60 Minutes (1968) s46e25 Episode Script
Season 46, Episode 25
The two explosions that tore through the Boston Marathon nearly a year ago were like a starting gun on a second race against time.
Unknown terrorists were on the loose and they had more bombs.
Now, for the first time, you're going to hear the inside story from the federal investigators who ran the manhunt.
They led a taskforce of more than 1,000 federal agents, state police and Boston cops.
Tonight, they will speak of the disturbing evidence that cracked the case and of a debate among the investigators that ultimately led to the dragnet's violent end.
The afternoon of April 15th, the FBI's man in charge of Boston got a text, "two large explosions near the finish line.
" For Special Agent Rick DesLauriers, the marathon became a sprint to catch the killers before they struck again.
Rick DesLauriers: I felt that week that I had the weight of the world on my shoulders.
And I'm sure I wasn't the only one.
Scott Pelley: Did you feel if there was a third bombing, it would be on you? Rick DesLauriers: That's everybody's fear.
It would be on me.
It would be on the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
But that wasn't what drove us.
What drove us was preventing more people from getting hurt.
before, Rick DesLauriers had been counting the days to retirement, 26 years at the FBI.
Now, on Boylston Street, he took over the biggest investigation of his life.
Rick DesLauriers: It was a scene of devastation.
There was evidence everywhere.
Scott Pelley: And you said what to yourself in that moment? Rick DesLauriers: I said, "We will find those responsible for these despicable crimes.
" FBI Director Robert Mueller ordered every office in the world to back up DesLauriers.
DesLauriers' link to headquarters was Executive Assistant Director Stephanie Douglas.
Stephanie Douglas: We were very, very concerned about other bombs in Boston.
But we had to think beyond that.
Were there other bombs in other cities? Were U.
S.
interests even abroad at risk? So we had to consider everything.
We could not eliminate anything.
First, came the crime scene -- 12 blocks of debris, abandoned backpacks, and bomb parts blown to smithereens.
Rick DesLauriers: I said, "We will find those responsible for these despicable crimes.
" They set up a grid pattern.
Evidence could be on windowsills.
Evidence could be on roofs of buildings.
Evidence could be anywhere.
Scott Pelley: Are they going down the street with tweezers? Stephanie Douglas: Sometimes.
When they need to they're doing that.
But yes, they are very carefully picking up everything they see.
They saw a battery pack for model cars and chunks of two pressure cookers.
The cookers concentrate the explosion for maximum force.
Scott Pelley: You decided to set up a warehouse near Logan Airport.
Stephanie Douglas: Right.
Everything swept from the street was processed in this 46,000 square foot warehouse.
Twice a day a plane flew the items to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va.
Stephanie Douglas: And you basically have almost like an assembly line of evidence.
So it gets tagged, it gets recorded as evidence so that you're preserving that chain of custody.
But it also-- for all the different parts and components that would later go to recreating the devices themselves.
Scott Pelley: The bombs.
Stephanie Douglas: Yes.
Scott Pelley: Recreating the bombs.
Stephanie Douglas: Yes.
Scott Pelley: From the pieces that you found.
Stephanie Douglas: Yes.
Successful as that was, it turned out, the evidence that would solve the case had been collected before the first bomb exploded that Monday.
The FBI could travel back in time though the lenses of dozens of security cameras up and down Boylston.
Stephanie Douglas: Almost 13,000 different videos were obtained and 120,000 actually more than 120,000 still photographs.
At the FBI lab in Virginia, 120 analysts were searching video feeds from Boston.
Scott Pelley: What are you looking for? Rick DesLauriers: Somebody who just doesn't look similar to others in a crowd who would be watching a race.
Scott Pelley: Was there a Eureka moment in terms of the video? At some point somebody said, "Hey, boss, have a look at this"? Rick DesLauriers: Yes, there was.
It was I believe, early Wednesday morning.
And we watched that video hundreds and hundreds of times.
Stephanie Douglas: You can see an individual, a tall man wearing a white ball cap walk into the frame.
He has a backpack slung over one of his shoulders.
He puts the backpack down very nonchalantly.
He joins the crowd.
You clearly see everybody look very, very definitely to the left like they've heard something.
They've seen something.
So you know that first blast has gone off.
He does not do that.
He does not do what everybody else in that video does, he does not turn to his left.
He instead just stands there for a second or two and walks very deliberately back the same direction that he came in.
The Eureka video hasn't been seen by the public.
It is being kept for the trial.
But this still photo shows much the same view of the suspect and the people who would be torn apart by the blast.
Scott Pelley: Let me ask you to describe what you see in that picture.
Rick DesLauriers: I see the subject, the individual who has been charged in the investigation.
And I see people who are grievously, who are grievously injured in that blast.
And I see individuals who died in that blast.
Scott Pelley: The people along the fence line there.
Rick DesLauriers: Several of them, yes.
Very, very emotional time when I look at that, to know what happened a few moments afterwards.
Stephanie Douglas: I believe I see his backpack on the ground.
And then I see one of the people that was killed as a result of that bomb.
Scott Pelley: Do you know his name? Stephanie Douglas: It's Martin Richard.
Martin Richard was 8 years old.
His 7-year-old sister, Jane, lost a leg.
Their father, Bill, suffered hearing damage from the bomb, in the backpack, laid at their feet.
In the video, the backpack explodes 20 seconds after the man in the white hat walks away.
Stephanie Douglas saw it in the FBI's Washington Command Center.
Scott Pelley: Nobody I've talked to can quite find the words.
Stephanie Douglas: It's a horrible video to watch.
I mean, after you, after the bomb goes off, obviously it's a very smoky situation.
There's a lotta smoke.
And the smoke clears.
And what you saw is very happy scene of people watching that marathon is no longer that.
Even after seeing something so horrible I remember this survivor who unfortunately, his clothes were on fire.
And I just remember this police officer getting down on his hands and knees and putting out the flames on this person with his bare hands.
And I just thought to myself, you know, "What an incredible contrast of events.
Something so horrific and then we have this person with no thought or of his own comfort or consequences to himself rush in and actually do something like that.
That was so brave.
" I still remember that very clearly.
Only two days had passed.
Now they were looking for every image of the suspect they called "white hat.
" Massachusetts state police analysts found him with a man in a black hat.
Scott Pelley: Which turned out to be his older brother.
Stephanie Douglas: Yes.
Scott Pelley: Now you have the Tsarnaev brothers.
Stephanie Douglas: Yes.
Scott Pelley: But you don't know that.
Stephanie Douglas: No, I don't know that.
I don't know who they are.
Then suddenly that Wednesday confusion reigned when cable news channels erroneously reported that a suspect had been arrested and was headed to the courthouse.
The error caused pandemonium according to U.
S.
Attorney Carmen Ortiz who's leading the prosecution.
Carmen Ortiz: And I remember turning to my colleague, and saying to my press person, saying, "Do we have someone in custody?" And I turned to Rick DesLauriers, "Do we have someone in custody?" And-- and they were like, "No, we don't have anyone in custody.
" I think that kind of misinformation makes it appear as if government isn't in control, the investigation is sort of, you know, confusing.
And so it can be very, very harmful.
More harm was done the next morning when the New York Post added to the erroneous reporting by putting a man with a white hat on its front page.
Scott Pelley: The problem was it wasn't the right man in the white hat.
Carmen Ortiz: That generated tremendous risk and harm.
It gives people a false sense of security thinking, "Oh they've identified these suspects" when it turns out that it's wrong individuals.
It puts those individuals at tremendous risk.
The risk to the innocent lent urgency to the debate over whether to release the real pictures.
Scott Pelley: Why wouldn't you release the pictures? Isn't that the fastest way to find the perpetrators? Stephanie Douglas: Sure.
But it also gives them every opportunity to escape.
Remember, we do not have the identities of anybody.
Scott Pelley: So your concern was that if you put the pictures out there to the public they'd know they'd been had, and they'd run? Stephanie Douglas: Yes, absolutely.
Rick DesLauriers: The countervailing argument is you had individuals, we had photographic evidence of individuals, who we strongly believed were responsible for the bombings and we need to identify them as quickly as possible.
So Thursday, Rick DesLauriers walked out in time for the evening news.
[Rick DesLauriers: These images should be the only ones--I emphasize the only ones--that the public should view to assist us.
.]
The pictures set events in motion that DesLauriers didn't predict, in fact, didn't recognize even after they started.
Rick DesLauriers: My wife was watching the news that evening.
[Breaking News: An officer has been shot.]
Rick DesLauriers: And there was a story about an MIT police officer who was subsequently identified as Officer Sean Collier who had been murdered that evening and right on campus.
My wife looked at me and she said, "I bet those are your guys and they're on the run right now.
And I bet they murdered this police officer.
" And I didn't believe her.
I said, "Oh, no, I don't think so.
" And I went to bed.
Scott Pelley: Your wife had cracked the case and you went to bed.
Rick DesLauriers: I did not believe that she had cracked the case at the time.
I went to bed.
Stephanie Douglas: I went to bed probably around 10:00 o'clock.
And, this is probably a sad commentary in my life, but my Blackberry was on the pillow next to me Rick DesLauriers: And somewhere around 12:30, quarter to one in the morning, I received a phone call from one of my assistant special agents-- agents in charge, Jeff Sallet Stephanie Douglas: And my phone rang about a little after 1:00 in the morning.
Rick DesLauriers: I woke her out of a sound sleep.
And I said, an MIT police officer has been murdered earlier this evening by individuals we believe to be responsible for the bombing.
And they are on the streets of Watertown right now engaged in a shootout with the Watertown Police Department.
It was combat.
Two suspects threw pipe bombs and a pressure cooker bomb at the police.
An officer was gravely wounded.
Those who argued that releasing the pictures would cause the suspects to run--were right.
Scott Pelley: Was putting the pictures out the right call? Stephanie Douglas: Yes, I think at the end of the day, we really had no choice.
Believe me, the death of Sean Collier is not lost on the FBI.
We consider it an incredibly tragic event.
But I think at the end of the day, given the facts as we knew them at the time, we made the best decision.
Scott Pelley: How do you feel about that decision now? Rick DesLauriers: I stand by that decision, Scott.
Nobody could have reasonably foreseen that a police officer would be murdered.
What could reasonably be foreseen is that these individuals could have had more bombs could have set those bombs off and caused carnage similar or even greater to than what they caused on April 15th.
One suspect was killed, the other vanished.
In minutes the FBI matched the dead man's fingerprints to Tamerlan Tsarnaev an immigrant from Kyrgyzstan.
Other records showed he had a brother.
Stephanie Douglas: Yeah and I remember that so clearly.
Somebody walking in with a manila folder and said, "OK, here's his brother.
" And they opened it.
And it's his picture.
And I go, "That's him.
That's white hat.
That's who we should be looking for.
" Friday, the governor ordered a lockdown of Boston.
But a house to house search turned up nothing.
Stephanie Douglas: Everybody's exhausted and deflated.
You know, I mean, it's a very sad day for Boston, another sad day for Boston.
But then, a man noticed someone in a boat in his backyard.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was wounded but alive.
Scott Pelley: What did you think as he went into court to be arraigned? Rick DesLauriers: He had a smug grin on his face much of the time in the courtroom.
He would glance over his right shoulder back to his relatives, and smile, and smirk at them.
And I found that absolutely galling.
And I found it reprehensible.
Scott Pelley: The attorney general has decided to seek the death penalty in this case.
Rick DesLauriers: Yes, he has.
And I support that decision.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has pled not guilty.
His defense team declined to speak with us.
U.
S.
Attorney Carmen Ortiz is preparing for a November trial.
The largest, most successful gang of diamond thieves in the world is credited with over getting bigger and more daring every year.
The gang is composed of networks of teams who work together, in Europe mostly.
But they have done jobs in 35 countries, as far afield as Tokyo and Dubai.
They are ex-Yugoslavs, many fought in the Serbian special forces during the Bosnian wars.
They are called the Pink Panthers.
And that's not a joke.
They got their name from those famous Peter Sellers movies of the 70s and 80s.
But as you can well imagine, there are scores of jewelers and cops in many countries who do not find them funny at all.
Their exploits have become the stuff of legend, but what they did in Dubai a few years ago shocked even the police officers who'd been after them for years.
Security camera footage captured the scene at the upscale Wafi mall.
They drove right into the mall in two Audis, crashed the cars into the doors of a jewelry store.
Then men in commando gear jumped out, ran into the shop, seemed perfectly relaxed as they broke into glass cases and bagged diamonds worth $3.
5 million.
Then they got back in their cars and just drove away Bob Simon: How did you react when you heard about the Dubai heist? I mean, it was pretty brazen wasn't it? Ron Noble: I had to see the video to believe that they actually drove two cars through the mall.
And then to do all that in less than 45 seconds, yeah, it was hard to believe.
But it happened.
That's the world's chief cop who found it hard to believe.
Ron Noble is secretary general of INTERPOL, the global police organization based in Lyon, France.
Ron Noble: I'd say that they are the most notorious, organized crime group that I've been involved in investigating in my life.
Bob Simon: So they're really good? Ron Noble: The problem is that they've become legendary because they are so good in their planning and their execution of robberies.
Legendary, in part, because of their name.
Remember this scene from that hilarious Peter Sellers comedy where the thief hides the diamond in a jar of cold cream? Well, these professional thieves did exactly the same thing after they hit a high-end jewelry store in London in That's how they became known as the Pink Panthers.
Incidentally, it was the largest jewel heist in British history.
Then Tokyo, men wearing wigs entered luxury shops, immobilized clerks with pepper spray and made off with diamonds, a tiara, and the Comtesse de Vendome necklace worth $30 million.
Copenhagen 2007, a jewelry store inside a hotel, in front of stunned guests, three men raced through the lobby and into the store.
They smashed glass cases and made off with more than a million dollars worth of stones.
In the last 20 years they have been responsible for a half a billion dollars in robberies.
In all that time, there's been one fatality.
What makes the Panthers so successful, Noble says, is how they do weeks of surveillance and preparation before an attack.
These undercover shots show a team taking the measure of a target before a hit.
Ron Noble: The MO of the Pink Panthers is very clear.
They tend to use a woman to case the jewelry stores first.
Bob Simon: An attractive woman.
Ron Noble: Attractive woman, woman wearing expensive clothing, woman wearing expensive jewelry A well-heeled man enters next, blocks the door open with his foot and clears the path for the "smash and grab" men.
Four people altogether.
Precise timing and well-planned getaways are their trademark.
Ron Noble: From the time they enter the door until they break all the glass in the cases, take the jewelry, and are out in less than Within a matter of hours, they're in another country.
That's their classic MO.
If the Mafia grew out of Sicily, the Pink Panthers are a product of Montenegro & Serbia, the now independent republics in what was once Yugoslavia.
They were allies in the brutal Bosnian Wars against the Muslims.
When U.
N.
sanctions halted the flow of products into the country, groups of soldiers became professional smugglers.
Bob Simon: Did many of them have paramilitary training? Ron Noble: The core were fighters during the war.
Paramilitary training.
Very organized, very disciplined and ruthless.
And were the ones who started it back in '94, '95, '96.
Bob Simon: So they learned their trade in the war? Andrea Scholz: They grown up with aggression.
They know if you want to have success in life, you have to use force and for them, it's common.
Andrea Scholz is a risk prevention consultant in Germany who has been investigating the gang for 10 years.
Bob Simon: So the distinctive thing about Pink Panthers from robbers in other countries is that since they're so experienced in war, they are not afraid? Andrea Scholz: They are not afraid, absolutely.
To date, INTERPOL has identified 800 core Pink Panthers using photos, fingerprints, and DNA.
They are notorious for using fake passports, which makes them very hard to catch.
Noble says, unlike the Mafia, they have no chain of command.
Ron Noble: They've got networks and depending on the robbery there's someone who organized a particular robbery, but there are no kingpins.
There's no Al Capone, or John Gotti at the top of the organized crime groups like classic or traditional organized crime.
They have specialists in everything -- from alarms to safecracking to stealing cars -- and those experts are not hard to find.
Bob Simon: Do they have connections in every country? Jan Glassey: In Europe, in quite every country you have the Balkan community.
So they have the possibility to have a connection.
In Switzerland we know that and it's the same in France, in Germany, in Sweden, in Denmark.
Swiss detective Jan Glassey says Geneva is one of their favorite cities because it's so rich.
It's where billionaires come to shop and play.
Bob Simon: So they went into this store? Jan Glassey: They went inside this store Bob Simon: And if they get - if they only get 15 watches, they've made like a million bucks? Jan Glassey: Yeah.
Bob Simon: In 50 seconds? Jan Glassey: Yeah, exactly.
This team wearing wigs and sunglasses robbed a luxury store on the Rue de Rhone, THE street in Geneva.
They grabbed $4 million worth of diamonds and made their getaway in motorcycles down a street which was too narrow for police cars.
Bob Simon: So it's almost a sport between you and them, isn't it? Jan Glassey: It is.
It is always a bit like that.
That mean, they are always a step before us because they are changing the modus operandi and yes, it's a little bit a cat and mouse game.
Bob Simon: They are professionals Jan Glassey: They are really, really professionals.
Bob Simon: There is no way for you to get there in time.
Jan Glassey: No, no, no.
For the cops it is very difficult.
Normally, we can say between three and five minutes.
Bob Simon: And by that time, they are in France.
Jan Glassey: At that time they are on the way to France.
A James Bond blockbuster could be made out of what they did in St.
Tropez.
The roads get clogged in the summer.
So after posing as tourists and scoring more than $3 million worth of jewelry, the Panthers made their getaway by sea.
Bob Simon: And when you hear that they got out of St.
Tropez in speed boats, are you thinking, "That's pretty good"? Jan Glassey: I really - all the cops are thinking that.
That's pretty good.
And now we have a lot of job to do.
We drove to the seaside town of Ulcinj, Montenegro to meet a semi-retired Pink Panther who has been associated with that job.
He calls himself Filip.
He agreed to talk to us at a rented apartment in a secret location.
We had to turn off our electronic devices before he appeared and we agreed not to show his face.
Bob Simon: How many jobs have you done? Filip: Nine.
Bob Simon: Nine.
What was your best robbery? Filip: My best robbery? OK, my best robbery was in France.
It was very speedy.
Bob Simon: Very speedy Filip: Yeah, very speedy.
Like Speedy Gonzalez.
It was good money and nobody hurt.
Bob Simon: You get a couple of million Euros in France and then how did you get them someplace where you could get money? Filip: I have connection everywhere.
If I say everywhere, I mean everywhere.
We got to Belgium, we have friends.
When they go to Belgium, they always drop in on Antwerp where gems worth billions are traded every day.
Patrick Peys: We know that a lot of diamonds come to Antwerp - stolen diamonds, stolen jewelry.
Why do they come to Antwerp? Because the diamond trade is here in Antwerp.
Patrick Peys is chief inspector of the Antwerp Diamond Squad.
Patrick Peys: If you compare their volume and their value, the best products in the world, of course.
That's why diamonds are so much used in criminal acts.
Making matters worse for cops, only the most expensive diamonds have laser inscriptions with identifying numbers.
And even then, large diamonds can be recut making it impossible to tell whether or not they've been stolen.
Bob Simon: So from what you're saying being a diamond thief isn't a bad career.
You make a lot of money, and the odds are with you that you're not going to get caught.
Patrick Peys: I wouldn't advise anybody to start that career, but yes, I can imagine that from their view that, yeah, it's a living.
It's a way of living.
And the possibilities of getting caught are probably not that high.
And recently, we learned, the Pink Panthers have started branching out.
Bob Simon: We know them as jewelry thieves, are they expanding their operations? Ron Noble: They're expanding their operations into art.
And very, very fine art In 2008, a group of armed and masked Panthers hit this museum in Zurich, making off with a Monet, a van Gogh, a Degas and a Cezanne.
It was the largest art robbery in European history.
The last of the paintings was recovered in April 2012 in a dramatic raid captured on videotape.
A Serbian SWAT team stormed this house to arrest the men accused of snatching the impressionist works.
The cops took a van in for examination and found something hidden in the ceiling.
When they pulled it out, they discovered it was Cezanne's "Boy in the Red Vest" estimated value $113 million, but nailing a couple of Panthers doesn't help the police nearly as much as they would like it to.
Bob Simon: If one of these guys gets caught, will he squeal? Will he give evidence about the other people, his partners? Jan Glassey: No, there is an omerta between them.
Bob Simon: The omerta really works? Jan Glassey: The omerta really works, and when we are speaking of the best teams, a lot of them are really friends, that means, they grew up together.
Still, since 2007, hundreds of arrests have been made, but those Panthers just keep on reproducing.
Bob Simon: And we understand there are approximately Ron Noble: Yes, so the next generation is being recruited.
Bob Simon: And trained presumably? Ron Noble: Recruited and trained.
Their daring has inspired legions of copycats disguising themselves as women in burkas, these thieves robbed a jewelry store in a mall in Bahrain and this gang took to their motorcycles to rob a jewelry store in London.
Ron Noble: The copycats are really just organized crime groups that have identified an easy way to make money based on the celebrity status, I would say, in large part, of the Pink Panthers.
And the police admit that, unfortunately, they themselves didn't help matters when they started calling the gang Pink Panthers.
Ron Noble: The problem with this group is that the name Pink Panthers it engenders inside us - the first memory is the movie or movies - about the Pink Panthers - and we smile at the name of Pink Panthers.
[Pink Panther movie clip Clouseau: Does your dog bite? Clerk: No.
Clouseau: I thought you said your dog did not bite! Clerk: It is not my dog!.]
Bob Simon: And indeed the first thing you think of when you hear Pink Panthers is comedy.
Ron Noble: That's why we try to highlight whenever we can the way in which they perpetrate the robberies.
They are not nice guys.
These are not nice guys who are stealing from the rich to give to the poor.
These are just coldblooded and ruthless and notorious thieves.
Now for some laughs.
For nearly 90 years, the place to go for sophisticated, often cutting edge humor has been The New Yorker magazine.
The very first cover in 1925 featured a caricature of a snooty New Yorker of the day, right down to his monocle.
They called him Eustace Tilley, an imaginary twit, mocking the self-importance of both the magazine and its readers.
And despite the excellence of the articles -- from a long list of legendary writers -- those readers usually turn first to the cartoons.
We've ventured behind the scenes to see how the drawings are selected.
As for the man who picks them he could be a cartoon character himself.
If there's an intersection that screams "New York, New York," it's 42nd and Broadway.
Times Square, the Theater District.
The greatest show on Earth: New Yorkers of every stripe rubbing elbows with tourists and each other.
The face in the crowd is Bob Mankoff, New York-born and bred, headed to work around the corner, to a place where laughs are born and also laid to rest.
Bob Mankoff: I had this idea for a cartoon.
This was basically a verbal cartoon.
OK, people love to go to Tuscany.
And I had to sort of figure out, OK, that's good.
Tuscany is great.
And what do they rave about in Tuscany? The food and the people and everything.
I thought of this woman on the phone saying, "We loved Tuscany.
The cell reception was fabulous and the WiFi was to die for.
" That's a badda-bing, badda-boom cartoon.
Mankoff is cartoon editor of The New Yorker.
To say he knows his stuff is an understatement.
He's studied every cartoon the magazine has published.
From the roaring twenties to the present day, they form a stunning reflection of American mores and manners.
The haves - the have nots.
Fashion, art, big business, kids, pets, television, trends.
And this being New York, psychiatrists, of course.
All told, 80,000 published cartoons.
Morley Safer: What are your -- if you had to choose -- the five or six best Bob Mankoff: Well, you know, I honestly, it's not just tough, impossible in a way because you would choose different ones in different ways.
Here are some great cartoons.
The Charles Addams cartoon is classic.
Addams' ghoulish family is about to pour boiling oil on some Christmas carolers.
Bob Mankoff: The Michael Crawford cartoon.
It's the French army knife.
All wine corkscrews.
Bob Mankoff: That's a perfect cartoon.
There's a Michael Shaw cartoon where there's a couple looking at the TV.
He's saying: "Gays and lesbians getting married.
Haven't they suffered enough?" Bob Mankoff: Then there's a classic Peter Steiner from 1993.
The two dogs in front of the computer saying "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog.
" The Peter Arno cartoon where the plane is crashing In Arno's 1941 drawing the pilot has bailed out, and the engineer is saying "Well, back to the old drawing board.
" Bob Mankoff: That phrase originates Morley Safer: With that cartoon? Bob Mankoff: With that cartoon.
And that's true of the earlier cartoon in which the mother is saying, "Eat it, it's broccoli, dear.
" And the kid answers: "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it.
" The year was In those early days - of bathtub gin and backstage musicals -- it wasn't long before the magazine - and the cartoons - took hold in the national consciousness.
In the 1933 film classic "42nd Street" the New Yorker had a short product placement role.
[Pontiac Film: Then there will be 13 pages in the New Yorker, the smart, sophisticated weekly.]
Advertisers took note.
Outlining its plans to sell the new 1935 Pontiac, General Motors targeted the magazine's upscale readership.
[Pontiac Film: Just the people for whom a Pontiac would serve as an ideal second car.
.]
The magazine still draws an affluent crowd, numbering a million subscribers.
Surprisingly, just roughly 10 percent live in and around New York with the other 90 percent spread around the country, pockets of sophistication in the boondocks mapped out in Saul Steinberg's famous New Yorker cover.
[Bob Mankoff montage: Hey.
How are ya? Paul, Robert.
Well, I suppose you came in here to show me cartoons?.]
Every Wednesday, a nervous band of ink-stained wretches gathers at Bob Mankoff's office.
Hoping against hope to sell him a cartoon.
Sam Gross: How many have been accepted? I really don't know.
There's the grizzled veteran Sam Gross, who figures he's submitted 30,000 cartoons, give or take.
Many consider this his masterpiece: a dog at heaven's gate, asking: is there any chance of getting my testicles back? Sam Gross: I still have to push the envelope.
Bob Mankoff: Sam has always pushed the envelope.
Things that you couldn't quite do.
[Bob Mankoff: How ya doing?.]
There's always a little preliminary chit chat.
[Bob Mankoff: How ya been? Alright.
Farley.]
Farley Katz specializes in the far out, in both cartoons and facial hair.
Bob Mankoff: So what's going on with that moustache? Are you still entering that contest? Farley Katz: No, I retired from the circuit.
This is all like a recreational moustache.
And then, Mankoff speed-reads the rough sketches.
[Bob Mankoff: This is just too awkward a drawing.]
Most get set rejected.
He's seen the idea in one form or another before.
Carolita Johnson: You know how whenever they open your bag at an airport Carolita Johnson has an airport security cartoon, with the TSA guy saying: "You can pack this back up now.
" Emily Flake has a joke featuring both King Kong and Godzilla.
[Emily Flake: The two heavy hitters in the monster world.
Bob Mankoff: It's as simple as that.
.]
Maybe it's just the day for facial hair, but Joe Dator seems to be a contender with a Tarzan cartoon.
[Bob Mankoff: The apes are saying: "We found you and raised you as one of us.
So we were just wondering at what point did you learn to shave?" Joe Dator: Can I say I have researched this? There is no iteration of Tarzan in literature, comic books or the movies in which he has facial hair.
It makes no sense.
.]
This is just stage one: thinning out the candidates to take to the magazine's editor.
[Bob Mankoff: This is a little too straight forward.
.]
He's largely noncommittal.
Pleasant.
But blunt [Bob Mankoff: Well it won't look right in our magazine.
.]
When a drawing simply isn't good enough.
[Bob Mankoff: We're not that impressed.
OK, next.
It doesn't have enough charm.
.]
The arithmetic is simple.
Hundreds of cartoons are submitted every week, by mail, email or in person.
And every week, there's only room for 17.
Bob Mankoff: We're picky.
Ben Schwartz: We cry afterwards.
Just loads of tears.
We assembled a roundtable of veteran New Yorker regulars to talk about rejection.
Ben Schwartz, who gave up being a doctor to draw cartoons.
David Sipress, Roz Chast, and Charlie Hankin, the new kid on the block.
David Sipress: We all probably do probably it's, we're lucky if we sell 30 cartoons a year.
So that's a lot of rejection.
Roz Chast: When I do a cartoon and I think, "This is, they're gonna love this one.
It's a classic.
" David Sipress: That's the one that gets rejected, right? Roz Chast: That, right away that goes in the garbage.
Charlie Hankin: I was addicted to the rejection before I got addicted to the, you know, actually making the sales.
Morley Safer: Addicted to the rejection? Charlie Hankin: Kind of.
It makes you feel alive.
Bob Mankoff: I know what it feels like.
It feels a little bit like a punch in the stomach.
It always feels bad.
Mankoff should know.
Starting out, he submitted about 2,000 cartoons to the magazine, before making a sale.
This is one of his greatest hits: "No, Thursday's out.
How about never.
Is never good for you?" He's lifted the line as the title for a memoir he's written, about his rise from the Bronx to the big time.
Morley Safer: You write of your mother, Molly.
"She wasn't really an audience for my jokes.
She was a target.
" What do you mean, that sounds cruel? Bob Mankoff: Well, it's Freudian.
My mother was this sexy, flamboyant, annoying woman, to me.
And also I loved her.
Like many an only child he got smothered with love and pierced with sarcasm.
Fertile ground for his New Yorky neuroses.
Bob Mankoff: She thought I was lazy.
I was lazy.
He talked back a lot, and developed a talent for one-liners and imitating Jerry Lewis.
Bob Mankoff: You know, I would do the Jerry Lewis thing, "Hey lady.
" And I did one of the things Jerry Lewis did, he had a mobile mouth.
So I also had a mobile mouth.
One of the first comic things you do is imitate.
David Remnick: I have to say when it comes down to it, he takes humor very seriously.
David Remnick is editor of The New Yorker, the man who makes the final decision - the decider - on which cartoons get published and which don't.
[David Remnick: That's kinda nice.
Bob Mankoff: I'd go with that one.
David Remnick: Just hang on.
.]
David Remnick: He is always trying to figure out what makes the little time bomb work, meaning the joke, meaning the cartoon.
[Bob Mankoff: You don't get it? David Remnick: No.
.]
David Remnick: He's very smart.
The shell, the outward schtick is - Morley Safer: Weird? David Remnick: Comic.
But there's a real mind at work there.
Morley Safer: One of his chapter titles in his book is: I'm Not Arguing, I'm Jewish.
David Remnick: Bob's Jewish? I had no idea.
[David Remnick: That's sweet.
Oooh.
That's a great drawing.
.]
This time the cartoons that make the cut include Joe Dator's beardless Tarzan.
Bob Mankoff: I like the Tarzan one, it's crazier.
David Remnick: Crazier is better.
Carolita Johnson's TSA problem.
David Remnick: I think this one is better.
Emily Flake's King Kong and Godzilla, "I'm telling you, Manhattan is over".
Bob Mankoff: Brooklyn is very big.
David Remnick: In it goes.
And a cat and mouse joke by Sam Gross: "Have you no shame?" Don't get it? You're not alone.
David Remnick: At least five times a week somebody'll come up to me and say "I didn't get such and such a cartoon.
" Morley Safer: Including me.
David Remnick: Well, and here is the deep secret: including me once in a while.
I will pick a raft of cartoons.
And then later it'll come time to run this cartoon.
And I'll look at it, and I won't quite get it anymore.
Because sometimes the grenade goes off in the moment and then it doesn't repeat down the line.
Morley Safer: Well, a friend of mine who's a New Yorker writer maintains there's at least one cartoon in every issue in which you're not meant to get it.
David Remnick: I'm gonna keep that myth alive.
One more thing about the mad Mr.
Mankoff.
Ping pong.
While New Yorker readers are relaxing with the cartoons, Mankoff pings and pongs, often with Will Shortz, the noted crossword puzzle editor.
Mankoff's moves are half Wile E.
Coyote and half scarecrow from "The Wizard of Oz.
" Bob Mankoff: Ping pong itself, there's something a little bit funny about it, in that so much aggression is spent on this tiny little ball.
So there's a pillow fight aspect to it.
We end -- as everything does -- with the Grim Reaper.
He's turned up in the New Yorker countless times over the years.
David Sipress: OK.
So we have Death In this recent David Sipress cartoon, the Reaper's latest acquisition is saying: "Thank goodness you're here - I can't accomplish anything unless I have a deadline.
" Bob Mankoff: Honestly, if it wasn't for death.
I don't think there'd be any humor.
Bob Mankoff believes humor is really our way of coping with anxiety.
Anxiety about death, about work, relationships, the state of the world, the state of your health.
So here's a prescription from the cartoon doctor.
Bob Mankoff: Illness and death, primary sources of anxiety.
One way of dealing with anxiety - Morley Safer: Is to laugh at it.
Bob Mankoff: Grim Reaper's gonna get the last laugh.
Until then, it's our turn.
Unknown terrorists were on the loose and they had more bombs.
Now, for the first time, you're going to hear the inside story from the federal investigators who ran the manhunt.
They led a taskforce of more than 1,000 federal agents, state police and Boston cops.
Tonight, they will speak of the disturbing evidence that cracked the case and of a debate among the investigators that ultimately led to the dragnet's violent end.
The afternoon of April 15th, the FBI's man in charge of Boston got a text, "two large explosions near the finish line.
" For Special Agent Rick DesLauriers, the marathon became a sprint to catch the killers before they struck again.
Rick DesLauriers: I felt that week that I had the weight of the world on my shoulders.
And I'm sure I wasn't the only one.
Scott Pelley: Did you feel if there was a third bombing, it would be on you? Rick DesLauriers: That's everybody's fear.
It would be on me.
It would be on the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
But that wasn't what drove us.
What drove us was preventing more people from getting hurt.
before, Rick DesLauriers had been counting the days to retirement, 26 years at the FBI.
Now, on Boylston Street, he took over the biggest investigation of his life.
Rick DesLauriers: It was a scene of devastation.
There was evidence everywhere.
Scott Pelley: And you said what to yourself in that moment? Rick DesLauriers: I said, "We will find those responsible for these despicable crimes.
" FBI Director Robert Mueller ordered every office in the world to back up DesLauriers.
DesLauriers' link to headquarters was Executive Assistant Director Stephanie Douglas.
Stephanie Douglas: We were very, very concerned about other bombs in Boston.
But we had to think beyond that.
Were there other bombs in other cities? Were U.
S.
interests even abroad at risk? So we had to consider everything.
We could not eliminate anything.
First, came the crime scene -- 12 blocks of debris, abandoned backpacks, and bomb parts blown to smithereens.
Rick DesLauriers: I said, "We will find those responsible for these despicable crimes.
" They set up a grid pattern.
Evidence could be on windowsills.
Evidence could be on roofs of buildings.
Evidence could be anywhere.
Scott Pelley: Are they going down the street with tweezers? Stephanie Douglas: Sometimes.
When they need to they're doing that.
But yes, they are very carefully picking up everything they see.
They saw a battery pack for model cars and chunks of two pressure cookers.
The cookers concentrate the explosion for maximum force.
Scott Pelley: You decided to set up a warehouse near Logan Airport.
Stephanie Douglas: Right.
Everything swept from the street was processed in this 46,000 square foot warehouse.
Twice a day a plane flew the items to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va.
Stephanie Douglas: And you basically have almost like an assembly line of evidence.
So it gets tagged, it gets recorded as evidence so that you're preserving that chain of custody.
But it also-- for all the different parts and components that would later go to recreating the devices themselves.
Scott Pelley: The bombs.
Stephanie Douglas: Yes.
Scott Pelley: Recreating the bombs.
Stephanie Douglas: Yes.
Scott Pelley: From the pieces that you found.
Stephanie Douglas: Yes.
Successful as that was, it turned out, the evidence that would solve the case had been collected before the first bomb exploded that Monday.
The FBI could travel back in time though the lenses of dozens of security cameras up and down Boylston.
Stephanie Douglas: Almost 13,000 different videos were obtained and 120,000 actually more than 120,000 still photographs.
At the FBI lab in Virginia, 120 analysts were searching video feeds from Boston.
Scott Pelley: What are you looking for? Rick DesLauriers: Somebody who just doesn't look similar to others in a crowd who would be watching a race.
Scott Pelley: Was there a Eureka moment in terms of the video? At some point somebody said, "Hey, boss, have a look at this"? Rick DesLauriers: Yes, there was.
It was I believe, early Wednesday morning.
And we watched that video hundreds and hundreds of times.
Stephanie Douglas: You can see an individual, a tall man wearing a white ball cap walk into the frame.
He has a backpack slung over one of his shoulders.
He puts the backpack down very nonchalantly.
He joins the crowd.
You clearly see everybody look very, very definitely to the left like they've heard something.
They've seen something.
So you know that first blast has gone off.
He does not do that.
He does not do what everybody else in that video does, he does not turn to his left.
He instead just stands there for a second or two and walks very deliberately back the same direction that he came in.
The Eureka video hasn't been seen by the public.
It is being kept for the trial.
But this still photo shows much the same view of the suspect and the people who would be torn apart by the blast.
Scott Pelley: Let me ask you to describe what you see in that picture.
Rick DesLauriers: I see the subject, the individual who has been charged in the investigation.
And I see people who are grievously, who are grievously injured in that blast.
And I see individuals who died in that blast.
Scott Pelley: The people along the fence line there.
Rick DesLauriers: Several of them, yes.
Very, very emotional time when I look at that, to know what happened a few moments afterwards.
Stephanie Douglas: I believe I see his backpack on the ground.
And then I see one of the people that was killed as a result of that bomb.
Scott Pelley: Do you know his name? Stephanie Douglas: It's Martin Richard.
Martin Richard was 8 years old.
His 7-year-old sister, Jane, lost a leg.
Their father, Bill, suffered hearing damage from the bomb, in the backpack, laid at their feet.
In the video, the backpack explodes 20 seconds after the man in the white hat walks away.
Stephanie Douglas saw it in the FBI's Washington Command Center.
Scott Pelley: Nobody I've talked to can quite find the words.
Stephanie Douglas: It's a horrible video to watch.
I mean, after you, after the bomb goes off, obviously it's a very smoky situation.
There's a lotta smoke.
And the smoke clears.
And what you saw is very happy scene of people watching that marathon is no longer that.
Even after seeing something so horrible I remember this survivor who unfortunately, his clothes were on fire.
And I just remember this police officer getting down on his hands and knees and putting out the flames on this person with his bare hands.
And I just thought to myself, you know, "What an incredible contrast of events.
Something so horrific and then we have this person with no thought or of his own comfort or consequences to himself rush in and actually do something like that.
That was so brave.
" I still remember that very clearly.
Only two days had passed.
Now they were looking for every image of the suspect they called "white hat.
" Massachusetts state police analysts found him with a man in a black hat.
Scott Pelley: Which turned out to be his older brother.
Stephanie Douglas: Yes.
Scott Pelley: Now you have the Tsarnaev brothers.
Stephanie Douglas: Yes.
Scott Pelley: But you don't know that.
Stephanie Douglas: No, I don't know that.
I don't know who they are.
Then suddenly that Wednesday confusion reigned when cable news channels erroneously reported that a suspect had been arrested and was headed to the courthouse.
The error caused pandemonium according to U.
S.
Attorney Carmen Ortiz who's leading the prosecution.
Carmen Ortiz: And I remember turning to my colleague, and saying to my press person, saying, "Do we have someone in custody?" And I turned to Rick DesLauriers, "Do we have someone in custody?" And-- and they were like, "No, we don't have anyone in custody.
" I think that kind of misinformation makes it appear as if government isn't in control, the investigation is sort of, you know, confusing.
And so it can be very, very harmful.
More harm was done the next morning when the New York Post added to the erroneous reporting by putting a man with a white hat on its front page.
Scott Pelley: The problem was it wasn't the right man in the white hat.
Carmen Ortiz: That generated tremendous risk and harm.
It gives people a false sense of security thinking, "Oh they've identified these suspects" when it turns out that it's wrong individuals.
It puts those individuals at tremendous risk.
The risk to the innocent lent urgency to the debate over whether to release the real pictures.
Scott Pelley: Why wouldn't you release the pictures? Isn't that the fastest way to find the perpetrators? Stephanie Douglas: Sure.
But it also gives them every opportunity to escape.
Remember, we do not have the identities of anybody.
Scott Pelley: So your concern was that if you put the pictures out there to the public they'd know they'd been had, and they'd run? Stephanie Douglas: Yes, absolutely.
Rick DesLauriers: The countervailing argument is you had individuals, we had photographic evidence of individuals, who we strongly believed were responsible for the bombings and we need to identify them as quickly as possible.
So Thursday, Rick DesLauriers walked out in time for the evening news.
[Rick DesLauriers: These images should be the only ones--I emphasize the only ones--that the public should view to assist us.
.]
The pictures set events in motion that DesLauriers didn't predict, in fact, didn't recognize even after they started.
Rick DesLauriers: My wife was watching the news that evening.
[Breaking News: An officer has been shot.]
Rick DesLauriers: And there was a story about an MIT police officer who was subsequently identified as Officer Sean Collier who had been murdered that evening and right on campus.
My wife looked at me and she said, "I bet those are your guys and they're on the run right now.
And I bet they murdered this police officer.
" And I didn't believe her.
I said, "Oh, no, I don't think so.
" And I went to bed.
Scott Pelley: Your wife had cracked the case and you went to bed.
Rick DesLauriers: I did not believe that she had cracked the case at the time.
I went to bed.
Stephanie Douglas: I went to bed probably around 10:00 o'clock.
And, this is probably a sad commentary in my life, but my Blackberry was on the pillow next to me Rick DesLauriers: And somewhere around 12:30, quarter to one in the morning, I received a phone call from one of my assistant special agents-- agents in charge, Jeff Sallet Stephanie Douglas: And my phone rang about a little after 1:00 in the morning.
Rick DesLauriers: I woke her out of a sound sleep.
And I said, an MIT police officer has been murdered earlier this evening by individuals we believe to be responsible for the bombing.
And they are on the streets of Watertown right now engaged in a shootout with the Watertown Police Department.
It was combat.
Two suspects threw pipe bombs and a pressure cooker bomb at the police.
An officer was gravely wounded.
Those who argued that releasing the pictures would cause the suspects to run--were right.
Scott Pelley: Was putting the pictures out the right call? Stephanie Douglas: Yes, I think at the end of the day, we really had no choice.
Believe me, the death of Sean Collier is not lost on the FBI.
We consider it an incredibly tragic event.
But I think at the end of the day, given the facts as we knew them at the time, we made the best decision.
Scott Pelley: How do you feel about that decision now? Rick DesLauriers: I stand by that decision, Scott.
Nobody could have reasonably foreseen that a police officer would be murdered.
What could reasonably be foreseen is that these individuals could have had more bombs could have set those bombs off and caused carnage similar or even greater to than what they caused on April 15th.
One suspect was killed, the other vanished.
In minutes the FBI matched the dead man's fingerprints to Tamerlan Tsarnaev an immigrant from Kyrgyzstan.
Other records showed he had a brother.
Stephanie Douglas: Yeah and I remember that so clearly.
Somebody walking in with a manila folder and said, "OK, here's his brother.
" And they opened it.
And it's his picture.
And I go, "That's him.
That's white hat.
That's who we should be looking for.
" Friday, the governor ordered a lockdown of Boston.
But a house to house search turned up nothing.
Stephanie Douglas: Everybody's exhausted and deflated.
You know, I mean, it's a very sad day for Boston, another sad day for Boston.
But then, a man noticed someone in a boat in his backyard.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was wounded but alive.
Scott Pelley: What did you think as he went into court to be arraigned? Rick DesLauriers: He had a smug grin on his face much of the time in the courtroom.
He would glance over his right shoulder back to his relatives, and smile, and smirk at them.
And I found that absolutely galling.
And I found it reprehensible.
Scott Pelley: The attorney general has decided to seek the death penalty in this case.
Rick DesLauriers: Yes, he has.
And I support that decision.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has pled not guilty.
His defense team declined to speak with us.
U.
S.
Attorney Carmen Ortiz is preparing for a November trial.
The largest, most successful gang of diamond thieves in the world is credited with over getting bigger and more daring every year.
The gang is composed of networks of teams who work together, in Europe mostly.
But they have done jobs in 35 countries, as far afield as Tokyo and Dubai.
They are ex-Yugoslavs, many fought in the Serbian special forces during the Bosnian wars.
They are called the Pink Panthers.
And that's not a joke.
They got their name from those famous Peter Sellers movies of the 70s and 80s.
But as you can well imagine, there are scores of jewelers and cops in many countries who do not find them funny at all.
Their exploits have become the stuff of legend, but what they did in Dubai a few years ago shocked even the police officers who'd been after them for years.
Security camera footage captured the scene at the upscale Wafi mall.
They drove right into the mall in two Audis, crashed the cars into the doors of a jewelry store.
Then men in commando gear jumped out, ran into the shop, seemed perfectly relaxed as they broke into glass cases and bagged diamonds worth $3.
5 million.
Then they got back in their cars and just drove away Bob Simon: How did you react when you heard about the Dubai heist? I mean, it was pretty brazen wasn't it? Ron Noble: I had to see the video to believe that they actually drove two cars through the mall.
And then to do all that in less than 45 seconds, yeah, it was hard to believe.
But it happened.
That's the world's chief cop who found it hard to believe.
Ron Noble is secretary general of INTERPOL, the global police organization based in Lyon, France.
Ron Noble: I'd say that they are the most notorious, organized crime group that I've been involved in investigating in my life.
Bob Simon: So they're really good? Ron Noble: The problem is that they've become legendary because they are so good in their planning and their execution of robberies.
Legendary, in part, because of their name.
Remember this scene from that hilarious Peter Sellers comedy where the thief hides the diamond in a jar of cold cream? Well, these professional thieves did exactly the same thing after they hit a high-end jewelry store in London in That's how they became known as the Pink Panthers.
Incidentally, it was the largest jewel heist in British history.
Then Tokyo, men wearing wigs entered luxury shops, immobilized clerks with pepper spray and made off with diamonds, a tiara, and the Comtesse de Vendome necklace worth $30 million.
Copenhagen 2007, a jewelry store inside a hotel, in front of stunned guests, three men raced through the lobby and into the store.
They smashed glass cases and made off with more than a million dollars worth of stones.
In the last 20 years they have been responsible for a half a billion dollars in robberies.
In all that time, there's been one fatality.
What makes the Panthers so successful, Noble says, is how they do weeks of surveillance and preparation before an attack.
These undercover shots show a team taking the measure of a target before a hit.
Ron Noble: The MO of the Pink Panthers is very clear.
They tend to use a woman to case the jewelry stores first.
Bob Simon: An attractive woman.
Ron Noble: Attractive woman, woman wearing expensive clothing, woman wearing expensive jewelry A well-heeled man enters next, blocks the door open with his foot and clears the path for the "smash and grab" men.
Four people altogether.
Precise timing and well-planned getaways are their trademark.
Ron Noble: From the time they enter the door until they break all the glass in the cases, take the jewelry, and are out in less than Within a matter of hours, they're in another country.
That's their classic MO.
If the Mafia grew out of Sicily, the Pink Panthers are a product of Montenegro & Serbia, the now independent republics in what was once Yugoslavia.
They were allies in the brutal Bosnian Wars against the Muslims.
When U.
N.
sanctions halted the flow of products into the country, groups of soldiers became professional smugglers.
Bob Simon: Did many of them have paramilitary training? Ron Noble: The core were fighters during the war.
Paramilitary training.
Very organized, very disciplined and ruthless.
And were the ones who started it back in '94, '95, '96.
Bob Simon: So they learned their trade in the war? Andrea Scholz: They grown up with aggression.
They know if you want to have success in life, you have to use force and for them, it's common.
Andrea Scholz is a risk prevention consultant in Germany who has been investigating the gang for 10 years.
Bob Simon: So the distinctive thing about Pink Panthers from robbers in other countries is that since they're so experienced in war, they are not afraid? Andrea Scholz: They are not afraid, absolutely.
To date, INTERPOL has identified 800 core Pink Panthers using photos, fingerprints, and DNA.
They are notorious for using fake passports, which makes them very hard to catch.
Noble says, unlike the Mafia, they have no chain of command.
Ron Noble: They've got networks and depending on the robbery there's someone who organized a particular robbery, but there are no kingpins.
There's no Al Capone, or John Gotti at the top of the organized crime groups like classic or traditional organized crime.
They have specialists in everything -- from alarms to safecracking to stealing cars -- and those experts are not hard to find.
Bob Simon: Do they have connections in every country? Jan Glassey: In Europe, in quite every country you have the Balkan community.
So they have the possibility to have a connection.
In Switzerland we know that and it's the same in France, in Germany, in Sweden, in Denmark.
Swiss detective Jan Glassey says Geneva is one of their favorite cities because it's so rich.
It's where billionaires come to shop and play.
Bob Simon: So they went into this store? Jan Glassey: They went inside this store Bob Simon: And if they get - if they only get 15 watches, they've made like a million bucks? Jan Glassey: Yeah.
Bob Simon: In 50 seconds? Jan Glassey: Yeah, exactly.
This team wearing wigs and sunglasses robbed a luxury store on the Rue de Rhone, THE street in Geneva.
They grabbed $4 million worth of diamonds and made their getaway in motorcycles down a street which was too narrow for police cars.
Bob Simon: So it's almost a sport between you and them, isn't it? Jan Glassey: It is.
It is always a bit like that.
That mean, they are always a step before us because they are changing the modus operandi and yes, it's a little bit a cat and mouse game.
Bob Simon: They are professionals Jan Glassey: They are really, really professionals.
Bob Simon: There is no way for you to get there in time.
Jan Glassey: No, no, no.
For the cops it is very difficult.
Normally, we can say between three and five minutes.
Bob Simon: And by that time, they are in France.
Jan Glassey: At that time they are on the way to France.
A James Bond blockbuster could be made out of what they did in St.
Tropez.
The roads get clogged in the summer.
So after posing as tourists and scoring more than $3 million worth of jewelry, the Panthers made their getaway by sea.
Bob Simon: And when you hear that they got out of St.
Tropez in speed boats, are you thinking, "That's pretty good"? Jan Glassey: I really - all the cops are thinking that.
That's pretty good.
And now we have a lot of job to do.
We drove to the seaside town of Ulcinj, Montenegro to meet a semi-retired Pink Panther who has been associated with that job.
He calls himself Filip.
He agreed to talk to us at a rented apartment in a secret location.
We had to turn off our electronic devices before he appeared and we agreed not to show his face.
Bob Simon: How many jobs have you done? Filip: Nine.
Bob Simon: Nine.
What was your best robbery? Filip: My best robbery? OK, my best robbery was in France.
It was very speedy.
Bob Simon: Very speedy Filip: Yeah, very speedy.
Like Speedy Gonzalez.
It was good money and nobody hurt.
Bob Simon: You get a couple of million Euros in France and then how did you get them someplace where you could get money? Filip: I have connection everywhere.
If I say everywhere, I mean everywhere.
We got to Belgium, we have friends.
When they go to Belgium, they always drop in on Antwerp where gems worth billions are traded every day.
Patrick Peys: We know that a lot of diamonds come to Antwerp - stolen diamonds, stolen jewelry.
Why do they come to Antwerp? Because the diamond trade is here in Antwerp.
Patrick Peys is chief inspector of the Antwerp Diamond Squad.
Patrick Peys: If you compare their volume and their value, the best products in the world, of course.
That's why diamonds are so much used in criminal acts.
Making matters worse for cops, only the most expensive diamonds have laser inscriptions with identifying numbers.
And even then, large diamonds can be recut making it impossible to tell whether or not they've been stolen.
Bob Simon: So from what you're saying being a diamond thief isn't a bad career.
You make a lot of money, and the odds are with you that you're not going to get caught.
Patrick Peys: I wouldn't advise anybody to start that career, but yes, I can imagine that from their view that, yeah, it's a living.
It's a way of living.
And the possibilities of getting caught are probably not that high.
And recently, we learned, the Pink Panthers have started branching out.
Bob Simon: We know them as jewelry thieves, are they expanding their operations? Ron Noble: They're expanding their operations into art.
And very, very fine art In 2008, a group of armed and masked Panthers hit this museum in Zurich, making off with a Monet, a van Gogh, a Degas and a Cezanne.
It was the largest art robbery in European history.
The last of the paintings was recovered in April 2012 in a dramatic raid captured on videotape.
A Serbian SWAT team stormed this house to arrest the men accused of snatching the impressionist works.
The cops took a van in for examination and found something hidden in the ceiling.
When they pulled it out, they discovered it was Cezanne's "Boy in the Red Vest" estimated value $113 million, but nailing a couple of Panthers doesn't help the police nearly as much as they would like it to.
Bob Simon: If one of these guys gets caught, will he squeal? Will he give evidence about the other people, his partners? Jan Glassey: No, there is an omerta between them.
Bob Simon: The omerta really works? Jan Glassey: The omerta really works, and when we are speaking of the best teams, a lot of them are really friends, that means, they grew up together.
Still, since 2007, hundreds of arrests have been made, but those Panthers just keep on reproducing.
Bob Simon: And we understand there are approximately Ron Noble: Yes, so the next generation is being recruited.
Bob Simon: And trained presumably? Ron Noble: Recruited and trained.
Their daring has inspired legions of copycats disguising themselves as women in burkas, these thieves robbed a jewelry store in a mall in Bahrain and this gang took to their motorcycles to rob a jewelry store in London.
Ron Noble: The copycats are really just organized crime groups that have identified an easy way to make money based on the celebrity status, I would say, in large part, of the Pink Panthers.
And the police admit that, unfortunately, they themselves didn't help matters when they started calling the gang Pink Panthers.
Ron Noble: The problem with this group is that the name Pink Panthers it engenders inside us - the first memory is the movie or movies - about the Pink Panthers - and we smile at the name of Pink Panthers.
[Pink Panther movie clip Clouseau: Does your dog bite? Clerk: No.
Clouseau: I thought you said your dog did not bite! Clerk: It is not my dog!.]
Bob Simon: And indeed the first thing you think of when you hear Pink Panthers is comedy.
Ron Noble: That's why we try to highlight whenever we can the way in which they perpetrate the robberies.
They are not nice guys.
These are not nice guys who are stealing from the rich to give to the poor.
These are just coldblooded and ruthless and notorious thieves.
Now for some laughs.
For nearly 90 years, the place to go for sophisticated, often cutting edge humor has been The New Yorker magazine.
The very first cover in 1925 featured a caricature of a snooty New Yorker of the day, right down to his monocle.
They called him Eustace Tilley, an imaginary twit, mocking the self-importance of both the magazine and its readers.
And despite the excellence of the articles -- from a long list of legendary writers -- those readers usually turn first to the cartoons.
We've ventured behind the scenes to see how the drawings are selected.
As for the man who picks them he could be a cartoon character himself.
If there's an intersection that screams "New York, New York," it's 42nd and Broadway.
Times Square, the Theater District.
The greatest show on Earth: New Yorkers of every stripe rubbing elbows with tourists and each other.
The face in the crowd is Bob Mankoff, New York-born and bred, headed to work around the corner, to a place where laughs are born and also laid to rest.
Bob Mankoff: I had this idea for a cartoon.
This was basically a verbal cartoon.
OK, people love to go to Tuscany.
And I had to sort of figure out, OK, that's good.
Tuscany is great.
And what do they rave about in Tuscany? The food and the people and everything.
I thought of this woman on the phone saying, "We loved Tuscany.
The cell reception was fabulous and the WiFi was to die for.
" That's a badda-bing, badda-boom cartoon.
Mankoff is cartoon editor of The New Yorker.
To say he knows his stuff is an understatement.
He's studied every cartoon the magazine has published.
From the roaring twenties to the present day, they form a stunning reflection of American mores and manners.
The haves - the have nots.
Fashion, art, big business, kids, pets, television, trends.
And this being New York, psychiatrists, of course.
All told, 80,000 published cartoons.
Morley Safer: What are your -- if you had to choose -- the five or six best Bob Mankoff: Well, you know, I honestly, it's not just tough, impossible in a way because you would choose different ones in different ways.
Here are some great cartoons.
The Charles Addams cartoon is classic.
Addams' ghoulish family is about to pour boiling oil on some Christmas carolers.
Bob Mankoff: The Michael Crawford cartoon.
It's the French army knife.
All wine corkscrews.
Bob Mankoff: That's a perfect cartoon.
There's a Michael Shaw cartoon where there's a couple looking at the TV.
He's saying: "Gays and lesbians getting married.
Haven't they suffered enough?" Bob Mankoff: Then there's a classic Peter Steiner from 1993.
The two dogs in front of the computer saying "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog.
" The Peter Arno cartoon where the plane is crashing In Arno's 1941 drawing the pilot has bailed out, and the engineer is saying "Well, back to the old drawing board.
" Bob Mankoff: That phrase originates Morley Safer: With that cartoon? Bob Mankoff: With that cartoon.
And that's true of the earlier cartoon in which the mother is saying, "Eat it, it's broccoli, dear.
" And the kid answers: "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it.
" The year was In those early days - of bathtub gin and backstage musicals -- it wasn't long before the magazine - and the cartoons - took hold in the national consciousness.
In the 1933 film classic "42nd Street" the New Yorker had a short product placement role.
[Pontiac Film: Then there will be 13 pages in the New Yorker, the smart, sophisticated weekly.]
Advertisers took note.
Outlining its plans to sell the new 1935 Pontiac, General Motors targeted the magazine's upscale readership.
[Pontiac Film: Just the people for whom a Pontiac would serve as an ideal second car.
.]
The magazine still draws an affluent crowd, numbering a million subscribers.
Surprisingly, just roughly 10 percent live in and around New York with the other 90 percent spread around the country, pockets of sophistication in the boondocks mapped out in Saul Steinberg's famous New Yorker cover.
[Bob Mankoff montage: Hey.
How are ya? Paul, Robert.
Well, I suppose you came in here to show me cartoons?.]
Every Wednesday, a nervous band of ink-stained wretches gathers at Bob Mankoff's office.
Hoping against hope to sell him a cartoon.
Sam Gross: How many have been accepted? I really don't know.
There's the grizzled veteran Sam Gross, who figures he's submitted 30,000 cartoons, give or take.
Many consider this his masterpiece: a dog at heaven's gate, asking: is there any chance of getting my testicles back? Sam Gross: I still have to push the envelope.
Bob Mankoff: Sam has always pushed the envelope.
Things that you couldn't quite do.
[Bob Mankoff: How ya doing?.]
There's always a little preliminary chit chat.
[Bob Mankoff: How ya been? Alright.
Farley.]
Farley Katz specializes in the far out, in both cartoons and facial hair.
Bob Mankoff: So what's going on with that moustache? Are you still entering that contest? Farley Katz: No, I retired from the circuit.
This is all like a recreational moustache.
And then, Mankoff speed-reads the rough sketches.
[Bob Mankoff: This is just too awkward a drawing.]
Most get set rejected.
He's seen the idea in one form or another before.
Carolita Johnson: You know how whenever they open your bag at an airport Carolita Johnson has an airport security cartoon, with the TSA guy saying: "You can pack this back up now.
" Emily Flake has a joke featuring both King Kong and Godzilla.
[Emily Flake: The two heavy hitters in the monster world.
Bob Mankoff: It's as simple as that.
.]
Maybe it's just the day for facial hair, but Joe Dator seems to be a contender with a Tarzan cartoon.
[Bob Mankoff: The apes are saying: "We found you and raised you as one of us.
So we were just wondering at what point did you learn to shave?" Joe Dator: Can I say I have researched this? There is no iteration of Tarzan in literature, comic books or the movies in which he has facial hair.
It makes no sense.
.]
This is just stage one: thinning out the candidates to take to the magazine's editor.
[Bob Mankoff: This is a little too straight forward.
.]
He's largely noncommittal.
Pleasant.
But blunt [Bob Mankoff: Well it won't look right in our magazine.
.]
When a drawing simply isn't good enough.
[Bob Mankoff: We're not that impressed.
OK, next.
It doesn't have enough charm.
.]
The arithmetic is simple.
Hundreds of cartoons are submitted every week, by mail, email or in person.
And every week, there's only room for 17.
Bob Mankoff: We're picky.
Ben Schwartz: We cry afterwards.
Just loads of tears.
We assembled a roundtable of veteran New Yorker regulars to talk about rejection.
Ben Schwartz, who gave up being a doctor to draw cartoons.
David Sipress, Roz Chast, and Charlie Hankin, the new kid on the block.
David Sipress: We all probably do probably it's, we're lucky if we sell 30 cartoons a year.
So that's a lot of rejection.
Roz Chast: When I do a cartoon and I think, "This is, they're gonna love this one.
It's a classic.
" David Sipress: That's the one that gets rejected, right? Roz Chast: That, right away that goes in the garbage.
Charlie Hankin: I was addicted to the rejection before I got addicted to the, you know, actually making the sales.
Morley Safer: Addicted to the rejection? Charlie Hankin: Kind of.
It makes you feel alive.
Bob Mankoff: I know what it feels like.
It feels a little bit like a punch in the stomach.
It always feels bad.
Mankoff should know.
Starting out, he submitted about 2,000 cartoons to the magazine, before making a sale.
This is one of his greatest hits: "No, Thursday's out.
How about never.
Is never good for you?" He's lifted the line as the title for a memoir he's written, about his rise from the Bronx to the big time.
Morley Safer: You write of your mother, Molly.
"She wasn't really an audience for my jokes.
She was a target.
" What do you mean, that sounds cruel? Bob Mankoff: Well, it's Freudian.
My mother was this sexy, flamboyant, annoying woman, to me.
And also I loved her.
Like many an only child he got smothered with love and pierced with sarcasm.
Fertile ground for his New Yorky neuroses.
Bob Mankoff: She thought I was lazy.
I was lazy.
He talked back a lot, and developed a talent for one-liners and imitating Jerry Lewis.
Bob Mankoff: You know, I would do the Jerry Lewis thing, "Hey lady.
" And I did one of the things Jerry Lewis did, he had a mobile mouth.
So I also had a mobile mouth.
One of the first comic things you do is imitate.
David Remnick: I have to say when it comes down to it, he takes humor very seriously.
David Remnick is editor of The New Yorker, the man who makes the final decision - the decider - on which cartoons get published and which don't.
[David Remnick: That's kinda nice.
Bob Mankoff: I'd go with that one.
David Remnick: Just hang on.
.]
David Remnick: He is always trying to figure out what makes the little time bomb work, meaning the joke, meaning the cartoon.
[Bob Mankoff: You don't get it? David Remnick: No.
.]
David Remnick: He's very smart.
The shell, the outward schtick is - Morley Safer: Weird? David Remnick: Comic.
But there's a real mind at work there.
Morley Safer: One of his chapter titles in his book is: I'm Not Arguing, I'm Jewish.
David Remnick: Bob's Jewish? I had no idea.
[David Remnick: That's sweet.
Oooh.
That's a great drawing.
.]
This time the cartoons that make the cut include Joe Dator's beardless Tarzan.
Bob Mankoff: I like the Tarzan one, it's crazier.
David Remnick: Crazier is better.
Carolita Johnson's TSA problem.
David Remnick: I think this one is better.
Emily Flake's King Kong and Godzilla, "I'm telling you, Manhattan is over".
Bob Mankoff: Brooklyn is very big.
David Remnick: In it goes.
And a cat and mouse joke by Sam Gross: "Have you no shame?" Don't get it? You're not alone.
David Remnick: At least five times a week somebody'll come up to me and say "I didn't get such and such a cartoon.
" Morley Safer: Including me.
David Remnick: Well, and here is the deep secret: including me once in a while.
I will pick a raft of cartoons.
And then later it'll come time to run this cartoon.
And I'll look at it, and I won't quite get it anymore.
Because sometimes the grenade goes off in the moment and then it doesn't repeat down the line.
Morley Safer: Well, a friend of mine who's a New Yorker writer maintains there's at least one cartoon in every issue in which you're not meant to get it.
David Remnick: I'm gonna keep that myth alive.
One more thing about the mad Mr.
Mankoff.
Ping pong.
While New Yorker readers are relaxing with the cartoons, Mankoff pings and pongs, often with Will Shortz, the noted crossword puzzle editor.
Mankoff's moves are half Wile E.
Coyote and half scarecrow from "The Wizard of Oz.
" Bob Mankoff: Ping pong itself, there's something a little bit funny about it, in that so much aggression is spent on this tiny little ball.
So there's a pillow fight aspect to it.
We end -- as everything does -- with the Grim Reaper.
He's turned up in the New Yorker countless times over the years.
David Sipress: OK.
So we have Death In this recent David Sipress cartoon, the Reaper's latest acquisition is saying: "Thank goodness you're here - I can't accomplish anything unless I have a deadline.
" Bob Mankoff: Honestly, if it wasn't for death.
I don't think there'd be any humor.
Bob Mankoff believes humor is really our way of coping with anxiety.
Anxiety about death, about work, relationships, the state of the world, the state of your health.
So here's a prescription from the cartoon doctor.
Bob Mankoff: Illness and death, primary sources of anxiety.
One way of dealing with anxiety - Morley Safer: Is to laugh at it.
Bob Mankoff: Grim Reaper's gonna get the last laugh.
Until then, it's our turn.