[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I do want to go to Omar Jimenez, who is following these helicopters landing in New York, which you were looking at just moments ago. Omar, what are you seeing? Yeah.

[00:00:09] Speaker 2: So, you heard John Miller talking about three helicopters that took off from Newburgh headed out this way. We just saw three helicopters land, matching roughly the time it would take to fly by helicopter here. What you're looking at right now is what has been an increased law enforcement, one that's increased pretty steadily over the last few hours since we've been out here. We actually have been pushed much further back. This is the heliport here where all of this, the variety of law enforcement, predominantly NYPD, but we've seen federal officers here as well, including DEA agents, a mass of them that just came in within the last few minutes to this area as well. We're waiting to see, we can hear the helicopters. We saw them land just beyond our view here, three of them, it appeared. But we're waiting for them to go into what would be sort of this indoor area. And then they would come out, come into presumably one of these vehicles where they would then go for processing here at a federal building in New York City. Now, for those that aren't familiar with sort of the geography of Manhattan and New York City, we are on the west side of Manhattan, what's known as the West Side Highway. Both lanes in both directions have been closed off by law enforcement to this point. This is typically a very busy area. We are now seeing lights from the New York Police Department turn on. That has not been the case previously to this point. We can still hear the motor of the helicopters to this, but I can't stress enough, this has been the highest level of law enforcement presence we have seen to this point. One that has been steadily increasing over the past few hours, Jessica.

[00:01:48] Speaker 1: Yeah, and Omar, we see the DEA agents there walking past the cameras as well. Okay, Omar, stay with us. Let's bring John Miller back in to help us understand what we're looking at here. John, Omar, describing the scene, we are in the middle. It's actually very close to where we're broadcasting from right now. It's right behind our building. But we are in the middle of Manhattan where this is happening. Take us through what you're seeing in this scene.

[00:02:13] Speaker 3: Well, what you're seeing is a joint force. You have DEA agents, FBI agents, and a contingent of NYPD people broken into specialized units that are going to make this critical move. Obviously, this is done under very tight security because you're dealing with an individual who is charged with being in league with some of the most violent drug cartels in the world, who is also a world leader in his own right, or was at least until this morning. But what you're looking at there is an armored vehicle that is what they call a Bearcat. This is an armored vehicle that contains what they call a CAT team, a counter-assault team, which is part of this motorcade. So you'll have a vehicle that will contain President Maduro and his wife, maybe in a separate vehicle. You'll have the escort vehicles, which are from NYPD's highway patrol. They have the route between where they are and the location they are going to frozen. As we watch that move out, we see the van, and then we're going to see the armored vehicle following that, which is the counter-assault team.

[00:03:34] Speaker 1: They're driving to Brooklyn now. Is that the plan?

[00:03:38] Speaker 3: They're driving to a separate location. For security reasons, we're not going to get into that location on the air live, but that location is a secure law enforcement facility. They are going to go through the booking process there, and then they are going to go to that other location. So you see the armored vehicles, you see the van, you see the ambulance, which is part of the contingent because they've already had to deal with some medical issues along the way.

[00:04:09] Speaker 1: It is pretty remarkable. I want to go to Omar for a second as we're watching this happen. Omar, this is a Saturday night in Manhattan, and this is just an incredible law enforcement, likely again with the now-ousted president of Venezuela having traveled here. Describe the scene for us. This is somewhat surreal.

[00:04:34] Speaker 2: It really is. And for those that have even just been passing by on the street, I mean, you see a lot of things in New York City, but the amount of police and law enforcement presence just in this part of Manhattan is even mind-blowing for those that live here in the city. And if you were following that motor—I mean, the motorcade, essentially, that appeared to hold Maduro and his wife, but they have all cleared out of this area. It was that quick. And I can tell you, when we were a little bit closer earlier in the day, we were able to get basically right up to the heliport area. We saw them sort of what appeared to be tracing a path from the exit of the heliport through the gate over there, and the way they positioned their vehicles, it appeared that it was just going to be a very quick transfer from that heliport into the vehicles, pull out, and that is exactly what we just saw happen a few minutes ago here. And as you saw, the level of law enforcement presence just going down the West Side Highway from the armored vehicles to that variety of law enforcement, it's astounding to see on a city street here in New York, Jessica.

[00:05:42] Speaker 1: Yeah, it certainly is. I want to go back to John Miller, if he's still with us, because I have another logistical question for him, John, which is, you know, when I lived in D.C., you were used to seeing motorcades and they were very used to clearing streets there. Obviously, New York can do that because it gets its fair share of dignitaries as well. But to move through the New York streets like this, what does that take for law enforcement? How do they keep everybody safe?

[00:06:06] Speaker 3: You know, in New York City, and I say that as someone who used to be in charge of these movements for various presidents, including presidents of the United States, this is a very experienced team. The NYPD Highway Patrol team is used to being able to freeze a route or navigate a route that's unfrozen. In this case, the route between where they landed and where they're going was frozen. They have a lot of experience in that. And that's for dignitaries. This is different, Jessica. This is a high-threat prisoner in charge in a major narcotics trafficking case who happens to be formally, as a few hours ago, president of a sovereign nation in our region. So that is very similar to what they did with the El Chapo situation, where you had the head of a major cartel. This is the kind of person that had a lot of money behind them, the resources to arrange people who could either attack such a motorcade, try to free a prisoner, try to stage a breakout. So layers and layers and layers are added on. We saw a lot of them right there in terms of the armored vehicle, the counter-assault team in case there was an assault on motorcade, the numerous blockages of traffic between where they are and where they're going. But that is something that they've experienced. And you will see that as they move from that jail to the court for the arraignment on Monday. And if there's a trial, you may see it on a daily basis.

[00:07:49] Speaker 1: Right. It's really fascinating. All right, John, thank you. I do want to go to Jim Sciuto as well as we're watching this play out. Jim?

[00:07:57] Speaker 4: Jessica, I would just say we have to remember how we got to this moment of those helicopters landing on the West Side Highway. Nicolas Maduro was president of Venezuela, a Latin American country of tens of millions of people until this morning when he and his wife were taken out of their bedroom by the U.S. Delta Force in a highly complex military operation to, in effect, decapitate the leadership of a major country in Latin America. It is a remarkable, I don't want to say ending, but just next chapter, right, this arrival in New York for prosecution in an enormous event with a whole long list of questions still to be answered. One of the most prominent of which is who's going to replace Nicolas Maduro and who does the U.S., which carried out this operation, want to replace Nicolas Maduro? Because it was the position of the Trump administration until a short time ago, until weeks, perhaps months ago, that it should be the opposition. For instance, the Nobel Prize winner Maria Corina Machado and there were public statements of support. Those have waned. And today, this morning, the president, as he announced this operation and Maduro's removal, was praising Maduro's deputy, the vice president of that country, Delcy Rodriguez, saying that she wants to do everything she can, and I'm paraphrasing to some degree here, to make Venezuela great again. This is quite remarkable. If that would be this administration's position to prosecute Maduro, bring him to the U.S., replace him with a vice president from that same regime, we'll see. And then we'll also see what the U.S. investment is going to be in assuring such a transition or moving on to new elections. He says he's willing to put U.S. troops on the ground. How many and for how long? Quite a remarkable several hours here, given what we're seeing now in New York, but what it means for what Maduro left behind.