Could always unpack the most difficult story. My favorite stories are government stories, where you say youre not going to believe this is going on. Its been going on for a long time, and nothing has ever been done about it. Ready is everybody rolling . Set we have speed . Go on the eve of our 52nd season, 60 minutes salutes one of the best to ever tell a story on sunday night, steve kroft. The good news is, were not cops. Well, i didnt think so. laughs the bad news is, is were 60 minutes. ticking i can. The two words whispered at the start of every race. Every new job. And attempt to parallel park. newborn cries it is humanitys official twoword war cry. The same two words that Capital Group believes have the power to improve lives. And that, for over 85 years, have inspired us to help people achieve their financial goals. Talk to your advisor or consultant for investment risks and information. 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Without his eye for the outrageous, without his willingness to unpack the complicated stories most reporters would tell you are impossible to tell on television. Most of all, without his elegant, spare writing that serves the story without ever calling attention to itself. As kroft and everyone here just calls him kroft says, its always about the story. Kroft whats the headline here . You ever seen anything like this before . Everybody in town is talking about it, why . Why . Why didnt anybody anticipate that . So you had two wives. Really . Was it dangerous . Were you angry . Did you enjoy this . Whats going on . Stahl we had some questions of our own when we talked with the 74yearold newlyretired correspondent at his waterfront home on long islands peconic bay. 60 minutes. Kroft mmhmm. Stahl people do not walk away from this, steve. And theres a lot of people want to know why. I want to know. I tried to talk you out of it. Kroft right. Stahl im surprised. How can you walk away from this . Kroft ive always felt like, i had great amount of respect for people who whove left their professions when they were on top. And, i felt that that this was the time for me to to go. That there were other things that i wanted to do, that i still had the energy to do it, and i still had the interest in doing it. Stahl 30 years ago, when kroft joined 60 minutes, giants roamed the halls. Hold it a minute, god dammit stahl mike wallace and morley safer. Ed bradley and harry reasoner. Kroft the best that can be expected is. Stahl kroft was a veteran of the cbs London Bureau and the newsmagazine west 57th, but 60 minutes was a whole new league. Was the red carpet out for you . Did you have a tough time in the beginning . Kroft well, i think everybody who comes to that show as a correspondent has a tough time at the beginning. Its very intimidating, and stahl but didnt you once say that there that there was a hazing period for you . Kroft it was more a period where i was like a junior partner in a law firm. Stahl ah, there you go. Kroft thats the way it felt. You know, if you were fighting over a story, there wasnt any question stahl forget it, yeah. Kroft who was going to get it. I was not going to get it. Stahl right. Thats kind of hazing. We go we all go through that. Kroft yeah, yeah. It wasnt like a level playing field. Hold it, hold it. Kroft there was seniority involved. And the place was very competitive, you know, and i never quite felt like i made it. In part, because in some ways, if i did really a good story, it just created more antagonism, particularly for mike. laughs ah, come on keep going stahl yeah, he would be jealous. Kroft he would be jealous. What the dickens are you insecure about . I really dont understand. Kroft and then hed try to steal the producer. laughs stahl the producer but what about didnt dan rather sort of give you a warning . Kroft he said its like a jungle, and theres a lot of big cats over there. And they can just, with one swipe of the hand, youll be limping for, like, a year. laughs stahl welcome to 60 minutes. Kroft welcome to 60 minutes. And he was pretty much right. laughs he was pretty much right. Stahl very early on, you were doing stories that are iconic stories for 60 minutes, that people want to see again and again. Kroft right. Stahl like chernobyl. Wasnt that your very first season . Kroft yes. Stahl and you just walked into radioactive city. laughs i remember watching that and thinking, is that guy crazy . russian music kroft the only sign of life is the music, piped in continuously to keep the decontamination crews that have to be here from going crazy. Its hard to imagine a Nuclear Accident worse than this one, right . Its hard to imagine. In some hot spots, we found radiation levels 100 times normal. Stahl were you ever nervous about that, or. . Kroft i wasnt nervous, because we had done a lot of research. Stahl people dont appreciate how Much Research goes into our stories. Kroft oh, yeah. Stahl not just on whether were going to be in danger or not, but kroft thats what makes them so good. Youre sure of the mileage . Stahl before he was a familiar face on sunday night, kroft went undercover in houston to explore the classic scam of rolling back the odometers on used cars. Aww, well make a deal. Stahl he met bill whitlow, who was a master of the art. Kroft he was a crazy texas character. And everybody in the used car business brought them to bill, and bill would roll back the odometers. This is not exactly legal, right . Its not exactly legal, no. laughs kroft he laid out his whole scam for us. I want to show you one thing. All right. Kroft and when it was all over, i thought we needed to give him a heads up. Kroft see that picture . Theres a tv camera back there. Yeah. Kroft weve been taping this whole thing. Well, all right. Stahl and then, one of the great lines theres the good news and the bad news. Kroft right. laughter the good news is, were not cops. Well, i didnt think so. laughs kroft the bad news is, is were 60 minutes. Stahl a few years later, a 60 minutes team talked with bill whitlow in federal prison. He was no longer unperturbed. I think you can scrape the bottom of hell with a fine tooth comb and never come up with a man like steve kroft. Stahl kroft keeps a needlepoint pillow with whitlows words on his couch. As a badge of honor kroft as a badge of honor. My occupation has been crook most of my life. Stahl you know, youve interviewed a lot of grifters and scammers. Kroft con men, yeah. Stahl yeah, con men. Kroft you made your living ripping off little old ladies . Little old ladies and men, both, i wasnt sexist that way. Kroft how much money did you steal from medicare . About 20 million. Kroft 20 million . Yes. Kroft was it easy . Real easy. Stahl what category of person do you most like to talk about, interview, write about . Kroft one of my favorite interviews was john martarano, who was a hitman for whitey bulger, who killed Something Like 26 people. A lot of people would say youre a serial killer. I might be a vigilante, but not a serial killer. Stahl why was that your favorite . K really interesting, and he came to play. These are the rooms you dont want to go in. Kroft you could engage with him and he would talk to you. Thats the trap door for the cellar. Kroft anybody go down there and never come up . I think so, yeah. Kroft he was very honest about how he got in the business and he just kind of considered it a job. Okay, everybody settle. We have tape rolling. Steve, whenever youre settled. Kroft okay. Stahl krofts bestknown interview, and perhaps most historically important, came on super bowl sunday, 1992, when the thengovernor of arkansas, bill clinton, and his wife hillary, tried to save his president ial campaign from a tabloid sex scandal. Kroft governor, who is Gennifer Flowers . Well, i. Stahl they wanted to go somewhere that had a good reputation and answer the questions. Kroft right, one time. They wanted to answer the questions once. Stahl one time. Kroft so there was a lot of pressure to keep asking the questions. I want to go back and ask you the question again. Who is Gennifer Flowers . I met her. Kroft and they wanted hillary to be part of it. Stahl well, she came on to defend him. Kroft she did. You know, im not sitting here as some little woman standing by my man, like tammy wynette. Im sitting here because i love him. Stahl it is said that this interview saved his president ial campaign. But it also almost killed them. Kroft oh, right, with the light falling down . Stahl yeah. Can you walk us through what youre seeing . Kroft a wallmounted lamp, a highpowered a television lamp, like stahl one of these things . Kroft right. It just sprung off the wall. Jesus, mary and joseph wooowooowoo. Kroft it sounded like an explosion. I didnt know what had happened. Stahl well, she jumped. And it really did come close to her. Do you remember what she said . Kroft jesus, mary and joseph. Jesus, mary and joseph wooowooowoo. Stahl not what i would have said. Kroft not what i would have said, either. laughs stahl so youve covered politicians, celebrities, athletes, eccentrics. Kroft con men, mobsters. Stahl were you ever scared . Kroft no. Because, first of all, youre in a room, like we are right now, where you have lots of people here. Stahl protection. Kroft because you stahl you have laughs your producers protecting you. Kroft right. So i was never really worried that i was going to come under any physical threats. explosion but i was nervous the whole time i was in beirut. And i spent a lot of time in beirut. But instead of protecting him i was nervous the whole time i was in zimbabwe where we had done a really tough interview with robert mugabe. Would you be happy to see all the white people leave zimbabwe . No. Ive said so out of anger. Kroft and then we were followed by the secret police. And there was a group of marauders that came over, and i was pretty nervous. Stahl yeah. The craziness of kroft the craziness. Stahl all of this. Kroft it was fun. You know, it was a huge adrenaline rush. As churchill said, the most exhilarating moment in life is to be shot at without result, and its true. laughs hey stahl kroft insists that covering politics is never exhilarating for him. You guys are too fired up stahl so its ironic that his most frequent interviewee was a politician. Kroft you think the country is ready for a black president . Yes. Stahl for ten years, beginning in 2007, from the campaign trail to the oval office. Steve stahl . He covered barack obama. Good to see you, sir. Stahl i think you interviewed him 16 times. Kroft uhhuh. Its a lot. Stahl did you have a relationship . Kroft the only thing we had was a reportersubject relationship. Have there been moments when you said, what did i get myself into . laughs kroft i think he knew that we were not going to burn him, that we were going to ask tough questions. Kroft afghanistan . The health care bill. The unemployment problem. This is a tough business. I just want to say that. Kroft but we were going to let him answer them. Stahl and you ran them. Kroft well, we edited them down, but we were really careful to be able to distill what he was saying. And i think he appreciated that, and was comfortable with it. What else you got . laughter kroft everybody would come up to me in the white house and ul ththe on time, in thentervis, when you see the guy we see every day. And in all the interviews we did with him, i never once saw him lean on an aide or ask for a clarification or, am i saying this right . Or anything. Because he understood the issues. I dont think ive ever interviewed a politician quite like that. You interview lots of people in congress some of them cant answer anything without four aides in the room, you know, stopping them saying, well, thats not exactly right, and, you know. Stahl did you ever feel that you should have pushed harder . Kroft i dont think it was a matter of pushing hard. I think that that criticism came from the fact that i didnt get angry with him. And at the time that i came up and started doing interviews with the president , there was a long track record of how people did interviews with the president. Stahl you showed the office respect. Kroft yes, you showed the office respect. Steve, asked and answered. Lets move on. Kroft okay. Stahl oldschool standards come naturally to him. You grew up in kokomo, indiana. Kroft kokomo, indiana. Stahl what do you think you brought from kokomo that perhaps makes your sensibility different from your east west coast colleagues . Kroft well, i think that, i still think of the midwest as being the heartland of the country. Different values. Very religious, for the most part. Or, more religious than stahl east west coast. Kroft than the east west coast. And a lot of the people that i know in new york who have been very successful came from the midwest. And i thought, you know, they send kids off to fight wars. Stahl including kroft. He graduated from syracuse university, with an eye on madison avenue. Kroft then i got drafted, and then i ended up in vietnam. And i decided i didnt want to be in advertising anymore. I wanted to be in journalism. Stahl because when you were in the service, you were writing for stars and stripes . Kroft i was a correspondent photographer for stars and stripes, which was the highest journalism job in the army, and a great job. Stahl and you got to meet a lot of the Network Correspondents then. Kroft yeah, i knew immediately that thats what i wanted to do. Thats when i wanted to be, a foreign correspondent. Stahl when we come back, a look at some of the superstars, odd balls and politically powerful kroft met over 30 years at 60 minutes, and a look at his talent to unsnarl the most tangled financial stories of the great recession. ticking cbs money watch sponsored by capital one. Whats in your wall . Et. Quijano good evening, stocks could reclaim their alltime highs this week after the fed talked up the economy friday. Investors get a read on inflation and august retail sales. And apple wednesday is expected to show off its newest iphone 11, three of them. Ill elaine quijano, cbs news. 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The most serious side effects are angioedema, low blood pressure, kidney problems, or high blood potassium. Ask your doctor about entresto, for Heart Failure. Where to next . Entrust your heart to entresto. Stahl one striking part of steve krofts 30 years of 60 minutes was his range. He set out to be a foreign correspondent, but overseas reporting accounted for only a fraction of his 500 stories. There was almost no category he couldnt or wouldnt handle. He dug into medicine and sports; finance and entertainment; authors and autocrats. If the story was good, he was up for telling it. Go stahl sometimes, way, way up. Other times, way, way down. Or hed venture into a mine field. Ive got this adrenaline thats going through me, and i am thinking to myself, is it this time . Kroft i hope its not this time. No well, no go ahead and throw your punch. Stahl kroft searched out eccentrics. Kroft oh, i would love to comment on some of that. Oh, its unbelievable. Stahl and spoke with the most chilling. Kroft do you consider yourself a serial killer . Stahl . And the most quirky. The silence is so wonderful. Stahl . Among them, americas last lord of the manor. Kroft can you hear me now . I was in politics, so i can bellow. Stahl and the leatherclad First Citizen of interior design. Would you think youre talking to a bright architect, looking at a guy