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Americans Hostage at Sea; News Conference on Hijacking; Pentagon Official: American Crew Retakes Hijacked Ship; State Department Briefing on Hijacked Ship
Aired April 08, 2009 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: David McKenzie, as I mentioned just a moment ago, is on the beeper line with us.
And David, you have done a lot of reporting on this. Let me ask you, first of all, why is it that -- and I know there's a pretty straightforward answer to this, but I'm going to ask the question anyway. Why is it that in so many of these cases, I think in virtually all of them, the same scenario plays out where you have this hijacking and then there is the ransom demand for all of these millions and, seemingly, every time what happens is these companies pay?
DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's because -- the obvious answer is that these ships are worth millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars. And then you've got that, and also the fact that the crew's safety is at risk, and companies think that the only way to get the valuable goods and the safe crew out of there is by paying the money. And sometimes these ships are taken for weeks, if not months, actually three months in some cases.
They wait and negotiate with companies, and eventually the companies generally pay. You know, companies aren't very happy to talk about this openly, but certainly ship owners I have spoken to both in Kenya and (INAUDIBLE) have said the only thing they can really do is negotiate and hopefully get that price down. What it does open it up to, obviously, is that they will just take on more ships -- Tony.
HARRIS: Well, you know what I'm driving at here, David? There is every incentive for the pirates to continue doing what they're doing if they know that if they are successful, all they have to do is seize the ship, not a small task, but that once they do, they're going to get paid.
MCKENZIE: Well, that's right. I mean, it is a high-risk maneuver, but once they actually are on that ship and they have successfully taken that ship, the U.S. Navy and other Navy policies are we take on the pirates once they've commandeered a ship. The company certainly wants a private mercenary to take on the ship. So, basically, they just have to wait, and it's a waiting game.
And with them holding these ships -- and generally the tactic, Tony, is you take on the ship and then sail that ship eventually to right on the coast of Somalia, in towns like (INAUDIBLE), and in the north, the (INAUDIBLE) section of Somalia, which is a different section of Somalia. And they keep it there, and they've got a mini industry there.
HARRIS: Yes.
MCKENZIE: They basically hold the people there. They have guys on the shore who essentially grow fruit and vegetables that they then take out to these guys. And over weeks and weeks, they hold these poor sailors and negotiate a ransom. But so far, once those ships are out there next to the shore, they will not be taken on.
The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution saying that the U.S. Navy and other navies could go in "hot pursuit" of these pirates, that they could chase them onto the land, and they actually -- the U.S. Navy included having (ph) those power to take on these pirates. But up to this point they haven't used that power.
HARRIS: Yes.
MCKENZIE: We all member the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident. I'm sure the viewers remember the "Black Hawk Down" movie.
I mean, the U.S. got beat on the ground and that ended disastrously. So there's a lot of other implications that would mean that the navies and the armed forces wouldn't necessarily want to get on the ground on Somalia. The problem being that, obviously, everyone is taking this kind of standoff, wait-and-see approach. You know, the pirates kept the vessel, and everyone waits for the company then to pay the ransom. In the long term, many feel that that's not the way to solve the situation.
HARRIS: Well David, hang on a second. We're about to lose Stan Grant. I want to get one more question to Stan.
And Stan, I'm wondering what -- just to provide a little more perspective to folks here in the states who are watching the situation with us, what is the Obama administration, the White House, to do? I mean, this is not the first time this has happened, and nations with their flagged vessels have been hijacked by these pirates. So, I mean, practically speaking, what is it that the Obama administration or any government can do in a situation where it finds its nationals being held hostage on a hijacked vessel?
GRANT: Well, let's look at what can actually happen here.
HARRIS: Yes.
GRANT: And just as David talked there about the U.N. Security Council resolution saying that countries can go in hot pursuit of these pirates on the open seas, there is also the very, very tricky legal area here. It's being described as a gray area, legally, exactly how do you prosecute these pirates? Under what law? Under what jurisdiction?
There has been calls for the United Nations to establish some sort of international court or the U.N. to back an international court that could deal with this sort of piracy. So you have a legal problem.
You also have the problem of, if you do take action against these vessels and against these pirates, you run the risk of injuring or even killing the hostages themselves, who the pirates are holding. So it's a very difficult situation, but we do know that the United States has said in the past, all countries say this, they have a responsibility and a right to be able to protect their citizens.
HARRIS: Hey Stan, I'm going to let you go, because the CEO of Maersk is speaking now with the news conference we promised you.
Let's listen in.
(JOINED IN PROGRESS)
JOHN REINHART, PRESIDENT & CEO, MAERSK LINE LTD.: What we do is operate U.S. flag vessels. The Maersk Alabama is one of the vessels we operate.
Around 12 hours ago, at 12:30, we were notified that the vessel was boarded by pirates. We have set up a crisis center through the night. We have been working with the governmental agencies and trying to get as much information on it as we can.
By way of background, this vessel is an 1100 TEU feeder vessel. She has a Djibouti, chalala (ph) and Mombasa call (ph). About 350 miles off the coast she was boarded by pirates. It was bound for Mombasa, carrying aid cargo. Total cargo on the vessel was eight cargo, relief cargo for various agencies headed for Africa.
We had one communication earlier today from the crew. We were told the crew is safe. Our priority in all of this has been to keep our crew safe and do what we can to communicate with the crews' families and to work to get them safely returned.
In starting our crisis center at 12:30 last night, we have dealt with every government agency there is. We've had open and candid discussion. We've tried to make sure that everybody knows what has happened thus far.
And at this point I will just come back and take your questions.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
REINHART: Speculation is a dangerous thing when you're in a fluid environment. I will not confirm that the crew has retaken the ship. I think it would be inappropriate at this time. When there is something definitive, we will release that information.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
REINHART: The home port is here in Norfolk. The ship is home- ported here in Norfolk, and she's doing a feeder service. So mostly she stays there.
All of the crew members are U.S. citizens. They work for three unions: MMMP (ph), MEBA (ph), NSIU (ph).
We started early this morning calling all the families. We want to keep the families updated. We set up a crisis hotline for the families to camilies to call in and get status reports from the company from what has happened. We will not release the names of the crews to you.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
REINHART: We have a crisis center and we have vessel managers, superintendents that are working with the vessel. We did not have radio communication. We had a cell phone call from a member of the crew that said the crew (INAUDIBLE). That's how we heard.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
REINHART: No, sir, these are merchant vessels or commercial vessels. These are not security...
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
REINHART: They are going into policy. What we have is a policy of prevention, and all the crews are trained in security details in how to deal with piracy by what (INAUDIBLE) and the way we operate. But as merchant vessels, we do not carry arms. We have ways to push back, but we do not carry arms.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
REINHART: Well, first of all, speed and free board (ph) are two things you try to do. You operate at a fast pace so that you can outrun them. The free board (ph) makes it harder for the pirates to board.
Keeping in communication with the Navy and the details about your location and your venue, extra watch so that you can see out and project -- this is the first U.S.-flagged vessel that's been taken by pirates. So we've tried everything we can. We have more than 200 vessel routes through that area every year. But I think our preventative measures have been responsible as a ship owner, and our crews have performed very well.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
REINHART: I'll tell you one thing, I'm not going to negotiate with the press for the safety of my crew. And I'll wait for contact to decide what's appropriate.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
REINHART: There's been no requests of the company at this point.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
REINHART: We have 401 containers. It involved (ph) food products. This was going to Africa to people that are in need. And there were various different agencies.
We were just bringing relief cargo. There was no other cargo on the vessel at the time it was taken (ph).
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
HARRIS: We just lost that signal. We were hearing from the CEO of Maersk, John Reinhart, but quickly, you see the lower third there. Want to get to the Pentagon. And our Pentagon Correspondent Chris Lawrence is there.
And Chris, this looks like unbelievable news. I will read the banner. "American Crew Retakes Hijacked Ship." And you fill in the details for us if you would, please.
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Very few details, but I can tell you that a Pentagon official, Tony, has told me that the crew of the ship has retaken control of that ship. He is not aware of any injuries to the crew, and he says that the crew has taken at least one of the hijackers into custody.
But to put some nuance into that, it does raise some questions. To say that there is one hijacker that is in custody, well, we know there were multiple hijackers on board, so it raises the question about if this retaking was part of the ship or all of the ship.
The other hijackers, are they in another part of the ship or have they left the ship? Those are some of the questions we're still pursuing and still trying to answer, but obviously some very breaking developments in this story.
HARRIS: Yes. But clearly, the indication here is that the pirates aren't in control of the vessel at this point.
LAWRENCE: Well, we can at least say they are not in control of the entire vessel.
HARRIS: Yes.
LAWRENCE: We can say that for sure. Again, this has all been happening very, very quickly.
HARRIS: Well, Chris, let me do this. Let me have you go ahead and do some more reporting. I understand we have the CEO of Maersk back, John Reinhart, and let's listen and let you do your work.
Thanks.
(JOINED IN PROGRESS)
REINHART: Pretty nimble. What they try to do is they'll take multiple boats, sometimes they will run across. When the vessel turns and slows, they use graphite (ph) hooks and they come on board. And they just get on and they're carrying -- sometimes they will shoot on the vessels as they go with RPGs (INAUDIBLE).
HARRIS: All right, let's do this -- let's work that out, and maybe we just sort of monitor the situation.
Did that appear to clear up at the very end at the moment I jumped in? Was that clearing up?
OK.
Let's talk about this a little bit more with Alec Fraser. And Alex is a retired Navy captain and skipper of a Navy cruiser.
And Alec, this is very interesting. A couple things we want to take on with you.
The news -- what's your reaction, first of all? It's good news if it in fact plays out the way we think it might.
The lower third you see it, the American crew has managed to retake this hijacked ship. What does that tell you about the work of the crew and what they were up against possibly? I mean, we're all speculating at this point, what they were facing in terms of these pirates.
CAPT. ALEC FRASER, U.S. NAVY (RET.): Well, this is very interesting, because I don't think this happens very often. The crews are not trained to be able to do military, police-type, armed resistance for the most part, but in this case maybe they did.
It's not a common thing across the merchant fleets, because most ship crews are only 12 or 15 people. They're not well-trained, and in a way it's better and safer for the people not to defend the ship. But this is good news.
HARRIS: Yes. Well, we also understand that the top two commanders were trained at the Maritime Academy.
FRASER: Maritime Academy.
HARRIS: Would they have been trained in some kind of military tactics to take on situations such as this?
FRASER: Probably not.
HARRIS: Probably not.
FRASER: And most of that is an academic-type background. And there would be some training in that because it's a big thing now, but it's not something that you could actually lead a group of sailors to defend.
HARRIS: And Alec, you had a question for Chris Lawrence, and Chris is back with us. And your question was, you were curious to know whether or not a Navy ship might have been involved in helping the crew retake this vessel.
And Chris, do you have anything on that?
LAWRENCE: Yes, I do not believe the U.S. Navy was involved in this -- in whatever happened on board the ship. Again, we are hearing that the crew themselves have retaken control of that ship, and that they have at least one of the hijackers in custody. Again, that does call into question what has happened to the other hijackers, whether they are, perhaps, in the water or in another part of the ship. But I can also address something we were just talking about, about these particular sailors. We're hearing from the company that the sailors who work in these high-risk areas are trained in how to deal with pirate situations.
HARRIS: OK.
LAWRENCE: In fact, the second in command, his father is -- teaches about...
HARRIS: He's a professor, isn't he?
LAWRENCE: Right. He teaches about anti-piracy tactics, and he said his son was back home recently and actually addressed the class about the dangers and about some of the situations that mariners could find themselves in.
HARRIS: No, good point, because it's important, if this plays out the way we're getting indication that is it actually did, it sounds like the crew was able to use some of that training to turn the situation around.
And Alec, I saw just a moment ago you were itching to get back in with a point?
FRASER: Well, I think the point is whether a Navy ship was there or not. I think the early reports are that it was 300 miles away. Well, that's like 12 hours of high-speed steaming. And you need to be within a few miles of an endangered ship in order to put your small boats in the water to be able to intercept their small boats. So if you're not within a few miles or, say, 10 miles when there's a suspicious vessel headed their way, that's going to be very hard to intercept it before they get on board.
HARRIS: Got to ask you, are we going to see companies do more in the way of training their crews in the future? We're talking about an uptick in this kind of activity recently.
FRASER: Right.
HARRIS: Are we going to see more companies -- I mean, you can't, it seems to me, depend on this task force that's in the waters to protect you. Are you going to see more companies training their personnel to be able to handle a situation like this?
FRASER: They're going to have to...
HARRIS: Have to, yes.
FRASER: ... because the way to solve it is you have to control the Somalia coast to start with. You're going to have to probably institute some convoys, but that's not economically a sound way of doing business very easily. And you're going to have to try to arm some of the crews.
Now, this particular crew, it looks like it was armed, but how many of the pirates are coming on board? There's a limit to the number of crew that are on the ship versus the number of people that are climbing up the ladders.
HARRIS: How odd. This is the first time that a U.S.-flagged vessel has been attacked in this way.
Why haven't we seen this before? Is there some sort of presumption out there that a U.S.-flagged ship is a better protected ship? That the crew is better able to handle a situation like this? Is this why we haven't seen that so far?
FRASER: Well, I don't think the flag -- you fly a flag from the stern. That's sort of hard to tell.
If you're close alongside the ship and look at the name and the country that's underneath it, but not every -- a lot of ships are registered in Panama, and they fly the Panama flag. They never go to Panama, but it's the way that you register for various economic reasons. You do it that way.
HARRIS: I want to get back to that point in just a moment. But Chris Lawrence at the Pentagon for us.
And Chris, you've got some additional information for us?
LAWRENCE: Yes. Just to kind of flesh this out and give some more perspective, Tony, we're now hearing, now learning -- a defense official has told me that there were four hijackers that boarded this boat. One is in custody, that the crew took into custody. The other three attempted to escape.
We can assume by that to mean that they all jumped into the water. And we don't know their status at this time, but again, four hijackers in total. One the crew has in custody. Three others tried to escape.
HARRIS: All right. Let me just jot this down. So, four hijackers in total, one in custody, Chris?
LAWRENCE: Yes.
HARRIS: And the other three tried to escape.
LAWRENCE: Yes, exactly.
Just to add a little bit of perspective, you know, when you talk about -- I think Alec brought up a great point in talking about what the Navy is dealing with in this situation. You know, this combined task force maybe has 12 to 15 ships. The Navy has, you know, five ships as part of that. But you're talking about an area of over a million square miles.
Picture the state of Texas times four, and imagine that number of ships trying to patrol that area. You know, that is why the Navy, the U.S. military put out this warning, when they started to see these attacks escalating in this area.
They could tell that they were concentrating their efforts around the Gulf of Aden, which is a prime shipping lane. Well, the pirates reacted to that and then moved to the eastern coast of Somalia. They changed their tactics because the combined task force can only cover so much water at any one time.
HARRIS: And Alec wants to jump in here.
FRASER: So much water at one time is getting larger and larger. When the pirates can capture a small ship, get that ship to capture a larger ship that can go way out into, say, the Indian Ocean, then you could actually cover ranges all the way over to India.
And so all of the merchant shipping that's going around India over the Straits of Malacca, over to Singapore and on into the Asian countries, you could go that far and hijack that far the bigger the boat you have. All you have to do is tow along a few small ships.
HARRIS: I see. I see.
Hey, Chris, I want to drill down on this just a bit more, because -- let me just sort of recap the information you just gave us. So, four hijackers in total, one in custody, the other three tried to escape. So that is pretty direct information.
You know where I'm leading here. Is this over?
LAWRENCE: It seems to be. I think we would want to hear direct word from the ship or from the company, because the last word we have is that the three tried to escape. You know, we don't have full confirmation that exactly that danger has passed, but for right now, it looks like the crew is in charge of the ship, that they have this one hijacker in custody, and that they were able to handle the situation by themselves.
HARRIS: Boy, all right. Let's recap here. Chris, stay with us, because we're working toward a break here, and then we're going to come back and reset all of this.
Four hijackers in total, one in custody. The other three tried to escape. We don't know about what their circumstances are at this point.
Alec Fraser is with us, and Alec is a retired Navy captain, skipper of a Navy cruiser, also the head of Turner Properties.
Thank you for your help on this. Don't go anyway.
We're going to take a quick break and update this story on the other side of the break.
You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: Well, an intense situation unfolding off the coast of Somalia and East Africa. At least 20 Americans taken hostage by a group of pirates. We're going to update this in just a moment.
The attack happened early this morning. The Americans on board carrying relief supplies -- yes, relief supplies -- to Kenya.
The latest information that we just received moments ago from our Chris Lawrence at the Pentagon is that this situation appears to be under control right now. I'm not going to go any further than that. As you can see in the lower third here, the "American Crew Retakes Hijacked Ship."
We understand from Chris' contacts at the Pentagon that we're talking about four hijackers in all. One of them is in custody, the other three are trying to escape.
Alec Fraser is with us right now, a retired Navy captain, skipper of a Navy cruiser, and the head of operations here at Turner.
FRASER: Right.
HARRIS: And thank you so much for your help. Boy, you're terrific with this.
You know, a couple things I want to talk about with you.
We've been talking about -- there was a point at which we were talking with Stan Grant about how you police the situation and how you try these folks. We've got one of these pirates in custody now. Then the question becomes, how do you prosecute and under what laws we prosecute this particular hijacker, this pirate?
We've been talking about this, Alec, for more than two years. I was working with Betty on weekends when we were talking about this over two years ago now.
Why has it taken so long to come together with some kind of U.N. mandate, some kind of rules under which we can prosecute? Because it seems to me that, perhaps, can be a deterrent. If you watch one of these pirates, you prosecute, you throw that pirate in jail. Maybe that's a deterrent down the road.
FRASER: Right. Well, international law, which really is not formal...
HARRIS: Yes.
FRASER: ... you know, if there is piracy and you know it's piracy, you can intercept and arrest them. Now, where you go from there depends what country they come from, and then it gets a little murky, but at least you have them out of harm's way and they'll be taken care of. But the challenge is, amongst all the ships, I mean, there are not that many Navy ships in the world. Our Navy has 300 ships. To keep 15, as Chris was referring to on station here a little while ago, it takes 30 ships just to do that. You know, they're there, those that are coming or going, and those that are being refit back in the United States. And other navies aren't anywhere near as large as ours are.
HARRIS: Got you.
FRASER: So that's the challenge. You can't get that many ships there, and once you do, what do you do with them?
HARRIS: Well, so, then the answer has to be the companies, then, that are conducting commerce on these waters have to do more. If you can't depend on a task force, you know, with coalition partners coming together to patrol that vast an area -- and we're working on a map, we'll go to the Google map in just in just a second, and we're going to talk about these high-transit areas in just a moment -- it then becomes incumbent upon the crews and the companies to train the crews to better be able to handle these situations.
Correct?
FRASER: It's going to be a combination of that and going back to World War II, where we used to try to steam ships individually from the United States to England and back. We went to convoys. And so convoys are something that we could use in this particular area.
And we're looking at the map now. Convoys going through the Red Sea around Yemen, and up into the Gulf Aden is one way of doing that. But as I was trying to talk about earlier, ships sort of hanging in an area until there are enough Navy ships to be able to escort them, that is cutting days out of their transit. That's tough.
HARRIS: Yes, that sounds like it would be very difficult to do.
You know, Barbara Starr, our Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr, is with us from Bahrain.
And Barbara, I'm wondering, boy, we know that the U.S. military has stepped up its presence in the Horn of Africa. We're talking about a number of issues here, and you pick up on any one that you want to talk about.
We know that the U.S. military has picked up its presence in the Horn of Africa. We know that there is this coalition of countries that have come together with this task force for patrolling these waters and offering some kind of assistance to these vessels, but as Alec was just making the point, this is a vast area that we're talking about.
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, it is, Tony. One U.S. Navy official tonight, here in Bahrain, describing it as a piece of water four times the size of Texas, and then some. I mean, you just simply cannot put enough war ships in all of that water throughout the shipping lanes and escort every cargo ship that comes through there. This is one of the busiest commercial shipping lanes in the world, not just what you would expect, oil tankers. These are goods that transit waterways through the Middle East. They go on to Asia, they go on to Africa.
This is really one of the busiest commercial channels in the world, and the pirates know that. This is economic warfare, if you will. A lot of these Somali pirates, frankly, we have come to learn, are fishermen who have been put out of work by the extreme poverty, turned to criminal -- what is criminal activity, and gone out after these ships.
Now, what's most interesting, of course, as I think people have reflected on this earlier today, this ship, this American cargo ship, taken several hundred miles off the coast of Somalia. So that's not just fishermen in small wooden boats. These are guys who have the weapons and the capability to get some distance out to sea.
That's what's been worrying the U.S. Navy and military forces around the world. They're beginning to see organization, cooperation and capability. This is not just ships close to shore being nabbed, but out way in international waters, and it's very tough to protect them. We will see in the coming hours how this situation may have resolved itself, but I think some of it does remain to be seen, what the crew did to try and retake the ship.
International commercial shipping experts have been advocating putting armed crews aboard the ship, taking a number of protective physical measures on a deck, pulling up ladders, making it very tough for pirates to shimmy over the side, because that's literally what they do. One of our sources telling us earlier today that it was about 17 minutes between the time the ship made a radio call that it was in distress and the pirates took that initial control of this cargo vessel. So you can see how quickly these things can happen.
The idea is to make the ship inaccessible and not happen at all. A lot of lessons to be learned here. We'll see how it all sorts out, but bottom line, I don't know if anybody in the U.S. military thinks this is the last time this is going to happen -- Tony.
HARRIS: Great point, and great reporting.
Barbara Starr for us in Bahrain.
It is interesting to know -- and we'll take this up with Alec in just a couple of minutes -- this thing happened so quickly. How is it, according to our reporting, that four hijackers essentially in skiffs managed to, for however long they were in control of the ship -- and that's still an open question at this point -- managed to do that.
And we can talk about methods and practices in just a little bit, Alec. But we have some new information about the crew of the American flag ship hijacked off Somalia.
The two top commanders are graduates of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. "The Cape Cod Times" says Captain Richard Phillips is a 1979 graduate, and his second in command is Captain Shane Murphy. Murphy's father is a professor at the Maritime Academy. The paper says Murphy contacted his mother by phone and said he was safe.
OK. In just a couple of minutes we will talk about -- with our former Navy captain about options the U.S. military might have. But let's take a quick break. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: So one of the big questions certainly that I have, top of mind for me, is about the security on board ships like this. This vessel that we've been talking about throughout the morning. Tom Fuentes is a former assistant director of the FBI and he joins us live from Washington.
And, Tom, thanks for coming back. We know that you were on with Fred a couple of hours ago, but thanks for coming back and helping us out on this.
This whole issue of security on these vessels, it looks like, in this case, the crew was able to take back control of the vessel. But the question is, moving forward, is this a situation where the Maersks of the world are going to have to be more responsible for training their crews so that they can handle situations like this?
TOM FUENTES, FORMER ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, FBI: Well, I'm sure they're going to be discussing, along with many of the other shipping companies, what measures they should take in the future for security. Should they have armed guards on the ship? I don't think they're going to try to train actual crew members into suddenly becoming special forces operators. But certainly some measures to try to prevent this from happening.
HARRIS: Is that how you see this going? That -- and, you know, we're not talking about the first piracy act here. We've been talking about this for a few years now. Has that discussion moved anywhere in terms of whether these shipping lines are actually going to train armed guards or put guards on these ships?
FUENTES: Well, that discussion has been within the executive offices of the shipping lines.
HARRIS: OK.
FUENTES: But I can tell you, in the past, I formally ran the office of International Operations for the FBI. But we directly coordinated a number of responses. We've had occasions in the past -- the past three years where the United States Navy engaged in gun battles in that area with Somali pirates, apprehended the pirates, seized their weapons and their boat. And in one of the cases, we assisted the Kenyan authorities in Mombasa with the prosecution of 12 of those pirates and several were convicted. There was a 1988 treaty signed by many countries, including the U.S., which states that any piracy on the high seas in international waters can be prosecuted by any country that signed that treaty. It does not have to be a U.S. flag carrier, it does not have to be U.S. citizens, although it is in this case. But the individual, if the ship has been taken back under control by the crew, whoever is in custody for that can be brought to the United States and prosecuted for this violation.
HARRIS: That's interesting. So we don't need new language to prosecute.
FUENTES: No, we have a convention, we have a statute already. So that's in effect right now. And in the case of the incident where the Navy captured the people, they could have been prosecuted in Washington. In this case, the Kenyan government asked the U.S. government if they could prosecute the individuals in Mombasa and requested FBI assistance. We dispatched agents from our Washington field office, who spent many months in Kenya assisting in the prosecution of that case.
HARRIS: Hey, Tom, how much prosecutions are we talking about here? I'm just thinking about whether or not it's a deterrent factor here.
FUENTES: Well, I don't -- I wouldn't call it a deterrent because so many of these hijackings have been successful. In many case the shipping -- in every cast that I know of, the shipping company has agreed to . . .
HARRIS: And there you go. You jumped to my next point. I mean, come on, we can talk about prosecution all day if we want here, but it still appears to be a pretty lucrative business when we're talking about shipping companies, in most of these cases, maybe you know of a couple of exceptions, of paying the ransom.
FUENTES: Well, sure. And if you look at the operation, it's a pretty low overhead business. You get a little boat. You throw a couple of guns and RPGs in it. You sail out. You capture millions of dollars worth of cargo. Receive a huge ransom. Go back to Somalia. Buy more weapons and more boats and keep doing it. So this is a project that pays a huge amount of money for minimal investment on the part of the pirates themselves.
HARRIS: All right. Tom, stay there, if you would. You provided a great segue. And then I want to get to Chris Lawrence.
Well, let's do this. Let's get to Chris Lawrence quickly here because, Chris, I understand you have new information.
Do we have Chris?
I can go to Alec.
All right. Alec, what we've done is we've grabbed a piece from David McKenzie (ph) from a short time ago . . .
FRASER: Right.
HARRIS: That we heard last hour here in the NEWSROOM and he was making the point -- and we have it graphically here -- that we're talking about these huge vessels. Essentially being hijacked by these bands of pirates in these skiffs.
FRASER: Right. Right.
HARRIS: So talk to us about how this happens.
FRASER: Well, look at these small boats on the camera right now.
HARRIS: Look at this.
FRASER: Those are small speed boats basically. Rubber boats that can go at a high speed. They are attached to some other boat and they just pull along. As they are doing here, throw up some grappling hooks. A couple people climb up. They throw up a ladder and the other guys go climbing on board. It's not very hard to do. It is hard to do in heavy seas. It's hard to do at a high rate of speed. But as you can see here, they're doing it off the stern, where the water's a little bit calmer, other than the wake that's coming out.
The high sides, I mean, you can pull in the ladders over the side. You can do all these things. But if somebody with grappling hooks wants to come up the side of the ship, and there are enough of them, it's going to be hard to do that.
We've seen some other pictures of these ships where they -- the crew is really on the back. On this particular ship, you can see the white section on the very back. Everybody lives there. The engine room's back there. The pilot house is there. The crew quarters are there. There's nobody in the rest of the ship, for the most part, unless you go to anchor and somebody goes way up forward.
HARRIS: Gotcha. I see. I see.
FRASER: So everybody's back here. So they can sort of climb on board -- and maybe they do it at night when nobody can see them and then they're there.
HARRIS: Now that's interesting because that was going to be my next question about, well, wouldn't you know? I mean isn't someone monitoring? If you see these -- someone, I would imagine, and maybe you just answered the question, they're sort of monitoring the situation. If you see some speed boats coming up and, OK. And the other question is, once you've identified that you're under some kind of attack here, what evasive maneuvers are even available to you?
FRASER: Well, these ships are going -- some of them are going pretty fast. And you can sort of weave back and forth. But a speedboat can keep up with that.
HARRIS: Yes.
FRASER: And once he's got one little grappling hook on, he sort of ties that off to the boat, so the boat will just sort of go where the ship goes. You've got to get to them before they get alongside. That's sort of the bottom -- and actually the bottom line is, you've got to get to them before they leave the coast of Somalia.
HARRIS: Great point.
FRASER: You've got a -- you've got a big ocean. You know, little ships, big ocean and until we go back and blockade the coast or control the coast somehow, whatever we do out at the ocean's going to be hard to do.
HARRIS: And there's a point at which you're in international waters. So, theoretically, you could do that if most of the activity is coming from the coast of Somalia, theoretically.
FRASER: Right. Well, Somalia is hard to find, you know, what the government, if there is one in Somalia, you know is controlling off the sea. I mean we recognize territorial seas about 10 miles, but it's going to have to get closer than that.
HARRIS: Wow. Alec, if you would, stay with us. I want to get to Chris Lawrence.
Chris, I understand you have some new information for us.
LAWRENCE: Yes, Tony, first the quick context here.
There is a multinational coalition of ships that has been patrolling this area trying to protect ships in the area.
HARRIS: And that's a task force we've been referring to.
LAWRENCE: That's right. Combined task force 151. Of those 12 to 15 ships, the U.S. Navy is providing five of those ships. And we're now being told that one of those five, the USS Bainbridge, that's a Navy destroyer, is now heading towards the Alabama. I am told that it's between 250 and 300 nautical miles away.
I looked it up. The Bainbridge has a cruising speed of about 30 knots per hour. I should be better at this. My mom was a math teacher. But I -- the way I kind of figured it out is was that they are still about eight to 10 hours away from the Alabama right now.
HARRIS: Nice.
Alec, you wanted to jump in.
FRASER: Well, the Bainbridge is a Arleigh Burke class destroyer. One of the lightest ones that we have. It can do 25 or 30 knots when all the engines are on line. So it's 300 miles away, 25, 30 knots comes out to be 12 hours. So we're getting there on arriving.
It also, and I'm not so sure about the Bainbridge, but that class, some of the class have helicopters on board. So a helicopter could go out ahead, but there's not little -- there's little a helicopter can do against small boats in the water.
HARRIS: Yes. Hey, I'm just wondering, Chris and Alec, and maybe I'm to far field here, but this feels -- it's beginning to feel like a pretty robust response to the situation. I can't recall how long the situation has been unfolding, but you've got this U.S. Navy ship on its way. It sounds as though, and I know we haven't crossed the t's and dotted the i's on this, but it sounds like the crew was able to retake the ship. It feels like we've got a pretty robust response in that at least at the moment things worked out about as well as they could have at this point. Am I right in saying that?
Chris, I'll go to you on that first, and then Alec?
LAWRENCE: Yes, I think so. I mean I think this is a pretty, you know, surprising situation. You know, we've covered a lot of these, you know, pirate attacks.
HARRIS: And these things can go along for days and weeks and weeks and weeks.
LAWRENCE: Oh, yes. Normally the normal outcome of this is that the company figures out a way, negotiates, and pays a ransom and gets a ransom. We've seen that video of the helicopter coming in, swooping in, dropping off the ransom money to release the ship. You know, that's the way a lot of these hostage situations normally end. For the crew to retake control on their own is a pretty surprising development here.
HARRIS: Yes.
Alec.
FRASER: Just to add on to that. This was four -- I guess in the reports that we have so far . . .
HARRIS: Yes. Yes.
FRASER: These are four hijackers coming on board. I think there are other instances where there are a lot more. And so if you only have 12, 15 people that are -- as a crew, of which some of them may be armed -- I think you've got to sort of judge how many people are coming on board and what type of a response.
HARRIS: That's a great point. That's a great point.
FRASER: The last thing you want to do is get these guys mad at you and then you've got other problems.
HARRIS: OK. That's a great, great point.
All right, let's do this. I want to give you a quick update on the White House statement so far. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs issued this statement regarding today's attack. It says, "the White House is closely monitoring the apparent hijacking of the U.S.- flagged ship in the Indian Ocean and assessing a course of action to resolve the situation. Our top priority is the personal safety the crew members on board." We are going to -- I'm sorry, Joe? Do we have something else available to us? OK. We're going to keep an eye on the State Department briefing. We believe it is under way now. Let's listen in. Robert Wood speaking.
ROBERT WOOD, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: That's right. It was food assistance bound for Africa.
QUESTION: Can you be more specific?
WOOD: Yes. I think I can probably give you some more details on it.
The ship apparently was bound for Mombasa, Kenya, and the shipment included vegetable oil, corn soy blend, and other basic food commodities bound for people in countries including Somalia, Uganda and Kenya.
QUESTION: Can you confirm that the crew took control of the ship?
WOOD: I can't. (INAUDIBLE). I just don't know. There is a lot of contradictory reports out there. So I just couldn't tell you.
QUESTION: Were there any U.S. diplomats on board the ship?
WOOD: Not that I'm aware of. They were all American citizens. I think there were 20 Americans.
QUESTION: Because there were just reports that there was one.
WOOD: I haven't seen that report. I can just confirm that I think there were 20 American citizens on board. On the subject (ph) (INAUDIBLE).
QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE) on the subject (ph). (INAUDIBLE) U.S. bilateral talks. The first question is, any bilateral talks between Secretary (INAUDIBLE) and the (INAUDIBLE) and (INAUDIBLE) deputy prime minister of . . .
WOOD: I thought we were staying on this subject. I wanted to stay on this subject.
QUESTION: OK.
WOOD: Yes.
QUESTION: Actually, I wanted to move to a P5 plus 1, but . . .
WOOD: OK. Well then let me -- well, let me do Lambro's (ph) question and we'll -- did you want . . .
QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE).
WOOD: OK. QUESTION: OK. The question is on Balgardia (ph) and U.S. relations. Number one is, any bilateral talks between Secretary (INAUDIBLE) and the Bulgarian (INAUDIBLE), deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs or the (INAUDIBLE)?
WOOD: Yes, the secretary met with the Bulgarian foreign minister just a short while ago. They had a very good discussion. They talked about energy issues. They talked about Afghanistan.
HARRIS: OK. We have apparently moved on. We're talking about the Bulgarian ambassador. So we moved on.
Just wanted to see if there was anything that Robert Wood, the State Department spokesman, could add to the situation. We clearly have been aware of the fact that this was a ship carrying aid supplies.
What we're going to do is we're going to take a quick break. As we go to break, just another reminder that it appears that the crew, the American crew, 20 members on that crew, 20 Americans on board of the Maersk vessel, have managed to take back control of the vessel. And the reporting that we're getting from Chris Lawrence at the Pentagon is that we're talking about four hijackers in total. One is in custody, three trying to make their escape. We will update this story with the very latest information in just a moment. 12:46 Eastern Time. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: You want to talk about breaking news. We've got it for you right here. Our Jason Carroll is on the line with us.
And, Jason, I'm not going to steal your thunder here because you're just off the phone, is my understanding, with a very interested party in this entire drama.
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, basically, Tony, we just finished an interview with Joe Murphy (ph). We had scheduled an interview strangely enough with Joe more than a week ago. We wanted to do a story about the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. He is an instructor here. What does he do? He instructs these cadets about how to deal with pirates. His son graduated from here, Shane, in 2001, and it turns out, as we all know now, Shane was one of those crew members that was abducted aboard that vessel.
So it was a very interesting conversation. We spoke to him. We also spoke to Shane's wife. Told us that Shane called her from overseas at about 10:00 a.m., first to say that he was alive. That he couldn't speak for very long, Tony, but he wanted to say that they had "taken down one of the pirates." He did not say how they were able to do it since none of these men were armed. He simply said that the situation was resolving itself.
We now know what has happened in terms of that situation, that control has been given back over to the U.S. crew members. But in speaking with Joe . . . HARRIS: Wow.
CARROLL: Yes, in speaking with Joe, he told us how he initially had heard 6:30 this morning what had happened to his son. Obviously, he was very worried, but also knew that his son was trained and knew how to deal with these types of situations. So two very interesting conversations we just had.
HARRIS: Absolutely.
CARROLL: But we were able to call you just as soon as we could.
HARRIS: No, that's awesome. But let me just get back to what seems to be the really pertinent conversation here, and that's the conversation that Shane Murphy had from aboard the Maersk with his wife. And go through that information again, if you would, for us because even in that phone call he seemed to be indicating that the situation was resolving itself.
CARROLL: That is correct. His wife, she received the call at about 10:00 a.m. this morning. Obviously, you can imagine how she was feeling before that. She said that her cell phone rang. It was Shane. He said, he said, honey, I'm alive. He said I cannot speak for very long. He said, I just want you to know that we've taken down one of the pirates.
He also said, Tony, that basically they knew that the Navy was on its way, but the pirates did not know that. And so what they basically did was waited until the Navy got close enough and then let these pirates, in his words, let them think they had control.
HARRIS: Wow.
CARROLL: That they knew that help was on the way. And when the moment was right, we don't know what that moment was, they were able to overtake one of these pirates, at least one of them, and as he told his wife, we have taken down one of these pirates. He said he felt confident that the situation was going to resolve itself very shortly.
HARRIS: That's awesome.
CARROLL: That was at about 10:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
HARRIS: What took you so long to call us, man? All right, Jason . . .
CARROLL: No, no, no, no, Tony, that's what time the wife got the call.
HARRIS: The initial conversation with, yes, between husband and wife.
CARROLL: Correct. I just finished speaking with her about 10 minutes ago.
HARRIS: OK. Awesome. All right. Before I give you all kinds of guff that you don't deserve.
Jason, if you would, I actually want you to stand by, but I'm understanding you may have to run. I hope I'll have you on the other side of the break because I'd love for you to share all of this information once again with the audience.
Jason Carroll with some exclusive information, I believe, at this point. But let's take a quick break and we'll come back and recap this story right here in the CNN NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: Very, very quickly, before we push forward to Kyra Phillips in the CNN NEWSROOM at the top of the hour, want to get to Colin Freeman. And Colin is a journalist. He's joining us from London. And he has been reporting on this issue of piracy for some time now.
And, Colin, first of all, I know you've just received the news that it appears the American crew has retaken this vessel. I'm wondering, what kind of signal that sends? And maybe the more important question is of whether or not where we stand now on this whole discussion between countries, between the task force and countries that sail these vessels in terms of how much training to provide to the crews and whether or not more armed security guards might in the future be placed on these vessels.
COLIN FREEMAN, CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, "SUNDAY TELEGRAPH": Well, certainly it's rather too early to say exactly what's happened on the vessel that's just been taken, but if these guys have managed to stage some sort of rebellion against the kidnappers, I'm assuming they've done that unarmed. That is obviously quite a gamble to take. If they've been training in dealing with possible piracy attacks, maybe they're in a better position to take it.
On the more general subject of whether to go armed or not, that has been a debate that's been going on in shipping circles for quite a while now.
HARRIS: And where do we stand on that? Is there a consensus building at all on it?
FREEMAN: No. My understanding is that a number of the American -- from the American perspective certainly that would tend to favor. Quite a lot of people do favor putting armed guards on ships. Other people point out that it complicates matters vastly from an insurance point of view in terms of liabilities as to whether somebody -- a pirate was killed or any kind of legal issues that might arise.
And also there's a cost issue. Putting highly-trained security guards on a boat for a journey that might last several weeks will add enormously to any shipping costs.
HARRIS: What are the other options being considered here? Because clearly we're talking about an international coalition, a task force, in the water of nations trying to patrol this vast area that really can't do the job as efficiently as certainly these shipping companies would like.
FREEMAN: Well, yes. I mean, I've been speaking to a number of people about this recently. And most of them seem to admit that there doesn't really seem to be any solution in the immediate short term. It's a vast area of ocean you're talking about. There is no way that . . .
HARRIS: Yes.
FREEMAN: Aa naval task force of the current size can patrol all these waters. There are a number of different options that ships can make -- take to make themselves more difficult to board in terms of putting -- dragging nets in the (INAUDIBLE) around the ship.
HARRIS: Well, Colin, let me do this. Colin, let me do this. Let me pass you off to Kyra Phillips and her team and maybe you can get into some of those things that these shipping companies can do moving forward. But we are flat out of time and our thanks to Alec Fraser, a retired Navy captain, skipper of a Navy cruiser, and the president of -- head of Turner Properties here.
We're pushing forward with Kyra Phillips. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.
