Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

AirAsia CEO Says No Confirmation Plane Found; FBI Stands Firm: Sony Hack by North Korea; Top Trending Stories of 2014

Aired December 31, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

In Indonesia, the monsoon season rolls in. The bleak reality of the AirAsia crash hits home. The first victims arriving on shore in wooden boxes labeled 001 and 002. Grim reminders of the 160 other victims as bad weather descends on the Java Sea.

Also this morning, conflicting information in the search for answers. One official saying sonar may have located underwater wreckage but the airline is playing down that big break.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY FERNANDES, AIRASIACEO: The search-and-rescue team is doing a fantastic job and they're narrowing the search. They are feeling more comfortable but they are beginning to know where it is but there is no confirmation of them, no sonar, some visual identification but nothing confirmed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN's Paula Hancocks is live with the latest.

Why the conflicting information?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Carol, we have had a fair bit of conflicting information. We do know in the next couple of hours potentially, there will be more bodies arriving here to the hospital in Kalimantan. This is where they're first brought when they are recovered to be treated, to be prepared, and then also to have the initial identification.

Now, again, there have been some conflicting reports about how many bodies will be arriving. A local government official now telling us they expect two to be arriving at the port here and they will be brought here basically the doctors and nurses and volunteers who are part of this operation will try and identify them from how they look from their -- their gender, their height, any identifying marks, any ID cards they may have on them and also facial recognition.

Remember, those families in Surabaya were asked to give photos of their loved ones, they were asked for all these details ahead of time to help this process. The bodies will then be prepared and put in a casket to be sent to Surabaya. Now, we understand from the director of the hospital, they also have representatives from five different religions here who will say a prayer over the body and pay their respects because they don't know what religion each victim is. And then they will be sent to Surabaya, as I say, for the families to give that formal identification -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Paula Hancocks reporting live for us this morning. I appreciate it.

Let's talk about the search for Flight 8501 with Peter Goelz. He's a former NTSB managing director. I'm also joined by CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Mary Schiavo.

Good morning to both of you.

PETER GOELZ, FORMER NTSB MANAGING DIRECTOR: Good morning.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: Peter, an official says sonar may have detected the plane's wreckage but there's been no confirmation the plane has been found. How close are they, do you think?

GOELZ: Well, I think the Indonesians have done an outstanding job in pinpointing the crash site. I mean, they obviously had good radar information. They've sent their assets to the right location.

It's going to take a little time to zero in on the wreckage because the sonar as we saw in Flight 370, you pick up false signals. But I think they're getting to it. They'll get to it fairly quickly. We're on the final days of this terrible tragedy.

COSTELLO: Mary, we know there's terrible weather out there. It's monsoon season. It's supposed to rain into Friday. Will that change the location of the wreckage much?

SCHIAVO: It won't change the location of the wreckage but it certainly will change the location of anything that's floating, parts of the plane, any human remains. It will really move them further down with the currents.

However, I mean, the researchers and investigators have worked so many ocean crashes, they will know to just put the search area for bodies further down from the currents. But it will make recovering remains tougher.

COSTELLO: That's just the hardest part to bear of all, isn't it? "The Wall Street Journal," Peter, is reporting the plane is upside down underneath the water. What does that tell you, if anything, about the crash?

GOELZ: It really doesn't tell very much. I mean, until we actually get a look at the wreckage, start doing the analysis of whether it's torn, whether it's compressed and until we get the data recorder and the voice recorder, we're still somewhat in the dark. I think the good news is, is that we know generally where it is and we're going to get it but we just don't know until we get the facts.

COSTELLO: Of course, we always try to read between the lines, Mary. The head of the search and rescue says he expects that many of the passengers will be found inside the plane still with their seat belts strapped.

What does that tell you?

SCHIAVO: Well, I think that's a pretty good assumption because the weather was so terrible, the pilots would have told the passengers to strap down and give it an extra tug. I would have anticipated that the flight attendants would have been in their seats as well, so because everybody was battened down because of the bad weather, it's logical to assume most people would still be in their seats.

And that has occurred in prior accidents like TWA 800 people were still in their seats, Swissair 111, West Caribbean 708. Those are planes that fell from heights and they were still in their seats. So, that's a pretty good assumption.

COSTELLO: There's a lot of conflicting information out there, of course, Peter, as there often is in these situations. Reuters is reporting that one of the victims was found wearing a life vest. We've seen the bodies of other victims and they were not wearing life vests.

What should we take away from that?

GOELZ: Well, the first is, as you pointed out, Carol, is there's a lot of misinformation that comes out in the early stages of every phase of a tragedy like this. But if you did see victims wearing life preservers, it would indicate that the flight crew had given an instruction to don them and to be prepared for an in-water crash. So, it would be an important piece of information.

But simply because one report comes through that's not verified, I wouldn't put too much stock in it yet. Let's see what the evidence actually shows.

COSTELLO: Mary, of course, officials want the black boxes. How difficult will that be to retrieve them from the plane? Can you sort of walk us through the process?

SCHIAVO: Sure. If the images they have, indeed, are of the plane and it's the fuselage and the tail part of the fuselage -- it's not right in the very tail but it's toward the back of the fuselage, if it's still intact, the black boxes should still be there, both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recording. If that's the case, they don't have to do all the things that we heard about when we watched in Malaysia 370.

They don't have to have towed pinger locators and all of that. They can go right to the black boxes and get them. That will not interfere at all with the recovery of the human remains because they will know right where they are even if the plane has broken apart there. For example, say the breach in the fuselage was there.

Black boxes should not be too far away. They're fairly heavy. They would stay not far from the wreckage. Currents wouldn't move them. So I think if this is the plane, they'll have in very short order we won't have to go through long periods of listening for pings.

COSTELLO: I hope not. Of course, the first priority is to get the bodies out of that plane.

So, Peter, how difficult a process will that be if, indeed, most of the passengers are still inside the plane?

GOELZ: Well, it can be very challenging. The navy dive teams that work on TWA. You know, they are most courageous individuals I'd ever met and we have similar divers from both Indonesia and other countries prepared to go down.

The wreckage is a jumbled dangerous mess you're a family member sitting there waiting each day to see whose family members are recovered and it's the luck of the draw and it's a particularly agonizing period for family members.

COSTELLO: All right. I'll leave it right there. Peter Goelz, Mary Schiavo, thanks to both of you. I appreciate it as always.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: As investigators search for the cost of the AirAsia crash, families wrestle with uncertainty. Children robbed of a parent, mothers and fathers wrestling with the unmatched heartache of losing their child, and one family facing the gut-wrenching loss of seven loved ones.

CNN's Gary Tuchman is in Surabaya with where the doomed flight began.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An Indonesian family going through an unfathomable experience. They lost many people they loved on AirAsia Flight 8501.

SUYONO THEJAKUSUMA, RELATIVE OF AIRASIA VICTIMS (through translator): My mother and my sister and my brother-in-law and his whole family and my in law to be, so in total, seven people.

TUCHMAN: And now, Suyono Thejakusuma and other family members get ready to drive to where the AirAsia flight started, the Surabaya airport, to join other families waiting to hear about the status of their loved ones body. Suyono's mother, an 81-year-old (INAUDIBLE), the matriarch of the family.

(on camera): How does a man cope in this situation?

THEJAKUSUMA: I am very sad. Of course I am devastated. TUCHMAN: And (INAUDIBLE) is this young man's grandmother.

As Eric drove to the airport, he thought about opportunities he missed out on with his grandma.

ERIC, RELATIVE OF AIRASIA VICTIMS: I basically regret all the time that I was supposed to spend time with her. Now, I can't do it anymore.

THEJAKUSUMA: When we heard the information, firstly, of course, we hoped our family members were safe and thought of nothing. Until yesterday morning and afternoon, we still hoped we would get a miracle that our families are still alive, because my mother, my sister, we were very close.

TUCHMAN: This Suyono's other sister The Le Hoa.

THE LE HOA, RELATIVE OF AIRASIA VICTIMS (through translator): I asked God why he is testing us this way by taking them away without giving us the chance to say good-bye.

TUCHMAN: But this family knows a miracle is most unlikely.

THEJAKUSUMA: My wife said, "Why is it always the best that leave first?"

TUCHMAN: Gary Tuchman, CNN, Surabaya, Indonesia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Standing firm on North Korea, the FBI will not budge on its original assessment that the rogue nation, North Korea, is behind the massive hack that crippled Sony. This week, the FBI spent three hours in a meeting with the cyber security firm Norse, though. Norse claims the Sony hack was actually an inside job, and one of the suspects is a former Sony employee code named Lena who was laid off in May.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAM GLINES, NORSE: These suspects, at least one, had ties to and critical knowledge of Sony systems, IP addresses, credentials, et cetera.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Now a former FBI assistant director says the agency wouldn't name North Korea as a culprit without rock-solid proof that it will not share with you and I.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RON HOSKO, FORMER FBI ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: The FBI is not going to expose to the public all the tools in their tool box. They are not going to look to be embarrassed. The director of the FBI's stamp is going to be on the answer to this question.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So, let's talk more about this with CNN justice correspondent Evan Perez. And Mark Rasch, he's a former Justice Department prosecutor for cyber crimes.

Welcome to both of you.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Good morning.

MARK RASCH, FORMER DOJ PROSECUTOR FOR CYBER CRIMES: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Hi. Good morning.

So, Evan, FBI agents aren't taking kindly to reports that they're wrong about North Korea. They're being very professional about it. But what are your sources telling you?

PEREZ: Well, Carol, this allegation that it was an inside job is actually not new. It's been around, frankly, since we learned about this hack. And they've checked it out and they just find nothing credible at all to show this. They say what they've heard from Norse yesterday is just not -- doesn't add up and they say it's -- the allegation that it was a former employee is false. They say that what happened was is the hackers got in and stole the credentials of a former system administrator and were able to have free rein of the system, which we talked about on our air.

And they also that they routed the attack through several countries and that, you know, there was malware that had telltale signs that it was North Korea simply because of the characters used in some of the code.

COSTELLO: So what about Lena, Evan? Who's Lena?

PEREZ: That's going to be interesting.

You know, I guarantee you that there's a lot of people at Sony who know exactly who this person is and that person, if indeed they're being accused of a crime here by this company, has a very good case to make if they want to bring a lawsuit if, indeed, they're not guilty of anything like this.

COSTELLO: Interesting.

So, Mark, when I talked to you yesterday you were kind of on Norse's side.

RASCH: I still am. You know, there's a lot of stuff that points towards an insider. Both the timing of the attack, the initial demands for money, the initial nature of the attack, how the data was exfiltrated or gotten out of Sony, all point towards an insider and the personal nature of the attack itself points to an insider, and other things point to North Korea. So, you can't say it wasn't North Korea. Right now what the Justice Department is saying is we have secret

information, we're not going to make available to anyone that points to North Korea, trust us. And when it comes to acts of war or crime, I don't know that I'm willing to trust secret information.

COSTELLO: You have to admit, Mark, the FBI is a very conservative organization. Is it really likely going to jump the shark and announce to the world that North Korea was behind this hack?

RASCH: I don't doubt that the FBI firmly believes it's North Korea and I don't doubt that there's a good deal of forensic evidence pointing to North Korea. I just look at the question on which makes more sense, a hacker group trying to make it look like it's North Korea or North Korea trying to make it look like it's a hacker group. It's sort of like the first five minutes of "Law and Order", the person they arrest isn't always the right person.

COSTELLO: Evan?

PEREZ: Well, Mark, just to address that point, I think what people like Mark and Norse are doing is trying to approach this like North Korea is some kind of rational actor. This is not a country that does rational things, you know? And so, you're sort of approaching it from this point of view of that, well, North Korea would never do this. Or it's not likely that they would behave in this way.

It is true that this is a very unusual hack. I mean, it's never been seen where you have hackers go in and destroy thousands of computers, which is what they did here. That made the system unusable.

And you had Sony employees having to use old cell phones and old personal phones. Gmail, having to use a phone tree to be able to communicate with each other. So, this is a very unusual situation. The FBI doesn't believe there was ever really a reasonable case for a ransom here. This is not really what we've ever seen in ransom cases. It just doesn't add up.

COSTELLO: Evan, a question for you. If the FBI didn't take what Norse was saying seriously, why did it meet with Norse?

PEREZ: Well, they meet with everybody who says -- they call them up and they say we have information about a possible crime, possible information about a crime. So, it's not unusual with them to meet with anyone who says they have information about a case. And that's what they did here.

COSTELLO: Well, Mark, and Evan brought this up before, is it possible the north is doing this for publicity purposes? Other cyber security firms have their own theories. I read one who said it was really Russia behind this, not North Korea.

RASCH: Well, first of all, the problem with the crazy North Korea theory is then everything points to North Korea. Anything that indicates it wasn't North Korea just proves that it was North Korea because, after all, they're crazy. You have to look at the forensics and the evidence. And, again you

have to look at it with a neutral eye. Sure, Norse is getting publicity out of this but really what you need is a public/private cooperation where people share information with the FBI but also where the FBI shares information with the public. Right now, we've got one- way communication.

COSTELLO: All right. I have to leave it there. Evan Perez, Mark Rasch, thanks to both of you. I appreciate it.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM: a global soccer tournament. A teenager at his after school job, even buckets of ice water. What do they have in common?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Social media played quite a role in shaping 2014. Brooke Baldwin takes a look back at the top trending stories of the past year.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Alex from Target.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Alex from Target.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: #AlexfromTarget.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Number 10, #AlexfromTarget. It was trending for days. No one could figure out why, including Alex.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My manager came up to me, and she showed me the actual picture.

BALDWIN: There was a text start-up firm that tried to claim responsible for how this picture went viral. No word yet as to whether or not this firm deserves the credit.

Number nine, remember that news conference where President Obama was serious and talking about Russia and ISIS, but really all anyone on Twitter could talk about was his tan suit? Thank goodness the president didn't wear white after Labor Day.

Number eight, do you remember back in May, 22-year-old Elliot Roger went on this killing spree near the University of Santa Barbara, California, blaming the cruelty of women?

Well, women responded on Twitter, saying not all men turn romantic rejection into murder. Women, yes, all women, experience discrimination and harassment.

Number seven, pro-democracy protesters occupied Hong Kong's financial district for nearly two and a half months.

(CHANTING) BALDWIN: Their hopes, being able to freely choose their leader in 2017. The cause, known as the Umbrella Revolution, because all these demonstrators used umbrellas to try to protect themselves from the tear gas and pepper spray from police.

Number six, video of NFL star, Ray Rice, knocking his then fiancee unconscious in the elevator, which prompted Beverly Goodman to start the #whyistayed.

BEVERLY GOODMAN, ACTRESS: It really showed not only that there are complex reasons why people stay, but that there are people out there who have lived this.

BALDWIN: Number five, the 2014 World Cup generated some massive three billion Facebook interactions. And during that final match between Germany and Argentina, audiences tweeted more than 618,000 times per minute.

Number four, when Boko Haram militants kidnapped more than 200 teenage girls from that Nigerian boarding school, many blamed the government for not doing enough to find them. Their cries spread all over social media with the #bringbackourgirls.

Number three, who would have guessed dumping buckets of ice water on people's heads would have raised more than $100 million over the summer for ALS research?

Number two, a white cop shooting and killing an unarmed black teen was a local story in Ferguson, Missouri, until social media elevated it to a national stage. Hash tags like #iammikeBrown and #iftheygunmedown trended right around that grand jury hearing regarding Officer Darren Wilson, sparking nationwide protest after no charges were filed.

And number one, after that Ferguson decision, another grand jury decided not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the wake of Eric Garner's death. Brown and Garner's deaths inspired the #blacklivesmatter. A recent incident pushed the message forward even more, after two police officers were assassinated by a gunman in New York City. People took to social media with the #alllivesmatter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: And be sure to join Brooke Baldwin today, 3:30 Eastern, for a CNN special "Top 10 of 2014".

Thank you for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello. "@THISHOUR" with Berman and Michaela starts now.