Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Harrison Ford Recovering After Plane Crash; NTSB Investigates Near-Disaster in New York; Witnesses Describe Boston Marathon Bombing Carnage; Iran Helps Iraq Gain Ground in Tikrit; Jobless Rate Hit Seven-Year Low

Aired March 06, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, does this teenage boy look like a future terrorist to you? New video unmasking Jihadi John years before he became the poster boy for ISIS.

And Iran might be battling the U.S. over nukes but is the country quickly becoming America's best friend in the fight against ISIS?

Also, scammers targeting Apple Pay. Now they're using stolen credit cards to buy loot.

Let's talk. Live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. We start this hour with the dramatic crash involving one of the country's most iconic stars.

Harrison Ford now recovering at a hospital after the vintage World War II era plane he was flying crashed on to a Southern California golf course. According to audio from inside that plane, the engine died just moments after taking off.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRISON FORD, ACTOR: 53178 engine failure. Request immediate return.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ryan, 178 run A21 clear to land.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Ford's plane did not make it back to that runway. Instead it clipped a tree on a nearby golf course and as I said, crashed on to the course. The fire department says Ford is lucky.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ASST. CHIEF PATRICK BUTLER, ASSISTANT CHIEF POLICE, LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPARTMENT: I will tell you my personal experience 25 years in the department, I've been on several plane crashes, single engine, small personal aircraft, and normally the outcomes are fatalities so, yes, we are very thankful that the passenger from what appear right now had moderate injuries.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Yes, he's going to be OK. His son tweeting that out last night.

But let's talk more about this crash. I'm joined by CNN aviation correspondent and pilot Miles O'Brien.

Welcome.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. How are you?

COSTELLO: Good to have you here. So Harrison Ford was flying this vintage World War II era plane which meant the engine was probably pretty old?

O'BRIEN: Well, there's old and then there's old. I mean, something like this is meticulously restored and maintained. And somebody like Harrison Ford has the means to do that. It's to say it's an old plane is not entirely correct. If you were to look at that motor, which failed before yesterday, you would say this is brand new.

COSTELLO: So he should have been flying this plane. The plane was safe to fly because he was having engine trouble, right, before he crashed.

O'BRIEN: Yes. I mean, you know, engines do quit. And when you only have one, you have to be pretty smart and think about what you're going to do about it quickly. Single engine planes, this is just -- whether it's a 1942 or a 2002 airplane, when you have one engine and it quits, you're going to go down.

COSTELLO: OK. So he managed to crash land this plane and he managed to survive because he was a very experienced pilot. He takes piloting seriously. You know, I'm not saying that most pilots don't when they fly these small planes but there are 2,000 small plane crashes every single year in the United States. And compare that to commercial air flight when there are --

O'BRIEN: Yes.

COSTELLO: I mean, just a couple.

O'BRIEN: Well, it's you know, we're talking about professional pilots, two-person crews, multiple engines, many layers of redundancy. Airliner flying and flying single engine airplanes two entirely different things. The level of safety for airliner plane far exceeds being on the highway. Flying a little plane like this is probably like riding a motorcycle.

COSTELLO: But isn't there a problem there? Because if you said there were 2,000 commercial airline crashes every year, people would be really disturbed by that.

O'BRIEN: Yes. The difference is people like Harrison Ford and myself are not taking paying passengers. So the bar should be set a little higher for airliner, right? You're buying a ticket, you expect a level of safety. When you're getting in a 1941 trainer, a Ryan PT-22 I think your expectation for risk is a little bit different.

O'BRIEN: But other people do die in these plane crashes. I mean, what, a week ago a small plane crashed in Virginia killing three people. Last month a pilot taking a selfie crashed in Colorado. Two people died. In January, a small plane crashed in Kentucky. Four people died. A 7-year-old girl managed somehow to survive.

Doesn't that illustrate that there's something awry?

O'BRIEN: It's not the safest thing in the world but It's not the most risky either. Neither is the pretty highway. We could go to statistics on that as well. I mean what's the solution? The solution is to make pilots be more aware. To make sure training is good. To make sure they maintain their aircraft properly. But with that many planes, that many pilots, this is going to happen. Accidents do happen. What's good --

COSTELLO: But is anyone overseeing their training?

O'BRIEN: Sure. The FAA is deeply involved in this. And believe me, when you're a pilot, you get to know the FAA very well. Probably a little better than you'd like. So it's something that -- accidents happen and I think that we accept this risk as part of things we like to do. Part of transportation, part of the pure joy of it.

COSTELLO: All right. Miles O'Brien, I knew you would disagree with me.

(LAUGHTER)

Because we talked about this before.

O'BRIEN: Yes.

COSTELLO: Miles O'Brien, thanks so much.

Also this note. Miles shares his own journey with CNN next Tuesday in a special report by Dr. Sanjay Gupta. "Miles O'Brien: A Life Lost and Found" airs Tuesday night 9:00 p.m. Eastern.

In New York, the NTSB is investigating a near disaster at LaGuardia Airport. A Delta flight with 127 passengers onboard skidded off a snowy runway nearly sliding into the icy water. The port authority is standing by its decision to land the plane, though.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROXANNE JOFFE, PASSENGER OF DELTA 1086: I do fault Delta and I do fault the port authority because the plane should never have left in the first place. And I don't know who made that decision. But whoever did made the wrong decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Let's talk more about that. Miguel Marquez is at LaGuardia this morning. Good morning.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning there, Carol. When you see that runway in the light of day and where that plane ended up, it is amazing that this wasn't much worse. There is about 600 feet of fencing along that runway that is completely ripped away. That plane, that wing cracking, opening up, and putting gas down on the runway, about 1,000 gallons in all leaked where you can see the runway now very clearly and the crews have been out there cleaning it up.

The crash site now is completely clean and they're starting to work on the runway so it looks like that will get opened soon. But those harrowing few seconds when that plane hit the ground and lost complete control, here's how one passenger described it to Michaela Pereira on our show this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JARED FAELLACI, PASSENGER ON DELTA 1086: And so literally I braced the seat in front of me. People are doing all sorts of things. Some people were crying. Some were obviously frantic. Some people were praying. Some people were obviously shouting. But I grabbed the seat in front of me. I just bowed my head and prayed and just asked for God's protection in that moment.

And literally when it came to a screeching halt and we felt the pressure of the wing clipping the fence?

MICHAEL PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR, NEW DAY: Yes. Yes.

FAELLACI: Because it dragged the fence for about 200 yards or so and obviously the plane kind of moved where it was actually facing out into the water and then amazingly enough, which now I see in photos, the pilot walked out of the cockpit after we -- after about 20 seconds no one moved, no one said a thing. Everyone just sat in their seats because I think we were just breathing. Are we OK? Are we on water?

PEREIRA: Waiting to see what would happen, too?

FAELLACI: Exactly.

PEREIRA: Right.

FAELLACI: Well, actually, I was telling Wolf yesterday, we felt like there was a weight imbalance. Like if we stand up, is this -- are we half over the water?

PEREIRA: Because you did not know what you were on and where you were.

FAELLACI: We did not know -- exactly. And so literally we thought maybe if we stand up it's going to be problematic we just -- everyone just stood -- sat in their seats. Didn't do anything. The pilot came out of the cockpit. The flight attendant stood up and they reassured and calmed everyone and then they obviously gave the process of deplaning. (END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUEZ: This could have been such a major disaster if there was a spark setting off that fuel as that plane skidded down the runway out of control.

Everybody got out fine through that right door. Only minor injuries, which was good news. And now it turns to what exactly were the conditions? Was it wind? Was it mechanical failure? Was it pilot error or was that runway just not safe to land on?

Look, even in Boston, in the worst of snowstorms, they have kept that -- those runways open to some degree. They're very accustomed to snow here. We had reports from pilots throughout the day that sometimes it was poor, sometimes it was OK. Just what they came down on at that particular moment, though, the NTSB will want to know -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Miguel Marquez reporting live from LaGuardia.

I want to bring back in Miles O'Brien. So should the plane have landed?

O'BRIEN: Well, it was -- it's difficult conditions. LaGuardia on a good day 7,000 feet of runway. I call it the stationary aircraft carrier. Anybody who's landed there knows they land hard and they stop abruptly. In this case, low visibility, low ceiling, and what we call contaminated runway meaning slick. Is it possible that when they deploy the thruster versers (ph), which are those, you know, kind of clam shell devices that go over the engine in the back to reverse the thrust and aide in the braking.

Could that have exacerbated, made them fishtail more? There's an NTSB safety recommendation from years ago that if you deploy them slightly asymmetrically on a slick runway, you're going to end up on the side of the runway. So we don't know exactly what happened. Was there a mechanical component to this or was it just a decision to land on runway that was not a good decision. We don't know yet.

COSTELLO: All right. Miles O'Brien, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Thanks again.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: A heartbroken father describes the gut-wrenching moment he realized his 8-year-old son was going to die after an explosion at the Boston marathon finish line. The emotional testimony came Thursday as victims and witnesses took the stand at Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial. Descriptions of carnage and chaos so powerful some jurors fought back tears.

CNN's Deborah Feyerick is in Boston this morning.

Good morning, Deborah. DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning there,

Carol. And it's hard to listen to but it's equally hard to stop listening because it is so powerful and so riveting about what these people experienced.

And we heard the father, Bill Richard, say that he chose to save the life of his daughter knowing that the life of his young son was slipping away and that at the end of the day when everybody was in hospitals, he made the decision to go home and shower, to get the smell of gunpowder and sulfur, and burned hair and flesh off of his body. He said in a nutshell, it was vile.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK (voice-over): New photos released on day two of the Tsarnaev trial reveal the unsuspecting crowd outside the Forum restaurant before police say Dzhokhar Tsarnaev places the second bomb, and then moments later, complete carnage. Smells of sulfur and burning hair witnesses say filled the air.

The same spot is where Bill Richard's family was all together for the last time. His 6-year-old daughter, Jane, loses her leg in the explosion and his 8-year-old son, Martin, lost his life.

On the stand Thursday, Richard said it was difficult talking about his son recalling, "I saw a little boy who had his body severely damaged. I just knew from what I saw that there was no chance."

Richard also testified he lost some hearing due to the blast but says, "I can still hear the beautiful voices of my family."

Football coach Alan Hern described how he found his badly injured 11- year-old son outside the Forum. "He said it really hurts, dad. It really hurt. On his outer left thigh there was a crater about as big as my hand. It was mangled flesh full of blood."

Twenty-nine-year-old Crystal Campbell couldn't be saved. Officer Frank Chiola fought for her life. "As I applied chest compressions," he said. "Smoke was coming out of her mouth."

This is Jeff Bauman, whose rescue was captured in this iconic photo, recalled seeing Tsarnaev moments before the explosion. "Everyone else was clapping," he said. "I looked at him and he stared down at me, and I just thought it was odd."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK: And Jeff Bauman was the man who actually helped the FBI identify Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the early days because the bomber had bumped up against him and he thought it was strange that he was alone in the crowd and looked like he wasn't having any fun. He turned back to the race. And then when he looked to see whether the man was there, his bag was but he was gone. He knew at that moment that something wrong was about to happen but he said it was the marathon.

Everybody was having a good time. And he didn't think about it anymore until that blast went off. But he was able from his hospital bed to identify Tamerlan and that was a big step and gave the FBI a lot of hope that this crime could be solved -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Deborah Feyerick reporting live from Boston this morning.

Iran may be America's best friend when it comes to fighting ISIS in Iraq. The Obama administration would deny that. But it's clear Iranians are helping Iraqi troops retake Tikrit. Odd, right? How is it possible Iran is in Iraq along with American advisers fighting a common enemy?

Christiane Amanpour talked with Iran's foreign minister.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAVAD ZARIF, IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: This is a global threat. You see the implications in Europe, you see the fact that they are recruiting from Europe. So this is a global problem. It requires global cooperation and global work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Again, the U.S. denies it is coordinating military operations with Iran. What is clear, Iraqi troops need help. ISIS just bulldozed another ancient city crushing precious artifacts.

Barbara Starr live at the Pentagon this morning with more on Iran's part in this crisis.

Good morning, Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Well, look, let's be clear. Iran has been deeply involved in Iraq for many years trying to influence the various governments that have been in power there. So that is nothing new. They have their own motives for doing that. They are doing a good deal of the heavy lifting and the fight against ISIS.

That is a very sensitive matter and our own Ben Wedeman in Iraq on the ground talked to some Iraqi legislators about all of this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Today the Iranian support is much larger than the American support, which is limited, he says. Praise for Iran, mixed with criticism for the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition.

"Unfortunately," says Spokesman Abbas Zaidi, "we've seen no effort by the international coalition here and that really doesn't reflect well on them.

The Iraqi government has said it didn't request assistance from the coalition for the Tikrit operation. If this operation is successful, these fighters and Iran will take the credit. (END VIDEOTAPE)

STARR: Now if it's successful on the ground in Tikrit, the U.S. view is that's a good thing. It pushes ISIS out. But again, the deeper, more fundamental U.S. security concerns are Iran extending its influence even deeper into Iraq and how much the Iraqi government will be able to maintain its independence from Tehran over the long-term -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Barbara Starr reporting live from the Pentagon. Thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Apple unveiled its payment system with the promise of speed and convenience, unfortunately hackers are proving those claims all too true.

Chief business correspondent Christine Romans is here.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. They are breaching all of those -- all of those stolen credit cards from Home Depot and Target. Remember those? For sale on the black market. Now they're being used to buy stuff at Apple with Apple Pay.

I've got that story right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Winter's chill may still be in the air but guess what? The job market is heating up. You heard right. The economy added 295,000 jobs last month pushing the jobless rate down to 5.5 percent. That is the lowest rate this country has seen in seven years. Since that terrible year. You remember that year, 2008?

ROMANS: Terrible.

COSTELLO: Joining me now to talk about this, senior White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, CNN political analyst John Avlon and chief business correspondent Christine Romans.

Christine, I want to start with you. Tell us -- I mean, it's pretty good.

ROMANS: They're strong numbers, Carol. They're strong numbers. You look at 60 months now the private sector has created 12 million jobs over the past 60 months. And we've seen 200,000 plus jobs created over and over and over again for more than a year now. Strength at the end of the year and also we're concerned about all this weather, this bad Boston weather, it didn't hold back hiring.

And I'm seeing hiring across the board. It's not just low-wage retail jobs and restaurant jobs. You're seeing architects and lawyers, you're seeing office managers, tech kind of jobs. Pretty much across the board we're seeing job creation here, Carol.

COSTELLO: Interesting. So what's the -- what's the White House saying about it, Jim Acosta? JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The White House is

very happy about this jobs report, Carol. The chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Jason Furman, has just put out a statement in the last several minutes. You'll forgive me, Marine One is taking off right now as the president heads to South Carolina. But the statement goes on to say, "We've now have seen 12 straight months of private sector job gains above 200,000."

The first time that has happened since 1977. So they've got a whole lot of metrics in this statement this morning indicating how strong the job numbers are and you mentioned the winter weather. This statement goes on to say that the winter weather has not really affected this, even noting the record amount of snow they've had up in Boston has not put a damper on these job numbers.

And you're going to hear the president, I think, talk about this later today. He's going to be speaking at a traditionally black college down in South Carolina. He's going to be talking about expanding economic opportunities and what will be a very big 48 hours for the president talking about civil rights issues, as you know, Carol, be down in Selma, Alabama, tomorrow.

COSTELLO: Right.

ACOSTA: But I think it's a guarantee he'll talk about these job numbers later on today.

COSTELLO: So, John, how will this -- dare I say it -- affect the 2016 presidential race?

JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, Carol, I mean, first of all, let's just pull back for a second. We haven't seen an unemployment rate this low since the summer of 2008. And when President Obama took the oath of office, he was really trying to catch a falling economic knife. I mean, the velocity of the collapse was intense and here we are in the middle of his second term, and if Romney had been elected in 2012, we'd be talking about an economic miracle.

These are strong sustained job growth. Really -- and the way you judge a chief executive at the end of the day is whether things are better when he leaves office than when he comes in, and at this stage, they will definitely be better economically. We have made enormous gains. And while the president doesn't deserve credit for all this economic growth, he certainly deserves some political wind at his back and that may translate to the Democrats come '16.

COSTELLO: OK. So Christine told me in the break that her e-mail box is being flooded by progressives and conservatives actually complaining about this report.

ROMANS: They are.

COSTELLO: Why, Christine?

ROMANS: Well, because you've got people complaining that the African- American unemployment rate is still double the general unemployment rate and that's got -- the president may have to address that later today. No question there. But that has been falling. The White House in a statement saying it's falling quickly but it is too high.

And then conservatives are upset because they say well, the real unemployment rate is still double digits. That means a lot of people left the labor market in the worst of the recession because they couldn't find any work and they're out of the labor market, they're not counted. And that is true as well. The underemployment rate is 10.4 or 11 percent. But it is falling, too. So no matter how you look at these numbers, they are all starting to fall here and that's the trend that is really important.

COSTELLO: But still you could argue it is disturbing, Jim Acosta, that the unemployment rate among African-Americans is still double digits.

(CROSSTALK)

AVLON: That's right --

ACOSTA: It is. It is. But the -- you know, the White House says it is falling fast. It is falling quickly. It's not falling far enough. And that's one of the things that the president is going to be talking about later on today. You know, you'll recall this White House usually used the phrase income inequality. Now they've exchanged that phrase for middle class economics.

And so, you know, this is an issue that hits home for this White House. They know that as goes the middle class, so go the political prospects of President Obama. But they feel like, hey, why isn't he getting some credit over here? Mitt Romney who John Avlon mentioned, you said, during the campaign and I covered Mitt Romney extensively as you'll recall, that, you know, he didn't think that the unemployment rate would get this low unless there was a President Romney in the White House.

And now Democrats are feeling pretty proud of the fact that it is at 5.5 percent and heading down. I mean, when you have 200,000 jobs being created every month, that's a significant impact on the economy given the fact that as John was saying back in 2008 when the economy really took a nosedive, you know, President Obama came into office with 700,000 jobs being lost every month.

So it is a pretty stunning turnaround. It took a long time. It took eight years, seven or eight years, but we're finally getting there.

COSTELLO: And so, John Avlon, if you're a Republican, what do you say about this jobs report?

AVLON: Well, first of all, I think you need to acknowledge reality. But then focus on the real gap that still exists, for example, between Wall Street and main street. The wages aren't catching up fast enough. That there still is real unemployment. However, these criticisms require a solution. Not just complaints but a policy proposal that directly addresses the middle class and that's got to go beyond some -- you know, bromides like simply just cut taxes.

A lot of the bets and the arguments Republicans have been made about Obama's economic approach are undercut by this job growth. You can say it hasn't happened fast enough but you've got to put forward a real plan to start pulling the middle class and main street so that it achieves growth equal to what we've seen from Wall Street over the past couple of years. That's the key argument for the 2016 debate.

Who can offer real meaningful policies that can translate to middle class economic growth? That's open but Republicans need to get on the bidding war and not just complain from the sidelines.

COSTELLO: All right. John Avlon --

ACOSTA: And you know, Carol, you know one of the reasons why --

COSTELLO: Go ahead, Jim.

ACOSTA: I was going to say, Carol, John touched on a good point, I'll say just very quickly, is that the Republican field has really shifted its rhetoric on this. They used to talk about the economy not racing ahead fast enough. The unemployment rate not dropping fast enough.

And now that that's doing that, they are talking about things like income inequality and this wage gap that John mentioned. So that -- you know, this improving economic picture is shaping that debate on the Republican side. No question about it.

All right. Jim Acosta, John Avlon -- thanks you so much.