60 Minutes - Sunday, June 19, 2016

Episode Date: June 20, 2016

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When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and

terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Do I get my own, right? You get your own ring. The ring has a tiny computer chip inside a black stone, which transmits a signal. When it's close to the trigger, it unlocks

the gun. Alternatively, if I were to grab it, you know, nothing happens. That's an example of what's known as a smart gun that only its owner can shoot. Every time a mass shooting occurs, the conversation begins again about why you can't buy one. Behind these doors in the U.S. Capitol is a vault that contains one of the most secret and sensitive documents in the United States, 28 pages that could shed light on the events of 9-11. They've been seen by very few people, and tonight you'll hear from some of them. I think it is implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn't speak English,

could have carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States. And you believe that the 28 pages are crucial to this? I think they are a key part. Okay, you're good? Okay, three, two, one, go! JT launches off the summit. Champion speed rider Valentin DeLuke quickly follows, videotaping for us with a camera on his helmet. The ride of a lifetime has begun. You're standing there on the top of the mountain. What goes through your mind? There's two mindsets. There's the Evel Knievel, which is kind of kamikaze,

and then there's the James Bond. Which one are you? I'm Bond. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes.

Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. The mass shooting at the nightclub in Orlando a week ago today represents the latest of what has become a reoccurring nightmare in America. Family and friends are mourning again. Flags are at half staff again. And once again, there are calls for gun control, which happens every time there's an incident like this. One proposal to address the violence, especially when it comes to the daily shootings

on our streets and in our homes, is smart guns. As we first reported in November, these are firearms that only work when they're fired by their owner. With gee whiz technology seeping into every corner of our lives, why not guns? In the 2012 movie Skyfall, Q gives James Bond a smart gun that only he can activate. It's been coded to your palm print so only you can fire it. Later, when the bad guy gets a hold of it. Good luck with that. Firearms that recognize only their owner aren't just the stuff of movies. Army veteran Tom Lynch is developing a touchpad scanner that recognizes fingerprints like an iPhone. Add it to an existing gun and it's a smart gun. So it's recognizing you. It's recognizing me. Okay. Now. Now. It's unlocked. It's still on fire. Let me try it. It should be over the fire. Let's see if I can. Now pull the trigger. I can't even pull the trigger. That's the point. It's locked. It's

locked. Other inventors are working on guns that recognize the squeeze of your grip or unlock wirelessly if the shooter wears a watch or a ring. These guns would not have prevented many of the mass shootings because the gunmen owned the firearms. But smart gun advocates say they could counter this all too common grim reality. A 14-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed his nine-year-old brother. Children shot and killed by other children. A tragic shooting, two friends playing with a gun when it goes off. Smart guns could curtail the number of suicides and cut down on the resale of stolen guns, estimated to be 230,000 every year. What good is a gun no one but the owner can fire? Shots fired in the city of an officer down.

And they would help on-duty cops. There was a struggle and Clark grabbed Officer Smith's gun and shot him two times. And yet, with at least a half dozen smart guns in advanced development and some ready for manufacturing, no major U.S. gun company is making them and no gun dealer is willing to sell them. Why? Well, consider what happened to one Maryland gun dealer who tried. I like the way Sterling Arsenal actually painted this thing.

Last year, Andy Raymond, co-owner of Engage Armament, announced that he'd sell the Armitix IP1, a smart pistol made in Germany. Who did you think would be interested in that kind of a gun? Typically what I like to call fence-sitters, so people who aren't normally into guns and don't normally want one, you know, I'm too afraid or whatever. Did you anticipate the reaction that you got? No. Within minutes of his announcement, angry e-mails and phone calls started coming. We got about 2,000 phone calls and maybe about the same e-mails. All against? Yeah, that was just in one day.

I mean, it was insane. I mean, one person threatened to burn down the shop. Another person threatened that I would be raped. That was classic. You would be raped? Yeah. Did you get any death threats? Yeah, The crazies

did come out of the woodwork. That's him that night, shaved head and whiskey bottle at his side. He stayed in his store to guard it and posted this video on Facebook. So anyway, obviously, I received numerous death threats today. I really appreciate that. That's classy. That's a great thing for gun rights when you threaten to shoot somebody. He thinks the campaign against him was viral, not organized by the gun lobby. Though in his rant, he wondered why gun lovers and the National Rifle Association would oppose the sale of any gun. How can the NRA or people want to prohibit a gun when we're supposed to be pro-gun? We're supposed to say that any gun is good in the right person's hands.

How can they say that a gun should be prohibited? How hypocritical is that? If you believe in the Second Amendment, the Second Amendment is absolute. The right of people keeping bare arms shall not be infringed. Then you should be able to buy whatever you want. What Andy didn't realize is that there's a long beleaguered history to these devices. Fifteen years ago, gunmaker Smith & Wesson promised the Clinton White House to develop smart guns as part of a deal to fend off liability litigation.

Under the agreement, Smith & Wesson will develop smart guns that can be fired only by the adults who own them. The gun lobby organized a boycott against Smith and Wesson will develop smart guns that can be fired only by the adults who own them. The gun lobby organized a boycott against Smith and Wesson, seeing smart guns and other concessions in the deal as part of the gun control agenda. Factories closed, employees were laid off, and after that, no big U.S. gunmaker ever went near a smart gun. There's a lot of skepticism and a lot of resistance to them. Steve Sinetti, president of the Gun Lobby and Trade Group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, represents over 12,000 gunmakers, dealers, and businesses. Does your organization see the smart gun as gun control?

People that own guns are not the ones saying, I'm the one that want this, please develop it. It's coming from the gun control side. It's coming from people who, frankly, really want to put as many obstacles to a gun going off as they can. Why are dealers who want to sell it? Why are they being intimidated not to? Why not let the market decide? People don't want it, Don't buy it. Well, I agree. We think the market should be able to decide that. We have never fought the idea that dealers can put them on the shelves. It's totally up to the marketplace. So where is that fight coming from?

And that's the point. People don't understand the passion that firearms owners have for the firearms that they own. The passion has been fueled by the NRA, which says on its legislative website, smart guns could open the door to a ban on all other guns. Why do they say that? Well, it's actually happened. In 2002, New Jersey's governor signed a law that became known as the mandate. There is a statute in the state of New Jersey that would say that once a gun like this is offered for sale anywhere, that's the only kind of gun that could be sold. If these guns are sold in Wyoming or California, this triggers this law that everybody in New Jersey has to have that. Loretta Weinberg, the New Jersey state senator who authored the law, didn't foresee its consequences.

We passed that bill to help spur this technology. It appears it totally backfired because it spurred this passionate objection to the gun. Because of the intervention of the NRA and the Second Amendment. They say the reason they intervene is because of the mandate. Right. It isn't the law that stopped the development. It is the people who threatened folks who actually wanted to sell such a gun. Andy Raymond came to realize that even if he had sold the Armitix gun in Maryland, it might have triggered the mandate banning the sale of regular handguns in New Jersey.

The people of New Jersey, my apologies. You got nothing to worry about from me. I did apologize. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to this day. Did you actually sell any of the Armitix guns? No. After his case came to her attention, the New Jersey senator offered to rescind the mandate if the gun lobby publicly removed its opposition to smart guns. She's yet to hear back. They seem to oppose almost everything. Any time we suggest anything, we've gotten very little cooperation back.

If the law were completely repealed, do you think that the gun lobby would then let this go forward? No. Why are you trying to take my firearm, which I store safely and properly, and I've never had problems with it, and add something to it that's going to make it more prone to failure? What about this argument that we have seatbelts, we have airbags, they're mandatory. Why not make a safe gun mandatory? Firearms are safe. The firearms manufacturers include appropriate locking devices for their guns along with them when they're shipped. They may be low-tech, but they work.

He says adding high-tech to guns may make them less safe. For example, the batteries that operate the smart guns. We've all had battery-operated devices where the battery dies. So the people who are working on this tell us that the batteries will have a 10-year life. What about the 11th year? Well, you change the battery. If you remember, if... No, you're going to get a warning.

Okay, if the gun is stored inside a cabinet or a box or a safe or something like that, you might not see the warning. Other concerns. Will fingerprints work in snow and rain? Will they work if you're sweating because an intruder entered your home? Could guns using wireless technology be hacked or jammed and disabled remotely by the government? We have to be careful not to fall into the technology trap. It doesn't solve every problem. It's great. We're not Luddites. We're not here saying that technology is a bad thing.

Technology obviously improves our life in many ways. But I think you have to look at firearms in a slightly different way. Their mechanisms are the way they are over centuries of development. They're at the state now that the consumers want them. And in the United States, there's lots of tradition involved with firearms. People like guns of the Old West. They like them the way Davy Crockett used them. They like them the way they were used years ago.

That was the case a decade and a half ago, as Jonathan Mossberg found out. He had left his family's gun-making business, Mossberg & Sons, and invented a smart gun that works in conjunction with a ring. Do I get my own, right? You get your own ring. The ring has a tiny computer chip inside a black stone, which transmits a signal. When it's close to the trigger, it unlocks the gun. Alternatively, if I were to grab it, you know, nothing happens. Mossberg's gun was ready to sell 13 years ago, but... People weren't really, there was some market, but not enough. So we decided not to sell it.

And has something changed? Yes. We all started living with these evil things. And so we became comfortable trusting it. They guide us to our destinations, they make sure we're okay for meetings, and they're extremely reliable. He thinks that today's young parents, comfortable with technology, are a ripe market. And Silicon Valley agrees. This is going to happen outside the gun industry.

Why they aren't doing research and investing in this baffles me. Ron Conway, one of the early investors in Facebook and Google, is now looking for, he says, the Mark Zuckerberg of guns. He has funded at least 15 smart gun inventors, including those involved in the two guns we tested. Are you thinking that if the gun manufacturers don't come along, that they're going to be like Kodak? Absolutely. This is what you're saying. Yes. Kodak and Polaroid all wrapped in one. You cannot stop innovation. And this is an area where innovation is taking over.

Are you not worried about the politics of this whole issue? I think for technology and innovation, we have to ignore politics. Can you? Of course you can. But when it comes to guns, it's all about politics. Just ask Andy Raymond. I got caught up in the middle of something that was way beyond me, way beyond my capabilities, and got caught between two sides that, I mean, it was just, I will never, ever, ever touch anything else like that ever, ever again. As of today, you cannot find a smart gun to buy in the United States. Senator Loretta Weinberg told us that she plans to ask the New Jersey state legislature to repeal the mandate, but

replace it with a demand that dealers display at least one smart gun in their stores. Question is, will dealers be too gun shy? If this gun does take off, would you sell it? Absolutely not. Ever? I would rather be shot by a smart gun than sell one. Shortly after it was introduced, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed Senator Weinberg's new smart gun bill. But President Obama has announced a federal commitment to jumpstart the deployment of smart gun technology involving the Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. While investigators are trying to get to the bottom of what happened in Orlando,

there is still a significant gap in what the U.S. government will reveal about 9-11. The White House and the intelligence community are in the final stages of reviewing one of the country's most sensitive and secret documents to determine whether it can be declassified and released to the public. As Steve Croft first reported in April, the 28 pages have to do with the possible existence of a Saudi support network for some of the 9-11 hijackers while they were in the United States.

For 13 years, the 28 pages have been locked away in a secret vault. Only a small group of people have ever seen them. Tonight, you will hear from some of the people who have read them and believe, along with the families of 9-11 victims, that they should be declassified. I think it is implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn't speak English, most of whom had never been in the United States before, many of whom didn't have a high school education, could have carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States. And you believe that the 28 pages are crucial to this?

I think they are a key part. Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham has been trying to get the 28 pages released since the day they were classified back in 2003, when he played a major role in the first government investigation into 9-11. I remain deeply disturbed by the amount of material that has been censored from this report. At the time, Graham was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

I call the Joint Inquiry Committee to order. And co-chair of the bipartisan Joint Congressional Inquiry into Intelligence Failures Surrounding the Attacks. The joint inquiry reviewed a half a million documents, interviewed hundreds of witnesses, and produced an 838-page report, minus the final chapter, which was blanked out, excised by the Bush administration for reasons of national security. So this is your office? Bob Graham won't discuss the classified information in the 28 pages. He will say only that they outline a network of people that he believes supported the hijackers

while they were in the U.S. You believe that support came from Saudi Arabia? Substantially. And when we say the Saudis, you mean the government, rich people in the country, charities? All of the above. Graham and others believe the Saudi role has been soft-pedaled to protect a delicate relationship with a complicated kingdom where the rulers, royalty, riches, and religion are all deeply intertwined in its institutions. The committee will be in order.

Porter Goss, who was Graham's Republican co-chairman on the House side of the joint inquiry, and later director of the CIA, also felt strongly that an uncensored version of the 28 pages should be included in the final report. The two men made their case to the FBI and its then-director, Robert Mueller, in a face-to-face meeting. They pushed back very hard on the 28 pages, and they said, no, that cannot be unclassified at this time. Did you happen to ask the FBI director why it was classified?

We did, in a general way, and the answer was because we said so and it needs to be classified. Goss says he knew of no reason then and knows of no reason now why the pages need to be classified. They are locked away under the Capitol in guarded vaults called Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, or SCIFs in government jargon. This is as close as we could get with our cameras, a highly restricted area where members of Congress with the proper clearances can read the documents under close supervision, no note-taking allowed. It's all got to go up here, Steve.

Tim Romer, a former Democratic congressman and U.S. ambassador to India, has read the 28 pages multiple times, first as a member of the joint inquiry and later as a member of the Blue Ribbon 9-11 Commission, which picked up where Congress's investigation left off. How hard is it to actually read these 28 pages? Very hard. These are tough documents to get your eyes on.

Romer and others who have actually read the 28 pages describe them as a working draft, similar to a grand jury or police report that includes provocative evidence, some verified and some not. They lay out the possibility of official Saudi assistance for two of the hijackers who settled in Southern California. That information from the 28 pages was turned over to the 9-11 Commission for further investigation. Some of the questions raised were answered in the Commission's final report. Others were not. Is there information in the 28 pages that if they were declassified would surprise people? Sure you're going to be surprised by it. And you're going to be surprised by some of the answers

that are sitting there today in the 9-11 Commission report about what happened in San Diego and what happened in Los Angeles and what was the Saudi involvement. Much of that surprising information is buried in footnotes and appendices of the 9-11 report, part of the official public record, but most of it unknown to the general public. These are some, but not all, of the facts. In January of 2000, the first of the hijackers landed in Los Angeles

after attending an al-Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The two Saudi nationals, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midar, arrived with extremely limited language skills and no experience with Western culture. Yet, through an incredible series of circumstances, they managed to get everything they needed, from housing to flight lessons. L.A., San Diego, that's really, you know, the hornet's nest. That's really the one that I continue to think about almost on a daily basis. During their first days in L.A., witnesses placed the two future hijackers at the King Fahd Mosque in the company of Fahd Althumary, a diplomat at the Saudi consulate known to hold extremist views. Later, 9-11 investigators would find him deceptive and suspicious,

and in 2003, he would be denied re-entry to the United States for having suspected ties to terrorist activity. This is a very interesting person in the whole 9-11 episode of who might have helped whom in Los Angeles and San Diego with two terrorists who didn't know their way around. Phone records show that Thumeri was also in regular contact with this man, Omar al-Bayoumi, a mysterious Saudi who became the hijacker's biggest benefactor. He was a ghost employee with a no-show job at a Saudi aviation contractor outside Los Angeles, while drawing a paycheck from the Saudi government.

You believe Bayoumi was a Saudi agent? Yes. What makes you believe that? Well, for one thing, he'd been listed even before 9-11 in FBI files as being a Saudi agent. On the morning of February 1st, 2000, Bayoumi went to the office of the Saudi consulate where Thumary worked. He then proceeded to have lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant on Venice Boulevard, where he later claimed he just happened to make the acquaintance of the two future hijackers.

Hosni Amidhar magically run into Bayoumi in a restaurant that Bayoumi claims is a coincidence in one of the biggest cities in the United States. And he decides to befriend them. He decides to not only befriend them, but then to help them move to San Diego and get residence. In San Diego, Bayoumi found them a place to live in his own apartment complex, advanced them the security deposit, and co-signed the lease. He even threw them a party

and introduced them to other Muslims who would help the hijackers obtain government IDs and enroll in English classes and flight schools. There's no evidence that Bayoumi or Thoumary knew what the future hijackers were up to, and it is possible that they were just trying to help fellow Muslims. But the very day Bayoumi welcomed the hijackers to San Diego, there were four calls between his cell phone and the imam at a San Diego mosque, Anwar al-Awlaki, a name that should sound familiar. America cannot and will not win. The American-born Awlaki would be infamous a decade later

as al-Qaeda's chief propagandist and top operative in Yemen, until he was taken out by a CIA drone. But in January 2001, a year after becoming the hijacker's spiritual advisor, he left San Diego for Falls Church, Virginia. Months later, Hosni, Midar, and three more hijackers would join him there. Those are a lot of coincidences, and three more hijackers would join him there. Those are a lot of coincidences, and that's a lot of smoke. Is that enough to make you squirm and uncomfortable and dig harder and declassify these 28 pages? Absolutely. Perhaps no one is more interested in reading the 28 pages than attorneys Jim Kreinler and Sean Carter, who represent family members of the 9-11 victims

in their lawsuit against the kingdom, alleging that its institutions provided money to al-Qaeda knowing that it was waging war against the United States. What we're doing in court is developing the story that has to come out. But it's been difficult for us because for many years we weren't getting the kind of openness and cooperation that we think our government owes to the American people, particularly the families of people who were murdered. The U.S. government has even backed the Saudi position in court that it can't be sued because it enjoys sovereign immunity. The 9-11 Commission report says that Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al-Qaeda funding through its wealthy citizens and charities with significant government

sponsorship. But the sentence that got the most attention when the report came out is this, we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization. Attorney Sean Carter says it's the most carefully crafted line in the 9-11 Commission report and the most misunderstood. When they say that we found no evidence that senior Saudi officials individually funded al-Qaeda, they conspicuously leave open the potential that they found evidence that people who were officials that they did not regard as senior officials had done so. That is the essence of the family's lawsuit, that elements of the government and lower-level officials sympathetic to bin Laden's cause helped al-Qaeda carry out

the attacks and helped sustain the al-Qaeda network. Yet for more than a decade, the kingdom has maintained that that one sentence exonerated it of any responsibility for 9-11, regardless of what might be in the 28 pages. It's not an exoneration. What we said, we did not, with this report, exonerate the Saudis. Former U.S. Senator Bob Kerry is another of the 10-member 9-11 Commission who has read the 28 pages and believes they should be declassified. He filed an affidavit in support of the 9-11 family's lawsuit. You can't provide the money for terrorists and then say, I don't have anything to do with what they were doing. Do you believe that all of the leads that were developed in the 28 pages were answered in the 9-11 report, all the questions?

No. In general, the 9-11 Commission did not get every single detail of the conspiracy. We didn't. We didn't have the time. We didn't have the resources. And we certainly didn't pursue the entire line of inquiry in regards to Saudi Arabia. Do you think all of these things in San Diego can be explained as coincidence? I don't believe in coincidences. John Lehman, who was Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, says that he and the others make up a solid majority of former 9-11 commissioners who think the 28 pages should be made public. We're not a bunch of rubes that rode into Washington for this commission. You know, we've seen fire and we've seen rain in the politics of national security.

We all have dealt for our careers in highly classified and compartmentalized and every aspect of security. We know when something shouldn't be declassified. And those 28 pages in no way fall into that category. Lehman has no doubt that some high Saudi officials knew that assistance was being provided to al-Qaeda, but he doesn't think it was ever official policy. He also doesn't think that it absolves the Saudis of responsibility. It was no accident that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. They all went to Saudi schools. They learned from the time they were first able to go to school of this intolerant brand of Islam. Lehman is talking about Wahhabism, the ultra-conservative puritanical form of Islam that's rooted here and permeates every facet of society.

There is no separation of church and state. After oil, Wahhabism is one of the kingdom's biggest exports. Saudi clerics, entrusted with Islam's holiest shrines, have immense power and billions of dollars to spread the faith, building mosques and religious schools all over the world that have become recruiting grounds for violent extremists. 9-11 Commissioner John Lehman says all of this comes across in the 28 pages. This is not going to be a smoking gun that is going to cause a huge furor. But it does give a very

compact illustration of the kinds of things that went on that would really help the American people to understand how is it that these people are springing up all over the world to go to jihad? Look, the Saudis have even said they're for declassifying it. We should declassify it. Is it sensitive, Steve? Might it involve opening a bit of can of worms or some snakes crawling out of there? Yes. But I think we need a relationship with the Saudis where both countries are working together to fight against terrorism. And that's not always been the case. When our report aired in April, the Saudi government denounced the story as myths and erroneous charges,

while members of Congress demanded that the 28 pages be made public. The official review by top intelligence officials, which has been going on for two years, is expected to be concluded before the end of this month. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. The Eiger in the Swiss Alps is one of the most forbidding mountains in the world.

Locals call it the Ogre, and for more than a century, this monster of a mountain has attracted thrill-seekers eager to risk their lives on its nearly vertical slopes. More than 60 climbers have frozen or fallen to their deaths. Now, as we first reported last fall, a new breed of daredevil is taking on the Eiger, not by climbing up the mountain, but by plunging down it. When we heard that after years of planning, a new kind of descent was about to be attempted, we went to Switzerland to see firsthand something no one had ever tried before. At 13,000 feet, the icy summit of the Eiger is too steep and rocky to simply ski down.

You ready? So J.T. Holmes is training in three extreme sports to rocket down more of the Eiger than anyone ever has. Right now, he's practicing one of those sports, speed riding, on a nearby mountain slope with his friend and cameraman, Valentin DeLoup. To speed ride, JT is using skis, but he's also attached to a glider-like parachute called a speed wing. It allows him to soar over rocks and ledges impossible to ski. You're capable of transitioning in and out of flight at will. So you're both skiing and then you're flying.

And then you're skiing a little bit more. Exactly. But speed riding will only take JT so far down the Eiger. He'll also ski off a cliff and then free fall the rest of the way, all in one long, nonstop, breathtaking ride. Three sports, one run. And they're my three favorite sports. These are the three things you love?

Yeah, these are three of the things that I love. JT needs perfect conditions for this dangerous descent, and so far he hasn't been lucky. Weather on the Eiger is unpredictable. Fierce winds whip the slopes and change direction dramatically. JT checks the Eiger every day to see if he can finally head to the summit. The past two years, he's had to cancel plans because wind blew the snow off the top of the mountain. Today, the conditions are not right. Well, yeah, today you can't even see the top of

the Eiger. So first of all, you can't even see the top of the Eiger, so first of all you couldn't land a helicopter up there. How long have you been planning this? You know, first kind of thoughts of it were upwards of six years ago, but really focused on it for three. Why is it taking so long? You're putting your life, you know, in unnecessary risk, so I need the right day. JT is well aware of the risk.

He started out as a professional skier. The steeper the slope, the better. Ready, set, go! Now at 35, he makes a living through endorsements and filming his remarkable feats. When we first met him six years ago in Norway, he and his daredevil friends were pioneering the use of wingsuits, jumping off mountains and flying at more than 100 miles an hour. But in the last several years, a number of JT's friends and acquaintances have died in wingsuit accidents.

Iliv Rude, who was flying with JT in Norway, was killed in 2012 when he struck a cliff and fell a thousand feet. JT won't be wingsuit flying off the Eiger. The most dangerous part of his descent will be after he finishes speed riding when he tries to jettison his skis and free fall down the rest of the mountain. To practice, he makes base jumps without skis off a tiny, slippery piece of rock he calls the mushroom. I stepped off the helicopter onto the mushroom, and that was fine. I had good grip. But then I took another step, and there was this really thin ice layer. Yeah, it feels more uneven than I remember it.

He's off. He falls for about 20 seconds, accelerating to 110 miles an hour before opening his parachute. He's straightening right toward us. The parachute's open. It's a white parachute. He's red. That was amazing. How was it? Scary. When JT jumps off the cliff on the Eiger, he'll have his skis on. Properly releasing them is critical. What's the danger if you can't get the skis off? You're at risk of an unstable parachute deployment or a snag. So the biggest danger is that the ski is going to get tangled up in the parachute?

That's the risk. That risk is foremost in his mind because of what happened to his best friend, Shane McConkie. In 2007, JT and Shane started skiing off mountains, dropping their skis, and then flying away in wingsuits. It was a dangerous combination they found thrilling. Oh yeah, another wingsuit ski base. Here we go. But on this jump in Italy in 2009, Shane McConkie's ski release mechanism jammed. He couldn't get his skis to come off. He crashed into the ground at high speed and was killed instantly. That's how he died. His skis didn't come off. He couldn't get his skis off, struggled in his wingsuit, and crashed.

When JT is training at the Eiger, he wears a T-shirt with a funny picture of Shane on it. This Eiger descent. Without his old friend there to help him, he's turned to new friends. Martin Sherman is an experienced Swiss mountain guide. They can change very quickly, from good conditions to really nasty. It can turn bad very quickly. And then you're in trouble. One wrong step and you can plunge off.

You're gone. Martin and JT are cautious and methodical, making numerous trips of the Eiger to plan in advance every part of the complex descent, particularly this spot where JT will jump, jettison his skis, and begin to free fall. You're standing there on the top of the mountain. What goes through your mind? There's two mindsets. You know, there's the Evel Knievel, which is kind of kamikaze, and who knows how it's going to work out, and will you hit the landing ramp or not? And then there's the James Bond. And Bond is composed and dialed, and he uses clever pieces of gear, which he developed with Q to outwit his opponents and pull off tremendous things. Which one are you?

I'm Bond. After days of waiting and years of false starts and canceled attempts, on this visit in April, the weather on the mountain suddenly clears. JT decides the time is right. He and his team take a chopper to the Eiger summit. I'm checking for landmarks on the way up and kind of confirming my line, my path of descent. So you already have a path of descent in your mind. It's something that's been memorized.

The Eiger may be a monster of a mountain, but up close, the summit is shockingly small. Here, there is no room for error, no room for the helicopter. It's not big enough for the helicopter to actually land. It does what we call a toe-in, where it just puts its nose into the Eiger and it just hovers there. How big is the area that you're standing on at the top? The top of the Eiger is pretty small. There is no flat spot. You know, workable space is three ping-pong tables. Three ping-pong tables? Yeah. That's it? Something like that, yeah. A mistake here, one wrong step at 13,000 feet, could cost them their lives.

JT and his team work for almost an hour. Wearing crampons on their ski boots, they dig trenches with ice axes so they won't fall down the nearly vertical slope. The surface is jagged ice, not powdery snow, and it can easily rip the speed wings. I don't like how these things grab the lines. They file down the sharp pieces of ice so they won't snag the speed wing lines. But the wind kicks up, and they have to quickly reposition them. JT decides it's now or never.

Okay, you good? Okay, three, two, one, go. JT launches off the summit. Champion speed rider Valentin DeLoup quickly follows, videotaping for us with a camera on his helmet. The ride of a lifetime has begun. That's when you turn your skis downhill. Doing that, that's very committing because when you point your skis downhill. Doing that, that's very committing,

because when you point your skis down the Eiger, you're probably not going to stop until the bottom. One way or the other? One way or the other. JT uses the Speedwing for much of the descent, flying over outcroppings of rock and icy slopes too steep to ski. He reaches an open slope on the Eiger's western flank and lands. He cuts loose his speed wing, so it won't slow him down.

Now he relies solely on his skis and skill. It's black diamond skiing. You're in a really cool place where a few people have skied. Really what you're trying to do is just gather as much speed as possible and just propel yourself off the cliff. The cliff he'll ski off is coming up fast. This is the most dangerous part of JT's descent. There is no stopping. He completes a double backflip to stabilize himself, releases his skis, then free falls. His nylon suit is aerodynamically designed, propelling him forward so he doesn't crash into any rock ledges. He falls nearly 2,000 feet, finally opening his parachute.

Woo-hoo! Yeah! Yeah, buddy. Woo-hoo! Yeah! Yeah, buddy! Woo-hoo! He drifts safely to the ground, landing more than a mile below the Iger's summit. Whoa, dude! Woo!

Oh, my God! That was pretty intense, man. Nailed it. Nailed it. Nailed it. I don't have words to describe how it felt to go and pull that off after so much time. And, you know, it's kind of a twisted style of having fun, but it was really fun. If you're too fast, it's a little just kind of scary. We assume JT

would call it a day after making it down the Eiger in one piece. But after catching his breath and repacking his equipment, he decides to head back to the summit and do the whole run down the mountain once again. Three, two, one, go. His speed ride off the summit goes perfectly. He flies over trouble spots and builds up speed as he approaches the cliff edge. But when he tries to release his skis, one of them won't come off. This is what killed his best friend, Shane McConkie. JT struggles for several agonizing seconds, then finally manages to drop the ski. It's a close call, but it doesn't seem to stop him from enjoying the rest of the ride. Could you give it

up? I believe that I could, because I don't feel that I'm addicted to this sort of type of thing, this adrenaline or this sort of high-risk activity. You're not an adrenaline junkie, you don't think? Absolutely not. I prefer adrenaline enthusiast. I truly believe that I don't have to do this, and I truly believe that I enjoy doing this. That's pretty clear. The day will come when I tone it down significantly. But that day's not here yet. It's not today.

I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.