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Show Film 98
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00:00On September 17th, after Israel and the terrorist organization Hezbollah had been in an escalating war for nearly a year,
00:10the Israeli spy agency Mossad launched one of the most...
00:13We now join our program already in progress.
00:17...in the history of counterintelligence, the Pager Plot, a modern take on the Trojan horse.
00:24Mossad created a bomb in a pocket and tricked Hezbollah fighters into unwittingly wearing these devices on their bodies.
00:33The repercussions of the plot have been dramatic, including aiding in the fall of the Assad regime in Syria,
00:41the weakening of Iran, and the decimating of the target of the plot, Hezbollah.
00:47As we first reported in December, less than four months after the operation,
00:53we spoke with two recently retired senior Mossad agents who were among those who ran it.
01:00To hide their identities, we agreed they could wear a mask and have their voices altered.
01:06We started with Michael, not his real name.
01:11You were something called a case officer. What exactly is a case officer?
01:16A case officer spearheads the operation. He is the commander of the operation.
01:21The operation started 10 years ago, not with pagers, but with weaponizing walkie-talkies.
01:29A walkie-talkie was a weapon, just like a bullet or a missile or a mortar.
01:35So a walkie-talkie bomb.
01:37A walkie-talkie bomb.
01:38Inside the battery, there is an explosive device.
01:41And that was the invention, to put an explosive device that couldn't be detected into the battery.
01:47Correct. Made in Israel.
01:48At Mossad?
01:50Yes.
01:51As I understand it, these walkie-talkies went into a tactical vest that a soldier would put on,
01:59and then this would go in the pocket.
02:01Correct.
02:01Near the heart.
02:02Yes.
02:03So Israel sold this device to Hezbollah.
02:08Hezbollah paid for this weapon that was to be used against them.
02:13They got a good price.
02:14A good price that couldn't be too low, or they'd be suspicious.
02:20In the end, Hezbollah bought over 16,000 of these exploding walkie-talkies that Israel didn't activate for 10 years until the September operation.
02:31How did you convince Hezbollah to buy this?
02:36Well, obviously, they didn't know that they were buying it from Israel.
02:39Who did they buy it from, or think they were buying it from?
02:42We have an incredible array of possibilities of creating foreign companies that have no way being traced back to Israel.
02:53Shell companies over shell companies who affect the supply chain to our favor.
02:57We create a pretend world.
02:59We are a global production company.
03:02We write the screenplay.
03:03We're the directors.
03:05We're the producers.
03:06We're the main actors.
03:08The world is our stage.
03:10This is Mossad's old office.
03:12Its motto, from Proverbs 24, 6, says in so many words, wage war through deception and trickery.
03:21Kind of like the CIA's smoke and mirrors, which is what this operation was all about, starting with those walkie-talkies.
03:29But walkie-talkies are only worn in battle, so Mossad began developing a new device that Hezbollah fighters would have in their pockets all the time, a pager.
03:43A pager is almost obsolete around the world, but Hezbollah still using it.
03:47This is Gabriel, not his real name or voice.
03:51In 2022, he and his team started developing the second phase of the operation, the booby-trapped pagers.
04:00He found out that Hezbollah was buying pagers from this company in Taiwan called Gold Apollo.
04:07This is the pager that Hezbollah was using.
04:11So it's very sleek, it's very shiny, and it certainly can fit in a pocket.
04:17So what did you do to change this, to make it into a bomb?
04:24So to make it into a bomb, we have to enlarge it a little bit.
04:28In order to put explosives inside, but not too much.
04:33Using dummies, Mossad conducted tests with the pager in a padded glove
04:38to calibrate the grams of explosive needed to be just enough to hurt the fighter, but not the person next to him.
04:47If we push the button, the only one that will get injured is the terrorist himself.
04:52Even if his wife or his daughter will be just next to him, he's the only one that's going to be harmed.
04:57Did you test for that?
04:58Yes. We test everything triple, double, multiple times in order to make sure there's minimum damage.
05:04Could you use it as a tracking device?
05:07Did it have intelligence capability?
05:09Oh, no. This is a very stupid device by nature.
05:13This is the reason they're using it.
05:15There's almost no way how to tap it.
05:17It's only receiving messages and several grams of explosive.
05:24Mossad also tested these ringtones to find a sound urgent enough to compel someone to take it out of their pocket.
05:31And they tested how long it takes a person to answer a pager.
05:37On average, seven seconds.
05:39But how to convince Hezbollah to switch to this bulkier pager?
05:44I remember the day that I came to our director, put it on the table, and he was furious.
05:50He was telling us, there is no chance that anyone would buy such a big device.
05:54It's not comfortable in their pockets.
05:56It's heavy.
05:57Very heavy.
05:58Very heavy.
05:59It's no good.
05:59Yeah.
06:00Go back and bring me something else.
06:02It took me two weeks to convince him that although it's ugly, it has character.
06:07Character meaning added features, which they touted in fake ads on YouTube.
06:13Robust, dustproof, waterproof, long battery life.
06:19We make advertising movies and brochures, and we put it on the Internet.
06:23And it becomes the best product in the beeper area in the world.
06:26Did people other than Hezbollah want to buy this based on what was being said about it online?
06:33Yes.
06:33We received several requests from regular potential customers.
06:37Obviously, we didn't send to anyone.
06:39We just bought them with expensive price.
06:41Mossad wanted to use the name Gold Apollo on its pager.
06:46So, it set up shell companies, including one in this building in Hungary, to dupe the Taiwanese into partnering with them.
06:55So, the company in Taiwan, Gold Apollo, did they know that they were working with people from Mossad?
07:03Gold Apollo had zero clue that they are working with the Mossad.
07:07And neither did Hezbollah.
07:09When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad.
07:13We make like Truman Show.
07:15Everything is controlled by us behind the scene.
07:18In their experience, everything is normal.
07:20Everything was 100% kosher, including businessmen, marketing, engineers, showroom, everything.
07:27To further the plot, Mossad hired the Gold Apollo saleswoman Hezbollah was used to working with before.
07:35She offered them the first batch of pagers as an upgrade free of charge.
07:41By September 2024, Hezbollah had 5,000 pagers in their pockets.
07:48The question for Israel, when to activate the sleeping bombs?
07:52There were hints Hezbollah might be getting suspicious of the devices.
07:57So, Mossad head Dadi Barnea gave the go-ahead, triggering the attack and shocking people around the world,
08:05as it seemed more like a spy movie than reality.
08:09On September 17th, at 3.30 p.m., pagers started beeping all over Lebanon.
08:16As I understand it, people with this pager got a message that said,
08:20you have an encrypted message, in order to access it, you have to push the two buttons,
08:27meaning that it would explode in their hands.
08:30That was the whole point.
08:32So, if someone did not push the two buttons, what happened?
08:37It's the same effect. It's going to explode anyway.
08:40The explosive was triggered in Israel.
08:44Yes.
08:45What ensued was mayhem.
08:51People with pagers blowing up on the street, on motorcycles, hospitals filling up with the wounded,
08:59limbs, fingers torn off, bloodied, blinded, holes in stomachs.
09:04For the most part, the explosions worked as planned, they say.
09:08Watch the man on the left.
09:14Those right next to him were unscathed.
09:20The very next day, Mossad finally activated the walkie-talkies that had been dormant for 10 years,
09:27some going off at the funerals of those killed by the pagers.
09:34All in all, about 30 people died, including two children.
09:39Around 3,000 were injured.
09:42The aim, it wasn't killing Hezbollah terrorists.
09:45If he's just dead, so he's dead.
09:47But if you're wounded, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him.
09:51You need to invest money in efforts.
09:53And those people without hands and eyes are leaving proof, walking in Lebanon, of don't mess with us.
10:00They are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East.
10:04Two days after the pager attack, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, known for his fiery oratory, gave a subdued speech.
10:14If you look at his eyes, he was defeated.
10:17He already lost the war.
10:18And his soldiers look at him during that speech, and they saw a broken leader.
10:22And this was the tipping point of the war.
10:25I don't know if you know that Nasrallah, when we operate the Bipper operation,
10:29just next to him in the bunker, several people at the Bipper receiving the message.
10:33And in his own eyes, he saw them collapsing.
10:37How do you know that?
10:38It's a strong rumor.
10:41In the ensuing days, the Israeli Air Force hit targets all across Lebanon,
10:47killing over a thousand, many of them civilians.
10:50On September 27th, it dropped massive bombs on Nasrallah's bunker, assassinating him.
11:01Two months later, after more Israeli strikes over Lebanon and more civilian deaths,
11:08the war between Israel and Hezbollah ended with a ceasefire.
11:13Did you completely destroy and crush Hezbollah?
11:17I think it's a big question.
11:19And I think the honest answer will be no.
11:22But I think after this tipping point of the Bipper operation and the walkie-talkie and then IDF attack,
11:28put Hezbollah in a very, very difficult situation.
11:31No chain of command, no spirit in their soldiers, asking, begging for a ceasefire.
11:36So you restore your sense of superiority.
11:40But what about your moral reputation?
11:43Don't you think Israel has to worry about its reputation?
11:48Definitely.
11:49But there is a prioritization.
11:51First, you have to defense your people not being killed by the thousands.
11:55And then, the reputation.
11:56The pagers have had a profound, rippling effect, severely weakening Iran by leaving its proxy empire in ruins,
12:06with Hezbollah shattered in Lebanon, Assad toppled in Syria.
12:12We asked Agent Michael about the effect on Gaza.
12:16How does that affect the situation with Hamas?
12:19The wind was taken out of Hezbollah's fight after the pager operation.
12:24And I'm hoping that it will have an effect also on the Hamas and hostage situation
12:30because they're looking at their sides and they're seeing no one next to them.
12:35They are completely isolated now.
12:37In terms of the kind of warfare that was conducted with the walkie-talkies and the pagers,
12:45would you call it a psychological war?
12:47The day after the pagers exploded, people were afraid to turn on the air conditioners in Lebanon.
12:54Because they were afraid that they would explode.
12:57So there was, there is real fear.
13:00Was that an intention?
13:01We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are.
13:04We can't use the pagers again because we already did that.
13:08We've already moved on to the next thing.
13:11And they'll have to keep on trying to guess what the next thing is.
13:15A Lebanese journalist on Iran's waning influence.
13:24Iran has been weakened tremendously.
13:27At 60minutesovertime.com.
13:29Last year, for the first time, the Veterans Administration announced it would begin funding its own clinical trials
13:41to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and addiction using two psychedelic drugs, psilocybin and MDMA.
13:49Even if these trials are successful, it would be years before the VA could prescribe either drug for its patients.
13:56Thousands of veterans who are suffering aren't waiting.
13:59Desperate for help, they're attending psychedelic retreats in countries where the drugs are legal to use,
14:05mostly in indigenous ceremonies.
14:08In March 2024, we were invited to join nine veterans who traveled to the west coast of Mexico
14:13for a psychedelic journey they hoped would finally help ease their pain.
14:20They came to Mexico from all over the United States,
14:23a group of nine veterans with invisible wounds that are hard to heal.
14:28Their destination, a remote village near Puerto Vallarta for a week-long psychedelic retreat.
14:34It was a voyage into the unknown, but a risk worth taking for T.J. Duff, a former Navy sailor.
14:42Are you optimistic?
14:43Being optimistic is hard for me because I've been through a lot of therapy,
14:48a lot of different treatments, and not a lot of success.
14:52Duff was 18 when he joined the Navy.
14:55Months into his first deployment aboard the USS Cole,
14:58he says he narrowly escaped death when two suicide bombers attacked the ship in Yemen, killing 17 sailors.
15:05Everyone around me was killed.
15:07There's bodies alive and dead being piled up in the midships,
15:10and I think that's really where I just started holding everything in.
15:14I don't have it where I'm jumping in ditches when I hear loud noises.
15:19My PTSD is kind of a self-destructive form.
15:25Randy Weaver is a police officer in New York.
15:27A former staff sergeant in the Army, he was diagnosed with PTSD in 2007 after returning home from tours in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
15:36It's the constant, you know, what if I had done this, what if we did that, you know.
15:42Are those things you want to revisit while you're taking the psilocybin?
15:46Yeah, if I could revisit them and see them maybe from a different perspective, like not where I failed somebody.
15:56Is there a particular incident that you feel you failed somebody?
16:03Yeah, so March 18th, 20 years ago.
16:07In 2004, Weaver's platoon was caught in a firefight in an Afghan village.
16:13Two soldiers were killed, one of them his friend, Staff Sergeant Anthony Lagman.
16:18Weaver's worn this bracelet with Lagman's name on it since coming home.
16:22You've been wearing that for 20 years?
16:24Yeah, every day.
16:26Weaver says he's tried nearly every treatment for PTSD the VA offers,
16:30including talk therapy, exposure therapy, meditation, and antidepressants.
16:35You get to a point where you're so mentally exhausted and you've created so much destruction
16:42that your demons tell yourself that your family would be better off without you.
16:50And when those demons tell you those things every day, it's something hard to ignore.
16:55Will this help with that?
16:57I hope so.
16:58The retreat was organized and paid for by the Heroic Hearts Project,
17:02a nonprofit that's helped more than 1,000 U.S. veterans with combat-related PTSD access psychedelics.
17:10I came home super angry, super anxious, hypervigilant.
17:14You know, that led to a pretty nasty divorce.
17:16Ed Glover was in Afghanistan with the Marines.
17:19He's been a firefighter for 22 years.
17:21I feel like one or two traumatic events you may be able to recover from,
17:25but kind of seeing it day in, day out really takes its toll.
17:29As the vets talked, it became clear some of their struggles began long before they joined the military.
17:36My family life was just always this constant conflict.
17:39Navy vet Michael Giardina had an emotionally abusive father who killed himself 16 years ago.
17:45His sister died by suicide five months before he came here.
17:48My daughter asked my ex-wife if I was going to kill myself, and I'm not.
17:53I just want to get better.
17:54To qualify for this retreat, they had to work with their doctors to wean off any antidepressant
17:59or anxiety medication they might be taking because of how it could interact with the psychedelics.
18:04They also had to have a medical screening and no family history of psychosis or schizophrenia.
18:10When we were there, a local doctor was on site, but no mental health professionals.
18:15I appreciate you guys for putting the faith in me, the faith in us coming here.
18:21Jesse Gould, a former Army ranger, founded the Heroic Hearts Project in 2017
18:26after he tried another psychedelic, ayahuasca, at a retreat in Peru.
18:31Gould says psychedelics can help veterans revisit traumatic moments
18:35in ways they may be unable to with other therapies.
18:38The value of what we're finding with psychedelics is it's a very individualistic journey.
18:43It comes at you, it brings up the emotions, it heightens your senses, and so you're having to face it.
18:48So that's why you see such big revelations, because it's giving you the tools to actually get there.
18:53Do you worry that some who see this as sort of the last hope may end up disappointed?
18:57I worry that we're at the situation where people are having to go to other countries for their last hope.
19:03That indicates a major flaw in the system.
19:06The orange one? Okay.
19:07Heroic Hearts hired traditional healers to conduct three psychedelic ceremonies.
19:13The first two with psilocybin, a psychoactive compound found in some mushrooms.
19:18It's been used as medicine by indigenous communities in Mexico and elsewhere for centuries.
19:23You don't need to be strong.
19:25All we need for this experience and to receive the healing is humbleness.
19:34The healers stirred ground-up mushrooms into a tea.
19:40The vets drank it, put on blindfolds to shut out distractions, and lay down.
19:45At first, it seemed like the group might have traveled thousands of miles for a midday nap.
19:58But then, about an hour in, we saw Michael Giardina raise his hand for help.
20:05His foot soon started to shake, followed by his whole body.
20:10By hour three, it was clear the psilocybin had kicked in.
20:24Randy Weaver and T.J. Duff barely seemed to move,
20:28while firefighter Ed Glover appeared caught between rapture and deep sorrow.
20:32When you let God be, the truth will appear, so simple and clear.
20:45Five hours later, when the psilocybin began to wear off,
20:49the vets removed their eye masks and found the heat of the afternoon sun.
20:55The next day, the group gathered to discuss what they'd gone through.
20:59It literally felt like an exorcism.
21:00My foot was going crazy.
21:03I could kind of feel like my body was convulsing.
21:06I felt like I was taking every last breath of any victim, patient, or friend that I had lost.
21:12So I really struggled to breathe yesterday.
21:14I've never done anything like that before.
21:17Randy Weaver appeared to find some of what he traveled all this way for.
21:22One thing that I remember very vividly was flying back with the guys that we lost.
21:37Like, being on that medevac, even though I wasn't there in the real world,
21:41I was there spiritually with them.
21:45T.J. Duff, however, found it unsettling and at times scary.
21:49I've heard a lot of your guys' stories, and I did not get as immersive as you guys did.
21:53I'm kind of glad I didn't, honestly, because I was kind of afraid of that.
21:56That night, Duff took part in another psilocybin ceremony, but the next day, he left.
22:02He later told us the whole experience caused a dangerous decline in his mental health.
22:07He's now back on antidepressant medication.
22:09The last ceremony of the retreat was with five MEO DMT, a powerful and fast-acting psychedelic secreted from a toad.
22:19After returning home, the vets had several virtual meetings with a Heroic Hearts Project counselor.
22:25I think my biggest takeaway was making sure I make the time to take care of myself.
22:33The Veterans Administration warns against self-medicating with psychedelics or using them as part of a self-treatment program.
22:41But in December, when we spoke to its top doctor, Sharif El-Mahal, he was enthusiastic about their potential.
22:48Do these retreats concern you?
22:49They can concern me because there's no way to monitor, certify, make sure that they're actually safe environments.
22:57They're seeking these therapies because they do not see our current options for them to be effective enough, and they're in a state of desperation.
23:04And that in and of itself, them seeking this type of unauthorized therapy, is just another indication on why we need to study this further and get it to a safe and effective medical environment.
23:15Last August, the FDA rejected a pharmaceutical company's application to use the psychedelic MDMA in combination with therapy as a treatment for PTSD,
23:26after an FDA advisory panel said there wasn't enough evidence it was safe or effective.
23:31The VA is now conducting 11 clinical trials using MDMA and psilocybin to treat PTSD, depression, and addiction.
23:39Dr. El-Mahal told us a small phase 2 trial by the VA using MDMA and therapy to treat PTSD, completed last year, showed real promise.
23:5045% have gone into complete remission, which is essentially a normal emotional state that is unheard of with prolonged exposure, cognitive processing, and certainly SSRIs, the current standard of care options.
24:03Almost half of the people who came in with PTSD and did MDMA therapy at the VA were cured?
24:11Yes.
24:12So you have no doubt that this works?
24:14We need to do larger phase 3 clinical trials.
24:17That's the best way scientifically to understand what the true adverse events are and whether we can reproduce these results in larger populations of veterans.
24:27I'm very optimistic we will be able to demonstrate that.
24:30How long do you think it will be before veterans can go to the VA and get this therapy?
24:36It could be another couple of years.
24:38The incoming administration is going to take, you know, a pretty bold stance on this.
24:42What makes you optimistic that the new administration is going to be a believer in this?
24:47We've heard the nominee for HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., talk about what he thinks the potential breakthrough therapy is.
24:55We'll see what the stance is of other health officials.
24:58That's really promising.
25:00Nearly a year after that retreat in Mexico, we checked in with the nine veterans who attended.
25:06Eight of them told us their symptoms had improved and called their experience with psychedelics life-changing.
25:13Ed Glover said he felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.
25:17How are you doing?
25:18Very well.
25:20Shortly after coming home from the retreat, he decided to retire as a firefighter.
25:25Prior to the retreat, I thought about taking my life just about every day.
25:27I had a very close call.
25:30You know, the note, the gun, that is no longer the case.
25:33You haven't had thoughts of killing yourself since then?
25:37Not one.
25:38And Randy Weaver says his suicidal ideations have stopped as well.
25:42I don't have any of those thoughts since going through this journey.
25:48That's remarkable.
25:51I would say, yeah.
25:53You had told the group afterward that you had visualized people on a medevac helicopter that you had served with.
26:04Yeah.
26:04What was the impact of that?
26:06In combat, things happen quickly.
26:07One minute you're talking to your friend, and the next minute, you know, you're putting him in a body bag.
26:14That causes a gap in your psyche.
26:19So to be able to revisit those incidences, you know, seeing those helicopters come back with friends, it brings a little peace to you.
26:27Since our report aired in February, former firefighter Ed Glover suffered a setback in his decades-long battle with PTSD, and has since sought conventional mental health care.
26:40The new head of the Veterans Administration, Secretary Doug Collins, says he supports more research for psychedelic therapies.
26:47Yes, in film, but even more so in theater, a sense of timing is essential.
27:04At age 63, George Clooney made his Broadway debut this spring, starring in an adaptation of the 2005 Oscar-nominated movie Good Night and Good Luck.
27:13The play broke box office records, and it's up for five awards at the Tonys later tonight.
27:20Clooney co-wrote both the original screenplay and this play, telling the story of pioneering journalist Edward R. Murrow,
27:26who took on strong-arming Senator Joseph McCarthy, all while withstanding pressure not to make waves at his own news network, this network, CBS.
27:36The plot revolves around themes of truth, intimidation, and courage in the face of corporate media.
27:41It is set in the 1950s.
27:44As we first told you in March, Clooney always meant for the story to echo today.
27:49He just didn't realize how loudly it would.
27:53Ooh, it's cold.
27:55Oh, wow, it's cold.
27:57Deep February, Winter Garden Theater in the heart of Broadway, the set still under construction.
28:03Ooh-hoo!
28:04George Clooney arrives in character.
28:06This is how they treat the two-time sexiest man alive.
28:08You see that?
28:09Oh, there he is.
28:09Hey, John.
28:10How are you, man?
28:12How are you?
28:12Ever the everyman, he doesn't stand on ceremony, he hurdles over it.
28:17They don't care.
28:17They don't care.
28:18But now it can be told.
28:20Hollywood's famously cool leading man has the jitters.
28:24I mean, look at this place.
28:25This is proper old Broadway, and it's exciting to be here.
28:30You know, look, let's not kid ourselves.
28:33It's nerve-wracking.
28:34And there's a million reasons why it's dumb to do.
28:37What do you mean?
28:38Well, it's dumb to do because you're coming out and saying, well, let's try to get an audience
28:44to take this ride with you back to 1954.
28:46One minute.
28:48We need a live mic on the floor.
28:50It's front-loaded.
28:51How much?
28:52By about five seconds.
28:53Five seconds?
28:53That's too much!
28:55The play brings to life the humming CBS newsroom of the 1950s, all typewriters and smoldering cigarettes.
29:02Having dyed his hair, upsetting that familiar salt-and-pepper ratio, Clooney plays the protagonist, Edward R. Murrow, host of the weekly television news program, See It Now.
29:15Good evening.
29:16A few weeks ago, there occurred a few obscure notices in the newspapers about a Lieutenant Milo Radulovic.
29:22We propose to examine insofar as we can.
29:24You wrote the script to the film more than 20 years ago.
29:28You played Fred Friendly, Murrow's producer.
29:30You didn't play Murrow.
29:31No.
29:32Why did you not want to play him?
29:34Murrow had a gravitas to him that at 42 years old, I wasn't able to pull off.
29:40Murrow earned his gravitas during World War II.
29:43Just overhead now, the burst of the anti-aircraft fire.
29:47With eyewitness radio dispatches from London amid the blitz.
29:51Good night and good luck.
29:54His trademark sign-off doubles as the play's title.
29:57Clooney wrote the story with his longtime friend and creative partner, Grant Hesloff.
30:03We have the same suit on.
30:05Is it the same color?
30:06How does this partnership work?
30:08Who's at the keyboard?
30:08Oh, you're at the keyboard.
30:10He doesn't know how to use a computer.
30:12He can barely.
30:13No, I'm like this.
30:14I'm the Luddite.
30:16Through the first writers' meeting.
30:18They met in L.A. in the early 80s, when both were struggling actors.
30:22Now they run a production company together.
30:25Full disclosure, the three of us collaborated on an unrelated sports documentary out this month.
30:30Clooney and Hesloff conceived of the story of good night and good luck in the early 2000s, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq.
30:39You know, I just thought it was a good time to talk about when the press held government to account.
30:45Because a report on Senator McCarthy is by definition controversial, we want to say exactly what we mean.
30:51In A Show Within a Show, the play recreates the historic television face-off between Murrow and Joseph McCarthy, with McCarthy essentially playing himself through archival footage.
31:02Mr. Edward R. Murrow, as far back as 20 years ago, was engaged in propaganda for communist causes.
31:11At the height of the Red Scare, the Wisconsin senator led a crusade to weed out supposed communist infiltration of the U.S. government.
31:19We're going to go with the story because the terror is right here in this room.
31:24Murrow and his team overcame the climate of fear and intimidation to expose and help take down McCarthy with measured, fact-based editorials.
31:33His proposition is a very simple one.
31:35Anyone who opposes or criticizes McCarthy's methods must be a communist.
31:39Are you guys using McCarthyism as a parable for today?
31:43Originally, it wasn't for today-today.
31:46But this is a story that stands the test of time.
31:49I think it's a story that you can keep telling over and over.
31:52I don't think it will ever thematically get old.
31:55Hey, guys.
31:56Hey, George. Good to see you.
31:57Thank you so much for having me.
31:58I'm so happy you're here.
32:00At the table read in a downtown Manhattan studio...
32:03I'm a little nervous.
32:04Yeah, I'm a little nervous, too.
32:05...Clooney met the cast and wasted no time addressing what he sees as the parallels to today.
32:11When the other three estates fail, when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the fourth estate has to succeed.
32:20Has to succeed.
32:21As 60 Minutes is here right now on our first day.
32:24Kidding aside, Clooney made the point.
32:27These are chilling times for the news media.
32:29ABC has just settled a lawsuit with the Trump administration, and CBS News is in the process.
32:36The process he's talking about?
32:38President Trump lodged a $20 billion lawsuit against CBS, making the unfounded allegation that 60 Minutes engaged in election interference.
32:47CBS filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, and the parties have discussed settlement.
32:51All this as the network's parent company, Paramount, is trying to close a merger deal, which requires approval from the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission.
33:02We're seeing this idea of using government to scare or fine or use corporations to make journalists smaller.
33:13Governments don't like the freedom of the press.
33:16They never have.
33:16And that goes for whether you are a conservative or a liberal or whatever side you're on, they don't like the press.
33:23What does this play tell us about the media's ability or willingness to withstand this kind of pressure?
33:30It's a fight that is for the ages.
33:32It will continue.
33:34You see it happening at the L.A. Times.
33:36You see it happening at the Washington Post, for God's sake.
33:39You guarantee the corporate would have no influence over news content.
33:44Journalism and telling truth to power has to be waged, like war is waged.
33:52It doesn't just happen accidentally.
33:54You know, it takes people saying, we're going to do these stories, and you're going to have to come after us.
34:00And that's the way it is.
34:02Places for top of scene two, please.
34:05Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
34:07When we dropped in on rehearsals, the mood was as light as the material was heavy.
34:12You're insured, right?
34:13Yeah, yeah, yeah.
34:14Comedian and producer Alana Glazer plays CBS news writer Shirley Worshba.
34:19How is George Clooney doing leading a troupe of stage actors?
34:24It's shaky.
34:26It's shaky, John.
34:27It's tough.
34:28No, I'm just kidding.
34:29Just do it live.
34:30Just do it live.
34:31We're all, like, so focused on this material, and it's serious, and I'm trying to make it as honest as possible.
34:38So, George really, like, will let the tension release and break the tension with a joke at the right time.
34:46Wait, let me just jump in a second.
34:47One of Broadway's most in-demand directors, David Cromer, is the man in charge.
34:52This has to do with the pressure on you.
34:54Your Murrow character is being portrayed by someone with considerable star wattage.
35:00What challenge does that present to you?
35:01It doesn't present a challenge.
35:03It helps.
35:04Why?
35:04Edward R. Murrow was a star.
35:05He was the most trusted man in America.
35:07He had this very serious news show, but he also had this incredibly popular entertainment show,
35:13which was on Friday night, which was called Person to Person.
35:15And he went into Liberace's house, and he went into all these people's houses.
35:22Thanks a lot.
35:23Don't mind.
35:23Good night, Lee.
35:24Good night, Ed.
35:25If he were playing Willie Lohman, that would be different.
35:28You know what I mean?
35:28A smaller figure than Murrow.
35:29If he were playing a little man.
35:32If he were playing a little man.
35:34He's playing a great man.
35:35He's a great man.
35:35He's playing a great man.
35:36Next week, we'll take you to Beverly Hills, California.
35:39As for the play's setting, Clooney knows his way around a newsroom.
35:43His father, Nick Clooney, was a longtime journalist and anchorman.
35:47When I was 12 years old, and my dad was working at WKRC in Cincinnati,
35:52I would run the teleprompter.
35:53In those days, a teleprompter was sheets of paper taped end to end with a camera pointed down,
36:00and you'd feed them like this underneath the camera,
36:02and my dad would be able to read it on the teleprompter.
36:05And then at the commercial, they'd say, okay, cut three minutes out of that story.
36:09And you had at the end of it a paper cutter.
36:11Literally cut.
36:11You really are old.
36:13I'm old, man.
36:15It's like I'm running for something.
36:16Clooney says he's running for nothing.
36:19So, yeah, exactly.
36:20But he makes no secret of his politics.
36:23A lifelong Democrat, he made news last summer when he wrote a pointed essay
36:27calling on Joe Biden not to seek re-election on account of his age.
36:31Looking back on that, happy you did it?
36:34Yeah.
36:34I'll make it kind of easy.
36:36I was raised to tell the truth.
36:38I had seen the president up close for this fundraiser, and I was surprised.
36:46And so I feel as if there was a lot of profiles and cowardice in my party through all of that.
36:53And I was not proud of that.
36:56And I also believed I had to tell the truth.
36:59Truth, an increasingly elusive concept.
37:02Clooney says that for all the parallels between the play and these convulsive times we live in today,
37:08disinformation is one critical distinction.
37:10Here's where I would tell you where we differ from what Murrow was doing.
37:15Although McCarthy would try to pose things that he'd show up a blank piece of paper and say,
37:19I've got a list of names.
37:20OK.
37:21So that was his version of fake news.
37:24We now are at a place where we've found that it's harder and harder and harder to discern the truth.
37:31Facts are now negotiated.
37:33You and I can agree or disagree, but if we can't reach a consensus that this chair is brown,
37:38we're in trouble.
37:39That's right.
37:40Can we turn the camera on and look at the opening shot?
37:43By March, rehearsals had moved into the theater.
37:46A big production issue on this day, the prop cigarettes.
37:49Any trouble with cigarettes, lighters, ashtrays, anything like that?
37:52We'll have to talk about ashtrays.
37:54The hardest part for me is smoking.
37:56What do you mean?
37:57We smoke a lot.
37:58And we smoke a lot in the play.
37:59Everybody smokes in the play, so the place is covered in smoke.
38:02And smoking in our family is a big, you know, problem.
38:07Grew up in Kentucky, a lot of tobacco farmers.
38:09And almost all of my family members died of lung cancer.
38:13My father's sister, Rosemary, died of it.
38:15She was a wonderful singer, died of it.
38:17And my dad's 91 because he didn't smoke.
38:19So smoking has always been a hard thing to do.
38:23It's easy to forget George Clooney has been an A-lister for 30 years now.
38:33Usually he sleeps on the foot of my bed, but he's gotten so fat.
38:36In 2003, he was a bachelor living with a pet pig when 60 Minutes profiled him.
38:41You were in the sexiest man-of-the-year phase?
38:47Sure, that was a big time for me.
38:48Not that you're not sexy now.
38:50It's okay, I'm not hurt.
38:51He's married now.
38:52His wife and their two kids left the home they keep in Europe to spend this spring run with him in New York.
38:59Clooney is also in a different phase of his life professionally.
39:02Look, I'm 63 years old.
39:04I'm not trying to compete with 25-year-old leading men.
39:08That's not my job.
39:10I'm not doing romantic films anymore.
39:12So we just put the catwalk in up here.
39:14Clooney's turn on Broadway earned him a Tony nomination for Best Actor just as it put him a few feet from the audience.
39:21They can see you.
39:21You can see them, too.
39:22I'm not looking at them.
39:24I'm putting my wife in the very, very, very back.
39:27You wish you had done this earlier in your career?
39:29I don't know that I could have.
39:30But I didn't do the work required to get there.
39:35But I saw the smile when you came out here and looked out here.
39:39Anybody who would deny that would just be a liar.
39:41I mean, there isn't a single actor alive that wouldn't have loved to have been on Broadway.
39:46So that's the fun of it.
39:48It's trickier the older you get, but why not?
39:51And so the question is a very simple one.
39:54Not what power unchecked will do.
39:57We've seen that answer.
39:58The question is, what are you prepared to do?
40:03Good night.
40:05And good luck.
40:06Good night.
40:13Good night.
40:14Good night.
40:14Good night.
40:15Good night.
40:16Good night.
40:16Good night.
40:16Good night.
40:17Good night.
40:17Good night.
40:18Good night.
40:19Good night.
40:20Good night.
40:21Good night.
40:22Good night.
40:23Good night.
40:24Good night.
40:25Good night.
40:26Good night.
40:27Good night.
40:28Good night.
40:29Good night.
40:30Good night.
40:31Good night.
40:32Good night.
40:33Good night.
40:34Good night.