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Possible Computer Glitch on AirAsia Flight 8501; Photos from Boko Haram Show Children Wielding AK-47s; Auschwitz Anniversary

Aired January 28, 2015 - 15:30   ET

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


NANCY GRACE, HLN HOST: The fact is, he said he had used drugs and he couldn't get an erection. All right? He had to turn on porn there at the time to try to get an erection. All right?

So, he may not have physically raped her, but he was part of the plan. He was responsible for the plan. And he aided and abetted the attack on this woman.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And tell me about -- because I actually wondered, would these other men have done this if he hadn't egged them on? And so for that, there may be an argument that what he did --

GRACE: Was worse?

KEILAR: -- was obviously just as bad, was worse. Is that a precedent, do you think?

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: They are -- I don't think him being charged is a precedent, because when you aid and abet and you are part of the crime, you're responsible for what your co-conspirators do.

But, in this case, they are all responsible, all of them. Nobody can point the blame. And that is what the whole defense was. They were all pointing at each other. They tried to blame Vanderbilt. Well, Vanderbilt could have pushed this, swept through under the rug. They didn't.

KEILAR: They didn't.

GRACE: They went for it and took this to police. In fact, they was a real fluke the whole way you got found out. What happened was there have been some vandalism at Vanderbilt and they had put up security cameras trying to catch, you know, who did graffiti, who'd broken the door. Well, a custodian sees two guys carrying a woman in.

And catch this, listen to this. There were people in that dorm, all right, which is a male-female dorm, that saw the woman passed out and semi-naked and they did nothing. Nothing.

KEILAR: Yes. And people who got the text and the videos didn't as well.

Nancy Grace, thank you so much. Very important case to talk about here.

GRACE: Thank you.

KEILAR: And we'll be watching you weeknights on "HLN" at 8:00 p.m. Eastern. Thanks so much.

Just ahead, horrifying pictures posted on Twitter show children holding AK-47. It's apparently a military training camp for kids. We'll show you those stunning images coming up.

Plus, a possible computer glitch in the final moments of AirAsia Flight 8501. What would that have meant for the pilots in that storm? Could the reaction have changed anything? We'll have that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Welcome back. I'm Brianna Keilar.

More than 600 miles from the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501, two more bodies have been found floating in the sea. Fishermen made this discovery and officials say they believe the remains belong to passengers aboard the doomed airliner. The vast stretch of ocean suggesting just how powerful currents can be.

Meantime, Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency said today that it will take over recovery operations beginning this weekend. The news coming a day after Indonesia's military said a quarter of its drivers were treated for decompression illness and that it would stop working at the crash site. And now investigators are trying to determine whether a potential computer glitch played a role in the crash.

Joining me now to look at all of this is CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien.

And Miles, let's concentrate first on this computer glitch. Would this have interfered with the plane's automation system, and if so, what kind of demands would this have placed on the pilots?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Brianna, it's important to understand that the Airbus, like a lot of modern airliners, is flown really by computers and that the human beings in the cockpit are put in the role of a monitoring, the systems. And 99.9 percent of the time the computers do just fine and fly the flight perfectly smoothly.

What happens is when things go awry, when there's data that comes in the computers can't compute. It starts handing over control of the aircraft by reducing its authority and handing it over to the crew through a series of gradations called laws. And what happens is if the computer fails or if there's bad data, oftentimes that is at the worst possible time for the crew. There's something bad happening, some sensors have failed. And they get handed over control not really knowing how much authority they have to control the aircraft.

If one of these computers failed and the crew wasn't fully aware of -- that it had failed, they wouldn't really know where they stood in relation to the man-machine interface. And this is a problem that the NTSB has identified, the FAA has looked at. When you automate aircraft and there are situations that they hand over control to the human being, there has to be a very clear handover. That's something I think that will be looking at here as this investigation progresses.

KEILAR: OK. And then let's talk about these bodies. There's so many to be recovered. Six hundred miles away, though, from the wreckage. What does this tell us? And what does this it tell us about maybe the efforts to find some of the other bodies? Really so key to family members of the victims getting some closure here.

O'BRIEN: Yes. I'm not an expert on the drift patterns in that part of the world, in that ocean, but of course, we're talking about a crash that occurred about a month ago now, December 28th. And for the bodies to have travelled that far by drift I suppose is possible. But it does raise the possibility and this is something that we need to consider, I haven't really overlaid it with the flight path. There's a lot of variables here.

But, you know, it is possible that in the midst of that thunderstorm as this crew was battling those elements that this aircraft could have broken up in flight. We don't know that for sure. Most of the fuselage seemed to be in one isolated area. But who knows? And that's something that will have to be factored in.

KEILAR: Yes. And we're seeing some of the challenges of that recovery, especially if maybe the debris field is wider than we thought. But we're seeing the challenges there recovering some of -- some of the bodies and the fact that even though this isn't tremendously deep water, you know 80 to 100 feet that's still pretty deep for divers. And you've seen the military have to terminate search and recovery because obviously you know their divers have been struggling with decompression here. This is -- this is still a tough recovery even though it's not really, really deep water.

O'BRIEN: Yes, it's really kind of -- kind of at the limits of scuba diving. I mean, your bottom time at 100 feet.

KEILAR: Yes.

O'BRIEN: With normal air is, you know, 10 or 15 minutes. You know, there's ways to kind of increase that. But I'm sure these divers were doing heroic things to try to, you know, help out these families who'd love to have their -- know what happened to their loved ones. And I'm sure that's why we're hearing these stories about them pushing the envelope and ending up with the bands. But, you know, these are professional divers who know their limits and this is the limits of, you know, human beings going down there and actually being there. It's not an easy task.

KEILAR: Yes. No -- no doubt it. And certainly it is different for each person. And they probably never been in a situation like this where they need to spend so much time under water because there's so much work to be done.

Miles, thanks so much. Miles O'Brien with us. O'BRIEN: You're welcome, Brianna.

KEILAR: Well, new pictures appear to show in terrible detail how vicious and depraved Boko Haram's war in Nigeria has become. These are pictures that show children at an alleged military training camp. These were posted on a Twitter account for Boko Haram's so-called official mouthpiece.

CNN's Diana Magnay has more in these disturbing images and what they may tell us about the terror group's brutal tactics.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DIANA MAGNAY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Seeing photos of young children who appear to be little more than 8 or 9 years old in formation, holding AK-47. These photos appeared earlier in the week on Twitter, a Twitter account which purports to be the official mouthpiece of Boko Haram.

Intelligence sources tell us they have no reason to doubt the authenticity of the Twitter handle or of these photos. And it would appear to be consistent with Boko Haram's forcible recruitment and training of young children.

Earlier this month, in the city of Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, there was an incident when a girl thought to be as young as 10 years old was used by Boko Haram as a human bomb. It is quite possible that she was one of the hundreds of kidnapped children.

It also coincides with the upgrading, if you will, of Boko Haram's media strategy. And one where it appears to emulate ISIS, even using ISIS chants in some of its -- Nasheed in some of its videos.

Earlier on Thursday, two videos were published, again on this Twitter handle, which -- one of which was an interview with the supposed spokesman of the terror group. Both of the interviewer and the interviewee are masked. But it does show more sophisticated production values than we've seen by Boko Haram in the past.

Now John Kerry, when he was in Lagos in -- over the weekend said that he -- there have been no declaration of affiliation between Boko Haram and ISIS. But that ISIS was clearly trying to spread its tentacles, as he put it, through countries in Northern Africa. Of huge concern will be whether what appears or could just be a simple emulation of one another's modes of operation could evolve into something more.

Diana Magnay, CNN, Johannesburg.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Well, as New England digs out from that record blizzard, another winter storm is brewing and threatening another round. We have that next.

Plus, 70 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, survivors of the concentration camp are sharing their harrowing stories. Wolf Blitzer joins us to reflect on his own family's very personal connection.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: The clean-up in New England is underway after yesterday's record-breaking snowfall. But you know what happens when you clean up, right? Now forecasters say that a new storm is on the way. And that means more snow and this time frigid temperatures.

Residents in the town of Marshfield were especially hard hit by this latest storm. Snow and ice blanketing homes there after part of the seawall collapsed. There was one homeowner who was trapped in his driveway, said that he's shaken up enough to pack his things and go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Did you want to come back and live here after this?

TIM MANNIX, MARSHFIELD RESIDENT TRAPPED BY STORM: Well, no. This is probably it. Sell the property and get out. Just have no answers to my future right now. I've got a pretty bleak future today, tomorrow, the next day, you know so, we'll see what happens. I'm trying to laugh it off, you know. Think about tomorrow and not yesterday.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Well, we hope it is looking up for him in the coming days.

The coastal community of Scituate is also drying out from big flooding.

Let's get to CNN meteorologist Jennifer Gray, she's in Boston.

So tell us what we're expecting with the second storm, Jennifer.

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, it's not going to be as bad as the first, I can tell you that. We're all expecting to get a few inches of snow. But if you look behind me, look at that, already blanketed this park. And after receiving about 24 inches of snow, the last thing you want to hear is more snow.

But that's exactly what we're going to see. Let's time the system out. Because it looks like it's going to happen really late Thursday night into the wee hours of Friday morning then pushing out by late on Friday. So it's basically going to be an event on Friday. And we're looking at anywhere from a couple of inches of snow, worst-case scenario will be about four to five inches.

So definitely not what we saw in this last go round. But temperatures are going to stay very, very cold. We barely get above freezing before temperatures dive back down. High temperatures on Saturday around 17 degrees. And that's where we've been the past couple of days. We were actually in the teens and low 20s yesterday. A little bit warmer today. But temperatures are really going to dive by the weekend.

Could possibly see a third storm on Monday that we're keeping our eyes on as well. So it looks like we are going to be in the deep freeze here in Boston, Brianna, for quite some time.

KEILAR: Yes, I'm so impressed with people there, though. I think they call 17 degrees balmy probably there.

(LAUGHTER)

Jennifer Gray, thank you so much there for us right in Boston.

GRAY: Compare to yesterday, yes. KEILAR: And next, CNN's Wolf Blitzer will be joining me to talk about

his emotional trip to Auschwitz, where his grandparents were killed. What was it like for him walking through the death camp. He'll tell us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: In the history of human atrocities, the name Auschwitz stands alone as the epitome of evil. The Nazi death camp was liberated by Soviet troops 70 years ago in the final days of World War II. The anniversary was marked yesterday with the candlelight ceremony for the survivors and their descendants.

The horror never completely fades. And as you'll see in tonight's CNN special "VOICES OF AUSCHWITZ" more than one million people were murdered there, including the grandparents of our own Wolf Blitzer. Wolf recently went to Poland to see the place for itself and he was overwhelmed by the experience.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: It haunts us to this very day. You just hear that word, Auschwitz, and you think of death. You smell the death when you're walking around.

I read a lot about the holocaust. I'd seen the movies. I've seen a lot of the pictures. Certainly, I knew what happened, but until you actually see the location, you see where it occurred, and you get a sense of the enormity of this crime. It's hard to believe that people can be as cruel as they clearly have been.

On my dad's side, he grew up in the town of Auschwitz. He was born in Auschwitz. He grew up in that village, that town, and I walked around that town. And you know I couldn't believe how close it was. He himself was never taken to Auschwitz. They took him to a dozen other slave labor camps.

I mean, I grew up hearing these stories. My parents were very open about their experience. That they never hid anything from me. But I finally went but it was a powerful moment for me.

When you walked around those areas at Auschwitz and Birkenau knowing the blood that it's in the ground there. It wasn't until that moment that it hit me that my father's parents were killed at Auschwitz.

Powerful experience. Something I'll never forget.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Wolf Blitzer joining us now from Washington.

And, Wolf, you obviously knew all about Auschwitz, you talked about it with your parents, as you said. They were very open. But I think even you were surprised by how much the experience really affected you while you were there.

What really touched you the most?

BLITZER: You know, it was so shocking just to walk around. Auschwitz itself, the barracks there, the various facilities, but, Birkenau, which was the adjacent camp, that was really huge. It was much bigger. All of the gas chambers, all the crematory, that's where the cattle cars came in, where Jews were brought in from various parts of Europe, and they spent several days on a cattle car, they got off.

Some people were told to go to the right, that means they were going right to these gas chambers. Some people were told to go to the left. That means they'd be working or becoming slave laborers at least for a short period. Some of whom -- and I interview in the documentary that will air later tonight, a woman named Eva Kor who was only 10 years old. She was brought in from Hungary in one of these cattle cars together with her sisters and brothers and parents and grandparents.

And when they were getting off the cattle car, Eva, who is in her 80s now, she said to me, you know, all of a sudden my parents, grandparents and other relatives, they were told to go to the right. We didn't know what was going to happen to them but these Nazi guards noticed my sister and me, Eva and her sister Miriam, and they -- one of the Nazi guards shouted out in German, zwillinge, zwillinge, which means twins.

And they were 10-year-old little girls, and Dr. Josef Mengele, this so-called doctor who is experimenting on twins, needed more guinea pigs, if you will as she called them. And these two little girls were taken to be brutally tortured with these experiments as they supposedly were. She tells this story, and you'll hear it tonight in this documentary, but it's so moving, it's so powerful.

Just one of the voices of Auschwitz that we hear their stories before the war, what life was like for them, before the war, what it was like during the war, and what it was like after the war, how they survived and what they did with their lives. And it's a real powerful and very inspirational I should say documentary.

And I was really proud that CNN put it together and asked me to get involved in this because from my own personal experience, knowing that my paternal grandparents were murdered at Auschwitz, it became so especially powerful and meaningful to me.

KEILAR: Certainly. And tell me a little bit about your grandparents but also about your parents, Wolf, because it's really an amazing, heart-warming story to learn about how your parents met and then the life that they had in the states.

BLITZER: Yes. Well, they both lost their parents during the holocaust. All four of my grandparents were killed during the holocaust. They were young. They were in their mid 20s by the time the war was over with, early 20s. They met on a train, they were looking for family members who might have survived. And they -- there they are. They quickly fell in love and before too long they got visas to come to the United States.

And they wound up and settled in Buffalo, New York, my hometown, which is where I grew up. And they had a wonderful life together. My dad unfortunately died back in 2002. My mom, she might be watching us right now. She's 92 years old down in Florida. And she's a devoted CNN viewer, I should say. So she's around. And so it's -- you know, they really had a wonderful life after the war.

But, of course, they never hid their experiences from me and it was so important for me to know what they went through and what so many others went through at the same time. 1.2 million people were killed at Auschwitz during those few years, 1.1 million Jewish people, 100,000 non-Jewish, mostly, you know, partisans, anti-Nazis, Catholic priests, homosexuals, gypsies.

We'll tell the story tonight, Brianna. And it's something I recommend our viewers watch.

KEILAR: We'll be watching, Wolf. Thanks so much.

That is going to be Wolf's special report tonight, "VOICES OF AUSCHWITZ" tonight at 9:00 Eastern.

Thanks so much for watching.

"THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.