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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Harrison Ford Injured in Plane Crash; Plane Slides Off LaGuardia Icy Runway; Winter Storm Wreaks Havoc Across Northeast

Aired March 06, 2015 - 04:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Harrison Ford in the hospital after crash- landing this plane on a golf course. We'll give you the latest information on his condition, this morning.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Panic on board a Delta Airlines flight. The jetliner skidding off the runway, through a fence, stopping just feet, just feet, from the icy bay. New details we're learning this morning.

BERMAN: Those are amazing pictures.

Thousands of flights across the country grounded, a severe winter storm warming across the country, closing schools, covering roads with ice. Look at some of those accidents. We'll tell you what to expect for today.

ROMANS: Oh, my goodness.

BERMAN: Oh, my gosh, I didn't see that. That's crazy.

ROMANS: I know.

BERMAN: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm John Berman.

ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans. It is Friday. It is Friday, March 6th -- March 6th, it's 4:00 p.m. in the east.

We'll get to the weather in a moment. But this morning, NTSB investigators will pick Harrison Ford's vintage plane up off the golf course where it crashed Thursday with the movie star at the controls. Like the plane itself, Ford was badly banged up but emerged in one piece. He was taken to the hospital. Crews will move the plane to a safe location where investigators can get a closer look.

Engine noise told airport neighbors that something was wrong seconds after the 1942 military trainer took off. One recorded the emergency landing on his phone. You see it there.

CNN's Kyung Lah has this report from Venice, California.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: John, Christine, investigators have been here in the overnight hours, trying to figure out exactly why this vintage plane lost power in the engine.

What you can see over my shoulder is this extraordinary landing. You can see that the nose of this plane is bent into the ground. This is a small golf course you're looking at.

The propeller is ground into the grass but look at the body of the plane. It really wasn't that damaged. Harrison Ford was seated in one of those two seats. He did have some head injuries but some of the people here. Witnesses say that he was bleeding from the head but they managed to get him out, take him to the hospital.

He is pointed towards the runway. Neighbors say they actually heard the engine stall.

JENS LUCKING, WITNESS: I heard it having problems, then he turned around, when he was right by the house, the engine cut out, then he turned around. That's what I heard, he turned around, tried to get back to the airport.

LAH: That neighbor says Ford is quite a good pilot to manage right here, only about 30 yards from where I'm standing -- the houses are about 50 yards away. Ford's publicist says he is banged up but should be OK -- John, Christine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: Wow. All right. Ford's "Star Wars" co-star Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker, took to Twitter to offer Ford his best-wishes, "Get well soon," he writes, adding, "may all his future flights be green screen."

BERMAN: Yes, I hope Harrison Ford has such a sense of humor about this, this morning.

ROMANS: Yes, well -- yes, maybe he's just trying to heal.

BERMAN: Good news though that he's doing OK, he's recovering.

There was another hair raising landing, this one at LaGuardia here in New York City. A Delta flight slid off an icy runway coming to rest just feet, look at that, just feet, from the waters of Flushing Bay. This morning, two huge industrial cranes are moving that plane off the berm where the plane came to a rest, luckily came to a rest. They want flights to resume taking off and landing on that runway.

ROMANS: What if they berm had not been there?

BERMAN: Well, it would be in the water. I mean, really, it's the only thing that stopped it. Look at this, live pictures right now of LaGuardia, trying to get the plane off that runway. Major backups across the U.S. because of flights being canceled at LaGuardia yesterday. Fascinating to see this.

All right. Will Ripley gives us an update from LaGuardia.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John and Christine, throughout the overnight hours, work continuing here to move that Delta flight off of the runway where it landed, slid about 4,000 feet and ended just dangerously close to the icy water, Delta 1086. We saw pictures coming in of two large cranes that were intending to lift the aircraft, turn it around and bring it into a hangar, as the NTSB continues to investigate how this happened.

Passengers describe a really terrifying scenario as this plane from Atlanta was coming in on Thursday morning, around 11:00. Shortly after 11:00. They say there was no traction. They felt a thud, they were thrown and then the plane just kept sliding, again, 4,000 feet on a 7,000-foot runway. The nose crashed right through a fence and were it not for a berm that the plane became wedged on, the plane could have actually slide into the water which would have been a very dangerous scenario.

As it turned out, passengers were able to evacuate. There was a problem with some of the emergency chutes. They didn't deploy. So, firefighters climbed up on the wing and helped these people climb out, some of them without jackets out, climbed out, walked off of the plane, and then trudged through the snowy runway, through the cold, through the ice and snow to safety.

But remarkably, everybody was able to walk away from this. And another thing that's being looked into right now, just minutes before this plane landed runway conditions, the breaking conditions were reported to be good by two other planes. It just goes to show the dangers of taking off, in this case, landing in this icy weather. Winter weather that has caused a number of travel delays in the New York area and across the country -- John and Christine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: All right. Will, thanks for that.

You know, that runway accident at LaGuardia made a bad air travel day even worse around the country.

BERMAN: This big winter storm, translation, nearly 5,000 flights -- 5,000 flights canceled in the U.S. on Thursday. That's 20 percent of all scheduled flights -- never left the ground. The icy conditions made the roads dangerous, too.

Look at this. This is surveillance footage in Rhode Island. That's awful to see, an out-of-control hash back slides into that parked car there. She did walk away from that crash.

ROMANS: In Philadelphia, the weigh of the snow and ice caused the roof of a five-story apartment building to collapse. One resident was taken to the hospital in that incident for evaluation.

BERMAN: Check out this -- in Connecticut, a barn collapsed under the weight of the heavy, wet snow. You can see it all just caved in right there. Luckily, none of the rescue horses inside were hurt. They are going to have to find a new home, though.

ROMANS: This tractor-trailer carrying 93 cattle overturn on a Maryland highway. No people were hurt in the crash. It's not known if any or how many of the cows were hurt.

BERMAN: Look at Kentucky. Drivers stranded on interstate I-65 for hours.

ROMANS: They ran out of gas, a lot of them, just sitting there.

BERMAN: Oh, my gosh. Imagine that. The governor says state officials did all they could to prepare but still, so many cars just not going anywhere there.

ROMANS: Severe flooding in West Virginia, the rivers swelling, roads submerged. Some people who braved the conditions had a hard time, really hard time, are getting around. Similar scene playing out in Virginia, roads looking like rivers after the storm swelled rivers over their banks.

BERMAN: Thankfully the storm is now moving off into the Atlantic. But right behind it, really cold temperatures.

Meteorologist Derek Van Dam with the latest.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, John and Christine.

Just to give you an idea of how potent this cold front actually was, we had a 50 degree temperature drop in Jackson, Mississippi, from Wednesday into Thursday, as this cold front swept through.

Here it is on our satellite loop, this large shading of white, that, of course, being the cloud cover, moving off the New England coast, plunging our temperatures to near record low minimum temperatures especially across the East Coast. Record lows near the Big Apple, 6 agrees. We're in the middle teens at the moment.

We'll be running about 18 degrees below where we should be this time of year, normal temperature for New York City is about 36. More of the same for Washington, D.C., and towards Atlanta.

This is going to be deceiving. Sunshine across the eastern half of the United States, with the exception of a few scattered showers throughout the Florida panhandle. A lot of us have been wondering, is this the last of winter? Well, one thing's for sure, only 14 more days until spring.

Back to you.

ROMANS: All right. Thank you, Derek.

Authorities in South Korea investigating a possible connection between the suspect who slashed U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert and North Korea. Prosecutors requesting an arrest warrant for 55-year-old Kim Ki-jong. He could be charged with attempted murder. Police now digging into his travel history dating back over a decade.

Live from Seoul this morning for us, CNN's senior international correspondent Ivan Watson.

First, Ivan, how is the ambassador doing this morning?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, doctors say he is improving, he's been able to move around his hospital room and they predict that he'll be there for a couple more days. But even he has tweeted that he's doing OK despite that deep gash to his face and to his arm, from this attack early Thursday morning.

Now, the man, Kim Ki-jong who eyewitnesses saw stabbing the U.S. ambassador, he was taken to a courthouse here in Seoul earlier today. He was in a wheelchair. One of his ankles was bound. There are reports it may have been fractured when he was tackled after the attack.

And some Korean journalists were able to ask him questions, asking, for example, was he working with North Korea to carry out this attack? He responded no. And they asked whether or not he had traveled in the past to North Korea? He said, this is nonsense.

Well, the South Korean government says otherwise. They say that he traveled to North Korea at least seven times between the late '90s and around 2007.

Another strange detail is that he had worked with something called the Reunification Education Board. It was a wing of a department of the South Korean government for a few years in the past. But then, of course, he was arrested in 2010 for throwing a block of concrete at a Japanese diplomat here and was serving a two-year suspend jail sentence for that. So he did have a criminal record.

So questions, how could a man with a knife with that past criminal record get into this event and how was he able to get this close to the U.S. ambassador?

The U.S. embassy telling us they did not request extra security for this event, the South Korean authorities saying there were dozens of police there. But as a first-time visitor to Seoul, you might note, though we're very close to the demilitarized zone, we're very close to North Korea here, security is more lax than in other cities around the world. There are not metal detectors in front of hotels and shopping malls, for example. That may be something this man took advantage of.

Of course, all important to note that though there is no direct link to North Korea, the North Korean regime has gleefully responded to this attack, calling this a, quote, "knife attack of justice" on North Korean state TV -- Christine.

ROMANS: Knife attack of justice.

All right. Thanks for that, Ivan Watson.

BERMAN: Eleven minutes after the hour. The State Department is refuting reports that Hillary Clinton violated

policy by using personal e-mail while she was secretary of state. An official says the department's policy manual allows sensitive but unclassified information to be, quote, "handled on a system with certain security requirements except in certain circumstances." That clears things up.

We're also now told that a review of Mrs. Clinton's e-mails could take months. It has also been revealed that the secretary of state was using personal e-mail even while her own inspector general was warning against it. The agency watchdog questioned the ambassador, the former ambassador to Kenya for doing that, for using personal email in 2012.

Now, some Republicans, it turns out, have similar issues to this. Jeb Bush used a private domain he set up in his own home with a server. He put a private address in it during his time in office as governor of Florida, different circumstances. The governor of Florida, in theory, doesn't handle state -- you know, federal, secure information.

ROMANS: Yes, it's interesting to me that even 10 or 15 years ago this wasn't really an issue because there wasn't widespread use of e-mail really among some of the executives in these positions. You know what I mean?

BERMAN: True, very true.

ROMANS: I mean, is it one of those new problems to have?

All right. Let's have an early start on your money this morning, shall we? U.S. stock futures barely moving so far. Yesterday, stocks climbed after the European Central Bank said it would start buying bonds on Monday, bond-buying program Monday. That's a stimulus there.

The Dow gained about 40 points, breaking that two-day losing streak. Today, it's all about the jobs, the jobs in this country. The February jobs report comes out at 8:30 Eastern. We'll be really closely watching to see whether we've had strong job growth, but also if wages are finally starting to rise.

Apple Pay facing a wave of fraudulent purchases with stolen credit card information. According to "The Wall Street Journal", thieves are taking stolen credit card data, entering it into smartphones and making purchases without an actual credit card or signature. That data comes from recent hacks, including the Home Depot and Target hacks. But 80 percent of the purchases have been made at Apple Stores. Interesting.

BERMAN: All right. Dramatic testimony, new disturbing images in the Boston marathon bombing trial. We'll take you there, next.

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BERMAN: Dramatic day at the trial of accused Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It features new disturbing images from the scene of the attack right at the marathon finish line, along with gripping testimony from survivors, recalling what had to be one of the worst days of their lives.

Let's get more from CNN's Alexandra Field.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christine and John, the jury saw gruesome images of the aftermath of the second explosion, the one that went off in front of the Forum Restaurant.

It's same spot where William Richard was with his family. Surveillance picks show him with two of his young children, who are pressed up against the police barrier watching runners go by before that bomb goes off.

On the stand, Richard speaks about his 6-year-old daughter Jane, who lost her leg, 8-year-old son, Martin, lost his life. Richard said that he heard the first explosion, the one that happened near the finish line. He said at that point, time seemed to slow down. He had the thought to get his family out of there but they ran out of time.

We also heard from Boston police officers who testified about their efforts to try to save the lives of two of the young women killed on that day. One officer talking about being at Lingzi Lu's side, watching her body shaking and quivering. Another officer talking about trying to comfort Crystal Campbell, seeing smoke coming out of her mouth and realizing what a great deal she was in.

We heard from Roseann Sdoia who said she was on Boylston Street and thought she was going to bleed out. At one point, she asked police to take her sister's phone number, she didn't want them to have to call her parents to told them their daughter died on Boylston Street.

And for the first time, jurors also learned about how police begun to identify their suspects. Jeffrey Bauman, the one seen in that iconic being rescued by the man in the cowboy hat, he was injured during the first bombing, the one that happened near the finish line. He says on that day, he noticed someone later identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, that man stuck out in the crowd to him, he was wearing a black hat, a black coat, a backpack. He wasn't with anyone, he wasn't watching the race, Bauman said.

When he later woke up at the hospital missing both legs, he remembered that face. Right away he told police he knew what had happened -- Christine, John.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: So emotional. Alexandra, thank you for that.

Nineteen minutes past the hour.

The family of Michael Brown moving forward with a wrongful death suit against Darren Wilson and the city of Ferguson, Missouri. It comes after a Justice Department found widespread discrimination in the Ferguson police department. But that report cleared Officer Wilson in the Michael Brown shooting. An attorney for the family says they disagree with that decision.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY GRAY, BROWN FAMILY ATTORNEY: Officer Darren Wilson did not have to shoot and kill Mike Brown Jr. in broad daylight in the manner that he did, that he had other options available to him. And that he chose deadly force as his option and we plan to demonstrate, in a court of law, to reasonable-minded people that the choice to use deadly force was unreasonable and unnecessary under those circumstances.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Michael Brown's parents have said they are disappointed with the Justice Department decision.

BERMAN: Iraqi forces trying to take back a crucial city from ISIS. This battle could lead to bigger problems for Iraq down the road. Our reporter got a firsthand look at this battle. We'll take you there, next.

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ROMANS: Twenty-four minutes past the hour.

Iran gaining more traction and influence in Iraq's battle against ISIS. Iranian backed militias taking the lead now in the offensive to retake Tikrit. Senior Iranian military leaders openly directing this mission with the U.S. on the sidelines. This as ISIS fighters destroy another piece of Iraqi history, bulldozing the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud. Can you believe that?

Let's bring in CNN senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman.

Good morning, Ben.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Christine.

Yes, you mentioned the Iranian role. Well, yes, they are playing a role in this operation against Tikrit.

We were up on the front lines yesterday. I must say, we did not see any Iranians. But I did speak to several officers as well as a member of the Iraqi parliament who praised the Iranian role in the entire operation, saying that it's very practical, desperately needed assistance of the kind, they say the United States isn't willing to provide.

There are, we've seen pictures, we've seen video, released by one of the Shia militias of Iranian of advisers on the ground speaking in Farsi, clearly playing a role in directing the operation.

Now, we also heard complaints from officers and soldiers on the front lines about the absence of coalition aircraft in providing air cover to the operation, although the Iraqi government has said they did not request any assistance and U.S. officials say they were not asked for it. But the operation is going forward. We reached about two miles south of the center of Tikrit. We didn't see from our vantage point any sign of ISIS fighters or even civilians inside the city.

As far as the city of Nimrud goes, that ancient town, 18 kilometers to the south of Mosul, yes, last night, the Iraqi Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities put a statement, saying that ISIS had dispatched bulldozers to this ancient city, that dates back to 13th century BC. The statement said they had been razing that, the remains of that ancient town. And, of course, that is really just the latest atrocity against human heritage.

Last week, we must recall that ISIS members went into the Mosul museum and defaced priceless artifacts dating back to the 9th century BC.

But really, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Keep in mind since 2011 you had revolution unrest, civil war, in countries like Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, all of these countries rich with human artifacts and archaeological sites, all of them now, it's not just ISIS doing it, it's just desperately poor people looking for some way to make a buck, so to speak, taking advantage of the collapse of law and order in almost all of these countries -- Christine.

ROMANS: Civilization coming undone is what it looks like.

Thanks so much, Ben Wedeman.

BERMAN: Twenty-seven minutes after the hour right now.

Harrison Ford hospitalized after he crash-lands his World War II vintage plane on a golf course. How did it happen? How did he survive? We'll give you the very latest details on his condition. That's coming up.

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