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Yemen President Flees in Civil War; Military Decision Expected in Bowe Bergdahl Case; Time Line of Bergdahl Case; New Information on Germanwings Plane Black Boxes. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired March 25, 2015 - 13:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:33:32] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting from Washington.

We're awaiting the start of a news conference from the CEOs of Lufthansa and Germanwings. Germanwings, the airliner involved in the crash of flight 9525. Once that news conference begins, we'll have live coverage, the CEOs from Lufthansa and Germanwings. we're expecting new information on the mystery surrounding this crash of flight 9525.

There's other news we're following right now, including Yemen. Let's turn to Yemen and the deteriorating situation there. The country's elected president is now on the run to an undisclosed location. He was forced to flee his palace in the southern city of Aden when Houthi rebels swarmed the city. Now reportedly a bounty on his head.

CNN's terrorism analyst, Paul Cruickshank; and retired Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona, CNN military analyst, join us.

Colonel, Yemen clearly out of control right now. The defense minister under arrest. All the officials were all practical purposes the U.S. used to deal with in going after al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, headquartered in Yemen. They're basically gone. The U.S. is out of there. The embassy has been evacuated. All U.S. military personnel out of there. What is going on? This looks like a total, total disaster.

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Everything we had there is gone. It's a total collapse of any kind of control in the country. It's devolving into a civil war. It's going to get worse. But for the United States interest, we no longer have a capability to interface what was left of the Yemeni army or the intelligent services. Our capability to conduct strikes against AQAP is severely degraded. Hopefully, we can replicate that in another country, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, somewhere like that. But this puts a blow in our efforts against AQAP, one of the more capable al Qaeda elements.

[13:35:32] BLITZER: The bomb-maker is still on the run over there. Very sophisticated capabilities and they have a track record of going after U.S. targets here in the United States as well. Paul, these Shiite Houthi rebels, they're backed by Iran, now taken

control of a major air base in Yemen which was recently abandoned by the United States. And there are these reports the U.S. not only left and fled the area but they left about $500 million worth of military equipment there that these Shiite rebels have, maybe AQAP has, maybe some other terrorist groups have right now. Your reaction to what's going on?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, it's all obviously very, very concerning. The Houthies are on the verge of taking Aden, the second largest city in Yemen, that risks plunging the country into a full-blown civil war. And I think al Qaeda in Yemen and ISIS are going to be the big winners here. They'll be able to exploit this civil war to their own advantage. They're going to be able to exploit anger amongst Sunni tribals who are infuriated by this Houthi takeover of Sanaa and parts of south of the country to get a recruitment windfall. This will all help al Qaeda build up its position further inside there. It's been the most active group in terms of plots against the United States. I think they are on the verge of having more resources than at any point before to launch those kinds of plots against U.S. aviation. Of course, now with this rivalry with ISIS, the onus is even more on al Qaeda in Yemen to launch these kinds of international plots to shore up their support base.

BLITZER: Colonel Francona, the Saudis now report they're amassing their own troops in Saudi Arabia but on the border with Yemen, that northern border with Yemen. Is that to protect Saudi Arabia from infiltration or does it mean the Saudi troops might be moving into Yemen given their understandable concern of what's going on in this neighboring state?

FRANCONA: It's a little bit of both. But I think the Saudis are posturing more some sort of possible military intervention. They don't want to do this. But they have committed to supporting the democratically elected president, al Hadi. But I'm not sure the Saudis want to get involved in Yemen. It's a tough fighting environment. Other countries have tried and been unsuccessful. So it's a real tough decision for the Saudis but they don't want to see control of Yemen to what they believe is a proxy group for Iran, their major rival across the Persian Gulf.

BLITZER: Looks like Iran's making a major inroad in Yemen as they have in Iraq, in Syria, in Lebanon and other places as well. That's a great concern to the Saudis as all of us know.

Thanks, guys, very much. Always helping us better appreciate what's going on.

Just ahead, they came from at least 15 different countries and two of them were from the United States. The identities of the American victims of flight 9525, we're getting more information on them. Stand by for that.

And any moment now, the airline, Lufthansa, and its subsidiary, Germanwings, will have a joint news conference on the latest information they're getting on the crash and the investigation. We'll have live coverage of that.

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[13:42:00] BLITZER: There's other breaking news we're following right now. The United States military has just announced it will make an announcement shortly on the Bowe Bergdahl case.

Let's go to Barbara Starr, our Pentagon correspondent.

Remind our viewers, Barbara, who Bowe Bergdahl is and what we're anticipating.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, this is a case that has garnered worldwide attention and really tied the Army up in knots for years now. Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl left his base in Afghanistan in July 2009, was very quickly captured by insurgents in Afghanistan, held for five years. And it was just last year that President Obama made the decision to trade Bergdahl in captivity. You see the rescue mission there to bring him back home in exchange for releasing Taliban militants from Guantanamo Bay. Hugely political, hugely controversial. The president making the decision to get Bowe Bergdahl back. But what everyone's been waiting for is what we are going to learn at 3: 30, the next step in this case. Because Bergdahl by all accounts left that base in Afghanistan voluntarily. By all accounts, he walked away of his own free will. He was not captured on base. He was captured outside. He went outside the wire.

So at 3:30 today, in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, the Army will announce the next steps in any disciplinary proceedings against Bergdahl. What they have been doing for several months now, General Mark Milly, the head of U.S. Army forces in the United States, has been reviewing the evidence, reviewing the case. He now has apparently by all accounts made a decision on the next steps. There are two roads in front of them in terms of discipline for Bergdahl, how to hold him accountable for what he did. They could choose administrative action, basically giving him a poor discharge, reducing his pay, reducing his rank, dismissing him from the Army. They could decide to go to court. They could order a court marshal proceeding, essentially a military criminal proceeding. A lot of people have talked about this being a case of desertion. That may be a very tough case to make. You have to have the evidence that he had a clear intent to desert and never return to his post. Military experts we've talked to say de say desertion can be a very difficult case to make because of the level of evidence that is required.

So where are we right now? At 3:30 today, east coast time, Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, the U.S. Army will announce the next steps in this investigation, how they want to proceed. Every Army official we have talked to over the months has said Bergdahl must be held accountable for what he did, you cannot serve in the U.S. military and walk away from your post. But they also remind everyone, this is a U.S. soldier who endured five years of brutal captivity by the Taliban. Do they want to send him to jail? Do they want to go through a very public trial for this soldier? Do they want to subpoena his old buddies who may now be out in the civilian world? Do they want to remind everyone of that Rose Garden ceremony where President Obama met with his parents and talked about him finally coming home? It's a really complicated case to make. And emotions in the Army, very high on this -- Wolf?

[13:45:25] BLITZER: Because a lot of his fellow soldiers, fellow -- the guys he was serving with there in Afghanistan believe he did actually desert, that he walked away on his own for whatever reason. And in the process he endangered a lot of them because they then had to leave their relatively safe compound to go out on a search mission to find them. Some of them potentially could have been hurt and in the end, the U.S. had to give up five militants in exchange, even though the United States supposedly doesn't negotiate with terrorists. In this particular case, the Obama administration was willing to give up five Taliban detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. There's a lot of anger towards this guy among his fellow soldiers, right?

STARR: That is correct. There is a whole range of feelings. That's why I say emotions very high on this case. There are soldiers who will tell you that other soldiers died in the search for Bowe Bergdahl. When the unit was ordered to search eastern Afghanistan for him, that there were casualties as they ran into Taliban, as they ran into other militant activity and that some soldiers died as a direct result of that. The Pentagon will tell you that this was a military mission and that they searched for any soldier, any member of the U.S. military who essentially goes missing or is perceived to have been taken captive.

On the question of the terrorists from Guantanamo Bay that were released and have been held in Qatar under monitoring for the last year, that also very controversial because one of them at least made contact with his old Taliban buddies. So this is a very complex case, emotions high. And at 3: 30 today, we are going to find out what the next steps are that the U.S. Army plans to take.

BLITZER: 3:30 p.m. eastern, a little bit less than two hours from now. CNN, a lot of coverage of that.

Barbara, we'll be watching together with you. Thank you very much.

Let's take a quick break. We're standing by for that news conference, the CEOs of Lufthansa and Germanwings. We expect new information on the investigation into the crash in the French Alps. It apparently killed 150 people.

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[13:50:55] BLITZER: All right. We're standing by for two news conferences. We've been reporting the news that the Pentagon has now made a decision what to do with Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. That announcement will be made 3:30 p.m. eastern. Barbara Starr is working the story. Stand by for that.

We're standing by for a joint news conference of CEOs of Lufthansa and Germanwings. We'll have live coverage of that. Apparently, they've got new information, new information on what is going on in this investigation. 150 people presumed dead in that plane crash in the French Alps. Stand by for that news conference. That's coming up, the CEOs of Lufthansa and Germanwings.

Bowe Bergdahl has caused a lot of concern here in the United States since the United States his release from the Taliban in exchange for five Taliban detainees who had been held at Guantanamo Bay at the U.S. military prison there.

Ed Lavandera has a time line on what happened in this case.

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ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The night Bowe Bergdahl disappeared from his post in the summer of 2009, he was 23 years old. The Army sergeant's gun, bulletproof vest and his night-vision goggles were all found in his bunk. From that moment, the U.S. military would spend almost five years looking for and negotiating for Bergdahl's release.

CHUCK HAGEL, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: Our commanders are sparing no effort to find this young soldier.

LAVANDERA: It's a saga that still isn't over for the soldier who is now 28 years old.

(on camera): When Bowe Bergdahl disappeared, he was stationed at a U.S. Military outpost in southeastern Afghanistan. He was supposed to be on a guard shift that night. This was his first deployment as a U.S. soldier, and he had been in Afghanistan less than two months.

(voice-over): Other soldiers in his unit have described Bergdahl as a deserter and a traitor to his country.

UNIDENTIFIED SOLIDER: I think he just wanted to go on an adventure without having anybody to answer to, without having anything to worry about. He wanted to be able to go out and see Afghanistan for himself without, you know, the Army stopping him.

LAVANDERA: Bergdahl would end up in the hands of the Taliban. Intensive efforts to find Bergdahl in the early days of his disappearance failed. Before long Bergdahl's captors would soon start showing off their prize capture in propaganda videos.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In fact, this is exactly why (INAUDIBLE) by the Afghans but by many in the world.

LAVANDERA: The U.S. government believed Bergdahl was then passed around between Taliban captors and members of what's called the Hakani Network, which would have taken him into Pakistan.

For his mother and father, these videos would be the only proof of life they'd see of their son.

BOB BERGDAHL, FATHER OF BOWE BERGDAHL: -- either be released.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I understand.

LAVANDERA: Frustrated by the slowness res in finding his son, Bob Bergdahl grew out his beard as a sign of solidarity with Bowe and started teaching himself to speak Pashtu, the language of the captors.

BOB BERGDAHL: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

LAVANDERA: Bob Bergdahl would later receive scathing criticism as a Taliban sympathizer for growing the beard.

BOB BERGDAHL: A father does not leave his son alone on the battlefield.

LAVANDERA: Then in May of last year, after several years of negotiating, the Obama administration agreed to release five Taliban prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay for Bowe Bergdahl. He was brought to this field in a remote area of Khost Province and handed over to a U.S. Special Forces unit. One of the soldiers told Bowe Bergdahl on the chopper ride out, we've been looking for you for a long time.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, Dallas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[13:54:32] BLITZER: One again, at 3:30 p.m. eastern time, a little bit more than an hour and a half or so from now, the Pentagon will be making an announcement about his fate. Will he be court-martialed? Will he be relieved of duty? What will happen to Bowe Bergdahl? Stand by. We'll have coverage of that announcement as far as Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is concerned. 3:30 p.m., that announcement will be made at Ft. Bragg. Also, we're standing by for a joint news conference. The CEOs of

Lufthansa and Germanwings are getting ready to make some statements about what's going on in the investigation.

By the way, we've just learned from the State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, saying that a third American has been confirmed to be on that doomed flight, that Germanwings flight 4525. We're getting information on this third American.

Let's take a quick break. Much more on both of these developing stories right after this.

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BLITZER: Once again, we're standing by for a news conference of the CEOs of Lufthansa and Germanwings. They're getting ready to make a statement. We'll have live coverage here on CNN.

In the meantime, we're getting new information on those two so-called black boxes, the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.

Peter Goelz is with me here in Washington, the former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Will the U.S. get involved, NTSB, other U.S. experts, in helping the French try to determine what's included on those two black boxes?

PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It depends how damaged they are and whether the U.S. has any particular expertise. But the French are fully capable. They have a very advanced laboratory there. The Germans have one as well. I think the French will keep this close to home and they will be fully capable of downloading.

BLITZER: I know the airbus is a European consortium. The jets, I believe, Rolls Royce jet, maybe Boeing jets. What about the black boxes? Who manufactures those?

GOELZ: Those are manufactured in the U.S. and --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: You would think they would want the best U.S. minds to help them in a complicated situation like this.

GOELZ: Right. And the U.S. has offered that. They've offered their expertise. If the French take it, I wouldn't be surprised. But we have a good working relationship between the big four or five investigative agencies. They share information, they share expertise. They do cross-training. So it's a good working relationship.

BLITZER: If there's some criminal investigation that might be developing, we have no idea if that's involved. Interpol, the FBI, presumably all of them would get involved as well.

GOELZ: I think this would be an international hunt for whoever was responsible if it proves to be criminal.

BLITZER: And we don't know mechanical, catastrophic, criminal. The only thing we know the mystery, the last eight or ten minutes there was no communication from cockpit to ground control.

GOELZ: Exactly. It reinforces the need for real-time streaming of this kind of data. We can't have these kinds of mysteries continuing.

BLITZER: You don't have to look for a black box. They have it on a server right away. They need video cameras in those cockpits and you can do real-time streaming of that. It's expensive. I know it's expensive. Pilots unions don't like it. But I suspect they're going to move in that direction.

GOELZ: It's the right thing to do.

[14:59:55] BLITZER: All right, thanks very much.

That's it for me. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room."

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