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U.S. Officials: Early Theory Bomb Took Down Jet; Egypt: Terror More Likely Than Technical Issue; EgyptAir: We Have Found The Plane's Wreckage. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired May 19, 2016 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: 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 and piecing it altogether?

CHRISTINE DENNISON, REMOTE EXPEDITION SPECIALIST: Well, you have everybody, you know, all hands on deck at the moment. And what they're looking for initially is this debris field or this debris, the floating debris that they've seen.

So what they are doing is visual. They are looking to find bodies, unfortunately, pieces of bodies, parts of the wreck, and parts of anything that looks like it would belong to a plane.

This is a very heavily trafficked area as well. So you have a large debris field that could be coming from something else. You have debris scattered throughout this area and on the ocean floor, as well.

BALDWIN: Would the pieces be floating? I'm thinking that just quickly and then we'll take a break, with the flight data recorder minding where that's located in the plane and whether or not -- this is parts are plastic, I know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's back in the tail.

BALDWIN: Back in the tail. So, would that be floating? I understand this part of the sea is very, very deep.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It could be, but most likely it would have sunk.

BALDWIN: OK, OK. We'll take a quick break. We have more and take you to the airport in Cairo. We have a correspondent there who is live. We continue our special breaking news coverage of the crash of this EgyptAir Flight 804. Back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:35:36]

BALDWIN: Welcome back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We're back with our special breaking news coverage here. A sad story really to report today and a mystery and potential terrorism as far as what's happened with this EgyptAir Flight 804 that has crashed in the Mediterranean Sea after taking off in Paris en route to Cairo.

Here's what we know right now. According to the EgyptAir vice president, they have found the wreckage. This is near one of the Greek islands there in the middle of the Mediterranean. This is now a search and recovery effort.

And according to folks our CNN teams are talking to, you know, looking through the passenger manifest and names and cross referencing those with any sort of terrorist watch list, nothing has come up abnormal on those.

Sixty six people including the crew on this flight and also significant from U.S. intelligence specifically saying and we don't know why, right, but they are saying that they do think it is likely terrorism. They do believe it's likely that a bomb was on board that plane.

Let me first go to our senior international correspondent, Arwa Damon, who is live now outside of the Cairo airport there in Egypt.

Arwa, question twofold. One, what is the latest that Egypt is saying as far as where the investigation stands and, two, I'm just thinking about these families, are they being notified right now?

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we really hope that they are being notified. Now they were in the building behind where we are standing right now for most of the day. And they've since been moved on to hotels where the media is not being facilitated access to them.

You know, throughout the day, when our other teams were here, they were telling us about how these families were coming through initially in shock. But holding on to some sort of hope that maybe this worst- case scenario was not what was going to actually end up materializing.

That maybe there was a slight chance that perhaps their loved ones could still be alive. That does not seem to be the case at this stage. And we do believe that, yes, the families are being updated on a fairly regular basis.

And as they were leaving from here to go on to those hotels, some of them coming out wanting to speak to the media, many of them breaking down as they were trying to do so.

And some of them are very angry at the fact that they said that they had been receiving enough information and that their questions aren't being answered. Of course, those are questions that many of us still have first and foremost being what happened and what went wrong?

Now, Egyptian authorities are saying that they believe that they have found what could be in the wording of the statement makes it seem as if some part of the wreckage may not have been found just yet, but what could be at least a portion of the wreckage of this plane.

It disappeared from radar shortly after crossing from Greek into Egyptian waters. Plummeting fairly quickly before completely disappearing off the radar.

Now, it's not U.S. officials who are leaning towards the scenario that this may have been terrorism. But Egyptian ones, as well, with the country's civil aviation minister saying that he at least believes when looking at all of the bits and pieces of information that are at hand that this was more likely to be an act of terrorism than any sort of technical failure -- Brooke.

CUOMO: Arwa Damon, we'll follow your reporting closely on the investigation and so importantly the families. Thank you so much. Live in Cairo.

Let me bring in some additional voices here on what's going on. With me now is Seth Kaplan, managing partner of "Airline Weekly," CNN aviation analyst, Mary Schiavo, and Fred Tecce, a licensed commercial pilot.

So Seth, let me just begin with you here and let's just talk a little bit about the history of EgyptAir because you're unique in the fact that from what I understand you trained some EgyptAir employees or you taught a number of courses. You know about the planes. Tell me about EgyptAir.

SETH KAPLAN, MANAGING PARTNER, "AIRLINE WEEKLY": Yes, I know the airline quite well. Let's be clear, Brooke, I'm more on the commercial size, but in those courses where people like pilots, I know a few of them, who were there to learn more about aviation management.

So yes, I've been through this training center there and you know, within their region, they're very well regarded. This is an airline that on one hand, you know, looks up to some others around the world.

[15:40:00]Lufthansa sort of very involved in bringing them into the western world, so to speak. They are in the alliance with Lufthansa, with United Airlines, a member of the star alliance.

But within the Middle East, they're an airline that helps train others. And yes, I mean, certainly being on the ground there, you know, you get every impression that this is a professional airline. Meeting the pilots, people you would feel very comfortable flying on an airline commanded by them.

BALDWIN: All right, so that's on the airlines. Mary Schiavo, with you and your investigative hat sort of I'm wondering as we have talked a bit about, you know, concerns over some personnel, specifically at Charles de Gaulle and we know that thousands of lockers had been looked into.

I believe also at the other airports and a number of people were let go from their jobs because of security concerns. That said, who would have had access, if we go with the potential bomb theory as the plane was, you know, getting scrubbed before taking off for Cairo, who would have access to that plane other than, you know, the pilots, the crew?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, and anyone working at the airport. Now, everybody's talking about the enhanced security measures and there are a lot of different ones. I think it is important to go back and talk about where they came from.

Because remember back in July of 2014, enhanced security measures were put in place for planes bound for the U.S. at the U.S. demand out of Paris because the U.S. intelligence had indicated that AQAP, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, had developed explosives that were very difficult to detect going through security.

So the enhanced measures where you check the plane, the bathrooms, the cargo holds, literally seal off all the various bins and cupboards on the plane, those don't apply to all planes across the board.

So here with this plane originating outside of terrorist and outside of Europe, it would have received this overnight check. They would have checked the bins, the trash bins and the carts on the plane, et cetera.

But then once the plane is making its routes during the day, a walk around but anyone loading the plane at the various airports, anyone performing catering or cleaning, there are literally hundreds of persons that would have touched that plane during the day.

So, you know, and a plane is, you know, basically a ticking time bomb. Anything put on that plane that's not been taken off flies with it to the various airports. So some of the enhanced security starting in 2014 was specifically aimed at planes for the U.S. This plane might not have gotten the enhanced security.

KAPLAN: Brooke, by the way, you mentioned Flight 990, obviously, one of the worst incidents in the history of that airline.

BALDWIN: Yes.

KAPLAN: My mind goes to an incident that I think everybody remembers about a decade before that, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103. Don't forget that was one where, yes, it took off from London Heathrow, the bomb by all appearances placed aboard in Malta.

The aircraft made a stop in Frankfurt before going to Heathrow and then obviously we all know what happened over Lockerbie, Scotland. There is precedent for that.

And really when you think of developed world airports, if you will, a bomb going off aboard an aircraft leaving, if that's what happened here, this would be the first major incident of that since then. A plane leaving a place like Paris in that case and left London, of course.

BALDWIN: No. I'm glad you bring that up. I had asked Mary last hour because it's also important to point out 24 hours prior, you know, this plane was both in Africa and also in Tunisia.

KAPLAN: Yes.

BALDWIN: As others have pointed out as well, it only takes a couple of ounces of an explosive to have some sort catastrophic destruction in its wake. KAPLAN: And ICAO by the way, an agency of the United Nations had put Eric Tria (ph) last year on sort of a red flag list of countries along with some others where they had some concerns.

SCHIAVO: I have to mention --

BALDWIN: Go ahead, Mary.

SCHIAVO: I have to mention one other thing. Strange coincidence, remember the shoe bomber, he was coming out of Paris headed to Miami. Paris authorities questioned him. He didn't make the flight that day. He was allowed to rebook for the next day, but the shoe bomber had an accomplice.

People don't talk about the accomplice. He was from Tunisia. Shoe bombers and super max in the United States. The Tunisian co- conspirator went to a prison for 13 years.

So we have the Tunisian-Paris connection in other -- not saying it's anything like that, but in other attacks or attempted attacks in the past. We had these two locations also implicated. By the way, the shoe bomber traveled from Brussels to board the plane.

BALDWIN: Fred, to you, just in terms of the timing, do you find any of it curious or it could be a total coincidence that this is right around when this plane is leaving Greek air space entering Egyptian air space when it just goes off the radar.

[15:45:07]FRED TECCE, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Well, a few things jump out at me. You know, a lot of people say that you want to put a bomb to go off as the aircraft is getting to cruising altitude because it's got the most amount of fuel.

But a lot of times terrorism and terrorists want to make a different a statement and they may have wanted to make this statement that they wanted this airplane to explode as it got closer to Egypt.

So it's very, very difficult to tell, you know, the timing of matters and these things for all the sophistication they aren't as accurate as everyone likes to think they are on a lot of occasions.

You know, and I think -- clearly I think the bomb if it was a bomb in the back of the airplane, I mean, that would account for the kind of vicious rolls, which you cannot do with an airbus. You know, if you're the pilot of an airbus --

BALDWIN: Let me stop you on that point. So we know at some point that this plane apparently, you know, sort of jerked left 90 degrees, jerked right about 360 degrees and ultimately was gone. So those kind of maneuvers you are saying, this leads you to perhaps hypothesize that a bomb could be in the back because why?

TECCE: Well, it's a sophisticated guess. All right? We don't know and look, we know where the wreckage is. They'll find the black boxes, the wreckage and the pieces that will answer all those questions. But in an airbus, the airbus has certain modes. It's what they call a fly by wire airplane. In the old airplanes and a lot of airplanes that I fly, when you pull on the stick or turn it cables, pulleys electronics move the devices.

In the airbus, when the pilot moves that joystick to his left, all that does is send a signal to the computer to tell the airplane what to do.

And if you're a pilot in an airbus and if you at cruise altitude and speeds, and you throw that stick hard to the left, the airplane will not go hard to the left. It will only turn as quickly as it thinks is safely possible.

And again, if you go back to the right. So these maneuvers if we know, if they're correct, remember this radar facility was 400 miles from this airplane.

So until we find the flight data recorder, we are not really going to know what the airplane did, but if these are accurate they're not consistent with the way an airbus can be flown at cruise.

BALDWIN: OK. Let's hope for the families' stakes they find that and some wreckage, perhaps not all, but the pieces, the tail where you have all that information, lying in that -- those data recorders hopefully they find that soon.

Mary and Fred and Seth, thank you so much. We're going to take a quick break. Special live coverage, thank you, continues after this including we are going to take you to Paris to Charles de Gaulle Airport where this flight originated before the crash.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:52:09]

BALDWIN: Back to our special breaking coverage here of EgyptAir Flight 804. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with us today here. I want to take you straight to Paris to Atika Shubert who is standing inside Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport where this flight originated some 17 hours ago.

Atika, tell me, how is security in the wake of this and also tell me about security for just airport personnel.

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. I mean, it's at the highest level of alert now, but it has been now for several months. We've seen several armed guards going through the airport periodically checking passengers' baggages, spot checks.

And so it is some of the tightest security you can find in any airport across Europe. Having said that, though, no airport is 100 percent water tight. What Charles de Gaulle does to take extra security measures is that anybody who needs to access those secured areas, like personnel, gets screened by police, they get screened again periodically every few months, their lockers are searched as well. You know, the same kinds of precautions that are taken with passengers, making sure that they have no liquids, their laptops are screened, that all happens for personnel entering secured areas as well.

They took extra steps in December by actually removing some 70 employees from their positions because they feared they may have links to radical Islamist networks.

So there's been a crackdown on security here for some time, but investigators are going over those steps to see if there are any weak links in the security chain here.

BALDWIN: All right, Atika Shubert, thank you so much, in Paris. Let me bring back our other panel, CNN aviation analyst, Justin Green, Christine Dennison, remote expedition specialist, and Mike Baker, former CIA operations officer.

You know, we were chatting in commercial break. Christine, this is directed at you where you are rightly pointing out, yes, the vice president of EgyptAir has come out with Christiane Amanpour and said we have found the wreckage.

But your point is, this is the Mediterranean Sea, there is a lot brewing in this part of the world in the waters. You're not 100 percent convinced this is in fact this plane?

DENNISON: Well, I'm not. I don't think anybody should be at this point until we have physical evidence that they have identified and they have to be really careful and very sensitive to what they are identifying and putting forth because you have families that are waiting to find out if this is wreckage.

So they are holding on to every word. And if you have information that you don't want to put forth, that's fine. But to put out misinformation that isn't 100 percent verified, you're going to have to spend a lot of time backtracking and explaining, which is completely unfair to the families, to the investigation and we went through this with MH370 for weeks.

CUOMO: You mentioned the families, we were just handed this piece of paper. Let me just read this on the families. A group of families have arrived in Cairo from Paris.

[15:55:06]The vice chairman of EgyptAir is in Cairo receiving the relatives who left Paris Thursday afternoon on an EgyptAir flight from the Cairo International Airport.

This man tells CNN he will accompany the devastated families of the victims to their hotels. Just keeping them in our thoughts as we are having these discussions.

Mike Baker, to you, you're listening to all of this. You know, what are you thinking, we're so early in this process?

MIKE BAKER, FORMER CIA COVERT OPERATIONS OFFICER: Yes, we are. I mean, I look at it strictly from an operational point of view. Seth Kaplan earlier, he referenced Lockerbie. I know the Lockerbie operation and investigation pretty.

And it was an ungodly amount of work that it took to identify the explosive device and how it made its way on board that plane. That took forever, it seems. So anybody who is out there hoping for a quick resolution -- and the vectors of attack have increased since then. You know, the opportunities --

BALDWIN: The technological arms race among these different terrorists --

BAKER: I look at this and it's tragic, but what I say is always the same thing. Look, there's a difference. Speculation investigation, you've got to let this thing ride out. Unfortunately, we are dealing with yet again the host country, it was Malaysia before and now Egypt, not known for transparency. Not known for necessarily being, you know, above, where there information delivery on this (inaudible) out. So --

BALDWIN: But Egypt came out quickly, though, and said they also in addition to U.S. intelligence do believe it's likely terror, which wouldn't be a difference than what we saw say in '99.

BAKER: It would be. They tend to have been reluctant to go that route and for a lot of reasons. National pride, the massive hit that their tourism industry has taken.

BALDWIN: Yes.

BAKER: And look, they are on their backs. This is a very difficult time for them right now. So could it be terrorism? Of course, it could be. Everybody is investigating it, but you have to look at everything. You can't take anything off the table at this point. You've got to devote all of your resources to all the possible scenarios.

BALDWIN: What about from everything I've read, you know, ISIS to al Qaeda, no one has jumped to claim responsibility. We're in the age of 2016 on Twitter where people are in charge of social media for these terrorist organizations. Does that then cause you pause that perhaps it could have been something else?

BAKER: It's a great question. Again, the unsatisfying answer is that there is no hard and fast rule for how they accept or claim responsibility for one of these attacks. Sometimes there's a delay, sometimes it's immediate.

So you can't read too much into that. Just like we can't read too much into any of the statements coming into Egypt, can't read too much into any of this, the movement of the plane prior to --

BALDWIN: Question everything?

BAKER: Yes. Exactly. Everything is still on the table unfortunately at this point. BALDWIN: What are you thinking?

JUSTIN GREEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: There's an old show dragnet, the sergeant said just the facts, ma'am. I think right now we have a limited number of facts. We can speculate based on those limited number of facts, but it doesn't do anybody any good.

The investigation has to go through -- remember TWA 800, I don't know if you were involved if in that, but initially everyone thought it was a terrorist attack, a missile shoot-down. The NSTB, the FBI, I'm sure some of your colleagues did an amazing investigation.

They put the airplane back together and found what the cause was and that's what the families in this case deserve. They deserve competent and fully transparent investigation.

BALDWIN: Who takes the lead on this if there was no American on board?

GREEN: Egypt has it.

BALDWIN: Egypt has it?

GREEN: Under international law, Egypt has the investigation.

BALDWIN: And so in the final sort of 60 seconds that I have, let's end our show thinking of the families. You have, you know, folks -- I think it was 30 Egyptians, 15 French and a number from a number of other countries.

They are in their hotel rooms trying to understand what's happening. They don't have the facts. We don't have the facts. How do you handle them? What do you say?

GREEN: Well, I represent the families. I don't meet them this week, you know, or in this case probably never because it's not a U.S. nexus case, but usually it will be six months after the accident I'll meet them and there's nothing you can say.

I think the most important thing is whatever you do tell them -- and this is for the investigators and the airline, make sure you write. That's the most important thing. Don't be wrong. Don't mislead them.

BALDWIN: Be correct.

DENNISON: You really have to include them in every step, let them know what is coming, protect them. Make them feel that. That's very helpful to them at point they have nothing else.

BAKER: And they should take comfort also from the fact that even though it seems like they are not getting information on the ground from EgyptAir, concurrently, the same time, independently of that, there's a massive effort with the CIA, NSA, French authorities.

BALDWIN: They are on it.

BAKER: With other intel services trying to figure out what's happened.

BALDWIN: All right, Mike, Christine, and Justin, thank you so much for being with me. Let's send it to Washington. "THE LEAD" starts now.