60 Minutes - Sunday, December 17, 2017

Episode Date: December 18, 2017

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Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. This is the best case we've ever had against a major distributor in the history of the Drug Enforcement Administration. How do we not go after the number one organization? He's talking about the McKesson Corporation, the largest drug distributor in the country, and how the DEA's two-year case built against the company ran into a brick wall. Were they scared?

Yes. Scared of going after McKesson? In a better word, might be intimidated. Tonight, 60 Minutes and The Washington Post break more news in our opioid investigation. You hated black people. I thought I did. You hated black people. I thought I did. You hated Jews. I thought I did.

You wanted to kill them. At that time, I did. No one understands the white supremacist movement as well as Christian Picciolini. He knows it because he helped build it. This is the story of an American terrorist. His long journey to redemption and his struggle now to lift others from the depths of hate. A team in South Africa have engineered a bold way to help one of the continent's most endangered animals.

And when we heard about it, we had to see it for ourselves. Take one 1,400-pound black rhino. A young female. Two veterinarians, three game-capture specialists, a 52-year-old helicopter, and you get this. Woo! Look at that! Oh, my God! A solution that seems to defy the laws of gravity.

I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Lara Logan. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. In October, we joined forces with the Washington Post and reported a disturbing story of Washington

at its worst, about an act of Congress that crippled the DEA's ability to fight the worst drug crisis in American history, the opioid addiction crisis. Now, a new front of that joint investigation. It is also disturbing. It's the inside story of the biggest case the DEA ever built against a drug company, the McKesson Corporation, the country's largest drug distributor. It's also the story of a company too big to prosecute. In 2014, after two years of painstaking inquiry by nine DEA field divisions and 12 U.S. attorneys, investigators built a powerful case

against McKesson for the company's role in the opioid crisis. Our reporting turned up the leader of the DEA team, David Schiller, who tells, for the first time, how his investigators hit a brick wall in Washington when they tried to hold the powerful company accountable. This is the best case we've ever had against a major distributor in the history of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

How do we not go after the number one organization? In the height of the epidemic, when people are dying everywhere, doesn't somebody have to be held accountable? McKesson needs to be held accountable. Holding McKesson accountable meant going after the fifth largest corporation in the country. Headquartered in San Francisco, McKesson has 76,000 employees

and earns almost $200 billion a year in revenues, about the same as ExxonMobil. Since the 1990s, McKesson has made billions from the distribution of addictive opioids. I was with DEA for over 30 years. I was the assistant special agent in charge for the Denver Fuel Division. How many people did you supervise? Approximately 100. Before he retired in August, Schiller had supervised investigations in drug trafficking and money laundering cases. But he considered the case against McKesson to be the single most important investigation of his lifetime.

What did they do that was wrong? The issue with McKesson was they were providing millions and millions and millions of pills to countless pharmacies throughout the United States, and they did not maintain any sort of due diligence. This wasn't just happening in Denver, Colorado. This was happening in Los Angeles, California. It was happening in Detroit, Michigan. It was happening in New York City. It was a national problem, and nobody wanted to deal with it. McKesson told us when it comes to the opioid crisis and pills flooding into American communities, there's plenty of blame to go around.

Drug makers, other distributors, doctors's plenty of blame to go around. Drug makers, other distributors, doctors, pharmacies all played a role. But in 2008, McKesson agreed to pay $13.3 million in fines for failing to report huge orders of hydrocodone to shady internet pharmacies. After that settlement, the company promised to do a better job of monitoring shipments of controlled substances. Now, Special Agent Schiller and his team had caught McKesson again shipping suspicious orders of opioids.

DEA investigators discovered that McKesson was supplying pharmacies and doctors that were fronts for criminal drug rings, and pills were ending up on the black market. And everybody kept saying, it's just a prescription drug, it's a pill, it's a liquid, what's the big deal? And I would say, they're killing people. And their motive? This is all for financial gain. That's the problem. One of the former DEA administrators said that the McKesson Corporation has fueled the explosive prescription drug abuse problem in this country. Do you agree with that? 100 percent. If they would have stayed in compliance with their authority and held those

that they're supplying the pills to, the epidemic would be nowhere near where it is right now. Nowhere near. So you decided to take a swing at a hornet's nest. I knew that if we could get to the distributor, we could make a great impact for the United States citizens immediately. Immediately. McKesson delivers more than a third of all medicines in the U.S. from a network of 30 warehouses around the country. The DEA requires drug distributors to identify, stop,

and report orders of unusual size or frequency to the agency, something Schiller says McKesson did not do until the company learned it was under investigation. They had hundreds of thousands of suspicious orders they should have reported, and they didn't report any. There's not a day that goes by in the pharmaceutical world, in the McKesson world, in the distribution world, where there's not something suspicious.

It happens every day. And they had none. They weren't reporting any. I mean, you have to understand that nothing was suspicious. In one case, DEA investigators discovered that McKesson was shipping the same quantities of opioid pills to small town pharmacies in Colorado's San Luis Valley, as it would typically ship to large drug stores next to big city medical centers mckesson is supplying enough pills to that community to give every man woman and child a monthly dose of 30 to 60 tablets is that is that not shocking i found that shocking

helen kopang retired from the dea this fall after 29 years as an investigator and supervisor. She worked with Schiller on this investigation. She says the delivery of so many pills to such small towns should have set off alarms at McKesson. There was no legitimate reason for that pharmacy in that little town in remote Colorado to be getting hundreds of thousands of pills over a several-year period. None. Did McKesson know this, or should McKesson have known this? Absolutely, it was their customer.

They were supplying it. It was just outrageous. They were turning a blind eye to the very problem that we were trying to address. Copang said to get around reporting suspiciously large orders at the time, McKesson would simply raise the limit a pharmacy was allowed. No order, no matter how large, was ever reported as suspicious. They would set a threshold, and if they surpassed their own threshold, they would just bump up the threshold to meet this new higher number?

Yes. So they rigged the system? Absolutely. Absolutely. And to be clear here, we're talking addictive opioids. Highly addictive, oxycodone and hydrocodone in particular. That's what we're talking about. The most commonly prescribed and abused controlled

substance in the United States. McKesson would say they're just supplying the doctors and the pharmacies. They're giving them the prescriptions they are allowed to have. How are they wrong? Because they're going above and beyond those thresholds without justification and had supplied controlled substances in support of criminal activities to pharmacies. I mean, the president declared a public health emergency. It's on the front lines of everybody's dinner table conversation. There's not a bigger problem we have in the United States. And who led to the problem? McKesson was at the forefront.

With the opioid epidemic getting worse year by year, Special Agent Schiller and his team wanted to send a message to the pharmaceutical industry by hitting McKesson hard. They wanted to fine the company more than a billion dollars, revoke registrations to distribute controlled substances, and more than anything, put a McKesson executive behind bars. But Schiller says attorneys for the DEA and the Department of Justice retreated at the thought of going against McKesson and its high-powered legal team. Did a DEA attorney actually tell you that they were not going to pursue McKesson because they had lawyers who had gone to Harvard and Yale?

They told me those exact words because the case would take too much time and too much effort. And by the way, what if we lost? I said, what if you lost? I go, you can't have a better case on a silver platter. Were they scared? Yes. Scared of going after McKesson? And a better word might be intimidated. This was at the time whistleblower Joe Renecici,

the DEA's then Deputy Assistant Administrator, was sounding alarms that the DEA and Congress were bending to the will of the pharmaceutical industry. In our October report, he told us Justice Department attorneys were pressing him and his investigators to take a softer approach toward the industry. The summer of 2014, you get a request to play nice with the pharmaceutical industry. Yes. What do you think of that?

I didn't think it was appropriate. We told them what they need to do. We told them what compliance is and how to comply with the act. We met these people over and over again. The time for meetings and reports are over. You either comply or you lose your registration. But in the McKesson case, negotiations with company attorneys went on for more than two years. In the end, instead of the billion-dollar fine DEA investigators wanted,

the company was fined $150 million. That was a record for the DEA, but Schiller called it a slap on the wrist for a Fortune 5 company and a second-time offender. There was backdoor deals being cut that we didn't know about, I didn't know about, and I was representing DEA nationally on the investigation at the highest level. How do you settle? How do you say it's okay just here write this check this time and close this place for a little bit sign this piece of paper. How do you do that? No. Put them in jail. You put the people that are responsible for dealing drugs for breaking the law in jail. Nobody's in jail. They wrote a check. Did you think McKesson was getting special treatment? I don't think. I know

they were getting special treatment. They don't think. I know they were getting special treatment. They were getting treatment like I'd never seen in my 30-year career. Getting special treatment, he said, from lawyers at his agency. In an email, a member of DEA's senior leadership team who sided with Schiller told him she was overruled. David, I am totally against settling, she wrote, but how do we hold their feet to the fire? Our attorneys have us over a barrel with their refusal to go to court. There's not a man or woman in DEA today that's happy with the settlement, and morale has been broken because of it.

Why did you ultimately decide to sit down and talk to us? I saw what's happening to our country now with this epidemic. I saw the limitations being placed on us by our own people and chief counsel fighting with our own agents and investigators. And I know I'm going to make a lot of enemies because people don't like to hear the truth. I'm doing it because the truth needs to be told. Schiller pointed out to us the $150 million fine was only about $50 million more

than McKesson CEO John Hammergren's compensation last year. He was the third highest paid CEO in the country. Only Tim Cook of Apple and Reed Hastings of Netflix earned more. In the last earning period, McKesson's revenues were up $8 billion. We wanted to speak to a McKesson representative on camera, but they declined. But in a statement, McKesson said, In the interest of moving beyond disagreements, the company agreed to settle with the DEA and DOJ. And McKesson promised to do a better job flagging

suspicious orders. We asked the DEA about allegations its attorneys went easy on McKesson. A spokesperson told us the agreement was a good deal, that the priority was to get McKesson to do the right thing going forward. And now an independent monitor has been put in place to watch McKesson more closely. MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire Senator, New Hampshire Senator, New Hampshire Senator, Maggie Hassen has been critical of Congress for not aggressively investigating industry's role in this epidemic. New Hampshire has the second highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the country.

What more is it going to take to convince Congress to act? Well, one of the things we have to do is begin to hold the pharmaceutical companies accountable for this. And right now, when you see a fine for the McKesson company of $150 million when they make $100 million a week in profits, that isn't going to do it. What incentive do they have to change their behavior? Well, right now, they don't have a lot of incentives, and that's something that has to be changed. This, in many ways, reminds me of the situation with big tobacco. And, you know, I think it's one of the reasons you see attorneys general around the country beginning to file lawsuits against the pharmaceutical industry to hold them accountable for the costs of this terrible epidemic.

Forty-one state attorneys general have banded together to sue the opioid industry, while at McKesson, John Hammergren begins his 18th year as CEO. This year, the board awarded him an additional $1.1 million performance bonus, a bonus based on ethics and accountability. Terrorism has come to mean Islamic extremism.

But the fact is, since 9-11, more than twice as many Americans have been murdered by white supremacists. This threat exploded into view this past August when a protest aimed at a Civil War monument in Charlottesville, Virginia, ended with one dead and 19 injured. No one understands the white supremacist movement as well as Christian Picciolini. He knows it because he helped build it. This is the story of an American terrorist, his long journey to redemption, and his struggle now to lift others from the depths of hate.

You hated black people. I thought I did. You hated Jews. I thought I did. You wanted to kill them. At that time thought I did. You hated Jews? I thought I did. You wanted to kill them? At that time, I did. Christian Picciolini was not born to hate. He was taught. His education began in the Chicago suburb of Blue Island. He was 14, at odds with his Italian immigrant parents, and lost. I had been bullied and picked on for, you know, everything from my name to my short stature

to my parents not being able to speak English very well. And I just never fit in. And one of Picciolini's neighbors was a national figure in the neo-Nazi movement. When you first met this man in the alleyway and then the rest of the skinheads in that town, what was it that they were promising you? They promised me paradise.

They promised me that they would take me out of whatever hell I was living in, whether that was abandonment or marginalization. And to a degree degree they delivered. They did give me a new identity. I was now this powerful person, and they gave me a community that accepted me. That community was a racist gang

with its own culture and its own music. That's Picciolini with a song that he wrote called White Power. The music gave me very specific focus on what was happening to me. And it was trying to give me the answers of why that was happening. And what were those answers? Those answers were that everybody was against me as a white man, that I was being intentionally ostracized, and that diversity was a code word for white genocide, and that if I didn't protect my proud European heritage, that we would be wiped out.

By the time he reached Eisenhower High School, he had turned to violence on his last day there he beat up the same black student twice and i was brought down to the office into the principal's office who was also a black woman and in that office i got in a very heated physical argument with the security guard, Mr. Holmes. That security guard, Johnny Holmes, who has never forgotten what he saw in the principal's office that day. She put her arms around Chris. He said, you black bitch, get your filthy hands off of me. There were some words that I said to the principal that were not very kind. In fact, they were disgusting and very racist. Then he turned from her to me, and he started to poke me in my chest like this,

and he went on to say how he lived to see the day where a nigger was hanging from every light pole in Blue Island. And he really got in my face to try and stop me and subdued me until the police came and the police arrested me. Picciolini was expelled for the sixth and last time, which only made him more committed. That is me in 1994, looking very much like somebody who is a terrorist, I am at this point the leader of an organization of skinheads.

And the people standing behind me are my soldiers, people that would have done anything for me. And that last picture, where are you? I am standing in front of the gates of Dachau concentration camp in Germany. Dachau, where an estimated 41,000 were murdered, mostly Jews. What are you thinking? I was thinking that I wanted to burn the world down because I was so angry at it. The anger led Picciolini to recruit dozens of new members and unleash them on a campaign of assault, vandalism, and burglary. The violence reached its peak one night when Picciolini and his soldiers chased a black man out of a restaurant.

We caught that individual and we proceeded to beat him brutally. And at one point when I was kicking him on the ground and his face was swollen, covered in blood, he opened his eyes and they connected with mine. That was the first time I felt empathy for one of my victims. And that was the last time I hurt anybody. It took years from that moment for Picciolini to turn around. His wife and children left him. He went through five years of depression but ultimately he says his anger began to

cool as he was confronted by kindness blacks and Jews who refused to return the hate. The truth is I'd never met or had a meaningful dialogue or engagement with anybody that I thought I hated. And when they took the step to try and reach me, the demonization of them that I had in my head started to crack. 20 years later, 44-year-old Christian Picciolini is making amends. This was a United Nations peace conference in Geneva. In the U.S., he trains police, the FBI, and Homeland Security

in the mindset and tactics of the white supremacy movement. You know, 30 years ago, we were skinheads. We wore swastikas and shaved heads, and you could identify us pretty easily. So we decided at that time to grow our hair out, to trade in our boots for suits, and we encouraged people to get jobs in law enforcement, to go to the military and get training and to recruit there. Which is why it was hard to spot the racists amid the violence of Charlottesville. So Charlottesville is a seminal moment in this country for hate. Oren Siegel tracks the white supremacist transformation as director of the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL trains law enforcement officers in 250 agencies.

You know, look no further than Charlottesville. One of the lasting impressions people have are these white kids with polo shirts and khaki pants, almost look like a fraternity scene. But they're holding tiki torches, and they're talking about how the Jews are responsible for the ills of this country. They're racist, they're anti-immigrant, they're misogynist. But they look like our kids.

That's the changing face of hate in this country. Since 9-11, the country has been focused on radical Islamic terrorism, but what do the facts tell you? The data tells us this, 74% of extremist-related killings in this country in the last 10 years have been carried out by right-wing extremists, not Islamic extremists. Including white supremacists. Yes, so white supremacists in particular have been responsible for a majority of the killings, even in the last 10 years. It is social media that propels the movement's momentum.

Posts like these promoted the Charlottesville protest, which drew people from 35 states. It was the largest white supremacy rally in 15 years. The most common hashtag for racist tweets now is white genocide. And it's these types of things that appeal to young people who, frankly, are living in an environment right now where it's tough to find something to believe in. Today, Picciolini is trying to give white supremacists something else to believe in. He says he's counseled 200 members of the movement. You've got to be dealing with some stress, and I want to know how you're dealing

with it. He's sought out by parents and courts. In Chicago, a man who broke windows and painted swastikas on a synagogue was sentenced to a year of counseling with Picciolini. Didn't they call you Nazi Dean in grammar school? Yeah. Dean Chabot is another neo-Nazi who followed Picciolini out of white supremacy. Dean, do you consider yourself to be out or do you consider yourself to be in the process? I'm completely out. Actually, doing this interview is the final step. How so?

Once this airs, there's no going back. If you try to go back in, someone's going to kill you. This interview wasn't truly his final step. Dean, would you mind showing me these tattoos? Yes, sir. And how old were you when you got these? It's about 15 to 17. And when you got the tattoos, you thought what? I just thought that it was complete. I finally have my ink. Finally have your ink. You were all in, indelibly in the movement. Yep. Dean, you ready?

Yeah, I'm ready for this. Picciolini arranged for a plastic surgeon to erase the last traces of Chabot's former life. The reason why I'm doing this is because it's ending a chapter in my life, getting the hate off my skin. Good for you. When you first sit down with one of these young men you're trying to turn around, what do you say to them? I'm there to listen because they're used to people not listening to them.

His hardest case is the most notorious white supremacist of our time. In 2015, Dylann Roof murdered nine African Americans during Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina. I had to do it because somebody had to do something. Because black people are killing white people every day. Picciolini wrote to Roof in the hope that Roof would express remorse. Roof responded this way to Picciolini's letter. Well, it starts off with, traitor, you've really cashed in, haven't you?

I know you won't be, but you really should be ashamed of yourself. I hope you know that you are 100 times worse than the Jews you've surrounded yourself with. What does that tell you? That tells me he is completely indoctrinated by these alternate sets of facts, these conspiracy theories, this rhetoric that's pushed by the movement that puts all the blame on Jewish people, that he's so entrenched in that information that he's been fed, that that's become his reality. Redemption comes to those who face the evil they have done. Christian Picciolini's first job after white supremacy

was as a computer technician, and by chance he was sent to work at a high school, Eisenhower High School, where he apologized to Johnny Holmes, who was then still head of security. I knew it was genuine, and he was emotional, and it was a very, very special moment, that exchange. I am forever, forever grateful, and that's really important for me to be here.

I'm so happy for you, and I'm so glad that it happened. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think my biggest regret, aside from the people that I physically hurt, were all the young, promising people who could have had a normal, great life if I hadn't stepped in their way, if I hadn't recruited them. You know, there are many that went to prison, many that ended up dead. And that's my biggest regret. Do you fear for your safety? I receive death threats on a daily basis.

But the way I look at it is for eight years of my life and my youth, I was willing to die for something that was wrong. So if I wasn't doing what I was doing to try and help pull people out of this movement, I don't know that I'd be able to live with myself. Finding forgiveness for a racist. Was it easy for you to forgive him? It was so easy. Go to 60minutessovertime.com. How do you save a prehistoric looking animal that's ornery, exotic, and weighs around a ton, especially when it lives in places that are hard to get to? That the rhinoceros is in trouble is not a new story. For years, they've been crowded out of their habitats and hunted for their distinctive

horns. In the last ten years the poaching has gotten so bad in South Africa, where most of them live, that the rhino there are under almost daily attack. A team of veterinarians, pilots and game capture specialists are trying a different way to help the most endangered type of South African rhino, the black rhino. Their solution seems to defy the laws of gravity. And when we heard about it, we had to see it for ourselves. Take one 1,400-pound black rhino who's been darted and sedated.

A young female, probably about six or seven years old. One 1,400 pound black rhino who's been darted and sedated. A young female, probably about six or seven years old. Two veterinarians. With black rhino, lots of things can go wrong. Three game capture specialists. So now we're putting these straps on the feet. Four leg straps. A 52 year old Huey helicopter and its pilot

add a potentially lethal 130-foot chain. Keep an eye on that chain. I'm always worried about it swinging into someone's face. And you get this. Yeah. Look at that. Amazing, isn't it? Wow. I'm never tired of seeing it. This feat of engineering, aerodynamics and conservation

has been choreographed by Jacques Flamand, a veterinarian who's moving these rhino to save them. Why did you start flying the rhinos, transporting them by helicopter instead of by road or other means? Some of these rhino are in very inaccessible parts of the reserve, and this method of airlifting them provided us with an opportunity. I immediately thought that this is the solution to our problem. We're getting them out of rugged mountainous or thick forested areas

where vehicles cannot go in. With more than 100 square miles of mountains and ravines, the Atala Game Reserve fits that description. When we joined Flamond and his team, they were searching the impossible terrain for three rhino they had selected for relocation, part of his plan to protect them from poachers and increase their numbers. Why did you choose the black rhino to focus on? Well, I didn't choose it. It chose itself because it's in trouble. So how many black rhino were there in the country when you began? There were about 2,500 black rhino in South Africa when we started the project.

That was 15 years ago. The black rhino was a critically endangered species. To get the numbers up, Flamond started the Black Rhino Range a critically endangered species. To get the numbers up, Flamond started the Black Rhino Range Expansion Project with the help of the World Wildlife Fund. The idea was to take a small number of rhino from government parks and settle them in new places, mostly on private land,

where they would breed and create new populations. So you got the word out to people? We got the word out that we were looking for land for black rhino, and well, it's worked amazingly. So those 20 black rhino, or however many, get put all together onto a new block of land and are left to breed. And we wanted to put 20

because that's a genetically viable number. Flamand's team captured the rhino by darting them, then driving trucks in to pick them up. But when they ran out of road, they turned to the skies. I mean it's spectacular and unbelievable and also slightly distressing at the same time. It's sort of everything. You really have to put your mind at rest that animal physiologically is not being harmed in any way. Dave Cooper has been the chief veterinarian for KwaZulu-Natal parks for 22 years.

He says the rhino are usually in the air for less than 10 minutes and fully sedated the entire time. It looks as if the animals are really uncomfortable. But we've done our homework. We didn't just do this and see if it was going to work. We hung rhino upside down with cranes and sat and monitored their vitals. I'm talking about sophisticated kind of equipment. Didn't you volunteer to hang yourself upside down from the helicopter? I did, but the pilots wouldn't let me. We've had some of the vets want to be hung upside down and try that.

They've told me that anything that can walk on its feet can hang by its feet. Pilot Tosh Ross and Dave Cooper have been working together from the beginning. I got you. Ross told us the Huey helicopter he's flying for this can haul two tons, more than enough to lift a black rhino. But you've done how many now? This will be 198. So almost 200 and you've lost none.

Yeah, if we do, if we just see today, then it'll be 200, yeah. What's the most difficult part? Putting it down, Putting it down gently. So you don't hurt the animal? It's not... But it's so easy, everyone will be doing it. We saw just how difficult it can be as Tash Ross struggled to land the first rhino. He got it down safe and unhurt on the second try. Vet Dave Cooper was already up in another smaller helicopter looking for the next rhino.

He prepped darts for his tranquilizer gun with a dose strong enough to knock the animal out for 30 minutes. The first dart didn't fully pierce the inch-thick skin. Three minutes later, his second shot stuck. They tracked the rhino till it dropped. We were right behind them in the Huey with Jacques Flamand and the game capture team. I see the rhino down.

How many minutes do you have now to get that rhino? We'll go over the top. As soon as we landed, it was a race to get to the sedated animal. Dave Cooper's priority removing the tranquilizer dart and treating the wound with an antibiotic. I darted in once here. Yeah. The dart just went in and out. So I immediately had to put another one in. So that's the first thing you do is cover the eyes? Yeah, that's right, because that stops them. So is this a male or female?

This is a male. He's young and has many years of breeding ahead of him, exactly what they need. They ID'd him from notches in his ears. Most rhino in the KwaZulu-Natal parks are marked this way. Is that him breathing? That's him breathing. Wow. It's lovely, big, deep breath. I'm happy with that. parks are marked this way. Is that him breathing? That's him breathing.

Wow. It's lovely big deep breaths. I'm happy with that. The game capture team cleared a path to above. The helicopter's now going to come. Yeah. Wow. And we're going to hitch up those four straps to the central hook.

Tosh Ross maneuvered in the chain and swept the Rhino away. It took them less than 16 minutes. For Dave Cooper, it's a small victory every time. I had tears in my eyes. Because? They mean a lot to me. As a vet, I mean you're the one that gets called out when the poachers have been there

and they've hacked off the horn and the animal's bleeding. Is that very difficult for you? Yes. There's so much negativity around rhino at the moment with all the poaching that to be involved in something like this is what lifts you and keeps you positive about things. This is what Cooper and Flamond are seeing more and more. When the program started in 2003, three or four black rhino were being killed a

year. Now we're into the hundreds for this province alone this year. So why is that? Well, because there is that stupid demand for rhino horn, which has absolutely no medicinal value, sadly. Rhino horn is made of keratin, the same substance as human fingernails. Yet in countries like China and Vietnam, people believe it can cure hangovers and increase virility. Private game parks are drowning in security costs. Most remove the horns to deter poachers.

But it's worth so much, more per ounce than gold or cocaine, that every place there's rhino is a target. Some people have even got rid of their rhinos because they've become a liability on their own properties. And a financial burden. A very huge financial burden. But we still, fortunately, have some very committed, passionate people who want to get more black rhino.

That commitment is shared by the game capture team. Vuzi and Changazi told us the poachers threatened their lives and their livelihood. We feed our children with this job. If the rhinos never came here… Then you would have no job. Yeah, yes. So these animals mean a lot to you.

It's important to us. Very important. To our lives. So important. Moving the rhino this way is expensive. With Tash Ross volunteering his services, it still costs about $100,000 to lift 20 rhino. You'll have to come in over the trucks. He's prepping now.

Jacques Flaman joined his team at the landing zone, where they were preparing for their final delivery. Tash Ross eased his cargo down. The next part, the dehorning, was hard to watch. I know you do it to save the rhino, but it still seems like horrible. It's painless. There are no nerve endings or blood supply to the horn directly. Don't they need their horn? They do to defend themselves, but it's a toss-up.

You know, it's predators versus poachers. Who do we protect them from most? Poachers at the moment, I'd say. After some prodding, the groggy female was loaded into a crate. She still had a road trip ahead of her to a holding area. The female was loaded into a crate. She still had a road trip ahead of her to a holding area. Flamand will keep her there until he's captured enough rhino to relocate as a group. What is that like for you?

It's great, it's great. I mean, one always feels sad removing them from their existing homes, but it's for a good cause. It's to start a new breeding population. Eight weeks later, they were released. For security, we can't tell you exactly where, but it's a well-guarded reserve in another part of the country. Jacques Flamand said there are now about 200 more black rhino in South Africa

than when he started his program. Not as many as he wanted, but at a time of relentless poaching, there's no simple road to success. 50 seasons of 60 Minutes. This week, from December 1981, Nancy Reagan had begun an expensive redecoration of the White House. Mike Wallace, an old friend, asked the First Lady about the negative stories concerning her perceived

extravagance. You're really hurt by some of the press that you've been getting. I mean hurt. Yes. And were you unprepared for the scrutiny that you were going to get? Yes, I really was. Although people, like everything else, had told me. But I really didn't think it would be as deep as it is. I guess what you really want for Christmas is for the press to take a fresh look at you.

Really. That would be nice. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.