captioning funded by cbs and ford-- built for the road ahead. >> oh, my god. >> right. let's keep it that way. >> kroft: julian assange, the nomadic founder of the web site wikileaks, is under legal and personal attack from the u.s. government for publishing

military and diplomatic secrets. he is under house arrest in the english countryside, where we conducted the most extensive television interview he's ever given about his life, his beliefs and his concerns about being charged and extradited to the united states. >> it's completely outrageous. it is the worst act we have seen by the united states since the 1950s, since the mccarthy era. >> are you surprised? >> i am surprised actually. >> kroft: but you are playing with the forces of nature. >> simon: you won't find them in america anymore. in fact, they're hard to find anywhere. they hunt by night and sleep by day. on a trip through brazil's wetland, we spotted the elusive and powerful jaguar in more places than we expected. look at her. god, she's beautiful.

it even surprised the scientists we were with. >> this is a rare sight. i've never caught them in the water. i've never gotten it in the water before. >> i'm steve kroft. >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm bob simon. >> i'm morley safer. >> i'm anderson cooper. >> i'm scott pelley. those stories tonight on "60 minutes."

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look good for ladies. uh ok, how 'bout cash? cash? he want cash! want better rewards? peggy? switch to discover. america's number 1 cash rewards program. it pays to discover. >> kroft: just a few months ago, most people had never heard of a web site called wikileaks, or of its mysterious and eccentric founder, julian assange. but in that short period of time, both have managed to rattle the worlds of journalism, diplomacy, and national

security. wikileaks, which solicits and publishes secrets and suppressed material from whistleblowers around the world, has been under cyber attack from governments that want to shut it down. and assange is currently under legal attack from the u.s. government, which would like to charge him with espionage for publishing volumes of classified material from the pentagon and the state department. we spent two days with him in britain, where he is under house arrest while fighting extradition to sweden for questioning in two sexual assault cases, which he's called part of a smear campaign against him. in his most extensive television interview to date, assange talked to us about his work, his vision, and the prospect of facing criminal charges in the united states. you've been called a lot of names. you've been characterized as a hero and as a villain, a martyr, terrorist. >> assange: i'm not yet a martyr. >> kroft: right. >> assange: let's keep it that way. >> kroft: for now, julian assange is holed up on this

bucolic 600-acre english estate with an ankle bracelet, a 10:00 curfew, and a slow internet connection. he declined to talk to us about the allegations in sweden, on the advice of his attorney. he has not been charged and proclaims his innocence. well, i suppose if you have to be under house arrest, there could be worse places. >> assange: well, it's a gilded cage. it's still a cage. but when you are forced to stay somewhere against your will, it does become something that you... you want to leave. >> kroft: it's a radical departure from the lifestyle that the peripatetic internet muckraker is used to-- bounding from city to city, country to country, and regularly changing his cell phones, hair styles and general appearance, he says, to elude surveillance and avoid being killed, kidnapped or arrested. and there are reasons for his paranoia. in the last fours years, wikileaks has released information that played some role in deciding the 2007

election in kenya, and fueling the anger that recently brought down the government in tunisia. it has also divulged the membership rolls of a neo-nazi organization in britain, and secret documents from the church of scientology. and that was before assange began publishing u.s. secrets, provoking what he calls "threatening statements" from people close to power. what statements are you referring to? >> assange: the statements by the vice president biden saying, for instance, that i was a high- tech terrorist. sarah palin calling to our organization to be dealt with like the taliban and be hunted down. there's calls either for my assassination or the assassination of my staff, or for us to be kidnapped and renditioned back to the united states to be executed. >> kroft: well, as you know, we have a first amendment, and people can say whatever they want, including politicians. i don't think that many people in the united states took seriously the idea that you were a terrorist.

>> assange: i would like to believe that. on the other hand, the incitements to murder are a serious issue. and unfortunately, there is a portion of the population that will believe in them and may carry them out. >> kroft: if nothing else, wikileaks is the latest demonstration that a small group of people with a powerful idea can harness technology and affect large institutions. in wikileaks' case, it was the idea to aggregate state and corporate secrets by setting up an online electronic drop box, where whistleblowers around the world could anonymously upload sensitive and suppressed information. the secrets are stored on servers around the world, beyond the reach of governments or law enforcement, then released worldwide on the internet. >> assange: the u.s. does not have the technology to take the site down. >> kroft: because? >> assange: just the way the... way our technology is constructed, the way the internet is constructed. it's... it's quite hard to stop things reappearing.

so, it... we've had attacks on particular domain names, little pieces of infrastructure knocked out. but we now have some 2,000 fully independent in every way web sites, where we're publishing around the world. >> kroft: wikileaks first caught the attention of most americans last april when it released this video. it shows a u.s. apache helicopter crew in iraq opening fire on a group of suspected insurgents who were standing on a street corner in baghdad. some of the men were armed, but two of them were journalists from reuters. >> come on, fire. >> roger. >> keep shooting. >> kroft: at least a dozen people were killed in the attack, some of them innocent civilians. then last july, wikileaks released 76,000 classified field reports of u.s. operations in afghanistan that provided a chaotic and bleak ground level

view of the war. in october, there were another 400,000 classified documents released from iraq, showing that civilian casualties there were much higher than the pentagon had claimed. and finally in november, thousands of state department cables that lifted the veil on highly sensitive backroom diplomacy. the documents revealed that arab leaders were lobbying the u.s. to attack iran, and that the state department had been secretly collecting intelligence on leaders at the united nations. it triggered outcries that assange was a political actor trying to damage the u.s. government. are you a subversive? >> assange: i'm sure there are certain views amongst hillary clinton and her lot that we are subverting their authority. but you're ri... you're right, we are subverting illegitimate authority. the question is whether the authority is legitimate or whether it is illegitimate.

>> kroft: do you consider the u.s. state department a legitimate authority? >> assange: it's legitimate insofar as its actions are legitimate. it has actions that are not legitimate. >> kroft: and you've gone after the ones that you think are illegitimate? >> assange: we don't "go after." that's a bit of a misconception. we don't go after a particular country. we don't go after a particular organizational group. we just stick to our promise of publishing the material that is likely to have a significant impact. >> kroft: to increase the impact of the u.s. documents, assange decided to share them with some of the leading news organizations in the world, including the "new york times," a relationship that grew testy when assange published the first set of war logs without removing the names of afghans who were cooperating with u.s. forces. the most persistent criticism from within the press has been that you have behaved recklessly, from time to time.

and the example that they cite is the... the fact that... that you've decided to release afghan documents without redacting the names of people who had provided intelligence to the u.s. government. >> assange: there's no evidence or any credible allegation or even any allegation from an official body that we have caused any individual at any time to come to harm in the past four years. >> kroft: the pentagon said that they've gone through all of these documents and they found the names of 300 people. >> assange: well, that's new... new public information to us. it's possible that there are 300 names in the publicly released afghan material. we don't pretend that that process is absolutely perfect. we did hold back one in five documents for extra harm minimization review, and we also improved our process. so, when iraq came around, there was not even a single name in it.

>> kroft: i mean, there have been reports of people quoting taliban leaders, saying that they had the names of these people and that they were going to take retribution. >> assange: the taliban is not a coherent outfit, but we don't say that it is absolutely impossible that anything we ever publish will... will ever result in harm. we cannot say that. >> kroft: there's a perception on the part of some people who believe that your agenda right now is anti-american. >> assange: not at all. in fact, our founding values are those of the u.s. revolution. they are those of the people like jefferson and madison. and we have a number of americans in our organization. if you're a whistleblower and you have material that is important, we will accept it, we will defend you, and we will publish it. you can't turn away material simply because it comes from the united states. >> kroft: after the release of the state department cables, attorney general eric holder condemned wikileaks for putting national security at risk.

>> eric holder: there's a real basis. there is a predicate for us to believe that crimes have been committed here. >> kroft: holder announced that the justice department and the pentagon were conducting a criminal investigation. they are reportedly looking at the espionage act of 1917 and other statutes to find a way to prosecute assange and extradite him to the u.s. >> assange: it's completely outrageous. >> kroft: are you surprised? >> assange: i am surprised, actually. >> kroft: but you were screwing with the forces of nature. you have made some of the most powerful people in the world your enemies. you had to expect that they might retaliate. >> assange: oh, no, i fully expected they'll retaliate, but... >> kroft: you took... you gathered, you... you stored all sorts of classified cables and documents, and then released them to the world on the internet. they see that as a threat. and they want to... >> assange: they see it as highly embarrassing. i think what it's really about is keeping the illusion of control. i'm not surprised about that.

i am surprised at how the... the sort of flagrant disregard for u.s. traditions. that is what i'm surprised about. >> kroft: you're shocked? someone in the australian government said that, "look, if you... if you play outside the rules, you can't expect to be protected by the rules." and you played outside the rules. you've played outside the united states' rules. >> assange: no. we've actually played inside the rules. we didn't go out to get... get the material. we operated just like any u.s. publisher operates. we didn't play outside the rules, we played inside the rules. >> kroft: there's a special set of rules in the united states for disclosing classified information. there is longstanding... >> assange: there's... there's a special set of rules for soldiers, for members of the state department who are disclosing classified information. there's not a special set of rules for publishers to disclose

classified information. there is the first amendment. it covers the case. and there's been no precedent that i'm aware of in the past 50 years of prosecuting a publisher for espionage. it is... it is just not done. those are the rules. you do not do it. >> kroft: no one has accused assange of stealing secrets. the apache video and the classified documents were allegedly provided to wikileaks by private first class bradley manning, a low-level intelligence analyst in iraq who is accused of copying them from a classified government network that a half a million people have access to. manning is now in solitary confinement at a military prison in virginia, facing charges that could put him away for 50 years. you've called him as a prisoner of a conscience, correct? >> assange: i've said that, if the allegations against him are true, then he is the foremost prisoner of conscience in the united states.

there's no allegation it was done for money. there's no allegation it's done for any other reasons than a political reason. now, i'm sorry if people in the united states don't want to believe that they are keeping a political prisoner. but in bradley manning's case, the allegations are that he engaged in an illegal activity for political motivations. >> kroft: people in the united states think he's a traitor. >> assange: that's clearly not true. >> kroft: regardless of what happens to private manning, any prosecution of assange will be fraught with problems, because wikileaks wasn't alone in the publishing the classified material. the "new york times" also published some of it. if the government were to try and prosecute wikileaks and not the "times," it would likely need to prove that assange was actively involved in a conspiracy to illegally obtain the documents. did you encourage anyone to leak this material to you? or have you done anything in connection with the u.s. cases in terms of encouraging an

individual to provide you with material? >> assange: no, never. >> kroft: there are people that believe that it has everything to do with the next threat. that if they don't come after you now, that what they have done is essentially endorsed small, powerful organization with access to very powerful information releasing it outside their control. and if they let you get away it, then they are encouraging... >> assange: then what? they will have to have freedom of the press? >> kroft: then, they will encour.... that... that it's encouragement to you... >> assange: and? and? >> kroft: ...or to some other organization. >> assange: and to every other publisher. absolutely correct. it will be encouragement to every other publisher to publish fearlessly. that's what it will encourage. >> kroft: to publish information much more... much more dangerous than this information. >> assange: if we're talking about creating threats to small publishers to stop them publishing, the u.s. has lost its way. it has abrogated its founding traditions.

it has thrown the first amendment in the bin. because publishers must be free to publish. >> kroft: when we come back, julian assange talks about his background, his political beliefs, and some of the things he says are stored in the wikileaks computer, including potentially damaging information about american banks. >> >> mitchell: and good evening. oil prices could surge higher as protests against the government continue in egypt. oil futures jumped more than 4% on friday. alpha natural resources is paying $7 billion for massey energy, the fourth largest coal produceer. and the wrights won the weekend box office. i'm russ mitchell, cbs news. bin,

>> kroft: julian assange is not your average journalist or publisher, and some have argued that he is not really a journalist at all. he is an anti-establishment ideologue with conspiratorial views. he believes large government institutions use secrecy to suppress the truth, and he distrusts the mainstream media for playing along. some people have called him an anarchist, which he denies. assange prefers to be called a libertarian, and believes that the only people who can adequately police the system are those on the inside who are in a position to notice the abuse and blow the whistle. while most reporters pride themselves in gathering information and interpreting it for a larger audience, the wikileaks model is different-- it prefers to take raw data, make it available, and let others decide the meaning. regardless of whether you agree with this idea or not, it beats close to the heart of the internet and a younger generation, and it runs through

the life of julian assange. you obviously have a mistrust of authority. where does that come from? >> assange: i think it comes from experience with various types of authorities. >> kroft: assange gave us an example from his childhood, a story about him and his mother, christine, who was present at one of his recent court hearings. she was a political activist who helped scientists gather information about nuclear tests conducted by the british in the australian outback. he remembers them being stopped late one night and questioned by authorities, one of whom said: >> assange: "look, lady, around 2:00 in the morning with this child-- it could be suggested that you're an unfit mother. i suggest you stay out of politics." and which she did for the next ten years, in order to make sure nothing happened to me. so that's a very early abuse of power and the secrecy that i saw in my life. >> kroft: his was an unconventional and sometimes

tumultuous childhood, in which he was frequently uprooted and moved around the countryside. he attended 37 different schools. so you've always been a little bit of an outsider? >> assange: i've certainly... when i was a child, going from one school to another, you are the outsider to begin with and you have to find your way in. but in most of the places where i... where i stayed long enough, i did find my way in. >> kroft: one of the first places assange found his way into was populated by teenagers and computers. and he knew how to program them before most people had them. you got involved with computers pretty early, with hacking? >> assange: well, i first became involved with computers when i was 13 or so, and i was unusually adept. and i saw a sort of intellectual opportunity... understanding how to program, understanding how these complex machines work. and that was part of a social culture in cracking codes to

prove that you could do it. it is very, actually, normal and... and healthy amongst young men. you see it in skateboarders, competing to show that they are capable in learning the best tricks. >> kroft: and your tricks were like breaking into computers at the department of defense and los alamos national laboratory, nasa and nortel, some canadian banks. >> assange: yeah, all that... all that happened. >> kroft: at age 20, assange was arrested by the australian federal police and eventually pled guilty to multiple counts of computer hacking. he managed to get off with no jail time, because the judge concluded assange hadn't stolen any information or done any damage. is that still one of your skills? >> assange: not really. unfortunately, i've been sort of, you know, promoted up into management, so i don't get to do... don't get to do that so much. but i know the terrain, which means i know what is possible.

for example, bill gates could program-- but he certainly doesn't program anymore-- but he knows what is possible for other people to do. >> kroft: except that assange is not bill gates and wikileaks is not microsoft. the shoestring operation that created all the havoc has no permanent offices and is headquartered wherever assange happens to be. wikileaks is a small non-profit organization with a handful of employees, a secret cadre of international programmers, and a legion of worldwide volunteers. its finances are administered by the wau holland foundation based in berlin and named after a famous hacker. according to the ledgers, wikileaks took in $1.3 million last year in donations, with expenses of about $500,000. for somebody who abhors secrets, you run a pretty secret organization. >> assange: that's not true. what we want is transparent government, not transparent people.

we are an organization who, one of our primary goals is to keep certain things secret-- to keep the identity of our sources secret. so secrecy is an inherent part of our operation. >> kroft: the state department would make the same argument. they have... doing very sensitive work that they're trying to make peace and negotiate situations around the world very delicately. it's very important that they do this in secrecy. what's the difference? >> assange: we don't say that the state department should have no secrets. that's not what we're saying. rather we say that if there are people in the state department who say that there is some abuse going on, and there's not a proper mechanism for internal accountability and external accountability, they must have a conduit to get that out to the public. and we are the conduit. >> kroft: given all the attention that assange has received, we were curious about how he thought he was being perceived in the united states. he told us that he hasn't had the time to give it much thought. do you want me to give you my

characterization of what i think people think? >> assange: sure. >> kroft: mysterious. little... little weird. a cult-like figure. little paranoid. >> assange: well, you're... you're repeating all the... the ad hominem attacks by our critics. my role, when i do something like speak about that we have discovered the deaths of 109,000 individual people in iraq, 15,000 civilian casualties never before reported anywhere-- that's a very serious role. that is not a role where i can engage in humor, so i'm not used to performing under the spotlight, and i am learning this as... as time's going by. >> kroft: you have shown a fair amount of contempt for the mainstream press over the years. why did you decide to-- as you

used the word-- "partner" with them in some of these most recent releases? >> assange: we're a small organization. we're in a position, say, with cablegate, where we have 3,000 volumes of material that are very important to get out to the public in a responsible manner that have the potential for great change-- for example, this recent revolution in tunisia. it is logistically impossible, so instead, our organization delegates its excess source material to other journalists who will have more impact, who will do a better job. >> kroft: there is an element of the press-- most of the mainstream press-- nobody wants to see you prosecuted, because it could affect the way that they do their business. but there's also a feeling within the community that you're not one of them, that you play a different game.

>> assange: we do play a different game. and i hope we're a new way. >> kroft: the point that they're making, i think, is that you're not... you're a publisher, but you're also an activist. >> assange: wait, whoa. we're a particular type of activist. in the u.s. context, there seems to be "communist activists" or something, so it's a... >> kroft: right, "agitator." >> assange: it's a... it's a dirty word in the u.s. >> kroft: it's a dirty word. and people think that what you're trying to do is to sabotage the workings of government. >> assange: no. we're not that type of activists. we are free press activists. it's not about saving the whales. it's about giving people the information they need to support whaling or not support whaling. why? that is the raw ingredients that is needed to make a just and civil society. and without that, you're just sailing in the dark. >> kroft: there have been clear signs that assange, under the

threat of possible indictment by the justice department, has moderated some of his views. before releasing the last two batches of classified documents, assange and his lawyers contacted both the pentagon and the state department, offering to explore ways to minimize potential harm. in both cases, their offer was rebuffed. assange acknowledged that his fundraising has been hurt by the decision of paypal, mastercard, visa and bank of america to cease handling donations. but he dismissed reports that wikileaks is wracked by internal dissention and mass defections. >> assange: we're talking about daniel domscheit-berg, who was a german spokesman, had a limited role in the organization. we had to suspend him some five months ago. >> kroft: describes you as being authoritarian, secretive, punitive. >> assange: i'm the boss that suspended him, that's correct. >> kroft: you don't care to elaborate? >> assange: i think i just did. >> kroft: you said you have this

package of very damaging documents, sort of a poison pill, that's going to be released if anything bad happens to you. >> assange: no, that's not... that's not at all true. that's... that's some kind of media hype. what we do have is a system whereby we distribute encrypted backups of things we have yet to publish. there are backups distributed amongst many, many people-- 100,000 people-- and that all we need to do is give them an encrypted key and they will be able to continue on. >> kroft: this wasn't intended to be a blackmail threat. >> assange: not at all. >> kroft: what would trigger that encryption code being released? >> assange: anything that prevented us from our ability to publish-- so, not just for a second, but preventing us significantly from being able to publish. >> kroft: your imprisonment, for example.

>> assange: if a number of people were imprisoned or assassinated, then we would be... we would feel that we could not go on, and other people would have to take over our work, and we would release those keys. >> kroft: one bank-- bank of america-- had its stock go down 3% to 5% based on a rumor-- maybe it's a rumor, maybe you know more about it-- that you had the contents of a five- gigabyte hard drive belonging to one of its executives. do you have a five-gigabyte hard drive? >> assange: i won't make any comment in relation to that upcoming publication. >> kroft: you're certainly not denying it. >> assange: you know, there'll be a process of elimination if we denied some and admitted others. >> kroft: so, it might not be bank of america, and you're just going to let them squirm until you get ready to... >> assange: i think it's great. we have all these banks squirming, thinking maybe it's them. >> kroft: you seem to enjoy stirring things up.

>> assange: when you see abusive organizations suffer the consequences as a result of their abuse, and you see victims elevated, it's... yes, that's a very pleasurable activity to be involved in. >> kroft: i mean, you see yourself as a check on the power of the united states and other big countries in the world. and in the process of doing that, you have now become powerful yourself. who is the check on you? >> assange: it is our sources who choose to provide us with information or not, depending on how they see our actions. it is our donors who choose to give us money or not. this organization cannot survive for even a few months without the ongoing support of the public. i can't believe i used to swing over those rocks...

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>> simon: we name fancy cars and sports teams after them, but precious few people have ever seen a jaguar in the wild. they don't live in the united states anymore, and can only be found in the sweltering jungles and wetlands of central and south america. but just try to find one. they hunt by night and sleep by day, comfortably concealed in thick, dark brush. it's because of their elusive nature, their power, and their beauty that jaguars have long been worshipped by tribes as demigods whose real home is a spiritual world which man cannot even fathom. but whichever world they

frequent, they only emerge, briefly, during the dry season when they go down to rivers to drink. so when it got dry in september, and alan rabinowitz, the world's foremost authority on jaguars, invited us to go with him to some far-flung wetlands in brazil near the bolivian border, we picked up the phone and booked our flights. we headed towards an unspoiled, remote area called the pantanal, where the temperature rarely dipped below 115 degrees. we had to cross more than 125 rustic wooden bridges over dried up ponds and lakes, home to piranhas and caymans, cousins to the crocodile. it was good to be in a car. we started our search for jaguars on the cuiaba river with alan rabinowitz, the ceo of panthera, a new conservation group. he told us that jaguars are very fast and have been known to kill people.

it was good to be in a boat. rabinowitz has been studying the cats' migration routes and habitats in the jungle for 30 years. but he has gone months without seeing a single one. his advice to us-- get lucky. >> alan rabinowitz: it takes hours and hours of doing this, because even when they're out there, it's... it's almost needle in a haystack. even though this is the densest, highest concentration of jaguars matching any place on earth, there's still a limited number of jaguars here. >> simon: but luck was a lady that day. it wasn't long before we caught our first glimpse-- and it was just a glimpse-- of a young jaguar, sitting on the river bank behind that fallen tree. if you can't see him clearly, well, neither could we. but rabinowitz... >> rabinowitz: its head is right there. amazing. see it? you got it, it's beautiful. see it? isn't that something?

this gives you the real gut feel of the secretive nature of this animal. there's no sign of defeat in its face. >> simon: at dawn the next day, we went looking for jaguars again. one of our spotters tried to tempt the cats out of the jungle, but his simulated mating call... ( cooing sound ) >> simon: ...just didn't do it. but it might have appealed to anacondas. this fellow is medium sized, according to the spotters. nine feet long. then, we went up a small river that looked like an aquatic garden of eden. no jaguars here, either, but an extraordinary assembly of birds... and others. we saw a family of very rare

giant river otters, basking in the sun after a morning of fishing and swimming. we saw the world's largest rodents-- unflappable hundred- pound capybaras, a favorite dish of jaguars. jaguars like caiman, as well. this caiman was having lunch. this one had been somebody else's lunch, probably a jaguar's. >> steve winter: small. it's a young jaguar. >> simon: photographer steve winter has been a jaguar groupie for years, and was helping us look for the cats. he has shot what could be the finest jaguar portraits ever taken. they weren't easy to come by. >> winter: i spent the first three months in the jungle and got a big fat zero. >> simon: really? >> winter: no cats. no. >> simon: three months? >> winter: right. >> simon: how'd you feel about that? >> winter: i felt like my career was over. ( laughter ) >> simon: we were beginning to feel the same way, so we headed out again at night.

our spotters told us they could see the reflection of their lights in the eyes of a jaguar 100 yards away. we were skeptical. we were wrong. >> rabinowitz: that's like 80 to 85 kilos. that's a relatively small jaguar in this area. look at her. god, she's beautiful. oh, man, and then she looks right at you. >> simon: it's one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen. >> rabinowitz: yeah, this was a great sighting. >> simon: but the best was yet to come. a few minutes later, we happened to be there as a jaguar swam from one side of the river to the other. it was a once-in-a-lifetime shot in the dark. >> rabinowitz: this is a rare sight. i've never caught them in the water. i've never gotten them in the water before.

that was a young one. >> simon: dr. alan rabinowitz-- zoologist, scholar, scientist-- was as excited as a kid at the zoo. perhaps more excited. >> rabinowitz: that was spectacular. i've never seen that before. what luck. what unbelievable luck-- just as it's swimming across. there was no fear there. there was just pure curiosity, like, "what are you guys bothering me about?" ( laughs ) >> simon: maybe we had bothered her, because she disappeared. but then, it seems, she got curious again. >> rabinowitz: look at that. it's just sitting up there on the mound. that's phenomenal. >> simon: she looked a little sleepy or confused. but there she was, the diva, perfectly lit, taking her curtain call. it was hard to imagine that this lovely starlet was really a ferocious predator, who sinks her fangs into the skull of her prey, killing it instantly. we were beginning to understand why jaguars were viewed as other worldly beings by the tribes

that used to live here. because he is a creature of the night, his real home is said to be the underworld, which he dominates, just as he dominates the jungle. killing a jaguar is believed by some tribes as being equivalent to killing an ancestor, and is said to condemn the killer to eternal damnation. that myth has helped the jaguar survive. and in the strangest way, jaguars helped alan rabinowitz survive. it all began with a debilitating condition he suffered through, even before he knew what a jaguar was. >> rabinowitz: when i was a young child, i couldn't speak. i had a severe, severe stutter. >> simon: you literally couldn't talk? >> rabinowitz: i could talk, but i had severe blocks. my whole body would spasm. my... my mouth would close shut. and back then, unlike now, they thought it was completely psychological. now, we know it's more genetic.

so they... they would put me in special classes. they would put me in what all the kids called "the retarded classes." and i just stopped trying. i stopped even trying to speak to the human world. what i could do... stutterers can sing without stuttering, and i couldn't sing very well. and stutterers can speak to animals. and every day, i'd come home from school and i'd go into my closet, because i loved being in the dark. and i'd speak to my green turtles or chameleons or lizards or garter snakes. if i was having a particularly bad week at school, which often happened, my father would take me to the bronx zoo. >> simon: and that's where his fascination, his obsession, began-- in the bronx zoo. >> rabinowitz: one pitiful, lone jaguar sat in the great cat house. it was big, it was... it was powerful. and i was... and it was all alone. and i was so incredibly attracted to that one lone jaguar. i would make my father stay back, and i would lean over

towards the bars and i would start talking... >> simon: you talked... >> rabinowitz: ...to the jaguar. >> simon: ...to the jaguar? >> rabinowitz: i did talk to the jaguar. >> simon: do you remember what you said? >> rabinowitz: i would say how people are stupid, how they don't understand me-- clearly, the same way they don't understand you. how they're locking you up in this cage the... the way i'm locked up in my own head. those are the things i would... i would talk about to the jaguar. i made a promise over and over again that if i ever got my voice back, that somehow i would help that animal. help that jaguar, help these animals like him. >> simon: alan rabinowitz has kept his promise. devotion to jaguars became his religion. before he got married, he lived alone in the jungle, just to be close to jaguars, doing then what he does now-- learning more about them every day, following them by tracking their droppings, setting up traps like this one so that he can attach radio collars to their necks. one night, alan and his team snared this young lady and put

her to sleep for a while. this is the same cat we saw swimming this afternoon, is it? >> rabinowitz: it's likely. it looks as if it probably is. >> simon: the team monitored the jaguar's vital signs, took a blood sample, and put a gps unit around her neck. >> rabinowitz: it's through the data of a few animals like this that we're able to be saving this whole species. >> simon: and here's a jaguar we saw from the sky. the data rabinowitz has collected showed him that jaguars instinctively travel great distances, sometimes hundreds of miles. trouble is, they can't any more. cattle ranches now interrupt their old roaming routes. and ranchers kill jaguars, because jaguars eat their cattle. that's where billionaire tom kaplan, the co-founder of panthera, the outfit trying to save jaguars, comes in. he's buying up ranches and

telling the ranchers-- his employees now-- to lay off the jaguars. to make sure they understand that there's been a change of ownership, he's introduced a new branding iron-- the paw print of a jaguar. he's also winning them over the old fashioned way-- improving their lives, building schools and clinics. >> tom kaplan: there is no better way to stop poaching than to make the local community say, "hey, wait a minute, our children have medicine and education because of the jaguar." when you show that, you've won their hearts and you've won their minds, and then you've won the war. >> simon: alan rabinowitz wants the jaguars to be able to roam freely again, so he's working with governments, as well as ranchers, to protect what he calls jaguar corridors. they connect the different isolated areas where the cats are still thriving. he gets to these areas sometimes, and sometimes he gets

too close. now, how far away are you from him? >> rabinowitz: i would say about 20 feet. >> simon: 20 feet? >> rabinowitz: yeah. >> simon: and he is standing, sitting, lying? >> rabinowitz: he was standing. then, probably within a few seconds, i realized this is dangerous. and i fell. of course, you know, what... what more could happen? so i fell backwards, thinking, "okay, if you want to kill me, now... now's the time. i'm on my back." and the jaguar just stood up and started walking off into the jungle, not very far away. but this is what i'll never forget-- it turned back to me, it gave a low growl. it wasn't a... it wasn't an aggressive growl. it just gave kind of a low, growling sound, and it looked at me. and i looked at it. and i could look in its eyes not... now with no fear. and i said to it, i said out loud, "we're okay now. we're going to be okay." >> simon: alan rabinowitz can only hope he'll be okay.

he conquered his stutter, but now he's fighting leukemia, and doesn't know how much longer he'll be able to stay in the jungle. but before we left, he told us he was happy that, after his 30 years of devotion, we'd be introducing so many of his friends on "60 minutes." >> welcome to the cbs sports update presented by viagra. here at the farmers insurance open at torrey pines outside of san diego, bubba watson birdied the 72nd hole to shoot 67 and to win by one over phil mickelson. watson's second career victory. and earlier today, novak djokovic won his second australian open title, defeating andy murray in straight sets. for more sports news and scores, log on to cbs sports.com. this is jim nantz reporting. about the world. and yourself.

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