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Should Flight 370 Get Independent Investigation?; Satellite Spots Debris in Flight 370 Search; Obama to Speak on Ukraine

Aired March 20, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It's been 13 days since Flight 370 with the 239 on board have gone missing. And for some, part of that delay is due to the perceived incompetence of the Malaysian government. Now one group is encouraging the families of the missing to band together and order an independent investigation. In an open letter on Facebook, the Family Association of Air France Flight 447 which crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Brazil in 2009 writes in part, quote, "You as families should feel entitled to approach your respective national governments to put pressure on the Malaysian military and civil authorities to speed up the investigations. We also encourage you to demand a neutral investigation to be carried out by competent experts of your choice in order to safeguard full transparency and best practices be applied."

Joining me now to discuss that is aviation attorney, Daniel Rose. Hi Daniel.

DANIEL ROSE, AVIATION ATTORNEY: Good morning Carol.

COSTELLO: So are these families right? Should these families demand an independent investigation?

ROSE: Yes absolutely. It's one of my pet peeves. You know as good as our NTSB is and they're very good especially in these big disaster cases, one of the biggest issues I have is that families don't have a say or a representative involved in the process. And at a minimum it implicates the transparency of the whole process but you know at the bottom, at the baseline what you really want to do is get answers. And if you can get those answers from any source and families can hire attorneys, you can hire experts who have extreme knowledge in unique areas that can further the investigation and they can do that in a productive and meaningful way, then what's the reason not to allow that to happen? And it's something that's really troubling.

COSTELLO: How would these families go about doing that though?

ROSE: Well it's very difficult. It's very difficult in the U.S. I can only imagine it's tenfold as difficult in Malaysia where they're dealing really with their first major disaster. But you know every time we're involved in an aviation accident that leads to a litigation, we effectively conduct our own independent investigation.

We go out and we hire our own experts and these are experts that have practiced in the field that all NTSB experts are practicing in and have excelled in those fields and are now at the pinnacle in those -- in those fields of knowledge. And they contribute very meaningfully to an investigation and often times find things that are overlooked by the governmental investigation. It happens frequently.

COSTELLO: Well it sounds like it would cost a lot of money.

ROSE: Well, it does. You know I'm not saying you -- you go back and reinvent the whole wheel. Obviously you don't go out and look necessarily for more wreckage or anything to that extent, but you know when that information when that evidence is collected and available, it's very important for another set of eyes to take a fresh look at it and really see if something was missed in the initial pass through or approach it with a different view about, hey well what if this happened?

Then you know this piece of evidence may mean something else. And that's where the value comes in. And yes, it's expensive, and it's -- but its money well spent in getting to the truth and getting the answers to the families that they deserve.

COSTELLO: Daniel Rose, thanks for your insight. I appreciate it.

ROSE: My pleasure.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, possible debris from Flight -- from Flight 370 has investigators and search crews shifting their focus to the southern Indian Ocean. So what's next and how likely is it that this debris is the real thing? Our experts weigh in next.

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COSTELLO: New satellite images are giving hopes this morning to crews searching for Flight 370. Two pieces of debris spotted some 1,400 miles from the Australian coast. A Norwegian ship now in the area ready to resume the search when day breaks. Because of course it's nighttime in Australia right now.

Let's bring in our experts Tom Fuentes is a CNN law enforcement analyst and former FBI assistant director and Arthur Rosenberg, an aviation lawyer and pilot. Welcome to both of you.

ARTHUR ROSENBERG, AVIATION LAWYER: Good morning Carol.

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Good morning Carol.

COSTELLO: Tom, I want to start with you because these satellite images of this debris four days old and just now, just yesterday they started looking for them. Australian officials say they're hopeful. But it seems like a long shot.

FUENTES: I agree Carol. It seems like quite a long shot especially because not only the four days old, but when they fly out to the site to actually use all the specialized equipment to search, they can only stay there a few number of hours and of course they're limited by the daylight hours. But -- but even during daylight, they can only stay so long and have to return 1,500 miles back to Perth, Australia.

COSTELLO: Still Arthur Malaysian officials mentioned the NTSB saying they -- it had offered suggestions about where to look on this data. So Australian -- Australia's Prime Minister went before its parliament and announced that some hopeful signs had been spotted by satellite. So that gives some credence to this report.

ROSENBERG: Yes that's absolutely true. But here's my take on this. At this point, this is the best clue that we have at this moment in time. This clue being what it is, is not -- should be taken with a grain of salt. Cautious optimism for some, cautious pessimism from others. Now this is what I know you have a piece -- an object that was 80 feet long. If you compare that to the 777, the wingspan is 200 feet each side is a 100 feet. Could it be a section of the wing? Maybe? What about the horizontal and vertical stabilizers? Well they're about 60 feet to 70 feet long. I don't think that this object could be that because the object is bigger.

In addition, this particular area is known as a confluence area in the sea where debris, containers, a lot of stuff seems to coalesce. So in terms of whether this is a piece of wreckage, it's hard to say. Could something be floating? Well there's a lot of composite in the 777. The wing can be composite, the horizontal and vertical stabilizers uses composite. Have honey comb in between it, it's airtight, it floats. If you take a look at what happen with the American Airlines Flight coming out of LaGuardia just after at 9/11 the vertical stabilizer was floating in the water. It could be this, maybe it's not.

But at this point, with airplanes having come out looked at it, they don't see anything. I know the weather is bad. I'm somewhat pessimistic that this is going to be a piece of the wreckage. And if that's the case, then these poor families are back to square one on trying to get answers and clues as to what's going on.

COSTELLO: I know. I mean doesn't a lot of this depend, Tom, on how exactly the plane crashed into the water, if it did?

FUENTES: That's true Carol. It depends on all those factors. Are there a million pieces floating on the ocean being spread around the whole area by currents and wind? Or just maybe a couple of large chunks and other things sank so you know there's a number of questions that come up this. And we're not going to know until, if and until it's found, where they can do the detailed forensic work on the pieces of the aircraft.

But again, I completely agree with Arthur. I think that I would lean more toward being negative about these -- these pieces then I would being positive that that's it, we found the airplane.

COSTELLO: Ok but they seem so sure about the general area. And it's a large general area. I realize that. Because they've spent everything but the kitchen sink there to look.

FUENTES: Right.

COSTELLO: So they've got to know something we don't know. I mean isn't that possible Arthur?

ROSENBERG: Yes, I mean it absolutely is. You know, the best piece of evidence we have right now is the satellite photography. The satellite photographs that they showed to public are probably not the precision and clarity that they're actually looking at. They do that for military reasons for secrets. But if we assume that the photographs from the satellite -- we've all heard the adage that our satellites could see the numbers on a license plate from space. So you would certainly think that these satellites could have beamed in and given us a much crisper picture.

When you take that information with the flight path of the airplane that we know -- we know the last point from military radar was at 2:15. If we say they took the southern corridor, if you take the ping from the INMARSAT satellite and you look at the range of this airplane, when you put it all together, they're kind of in the right area to be looking.

But it's a lot of assumptions. It's a difficult analysis. The airplanes haven't found anything yet. The ships are on the way. They'll obviously will loiter in the area and have a better chance of seeing something. But I still think it's a long shot for finding the plane.

COSTELLO: Yes. Well, let's just talk about the theory they're working under -- Arthur. I'm going to ask you this because you are a pilot. Let's say that the plane was flying along until it ran out of fuel. What would happen?

ROSENBERG: Yes, sure. Well, you know first off, you look at how much fuel is on board. From what I've heard, we're all working with about eight hours of fuel on board. The plane actually was in the Malay Peninsula area, you know, it flew east, it flew back, burned off about two hours of fuel. That leaves about six hours left.

If the plane is going 500 miles per hour on average which it probably wasn't because we know there were altitude excursions. That gives you a range of 3,000 miles which kind of puts you in this area.

What happens next? Let's assume the plane ran out of fuel. Well, if the plane made a controlled descent which it may have, it could have made something like a Sully Sullenberger landing in the water in which the plane may not have broken into a million pieces. If the plane was nosed over in a final ditch effort of suicide or something like that like EgyptAir or (inaudible), then we're looking at a plane which is scattered all over the place in pieces. The debris field could be hundreds of miles long. So we really don't know.

But, you know, I kind come back to these poor families and they really -- all they want are answers. They really haven't been given any which is why these people really do need legal representation in some form or another to guide them. COSTELLO: I know. I'm with you. I know that Malaysian authorities are holding a conference with them. They have them in a hotel room, all the families are together. It's been going on more than an hour. We don't know exactly what Malaysian authorities are telling them but we have Atika Shubert covering that for us.

We'll know a little later but I'm with you. I'm with you Arthur. Tom Fuentes and Arthur Rosenberg, thanks to both you.

FUENTES: Thank you.

ROSENBERG: Thank you for having me.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the southern Indian Ocean is one of the most remote areas on the planet. Why is the search for Flight 370 now focused there? We'll delve deeper to that when we come back.

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COSTELLO: Coming up in just about ten minutes, President Obama is expected to make some sort of announcement on the Ukrainian situation on the South Lawn of the White House. Michelle Kosinski, our CNN White House correspondent is there to tell us more. What do we expect the President to say?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it would seem likely this would be announcement of an expansion of sanctions only because we know the White House has been looking at that possibility. They've been talking about it. And they said basically this would come in coming days unless Russia did something to indicate it was going to reverse course in Crimea which seems extremely unlikely to impossible or if it changed the situation there in a positive way that western nations have been calling for.

Because to our knowledge, nothing has changed on the Russian-Crimean situation -- it seems that that could be the announcement. Of course we don't have confirmation of that yet. But at the same time this upcoming presidential announcement was indicated here, we heard from the UK's Prime Minister David Cameron, announcing that he was going to expand the sanctions very similar to the sanctions that the president of the United States announced this week.

He was going to expand the number of people affected by the asset freezes and visa bans. Because the U.S. activity has been really in close concert with what the EU has done in terms of reaction to Russia, even though the U.S. was first to impose sanctions, because the UK is announcing that expansion today, it seems likely that the U.S. could be doing the same.

So in just a few minutes, we'll hear directly from President Obama before he boards the plane bound for Florida on another topic. We know he will be speaking specifically about Ukraine. After he delivers that statement, we'll then hear more -- more detail in the background briefing by senior White House officials. COSTELLO: Michelle Kosinski, thanks so much. Of course, when the President begins speaking, we'll carry that for you live. I'll be right back.

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COSTELLO: We've been talking all morning long about two big pieces of debris that investigators are looking at off the coast of southern Australia in the southern arc if you will. But there's got to be more to it than this because investigators and countries have thrown a lot of resources into this area. We've been trying to figure out if they know something they're not telling us.

Let's head to Washington and check in with Rene Marsh -- she's been looking into this. What have you found?

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, it is all about the data. So again, we're talking about these new satellite images today that possibly show this debris. And as you mentioned, they diverted the search to the vicinity where they believe the satellite images show what may be the debris from the plane. You're looking at images now.

Now, they're still being cautious, but what makes this is imagery more credible than, let's just say, the Chinese satellite imagery that we talked about days ago is it essentially places the debris in the same general area where NTSB data says the plane may have made its last known satellite connection. That makes it more credible. Also the size of this debris makes it more credible. It's about 78 feet. And that conceivably could be a part of this 777 -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. He'll keep on. We'll keep on. Rene Marsh, many thanks to you and thank you for joining me today. I'm thanks and thank people joining me today.

I'm Carol Costello. President Obama is expected to speak on Ukraine shortly. I want to hand it give it over to Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Carol, thanks very much. We're a waiting the President of the United States. We'll have more on the mystery surrounding the Malaysian airliner. That of course, is coming up.

But right now, you're looking at live pictures from the south lawn of the White House. The President will be walking out to Marine One. Marine One will fly the President to the joint Base Andrews outside Washington D.C., getting rod to fly down to Orlando, Florida for a series of events there including some political fundraising. But in the meantime, before the President boards Marine One -- will make what the White House is describing the statement on the situation in Ukraine. U.S. deeply concerned about what's going on now.

The official decision from Russia from the parliament in Russia, the Dumato vote that nearly unanimously to annex Crimea and make it part of Russia and in effect taking it away from the sovereign nation of Ukraine. Michelle Kosinski is our White House correspondent. She is standing by. This was a late edition Michelle to the President's schedule. The President clearly wants to make a statement right now. I assume he's going to tighten up the sanctions on the Russians, given the U.S. concern over what's going on.

KOSINSKI: Yes. It just seems likely that this will be an expansion of those sanctions that we saw Monday, I think it was. This week the asset freezes and travel bans on certain individuals.

We know that the White House has been working on this. They've been talking about expanding them in the near term. In fact, right after those sanctions that we mentioned were imposed this week, there was a long meeting to discuss how they could be furthered.