captioning funded by cbs and ford-- built for the road ahead. >> pelley: tonight, we're going to take you to one of the most toxic places on earth, a place government officials and gangsters don't want you to see. which is why, after a few minutes of filming, we were jumped. several men struggled for our cameras. they got a soil sample that we

had taken for testing, but we managed to wrestle the cameras back. what are they afraid of? >> they're afraid of being found out. >> kroft: many of the deals that helped create the current financial crisis would have been illegal during most of the 20th century, in violation of gaming laws. but in 2000, congress gave wall street an exemption that's turned out to be a very bad idea. >> it's legalized gambling. it was illegal gambling, and we made it legal gambling. >> kroft: with no regulatory controls? >> with absolutely no regulatory control-- zero, as far as i can tell. >> kroft: i mean, it sounds a little like a bookie operation. >> yes. >> safer: it's the annual gathering of the inventors' hall of fame, which honors america's visionary tinkerers: patsy sherman, who invented scotchgard to protect the rug and furniture; dr. harry coover, who invented super-glue to hold your stuff together;

and dr. klaus schmeigel, who invented prozac to hold your head together. and standing tall among them, the subject of our story tonight-- forest bird, a remarkable american original. chances are, his invention has saved the life of someone you know. >> i'm steve kroft. >> i'm leslie stahl. >> i'm bob simon. >> i'm morley safer. >> i'm anderson cooper. >> i'm scott pelley. those stories and andy rooney tonight on "60 minutes." ( siren blaring ) special interest groups are trying to block progress on health care reform, derailing the debate with myths and scare tactics. desperately trying to stop you from discovering that reform won't hurt medicare. it will actually strengthen it by eliminating billions of dollars in waste and lowering drug prices. tell congress not to let myths get in the way

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>> pelley: tonight, we're going to take you to one of the most toxic places on earth, a place government officials and gangsters don't want you to see. it's a town in china where you can't breathe the air or drink the water, a town where the blood of the children is laced with lead. it's worth risking a visit because much of the poison is coming out of the homes, schools and offices of america. this is a story about recycling, about how your best intentions to be green can be channeled into an underground sewer that flows from the united states and into "the wasteland." that wasteland is piled with the burning remains of some of the most expensive, sophisticated stuff that consumers crave. and we discovered that the gangs who run this place wanted to

keep it a secret. >> translator: he said if we don't leave, we may get beaten up. >> pelley: what are they hiding? the answer lies in the first law of the digital age: newer is better. in with the next thing, and out with the old tv, phone or computer. all of this becomes obsolete, electronic garbage called e- waste. you know, my computer seems like such a smooth, clean machine. what's inside it? >> allen hershkowitz: lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, polyvinyl chlorides. all of these materials have known toxicological effects that range from brain damage to kidney disease to mutations, cancers. >> pelley: allen hershkowitz is a senior scientist and authority on waste management at the natural resources defense council. >> hershkowitz: the problem with e-waste is that it is the fastest-growing component of the municipal waste stream, worldwide. >> pelley: what do you mean,

fastest growing? >> hershkowitz: well, we throw out about 130,000 computers every day in the united states. >> pelley: in the united states alone? >> hershkowitz: correct. and we throw out over 100 >> pelley: and here's what that looks like. at a recycling event in denver, we found cars bumper to bumper for blocks, in a line that lasted for hours. most folks in line were hoping to do the right thing, expecting that their waste would be recycled in state-of-the-art facilities that exist here in america. but really, there's no way for them to know where all of this is going. the recycling industry is exploding and, as it turns out, some so-called recyclers are shipping the waste overseas, where it's broken down for the precious metals inside. executive recycling, of englewood, colorado, which ran this event, promised the public on its web site: "your e-waste is recycled properly, right here in the u.s., not simply dumped on somebody else."

that policy helped brandon richter, the c.e.o. of executive, win a contract with the city of denver and expand operations into three western states. tell me what the problem with sending this stuff overseas is. >> brandon richter: well, you know, they've got low-income labor over there. so obviously, they don't have all of the right materials, the safety equipment to handle some of this material. >> pelley: executive does recycling in-house, but we were curious about shipping containers that were leaving its colorado yard. we found this one filled with monitors. they're especially hazardous, because each picture tube, called a cathode ray tube or c.r.t., contains several pounds of lead. it's against u.s. law to ship them overseas without special permission. we took down the container's number and we followed it to tacoma, washington, where it was loaded on a ship. when the container left tacoma, we followed it for 7,459 miles

to this place-- victoria harbor, hong kong. it turns out the container that started in denver was just one of thousands of containers on an underground, often illegal smuggling route, taking america's electronic trash to the far east. our guide to that route was jim puckett, founder of the basel action network, a watchdog group named for the treaty that's supposed to stop rich countries from dumping toxic waste on poor ones. puckett runs a program to certify ethical recyclers, and he showed us what's piling up in hong kong. it's literally acres of computer monitors. is it legal to import all of these computer monitors into hong kong? >> jim puckett: no way. it is absolutely illegal, both from the standpoint of hong kong law, but also u.s. law and chinese law.

but it's happening. >> pelley: we followed the trail to a place puckett discovered in southern china, a sort of chernobyl of electronic waste-- the town of guiyu. but we weren't there very long before we were picked up by the cops and taken to city hall. we told the mayor we wanted to see recycling. mayor's going to ride up front. after you. very nice car. so he personally drove us to a shop. let me explain what's happening here. we were brought into the mayor's office. the mayor told us that we're essentially not welcome here, but he would show us one place where computers were being dismantled. and this is that place-- a pretty tidy shop. the mayor told us that we would be welcome to see the rest of the town, but that the town wouldn't be prepared for our visit for another year. so we were allowed to shoot at that location for about five

minutes. and we're back in the mayor's car, headed back to city hall, where i suspect we'll be given another cup of tea and sent on our way out of town-- with a police escort, no doubt. and we were. but the next day, in a different car, on a different road, we got in. >> puckett: this is really the... the dirty little secret of the electronic age. >> pelley: here's a c.r.t. stand. >> puckett: oh, yeah. oh, yeah. >> pelley: so they've been dismantling the c.r.t.s, as well. >> puckett: little bit of everything in here. and this is the place where they're clearly doing the burning. >> pelley: greenpeace has been filming around guiyu and caught the recycling work. women were heating circuit boards over a coal fire, pulling out chips and pouring off the lead solder. men were using what is, literally, a medieval acid recipe to extract gold.

pollution has ruined the town. drinking water is trucked in. scientists have studied the area and discovered that guiyu has the highest levels of cancer- causing dioxins in the world. they found pregnancies are six times more likely to end in miscarriage, and that seven out of ten kids have too much lead in their blood. >> hershkowitz: open, uncontrolled burning of plastics. chlorinated and brominated plastics is known worldwide to cause the emission of poly- chlorinated and poly-brominated dioxins. these are among the most toxic compounds known on earth. we have a situation where we have 21st-century toxics being managed in a 17th-century environment. >> pelley: the recyclers are peasant farmers who couldn't make a living on the land. destitute, they've come by the thousands to get $8 a day. greenpeace introduced us to some of them. they were afraid and didn't want to be seen, but these are the hands that are breaking down

america's computers. >> ( translated ): the air i breathe in every day is so pungent, i can definitely feel it in my windpipe and affecting my lungs. it makes me cough all the time. >> pelley: if you're worried about your lungs and you're burning your hands, do you ever think about giving this up? >> ( translated ): yes, i have thought of it.& >> pelley: and why don't you? >> ( translated ): because the money's good. >> pelley: you know, it... it struck me, talking to those workers the other day, that they were destitute and they're happy to have this work. >> puckett: well, desperate people will do desperate things. but we should never put them in that situation. you know, it's... it's a hell of a choice between poverty and poison. we should never make people make that choice. look at the ash river here. >> pelley: ( coughs )

oh, man, this is... it's unbelievably acrid and choking. >> puckett: look at this. >> pelley: what are we seeing here? >> puckett: this is an ash river. this is a... detritus from burning all this material, and this is what the kids get to play in. >> pelley: after a few minutes in the real recycling area, we were jumped. several men struggled for our cameras. the mayor hadn't wanted us to see this place, and neither did the businessmen who were profiting from it. they got a soil sample that we'd taken for testing, but we managed to wrestle the cameras back. the question is, what are they afraid of?

>> puckett: they're afraid of being found out. this is smuggling. this is illegal. a lot of people are turning a blind eye here. and if somebody makes enough noise, they're afraid this is all going to dry up. >> pelley: back in denver, there was no threat of it drying up. in fact, it was a flood. and brandon richter, c.e.o. of executive recycling, was still warning of the dangers of shipping waste to china. >> richter: i just heard, actually, a child actually died over there breaking this material down, just getting all these toxins. >> pelley: then we told him we'd tracked his container to hong kong. this is a photograph from your yard, the executive recycling yard. we followed this container to hong kong. >> richter: okay. >> pelley: and i wonder why that would be. >> richter: hmm. i have no clue. >> pelley: the hong kong customs people opened the container... >> richter: okay.

>> pelley: ...and found it full of c.r.t. screens which, as you probably know, is illegal to export to hong kong. >> richter: yeah, yep. i don't know if that container was filled with glass. i doubt it was. we don't fill glass... c.r.t. glass in those containers. >> pelley: this container was in your yard, filled with c.r.t. screens, and exported to hong kong, which probably wouldn't be legal. >> richter: no, absolutely not. yeah. >> pelley: can you explain that? >> richter: yeah, it's not... it was not filled in our facility. >> pelley: but that's where we filmed it. and it turned out we weren't the only ones asking questions. hong kong customs intercepted the container and sent it back to "executive recycling, englewood, colorado." the contents were listed as "waste: cathode ray tubes." u.s. customs x-rayed the container and found the same thing. we showed richter this evidence, and later, his lawyer told us the c.r.t.s were exported under executive recycling's name, but without the company's permission. >> richter: i know this is your job. but, unfortunately, you... you know, when you attack small

business owners like this and you don't have all your facts straight, it's... it's unfortunate, you know? >> pelley: but here's one more fact. the federal government accountability office set up a sting in which u.s. investigators posed as foreign importers. executive recycling offered to sell 1,500 c.r.t. computer monitors and 1,200 c.r.t. televisions to the g.a.o.'s fictitious broker in hong kong. but executive recycling was not alone. the g.a.o. report found that another 42 american companies were willing to do the same. since we first broadcast this story, federal agents executed a search warrant at the executive recycling headquarters as part of an ongoing investigation.

>> good evening. monthly auto sales out tuesday are expected to post the first year-over-year increase since 2007 thanks in part to cash for clunkers. the price of gas dipped slightly for national average of $2.61 a gallon, which is down two cents in a week. and "the final destination" topped the weekend box office. i'm jeff glor, cbs news. lots of guys everywhere

>> kroft: anyone with more than a casual interest in why their 401(k) has tanked over the past year knows that it's because of the global credit crisis. it was triggered by the collapse of the housing market in the united states, then magnified worldwide by the sale of complicated investments that warren buffet once labeled "financial weapons of mass destruction." they are called credit derivatives or credit default swaps, and as we first reported last fall, they are essentially side bets on the performance of the u.s. mortgage markets, and some of the biggest financial

institutions in the world, a form of legalized gambling that allows you to wager on financial outcomes without ever having to actually buy the stocks and the bonds and mortgages. it would have been illegal during most of the 20th century under the gaming laws, but in 2000, congress gave wall street an exemption, and it turned out to be a very bad idea. >> the term "derivative" is almost becoming a household word. >> the cat's kind of out of the bag here. >> this is not the american dream; it's an american nightmare. >> kroft: while congress and the rest of the country scratched their heads and tried to figure out how we got in this mess, we decided to go to frank partnoy, a law professor at the university of san diego who has written a couple of books on the subject. can you explain to me what a derivative is? >> partnoy: yes. a derivative is a financial instrument whose value is based on something else. it's basically a side bet. >> kroft: think of it for a moment as a football game. every week, the new york giants take the field with hopes of getting back to the super bowl.

if they do, they will get more money and glory for the team and its owners. they have a direct investment in the game. but the people in the stands may also have a financial stake in the outcome, in the form of a bet with a friend or a bookie. >> partnoy: we could call that a derivative. it's a side bet. we don't own the teams, but we have a bet based on the outcome. and that... a lot of derivatives are bets based on the outcome of games of a sort-- not football games, but games in the markets. >> kroft: whether interest rates are going to go up or down. >> partnoy: yes. and the new bet that arose over the last several years is a bet based on whether people will default on their mortgages. >> kroft: and that was the bet that blew up wall street. the t.n.t. was the collapse of the housing market and the failure of the complicated mortgage securities the big investment houses created and sold around the world. but the rocket fuel was trillions of dollars in side bets on those mortgage securities called credit default swaps.

they were essentially private insurance contracts that paid off if the investment went bad, but you didn't have to actually own the investment to collect on the insurance. if i thought certain mortgage securities were going to fail, i could go out and buy insurance on them without actually owning them? >> eric dinallo: yeah. the irony is, though, you're not really buying insurance at that point; you're just placing the bet. >> kroft: when we spoke to eric dinallo, he was insurance superintendent for the state of new york. he says credit default swaps were totally unregulated, and the big banks and investment houses that sold them didn't have to set aside any money to cover potential losses and pay off their bets. >> dinallo: as the market began to seize up, and as the market for the underlying obligations began to perform poorly, everybody wanted to get paid, had a right to get paid on those credit default swaps. and there was no there. there was no money behind the commitments. and people came up short. and so that's, to a large extent, what happened to bear

sterns, lehman brothers, and the holding company of a.i.g. >> kroft: in other words, three of the nation's largest financial institutions had made more bad bets than they could afford to pay off. bear stearns was sold to j.p. morgan for pennies on the dollar, lehman brothers was allowed to go belly up, and a.i.g., too big to let fail, is on life support thanks to a $180 billion investment by u.s. taxpayers. it's legalized gambling. >> dinallo: it's legalized gambling. it was illegal gambling, and we made it legal gambling, and some... >> kroft: with no regulatory controls. >> dinallo: with absolutely no regulatory controls-- zero, as far as i can tell. >> kroft: it sounds a little like a bookie operation. >> dinallo: yes, and it used to be illegal. it was very illegal 100 years ago. >> kroft: in the early part of the 20th century, the streets of new york and other large cities were lined with gaming establishments called bucket shops, where people could place wagers on whether the price of stocks would go up or down without actually buying them.

this unfettered speculation contributed to the panic and stock market crash of 1907, and state laws all over the country were enacted to ban them. >> dinallo: big headlines. i could show you the headlines, huge type. this is the front page of "the new york times". >> kroft: "no bucket shops for new law to hit." >> dinallo: so they'd already closed up, because the law was coming. here's a... here's a picture of one of them. and they were like... they were like parlors. see? >> kroft: betting parlors. >> dinallo: betting parlors, yeah. it was a... it was a felony. well, it was a felony when a law came into effect, because it had brought down the market in 1907. and they said, "we're not going to let this happen again." and then 100 years later, in 2000, we rolled them all back. >> kroft: the vehicle for doing this was an obscure but critical piece of federal legislation called the commodity futures modernization act of 2000. and the bill was a big favorite of the financial industry it would eventually help destroy. it not only removed derivatives and credit default swaps from the purview of federal

oversight; on page 262 of the legislation, congress preempted the states from enforcing existing gambling and bucket shop laws against wall street. it makes it sound like they knew it was illegal. >> dinallo: i would agree; they did know it was illegal, or at least prosecutable. >> kroft: in retrospect, giving wall street immunity from state gambling laws and legalizing activity that had been banned for most of the 20th century should have given lawmakers pause. but on the last day and the last vote of the lame duck 106th congress, wall street got what it wanted-- the senate passed the bill unanimously. >> professor harvey goldschmid: there was an awful lot of "trust us. leave it alone. we can do it better than government." without any realistic understanding of the dangers involved. >> kroft: columbia university law professor harvey goldschmid is a former commissioner and

general counsel of the securities and exchange commission. he says the bill was passed at the height of wall street and washington's love affair with deregulation, an infatuation that was endorsed by president clinton at the white house, and encouraged by federal reserve chairman alan greenspan. >> goldschmid: that was the wildest and silliest period, in many ways. now, again, that's with hindsight, because the argument at the time was, "these are grownups. they're institutions with a great deal of money. government will only get in the way. fears it will be taken overseas. leave it alone." but it was a wrong-headed argument, and turned out to be, of course, extraordinarily unwise. >> kroft: what role did alan greenspan play in all of this? >> goldschmid: well, he made clear in his public speeches and book that a libertarian drive was part of the way he looked at the world. he's a very talented man, but that didn't take us where we had to be.

>> kroft: he was, another former commissioner told us, hard to argue with at that point. >> goldschmid: alan was the most powerful man in washington, in... in a real sense-- certainly, a rival to the president, and had enormous influence on capitol hill. >> kroft: and he was at the height of his power. >> goldschmid: he was at the height of his power. >> kroft: within eight years, unregulated derivatives and swaps helped produce the largest financial services economy the united states has ever had. estimates of the market for credit default swaps grew from $100 billion to more than $50 trillion, and you could bet on anything from the solvency of local communities to the fate of general motors. they also helped produce a huge transfer of private wealth to wall street traders and investment bankers, who collected billions of dollars in

bonuses. a lot of the money was made financing what seemed to be a never-ending housing boom, selling mortgage securities they thought were safe and credit default swaps they believed would never have to be paid off. >> goldschmid: the credit default swaps was the key to what went wrong and what's created these enormous losses. >> kroft: is it your impression that people at the big wall street investment houses knew what was going on and knew the kind of risks that they were exposed to? >> goldschmid: no. my impression is to the contrary; that even at senior levels, they only vaguely understood the risks. they only vaguely followed what was going on. and when it tumbled, there was some genuine surprise, not only at the board level, where there wasn't enough oversight, but at senior management level. >> kroft: they didn't know what was going on, in part, because credit default swaps were totally unregulated. no one knew how many there were or who owned them. and there was no central exchange or clearing house to keep track of all the bets and to hold the money to make sure they got paid off. eventually, savvy investors figured out that the cheapest, most effective way to bet

against the entire housing market was to buy credit defaults swaps; in effect, taking out inexpensive insurance policies that would pay off big when other people's mortgage investments went south. >> jim grant: i know people personally who have taken away more than $1 billion from having been on the right side of these transactions. >> kroft: jim grant is the publisher of "grant's interest rate observer," and one of the country's foremost experts on credit markets. >> grant: if you can-- and you could-- lay down cents on the dollar to place a bet on the solvency of wall street, for example, as some did, when wall street became evidently insolvent, that cents-on-the- dollar bet went up 30-, 40-, and 50-fold. not everyone who did that wants to get his name in the paper. but there are some spectacularly rich people who came out of this, and... and... >> kroft: who got richer. >> grant: who got... well, who got... who got richer, who got... became, you know,

fantastically richer. >> kroft: a lot of them were hedge fund managers. john paulson's credit opportunities fund returned almost 600% last year, with paulson pocketing a reported $3.7 billion. bill ackman, of pershing square capital management, said he plans to make hundreds of millions. both declined our request for an interview. >> senator tom harkin: it's a betting game, folks; it's a betting game. >> kroft: congress now seems& shocked and outraged by the consequences of its decision eight years ago to effectively deregulate swaps and derivatives. >> harkin: this is casino capitalism, that's what it is. it's casino capitalism. >> kroft: and various members of the house and senate have all been the usual suspects to accept or share the blame. >> congressman henry waxman: were you wrong? >> alan greenspan: credit default swaps have some serious problems. >> kroft: it appears to be the first step in a long process of restoring at least some of the regulations and safeguards that

might have prevented, or at least mitigated, this disaster, after the damage has already been done. where do we go from here? >> goldschmid: we need the most dramatic rethinking of the regulatory scheme for financial markets since the new deal. if anything has demonstrated that imperative, it's the economy right now and the tragic circumstances we're in. >> kroft: how much danger is still out there, do you think? >> goldschmid: we don't know. part of the problem of the lack of transparency in these... in these markets has been we don't really know. i've had asthma forever. i've had asthma for 5 years. 10 years. i used to wonder why my controller medicine wouldn't help prevent... ...help prevent my symptoms from coming back. i just figured it couldn't get any better. and then i found out something i didn't know... i found out there are two main causes of asthma symptoms... ...airway constriction you feel and inflammation you may not. most controllers don't treat both. so my doctor prescribed advair. advair treats both main causes

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>> safer: a viewer wrote us a while back and said: "you really should take a look at the life and times of a man, an inventor named forrest bird." we did, and found, in the panhandle of idaho, a remarkable american original. over the last eight decades, forrest bird has seen enough history and rubbed elbows with enough legends to rival that other forrest-- forrest gump. as we reported two years ago, chances are forrest bird's invention has saved the life of someone you know, maybe even your own. when inventors get together, bird stands, literally, head and shoulders above the rest. it's the annual gathering of the national inventors' hall of fame, which honors america's visionary tinkerers: patsy sherman, who invented scotchgard to protect the rug and the

furniture; dr. harry coover, who invented super-glue, to hold your stuff together; and dr. klaus schmeigel, who invented prozac to hold your head together. and standing tall among them-- all 6'4" of him-- is forrest bird. his brainchild, the modern medical respirator, has given the breath of life to countless people around the world. it all began with a gizmo he cobbled together long ago to help a friend with emphysema breathe. >> forrest bird: i went to the hardware store and got a doorknob. you can see this doorknob right here at the top. so, the patient would take and push down like this on the doorknob and blow their lungs up. well, he did remarkably well with it. >> safer: what year are we talking about? >> bird: we're talking about 1947. >> safer: did you have any idea then that you were on the trail to a device that would be just the most routine part of emergency medicine there is? >> bird: no, sir, not the foggiest. i mean, this was seeing a problem and coming up with a

rudimentary answer, that was all. >> safer: and that answer came from one of this tinkerer's many passions, aviation. bird is an old flyboy who still takes to the skies in a souped- up 1938 piper cub that belonged to his father. >> bird: my daddy was a world war i pilot, and i just wanted to be able to fly like he did. >> safer: bird spent world war ii delivering aircraft from the factory to the front, and got to thinking along the way about the similarities between air flowing over the wings of a plane and air moving through the human lung. >> bird: in that lung is rudimentary air foils. it's like a million airplane wings all down through the lungs, in and out, all the way through, that facilitate your normal, spontaneous breathing. so it was just applying all this, taking it from aviation. okay, put that on the end here. >> safer: it sounds simple enough, a concept even school kids can grasp.

but in reality, the human lung works with mind-numbing complexity. for his own education, the military sent forrest bird to medical school. and though his studies took him to the outer limits of science, his next respirator was still definitely low-tech. >> bird: these are strawberry shortcake tins in here. >> safer: you're kidding. >> bird: no, i am not. honest to god. they're strawberry shortcake tins. they really are. and what i did was, i put a diaphragm in here so that when you did that, it would drop the pressure and this magnet would grab it and hold it off. >> for a child with polio, a minute's breathing can mean his life. >> safer: back then, there weren't many options for people with respiratory problems. the worst cases required iron lungs-- big, primitive, expensive and confining. so forrest bird kept on trying to develop a small, affordable device that could automatically help people breathe. his breakthrough came in the late 1950s: the mark 7

respirator, a device so effective, the air force made a training film about it, hollywood music and all. >> here's the star of our film, the bird mark 7 respirator. >> bird: we were able to assist your respiration. we could control it. >> safer: and this became standard use? >> bird: throughout the entire world. and still today, there's tens of thousands of these still functioning around. >> safer: improved models quickly followed. thanks to his respirator for infants, the baby bird, the death rate for preemies was massively reduced. >> bird: it's an amazing situation and a good happy ending. >> safer: donna turnbull and her husband, bob, neighbors of forrest bird, have good reason to thank him for his baby bird respirator. >> donna turnbull: it had been snowing and there was a black sheet of black ice on the highway, and we hit it, and so did another pickup truck. and it ran right into us. >> safer: she was in labor, bob was driving her to the hospital that day in 1985.

the accident nearly killed her, and doctors first thought the baby, tim, was gone. >> bob turnbull: they wouldn't look me in the eye. and i thought, "well, what's going on? what's wrong?" >> donna turnbull: the doctors pronounced tim dead. they said he was stillborn. >> safer: but when a faint pulse was discovered in the umbilical, baby tim was hooked up to the baby bird. it made him breathe, and it pulled him through. i gather the turnbulls owe a great deal to forrest bird. >> bob turnbull: without forrest bird... >> donna turnbull: great man. >> safer: the great man is 86 now, still certified to fly. he lives and works at a breathtaking 300-acre compound on lake pend oreille, just south of the canadian border. here, forrest bird has invented his own private idaho. >> bird: i've kind of recreated similar to what i had as a young lad growing up in new england. >> safer: well, it's almost a fantasy, this place.

>> bird: it's fun. we enjoy it. >> safer: think of it as a combination home, business center, factory, museum and farm. here, where the deer and the baby buffalo play, bird routinely works a 12-hour day, conferring with doctors who come from around the world for his expertise; overseeing a staff of 40 who assemble the newest generation of bird respirators; writing, lecturing, flying, and still tinkering. where does he get the energy from? >> pam bird: he has to get it from heaven, because there's days where there's, if i was one day older, i don't think i could keep up with him. >> safer: his second wife, pam, met bird through her work bringing inventors and investors together. the first time he took her up in a plane, he did some aerial acrobatics. it was love at first flight. >> pam bird: and he did the spins and the flips. then, when we had landed, he looked at me and he goes, "well, what do you think about that?"

and i looked at him and i said, "is that all you can do?" >> forrest bird: she did, too. ( laughter ) >> safer: you were trying to impress her? >> forrest bird: i was. >> pam bird: he was trying to see how much i could take. >> safer: his late wife, mary, had emphysema and was treated on many of bird's respirators. >> forrest bird: she was always my first patient. but ultimately, the lung was destroying itself. but we probably gave her a number of years of additional life, and probably it sparked me, too, in turn, to push further and develop. >> safer: he's a legend in aviation and medicine, but something of a mystery to his idaho neighbors. which is why he invited everyone over for the opening of a museum showcasing his inventions and his toys. there was an air show starring stunt pilot patty wagstaff. she did enough spins and flips to put forrest bird to shame. and she officially opened bird's museum by cutting a ribbon flying upside-down 15 feet off

the runway. >> forrest bird: wow. you're the greatest. thank you, patty. >> safer: and that's a major compliment coming from someone whose father taught him to fly 75 years ago, who's piloted almost every kind of aircraft there is. forrest bird's own private idaho includes his own private air force. how many planes you got? >> i think 21. helicopters-- we have three helicopters, and they're all flyable. >> safer: you use all these planes? >> forrest bird: yes, i do. >> safer: how does one guy use... >> forrest bird: i fly one at a time. ( laughter ) >> safer: he's a king-size pack rat, collecting and restoring old planes, old cars, even old motorcycles. and they all come with stories. admire his collection of old fords, and he'll tell you about meeting the man himself. >> forrest bird: henry ford. >> safer: talk about his vintage biplanes, and he'll tell you about meeting, as a teenager, one-half of the wright brothers, orville.

>> forrest bird: and i thought he was god. now these are amphibious floats. >> safer: talk about float planes he's had over the years, and he'll tell you about flying them several times with the 20th century's most mysterious man, howard hughes, who, even in his last, reclusive days, could not resist taking a spin with forrest bird. >> bird: he had a stocking cap on, and a beard and so on. and other than basically his voice, i didn't recognize him. he says, "let's go." he was a magnificent pilot all the way, and he totally enjoyed it. and we came back and he said, "well, how much do i owe you?" i said, "mr. hughes, you know, i get great enjoyment out of it." >> safer: but the flying experience that astonished him most was the encounter he had as a teenager outside boston one afternoon in 1937. >> i was heading east and i saw this massive thing in the sky. i flew up alongside of it. and i first saw the swastika on the end and then it came back. >> safer: it was the great

german zeppelin "hindenburg," nearing the end of what would be its final voyage. >> that was awe-inspiring, truly awe-inspiring. >> safer: hours later, bird and the world would hear what happened when the "hindenburg" tied up at lakehurst, new jersey. >> oh, the humanity. oh, the humanity! >> forrest bird: it will be with me all my life. >> safer: over the years, he had a couple of close calls of his own. but fish got to swim and birds got to fly, and this bird will not be grounded. a lot of people might feel just a tad uncomfortable flying with an 86-year-old pilot at the helm. what do you say to people like that? >> i tell them that the f.a.a. figures that i'm safe. >> safer: matter of fact, he says, in some air emergencies-- pulling out of a dive without blacking out, for instance-- it's the old guy you want at the controls. >> forrest bird: we have arterial sclerosis.

now, a young fellow, at 25, will black out faster than we will because our arteries are harder and they're less expansive, so we maintain our blood pressure better. these are facts. >> safer: this is the first case i've ever heard anyone make for hardening of the arteries. >> forrest bird: yeah, that's right. but this is fact. i mean, absolute fact. textbook, eh? >> safer: so you have no intention of packing it in. >> forrest bird: no way. they'll pack me in when they put me in a box, right? >> safer: and that seems unlikely any time soon. forrest bird thrives on work and flying, and on the knowledge of the difference his inventions have made in countless lives. his offices are covered with thank-yous from children and adults saved by bird respirators. what are you most proud of? >> forrest bird: i guess, probably, let's say the baby bird. >> safer: which brings us back to the turnbulls, who have not one, but two reasons to thank forrest bird. one is tim, the baby saved from that terrible highway accident. the other is tim's brother, rob, born two months prematurely. the baby bird respirator saved

his life as well. >> forrest bird: you've caught me flat-footed this morning. >> safer: seeing these two strapping young men as grown-ups produced in forrest bird a rare condition-- he was almost speechless. >> forrest bird: ( laughs ) i really am, i'm astounded. >> safer: and so we leave bird man back in the element he loves most, back in the wild blue yonder of idaho, in the plane his daddy bought in 1939. >> forrest bird: four, three, two, one. clearing the runway. >> welcome to the cbs sports update presented by pfizer. here at the barclays, heath slocum was the surprise winner, making a par putt from 20 feet at the final hole to defeat steve stricker, tiger woods, padraig harrington and ernie

els. a third career win for slocum, the biggest moment of his career. in the american league wild card race, boston extended its lead with a shutout of toronto. for more sports news and scores, log on to cbssports.com. this is jim nantz reporting. bladder.

>> stahl: and now, a few minutes with andy rooney. >> rooney: i'm always looking for major changes in our way of life in america, and i think i've noticed one cosmic change in what people are doing. it is my observation that people are carrying more stuff than they used to.

you don't see anyone carrying nothing. many people are carrying things to work, even though usually what they're carrying doesn't have anything to do with their work. >> i have a donut, wallet, sunglasses, blackberry, makeup case, digital camera. >> rooney: a lot of dogs going to work. >> we're on our way to work. >> rooney: i should think women might be getting stronger than they used to be, too, because the bags they carry are certainly heavier. i hadn't realized women were so well organized, but one of the items most women are carrying is what they call a "planner." they carry planners and a bottle of water. >> my planner. >> my planner. >> water and planner and my wallet. >> rooney: when they left the house that morning, they planned to drink water, i guess. if people don't have something in their arms, they're carrying it on their back. backpacks are almost as common as pocket books. some of them are attached to the

back of the person carrying them. you wonder what they have in there that's so important. >> there are some newspapers, some notebooks and various odds and ends i use for work. >> rooney: some backpacks are so heavy, they're no longer back packs; they're wheel packs." i talked to a lot of people, and most of them going to work had a book in their bag. there were big books and small books, but everyone on their way to work was carrying some kind of a book. >> a giant book. >> a self-help book. >> books, notebooks. >> a book. >> a bunch of books. >> got a book. >> rooney: it was my inescapable conclusion that there's a lot of book-reading going on at the office on company time. most of the people carrying books denied that they read at work, of course. on company time? >> of course not. no, no, no. on my break. >> rooney: at the office. >> no, no. >> rooney: do you read on company time? >> no, i read on the subway.

>> a book to read, a book i need to study for later on. >> rooney: at the office? >> no! >> rooney: next time you're walking down the street, look around and see if there's anyone who isn't carrying something. >> stahl: i'm leslie stahl. we'll be back next week with another edition of "60 minutes".