and, we're going to need some help with the rest. you've worked so hard to achieve so much. perhaps it's time to partner with someone who knows you and your business well enough to understand what your wealth is really for. >> it's the test no one wants to fail. going pack to campus in the >> it's the test no one wants to fail. going pack to campus in the fall -- there's much to consider. as you'll hear tonight, students, families, and educators are all feeling the burden. >> one weight comes truly from uncertainty. human beings loathe it. we will do almost anything not to have it, and we are called to tolerate uncertainty at a really high level right now. ( ticking ) >> in 1921, the glenwood neighborhood of tulsa, oklahoma, was among the wealthiest black

communities in america, but it was destroyed in a race massacre hate rained down on churches and homes from above. >> the first time in american history airplanes were used to terrorize americans. it was not at 9/11. ( ticking ) >> the merit system protests order, why should americans know or care what that is? >> this agency is there to protect federal employees from bad supervisors and poor performers. all you need is one bad employee, one bad supervisor for things to go amuck in any federal agency. and if you're getting your benefits, your services, whatever they russia let's say it's drug, medicine, you're going to want ( ticking ) >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm bill whitaker. >> i'm john dickerson. >> i'm norah o'donnell. >> i'm scott pelley.

those stories, tonight, on "60 minutes." ( ticking ) >> cbs money watch, sponsored by lincoln financial, helping you create a secure financial future. >> good evening. spiking coronavirus cases in several states are testing america's reopening. retail sales out tuesday will give a snapshot of consumer spendingen and starbucks will allow employees to wear black lives matter t-shirts. i'm major garrett, cbs news.

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seresto. 8-month. seresto, seresto, seresto. >> dickerson: this fall, college will start with a test. can america's universities reopen during the greatest pandemic in 100 years? some universities are remaining online. others are still unsure. but a growing number are preparing for perhaps the largest coordinated return institutions have made since the virus hit. in many ways, colleges and universities are the perfect places for an american reawakening.

scientists can track and trace, behavioral experts can make the pitch and philosophers can explain the balance between collective good and the individual. but, we go to college to be social, with no distance.e to be social, with no distance. college students are going to have to step up by staying apart. if they do, they may lead the way not just for the next semester, but for the entire country and its future. in 1795, the university of north carolina at chapel hill became the first public university in america to open its doors to students. but since this past march, those doors have been shut. in august, the silence on campus will be lifted. though the pandemic persists, the university was among the first schools to announce a plan to bring its 40,000 students, faculty and staff back to campus

for in-person classes. kevin guskiewicz is u.n.c.'s chancellor. what are you hearing from students about coming back in the fall? >> kevin guskiewicz: they're excited about the opportunity to come back, knowing though that it's not going to be the same carolina. >> dickerson: is it worth the risk then, to bring everybody back, if it's not going to be the same carolina? >> guskiewicz: we're not going to bring students, faculty, staff back onto a campus where environment. there certainly is some risk, but we believe we're putting in place the right measures to mitigate that risk. >> dickerson: those measures include starting the fall semester early. in seven weeks, students will begin the familiar ritual of moving into dorms. final exams will end just before thanksgiving, and then students will be sent home through at least the new year. >> guskiewicz: we're trying to stay ahead of the potential second wave of the virus, which the experts think that if we're going to see that, it's likely to happen in late november, december. >> dickerson: to reduce density, lecture classes will be

downsized. disinfecting is happening in the athletic facilities, the dormitories and classrooms. to help design its reopening, the school turned to dr. myron cohen, the director of u.n.c.'s institute for global health and infectious diseases. how important are masks? >> dr. myron cohen: masks, masks and more masks. you-- you can't say enough about masks. >> dickerson: what is the mask rule? >> cohen: we require that the students in the classroom will wear a mask, that the professor will be some distance away from the students, and the professor will wear a mask. so we intend our classrooms to be 100% masked. >> dickerson: how do you teach a class with a mask on? >> cohen: well, we're going to figure that out pretty quickly. but, i think, i can put my mask on and we can continue the interview. and we can see how it goes. it's not impossible. >> dickerson: what may be impossible is preventing students from gathering in dorms. college-age kids are wired to socialize. they mark the time by the

big celebrations, like this one after north carolina's national championship in basketball three years ago. how leaky, for lack of a better word, is... >> cohen: it's a good word. >> dickerson: ...the campus environment? how many threats to your system are there? >> cohen: oh, it's-- it's completely leaky. the students can go anywhere they'd like to go. and the most important thing is, the leakiness matters less under two conditions. we reduce the density. that is, we do not allow large numbers of people congregating and masks. >> dickerson: i can't think of a more difficult cohort than college students to tell, "don't congregate." isn't the whole reason they're being brought back here, to congregate? >> cohen: well, i guess we're going to have to see. >> dickerson: because it feels like you're one keg party away from a bad problem. >> cohen: the entire campus will be trying to create environments where people are incredibly socially responsible. humans are smart, okay? these students are smart. >> dickerson: reeves moseley, a rising senior from texas, is u.n.c.'s student body president. >> reeves moseley: we have to grow up a little faster than we

would otherwise and be able to say, this is a new community standard that we have to set. this is unprecedented, but we have to rely on the social pressure for students to wear masks, to social distance. >> dickerson: the university acknowledges there will be cases. the challenge will be catching them before a larger spread occurs. two dormitories will be set aside to quarantine students. >> guskiewicz: we'll look for clusters. if there was a cluster of positive cases that that would potentially create an off ramp for us and we could pivot back to an remote learning environment. >> dickerson: many schools around the country are still working on their specific plans for the fall. that must now include how to handle almost certain protests against racism. due to the pandemic, the california state university system announced last month courses will be taught primarily online in the fall. for u.n.c.'s reeves moseley, remote learning this spring led to a sense of isolation and a

loss of community. if they had said, "you're going to have to do online learning for one more semester," how many of your fellow students would have said, "i'm not going to do that?" or their parents would have said, "i'm not going t >> moseley: a lot. you know, you're paying these tuition dollars, and if you're having an online instruction experience, that's nowhere like the actual experience you'd be having otherwise. >> dickerson: for u.n.c.'s chancellor kevin guskiewicz, that's another reason to reopen. and i just wonder if it would've been financially infeasible to not reopen? >> guskiewicz: we would've been challenged financially to not reopen. we-- we know that many students would've perhaps taken a gap yea, or to defer their enrollment. but i want to emphasize that our decisions are based on creating that learning environment for students, where we know they can thrive and building in all of these measures for safety. >> dickerson: college in the fall is a time of renewal. a return to fields of possibility, a place where your route to the future is visible.

at william & mary in virginia, the school year is launched with a traditional raucous welcome of new students. in the middle of it all the past two years has been the university's first female president, katherine rowe. have you already started writing the speech for when they return? >> katherine rowe: oh, i'm thinking about it all the time. i miss them so much. >> dickerson: we spoke to president rowe in the oldest building on any american campus. at the 327-year-old school that educated three u.s. presidents, rowe and her husband are now the only people living on campus. she walks daily past the empty halls and dorms, burdened by what's ahead. what causes the most weight to that burden? >> rowe: one weight comes from, sheerly from uncertainty. human beings loathe it. we will do almost anything not to have it.

and we are called to tolerate uncertainty at a really high level right now. >> dickerson: after a marathon of zoom calls, william & mary announced friday it too will return early to in-person classes. but students will have the flexibility to finish the school year through next summer. >> rowe: it's helpful to know that we've survived enormous shocks in the past and to think about what it took to persevere. that's incredibly encouraging. ( bells chiming ) >> dickerson: twice before in its long history, william & mary shut down: during the civil war, and during a late 19th-century financial crisis. this pandemic and its economic impact may present the biggest challenges to the school in over a century. how many students do you think won't be able to come here because of the economic devastation? >> rowe: i think that's one of the questions that is most concerning, and that we still don't know the answer to. if you think about 40 million people in the country out of

work, some of them will be parents of our students. >> dickerson: some people worry about a lost generation. >> rowe: we have an obligation to ensure that this cohort of students doesn't lose speed, doesn't lose momentum in their college educations. >> dickerson: what would happen if the students lost that speed? >> rowe: it's really hard to imagine accepting that as a so however we have a year next year, we will have a year. however they learn, we will make it possible for them to learn. >> dickerson: three quarters of college students attend public institutions, which are reliant on state funding. >> john king: what's coming is that states are seeing huge drops in revenue that will translate into a big hit to public higher education. and if we see huge cuts to public higher ed, that'll mean less financial aid for students. >> dickerson: john king served

as the secretary of education in the obama administration and is now the c.e.o. and president of the education trust, a non- profit that works with underserved students he worries will be hurt the most. budget cuts could cripple institutions like those in the city university of new york system, known as c.u.n.y. >> king: i think a lot about c.u.n.y. partly because it's such a powerful engine of social mobility today and has been for generations, generations of low- income folks, generations of immigrants who through c.u.n.y. have gotten access to the american dream. >> dickerson: this is not just about the next semester of college? this is about the next phase in the economy? >> king: absolutely. we-- as we've moved towards an information economy, the future jobs that will provide a good family-sustaining wage are jobs that require college degrees. we know that earning a college degree adds a million dollars in lifetime earnings. >> dickerson: and if three quarters of college students are

going to state institutions and those are feeling particular pressure, this economic challenge for colleges exacerbates the existing economic challenges in the american workforce? >> king: if we make cuts to higher education now, if we undermine public higher ed as a driver of economic opportunity we will hurt the economy five, ten, 15 years out. >> dickerson: the incoming freshmen this fall, the high school class of 2020, were denied the pleasure of breaking the tape at the end of a long marathon. lawn signs replaced graduation day. there were a few innovative ceremonies. clover high in south carolina rented out hound's drive-in theater to hand out diplomas to departing seniors, some of whom will be entering an uncertain and the struggle extends to those already in college, who are laboring to pay tuition and are weighed down by debt, like 20-year-old katherine trejo of

arlington, virginia. the daughter of a single mom from bolivia, katherine was supposed to graduate from george mason next year. she is the first person in her family to attend college. was it always the expectation that you would go to college? >> katherine trejo: yes. my mom wants, wanted me to begin reading law books when i was in fourth grade. obviously, i... >> dickerson: fourth grade? >> trejo: yes. she wanted, she's been pushing me to be a lawyer since i was in the fourth grade. >> dickerson: but katherine lost her two jobs this spring that helped her finance her tuition and support her family. she has no health insurance, and has $11,000 in student debt. so right now, you won't be going back in the fall? >> trejo: as it stands, no. >> dickerson: so with everything you're facing, covid still going on, the economy has hit your family really hard, that dream that you've been talking about for yourself and your family, do you feel like that's slipping away? >> trejo: yeah. i worry about it every day. just, sometimes i get really overwhelmed, and i do feel like

the dream is slipping away. >> dickerson: what would happen if you didn't graduate from college? >> trejo: that's not an option. it's just not an option. i value education a lot, and whether it'll take me five years or another ten years to get it, but it's just not an option to not go back. >> dickerson: that is the kind of determination that spurs universities to reopen. and when the covid-19 challenge is over, schools will return to the previous test they faced: finding a way to make education available to enough students so that america can still be called the land of opportunity. ( ticking ) >> how the university of north carolina is preparing for fall sports at 60minutesovertime.com. sponsored by corogard. because when caught early, it's more treatable.

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>> pelley: the death of george floyd, in the hands of minneapolis police, came on memorial day. 99 years before, that same week, black americans suffered a massacre. in the days after world war i, a neighborhood in tulsa, oklahoma, called greenwood was among the

wealthiest black communities. oil made greenwood rich, but jealousy made it suffer. in 1921, a white mob, with incendiary rage, burned greenwood to ash. even memories were murdered when the dead were dropped into unmarked graves. last december, before the pandemic, we found tulsa preparing to embrace a reckoning, with a plan to exhume the truth and raise the dead. >> john franklin: the community that is greenwood has thriving businesses, professional offices, doctors, lawyers, dentists. >> pelley: john w. franklin speaks of greenwood in the present tense. >> franklin: greenwood is the nexus of that african american community. >> pelley: perhaps because he studied greenwood in 32 years as a historian at the smithsonian, or likely because greenwood is personal.

>> franklin: and my grandfather moves here from rentiesville in february 1921. and he's the first person in the family to go to college. buck colbert franklin. >> pelley: buck colbert franklin was a lawyer who chased his dream to a promised land. booker t. washington named greenwood "negro wall street." because the district was lined with black-owned shops, restaurants, two newspapers, a 54-room grand hotel, a hospital and the dreamland theater which would soon boast air conditioning. but on the day after memorial day, 1921, buck franklin awoke to fearful news. >> franklin: he hears that there's to be possibly a lynching. there's this black man who's been caught with this white woman in the elevator. and the newspapers are saying, read all about it. extra, extra, read all about it. >> pelley: tulsa's white newspapers told of a black

teenager who allegedly attacked a white female elevator operator. at the jail, a lynch mob demanded the prisoner. black veterans of world war i arrived to shield the defendant for his day in court. a shot was fired. and, in a running gun battle, the mob chased the black vets to greenwood. one of the moments during the riot that your grandfather wrote about was this. "on they rushed, whooping to the tops of their voices, firing their guns every step they took." what is it like for you to read those words today? >> franklin: he too was traumatized by seeing people being shot in front of his eyes. he describes a woman who's trying to find her child who's run in front of her, and she's unafraid of the bullets raining down, because her concern is to find her child.

>> pelley: what began as an attempted lynching at the jail erupted into a massacre. from a high grain elevator, a machine gun laid fire on greenwood avenue. >> franklin: where's the fire department? where's the police when we need them? we're part of a city. this is not some small town. this is a city of wealth and order, and governance. it is now been taken over by a mob. >> pelley: the police joined the mob. national guard troops pressed the attack against what one guard officer called "the enemy." quotes from eyewitnesses includ" old women and men, children were running and screaming every where." a deputy sheriff reported a black man dragged behind a car," his head was being bashed in, the deputy said, bouncing on the steel rails and bricks."

but what happened next may have frightened buck franklin even more. >> franklin: and he hears planes circling and sees roofs of buildings catching fire. and these are from turpentine balls, burning turpentine balls dropped from planes. >> robert turner: the first time in american history that airplanes were used to terrorize america was not in 9/11, was not at pearl harbor. it was right here in the greenwood district. >> pelley: reverend robert turner's vernon a.m.e. church was among at least five churches burned, along with 1,200 homes. a photo was crudely and imperfectly hand-lettered at the time, "running the negro out of tulsa." >> turner: 36-odd square blocks, city blocks, were destroyed. and before they destroyed it, they looted. they took nice furniture, money. >> pelley: when the black hospital burned, white hospitals refused to take greenwood's

wounded. those who bled to death included greenwood's most prominent surgeon. ultimately, one hospital did make space in its basement for black casualties. the number of dead is estimated between 150 and 300. survivors included 10,000 now- homeless african americans. 6,000 of them were herded into internment camps, and then released weeks later. >> turner: i don't know how they did it. but the following sunday after the massacre, they came and worshipped in our basement. and that's the same basement that we have today. >> pelley: the death of a black man at the hands of police is, today, shouted into the national memory. thanks to all of you for being here. but in 1921, it remained possible to erase a genocide. >> wright: i grew up attending

segregated tulsa public schools. never in any of the schools was anything ever said about it. >> pelley: the congregation of vernon a.m.e. church is two generations beyond 1921, but they too were victimized. this was not taught in the public schools? >> wright: no. >> pelley: you never heard about this in class? >> wright: you never heard a word about it. >> damario solomon-simmons: when i went to o.u. in 1998, i was sitting in a class of african american history. and the professor was talking about this place where black people had businesses and had money and had doctors and lawyers. and he said it was in tulsa. and i raised my hand, i said, "no, i'm from tulsa. that's not accurate." and he was talking about this massacre riot. i said, "man, what are you talking about?" i said, "i went to school in greenwood. i've never heard of this ever." >> pelley: how many people were arrested, tried, for what happened in greenwood? >> franklin: no one. >> pelley: 200 or 300 people

murdered, an entire community burned to the ground, and the police were unable to find a single person. >> franklin: it's a real tragedy. all the thousands of claims that were filed by african americans, not a one-- not a one insurance company paid their claim. and our church was included. >> pelley: no insurance honored for black tulsans, no arrests made, no complete count of the dead. the salvation army recorded only that it fed 37 grave diggers. the nameless were buried in unmarked graves while their families were locked down in the internment camps. i wonder if there are any doubts in this room about whether there are mass graves in tulsa, oklahoma. no doubts? >> my great grandmother. >> pelley: oral histories, passed down generations, pointed to at least four sites of possible mass graves. >> bynum: as a mayor, i view it as a homicide investigation.

>> pelley: g.t. bynum is tulsa's republican mayor. in 2018, he ordered an investigation of all remaining evidence. >> bynum: what you have is a case of law and civil order being overrun by people who were filled with hatred. we believe at the end of this road we're walking down right now is one of the sites where we found an anomaly. >> pelley: "anomalies" of disturbed earth showed up in the studies of scott hammerstedt. that's not a mower. it's ground-penetrating radar. >> hammerstedt: and right here is the anomaly. >> pelley: he's a senior researcher at the oklahoma archeological survey. te anomalies that we're looking at, what are those? >> hammerstedt: it's just contrast between the surrounding soil that's undisturbed and then this soil that has been disturbed. >> pelley: so we're not seeing, in these images, human remains? >> hammerstedt: no, no.

it's definitely not like c.s.i. you don't see individual skeletons. you just see disturbances and contrasts, which is why you can't really say necessarily that for sure it's a common grave. but it's very consistent with one. >> bynum: of course there's any number of things it could be. that's always the thing i have to remind myself. >> pelley: and there's only one way to find out? >> bynum: that is exactly right. we have to dig. we have to dig. >> phoebe stubblefield: but we don't know what's underneath. >> pelley: a ten-day test excavation is scheduled to begin in july, led by university of florida forensic anthropologist phoebe stubblefield. she'll investigate cause of death, but it's complicated, because of the spanish flu pandemic from the same period. so, just because you find a burial site, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's from the massacre. >> stubblefield: correct. and so, i'm interested in markers, like signs of violence or any kind of ballistic injuries or chop injuries. >> pelley: can you retrieve d.n.a.?

>> stubblefield: if it's a good preservation state, there's a high probability. >> pelley: would it be possible, in your opinion, to actually identify some of these people? >> stubblefield: we could try for genealogical matches. so, if we had people now who say, "oh, i'm missing a relative from that time period, here's my d.n.a.," then we can make matches through similar markers and do the genealogical matches. >> pelley: there's a long legacy from 1921. tulsa is still one of the most segregated cities in the country. >> bynum: yes. >> pelley: the north part of tulsa is black, the south part is white, and the twain don't meet very much. >> bynum: right, because of the history of racial disparity that exists in our city. a kid that's growing up in the predominantly african american part of our city is expected to live 11 years less than a kid that's growing up in a whiter part of the city. and by the way, tulsa's not unique in that regard.

you see disparities like that in major cities all around america. >> pelley: the test excavation is expected to discover whether there are human remains. next steps would include recovery and the question of how to honor those who have waited nearly 100 years for justice. >> franklin: how do you commemorate an event that gives dignity and honor to the people who've been lost? >> pelley: we have taken in recent decades in our memorials to etch the names of every single person who was lost. the 9/11 memorial, the vietnam memorial. that's not going to be possible here. we don't know the names. >> franklin: we don't know the names. and-- you're going to have to do some kind of-- you know-- we have the tomb of the unknown soldier. so, it has to be something that

is representative of lost souls, lost in anonymity. something like that will have to be planned. ( ticking ) it's the 6:10 migraine medicine.woke-up-ls the 3:40 mid-shift migraine medicine. >> o'donnell: this is a story anywhere a migraine attacks without worrying if it's too late or where you happen to be. one dose of ubrelvy can quickly stop a migraine in its tracks within two hours. do not take with strong cyp3a4 inhibitors. few people had side effects, most common were nausea and tiredness. ubrelvy. the anytime, anywhere migraine medicine.

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schwab. if there was one immediate when we closed in march,wynn it was keeping all 15,000 team-members on board with full pay and free testing for all. we then focused our five-star level of service to all who needed it and did what we always do. we cared about everything and everyone. in our communities and in our homes, we were there. with food and supplies and with love. we made improvements to people's lives. we strove to be better. and we made people happy.

like we always do. this closure may have temporarily taken us out of wynn and encore. but it couldn't take the wynn and encore out of us. and now... we are proud to welcome you back. ( ticking ) >> o'donnell: this is a story about a small federal agency most americans have never heard of, called the merit systems protection board. it's meant to give two million federal civil service workers, including whistleblowers, a place to appeal, should they be disciplined, demoted or fired. it's not that the board is working poorly, but that the board is not working at all. since 2017, it has lacked enough members to pass judgement on any

appeals, and for well over a year, the board has had no one on it, leaving three empty chairs and a backlog of cases that's now in the thousands. half a mile north of the white house, stands the unmarked headquarters of the merit systems protection board, or m.s.p.b. we got permission to visit in early february, before covid-19 made working from home the norm. about 100 staffers were there, analyzing petitions from both federal workers and agencies about employment disputes. cases that would usually make their way to the board for a final ruling were instead going into storage, because the chairman's spacious office suite, as well as the vice- chairman's, and another for the third and final member of the board, were all empty. and not because of the pandemic. >> today we're also considering three candidates for appointment to the merit systems protection board. >> o'donnell: president trump has nominated people to fill all three open positions, but the

nominations have languished in the senate, awaiting confirmation. >> jim eisenmann: without a board, without at least two board members, we're lost. >> o'donnell: from 2010 to 2018, jim eisenmann worked for the chairman of the board, as general counsel and executive director. the merit systems protection board-- why should americans know or care what that is? >> eisenmann: this agency is there to help and protect federal employees from both bad supervisors and poor performers, and all you need is one bad employee, one bad supervisor, for things to go amuck in any federal agency. and if you're getting your benefits, your services, whatever they are,safe drugs and medicine, you're going to want this agency to be there to protect and enforce the federal merit systems. >> o'donnell: what are these merit systems' principles? >> eisenmann: that people will be hired based on merit, that they will not be discriminated against, that decisions will be

based on their performance rather than someone's personal feeling about them. >> o'donnell: and has the board ever had so many vacancies for so long? >> eisenmann: never. >> o'donnell: in a divided capital, the board stands apart in that, by law, it is bipartisan. only two of three members can be from the same political party. it was established 42 years ago, but its roots go back to the 19th century and republican teddy roosevelt, who, before becoming president, championed the creation of the u.s. civil service commission, the precursor to today's board. >> debra roth: the american public, you know, made a decision 140 years ago that they want their government run by qualified people. and they want it run efficiently. >> o'donnell: for 30 years, attorney debra roth has represented both federal agencies and employees in front of the board. she's worried about what the breakdown at m.s.p.b. means for the average citizen. >> roth: m.s.p.b. is the one making sure that everyone's playing by the rules on the inside. >> o'donnell: so in effect, with

no board, is there more waste, fraud, and abuse that's going on in government? >> roth: probably. it is the internal accountability for the rest of government. it's not like every case ends up at m.s.p.b. so for statistics, you consider something like over two million people are part of the federal workforce in the executive branch. about every year, about 80,000 of them quit. another 12,000 are getting fired for cause. and those people are probably the ones who are going to end up, possibly, a portion of them, filing an appeal at m.s.p.b. >> o'donnell: before a case gets to the board, it goes to an m.s.p.b. administrative judge, who issues an initial decision. only about 800 decisions a year then get appealed to the board. these days, with no one to rule on them, the cardboard boxes holding some of the nearly 2,900 cases in the backlog are stacked in multiple offices throughout

the agency. >> eisenmann: and each of those cases is an individual waiting for justice, and an agency waiting for certainty as to what's going to happen with that employee. is that employee going back to work or are they not? >> o'donnell: traditionally, the board gets involved in other cases at the request of the office of special counsel, a federal watchdog that's supposed to protect whistleblowers, like rick bright. bright was the first federal official to publicly proclaim that the trump administration's response to the pandemic was disorganized, and so slow that it cost lives. >> rick bright: if we fail to improve our response now based on science, i fear the pandemic will get worse and be prolonged. >> o'donnell: before he testified before congress, bright filed a complaint with the special counsel alleging his bosses at health and human services demoted him for sounding the alarm. the special counsel's office" found a substantial likelihood

of wrongdoing" and asked h.h.s. secretary alex azar to give him his old job back while it investigated. in april, bright sat down with "60 minutes." our understanding is that the merit systems protection board could reinstate you at your job, pending an investigation into your complaint. had you ever heard of the m.s.p.b. before your complaint? >> rick bright: no. honestly, i hadn't. i-- i've learned, though, since my complaint, that-- that m.s.p.b., that merit systems protection board, is full of empty chairs. >> o'donnell: rick bright's case may be the most high-profile impacted by the three empty chairs, but it's not the only one to involve a whistleblower. after filing a freedom of information act request, we learned about a quarter of the cases in the backlog include whistleblower claims. the backlog stretches across 55 federal agencies, but the most whistleblower cases from

one agency, 197, are from the department of veterans affairs, or v.a. one of them belongs to chris marcus. >> chris marcus: i put my heart and soul into the v.a. because i knew we could fix it. >> o'donnell: after graduating from the air force academy in 1992, marcus served for 20 years. in 2008, he helped run the u.s. military's busiest combat trauma hospital during the surge in the iraq war. after retiring as a lieutenant colonel, marcus was hired by the v.a. and eventually put in charge of three outpatient clinics serving approximately 80,000 veterans in tennessee. he says members of his staff violated basic health and safety guidelines and mishandled patients' medical files, but the worst problem he described was doctors who showed up late and sometimes disappeared, leaving elderly veterans waiting for hours. >> marcus: if you can't get your staff to show up for work on time, then that's a problem. that's one of the accusations i had against me, was that i would

walk around the halls looking for people coming into work late. like, i'm guilty. yes, i did. >> o'donnell: what did you do? >> marcus: a coworker and i, we would constantly elevating that to the-- to the appropriate leadership, saying, "we have got to do something about these providers." and-- and nothing ever happened. >> o'donnell: when the v.a. fired you, what was their justification? >> marcus: that i created a hostile work environment. that was pretty much it. >> o'donnell: the unprofessional behavior that you were accused of by the v.a., is there any truth to it? >> marcus: no. ( sighs ) and, they gave me a stack of paperwork about this thick, that was the evidence file used against me. and i'm just thinking, "oh my goodness, what did i do?" i mean, i really-- racking my brain, "what on earth did i do?" >> o'donnell: an administrative judge ruled this past december that the only thing chris marcus did was his job. the judge wrote in his decision, the v.a.'s allegation marcus had been unprofessional "lacked any factual basis," and that a v.a. executive, "had a motive to

retaliate against" him. more importantly, the judge added marcus was "an employee that the v.a. should be seeking to retain and promote instead of removing." >> marcus: he's absolutely right. i-- i-- i challenge anyone to find anything in that evidence package that's actually evidence of any conduct unbecoming or unprofessionalism. it's just not there. >> o'donnell: the judge ordered the v.a. to reinstate lieutenant colonel marcus and give him back pay and interest, which at the time was upwards of $50,000. the v.a. refused, and appealed to the board. but because no one was on it, the case, and marcus' life, entered a state of limbo. >> marcus: even if you win, you lose. >> o'donnell: do you consider yourself a whistleblower? >> marcus: i'd never thought of me as being a whistleblower. i guess i am, because i've been identifying these things for years and my leadership retaliated against me for that. >> o'donnell: in early april, five months after chris marcus' case joined the backlog, we asked the v.a. about him.

the v.a. declined to comment specifically, but two weeks later, offered him a settlement that included nearly a year's worth of back pay, plus interest, damages, legal fees, and a new job that allows him to work from home, that he started last month. attorney debra roth does not represent chris marcus, but says justice for others caught in the backlog will be harder to come by. an appeals process that used to take months will now take years. she says typically, about 15% of those who appeal to the board end up getting their jobs back. >> roth: and the longer it takes toget their job back, the clock is running, because the board will determine that they were fired improperly, illegally, and the-- the remedy will be that they will get a retroactive hiring and their back pay. >> o'donnell: there are government workers right now sitting at home, not working, who will eventually get back pay? >> roth: uh-huh. a lot of it. at taxpayer expense. >> eisenmann: for every single

day, every single year that goes by without a decision, that's just more and more back pay for the individual, if they're being reinstated. that's more attorney fees. that's more interest. that's-- just more money, generally. >> o'donnell: former m.s.p.b. executive director jim eisenmann told us the prospective new board members face a daunting task, digging out from the nearly 2,900 cases piled up in their office. >> eisenmann: it will probably take three to four years just for those cases to be decided by any board. if you had board members start today. >> o'donnell: that's justice delayed. >> eisenmann: and denied. absolutely. >> o'donnell: which brings us back to the reason we ever heard about the merit systems protection board in the first place-- not a single board member has been confirmed by the senate in over eight years, since april 2012. "60 minutes" has learned only one of the president's nominees faces serious opposition from senators in both parties.

but if two of the other nominees were confirmed, the board could quickly get back to work. we wanted to ask the most powerful man in the senate, republican majority leader mitch mcconnell, why that hasn't happened yet. after his office ignored several of our inquiries, we went to the capitol to ask him directly. this is a challenging time for federal workers, especially those on the front lines of the coronavirus. so we wanted to know, why has the senate not confirmed any of president trump's three nominees to the merit systems protection board? >> mitch mcconnell: well if they're out on the calendar, you'd have to ask senator schumer. >> o'donnell: we contacted the office of senate minority leader chuck schumer, whose spokesman pointed out, "senate majority leader mcconnell has full control over which nominees are voted on and which ones aren't." how does this happen? how does such an important government agency remain shut down for so long? >> eisenmann: negligence, if not an intentional failure to do a

constitutional duty. ( ticking ) >> cbs sports hq is presented by progressive. the pga tour returned to competition for the first time in 13 weeks in fort worth, texas, and daniel berger, a 27-year-old from florida, took the title. he birdied the final hole in regulation to get into a playoff and won it. it's the third career title for daniel berger. for 24/7news and highlight, visit cbssportshq.com. jim nantz reporting from fort worth, texas. hoppers. we laughed with you. sprinkles are for winners. we surprised you. on occasion, we've probably even annoyed you. we've done this all with one thing in mind. to help protect the things you love. and if we can't offer you the best price we'll help you find a better one. it's not always the lowest! even if it's not with us. that's how we've done it for the past 80 years.

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but don't lose count. we'll have some catching up to do. ( ticking ) >> dickerson: tonight marks the opening of a new era in story telling for "60 minutes." we are launching an innovative way for our one-of-a-kind reporting to reach a new and expanded audience, on the mobile app quibi. we've named it "60 in 6," and each week, "60 in 6" will report an original story, in a shorter, approximately six-minute form, produced specifically for viewers watching on mobile

devices. we've recruited a dedicated staff of correspondents, producers and editors from both inside and outside cbs news who are working to guarantee true "60 minutes" reporting and high standards to the stories in our new, mobile home. this week, we kick off with pulitzer prize-winning correspondent wesley lowery reporting from minneapolis, with a view from that city you haven't seen before, including an interview with george floyd's brother, philonise. >> wesley lowery: do you see your brother and his story as part of a bigger, broader movement? >> philonise floyd: yes, sir. people who knew my brother, they always say the same thing. floyd, he died for a reason. i think this is the biggest civil right movement ever. people tired, man. everybody wants to live on this earth and have peace. that's all i want is peace. >> dickerson: i'm john dickerson. "60 minutes presents" is next, and we'll be back next week with another edition of "60 minutes." ( ticking ) seresto, seresto.

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