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Pope Visits Brazil Shanty Town; The Perfect Job for a Thief; Veterans' Unemployment Falls; Patriots Move on from Hernandez

Aired July 25, 2013 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. All right. I'm talking here because I'm looking at live pictures coming in to us of Pope Francis. He's in Brazil. He's outside of Rio de Janeiro. And I believe he's now in the soccer stadium. And you can see all of the people assembled outside of that stadium. I think Pele is inside the stadium and the Pope will meet him directly.

But the amazing thing about this is before the Pope arrived at the soccer stadium, he got out of his modified Pope mobile and he walked from a chapel where he was holding mass. He walked to that soccer stadium. You could see all of the people around him. You are looking at pictures of when he was in the Pope mobile and you could see people actually approaching, literally flinging their babies at the Pope so the Pope could bless the babies and kiss the babies. It's just amazing.

People were tossing t-shirts at the Pope and flowers and mementos wanting the Pope to have those to take back to Rome. And you can see there the Pope walking through the crowd and kissing babies.

I want to bring in Daniel Bongino he's a former Secret Service agent. He served under Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. He's now a security consultant.

And thanks so much, Daniel, for being with us by phone. Because I -- I'm --

DANIEL BONGINO, FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT (via telephone): You're very welcome.

COSTELLO: -- I'm really curious. The Pope decides on get out and walk. The security officials in Brazil must be a little concerned about that.

BONGINO: Well they should be. And having been intimately involved in President Obama's first inauguration, you know, he did get out and walked the inaugural route. It's pretty common. But that's not a bad thing as long as the layered detail security planning goes into it in advance.

The problem is -- I love the Pope's desire to be a man of the people but -- he has a very high threat profile and getting out and walking just creates a number of very difficult security situations for the people putting their lives on the line for him.

COSTELLO: And not only that, he's in a pretty dangerous area. Drugs are a real problem in this town that he's in right now.

BONGINO: Sure and I used to look at it through what I used to call the big six. And these are the big six problems you have to worry about as a secret service agent: a tactical attack, a medical problem, a chemical assault, the explosives, airborne attack, and fire. And that fire could be anything from a Molotov cocktail to a fire that just went off by accident. It doesn't really matter who creates a problem.

When you look at those big six they are exacerbated dramatically by these impromptu "let me walk into a crowd" moment. Because when you can't control the flow of people around your protectee all of those things get worse. The potential for a tactical assault, and getting evacuating -- God forbid a medical emergency with the Pope. Chemical attack. They are all worse because the -- you cannot control the flow of people or the ingress or egress of either the crowd or your protectee getting them in or out. So it does create some significant problems.

COSTELLO: So you -- can you see this video that I'm looking at?

BONGINO: No, I cannot.

COSTELLO: Ok so what I'm looking at is the Pope is walking down the street. And he does have men in suits surrounding him. Some of them are wearing earphones.

BONGINO: Right.

COSTELLO: I saw a military guy pop in briefly but I didn't see a large contingency of military personnel. But you can see a lot of men with suits. And I assume that those men are armed surrounding the Pope. But they are not blocking people from touching the Pope and the Pope reaching out to touch people.

BONGINO: Well the problem I see in having worked with the security detail for the Pope before -- the Secret Service protects the Pope on American soil because he is technically a head of state. The issue I see there is whereas with the President of the United States, we have a reasonable degree of control over his security and we can tell him, yes or no to an extent. He's still the President. We wouldn't allow him to do that.

And -- why they are allowing him to do that, I just -- I don't understand. You know, he's the Pope. He is a spiritual leader of the Catholic Church. But I think self-admittedly he is not an expert in security. It's a very dangerous situation.

I have actually done a number of interviews on over the past few days. And I'm quite concerned about -- about the detail not taking some degree of control over this and just -- sitting him down and saying you know, sir, this really isn't going to work. This is not -- this is not an advantageous situation for us. You never want to be playing defense on a security detail.

The minute you get to a body guarding work it's all over. It's a cerebral exercise and planning it's not body guarding work. And unfortunately it looks like that's what they are doing now.

COSTELLO: Oh definitely so.

Daniel Bongino thanks for your insight. As far as we know the Pope is inside that soccer stadium now. You can see him climb up to the stands or take a look at these live pictures again. And he's talking to some folks. He has some priests -- I assume they are Brazilian priests -- surrounding him. And he's -- I guess somebody is reading him a message right now. He's going to meet Pele. He's staying in that soccer stadium and we'll see what happens.

But it seems that Pope Francis has his own mind and his own way of doing things and nobody can tell him no. After all, he is the Pope. Right?

We're going to take break we'll be back with more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: It is the perfect job for a thief, stealing planes, boats, cars and all of it is legal. We're talking about luxury repo men. Taking private jets from the rich and giving it back to the banks. A while back I went along with expert repo man Ken Cage as he reclaimed a jet in Florida. Not an easy task.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no jet fuel in here.

COSTELLO: Then a hitch.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The jet fuel pump is shut down. So we can't get fuel. We've got enough to get there. It's less than you prefer to have though. So that's the thing. So he says we have enough, we have enough.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got to take off runway 35.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I'm ready when you are.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pretty save John thanks so much, man.

COSTELLO: Finally, Cage's $700,000 quarry is airborne. Ten miles later it lands. The own won't know what hit him until he calls the hangar a few hours later.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: It was an exciting shoot. Well now Ken Cage has his very own TV show on Discovery. "Airplane Repo" highlights the risk and the reward with dramatic scenes like this one where an angry debtor tries to stop the repo men from flying off. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAGE: Let's get out of here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Brian, you're going to be able to get this thing up in the air?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. I should be able to get it up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Keep up with him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Man that guys is crazy he's right on the wing come on. Come on, punch it. Let's burn this sucker.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Ken Cage joins me now from Philadelphia. He's the president and co-owner of Internal Recovery Group. Hi, Ken.

KEN CAGE, PRESIDENT/CO-OWNER INTERNAL RECOVERY GROUP: Hi Carol. How are you?

COSTELLO: I knew you would be famous. How does it feel?

CAGE: Well, I'm not famous at all. But thanks to you, yes, we're doing some fun things now. So that's great.

COSTELLO: It's more than fun things. I mean, to a lot of people, including me, this is like a fantasy job. I mean you get to like use your detective skills and you know, your reporting skills and you get to steal stuff and it's all legal.

CAGE: Yes. That's true. I mean we have our own problems that come up that are fun to work through as well. But -- yes. We use that -- the detective stuff is the most important stuff. I think on the show, that's really what we focus on is how hard it is to find the assets. And then take possession of them.

COSTELLO: Yes. And I experienced that firsthand when I did a story on you guys. It takes a lot of time to figure out like where the thing is you are going the repo, how to get it, and you also have to like build in safeguards so the owner doesn't just suddenly show up and surprise you.

CAGE: Exactly. That's the hardest thing is the logistical part of it. A lot of times and you will see this in the show. We are not there in time. We don't get the asset and we have to go chase it and makes it so much harder. But we use those detective skills that we have to figure out where it is going and how far it might be going and try and get ahead of it.

And that's the challenge the whole time is trying to get ahead of it. And then we have that inevitable confrontation where we have to talk to this formerly wealthy person that, you know what, it was your airplane, it was your boat, now it is ours. There's a whole set of fun circumstances that come there as well. COSTELLO: Fun and quite possibly dangerous at times. What is the most expensive item that you have repo'd?

CAGE: Well, the most expensive one we've repo'd I always say is the $20 million jet we've done. I mean we actually did a 350-foot cargo ship for an attorney. But that was a different situation so I don't really count that one. But the $20 million jet is probably the biggest one that we have done.

That one went fairly smoothly. It was locked away. We were able to get to the hangar with the help of the airport. That wasn't the scariest one but the $20 million was the biggest, most expensive.

COSTELLO: Unbelievable. You have said that really your job is like giving back to the people. How so?

CAGE: Here's the thing. When we repossess an item for the bank we then -- we're also licensed brokers so we sell those items for the bank. Give the bank that money back to pay down the loan. Then when the bank gets the money, they just go and lend it again. That's where we kind of get the money back into the economy so the banks can lend and people can borrow and then that keeps the marinas going because the marinas are full because of these loans. It's just an ongoing thing.

We are a small part of it but once we get that money back into the economy, everything seems to roll through and it keeps things going pretty smoothly.

COSTELLO: Well Ken, it was fun to talk to you again. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

CAGE: Carol, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

COSTELLO: Any time. "Airplane Repo" by the way, airs Thursdays at 10:00 p.m. Eastern on the Discovery Channel.

The job market for recent veterans is looking up. We will take you live to the New York Stock Exchange next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Checking our top stories at 50 minutes past the hour.

This news just in to us -- it happened again. Two people have been hurt when a small plane hits a house. It happened this morning near Indianapolis. You can see the side of the house on fire. Part of the roof is gone. Of course, we will continue to follow this story and bring you more information as we get it.

Tropical storm Dorian is swirling in the middle of the Atlantic right now. But it could reach the United States as early as next week which could mean lots of rain and wind across the Southeast. This is the fourth named storm in the hurricane season that just started on June 1. One of the nation's largest hedge funds, SAC Capital, is facing criminal charges as the government cracks down on insider trading. The indictment doesn't mince words calling the pattern of insider trading, quote, "substantial, pervasive and on a scale without known precedent in the hedge fund industry".

SAC Capital is run by billionaire Steve Cohen. The Securities and Exchange Commission has been circling Cohen for years but so far he is not facing any criminal charges. He is facing civil charges, though.

We saw a slight uptick in weekly jobless claims mainly due to seasonal changes in factory work and school closing. However, the unemployment rate for military veterans is dropping; falling in line with the rest of the country to around 7 percent. Alison Kosik joins us live from the New York Stock Exchange to tell us more. Good morning.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. And with something like this, it is good to look at the trend and veterans who left the military after September 2001 they have had a harder time finding a job than nonveterans. But guess what; that trend is now reversing course.

You look at June, the unemployment rate for recent vets at 7.2 percent. It is the third month in a row. It has been better than the national average and actually down from 11.7 percent at the beginning of the year.

But here is what helped -- the White House. It made hiring vets a priority for the past few years especially launching the joining forces initiative headed by Michelle Obama and Jill Biden. Initiative, what it has done has gotten big-time commitments from dozens of big-named companies and organizations to look to hire veterans.

But of course, nothing is perfect here. Lots of veterans are still on the sidelines. 160,000 recent veterans who want to be working and more than half a million others are not in the labor force. A lot still not working and not in the -- not in the labor force and women's veterans are lagging behind men. Jobless rate, Carol, for recent female vets is almost 9 percent. Although improvement is being made, there's still a lot of work to be done -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Alison Kosik, thank you.

For the New England Patriots, it is time to move on. They put Aaron Hernandez behind them as they get back to work. Don't expect players like Tom Brady to focus on the past.

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COSTELLO: One topic everybody wants to talk to the New England Patriots about maybe the one topic we don't hear much about. The Patriots start training camp tomorrow without Aaron Hernandez. He sits in a Massachusetts jail cell after pleading not guilty to murder. Tom Brady will no doubt field a lot of questions about Hernandez today. But maybe the coach, you know, Belichick -- he's the only guy allowed to talk about it. But you can bet, Andy Scholes, that Tom Brady will be asked about it by local media in about what -- four minutes.

ANDY SCHOLES, "BLEACHER REPORT": Yes. He's definitely going to be asked about it. You know, Bill Belichick talked yesterday for first time since all of this went down. He said, "I'm not going to answer questions about it, neither will any of my players."

But Belichick did give a seven-minute opening statement about the Hernandez situation which he only said "Aaron Hernandez" one time. But he did go on to talk about how it was very shocking and disappointing what has gone on. He apologized to Odin Lloyd's family for what happened, to everyone else who has been affected by the whole thing.

He also talked about how the Patriots have taken in troubled players in the past. You know, they've had Corey Dillon, Albert Haynesworth, Randy Moss. He had a checkered past then eventually got to the Patriots. He said sometimes these things work out and sometimes they don't. But he did describe the process the Patriots go through when they are considering these type of players. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL BELICHICK, COACH, NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS: We try to look at every single situation on a case by case basis. And try to do what's best for the football team and what's best for the franchise. Most of those decisions have worked out but -- some don't. Overall, I'm proud of the hundreds of players that have come through this program and I'm personally disappointed and hurt in a situation like this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: Belichick went on to say that hopefully the Patriots franchise will -- said they will learn from this outcome with Hernandez and move forward.

COSTELLO: Well he seems like such a stoic guy. So to hear him say he's personally hurt by the situation, I mean, I don't know. Can we -- gain some deeper meaning to that? Did he have some sort of close relationship to Hernandez?

SCHOLES: You know, we don't really know, I guess, how good their relationship was and how close they were. But -- you know, I guess you can take from this and when he says they're going to learn from the situation, maybe they won't take chances on these players like Aaron Hernandez and the Randy Mosses and Haynesworth in the future when they have a checkered past. Maybe they will start staying away from them when in the past they have given them that chance because you know, it is all about the product and the football field and you're trying to win Super Bowls here.

COSTELLO: Sadly that's really what fans care about, I think.

SCHOLES: Yes.

COSTELLO: I know. Fans are very forgiving themselves and maybe -- maybe they shouldn't be. Andy thanks so much.

A painful freaky play will end the season for Atlanta Braves pitcher Tim Hudson. Hudson was covering first base on a routine ground ball and oh, that's when his right ankle was stepped on by the Mets outfielder Eric Young. The 38-year-old Hudson collapsed to the ground. He has a broken ankle.

And in the spirit of what's great about baseball, you see Eric Young there. He immediately ran to Hudson's aid. Tears were in his eyes. He apologized several times. Very visibly upset. He even wiped tears away when Hudson was carted off the field.

But the best moment for me when he -- was when he shook Tim Hudson's hand as Tim Hudson laid on that stretcher there and Tim Hudson said "It is okay, I get it. You couldn't help it."

This is what Eric Young had to say after the game. "I saw his foot as I'm going for the base right there in the middle and as I came down, I knew I didn't get any of the base. He said there was nothing I could do about it. That made me feel somewhat better but still bummed that he is going to be out for a while."

The Braves pitcher will be out for a while because he needs surgery to repair his ankle. So we're still with you, Tim Hudson.

Thank you for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello. CNN NEWSROOM continues right now.