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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

EgyptAir Items Found at Sea; Paris Airport Adds Officers; Airport Security. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired May 20, 2016 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is LEGAL VIEW.

Daylight is fading now in eastern Mediterranean, but a long day of searching for the remains of EgyptAir Flight 804 apparently have yielded something. Egyptians saying they have found airplane debris, aircraft seats, suitcases and human body parts in those waters that are roughly 180 miles north of Alexandria. A military spokesperson saying, quote, "searching, sweeping, and retrieval are underway."

Separately, the European Space Agency says a satellite image appearing to show a one mile long oil slick in the general vicinity of the crash. An Airbus A320 bound for Cairo went down just inside of Egyptian airspace after an otherwise routine flight from Paris early yesterday morning.

We now have photographs of the pilot and first officer. Mohamed Shoukair had more than 6,000 hours in the cockpit. Co-pilot Mohamed Assem had almost 3,000 hours.

Our special team live coverage begins on both sides of the Mediterranean. CNN's Nic Robertson joining me live now from the Greek island of Crete, and Arwa Damon is at the airport in Cairo.

So, Nic, if you could update us as to the search. We're hearing that the Greek ships have been able to bring back, or at least find and get close to some of these pieces, the debris, and that they've also beefed up what they have in the water there.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: They have. More vessels in the water. The British have contributed a ship. The Greek air force here providing two C-130s. One of them behind me here. That's getting ready to go out on a mission. And another one of their C-130, the military cargo transport aircraft, is flying above that search and recovery area. At the moment, there's also a Greek surveillance aircraft in the air. The United States providing three Orion P-3 surveillance aircraft. Those are also flying in the air.

So what has been recovered? Seats have been recovered. Luggage of passengers have been recovered. Some parts of aircraft have been recovered, along with human body parts also being recovered. So what this means is these several different groupings, if you will, amounts of material that have been seen and that have been recovered, what is emerging here is that the focus is now tightening on the area where the plane disappeared from the radar just southeast of where it disappeared from the radar, which will help locate where the actual main part of the aircraft may be. These parts on the surface now helping identify. That's still far from done in recovering - in recovering all those parts. The Greek authorities here have two helicopters on standby from an island not far from here. They will be deployed as well to help in that recovery effort as it goes forward.

It is picking up pace. However, look at it right now, Ashleigh. It is raining. The clouds are rolling in. The winds been picking up. It was calm this morning. Visibility was good this morning. Right now, the seas are rougher and it's going to make the environment for recovery that much harder. But they've made a major step. They have a much better fix on the areas that they're looking at right now, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Our Nic Robertson reporting from us live. Thank you.

And, Arwa, if I can go to you. The families, this has been, obviously, an extraordinary time for them. I know there was a lot of frustration and a lot of complaints about the way they're being treated with regard to the flow of information. Is that improving? How are they being treated?

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ashleigh, they are being briefed on a fairly regular basis. The problem is that when you're grieving to such a degree, you want more than just briefings. You want answers. And the issue right now is that no one really knows how or why the flight went down. And that's proving to be extraordinarily difficult for some of these families. Our Ian Lee went to Friday prayers at one of the mosques here in Cairo that was also a memorial for the -

BANFIELD: Our apologies. Our signal to Arwa has just, unfortunately, been interrupted. I think we can get her back up.

Arwa, can you still hear me?

DAMON: Yes, I got you, Ashleigh.

As I was saying, some of the family members and relatives of the crew of the EgyptAir flight were feeling fairly angry and irritated at this notion that perhaps the crew or EgyptAir itself were somehow responsible for what had transpired and taken place. In other parts, at mosques and memorials that were being held there, some family members didn't go because they didn't want to pray for the dead. They are still hoping, clinging to that tiny little shred of hope that maybe, just maybe, their loved ones are somehow still alive, because going through such unspeakable pain, one does want to somehow cling to the hope that maybe this is all just some sort of a nightmare that they can wake up from. But, sadly, that's highly unlikely to be the case, Ashleigh.

[12:05:24] And, again, it is really all about the answers that are going to be coming out, if and when that wreckage is finally found. Those key questions out there, was this an act of terrorism or was this some sort of technical malfunction or something else?

BANFIELD: And those questions are still robust for a number of investigators in a number of countries.

Nic Robertson, Arwa Damon, thank you to you both.

Obviously, those are the questions on the table. Our CNN aviation analyst and former Boeing 777 captain, Les Abend, is with me live, as well as Christine Dennison, who's an underwater search expert and president of Mad Dog Expeditions, Larry Kobilinsky is a forensic scientist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He's also a CNN contributor.

Les, if I can start with you. And it pains me to ask a pilot because it's the last thing you want to think about, but when they're dealing with wreckage, from another pilot's workspace, there is a lot that they can learn from when they get that wreckage. They can learn if it was a bomb.

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, yes, the entire airplane structure is going to indicate that. Every aspect of what might be floating debris right now, in addition to the gruesome task of recovering human remains, may also say what was involved, if there was some sort of explosion, there might be ingestion of that kind of material into the lungs. That's not my area of expertise, of course.

But, you know, as far as the cockpit, yes, there's some aspects in the cockpit itself other than the black boxes that we always refer to that you can make a determination of what might happen. I was at the crash site of American Airlines 587 and there was aspects of this crash site where the rudder pedals were located and there was - there was a very controversial thing about those particular rudder pedals but there was something about the rudder pedals themselves that said something about this - you know, about what might have occurred.

BANFIELD: Well, Christine, to that end, actually retrieving the critical pieces of the plane, maybe the most critical among them are those two data records, the flight data recorder, the cockpit voice recorder, that could give us almost every clue. But this is not easy no matter what. You might say the Mediterranean, you might say there's lots of traffic, you might say they found it within 36 hours, but -

CHRISTINE DENNISON, UNDERWATER SEARCH EXPERT: But the conditions are still the conditions, which is they're dealing with depth and they're dealing still with the preliminary, as Les was saying, that the aircraft has yet to be found. They're looking on the surface for visuals. And the bodies are very important. The debris that they're finding, ascertaining if it is, in fact, all from this wreckage, or if it's other debris.

BANFIELD: And this is the current map, the actual ocean currents, that we're showing just to the right of us right now. That makes a big difference.

DENNISON: It does and the water temperature in this area is in the 60s, which, if there was a probability of there being some survivors, it is water temperature that you could sustain life for some time. But, unfortunately, it doesn't really seem that way at all at this point and - BANFIELD: And, Larry, Les just touched on the notion of finding - they have found some human remains. We don't know to what extent. We don't know how intact. But this is your area. As a forensic scientist, there is so much you can learn at a microscopic level and then there's more you can learn if you get intact bodies. Take me through that.

LAWRENCE KOBILINSKY, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it's a complex scene, first of all. We're dealing in three dimensions with the depth, the average depth, about 4,700 feet, but in some places we're talking three miles. So just retrieving the critical evidence is really going to be very important in understanding what brought this plane down. Was it mechanical? Was it terrorism?

I think once we have the evidence, we'll be able to learn exactly what the cause was. And the bodies, of course, are a critical piece of the puzzle. Clearly, there's going to be a great deal of trauma to the bodies. The force exerted upon impact hitting the water or perhaps the plane exploding in the air. And if there was an explosion inside the plane, a shock wave would have dismembered - could have dismembered bodies.

BANFIELD: In a different way than any other kind of trauma.

KOBILINSKY: In a different way. Indeed.

BANFIELD: And then - and Les mentioned the ingestion in the lungs as well. That will tell you something.

KOBILINSKY: A lot of this will tell us whether they were alive or not when they - when they hit the water. I think the key is getting this plane up and trying to figure out if there was an explosive, what was the nature of the explosive? These terrorists are using explosives that don't contain nitrogen and that's important because nitrogen is what we look for when we're looking for explosives. When you go through the various detection devices, they're looking for nitrogen based substances. TATA - TATP does not have nitrogen, and that's why terrorists like to use it. So there's a lot that we need to learn, but it's all in the evidence. We've got to retrieve as much of that plane as we can.

[12:10:28] BANFIELD: And this is effectively a massive crime scene I think it goes without saying. Thank you to all three of you, Les, Christine and Larry. I appreciate it.

Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport sends hundreds of flights directly to the United States every single day. The EgyptAir disaster prompting the airport to take an even harder look at their security protocols and, yes, even their own staff.

You can watch LEGAL VIEW at any time. You can go to cnn.com/go as well. Back in a moment.

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BANFIELD: Security is ramping up at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. The last stop of EgyptAir Flight 804 before it disappeared and crashed into the Mediterranean. Thirty additional intelligence officers are now set to be on the ground starting next month. And while officials are not saying why, airport security has been a pretty hot topic following this crash.

[12:15:14] Just to emphasize what a crucial point this is, 86,000 people who work at Charles de Gaulle Airport have what's called a red badge. If you have a red badge, you are allowed to access secure areas. Since January 2015 though, 85 of those employees have lost their security clearances. And the reason for that, alleged radicalization. All of this taking place at the second largest airport in Europe, eighth largest in the world.

CNN's senior international correspondent Jim Bittermann is with us now in Paris.

Jim, those are statistics I think maybe people would be nervous to hear. It would certainly lay out a lot more questions. And you had a chance to speak with the spokesman for the French interior ministry and you touched upon the topic there. Talk to me about what the response was.

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Ashleigh. It's something they're very sensitive about, obviously. This is a problem that's been going on for about ten years now, this idea that there might be radicalization at the airport. In fact, about ten years ago, a right wing member of parliament here wrote a book entitled "The Mosques of Roissey." Roissey is the name of the airport. Sort of the common, familiar name in French of the airport. And as a consequence it was shown light - light was shown on this problem, the idea that there might be radicals among the employees.

Over the years, they have had one security sweep after another. As you mentioned, last year they pulled 85 passes of the employees. That was after the terrorist attacks here. And they've increased the number of intelligence officers just recently. They're - they, I think, are realizing that they have to tighten security even more than it already has been tightened over the years.

We talked with the spokesman for the interior minister and he basically made that point that even though there's been nothing concluded about the crash of the EgyptAir flight, they still are going to go through the - sort of the motions as if the problem was related to the airport. So here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PIERRE-HENRI BRANDET, SPOKESMAN, FRENCH INTERIOR MINISTRY (through translator): Of course we must take a maximum amount of precautionary measures straight away without even waiting for the conclusions of the international investigation and without even being sure of what actually happened. We can still conduct other investigations and continue to reinforce security measures on our side. This is not only a necessity, but a principle of precautionary measures. This is not a judgment, nor an assumption. There was a failure, but it's a way to continue, as we always have done, to make sure our citizens are safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BITTERMANN: And, in fact, Ashleigh, basically they' got a number of major sporting events coming up here in the next three or four months that are going to draw millions of people. There's a great deal of concern that if the cause of the crash has not been determined, if there still is cloud hanging over the airport and its security, that, in fact, that could drive people away and prevent a lot of people from coming.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: All right, Jim Bittermann live for us in Paris on the investigation. Thank you for that.

This is not just an issue for Paris. Or for Europe, in fact. You actually might have been one of the 7 million people who traveled to and from the United States through Charles de Gaulle last year. And along with that figure, new security questions about U.S. airports from a person in the know. Former director of the CIA, James Woolsey, telling CNN why we are still vulnerable. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: The whole focus seems to have been from avoiding terrorist attacks on TSA, and let's add more TSA people standing around as we walk through the magnetic detectors. That strikes me as perhaps not front and center of the things one needs to do. The hard thing about many aspects of law enforcement and intelligence is that you simply have to get into people's backgrounds and understand why they might be the radical ones. And the process for doing that, people don't like. Sometimes it's done wrong and it would affect, you know, people's privacy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Privacy, a very big issue, and not just in America either.

I want to bring in to discuss this, CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank, who's in Brussels, CNN aviation analyst and Boeing 777 captain Les Abend, and joining us again, happy to have you on board here, David Soucie, CNN safety analyst.

If I can start with you, David, the biggest questions that have arisen, for Americans in particular, since watching this all develop is, what's the reaction from the TSA? There have been a lot of complaints against security in America, long lines, things that sneak through. The TSA head, in fact, just in the last hour, had this to say about security. Have a look.

[12:20:17] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER NEFFENGER, TSA ADMINISTRATOR: The EgyptAir disaster, we still don't know what happened there. We're following the investigation closely. Our hearts go out to the families and friends of the people who were lost. But, most importantly, it's a stark reminder that what we do is really important. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: I think that's critical, what we do is really important. Everybody agrees it's really important, but is it being done well? As compared to what's going on in Europe, how does the U.S. stack up?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, the U.S. stacks up poorly according to what we found in Europe right now, because in Europe right now what they're doing is they're screening employees in a different way. He talked much - Woolsey spoke a lot about what we do for background checks, and they do that, but there's another level to that, and that is that when you come into the airport, as an employee, you have your badge. You come in with a wheel dolly full of cans, for example. So you come through there, your badge, you go right through, you don't have to go through what we do as travelers. But that is the challenge because that can, remember, that's the can - the size of a can that took down an airplane just not too long ago.

BANFIELD: And they're not checking all that mini cargo.

SOUCIE: So that doesn't get checked. That's right. That's right. So those are the challenges. Those are the venerabilities that - what's important -

BANFIELD: That's -

SOUCIE: Go ahead.

BANFIELD: Sorry to say, that's terrifying -

SOUCIE: It absolutely is.

BANFIELD: That a trolley full of cans, which would look like soda for the galley, doesn't get checked.

SOUCIE: No, it does not. But what it does is that the person that - it's about trusting the person that does it. So it's really important too to mention that these security officers they're talking about, that's not just - their intelligence officers. They're not just security officers, they're intelligence, which means, they're looking for other vulnerabilities now. They're not just looking for what did we not do right with our current system, they're saying, how do we improve that system? That's what intelligence officers do. So it's much different level. Now they're really refining what it is they do with security.

BANFIELD: You know, it seems every time something like this happens, Les, we live in a new normal. The can was brand new, the can that took down - was it Metrojet over the Saini?

SOUCIE: Yes, Metrojet.

BANFIELD: And now we're seeing grieving families who gather and clearly need to be treated with kid gloves, but the reality is, while they're mourning, someone's investigating their background and maybe their husband's background or their daughter's background or their nephew's background who was on the flight because everybody is now a risk.

ABEND: Well, yes, but that's now part of the process, absolutely. And, you know, you can't - it's never going to be a perfect system, but it's not a system that is - is - I mean most of us are very safe. We're safer than we are getting out on the west side highway, I think you -

SOUCIE: Yes.

ABEND: Will agree with me on that. But there are some weak links in the system. I mean when you have crew members, at least that's what I'm familiar with, we - you know, we have our own portal that we can now go through certain airports that are set up to go through security. But I've been vetted. And so have the flight attendance. You know, we've gone through a whole new process that, you know, allows us to go through. But then again, you know, I have to admit, you know, if somebody decides to bring contraband through, it may very well happen, and we saw it with the JetBlue flight attendant.

BANFIELD: Paul, if I could ask you this, John Miller, he's a central figure in New York City, three critical large airports here surrounding New York City, here's the NYPD deputy commissioner of counterterror. I want you to listen to what he said this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN MILLER, NYPD DEPUTY COMMISSIONER FOR COUNTERTERRORISM: I think when you look at the odds of modern airplanes with experienced crews in good mechanical condition don't just fall from the sky.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: It's what everybody says and it's what everybody thinks. And then when you get into the nitty-gritty, you still have the story of Charles de Gaulle with 85,000 people or 86,000 people with red badges. And even if you take away 85 in the last year and a half, doesn't that still leave us extraordinarily vulnerable? And can't, I mean, I don't even know if they lost their jobs, they just lost their badges. Couldn't they radicalize the guy that picks up his Starbucks next to them if they're still working at the airport?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, Ashleigh, there was obvious concern about that radicalization at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Eighty-five - it's clearly a significant number. But there are, at the same time, it must be stressed, very rigorous security protocols in place at Charles de Gaulle Airport in terms of the staff that work there, in terms of their access to secure areas under European security regulations.

When they go into these secure areas in European airports, they, just like passengers, need to have their belongings checked. They need to go through security scanning. And so that provides an extra safeguard at many airports in Europe against this insider threat. It's been a real realization for quite a long time in Europe, really since 9/11, that that was a possible threat, so there have been measures that have been put into place to safeguard against that. [12:25:13] But you also have to look at this aircraft and where it was

in the 24 hours before it was in Paris, and it was in several places in Africa and the Middle East. And these are areas in the developing world which have lagged behind in terms of airport security, in terms of deployment of the latest state-of-the-art technology scanning machine, in terms of training of airport security staff, in terms of protocols to protect against the insider threat. And it's no accident the two of the last bombs that have gone on to planes have been in Egypt, Sharm el-Sheikh, where ISIS managed to recruit an insider there, and also at the airport in Mogadishu in February when al Qaeda's affiliate, al Shabaab, managed to recruit two airport inside there who helped get a bomb on a plane back in February.

So you really have to look at that 24 hours before. And it's not just airport insiders that you've got to look at, but all the passengers that were taking that aircraft in the 24 hours before, because if you go all the way back to 1994, this big al Qaeda linked plot to hit American airliners over the Pacific, the al Qaeda operative, linked operative in that case, Ramsey Youssef, was flying between the Philippines and Japan. And on the first leg of that trip, he left a bomb and explosive device in the life jacket pouch underneath the chair, which then exploded on the second leg once he'd gotten off, killing a Japanese businessman. So we've seen plots before where the passengers have managed to leave an aircraft and leave a bomb there.

BANFIELD: And you're talking about Tunisia, Eritrea, France and Egypt, passengers from all four of those places that were on board say prior to the, you know, the people who died in this - in this crash.

Paul Cruickshank, thank you for that. Les Abend and David Soucie, as well, I appreciate your insight as well.

And since we're on the topic of passengers, the families of those 66 people who were on board are learning the absolute worst news you could ever hear today, that belongings and remains are starting to turn up and be recovered. Yes, it brings an end to a mystery that is not the end anyone wants. My next guest says that she truly knows exactly what they're going through. She was one of them. She's going to join me next.

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