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Marine Chopper Wreckage Found in Nepal; Amtrak Engineer to Speak to NTSB Investigators; Interview with Congressman John Mica of Florida; Marines: Unlikely Any Survivors From Chopper Crash in Nepal. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired May 15, 2015 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00] CAMEROTA: All right. On this Friday, we hand it over to our friend Carol Costello. It is "NEWSROOM" time.

Happy Friday.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happy Friday. The best day of the week. Have a great weekend. Thanks so much.

NEWSROOM starts now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, the wreckage of a missing American helicopter found in Nepal.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is not the news anybody was hoping to hear.

COSTELLO: Six Marines among those onboard, three bodies found so far. We're on the ground near the crash site.

Also new video and details about the last 65 seconds before that Amtrak train derailed. And now the engineer agrees to talk to investigators.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're very excited that he has agreed to talk to us and we plan to do it in the next -- in the next few days.

COSTELLO: As his friends and coworkers insists he was good at his job.

JAMES WEIR, ENGINEER BRANDON BOSTIAN'S BEST FRIEND: I don't think there's any foul play or anything like that. He was never one to do drugs. There's got to be something else going on.

COSTELLO: Plus another day, another answer from Jeb Bush about Iraq.

JEB BUSH (R), FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR: I would have not engaged, I would not have gone into Iraq.

COSTELLO: That's not what he's been saying all week long. Can he shake this off?

Let's talk. Live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

We begin in Nepal. A tragic end to the search for those U.S. Marines gone missing on an aid mission in the Nepalese mountains. The U.S. military not confirming that a chopper carrying six Marines and two Nepalese service members has been located. Its charred wreckage found on a steep slope in the mountains east of the Kathmandu. Nepal's military says there are three bodies among the burned debris.

Will Ripley is in Kathmandu this morning.

Tell us more -- Will.

RIPLEY: Oh, Carol, this is a really, really discouraging news and sad news for so many people on the ground here in Nepal. And many countries were involved in the search for several days.

The Americans came here to conduct a relief mission to provide humanitarian aid, and that's what they were doing when their helicopter disappeared on Tuesday, the same day this country was rocked by a massive 7.3 earthquake.

Immediately Nepal, India and the United States sprung into action. They were launching search flights and they've been scouring the Himalayas looking for any sign of this aircraft. And it was today that the Nepali helicopter actually spotted it on the ground about 21 miles east of where I'm standing right now here in Kathmandu.

You said it, it was on a very steep slope. 11,200 feet elevation. And when crews were able to hike into there, and keep in mind this is very, very rugged terrain, very difficult to navigate, it takes skilled hikers to get through this area. But when they arrived on the scene, and U.S. Special Forces also arrived, did it confirm that this was the wreckage of a helicopter. There appears to have been some sort of a fire upon impact, and they have already located three what are described as burned bodies.

Still, though, no word on the other five people who were onboard. There were six U.S. Marines, two Nepali soldiers. And they're scouring that area right now to try to find out what happened to them, Carol, but the initial signs are not good, sadly.

COSTELLO: All right. Will Ripley reporting live from Kathmandu. Thank you so much.

In Philadelphia, new details emerge and add to the mystery of why an Amtrak train was dangerously barreling into the curve before flying off the tracks. We're learning the train sped up in the final minutes, gradually ratcheting up from 70 miles per hour to 106. As we now know that's more than double the speed limit in that stretch of track. Today the man at the controls is due to speak to NTSB investigators

for the first time. The attorney for Brandon Bostian says he suffered a head injury, a concussion and can't remember the final moments. That claim echoed by Bostian's best friend who spoke to him just after the deadly accident.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WEIR: He is very distraught. He's very upset and very sorry. I don't think there is any foul play or anything like that. He was never one to do drugs. There's got to be something else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: The first lawsuit has been filed and it's coming from a fellow Amtrak employee who was a passenger on board that train. It accuses Amtrak of reckless conduct but those closest to Bostian say he was a model of responsibility and safety when he operated his train.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Let me ask you some tough questions. Ever see him drinking?

XAVIER BISHOP, FORMER FLAGMAN: Never.

GRIFFIN: Ever see him too sleep?

BISHOP: No.

GRIFFIN: Texting?

BISHOP: No.

GRIFFIN: Phone calls?

BISHOP: No. Never had his phone on. It didn't matter what the situation was. Never had his phone on.

GRIFFIN: Let me ask you. What do you think happened?

BISHOP: I honestly don't know. I really believe something happened prior to him getting to that curve. We all know what the speed limits are, and it's not a mystery to us. And again, I have went up and down these rails with Brandon hundreds of times.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:05:11] COSTELLO: All right. So let's focus on that engineer and that sudden burst of speed. Bostian, the engineer, is -- actually he's been demonized in the eyes of the media and others. Take a look at the "New York Daily News." That's Bostian asking, Urkel style, "Did I do that?" Columnist Mike Lupica calls him a speed demon. Philadelphia's mayor called him reckless.

But the -- but the NTSB says not so fast. There was this bizarre acceleration in the seconds before the crash. Consider this. 65 seconds before the train's black box reporting ends, the train was traveling at 70 miles per hour, and then it sped up. At 43 seconds before the recording ends, the train was up to 80 miles per hour. Twelve seconds later the train hit 90 miles per hour, and 15 seconds after that it topped 100 miles per hour. That's when the engineer, Bostian, slammed on the brakes. So what could this mean?

With me now, Peter Goelz, former managing director at the National Transportation Safety Board.

Good morning, Peter.

PETER GOELZ, FORMER NTSB MANAGING DIRECTOR: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: So, Peter, based on what we know and your experience at the NTSB, what could this sudden acceleration and speed mean?

GOELZ: Well, I mean, they're going to have to focus on the human factors and that's why this interview with the engineer will be so critical. And, you know, when the NTSB interviews a witness like this, it is not a cross-examination, it is not an adversarial situation. The NTSB doesn't work like that. They'll ask him, what do you remember? Sometimes they'll ask him to write it down. And they'll ask questions, can you expound on this?

Now perhaps there was something else going on in the cab just prior to entering this turn. Perhaps it was a case of what we see in aviation all the time of a lack of situational awareness, that all of a sudden the pilot or the operator in this case does not know where he is in his route. And he may have thought he was somewhere else. But in any case, the interview will be critical today.

COSTELLO: I want to take our viewers inside the engineer's car, because I don't know if many of our viewers know how exactly you accelerate a train. Can you explain what we're seeing from this picture, Peter?

GOELZ: Well, I haven't been in this engine's cab. It's a new engine, it came online in 2012. But you can see it's a pretty high tech situation. You've got your throttles and brake on the right. You've got, you know, digital screens that are relaying information from the -- from the control center. It is a high-tech environment.

What it's missing, of course, is the inward looking camera that would tell us and show us exactly what the engineer was doing prior to the event.

COSTELLO: So is the engineer alone in this cabin? Is the conductor with him all the time? How does that work?

GOELZ: The engineer is often alone in the cabin, but there can be a conductor with him, and, you know, there have been studies that have shown that really one-man crews are sometimes safer than two-man crews, because you're not distracted and engaged in conversation with someone else in the cab, so it's -- the psychology of safety is a very complex issue. COSTELLO: Yes. Well, let's get into -- I know. You know, I do think

that this engineer has been quickly demonized. Everybody is assuming that it's completely his fault, right?

GOELZ: He has. Yes.

COSTELLO: But, you know, he's written on blogs that he is concerned about the safety of trains and he wishes that more technology was installed to make travel safer, so he's well aware of the problems himself. So what do you make of that?

GOELZ: Well, I think -- I think he appears to be a very responsible guy. And let's be honest. This is an issue of funding. Every day people who operate Amtrak, who operate commuter systems, have to make judgments on what to spend their limited funds on in terms of safety, and in this case, Amtrak made, you know, what was the difficult but the best decision. They put the limiting technology on the southbound section because you are coming out of a very high speed section of track.

Would they have wanted to put it on both sections of the track? They would have, but they didn't have enough money to do it so they chose the high consequence track to put the system on first.

[09:10:03] COSTELLO: Well, Peter, you heard what John Boehner said, the House speaker. He said, you know, any indication that Amtrak wasn't funded properly as far as safety is concerned is stupid.

GOELZ: Well, if I'd orchestrated a budget cut to Amtrak on the day after the accident that's probably the answer I would have given. It sounded a little flipped, unfortunately.

COSTELLO: And -- but you think Speaker is wrong?

GOELZ: I think -- I think that those who've continued to make Amtrak and commuter rails whipping boys for budget cuts are wrong. These are essential parts of the American community and the fabric of our lives. We need to support them.

COSTELLO: Peter Goelz, thanks for your insight as usual. I appreciate it.

GOELZ: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Three days after the crash, the first funeral is scheduled for today. 20-year-old Justin Zemser was a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, and he was heading home on leave. He is also the youngest person to die.

We now know the names of all eight -- all eight of those people who did die. They include the final person to be identified, 47-year-old Laura Finamore. She worked in corporate real estate and served as the managing director of the firm Cushman and Wakefield. She lived in the borough of Queens.

Also added to the list of the dead Robert Gildersleeve, an executive at Ecolab. He had two children. And you might remember Gildersleeve's son handed out flyers on Wednesday hoping that maybe his father was just injured or dazed and merely wandered off from the crash site but now we know that he did indeed die in the derailment of that Amtrak train.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a Soviet style management company. That's how my next guest describes Amtrak.

Congressman John Mica on the rail system's future after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:26] COSTELLO: We're learning new details about the deadly Amtrak crash in Philadelphia. We now know during the train's final minute, it raised from 70 miles per hour to 100 miles per hour before it barreled off the tracks. The NTSB says if the safety system known as positive train control had been installed, the accident would not have happened.

The cost of the system isn't cheap, though. According to the Federal Railroad Administration, it costs about $52,000 per every mile of track, all of this prompting a major fight on Capitol Hill over Amtrak funding.

Just hours after the crash, a Republican-led House committee voted to slash Amtrak funds by more than $250 million. On Thursday, the House Speaker John Boehner lashed out over a reporter that asked if funding was linked to the derailment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Are you going to ask such a stupid question? Listen, you know, they started this yesterday, it's all about funding, it's all about funding. Well, obviously, it's not about funding. The train was going twice the speed limit.

Adequate funds were there. No money has been cut from rail safety and the House passed a bill earlier this spring to reauthorize Amtrak and authorize a lot of these programs. And it's hard for me to imagine people take the bait on some of the nonsense that gets spewed out around here. Thanks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Joining me now, Republican Congressman John Mica. He's the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Transportation.

Thank you so much for joining me, sir.

REP. JOHN MICA (R), FLORIDA: Thank you. And important subject you are covering.

COSTELLO: Absolutely. So, Congressman, I wanted to ask you, is it really a stupid question when you, yourself, called Amtrak a third world passenger rail operation?

MICA: Well, there's no question, the United States has a third world rail system. It's a monopoly run in a Soviet-style operation, Amtrak. Almost every country in the world is bringing in the private sector to invest to create high-speed rail. The Obama administration, which I thought was going to do something on high speed rail, took $10 billion, put it into -- most of it into California where cows and vegetables are the only thing that are going to be served between Bakersfield and Fresno, doesn't even connect into a major metropolitan area.

So, it's not how much money you spend. It's where you spend the money and we are spending billions.

COSTELLO: Well, let me ask you where you spend the money, because the House Appropriations Committee voted down a Democratic amendment that would have offered $825 million for the technology known as positive train control and according to the NTSB, if that technology had been in place this accident wouldn't have happened?

MICA: Exactly. But we had given Amtrak between $1 billion and $1.5 billion every year I have been in Congress. It's where they spend the money. They are spending money on bonuses for executives. We could put in miles and miles of that. They are spending money to subsidize losing food service.

As of this year and about a dozen years, they've lost $1 billion in the captive food service operation. The entire world is now opening state-supported rail to competition and I --

COSTELLO: Not Japan or China or Europe. The government pays for their system.

MICA: See, you're wrong. You don't know what you are talking about. In Europe, in fact, in England, Virgin Rail --

COSTELLO: China?

MICA: -- is privately operated. In Russia, they've actually brought in public-private partners. They have high speed rail between St. Petersburg and Moscow, between New York, Washington and Boston, the only corridor we own.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: Let me say that you're right, that it's subsidized in part by their government, so why can't we get it together in Amtrak --

MICA: We are subsidizing, we are subsidizing.

COSTELLO: I understand that, we do. So, why can't we get it together and provide a first class service for the people of the United States?

MICA: Because Amtrak blocks any competition. Amtrak takes the money we give them and squanders it. They have squandered it on bonuses. They squandered it on food service. They've squandered it on all kinds of activities, most of which you can't even tell because you can't get a balance sheet out of Amtrak that even tells you where all the money is spent.

[09:20:01] COSTELLO: So, why doesn't someone our government go in and fix things. Because you can cut off funding all you want, but the problem with Amtrak that doesn't exist let's say in the U.S. Postal Service, there are live people onboard those trains and lives are at stake?

MICA: Well, that's true. And again, we are working. I proposed two weeks ago, and people don't listen, don't pay attention, that we allow private sector competition. We created a Northeast commission, a Northeast Corridor Commission to improve Amtrak, their report came out two weeks ago and has specific improvements for that corridor, and we wouldn't have accidents like this.

We could have competition to Amtrak in that corridor, and we'll leave, they only have 150 trains a day in that corridor, there are 2,000 train movements, but we could take some of the congestion out of there, and get true high-speed traffic in there. We don't have to invest public money, the private sector will do it, Virgin Rail did it in England. In Italy --

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: Let's talk about privatization for just a second. Let's talk about privatization for just a second.

MICA: Yes, go ahead.

COSTELLO: Amtrak lost $227 million last year. It needs $52 billion in infrastructure work, the technology that positive train control that would have prevented the Philadelphia derailment cost $52,000 per mile of track, and if you own a private rail company, if you are a private company, Congressman, would you buy Amtrak?

MICA: You don't have to buy Amtrak. The University of Pennsylvania showed a route with parallel lines where you could put in high speed rail. The private sector will come in and invest. They've done it around the world. They will provide good, efficient service at a reasonable cost and even provide competition.

So, we don't have to squander more taxpayer money in the Amtrak pit, you can actually have world class high speed rail systems and positive rail system which I strongly advocate. It's where you put the money.

If we put the $10 billion that the Obama administrations squandered on a line in California or over $1 billion in a line that's going to go 60 miles an hour between St. Louis and Chicago, if we put that in the Northeast corridor, that's the only corridor we own. People don't understand that. The rest of the 22,000 miles of Amtrak service is over private freight rail, but they own a valuable asset and they squander the valuable asset. It could be turned into profit. Don't talk about Republicans not doing anything. Just two weeks

ago, we put in an authorization bill funds for the first time in the Northeast corridor, over a half a billion dollars a year, and additionally, we allowed the revenues from the Northeast corridor to come back in, to make improvements in the Northeast corridor.

So many people don't know what they are talking about what Republicans are doing, but we're trying to do responsible things with hard-earned taxpayer money.

COSTELLO: All right. Congressman John Mica, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I appreciate it.

MICA: And that bill passed the House. Just look at it.

COSTELLO: I will. Thank you so much, sir, for joining me this morning.

All right. We want to head out to Katmandu where General John Wissler just talked about those U.S. marines that went down on the military helicopter aiding people in Nepal. Let's listen to what he had to say.

(BEGINVIDEO CLIP)

LT. GEN. JOHN WISSLER, COMMANDING GENERAL MARINE EXPEDITIONAL FORCE: At this time I can confirm we located the wreckage of the UH-1 Yankee Huey helicopter that's been missing since Tuesday, the 12th of May. Because of the nature of the wreckage, it's unlikely there are any survivors at this time. Our prayers are with the marines and the Nepalese soldiers and their families, we all mourn this tragic loss of life. The aircraft was positively identified at approximately 1:50 p.m. today, eight miles north of Charikot, in the Dolakha region, the wreckage was found at approximately 11,000 feet in extremely dense forest and exceptionally rugged terrain.

Our Nepalese partners originally discovered what they thought to be evidence of an aircraft mishap while they were flying patrols in this area in their helicopters. As soon as we were made aware of their first reports, we immediately diverted the U.S. helicopters that were already in the air to the grid coordinates that they had provided to us.

At this time, I'm not able to positively identify the cause of the mishap and I'm also unable to positively confirm the identities of any of the remains of the service members, either from the U.S. or from Nepal, that were onboard that aircraft.

Additionally, due to the extremely difficult terrain at the site of the mishap, below freezing temperatures and violent winds and thunderstorms, I made the decision to cease the recovery efforts for this evening.

[09:25:05] We cannot afford to put U.S. or Nepalese service members at any further risk. At first light, we will resume the recovery mission. The six marines and two Nepalese soldiers onboard the aircraft were participating the disaster relief missions following the second devastating earthquake to struck this country. They were determined to go forward with their duties, eager to contribute to our mission, and to alleviate suffering and to come to the rescue of those in need.

They were courageous. They were selfless individuals dedicated to the international humanitarian aid mission here in Nepal. We are deeply saddened to the discovery of this wreckage, and we will remain dedicated to the recovery effort until every last marine and Nepalese soldier is brought home. We are continuing and will continue to work closely with the government of Nepal and the Nepalese arm forces to identify the remains of all of the service members that were onboard the aircraft, and we will determine the cause of the mishap. We will release further details as they become available.

I want to express my gratitude to our international friends, the countries of Nepal and India who came forward and offer their support during our extensive search efforts since this aircraft went missing. We ask for continued prayers and support during this difficult time. We also ask the public to please respect the families and allow them time as the investigation continues and the next of kin are respectively notified.

Lastly, I want to express the United States military will remain committed to our mission here in Nepal. While we mourn the tragic passing of our service members and of the Nepalese army, we recognize that the Nepalese have suffered the lost of thousands of their own citizens. And we will continue to stand with Nepal as long as our friends need our help.

The sacrifice these marines and Nepalese soldiers have made for their respective countries will not be forgotten. Their memories will leave on to the lives they touched during this disaster relief operation and in their previous service to their countries. At this time, I'll take your questions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. We're going to jump away, but tragic news out of Katmandu this morning. You heard the general say that all aboard that military helicopter that went down in the Nepalese mountains are gone. They are confirmed dead. They are trying to help the people of Nepal, you know, recover after the two devastating earthquakes there. And as you also heard, the marines will continue to stand by the people of Nepal.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)