Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

New Search Area Is The Size Of Delaware; How Do Pingers In The "Black Boxes" Work?; Thousands Mourn Slain NYPD Officer; About 23 Days Left On Pinger Batteries; Boston Bombing Trial Starts Monday; United States Sanctions North Korea Over Sony Hack

Aired January 03, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Of course, we have much more straight ahead in CNN NEWSROOM, and it all starts right now.

All right. Hello again, everyone. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. It's now the noon Eastern Hour. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. Four large objects that could belong to Airasia Flight 8501 have been found in the Java Sea.

Searchers detected the metal objects underwater after finding an oil slick. One object is almost 60 feet long. The bad weather posed another problem once again and crews have not been able to recover any more bodies. So far, 30 bodies have been recovered.

A U.S. ship is now part of the recovery efforts. The "USS Fort Worth" arrived in the search area today. David Molko is live for us in Surabaya monitoring the search efforts.

So David, four large objects found or at least located today, unable to actually retrieve it. What's the hope for later on when the search resumes?

DAVID MOLKO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Fredricka, when the sun comes up here in a few hours, Sunday morning, we're hearing weather conditions are going to improve significantly, at least for about 24 hours. That means you're going to see waves in the range of maybe even 7 feet, instead of 16 feet or 17 feet.

Having less of a choppy sea means they're going to be able to potentially get divers and maybe an underwater robot into the water. Now what they want to do is take a closer look at these objects.

At least a couple of them, the search and rescue team have said they've been able to use a sonar device to kind of sense down waves down and bounce back. What that does is gives you the outline in the image of the object.

It also tells you that it's man-made. It's not natural. So what they're hoping for in the next 24 hours is to actually take a closer look. Maybe take some photographs and potentially bring the objects up or at least one of them up.

Just for some context, that 60-foot object, the largest one they've located just for perspective, Airbus A-320, the wing span about 120 feet wide, the length, also about 120 feet. So we'll see what happens when search teams get out there in the morning -- Fred.

And so David, there are several investigations, you know, locating of the wreckage. Where is it? Where are more bodies? What happened in the first place to bring this flight down.

And then even preceding that, because now apparently, Airasia we're told didn't have a license to fly the route that it took. Explain a little bit more about why that is important or is it an aside to these various investigations?

MOLKO: Yes, Fred, I think at this point in the investigation, we don't know what happened to 8501 and so everything has to be taken into account. What we do know about the violation that you're mentioning is that Airasia did not have a license to fly from Surabaya to Singapore on Sunday.

They had a license to fly a few other days of the week, but specifically not on Sunday. The Transportation Ministry is calling that a serious violation. They're launching an investigation, not only into Airasia's practices, but they're looking at airline practices across Indonesia.

We tried to get in touch with the CEO of Airasia Indonesia for comment. We haven't had our calls returned. He did tell a local TV station, though, that they're cooperating with that probe.

In the meantime, their service on that route has been suspended, pending the investigation. Perhaps -- it's not connected, but we'll see what happens in the days ahead. Certainly, the words serious violation is not good for Airasia at this point. WHITFIELD: And then, David, while they're unable to retrieve any more

bodies that may have been located in the seas. What about the family members? What's the proximity to where you are, to where many of them are, waiting for the fuse and just agonizing details about what happened to their loved ones?

MOLKO: Yes, Fred, just behind me here, inside this building, this is the crisis center. This is East Java Police Headquarters, inside through the doors behind me where the families have been coming every day, dozens if not hundreds of people along with relatives, teachers, religious officials, counselors to give them support.

The thing at this point is 30 bodies have been recovered, six I.D.'d, the 30 -- they've all come to Surabaya. There are none that still have to be transported here but that's just 30. You know, 162 people on board that flight. That's 132 more.

At this point, family members are still waiting for answers, growing frustrated with the search efforts. The mayor here in Surabaya telling me that she's frustrated as well, but she's reassuring families that the search and rescue officials are doing everything they can to get their loved ones home.

WHITFIELD: All right, David Molko, thanks so much. Keep us posted.

So two more victims were identified today, a 44-year-old woman and a 23-year-old man that means six out of 30 bodies recovered have been identified. Indonesian officials say they halted further recovery today because of the bad weather as David was underscoring.

And CNN's Paula Hancocks actually got a firsthand look at the mission while on board a search helicopter.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Following the line, going to the east.

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Haraiti Mapaon (ph) shows me the flight plan, scouring the southwest coast Borneo, plans to reach the Airasia crash site changed due to the weather. The airport evacuated bodies and debris allowed to risk the so-called red zone.

Officials believe remnants of the plane or bodies may have drifted around 100 nautical miles to land. Dense vegetation and marshes make searching by land unrealistic. Much of this area is barely inhabited. As the weather closes in, the pilot tries to fly around it, but the front is too big.

(on camera): We're only half an hour into the flight. And the pilot has just decided that we have to abort this mission. He says that the weather up ahead is simply too dangerous. We cannot fly into those kinds of clouds and that rain, so we're certainly going back to the airport.

For those on board, they're going to be looking for debris and also looking for bodies. They barely had a chance to even start their job. This was just along the coastline. This was not even out at sea where the weather is worse.

(voice-over): Back on land, the team refuses to be disheartened. The local police chief tells me we'll keep going until we find everyone. More victims have flown to dry land Saturday, despite the weather.

Once cleaned and treated, they're flown on to Surabaya for formal identification, every number, a loved member of a distraught family, an innocent soul who lost their life in the Java Sea. Paula Hancocks, CNN, Indonesia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: All right, let's talk more now about the debris that has been located in the search and in some cases found and retrieved.

I'm joined now by former NTSB managing director and CNN aviation analyst, Peter Goelz. Good to see you, and Mary Schiavo, also a CNN aviation analyst, and the former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation. Good to you as well.

All right, so let's talk first about the debris located today. Four large metal objects, one is being described as almost 60 feet long. So, Peter, what could that kind of piece be? Would it be intact or would you envision that might be a broken off piece at 60 feet long? PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, it's obviously a broken off piece. You want to be optimistic. There's a lot of wreckage in the bottom of the Java Sea from World War II forward. But this seems, you know, very encouraging.

The Indonesians in this search and rescue have been very methodical. They've been very sober, they haven't, you know, increased expectations unnecessarily.

If they're confident or they feel as though this is a real opportunity, I think we ought to take them at their word. I think we'll find out before the end of today.

WHITFIELD: And so, by the end of today, Mary, even given the weather conditions, you feel that there should be hope? It would be Sunday there, and they do believe that the weather is going to break. How encouraged are you by that?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I am. And it's clear that the pieces that are coming up are from an aircraft and the long piece might be a wing, it might be part of a fuselage.

But with a life raft or inflatable slide and that canister, I believe, is draft gas which is what you would use to inflate the slide or the life raft and some of the tubing.

The wooden pieces are not from the plane, but I think that they're very close on the trail of it. So I am encouraged that they can find more and hopefully find the rest of the victims in a very short order.

WHITFIELD: All right, so let's both of you actually look at some of the debris in these images that we're speaking about, this one appearing to be a window, a side of a plane. Peter, what does this image tell you, and what will investigators be looking at in terms of stress on these parts?

GOELZ: Well, I mean, you know, it's very hard to, you know, determine from just a single piece. But there's no compression damage there appears in this, which means that it was torn from the body, perhaps on impact.

But we really need to wait another few hours to see what the underwater vehicles are going to tell us. It's just -- it's just too soon to be speculating.

WHITFIELD: Yes. And it looks just from the break, it looks like this is the same item, it's just flipped on, you know, you're seeing in the interior and the exterior.

GOELZ: Yes, it is.

WHITFIELD: So, Mary, what do you look at? Are you in agreement that it's just, you know, too early to try and discern anything?

SCHIAVO: Well, you know, I think I agree with Peter, but I think that given the debris pattern, they're starting to find more and more, sort of in the same area. It's not widely dispersed. I probably would go a step further and say that it indicates it did not break up at altitude so we would find it very far and wide.

I think that Peter's right when he says it looks like water on the wreckage pattern, you know, the life raft, the inflater bottle, it's called draft gases there with the slide or the life raft, and it wasn't inflated. So I think that there is no way that this made a water landing. I think Peter hit it right sadly on the head it broke up on impact.

WHITFIELD: Yes, all right, let's look at the damage here. I think this is in part what you were referring to, Mary, when you talked about, you know, wood and you're seeing rescue crews, recovery crews here, holding like a cluster of wood or debris pieces. But in your is this the one that you were talking about where you don't think this would be from, Mary, that plane wreckage --

SCHIAVO: Yes, if it's wood, it's not from the plane unless it was something in the cargo hold. There's just so much debris in the ocean. But the plane, there's no structural part of the plane made of wood just nothing.

WHITFIELD: OK and I think we have an even closer image of it. Let's go to the second image, which is really the third image. There we go, OK, now, holding up something there. I mean, I see hoses in one hand and, again, it looks like wood or some kind of compressed, you know, material in the other. Peter, what do you --

GOELZ: It's pretty hard to tell at this point. As Mary said, you know, there's considerable amount of debris in the ocean from all sorts of, you know, overthrown, from boats and other things.

But, you know, one of the points I wanted to score today, is Mary mentioned early on, in the investigation, about the oversight of this air carrier and the news that they did not have a license to fly on Sunday.

Underscores the point she made early on, that when you have an expanding industry and expanding company, the infrastructure within the company and within the Civil Aviation Authority, sometimes, doesn't keep pace.

And she indicated that they ought to look at the dispatch system, which is absolutely correct. Where was this plane dispatched correctly? And by people who were qualified and were the Indonesians overseeing this process closely? Clearly, they were not if this plane was not licensed to fly on a Sunday.

WHITFIELD: And then, Mary, does that underscore or maybe reveal confusion. And maybe not just this time, but there may be a pattern of confusion even?

SCHIAVO: Well, absolutely. United States skepticism of the Indonesian safety system goes back at least a decade, almost two decades because the FAA in conjunction with the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO, does review foreign countries for their compliance with the international safety standards.

And we do that so we can determine if those airlines can land in the United States. Just to protect the citizens of the United States. And long ago, we determined that Indonesia does not have an acceptable oversight system and they were very short on inspectors.

And so it kind of leaves the airlines up to their own, you know, devices, if you will, and some airlines are good, and some not so good. And you know, following the rules becomes sort of a suggestion.

WHITFIELD: All right, Mary Schiavo, Peter Goelz, thanks to both of you. Appreciate it. We'll check back with you later on today.

Also ahead, an inside look at the pings that could be key to finding Airasia's black boxes and why time is running out also. What really is inside the black box and how does it work? We'll take a look next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The search for Airasia's black boxes grows more urgent with each passing day. That audible ping is expected to run out in just about 23 days. Retrieving those devices and that data is crucial to figuring out what happened. CNN digital correspondent, Rachel Crane has more.

RACHEL CRANE, CNN DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: following a plane crash, the search for survivors always comes first. But just as important is the search for answers, the why and the how. Often, those answers are found in the black box.

Since the '60s, all commercial airplanes have been required to have one on board. Now, the name say little misleading because they're actually orange and when we're talking about a black box, we're talking about two different boxes, one being a cockpit voice recorder, the other being the flight data recorder.

Together, they weigh anywhere between 20 pounds to 30 pounds and they have to be crash proof. Black boxes can survive just about anything, temperatures up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour, forces that are 3400 Gs.

Now that's 3,400 times the force of gravity. They are waterproof, and they can save recorded data for two years and it's a lot of data. The cockpit voice recorder records the crews' conversation and background noise.

By listening to the ambient sounds in a cockpit before a crash, experts can determine if a stall took place, the RPMs of the engine and the speed at which the plane was traveling when these sounds are cross-referenced with ground control conversations.

They can even help searchers locate a crash site. Then there's the flight data recorder. It gathers 25 hours of technical data from airplane sensors recording several thousand discrete pieces of information. Data about the air speed, altitude, pitch, acceleration, roll, fuel and the list goes on and on. But to make sense of the data, first you have to find it. Not an easy thing to do when a plane crashes into the ocean.

Both black box components are outfitted with underwater locator beacons, which self-activate the moment they come into contact with water. They send pings once per second to signal their location and can transmit data from as deep as 20,000 feet for up to 30 days when their batteries have run out.

But on land, there's no such pinging to help guide the search. Investigators have to sift through the wreckage until they find it.

WHITFIELD: All right, Rachel Crane, thank you so much. We'll have much more on the search for Airasia Flight 8501 in a moment but first --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's just really a miracle.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I went to the door. There was a little girl about 7 years old, crying. Not bad. Lips were quivering pretty good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: Incredible, the 7-year-old girl is the only survivor at a horrifying plane crash. How she walked nearly a mile to find help. That story next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right, checking our other top stories, an incredible story out of Kentucky today. A 7-year-old girl is the lone survivor of a terrible plane crash. Her parents, sister and cousin died. But the little girl managed to walk away from the wreckage, walking in fact a mile in the freezing cold to get help. CNN spoke to the man who found her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY WILKINS, TOOK IN 7-YEAR-OLD PLANE CRASH SURVIVOR (via telephone): I went to the door. There was a little girl about 7 years old crying and not bad. Her lips were quivering pretty good and she was pretty bloody, had a bloody nose and her arms and legs were scratched up real bad. And she told me that her mom and dad were dead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: The NTSB and FAA are now on the scene investigating the crash.

Parts of the nation bracing for the first major winter storm of the year. Forty four states currently under a winter weather advisory, this as millions of Americans head home after their holiday vacations tonight and tomorrow.

Snow and wintry mix expected to stretch all the way from Chicago to Boston. Farther south in the Gulf States there is a threat of hail and even tornados.

And in New York City, hundreds of people are gathering for the wake of fallen New York Police Detective Wenjian Liu. Liu was one of two officers ambushed and killed last month in Brooklyn.

Liu's wake, right now, live pictures taking place, it's under way. His funeral is set for tomorrow. The White House is sending FBI Director James Comey to represent the president at tomorrow's service. New York City Mayor De Blasio is expected to speak at that service as well tomorrow.

So ahead of the mayor's address, new York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is sending a message to NYPD officers attending today's service and tomorrow, he says a hero's funeral is about grieving. Not airing grievances.

The warning comes after several police officers turned their backs on the mayor during the funeral service for Liu's partner, Rafael Ramos last week. The move was a silent symbol of anger and frustration toward De Blasio's handling of recent tensions with police. Here now is CNN's Sara Ganim.

SARA GANIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fred, the wake for Officer Wenjian Liu is about to begin in just a few minutes. It's actually closed to the public. But this afternoon in Chinatown, there's going to be a more public memorial where members of the community and members of the public in common pay their respects to the officer.

Tomorrow is the funeral. Tomorrow, we do expect that just like last week with the funeral of his partner, Rafael Ramos, that there will be tens of thousands of officers coming to pay their respects.

JetBlue has already said they'll be flying in more than 1,100 officers from different jurisdictions across the country. We also expect to see the FBI director there. The police commissioner, William Bratton, will be there, and the mayor of New York, Bill De Blasio.

Now De Blasio has come under fire by members of the NYPD for some of his recent comments after the decision not to indict the officer who was involved in the apparent choke hold death of Eric Garner.

And since then, there have been growing tensions between De Blasio and the NYPD. And last week at Ramos' funeral there were members of the NYPD who actually turned their backs on the mayor as he was speaking.

Now, because of that, William Bratton, the police commissioner issued a memo this week asking the officers not do that again. He said that a hero's funeral is a place for grieving. Not for grievances.

He said that this wasn't a mandate. That he would not be disciplining anyone over this. He said, quote, "It was not all the officers and it was not disrespect directed at Detective Ramos. But all officers were painted by it and it stole the valor, honor, and attention that rightfully belonged to the memory of Detective Rafael Ramos' life and sacrifice. That was not the intent I know. But that was the result" -- Fred.

WHITFIELD: Sara Ganim, thank you so much.

Still ahead, an excruciating wait for families of the Airasia disaster.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, no, until we see the body, we still pray.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: Ahead, a sister's reason for holding on to hope amid tragedy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Hello again and thanks for joining me. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. Welcome to the NEWSROOM. We're following the latest developments on the crash of Airasia Flight 8501. Four large objects were found by sonar in a search area today.

One item is almost 60 feet long and another, about 40 feet long. Indonesian officials say they found the objects after they saw an oil slick. But bad weather whipped up such huge waves that some as high as 15 feet, that's really kept the searchers from getting to those destinations.

And the search has been suspended until Sunday, when the weather is expected to be better. Indonesian officials say Airasia didn't have a license to fly from Surabaya to Singapore route on that day the 8501 was flying. They say the airline was approved to fly the route four days a week but not on Sundays, which is when the plane went down.

So far, crews have recovered 30 bodies. Six have been identified and for those families, some of the waiting is over. But for loved ones of the victims still not yet identified, there remains a shred of hope.

CNN's Andrew Stevens spoke to a woman still praying for her brother who was on board with his wife and children.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIENNY GUNAWAN, FAMILY WAS ON AIRASIA 8501: I still hope and I still believe in miracle. I feel there's nothing to do here only hope and pray.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You come down here every day and just wait.

GUNAWAN: Yes, yes. I do come here and wait for miracles if nothing else.

STEVENS: And what are they telling you every day? Are you getting the information you need?

GUNAWAN: Actually not really. We're hoping that they have updates every day like three times, they promise us about 9:00, 1:00 and 5:00, maybe 7:00, every day. But here, there's nothing else.

STEVENS: You're not getting anything back or do you think they just don't know the information?

GUNAWAN: Maybe yes, maybe no.

STEVENS: And how is your family coping? How are you coping?

GUNAWAN: I try to be strong because one, in my family, I try to be strong and still believe. He'll come back, I don't know why. From the beginning, from the first time, I believe. I don't know. Maybe you can call me crazy, but I feel in my heart, he's alive somewhere.

I don't know, but my mom, I know my mom is not that strong. My dad has tried to become so strong. He cannot cry from the first time until maybe four days. Four days goes by, but we accept the worst part. We know the worst part we know already.

STEVENS: You just want to see him come home. You want to see if he has survived?

GUNAWAN: Yes, still --

STEVENS: You want to see his remains. You want to say good-bye.

GUNAWAN: No, no, not good-bye. I mean, until we see the body, we're still praying.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Wow. Pretty extraordinary, Sienny Gunawan is one of many family members praying and still hoping after that tragic disaster.

So 23 days, that's roughly the amount of time left on the pinger batteries, which could lead searchers to the critical black boxes from Airasia Flight 8501. The batteries are designed to last a month, but in some cases can actually last longer. They will fade out, not abruptly before they do shut off.

Joining me now from Massachusetts is Thomas Altshuler, the vice president of Teledyne Marine Systems, which develops and produces advanced underwater communication systems.

All right, good to see you, Dr. . Are you confident, 23 days left, typical battery life of those pingers, but are you confident that searchers will find those black boxes well before that time?

THOMAS ALTSHULER, VICE PRESIDENT, TELEDYNE MARINE SYSTEMS: Well, there are a couple of things going on. I'm quite confident for a couple reasons. First of all, they have a relatively small search area to localize the tail section of the airplane.

Secondly when we say that the pinger has a 30-day lifetime, that's really the minimum requirement that's dictated by the FAA, and typically for the pingers we make, we see lifetimes as long as 45 days. These pingers were brand new. They were put on the airplane, my understanding, almost in the last few months.

WHITFIELD: And when you talking about this smaller search area, we're also talking about the depth being a little more forgiving than, say, the Malaysia flight that went missing in the Indian Ocean presumably last year. How will that assist in the search for it, if this is about 100 to 130 feet deep in this Java Sea?

ALTSHULER: It completely changes the whole process. First of all, this access is easy. So once the weather, the weather calms, being able to do good sonar images, you can do that with sonar around the ships trying to put ships down deep.

Secondly, you really have an opportunity to bring in the kinds of assets you couldn't use for the search for Malaysian Flight 370. It's just a completely different game. This is relatively simple at this point.

WHITFIELD: OK. There are at least two U.S. warships in that area. The "USS Fort Worth" that just arrived and you talk about the sonar capabilities. The sonar, we understand from, we're not sure which ship, actually located four more items. How might the sonar help detect the black boxes? And would that typically be the way in which those black boxes are located?

ALTSHULER: Well, typically, you don't use sonar to detect the black box, but the sonar or the ping from the black box should show up on the sonar record. So you'll see a line across the image that would indicate that the pinger is close by.

Then what you really want to use say pinger locator. There's a handheld system that we've manufactured, that some of the other companies that are associated with this type of system manufactured, you can even put that on the divers, by the divers close by the tail section or on a remotely operated vehicle.

So lots of opportunities, once you have the sections of the airplane, you can put various different assets on to find those.

WHITFIELD: I say, and then as you were talking, we're also looking at a graphic, we're seeing this submersible which would be scanning the ocean floor. How would that assist in better locating or getting a better view of those submerged?

ALTSHULER: So the sonar, most likely, the side scan sonars that are on the Navy vessels are lower frequency, which means they give a very grainy image. You don't see high resolution. You can't see specifics about the tail section.

The sonars that are on the underwater autonomous vehicles that you're referencing tend to be higher frequency and can do very, very nice imagery. So what you'll be able to do is start to pick up figures.

You can tell whether how well intact the tail section is and actually specific areas you might want to have. So what you'll end up with is a pretty nice image from those vehicles.

WHITFIELD: At what stage would that be used?

ALTSHULER: It would be nice. It's more efficient to have localized some of the wreckage before you put those in. There's a little bit more of a logistics burden to launch and recover the vehicles.

But there are vehicles that are being put on station right now. One of our vehicles that we make at Teledyne is in the process of being mobilized and should be in the general area in the next couple of days.

WHITFIELD: All right, well, keep us posted on that in the next couple of days as other type of apparatus to assist. Thanks so much, Dr. Thomas Altshuler.

ALTSHULER: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: We'll be right back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The trial of the Boston marathon bombing defendant is set to begin Monday. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev faces 30 federal accounts for his alleged role in detonating two bombs at the finish line in 2013.

Three people were killed, 264 injured in the attack. Tsarnaev is also charged with the murder of an MIT police officer. Deborah Feyerick has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Right near the marathon finish line on a holiday Monday in Boston, two explosions 12 seconds apart.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a scene of utter devastation and carnage down there.

FEYERICK: The homemade bombs killed three people. Shrapnel tears through more than 200 spectators. Rick Delorier runs the FBI's Boston office.

RICK DESLAURIERS, FBI'S BOSTON OFFICE: We were collecting pieces of shrapnel that have contained inside the bombs, pieces of pressure cooker bombs, pieces of the backpacks.

FEYERICK: Day three, a break in the case. Of the more than 12,000 images and surveillance videos from businesses and spectators, a man in a white ball cap at the second blast site.

DESLAURIERS: He places that backpack down on the ground, sliding it off his shoulder, and stands and mills around. A short time later, maybe 15 minutes later, he makes a cell phone call. Very shortly thereafter, you hear the first bomb go off.

FEYERICK: Day four, the FBI asks the public for help finding two men later identified as Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev now on the run. Officials say the brothers execute MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, carjacked an SUV and get into a shoot-out with police.

Watertown Police Chief Ed Deveau says 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev is shot, but manages to reload about four times.

CHIEF EDWARD DEVEAU, WATERTWON, MASSACHUSETTS POLICE: He runs out of ammunition and throws his gun at my sergeant. And he starts to run.

FEYERICK: Officers tackle Tamerlan. His brother tries to scatter police to free him.

DEVEAU: He drags his brother down. He's lodged under the stolen SUV and he smashes into one of our cruisers.

FEYERICK: By sunrise Friday, millions in the Boston area on lockdown. When it is lifted that night, a resident calls 911, the suspect is hiding in his boat.

(on camera): He's got a sniper's rifle pointed right at his head because he was still a threat.

DESLAURIERS: He was still a threat. We didn't know if he had bombs on him.

FEYERICK: After a tense standoff, Tsarnaev surrenders. At the hospital, he is questioned by FBI interrogators then read his rights. Deborah Feyerick, CNN, Boston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Federal prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty. Let's bring our legal guys, Avery Friedman, a civil rights attorney and law professor in Cleveland. Good to see you and happy New Year.

AVERY FRIEDMAN, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: Hi, Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: And Richard Herman, a New York defense attorney and law professor joining us from Hawaii, aloha to you. There you go.

All right, let's talk about what is expected. Jury selection beginning Monday. Tsarnaev's lawyers tried to get this case delayed and moved out of Boston. That was denied.

So Avery, to you first, you know, how tough will it be to get an impartial jury since, you know, practically everyone in Boston knows something, holds an opinion about what took place.

FRIEDMAN: Well, I mean, unless you're living under a rock, you know something about this case and the fact is that this will be the largest potential jury pool in the history of the federal court in Boston.

There will be over 1,200 people, Fredricka, from which they will select about 12, maybe more, likely to be 12. I think that given the process of the jury selection. The federal judge, George O'Toole plays a very significant role in this.

I think you can achieve a fair and impartial jury and I think despite the efforts of the defense team. In fact, there's a pending motion right now in the federal court of appeals ultimately will be denied either today or Sunday. This case starts up first thing on Monday morning.

WHITFIELD: Wow, so Richard, you know, prosecutors and defense attorneys each want to see jurors that are favorable to them. What are the questions a defense attorney is likely to ask of a perspective juror?

RICHARD HERMAN, NEW YORK DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Do you come here with any preconceived ideas or preconceived notions about this case? Have you heard anything about it because once you start getting into that point, Fred -- yes, you find out, close your eyes, you can think of any color, but don't think of the color red.

Of course you think of red. These people, Avery, you're wrong. They're not going to be able to empanel an impartial jury in the United States. Everybody in Massachusetts, everybody in the United States, has seen, has heard this case, has seen the pressure cooker bomb, and has heard all the investigation that's going on in this case.

There's no way in my opinion they can get a fair trial in this case in Boston. This mans, here's the verdict, right now. Here's the verdict, guilty, it's done. It's over. They're trying to put a defense in that he was manipulated by his brother like in a D.C. sniper case. That's just not going to fly.

They did not make a plea deal. They should have made a plea deal here. I think the government will not make a plea deal. They want to get a penalty, a very rare in a federal case to go for the death penalty. They're going for it and I think they're going to get it here.

WHITFIELD: And so Avery, prosecutors can go into this feeling that it's fairly favor only for them especially because of what, you know, just Richard just outlined. Everyone has seen it. Everyone knows about it or feels that they're intimately involved in the details of this case so why wouldn't there be on the defense part a more aggressive fight to have a change of venue?

FRIEDMAN: Well, I think there was very aggressive fight. You got a team as good as it gets in capital cases and I think there's been a genuine effort to get rid of it. But I think Judge O'Toole in his ruling and it's a comprehensive memo explains why there can be a fair jury.

I, frankly, have a lot more faith in humanity and people generally, I guess, than Richard does because I do think that what's going to happen is that it's going to be an intense long effort to get this jury selected and they are going to be impartial.

Let me tell you something, there are enough safe guards for Tsarnaev, in terms of his protection against his violation of constitutional rights, to go to the court of appeals.

But, frankly, I think there's nothing to suggest that this federal district judge can do anything other than a good job in making the selection. There's going to be a jury selected and it's going to take a while, but it will start Monday morning.

WHITFIELD: It seems like it will take quite a while, 1,200 people whittled down to 12. Richard, Avery, happy New Year and thank you so muhc.

(CROSSTALK)

FRIEDMAN: -- and to Richard.

HERMAN: Mahalo, aloha, Chaka.

WHITFIELD: All right. Now you're off to the beach. Hang ten.

HERMAN: That's it.

WHITFIELD: All right, Gentlemen, thanks so much. Appreciate that.

All right, search crews are looking for more wreckage from the crash of Airasia Flight 8501. But what may look like debris sometimes turns out to be trash. Ahead, we'll look at how that complicates the search and now exactly what is being done about it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: One factor complicating the search for bodies and debris from Flight 8501 is the amount of trash floating in the Java Sea. Trash is a massive environmental problem facing the world's oceans. CNN's Stephanie Elam looks at the threat this waste poses to the ecosystem.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our oceans are littered in trash. It's unfortunate that it's taken human tragedy to highlight it.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For aviation, 2014 was scarred by the disappearance of two planes over open water. The hunt for Airasia Flight 8501 in the Java Sea and Malaysia Air Flight 370 in the Indian Ocean has given the world a good look at trash conditions of our oceans.

During the search for any sign of the aircraft, objects floating in the water turned out to be junk, discarded nets and old buoys, among a myriad of items. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: These are all examples of the kind of plastic pollution that we find out our oceans.

ELAM: Anna Cummins is the executive director of 5 Gyros Institute.

ANNA CUMMINS, 5 GYROS INSTITUTE: The biggest offender is plastic pollution. Roughly 80 percent to 90 percent of the debris in our oceans is plastic. And the worst of it is that people don't realize that this is not just unsightly. This plastic pollution is actually getting into the food chain and they ultimately be affecting our health.

ELAM (on camera): And it's affecting the animals?

CUMMINS: Absolutely. Roughly 660 species today, and that is a conservative estimate, are affected by plastic. They either get tangled in it or they ingest it. It's a lot of single used disposables and packaging. What's really insidious about it is that plastic in the oceans doesn't disappear. It acts like a sponge for contaminants.

ELAM (voice-over): In the Pacific Ocean alone, NOAA said massive patches of garbage swirl about between California and Hawaii.

(on camera): There are international laws that prohibit dumping plastics in the ocean. The problem is enforcement. Countries need to do a better job of cracking down on pollution and then there is another issue. The vast ocean waters are just very difficult police.

CUMMINS: People are realizing we can't afford the use of single-use plastics and companies need to start taking responsibility for what happens to their products after they leave the consumers' hands.

ELAM (voice-over): As for the Airasia jet, and MH-370, what impact will they have on these bodies of water? Cummins says as ocean pollution goes, the debris from the planes are just drops in the bucket.

CUMMINS: The bigger problem is what starts here on land. Roughly 80 percent of the plastic pollution we find out in our oceans starts on land. It's simple as the debris that we see right here on the sand, the cigarette butts, the straws, the forks, the bottles, the bags.

ELAM: Some common items that may help daily life, but pose a threat to our oceans. Stephanie Elam, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Roger is an only child. He was used to getting his way. Absolutely and he could be a real big baby when he didn't get what he wanted. Gene, on the other hand would just go in there and pummel you until you agreed with him. And until you said, all right, Gene, OK. You're right. Got it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It wasn't a game with him. He saw something, he wanted it to happen and he made it happen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Gene was very good at reading Roger's day book upside down. As soon as he saw L.A. and the date, he knew what films were coming out. He knew a big star that Roger would be going out to interview.

And that's all it took for him to make sure that he got the interview before roger got it. Fumes you could almost see coming out of roger's head, you know, gene had done him in again, that rascally rabbit.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The United States is hitting North Korea with a new set of economic sanctions after determining Kim Jong-Un's regime was behind last month's computer hack at Sony. CNN's Will Ripley is in our Beijing newsroom with an update -- Will.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're still working to get an official response to North Korea to this latest round of White House sanctions that are in direct response to the hacks on Sony that North Korea has denied. But the White House says they are confident that North Korea orchestrated despite some skepticism by private cybersecurity experts.

U.S. law enforcement believes that North Korea was behind the cyberattack on Sony, which is why we are now seeing the U.S. government, the Treasury, specifically, targeting three different North Korean entities and ten individuals linked to those entities.

Now, the North Korean organizations include their intelligence organization, their primary arms dealer, and their defense research and development entity. Now, what may hurt the most for North Korea, certainly, financially, is the targeting of the primary arms dealer and seven people who were believed to be using arms dealing trade.

North Korea makes a lot of its money by exporting weapons and these are people who are operating in places like Africa, Iran, Russia and Syria. Because the U.S. government is now naming these individuals publicly for the first time, it makes them much more public.

It makes it much more difficult for people to do business with them. Certainly, for anybody who has a stake with what the United States has to say about it.

But what this also does, perhaps more importantly, to the Obama administration is it sends a message that this kind of cyberattack will not be tolerated.

When the U.S. government decided to publicly blame North Korea for this, a lot of people around the world were wondering what recourse the United States government has. Now, you see at least the first response from the White House that any cyberattack against U.S. corporations or others around the world will be met with consequences. Will Ripley, CNN, Beijing.

WHITFIELD: We have much more straight ahead in the NEWSROOM and it all starts right now.