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Wolf

Disruption of Flights in UK; Flights Canceled and More Expected; President Obama Weighing In on Sports; House Vote Narrowly Passes Spending Bill; California Mudslide

Aired December 12, 2014 - 13:00   ET

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

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 6:00 p.m. in London, 8:00 p.m. in Jerusalem, 9:00 p.m. in Moscow. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us.

We begin in London where a major disruption of flights out of the British capital now threatens air travelers with delays far beyond the United Kingdom. Air traffic officials now say a technical failure at a key air traffic control center has been fixed but at the height of this disruption, flights all -- at all five London airports were affected. It's expected to be tomorrow before things return to normal.

Let's go to London. CNN's Jim Boulden is watching this story for us. Jim, what happened to cause this so-called technical failure? What's going on?

JIM BOULDEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we learned about two and a half hours ago, Wolf, that there was what looks like to be a computer failure with the air traffic control system. It's based at a company called NATS. And the NATS put out a tweet and said they were having technical problems with the air traffic control system. It's likely to be the computer system that helps the planes line up for landing and taking off in what is a very, very congested London region.

And it's not just planes coming into London and out of London, there's also flights, of course, that would fly over London going to the -- going into North America, going into Europe, going into South Africa as well. So, it has caused major chaos. Many, many flights being canceled. And people should know it's not just if you're flying into London, it is also going to have ramifications because other flights are being diverted to places like Paris, Amsterdam, north of England. And we are seeing flights that are already being canceled from airports from far and wide so people should check. British Airways has said that they will refund anybody who doesn't wish to fly and Heathrow is saying that cancellations will continue into tomorrow. We are talking about a very, very crowded air space and there will be a lot of chaos for hours and probably days to come -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Well, when you -- when they say it's some sort of computer problem, does -- was somebody trying to hack into it? Was it just a glitch? Was it just some sort of automatic computer problem? Are they releasing any details? BOULDEN: Well, first they said there was a power outage and now

they're saying that that is not correct. We were hearing power outages, then we heard computer glitch. This is more than a glitch, certainly. So, now, they're looking. They will certainly look. There will be very, very deep investigations of whether or not there could be a hack and the airlines. They said this is totally unacceptable because we have seen this system go down before. We saw it in December of last year and we've seen it in past years.

The U.K. government has said this is also unacceptable that this system could go down and cause such chaos. But, certainly, they will be investigating whether it could possibly be a hack. Right now, they're saying not a power outage, a computer failure.

BLITZER: All right, thanks very much. Jim Boulden reporting for us from London.

Let's bring in CNN's Safety Analyst David Soucie. David, obviously never a good time for a major disruption in air travel. But everyone's gearing up for a very busy holiday travel season. This technical failure, you heard Jim report it's happened before. What's your analysis? Could it happen again? Could it happen here in the United States?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, yes, actually, it could and it has. If you'll think back to just Chicago a few short months ago when there was a fire down in the -- in the lower section of the control center. This is the concern -- is that if there is a single point of failure -- and it's supposed to be designed not to do that. But if there's a single point of failure because everything is integrated, that single point of failure has impacts that are far- reaching. As you mentioned before, it's not just this area in London. It's going to reach far and wide and it could be months before this thing gets back to normal.

BLITZER: And they -- the investigation, I assume, only just beginning. They say it wasn't a power outage, although that was the initial suspicion. What other problems could generate this kind of air traffic problem crisis let's call it?

SOUCIE: Well, the part of the software that failed, as I understand it, is the scheduling part of the software. What that does is it tells all of the controllers throughout the whole network, throughout the NATS, the National Transportation System. Throughout that system, it tells them where the airplanes are going. Who is next? Who's going to happen next? When you get into those holding patterns that seem to last forever sometimes waiting to land, this is the software that tells the controllers to put that airplane into the -- into the holding pattern. Without that, it's left entirely up to the controllers to maintain separation, to understand at what point the plane has to land, how fast the airplane's going. All of those things are considered by this software. So, when it shuts down, it's a huge burden on those air traffic controllers. And I really pat them on the back for getting this back up and running as well as it is right now without that software. BLITZER: So, we obviously don't know what the cause of this problem

was. But, in general -- and we don't know if it's -- has anything to do with hacking. How vulnerable are these systems to hacking?

SOUCIE: They're really not vulnerable at all to hacking. I shouldn't say at all because there's always a hacker that's going to take that as a challenge and try to do it himself. But so far, there have been no actual hacking successes. There's been a lot of attempts, probably, that I don't know of. But there's been a lot of attempts but there have not been any actually through the firewall to take control of -- any kind of control in any way. So, unless this is the first time, I don't think that's what happened here. I think that the power glitch, that they said at first, may have actually trig -- happened and triggered this software failure because there is, as I mentioned, a single point of failure with that particular software.

BLITZER: Is there built-in redundancy so that if there is a problem, it can automatically be repaired because other systems go to work?

SOUCIE: There is, Wolf. The challenge here is that we're working with an infrastructure that was designed in the 1950s and 1960s still. There's some efforts like NextGen in the United States and SESAR in the U -- in the U.K. and over in Europe to upgrade the infrastructure. Now, that's been delayed mostly because the United States has sequestered the funding for NextGen which has delayed it for years. And then, SESAR which is relying on NextGen is also delayed. So, there is redundancy built into the system but it's kind of like putting band-aids on and continuing to try to repair older systems rather than start with a new infrastructure.

BLITZER: Has air traffic, around the world, air travel become so overburdened that even a relatively minor glitch could cause enormous headaches for travelers, not only in the -- obviously in the London area but around the world?

SOUCIE: Yes, it certainly can, Wolf. But there is even more to it than that. The way I describe this system is as a sand pile and you continue to add safety fixes to this overburdened system. Eventually, the sand pile has to avalanche down and normalize itself. And so, every time you add a safety feature -- because everything is so integrated and so large that they all rely on each other. So, when that gets overburdened too far, you can have an avalanche of failures and that's where we want to be sure we don't end up. And I don't see that happening right now but without the furthering of the NextGen and SESAR systems, we could be looking at that sand pile avalanche within the next year or so.

BLITZER: David Soucie, thanks very much for joining us.

SOUCIE: You're welcome Wolf.

BLITZER: Let's hope they -- let's hope they learn what caused this failure in London and learn the lessons to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Up next, President Obama now weighing in on sports and critically important social issues. We're going to hear what he now has to say about, quote, "the American team."

And later, Michele Bachmann is wrapping up her time in the United States Congress. She's going to be my guest. We'll talk about government, responsibility, spending, her own future. The always outspoken Michele Bachmann here for an exit interview. That's coming up later this hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Politics and sports. President Obama had a turn with both today as he called into a sports radio show on ESPN. Here's an exchange. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The one difference is that, you know, in politics, sometimes people forget, we're actually all on the same team and that's the American team. And, you know, it's one thing in sports if, you know, you go into an Eagles' stadium or the Raiders' stadium and folks are hollering at you and throwing stuff at you and you're the opposing team. Sometimes, I think in politics we forget that we're not actually on different teams.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Let's bring in our Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta. Jim, we've seen the president at several different venues this week, interviews with BET, --

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right.

BLITZER: -- Telemundo, the Colbert report. Now this. So, what's going on? What's the strategy because, clearly in this interview, he was making an appeal for some cooperation, some bipartisanship here in Washington.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right, Wolf. It's amazing that he said we're all in the same team after what happened with the (INAUDIBLE) bill last night that almost shut down the government. The strategy at the White House, Wolf, is that they want to go where the viewers are, where the listeners are. And so, in that interview on ESPN Sports Radio, the president put in a pitch for Healthcare.gov. By the way, open enrollment is going on right now.

And so, the president talked about that. You know, he also talked about other sports-related politics. He revealed that, you know, every morning when he gets up, he doesn't watch politics. He watches sports center. Also, the president talking about how he decompresses sometimes when things get stressful. He was on Telemundo and Univision earlier this week talking about his immigration action plan. And I was asking a White House official, are you guys just going around us and going to sort of nontraditional media outlets? And they said, no, no, no. We've been doing a lot with you guys lately. But they don't mind going beyond us, from time to time, and that's what they have been doing this week. BLITZER: He also spoke about the intersection of professional sports

and critically important social issues that have been in the news lately, in particularly the case of a football player, Ray Rice, who was suspended after hitting his then fiance, now his wife. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am so glad that we got more awareness about domestic violence. Obviously, the situation that happened in the Rice family was unfortunate but it did lift up awareness that this is a real problem that we've got to root out and men have to change their attitudes and their behavior and it has to start young. But the way it was handled also indicates that, you know, the NFL was behind the curve as a lot of institutions have been behind the curve , and sending a clear message.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Yes, he clearly wants to make that point that obviously has to be made. And the NFL has to learn from what happened in this particular case. He is an extraordinary sports fan, right?

ACOSTA: He is. And, Wolf, right when the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, is on the hot seat and some people are talking about him being thrown out, I thought it was pretty striking to hear the president come out to say -- today and say that the NFL was behind the curve, winging it. At one point, he referred to the league as sort of a good old boys' club. He really does not like the way that the NFL handled that Ray Rice matter and it was pretty apparent in that interview.

You know, Wolf, on other sports related topics, he went on to say that he thinks the Chicago Bulls will do pretty well in the NBA this season. He somehow overlooked the fact that our Washington Wizards, Wolf, are going to win the NBA finals. I think -- I think the president made a clear mistake there.

BLITZER: He obviously did. I totally agree. We'll see -- we'll see what happens game by game, including tonight. The Wizards are playing the Clippers here in D.C. All right, thanks very much. Jim Acosta, a good Washington Wizards' fan as am I.

Just ahead, down to the wire, the House approves a massive spending bill and narrowly avoids a government shutdown. We're going to take a closer look at why some Tea Party conservatives and some liberal Democrats, they opposed the bill, and what happens next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The Senate is expected to vote here in Washington later today on a massive spending bill that narrowly averted a government shutdown. The House of Representatives approved the bill by a vote of 219-206. So the price tag, $1.1 trillion. The bill funds most of the government through the end of next September.

Let's bring in our chief political analyst Gloria Borger and our chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash. Dana's up on Capitol Hill.

What do we expect to happen in the Senate? It passed the House, what, they needed 218 votes, they got 219 votes. Pretty close there. What's going to happen in the Senate?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the expectation at this point is that it will pass, but it's probably going to be close and we don't know when it's going to happen. The latest message I got from somebody in Democratic leadership is probably today, but the definition of today just could mean before we go to sleep, that could be when the sun's coming up tomorrow morning, because they have to decide when they're going to do it.

And the most -- one of the most fascinating dynamics is, you know, over the past couple of years we've been waiting to see if things are going to get passed or not and if there's going to be a delay, mostly because of Republican opposition. This is coming from some Republicans, but mostly the left, and we're all trying to find Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is the most outspoken opponent to this bill because of Wall Street reform rollbacks, and she had not answered the question from me and others about whether or not she is so opposed to this that she would use all of her powers, and every senator has a lot, to stop this. So that's what we're waiting to find out, Wolf.

BLITZER: You know, it's interesting, Gloria, because you have Tea Party conservatives on the Republican side, very liberal Democrats who are opposed for different reasons, and you add them together, they potentially -

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

BLITZER: They didn't succeed in the House of Representatives to block it, but potentially they could succeed in the Senate where there are different rules and you might need 60 votes, let's say.

BORGER: Elizabeth Warren, who says she is not running for president and says it repeatedly, opposes the repeal of these Wall Street reforms that she supports. And conservatives, of course, say, wait a minute, we didn't stop Obama from funding his immigration plan. So, you know, they come at it from different ways. But on a larger point, Wolf, what this proves is that the Democrats are not afraid of Obama and these conservative Republicans are not afraid of their leadership. There's no price to pay anymore if they cross them, so why not do it?

BLITZER: Yes. And that was pretty amazing when you think about it, Dana, that the Democratic leader in the House, the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, Chris van Hollen, another major democratic leader, in this particular case, despite the personal lobbying by the president, despite Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, going up to The Hill, appealing to all the Democrats to support this legislation, they didn't like it.

BASH: They didn't like it and they were incredibly vocal. And it was something that we don't see a lot. I mean we are, you know, sort of the story line, as I said over the past couple of years, has been ranker in the Republican ranks, Republican leaders not being able to keep their rank and file in check. Now it's a little bit of a different dynamic, but the same kind of issue that you're seeing on the left.

And I think what this is telling us is that, in this case, it -- certainly it was a big bill, over 1,600 pages. Members, understandably, feel that it is their job to actually read it and understand what's in it and they were not happy about everything. But, at the end of the day, what the Democratic and Republican negotiators tried to do was legislate and govern and they've been working for months on this try to actually fund the government for an entire year, set their priorities. And there just is a lot more power in both wings of the party. And as Gloria said, not a lot of repercussions to -- for bucking the party for lots of reasons. It's just a very different kind of situation here and it does make legislating a lot harder.

BLITZER: Yes, it's not every day you hear Nancy Pelosi saying to the president of the United States, you are - you are wrong. You are wrong.

BORGER: Not like legislating's been easy.

BASH: Yes, exactly.

BLITZER: Gloria, let me shift gears quickly.

BORGER: Yes.

BLITZER: You've done a lot of reporting on Mitt Romney over these years. All of us have. Now there's a major story out there in Politico suggesting maybe he's not that 100 percent definite with the no, no, no, that he could seek a third time to run for the Republican presidential nomination.

BORGER: First of all - so here --

BLITZER: Maybe he's leaving that door open a little bit. That's what they're hearing.

BORGER: Here's my reporting on this, Wolf. There's never any harm in leaving the door open. It doesn't hurt you in any way, shape or form. I think there are some folks who are close to Mitt Romney who, of course, would like him to run again. But I think the only way, the only way -- and I think this is a very slim possibility - the only way you'd see a Mitt Romney candidacy is if he's the white knight. And for some reason, if all the other candidates start looking smaller and smaller and smaller, and we went through this the last time around when everybody was saying, oh, is Chris Christie going to be the white knight for the Republican Party, that perhaps Romney would come in very, very late in the game. There are some funders who want him to go in, there are some former staff who want him to go in. They still love him. But, I think the likelihood is still small unless he comes in as someone who can save the party at the very end. I don't see him going through the entire process again.

BLITZER: It will be an intriguing game to watch to see what he decides. BORGER: Yes. We're waiting to see if Jeb Bush is going to get in,

right?

BLITZER: Yes, that's another thing we're watching too.

BORGER: Right.

BLITZER: Hillary Clinton, we know she's going to be getting in. All right.

BORGER: Yes, we do.

BLITZER: All right, still ahead, fallout over the CIA torture report and the remarks by the CIA director. Did John Brennan admit that laws were broken? We'll update you on the latest information. We're taking a closer look.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Dramatic images coming out of southern California right now of homes being swallowed up by mud and rock. It's all because of a powerful storm that's hammered the region with torrential rain and high winds. Our Paul Vercammen is in Camarillo Springs (ph), California, just up the coast from Los Angeles.

What's the impact? What's going on over there, Paul?

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we had a major rock slide here. And this is where it breached up here, right where these K-rails (ph) were. They heard a rumbling, they heard a thundering. It wasn't lightening. It was billions and billions of rocks. And if we come over here so I can show, you have homes that are literally covered in rocks. Ten homes now red-tagged, meaning uninhabitable, Wolf. And they were telling me there was an absolutely scary moment when an elderly couple and their caregiver were pinned in one of these homes by all these rocks and all this mud and the furniture that had been moved around. Fortunately, they were able to get them out safely.

One hundred and twenty-four homes evacuated here in Camarillo Springs. What caused this? A devastating fire back in 2013. It basically stripped the hillsides of vegetation. The Ventura County Fire Department and others worried a long time about this. Last night, overnight, in just three hours, they got between an inch and a half and two inches of rain and that loosened up the hillsides and these rocks just came tumbling and thundering down.

Wolf.

BLITZER: And as you say, how many people were injured?

VERCAMMEN: That we know of, nobody injured in this proximity. There was a driver injured, a motorist, somewhere nearby in Ventura County. But they were crossing their fingers and counting their blessings because it looks like everybody got out of here, not only alive, but unhurt in this immediate area, Wolf. BLITZER: All right, a lot of property damage, but, fortunately, no

injuries. Appreciate it very much. We'll stay in close touch with you, Paul. Thanks very much.