60 Minutes - Sunday, June 4, 2017

Episode Date: June 5, 2017

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There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile. Different is calling. What's better than a well-marbled

ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. 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. Vladimir Karamurza was an anti-Putin activist, which he knew was a dangerous mission. And one day, in May 2015, he learned just how dangerous.

I went within about 20 minutes from feeling completely normal to feeling like a very sick man. And I don't remember anything for the next month. He survived against all odds, only to recently fall deathly ill again. And again, he and others believe he was poisoned. It's death if you cross the Putin regime. The most beautiful thing. I love innovation. I love competing. I hate my competitors. You hate your competitors?

Of course I do. I want to beat them up. You want to make Dan and Yogurt in Yoplait suffer. Back to defense. He is the billionaire creator of Chobani Yogurt, and a reminder that foreigners don't always take jobs from Americans. Sometimes they create them. A lot of them. Hey, brother. how you doing? There aren't many jobs as dangerous as a guerrilla doctor.

And as we learned firsthand, before getting close enough to treat one, I'm about to give the antibiotic. these veterinarians often travel miles and miles into some of the most difficult terrain on Earth. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Laura Logan. I'm Scott Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Laura Logan.

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. Questions continue to swirl around the Kremlin's possible role in our presidential election and the nature of contacts between the Russians and those close to President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly professed his admiration of Vladimir Putin's skills as a strong leader. But as we first reported in March, what Mr. Trump doesn't talk about is the unfortunate fate that stalks some of Putin's most prominent critics. They have been victims of

unsolved shootings, suspicious suicides, and poisonings. Tonight, the story of one of them. Vladimir Karamurza was an opposition activist on the front lines, protesting Putin's policies, organizing demonstrations and town hall meetings. He knew he was on a dangerous mission. When we met him last year, he told us that one day in May 2015, he learned just how dangerous. I was in a work meeting with my colleagues in Moscow when I suddenly started to feel really sick. And I went within about 20 minutes from feeling completely normal

to feeling like a very sick man. And I don't remember anything for the next month. You were out for a month? I was in a coma for a week, and I don't remember anything for a month. And had basically a cascade of all my major life organs failing one after another, just switching off, you know, the lungs, the heart, the kidneys. He was shuttled from hospital to hospital in Moscow for two days as doctors frantically tried to figure out what was wrong with him. I was at one point connected, I think, to eight different artificial life support machines,

and doctors told my wife that it's only going to be about 5% chance that I'll survive. But he beat the odds. When we spoke with him last year, he'd been recovering for a year, but he was still walking with a limp from nerve damage. So what happened? Well, it was some kind of a very strong toxin. We don't know what it was because, you know, with these things, as people who know more about this than I do explain to me, you basically have to know exactly what you're testing for in order to find

it. So they never found the exact compound? They never did. It wasn't until the fourth day, and after he'd been on a dialysis machine, that blood was drawn and sent to a toxicology lab in France. It found heavy metals in his blood, but no specific toxin. Still, Karamurza maintains that he was poisoned. I have absolutely no doubt that this was deliberate poisoning, that it was intended to kill, because as I mentioned already, the doctors told my wife that it's about a 5% chance of survival, and when it's that kind of percentage, it's not to scare, it's to kill. Can you be sure that what happened to you was directed by Mr. Putin? Well, of that I have no idea.

I don't know the precise circumstances. I don't know the who or the how, but I do know why. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. In recent years, quite a few of Putin's enemies have perished by swallowing things they shouldn't have. In 2006, Russian spy-turned-Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko drank tea laced with polonium-210. Two years earlier, the Ukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko had somehow ingested dioxin. He survived, but was disfigured. But what would the motive be in the case of the critic Vladimir Karamurza? Cambridge-educated, he was for years a Washington-based reporter for a Russian TV station.

So he was well-connected and had perfect English, which he used to incessantly criticize the regime on the international stage. A government that is based on genuine support does not need to jail its opponents. As if his outspokenness wasn't enough to anger the Kremlin, he made matters worse for himself when he joined forces with this man. It's death if you cross the Putin regime. Bill Browder was for years the largest foreign investor in Russia and Putin's champion. But he turned into a dogged adversary when his Russian tax attorney, Sergei Magnitsky, blew the whistle on alleged

large-scale theft by government officials. We discovered massive corruption of the Putin regime. Sergei exposed it, testified against the officials involved. He was subsequently arrested, put in pretrial detention, tortured for 358 days, and killed at the age of 37. Browder was so outraged, he joined with Vladimir Karamurza to lobby the U.S. Congress for a law targeting those responsible for that death and other human rights violations. They succeeded. The Magnitsky Act passed in 2012. It's the first law that sanctions individual Russians, 44 so far. The Magnitsky Act is designed to sanction, to freeze the assets and ban the visas for people who commit these types of crimes in Russia. So they can't get to their money, which may be stashed in the United States.

And so Vladimir Putin is extremely angry that the Magnitsky Act was going to be passed. He was even angrier when it got passed. And he was even angrier when people started getting added, names started getting added to the Magnitsky list. One reason Vladimir Karamurza is convinced he was targeted is because six people connected to the Magnitsky list. One reason Vladimir Karamurza is convinced he was targeted is because six people connected to the Magnitsky case, as he was, have ended up dead. One of them was Boris Nemtsov, a leader of Russia's opposition and Karamurza's partner in lobbying for the Magnitsky Act. On the 27th of February 2015, he was killed by five bullets in the back as he was walking home,

as he always did out in the open without bodyguards. This was an assassination. In some of the deaths, proving there was foul play has been a challenge. Take the case of this Russian banker who came forward with incriminating documents related to the Magnitsky case. Alexander Parapolichny was a whistleblower. At the age of 44, he went jogging outside his home in Surrey, outside of London, and dropped dead. The police deemed it an unsuspicious natural death.

Well, they did look for poison. They just couldn't find any. They did a very first-round toxicology screen. They didn't find anything on the first run through. Detecting poison can be extremely difficult, and there's a reason. This Cold War CIA memo reveals that the Soviets ran a laboratory for poisons in a large and super secret installation known as the Chamber to test undetectable compounds. In the case of the banker in London, the coroner wasn't willing to give up. He ordered more tests, and three years later it was revealed in court

that an exotic toxin was found with the help of an authority on flowers. A small sample of his stomach contents was sent to a botanical garden outside of London, and one of the scientists found a compound called Gelsimian elegans, which is a Chinese herb. They call it the heartbreak grass, and it causes a person to die unexpectedly without explanation. Still, there's no direct evidence of a Kremlin connection, but the list of those

who've come to die unexpectedly after running afoul of Mr. Putin is long. Political opponents and human rights lawyers have been shot. Overly inquisitive reporters have perished in mysterious plane crashes or by car bombs, by poison or gunfire. Journalist Anna Polakovskaya was poisoned and shot. Then there are enemies who kill themselves, one by hanging, one by stabbing himself to death with two knives, and one by tying himself to a chair and jumping into a swimming pool. Some of Putin's opponents are in prison, others forced out of the country, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, probably Putin's most famous living critic.

Are you afraid for your own life? For a period of over 10 years, Vladimir Putin had ample opportunity to make a decision about putting an end to my life in a very easy way, just by snapping his fingers. And today, it's a little bit more difficult. Khodorkovsky was once the richest man in Russia until he took to opposing Putin. He was put on trial, his oil company confiscated,

and then thrown in prison for 10 years. Home is now London, where he funds a Russian pro-democracy movement. And this is where the plot thickens, because one of his senior organizers on the ground in Russia is none other than Vladimir Karamurza. There are people who say that what's happened to Karamurza is a message to you, a message to you to back off.

You know, for 10 years I was receiving lots of messages from our authorities of various sorts. And some of these messages were rather unpleasant concerning my physical well-being. But the authorities saw I ignored these messages. I would like to believe that they have not forgotten that. In 2015, once Vladimir Karamurza was stabilized, he was flown to Washington, D.C. to continue treatment near his wife, Yevgenia, and their three children, who live in the U.S. for their safety. But as soon as Karamurza got better,

he was itching to go back to Russia. I think what my husband believes in will always outweigh the fear. Even for you? Of course I'm terrified. But at the same time, you know, I married the guy 13 years ago and I knew what I was getting into. You know, I think there's nothing better this regime, the Putin regime, would like us to do than to give up and run away. And we're not going to give them that pleasure. Even after being poisoned? It's our country. We have to fight for it.

He told us this last June. He went back immediately after, even though threats against him had intensified, like this video posted on Instagram putting him in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. He was continuing his opposition work when this past February... All of a sudden, he begins experiencing this very elevated heart rate. His blood pressure drops very low. He begins sweating, and he has trouble breathing. His wife thinks her husband was attacked the same way as before. The first time, he had been dragged from one hospital to another to yet another

while they were trying to establish the cause. This time, he was taken directly to the hospital to the same medical team that had treated him in 2015. And the moment they saw him, they knew what they were dealing with. And what do you think happened? The Russian doctor's official diagnosis is an acute intoxication by an undetermined substance, which is poisoning. This happened just as Washington was raising questions about President Trump's relationship

with Mr. Putin. So Vladimir Karamurza quickly became an issue on the Senate floor. Vladimir has once again paid the price for his gallantry and integrity. Politicians on both sides of the aisles spoke out against the apparent poisoning, but the Trump administration has not. Remarkably, Karamurza survived again. Less than three weeks after he collapsed, he was flown to the U.S. And two weeks later, we spoke to him for a second time. You look pretty good. How are you actually feeling? Well, you're very kind. I don't think I feel as good as I look.

He said he's recovering faster because his doctors knew just what to do this time. The Kremlin has denied any involvement. And since no poison has been found yet, supporters of Putin question whether he was really poisoned at all. We've been told that we are very naive, naive journalists, gullible, and that this whole thing is concocted by the opposition to fool the American people

into thinking that that regime would do such a thing. To those who say that this is a plot, I honestly, and I mean this sincerely, I wish they'd never have to experience what I had experienced twice in the last two years. When you're trying to breathe and you cannot, when you feel your organs shutting down, giving up on you one after another, and when you feel the life coming out of your body in the next few hours and you don't remember anything for the next month and then for the next year, you're trying to relearn how to walk, how to use cutlery, you know, how to talk to your kids. Again, I wish these people who tell you these things never have to experience this. I honestly, sincerely do. You were very, very sick and went back. Now, are you finished? Are you

saying I'm not going back? Oh, God, no, of course not. I'm first going to go back. Of course, I will absolutely go back to Russia. I'm Russian. This is my country. And I believe in what I do and what my colleagues do. There are many of us, but not many have almost died twice. Many, unfortunately, have died. I'm the fortunate one. I'm still here. I'm still talking to you. Many of my colleagues cannot do that. 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. At a time when Americans are debating whether immigration and refugees are a good thing

or a bad thing for the country, it is sometimes noted that Tesla, Google, eBay, and Pepsi-Cola are all either founded by or currently being run by immigrants, and in one case, a refugee. It's a reminder that foreigners don't always take jobs from Americans. Sometimes they create them. And of all the success stories, none seems more relevant to the current debate than the tale of Hamdi Ulukaya, who came here from Turkey 23 years ago on a student visa with almost no money. As we first reported in April, he is now a billionaire who has changed American tastes with his Chobani yogurt, resurrected the economy and two communities, and drawn praise and some hostile fire for the way he's done it. He is a familiar paternal presence on the factory

floor where everyone calls him Hamdi. Hey brother, how you doing? He oversees every detail of a product line that barely existed a dozen years ago. Greek style yogurt, a thicker, tangier version of the dairy product that Eulachia popularized here and named Chobani. It's now the best selling brand in America. What does the word Chobani mean? It means shepherd. Shepherd. Shepherd. It's a very beautiful word. It represents peace. And it meant a lot to me because, you know, I come from a life with shepherds and mountains and all that stuff. His family raised goats and sheep and made cheese and yogurt in a small Kurdish village in eastern Turkey. During the summer months, they would move to the mountains and graze their flock under the stars.

He says he was born on one of those trips, but he doesn't know the date or the year. So how did you come not to know your birthday? Yeah, the old days, you know, the nomads, you know, they didn't deliver babies in the hospitals. Midwives? Midwives, yeah. They would register when they come back.

The registration officer would put everybody in January. Says it's easy for Matt. Like 70% of our town at that time born somehow in January. I'm January 20th. This reminds me home. He came to the U.S. at 22, a passionate, idealistic student who had gotten in trouble with Turkish authorities for writing

articles sympathetic to the Kurdish rights movement. He was hauled in for questioning and decided it might be a good idea to leave. Did you speak any English when you came? No. None? Zero. No family? Nothing. No friends? Nobody. No. It took him a year to find his footing in upstate New York, where he spent the next decade finishing his studies, working on a dairy farm, and starting a modest feta cheese business, where one day he spotted an ad.

It said, fully equipped yogurt plant for sale. It has a picture in front. It said 1920 on the back. There were small, small pictures of various parts of the plant. And I called the number. The real estate agent said the 85-year-old factory was owned by Kraft Foods, which had decided to get out of the yogurt business. And I asked for the price.

And he said $700,000. I mean, you cannot even get a tank with $700,000. How could this be? So I didn't ask the second time because I didn't want him to think that I... Didn't believe him. Or to get him to reevaluate. Yeah, he said, well, maybe we're asking too little. Sensing an opportunity, Hamdi set off to the small village of New Berlin, New York to have a look. There he found the last employees of the last plant in the

area, closing it down. I remember like yesterday, it's like this sadness in this whole place. Like as if somebody died, like somebody important died. 200 jobs. 200 jobs was gone. Former employees Frank Price, Maria Wilcox, and Rich Lake were among the mourners that day. Your whole livelihood's gone. You don't really know what you're going to do or where you're going to go. So in comes this guy. Did you think it was for real? Honestly, it was a little far-fetched sounding at first. There was a little bit of doubt, at least for me there was. It's okay. I thought of myself, too.

He didn't have any money, but he managed to get a regional bank and the Small Business Administration to split the risk of a million-dollar loan that put Chobani in business and allowed Hamdi to hire his first five employees, four of whom had been let go by Kraft. And we had no other ideas what we were going to do next. It would take them two years to come up with other ideas what we were going to do next.

It would take them two years to come up with a product and figure out how to produce it. Hamdi spent most of his time in the plant, except to grab two meals a day at the local pizzeria owned by another immigrant, Frank Bayo and his wife Betsy. This is the only place in my early days of coming here is this is the only place you can come and connect to life again and society and go back to whatever you do. And I want to say something. Excuse me if I interrupt you.

Before Andy showed up in this town, I was the king. What did you think of his plan? Well, let's put it to you this way. I kind of feel sorry because I don't think he knew what was getting to it. I mean, you figure if a crafter shut it down, who the hell is this guy that he's going to trick open up and make it right, make it going. Almost all of the early Chobani meetings took place here, along with some small celebrations. Betsy remembers one where Hamdi offered this toast. Here's to wishing we could ever make 100,000 cases of yogurt in a week and not worry about the light bill anymore. I said to my husband,

I'm going to feel so bad when he loses his shirt because he's never going to sell 100,000 cases in a week. Actually, it would take only a year. The first order of Chobani yogurt, 150 cases, was delivered to a kosher grocery store on Long Island in October of 2007. No one knew if there would be another. The store manager called me and said, I don't know what you're putting into these cups. I cannot keep it in shelf.

Don't tell me what you're putting in there. At that moment, I knew this was like three months in. This was not going to be about if I could sell it. It was going to be about, can I make it enough? More milk. It would require more machines, bigger facilities, more milk from the surrounding dairy farms, and a lot more people.

Between 2008 and 2012, production of Chobani yogurt grew to as much as 2 million cases a week. Revenues reached a billion dollars a year, and the number of employees shot up to 600. It's now roughly 1,000. Anybody in the community who wanted to work for those years will find a job at Chobani. Anybody. We were hiring. And if they were not working for us, they were working for the contractors that were doing job for us. Because my number one thing is I was going to hire everyone local before I go outside. Hamdi's recruiting effort included a stop at a refugee resettlement center in the city of Utica, 40 miles away, where he heard they were having trouble

finding people work. I said, well, the language is a barrier and transportation. I said, okay, let's try some. I will hire translators and will provide transportation. Let them come and make yogurt with us. And they worked out? Ah, perfectly. And they are the most loyal, hardworking people, along with everybody else is here. Right now in our plant in here, we have 19 different nationalities,

16 different translators. By 2012, the capacity of the plant in New Berlin had maxed out. They were running out of people, running out of milk, and running out of room. So Hundy decided to build a second facility, the largest yogurt plant in the world, in the town of Twin Falls, Idaho, all based on a sketch he'd roughed out on a napkin at Frank's Pizzeria. And if you look at the plant and the napkin, it's basically the similar design. The piping in this plant is, if you put it together from here to Chicago,

and we built them less than a year. There were some initial growing pains. A shipment had to be recalled because of mold contamination, and early production delays necessitated an emergency loan. But the business survived and has thrived in large part because of Hamdi's competitive nature. I love innovation. I love competing. I hate my competitors. You hate your competitors? Of course I do. I want to beat them up. You want to make Dan and Yogurt and Yoplait suffer. Back to France.

I'm just kidding aside. What I mean is you cannot be in the world of business when you don't have this consciousness of winning, but in the right way. Today, the Twin Falls plant has 1,000 employees with above-average wages and generous benefits. It pumps more than $2 billion a year into the regional economy, which is now running at close to full employment. It's allowed Hamdi to hire fellow immigrants and refugees, not instead of American workers, but alongside them. We met two of them in Twin Falls, sisters,

and agreed not to use their names or disclose the Middle Eastern country they fled because they fear reprisals from the human traffickers that separated them from their family, then abandoned them as young girls on a street corner in Eastern Europe. How did you manage to get out? It took us a long time. I prefer really not to talk about it because it is really painful. Would you have survived if you had stayed there?

No. Are you sure? Yeah, definitely. I was not sitting here alive if I was not leaving. They got here legally. They've gone through a most dangerous journey, they lost their family members, they lost everything they have, and here they are.

They're either going to be part of society or they're going to lose it again. The number one thing that you can do is provide them jobs. The minute they get a job, that's the minute they stop being a refugee. Hamdi Ulukaya insists he's not an activist, just a businessman. But the fact that he comes from a Muslim country, supports legal immigration and helps refugees has not been universally popular in Idaho, one of the most conservative states in the country.

During the past election, Chobani was attacked by far-right media, including Breitbart, claiming it had brought refugees, crime, and tuberculosis to Twin Falls, none of which is true. Yet both Hamdi and the mayor of Twin Falls received death threats. One publication had a headline that said, American yogurt tycoon vows to choke U.S. with Muslims. Yeah. People targeted you. Yeah. It was an emotional time. People, you know, hate you for doing something right. I mean, what can you do about that? There's not

much you can do. The situation has cooled somewhat, and Hamdi enjoys the full support of Idaho's very popular and very conservative governor, Butch Otter. I think his care about his employees, whether they be refugees or they be folks that were born 10 miles from where they're working. I believe his advocacy for that person is no different. And there's nothing wrong with that. We traveled with Eulachiah to Europe, where he has made the international refugee crisis the focal point of his personal philanthropy. He's donated millions to help survivors like these in Italy. What's your name? Who risked everything fleeing Iraq, Syria, and Africa in hopes of finding a better life.

He's also enlisted the support of major U.S. corporations in the cause and pledged to give most of his fortune to charity. She died? Yes. And the kids died too? Hamdi says he had no idea that things would turn out the way they have when he came to America 23 years ago and bought that shuttered yogurt plant in upstate New York.

He is now showing his gratitude. A year ago, he gave 10% of all of his equity in Chobani to his employees. It's not a gift. It's not a, oh, look how nice I am. It's a recognition. It's the right thing to do. It is something that belongs to them that I recognize. That's how I see it. Two days after our story first aired, the far-right radio host Alex Jones posted a fresh round of accusations that Chobani was, quote, importing migrant rapists. This time, the yogurt company sued. In May, Jones settled the case and expressed regret for the way he characterized the employees

of Chobani. 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. There are only about 950 mountain gorillas left on Earth. Habitat loss, poaching, and disease have made them one of the most endangered animals alive. But as we first reported last fall, their numbers are rising, thanks in large part to a group of veterinarians called Gorilla Doctors. Their team has 16 doctors who operate all across the gorillas' territory,

a vast rainforest that spans three countries, Rwanda, Uganda, and the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo. We went to Africa to meet them, and not long after we arrived, we got to see how difficult their job can be. An adult female gorilla in the DRC had caught her wrist in a poacher's snare. Have you got a 10cc syringe there? With the wounded gorilla close by, the gorilla doctors prep their medical gear on the floor of the forest. And Martin, if you could get Betadine ready, too. Finding her had not been easy, and they didn't want to lose this chance to treat her. And then you're going to use that volume of dexmedetomidine?

Yes. Dr. Mike Cranfield has been running gorilla doctors for 18 years. Dr. Eddie Kambale is his right hand and Dr. Martin Kabuyaya, one of his newest field veterinarians. So Mike, what is the plan right now? So right now, Eddie is getting the anesthetic ready. Because it's a snare, we know we're going to do a knockdown. He'll dart the first chance he has. Are you a good shot, Eddie? He's an excellent shot. Eddie grabbed his dart gun that was loaded with anesthetic and went with the trackers to find the wounded female

who'd hurt herself when she picked up a snare poachers had set for a smaller animal. They had to cut a path through the forest as they went. She was with her group, and they were moving fast. Thick vegetation gave way to a clearing, where they spotted her. Then Eddie stepped forward and prepared to take his shot. As soon as it hit, she took off.

And the team followed. They knew she had to be close. It was an unforgettable sight. Now they had less than 40 minutes to assess her wound and treat it before the anesthetic wore off. They call this an intervention. Eddie and I and Martin have done probably 15 interventions together. It's the team. It's always the team. We have some of the most important patients in the world, right? If something doesn't go right, basically you can almost count on it being known almost worldwide.

How would you rate the quality of your work as an organization? I think it's very good, actually. When they're not doing emergency interventions, Mike said his doctors are out making house calls. And in the 10 days we spent with them, we went on a few. This one in the DRC, where Eddie and Martin are based. Activity. All the signs are normal. So that means she's still healthy.

Active, moving. She's using all limbs. I can just see how she's breathing. I can try to count she's breathing. Right. I can try to count the breathing rate like now, you see. One. You can see that the abdomen is rising. Two.

Three. These gorillas live in Virunga, the oldest national park in Africa. And from the air, some of the most forbidding landscape you'll ever see. When the gorilla doctors began working here, the mountain gorillas were almost extinct. Today, they're the only population of great apes that's growing. They're increasing at 4% a year, which is about the maximum that they could. That's as fast as the human population is growing on the face of the earth. And the veterinarians are credited with 50% of that growth, or 2% a year.

You're talking about gorilla doctors, your veterinarians. Yes, we're the only veterinarians that are working on the gorillas in a clinical sense. Over the years, Mike told us he's had a few run-ins with his patients. He came flying towards me for about 30 yards and just punched me right in the face. Did it hurt? A little bit. This is Umoja.

Mike calls her a miracle baby. Part of her intestines were hanging out of her body when the gorilla doctors got to her. Now, eight years later, Mike wanted us to meet her, which meant hiking through a bamboo forest, layers of vegetation, and up to more than 9,000 feet. There, on the steep volcanic slopes in northern Rwanda, we found Umoja's family. And here she is, a new mother, her baby boy, only a month old. Umoja is probably the most spectacular case that we've ever had, and that brought a lot of pride for gorilla doctors. So it's not just the animal that you save, it's the future generations.

Correct. You're actually influencing not one life, but multiple lives. In Rwanda, where we met one of Mike's senior veterinarians, Dr. Noeli Jambosco, the mountain gorillas have become a national symbol. He was 14 when his country was torn apart by genocide in 1994. More than 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days. So what do you remember of the genocide? Darkness in the whole country.

At that age, you know, you don't have much thinking, but you can see that this is over. The whole country is over. In 22 years, Rwanda has risen from the ashes, and the guerrillas are at the center of that transformation. Close to 30,000 tourists come every year for the guerrillas, and tourism is the biggest source of foreign income for this tiny nation. The connection makes everybody feel, okay, these guys are very important to us. These gorillas are important.

These gorillas are important to us. Everyone feels that. Mike, who works with the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center, was at the gorilla doctor's headquarters in Rwanda when he got the call about that wounded gorilla in the DRC. Oh, dear. Okay, and how long has the snare been on? Before long, we were rushing for the border. On the moment you get that phone call, is there a pressure to move as fast as you can? Speed. Speed is everything. 24 hours can make a difference to having function, full function in

the hand. That's kind of tough here sometimes because speed matters, but to get there you have to take the slow boat. Dr. Eddie Kambale was waiting for us at the slow boat on the other side of the border on the shores of Lake Kivivu, amidst the crowd and the chaos and struggling to hold on to our gear, we boarded with minutes to spare and settled in for the long journey, a 12-hour odyssey across one of Africa's great lakes. We woke as the sun was rising and pulled into the harbor at Bukavu with the hustle and bustle of the early morning. And then we still had to get to the animal.

That's sometimes the most difficult part. A bumpy ride and a broken bridge took us to the edge of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park. From here, we went on foot, hiking deep into one of the largest forests in the DRC. Every time we went down, we had to come back up, and the hills were steep. We walked and walked, with no sign of the gorillas, stumbling and falling into the night. It's not easy to find the trail in the night. It was hard walking in the dark. Yeah.

Even for you? Yeah, please. But that wasn't normal. That was not normal. It was really hard. With worn feet and low expectations, we tried again the next day. This time the trackers got lucky and led us right to them. That's when Eddie darted her and she ran into the forest. From that moment, when she was in the hands of her doctors,

there was a sense of urgency. The first thing Mike did was check her breathing and heart rate to make sure she was tolerating the anesthesia. Eddie's job was her injured wrist. He had to cut away her hair to get to the wound. The snare was dug in, her flesh infected. Bad smell. Bad smell? Yep. I'm giving the ketoprofen.

What did you give her, Mike? The painkiller. I'm about to give the antibiotic. That's good? Okay. That's her snoring. Mike said she was in a deep sleep and couldn't feel anything. From her worn teeth, they estimated she was at least 20. She's an eastern lowland gorilla, not a mountain gorilla, but also critically endangered. Very good, Martin. Very good. Eddie used wire cutters and removed the snare. Eddie. Eddie. A couple more, eh? How's the hand look?

You can actually... Oh my gosh, that was deep, right? Yeah, it was really deep, so... Okay. Yeah. It's not that, you see? I'll pull, I'll pull on the inside of the... So it won't need to be amputated?

No, this is going to be a perfect scenario. Okay. We're very, very pleased. Martin was gathering samples while they worked. They study these and share them with scientists all over the world. I'm going to take this blood and put it in a tube. Eddie cleaned the wound, tested the movement in her hand, and decided she did not need stitches,

while Mike did a physical exam. She's starting to wake up. Yeah. Okay, so we need to start moving back a bit before we get the reverse. Between 34 minutes. All right. Now, if she starts to slip,

she's going to have to have very hard work. Okay, Eddie, let's go. Yep. She's starting to wake up. Okay, put it in. Okay, everybody back up. Give her room to get away. Okay, so that's a little faster than we'd like. The doctors won't leave her until they know she's okay.

You can see how the respiration's picked up. And as long as we don't stimulate her, she'll probably stay that way, and that's the way we'd like her to stay until the ketamine's worn off. Okay, she's starting to move, guys. Get out of her way. Attention, I move. She's going that side. Okay, maximum.

Beware. For the next 15 minutes, she struggled as the drugs wore off. Her wrist, they said, would now heal on its own, and they'd be back to check on her. Okay, we're going to want her to come up. Eddie made sure she headed for her group until, not far from her, he saw the group's leader, a silverback in the grass. Instinctively, she moved towards him and disappeared into the forest. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.