60 Minutes (1968) s46e02 Episode Script
Season 46, Episode 2
There is a Senate hearing scheduled tomorrow on a subject of some importance to millions of Americans, but with the government shutdown it's not clear that the Senate Committee on Government Affairs will be able to pay for a stenographer to record the event.
The hearing involves the Federal Disability Insurance Program, which could become the first government benefits program to run out of money.
When it began back in the 1950s it was envisioned as a small program to assist people who were unable to work because of illness or injury.
Today, it serves nearly 12 million people -- up 20 percent in the last six years -- and has a budget of $135 billion.
That's more than the government spent last year on the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Labor Department combined.
It's been called a "secret welfare system" with it's own "disability industrial complex," a system ravaged by waste and fraud.
A lot of people want to know what's going on.
Especially Sen.
Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.
Tom Coburn: Go read the statute.
If there's any job in the economy you can perform, you are not eligible for disability.
That's pretty clear.
So, where'd all those disabled people come from? The Social Security Administration, which runs the disability program says the explosive surge is due to aging baby boomers and the lingering effects of a bad economy.
But Sen.
Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Subcommittee for Investigations -- who's also a physician -- says it's more complicated than that.
Last year, his staff randomly selected hundreds of disability files and found that 25 percent of them should never have been approved -- another 20 percent, he said, were highly questionable.
Tom Coburn: If all these people are disabled that apply, I want 'em all to get it.
And then we need to figure out how we're going to fund it.
But my investigation tells me and my common sense tells me that we got a system that's being gamed pretty big right now.
And by a lot of different people exploiting a vulnerable system.
Coburn says you need look no further than the commercials of disability lawyers trolling for new clients.
Namely, the two thirds of the people who have already applied for disability and been rejected.
There's not much to lose, really.
It doesn't cost you anything unless you win the appeal and the lawyers collect from the federal government.
Marilyn Zahm: If the American public knew what was going on in our system, half would be outraged and the other half would apply for benefits.
Marilyn Zahm and Randy Frye are two of the country's 1,500 disability judges.
They are also the president and vice president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges.
They are each expected to read, hear, and decide up to 700 appeals a year to clear a backlog of nearly a million cases.
They say disability lawyers have flooded the system with cases that shouldn't be there.
Marilyn Zahm: In 1971, fewer than 20 percent of claimants were represented.
Now, over 80 percent of claimants are represented by attorneys or representatives.
Steve Kroft: Why do you think there's so many more lawyers involved in this than there used to be? Marilyn Zahm: It's lucrative.
Randy Frye: Follow the money.
Last year the Social Security Administration paid a billion dollars to claimants' lawyers out of its cash-strapped disability trust fund.
The biggest chunk -- $70 million - went to Binder & Binder, the largest disability firm in the country.
Lawyer Jenna Fliszar and Jessica White worked for Binder & Binder representing clients in front of disability judges from New Hampshire to West Virginia.
Jenna Fliszar: I call it a legal factory because that's all it is.
I mean, they have figured out the system and they've made it into a huge national firm that makes millions of dollars a year on Social Security disability.
Jessica White: I was hired at the end of 2008 and business was booming because the economy was so bad.
We had a lot of people who -- their unemployment ran out and this was the next step.
Jenna Fliszar: If you're unable to find a job, and you have any type of physical issue, then it really becomes a last ditch effort because the job market is so bad.
Many of the cases they handled involved ailments with subjective symptoms like backache, depression and fibromyalgia, which is joint and muscle pain along with chronic fatigue.
Steve Kroft: Hard to prove you've got it? Jenna Fliszar: Yes.
And there's really no diagnostic testing for it.
Steve Kroft: Hard to deny you don't have it.
Jenna Fliszar: Correct.
Steve Kroft: Out of the hundreds of people that you represented, how many of these cases involved strong cases for disability? Jenna Fliszar: Strong cases I would say maybe say half of my cases were not deserving of disability.
Steve Kroft: How many of them ultimately ended up getting benefits? Jenna Fliszar: Half.
We tried repeatedly to reach Binder & Binder for comment, but our phone calls were not returned.
Tom Coburn: We ought to err on the side of somebody being potentially disabled.
And we have a ton of people in our country that are, but what's coming about now with where we are, is the very people who are truly disabled, because we have so many scallywags in the system, are going to get hurt severely when this trust fund runs outta money.
Sen.
Coburn says disability payments are now propping up the economy in some of the poorest regions in the country.
Which is why he sent his investigators to the border area of Kentucky and West Virginia.
More than a quarter of a million people in this area are on disability -- 10 to 15 percent of the population -- about three times the national average.
Jennifer Griffith and Sarah Carver processed disability claims at the Social Security regional office in Huntington, West Virginia.
Steve Kroft: How important are disability checks to people in this part of the country? Jennifer Griffith: They're a vital part of our economy.
A lot of people depend on them to survive.
To see it first hand, they suggested we come back right after the disability checks went out.
And we did, to find crowds and traffic jams.
Jennifer Griffith: You avoid the pharmacy.
You avoid Wal-Mart.
You avoid, you know, restaurants because it's just-- Sarah Carver: Any grocery stores.
Jennifer Griffith: It's just extremely crowded.
Everybody's received their benefits.
Let's go shopping.
Not everyone in the throngs we saw is on disability, but Jennifer Griffith and Sarah Carver say there's no question that a lot of them are and probably shouldn't be.
Sarah Carver: We have a lot of people who have exhausted their unemployment checks and have moved onto Social Security disability.
Steve Kroft: This is, sort of, a bridge between unemployment and collecting Social Security.
Sarah Carver: Generally, yes.
Steve Kroft: Are they disabled? Sarah Carver: Not always, no.
Jennifer Griffith: More often than not, no.
Around here, people call it "getting on the draw" or "getting on the check," but they have other names for it.
Sarah Carver: I think you could call it a scheme.
You could call it a scam.
You could call it fraud.
I mean, there's different definitions for it.
Steve Kroft: Large scale? Jennifer Griffith: Very large scale.
They began complaining to their bosses at the Social Security Administration six years ago after discovering that an outsized number of claims and some questionable medical evidence was being submitted by Eric Conn, a flamboyant attorney whose face is plastered on billboards throughout the area and on local TV.
He runs the third largest disability practice in the country out of the Eric C.
Conn Law Center which is just off Route 23 in Stanville, Ky.
It's a complex of several doublewides welded together with an imposing replica of the Lincoln Memorial in the parking lot.
Surprisingly, it has only one space for the disabled.
Steve Kroft: I mean, it's kinda hard to miss Eric Conn around here, isn't it, with all the billboards and-- Jennifer Griffith: You'd be hard pressed to find somebody who doesn't know who he is in this area.
Steve Kroft: He calls himself Mr.
Social Security.
And some of his ads say "guaranteed success.
" How can he make that claim? Sarah Carver: He backs that up.
Steve Kroft: A slam dunk? Sarah Carver: Uh-huh (affirm).
Pretty much.
Steve Kroft: That's a remarkable record.
Sarah Carver: Yes, it is.
Steve Kroft: Is he that good a lawyer? Sarah Carver:: You know-- Jennifer Griffith: No.
(laugh) A lot of Conn's success, they say, had to do with a particularly friendly disability judge, David Daugherty, who sought out Conn's cases and approved virtually all 1,823 of them, awarding a half a billion dollars worth of lifetime benefits to Conn's clients.
The decisions were based on the recommendations of a loyal group of doctors who often examined Conn's clients right in his law offices and always endorsed them for the disability rolls.
Steve Kroft: Were most of the medical reports submitted by the same doctors? Jennifer Griffith: Yes.
Sarah Carver: Yes.
Sometimes up to 13 to 20 reports a day.
Jennifer Griffith: I know on one, we counted at his office.
Steve Kroft: And they were all approved? Jennifer Griffith: They were all approved.
Steve Kroft: Were all those valid claims? Sarah Carver: There's no way that you're going to have 100 percent of clients walk through your door and be disabled.
100 percent of claimants, there's no way.
We were hoping that given Eric Conn's outgoing personality and love of publicity, he would be eager to talk to us, but that turned out not to be the case.
At first we were told he wasn't in the office.
We said we'd wait.
Conn staffer: Hey, take some pens, too.
Alright? Steve Kroft: OK.
Great.
About an hour later, we got a call from his lawyer in Washington.
Steve Kroft (on phone): You know, we don't want to make it seem like he's hiding from us.
The lawyer said he'd try to coax Conn out of the office and eventually he emerged.
Eric Conn: I'm very much familiar with you.
How we doing today? Steve Kroft: I'm doing good.
Look, there's a lot of allegations out there-- Eric Conn: There are.
Steve Kroft: --about you that we wanted to talk to you about.
Eric Conn: I understand.
Well, I'm not normally a shy person, but I think it's probably best I speak in the legal realm rather than here.
I know you all have come a long way, and I don't mean to be inhospitable but I just think it's probably best right now.
Steve Kroft: You can't talk about your relationship with Judge Daugherty or your incredible success in disability court? Eric Conn: Boy, that's tempting.
Oh, I would love to comment on some of that.
But not - I'm really sorry, I don't think I should right now.
Conn didn't want to go into it with Sen.
Coburn's investigators either.
They've been quietly working on the case for two years, interviewing witnesses and pouring over disability documents.
That's why they asked us to protect their identities.
Steve Kroft: What did you find out in West Virginia and Kentucky? Tom Coburn: Significant fraud.
Steve Kroft: Does the name Eric Conn ring a bell? Tom Coburn: Uh-huh (affirm).
I would tell you, I wouldn't want him for a brother-in-law.
And he's got a lot of money.
And the American taxpayer paid him that money.
Steve Kroft: Is he breaking the law? Tom Coburn: That's probably going to be determined by the Department of Justice.
Coburn says the report -- to be released tomorrow -- will show that Conn collected more than $13 million in legal fees from the federal government over the past six years and that he paid five doctors roughly $2 million to regularly sign off on bogus medical forms that had been manufactured and filled out ahead of time by Conn's staff.
Steve Kroft: You think what you found there is just an isolated case? Tom Coburn: No.
I mean, it's-- it may be one of the worst cases.
It just shows you how broken it is.
You take a good concept that's well meaning.
And then you don't manage it, you don't monitor it, you don't over-- Congress doesn't oversight it, and pretty soon, you end up with places like in West Virginia, certain counties, where, you know, you're born to be on disability.
It should be pointed out that no one is getting rich off disability payments of $1,100 a month.
It's a minimum wage income with Medicare benefits after two years.
But each new case will eventually cost taxpayers, on average, $300,000 in lifetime benefits.
For Marilyn Zahm, the disability judge from Buffalo, the high demand for it is a measure of the low prospects that still exist for millions of Americans.
Marilyn Zahm: People run out of unemployment insurance.
They are not going to die silently.
They are going to look for another source of income.
It is not unusual for people, especially people over 40, to have some sort of an ailment or impairment.
So they will file for disability benefits based upon that.
For many of these people, the plant closed.
There are no jobs in their communities.
What are people supposed to do? Steve Kroft (to Coburn): Some of these people are desperate people.
Tom Coburn: Absolutely desperate.
I agree.
But what you're really describing is our economy and the consequences of it.
And we're using a system that wasn't meant for that, because we don't have a system over there to help them.
Which means we're not addressing the other concerns in our society.
And that's a debate Congress ought to have.
It was a defining moment in the history of U.
S.
Special Operations and it was the first time American forces faced al Qaeda in battle.
You may remember it as "Black Hawk down," a phrase immortalized on the battlefield in Somalia 20 years ago this past week.
Super 6-1 was the call sign of the first Black Hawk helicopter to be shot out of the sky that day, setting in motion a series of events that remain seared into America's memory: the sight of U.
S.
soldiers being dragged through the streets, the capture of a badly wounded American pilot named Mike Durant.
When the fighting ended, America pulled out of Somalia with the dead and wounded, but left behind the wreckage of Super 6-1.
Tonight, you are going to see and hear things about that day you never have before and meet an American couple determined to bring home a lost piece of American history.
To get to the crash site of Super 6-1, you have to travel into the Bakara market, the worst part of Mogadishu.
David Snelson: There's still people there very sympathetic with the Shabab.
Lara Logan: Which is basically al Qaeda in Somalia? David Snelson: It's al Qaeda in Somali.
David Snelson is a former warrant officer for U.
S.
Army Intelligence, and he's been running a private security company here with his wife, Alisha Ryu, for the past three years.
He took us to the crash site with a small army of 20 armed guards.
Lara Logan: So the biggest threats here really are IEDs, homemade bombs? David Snelson: IEDs.
VBIEDs.
Or vehicle IEDs.
The violent history of this ancient Arab city is written in the ruins that still dominate these streets.
Somalia has been a country without a government for most of the past two decades and it's only now beginning to emerge from the chaos.
David's guards set up a ring of security when we got to the site.
David Snelson: It's just down over here, right, right here.
Lara Logan: Oh my gosh.
This tiny little alleyway? David Snelson: It's just this tiny alleyway.
There's nothing marking the spot, just a sense of history and the knowledge that this epic battle unfolded right here where Super 6-1 came down.
You can see where the wreckage was laying in these haunting images taken in the days after the battle.
The smashed hulk of the main rotor was right against the wall where we were standing.
David Snelson: In fact, I'm relatively confident that this, this section of the wall was probably damaged in the crash and just never been repaired.
How it ended up here began with a top secret mission.
A task force of U.
S.
Special Operations troops were sent in to hunt down a violent warlord, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who was preventing U.
S.
and UN troops from feeding starving Somalis.
Norm Hooten: The mission that day was to capture key leaders of his executive staff.
We had all of his executive staff at one meeting which was very rare.
Usually you get one or two but to have 10-12 key leaders in one spot was, was just, was just something we couldn't turn down.
Norm Hooten was one of the special operators leading the assault force that day and in the battle.
video which has not been seen publicly until now.
Here you can see the very beginning of the mission.
Hooten was flown in on one of these "Little Bird" helicopters to the target building, which was quickly enveloped in clouds of dust.
Lara Logan: How well did you and your men execute that main-- the main objective of the mission? Norm Hooten: It was flawless.
From the time we set down to the time we called for the helicopters to come back and get us, I would say it was no more than five minutes and it was over.
Lara Logan: So you thought you were going back, it was done? Norm Hooten: Yes.
The helicopters were on their way back to the target to pick us up.
We had everybody that we'd been trying to get for months was in one package in one mission.
Then, from this rooftop with his men under fire, Hooten watched as the lead Black Hawk Super 6-1 headed towards him.
Norm Hooten: And it took a direct hit to the, to the tail boom.
And it went and started a slow rotation.
Lara Logan: How hard did it hit? Norm Hooten: It was a catastrophic impact.
That's the only way I could describe it.
This is Super 6-1 moments after it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, spinning out of control before it's torn apart on impact.
[Radio: Going down, we got a Black Hawk going down.
.]
When Super 6-1 came tumbling out of the sky on Oct.
3, 1993, these streets were already a battlefield.
Thousands of angry Somalis and heavily armed gunmen were locked in an intense battle with the Americans.
And now the unthinkable had happened.
They'd shot down a Black Hawk -- this powerful symbol of America's might.
For the men on the ground here, it was the moment that changed everything.
Matt Eversmann: There is now a complete, 90 degree turn in our plan.
And it is to go recover this aircraft.
Matt Eversmann was one of the Army Rangers who fast roped out of these Black Hawk helicopters to secure the target building.
Until then, none of their operations had lasted more than an hour and they had no reason to think this one would be any different.
Lara Logan: Some of the guys didn't even take water with them, because they thought it would be over so quickly.
Matt Eversmann: You're looking at one of 'em, you know? Lara Logan: You didn't-- Matt Eversmann: What an idiot.
I took one of my canteens out.
Because you could put seven magazines into the old canteen pouch.
It was a perfect fit.
Hovering a few hundred feet above the battlefield in the command and control helicopter was Tom Matthews.
Back then, he was the battalion commander for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment -- considered the finest helicopter pilots in the world.
Lara Logan: Did you see Super 6-1 get hit? Tom Matthews: I did.
The nose went into a wall that was reinforced with another wall on the other side.
The tail boom knocked down the wall behind it.
The cockpit did not break through that wall because it was reinforced.
So it crushed that cockpit.
Lara Logan: Which obviously meant that the two pilots had no chance.
Tom Matthews: They had no chance at impact in that particular case.
Matthews told us the pilots, Chief Warrant Officers Cliff Wolcott and Donovan Briley were among the best under his command.
He recalled those first few moments after the crash, as he tried to make sense of what had happened to the eight men on board.
Tom Matthews: First thing I saw was a guy crawl out of the wreckage of Super 6-1, one of the operators who was in the back, and take up a defensive fighting position at the corner of the building to protect that crash site.
And that happened within probably 30 seconds of the of the crash.
The dark figure you can just make out standing on the corner is 25-year-old Staff Sergeant Dan Busch, as he defended Super 6-1 against swarming enemy fighters.
He would soon be dead.
Norm Hooten says he and his men were doing everything they could to get to the crash site that was in danger of being overwhelmed.
Lara Logan: You've described it as being like sharks, smelling the blood in the water.
Norm Hooten: Yes.
They smelled blood and they were, they were moving towards it.
Matt Eversmann and his team of Army Rangers were also trying to get to Super 6-1 in this convoy, but they kept running into a hail of gunfire.
Matt Eversmann: I think we went through three or four ambushes along the way.
Literally, this is-- the Somalis line both sides of the street, face towards the center, and shoot while you're driving through.
I mean, that's their battle drill.
And we start to lose more soldiers by attrition.
Lara Logan: Taking casualties on the convoy- Matt Eversmann: You know, we're taking casualties on the convoy.
You know, each ambush, we're losing more guys.
The Americans were outnumbered by thousands of Somalis.
Norm Hooten said it took him and his men hours to reach the crash site which was only a few blocks away.
Lara Logan: And all the time you were being hit from every direction? Norm Hooten: That's correct.
Lara Logan: And taking casualties constantly? Norm Hooten: Yeah, at close range.
You're within a doorway away or over a brick wall, so within, within 10 feet.
So it's very, very close and very personal.
Lara Logan: You can see exactly who's trying to kill you? Norm Hooten: You can.
Lara Logan: When you finally got to that crash site what was that like, that moment when you first saw it, you knew that you were finally there? Norm Hooten: I can remember seeing the tail boom kinda broken and sticking out.
And I remember the relief I felt when I saw it.
I said "finally, we finally we can finally put our arms around this thing and start solving this problem.
" In the midst of this intense fight, they faced a nearly impossible task: to free the body of one of the pilots pinned in the wreckage.
It took all night.
Norm Hooten: We used every manual tool we could to try to disassemble that aircraft and recover.
We went in with straps and lifts and basically pulled that aircraft off until we could recover our friends, and leave.
I remember being inside that aircraft, working on it and looking out and seeing the sun coming up and thinking, here we go.
It's getting ready to get bad again.
Lara Logan: So you were not going to leave that pilot's body - Norm Hooten: No, no, no.
Lara Logan: -trapped in that aircraft.
Norm Hooten: That was absolutely not an option.
More than 13 hours after Super 6-1 went down, they were still at the crash site and the battle wasn't over yet.
Out of 160 Americans, more than a hundred were dead or wounded.
One of them was a 21-year-old Army Ranger from New Jersey, Corporal Jamie Smith.
Norm Hooten: He was shot in the leg, but he was shot way up close to the hip, so you couldn't get a tourniquet on him, you know.
And we kept pushing IVs into him for hours and he would say, "Am I gonna die?" And we would say, "No you're not gonna die.
" And we'd call helicopter in to come and get him and it would come in and that helicopter would get shot.
And then we would try to get vehicles in, and, then finally, finally, you know after hours of this, agonizing thing with a young kid.
You try to tell him "No, son, you're not gonna die, you're gonna live.
" And he died -- and that, that is a, that's one of the things that I, you know, keeps me up at night sometimes --- that, that horrible lie that you tell someone trying to keep his spirits up.
The memory of Corporal Smith and the other men who died is what David Snelson and Alisha Ryu say they see in the remnants of Super This past spring, after careful negotiations with local clans they were able to start digging out the wreckage.
They were anxious to get to it before the Somalis went ahead with a plan to build a road over the crash site.
The earth gave up one piece of twisted metal after another.
It was surprising how much was there.
Few people realized that for 20 years since it fell, Super 6-1 had been there, in that same place, where it went down.
Because of the threat from al Qaeda, it was too dangerous for David and Alisha to be at the site, and they were waiting for the wreckage to be brought to their home in Mogadishu.
Alisha Ryu: I saw the truck pull in and I saw what appeared to be at least three of the rotor, of the blades and I was, "wow.
' I said, 'That can't be.
" David Snelson: I was amazed.
Lara Logan: You had no idea? Alisha Ryu: No idea.
Had absolutely no idea, it was just, absolute shock.
They kept the wreckage safe behind their high walls and heavy security.
This massive part is the main rotor which still dripped clean hydraulic fluid when they dug it out.
David Snelson: I don't want to lift this up too much because it's really corroded and really fragile.
And these are the foot pedals used by one of the Super 6-1 pilots as he struggled to control the helicopter in the final seconds of his life.
It had taken them almost a year and most of their life savings, but in June they were finally able to package up the wreckage and send it on its way.
With the help of the U.
S.
Military, Super month and a half ago.
And this is where it will stay.
On display at the Airborne & Special Operations Museum.
Norm Hooten: I think it's coming back to where it belongs.
Lara Logan: And that matters? Norm Hooten: And that matters.
To anybody that was there that night, it matters.
For a long time, astronomers saw the asteroids and comets that come close to Earth as useless debris -- space rocks that blocked our view of distant galaxies.
Not anymore.
They're now viewed as scientifically important and potentially very dangerous if they were to collide with our planet.
The odds of that happening on any given day are remote, but over millions of years scientists believe there have been lots of impacts, and few doubt there are more to come.
A former astronaut told us it's like a game of "cosmic roulette," and one mankind cannot afford to lose.
Concern over our ability to detect these objects that come near the Earth grew after an incident in Russia this February, when an asteroid crashed into the atmosphere with many times the energy of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, narrowly missing a city of one million.
This is video of that asteroid in Russia, barreling toward Earth at 40,000 miles an hour.
It exploded into pieces 19 miles above and 25 miles south of the city of Chelyabinsk.
People thought it had missed them entirely, until minutes later, when the shock wave arrived.
Shattering glass, crushing doors, and knocking some people right off their feet.
More than a thousand were injured.
Anderson Cooper: How much warning did people in Chelyabinsk have? Paul Chodas: None.
Paul Chodas is a scientist at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
He and his boss Don Yeomans have been trying to track near-Earth objects for decades.
Paul Chodas: We didn't see it coming.
It was coming from the general direction of the sun, so it was in the daytime sky as it approached.
Anderson Cooper: So how did you find out about it? Paul Chodas: Twitter and YouTube-- when we first saw the images.
Anderson Cooper: So the first people at NASA that heard about it was Twitter? Paul Chodas: Exactly.
Chodas says an object this size hits Earth once every hundred years, on average.
Yet the same day, purely by chance, another asteroid twice as large came within 17,000 miles of Earth, passing between us and the satellites that are bringing you this broadcast.
The only reason there was any advance warning was because an amateur astronomer in Spain, an oral surgeon by day, noticed it just before it moved out of view.
Amy Mainzer: We know about some of the most distant galaxies in the known universe, and yet, we don't really know everything that's right in our own backyard.
Amy Mainzer is a NASA scientist who focuses on detecting asteroids.
Amy Mainzer: So we gotta move the dome out of the way.
And then we're gonna start to follow the asteroid as it tracks across the sky.
This telescope at the Table Mountain Observatory in California is one of dozens all over the world that are used to track and study near-Earth objects.
Mainzer told us they're often very hard to find.
Amy Mainzer: Some of these asteroids are really, really dark.
Darker even than coal in some cases.
Kinda like the soot at the bottom of a barbecue grill.
Anderson Cooper: So you're looking for something that's darker than coal against a black sky.
Amy Mainzer: Exactly.
And now you see the problem.
Another problem is that ground-based telescopes can't see objects coming from the direction of the sun because they're in the daytime sky, like the asteroid that hit Russia.
Astronomers find asteroids by taking repeated pictures of the night sky and looking for things that change position.
Professionals and amateurs all over the world work together, sharing information.
Once Paul Chodas and his NASA colleagues have multiple sightings, they can predict an object's location as far as 100 years into the future.
The asteroid Amy Mainzer was observing the night we visited didn't look like much on her screen.
Anderson Cooper: That little thing? Amy Mainzer: Yep, that's it.
but it's nearly half a mile wide and capable of destroying an entire continent.
Anderson Cooper: So that's actually-- that's a huge asteroid.
Amy Mainzer: That's a huge asteroid.
If something this size hit the Earth it would be devastating.
It would be very bad.
Asteroids are composed mostly of rock; comets - ice and dust.
They come in all shapes and sizes.
Some look like small planets.
Others -- giant dog bones.
For a long time, nobody thought they were worth tracking at all.
Amy Mainzer: It wasn't thought that they really did hit the Earth.
Astronomers debated for a long time about the nature of the craters on the moon.
And-- Anderson Cooper: They thought that the craters on the moon were volcanic.
Amy Mainzer: Possibly, yeah.
And it's only been fairly recently, within, you know, the last 50 years or so, that the field has really recognized that yeah, impacts actually do happen.
And not only do they happen on geological timescales, you know, millions and billions of years, but on human timescales in some cases.
The last major asteroid to collide with Earth hit in 1908, in the Tunguska region of Siberia.
It's believed to have been 40 yards wide and to have exploded in the air like a nuclear bomb, leveling 80 million trees in an area the size of metropolitan Washington.
This crater in northern Arizona was created 50,000 years ago.
It's one of more than 180 impact craters geologists have found so far.
They think there are many more, hidden by water and vegetation-- more even than on the moon, because the Earth's gravity is greater.
The most famous impact of all is the one that may have wiped out the dinosaurs more than enormous asteroid or comet collided so violently with Earth it created a cloud of debris that blocked out the sun, killing off 75 percent of all species, and leaving behind a crater in Mexico more than 100 miles wide.
Don Yeomans: These are objects that were once in spacepieces of asteroids.
Yeomans and Chodas showed us some of the remarkable things that have fallen from the sky.
Anderson Cooper: This is a piece of Mars? Don Yeomans: You have it in your hand.
It wandered around the inner solar system for a few million years, and a 40-pound stone came down in Africa, about 10 feet from a farmer, in-- Anderson Cooper: Really? Don Yeomans: --October of 1962.
Anderson Cooper: It's amazing, to think this is from Mars.
They played a trick on me as well.
Don Yeomans: Would you hand that one to me? That big one? Anderson Cooper: That one? Don Yeomans: Yeah.
Come on.
Anderson Cooper: Oh my god.
This one was iron-nickel and heavy as an anvil.
Not all asteroids are made of such dense stuff, but many contain high concentrations of valuable minerals, like platinum, that might some day be mined in space.
[President Obama: We'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid.
.]
President Obama's proposed budget for next year includes a plan to capture a tiny asteroid so that astronauts could rendezvous with it by 2025.
The idea is to perfect techniques needed to explore deep space and perhaps find a way to exploit the water resources that many comets and asteroids have.
Don Yeomans: You could extract water from them.
You could break the water down into hydrogen and oxygen which is the most efficient form of rocket fuel.
So asteroids may serve as the fueling stations and watering holes for future planetary exploration.
But as the scriptwriters of the Hollywood blockbuster "Armageddon" vividly imagined, asteroids have the potential to harm mankind as well.
For better or worse, this is what many of us know about near-Earth objects: that if Bruce Willis hadn't nuked one, it would have destroyed the world.
Anderson Cooper: I mean-- you see these movies with Bruce Willis where any asteroid is coming and is gonna destroy the world.
Is that likely? Don Yeomans: No.
No.
We've found 95 percent of the large ones and none of them represent a threat within the next 100 years or so.
Anderson Cooper: What about the other five percent? Don Yeomans: We're still looking.
He's talking about objects over half a mile wide that are big enough to cause global destruction.
The problem is there are lots of smaller objects -- over 40 yards in diameter -- that are unaccounted for and potentially very dangerous.
Ed Lu: If you look at the light green dot that's the orbit of the Earth.
Ed Lu is a former astronaut who spent six months on the International Space Station.
He showed us a computer-generated representation of our solar system - that's the sun in the center and those green dots are 10,000 near-Earth objects astronomers have found so far.
Ed Lu: So these green dots are the asteroids that could hit the Earth.
Anderson Cooper: This is the-- about the 10,000 known asteroids? Ed Lu: Yes.
These are the 10,000 known asteroids.
Here's the problem.
There's about a factor of 100 more.
The real solar system looks like this.
And we know this because we've only been able to observe a small fraction of the sky, and we know that there's about 100 times more asteroids than we've found.
Anderson Cooper: Wait-- wait, this is all the asteroids that are-- Ed Lu: There are about a million asteroids large enough to destroy a city out there.
Anderson Cooper: And right now, we only know of what percent of those asteroids? Ed Lu: About one half of one percent.
Anderson Cooper: Does it worry you that you only know one percent of these asteroids that are big enough to destroy a city? Paul Chodas: Well, most of those are really small.
And the odds are that many of these would hit in a remote area or they could hit in an ocean.
So that is why the larger ones are those that we were paying attention to first.
Now the next size range is the one to concentrate on, those that can cause, you know, continent-wide extinction or destruction.
Anderson Cooper: Yeah.
That would be pretty good to prevent that-- continent-wide destruction.
Paul Chodas: Those are the next ones we'll continue to find those.
And w-- and we work our way down to the small ones.
Anderson Cooper: But right now an object that could wipe out the eastern seaboard or New York City could be a day away and there's a very good chance we wouldn't know about it.
Don Yeomans: Well, we're working to make sure that we will know about it.
Anderson Cooper: But right now we wouldn't know about it.
Paul Chodas: It's possible, yes.
[Congressional hearing: The Committee on Science, Space and Technology will come to order.
.]
NASA administrator Charles Bolden faced similar questions from Congress after the near-miss in Russia earlier this year.
[Congressman: What would we do if you detected even a small one, like the one that detonated in Russia, headed for New York City in three weeks? What would we do? Charles Bolden: If it's coming in three weeks -- pray.
.]
Anderson Cooper: Is there anything you can do to deflect an asteroid that's-- that's going to hit besides evacuating a city? Don Yeomans: If you find it 10 or 20 or 30 years in advance, then yes-- you could actually send a spacecraft up-- run into it, slow it down a millimeter or two per second so that in ten or 20 years when it was predicted to hit the Earth, it wouldn't.
Anderson Cooper: Just slam a spacecraft into it.
Don Yeomans: Just slam into it.
In 2005, NASA did just that, as an experiment, firing a small unmanned spacecraft into a comet called Tempel 1.
But you can't deflect what you don't detect -- which is why former astronaut Ed Lu has taken on a new mission.
[Ed Lu: So here's the telescope that we're building.]
He's now chairman of the B612 Foundation, which has designed a space-based telescope to speed up the discovery of near-Earth objects.
NASA's Amy Mainzer has been developing one too.
Both telescopes would be able to find asteroids by using infrared sensors that detect heat rather than light.
But a telescope like this would cost roughly half a billion dollars, and so far neither the United States nor any other government has committed significant funds.
So the B612 Foundation is trying to raise the money privately by reaching out to individual donors.
Ed Lu: I don't think there's any other global catastrophe, global scale catastrophe that we can prevent.
This is the only one that I know of.
We can solve this particular issue for the cost of building a freeway overpass.
I mean, and that's literally what it is.
Anderson Cooper: But nobody has been killed by an asteroid.
Ed Lu: Yeah.
And what I'm saying is that you can't wait 'til that point afterwards, when you say, "We shoulda done it.
" You have to think of this as cosmic roulette, right? Ed Lu: The phrase that they have in Vegas is that the house always wins, right? And you know, the sort of secret to all this is that we're not the house.
Right? At some point, you know, the solar system's gonna get you.
Don Yeomans: They're very low probability events but very high consequence events.
Anderson Cooper: The problem it seems like is you're asking people to care about something which may not affect their lives, may not even affect their children's lives.
Don Yeomans: That's true.
It's a tough concept to get across because, as you say, it's something that may not happen for another 100 years,
The hearing involves the Federal Disability Insurance Program, which could become the first government benefits program to run out of money.
When it began back in the 1950s it was envisioned as a small program to assist people who were unable to work because of illness or injury.
Today, it serves nearly 12 million people -- up 20 percent in the last six years -- and has a budget of $135 billion.
That's more than the government spent last year on the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Labor Department combined.
It's been called a "secret welfare system" with it's own "disability industrial complex," a system ravaged by waste and fraud.
A lot of people want to know what's going on.
Especially Sen.
Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.
Tom Coburn: Go read the statute.
If there's any job in the economy you can perform, you are not eligible for disability.
That's pretty clear.
So, where'd all those disabled people come from? The Social Security Administration, which runs the disability program says the explosive surge is due to aging baby boomers and the lingering effects of a bad economy.
But Sen.
Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Subcommittee for Investigations -- who's also a physician -- says it's more complicated than that.
Last year, his staff randomly selected hundreds of disability files and found that 25 percent of them should never have been approved -- another 20 percent, he said, were highly questionable.
Tom Coburn: If all these people are disabled that apply, I want 'em all to get it.
And then we need to figure out how we're going to fund it.
But my investigation tells me and my common sense tells me that we got a system that's being gamed pretty big right now.
And by a lot of different people exploiting a vulnerable system.
Coburn says you need look no further than the commercials of disability lawyers trolling for new clients.
Namely, the two thirds of the people who have already applied for disability and been rejected.
There's not much to lose, really.
It doesn't cost you anything unless you win the appeal and the lawyers collect from the federal government.
Marilyn Zahm: If the American public knew what was going on in our system, half would be outraged and the other half would apply for benefits.
Marilyn Zahm and Randy Frye are two of the country's 1,500 disability judges.
They are also the president and vice president of the Association of Administrative Law Judges.
They are each expected to read, hear, and decide up to 700 appeals a year to clear a backlog of nearly a million cases.
They say disability lawyers have flooded the system with cases that shouldn't be there.
Marilyn Zahm: In 1971, fewer than 20 percent of claimants were represented.
Now, over 80 percent of claimants are represented by attorneys or representatives.
Steve Kroft: Why do you think there's so many more lawyers involved in this than there used to be? Marilyn Zahm: It's lucrative.
Randy Frye: Follow the money.
Last year the Social Security Administration paid a billion dollars to claimants' lawyers out of its cash-strapped disability trust fund.
The biggest chunk -- $70 million - went to Binder & Binder, the largest disability firm in the country.
Lawyer Jenna Fliszar and Jessica White worked for Binder & Binder representing clients in front of disability judges from New Hampshire to West Virginia.
Jenna Fliszar: I call it a legal factory because that's all it is.
I mean, they have figured out the system and they've made it into a huge national firm that makes millions of dollars a year on Social Security disability.
Jessica White: I was hired at the end of 2008 and business was booming because the economy was so bad.
We had a lot of people who -- their unemployment ran out and this was the next step.
Jenna Fliszar: If you're unable to find a job, and you have any type of physical issue, then it really becomes a last ditch effort because the job market is so bad.
Many of the cases they handled involved ailments with subjective symptoms like backache, depression and fibromyalgia, which is joint and muscle pain along with chronic fatigue.
Steve Kroft: Hard to prove you've got it? Jenna Fliszar: Yes.
And there's really no diagnostic testing for it.
Steve Kroft: Hard to deny you don't have it.
Jenna Fliszar: Correct.
Steve Kroft: Out of the hundreds of people that you represented, how many of these cases involved strong cases for disability? Jenna Fliszar: Strong cases I would say maybe say half of my cases were not deserving of disability.
Steve Kroft: How many of them ultimately ended up getting benefits? Jenna Fliszar: Half.
We tried repeatedly to reach Binder & Binder for comment, but our phone calls were not returned.
Tom Coburn: We ought to err on the side of somebody being potentially disabled.
And we have a ton of people in our country that are, but what's coming about now with where we are, is the very people who are truly disabled, because we have so many scallywags in the system, are going to get hurt severely when this trust fund runs outta money.
Sen.
Coburn says disability payments are now propping up the economy in some of the poorest regions in the country.
Which is why he sent his investigators to the border area of Kentucky and West Virginia.
More than a quarter of a million people in this area are on disability -- 10 to 15 percent of the population -- about three times the national average.
Jennifer Griffith and Sarah Carver processed disability claims at the Social Security regional office in Huntington, West Virginia.
Steve Kroft: How important are disability checks to people in this part of the country? Jennifer Griffith: They're a vital part of our economy.
A lot of people depend on them to survive.
To see it first hand, they suggested we come back right after the disability checks went out.
And we did, to find crowds and traffic jams.
Jennifer Griffith: You avoid the pharmacy.
You avoid Wal-Mart.
You avoid, you know, restaurants because it's just-- Sarah Carver: Any grocery stores.
Jennifer Griffith: It's just extremely crowded.
Everybody's received their benefits.
Let's go shopping.
Not everyone in the throngs we saw is on disability, but Jennifer Griffith and Sarah Carver say there's no question that a lot of them are and probably shouldn't be.
Sarah Carver: We have a lot of people who have exhausted their unemployment checks and have moved onto Social Security disability.
Steve Kroft: This is, sort of, a bridge between unemployment and collecting Social Security.
Sarah Carver: Generally, yes.
Steve Kroft: Are they disabled? Sarah Carver: Not always, no.
Jennifer Griffith: More often than not, no.
Around here, people call it "getting on the draw" or "getting on the check," but they have other names for it.
Sarah Carver: I think you could call it a scheme.
You could call it a scam.
You could call it fraud.
I mean, there's different definitions for it.
Steve Kroft: Large scale? Jennifer Griffith: Very large scale.
They began complaining to their bosses at the Social Security Administration six years ago after discovering that an outsized number of claims and some questionable medical evidence was being submitted by Eric Conn, a flamboyant attorney whose face is plastered on billboards throughout the area and on local TV.
He runs the third largest disability practice in the country out of the Eric C.
Conn Law Center which is just off Route 23 in Stanville, Ky.
It's a complex of several doublewides welded together with an imposing replica of the Lincoln Memorial in the parking lot.
Surprisingly, it has only one space for the disabled.
Steve Kroft: I mean, it's kinda hard to miss Eric Conn around here, isn't it, with all the billboards and-- Jennifer Griffith: You'd be hard pressed to find somebody who doesn't know who he is in this area.
Steve Kroft: He calls himself Mr.
Social Security.
And some of his ads say "guaranteed success.
" How can he make that claim? Sarah Carver: He backs that up.
Steve Kroft: A slam dunk? Sarah Carver: Uh-huh (affirm).
Pretty much.
Steve Kroft: That's a remarkable record.
Sarah Carver: Yes, it is.
Steve Kroft: Is he that good a lawyer? Sarah Carver:: You know-- Jennifer Griffith: No.
(laugh) A lot of Conn's success, they say, had to do with a particularly friendly disability judge, David Daugherty, who sought out Conn's cases and approved virtually all 1,823 of them, awarding a half a billion dollars worth of lifetime benefits to Conn's clients.
The decisions were based on the recommendations of a loyal group of doctors who often examined Conn's clients right in his law offices and always endorsed them for the disability rolls.
Steve Kroft: Were most of the medical reports submitted by the same doctors? Jennifer Griffith: Yes.
Sarah Carver: Yes.
Sometimes up to 13 to 20 reports a day.
Jennifer Griffith: I know on one, we counted at his office.
Steve Kroft: And they were all approved? Jennifer Griffith: They were all approved.
Steve Kroft: Were all those valid claims? Sarah Carver: There's no way that you're going to have 100 percent of clients walk through your door and be disabled.
100 percent of claimants, there's no way.
We were hoping that given Eric Conn's outgoing personality and love of publicity, he would be eager to talk to us, but that turned out not to be the case.
At first we were told he wasn't in the office.
We said we'd wait.
Conn staffer: Hey, take some pens, too.
Alright? Steve Kroft: OK.
Great.
About an hour later, we got a call from his lawyer in Washington.
Steve Kroft (on phone): You know, we don't want to make it seem like he's hiding from us.
The lawyer said he'd try to coax Conn out of the office and eventually he emerged.
Eric Conn: I'm very much familiar with you.
How we doing today? Steve Kroft: I'm doing good.
Look, there's a lot of allegations out there-- Eric Conn: There are.
Steve Kroft: --about you that we wanted to talk to you about.
Eric Conn: I understand.
Well, I'm not normally a shy person, but I think it's probably best I speak in the legal realm rather than here.
I know you all have come a long way, and I don't mean to be inhospitable but I just think it's probably best right now.
Steve Kroft: You can't talk about your relationship with Judge Daugherty or your incredible success in disability court? Eric Conn: Boy, that's tempting.
Oh, I would love to comment on some of that.
But not - I'm really sorry, I don't think I should right now.
Conn didn't want to go into it with Sen.
Coburn's investigators either.
They've been quietly working on the case for two years, interviewing witnesses and pouring over disability documents.
That's why they asked us to protect their identities.
Steve Kroft: What did you find out in West Virginia and Kentucky? Tom Coburn: Significant fraud.
Steve Kroft: Does the name Eric Conn ring a bell? Tom Coburn: Uh-huh (affirm).
I would tell you, I wouldn't want him for a brother-in-law.
And he's got a lot of money.
And the American taxpayer paid him that money.
Steve Kroft: Is he breaking the law? Tom Coburn: That's probably going to be determined by the Department of Justice.
Coburn says the report -- to be released tomorrow -- will show that Conn collected more than $13 million in legal fees from the federal government over the past six years and that he paid five doctors roughly $2 million to regularly sign off on bogus medical forms that had been manufactured and filled out ahead of time by Conn's staff.
Steve Kroft: You think what you found there is just an isolated case? Tom Coburn: No.
I mean, it's-- it may be one of the worst cases.
It just shows you how broken it is.
You take a good concept that's well meaning.
And then you don't manage it, you don't monitor it, you don't over-- Congress doesn't oversight it, and pretty soon, you end up with places like in West Virginia, certain counties, where, you know, you're born to be on disability.
It should be pointed out that no one is getting rich off disability payments of $1,100 a month.
It's a minimum wage income with Medicare benefits after two years.
But each new case will eventually cost taxpayers, on average, $300,000 in lifetime benefits.
For Marilyn Zahm, the disability judge from Buffalo, the high demand for it is a measure of the low prospects that still exist for millions of Americans.
Marilyn Zahm: People run out of unemployment insurance.
They are not going to die silently.
They are going to look for another source of income.
It is not unusual for people, especially people over 40, to have some sort of an ailment or impairment.
So they will file for disability benefits based upon that.
For many of these people, the plant closed.
There are no jobs in their communities.
What are people supposed to do? Steve Kroft (to Coburn): Some of these people are desperate people.
Tom Coburn: Absolutely desperate.
I agree.
But what you're really describing is our economy and the consequences of it.
And we're using a system that wasn't meant for that, because we don't have a system over there to help them.
Which means we're not addressing the other concerns in our society.
And that's a debate Congress ought to have.
It was a defining moment in the history of U.
S.
Special Operations and it was the first time American forces faced al Qaeda in battle.
You may remember it as "Black Hawk down," a phrase immortalized on the battlefield in Somalia 20 years ago this past week.
Super 6-1 was the call sign of the first Black Hawk helicopter to be shot out of the sky that day, setting in motion a series of events that remain seared into America's memory: the sight of U.
S.
soldiers being dragged through the streets, the capture of a badly wounded American pilot named Mike Durant.
When the fighting ended, America pulled out of Somalia with the dead and wounded, but left behind the wreckage of Super 6-1.
Tonight, you are going to see and hear things about that day you never have before and meet an American couple determined to bring home a lost piece of American history.
To get to the crash site of Super 6-1, you have to travel into the Bakara market, the worst part of Mogadishu.
David Snelson: There's still people there very sympathetic with the Shabab.
Lara Logan: Which is basically al Qaeda in Somalia? David Snelson: It's al Qaeda in Somali.
David Snelson is a former warrant officer for U.
S.
Army Intelligence, and he's been running a private security company here with his wife, Alisha Ryu, for the past three years.
He took us to the crash site with a small army of 20 armed guards.
Lara Logan: So the biggest threats here really are IEDs, homemade bombs? David Snelson: IEDs.
VBIEDs.
Or vehicle IEDs.
The violent history of this ancient Arab city is written in the ruins that still dominate these streets.
Somalia has been a country without a government for most of the past two decades and it's only now beginning to emerge from the chaos.
David's guards set up a ring of security when we got to the site.
David Snelson: It's just down over here, right, right here.
Lara Logan: Oh my gosh.
This tiny little alleyway? David Snelson: It's just this tiny alleyway.
There's nothing marking the spot, just a sense of history and the knowledge that this epic battle unfolded right here where Super 6-1 came down.
You can see where the wreckage was laying in these haunting images taken in the days after the battle.
The smashed hulk of the main rotor was right against the wall where we were standing.
David Snelson: In fact, I'm relatively confident that this, this section of the wall was probably damaged in the crash and just never been repaired.
How it ended up here began with a top secret mission.
A task force of U.
S.
Special Operations troops were sent in to hunt down a violent warlord, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who was preventing U.
S.
and UN troops from feeding starving Somalis.
Norm Hooten: The mission that day was to capture key leaders of his executive staff.
We had all of his executive staff at one meeting which was very rare.
Usually you get one or two but to have 10-12 key leaders in one spot was, was just, was just something we couldn't turn down.
Norm Hooten was one of the special operators leading the assault force that day and in the battle.
video which has not been seen publicly until now.
Here you can see the very beginning of the mission.
Hooten was flown in on one of these "Little Bird" helicopters to the target building, which was quickly enveloped in clouds of dust.
Lara Logan: How well did you and your men execute that main-- the main objective of the mission? Norm Hooten: It was flawless.
From the time we set down to the time we called for the helicopters to come back and get us, I would say it was no more than five minutes and it was over.
Lara Logan: So you thought you were going back, it was done? Norm Hooten: Yes.
The helicopters were on their way back to the target to pick us up.
We had everybody that we'd been trying to get for months was in one package in one mission.
Then, from this rooftop with his men under fire, Hooten watched as the lead Black Hawk Super 6-1 headed towards him.
Norm Hooten: And it took a direct hit to the, to the tail boom.
And it went and started a slow rotation.
Lara Logan: How hard did it hit? Norm Hooten: It was a catastrophic impact.
That's the only way I could describe it.
This is Super 6-1 moments after it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, spinning out of control before it's torn apart on impact.
[Radio: Going down, we got a Black Hawk going down.
.]
When Super 6-1 came tumbling out of the sky on Oct.
3, 1993, these streets were already a battlefield.
Thousands of angry Somalis and heavily armed gunmen were locked in an intense battle with the Americans.
And now the unthinkable had happened.
They'd shot down a Black Hawk -- this powerful symbol of America's might.
For the men on the ground here, it was the moment that changed everything.
Matt Eversmann: There is now a complete, 90 degree turn in our plan.
And it is to go recover this aircraft.
Matt Eversmann was one of the Army Rangers who fast roped out of these Black Hawk helicopters to secure the target building.
Until then, none of their operations had lasted more than an hour and they had no reason to think this one would be any different.
Lara Logan: Some of the guys didn't even take water with them, because they thought it would be over so quickly.
Matt Eversmann: You're looking at one of 'em, you know? Lara Logan: You didn't-- Matt Eversmann: What an idiot.
I took one of my canteens out.
Because you could put seven magazines into the old canteen pouch.
It was a perfect fit.
Hovering a few hundred feet above the battlefield in the command and control helicopter was Tom Matthews.
Back then, he was the battalion commander for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment -- considered the finest helicopter pilots in the world.
Lara Logan: Did you see Super 6-1 get hit? Tom Matthews: I did.
The nose went into a wall that was reinforced with another wall on the other side.
The tail boom knocked down the wall behind it.
The cockpit did not break through that wall because it was reinforced.
So it crushed that cockpit.
Lara Logan: Which obviously meant that the two pilots had no chance.
Tom Matthews: They had no chance at impact in that particular case.
Matthews told us the pilots, Chief Warrant Officers Cliff Wolcott and Donovan Briley were among the best under his command.
He recalled those first few moments after the crash, as he tried to make sense of what had happened to the eight men on board.
Tom Matthews: First thing I saw was a guy crawl out of the wreckage of Super 6-1, one of the operators who was in the back, and take up a defensive fighting position at the corner of the building to protect that crash site.
And that happened within probably 30 seconds of the of the crash.
The dark figure you can just make out standing on the corner is 25-year-old Staff Sergeant Dan Busch, as he defended Super 6-1 against swarming enemy fighters.
He would soon be dead.
Norm Hooten says he and his men were doing everything they could to get to the crash site that was in danger of being overwhelmed.
Lara Logan: You've described it as being like sharks, smelling the blood in the water.
Norm Hooten: Yes.
They smelled blood and they were, they were moving towards it.
Matt Eversmann and his team of Army Rangers were also trying to get to Super 6-1 in this convoy, but they kept running into a hail of gunfire.
Matt Eversmann: I think we went through three or four ambushes along the way.
Literally, this is-- the Somalis line both sides of the street, face towards the center, and shoot while you're driving through.
I mean, that's their battle drill.
And we start to lose more soldiers by attrition.
Lara Logan: Taking casualties on the convoy- Matt Eversmann: You know, we're taking casualties on the convoy.
You know, each ambush, we're losing more guys.
The Americans were outnumbered by thousands of Somalis.
Norm Hooten said it took him and his men hours to reach the crash site which was only a few blocks away.
Lara Logan: And all the time you were being hit from every direction? Norm Hooten: That's correct.
Lara Logan: And taking casualties constantly? Norm Hooten: Yeah, at close range.
You're within a doorway away or over a brick wall, so within, within 10 feet.
So it's very, very close and very personal.
Lara Logan: You can see exactly who's trying to kill you? Norm Hooten: You can.
Lara Logan: When you finally got to that crash site what was that like, that moment when you first saw it, you knew that you were finally there? Norm Hooten: I can remember seeing the tail boom kinda broken and sticking out.
And I remember the relief I felt when I saw it.
I said "finally, we finally we can finally put our arms around this thing and start solving this problem.
" In the midst of this intense fight, they faced a nearly impossible task: to free the body of one of the pilots pinned in the wreckage.
It took all night.
Norm Hooten: We used every manual tool we could to try to disassemble that aircraft and recover.
We went in with straps and lifts and basically pulled that aircraft off until we could recover our friends, and leave.
I remember being inside that aircraft, working on it and looking out and seeing the sun coming up and thinking, here we go.
It's getting ready to get bad again.
Lara Logan: So you were not going to leave that pilot's body - Norm Hooten: No, no, no.
Lara Logan: -trapped in that aircraft.
Norm Hooten: That was absolutely not an option.
More than 13 hours after Super 6-1 went down, they were still at the crash site and the battle wasn't over yet.
Out of 160 Americans, more than a hundred were dead or wounded.
One of them was a 21-year-old Army Ranger from New Jersey, Corporal Jamie Smith.
Norm Hooten: He was shot in the leg, but he was shot way up close to the hip, so you couldn't get a tourniquet on him, you know.
And we kept pushing IVs into him for hours and he would say, "Am I gonna die?" And we would say, "No you're not gonna die.
" And we'd call helicopter in to come and get him and it would come in and that helicopter would get shot.
And then we would try to get vehicles in, and, then finally, finally, you know after hours of this, agonizing thing with a young kid.
You try to tell him "No, son, you're not gonna die, you're gonna live.
" And he died -- and that, that is a, that's one of the things that I, you know, keeps me up at night sometimes --- that, that horrible lie that you tell someone trying to keep his spirits up.
The memory of Corporal Smith and the other men who died is what David Snelson and Alisha Ryu say they see in the remnants of Super This past spring, after careful negotiations with local clans they were able to start digging out the wreckage.
They were anxious to get to it before the Somalis went ahead with a plan to build a road over the crash site.
The earth gave up one piece of twisted metal after another.
It was surprising how much was there.
Few people realized that for 20 years since it fell, Super 6-1 had been there, in that same place, where it went down.
Because of the threat from al Qaeda, it was too dangerous for David and Alisha to be at the site, and they were waiting for the wreckage to be brought to their home in Mogadishu.
Alisha Ryu: I saw the truck pull in and I saw what appeared to be at least three of the rotor, of the blades and I was, "wow.
' I said, 'That can't be.
" David Snelson: I was amazed.
Lara Logan: You had no idea? Alisha Ryu: No idea.
Had absolutely no idea, it was just, absolute shock.
They kept the wreckage safe behind their high walls and heavy security.
This massive part is the main rotor which still dripped clean hydraulic fluid when they dug it out.
David Snelson: I don't want to lift this up too much because it's really corroded and really fragile.
And these are the foot pedals used by one of the Super 6-1 pilots as he struggled to control the helicopter in the final seconds of his life.
It had taken them almost a year and most of their life savings, but in June they were finally able to package up the wreckage and send it on its way.
With the help of the U.
S.
Military, Super month and a half ago.
And this is where it will stay.
On display at the Airborne & Special Operations Museum.
Norm Hooten: I think it's coming back to where it belongs.
Lara Logan: And that matters? Norm Hooten: And that matters.
To anybody that was there that night, it matters.
For a long time, astronomers saw the asteroids and comets that come close to Earth as useless debris -- space rocks that blocked our view of distant galaxies.
Not anymore.
They're now viewed as scientifically important and potentially very dangerous if they were to collide with our planet.
The odds of that happening on any given day are remote, but over millions of years scientists believe there have been lots of impacts, and few doubt there are more to come.
A former astronaut told us it's like a game of "cosmic roulette," and one mankind cannot afford to lose.
Concern over our ability to detect these objects that come near the Earth grew after an incident in Russia this February, when an asteroid crashed into the atmosphere with many times the energy of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, narrowly missing a city of one million.
This is video of that asteroid in Russia, barreling toward Earth at 40,000 miles an hour.
It exploded into pieces 19 miles above and 25 miles south of the city of Chelyabinsk.
People thought it had missed them entirely, until minutes later, when the shock wave arrived.
Shattering glass, crushing doors, and knocking some people right off their feet.
More than a thousand were injured.
Anderson Cooper: How much warning did people in Chelyabinsk have? Paul Chodas: None.
Paul Chodas is a scientist at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
He and his boss Don Yeomans have been trying to track near-Earth objects for decades.
Paul Chodas: We didn't see it coming.
It was coming from the general direction of the sun, so it was in the daytime sky as it approached.
Anderson Cooper: So how did you find out about it? Paul Chodas: Twitter and YouTube-- when we first saw the images.
Anderson Cooper: So the first people at NASA that heard about it was Twitter? Paul Chodas: Exactly.
Chodas says an object this size hits Earth once every hundred years, on average.
Yet the same day, purely by chance, another asteroid twice as large came within 17,000 miles of Earth, passing between us and the satellites that are bringing you this broadcast.
The only reason there was any advance warning was because an amateur astronomer in Spain, an oral surgeon by day, noticed it just before it moved out of view.
Amy Mainzer: We know about some of the most distant galaxies in the known universe, and yet, we don't really know everything that's right in our own backyard.
Amy Mainzer is a NASA scientist who focuses on detecting asteroids.
Amy Mainzer: So we gotta move the dome out of the way.
And then we're gonna start to follow the asteroid as it tracks across the sky.
This telescope at the Table Mountain Observatory in California is one of dozens all over the world that are used to track and study near-Earth objects.
Mainzer told us they're often very hard to find.
Amy Mainzer: Some of these asteroids are really, really dark.
Darker even than coal in some cases.
Kinda like the soot at the bottom of a barbecue grill.
Anderson Cooper: So you're looking for something that's darker than coal against a black sky.
Amy Mainzer: Exactly.
And now you see the problem.
Another problem is that ground-based telescopes can't see objects coming from the direction of the sun because they're in the daytime sky, like the asteroid that hit Russia.
Astronomers find asteroids by taking repeated pictures of the night sky and looking for things that change position.
Professionals and amateurs all over the world work together, sharing information.
Once Paul Chodas and his NASA colleagues have multiple sightings, they can predict an object's location as far as 100 years into the future.
The asteroid Amy Mainzer was observing the night we visited didn't look like much on her screen.
Anderson Cooper: That little thing? Amy Mainzer: Yep, that's it.
but it's nearly half a mile wide and capable of destroying an entire continent.
Anderson Cooper: So that's actually-- that's a huge asteroid.
Amy Mainzer: That's a huge asteroid.
If something this size hit the Earth it would be devastating.
It would be very bad.
Asteroids are composed mostly of rock; comets - ice and dust.
They come in all shapes and sizes.
Some look like small planets.
Others -- giant dog bones.
For a long time, nobody thought they were worth tracking at all.
Amy Mainzer: It wasn't thought that they really did hit the Earth.
Astronomers debated for a long time about the nature of the craters on the moon.
And-- Anderson Cooper: They thought that the craters on the moon were volcanic.
Amy Mainzer: Possibly, yeah.
And it's only been fairly recently, within, you know, the last 50 years or so, that the field has really recognized that yeah, impacts actually do happen.
And not only do they happen on geological timescales, you know, millions and billions of years, but on human timescales in some cases.
The last major asteroid to collide with Earth hit in 1908, in the Tunguska region of Siberia.
It's believed to have been 40 yards wide and to have exploded in the air like a nuclear bomb, leveling 80 million trees in an area the size of metropolitan Washington.
This crater in northern Arizona was created 50,000 years ago.
It's one of more than 180 impact craters geologists have found so far.
They think there are many more, hidden by water and vegetation-- more even than on the moon, because the Earth's gravity is greater.
The most famous impact of all is the one that may have wiped out the dinosaurs more than enormous asteroid or comet collided so violently with Earth it created a cloud of debris that blocked out the sun, killing off 75 percent of all species, and leaving behind a crater in Mexico more than 100 miles wide.
Don Yeomans: These are objects that were once in spacepieces of asteroids.
Yeomans and Chodas showed us some of the remarkable things that have fallen from the sky.
Anderson Cooper: This is a piece of Mars? Don Yeomans: You have it in your hand.
It wandered around the inner solar system for a few million years, and a 40-pound stone came down in Africa, about 10 feet from a farmer, in-- Anderson Cooper: Really? Don Yeomans: --October of 1962.
Anderson Cooper: It's amazing, to think this is from Mars.
They played a trick on me as well.
Don Yeomans: Would you hand that one to me? That big one? Anderson Cooper: That one? Don Yeomans: Yeah.
Come on.
Anderson Cooper: Oh my god.
This one was iron-nickel and heavy as an anvil.
Not all asteroids are made of such dense stuff, but many contain high concentrations of valuable minerals, like platinum, that might some day be mined in space.
[President Obama: We'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid.
.]
President Obama's proposed budget for next year includes a plan to capture a tiny asteroid so that astronauts could rendezvous with it by 2025.
The idea is to perfect techniques needed to explore deep space and perhaps find a way to exploit the water resources that many comets and asteroids have.
Don Yeomans: You could extract water from them.
You could break the water down into hydrogen and oxygen which is the most efficient form of rocket fuel.
So asteroids may serve as the fueling stations and watering holes for future planetary exploration.
But as the scriptwriters of the Hollywood blockbuster "Armageddon" vividly imagined, asteroids have the potential to harm mankind as well.
For better or worse, this is what many of us know about near-Earth objects: that if Bruce Willis hadn't nuked one, it would have destroyed the world.
Anderson Cooper: I mean-- you see these movies with Bruce Willis where any asteroid is coming and is gonna destroy the world.
Is that likely? Don Yeomans: No.
No.
We've found 95 percent of the large ones and none of them represent a threat within the next 100 years or so.
Anderson Cooper: What about the other five percent? Don Yeomans: We're still looking.
He's talking about objects over half a mile wide that are big enough to cause global destruction.
The problem is there are lots of smaller objects -- over 40 yards in diameter -- that are unaccounted for and potentially very dangerous.
Ed Lu: If you look at the light green dot that's the orbit of the Earth.
Ed Lu is a former astronaut who spent six months on the International Space Station.
He showed us a computer-generated representation of our solar system - that's the sun in the center and those green dots are 10,000 near-Earth objects astronomers have found so far.
Ed Lu: So these green dots are the asteroids that could hit the Earth.
Anderson Cooper: This is the-- about the 10,000 known asteroids? Ed Lu: Yes.
These are the 10,000 known asteroids.
Here's the problem.
There's about a factor of 100 more.
The real solar system looks like this.
And we know this because we've only been able to observe a small fraction of the sky, and we know that there's about 100 times more asteroids than we've found.
Anderson Cooper: Wait-- wait, this is all the asteroids that are-- Ed Lu: There are about a million asteroids large enough to destroy a city out there.
Anderson Cooper: And right now, we only know of what percent of those asteroids? Ed Lu: About one half of one percent.
Anderson Cooper: Does it worry you that you only know one percent of these asteroids that are big enough to destroy a city? Paul Chodas: Well, most of those are really small.
And the odds are that many of these would hit in a remote area or they could hit in an ocean.
So that is why the larger ones are those that we were paying attention to first.
Now the next size range is the one to concentrate on, those that can cause, you know, continent-wide extinction or destruction.
Anderson Cooper: Yeah.
That would be pretty good to prevent that-- continent-wide destruction.
Paul Chodas: Those are the next ones we'll continue to find those.
And w-- and we work our way down to the small ones.
Anderson Cooper: But right now an object that could wipe out the eastern seaboard or New York City could be a day away and there's a very good chance we wouldn't know about it.
Don Yeomans: Well, we're working to make sure that we will know about it.
Anderson Cooper: But right now we wouldn't know about it.
Paul Chodas: It's possible, yes.
[Congressional hearing: The Committee on Science, Space and Technology will come to order.
.]
NASA administrator Charles Bolden faced similar questions from Congress after the near-miss in Russia earlier this year.
[Congressman: What would we do if you detected even a small one, like the one that detonated in Russia, headed for New York City in three weeks? What would we do? Charles Bolden: If it's coming in three weeks -- pray.
.]
Anderson Cooper: Is there anything you can do to deflect an asteroid that's-- that's going to hit besides evacuating a city? Don Yeomans: If you find it 10 or 20 or 30 years in advance, then yes-- you could actually send a spacecraft up-- run into it, slow it down a millimeter or two per second so that in ten or 20 years when it was predicted to hit the Earth, it wouldn't.
Anderson Cooper: Just slam a spacecraft into it.
Don Yeomans: Just slam into it.
In 2005, NASA did just that, as an experiment, firing a small unmanned spacecraft into a comet called Tempel 1.
But you can't deflect what you don't detect -- which is why former astronaut Ed Lu has taken on a new mission.
[Ed Lu: So here's the telescope that we're building.]
He's now chairman of the B612 Foundation, which has designed a space-based telescope to speed up the discovery of near-Earth objects.
NASA's Amy Mainzer has been developing one too.
Both telescopes would be able to find asteroids by using infrared sensors that detect heat rather than light.
But a telescope like this would cost roughly half a billion dollars, and so far neither the United States nor any other government has committed significant funds.
So the B612 Foundation is trying to raise the money privately by reaching out to individual donors.
Ed Lu: I don't think there's any other global catastrophe, global scale catastrophe that we can prevent.
This is the only one that I know of.
We can solve this particular issue for the cost of building a freeway overpass.
I mean, and that's literally what it is.
Anderson Cooper: But nobody has been killed by an asteroid.
Ed Lu: Yeah.
And what I'm saying is that you can't wait 'til that point afterwards, when you say, "We shoulda done it.
" You have to think of this as cosmic roulette, right? Ed Lu: The phrase that they have in Vegas is that the house always wins, right? And you know, the sort of secret to all this is that we're not the house.
Right? At some point, you know, the solar system's gonna get you.
Don Yeomans: They're very low probability events but very high consequence events.
Anderson Cooper: The problem it seems like is you're asking people to care about something which may not affect their lives, may not even affect their children's lives.
Don Yeomans: That's true.
It's a tough concept to get across because, as you say, it's something that may not happen for another 100 years,