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Kerry Meets With Putin; Earthquake Aftermath; U.S. Helicopter Missing in Nepal. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 12, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:02]

BEN VOLIN, "THE BOSTON GLOBE": Like I said, not making Jim McNally available after some crucial information came out.

They have gone kicking and screaming and almost mocking the process from the start, Robert Kraft going up on the stage at the Super Bowl, demanding an apology, when really none was demanded or expected. So, frankly, the Patriots, with their defiance and the way they refuse to take any responsibility for this whatsoever, they're the reasons Ted Wells had to get involved. And they're the reasons the punishment had to be so harsh now.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: OK.

Ben Volin, "Boston Globe," Brian Socolow, thank you so much, sports attorney. Gentlemen, I appreciate it. Let's roll on.

Hour two. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

And in mere moments, a district attorney in Wisconsin will announce a decision as to whether a Madison police officer will be charged for shooting and killing an unarmed man. That unarmed man, Tony Robinson, he was just 19 year of age. Robinson's uncle tells CNN he is expecting no charges against the officer. The aunt, as well, shared the same with me when I spoke with her last hour, saying he acted out of self-defense.

We will let you know what happens. We will bring that DA announcement live in just a little while from now.

But, in Nepal, we have got breaking news we're following out of there. Just more than two weeks after a monster earthquake killed more than 8,000 people and then today, another one, the 7.3 quake striking nine miles deep, this is along the border there with China. At least are 68 dead, more than 1,200 injured. We will take you to Kathmandu here in just a moment.

But, first, we are getting more information right now about this U.S. Marine helicopter that is considered missing currently in Nepal. We can tell you that we know six Marines and two Nepalis were carrying out earthquake disaster relief -- this was outside of the capital -- when apparently their helicopter vanished.

So, first to Barbara Starr. She's at the Pentagon for us. And, Barbara, it is after midnight there in Nepal, incredibly mountainous region. Communication is difficult just in general. What are you hearing from military, from DOD?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, what the Pentagon is saying is they hope to resume the air search for this missing Marine Corps helicopter in the coming hours at first light.

It's been suspended through the evening hours in Nepal. But even in the dark, members of the Nepalese army were trying to make their way on foot to where they think maybe the helicopter might be. This helicopter had been out of contact for about two hours and was declared missing once they realized and calculated it would have been out of fuel. It must be on the ground somewhere.

The big question, of course, what happened to it? They are hopeful. And that is the word Pentagon officials are using, hopeful at first reports that simply the pilot may have run into a problem and put the helicopter down somewhere in a remote area, that hopefully everyone is OK and they will be rescued at first light.

A nearby helicopter flying at the same time reported some radio chatter that the Americans said they had run into fuel problems. There are other reports of spotting the American helicopter in this overall region. But an initial air search for an hour-and-a-half before darkness fell did not turn up anything.

It should have been easier to find them. But one of the problems is the rough terrain in Nepal with these very steep high-altitude mountains. If the helicopter's on the ground, surrounded by mountains, their communications gear may not be working properly. They may not be able to get a signal out. That may be what is going right now. That is what the Pentagon hopes.

But, at first light, they are going to put helicopters and aircraft back in the air and try and find these people -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. Let's remain hopeful. Barbara Starr, thank you so much.

Let's talk a little bit more about this with Lieutenant Colonel James Reese.

Colonel Reese, just springboarding off of Barbara's point, when she talks about imagine you're on this Huey, it's after midnight, so it's dark, it's mountainous, as she was pointing out. Communication can be a challenge. Can you just walk through and -- and if these reports accurate that they could be worried about fuel, just the challenges there, what you would be thinking as the pilot?

JAMES REESE, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Sure, Brooke.

So, right now, that altitude where these guys are flying is very challenging, not for the pilots, but the aircraft themselves. It's burning a lot more fuel. And it just challenges the aircraft's capability. But one of the things we could look at is, if they had a fuel problem, those pilots know how to put that thing down safely.

It could be a hard landing, but they know how to put it down safely. And they probably have two things going on. If there's any injuries, they are going to stay right there with the injuries. If they're not, if they can get to high ground, they will try to get their communications up.

But the best thing is to stay with that aircraft with everything they have right there until a search party can come out and continue to look for them tomorrow.

[15:05:02]

BALDWIN: What about would they have any kind of emergency signal or beacon?

REESE: Yes. That's one of the things. Right now, the Blue Force tracker, the type of beacons that the aircraft are carrying, right now, I have got to believe that, you know, Pacific Command, and the 505th Joint Task Force that this aircraft came out of out of the Philippines is using all of the type of satellite, everything to look for some type of aircraft distress signal, or whatever they might be having also on their personal beacons that they carry with them for distress signals that the aircraft and the personnel carry.

BALDWIN: OK. Lieutenant Colonel James Reese, thank you so much.

And we will have more on this story.

REESE: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: The status of this helicopter, again, Barbara Starr reporting they will look at first -- when the sun begins to come up.

But back to the quake itself, and just the ripple effect, the devastation there in Nepal, I just want to show you something, because this is the actual moment caught on some sort of TV system within this building. This is the moment the quake hit, the 7.3 quake hit, just panic, people rushing out of there, fearing that obviously the walls, the roofs could come down on them.

This massive earthquake flattening homes and buildings and triggering huge landslides like this here. And just a reminder, when this quake hit, there were people still sifting through the rubble. They were searching for possibly missing or dead after that April 25 quake hit, killing more than 8,000 people. Incredibly, today's quake is technically considered an aftershock, 7.3 magnitude.

Let's go to my colleague, Will Ripley. He's just arrived there in the capital of Kathmandu.

Rubble all behind you, Will, I don't know if that was from the first or the second massive earthquake. Tell me what you're seeing.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This was a five-story building until this afternoon, Brooke. This is one of the money buildings around Kathmandu that were partially damaged in the first quake. Their walls were cracked, but they came down as a result of this huge aftershock today.

Just terrifying for the people who live here, describing 30 seconds of pure panic, people screaming during the earthquake -- they couldn't even move, the ground was shaking so much. And just a couple of days ago, Brooke, people started to feel safe to sleep in their homes. Now, as we were driving from the airport, we looked and we saw a golf course. It was back full with hundreds of people sleeping outside.

Weather's good right now, but the monsoon season's coming up, the heavy rains are coming, and if these aftershocks continue, it's going to be a really tough situation for people because they still don't even have temporary shelters built for them, Brooke.

BALDWIN: That was a five-story building behind you? My goodness, Will Ripley.

Let me bring in USGS seismologist Gavin Hayes, because, Gavin, when you look at, and Will was describing it, you have the intensity of this quake at 7.3, and just for comparison, for people watching, the quake that initially had killed more than 8,000 a couple of weeks ago, that was 7.8. So, just perspective-wise, how -- what is the rarity for this to happen just a few weeks after one another?

GAVIN HAYES, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY: Well, Brooke, the likelihood of a magnitude-7.3 aftershock after a magnitude-7.8 aftershock is not incredibly small. And so it's not an unexpected event.

BALDWIN: I hear you have some maps to show me?

HAYES: I do, yes.

I have a map of the aftershock distribution that has occurred since the magnitude-7.8 main shock. In the epicentral region, there have been about 100 aftershocks since that April 25 event. And this magnitude-7.3 aftershock has had several aftershocks of its own since last night.

BALDWIN: So, if we're technically referring to this most recent one as an aftershock, does that then mean, just going back to geology 101, is this the same tectonic plate shifting, or is this in a separate area?

HAYES: Yes. Really, the term aftershock is semantics. It just means that this is an event that is associated with that April 25 event and is in approximately the same plate boundary area as that main shock.

This event occurred just at the eastern end of the part of the plate boundary that moved in that April 25 event.

BALDWIN: And I was talking to a seismologist recently just about convergent zones and let's get a little wonky here, because I am curious. You have the convergence zone there in the Himalayas, where these Indian and Eurasian tectonic plate collide. Does that explain why this particular part of the world could be capable of so many quakes and so close together?

HAYES: Exactly, yes.

This is a major continental collision zone, where the India plate is colliding with Eurasia. India is thrusting beneath Eurasia and is throwing up those high Himalayan Mountains. And so this plate boundary is capable of very large earthquakes.

[15:10:04]

We believe, in the past, it's had earthquakes as large as magnitude 9 and is probably capable of similar-sized events in the future. So, these events we have seen over the past...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: No, forgive me, but you can't predict them, correct?

HAYES: We can't predict them, but we can observe what's happened in the past. And we can use that to inform us about what might occur in the future.

BALDWIN: So, speaking of the future, if you have one sort of and then this next one, what does the future look like, final question?

HAYES: We certainly expect more aftershocks in the magnitude 5 to 6 range. They will be common and they will probably be felt in the Kathmandu region, as they have been over the past 12 hours or so.

The likelihood of larger aftershocks is small, but certainly they are possible as well.

BALDWIN: How frightening for these people.

Gavin Hayes with the USGS, thank you so much, and Will Ripley there in Kathmandu, my thanks to you.

HAYES: My pleasure.

BALDWIN: I that know you're wondering, how can I help these people? Well, you know what? You can. Go to our Impact Your World Web site. That's just CNN.com/impact.

Minutes from now, the district attorney in this one part of Wisconsin will announce whether it will be charging this police officer who shot and killed an unarmed teenager, that shooting sparking weeks of protests. We have been talking to the teen's aunt about what she expects that prosecutor to decide. And we will hear from the district attorney. That's what we're looking for coming up in mere minutes.

Also, John Kerry and Vladimir Putin meeting face to face? We will tell you what happened there.

And Chris Christie, yes, behind in the polls, still taking questions on Bridgegate, but he just sat down with Jake Tapper. Hear what he's up to in New Hampshire. You're watching CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:16:04]

BALDWIN: The University of Virginia's dean of students has filed suit over that erroneous "Rolling Stone" magazine article detailing allegations of a gang rape on campus.

A lawyer for Nicole Eramo says the administrator is suing "Rolling Stone" and its parent company for defamation. The article was later discredited in an extensive review conducted by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Eramo is also suing the writer of the article, is also being sued, Sabrina Erdely. Erdely profiled the UVA dean in a highly controversial piece and accused her of mishandling the campus rape allegations.

America's top diplomat is hoping to patch up Washington's relationship with Moscow. Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting today with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, the site of last year's Winter Olympics, Secretary Kerry there in -- on Russian soil for the first time since the two superpowers faced off over the crisis in Ukraine, a conflict that seemed to echo the Cold War.

CNN global affairs correspondent Elise Labott is following today's high-level talks.

And I know we heard from Secretary Kerry just in the last hour. What did he say?

ELISE LABOTT, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, you know that the U.S. has been really frustrated with Russian -- what they call Russian meddling in Ukraine, various air incursions by the Russian military into Europe, and, as you said, sparking fears of a cold war, but today in this first meeting with the Russian president for the last two years since the crisis began, Secretary Kerry was talking all about cooperation on a lot of issues, Syria, Iran among them. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: I am grateful to President Putin for the significant amount of time that he made available to this discussion, for his directness, and for his very detailed explanations of Russia's position with respect to some of these challenges, and of the ways that he believed that we have an ability to be able to work constructively together in order to resolve these problems.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LABOTT: And what is the U.S. looking for from Russia? Well, first of all, on Syria, the U.S. and Russia worked very closely together on that agreement to end Syria's chemical weapons. But they find that President Assad is still using chlorine gas against his people. They want -- Kerry wants President Putin to put pressure on Assad to

stop that. They also -- now that they see some losses on the battlefield by Assad forces, in the end, they're really hoping that Assad will end -- that President Putin will end his cooperation for Assad altogether and help put an end to the civil war. The U.S. also looking for Russian cooperation on Iran. They're negotiating that nuclear deal together with their European allies.

And they also want Russia to stop selling a very sensitive air defense system to Iran that could impact these negotiations. So, even as the U.S. is very upset with Russia's involvement in Ukraine, it's obvious that they need Russia's help for so many other issues, Brooke, so much so that they said that if they see action on Ukraine, that they could in fact lift some of those sanctions from the U.S. and the European Union.

I think right now the name of the game is cooperation, Brooke, really needing Russia for so much more than just Ukraine.

BALDWIN: Listening to that long list of wants. We can hope. Let's hope. Elise Labott, thank you very much in Washington this afternoon.

Coming up next, Chris Christie trying to build a little momentum for a potential run for the White House. And you know what he's talking to today? My colleague Jake Tapper. We have the first little scoop of that interview coming up with Tapper.

Plus, we're mere minutes from a news conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The question, will a police officer there face criminal charges in the shooting death of an unarmed African-American teen? We will find out. Stay here. This is CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:24:14]

BALDWIN: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is on the road in New Hampshire. He is not yet an official presidential candidate, but he is making all the moves one would expect to perhaps say he's into it.

The Granite State is home to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

So, Jake Tapper headed up to New Hampshire to see him. And so Jake is live in Manchester, New Hampshire, fresh off this interview.

All right, I'm dying to know what -- tell me anything and everything. What did he say?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, he talked about a lot. He's up here talking about the economy. So, of course, we discussed that. We talked about immigration. We talked about entitlement reform.

But one of the most interesting and starkly different answers that he gave was when I asked him about the question that was put to Jeb Bush the other day. Knowing then that we know now, does Jeb Bush think that the decision to go to war in Iraq, the decision his older brother George W. Bush made, was that the right decision?

[15:25:12]

Now, Jeb Bush didn't really directly answer that question. So, I asked it to Governor Christie. And here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), NEW JERSEY: No, it wasn't.

Now, I think President Bush made the best decision he could at the time, given that his intelligence community was telling him that there was WMD and that there were threats right there in Iraq. But I don't think you can honestly say that, if we knew then that there was no WMD, that the country should have gone to war. So, my answer would be no.

But I think, you know, what we've got to avoid is continuing to go backwards in this county. We need a forward-looking foreign policy that talks about how to reassert American authority and influence around the world.

But I want to directly answer your question, because that's what I do. If we knew then what we know now and I were the president of the United States, I wouldn't have gone to war. But, you know, we don't get to replay history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: You heard him say, I wanted to directly answer your question, because that's what I do.

Perhaps that was a subliminal dig at Jeb Bush, who did not directly answer the question, although we're told that he misheard it. Anyway, Governor Christie, he weighs in on a whole bunch of other issues in our interview, which airs coming up on "THE LEAD," Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. Nice air quotes, by the way, Tapper. I caught that.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Let me follow up. I did. I did.

Let me follow up with -- so we're -- you're in New Hampshire. He's in New Hampshire. Has he written off Iowa, a la John McCain 2000? How are you reading that?

TAPPER: He says no. I asked him about that. Obviously, there does seem to be some sense of him taking a page from McCain's playbook in not devoting so much time to Iowa, where there are so many conservative Christians who are the base of the Republican Party there, a group that is not hugely a fan -- fans of Governor Christie's, and maybe focusing here more on New Hampshire, where his kind of candor, his straight talk, as John McCain called it, might endear him to the independent Republican voters.

But he said, no, that's not the case. He's traveling all over. And -- but I do think there is something to be said about him having a good chance of -- or at least the best chance of making waves here in New Hampshire. And there really isn't an heir in the Republican Party to this state, Mitt Romney not running. He's of course from neighboring Massachusetts.

So, there isn't anybody who's a natural Republican fit for New Hampshire. So, this could be a place where he brings his candidacy back.

BALDWIN: What about -- just going back to your point about candor, straight talk, or people, definitely critics have called him a bully. We talked yesterday about doing all these town halls. He'd be doing all these town halls, which, yes, he can really sort of excel, but also can -- critics again saying bullyish. How will that persona, how would that play outside of the Northeast?

TAPPER: Well, I don't know how well he will play outside of the Northeast.

I have seen him doing town halls. And, for most part, there isn't that kind of bully thing that you're talking about, unless he is challenged. It can happen. But, generally speaking, he's pretty experienced at doing these town halls. He's done more than 100 in New Jersey.

And so I haven't seen that come into play here in New Hampshire. But, you know, it's early yet.

BALDWIN: OK.

Jake Tapper in Manchester, New Hampshire, with the Chris Christie interview, definitely tune in for Jake's show right after mine, 4:00 p.m. Eastern here, for more on that, on "THE LEAD."

Jake Tapper, thank you so much.

And in moments from now, a district attorney in Wisconsin will announce the decision in the case that's set off major demonstrations, including one you're about to see that overtook the state capitol in March. Here you go. Remember this? Massive crowds there.

We will soon find out if that Madison police officer who shot Tony Robinson will be charged. His family and friends talked to a Wisconsin newspaper. They did say that Robinson may have taken hallucinogenic mushrooms. This is back -- the incident was March 6, the day of the shooting. Police say Robinson had no weapon when he was killed. He was just 19.

CNN's Ryan Young has more on Tony Robinson's final hours.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Scanner traffic gives us a glimpse into several 911 calls made just before the shooting.

911 OPERATOR: Look for a male, black, light-skinned, tan jacket, and jeans, outside yelling, jumping in front of cars, 19 years of age. Name is Tony Robinson.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Another call said Robinson was trying to strangle someone. Officer Matt Kenny, the first officer on scene, reports he heard a commotion inside this apartment and forced his way through the door. The officer indicates a fight started and he was hit in the head by Robinson 30 seconds later.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Shots fired. Shots fired.

YOUNG: Robinson died after being shot.

MIKE KOVAL, MADISON, WISCONSIN, POLICE CHIEF: He was unarmed. And that's going to make this all the more complicated for the investigators.