MONDAY: 60 Minutes steps up to the plate!

MONDAY, APRIL 7, 2025

Where human discourse begins: 60 Minutes has been earning its stripes in recent weeks. 

Last night, the program started with a deeply informative look at life among the dying and wounded of Gaza. For transcript and video of the segment, you can just click here:

Gaza's children struggle with life-changing injuries from ongoing Israel-Hamas war

Dr. Samer Attar is an orthopedic surgeon in Chicago, a professor of surgery at Northwestern, and recently, among the brave volunteers fighting for life in the war in Gaza. 

Gaza is 25 miles long and home to two million Palestinians, descendants of those displaced in the 1948 creation of Israel. Gaza is ruled by a terrorist group called Hamas. And in 2023, Hamas attacked Israel—an atrocity—that, Israel says, killed 1,200 civilians, including 40 children, and captured 251. 

Israel's war to free its hostages and defeat Hamas has killed an estimated 50,000 Palestinians, 15,000 of them children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The U.N. says 92% of Gaza housing has been damaged. 

Last week on 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl reported on the trauma and torture suffered by Israeli hostages. Tonight, we have the story of the desperate fight to save Gaza's civilians through the charity of nations and the mercy of volunteers like Samer Attar.

That's Dr. Attar battling a stalled heart...

We always marvel at the work of people like Dr. Attar. Last week, 60 Minutes explored "the trauma and torture suffered by Israeli hostages." Last night, it was the suffering of paramedics—and the death and suffering of children—inside the borders of Gaza. 

That was the program's first report. For transcript and tape of last night's second report, you can just click this:

U.S. sent 238 migrants to Salvadoran mega-prison; documents indicate most have no apparent criminal records

Three weeks ago, 238 Venezuelan migrants were flown from Texas to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

That country's president offered to take them and the Trump administration used a law not invoked since World War II to send them—claiming they are all terrorists and violent gang members.

The government has released very little information about the men. But through internal government documents, we have obtained a list of their identities and found that an overwhelming majority have no apparent criminal convictions or even criminal charges. 

They are now prisoners...

That's the headline and the start of the transcript. Just for the record, "prisoners" is barely the word.

Eventually, the transcript says this about the people who were shipped to that "maximum security prison"—to a prison which may function more like a gulag, like a brutal gulag at that:

In October, Tom Homan, who is now the White House border czar, told 60 Minutes the Trump administration's mass deportation plan would start by removing the worst of the worst.

HOMAN (on videotape): We're gonna prioritize those with convictions. We're gonna prioritize national security threats. We have to do that. You gotta get the worst first.

But are they the worst? The Trump administration has yet to release the identities of the Venezuelan men it sent to El Salvador last month. We obtained internal government documents listing their names and any known criminal information. We cross referenced that with domestic and international court filings, news reports and arrest records whenever we could find them.

How about it? Are these men the worst of the worst? Is it even possible that some of these frog-marched, disappeared people aren't guilty of any kind of misconduct at all?

Everything is always possible, until it's shown that it isn't. Here's what 60 Minutes says it found when it says it conducted a search:

At least 22% of the men on the list have criminal records here in the United States or abroad. The vast majority [of the 22%] are for non-violent offenses like theft, shoplifting and trespassing. About a dozen are accused of murder, rape, assault and kidnapping. 

For 3% of those deported, it is unclear whether a criminal record exists. 

But we could not find criminal records for 75% of the Venezuelans—179 men—now sitting in prison.

In response to our findings, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said many of those without criminal records, quote "are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters, and more. They just don't have a rap sheet in the u.s."

Border Czar Tom Homan said immigration agents spent hours conducting rigorous checks on each of the men to confirm they are members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang President Trump campaigned on eradicating.

According to 60 Minutes, they could establish that only a dozen of these men had been accused of murder / rape / assault / kidnapping. They said they could find no pre-existing criminal records for 75 percent of these people.

Are these men really the worst of the worst? Is it possible that some, perhaps many, of these people aren't bad actors at all?

Obviously, yes, such things are possible. For now, CBS says it conducted a search, and that's what CBS says it found. 

In a rational and even a moral world, that would represent a starting point for a serious public discussion. That said, it's unlikely that we'll see any such discussion here. 

For one thing, the current administration is "flooding the zone" with one event after another. This makes it hard for any topic to receive a full dose of attention.

Also, we don't live in any such rational / moral world at the present time. Our culture, such as it ever was, is withering away on the vine. 

On the journalistic end, we're living inside a tribal corporate Babel. As one part of this system, people are paid to go on TV and recite bogus claims and they go on TV and they do it.

60 Minutes has been doing good work. It's the kind of thing which could make a person start to admire and respect a given nation's imperfect attempt at creating an admirable culture.