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Flight 370 Satellite Data Released; California Shooting Rampage; Nigerians Say They Know Where Girls Are

Aired May 27, 2014 - 08:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, and welcome once again to NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, May 27th, 8:00 in the East.

Breaking overnight, Inmarsat and the Malaysian government have released the satellite data used in the search for Flight 370, at least some of it. The information includes those handshakes signals used to plot the possible flight path to the southern Indian Ocean.

CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest, he is here with much more, joining us from Los Angeles this morning.

So, Richard, lay it out. It's confusing, yes. We thought it would be. What's the good news here?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: The good news is now out there, that the raw data is now out there, and others will be able to see that, (a), it exists; (b), the extremity of or, (c), the paucity of information upon which they have based so much of the search.

The bad news is, of course, that they haven't given their workings, as David Soucie put so elegantly, they haven't shown the mathematics on how they got to their answers, and as Chris put it to the CEO of Inmarsat a moment ago, it is the absence of that information that really -- it's as if you've been told where the destination is, but you haven't been told the route map by which you got to get there.

And Inmarsat is very deliberate, I spoke with the man who actually did the work and he was quite clear. Putting this information out was designed just to show people what they had.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: To be clear, you're letting people make judgments on your work. You're not inviting them to redo your work.

MARK DICKINSON, WGE PRESIDENT OF INMARSAT SATELLITE OPERATIONS: No. As I say, redo the work require experts in many different fields. We gathered those victims within the investigation team to allow that to happen. But this is providing some transparency in terms of what data came back and forth between the plane and ground station and how that data has been subsequently used. So, it allows people to see what techniques, what things have been accounted for. But certainly provides I'm hope aggregate deal of transparency in terms of the analysis that's been done by Inmarsat and also by the other teams in the investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: So, Kate, what needs to happen now, if Inmarsat is going to provide the rest of their formulas so far and good, otherwise, other organizations that did do the research, whether it's Boeing, the AAIB, the NTSB, (INAUDIBLE), whoever it is, they are the ones who have to come out and say, we looked at this, the numbers, we're happy with them.

BOLDUAN: What is so interesting, as you just noted, the CEO of Inmarsat saying to Chris that they're happy to provide more information than what was provided, but that still is up to the Malaysian government. Do you think that is going to happen?

QUEST: I think there's a little bit of, a bit of wiggle room there.

BOLDUAN: Uh-huh.

QUEST: Inmarsat -- let's be blunt. Inmarsat put out the information they wanted to put out. They could have said we'd like to put out more, this and that. I can't see the Malaysians raising an objection.

The difficulty is how they would have done it, because it's not only their stuff. It's Honeywell's with the satellite coordinates. It's Boeing's performance indicators. There's a huge number of people that sat in the room and contributed, and they all have to be onboard, if you're going to release the formula.

And I -- I'm pretty certain that was a big factor in what was released. Who owns what? And who would agree?

BOLDUAN: Maybe also, then, a factor in why the delay in getting this information out?

QUEST: Oh, right. Oh, oh, I can tell you. I've been close to this from the get-go, as they say, and the negotiations between Malaysia, Inmarsat, all the other parties. The Australians. Everybody had to be onboard to come together with an agreed formula, and then Malaysia is the conduit for it.

I think it's unfair in some sense to blame any one party here. There are so many toes to be trodden on, so many risks to be taken, and as you -- you were right to point out. Ultimately, it's the families saying, hang on. Don't forget about us. We're the ones who need to know.

BOLDUAN: It's essentially exactly what we've heard from Sara Bajc this morning. They've been asking for this information and don't even know what they got in the end and if it's going to lead them anywhere to this point.

Richard, thank you so much.

Chris?

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, another mass shooting, another hard set of questions. As (INAUDIBLE) grieved for the loss, we're learning more about the man who left behind a trail of carnage and heartbreak, including many red flags that were missed.

CNN's Sara Sidner is live in Santa Barbara with more -- Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Chris, this community is in mourning, and you might imagine, these families who lost these students who were just starting to blossom in their adult lives here in school, all of the victims are between the ages of 19 and 20, and we are hearing more now from some of the families who were directly affected by this rampage.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER (voice-over): Vigils held across California honoring all six UC Santa Barbara students killed in the stabbing and shooting rampage by 22-year-old Elliott Rodger before apparently taking his own life.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We don't want our kids to get hurt. It shouldn't happen to any family.

SIDNER: Parents inconsolable, including the mother of 20-year-old Weihan Wang, one of three men deputies say Rodger stabbed repeatedly in his apartment.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't understand why this happened to me.

SIDNER: Classmates of 20-year-old Cheng Yuan Hong remembering their studios and happy friend.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Never had any enemies, always super friendly. A really good guy. Absolutely did not deserve this.

SIDNER: The sheriff says the gunman was apparently, severely mentally disturbed and for at least a year he had been planning to attack women and those he saw as a popular kid. Taping this YouTube video titled "Retribution."

ELLIOT RODGER: Love, affection, adoration, you think I'm unworthy of it. That's a crime that can never be forgiven.

SIDNER: Rodger also outlined his grievances in a diatribe more than 100 pages long. "I will kill them all and make them suffer," he wrote, "just as they have made me suffer."

One of Rodger's childhood classmates mentioned in the document describing him as quiet.

LUCKY RADLEY, FRIEND OF SHOOTER: He didn't say much. I don't remember him saying anything. He only spoke when he was spoken to. SIDNER: A family friend says Rodger's parents feel a pivotal moment was missed last month when six deputies conducted a well-being check on Rodger after his mother discovered other chilling videos posted online, documenting his, quote, "loneliness and misery." But the officers say they found nothing alarming during their check.

JAMES ALAN FOX, CRIMINOLOGIST, NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY: We would like to believe we would like to collect all the data and all evidence and be able to identify mass murderers before they act but we simply cannot do it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: Now, UC-Santa Barbara is closing the campus today. They are focusing on the victims, focusing and trying to help the families heal. There will be a mourning ceremony here instead -- Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Important to remember those young lives lost. Focus on that memorial today and keep those people in our hearts for sure.

Thank you so much.

This morning, a top Nigerian military official says he knows the location of nearly 300 schoolgirls kidnapped by radical Islamists last month, but the official says using military force to rescue the girls would put them in too much danger. Those girls were abducted from their school last month. They've only been seen in this video since then.

Our Arwa Damon is live in Abuja, Nigeria, with the very latest -- Arwa.

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We have been trying to make a round of phone calls to various spokespeople and officials here to try to determine exactly what the defense chief meant by, we know the location of these girls. Have they managed to, given that they have been running numerous aerial surveillances pinpointed the location of these girls or was this just another statement to appease the frustration amongst the people and the anxiety, understandably, of the parents?

Taking the military option off the table, understandably to a certain degree, because trying to launch that would prove to be challenging if not impossible even with the best of militaries. About a week ago, we spoke to two Boko Haram informants who know these people very well, they lived amongst their members, telling us they have not doubt Boko Haram would not hesitate to use these girls as human shields. Understandable, then that no Nigerian official would want to say that a military operation would be worth risking these girls' lives even further.

Negotiations are also phenomenally difficult, given that Boko Haram is not a top-down organization. These girls are believed to have been split into various smaller groups and each cell has its own leadership. So at this stage, even if it is true that their location has been specified, bringing them home safely is going to pose an incredibly large challenge.

PEREIRA: And there's the question, Arwa, how do we get them home otherwise? Thank you so much for that update for us.

Over to Ukraine where heavy fighting continued overnight between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists, in one of the most intense eastern cities. About 40 people have been killed. Separatists declared control of the Donetsk airport after storming on Monday. Ukrainian forces are still holding their ground nearby.

I want to get you straight to senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, who is in Donetsk -- Nick.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Michaela, troubling developments. I've just come back from a morgue where we saw, a doctor said, 31 bodies, many of them militants destroyed very badly by a mixture of bullets and heavy weapons -- a real sign there of the casualties sustained by the pro-Russian separatists and heavy fighting at the airport yesterday. We went to a place where many of them were killed. A truck hit it seemed by a lot of heavy weaponry there.

Some parts of human remains and blood there, and we saw when they tried to bring the bodies away and bring in medical aid. Some locals tried to take some bodies away from that morgue to identify them and bury them, although pro-Ukrainian officials are suggesting some may include, in fact, foreigners.

But two other worrying things. I've just spoken to a separatist spokeswoman. She says to me that she heard online the government gave them between noon and 3:00, that's now, to leave the city or face bombing. That deadline has passed and also the OSCE, that's a monitoring group which has been charged here by both Moscow and Kiev and Washington, everyone agreed, to monitoring the situation. They say they've just lost contact with four of their observers since Monday evening to the east of Donetsk.

Remember, last year, they lost what ended up held prisoner by separatists in Slaviansk. Not clear what's happened here, but certainly concerns are high -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: Really concerning as you said and an intense emerging moment by moment. We keep watching that with you.

Nick Paton Walsh, thanks.

CUOMO: All right. Coming up on NEW DAY, YouTube videos, concerns from the family, run-ins with the cops. Six deputies coming to assess his stability, yet nothing could stop the California killer.

How do we prevent this kind of mass murder going forward? There are answers. There are solutions. Why aren't they being put to use?

Smart talk, straight ahead.

BOLDUAN: Also ahead, the Inmarsat data for Flight 370 released overnight. Our experts are going through it and ready to weigh in on it. So, what's in the data and perhaps more importantly, what's missing?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: New details emerge about the 22-year-old who went on a rampage near a college campus on Friday killing six. Relatives, friends, neighbors, all seem to know the young man was beyond disturbed, losing touch with reality. So why couldn't he be stopped?

Joining us now, Dr. Casey Jordan, criminologist, attorney, professor of justice and law administration, and retired police detective Steve Kardian.

Steve, you don't need to be a detective or a big brain to understand that this guy was a threat to himself and others, yes?

STEVE KARDIAN, NYC DEPARTMENT OF INVESTIGATIONS: He was a threat to himself and others. Of course, we know that now, but at the time law enforcement came to his house they sent six officers, took it very serious. The bar is high for doing that 51-50, where we're going to actually grab him and put him in an institution for evaluation for 72 hours.

CUOMO: Why is the bar so high?

CASEY JORDAN, CRIMINOLOGIST: Because we have constitutional rights and don't want a slippery slope in our law where we can civilly commit our Polly Aunt. You have to have imminent dangerousness.

So, you know, when you have somebody who is saying they have thoughts, that cannot be intrinsically interpreted to acting on them. You have to actually act on it before you can be committed. In this particular case from the time he issued that manifesto to the time he fired the bullets as minutes. So, there was no for anyone to act to commit him.

CUOMO: I would disagree with that patently. And you're right, of course --

JORDAN: Under the law.

CUOMO: Yes, you're totally right, but means of opportunity. The guy had a cache of guns at his house, wrote a 140 page manifesto all he was thinking about how to pull it off. Criminally, the case is made for you right there, isn't it?

KARDIAN: The case is made after the fact, before we know all this information.

CUOMO: Yes, except deputies there, they didn't even search his room?

KARDIAN: That again constitutional liberty. I mean, we're not violating his rights unless we have reason to do so. Again, safety, and --

(CROSSTALK) CUOMO: I'm looking at his videos online. This kid is planning something. He's my kid. I'm telling you, something's wrong. That's not probable cause?

KARDIAN: We need more than just that, such as an overt act, had they found the guns. There was a lot -- in this case, a lot of yellow flags but not red flags until after the fact.

CUOMO: So, what does it mean that you are both right yet this situation is so wrong? How many times do I have to say what I just said? I've read that same tell -- no offense to the writers - many times about many states and many people.

Is the reality this won't change, because the law makes more sense as it is? Or is it time for a change that makes more sense?

JORDAN: It's absolutely time for a change. You've got to understand that mental illness is not this black and white thing. It is an ocean of gray. It's a spectrum, and interpreting that should not actually fall on officers. It should fall on mental health professionals.

I would love to see every large police Democrat, every police department, actually, have an on-call mental health professional. A psychiatrist, psychiatric social worker to go do the work with them and charged with making assessment whether this person is an imminent danger. Not under the law but under mental health profession.

CUOMO: Is imminent danger still the right standard?

JORDAN: I don't think so. No, potential danger.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: Because that's a lunatic standard. You know, when you go back and trace in the law, they made the bar very high, because what we used to have? We used to have a rash of institutionalizations, you referred to with Aunt Polly. One in every 100 New Yorkers at one point was institutionalized. A too expensive, weren't treated. Geraldo exposed Willowbrook and we didn't want it and we let them out.

Did we go too far the other way?

KARDIAN: We did, but in every one of these cases there's someone that knows something, and if they don't get it to the authorities, and in this case they did, but he was so convincing. That sociopathic personality can be very convincing, very persuasive and very believable.

CUOMO: So, what does that tell us?

JORDAN: Well, I think that, you know, you've got actus reus and mens rea. It is not illegal to have legal facts, but maybe the act can be -- putting the act on video. Maybe the act can be writing it down in a manifesto. Make it easier to take the thoughts that are now, we call it leakage, coming out and manifesting themselves in things the person is saying and doing, and low are the bar to where that action by itself can be criminalized and you can get that 72-hour examination to see whether or not this person's potentially dangerous. Not imminently, potentially.

CUOMO: You're using Latin parts there that describe the legal basis for a crime. Actus reus is the bad thing.

JORDAN: We act.

CUOMO: And the mens rea is the mental state that goes along with it.

My question is, why put people who are destabilized mentally, because all mentally ill, most, the overwhelming majority are not violent. We're not talking about them. We don't want to sent that stigma.

But when you're dealing with a psychotic, near psychotic, why put them in the box with a garden variety robber or a murderer? Why don't we have special designations? We've seen the need. This is the same story every time.

JORDAN: Well, first of all, in our culture we stigmatize mental illness. So, it would be really nice not to do that. You shouldn't have to be naked and dancing in a parking lot to get yourself committed.

The idea of the evil thoughts leaking out through things that people say, things that they want their families to know, the family called the police. You can't really blame the family. You can't blame the police.

The laws have to change and maybe it will take a Supreme Court decision. Everyone's afraid of being sued. They're afraid if they actually violate somebody's First Amendments rights or Fourth Amendments right, to be safe in the person, violate privacy they're going to be sued. Make it easier. Make them protected and you will see change.

CUOMO: Are you surprised that the mental health agencies are coming out against the Murphy bill that addresses a lot of these things and lowers the bar, makes it easier to put someone in an involuntary state of being analyzed?

JORDAN: We are afraid of returning to that place where people can be committed against their will. "One flew over the cuckoos nest.", you know, where people who aren't crazy are institutionalized. There has to be middle ground.

If we remove the stigma people will not resist the information that will get them the help they need.

CUOMO: What are the chances, Steve, if we don't make a change you and I have the same conversation again within 12 months?

KARDIAN: We will likely have that, if, in fact, things aren't changed. They have to lower the bar, they have to remove the liability and put public safety first and foremost. CUOMO: The sickening part for me is, I've had people, maybe not as attractive, maybe not as smart, but I've been told this for years and now you have a representative trying to change it and he's getting pushback. We're going to stay on it.

Steve, Casey, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

JORDAN: Good to be here.

KARDIAN: Pleasure.

CUOMO: Kate?

BOLDUAN: Coming up next on NEW DAY: Still no sign of Flight 370, but overnight a victory of sorts for family members of the missing passengers. They finally have access to satellite data they've didn't asking for, really, since the beginning. We're going to break down what is in this data release, and what is not.

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PEREIRA: Good to have you back with us here on NEW DAY.

Overnight, the Malaysian government released the Inmarsat data that was used to calculate where missing Flight 370 most likely ended its journey. Now that we have it, what do we know?

We're joined by Mary Schiavo and David Soucie for more.

Mary, of course, a CNN safety analyst and a former inspector general at the U.S. Department of Transportation. David is a CNN safety analyst and former FAA inspector. The right two people to crunch through this.

I looked through this. A whole lot of numbers, Mary. One has to ask, is there more need? When you look at all of that, what is missing for you?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, there is more need, and what's missing is what Inmarsat did with the data. I thought Chris' interview with the CEO of Inmarsat was very interesting because he said they had given the date to Malaysia, the Malaysian authorities and they wanted them, didn't mind if they released it.

So, that's the piece that's still missing but not to take away from what the families asked for and got, they have the information to give to independent investigators, mathematicians to look at that. So they have the raw data but I think the rest of the Inmarsat data should be released, but it's a good step. The next step forward.

PEREIRA: And to that end, it sort of context, I heard you earlier, David, say, they haven't shown their map? We all remember that from school? Don't we? They haven't shown their map, sort of context, the formula of how this data was processed.

Absent that, how effective will this information, this raw data, be to an independent investigator?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, I've spoken with several of them, especially Mike Exner, who is doing this analysis who feels there's still information missing he needs, of course, to reverse engineer this or come up with the information. For example, they just give references to channels instead of actual frequency of channel.

So, there's a lot left that's on the table that needs to be answered for sure.

PEREIRA: Well, and, Mary, we know, and even the CEO in speaking with Chris talked about the fact that this was a move of transparency. That was the importance of releasing this. Was it transparent enough?

SCHIAVO: No. And I think that Mr. Pearce (ph) talking to Chris made it very clear that Inmarsat wants it released, and why the Malaysian officials, the investigators, chose not to do that is a question, perhaps they didn't want people going off and doing independent analysis.

But that's kind of contrary to an air safety and air crash investigation. You want to make this available, especially at the end of the investigation, because that's the purpose of it. An air investigation, air crash investigation, is to improve safety in the long run. It's going to be important to get that out. It will come out eventually and I think Mr. Pearce said it best, they want it out.

PEREIRA: Eventually, goodness sakes, three months in? How much more eventually can the families bear? Speaking with Sarah Bajc, her partner Philip Wood was onboard the plane.

David, she said the families are looking for the flight data, same plane from previous flights, they didn't get that data. Give us an idea of what kind of insight that could provide?

SOUCIE: Well, what do we do is to provide comparative data. In other words, the base frequency offset and other information that's in there, able to compare to previous flights, especially if the aircraft had taken the same route.