The Story Behind The Story: Charles Robert Jenkins on "60 Minutes"

Here, readers, is the story behind yesterday's "60 Minutes" piece on Charles Robert Jenkins, an army deserter who was imprisoned in North Korea for nearly 40 years. Most "60 Minutes" stories take days, weeks, or months to put together, but the Jenkins story took years of legwork to complete. It began when one of the primary producers, working for another network, was almost derailed by a hurricane and a typhoon, and looked for a long time like it wasn't going to see the light of day. We thought you would be interested in the backstory.

Producer Andy Court, who co-produced the piece with Jill Landes, began working on it in 2002, when he was a producer at NBC's "Dateline." North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had admitted that his country had engaged in the abductions of ordinary Japanese citizens in order to train North Korean spies, and Court noticed that one of those abductees, Hitomi Soga, had married an American deserter named Charles Robert Jenkins while the two were being held captive in North Korea. For a long time, the army hadn't even known if Jenkins was alive or dead. In 1996, however, he turned up as an actor in a North Korean propaganda film. Court was fascinated by the Jenkins story, and he started thinking about how he might be able to do a piece on him.

Landes, meanwhile, who worked for "60 Minutes II" at the time, began working on the story as well, along with then-"60 Minutes II" producer Peter Klein and associate producer Trisha Sorrells. Both Court and Landes' team separately started talking to Jenkins' family members and the North Korean authorities. They were able to develop a relationship with the families, but the North Koreans stonewalled when approached about the possibility of an interview with Jenkins, their prisoner. "It was one of those stories where I thought, this is never, ever going to happen," says Court.

Court and Landes maintained their relationships with Jenkins' family anyway, and in 2004, to everyone's surprise, Jenkins was allowed to leave North Korea. Details eventually emerged about his having been beaten, forced to teach English to spies, and even told how often to have sex. Once he had settled in Japan, Jenkins agreed to an interview. He hoped to get a book deal in the United States and get his story in "Life" magazine, and figured the interview would help. (Having been out of the country for 40 years, Jenkins wasn't aware "Life" was no longer the cultural touchstone it once was.)

Jenkins had moved to a remote Japanese island with his wife, who had also been allowed to leave North Korea. The interview, which was to be conducted by correspondent Scott Pelley, was scheduled for Monday, September 5th, and was to take place near Jenkins' home. Pelley, who had been involved in the story for about 18 months, was scheduled to fly to Tokyo after working on a story about polar bears and global warming in the Arctic. Once the impact of Hurricane Katrina became clear, however, he realized he had to cover the storm. And that would mean pushing back the Jenkins interview.

The hurricane story was especially important to Pelley, a Texas native who had covered New Orleans' potential for catastrophe as a CBS correspondent in the Dallas bureau. Still, he and Court worried that trying to move the Jenkins interview could kill the story. "The concept of moving that interview was insane," says Pelley. "It was this fragile egg you didn't want to drop for any reason. But the hurricane story was just huge."

Court, who was already in Japan, was understandably unhappy. He explained the situation to Jenkins and the family, and to his great relief, they agreed to reschedule the interview for a few days later. Over the next few days Pelley crashed his Katrina piece, sleeping little, and then went to Dallas, where he boarded a plane to Tokyo.

"The pilot announces that there's a typhoon in Tokyo," says Pelley, laughing. "So I'm going from a hurricane into a typhoon."

Court and Landes, along with the rest of their production team – two cameramen and two sound men – had been all set to film their interviews on the island, but because of the storm, they decided to rearrange the shoot. It wasn't just the people they had to move: There was camera and lighting gear as well, which they had transported to the island via a special van and a car ferry. They schlepped it back to Tokyo, just beating the typhoon, while Pelley was in the air. Pelley landed in Tokyo, had dinner with Jenkins that night, and then interviewed him the next day. The interview lasted 7 hours.

I asked Pelley if his fatigue was a factor in the interview. "It must [affect my work], but I don't find it terribly debilitating," he said. "Being chief White House correspondent is good training for pain. We used to take day trips to Sarajevo. They were 36 hours, but they were day trips."

I also asked if he expects to get hostile feedback for doing a piece about an army deserter. He stressed that the piece was not a glorification of Jenkins, and said he trusted viewers to recognize as much. "I think we'll get a lot of mail from people who are hostile to him, but not from people who are hostile to us," he said. Does he pay attention to charges from critics who see liberal bias in most everything CBS does? "I ignore that," he says. "I'm a little tone deaf to those kinds of things."