Scott Pelley

And also, if I can give you a little bit of context.

Please.

What had happened a couple of days before the meeting was so critical.

Nick Bilton wrote an email to the staff, sort of introducing himself.

And it was so insulting to the staff and so insulting to the history of 60 Minutes.

He told us in that email that it wasn't 1968 anymore.

And he helpfully noted that gasoline doesn't cost 32 cents anymore.

and suggested that we had all been frozen in amber in 1968 when the program first went on the air and that nothing had improved.

And he said in his email that it was, quote, strange, end quote, that 60 Minutes is only on the air at seven o'clock Eastern time on Sunday once a week.

When we've been on the air

24-7, globally, online, for well over a decade.

It betrayed the fact that Nick Bilton didn't know anything about us, didn't know anything about our culture, and yet was being imposed on us as our new executive producer, our new leader.

So people read that memo,

It's very concerning.

It's heartbreaking.

It's hard to compare this to anything other than something that actually could happen to your family.

It's a very loving and empathetic organization.

And we were met with cold, callous indifference to what anyone thought.

It was fate.

First of all, our entire senior staff had been wiped out.