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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Update on Crash Site; Anderson Cooper Speaks to Michael Bociurkiw; Challenges of Victim Identification; Interview With Dr. Joye Carter; Pentagon Says Russia Moving Heavier Weaponry Into Ukraine; Gaza Hospital Flooded With Victims After Gaza School Bombed

Aired July 25, 2014 - 12:00   ET

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

ANDERSON COOPER, HOST "ANDERSON COOPER 360":I'm Anderson Cooper. It is Friday, July 25th. As we begin this hour, I want to welcome our viewers in the United States and watching around the world. It has been eight days now since Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was blown out of the sky over Eastern Ukraine and still the crash site is not secured. No major investigation has been conducted in the zone which is controlled by the same pro-Russian rebels the United States accuses of shooting down the plane.

Today, some top rebel leaders showed up at the crash site in uniforms and marked cars, but perhaps most disturbing, officials at the scene say the remains of dozens of victims still may be laying among the wreckage exposed to the elements. Those same officials also say personal effects belonging to the victims have suddenly, suspiciously appeared among the wreckage. When those items were not there yesterday or even the day before. This morning, another military plane carrying MH-17 victims landed in the Netherlands. Another flight is scheduled for tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Dutch and Australian military police are gearing up, heading to Ukraine to provide security at the crash site. CNN's Phil Black visited the wreckage earlier today. He joins me now live from Eastern Ukraine. These military police, they are walking into a war zone. Can they secure the site? Are they armed?

PHIL BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's the question that is yet to be answered, Anderson. Both the Netherlands and Australia have left open the possibility that some of these officers could, in fact, be armed. At the moment, both of those countries have investigators on the ground at the crash site. I know you're about to get a specific update on their movements. What they've found over several days now really would seem to justify the stated concerns of countries like Australia, Malaysia and the Netherlands about the condition of the crash site more than a week on. But also, about the initial search for MH-17's victims. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLACK (voice-over): This is the biggest international presence seen at MH-17's crash site. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe traveling with investigators and diplomats from Malaysia and Australia. For the first time, the observer mission looked beyond the grassy fields and pushed into a dense forest. They found small, scattered pieces and this. So far, it's the largest single piece of MH-17's fuselage to be discovered. Its impact was cushioned by the forest. Some of the windows are still intact.

According to the European monitors, the investigators from Australia and Malaysia are surprised by two things. First, the sheer size of the debris field. And the fact that one week since the disaster there is still no exclusion zone surrounding it. And at this site, the observers closely study the front end of the cockpit. This is where emergency workers caused significant damage a few days ago, cutting into the wreckage with a high powered saw. It's also where the metal debris is marked by numerous puncture marks, possible signs of shrapnel damage from a midair explosion. Apart from this small group moving in convoy across the crash zone, and it's sometimes unfriendly militant escort, there is no one examining or securing evidence.

This, the site of a major recent air disaster, is quiet. It looks abandoned, and there is no ongoing operation to find victim's bodies among surrounding fields and farmlands. That's a concern because the monitors have found yet more evidence the original search effort was less than thorough.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Human remains, for the second day in a row. We did spot some human remains.

BLACK: Again today as well?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we did.

BLACK: One week on, international experts are on the ground in small, but growing numbers. But the wreckage of MH-17 is still not being treated with the care it deserves.

BLACK (on camera): So both Australia and the Netherlands are looking to ramp up their numbers on the ground. That's why they're talking about dozens of police and investigators heading this way shortly. Whether they are armed or not, and both those countries say decisions haven't been taken, it's impossible to imagine a scenario where you get that international force here, that investigative and security force here without the permission of the pro-Russian militants that support this site, no doubt the Russian government, and of course the Ukrainian government as well. Anderson, there is sure to be a great deal of diplomacy and negotiations going on right now.

COOPER: Yes, I talked to the prime minister of the Netherlands just yesterday. He said he's spoken to Vladimir Putin six times thus far and left open the door to some sort of international force the Netherlands might take part of. Phil Black, appreciate it. Joining me now from Donetsk, Ukraine, is Michael Bociurkiw, he is the spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe which is monitoring the crash scene. Michael, its good to see you again today. You were at the crash site again today. We're hearing that you found another large piece of debris in the middle of the village. I think we have some pictures of it. Tell us what you saw.

(BEING VIDEOCLIP) MICHAEL BOCIURKIW, SPOKESPERSON FOR THE ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE (voice-over): Hi, Anderson. Good to be back with you. Well, today, we're out with a fairly big delegation from Australia and the Netherlands. The Netherlands was exclusively forensic experts. And we did take them. For them, it was the first time we took them to Petropavlovka village near the crash site.

This is a village, Anderson, which has been heavily hit by debris, by human remains. And yes, it was basically a big cargo pallet that fell in front of the village council building. And then what the villagers have been doing, Anderson, is bringing parts that they have been finding and placing on top. One thing I should mention here that's quite extraordinary is that, you know, none of the villagers were injured by falling debris, even though it was mid afternoon. And one of them said to us, "Well, the name of our village is Petropavlovka, SaintPeter and Saint Paul, and maybe that's what protected us." Quite and extraordinary story.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

COOPER: And I know some of those villagers have even been bringing flowers, pictures of victims, kind of making makeshift memorials. I saw a report that you put out that you actually have now -- coming back to the site today, you suddenly found and saw victim's passports and other personal items that were not in those places yesterday. Can you explain that?

BOCIURKIW: The other, yes, extraordinary thing that happened today when we were with the foreign officials, in both Petropavlovka, we found credit cards, I.D. cards there. And the also, even more extraordinary, in the wooded area, where we talked about the fuselage yesterday, there was a fair bit of documentation there, including what looked like very fresh passports. Again, we report on what we see, as I've explained so many times. But, you know, we can't draw any conclusions. For sure, those were not there the last time we were there. Perhaps someone placed it there. We don't know. It's extraordinary finding.

COOPER: yes, I just want to repeat that for our viewers. You had been there Yesterday, did not see those passports in that place. You come today and all of a sudden, there's what you say are fresh-looking passports of victims left out that you are able to see quite clearly. I also understand you could clearly see one of the seat numbers in the part of the plane that you found yesterday.

BOCIURKIW: Well, we did a bit of triangulation and there are about 16 or 17 more or less intact windows there. Close by, we found, incredibly, a boarding pass that had seat 22 -- I think it was 22-F, something like that, so it indicates the -- almost kind of midsection of the aircraft, economy class section. For us, I mean, you know, we're perhaps (inaudible) but, I mean it just drove home again the kind of personal tragedy of all of this, it's not easy, Anderson.

The other thing I should tell you is that obviously today we went to many different debris fields and the question obviously came up, what happens with the debris? And we were giving the indication from the rebels in control, is that their patience is almost wearing out. They're saying maybe another week and then they've -- they don't know what will happen, and they were encouraging us to pass the message up the command chain, if you will, that, you know, a group of experts, perhaps 25 or 30, should get here soon to oversee their movement of the debris, and it did sound like they wanted the same thing as how it happened with the human remains. It would go on a lorrie to the nearby train station, placed on a train, and taken out.

COOPER: And it does sound, I mean I talked to, as I said, the prime minister of the Netherlands just yesterday. It does sound like in the coming days there's going to be a big ramp up of personnel on the ground, at least from the Netherlands. A lot of them have obviously been dealing with the removal of bodies and flying them out. Also, others have been stuck in Kiev. So we'll see if that actually happens. Michael, again, I appreciate the work that you and all the OSCE observers do.

It is a very difficult and dangerous work. I appreciate it. Thank you, Michael. I want to bring in our CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety investigator, inspector, David Soucie. I mean, again, as Michael said, finding that boarding pass with seat number 22-F, it really does just bring home how, you know, this is -- somebody carried that boarding pass to find their seat. We've all been there. We've all done that. We've all carried those boarding passes.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: That's the thing that impacts me most with the accident site is seeing those kinds of things that you know that that person that had that or pieces -- articles of clothing. You see the buttons. They touched those things. They knew that they were getting on the airplane and then suddenly that's no longer their life.

COOPER: And at a crash site, you've been at them --

SOUCIE: Yes.

COOPER: You see, that's all around?

SOUCIE: Absolutely. Could I touch a little on those personal belongings as well? Sometimes in these accident sites, there's some hurry and things going on at first. Eventually, people -- ethical behavior, takes a while to settle in. It's not uncommon to have things that have been taken from the site. I've seen it twice on my investigations, where things show back up again.

COOPER: Is that right, really?

SOUCIE: Yes, where people- -I've actually talked to a young man who had taken it and brought it back because I caught him there. He said, I couldn't live with myself. It just had to be here. And he couldn't sleep. He was so upset with himself for taking that.

COOPER: Also, in the case of passports, there's not really any value for a rebel --

SOUCIE: Its just the fact he's got something from that site too, I think that's part of it, yes.

COOPER: Fascinating, David Soucie, appreciate you being with us. Thanks very much. The victims of Malaysia Air Flight 17 are being taken to the Netherlands, as you know. We have watched extraordinary scenes over the last three days.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

COOPER (voice-over): Forensic experts are working to identify them, reunite them with their families. We'll speak with someone who knows firsthand what these doctors are going through.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER (on camera) Welcome back. Forensic investigators in the Netherlands are tasked with the grim but important work of identifying the remains of the victims of Flight 17. Now this morning, another military plane carrying those victims landed in the Netherlands and another flight is scheduled for tomorrow. Meanwhile, officials at the crash scene say human remains may still need to be collected from that site, really definitely will need to be. CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains the challenges facing the investigators trying to bring peace to the victim's families.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: After more than two days of lying in fields covered with debris with temperatures in the high 80s, the first shreds of dignity finally appeared Monday, some 200 body bags to be placed in simple wooden caskets according to Ukrainian officials.

How many souls inside? No one can say for sure.

A hundred-and-sixty-plus miles on rail through the plains of eastern Ukraine, before flying another 1,300 miles to the Netherlands where the plane originally departed.

They were greeted by the king and queen as casualties of war, 298 casualties from a war they never fought. Forty simple wooden caskets on Wednesday, 74 more on Thursday, Dutch officials now saying all of the remains will be brought here to Hilversum military base over the next few days.

A team of 75 investigators, they represent countries that represent the passengers who were aboard that plane, those investigators now with the awful task of going through those remains, trying to identify them.

They rely on basic things, clothing, jewelry, anything unique about the person, but also dental records, medical records, and finally, the gold standard, which will be DNA analysis.

JOS VAN ROO, CHIEF, DUTCH FORENSICS TEAM (via translator): There are a lot of bodies and body parts coming our way. All bits must be examined and it must be very precise. You must make sure you don't give the wrong body to the wrong family.

GUPTA: Eight years after the Oklahoma City bombing, a woman was discovered to have been buried with another victim's leg.

Just 60 percent of those who died in the world trade center on 9/11 were ever officially identified.

Nine years after Hurricane Katrina hit, the city of New Orleans still has 31 unidentified remains.

It is a science, but not a perfect science. In the direct aftermath of the crash, emergency workers, volunteers, even rebels move freely about the site.

DR. VICTOR WEEDN, CHAIR OF FORENSIC SCIENCE, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: We don't know where each set of remains actually were recovered from, and that will hamper some of the information that might otherwise be gleaned from the remains themselves.

GUPTA: None of this is easy for the families or the investigators. We know some of the remains may be charred or fragmented. That degrades the quality of the DNA.

Also, if entire families were traveling together, their DNA pool may be gone forever, making matches nearly impossible.

No, none of this is easy, but all of it necessary. The primary goal isn't investigative, legal, or even medical for that matter. It is to return the remains home to the people who love them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a tremendously important humanitarian effort.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Hilversum, the Netherlands.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Joining me to talk about the process of identifying the remains from Flight 17 is Dr. Joye Carter, the chief forensic pathologist in Marion County, Indiana. She's the first African- American to be appointed chief medical examiner in the U.S. and author of the book, "I Speak for the Dead."

Thank you so much for being with us, Dr. Carter. I understand you've had to identify victims of a plane crash before. What are some of the unique problems in this process?

DR. JOYE CARTER, FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST: Well, first of all, it's very difficult for the investigator. You have to imagine one of the worst fears is being involved with a plane crash. It takes a lot of intestinal fortitude.

And then you have your work cut out for you with trying to establish who was on the plane and how much of that body is remaining in order to get it back to the right family. That's so important. It's crucial.

You have to think about how this impacts all of the workers involved with this, a huge effort to get all the remains collected.

COOPER: You talk about fear, fear because you know the horror that you're going to be witnessing?

CARTER: Yes. That's one of the huge fears of flying, and certainly in today's world, with all the terror activity we've had around the world, and you know that you fly to get to your area as quickly as possible, and you have to kind of put that into another place.

But it does prey on the fear of many Americans and citizens around the world of the terror of being struck down as an innocent passenger.

COOPER: As a doctor, as a pathologist, I know you're trained to do this, but how do you deal with it, seeing -- I mean, it's one thing to see, you know, somebody who's been -- who's died a natural death. It's another to see somebody who's died in this way. How do you cope?

CARTER: Well, we are trained. We do witness fatalities every single day, and you do have to be trained for professional detachment. You have to put your emotions to the side and do your job.

And you have very limited time to do your job. And it is very important that you canvas your workers to make sure they're not exhausted or stressed by what they're seeing.

And there's always the fear that volunteers that are gathering are not trained the way that the forensic pathologist is and they may have that posttraumatic stress, that they can't get the memory out of their mind.

But you are trained to put your emotions aside and really to help the families. That's the ultimate goal as a physician is to help the family.

COOPER: Dr. Joye Carter, I appreciate you being on. Thank you very much.

This just in to CNN. A warning now from the Pentagon that Russia is readying the transfer of powerful weapons into Ukraine.

Barbara Starr joins me live from the Pentagon. Barbara, this is new information we're just learning. What have you heard?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Anderson.

Reporters here at the Pentagon have just come from an update briefing, and we're told there is now new intelligence showing that Russia is getting ready to transfer additional heavy weapons, if you will, into Ukraine.

Now, we've known for last several days they keep sending weapons across the border, but what we are told is these are multiple-launch rocket systems, so these are vehicles that tow rockets on top of them, crossing the border into Ukraine, weapons with more powerful warheads, more kinetic, kill capability, if you will, than what has been seen so far to date. We're told by the Pentagon the intelligence indicates that this transfer of up to a dozen perhaps vehicles carrying these weapons could be imminent, could be as soon as today.

A lot of questions because people, I think, want to see the intelligence. They want to see the imagery, the satellite pictures, that show this is happening, that show Russia is firing from across the border into Ukraine.

All of that imagery, we are told here at the Pentagon, remains classified, and it is not yet being made public, but they say -- U.S. officials say they have solid information about all of this.

Anderson?

COOPER: When you talk about heavy rocket launchers, are you talking surface-to-air or are you talking -- you mentioned kinetic. Would these actually be used on the battlefield, because there has been continued fighting, in fact an uptick in fighting over the last several weeks in eastern Ukraine?

STARR: Right, I think that's a very crucial point. All the indications are that these are not, right now, the surface-to-air missile batteries, if you will, the type of weapons the U.S. believes brought down the Malaysia Air flight.

These are surface-to-surface weapons, if you will. This is to give the separatists the ability to go back and fight against Ukrainian forces on the ground, which have been making a lot of progress in taking back territory from the pro-Russian separatists.

So this ups the ground game of this war, if you will, and the sort of chessboard that is out there as both sides struggle to retake territory. This is -- as the Pentagon said, this is an escalation.

By any measure, this will put much more ground firepower on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, and of course there is a lot of concern that civilians in the area, once again, are going to be caught in the crossfire.

COOPER: And a sign perhaps of Russia's concerns that pro-Russian rebels are not faring well on the battlefield.

Barbara Starr, appreciate it.

Anger keeps growing on both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict even as the tension (inaudible), diplomats are scrambling for a cease- fire.

Just ahead, we'll talk to Wolf Blitzer with the latest.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Palestinians have labeled this a day of rage in Gaza and the West Bank, but it might still be a day of hope. Diplomatic sources tell CNN that Secretary of State John Kerry, seen here with U.N. Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, is nearing an agreement on a truce beginning Sunday.

We've been waiting hours now for an expected news conference and some kind of announcement, but that now looks to be an hour away.

Kerry's believed to be pushing for direct negotiations on a longer- term, a broader agreement to start when the fighting in Gaza ends, but so far, we understand Hamas has not agreed to anything and Israel wants to keep troops in Gaza during a cease-fire.

At last official count, 826 Palestinians have been killed in 18 days of air strikes, rocket fire, and ground combat. Most were noncombatants. Thirty-six Israelis have died. Thirty-three of them have been soldiers.

Israel says it's investigating yesterday's horrific attack on a U.N. school that was serving as a shelter for Palestinians who'd fled their homes. At least 16 people were killed, children among them, and words cannot begin to describe the horrors, both at the school and the overwhelmed Gaza hospital where the casualties were taken.

ITV's Dan Rivers filed this report. ITN's Dan Rivers filed this report, which some viewers may find very disturbing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN RIVERS, ITN REPORTERS: They had come here seeking refuge but today the war came to this school. The playground peppered with shells, the results were devastating.

A few minutes later, we watched the first casualties arrive at the local hospital, child after bloody child, this boy reeling in shock as doctors lost the battle to save a member of his family.

For more than 30 minutes, the ambulance crews flooded this tiny hospital with more and more victims.

They are running out of room in this triage center as ambulance after ambulance has arrived with dozens of injured people, including many children.

One of the youngest, this 6-month-old baby boy, Ahmed (ph) has shrapnel in his back. There's no time for anesthetic as doctors pluck out the fragments of metal and make room for the next patient.

Nearby, the baby's father (inaudible) is hysterical. The father of six tells me his family was waiting in the school playground to be evacuated by the Red Cross when suddenly the shells rained down. He says his children were blown away like pieces of paper.

Everywhere we looked, faces contorted in pain, terrible news broken. For many it was too much.