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Cardinals Inside The 16th Chapel; Reports On Hacking; NASA Releases Information On A Martian Rock; Police Say Ex-Con Killed Grandparents; Sullenberger Live Next; Algae Threatens Manatees; What Women Want

Aired March 12, 2013 - 13:00   ET

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

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: You could go to Africa, anywhere in the world.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Absolutely.

HOLMES: The Middle East.

MALVEAUX: You could stop in Frankfurt.

HOLMES: Oh, my goodness me, that's not the airport to get shut down. A short show for me but not you. I'm out of here. But do carry on.

MALVEAUX: I missed you.

HOLMES: I missed you, too.

MALVEAUX: All right, we're going to do a full hour tomorrow. I promise you.

HOLMES: All right. OK, let's do that. See you then.

MALVEAUX: All right, good to see you.

The doors are closed, now we wait. This hour, 115 catholic cardinals, they are inside the 16th chapel. They are meeting, they are voting on who will become the next pope.

Then what do Michelle Obama, Paris Hilton and Mel Gibson have in common in? They all were reportedly hacked. That investigation up next.

And this hour, NASA releases new information about a martian rock, what they could mean for space exploration.

This is CNN NEWSROOM, and I'm Suzanne Malveaux. Right now in Vatican City, take a look at this. It is extraordinary, 115 catholic cardinals inside, gathered in the 16th chapel. There you see the doors, very dramatic shot here. They are locked away. They're not going to have contact with anyone in the outside world until they choose a new pope. Millions of people around the world, they are waiting to see what color smoke comes out of the chimney. That's what the indication is going to be. Whether or not they have made a decision. We're following, of course, every moment of this historic event.

Our Chris Cuomo, he is in Rome. Chris, I -- you've got the details. I've been following you all morning. You have details of what is taking place inside. Walk us through this.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's very interesting, Suzanne. Thank you very much. I've been sitting next to John Allen most of the morning, that's why I have the details. Our Vatican analyst is so spot on. It's a really involved ceremony. We watched the cardinals become one for the purpose of this conclave. Of course, they're going to have to figure out each other's minds and come to a consensus and pick one man to be the 266th pope.

But we got to listen in to the chanting and the singing and all the ceremony that goes to really give a sense of not just their religiosity but of the sense of purpose here. And one of the things that's really interesting is that once the conclave begins, unlike the political conventions that you and I know so well, there is no dickering. There is no nominations or speeches. That will go on in between and the lunches and at the night, perhaps.

But right now, it's a ceremony where each of these cardinals walks up with a ballot in their hand, puts it in an urn, and they have a very interesting counting process. Talk about redundancy. They have one cardinal, right, hears the name, says it out loud. Hands it to the next guy. Another cardinal says it out loud. Then, there's a third guy who marks it down. And then, they have three other cardinals who do the exact same thing. And all along the way, the other 115 cardinals who are electors are marking it down on their own ballots. So, you talk about wanting to get it right, Suzanne. It doesn't get much more specific than that.

MALVEAUX: It's pretty incredible. What happens, though, Chris, like, so they vote. They don't come up with the two-thirds that they need. I don't suppose there's anything like kind of a pope bracket, kind of -- a different kind of march madness here going on. But how do they reassess where -- the next vote and how that plays out?

CUOMO: Well, they'll tell you that it's about a lot of prayer and, obviously, as holy men, that's something they do, but there is caucusing, the luncheons. I was told by a Vatican insider, the ultimate power lunch. And at night, they're also allowed to meet and have their discussions. You know, they have to get to 77. That's the magic number. The rule is two-thirds majority plus one, as you were alluding to earlier. So, they're going to have to have discussion. I mean, just common sense demands it. But they really are hamstrung in a way, not use an indelicate word, by the fact that these candidates, the men whose names they're discussing, can't speak for themselves. They're not even allowed to vote for themselves -- Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: And how do we know, Chris, explain for us what we're looking for when we take a look at that chimney, the colored smoke?

CUOMO: La Stufa, the stove in Italian. Everything sounds better when you say it in Italian. So, they have these two stoves. They burn the ballots. There's this whole intricate proceeding they have of they run a needle through the same word on each of the ballots and then they tie them in thread. And they take all the notes as well that are being taken by the cardinals during that particular session, and every time they have two votes without a pope being nominated -- being selected, they burn them. And they put them in -- there's all these chemical packs that they use to try to make the smoke white, that means they have a pope, Omaca Bianca (ph). If not, then you have black smoke. They used to just take wet straw. Wet straw would make the smoke dark. Dry straw would make it light.

So, that's what we're watching for on smoke watch is to try and recognize the color of the smoke. Now, it has been notoriously, Suzanne, difficult because smoke, at the end of the day, is kind of smoke. And some who watch this have joked around. With all of the advances we've had in pyrotechnics, can't they reach out to, like, the Gucci family or something and get this smoke to really burst out in beautiful colors to announce what's happened? But that hasn't been done yet.

MALVEAUX: All right. Well, Chris, we'll be watching for the smoke. Hopefully they'll get it right and the bells will ring as well. So, you're on pope watch. Thanks, Chris, good to see you.

A manhunt underway this hour in Washington state. This is for an ex- convict who authorities say killed his grandparents just after they held this welcome home party in his honor. So, here's the guy. Here is the suspect. Police say 26-year-old Michael Boisen, he is on the run possibly in his grandparents' car. They say they are concerned he may make good on more threats to kill.

I want to get the latest from Casey Wian in L.A. Wow, Casey, so he is suspected of killing them right after they gave him a welcome home party?

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Suzanne. He was released from jail on Friday, and his relatives threw him a welcome home party Friday night. Everyone -- he was at his grandparents' house where he was supposed to spend the night. Everyone left the party around 9:00 Friday night. About 18 hours later, Saturday evening, his mother had not heard from him, had not heard from her parents, went to the house, was in the house for about an hour before she found the bodies of her parents. That means that he had several hours -- Michael Boisen had several hours to go basically anywhere.

Authorities say he could be anywhere. They're talking with law enforcement in neighboring states. They're in contact with the border patrol to make sure that he hasn't fled to Canada. But basically, they admit right now, they do not know where he is and they are asking for the public's help. You mentioned his grandparents' vehicle that he is allegedly -- alleged to have stolen after he allegedly committed these murders. It is a red 2001 Chrysler 300 with Washington license plates 046XXU. That's the last vehicle he was known to be in. Authorities say, he could have stolen another vehicle. They're not sure he is still driving that one. But they do want the public to be on the lookout.

He is also described as friendly and clean cut. The one big worry here is that after these murders, investigators found that he had done Internet searches about acquiring guns from gun shows in the Pacific Northwest and as far south as Nevada. Because he is a convicted felon, he can't go to a traditional retail store and buy a weapon. He has made threats against law enforcement, against members of the public, and they found out later that he had made threats against members of his own family. So, they're very, very worried about he could carry those out. Here's what the local sheriff had to say.

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JOHN URQUHART, SHERIFF, KING COUNTY, WASHINGTON: Right now, we have a person very, very dangerous on the run that we believe is trying to obtain weapons to kill citizens and to kill police officers or corrections officers. We need to catch this guy.

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WIAN: Added twist to this story, Suzanne. Four of his previous convicts for robbery involved Oxycontin. He was supposed to start rehab either today or tomorrow, so authorities are looking into any possible disappearances, burglaries of pharmacies, anything like that, concerned that that could be playing a role in this -- in this manhunt -- Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: This is an unbelievable story, just unbelievable. Thank you, Casey. Please let us know if you have more details of this guy, if they're getting close to catching him.

Also an alarming breach of security here. The secret service are now investigating a Web site that claims to have posted the first lady's financial information, including a social security number. She was not the only one in the administration. Actually, the vice president -- Vice President Biden, Hillary Clinton may also have been a victim -- one of the victims here.

Brian Todd's joining us. First of all, how do they explain how this happened?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Suzanne, this could be hacking or simple identity theft a Web site claiming to have this financial information about --

MALVEAUX: Yes.

TODD: -- political and entertainment figures is posting this information. The Web site is entitled The Secret Files. It has a picture of a ghoulish looking girl on the main page. The information appears to be data on the celebrities' finances, as you mentioned, credit reports, loan information, credit card accounts, mortgages. Now, we can't verify, though, that this information is accurate but the secret service and the FBI are investigating. The secret service confirms to us, it is looking into how the personal information purported to relate to first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Biden and former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ended up on the Web site on the Internet. Now, separately, as an indication that the situation is being treated very seriously, a law enforcement told CNN that investigators are going to seek administrative subpoenas to obtain records from Internet service providers -- Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: Wow. And there's some other folks, too, I guess some familiar names who were -- what, we're talking Jay-Z, Beyonce, Kim Kardashian, just to name a few, who have also been hacked.

TODD: Yes, more than a dozen of them, Suzanne. The site posted information on Kim Kardashian, Ashton Kutcher, Beyonce, and Jay-Z. Again, information relating to personal financial matters, auto loans, other financial data. We have to stress, again, we can't confirm if this information is accurate. We've called representative for these celebrities. We have not gotten any comment from them or confirmation on the accuracy of the data.

MALVEAUX: All right. Brian, thank you, I appreciate.

Coming up this hour, TSA is now allowing those small knives, that look like these, on the plane. Well, because of these forced spending cuts, the TSA now says it's closing hundreds of air traffic control towers. Could you be at risk? Well, we're going to ask and talk to one of most recognizable pilots and what he's got to say about it. Chesley (ph) Sullenberger up next.

And red tide threatening Florida's manatees. How algae is actually killing these endangered animals.

Then, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says working women can have it all but fewer than five percent of women lead the fortune 500 companies.

This is CNN NEWSROOM, and it's all happening now.

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CONAN O'BRIEN, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH CONAN O'BRIEN": Did you know that tours of the White House were cancelled? Did you hear that? Well, after tours of the White House were canceled due to budget cuts, Donald Trump has offered to pay for them. Yes, all he's asking is that he rename it the trump White House and casino.

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MALVEAUX: That's not bad. All right, Conan O'Brien having some fun over the suspension of those White House tours because of the forced budget cuts, the spending cuts. It is pretty serious though.

Wolf Blitzer's here. Hey, Wolf, good to see you. A lot of folks are pretty upset about canceling the White House tours. But we've heard from Jay Carney and he says, look, there were some big decisions to make. You had furloughs. You had overtime. So, this might be a way of at least making some cuts but not as painful. What do -- what do you think is the strategy behind this? WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Well, they insist they really don't have any choice that these across-the-board, meat cleaver kind of cuts in certain areas forced them to make these kinds of decisions as a result, no White House tours, which are very popular.

How do you get in one of these White House tours? The White House can give you a ticket or a much more common -- commonly they send over to these tickets to members of the House and the Senate. They give their constituents, their guests these tickets to go get a White House tour.

That's dried up. And it's very unpopular, this decision by the White House, especially with a lot of members of the House and the Senate, who made a point of giving these tour tickets to their own constituents.

You know, I had a chance to talk about this a little bit last night, Suzanne, with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. He was very upset about this, especially because at the same time that they're cutting back on these White House tours, the U.S. Is stepping up assistance, if you will, to Egypt, for example, and its Muslim Brotherhood-led government. Listen to Senator Paul.

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SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KY: When I talk to working class people and they find that their taxes are being sent to a country that burns our flag and chants "Death to America;" meanwhile, we don't have tours in the White House.

And you know what the president's done now? He's closing the entrances to the office buildings up here. And I asked one of the Capitol Hill police today, I said, well, where are they? Are they not working?

He said, no, they have just been assigned to other locations. So this Mickey Mouse games that he does, and then he gives $250 million in addition to the couple billion we already give to Egypt, I think it's really a disgrace.

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BLITZER: You're hearing a lot more of those kinds of complaints, Suzanne. You've been in Washington for a long time. You understand the irritation at the White House, coming from members of Congress, who are pretty angry about this decision to end these tours, at least for the time being.

MALVEAUX: And Wolf, I have another question for you. I mean, I wonder if this go-round it's going to work.

We have had many instances where you have the president, President Obama reaching out to Republicans; he invited them for a special screening of "Lincoln" when that came out. That -- they didn't show up. They didn't go to the White House. Well, now he's going to Capitol Hill; he's going to be on their turf.

Do you think that will help smooth over things this go-round?

BLITZER: Well, everybody hopes that they will because the stakes are enormous. And coming in a few months, by the end of July, the country is going to have to once again raise the nation's debt ceiling. You saw it raining earlier in the day here in Washington today as the president was outside. They've got some major issues that they've got to work out.

There's going to have to be some compromise on both sides, whether increasing tax revenues, which is what the president and the Democrats want, or cutting entitlement spending, which is what the Republicans by and large want.

They're going to have to come up with some sort of formula. So my own sense is -- and I have covered Washington for a long time -- is it's better to start talking to each other than -- that instead just talking at each other.

And the president's doing some impressive term offensive work this week. And even as we speak, he's heading to the Hill to meet with the Democratic leadership, rank and file as well, and the Republican leadership, rank and file as well.

MALVEAUX: Yes. It used to be folks would go out to dinner, they'd have drinks, you know, they'd chat, they'd negotiate over -- in that kind of really casual way. That doesn't really seem to be happening much these days.

Wolf, thank you. Good to see you as always.

BLITZER: Thank you.

MALVEAUX: TSA closing hundreds of air traffic control towers. What one of the nation's most recognizable pilots has to say about all of this. We'll hear from "Sully" Sullenberger, up next.

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MALVEAUX: I'm sure you remember this. This was called "The Miracle on the Hudson." This was the plane that was loaded with passengers that was guided to safety on the Hudson River after the engines were damaged.

Look at that. Just laying there. It was absolutely incredible; people called it a miracle. Well, the captain of the plane, Captain Chesley Sullenberger, better known as Sully, he was the one who saved all those passengers' lives. And he has a mission, if you will, a goal, takes him beyond flying.

Captain, always good to see you.

You know, before that happened a lot of us never even realized you could do something like that, land a plane in the water. And you just are a hero to many of us.

I want to talk about your cause. But let's get to -- we've got a lot of things to do. Primarily, let's talk a little bit about what we've seen with the TSA, some controversy, a couple of things that have changed here. Small pocketknives now being allowed on the planes.

How do you -- how do you weigh -- how do you weigh in on this? Do you think that's a good or a bad idea?

CAPT. CHESLEY "SULLY" SULLENBERGER, PILOT: Well, two thoughts come to me.

First, I think that the TSA is trying to go generally in the right direction, which is to do a better job of looking at people and their behaviors and not only searching to find things.

However, I think in this case, that they are missing the mark. I think that a lot of harm can still be done with a blade that's even 2.36 inches long and it puts the cabin crew, the flight attendants and the passengers at somewhat additional risk.

MALVEAUX: Do you think they have a point when they talk about the fact that they've got bigger fish to fry, other matters, more heavy security issues to deal with?

SULLENBERGER: They have many threats to deal with. And I know that they've come out recently saying that we have recovered all kinds of weapons. But I don't think in this case that it was a wise choice to allow -- or choose to allow soon -- blades of that size to come on to airplanes. I think a lot of harm can still be done with blades even that small.

MALVEAUX: Captain, one thing that's also happening, too, you have the forced budget cuts coming out of Washington here, threatening to shut down a lot of the control towers, particularly at some of those smaller airports. Do you think that that's going to have an impact on safety?

SULLENBERGER: You know, it's going to be a slight change and probably one that wouldn't even be noticed to passengers in the airplanes that they're flying in.

What's going to happen is when an air traffic control tower is closed, instead of having an air traffic controller to choreograph the movement of the airplanes in and around the airport and on the surface of the airport, instead of that, you have to have the pilots on their own kind of coordinate their own movements by stating on the radio frequency where they are and what their intentions are.

And to coordinate among themselves to follow the procedures, follow the rules for arrival and for take-off. So it puts all the burden for a collision avoidance on the pilots instead of the shared collision avoidance responsibility that we have at most a/patient, where there's an air traffic controller to help manage the flow safely and efficiently to and from the runways.

MALVEAUX: Do you think that puts passengers at more risk, at more danger? SULLENBERGER: Some. I mean, I think it's a small additional risk. We're much better off having manned air traffic controllers, towers at all the airports. I don't think it's going to be a big increase in risk, but, yes, it would be some additional risk, I think.

MALVEAUX: Tell us about your cause. I know that pilots, you have a check list; there are certain things that you have to do before that plane takes off. You want to use that system in the medical profession. Can you explain?

SULLENBERGER: Well, one of the obligations I feel, you know, since I've come to people's notice, is to do good with this and to try to improve and save as many lives as possible. And what we've learned over a century in aviation is how to make it safe.

And the kinds of systems and procedures and human skills we have to have to be able to do that. And these are directly transferrable to many industries, whether it's nuclear power, or financial risk management or patient safety in medicine.

And things as simple as using a surgical checklist, a simple, cheap intervention that aviation has been using in the form of a checklist for over 75 years. It's just now coming into wider acceptance to make more reliable, more predictable that the best practices are to be followed consistently on every procedure, on every patient on every day.

MALVEAUX: So, for instance, if you had an operation, you went in for a procedure, you have a checklist, just like you do as a pilot, that says, look, you know, here's what you've got to do. Put on the mask, make sure that, you know, this is the right kidney that we're treating, all kinds of things, that's the idea, yes?

SULLENBERGER: Exactly. And that's one example. That's one small example.

But it also involves things as simple as making sure that someone is in charge of stocking all supplies so that nurses, for example, can spend their shifts providing care and not searching for the supplies that they need.

And it's a matter of having administrations in the hospital that can use value-based purchasing based upon evidence so that instead of buying the cheaper iodine surgical scrub, they might purchase chlorhexidine, which would reduce surgical site infections by 40 percent. So it's a system wide approach.

MALVEAUX: It sounds like an incredible thing that you're doing there.

And I have to -- we've got to show these pictures. This is your opportunity; you met some babies. These were the babies, right, of the passengers, who you have saved, who have since been born.

Can you tell me what that was like to meet these guys?

SULLENBERGER: Recently, we had wonderful reunions, including of passengers who have had children born to them in the last four years since the flight to the Hudson, children that would not have been born had we not been so successful. So it was a wonderful celebration, literally, of life. And of the 10 children that have been born to the passengers, two. interestingly, are named Hudson.

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MALVEAUX: Oh, you can't blame them, of course. You'd want to, in some way, pay tribute to you as well.

Thank you so much, Captain. Really appreciate it. And it's just -- it's wonderful to see you and it's very touching to see that those children are here today because of your heroism. Thank you so much.

SULLENBERGER: Thank you. Good to be with you.

MALVEAUX: Still ahead, NASA says mars could have supported ancient life; what that actually means.

Plus red tide threatening Florida's manatees: how algae is killing these endangered animals.

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