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More Analysis of Clinton Interview; EgyptAir Jet Crashes; Clinton Says Trump Unqualified to Be President. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 19, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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


[15:00:18]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me on this Thursday.

Major breaking news on two stories today. We will get you back to the presumed -- the disappearance, the presumed bombing of an EgyptAir flight in just a moment here, but first to Hillary Clinton's exclusive interview with "CNN LIVE" moments ago.

The Democratic front-runner weighed in on this airplane crash, and in the process says her Republican rival, the presumed nominee, Donald Trump, is not qualified to be president.

Want you to listen now to Secretary Clinton's exact words and why she came to that conclusion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Do you think that Donald Trump is qualified to be president?

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No, I do not. And I think, in this past week, whether it's attacking Great Britain, praising the leader of North Korea, a despotic dictator who has nuclear weapons, whether it is saying pull out of NATO, let other countries have nuclear weapons, the kinds of positions he is stating and the consequences of those positions and even the consequences of his statements are not just offensive to people. They are potentially dangerous.

CUOMO: How so?

CLINTON: Well, as I mentioned...

CUOMO: Politicians talk, Madam Secretary. They say things, but then, once they get in office, people believe nothing will be that different.

CLINTON: Well, when you run for president of the United States, the entire world is listening and watching. So, when you say we're going to bar all Muslims, you are sending a message to the Muslim world, and you're also sending a message to the terrorists, because we now do have evidence, we have seen how Donald Trump is being used to essentially be a recruiter for more people to join the cause of terrorism.

So, I think, if you go through many of his irresponsible, reckless, dangerous comments, it's not just somebody saying something off the cuff. We all misstate things. We all may not be as careful in phrasing what we say. This is a pattern. It's a pattern that has gone on now for months.

And it's a pattern that adds up, in my opinion, having watched presidents, having seen the incredibly difficult work that they do and the decisions that they have to make, the thinking that goes in sitting in the Situation Room, do we go after bin Laden or not? I was part of that. Was it a clear, easy choice? Of course not.

Did it have to be carefully parsed and analyzed? And then we gave our opinions, but it was up to the president to decide. I know how hard this job is. And I know that we need steadiness, as well as strength and smarts in it.

And I have concluded he's not qualified to be president of the United States.

CUOMO: You don't think Donald Trump could make that call in that room about whether or not to go after bin Laden?

CLINTON: Based on what we know now, he could make it perhaps on evidence that wasn't clear. He could say a lot of things that might have given notice.

I mean, you just -- based on the way he has behaved and how he has spoken and the policies he has literally thrown out there, I think it adds up to a very troubling picture.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: All right.

With that, we're going to play a little bit more of the interview in a minute.

But let me bring in CNN's chief Washington correspondent, Jake Tapper, anchor of "THE LEAD" and "STATE OF THE UNION."

Jake Tapper, we remember Senator Sanders got a lot of backlash for making the same statement about Hillary Clinton. How is Clinton saying this about Donald Trump any different?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's very different, of course, when a Democrat says it about a Democrat vs. a Democrat saying it about a Republican.

There's certain intraparty rules and traditions in terms of not saying anything that might disqualify somebody in your own party from the position. But another point I would like to make, Brooke, is, I asked Secretary Clinton that same exact question at the end of April. Do you think Donald Trump is qualified to be president?

And she gave the traditional politician cop-out answer of, well, that is up to the voters to decide. I'm going to focus on my own qualifications, et cetera.

BALDWIN: Not today.

TAPPER: No. So, this says to me that there's been a change in strategy and a change in how seriously she is going to try to disqualify him. If three weeks ago she wasn't willing to say that, then something has changed today, when she gave a very, very forceful answer.

[15:05:02]

Now, some of the things she referred to, North Korea and the comments Donald Trump made about meeting with Kim Jong-un, they had not happened when I did the interview, but most of them, the proposed Muslim ban, et cetera...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Well, the fact that he's a presumed nominee, that is a difference as well.

TAPPER: I mean, yes, but it was very clear three months -- three weeks ago -- it was very clear three months ago that Donald Trump was going to be the nominee.

BALDWIN: Yes.

TAPPER: You could say that, yes -- no, no, actually, you know what? No, when I interviewed her, it was right after Donald -- it was before Indiana, but it was right after Donald Trump had declared himself the presumptive nominee.

BALDWIN: Ah, I see.

TAPPER: So, that really hasn't changed so much.

What it says to me is, they're looking at the polls, they're seeing that this is going to be perhaps a tougher fight and either through instinct or through some sort of polling and focus group work, the Democrats have suggested, this is speculation by me, but the Democrats have decided they need to really try to disqualify him as even up to the task, that saying it's up to voters will not be a strong enough answer.

BALDWIN: So, she gave the strong answer on saying that she doesn't believe he will make -- he is qualified to be president.

Then she talked about Bernie Sanders. So, let's play another clip. This is Secretary Clinton, how she sees her position in this race and what she expects from Senator Sanders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CUOMO: So, you get into the general election, if you're the nominee for your party.

CLINTON: I will be the nominee for my party, Chris. That's already done, in effect. There's no way that I won't be.

CUOMO: There's a senator from Vermont who has a different take on that.

CLINTON: Well...

CUOMO: He says he is going to fight to the end.

CLINTON: Yes.

CUOMO: And there seems to be a change here, as Donald Trump is trying to galvanize his party, and the Democratic Party seems to be going the other way. His supporters have become more aggressive, feeling that the system is rigged against the senator.

We saw what happened in Nevada. When you saw that, did you believe that Sanders responded the right way to that situation?

CLINTON: Well, I was very disturbed by what went on there. But I am confident...

CUOMO: With him or with his supporters?

CLINTON: Well, what we saw, what we saw there.

CUOMO: The supporters?

CLINTON: Well, what we saw was disturbing.

And I have every confidence we're going to be unified. I understand...

CUOMO: Where's that confidence come from?

CLINTON: Well, in part from my own experience.

I went all the way to the end against then Senator Obama. I won nine out of the last 12 contests. Back in '08, I won Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia. So I know the intense feelings that arise, particularly among your supporters, as you go toward the end.

But we both were following the same rules, just as both Senator Sanders and I are following the same rules. And I'm three million votes ahead of him, and I have an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates. And I'm confident that, just as I did with Senator Obama, where I said, you know what, it was really close, much closer, much closer than it is between me and Senator Sanders right now.

CUOMO: Votes-wise?

CLINTON: I said -- yes, I said -- vote-wise and delegate-wise. I said -- in fact, it depends on how you evaluate it -- I had more popular votes, but I had fewer delegates. And the name of the game is how many delegates you have. Right?

So, when I came out and withdrew and endorsed Senator Obama, about 40 percent, according to polls, about 40 percent of my supporters said they would never support him. So I worked really hard to make the case, as I'm sure Senator Sanders will, that whatever differences we might have, they pale in comparison to the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.

Name an issue you care about, domestic or international, and clearly we are closer, Senator Sanders' supporters and mine, than either of us is with Donald Trump.

CUOMO: Why don't you reach out directly to Senator Sanders and do the work of reunification, of unification of the party, however you want to see it?

I ask this because Senator Sanders has said to me in the past and to many others, it is not my job to get my supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton. Clinton has to make the case to these supporters.

And given what you are seeing with this increase in hostility and antagonism towards the process within the primaries on the Democratic side, should you reach out to Bernie Sanders and say, let's start doing this the right way, let me start talking to the supporters, from your perspective?

Have you done that? Have you thought of doing that?

CLINTON: Well, I certainly -- I have said many times what I have just said to everyone, including his supporters. And I am absolutely committed to doing my part, more than my part.

But Senator Sanders has to do his part. That's why the lesson of 2008, which was a hard-fought primary, as you remember, is so pertinent here, because I did my part. But so did Senator Obama. He made it clear he welcomed people who had supported me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[15:10:08]

BALDWIN: So, Tapper, I want your reaction to that, just how, I mean, she went out of her way to talk about the unity when she and then Senator Obama were in Unity, New Hampshire. What do you make of that exchange?

TAPPER: Well, I wonder if she and Senator Sanders are talking at all. I mean, that's what that exchange is, because, look...

BALDWIN: Do you think they are, based upon that exchange?

TAPPER: No, I don't...

BALDWIN: No. TAPPER: ... based on that, because that seemed to be her conveying a

message to Bernie Sanders. And it was not necessarily a message of outreach to Sanders supporters. A little bit, there was, in terms of how they're more similar to one another than to Donald Trump, although one could argue that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are more similar on issues like trade and on, at least rhetorically, on corruption and big money in Washington.

But putting that aside, it wasn't a let's come together and unite and fight. It was a message of, this is what I did when I was in Bernie Sanders' shoes, and this is how we made it work, and the two of us are going to need to do this together.

But it wasn't -- it seemed to be very directed at Bernie Sanders. That's my interpretation.

BALDWIN: OK. Jake Tapper, we will look for you at the top of the hour. Lots and lots to go through today. We will see you on "THE LEAD." Thank you, my friend.

TAPPER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Thank you.

Chris Cuomo there asked much more of Secretary Clinton, specifically on how she would respond to personal attacks from Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: You know where Donald Trump is going. He has started and he has adopted the go-ugly-early mentality, heavily personal about you and your husband. Your response has been, I'm not going there.

CLINTON: Right.

CUOMO: I'm going to stay above it.

CLINTON: Right.

CUOMO: The risk is that that's what Jeb Bush said. That's what others said. And the stink wound up sticking to them. Are you concerned that by ignoring the attacks they become more powerful?

CLINTON: No, I'm not, because I think people can judge his campaign for what it is.

I'm going to run my campaign. I'm not so much running against him as I am running for the kind of future that I think America deserves to have and that I believe I'm the best candidate to deliver. So, that's why I talk a lot about what I will do economically, about what I will do on education, on health care, how we are going to bring the country together.

I have a lot of experience working across the aisle with Republicans. I did it as first lady, as senator, as secretary of state. I'm very confident that we're going to lay out my record of accomplishments, my ideas, my vision for the future.

He can say whatever he wants to say, but I think in every election people want to know, what are going to you do tomorrow? What's the future going to look like if I entrust you with this most solemn responsibility? And that's exactly the kind of campaign I am running and I intend to keep running.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Joining me now, Stephen Miller, senior adviser to Donald Trump, who is also a top aide to Senator Jeff Sessions, a Trump ally.

Stephen, nice to have you here.

STEPHEN MILLER, SENIOR TRUMP CAMPAIGN ADVISER: Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: Let's just begin with the top headline out of that interview, that Hillary Clinton says your guy is not qualified to be president. I want your response.

MILLER: Well, we obviously agree with Bernie Sanders that Hillary Clinton isn't qualified to be president.

But I have to say honestly I feel bad for Bernie Sanders supporters. And I will tell you why. Thanks to superdelegates, the Democratic Party is on the verge of nominating the most pro-war, pro-Wall Street lawmaker in the modern history of the Democratic Party. And that's amazing. Think about it.

You have a candidate in Hillary who is running on a pro-war platform about what she did in Libya, about what she is doing in Syria, about the toppling of the Egyptian regime, and the military of course took back control, who's running on a pro-Wall Street, pro-war agenda. That's not the right fit for the Democratic Party or the country.

BALDWIN: OK. Let's not just -- I don't want to argue Benghazi with you. There's a lot of pieces there.

Just back, though, on the question as to whether or not she thinks Donald Trump is qualified, can you directly respond to that?

MILLER: Well, like we said, Bernie Sanders is correct and Hillary Clinton is not qualified to be president.

BALDWIN: Do you think Hillary Clinton is qualified to be president?

MILLER: Of course not.

See, look at her judgment. Hillary Clinton went to war in Iraq. Hillary Clinton's decisions in Libya have unleashed an operating base for ISIS that will be a scourge of terrorism against the entire Western world. Hillary Clinton's platform is, I want to start wars in the Middle East and then import all the refugees into the United States and other countries without knowing who they are.

That's a recipe for disaster. BALDWIN: What about how she is criticizing Donald Trump on how he's

essentially praising a dictator, Kim Jong-un, and criticizing a longtime U.S. ally in the U.K.? How is that fair?

[15:15:03]

MILLER: Donald Trump's position on Britain is that we want a strong Britain. We want a Britain that stands up for British values, and, in that message, we will find a great partner in the British people and a great partner in whatever government leads the British people.

In the case of dealing with foreign dictators and strong men, Hillary Clinton's basically saying stay the course. She is saying, if you elect me, on every policy that hasn't worked, I'm going to keep doing that exact same thing, whether it's on Wall Street or whether it's on foreign policy.

Can anybody say that our North Korea policy is working?

BALDWIN: Why do you want to -- why does he want to sit down with a dictator? That's something that the U.S. just doesn't do.

MILLER: Like I said, anybody who looks at the Middle East and who looks at our Asian relationships and who looks at all of our foreign policy troubles and says, oh, the way we're doing it right now is perfect, well, I would just have to disagree with them.

The way we're doing it right now isn't working. Also, remember, he has talked about with China using economic leverage to get them to bring North Korea into line, but right now what we have in North Korea is an unmitigated disaster.

BALDWIN: What about...

MILLER: And Clinton's the reason -- by the way, Clinton's the reason why -- Bill Clinton is why North Korea's nuclear. Let's not forget that.

BALDWIN: What about the disaster today, the Egypt plane that went down in the Mediterranean Sea? Very quickly, before the U.S. even came out and said it's likely terror, Donald Trump tweeted that it looks like terrorism.

You know, Hillary Clinton in the interview painstakingly went out to point out that when she was involved in the Situation Room and had to make -- was part of the team that made the difficult decision to take down bin Laden, she wasn't quite sure that Donald Trump would have made the right decision.

When you look at the quick tweet, one could say that that is a whiplash response. What's to say he wouldn't have whiplash responses if in the White House?

MILLER: Well, Donald Trump is saying the same thing that also the intelligence experts are saying.

BALDWIN: But hours before, that's the point.

MILLER: So, I guess if you're saying that Donald Trump is prescient and saw something a few hours before other people saw it, that would be a compliment, just like he warned about bin Laden in 2000, just like he warned about Iraq, when the conventional wisdom in Washington was in favor of that intervention the way that Hillary was.

But I would also make the point. You want to talk about bin Laden. Clinton, Bill, had a chance to get bin Laden, and he didn't take it.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: But he's not guilty running for president. I'm talking about Hillary Clinton.

MILLER: But what did she say? She said that she would put Bill Clinton in charge of the economy. Right?

Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA, destroyed our middle class. Bill Clinton put China in the World Trade Organization, the worst strategic blunder anyone can remember. And let's also keep in mind Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and she was the top diplomat dealing with China.

What happened then? A trillion dollar in trade deficits with China, getting her Wall Street friends rich, while we lost our middle class. That's the Clinton legacy, offshoring and foreign wars.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: She says she's happy to attack back, counterpunch back on issues such as what Trump has said about NATO, about nukes around the world, again, about Kim Jong-un.

But on the personal attacks, we know Mr. Trump has already said she was an enabler of her husband's infidelities more than once. She says she won't attack back in that regard. How much more aggressive will your campaign be?

MILLER: Well, I think we're definitely going to be a lot more aggressive and you are going to see an increasing...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: On the personal attacks?

MILLER: On every kind of attack, because Hillary Clinton would be an extraordinarily dangerous person to put in the White House.

We can't afford to keep having these foreign wars in the Middle East. Hillary Clinton is a candidate of reckless war and foreign intervention. What we are going to do instead is focus on defeating terrorism. And if that means we have to work with countries in the Middle East that don't share our values, but do share our goal of eliminating terrorists, then that's what we're going to do.

That's a big difference. Instead of foreign interventions for democracy, working with our Arab partners to destroy terrorism and Hillary Clinton won't even say the words radical Islam, even as she's going to flood them into our communities, refugees whose backgrounds we don't know. That's not safe. It's not compassionate.

I can tell you this. You want to talk about the woman vote. One of the biggest issues facing moms all across this country is the quality of education. Our schools cannot afford to educate the world's refugees.

BALDWIN: OK, OK, OK.

I know that the Clinton camp would take issue with a number of things you have just thrown out. Stephen Miller, you're absolutely entitled to your opinion. Thank you so much from the Trump campaign.

MILLER: Thank you. Thanks.

BALDWIN: Wanted to make sure we had someone from team Trump responding to what Secretary Clinton said today.

Quick programming note. You can watch Chris Cuomo's exclusive full interview with Hillary Clinton. That is tonight at 9:00 Eastern only here on CNN.

We are back now with our breaking news coverage into EgyptAir Flight 804, which we can now tell you has crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. Search crews finding wreckage, life jackets and plastic floating near where this plane vanished.

[15:20:01]

The suspicion right now is that this plane was brought down by an act of terror. The jet vanishing the 66 people on board as it traveled from Paris to Cairo, radar contact lost just about two minutes after crossing from Greek airspace into Egyptian airspace

The Egyptian government the first to suggest terror is behind this crash.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIF FATHY, EGYPTIAN AVIATION MINISTER: If you analyze the situation properly, the possibility of having a different action or having a terror attack is higher than the possibility of having a technical...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Greece specifically saying the plane swerved before it plunged from 37,000 feet. That is the safest of cruising altitudes.

We're now getting word as well from U.S. officials who say the early theory is that a bomb took down this plane.

For more on that relations, let's go to Evan Perez, CNN's justice correspondent. And, Evan, on that, we also know that the U.S. is sharing its watch list. What are officials saying about the likelihood of terrorism here?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, that's the top theory right now. That's -- again, it's only a theory, simply because they're still -- we're still early in the process, early in this investigation.

The U.S. is hoping to get its representatives over there to help assist the Egyptian-led investigation, along with the French authorities, but again there's very little information to go on right now. They're not ruling out certainly any mechanical incident that could have brought this down, but just based on the circumstances of what we're looking here, we're looking at an aircraft that was flying at 37,000 feet.

As we have said repeatedly on our air, it's one of the safest times for an aircraft, a modern aircraft that has a lot of redundancies. Certainly, if something was going wrong, the pilots would have had time to radio for help or to say something was going wrong. If there was a hijacking attempt, there were three security officers on this aircraft, according to the Egyptian authorities.

Again, they would have had some time to be able to try to raise the alert that something was going wrong. None of that occurred, and again that's one reason why authorities are focusing on the possibility of terrorism and in particular perhaps a bombing incident that would have brought down this aircraft.

Now, there's a lot of focus on many parts of this. Where would that bomb have been placed? But the first initial suspicion has to lie with the ground, the people who had access on the ground in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. We know that this is an airport that has a very good reputation.

Certainly, U.S. carriers have a lot of security precautions there, but there have been some recent incidents that French authorities have talked about, including revoking security passes for a number of workers there because of their concern that they were affiliated with extremists or Islamists.

So, that's part of the picture here. There's also the concern about the rise of ISIS in Egypt, as well as the threat, the threat picture that's emerging in Western Europe. We have had a couple of terrorist attacks there in the last couple of months, so that's the picture that the U.S. authorities are all looking at.

They're still scrubbing the manifest, as you said. The names have been run against some of the watch lists that are available to authorities not only in Western Europe, but here in the United States. So far, no red flags have emerged, but that work is still ongoing. They're going to look through every single name.

They're also going to check every single person who had access to this airport in Paris and elsewhere before it took this flight from Paris to Cairo, Brooke.

BALDWIN: All right. Evan Perez, excellent information. Thank you so much. Thanks to our Justice Department there with CNN.

Let me bring in Paul Cruickshank, our CNN terrorism analyst who is live in Brussels, Belgium, for us.

And, Paul Cruickshank, you know, I heard you earlier making this point that terror groups, if, in fact, let's go with U.S. intelligence is saying, that this was likely terror, likely a bomb -- that terror groups are eager to recruit airport insiders like what happened last year with Sharm el-Sheikh. Correct?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Brooke, they certainly are very keen to do that, especially because state-of-the-art detection systems at airports in the developed world, places like France, are pretty good at detecting explosives and it's very, very difficult to beat them.

And so, one of the ways that terrorist groups are looking to beat them is by recruiting insiders. And ISIS especially has been trying to do this because it hasn't developed the same kind of technologies, innovative techniques that al Qaeda has.

And so you saw with that attack on the Russian Metrojet in October they recruited an insider in that case, and managed to insinuate a device, a very small device onto a plane. So, one of the things the investigation is going to look at, if indeed this was terrorism, is the possibility that insiders either at Charles de Gaulle Airport in France or elsewhere in the 24 hours before this plane arrived in Paris -- and it was in several parts of the Middle Eastern Africa, including Cairo, Tunis and Eritrea -- whether possibly somebody at one of those airports might have been able to put a device on board.

[15:25:05]

And when it comes to developing world, Brooke, the standards really have lagged behind those in the West in terms of state-of-the-art machines, in terms of training, in terms of protocols to protect against the insider threat.

And some of these devices can be very, very small. The device that took down the Metrojet over the Sinai Peninsula allegedly just the size of an Schweppes soft drink can, and so you could think that that might be something that you might able to hide on an aircraft and perhaps not all these sweeps might be able to find something if an airport insider was able to put it on board.

BALDWIN: All right. Paul Cruickshank, that's a lot of information. We are going to take it and run with it. Thank you so much.

I have more great voices to bring in. CNN aviation analyst Justin Green is with me on set in New York. Christine Dennison is a remote expedition specialist and she can talk to us about what is happening in the Mediterranean Sea right now with this search and recovery effort. And Mike Baker is here with us as well, former CIA operations officer, talking more on the terror angle.

Let's just begin, Justin, with you. I think just on the pilot, too, from an aviation perspective, when you hear this plane was just cruising along at 37,000 feet and at some point -- and maybe the timing and the geography is significant, as Athens wanted to check in with the pilots before it checked in with Cairo -- this all seem to happen right around that time.

There were twists, 90 degrees one way, 360 another. Does anything jump out when you hear all those details?

JUSTIN GREEN, AVIATION ATTORNEY: No, just that the airplane was out of control.

It's a pilot's worst nightmare. Obviously, at from when the airplane started those turns, the pilots were not controlling the airplane.

BALDWIN: No distress call, no kind of SOS. At one point, there was 90 seconds. Athens was trying to talk to the pilots. Nothing.

GREEN: Right.

And right now, everyone's kind of looking at the tea leaves. We're dealing with circumstantial evidence. The fact that there was not a radio call, the fact that the track was so abrupt and so sudden, and we're trying to figure out theories, and apparently the U.S. and Egypt have seized on this terrorist theory. I think it's probably too soon to...

BALDWIN: You do think?

GREEN: I think it's too soon to throw all that in.

I think -- I forget who said it. But the French said it. And you have got to keep everything on the table. You got to look at the pilots. You got to look at the possibility of terrorism. You got the look at the airplane. All of that has to be considered.

BALDWIN: Mike Baker, though, on the terror angle, hearing that the U.S. is saying it's likely, is it possible that the U.S. has some sort of technology that we don't know about for them to jump out and say, likely terrorism, likely a bomb?

MIKE BAKER, FORMER CIA COVERT OPERATIONS OFFICER: Well, they're saying likely, but they're anonymous people saying, you know, and then they're caveating it, right?

So the unsatisfying truth with all these incidents is you have to let the investigation play out. We have this desire to get immediate answers and that's not the way these things work. You have to -- there's a difference between speculation and investigation for a reason.

BALDWIN: Yes.

BAKER: You have to follow the protocols. So, everybody's doing everything. You are looking at mechanical, potential mechanical failure. You are looking at the security issues for potential terrorism. And those follow certain steps. There's really nothing new under the sun when it comes to what you have to do for this.

You're tearing apart all the passengers on there. You're looking at the passenger manifest and understanding exactly who was on the plane and any associations and past activity. You're looking at all the people who had access, third-party providers and others what had access to that plane in the previous stops to try to understand who that might be.

Are there problems? you're looking at communications and chatter. Was there anything out there in the world talking about this potential plane or a targeting of a plane in that region?

BALDWIN: I think it was just what happened with Sharm el-Sheikh last year and the bomb that was size of a soda can and the infiltration within the airport there. We know what happened with EgyptAir 99 leaving JFK here in New York heading to Cairo crashing off of Massachusetts.

Still now Egypt isn't fully saying it was the co-pilot, even though the evidence is sort of insurmountable.

Christine, I promise I'm coming to you, but just following up on my question to Mike, would the U.S. have any kind of technology that would be different for us to say, aha?

GREEN: This is probably better for Mike, but in Malaysia Airlines 17, they had some satellite imagery that convinced them that there was an explosion in flight, that the airplane was shot down in that case.

So, there may be something. But what they're saying is that, look, this is just speculation at this point. And they're saying, well, it's at cruise altitude. That is not a usually risky altitude. They don't have any problems with the airplane that they're aware of.

And all of that suggests that -- and you have this immediate event, this terrible, what seems to be an immediate event. And I think that's -- I would call it speculation at this point.

BALDWIN: Here's what we know.

The wreckage has been found. And I'm looking at you and I'm saying this is direct to Christiane Amanpour from the vice president of EgyptAir, who, by the way, happened to be a co-pilot once upon a time with the captain of this plane, and said he was nothing other than a total, consummate professional.

That said, what, Christine, is happening in the Mediterranean Sea right now with these teams in terms of forensics --