The Man From Interpol

Interpol is one of the oldest, largest and most famous law enforcement agencies in the world. It has inspired two television series and played a role in countless novels and movies, its globe trotting agents hopping across international borders to snare fugitives, terrorists and spies. The only problem is most of what people think Interpol does is fiction. Its agents aren't allowed to make arrests, don't carry guns, and rarely leave the office.

As correspondent Steve Kroft explains, their real job is behind the scenes, collecting and disseminating information to law enforcement agencies all over the world, and until Ron Noble became the first American to ever run the global police organization, it played almost no role in fighting terrorism. Noble has been trying to change all that since the day he took over seven years ago, less than a year before Sept. 11th changed the world.

"Why did nobody call, do you think?" Kroft asks.

Says Noble, "We were irrelevant."

When he was nominated by President Clinton to become the first non-European secretary general of Interpol, Noble was one of the top law enforcement administrators in the U.S.: undersecretary of the Department of the Treasury, in charge of the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

He was ambitious, tireless and spoke four languages, the perfect choice to shake up what was considered a lethargic European bureaucracy, based in Lyon, France, a city known for famous chefs and some of the finest restaurants in the world. And walking through Lyon, it's easy to see why Interpol became known for long lunches and long weekends, not long days at the office.

"When you came here it had the reputation of sort of being a retirement home for police officers," Kroft remarks. "Was it open on the weekends?"

"It wasn't open on the weekends. And if you had a request for assistance at five o'clock on Friday, you'd have to wait until Monday morning for someone to respond to it," Noble recalls.

That has all changed. The lights at Interpol are on now around the clock, seven days a week. The international wanted posters, called "red notices," once sent out by third class mail to 186 countries, often took months to arrive. Now they leave Lyon in a matter of seconds on a secure Internet channel. And the Morse code tower, used into the 1980s, has been replaced by a state-of-the-art police communication system that allows countries instant access to a global database of fingerprints, mug shots, DNA samples and stolen travel documents.

Its mission is to give operational support to police departments around the world, by exchanging intelligence, tracking fugitives, and providing language and legal assistance in fighting crimes that cross international borders. Its staff is made up of police officers on loan from 58 different countries.

It's not glamorous work, but last year Interpol played a role in 4,500 arrests, including a war criminal from the former Yugoslavia and an al Qaeda terrorist connected to the Madrid train bombing.

Noble believes Interpol is capable of doing much more. "Al Qaeda has said they want to kill four million of us. So I'm asking myself, 'What do we need? What does it take?' What will it take for governments to say, 'You know what? Forget the past. If Interpol didn't exist today, we'd invent it. How would we invent it? How creative would we be?'" he says.

Noble says the world has changed drastically over the past decade, and along with it the nature of international crime.

It used to be that if someone committed a crime in Chicago, they stayed in Chicago, or at least in the United States. Today, they can get on a plane and commit the same crime in a number of different countries before anyone even notices. In fact, they don't even have to get on a plane. Someone with a computer in Lagos, Nigeria, can drain a bank account in London without even leaving his house.

"The Internet is police-able. It's police-able in the classical sense of the word, and we should be doing that," says Mick Moran, a 15-year veteran of the Garda, the Irish national police.

Moran joined Interpol last year to investigate international sex crimes against children. He tries to identify the country where the actual crime is taking place and then he passes on the information to the appropriate jurisdiction for further investigation.

"People call them child pornography. But that's a bad thing to call them, because it's actually a picture of a crime scene. And as an investigator, I examine the crime scene," Moran says.

Moran says he is "looking for anything that might give me a clue as to what country this comes from."

"That's what cyber cops do," he says.

Asked if he is a cyber cop, Moran tells Kroft, "We're cyber cops, yeah. Without a doubt, we're cyber cops. And one of the most horrific cyber crimes … these sex abusers, they use the Internet … and they turn it into a shadow land."

What does he mean by shadow land?

"Shadow lands. It's the dark side of the Internet. Because the Internet, don't forget, and a lot of people forget this, the Internet simply reflects society. It simply reflects the world we live in," Moran says. "And that world has good and that world has evil."

The smallest clues can lead Moran to a location. In one case, a yellow band on a can of Pringles potato chips linked the abuse to England and Ireland, where it was sold only briefly.

"We look at wall, clothes, we look at keyboards. We look at cans of Coca-Cola in the back," Moran explains. "What's the language on the can of Coca-Cola?"

When police in Canada confiscated horrific images of infants being sexually abused, they had no idea where the crime had actually taken place, so they sent the pictures to Moran at Interpol. One of his colleagues noticed that a computer keyboard in one picture had Spanish punctuation marks, so they forwarded the pictures to Madrid, where another officer noticed some printing on a towel. That helped break the case.

"What does it mean to me? It means very little to me. But to a police officer from the north of Madrid, when he sees that, he sees immediately, 'La Paz Hospital.' And he knows that this towel is from the La Paz Hospital. So there's a good clue as well," Moran says.

Spanish authorities eventually broke up the pedophile ring, which was operating out of a childcare center and they rescued 15 children, ranging in age from 6 to 14 months.

"You leave your child in the care of somebody, and you feel that, you hope that they're going to be cared for," Moran says. "But, in this case they weren't. In this case were preyed upon by sex abusing criminals."

Another case presented a different challenge: pedophiles sometimes hide their identity by digitally distorting their face, like a man who posted pictures of himself having sex with young boys in Southeast Asia. Moran worked with a German colleague, who devised a program to reverse the process, which he showed 60 Minutes for the first time.

"He simply swirled the picture. And what our colleague in Germany did was, he simply swirled back. And the result, you will agree, is fantastic," Moran says.

A few days ago, Moran posted the "un-swirled" photos on the Interpol Web site. "Somebody in the world knows that guy. Somebody in the world'll be able to say, 'That's my brother, friend, cousin, work colleague,'" Moran says.

Walk into any office at Interpol and you might find a German tracking stolen art, an American unraveling a new drug route through West Africa, or a French woman investigating a counterfeit malaria drug.

Aline Lecadre spent months working with the World Health Organization trying to find the origin of deadly pills that were flooding the market in Vietnam and Laos.

How serious a problem are counterfeit malarial drugs?

"I mean, the southeast Mekong area where we worked, 44 percent of the counterfeit of the products that were sold were counterfeited. I mean, 44 percent, everything was fake," Lecadre explains. "And nobody at the international level has done anything to fight against that crime."

The lab at Interpol analyzed the pills and found animal hair and pollen specific to a certain region in China. The Chinese government shut down the plant and arrested the people running it.

Interpol's command center is a clearinghouse for international crime and maintains the world's largest database of known terrorists -- 11,000 names.

Australian Chris Eaton says Interpol not only receives daily reports on significant worldwide events, they also monitor the jihadist Web sites.

"You know more about what's going on in the world crime-wise than any other place?" Kroft asks.

"Well, I'd think so. I mean with 187 countries telling us what's happening, I don't think there's too many organizations with that sort of spread," Eaton says.

One report Eaton received included a drug seizure in Columbia, a terrorist attack in Nigeria, and a report of a bunch of people getting arrested for traveling on stolen passports.

Eaton says stolen passports are at the moment a big deal.

Interpol has the world's only database on lost or stolen passports and travel documents. There are more than 15 million of them and every week 3,000 people try to use one to enter a country illegally.

"Every significant international terrorist attack that's occurred has been linked in some way with either a fraudulent passport, an authentic passport that's been modified or with a counterfeit passport," Noble explains. "So by catching the people with stolen passports, you get yourself closer to catching terrorists."

The system has been operational for more than two years, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is just now beginning to phase it in at some border locations. Noble says it's just one sign of U.S. reluctance to cooperate with international organizations, when it comes to terrorism.

The Department of Homeland Security has 250,000 employees, yet Noble says none of them are based at Interpol. "We don't have any Department of Homeland Security employees here at Interpol. Except for a secret service agent. But none working on border protection," he says.

Asked why he thinks that is, Noble tells Kroft, "You know, I ask myself that question. I just feel like they don't get it. They don't get it."

Reporting or providing data to Interpol is voluntary, and many nations don't want to share sensitive information with the agency because they believe it could end up in the hands of other member countries, like Iran, Libya and Cuba.

"There is a perception out there among police organizations, they don't want to provide sensitive information to Interpol. Because they're afraid of who might end up having access to it," Kroft remarks.

"I agree. I'm not disputing that there's a perception out there," Noble says. "There are ways to share information without undermining the security of the information."

Security isn't the only reason that countries don't cooperate with Interpol. Sometimes they're just embarrassed. Last year, when 23 people escaped from a prison in Yemen, including the mastermind of the al Qaeda attack on the U.S.S. Cole, Interpol found out about it by monitoring Arab television.

"Worldwide in the last two years, we've had 43 countries where escapes have occurred. And zero of those countries -- zero of those countries notified Interpol. That can't happen. That shouldn't happen. People wouldn't believe it's happening, but it's happening," Noble says.

Not only is Interpol underutilized, Noble says it is also hopelessly under-funded. The U.S. contributes $5.5 million to the organization's $50 million budget, a pittance compared to big city police departments.

"NYPD, $3 billion a year. FBI, $6 billion a year. DHS, $42 billion a year. Interpol is about $50 million," Noble points out. "About the same amount that the Los Angeles Galaxy is paying for David Beckham to play football. That's what the world is contributing to Interpol to keep the citizens of the world safer that they otherwise would be."

Noble is not looking for a few million dollars, he's looking for a different mindset. "I've been doing this now for six and a half years. You know, I get up every day, you know? And I think about 'How can I make the U.S. understand this?' And I just can't. I can't. I can't," he says.

"And we know that terrorist activities are being planned," Noble says, wiping a tear. "And we know that if we don't respond, people will die. And I know I'm a smart guy. I know I work hard and I know I can persuade people to do things. I know. But I can't get the U.S. and other governments to understand that the problem's a billion-dollar-a-year problem. You know, not a million-dollar-a-year problem. But I know that it's gonna change. It's gonna happen one day."

"This concerns you," Kroft says.

"We, yeah, we could we stop," Noble says,

We gave him a few moments to compose himself.

"What was it that triggered that?" Kroft asks about Noble getting emotional.

"I keep thinking about September 11th and all the other terrorist attacks. And I'm saying I'm seeing the mistakes that are being made every day. And I think about one of these days its going to happen again," he says. "And I've gotta be able to persuade people before it happens."

"You're obviously very wrapped up in this," Kroft remarks.

"Yeah," Noble agrees.

Noble acknowledged that he may be working too hard and traveling too much. He also has some health issues that have added to the stress. Last year in a confidential letter to member nations, Noble informed them that he had developed "a benign tumor" near his brain, which has caused some hearing problems.

"I realize I'm mortal and I'm not invincible. And I feel an urgency to communicate what I wanna communicate," Noble says. "My neck is out there with this interview. And after this interview I'll go back to working like I do every other day. But I'll know that there's nothing that I held back."

The Department of Homeland Security wrote Interpol this week and said that they're looking into sending an officer to Lyon by the end of the year.

Produced By Ira Rosen