Resources

One story uncovered in previously unreported detail the extraordinary drug smuggling ring assisted by the Venezuelan military and government and how drugs physically move from Colombia's production factories, to Venezuela's secret runways, and then in a series of tiny US-purchased planes to the Central American countries of Honduras and Guatemala. The report featured defectors speaking of their role in the trafficking, previously unseen maps of the traffic, data about the massive rise of the trafficking during the collapse of the Maduro government, and images of discarded Cessna aircraft littering the Honduran coast. Venezuela has one of the world's largest oil reserves, but the collapse of the industry, a crumbling economy and crippling US sanctions has set the country's sights on a different precious resource: gold. While the people of Venezuela continue to struggle, a select few are lining their pockets: Nicolas Maduro and his network of cronies. CNN’s Isa Soares got exclusive access to illicit mines deep in the jungle following the crooked gold route all the way back to Caracas and then the world, allowing Maduro to remain in power.

The last week of September was momentous by any standard. News of a whistleblower complaint against President Trump was confirmed. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the decision to open an impeachment inquiry, the White House declassified and released the transcript of the President’s call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. Even as the whistleblower complaint was being released, the President was sitting down for a bilateral meeting with Mr. Zelensky in New York during the United Nations General Assembly. At 60 MINUTES we covered every event and added some exclusive reporting and interviews of our own that made sense of this historic week.

One year after the murder of columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a two-hour FRONTLINE documentary investigates the rise and rule of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. Correspondent Martin Smith, who has covered the Middle East for FRONTLINE for 20 years, examines the crown prince’s vision for the future, his handling of dissent, his relationship with the United States — and his ties to Khashoggi’s killing. With unique access to key players within the Saudi elite, including two exclusive meetings with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Smith was able to get the crown prince to comment on his role in the Khashoggi murder for the first time.

The searing story of President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody campaign against drug dealers and addicts in the Philippines, told with unprecedented and intimate access to both sides of the war — the Manila police and an ordinary family from the slum. No reporting or camera team had ever been granted this kind of access to the Philippine National Police. Directors James Jones and Olivier Sarbil managed to negotiate unrestricted filming with one of the most notorious and deadly police forces in Duterte’s bloody war against drugs.

FRONTLINE’s hour-long documentary Flint’s Deadly Water is the most comprehensive investigation ever done into one of the largest Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks in U.S. history, which happened in the shadow of Flint’s lead poisoning crisis in 2014-15. The film exposes the decisions that led to the outbreak, the public officials who allowed it to continue — and their efforts to obstruct legal and scientific investigations once it subsided. Most significantly, the film examines Michigan’s official death toll for the outbreak. Its groundbreaking original reporting — a combination of cutting-edge statistical analysis and old-fashioned public records research — found that the actual number of deaths was likely many times higher than the state’s official count of 12.

Mariam Abdullah spent most of the last two years of her life in isolation in an Arizona prison. She was sent to Perryville Prison when she was 16, and spent months in solitary confinement for disciplinary reasons and was sent to suicide watch, where she was again isolated when officers felt she might harm herself. The story of a young immigrant who suffered and died in prison, reported by Type Investigations, HuffPost and CBS News, is a compelling case study of the shortcomings of our prison system and the ways in which it cares for the young and mentally ill.

In 2016 and 2017, twenty-five Americans, including CIA agents, who worked in the U.S. embassy in Cuba suffered serious brain injuries causing impaired vision and memory loss (among other persistent symptoms). 60 Minutes learned that at least fifteen American officials working at U.S. embassies in China also suffered unexplained brain trauma soon after. At the time, the FBI was actively investigating whether these Americans were attacked by a mysterious weapon that leaves no trace. Over a ten-month investigation, 60 Minutes collected evidence of what appears to be a hostile foreign government’s plan to target Americans serving abroad and their families.

The Swedish Catholic Church is now being drawn into the international scandal, with priests suspected of abusing children. In October, SVT News could reveal that two of the priests accused in the United States continued to work in Sweden in the early 2000s - and were charged with abuse here too, this time against adult parishioners. The priests were then sent from Sweden to parishes in other countries without the police being notified.

Reveal’s Caregivers and Takers investigation uncovered widespread exploitation of caregivers in senior board-and-care homes across the United States. Many of these caregivers are immigrants who earn about $2 an hour to work around the clock with no days off, while operators rake in millions. Reveal found that care home operators across the nation broke minimum wage, overtime or record-keeping laws in at least 1,400 cases over the last decade.

This investigation from the Center for Investigative Reporting/Reveal and PBS NewsHour exposed for the first time the true toll of Amazon’s relentless drive for speed, using never-before-public injury records from the company’s warehouses, deep sourcing from current and former Amazon workers, secret records made by a government whistleblower and recordings of 911 calls from an Amazon warehouse.