captioning funded by cbs and ford-- built for the road ahead. >> couric: >> greg mortenson's bt cups of tea is a publishing phenomenon that has made him a celebrity, a cult life figure of a lecture circuit and inspired people to give nearly $60 million to his charity, and it all began with one simple story. >> it's a beautiful story and it's a lie. >> we wanted to talk to mortenson about that and some other things, but he didn't want to talk to "60 minutes." >> how are you doing? >> do you have five minutes for us today? >> um... >> 95% of sexual assaults on

college campuses are never reported, but when they, are the cases are often difficult for schools to adjudicate and painful for the victim. both were true in the same of a scholarship basketball player named beckett brennan, who says she was raped and didn't know where to turn except to her parents. >> it was definitely the hardest conversation i've ever had. >> you describe bill gates in very harsh terms. you describe him as being quite abusive. i mean, it's not a pretty picture. >> i felt like when i wrote it, i should just tell it like it happened in an unvarnished way, warts and all. >> tonight you'll hear how the two high school buddies who started microsoft and a computer revolution had some pretty trying times along the way. you talk about his yelling, screaming. >> there was a lot of yelling.

>> you guys never understood, you never understood the first thing about this. i mean, there's no way. >> i'm steve kroft. >> i'm lesdy stall. >> i'm scott pelley. >> i'm bob simon. >> i'm morley safer. >> i'm katie couric. those stories tonight on "60 "60 minutes." >> this portion of "60 minutes" is sponsored by:

>> kroft: greg mortenson is a former mountain climber, best- selling author, humanitarian and philanthropist. his non-profit organization, the central asia institute, is

dedicated to promoting education, especially for girls, in remote parts of pakistan and afghanistan, and, according to its web site, has established more than 140 schools there. president obama donated $100,000 to the group from the proceeds of his nobel prize. mortenson's book, "three cups of tea," has sold more than four million copies and is required reading for u.s. servicemen bound for afghanistan. but last fall, we began investigating complaints from former donors, board members, staffers and charity watchdogs about mortenson and the way he is running his non-profit organization, and we found there are serious questions about how millions of dollars have been spent, whether mortenson is personally benefiting, and whether some of the most dramatic and inspiring stories in his books are even true. greg morentson's books have made him a publishing phenomenon and a sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit, where he has

attained a cult like status. he regularly draws crowds of several thousand people and $30,000 per engagement. and everywhere mortenson goes, he brings an inspirational message built around a story that forms the cornerstone of "three cups of tea" and his various ventures-- how, in 1993, he tried and failed to reach the summit of k-2, the world's second tallest mountain, to honor his dead sister; how he got lost and separated from his party on the descent and stumbled into a tiny village called korphe. >> mortenson: my pants were ripped in half, and i hadn't taken a bath in 84 days. and i stumbled into a little village called korphe, where i was befriended by the people and they gave me everything they had-- their yak butter, their tea. they put warm blankets over me, and they helped nurse me back to health. >> kroft: mortenson tells how he discovered 84 children in the back of the village, writing their school lessons with sticks

in the dust. >> mortenson: and when a young girl named chocho came up to me, and said, "can you help us build a school?," i made a rash promise that day, and i said, "i promise i'll help build a school." little did i know it would change my life forever. >> kroft: it's a powerful and heartwarming tale that has motivated millions of people to buy his books and to contribute nearly $60 million to his charity. >> jon krakauer: it's a beautiful story, and it's a lie. >> kroft: jon krakauer is also a best-selling author and mountaineer, who wrote "into thin air" and "into the wild." he was one of mortenson's earliest backers, donating $75,000 to his non-profit organization. but after a few years, krakauer says he withdrew his support over concerns that the charity was being mismanaged, and he later learned that the korphe tale that launched mortenson into prominence was simply not true. did he stumble into this village in a weakened state? >> krakauer: absolutely not. >> kroft: nobody helped him out and nursed him back to health.

>> krakauer: absolutely not. i... i have spoken to one of his companions, a close friend who hiked out from k2 with him, and this companion said, "greg never heard of korphe till a year later." >> kroft: strangely enough, krakauer's version of events is backed up by greg mortensen himself in his earliest telling of the story. in an article he wrote for the newsletter of the american himalayan foundation after his descent from k-2, mortenson makes no mention of his experience in korphe, although he did write that he hoped to build a school in another village called khane. we managed to track down the two porters who accompanied mortenson and spoke to them in pakistan's remote hushe valley. they also told us that mortenson did not stumble into korphe lost and alone, and that he didn't go to korphe at all until nearly a year later on another visit. he did build a school in korphe. >> krakauer: he did, and it's a good thing. but if you go back and read the first few chapters of that book, you realize "i'm being taken for a ride here."

>> mortenson: one of the most compelling experiences i had was in july of '96. >> kroft: it's not a solitary example. upon close examination, some of the most touching and harrowing tales in mortenson's books appear to have been either greatly exaggerated or made up out of whole cloth. >> mortenson: i went to the area to find a place to build a school. and what happened is, i got kidnapped by the taliban for eight days. >> kroft: the kidnapping story was featured in "three cups of tea" and referred to in his follow-up bestseller, "stones into schools," with this 1996 photograph of his alleged captors. we managed to locate four men who were there when the photo was taken; two of them actually appear in the picture. all of them insist they are not taliban and that greg mortenson was not kidnapped. they also gave us another photo of the group with mortenson holding the ak-47. one of the men, mansur khan mahsud, is the research director of a respected think tank in islamabad and has produced

scholarly articles published in the u.s. until recently, he had no idea that he had been shown as a kidnapper in a best-selling book. >> mahsud: that's me. >> kroft: we spoke with mahsud via skype. he told us he and the other people in the photograph were mortenson's protectors in waziristan, not his abductors. the story, as mr. mortenson tells it, is that he was held for eight days and won you over by asking for a koran and promising to build schools in the area. is that... is that true? >> mahsud: this is totally false, and he is lying. he was not kidnapped. >> kroft: who are these people that are also in the picture? >> mahsud: some are my cousin. some are our friends from our village. >> kroft: well, why do you think mr. mortenson would write this? >> mahsud: to sell his book. >> kroft: another place where no one has done much checking is into the financial records of mortenson's non-profit organization, the central asia institute, which builds and funds the schools in pakistan and afghanistan and is located

in bozeman, montana, where mortenson lives. he says the charity took in $23 million in contributions last year-- some it from thousands of school children who emptied their piggy banks to help its pennies for peace program, and some of it from large fundraisers like this one in santa clara, california. >> we got a $1,500 bid here. she gotta get to that school gettin' built, ladies and gentlemen, tonight! >> kroft: this organization's been around for 14 years. how many audited financial statements has it issued? >> daniel borochoff: one. ( laughs ) >> kroft: one. >> borochoff: it's amazing that they could get away with that. >> kroft: daniel borochoff is president of the american institute of philanthropy, which has been examining and rating charitable organizations for the last two decades. he says the central asia institute's financial statements show a lack of transparency and a troublesome intermingling of mortenson's personal business interests with the charity's public purpose.

according to the documents, the non-profit spends more money domestically promoting the importance of building schools in afghanistan and pakistan than it does actually constructing and funding them overseas. >> borochoff: what's surprising is that most of the program spending is not to help kids in pakistan and afghanistan; it's actually their, what they call, domestic outreach where he goes around the country speaking, and the... the costs incurred for that-- things like travel-- is a major component of that, you know. just advertising... >> kroft: what does that mean? >> borochoff: sounds like a book tour to me. >> kroft: his point is that when greg mortenson travels all over the country at the charity's expense, he is promoting and selling his books and collecting speaking fees that the charity does not appear to be sharing in. according to the financial statement, the charity receives no income from the bestsellers and little if any income from mortenson's paid speaking engagements, while listing $1.7

million in "book-related expenses." the $1.7 million that they spent for book-related expenses is more than they spent on all of their schools in pakistan last year. >> borochoff: correct. >> kroft: what do you say... i mean... >> borochoff: it's disappointing. you would hope that... that they would be spending a lot more on the schools in pakistan than they would on... on... on book- related costs. why doesn't mr. mortenson spend his own money on the book- related costs? he's the one getting the revenues. >> kroft: in fiscal year 2009, the charity spent $1.5 million on advertising to promote mortenson's books in national publications like this full-page ad in the "new yorker," and there are $1.3 million in domestic travel expenses, some it for private jets. late last night, we received a statement from the board of directors of the central asia institute acknowledging that it receives no royalties or income from greg mortenson's book sales or speaking engagements. but the board says the books and the speeches are an integral part of its mission, by raising

public awareness and generating contributions. and it claims that mortenson has personally contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the organization. but the american institute of philanthropy is not persuaded. >> borochoff: i don't think the charity's getting a fair share here, based on the financial reports that i've reviewed. >> kroft: do you think contributors are being misled? >> borochoff: i think so. >> kroft: and so does jon krakauer, who says it's been going on for a long time. >> krakauer: in 2002, his board treasurer quit, resigned, along with the board president and two other board members, and said, "you should stop giving money to greg." >> kroft: did he say why? >> krakauer: he said, in so many words, that greg uses central asia institute as his private a.t.m. machine, that there's no accounting, he has no receipts. >> kroft: over the years, a half a dozen staffers and board members have resigned over similar concerns, especially about money mortenson has sent overseas to build schools. >> krakauer: nobody is overseeing what... what goes on. he doesn't know how many schools he's built.

nobody knows how much these schools cost. >> kroft: the i.r.s. tax return central asia institute filed last year included a list of 141 schools that it claimed to have built or supported in pakistan and afghanistan. over the past six months, we visited or looked into nearly 30 of them. some were performing well, but roughly half were empty, built by somebody else, or not receiving support at all. some were being used to store spinach or hay for livestock. others had not received any money from mortenson's charity in years. the principal of this school told us that the institute had built six classrooms poorly several years ago and since then not a single rupee. in afghanistan, we could find no evidence that six of the schools even existed, most of them in war-torn kunar province. >> krakauer: in kunar province, it's really violent. he built three schools there in 2009. so he goes on "charlie rose," he says he built 11 schools in kunar province.

>> mortenson: today, we have 11 schools also in that district. >> krakauer: why can't he just say he built three? i mean, that's impressive. you say you built 11, i go, "why are you lying about this?" >> kroft: one of the schools we looked into in afghanistan is this one in bozoi gumbaz, a remote outpost in the wakhan corridor, on the roof of the world. mortenson's second book, "stones into schools," begins with abdul rashid khan, the leader of a semi-nomadic people, sending horsemen to summon mortenson to his camp. the book ends with khan on his deathbed, ordering every available yak in the high pamir to haul supplies for a school that will serve 200 children. but ted callahan, an anthropologist who spent nearly a year in the area, says the story doesn't ring true. >> callahan: the number of children that this one school's going to educate-- that's just nonsense. the words that abdul rashid khan says in this book-- this is a man who probably came to my tent every day for an hour or two, and the man that i knew is not the man who's portrayed in this book.

>> kroft: you seem to be saying that most of it is b.s. >> callahan: the most generous thing i could say is that it's... it's grossly exaggerated. and probably the harshest thing i could say is... is a lot of it just sounds like outright fabrication. >> kroft: today, the school sits empty, and we're told by a tribal leader that it has never been used. >> callahan: no one's there. no one's there at all. you know, i think, at best, it might end up being used as... as a storage shed for stuff. >> kroft: we obviously wanted to talk to greg mortenson, who has appeared on just about every news and talk show on television, but he didn't want to talk to "60 minutes." he dismissed our initial request for an interview last fall, and our follow-up messages and emails over the past two weeks have gone unanswered. we finally decided to seek him out at a speaking engagement and book signing in atlanta. >> mortenson: how ya doin'? >> kroft: steve kroft. >> mortenson: nice to meet you. >> kroft: how ya doin'? >> mortenson: thanks. >> kroft: you got five minute for us today? >> mortenson: i need to sign these books right now, so... >> kroft: yeah, i know. you know, we haven't heard from... it's been almost a week. we haven't heard from you or the board, and we're just tryin'

to... >> mortenson: i need to sign these right now. >> kroft: i don't want to disrupt this, but... >> mortenson: well, you're already disrupting it, so, thanks. >> kroft: okay. can we come back? we'll wait for you. >> mortenson: thanks. >> female book signer: hey, how are you? >> kroft: mortenson's staff immediately contacted hotel security, which asked us to leave. they told us if we retired to the lobby, one of his staff members would stop by or call us to discuss a possible interview. they never did. mortenson canceled his afternoon appearance and left the hotel through a back entrance. >> krakauer: he's not bernie madoff. i mean, let's be clear: he has done a lot of good. he has helped thousands of... of school kids in pakistan and afghanistan. >> he has become perhaps the world's most effective spokesperson for girls' education in developing countries, and he deserves credit for that. nevertheless, he is now threatening to bring it all down, to destroy all of it by this fraud and by these lies. >> kroft: in the last few days, we received two statements from

greg mortenson, saying that he stood by the information in his books and the value of his charity's work. he called the attacks against him unjustified. >> cbs money watch update sponsored by: >> mitchell: good evening. gas price hit an average of $3.83 a gallon today, up 7 cents in a week, 29 cents in a month. as millions of taxpayers scrambled to file by midnight tomorrow, the i.r.s. reports nearly half of americans paid no income tax. and rio scored hollywood's biggest opening of the year. i'm russ mitchell, cbs news.

>> couric: with all that's going on in the world, there hasn't been much attention paid to a social issue the obama administration has decided to take on-- sexual assault on college campuses.

it's a problem, according to the justice department, that has proliferated across this country. and earlier this month, the government sent out guidelines to help colleges deal with it. but it won't be easy. adjudicating a case of sexual assault on a college campus can be difficult for both the victim and the school, which we found out in the case of beckett brennan, who was a student at the university of the pacific when she reported that she had been raped. beckett brennan was a high school all-american basketball player, renowned for her three- point shooting, and recruited by dozens of top colleges. her father, barry, had played in the n.c.a.a. finals in 1974, and passed his love of the game on to his daughter. >> beckett brennan: we built an unbelievable relationship through basketball and on the court. >> couric: tell me a little bit about what made you fall in love with basketball.

>> beckett brennan: i enjoyed kind of having it define my ability, and it was nice to kind of be recognized by something that you worked so hard for. >> couric: she accepted a full scholarship at the university of the pacific, a picturesque school in stockton, california, with 3,000 undergraduates, and a successful division one men's basketball program and a growing women's program. and so you had a good year your freshman year, right? >> beckett brennan: yes. great year. actually played, and made an impact, i'd like to think. >> couric: but everything changed for beckett brennan one saturday night in may of 2008. she went to a party with her teammates at a student housing complex known as the townhouses, where she says she drank six shots of vodka. she says later, she found herself stranded at an off- campus party looking for a ride. >> beckett brennan: i was offered a ride by two of the men on the men's basketball team, and assuming that we were going back to the townhouses. >> couric: did you feel completely comfortable taking a

ride with them? >> beckett brennan: yeah, absolutely. there were no red flags that came up. no reason not to trust them. when they got back to the townhouses, she went into one of the basketball player's apartments, thinking the party was continuing there. instead, she claims they led her upstairs into an empty bedroom and raped her. then, she says, a third basketball player came into the room, pushed her into a closet, and raped her again. >> beckett brennan: i remember them saying "don't tell anybody" and "this is our little secret." >> couric: what were you saying to them? >> beckett brennan: "why are you doing this to me?" over and over and over again. >> couric: when it was over, she called friends for help. back at her dorm, and without her knowledge, one of them recorded her on his cell phone. >> beckett brennan: and they were, like, taking off my clothes. i was inside the closet in the corner, trying to... like, trying to get away. i don't want anyone to find out. no, i don't. i don't want anybody to find out.

>> couric: according to a study funded by the justice department, 95% of victims of sexual assault on college campuses don't report it. and neither did beckett brennan-- not to stockton police, not to the university. the next day, she got through her last final exam and flew home to colorado. but her friends were worried and upset, and gave that recording to the school. her assistant coach called her at home. is that when you told your mom and dad what had happened? >> beckett brennan: uh-huh. >> couric: what did they say? >> beckett brennan: that was definitely the hardest conversation i've ever had. >> barry brennan: it's nightmarish. you have rage. you don't know how to act or react, you're just trying to hold things together and process. >> couric: four days after the alleged assault, university police questioned the three basketball players beckett had identified on the tape as her

assailants-- michael nunnally, steffan johnson, and michael kirby. school officials urged beckett to report the assault to stockton police. a few weeks later, she talked to a detective there, and after that conversation, she decided not to file criminal charges. >> beckett brennan: he explained to me the system with cases that involve rape, and kind of laid out the facts about it's a "he said, she said," and kind of scared me. he used an example of a girl who was, like, 16 or 17 who was on the stand for, like, 16 hours. i can't even imagine. >> couric: the school suggested another option-- testify before the university's judicial review board, an internal school disciplinary panel that would guarantee beckett's identity wouldn't be revealed. her parents, jane and barry, believed this would be the best course of action. >> jane brennan: we were fearful for her safety, at that point;

just her own mental health. >> couric: but before the hearing, the university gave the brennans a startling piece of information-- another pacific student was claiming that she had also been raped at the townhouses just a month before beckett. the school suspected a link and put beckett in touch with the earlier victim, a former classmate named krystina tonetti. >> krystina tonetti: i just was really shocked that something like that would happen twice in a month. >> couric: tonetti says she was also drinking at a party at the townhouses when she was led upstairs, where one man raped her while two others stood by watching. >> tonetti: i just kept saying no. and i kept trying to push him off, because he was really big and he was kind of overpowering. >> couric: she says she managed to escape and went to a hospital, where she was interviewed by stockton police

and administered a d.n.a. rape kit. she decided not to press charges. while she couldn't identify the men in the room with certainty, tonetti believed they were pacific students and agreed to tell her story at beckett brennan's judicial review board hearing. but when the day came, she was a no-show. >> tonetti: it was starting to get too close to home and too close to my parents finding out, so i didn't go through with it. >> couric: so, five weeks after her assault, beckett brennan and the three players each testified in this campus building before a judicial board made up of three students, a teacher, and an administrator. the board heard no details about the other alleged assault at the townhouses. beckett said the board's questions made her feel like the case had suddenly become less about the basketball players and more about her behavior that night. >> beckett brennan: so much of what they focused on was not the actual assault.

tons of questions about how much i was drinking. a focus on flirting. >> couric: two of the players told the school that this was consensual. >> beckett brennan: in no way was it ever consensual, and they know that. >> couric: one of the players also said he wasn't even there. >> beckett brennan: yeah. >> couric: after a week of deliberations, the judicial review board ruled that all three basketball players were guilty of violating the school's policy against sexual assault. but they received different punishments. steffan johnson, who claimed he wasn't there, was expelled. michael nunnally, who admitted having sex with beckett but said he believed it was consensual, was suspended for a year. and michael kirby, who said he and beckett had consensual sex after she'd been flirting with him at the party, was suspended for a semester. all three chose not to comment for this story. >> beckett brennan: i didn't understand how you can find somebody guilty of sexual

assault and not expel them. >> janine simerly: expelling one student, suspending one for one semester, suspending the other for a full academic year-- those are all serious sanctions. >> couric: janine simerly is an attorney representing the university of the pacific. she says the case was always complicated, and after the decision was announced, it became contentious. >> simerly: i understand that she believes that the university did not do right in this situation. i'm suggesting to you that the university tried to get it right. the university did the best that it could do. >> couric: do you believe that beckett brennan was raped that night, or was the victim of sexual assault? >> simerly: i know that she believes that. and i know that the three male students who were accused deny that there was any nonconsensual sex. >> couric: you believe that this judicial review panel has the

proper experience and expertise to adjudicate a case of sexual assault or multiple sexual assaults? >> simerly: absolutely. and it happens across the country on a regular basis. and it should happen. that's the appropriate panel to review these kinds of issues. >> joelle gomez: all three should have been expelled. a sexual assault, a rape, is a rape. >> couric: joelle gomez runs the san joaquin women's center in stockton. she started counseling beckett shortly after the board's decision. gomez doesn't believe college judicial review boards are equipped to handle such serious crimes. >> gomez: there's little to no transparency. there's little to no accountability. certainly it does, in my opinion, favor the alleged perpetrator as opposed to the victim, again, who's really risking it all in making the report in the first place.

>> couric: you can almost hear the reaction of some people listening to this story. they might say, "this girl had too much to drink. she went upstairs with these three young men willingly." how do you respond to that? >> gomez: none of us know how we're going to react in a sexual assault. yet it's pretty simple. doesn't matter what time of day it was, who they were with, what they were wearing, how much they had to drink. but there is never an invitation for rape. >> couric: in june 2008, beckett brennan decided that the best way for her to move forward was to return to pacific for the summer session. >> beckett brennan: i wanted my life back. i wanted to play basketball again. i wanted my friends. >> couric: what was it like when you went back? >> beckett brennan: completely different. >> couric: for one thing, the athletic director had banned the men's and women's teams from

socializing. she was told the new rules were for her own protection, but says, as a result, she was blamed and ostracized. >> beckett brennan: it was kind of one of those situations where you felt like everyone on campus knew. >> couric: in october of 2008, beckett brennan left the university of the pacific for good. three months later, michael kirby returned to pacific and the tigers' starting lineup. the team's missing center, michael nunnally, returned the following fall. as for steffan johnson? three months after he was expelled from pacific for sexual assault, he was given a full scholarship to the university of idaho. head coach don verlin told a local newspaper he recruited johnson after talking to the associate head coach from pacific, ron verlin, who just happens to be his twin brother. >> barry brennan: unbelievable to sit there and say "oh, wow. okay, well, we can use a guy like that. oh, he has a sexual assault and has been found guilty?" how in the hell do you end up at another university within three

months? >> couric: beckett brennan and her family are not giving up. they sued the school for violating her civil rights. last fall, a judge ruled against them, and the brennans are now appealing that ruling. >> welcome to the cbs sports update presented by viagra. at the slow lair row texas open today, in only his 12th start, graham steele wins his first pga tour championship. in the nab playoff, the memphis grizzlies upset the san antonio spurs in game one of their first-round series while the new orleans hornets knocked off the second-seeded lakers. for more sports news and scores, log on to cbssports.com. ♪

>> stahl: it's interesting how many big high-tech companies were started by two friends: like hewlett and packard, or google's larry and sergey. microsoft was, too.

bill gates co-founded his company, one of the most important and successful in american history, with his high school buddy, paul allen. today, allen is known more for his mega-yachts and palling around with brad and angelina than for his revolutionary ideas in the company's early years. but now, paul allen has written a memoir called "idea man"-- out this week-- in which he not only gives an account of those ideas, he draws a dark portrait of his fellow co-founder and lifelong friend. as allen writes and tells us, in one of the only in-depth interviews he's ever given, he was too angry and proud to tell gates point blank, "some days working with you is like being in hell." you describe bill gates in very harsh terms. you describe him as being quite abusive. i mean, it's not a pretty picture. >> paul allen: i felt like, when

i wrote it, i should just tell it like it happened in an unvarnished way, warts and all. >> stahl: you know, here he is doing such great work. he's almost a saint now. and it seems like an odd time to write an unflattering portrait of him. >> allen: the timing had nothing to do with the many wonderful things that bill has done. but the timing was because i wanted to see if i could do it, and hopefully be alive to see it published. >> stahl: no wonder he was concerned-- when he started the book in 2009, he had stage-four lymphoma. the book goes back to the beginning. this is a picture of allen when he was 15 and met a boy at his private school in seattle, two years his junior, named bill gates. >> allen: there's the machine room. you can see the machine room in there... >> stahl: this video shows the two buddies revisiting an old computer lab where they used to feed their obsession with programming. >> bill gates: you'd lift me into one of those huge garbage

bins. >> allen: bill and i would actually dive in the dumpsters to try to find listings of the secret inner code of the operating system... >> stahl: you're kidding. >> allen: ...and try to figure out how it worked. that's how passionate we were. >> stahl: they both became crack coders, but early on, allen emerged as a creative dreamer; gates, a cold-eyed pragmatist. you write that, when he was 13 years old, he told you, "one day, we're going to start a company, run a company." >> allen: he was saying, "well, imagine what it's like to run a fortune 500 company." i'm thinking, "i have no idea." you know, my parents were... were librarians. >> stahl: you kept bringing him ideas, and you write in the book, "he was always popping my balloon." >> allen: that's right, that's right. i mean, i would have, you know, ten ideas, and he would kind of pick them apart, one by one. >> stahl: one of allen's ideas gates didn't shoot down would lead to the personal computer revolution and launch microsoft. it was 1974.

he was a college dropout working in boston, and one day, he spotted a magazine announcing a new small computer called the altair. he ran to show it to his friend gates, then at harvard. >> allen: and i said, "here, look at the magazine! this is the computer we've been waiting for!" >> stahl: this is how the p.c., the idea that we all have these computers, this is how it started. >> allen: yeah, and it's amazing to think, back then, nobody had personal computers. i mean, there were computers in universities and research labs and in corporations, but nobody had personal computers. >> stahl: allen's idea was to write software that would enable the altair to work as well as those large computers. >> allen: and so we called up the company that made it, and said, "well, we can demonstrate this software for you very... very quickly. are you interested?" and, they said, "sure, if you can really show up and demonstrate it." >> stahl: did you have software? >> allen: no. ( laughs ) no. >> stahl: you had nothing? >> allen: we had nothing! >> stahl: so they spent the next

eight weeks at harvard feverishly writing code, but without an altair to test on. allen writes that, because gates looked like he was 13, they decided allen should go alone to pitch their software. sitting by an old original altair, he showed me how he fed the computer a paper strip with their code punched into it and typed, "print 2+2." >> allen: and then i hit "return." and, lo and behold, it printed four. and a wave of relief surged over me, because i couldn't... i almost couldn't believe it had worked the first time. that night, i called bill up and i say, "billy, it's unbelievable, it worked!" and we were just... we were just over the moon. >> stahl: it was the beginning of the age of a computer in every home, on every desk. almost overnight, people started buying these small computers, and their software was in high demand. in 1977, gates was even interviewed on a tv show. >> gates: there's a lot of

people who are forecasting that there'll be software stores just like there are record stores today, and that there'll be thousands and thousands of those. and i think i'd have to agree with that. >> stahl: allen writes that gates had a rare gift for programming. he was also the shrewder businessman. from the beginning, he demanded a larger share of the company, 60%, and then more. but allen says he was the one who pushed through the company's big early break-- developing an operating system for ibm's first personal computer in 1980. yet as the company soared, allen didn't want to give up his whole life to microsoft the way gates did. >> allen: well, i've always had so many different interests. >> stahl: but do you think he came to think that you weren't working as hard as he was, and it became a source of resentment with him? >> allen: well, i think he was always pushing people to work as hard as they possibly could. >> stahl: you included? >> allen: maybe me more than everybody else. >> stahl: you describe bill in

this period, and actually throughout, as tough, a taskmaster. you talk about his yelling, screaming. >> allen: there was a lot of yelling. >> gates: you guys never understood! you never understood the first thing about this! >> stahl: a 1994 cbs news profile got a sample of gates' management style, which allen describes as "brow beating" and "personal verbal attacks." >> gates: that's ridiculous. i'm not using this thing. no, no, no, no, no. somebody's confused, somebody's just not thinking. i mean, there's no way. >> allen: you had to fight back intensely to stand your ground and make your position and your convictions expressed. >> stahl: but he didn't like to back down, so these fights would go on, you said. they could go on for hours. >> allen: oh, yeah. that's right. >> stahl: you're just screaming at each other for hours. >> allen: and that's exhausting. it's exhausting. but that was bill's style.

>> stahl: allen was miserable, and felt he was being marginalized. and then, things got a lot worse-- he got cancer. one night, he passed by gates' office and overheard him talking with steve ballmer, who'd been hired to help run the company. what were they saying? >> allen: they were basically talking about how they were planning to dilute my share down to almost nothing. and it was a, you know, really shocking and disheartening moment for me. >> stahl: and you were sick. >> allen: i think i was still probably in the middle of radiation therapy. he burst in and interrupted them. he says they were trying to cut him out and rip him off. >> allen: and, of course, steve came over to my house later that night to apologize. >> stahl: he did? >> allen: he did. >> stahl: but bill didn't come. >> allen: no, he sent steve. >> stahl: he sent steve. it wasn't steve; he sent steve. >> allen: well, steve's the one who came. >> stahl: shortly after, allen left. but he got to hold on to all his

shares. it's hard to feel sorry for him- - he was 30, cured of cancer, and owned nearly a third of microsoft. so, you built this building? >> allen: yeah. >> stahl: after the company went public, allen became one of the richest men on earth; at one point, worth an estimated $40 billion! gates would spend another two decades running microsoft, launching word, windows, and explorer. and once he retired, he devoted himself to eradicating global disease and improving education. allen has spent his wealth on a hodgepodge of many interests. for instance, he plays electric guitar, so he has his own personal rock 'n roll band to jam with, and he bought jimi hendrix's woodstock guitar for $750,000. he likes science fiction; he subsidizes an antenna farm listening for aliens.

an avid reader; he showed us a shakespeare folio he keeps at his estate. you became the owner of the seahawks. he likes football; he bought an nfl team. he likes basketball even more: he also bought an nba team. he's a movie buff, so he invested in dreamworks, the hollywood studio. he wants to travel, so he built himself a yacht longer than a football field equipped with its own submarine. he has spent over a billion dollars on philanthropy, including building an institute to study the brain and, like gates, he's pledged to give most of his money away to charity. now, he got married. >> allen: right. >> stahl: you never got married. >> allen: not yet. >> stahl: not yet. >> allen: i'm still optimistic. i still believe i'm going to meet somebody and that's going to happen but... >> stahl: you want to. >> allen: i want to have a family. >> stahl: but he's often described as a recluse.

something struck me when he showed us his collection of vintage war planes. i get this howard hughes-y feel- - the planes, hollywood. do you think about that ever? >> allen: well, i hope i don't end up in a cinema by myself watching "ice station zebra" over and over again. i think i've got such a diverse set of interests-- movies, aviation, technology, sports teams. >> stahl: howard hughes! >> allen: well, i don't know if howard was involved in sports teams. >> stahl: allen's diverse set of interests also led him to invest in over 100 business ventures. most of them were poorly managed or ahead of their time, so they flopped, and he slid from being the third richest man in the world to 57tgh. were you just too early, or was it that you really needed a bill gates and didn't have that other person to push it through? >> allen: look, in the microsoft days, you had some great ideas and some great execution between

me and bill and many other people. you know, in technology, most things fail, most companies fail. but i had some whoppers. >> stahl: some of his whoppers, however, produced numerous patents. last year, in a move that angered silicon valley, allen sued several giant companies, accusing them of infringing on those old patents. who are you suing? >> allen: oh, it's a long list. >> stahl: aol, apple, ebay, facebook, google, netflix, office depot, office max, staples, yahoo, and youtube. >> allen: right. >> stahl: how do you argue that you had something to do with google? it just seems so outlandish, or kind of wacky. >> allen: look, microsoft and google, all these people, have patents of their own. they all enforce patents. they all charge other companies for patents. all i'm trying to do is get back the investment that i made to

create these patents. >> stahl: we kept hearing that what he's really trying to do is gain recognition as a tech visionary. but with his book, "idea man," he's being branded "a bitter billionaire." but what's your reaction to people saying it's kind of a revenge book, a bitter book? >> allen: it's not about that. i just felt like it's an important piece of technology history, and i should tell it like it... tell it like it happened, and i hope people understand and respect that. >> stahl: but for all the bad feelings allen writes about with gates, near the end of the book, he reveals something that happened when he got cancer a second time in 2009. and he came to see you, he comforted you when you were sick. >> allen: right. bill came here to my house multiple times and we had some great talks. there's a bond there that can't be denied. and i think... i think we both feel that. >> stahl: even after the book? i know he's read the book.

>> allen: right. no, i'm sure... i'm sure, at some point, we'll sit down and talk about the book, which we haven't done yet. >> stahl: you'll have a screaming match. >> allen: well, i don't know about screaming, but it'll be... i'm sure it'll be a heated discussion. >> stahl: do you think there's any reason that you're going to have to apologize to him now? >> allen: i don't think so. >> stahl: we asked bill gates for a comment, and while he declined, he has said that the founding of microsoft was an equal partnership, and paul deserves more credit than he's often given. we used to bet who could get closest to the edge. took some crazy risks as a kid. but i was still over the edge with my cholesterol. anyone with high cholesterol may be at increased risk of heart attack. diet and exercise weren't enough for me. i stopped kidding myself. i've been eating healthier, exercising more, and now i'm also taking lipitor.

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