' due for a mammogram. should we schedule it? oh yeah that'd be great. a leader in the prevention, early detection and treatment of cancer. captioning funded by cbs and ford. we go further, so you can. ( ticking ) >> tonight the facebook whistle-blower. when francis howgan left facebook she took thousands of pages of internal research. it's proof she says that the social network conceals how it spreads misinformation and political interest. facebook, over and over again has shown it chooses profit over safety, it is paying for profits with our safety. ( ticking ) >> sometimes we report on stories that are so maddening, so frustrating, that you just

turn to the person next to you and go, "how can this be happening?" these members of the military were promised debt forgiveness on their student loans, only to end up fighting rigid rules and red tape: nine out of ten of those who've applied were rejected as ineligible. ( ticking ) ♪ i left my heart ♪ >> tony bennett's been singing and swinging for 70 years. now, at 95, he's struggling with dementia, but as we saw when we spent time with him, not even alzheimer's could stop this legend from getting back on stage with his friend lady gaga and putting on what may be his last and best performance ever. ♪ steppin' out with my baby ♪ can't go wrong cause i'm in right ♪ ( ticking ) >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm bill whitaker. >> i'm anderson cooper. >> i'm jon wertheim.

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one complaint alleges that facebook's instagram harms teenage girls. what makes haugen's complaints unprecedented is the trove of private facebook research she took when she quit in may. the documents appeared first, last month, in the wall street journal. but tonight, frances haugen is revealing her identity to explain why she became the facebook whistleblower. >> the thing i saw at facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for facebook. and facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money. >> pelley: frances haugen is 37, a data scientist from iowa with a degree in computer engineering and a harvard master's degree in business. for 15 years she's worked for companies including google and pinterest. >> i've seen a bunch of social

networks and it was substantially worse at facebook than anything i'd seen before. >>pelley: you know, someone else might have just quit and moved on. and i wonder why you take this stand. >> imagine you know what's going on inside of facebook and you know no one on the outside knows. i knew what my future looked like if i continued to stay inside of facebook, which is person after person after person has tackled this inside of facebook and ground themselves to the ground. >> pelley: when and how did it occur to you to take all of these documents out of the company? >> at some point in 2021, i realized, okay, i'm gonna have to do this in a systemic way, and i have to get out enough that no one can question that this is real. >> pelley: she secretly copied tens of thousands of pages of facebook internal research. she says evidence shows that the company is lying to the public about making significant progress against hate, violence and misinformation. one study she found,m is

year, says, we estimate that we may action as little as 3/5 percent of hate and about 6 tenths of one percent of violence and incitement on facebook despite being the best in the world at it. to quote from another one of the documents you brought out, we have evidence from a variety of sources that hate speech, divisive political speech and misinformation on facebook and the family of apps are affecting societies around the world. >> when we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarizing content it erodes our civic trust, it erodes our faith in each other, it erodes our ability to want to care for each other, the version of facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the d.ic ve' including myanmar in 2018 when the military used facebook to

launch a genocide. frances haugen told us she was recruited by facebook in 2019. she says she agreed to take the job only if she could work against misinformation because she had lost a friend to online conspiracy theories. >> i never wanted anyone to feel the pain that i had felt. and i had seen how high the stakes were in terms of making sure there was high quality information on facebook. >> pelley: at headquarters, she was assigned to civic integrity which worked on risks to elections including misinformation. but after this past election, there was a turning point. >> they told us, we're dissolving civic integrity. like, they basically said, oh good, we made it through the election. there wasn't riots. we can get rid of civic integrity now. fast forward a couple months, we got the insurrection. and when they got rid of civic integrity, it was the moment

where i was like, i don't trust that they're willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep facebook from being dangerous. >> pelley: facebook says the work of civic integrity was distributed to other units. haugen told us the root of facebook's problem is in a change that it made in 2018 to its algorithms—the programming that decides what you see on your facebook news feed. >> so, you know, you have your phone. you might see only 100 pieces of content if you sit and scroll on for, you know, five minutes. but facebook has thousands of options it could show you. >> pelley: the algorithm picks from those options based on the kind of content you've engaged with the most in the past. >> and one of the consequences of how facebook is picking out that content today is it is -- optimizing for content that gets engagement, or reaction. but its own research is showing that content that is hateful,

that is divisive, that isporiito inpeople tan to otr emotions. elley: misinformationg cot- to ople d keep... >> very enticing. >> pelley: ...keeps them on the platform. >> yes. facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they'll click on less ads, they'll make less money. >> pelley: haugen says facebook understood the danger to the 2020 election. so, it turned on safety systems to reduce misinformation—but many of those changes, she says, were temporary. >> and as soon as the election was over, they turned them back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritize growth over safety. and that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me. >> pelley: facebook says some of the safety systems remained. but, after the election, facebook was used by some to organize the january 6th

osutors citeebk po as evidence--photos of armed partisans and text including, by bullet or ballot restoration of the republic is coming extremists used many platforms but facebook is a recurring theme. after the attack, facebook employees raged on an internal message board copied by haugen. haven't we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence? >> we looked for positive comments and found this, i don't and found this, i don't think our leadership team ignores data, ignores dissent, ignores truth, but that drew this reply, welcome to facebook i see you just joined in november 2020. we have been watching wishy- washy actions of company leadership for years now. >> pelley: colleagues cannot conscience working for a company

that does not do more to mitigate the negative effects of its platform. >> facebook essentially facebook essentially amplifies the worst of human nature. it's one of these unfortunate consequences, right? no one at facebook is malevolent but the incentives are misaligned, right? like, facebook makes more money when you consume more content. people enjoy engaging with things that elicit an emotional reaction. and the more anger that they get exposed to, the more they interact and the more they consume. >> pelley: that dynamic led to a complaint to facebook by major political parties across europe. this 2019 internal report obtained by haugen, says that the parties, feel strongly that the change to the algorithm has forced them to skew negative in their communications on facebook, leading them into more extreme policy positions. the european political parties were essentially saying to facebook the way you've written

your algorithm is changing the way we lead our countries. >> yes. you are forcing us to take positions that we don't like, that we know are bad for society we know if we don't take those positions, we won't win in the marketplace of social media. >> pelley: evidence of harm, she says, extends to facebook's instagram app. one of the facebook internal studies that you found talks about how instagram harms teenage girls. one study says 13.5% of teen girls say instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse; 17% of teen girls say instagram makes eating disorders worse. >> and what's super tragic is facebook's own research says, as these young women begin to consume this this eating disorder content, they get more and more depressed.

and it actually makes them use the app more. and so, they end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more. facebook's own research says it is not just the instagram is dangerous for teenagers, that it harms teenagers, it's that it is distinctly worse than other forms of social media. >> pelley: facebook said, just last week, it would postpone plans to create an instagram for younger children. last month, haugen's lawyers filed at least 8 complaints with the securities and exchange commission which enforces the law in financial markets. the complaints compare the internal research with the company's public face—often that of c.e.o. mark zuckerberg—here testifying remotely to congress last march. >> we have removed content that could lead to imminent real- world harm. we have built an unprecedented third-party fact checking program. the system isn't perfect. but it is the best approach that we have found to address misinformation in line with our

country's values. >> scott pelley: one of frances haugen's lawyers, is john tye. he's the founder of a washington legal group, called whistleblower aid. what is the legal theory behind going to the sec? what laws are you alleging have been broken? >> as a publicly traded company, facebook is required to not lie to its investors or even withhold material information. so, the s.e.c. regularly brings enforcement actions, alleging that companies like facebook and others are making material misstatements and omissions that affect investors adversely. >> scott pelley: one of the things that facebook might allege is that she stole company documents. >> the dodd-frank act, passed over ten years ago at this point, created an office of the whistleblower inside the s.e.c., and one of the provisions of that law says that no company can prohibit its employees from

communicating with the s.e.c. and sharing internal corporate documents with the s.e.c.. >> i have a lot of empathy for mark. and mark has never set out to make a hateful platform. but he has allowed choices to be made where the side effects of those choices are that hateful, polarizing content gets more distribution and more reach. >> scott pelley: facebook declined an interview. but, in a written statement to 60 minutes it said, "every day our teams have to balance protecting the right of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place. we continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content. to suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true." if any research had identified an exact solution to these complex challenges, the tech industry, governments, and society would have solved them a

long time ago. dollar company. just 17-years-old, it has 2.8 billion users which is 60 percent of all internet connected people on earth. frances haugen plans to testify before congress this week. she believes, the federal government should impose regulations. >> facebook has demonstrated they cannot act independently facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety. it is subsidizing, it is paying for its profits with our safety. i'm hoping that this will have had a big enough impact on the world that they get the fortitude and the motivation to actually go put those regulations into place. that's my hope. ( ticking )

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>> lesley stahl: student debt is a crushing burden on millions of

americans. to help, congress passed a law in 2007, creating the public service loan forgiveness program, promising that if you are a public servant-- a cop, a teacher, a soldier-- and you work for ten years, your debt will be erased. but maybe it should be called the unforgiveness program: 98% of those who've applied for relief were told they're ineligible. we focused on the military. according to an april report by the g.a.o.-- the government's watchdog agency-- of nearly 180,000 active-duty service- members with federal student loans, only 124 individuals have managed to navigate the confusing rules of the program and get their debt wiped clean. we talked with a group you'd assume could figure it out: jags-- lawyers who work for the military. what was your student debt when you went into the service? >> heather tregle: about $90,000. >> brandon jones: $108,000. >> carson sprott: $150,000.

>> charles olson: over $150,000. >> stahl: charles olson, a marine; carson sprott-- air force; and in the army, heather tregle, jonathan hirsch, and brandon jones. they say the rules laid out in the law seemed clear-- they had to be employed in a public service job and repay typically small increments of their loans till they reached 120 payments. and whatever remained of their debt at that point would vanish: no matter how much. how many of you, in your own mind, think that you have paid up the 120 months and that you deserve to be forgiven? all of you. but all of them were told they're mistaken. they were off by years. were any of you derelict in making your payments? >> all: never. no. no. never. >> sprott: as military members, if we fail to pay our debts, we're subject to discipline under the uniform code of >> jones: and our ri

clearances are on the line. so, all this-- >> stahl: if you don't pay, you lose your security clearance? >> jones: you can. if you default on your loan, you can lose your security clearance. >> stahl: they all say they were walked through a bureaucratic maze that tripped them up. >> sprott: nobody ever explained that some of your loans are coded one way; some of them are coded the other. and some of those don't qualify. >> stahl: major carson sprott was told he had 41 extra months of payments, after he thought he was done. turns out, under the rules of the program, only one type of federal student loan is eligible fo relief-- his type of loans didn't qualify. but he says that wasn't explained to him by the loan servicing companies contracted by the department of education to collect his money. >> sprott: not until i'd been paying on the loans for 2.5 years. >> stahl: aren't you angry? >> sprott: i'm a little angry. ( laughs ) i'm a little angry. i wrote a dozen letters over my first two years to all my lenders, and i got no response, other than assurances that everything was fine.

>> stahl: his loan servicer told him, his only recourse was to convert to another type of loan and restart the month count-- from zero! and his other headache? under the rules, he had to make small monthly re-payments. but his repayments were so small, they didn't cover his interest. do you actually owe more now than you did when you started this program? >> sprott: significantly. my initial loans of $150,000 are now at approximately $215,000. >> stahl: the way this program is set up, many borrowers don't find out there's a problem for years. army jag leiutenant colonel jonathan hirsch found out after a decade. >> jonathan hirsch: i got a letter that said i had zero months accumulated towards public service loan forgiveness. >> stahl: no! >> hirsch: zero. and i had been paying for ten years. >> stahl: he had the right type of loans, but the wrong type of repayment plan-- so he had another decade to go!

>> hirsch: all of my kids are going to college. and so, i am taking out parent- plus loans to help pay for their college-- >> stahl: oh, no-- >> hirsch: --at the same time that i am making payments on my loans. >> stahl: heather, you were in afghanistan for a year? >> tregle: yes. >> stahl: so did that year count toward your 120 months? >> tregle: half of it did. >> stahl: army jag major heather tregle, mother of two, doesn't know why those six months didn't count. she always stayed on top of her loan, even when she was in war zones! like when she was in kandahar and noticed her loan servicing company suddenly hiked up her payments. >> tregle: so i spent days-- because when you're in afghanistan, you only can call for 20 minutes at a time-- >> stahl: you're calling from over there? >> tregle: correct. so, you had to use a morale line to call. and it cuts off after 20

minutes. so i would wait on hold and try to speak to them and get it all sorted out. and then tell them, "i am calling from afghanistan, can you please give me a number that i can just call you back, that i don't have to wait on hold?" and they couldn't do that. >> stahl: here's something else that's maddening: as long as they're in a warzone, they're allowed to skip their loan payments. but what's not always explained to them, we discovered, is that that brings their monthly count to a grinding halt. in other words: serving in actual combat can set them back years in getting relief. >> seth frotman: think about what that means. think about someone who is serving overseas. think about how many of their kids' birthday parties they missed, only to be told, "none of that time counts." >> stahl: seth frotman heads an advocacy group called the student borrower protection center. he says borrowers should haveste forgiveness program four years ago-- a decade after it startedn

military members who have applied for debt relief have been turned down. >> frotman: well, the first thing a 90%-plus denial rate shows you is that this isn't one-off borrower's fault. this isn't just individual people who made mistakes. >> stahl: right. >> frotman: this is an entire system, who let down our men and women in uniform. >> stahl: we're talking not just about jags. we're talking about military doctors, we're talking about cyber experts. >> frotman: the public service loan forgiveness program was created because the country was desperately worried that student debt was going to stop america's best and brightest from entering critical fields like the military. >> stahl: but the rules drive them crazy-- like making them chase after their commanders for their signature to verify that ey'reven in thlitary. >> frotman: this is where the wherrvice mbers are told,

"you're not eligible because we don't think you got the right officer to fill out your form." or, "you may have found the right officer, but they forgot to date the form." >> stahl: oh, come on. >> tregle: they make it more difficult than it needs to be. >> stahl: major tregle thought she did everything right to qualify: she had the right loan, right repayment plan. she can follow the fine print. after all, her title is "chief of complex litigation for the army's prosecutors"! so, after nine years of paying, she confidently started filing the necessary paperwork. >> tregle: i should have been about 12 payments away from 120 at that point. and they said that i had only paid 12 qualifying payments. >> stahl: they're telling you that your nine years of monthly payments amounted to one year. >> tregle: yes. so i obviously called them and said, "i don't understand. i have been in auto-payment the

entire time, so you guys take my payment when it's due and the amount that is due." and the woman looked through my account and she says, "you may have an issue that we know is an issue where the auto-debit takes the payment, but one penny short of what is actually due, so it doesn't count." >> stahl: whoa, whoa, whoa. what? >> tregle: so, it's a known problem that through the auto- payment, it's not-- it doesn't take the full amount due. it takes one cent shorter than it should. nobody's every told me, if that is in fact what was wrong with those payments. that was just something the servicer said on the phone that day, of, "well, this is a known problem." >> stahl: if it's known-- fix it! >> tregle: right. >> stahl: and online, borrowers complain that paying a few pennies over the sum can get payments disqualified, too! >> tregle: i submitted my case for a review, and it sat in

review for three years. and in the interim, i was paying, because you're like, "okay, well, they're reviewing it. they're doing something." but it-- the review, never-- three years later, it was still under review. >> stahl: it's an obstacle course! we found payments often disappear when the student loan is transferred from one servicing company to another, which happened to marine judge advocate major charles olson. when he applied for relief, his new servicer provided him this endless list of why he wasn't getting credit for over six years' worth of payments. >> olson: all those payments don't count, for a variety of different reasons. the payment wasn't on the correct due date. the payment wasn't the correct amount. and the frustrating part is i've sent the payment information via mail, via uploading, to prove to them that i've-- i've made the payments, the 120 payments. >> stahl: on time. the right amount?

records just hadn't transferred properly between servicers. i can't imagine that when you saw that, you didn't run out of your house and start screaming! >> olson: if i wasn't a marine-- yeah, i would have lost my bearing, ma'am. >> stahl: he's been arguing and appealing for over a year, in vain. army jag major brandon jones thinks repeated human errors cost him over three years of payments. his arguing and appealing has also proved futile. >> jones: it seems like they're just trying to wear us down, to the point where we either have to hire an attorney or do something else. >> stahl: or give it up and continue to pay. >> jones: or just give up. yup. >> sprott: these are three years of my life, in the service of my nation, that-- as i counted on them to count for this, they don't. and the reason they don't count, in my opinion, is that i was misled. >> frotman: one of the reasons why we are in the mess we are in is because the student loan companies, who have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars to implement these programs,

have cheated borrowers. they have deceived borrowers. they have chosen their bottom line over helping our men and women in uniform. you see this in the lawsuits that have been filed across the country. you see this in the federal regulators who have taken to task the student loan industry. >> stahl: regulators like the consumer financial protection bureau, which recently concluded that loan "servicers regularly provided inaccurate information," accusing them of deception. carson sprott, whose debt has grown, has left the air force, but he got a civilian public service job, so he's still counting months. jonathan hirsch, after many appeals, just got his debt wiped clean. heather tregle heard earlier this year that hers was, too. >> tregle: it was absolutely amazing. i believe i cried. ( laughs ) >> stahl: this problem didn't

start under president biden, but seth frotman says he could fix it immediately. >> frotman: so, there is a law that congress passed, as the war in iraq was raging, as the war in afghanistan was raging, which said, no member of the military should ever be denied a benefit because of bureaucratic red tape or government bureaucracy. >> stahl: so there is an actual law that could deal with every one of the glitches the jags are talking about? >> frotman: yes. >> stahl: and the president, you believe, has the power to put that law in, over the law that created this law. >> frotman: he could do it tomorrow. >> stahl: at the end of this past week, the department of education told us that the number of military people whose student debt has been forgiven has inched up to 350. it also said it plans to announce a major overhaul of this program, as early as this week. ( ticking )

(♪ ♪) 'my own garden is my own garden,' said the giant, so he built a high wall all round it. then one morning the giant heard some lovely music. (♪ ♪) through a little hole in the wall, the children had crept in. and the giant's heart melted... and they found the giant... all covered with blossoms. (♪ ♪) ( ticking ) >> anderson cooper: when tony bennett's family announced he had alzheimer's disease in february, few of the 94-year-old singer's fans imagined they'd ever see him on stage again.

but this summer, with his family's help, the legendary crooner began rehearsing for two concerts at radio city music hall, with his friend lady gaga. no one knew for sure if tony would be able to pull it off, but his family believed that tony's story could give hope to others struggling with alzheimer's, and invited us to follow him preparing for, what would likely be, his final act. ♪ i left my heart in san francisco ♪ >> cooper: tony bennett has been singing hits and swinging jazz... ♪ high on a hill ♪ >> cooper: ...for seven decades. but for tony, now, those years are a dim memory, lost in the fog of dementia from alzheimer's. he spends much of his time in his new york apartment looking through books and old photos. what are these of? we met tony and his wife susan

in june, a few weeks before his 95th birthday. is that bob hope? >> tony bennett: bob and dolores. >> susan benedetto: they sent that for your 75th birthday. and in a month and a half, you're going to be 95. ( laughs ) how about that? >> tony bennett: it's amazing. ( laughter ) >> cooper: do you feel 95? you don't look it. >> susan benedetto: how old do you feel, tone? >> tony bennett: 95. ( laughter ) >> cooper: tony has his good moments-- but susan has to do most of the talking. she says he first grew concerned about his memory five years ago. >> susan benedetto: we came home one night, and he said, "susan," he said, "i'm having a hard time remembering the names of the musicians." and-- >> cooper: the musicians he was playing with? >> susan benedetto: yeah, on s-- who he works with all the time. and so, it was unusual. and i said, "well, do you want to go see a doctor about it?" and he said, "i do." >> cooper: did you know right away that it was alzheimer's? >> dr. gayatri devi: yeah. >> cooper: dr. gayatri devi is tony's neurologist. she diagnosed him in 2017. >> cooper: do you know what is happening in-- in tony's brain? >> dr. devi: no one really kn

but i know that his hippocampus, which is the grand central station of memories-- and the conduit through which we retrieve memories, as well as lay down memories-- is not working very well. >> susan benedetto: look at this, tone. >> tony bennett: wow, what's that? >> susan benedetto: that's a painting that you did. >> cooper: susan and tony have been together for more than 30 years. she's now his full-time caregiver. how much does tony understand about what's going on around him at any given time? >> susan benedetto: every day is different. tony-- late at night, sometimes early in the morning, he's more alert, if i can use that word. so, i'll tell him, "tone, you're going to be on '60 minutes'." he's, like, "great." i said, "you remember that show, '60 minutes'?" he's, like, "i do." but in any other given moment, he won't know. >> cooper: i mean, he recognizes you. >> susan benedetto: he recognizes me, thank goodness. his children, you know. we are blessed in a lot of ways. he's very sweet. he doesn't know he has it. >> cooper: he doesn't know he has alzheimer's. >> susan benedetto: nuh-uh. >> cooper: what he does know is that he's at home, not performing on stage.

he'd continued to sing after his diagnosis... but the pandemic took him off the road. susan says it's been hard on him. >> susan benedetto: it was gayatri devi, our doctor, who said, "if he wants to sing, let him sing, because that's the best thing for him." you know, all the meds and all the treatments they do to stimulate your brain, for him, there's nothing more stimulating than performing. >> cooper: tony's oldest son and manager, danny bennett, came up with the idea of the radio city concerts in august with lady gaga. it'll be broadcast on cbs later this fall. >> danny bennett: the pandemic was a big-- ( sighs ) it was a big thing for me. like, an... ending his career on-- on that note... >> cooper: it couldn't end that way. >> danny bennett: couldn't end that way. after all that he'd-- he did. ♪ oh, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing ♪ >> cooper: tony and lady gaga released their first album together in 2014. ♪ doo-wa, doo-wa, doo-wa i've got you under my skin ♪

>> cooper: in 2018, he was able to record another album with her, which was just released this past week. by june, however, his disease had progressed, and susan told us she wasn't sure exactly what would happen at the planned radio city concert. >> susan benedetto: how you doing, handsome? >> tony bennett: okay. >> susan benedetto: you want to look over here at me? ( laughs ) (♪ piano ♪) >> cooper: but when it was time to rehearse, something incredible happened. tony's accompanist, lee musiker, began playing, and suddenly, the legendary showman was back. ♪ let someone start believin' in you ♪ let him hold out his hand let him find you and watch what happens! ♪ smile though your heart is aching ♪ smile

even though it's breaking ♪ >> cooper: he had no notes, no cue cards. ♪ when there are clouds in the sky ♪ you'll get by ♪ >> cooper: we were amazed. all his old songs were somehow still there. he sang an hour-long set from memory. ♪ if you just smile... ♪ ( applause ) >> lee musiker: bravo, tony. >> tony bennett: thank you. >> cooper: that was incredible. you just start playing something and it's all there? >> musiker: when i start playing, tony is completely engaged. and this is a whole new performance, and new phrases, new nuance. nothing short of a miracle. >> cooper: dr. gayatri devi explained how a transformation like that was possible. >> dr. devi: people respond differently depending on their strengths.

in tony's case, it's his musical memory, his ability to be a performer. those are an innate and hard- wired part of his brain. so, even though he doesn't know what the day might be or where his apartment is, he still can sing the whole repertoire of the american songbook and move people. >> cooper: how does music stimulate the brain? >> dr. devi: it engages multiple different parts of the brain, right? so there's the auditory cortex for hearing. there is the part of the brain that deals with movement and dance. there is the visual system that gets engaged, so it's kind of like a whole brain activator. >> cooper: tony could remember the songs-- but could he remember how to perform them in front of thousands of people? lady gaga knew it wasn't going to be easy. >> lady gaga: and you know, anderson, for the first couple of weeks that i saw tony since covid, he called me "sweetheart," but i wasn't sure he knew who i was.

>> cooper: in rehearsals this july, she found new ways to connect and communicate with her old friend-- when asking him questions, she'd keep it simple. >> lady gaga: for example, if i were to say, "tony, would you like to sing 'love for sale'," he'll say, "yeah." and if i say, "tony, would you like to sing 'love for sale' or 'it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing'--" he might not have as easy of a response. do you want to sing "anything goes?" >> tony bennett: yeah. >> lady gaga: all right, great." anything goes," everybody! >> lady gaga: when that music comes on-- ( snaps ) it's-- something happens to him. he knows exactly what he's doing. and what's important for me, actually, just to make sure that i don't get in the way of that. >> cooper: on opening night in early august, radio city's 6,000 seats were sold out. it was tony's 95th birthday... >> crowd: ♪ happy birthday to you ♪ >> cooper: ...and his fans were waiting. >> crowd: we love you, tony! >> cooper: lady ga

backstage, susan did her best to remind tony what was happening. >> susan benedetto: we're going to watch lady gaga's set. >> tony bennett: right. >> susan benedetto: and then you're going to sing. okay? >> tony bennett: how many songs am i singing? >> susan benedetto: i'll tell you what you're going to sing. >> cooper: when it was time, they walked toward the stage together. then, the lights went out, and the curtain went up. >> tony bennett: wow! >> susan benedetto: well, once he saw the audience, and, you know, and he raises his hands, he's-- i knew we were all right, because he became himself. he just turned on. you know, it was like a light switch. ♪ let someone start believin' in you ♪ let him hold out his hand let him fiou h whappens

♪ steppin' out with my baby ♪ can't go wrong cause i'm in right ♪ ask me when will that day be the big day may be tonight! ♪ this is all i ask ♪ >> cooper: there may have been a few missteps, but the crowd didn't care. it was tony's night, and the old crooner was in command. ♪ beautiful girls walk a little slower ♪ when you walk by me... ♪ ( cheers and applause ) >> cooper: he sang more than a dozen songs, and got at least 20 standing ovations. >> tony bennett: should we keep going? wow! what a great audience. >> cooper: when it came time for lady gaga to join him for some final duets, listen to what tony said as she appeared on stage: >> lady gaga: hey, tony!

>> tony bennett: whoa, lady gaga! i like that! >> lady gaga: me, too. >> tony bennett: do it again. >> lady gaga: okay! that's the first time that tony said my name, in a long time. >> cooper: really, in all the weeks leading up to it, he hadn't said your name? wow. >> lady gaga: i had to keep it together, because we had a sold-out show, and i have a job to do. but i'll tell you, when i walked out on that stage, and he said, "it's lady gaga," my friend saw me. and it was very special. ♪ go to the opera and i stay wide awake ♪ that's oke! ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> cooper: and at the end of the

night, lady gaga was there to walk tony bennett off the stage one last time. >> lady gaga: it's the last thing that i said to tony, on stage, was-- "mr. bennett, it would be my honor if i could escort you off the stage." and he said, "okay." and i did. and, just simply being the woman that got to walk him off stage, that's enough for me. you were so amazing. >> tony bennett: the public loved it. >> lady gaga: they did! you were-- you were spectacular. everybody, mr. tony bennett! >> susan benedetto: i thought it was a triumph, really. it's, like-- you know, climbing mt. olympus, and he made it. >> cooper: a few days after that triumph, we met tony and susan on their daily walk in central park. how did you feel about the concert the other night? >> tony bennett: i don't know what you mean. >> cooper: i saw you at radio city. yo did a great job. >> tony bennett: oh, thank you very much.

>> cooper: tony had no memory of playing radio city at all. is this a sad story, tony bennett's last performance? >> lady gaga: no. it's not a sad story. it's emotional. it's hard to watch somebody change. i think what's been beautiful about this, and what's been challenging, is to see how it affects him in some ways, but to see how it doesn't affect his talent. i think he really pushed through something to give the world the gift of knowing that things can change and you can still be magnificent. ♪ your golden sun will shine for me! ♪

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