Paul Manafort's Wealth Acquisition Questioned
PAUL: This morning there are some tough questions about our nation's airport security after an employee at Seattle Tacoma International Airport stole a passenger plane and he crashed it. This happened over night.</s>BLACKWELL: OK, so this is still early in the investigation but this is what we know from authorities. He's a 29-year-old ground service agent who they say stole the plane around 8:00 p.m. Pacific time. He flew the plane about 40 minutes before crashing into the small island in the Puget Sound. The Pearce County Sheriff Department says the man was suicidal. An audio between the man and traffic controllers, we're learning that they tried to help him safely land for nearly an hour before he crashed.</s>PAUL: So I want to bring in...</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh man, those guys will rough me up if I try landing there. I think I may mess it up there, too. I wouldn't want to do that. Oh, they got anti aircraft.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, they don't have any of that stuff. We are trying to find a place for you to land safely.</s>BLACKWELL: Let's bring in now Peter Goldstein an aviation analyst and former manager director of NTSB. Good morning to you. And listen to that sound, the man sounds excited or thrilled by this in discussion of antiaircraft. I wonder when you hear that ground service agent got behind, got into the cockpit and took off in this plane. Is this a single breach do you think or did this man have to jump through a series of loopholes to pull this off?</s>PETER GOLDSTEIN, AVAIATION ANALYST AND FORMER DIRECTOR OF NTSB: No he cleared the background check which he apparently hadn't and worked for the company, this is a clearly one-off event. The person was going through some sort of mental health crisis that he got access to the plane is unfortunate, but these aircrafts are serviced over night and they are maintained during the evening hours so they can fly during the day. This is just a tragic one off event.</s>PAUL: We know the NTSB and the FAA and FBI have been notified, they're all going to be working on this. What is the first thing they'll look at?</s>GOLDSTEIN: Well this will be an FBI led investigation, my guess is. The NTSB, my old agency, defers to FBI in any criminal type of investigation. I think the first thing you would do as anyone would do is review your procedures - both your ground procedures to see that security is in place and if there were any gaps in it and you would also frankly review your employee assistance programs to make sure that employees who are having difficulties have access to this. But you know Alaska is one of the airlines that consistently ranks high in customer satisfaction, high in employees satisfaction, and they're known as a really cutting-edge carrier. So this really is a one-off event. But I think everyone is going to take a hard look at it.</s>BLACKWELL: I also want to share, our producer told us during the break that you and I wonder, we should disclose this, have done some consulting work for Alaska Airlines, just so everyone's cards are on the table here.</s>GOLDSTEIN: I have and I admire the airline greatly but everyone will take a look at procedures and at whether every step was followed and whether there were any gaps and those will be closed. I can't think of an event like this happening before in my lifetime.</s>BLACKWELL: Yes, you know I wonder and I got Mary Schiavo's perspective on this and I want yours as well. After a plane crashes, train crashes as well, we've talked about some of the protections, some of the protocols that could be implemented that would protect these in the future and there has been some hesitancy, some resistance from the industries to implement those. To what degree do you think that we'll see intensified or increased mental health screenings or checks for employees of these airlines? We know that'll come at great expense.</s>GOLDSTEIN: Well there is expense on doing that and certainly the (inaudible) who had the German wing tragedy some years ago has completely revamped their mental health screening and their whole mental health environment for pilots. It is a challenge, I think if this incident is reviewed, there will be new procedures in place.</s>PAUL: All righty. We do want to point out, you mentioned Alaska Airlines, as we understand that this person was employed by Horizon Air, as well just to be clear. Thank you so much Peter Goldstein, we appreciate you being here and appreciate your perspective as always.</s>BLACKWELL: Thank you.</s>GOLDSTEIN: Thank you.</s>BLACKWELL: The trial of Paul Manafort will enter its third week on Monday. Prosecutors are expected to wrap up the case soon. On Friday, they focused on the former Trump campaign chairman's lavish spending on hundreds of thousands of dollars on baseball tickets; $226,000 for luxury box seats at Yankee Stadium in New York City allegedly paid for from an unregistered foreign account. Now, the jury was expected to hear that a part of the case right when court started Friday but instead, there was this 5-hour delay that pushed everything back until the middle of the afternoon. CNN National Correspondent Athena Jones is telling us what to look forward as this case moves forward.</s>ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Prosecutors expect to laying out the government's case against Paul Manafort early next week. This after a week of damaging revelations, many of them coming from Rick Gates, the government's star witness in the trial. Manafort's long time partner pleaded guilty to conspiracy and to lying to investigators and is cooperating with the government as it tries to convict his former boss on 18 counts of bank and tax fraud. While the trial is not about the president or his campaign, Trump's shadow looms over the proceedings. This is the first of two trials his former campaign chairman faces in Virginia and Washington, D.C.; the Virginia case presenting the first big test for Special Counsel Robert Mueller who is investigating the Russian meddling of the 2016 election. Manafort spent about six months on the Trump campaign.</s>PAUL MANAFORT: He's just won the primary process with a record number of votes.</s>JONES: Before leaving amid questions about his lobbying work for the pro Russian government in Ukraine and the payments he received which prosecutors say totaled more than $60 million. The government alleges Manafort hid millions, lied about his income, and failed to pay taxes while spending big on items like expensive suits and ostrich jacket, real estate, and New York Yankees season tickets. While serving as Manafort's right hand man for a decade, Gates whose three days on the witness stand began Monday testified that he and Manafort had 15 foreign accounts that they did not report to the government even though they knew it was illegal. Manafort instructed him not to submit the required forms. Gates testified that Manafort recommended a banker who loan him money for position of the Trump Administration and he admitted he cheated on his wife and had embezzled several hundred thousand dollars from Manafort by submitting false expense reports. Revelations Manafort's defense team hopes to use to undermine Gates' credibility. The government has also presented emails, photos, and financial records to prove their case and employees from the FBI and IRS testified about the money Manafort earned from his political work in Ukraine and his failure to report some of it on his tax returns. The president has played down his relationship with Manafort in recent months.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You know Paul Manafort worked for me for a very short period of time.</s>JONES: But he's watching the trial closely, taking to twitter early on to express sympathy for Manafort, comparing his treatment to prohibition-era gangster Al Capone and calling on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to end the Mueller probe immediately; a call the White House described not as an order but as an opinion. Athena Jones, CNN, New York.</s>PAUL: Thank you to Athena there. So African-American activist Theo Wilson went undercover as a white supremacist because he wanted to better understand the hatred of where all this was coming from. What did he learn, what is he saying about it now? He's with us next.