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Unemployment Hits Five And A Half-Year Low; NAACP Chapter Head Quits Over Sterling Scandal; Malaysia: "We Have Nothing To Hide"; Search For Missing Jet Could Take A Year

Aired May 02, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, your job, your money. A major new report just out on just how healthy our economy really is.

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AMANDA KNOX: I did not kill my friend.

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COSTELLO: Amanda Knox in a CNN exclusive.

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KNOX: I did not wield a knife.

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COSTELLO: New revelations and new details.

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CHRIS CUOMO, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY": This judge believes that this fight was about money and that you stole money from your roommate and that that is what started this violent night. Is there truth to that?

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COSTELLO: The Clippers take the court. As reports this morning team owner, Donald Sterling, has prostate cancer.

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SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: This is the closest thing to a smoking gun I've seen.

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COSTELLO: Benghazi and a White House on defense.

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JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That e-mail was not provided.

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Have you read the e-mail, Jim?

ACOSTA: I have it right in front of me.

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COSTELLO: Amazing new video of the Baltimore landslide as it happens. You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. We start this hour with breaking news on the health of our economy. The monthly jobs report shows a stunning gain in the number of jobs added to payrolls last month, the most since 2012, and the unemployment rate at its lowest level in five and a half years, 288,000 jobs were added in April, which drops the unemployment rate by four notches to 6.3 percent.

So, let's talk about this with our chief business correspondent, Christine Romans, and chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, Stephen Moore. Welcome to both of you. Christine, let's start with the positive. Tell us about this report.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: I think Stephen and I are both relieved that you got a 288,000 net new jobs and not something more benign than that. It was a cold winter and we were worried that the labor market was frozen, so let it go, to quote the movie. It looks as though the thaw has happened here.

The unemployment rate 6.3 percent, but that 288,000 jobs created and in February and March, you saw jobs pick up as well. What I liked about this number, broad-based jobs creation. There's been a low wage explosion, but I saw it in some other jobs as well. Accountants and business professionals and IT professionals, miners and construction workers, retail, warehousing and transportation, retail, in a lot of different things, so that's important here -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Well, Stephen, I think we should add a bit of caution because it's not like the economy is roaring back to life because that's certainly not true.

STEPHEN MOORE, CHIEF ECONOMIST, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Well, you know, I'm breathing a big sigh of relief today. Carol, I think everybody at Wall Street and Main Street is because we were very nervous when we got the GDP report that came out a few days ago. As you remember, Carol, that showed almost no growth in the economy in the first quarter and then the fed said we think actually there are some signs of life in the economy in this quarter and we saw it today.

We really did and Christine, you're right about 288,000 and if you the revisions upward for previous months, we were over 300,000 that's a really good number. The only thing I would caution about that is unexplainable in this report is you know, a big drop off in the number of people in the labor force. The kind of people who are looking for jobs. That's strange because as employers are hiring for workers we think we'd have more.

COSTELLO: Can you explain that, Christine?

ROMANS: Well, there's a couple of things happening there. Fewer people entering the work force, right, so for some reason, there were fewer people entering the workforce, either because they got out of college at the end of the year or were unemployed and moving back in. Also, you've got these baby boomers. We have kind of an historic moment where we have more people retiring or hitting retirement age every day than any time in history. Those people are making big choices now, about leaving the labor force, whether they want to or not.

COSTELLO: And you have to look at the number of hours people are working and how much they're getting paid for that work and there is very little growth there, Stephen.

MOORE: Yes. That's a problem actually. You know, we've seen the workweek kind of shrinking. Last month, it was stable, but it's actually been falling a little bit, which means people are having a harder time finding a full time job. A lot of this is perplexing. We don't know just in the couple of hours we've been looking at the report what's going on here, but I have to say this, Carol, my son is graduating from college in June and he's going to be looking for a job. So I'm so pleased maybe there are employers hiring people again.

COSTELLO: I hope so. Stephen Moore, Christine Romans, thanks so much.

ROMANS: It's getting better, Stephen.

MOORE: I don't want him coming home, that's for sure.

COSTELLO: Living in the basement, no.

MOORE: See you soon.

COSTELLO: All right, in other news this morning, there's a startling development surrounding embattled L.A. Clippers owner, Donald Sterling. The "New York Post" and ESPN both reporting that Sterling is fighting prostate cancer. The Clippers were told about the reported cancer after they were beaten by the Golden State Warriors in their playoff series last night. And of course forces into deciding game seven tomorrow night in Los Angeles.

Also, the NBA has taken another step to force Sterling to sell the team. A committee of ten owners met by conference call and voted unanimously to move the process forward. The Donald Sterling affair is also costing the NAACP in reputation. The L.A. chapter's president, Leon Jenkins, is resigning as you well know, the L.A. Chapter was about to award Sterling a second lifetime achievement award even though it knew Sterling did not exactly have a sterling reputation when it came to minorities.

But that's not all, it turns out, Leon Jenkins doesn't have a sterling reputation himself. According to the "New York Times," Jenkins was once a judge in Detroit. He was removed from the bench in 1991 and disbarred in Michigan for accepting bribes. He asked the BAR Association to reinstate him, but he failed to disclose a $600,000 debt. In fairness, the BAR Association did praise Jenkins for his community service.

So let's talk about this. With me now, CNN contributor and senior writer for ESPN, LZ Granderson, and CNN political commentator, Marc Lamont Hill. Welcome to both of you.

LZ, you called for Jenkins to be fired a couple of days ago. He stepped down for the good of the organization. Is that good enough for you?

LZ GRANDERSON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it depends. I wrote a column I think the next day because the NAACP really shocked me. The national organization shocked me because they found themselves getting involved trying to pressure Commissioner Silver into demanding some sort of sit-down with Sterling. I was like, look, as an organization, you need to worry about your own house first because you need to find out how many more Jenkins you have in your body before you start worrying about what's happening to the NBA.

Why do I say this? Because they've had allegations of corruptions in Georgia, in Houston, in the state of New York. This is not the first time the NAACP has had individuals at local chapters deal with corruption, so they need to worry about their own house first.

COSTELLO: The NAACP, not talking today about Jenkins that's for sure, but I want to ask you, Marc, should Jenkins have been president of the L.A. chapter in the first place?

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it sounds like no. If you have a history of corruption, putting you in charge of an organization in one of the flagship cities of historic organization just seems unwise. But I think part of this comes down to doing due diligence. It's quite possible that people didn't know his history in Detroit. Not to say it's acceptable, but I suspect they just didn't know. But it speaks to a broader problem.

COSTELLO: Come on, Marc. It's so easy --

HILL: Black people have Google. They could have looked this up. I'm just saying that a lot of times, these small organizations, there's a few people who show up to the meeting and vote. I'm in Philadelphia half the time and the local NAACP there was embattled for years. This stuff happens. I'm not making excuses. But it speaks to a bigger problem when you have these national organizations.

COSTELLO: True, but what does this say about the NAACP over all?

GRANDERSON: Well, it basically says it just needs to take time and do a better job of making sure that whoever's representing the organization, you know, and I don't just lay this at the feet of the local chapters. The national organization held their conference in Detroit and had Kilpatrick leading some sort of funeral for the n word in the middle of an investigation that he was going through or allegedly, he had strippers at the mayor's house and then one of the strippers ended up dead.

All of this was happening before he was speaking about the national conference of the NAACP, so again, you can say these are anomalies, it's what happened in L.A. or Georgia or Houston, but there just seems to be a consistency here and that's really troublesome and partly explains why the organization has had a hard time raising funds and raising relevance in today's society.

COSTELLO: I was just going to ask Mark about relevance, go ahead.

HILL: It also speaks to the black middle class. The NAACP is a major institution for the black middle class and this speaks to every problem we see with the black middle class. One, when Donald Sterling is being charged or you know, with housing discrimination, they're saying nothing at the local level. Why? Because poor black people are often an embarrassment, so they're not worried about them. So now, you can't show them to the Staples Center, they're in an uproar.

You know, a lot of times these national organizations are much more interested in wealth building than advocacy at this moment and I think that's part of the problem. That's why the Sterling thing went so long and it also speaks to -- where people who donate money get to have rule over everybody else. He donates some money, he's cool. We don't care about his past anymore. But it's not just the NAACP and black people. This is organizations all around the world. It's also politics.

COSTELLO: You got that right. Pretty much all the time it does, right. Marc Lamont Hill, LZ Granderson, thanks to you both.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, almost two months after Malaysia Airline Flight 370 vanished, still no sign of the plane. This morning, officials are pushing back against critics fed up with the investigation. We'll talk about that, next.

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COSTELLO: This morning, a top Malaysian official says he's willing to consider Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went down in the Bay of Bengal, but he does warn it is unlikely. This as the preliminary search for the wreckage in the region turns up dry. In the meantime, government officials are pushing back against critics who say yesterday's preliminary report on the missing jet doesn't go far enough.

CNN's Will Ripley is in Kuala Lumpur with more. Good morning, Will.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Within the past few hours, we finally got some answers, some direct answers to questions about that controversial preliminary report that showed there was some valuable time lost due to confusion, misunderstanding, and miscommunication right after the plane disappeared.

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HISSHAMMUDDIN HUSSEIN, MALAYSIAN ACTING TRANSPORT MINISTER: We really have nothing to hide. RIPLEY (voice-over): New this morning, Malaysian officials are dismissing claims by a private company of possible wreckage in the Bay of Bengal several thousand miles from the search zone.

HUSSEIN: Many have proven to be negative and this is similar to what we have done before.

RIPLEY: Breaking overnight, news of a trilateral meeting on Monday between Australia, China, and Malaysia. The next step, a daunting deep sea search off Western Australia. Eight to 12 months, estimated $60 million and more assets joining the Bluefin-21, which so far, has found no sign of the missing plane.

Air traffic control audio of those haunting final words from the cockpit just seconds before the plane's tracking devices were switched off. This new report detailing the hours of confusion that followed, 17 minutes before anyone noticed the plane disappeared from radar. Another four hours of inaction in the control towers before search and rescue was activated.

DIRECTOR GENERAL DATUK AZHARUDDIN ABDUL RAUMANI, MALAYSIA'S DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AVIATION: Why 17 minutes, this is what I told, so that's up to the investigation team to study, to investigate.

RIPLEY: Meantime, more heartbreak for the families of Flight 370. During this meeting in Beijing, learning Malaysia Airlines assistance centers are closing in just a few days, forcing them to go home without any answers about the plane or the 239 people still missing eight weeks later.

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RIPLEY: Still, so many unanswered questions, Carol. We are getting some answers. In fact, just a new press release from Malaysia Airlines explaining why they initially thought the plane was in Cambodia when it was far away from there. They were using flight tracker kind of like what you'd use on your cell phone if you want to see where your loved ones plane is in the middle of their flight. It was showing an estimated position, not the actual position. So that's something they are going to have to look into -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Will Ripley, you stay with us, actually, because I want to bring in our other guests and I'd like to have you participate. I want to bring in former undersecretary of the TSA, John Magaw and CNN aviation analyst, Jeff Wise. Welcome to both of you.

John, I want to start with you. In this preliminary report, there was so much confusion between air traffic controllers and this plane. The plane disappeared from radar for 17 minutes and it took them four hours to do anything about it. In your mind and I ask you this because yesterday, we kind of explored this issue about whether this kind of thing happens internationally and is a continuing problem. So is it in your mind?

JOHN MAGAW, FORMER UNDERSECRETARY TSA: Well, I think it is an international problem. You know, I wouldn't want to pinpoint any particular countries or areas, but I think it is one that has to be looked at, but you know, Carol, we really need to look at something different here, also. You know, the tracking and the looking for the aircraft and all the families, taking care of them that is underway. Mistakes have been made.

Let's don't go back and argue about those mistakes. Let's correct this so it doesn't happen again. Let's get real time monitoring. Since 2009, it was recommended. President Obama mentioned it again. We need the airline industry around the world and the federal and state and local airports, everybody involved, do this real time monitoring.

And the same time, do more things to safety on the cockpit. We can worry about all these things and another one will occur when we're not ready for it. We need to be active in that area as we move forward, quickly.

COSTELLO: I suspect this tragedy may push things along, we'll see. Jeff, there was no information in this preliminary report about the plane's maintenance history, its engine performance data or any information on air traffic control staffing, o so why won't officials release that information?

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, you know, I think for the most part, what you want to see in a preliminary report is information that's true to the conduct of the investigation and really points to where investigators think the relative facts are. So probably, engine performance wasn't a problem. Maintenance wasn't a problem. It seems to have been a deliberate act. Someone turned this plane, heading away from the course.

One thing I might want to explain quickly, you talk about the plane disappearing from radar, planes disappear from radar all the time. When they head out over open ocean as this plane did, so the fact that it wasn't appearing on primary or secondary radar might indicate why whoever did it chose to do so at this moment because an air traffic controller who sees this, well, disappear from the radar detection, wouldn't necessarily assume it's because the transponder was turned off.

COSTELLO: Just so many unanswered questions and there will be this tri-lateral meeting set up. Tell us about that.

RIPLEY: Yes, this is going to be China, Malaysia and Australia, and officials getting together in Australia to talk about the next step. There's some thinking this underwater search could take up to a year and cost up to $60 million, but they're going to have to bring in private contractors with different technology to assist the Bluefin 21. They're going to hammer out those details and give us those details as they learn them, so we should get more information about how that's going to work on Monday -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Will Ripley, John Magaw, Jeff Wise, thanks to all of you.

Still to come -- anytime. Still to come, shocking video out of Baltimore. Have you seen this yet? I mean, it's incredible. We'll show you more after a break.

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COSTELLO: Now some incredibly disturbing video to show you. This is the landslide on a Baltimore street that sent at least five cars plummeting into a ravine. Take a look.

That is crazy. That was a retaining wall. It collapsed after a retaining wall soaked the area. All of those cars were definitely damaged. Nineteen homes are now evacuated. People cannot return home for at least 40 days. Not only that, there is a CSX rail line nearby and it shut down transportation, so that will really mess with the city's economy.

Indra Petersons is here now to explain how this could happen.

INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOLOGIST: Definitely a scary sight. We know they had a lot of rain. The average amount of rainfall they've seen for the month is all about 3 inches. They saw in the Baltimore area 3 to 6 or 7 inches across the region, so that's the starting point. That doesn't happen because of one day. When I say winter, we know it is spring, so long winter. Doesn't seem like it's over with yet. About double the amount of snow.

So think about all the freezing of the ground and the amount of rain, about 10 inches above average so that kind of gives you an idea of what's been going on in the region. A lot of us had a lot of winter, rain, snow, we don't have lands landslides. So, you have to think about what kind of terrain they have. This region has been prone to it.

In the '80s, there was a previous incident on the other side of the school. A lot of residents were complaining. The city was coming out, just putting cement right over it and hiding what was going on underneath. How did it go from this to that? Let's talk about what a sinkhole is. Let's take a look and you're going to see, a lot of rain in the area. Gets like these little fractures, kind of weakens, so eventually, you start to see that big sinkhole. That's one scenario.

It could also be a landslide. They are different. Landslide is different because you get the weight of the run off on the top. It gets so heavy and the slope is so steep, everything can kind of come down with gravity, so that's what they're going to have to do. Those engineers are going to have to say, which one was it. They should have probably fixed it ahead of time.

COSTELLO: Think the mayor of Baltimore has some explaining to do. Walking back to that street where I parked my car and finding that. Can you imagine?

PETERSONS: Not even remotely and I don't want to.

COSTELLO: I don't either. Those poor people. Indra Petersons, thanks for the explanation. We appreciate it.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Sterling's alleged mistress claims she was employed by the billionaire team owner, recording conversations as his archivist. So, does he really have an expectation of privacy? Did she do anything wrong? We'll talk about that next.

But first, it only took one interview for a Cleveland man to become an internet sensation. You probably remember Charles Ramsey. Today, he is still considered a hometown hero. Since that ordeal, Ramsey has landed speaking deals and even had a burger named in his honor, but fame came long after his own personal struggles and now, he's sharing his struggle in a new book called "Dead Giveaway." Here's to someone making their mark.

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CHARLES RAMSEY, AUTHOR, "DEAD GIVEAWAY": Did you see me? That wasn't my finest work.

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