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Search for Flight 370; U.S. Expands Sanctions on Russia

Aired March 21, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

LT. CMDR. ADAM SCHANTZ, U.S. NAVY (via telephone): We're -- like you said, we're talking about three to four hours to get out there, roughly 1500 miles out there. The aircraft, there's no alternates and nowhere else out there to land.

They're having to manage their fuel very carefully out there to ensure they're getting back here with plenty of reserve gas. The American public should be proud of the men and women we have out here.

Manage their fuel very carefully out there to ensure they're getting back here with plenty of reserve gas. The American public should be proud of the men and women that we have out here. Our maintenance professionals are working hard to keeping this airplane flying and get on mission, get on the search area on time every day. Our air crew is out there. They're diligently working to search all the areas, (INAUDIBLE), and we all want the same thing and provide closure for these families.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Lieutenant Commander Adam Schantz and Kate Bolduan, thanks to both of you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, as search crews prepare for Malaysian officials call, quote, "a long haul," there are renewed questions about what caused the plane to seemingly vanish. Can we now rule out a hijacking? We'll talk about that, next.

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COSTELLO: Now to the investigation into what happened aboard Flight 370. As search crews comb through the southern Indian Ocean, could that location in itself provide key clues about what caused this plane to disappear. Let's bring in CNN's Martin Savidge, who's been bringing this story to us from the cockpit perspective. With him, Pilot Mitchell Casado. And Tom Fuentes, CNN's law enforcement analyst and former assistant director for the FBI.

Welcome, gentlemen.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: Tom, I'll start with you. The direction the plane was going toward the South Pole, could that rule out hijacking?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Carol, I don't think anything rules out hijacking or rules it in. It's still within the realm of possibility. And just because we haven't seen cases in the past where a hijacker took off with a plane -- or took control of a plane and flew it to some remote location. You know, one of the goals of terrorists is to get media attention. And they've certainly -- if that was the goal in this case -- they've done it. And in terms of terror, you know, people thinking twice now about getting on an aircraft and wondering if they'll ever be seen or heard of or known about ever again. So, you know, that's not an -- I mean it's an outside possibility, but you can't rule it out. There's nothing to rule it out.

COSTELLO: Well, two -- I know, because two things, no one's taken responsibility, it's been 14 days, and if -- and we're talking about a really remote location.

FUENTES: Well, the more remote, the less likely you'll find it in time. And the less likely you find it, that means recovering the data recorders, the black boxes. And, you know, and again, and the fact that it flew so long also tells you that you don't know what happened. You're not going to know what was said in the cockpit at the time the transponders were turned off. The recorders will have overwritten the voice communication, so you won't know who was in that cockpit, if a stranger came in there. You won't know if there was a struggle between the captain and the co-pilot for whatever reason. You won't know any of that. You won't hear the voices. So the data recorder will tell you if that plane went up, down, sideways, whatever it did, but it won't tell you why and it won't tell you who was talking about it in the cockpit at the time that was occurring.

COSTELLO: Marty, it seems some pilots are back to the theory that this was a mechanical failure. Is there any scenario that makes sense?

SAVIDGE: Oh, yes. Yes, there are a number of them, actually. There's a popular one out there that's called a zombie plane. We can sort of give you an idea what that's like. Remember, this is a flight that's taking off from Beijing or Kuala Lumpur headed to Beijing. It's the middle of the night and they've just reached their cruising altitude. So this is the part of that flight where normally you would hear the ding and that's the indication, OK, you can now take off your seatbelts and it's free to move about the cabin time. Safest part of the flight, right, Mitchell?

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT: Absolutely. Cruise (ph) typically, safest part of the flight, most eventful (ph) -- uneventful (ph).

SAVIDGE: Do we think that something else could have gone wrong like this? That's an indication, Carol, that you've got a fire. Maybe it's the nose wheel overheated and it's now smoldering, not blazing. But you get a fire indicator right here and, obviously, this would alert the pilots. So the scenario would be that one pilot would remain, say Mitchell here, and he would begin maybe programming the flight data system so that this aircraft could begin to make a turn, maybe go back to Kuala Lumpur or to an alternate airport.

Meanwhile, another pilot goes below to try to figure out what he can do. Possibly disconnecting electricals, like this, the transponder. We know it went out. Or maybe the fire burned it out. Then ACARS goes out. Again, was it disconnected to stop a fire? Did it burn out? But, meanwhile, the plane is already committed to the turn. It's on automatic pilot. How far would you go?

CASADO: You would go until you ran out of gas. (INAUDIBLE).

SAVIDGE: And since the plane was fueled for what we think, seven hours, that's how it ends up down there in the southern Indian Ocean, the zombie plane, because there's no brain (ph).

COSTELLO: Well, except for one thing, if -- if it is true that before the co-pilot said, "all right, good night," 12 minutes before that somebody, you know, reprogrammed the onboard computers, wouldn't that shoot that theory down?

SAVIDGE: Well, that's right, there is no sort of explanation anyone's come up with that covers all of the kind of parameters that we've heard of information. Now, we're assuming that everything we've heard or information that's been leaked or heard from sources is totally accurate. You can't verify that, as Tom says, until we find the black boxes. But there's no perfect explanation as yet. And that's been the frustration (ph).

COSTELLO: No Perfect -- that's because we have -- we have seemingly a complete lack of real evidence.

SAVIDGE: Right.

COSTELLO: Tom, let's talk about that homemade simulator in Captain Shah's home. American investigators now say they can retrieve some of those deleted files from Captain Shah's homemade simulator. Is it likely anything found there will be useful?

FUENTES: Well, it depends what -- I mean there's two aspects to the searches of the computers. One is, what flights he may have been practicing, you know, ahead as previous destinations, let's say, at home. But much of that could be explained away. You know, he used that maybe to practice going to places that Malaysian Airlines always go to, which is all over Asia. But he could have, just for recreation purposes, said what's it like to go to Somalia? What would it be like to fly to the North Pole? What would it be like to fly to New York? You know, you don't -- you don't know what they'll find with that. But no matter what they find, you could almost explain every possible thing away.

If you say he's looking at alternate destinations in the middle of Indian Ocean, well, they fly -- Malaysian Air files to every major city in Australia, including Perth, where the rescue is being conducted from now. So you would want alternate possible -- a small island or somewhere. Are they out there? You know, he might be looking for that. And again, almost anything they find with the flight simulator software could be explained, you know, one way or the other.

The other important factor, and I think -- and my opinion as an investigator, the more important factor is, what websites were the two pilots visiting? And this can be, you know, everything from child pornography, it could be extremist terror websites, it could be anything. That will give you a greater insight into what their interests are. What were the things they were looking up on a regular basis? What kind of files they may have stored or what kind of bookmarks they may have made in their computer to easily go back to some of these websites. That might be a lot more informative than what destinations he practiced flying to.

COSTELLO: Now, see, I would assume 14 days into this that investigators know some of that information. I mean -- and just aren't sharing it or really haven't found anything pertinent.

FUENTES: Well, I can tell -- in the FBI's case, doing the search now, you know, the first place they're going to report back to is the Malaysians. They're helping the Malaysians in their investigation. Now, at some point, they'll brief other he entities of the U.S. government and it will quickly leak out. That's how it happens all the time. But, for right now, the discipline of the investigation is such that what they find will be reported back to the investigators in Kuala Lumpur and, you know, go from there. But that will come out. You will know these things with the exception of -- in terms of the flight simulator especially, if he re-saved other files, that will cover over or corrupt or delete the files that were previously deleted. When you delete a file, you don't actually delete it, you just put it aside so that it can be overwritten if you need the space in the future.

COSTELLO: Gotcha.

Marty, you wanted to say something?

SAVIDGE: Well, I was just going to say, you know, to Tom's point about how this flight simulator may not necessarily show true intent. We get a lot of free time in here and, yes, I like to actually play. And you can come up with all sorts of scenarios. Just as Tom said, you know, maybe try flying under the Golden Gate Bridge. Now, you would never do that, but that's the beauty of a simulator. It is a chance to try something you would never do in real life. So, just because something shows up in a simulator does not mean that is what a pilot intended to do.

COSTELLO: A great point. Martin Savidge, Tom Fuentes, Mitchell Casado, thanks as always.

FUENTES: You're welcome, Carol.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, hundreds of miles above the Indian Ocean, satellites may hold the key to unlocking the mystery of Flight 370. But how helpful can these images be if they're delayed for several days? We'll talk about that, next.

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COSTELLO: Some of the best tools in the search for Flight 370 are not on earth but hundreds of miles in space. Satellites orbiting the globe snapping pictures. But those images are no good without men and women pouring through each frame.

Brian Todd has more for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Credible sightings, Australian officials call them, two large objects, captured on satellite photos, one about 79 feet long, the other about 16 feet.

JOHN YOUNG, AUSTRALIAN MARITIME SAFETY AUTHORITY: We need to get there, find them, see them, assess them to know whether it's really meaningful or not.

TODD: What gave the Australians confidence to say these two blurry objects may be parts of the plane? These images come from a Colorado based company called Digital Globe. Imagery analyst Tim Brown says Digital Globe satellites fly at four miles a second in a polar orbit, snapping huge swaths of pictures at a time.

(On camera): How would the searchers have taken these satellite images and determined that this was debris?

TIM BROWN, IMAGERY ANALYST, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: What they're looking for are bright objects against the dark sea and sometimes you use a change detection software to do that, other times, they have the human eyeballs and in the case of the Australians they have lots and lots of eyeballs.

TODD (voice-over): Google Earth satellites can zoom down and capture very detailed pictures, like these of planes at Reagan National Airport with publicly available technology. But these satellite pictures of the objects in question are fuzzy. Brown says Australian intelligence officials likely saw higher-resolution versions than the ones released to the public.

BROWN: And that's because they just don't want to share that information with potential adversaries, for example.

TODD: Why did it take four days for the pictures to go public? Brown says Digital Globe would have had to first download them to ground stations then send them by a satellite to their Colorado labs, process them in different formats, then send them to the Australians who would examine them frame by frame, pixel by pixel.

(On camera): If the currents are strong, and the ocean is choppy, how do you distinguish between white caps and a crucial piece of debris?

BROWN: If you have a white cap like that it's much more difficult to identify a piece of degree. And so it would require just more attention and a lot more eyeballs to make those distinctions.

TODD (voice-over): And now what's making the search difficult is that the water has been really choppy. After the pictures were taken released there was low visibility and rough seas in that same area.

Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: As the U.S. ramps up sanctions on Russian officials over Russia's annexation of Crimea, officials in both countries are ramping up the rhetoric.

White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski following that story for you from Washington.

Hi, Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, This has been an uncomfortable back and forth, tit-for-tat, so this is not a school yard battle, it is global politics that affects the future, coming up next.

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COSTELLO: We'll get back to our coverage of that missing flight in just a minute. But first, Russia. It is tit-for-tat between the United States and Russia. The United States imposes sanctions on Russian officials and citizens and the Russians in turn slap sanctions on American politicians like Harry Reid and John Boehner and Senator John McCain.

Senator McCain essentially laughed in President Vladimir Putin's face tweeting, quote, "He'll have to cancel his vacation to Siberia: It would be funny it weren't so serious.

White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski is in Washington with more.

Good morning.

KOSINSKI: Yes, I think he put that well. It's been strange to watch this back and forth. And leaders of both the U.S. and Russia making fun of each other. And some watching this say, well, this is ridiculous. It seems children even, and for what? Well, the sanctions just imposed by the White House do have some bite. And what that really tells us is how bad relations have become not only between the U.S. and Russia but between Russia and a good part of the world.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOSINSKI (voice-over): When the White House imposed rounds one and two of sanctions, freezing assets, barring entry to some key Russian officials, among others, their first reaction was to laugh, calling the moves hilarious, an honor, saying they don't have any property abroad. One top aide said he just wants to listen to Tupac Shakur and doesn't need a visa for that.

Well, now, come more sanctions against more senior people, Putin cronies, the White House calls them, with lots of cash and influence, Putin's banker and his crony bank. The administration says they'll all be frozen out of doing business in dollars, accounts will be closed. And the next step of sanctions could be more severe, targeting Russian financial services, mining, defense, energy and engineering sectors.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is not our preferred outcome. These sanctions would not only have a significant impact on the Russian economy but could also be disruptive to the global economy.

KOSINSKI: This time, Russia responded with its own sanctions on President Obama's advisers, top lawmakers. House Speaker John Boehner and Senator John McCain call themselves proud to be on Putin's naughty list, of those willing to stand against Putin's aggression, McCain said, I guess this means my spring break inside in Siberia is off. My secret bank account in Moscow is frozen. Nonetheless, I will never cease my efforts on behalf of freedom, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, including Crimea.

Senator Dan Coates tweeted, "I will continue to lead efforts on Capitol Hill to bring Putin to his senses." Our nation's leaders almost gleefully using the #sanctionedbyPutin.

Senator Mary Landrieu calling it a badge of honor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOSINSKI: U.S. officials say that diplomacy is still possible. The Russian foreign minister called U.S. sanctions inappropriate, counterproductive. Said that they will boomerang back on the U.S. and that for every hostile attack, they will respond appropriately, even hinting that they might not cooperate anymore in talks aimed to end Iran's nuclear program, although U.S. officials have discounted that somewhat saying that Russia also has a stake in that end.

But this is continuing obviously and it seems to get more unpleasant by the day -- Carol.

COSTELLO: That's one way to put it, Michelle Kosinski. Many thanks to you.

New in the next hour of NEWSROOM, the answers to what happened to Flight 370. It could be somewhere in the flight data recorder. The so-called black box. But what if we had those answers all along?

In our next hour, new technology that sends real-time information about everything from the plane's location to how its engines are running, how does it work and how could it help if something does go wrong.

Second hour of NEWSROOM after a break.

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