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At This Hour

Interview with Josh Earnest; Prosecutor: Germanwings Plane Crash Deliberate Act; More Information on Co-Pilot that Crash into Alps. Aired 11:30-12p ET

Aired March 26, 2015 - 11:30   ET

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

JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: But foundational to this decision, in the mind of the president, was the commitment that every commander in chief makes, with every single member of our armed forces, which is that we will not leave them behind.

[11:30:06] And we will not leave a member of the United States armed forces in the hands of the enemy.

And the president seized an opportunity that the United States had, a near term opportunity, to secure the release of Sergeant Bergdahl, and that's what the president did. And that is something -- that is something the president stands by, because this is an enduring American value that predates this president. And this is a value that will remain in place for future commanders in chief as well.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Is there any reconsideration of that major statement that was made by the president in coming out with Bowe Bergdahl's parents to announce that swap in the Rose Garden? We know that comes - that's a huge statement for the president to make, the optics of that, the message that sends. In light of these charges, was that a mistake?

EARNEST: The message that was sent is this president, like previous presidents, fully subscribes without exception to the theory, to the principle, to the value that the commander in chief will not allow a member of the United States Armed Forces to be left behind.

And it was important, an important message, for this president to deliver to the American people, but also to people all around the world that the United States and their commander in chief stands squarely behind our men and women in uniform, and with the commitment that we have made to not leave them behind.

BOLDUAN: A lot happening today. A lot on your plate. Josh, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.

EARNEST: No problem, Kate. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Of course. Thanks so much.

John?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Kate, we have new details in the investigation of Germanwings 9525, the focus now on the copilot. Investigators believe he deliberately crashed that flight into the Alps, accused of locking out his fellow pilot and taking that plane down. We'll look at his final moments. New details next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Live pictures of German Chancellor Angela Merkel reacting to stunning news that came out today that the copilot of Germanwings flight 9525 deliberately crashing the plane into the Alps, killing 150 people.

This is German Chancellor Angela Merkel's first reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANGELA MERKEL, GERMAN CHANCELLOR (through translation): It's just so difficult to understand, German authorities report that we have to assume that this aircraft was deliberately activated for a crash. This is hard to comprehend for most people. Nobody can imagine this. We do not have all background information yet, and this is why it's so important that further investigations are made and every aspect is looked at. Yesterday, I, together with the French President Francois Hollande and with the Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy, we visited the site and thanked the rescue helpers and teams for their efforts. We promise that we, as head of governments, will try everything to support that the investigation is completely fully.

The relatives of the victims are suffering. I would like to repeat what I have said yesterday at the crash sit site. I would like to give my deep sympathy to all families of all countries who lost loved ones. The German authorities, the German government will do everything possible to support them. We owe this to all people who lost their life and their relatives who suffer to such an extent.

Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:35:17] BERMAN: That was German Chancellor Angela Merkel reacting for the first time to the stunning news this morning that it was the copilot of Germanwings flight 9525 who appeared to lock the captain out of the cockpit and deliberately fly that plane into the Alps killing 150 people. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it's difficult to understand why someone would deliberately do this. She said we have to assume, though, that is what happened based on the investigation that is on going. She says she as a head of state will continue to support that investigation to its fullest and she did note that the relatives right now of those on board are suffering. In fact, so many people around the world now suffering right along with them.

We have new details, new developments breaking every minute on this story. We'll have more right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:39:18] BERMAN: Stunning developments in the deadly crash of Germanwings flight 9525. According to the French prosecutor, the copilot deliberately crashed that plane with all 150 people on board. The prosecutor says 28-year-old German national, Andreas Lubitz, locked the captain out of the cockpit and activated the plane's descent. The captain could be heard on the cockpit voice recorder trying to smash the door down trying to get back in. Investigators believe the copilot was completely conscious during the descent of that plane because of the nature of his breathing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED, FRENCH PROSECUTOR: So far as I know, there's no camera within the cockpit to film the copilot. We don't get the feeling that there was any particular panic because the breathing remains steady. How can you tell from his breathing that he was conscious? Well, the breathing was not faltering. It was normal human -- normal breathing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: That was the French prosecutor talking right there giving those amazing details. He emphasized the copilot activated the descent of the plane and that can only be done deliberately. There's a lot of technicalities that are very important.

Let's try to break it down a little bit with safety analyst and former FAA inspector, David Soucie.

David, you said it took a long time to build this up, it's difficult to explain. Let's start first on the idea of a deliberate act to activate the descent that they're discussing. Tell us what that means. We're looking at the Airbus A320 cockpit.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: There's a little knob on this eyebrow panel. What it does is sets the rate of descent. If you want to go at 1,000 feet per minute down, you set it at 1,000. You can also say I want to go up 1,000 feet as well. That's what he's saying was intentionally moved. There are some models that you just spin it and it knows you're going that. But it's so you go of 1,000 foot increments or 100-foot increments. He's saying he reached up, turned that down to about 3500 feet per minute.

BOLDUAN: Sounds difficult to make that be an accident. No one is saying accident at that point.

SOUCIE: Look how far you are from this? You're not going to hit your head or catch a sleeve.

BOLDUAN: Is there any evidence that this wasn't deliberate, any of the details they've discussed, that this was not a deliberate act?

SOUCIE: There's a couple things and I'm really reaching. We need to rule it out. Number one, this is the control yoke right here. This is how you fly the airplane, with just a joy stick basically. The thought is here, if he passed out and pushed that forward as he fell forward, it would have gone forward, initiated that rate of descent and overrode this, so the airplane would have continued down. Even though it's set at zero, it would continue this trajectory. BOLDUAN: Again, they still say, everything they know is that it is

deliberate.

SOUCIE: That's right. Second thing real quick, if the pilot got up from here and his sleeve caught this going in this direction, it would have changed the rate of descent. But from what we can tell, he's already out of there.

BOLDUAN: He's out of the plane before that happens.

Now let's go to where the focus really is. Two things. This is the override panel outside the cockpit to get in. This is the lock panel to lock the door from the inside. We know now something happened here. We don't know if the override was attempted. That's one thing we don't know. We also don't know the lock button was pushed. But we have to assume something happened because that's what the airline said.

SOUCIE: Right.

BOLDUAN: Walk us through this, David. This is important. Why does the five minutes matter?

SOUCIE: What happens here if the copilot -- they're saying the copilot intentionally did the lock? No matter what the pilot did, there's no door handle, no way to get in. He notifies the guy, I've got to get in. If the copilot decides he doesn't want him in, he clicks that down and has five minutes of solitude, no one is going to come in at all. It's impossible.

BOLDUAN: After that, how does the 30 seconds play in?

SOUCIE: How that works, if he wants to get in, he hits the button -- this is for in case both pilots are incapacitated. If the flight attendant can't reach anybody in there, she puts in a special code in. That little code goes over to the front near the pilot. It gives a 30-second buzzer type warning. That goes on for 30 seconds. Pilots have a choice. If they're incapacitated, they're not going to respond to that.

BOLDUAN: Right.

SOUCIE: However, what they need to do in that 30 seconds is either lock that door.

BOLDUAN: Or do nothing.

SOUCIE: Or let them in or wait 30 seconds and do nothing and the door automatically opens.

BOLDUAN: With all this, there's a lot of detail that needs to come out as to how this played out. There's a lot of time that could have passed when they're trying to initiate the override, five minutes, 30 seconds, we're talking eight-plus minutes before the crash happened.

SOUCIE: Not a lot of time. BOLDUAN: David, thank you so much, as always.

John?

[11:49:51] BERMAN: Kate, the FBI has been called in to assist into the investigation of Andreas Lubitz, the copilot officials now say deliberately clashed Germanwings flight 9525, we have new information on just what investigators hope to get their hands on in the coming hours. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Our breaking news, the French government has now formally requested the FBI's help into the investigation of the crash of Germanwings flight 9525. Officials now say the copilot deliberately crashed the aircraft into the Alps. That copilot, 28-year-old Andreas Lubitz is now the focus of an intense investigation.

Want to bring in CNN justice reporter, Evan Perez. Also with us, former FBI assistant director and CNN law enforcement analyst, Tom Fuentes.

Evan, the FBI called in to help. What will they be doing?

EVAN FUENTES, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: It's not just the FBI, but also U.S. Intelligence agents going all over the databases to see if there's anything they can find that indicates anything that could explain perhaps what this pilot was thinking in the last couple weeks, in the last few days before taking this flight. The FBI is going to be assisting the French with anything they ask for. We know for a fact one of the things they'll try to do is talk to the Lufthansa training facility, talk to people there to see if they can provide any information about perhaps the mindset indicating anything wrong with this pilot. The co-pilot trained in Arizona. And that is something the FBI is going to do here at home.

Beyond the FBI, we know the NSA and other intelligence agencies have databases that capture a lot of foreign communications, which has been something of a controversy in Germany and other parts of Europe. Now those databases are going to come in handy because you're going to have analysts poring over them to see if there's any communication between this pilot and anyone on a terror list that the U.S. is worried about.

[11:50:37] BERMAN: Tom, Evan just laid out some of the possibilities there. You have been on the inside for investigations like this. Now you have the information from investigators that they believe the co- pilot deliberately crashed this plane. What is it you are doing right now? Tracing his last steps over the last few days? What's the key here?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: I'd like to add that the request for the FBI, that's just a formality. The FBI's already been working with the authorities. It has a large office in Paris, Berlin and Madrid already involved in doing backgrounds looking at the passenger list, crew list and pilots. Scrubbing all the data bases in the U.S. and also using Interpol. So this is not something that started today. The criminal investigation would have started the day the plane crashed because they can't wait until later onto determine, oh, yeah, it wasn't an accident, something bad happen.

BERMAN: Tom, in your experience, if a guy is going to do this, deliberately crash a plane, does he leave some kind of trail?

FUENTES: Sometimes. You know, sometimes they'll -- over the last couple of days preceding this, maybe stop grooming themselves as closely or maybe tell a sign that way that the end is near. But sometimes they don't. And as Miles O'Brien has said so many times, we don't have black boxes inside people's heads and that's the problem. You don't know until you go into social media accounts, e-mails, phone calls to see is there any sign that indicates he was having some type of problems, financial, marital, you name it, that may have indicated a desire to end it all.

BERMAN: That's what will be happening right now on the ground in Europe. And no doubt in the United States where this co-pilot came and trained for a bit.

Thanks so much.

Kate?

BOLDUAN: Thank you, John.

So who is the co-pilot we're looking at prosecutors say that deliberately crashed the flight. He's 28-year-old German national Andreas Lubitz. Police say Lubitz took advantage when the pilot left the cockpit. He then activated the plane's descent when he was alone at the controls. The CEO of Lufthansa says the co-pilot passed all flight examiners and was, quote" 100 percent fit to fly," also adding that he, the CEO, is speechless that this guys appears to have deliberately crashed the plane.

Richard Quest is joining us once again.

Richard, you know this industry so well. You've got the big question of why. Let's start with what exactly we can know and what will be knowable, if you will. Where does the investigation go down with all of this startling information that came out today?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: You're going to need to understand the actual tick tock of events from the moment the captain leaves the cockpit, you want to know what happened. We know from what the prosecutor said, he leaves the cockpit and Lubitz initiates the descent by turning the auto pilot from 38,000 to 100 feet. At that point, the captain obviously tries to go back into the cockpit. We do not know if he used the override procedure.

BERMAN: Is it because he may not have time to?

(CROSSTALK)

QUEST: We just don't know. The CEO of Lufthansa was specific, we don't know. Nor do we know if Lubitz double locked the door. So we don't know those facts. All we do know is the captain attempts to get back in the cockpit by knocking on the door and gets more Frantic.

BERMAN: Is that information that will come out in the flight data recorder? Because the cockpit voice recorder clearly offered a lot of information. Will information as explosive as that come out in the flight data recorder?

QUEST: It might have. It's highly likely that it is one of the parameters that will show whether the door was locked or unlocked at the time. For the moment, we can assume for whatever reason either the captain did or didn't use the override, he was unable to get into the cockpit and that is the crucial problem.

But none of this goes to the issue, the longer-term investigation will be should there have been a second person in the cockpit.

[11:55:20] BOLDUAN: Exactly right. Why not?

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: If other airlines are doing it, this is the thing that kind of blows my mind. This -- the safety mechanism with the door was put into place after 9/11.

QUEST: It was.

BOLDUAN: So this co-pilot used to his advantage the safety and security procedures put in place to prevent something like this to his advantage.

QUEST: Yes.

BOLDUAN: How could they not account for that?

QUEST: Because somebody has to fly the plane. You -- you cannot have -- you can try and have a completely foolproof mechanism, but at the end of the day, a man or a woman has to have their hands on the controls of that aircraft.

Now, yes, you can have two people in the cockpit. Then we get into, hit them over the head. If somebody flies the plane, and you're going to be examining how to make this sort of event less likely in the future.

BOLDUAN: You cannot make it 100 percent impossible for it to happen.

Richard, thank you so much.

And thank you all very much for joining us at this hour.

BERMAN: "Legal View" with Ashleigh Banfield starts right after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)