Producers at 60 Minutes scour every and any source imaginable to find original material, combining basic research with shoe leather reporting, eliciting information from on camera and off camera sources. Producers scout locations, hire freelance and staff crews, compose interview questions, direct shoots, co-write and rewrite scripts, supervise in editing rooms, and oversee publicity, social media and cross platform development. Each story is a marathon that can take the form of a three-day "crash," a three-month (typical) turnaround, or a three-year epic pursuit culminating, one hopes, in a once in a lifetime story. 

Messick's first story at 60 Minutes was just that, an investigation into the gasoline additive MTBE, mandated by the Clean Air Act, that wound up contaminating the nation’s water supplies. The 24-minute report helped change federal law and won an Emmy for Investigative Reporting.  Since then, he has managed dozens of major investigations. In 2006, he was one of the first journalists to unravel the CIA practice known as rendition, in which masked agents snatch terrorism suspects from foreign countries, bundle them onto private airplanes and fly them to overseas prisons. The story, featuring videotape of a CIA 737 during an actual mission, had worldwide impact and earned an Emmy for Investigative Reporting. In 2007 Messick produced the first interview ever with former CIA director George Tenet. His explosive exchanges with Scott Pelley put torture back into the national debate and won an Emmy for Best Interview. Other high-profile exclusives include the first interview with CIA operative Valerie Plame, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, President Bush at Camp David, and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in his palace in Saudi Arabia. In 2009, Messick produced an investigative report on the emergence of offensive cyber attacks that won the George Foster Peabody Award. He produced an Emmy-winning investigative report on the mortgage meltdown. In 2010, he co-produced an investigation into the BP oil spill that was cited in Congressional hearings and won two Emmys and a duPont-Columbia Award. 

In recent years, he produced a year-long hidden camera investigation about the role U.S. lawyers play in international money laundering, the making of the Broadway musical Hamilton, the first ISIS attack inside the U.S., Rare Earth Elements, Russian interference in the 2016 elections, 60 Minutes' first interview with President Trump, TikTok as a data harvester, the SolarWinds cyber attack, terrifying real-world threats to our Electric Grid, Deepfakes, Radio Free Europe, and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAP, better known as UFOs.

​Messick began his journalism career in 1986 at CNN and HLN where he rose through the ranks as video journalist, writer, copy editor, show producer and senior writer before joining Ted Turner’s original documentary unit, Special Reports, as a producer. He spent five years producing hour-long documentaries that aired on “CNN Presents.” In 1995, he led a team into Kikwit, Zaire to document the first ebola outbreak in 20 years. The next year he co-produced a story about the first Gulf War, Back to Baghdad, which won the Overseas Press Club’s Edward R. Murrow award for Best TV Documentary on Foreign Affairs.



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