60 Minutes - 04/26/2026: Shots Fired, Ben Sasse, The Pigeon Mafia

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

After law enforcement officers halted a gunman from rushing the Washington Hilton ballroom where President Trump, members of the cabinet, congressional leaders and journalists convened to celebrate the First Amendment and White House correspondents, President Donald J. Trump speaks with Norah O'Donnell in a broadcast exclusive about the experience and what it signals about the state of the country. O’Donnell meets Mr. Trump at the White House for an in-depth conversation. Former Senator Ben Sasse, a conservative Republican from Nebraska – and once among the most popular politicians in the state – speaks with correspondent Scott Pelley about his battle with pancreatic cancer and his hopes for what America can be. Reflecting on politics, community, technology, and faith, Sasse offers meaningful lessons from his own life in hopes of building a better tomorrow. What Kentucky is to thoroughbred horses, Belgium is to elite racing pigeons. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi reports as prizes in international competitions have climbed into the millions, the best birds have become targets for organized crime. Insiders call the network of break-in artists and smugglers “the pigeon mafia.” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

She knows. How? Did you blam? No. The Devil Wears Prada 2. He's the movie event 20 years in the making. Honestly, I can't with the secrets anymore, so I think we just should tell her. Will you two please spit it out already?

This Friday, be the first to experience it only in theaters. In light of the recent scandal, I'm here to restore your credibility. Oh, because we're a team now? That's a nice story. The Devil Wears Prada 2 in Theathearts Friday. Last night in Washington, a gunman. stormed the security perimeter at the White House correspondence dinner. The president, the vice president, cabinet members, and more than 2,500 guests were gathered

to celebrate freedom of the press. We spoke with President Trump this afternoon. How worried were you that there were going to be injuries? You don't have much time. So why are you spending time doing this? You invited me, so I assume you needed to fill some time. Precious time with Ben Sass is well spent. The former U.S. senator and college president has perhaps only months to live,

but time enough for one last lesson in what America can be. Neither these parties really have very big or good ideas about 2030 or 2050. The Congress is not wrestling with big or important questions right now. It's a who-done-it in the heart of Europe. with Mission Impossible break-ins, organized crime, and international intrigue. We've heard people talking about a pigeon mafia. Is that a thing?

Forget the Maltese Falcon. This mystery is about a Belgian pigeon and a sport god cuckoo. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonci. I'm John Wortham.

I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Lesotho. stalled. Those stories, and in our last minute, an Admiral Charts America's course, tonight on 60 minutes. Last night in the nation's capital, a gunman stormed the security perimeter at the White House Correspondence dinner. The president, the first lady, the vice president, cabinet members, and more than 2,500 guests were gathered to celebrate the First Amendment and freedom of the press. But after shots were fired, the president was evacuated. It was at the same hotel where President

Ronald Reagan was nearly assassinated by John Hinkley 45 years ago. Tonight, federal investigators are looking into the motive of the alleged gunman, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, California. He emailed what a senior official called a manifesto to his family minutes before the attack. He wrote he was targeting members of the Trump administration. We spoke with President Trump this afternoon at the White House about what happened. Mr. President, do you know if you were the target of the gunman? I don't know. It sounded to me. I read a manifesto. He's radicalized. He was a Christian, a believer, and then he became an anti-Christian, and he had a lot of change. He's been going through a lot

based on what he wrote. His brother complained about him, and I think reported him to the police, and his sister likewise complained about him. His family was very concerned. He was probably a pretty sick guy. I was in the room, not far from you, Mr. President. Could hear what sounded like gunshots or commotion.

People nearby could smell the gunpowder. Everybody hit the floor. How worried were you that there were going to be injuries? I wasn't worried. I understand life. We live in a crazy world. You are sitting there next to the First Lady. The entertainer named Ose Pearlman is talking to you.

He's known as the mentalist. When did you know something was wrong? Right around that point. In fact, you can see the expression on the first lady's face. And you're president of the evening, chairman or president or both, who was doing a great job, by the way. Wija Jang, CBS News. Yeah, she was a terrific person.

They were asking the name of Caroline's child that he didn't know, I guess. Your press secretary is expecting and he was trying to guess the baby's name. That's right. You mentioned the first lady. Her face, she looked very alarmed. Was she scared?

Well, I don't want to say, and people don't like having it said that they were scared, but certainly, I mean, who wouldn't be when you ever said, situation like that. By that time, I think she realized ahead of time that that was more of a bullet than it was a tray. And she was I looked at her face just a little while ago before I came. I saw the scene. They played it for me and you know pretty good close up

and She looked very upset about what just took place. Yeah. Why not? You see the security moving quickly and? I within seconds, grabbing the vice president by his coat, lifting him up, bringing him out. Then the counter-assault comes in, took 10 seconds for them to flank you, Mr. President, and then 20 seconds to get you out. It looked chaotic.

At one point, you were down. What was happening? Well, what happened is it was a little bit me. I wanted to see what was happening, and I wasn't making it that easy for him. I wanted to see what was going on. And by that time we started to realize maybe it was a bad problem, different kind of a problem, bad one, and different than what would be normal noise from a ballroom, which you hear all the time.

And I was surrounded by great people, and I probably made them act a little bit more slower. I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, let me see, wait a minute. So, you know, I'm telling guys. Just at that moment where it looks like you go sort of down with the service, you were telling them to wait. Well, I know what happened is then I started walking with him. I turned, I started walking. And then said, please go down. Please go down on the floor.

So I went down and First Lady went down also. But we were asked to go down by the agents as I was walking. In other words, I wanted you almost to crawl out. I was standing up, pretty much. I was standing up and then turned around the opposite direction and started pretty much walking out pretty tall, a little bent over, because I'm not looking to be standing too tall. But I was walking out.

It was pretty about halfway there. And they said, please go down to the floor. Please go down to the floor. So I dropped to the floor, so to the First Lady. What was your thought at that moment? What did the First Lady say? Well, my thought was, you know, I've been through this before a couple of times.

And she has not, to this extent. She handled it great. I mean, she's very strong, smart. She got it. She knew what was happening. She listened. I did too, by the way. Because this was the first time she was.

When they said, yeah, when they said drop down, that meant trouble. And obviously, I'm the president. And I listened to what they said, please drop down, sir, please drop down. So I was walking halfway and then I dropped down at the final because we had little ways to go where you're exposed to the ballroom, surroundings. And then I got up and we went to a hold room for a while. And I tried to get them to continue the event, if possible. You wanted to go back in. I did.

I really did. You can see the gunman running through the metal detectors, and he fired off one or two rounds. His speed was rather incredible, actually. It was like a blur. How did he get that close with the place swarming with security? I will say. Look, I say it because I'm a big fan of the people of law enforcement. And, you know, some of these people, they may be crazy.

but they're not stupid and they figure things out. He ran 45 yards, they say, and he just went to it, and then, boom, he popped through it. I mean, he ran like, I think the NFL should sign him up. He was fast. When you look at it on tape, it's almost like a blur. Right. But it was amazing because as soon as they saw that,

you could see them draw their guns. They were so professional, aimed their guns, and then they took them down immediately. Two hours later, the president was was back at the White House to brief reporters. I saw a room that was just totally unified. It was in one way, very beautiful. Do you think this will change your relationship with the press?

Well, look, for whatever reason, we disagree in a lot of subjects. We talk about crime. I'm very strong on crime. It seems like the press isn't. It's not so much the press. It's the press plus the Democrats because they're almost one and the same. like the craziest thing. I have the strongest border we've ever had in the country where, as you know, it said zero people for nine months came into our country through our southern border.

We have a very tough border. The so-called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President. He appears to reference a motive in it. He writes this quote, administration officials, they are targets. And he also wrote this. I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to to coat my hands with his crimes. What's your reaction to that? Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you're horrible people, horrible people.

Yeah, he did write that. I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody. Oh, you think, do you think he was referring to you? Excuse me. I'm not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person. I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me.

I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let's say, Epstein or other things. But I said to myself, you know, I'll do this interview and they'll probably, I read the manifesto, you know, as a sick person, but you should be ashamed of yourself reading that

because I'm not any of those things. Mr. President, these are the gunman's words. Excuse me. You shouldn't be reading that on 60 minutes. You're a disgrace, But go ahead, let's finish the interview. The other thing that he wrote in the... You're disgraceful.

The other thing in the manifesto that I think is worth looking at in terms of determining his motive, is he had been staying at the hotel since Friday. He checked in, he said he had cased the place, and he wrote, what the hell is the Secret Service doing? And he wrote this quote, I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo. What I got is nothing.

He wrote like this level of incompetence is insane. Sir, you have already had two. Well, he was pretty incompetent too because he got caught, and he got caught pretty easily. So I'd say he was pretty incompetent too. You know, I could take any event having to do with security or anything else. I can always find fault. Those guys did a good job last night.

They did a really good job. I mentioned that because, again, as his motive, you brought this up, he had social media accounts that had anti-Trump. anti-Christian rhetoric. You should read, why don't you read all the anti-Trump? What don't you read it? You just did, so why don't you read it? Well, he had a lot of anti-Christian rhetoric.

He had, he was part of a group called the Wide Awakes. He had attended a no-king's protest in California. No kings. What did security tell you about what may have been his motives? The reason you have people like that is you have people doing no kings, I'm not a king. What I am, if I was a king, I wouldn't be dealing with you. Also at the dinner last night was your secretary, Robert of Kennedy, Jr. Yeah.

His sister, Carrie Kennedy, was there. They've both witnessed their father and their uncle, the assassinated. That's right. Erica Kirk was there. The House Majority Leader, Steve Scalise, was there. Political violence has touched so many people in that room. Is there something that you as president can do? What can be done to change the trajectory?

You know, you go back 20 years, 40 years, 100 years, 200 years, 500 years, 500 years, it's always been there. People are assassinated. People are injured. People are hurt. And I'm not sure that it's any more now than there was. I do think that the hate speech of the Democrats, much more so, is very dangerous. I really think it's very dangerous to the country. President Trump told us he hopes to move events like last.

night's press gala to the new East Wing Ballroom that he says is ahead of schedule, though it won't be ready until 2028. But he wants last night's dinner to be rescheduled much sooner than that. You are committed to doing this event with the White House Correspondent Center that's about freedom of the press. I want them because I don't want to see it be canceled. I don't want to have a crazy person. I think it's really bad for a crazy person to be able to cancel something like this. There are great people in the press do like a name, but I don't want to embarrass your show. We have some great people in the press, some very fair people, and people that are just on my side. But for the most part, it's a very liberal or very progressive, let's use the word liberal press. But I was just really, I was

really happy to see the, I don't know how long at the last, the relationship, the friendship, the spirit after a very bad event took place. Now, the... The event turned out to be much less bad because nobody was killed, nobody was hurt. The Secret Service agent, I spoke to him, he had a bulletproof vest on, unbelievable. He's okay. Oh, he's 100 percent, yeah, no, he was 100 percent. He didn't want to go to the hospital. He really didn't, they asked him to go.

He said, he didn't want to go. He said, I don't need to go to the hospital, but he went because they asked him to go. Well, I know the White House Correspondents Association very much appreciates you going last night and honoring a commitment to do it. I hope we're going to do it again. Nora, tell him to get it going, and we should do it within 30 days, and they'll have even more security, and they'll have bigger perimeter security. It'll be fine, but tell them to do it again.

We can't let something. It's not that I want to go. I'm very busy. I don't need that. I think it's very important that they do it again. I'm Anna Garcia, host of True Crime News, the podcast. Every week we bring you in-depth. coverage on cases making headlines, as well as those that go under the radar.

Tune in for murders that defy explanation, mystery seeking exploration, and shocking secrets that will leave you breathless. Each week, we honor the victims by going beyond the salacious in our search for justice. Crime never stops, and neither do we. Listen to true crime news available now on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Ben Sasse would like a final word. of 54, the former U.S. Senator of Nebraska is dying of pancreatic cancer. But a new drug is giving him extra time, time to hear his appeal for reason in Washington and community at home. SAS is a conservative Republican of independent thought. With a PhD in American history, he once told his fellow senators, the people despise us all, because we are not

are not doing our job. His cancer therapy leaves him looking seriously sunburned, but we found Ben Sass as insightful, passionate, and hopeful as ever. I love America, and I think there's a lot of big and meaty things that we should have been talking about, and we still can talk about, and having a terminal diagnosis isn't really that unique. We're all always on the clock. And some of us have the benefit, maybe it's a weird word, but the benefit of knowing our time is finite and defined. And it becomes an opportunity to talk about bigger stuff. And you have focus from that.

Yeah, I mean, it's weird to be in your early 50s and get a terminal diagnosis and people all of a sudden act like you're 93 or 94 and you have a lot of wisdom. I don't know that I have a lot of wisdom. But I have a lot of things that I think we should be reflecting on together. reflecting, he told us, on rebuilding communities, neighbor to neighbor, regulating artificial intelligence before it overwhelms us, and mending broken politics. Neither of these parties really have very big or good ideas about 2030 or 2050 at a national security level, at a future of work level, at an institution building level. The Congress is not wrestling with big or important questions right now. If Congress is looking at the wrong things, what is it missing?

We are living through a digital revolution, which is both glorious and horrific at the same time. Because what the digital revolution does is it accelerates almost everything about the human experience. Anything that can be reduced to a series of steps, which is most economic activity, is going to be routinized and become really, really cheap, really fast, and really ubiquitous. We've never lived in a world where 22-year-olds couldn't assume that the work they did they would be able to do until death of retirement, and we're never going to have that world again. And Congress doesn't talk about any of those kind of most fundamental issues. The disruption of work, for good and for ill, should be front and central.

Congress doesn't even know how to have that conversation. In 2014, Ben Sass was a college president in Nebraska when he was recruited to run for Senate, He became one of the most popular politicians in state history, maybe because during Senate recesses he worked as a garbage man and a vendor at Cornhusker Games, just to stay in touch with the lives of Nebraska's. What makes you a Republican? I'm a Republican because I think the Lincoln-Ragan continuum does the best job of building constraint on thinking Washington is our fundamental political. community. I think your fundamental political community is your neighborhood and your city hall and maybe even your state legislature. And right now, we are sacrificing a lot of our national politics to weird folks who want their main community to be their political tribe at a federal level. And that should be like the ninth thing or the 15th thing you care about, not the first or second thing.

You ended your Republican pantheon with Ronald Reagan. And I wonder when you look at the Trump administration to do that. What do you see? It's no secret that the current president and I wrestled on lots and lots of issues, but I don't spend much time commenting on our current politics because I don't really think our current politics are driving what's happening. I think it's mostly an echo of what's happening. I think we have really thin, shallow community right now. And unless people know the thickness of their local community, it's hard to make sense

of what national politics are for. I think our national political dysfunction is an echo of larger problems. In 2020, SAS was re-elected with more votes in Nebraska than Donald Trump. Then came January 6th. That day, SAS called out, quote,

the screamers who monetize hate. You can't do big things together as Americans if you think other Americans are the enemy. Later, in Trump's impeachment over January 6th, SASS was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict. His stand against the insurrection offended the Nebraska Republican Committee. So he sent them a message. Personality cults aren't conservative. Conspiracy theories aren't conservative.

Lying that an election has been stolen, it's not conservative. Acting like politics is a religion, it isn't conservative. In 2023, with four years left in his term, SAS quit to become president of the University of Florida. There had been too little substance in the Senate and too much absence from his wife and three children. Many senators I know would not be able to breathe without that job. It would kill them to leave. I don't want what you said to be true, but I fear that that is true, and that is a sign of a much, much deeper problem. We got a lot of people who serve in government who really do think the highest and greatest thing you can ever do is have the title, Senator or Congressman, bull-h-h-de-the-best thing you can do is be called dad or mom.

Lover, neighbor, friend, governor, senator, house member. It's a great way to serve. It should be your 11th calling, or maybe sixth, but never top. His calling left bipartisan consensus on one thing. The voice of Ben Sasse is missed. Democrat Mark Warner worked with Sass on the Intelligence Committee. He never really thought about things as conservative liberal. He much more thought about issues as future past.

somebody who was fearless, passionate. Republican John Thune of South Dakota is the Senate majority leader. Concern not just for today but for tomorrow and the future. And someone who wasn't distracted by all the noise that goes around us on a daily basis. An example of what the Senate should be? Yes. And hopefully, you know, an inspiration and example that many of us can learn from and follow.

The Senate needs to be less like Instagram. The Senate needs to be more deliberative. And that means less smackdown nonsense. One of the fundamental mistakes we've made over the last 30 or 40 years is putting cameras everywhere in Washington, D.C. This is not an argument against transparency. We should have reporters around. We should have pen and pad.

We should have people recording what's happening. But we should make the Senate less of an independent. institution that is built as a backdrop platform for people to get sound bites. That's not what the Senate is for. The Senate should be plotting and steady and boring and trustworthy. To be too frank, you were expected to be dead by now. That's frank. I like it.

Let's be blunt. What changed? Let's go with Providence, prayer, and a miracle drug. In mid-December, I was given a three-to-four-month life expectancy. I am on extended time already. I have a pancreatic origin cancer that is metastasized a number of places. So I've got lung, vascular, liver, other. Lever's pretty far along.

You have five cancers. Yes, sir. He's in a clinical trial for a drug called Diraxon Rassid, a new idea in therapy. In many cancers, it's a defective gene that signals cells to grow nonstop. The drug blocks that signal. I have much, much less pain than I had four months ago when I was diagnosed, and I have a massive 76% reduction in tumor volume over the last four months. Just this month, the drug maker Revolution Medicines reported that patients who had six months

survived a median 13 months. You are completely devoted to your faith, what's known as Reformed Christianity or Calvinism. And one of the tenets of that faith is that God ordains everything. And I wonder why you think God has put you to this test. Death is wicked. Death is evil. death is not how it's supposed to be.

And me getting a cancer diagnosis, again, is pretty small on the grand scheme of things. But it's a touch of grace because it forces me to tell the truth. And the lie I want to tell myself is that I'm the center of everything. And I'm going to be around forever and I can work harder

and store up enough that I can atone for my own brokenness. I can't. And so I hate cancer, but I'm also grateful for it. I tell a lot more truth to myself than I used to do it when I thought I was

super omnipotent and interesting. He may have to accept the label, interesting. Ben Sasse has lived life in a hurry with more careers than most and ends with his favorite, a teacher. I make no comparison to what you're going through. But there was a moment on 9-11 at the World Trade Center that I knew I was dead.

And in that lightning flash of an instant, the only thing that crossed my mind was leaving my family behind. And I wonder how you reconcile that. Yeah. I'm incredibly blessed. My wife, Melissa, has, we've been married 31 years. I, we're going to be apart for a time. But she's tough and gritty and theologically rooted, and she's going to be fine. My daughters are 24 and 22, and they're extraordinary. I want to walk him down the aisle when they get married.

That's not likely to be. That's not the math of my time card. My son, we have a providential surprise. He's a decade younger than big sisters. He's 14, and he's going to be fine. He'll have other wise men. women to put a hand on his shoulder. But I'm super bummed to not be there at 16 and 18 and 20 years old in his life. I want to give him more advice than he wants, and I want to put my arm on his shoulder.

I want his shoulders to get taller. But it's not a surprise to God. And God, you believe, has a plan. Absolutely. There are no maverick molecules in the universe. Decentralize a lot. More with Ben Sass and Scott Pelly. In a CBS News, Things That Matter conversation. Watch now on the 60 Minutes YouTube channel. Brought to you by Bank of America. The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road,

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It's the family and friends event at Shoppers Drug Mart. Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise. Two days only. Tuesday, April 28th and Wednesday, April 29th. Open your PC optimum app to get your coupon. Sixty minutes has reported on plenty of high profile crimes before. But nothing like the foul play involving the Columba-Livia Domestica. That's not some international crime syndicate.

That's the scientific name for pigeons and they're being stolen. We're talking about elite racing pigeons. The finest compete at international events in which they're released far from home and must find their way back. As prizes have risen up into the millions, the birds have become targets for what insiders call, the pigeon mafia. The Flemish region of Belgium is a land of medieval towers and fine chocolate.

It's also home to some of the most sought-after birds on earth. Yep, these guys. What Kentucky is to thoroughbred horses. Belgium is to racing pigeons. And there are few better at breeding a champion than Tom Von Gaver. Where some see a bird that looks like it's trying to remember how to breathe, Von Gauver sees an elite athlete with a calculating gaze. What makes this pigeon a great racer?

Yeah, he has everything. A good racer need to have, but of course we cannot look in the head. You can have a very smart pigeon, but when the body is not strong enough, his head want to go home, but the body cannot follow the other. Van Gauver breeds, sells, and races his pigeons That events around the world such as this. The weight of his dominance can be seen inside his modest home. But in his pigeon loft out back are his real prizes.

Pigeons that can fly hundreds of miles at highway speeds, feathered Ferraris worth a fortune. How much could you get for all the pigeons out there? I think around $10 million. $10 million in pigeons. Yeah, for these 300 sitting here. This was his greatest. His name was Finn. In a sport in which pedigree is everything, Finn was the secretariat of the sky.

Pigeon breeders, known as fanciers, traveled across oceans just to take a picture with Finn. People all recognize him because of his color, but of course he was a very good racer and, of course, a very good breeder. Finn was not for sale, but he was a priceless stud. Fanciers paid up to $100,000 for Finn's offspring. And then, one night as Von Gavre slept, a nightmare unfolded in his pigeon loft. This surveillance video is from 2024. Finn was in his favorite spot when he was snatched by an intruder.

It's like the Mona Lisa from the pigeon port they stole. Why the Mona Lisa? Yeah, because it's famous. Maybe it's old and it's not for sale, but everybody want to see it. Six other pigeons were also abducted. The first time you watch it and the second time and the third time and then start to look, who is he?

The Who Done It was among 35 pigeon robberies across Belgium over the last three years. High-value racing pigeons have also been stolen in Great Britain, South Africa and the United States. This tape was from an unsolved caper in 2023, outside Philadelphia. To understand what's behind this avian crime wave and why a member of our species

would risk jail time to steal a member of this species, we visited Ryan Zoniken. So what is different about this pigeon than the pigeon I'm going to see in New York defacing a statue? They're bred for the performance, for their racing abilities. Zonikin is a Canadian fancier

who calls himself the pigeon boss. When you're holding a pigeon in your hand, what is it you're looking for? It's got to be like a steel bar, but then it has to be as light as an empty soda can. And the feathers have to be like the most beautiful woman's hair, soft and silky. That's how it's got to be. And then the eye has to look like you're Tiffany's. Look like you're a Tiffany's, the pigeon eye? The eye of the pigeon, yeah.

That eye to the uninitiated, looks more like a panic button. Pigeons don't walk so much as glitch. Their coloring resembles concrete tinged with the broken rainbow of a parking lot oil slick. And when they take flight, they can make you look like a Disney princess that's hit rock bottle. They fixed your hair for you, see?

Zonikin moved from Canada to Belgium because he loves pigeons, like a lot. If this was a room of hens, of women, pigeons, females, hens, and you came in here every day. And I said, hello. Hi, girls, hi. Hi. And I look, I look at her and she sits up here and I,

oh, oh, you talk to her a little, talk a little bit, look at her, and you make eye contact with her, just like a girl at the bar. The love affair Europe has for pigeon racing began in the 1800s and grew into a working-class sport. There's not a feeling like when you sit there on a weekend and wait for your pigeons and you see them come home.

It's like, wow, I did this. You're the coach, you're the nutritionist, you're the scout. It's the best. But purists have seen the sport change as prize money has soared. It started about 20 years ago with a new kind of competition called One Loft Racing, which fanciers from around the world battle for millions of dollars. It's a beautiful idea, but when there's money involved, It's not the same.

We went to a one-loft race in Portugal to see how it works. Months earlier, fanciers shipped their best young prospects to the race loft so the pigeons could learn to recognize it as their home. The cost to enter a bird is about $500. The more pigeons, the larger the pot of prize money. All racing pigeons are identified by leg bands. Just before the race, each of the 33. 300 birds is scanned into a database and then driven 300 miles away to be released.

The first pigeon to find their way back into the loft wins. Six hours later, a spotter at the finish blew a whistle to signal the leaders were circling above. The first into the loft got the biggest cuts of the $1.2 million purse. It's crazy. You only see the last 30 seconds of a pigeon race. Isn't that something? People refer to it as a sport. It's a sport.

Is it a sport? Sure, it is. Is horse racing a sport? It's a sport. And as the prizes have climbed, so has the demand for the fastest pigeons. 100,000 is a bit. One loft winners are considered blue chip assets.

Their DNA is like an ATM. Sold to Poland. Producing descendants that can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. Come on. Brian Zonikin pays his bills by auctioning Belgian birds online. Take a look. It all has an infomercial feel.

She's buoyant. She has it all. And she's got the look. Well lubricated with gin and tonic. You can actually see the brains right in them. Just take a good look. On this night, the highest bids top three grand.

But that's chicken feed compared to the largest auction player in Belgium. It's called Pigeon Paradise, or PIPA for short. How many pigeons do you sell a year and about how much total sales are we talking about? I think about 40 million euro. Are you kidding me? Which is like $46 million in pigeon sales a year? Yeah.

Whoa. I mean, there's still a big potential. Nicholas Hazelbrick started PIPA when he was 18. About half of the sales go to Chinese buyers who are even more obsessed with pigeons than the Belgians. In 2020, a Chinese tycoon paid a record $1.8 million for one bird. China has over 400,000 registered pigeon fanciers with five-star luxury lofts and races

offering as much as $16 million in prizes. If we don't have China, it would be very hard to run the business. Because why? Because they make the price. More big spenders have followed from the Middle East. The result? A global arms race for wings. With so much money at stake, the bad guys moved in

and began to steal the sports superstars. They'll have the people come in and look at the pigeons, somebody who's orchestrating it, and then they send other people maybe a week later, a month later, a year later. Take them. And normally the time when breeding starts in the end of November, December, January, that's when all the key birds will be paired together. Easy stealing, right? We've heard people talking about a pigeon mafia.

Is that a thing? Yeah, I think there is against money involved. Fancyers and sons. investigators told us they believe international gangs are behind smuggling networks that breed the stolen pigeons to sell their offspring on the black market to fanciers anxious to supercharge their bloodlines. This batch, stuffed in socks and hidden in a briefcase, was stopped in December at Latvia's border with Russia. Have you seen crazy security at these lobs now? Oh yeah. What have you seen? Oh, multiple cameras, laser beams going across. So now,

Now, panicked fanciers in Belgium are turning to this soft-spoken veterinarian to help protect their pigeons. There's some droppings on this. Sure. That can happen. Ruben Launcrete is a pioneer in genetic testing on pigeons. That's a thing. He maintains a database of over 70,000 birds that stretch back over 10 generations.

It has been very important in proving parentage, father, mother, for, sale of pigeons. He showed us how he plucks genetic samples from feathers. The idea is his genetic library offers some protection from the pigeon mafia because a stolen pigeon or its offspring could be identified by DNA and make it too risky to sell or race. And that gets us back to Tom Vongaver and his missing masterpiece, Finn. This is the point in the story where you might expect to hear from charging detectives who took on the case. But the Belgian federal police wanted 60 minutes to agree to what we might ask in an interview, what they might say, and what we could report.

That didn't fly with us. So here's what we learned from sources close to the investigation. Police combed through security camera video, license plate reader data, and cell phone records tied to a dozen robberies across Belgium, including Tom von Govers. That led to a raid in March 2025 in a Brussels suburb on this yellow house and a Romanian national. 1,200 miles away, Romanian cops also searched the homes of some of his relatives.

In all, 87 pigeons were found that appeared to be birds stolen from Belgium. The identity rings were gone, so cops turned to Ruben Landcrete and his genetic testing. His DNA analysis helped identify 20 of the recovered pigeons, including two of Finn's grandchildren. Pigeon deaths have been happening. But now you can solve them, right? With DNA? Yes, that's very good. Now we can close the case.

Well, kind of. Eight co-conspirators were convicted with the mastermind sentenced to 30 months in jail. But he won't reveal what happened to the rest of Tom Von Gauver's stolen paper. pigeons, including Finn. Where are the pigeons? Give them back. This isn't about the money for you. This is about the pigeon. I want my pigeon back. The last minute of 60 minutes.

Retired Admiral William McRaven had a remarkable 37-year military career, which included commanding America's Special Operations Forces and the mission to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. We asked McRaven to reflect on America and honor. I've been all over the world and seen men and women from every country exhibit a sense of honor. I witnessed an Iraqi judge who refused

to be intimidated by al-Qaeda and an Afghan father who stood up to the Taliban. I see honor everywhere I look. This idea that we must do the right thing even when it's hard. Honor is what makes humanity so very, very worthwhile. But in the American context,

honor to me is about upholding the values that were baked into our national DNA, the ideas of liberty, equality, individualism, the rule of law, and religious freedom. Every military officer swears an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. And consequently, to maintain our honor as officers, we must always do right by the Constitution, even when the consequences might bring our careers to an end. Doing the right thing, even when it's hard, will always put you. you on the right side of history. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition

of 60 Minutes. There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's on the media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass, that's on the media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.