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Jordan Continues Air Campaign Against ISIS; France and Germany Seek Russian Cease-Fire in Ukraine; Aaron Hernandez Jurors Take Field Trip; Officials: Problems with Both Engines in TransAsia Plane; Researching Your Charities

Aired February 06, 2015 - 11:00   ET

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

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR: Round two of Jordan's vow to destroy ISIS, fighter jets pounding targets in Syria for a second day, it's just the beginning, they say, of retaliation for the grisly murder of one of their own.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR: A murder trial field trip, the jury in the Aaron Hernandez case bussed to key locations but why? Our expert says it is a case of celebrity justice.

BOLDUAN: New insight into what caused the amazing plane crash into a Taiwanese river caught on camera, both engines lost power one right after the other. Why and did the pilot accidentally turn off the wrong engine in trying to save the flight?

Good morning. Happy Friday, everybody. I'm Kate Bolduan.

BERMAN: And I'm John Berman.

Happening now, two wars raging with the United States poised to make key decisions about just how deeply to get involved in each. This morning, the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa is burning as Jordanian war planes pound that Syrian city from the sky.

BOLDUAN: Plus, right now the French president and German chancellor are in Moscow trying to negotiate a cease-fire deal over Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is a day after they met with Ukrainian leaders.

Lots to get to, two wars we're following, first let's get to the escalating war against ISIS. A second day of Jordan's new air assault on the terror group wrapped up just a short time ago. Once again, U.S. warplanes accompanied the Jordanian fighter jets on the bombing raids.

There are reports of loud explosions rocketing the terror group's de facto capital in Raqqa, Syria. Anti-ISIS activists posted these images you're looking at that purport to show smoke rising in the Syrian city. Of course CNN cannot independently verify the photos.

BERMAN: We have heard directly from Jordan's foreign minister. He tells CNN the air strikes against ISIS are just the beginning of Jordan's retaliation for the killing, the murder of pilot Moath al- Kasasbeh. We want to bring in CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr. Barbara, this operation is now named Moath the Martyr in honor of that slain pilot.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: It is indeed. Good morning to you.

An extraordinary site on the streets of Amman, Jordan, today as even Queen Rania, the wife of King Abdullah of course, took to the streets, joining Jordanian citizens in their protests, in their concern about ISIS, their anti-ISIS feelings very evident on the streets of Jordan this morning, Queen Rania there on the front lines in the streets.

In the skies over Syria now as these protests went on, the anti-ISIS protests, Jordanian warplanes again, about two dozen Jordanian F-16s, moving across the skies of Syria bombing a series of ISIS targets, accompanied by U.S. F-18s, U.S. F-22s.

Expect to see more of this by Jordan. Look, this is a small country, Jordan, with a relatively small yet capable air force. They can't keep up a huge pace of activity forever, but this is a country still vowing revenge, vowing to carry out its portion of air strikes against ISIS, so there definitely will be more to come.

Perhaps the real bottom line here is not the military part of this but the philosophical galvanizing, if you will, of the people of Jordan and people across the Arab world in response to what ISIS did in killing that pilot.

BERMAN: All right, Barbara Starr, thanks so much.

Now to the war tearing apart sections of eastern Europe, at this moment, key European leaders are trying to convince Vladimir Putin to make peace in eastern Ukraine amid accusations he's sending troops and tanks over the border.

BOLDUAN: Let's go to Moscow right. Senior international correspondent Matthew Chance, he is there. Matthew, the German chancellor going into this meeting with Putin says she's hopeful a deal can be reached before they leave.

What are you hearing?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, absolutely. And Francois Hollande, the French president, also with the three of them, these three leaders, trying to hammer out a deal that's going to bring an end to this fighting that's raged in Ukraine for the best part of the past ten months.

It's billed as a new peace plan that these two European figures are presenting to Vladimir Putin. We don't know the details of the plan exactly. It's been kept under wraps. We know it's already been discussed in some detail with the Ukrainian leadership. Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande were in Kiev along with John Kerry, U.S. secretary of state, yesterday. But the key figure of course in all of this, Kate, is Vladimir Putin. He is the one who will have to essentially give the thumbs up to this plan if it's going to have any traction whatsoever.

There's going to be meetings later on this evening. They're about to start, in fact, but we haven't received confirmation they've actually got under way.

What the Russian foreign ministry says is that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is prepared to talk constructively with the European leaders and that Russia will do everything in its power -- this is coming from the Russian foreign ministry to quickly resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

But, you know, we've been here before. There have been truces signed before, but they just haven't seemed to have made any difference to the fighting on the ground, Kate.

BOLDUAN: That's exactly right. Let's talk about the fighting on the ground. Matthew Chance, thank you so much for us in Moscow.

Let's talk about exactly that, the fighting on the ground. Parts of eastern Ukraine are being pounded, continue to be pounded by shelling, but the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic says on its website it's offered Kiev the chance for civilians to leave an area northeast of Donetsk.

BERMAN: CNN's senior national correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, live from Donetsk right now, Nick, you've been on the ground. You have seen the situation firsthand. Give us the description.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: John, frankly we've been coming here for months, and I haven't heard the shelling landing quite so close to where we are here, certainly, in the city center. It's more sporadic and certainly it's not the kind of backdrop you would expect if we're going to see some success in Moscow with those talks between European leaders and Vladimir Putin.

Now, clearly the separatists have felt distinctly emboldened in the past few months or so. We've seen them in the past week ourselves, taking a lot of territory particularly northwest of where I'm standing but also to Donetsk city. Their stronghold is being hit regularly as well. Just heard another landing thud behind me.

The issue here is that diplomatic talks feel to some degree obsolete. They're going back to discuss a cease-fire, to some degree, which has fallen apart. It was agreed months ago.

The issue people are going to be facing is quite what the reality both sides believe are on the ground. We have separatists taking more territory, very well equipped, the Ukrainian military not doing well at holding them back and that sense that maybe these peace talks could fail and allow even further escalation of violence.

Five thousand dead so far, this city running out of food, running at times out of electricity and that constant thudding in the background. John?

BOLDUAN: Nick Paton Walsh, Nick, thank you so much. I mean, and Nick, he's talking about -- he's been there for months and he's seen all of the shelling.

He also -- we brought you earlier this week the images that Nick had himself, going through Donetsk international airport. It used to be a symbol of progress in Ukraine. Now it's absolutely decimated.

BERMAN: Yeah, as he says, it has seen much worse than they are even admitting as they try to negotiate some kind of peace there.

BOLDUAN: Exactly right.

All right, looking back here, family and friends say good-bye to the driver of the SUV that caused a commuter train collision here in New York. Ellen Brody and five train passengers were killed in Tuesday's crash.

So far investigators have found that signals and warning systems were working when Brody's car stopped on the tracks. The train was going just below the speed limit, and the engineer did apply the emergency brake.

So the big question of course is why did this happen and why was it so deadly? They are still searching for those answers.

BERMAN: Concerned parents at this hour in the Chicago area, five babies have been diagnosed with measles. All of them were at the same day care center. All of them were too young to receive the vaccine.

Health officials warn there may be more cases there. Probably will be more cases there. More than 100 measles cases have been confirmed in 15 states in this latest outbreak.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, jurors in the Aaron Hernandez murder trial, they're going on a field trip. They're touring the former NFL star's home today. But there are some things the judge says they won't be able to see. What's this about?

BERMAN: And from two working engines to none in seconds, new insight into what happened in the moments before a plane took a deadly plunge into a river. Did the pilots make a fatal decision?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Happening now, jurors in the Aaron Hernandez murder trial are taking a field trip to several key locations in this case.

BOLDUAN: Sounds amazing. A short time ago the bus departed from the courthouse in Fall River.

BERMAN: Jurors are heading to the crime scene, also the house of the victim, Odin Lloyd, and the house of the defendant, Aaron Hernandez. BOLDUAN: All of this after the defense in the courtroom grilled a

police witness. They claim the first arriving officers bungled the investigation by failing to protect the integrity of the crime scene.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMIE SULTAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Have you been trained in the collection of evidence at a crime scene, Captain (inaudible)?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.

SULTAN: You said that at some point a decision was made to pick up pieces of evidence, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

SULTAN: OK. And that was before anyone from state police crime scene services arrived, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

SULTAN: Nobody measured it, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nobody measured it, no.

SULTAN: You eyeballed it? Is that what you're telling us?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's exactly what I'm telling you, yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: CNN legal analyst Danny Cevallos joins us right now, and, Danny, you are a trial lawyer. You are in this fight every day, not in this case but your own cases.

How unusual is it to take the kind of field trip that these jurors are now on? You don't hear it except in these cases of celebrity justice.

DANNY CEVALLOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: The judge in any trial has substantial discretion to either grant or deny either party's request for a jury view.

That being said, lest you think this happens in murder cases or criminal cases, let me disabuse you of that notion. This is so rare I know many attorneys who have never had a jury view. And, frankly, most of my motions for them get denied because the judge with all that discretion, really it comes down to a balancing test.

What is the value of the evidence that we're looking at? What's the value of the house to the jurors? And you balance that against the massive inconvenience of putting together a big yellow school bus and a chaperon and getting everybody on and getting to the place. So at the end of the day most of these motions are denied. The thing is, in these high-profile cases, judges know and the parties know they're going to be subjected to scrutiny later on, so an interesting thing happens that in these cases requests that normally would be stamped motion denied become motion granted.

BOLDUAN: What exactly are they going to see on the most basic level? They get on the bus, they show up at Aaron Hernandez's home, are there things that are off-limits? Are they allowed free reign to just walk through his house?

I'm very confused and interested in what exactly they're going to be able to see.

CEVALLOS: No two jury views are alike, and those are two very important questions that the judge and the parties have to hash out. In fact, the prosecution, I was reading some of their filings. They wanted permission to go to the house beforehand, the before, last night I suppose, and take a look to make sure that nothing has been moved around or monkeyed with.

So now the question is -- it's a very good question. Can a juror use the bathroom if they want to? And by the way, they're all -- they've been instructed to wear boots because of the weather. Can they tramp around in the house and go wherever they like? I mean, what are the parameters?

That's why jury views create such a logistical problem that, functionally, most of them get denied.

BERMAN: In this case, does it help one side more than another?

CEVALLOS: Each side, if they want it, they must have some purpose. And the trophy case is a great example. There's been all this fighting about whether or not the jurors can see this trophy case. My understanding of Judge Garsh's order is that anything that was in the house prior to 2013 may be viewed by the jurors, and anything after that that's in the house now has to either be removed or covered up. And the idea behind that is that that prevents -- Anything after 2013, somebody sort of farming the jury or putting in some evidence that will make him look better, the defendant, like a bible, like maybe a cross on the wall. Just examples. Which it was alleged in the prosecution's own filings in this case. The same thing happened in the O.J. trial.

BOLDUAN: So fascinating. We'll have to see if there's any impact. if we'll ever learn, what impact this field trip has on the jury. The first, and probably not even the first, of many twists that we've already seen in this trial so far. Danny, thank you.

CEVALLOS: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Of course. New information coming up this morning showing there was engine trouble before a plane took a deadly plunge into a Taiwanese river. Did the pilot shut down an engine that was actually working in the seconds that they had to react? Our aviation experts are going to weigh in. We'll be back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: New information about what may have caused that deadly plane crash caught on camera in Taiwan. Officials have completed their analysis of the black boxes and found there was a problem with both engines. Both stopped producing power, leaving the plane flying without any thrust. Just 37 seconds into the flight is when the first stall warning went off about the engines.

BERMAN: The first engine, here's the curious thing, after the first engine went out, for some reason the other engine appears to have been turned off: The one that was working. Did the crew turn it off? And if so, why? They managed to restart that engine, but it was too late and just a couple seconds later the plane crashed into the river.

Joining us now to talk about this, CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo. Mary, they had one engine that went out. We know that. Then, it seems that perhaps they turned off the one working engine. Why would a crew do that?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Because they are in a hurry. They're in a very tense situation. They don't have much time and they haven't been trained to properly troubleshoot. You know, I would like to say this is unheard of and it's never happened before, but I can name at least three commercial fatal accidents where this exact thing happens. There was a very famous, a British midlands plane, and this was way back in '89. This was a 737. They heard a bang. They thought it was one engine and in fact it was the other engine. As I like to remind people, there's no rearview mirrors in the cockpit so it's sometimes difficult to see which engine you have a problem with. They shut off the wrong engine, the crashed the 737, it happened in Spain, it happened in Scotland. And it's very difficult sometimes to tell, particularly one of the keys in prior accidents is if you had recently switched aircraft. If you were flying an older model and switched to a newer model, as apparently they had here.

BERMAN: Just to be clear, if they did have one working engine, they could have flown with that before they turned it off. True?

SCHIAVO: They could have before they turned it off. Now once they turn it off, there are restart procedures, in-flight restart procedures, and had they been at 15,000 feet, they could have restarted it and they would have been fine.

BOLDUAN: That's exactly what I was going to - One of the things I wanted to ask you was how long does it take to restart the engine? Remember, to all of our viewers, this happened right after takeoff. The 37 seconds into the flight is when the first stall warning went off.

SCHIAVO: Realistically, once they turned off the good engine, they would not have had enough altitude to restart it. I don't think they would have had altitude or time. So the fatal decision was turning off the good engine. And I said, this is not the first time this has happened. I hope it's the last. This is a problem on a twin plane, as figuring out which one you have the problem with and you have to read those instruments very carefully and sometimes they're misleading.

BOLDUAN: Exactly to that point, there's news out this morning that all TransAsia pilots are now going to be required to take a written and oral exam if they fly the ATR aircraft within the next four days. That was announced by TransAsia. What does that tell you? They must be concerned that these guys don't know how to fly these planes.

SCHIAVO: Right, they're concerned about their training. Particularly, their training in emergency situations and, you know, this is a worldwide problem. A lot of the training, even the United States has done in classroom or in simulators, and in fact, there have been instances where they have been training for this situation in the field and they've crashed on training exercises, so shutting down one engine and then training on the other is tricky even with a flight instructor onboard.

BERMAN: Mary Schiavo, thank you so much. (INAUDIBLE). Finding out what caused it will be fascinating.

BOLDUAN: Think of what they were up against in those 37 seconds. They just had taken off.

BERMAN: Think about the passengers inside. One survivor of this crash took off his seatbelt before the plane crash. He told the woman next to him to do the same. Both of them survived. Was that the move that saved their lives? In a few minutes, we'll talk about the issue of seatbelts and how much they help and sometimes how much they get in the way of surviving a plane crash.

Also, this is just the beginning. Jordanian warplanes pounding targets in Syria, warning more to come, delivering on a promise to make the terrorists pay for murdering one of their own.

BOLDUAN: That's coming up for us. But first, CNN's "Impact Your World." How to help those in need.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Charity. Seems straightforward, right? You give money to an organization, they take that money and makes sure it gets where it needs to go. Simple enough. Well as it turns out, charity, like most things, is more complicated than it seems.

First off, pretty much anyone can raise money these days either using a crowd-funding site like Go Fund Me or by crowd-sourcing help for a problem. When it comes to big charities, many operate a little bit like an investment fund. The idea is they make a profit on your dollar so they can make it go farther. In fact, that's how some nonprofit CEOs justify those hefty salaries. They say they're very good at squeezing the most out of your donation so they deserve to be paid, as well.

Like that? Well, that's just how it is. Confused? Maybe you should be because we haven't even gotten to the so-called Venture Capital philanthropy yet. That's where instead of giving money to, say, a university doing cancer research, a foundation might invest in a private company studying a cure. Different approaches, but all with the same goal: Making your donation more efficient. In theory, at least.

The truth is, when it comes to efficiency, not all charities are created equal. Before you donate, go online and do research and find out exactly where your donation is going. Check out how your nonprofit uses its money how effective it is. They should tell you how many cents on every dollar they put to the cause. After all, if you're going to give away your hard-earned dollars, you want to know that the charity is out there working as hard as possible for those who need them the most.

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