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Planes Spot Objects In New Search Area; Obama Seeks To Repair U.S. Saudi Ties; Families Walk Out Of Briefing In Protest

Aired March 28, 2014 - 10:00   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: Breaking overnight, a major shift in the search.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This continuing analysis indicates the plane was traveling faster than was previously estimated.

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COSTELLO: New credible radar information moving efforts closer to the Aussie coast. So what was in these satellite images? Are we really back to square 1? Families of the passengers, fed up and furious, walking out of a meeting with Malaysian officials, accusing them of a cover-up.

This, as investigators turn their focus on the pilot. How often should pilots be psychologically tested? Breaking new details coming in every hour.

A special edition of NEWSROOM starts now.

Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me. This morning, a new direction and possibly new leads in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 just hours after dramatically shifting the focus hundreds of miles away: five aircraft have spotted objects in this new search area in the Indian Ocean. Those objects are described as being of various colors, various sizes. They were photographed and those images will be assessed in the coming hours.

Overnight, officials abandoned their previous search areas and shifted their attention to this new zone nearly 700 miles away. So let's get the latest on these new search efforts. Will Ripley is in Perth, Australia with more. Take it away, Will.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. The latest is we have this new search zone, which is closer to shore, better weather, more time for the planes to search because it doesn't take as long to get out there. We had five planes today that spotted debris in the search zone as you mentioned of various colors. For the first time now in this search, two planes, first, from New Zealand and then from Australia. They flew over the same patch of debris. It was white, light gray and blue.

Both planes from both countries spotted this debris. Those colors are noteworthy because of the fact that you will find those colors on the exterior of a Malaysia Airliner and you also find them on the exterior of a lot of other things as well. The critical thing that's happening right now, we have photographs that are being analyzed as we speak.

We also have ships that are heading to this area right now. They are going to pick up the debris and take a look at it. See what it is and then go from there. But certainly a very promising lead after some pretty discouraging news this morning that the past week where we have been looking is the wrong location according to new data analyzed by research teams.

COSTELLO: Yes, at least, in this new location, five different aircrafts have spotted something, although we don't know if that debris has anything to do with the plane. Will Ripley, many thanks to you. I want to take a closer look that this new search area. It's 700 miles away from the previous search area. CNN's Tom Foreman is here as usual to map it out for us. Good morning, Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Yes, if you look at the map and you look at how it has changed since this plane went missing. All the different areas and their search and the way they have jumped around, one of the clearest things is this. If any of this data was clear and obvious, we would have known it before 20 days and more had passed. This is where we are right now. Perth is over here. You go about 1600 miles out to what is the search area yesterday.

You can see where the satellites were, 47,000 square miles. Now, we shift again about 700 miles to the north to get up into the red zone up there. It is really another big change. Maybe it is promising. Maybe it is good. Here is a point of reference I like to bring up in all of this.

With the Air France crash, the surface debris, which was found in a much shorter period of time, only covered about 3 miles, in the terms of the bulk of it. On the bottom of the ocean, when they found the crash site, it only covered a small football field. If you took that few football fields and you brought it out here and you imposed it upon the very same area that we are talking about. One of the areas like yesterday's satellite area, I want to you look at what happens to this.

If it settles over the area, it is not that big. It is a pinprick out there. Very hard to spot in it any of these search areas because of this, Carol, look at this image, if you bring in the flow, all the currents out there. Think about all this time that has passed since the plane these are time lapse images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is where we are looking. We are looking down in here where there are these extraordinary competing currents at all times.

I don't know how you, with any confidence, can reverse engineer, even if you find the debris. How do you reverse engineer over more than 20 days to see where that few football size target is under the water, how things drifted to this point. It is an unbelievably difficult task and an awful lot of statisticians would say the exact same thing -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Tell investigators they found hopeful these Australian officials so Tom Foreman, many thanks.

Let's talk more about that. We are joined by Mary Schiavo. She is a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation. She is also an aviation attorney who represents victims and families after airplane disasters. Welcome, Mary.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Thank you. Good to be with you.

COSTELLO: They adjusted the speed of the aircraft. That's how they came up with this new search area. Can you expound on that for us?

SCHIAVO: Well, yes, I mean, there were so many different bits of information coming out at first and there was a great discrepancy over a couple of things, altitude, which they still have to work on and air speed. And of course, once that plane made that left-hand turn, it reported in, all right, good night, turned left. Then, there was a lot of disagreement over what happened, did it climb, did it descend, how fast was it going?

This is an important piece of data because now, they have a better fix on the speed of the aircraft and directional because now they can put it at a more exact location where it ran out of fuel. So it should be a better location to search. But of course, it is a huge area to search. The drift may not be the most accurate at this point, the drift calculations.

So I was encouraged last night when the Australian official said that they thought this might also be the point of impact, or the crash location as well, would be near here too. How they have calculated that is still somewhat a mystery. Presumably, they have put the hand shake data together with the aircraft speed and directional data. If that's the case, they still have the chance to find the wreckage and the very important black boxes.

COSTELLO: OK, just to center on the speed one more time, the faster the plane is going, the faster it runs out of fuel. So they believe it went down sooner. Let's talk about those handshakes with the plane and the satellites. We talked a lot about the half ping they detected. You have told me that half ping is very important in locating that point of impact. Might that be coming into play too?

SCHIAVO: I would think so. This plane is unique. I would put it in layman's terms. If the engines are in trouble and they are turban engines, if you need to do a restart or you have problems with the engines, this plane has little air inlets. If your engines are in trouble, these drop down and give you air intake, almost like a ram jet.

That kind of helps your engines and they are thinking that this half handshake might actually be those little air inlets, those intakes, helping the engines or giving you that extra little boost. That might be the half handshake. That would have happened after the plane was losing its engines. Maybe they figured this half handshake is where the plane finally lost its engines and was headed to the ocean.

COSTELLO: Let's talk about the latest debris that five separate planes spotted. Five of them and it is the same debris because they have described them in a similar fashion. They are rectangular and they are different colors. What does that say to you?

SCHIAVO: Well, it can be a lot of different things. On the planes, you have lots of rectangular things and rectangular things don't occur in nature. You have food service carts, cargo containers in the plane, potentially, pieces of luggage. You've rectangular equipment on the plane. You have a lot of things on aircraft and ships too that don't have rounded edges.

In nature, things are kind of rounded. So it is encouraging that they find things that wouldn't just be out there, like clumps of seaweed. One time, they had found a whale carcass. The shapes and colors are very important. They are going to have to pick it up and get it on a ship to see if it is the plane and identify it. That will be a tremendous breakthrough.

COSTELLO: Well, it is encouraging because they saw it with their naked eye. They weren't looking for debris in a satellite image and not finding anything as they have been doing for the past several days.

SCHIAVO: That's very important. Absolutely. Because not only that, they start with the naked eye, but more than one aircraft picked it up. So it is something that is there. They will be able to find it. They have marked the position and they will be able to send the ships there to finally haul it up on the deck of the ship and start performing that, you know, the visual examination, very important.

You'll be able to tell from the wreckage, you know, what happened, how it entered the water. There will be tear patterns on the metal. If there was any kind of a fire explosion, explosions leave a pitting pattern on the metal and then other things including on remains. There is just lots of things you can tell by hauling it up on the deck of the ship. Aside from the fact that they were looking for the drift pattern to find the black boxes.

COSTELLO: Right. And there is a Chinese ship in the area. So tomorrow maybe that Chinese ship will locate this debris that was spotted by those five planes. Final question for you, these five satellite images that we have been talking about for the past several days, do they matter anymore? Can we totally discount them?

SCHIAVO: Well, I don't think they matter much anymore unless, for example, they needed -- they think that it is still part of the plane that might have drifted that far and it would be long distance drift patterns. But if they can zero in -- what they need to do is zero in. Stuff that has floated long distances away, if they have better locations now don't matter. What matters most is finding the wreckage and the point where it entered the water. That's where you are going to find the black boxes.

COSTELLO: Mary Schiavo, thanks so much.

SCHIAVO: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, volunteers digging through the mud and muck on their hands and knees trying to get to anyone who could have survived Saturday's devastating landslide. Dan Simon is live for us.

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Authorities here in Washington State are preparing folks for some very bleak news this morning. They say that the death toll is expected to rise significantly. We will have a live report coming up in a few minutes.

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COSTELLO: Today, President Obama heads to Saudi Arabia, the final stop of a six-day tour. On the agenda, repairing strained ties between the United States and the Middle Eastern country. Mohammed Jamjoom joins me now to talk about this. First of all, explain to us why is Saudi Arabia so upset with President Obama?

MOHAMMED JAMJOOM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The first is because of Syria. The Saudis really want to see Bashar Al-Assad gone. They believed that President Obama was going to conduct air strikes in Syria last year and when that didn't happen they just went apoplectic. They expressed their anger in a way that they hadn't before and they are still upset about it because the Saudis would like to get weapons into Syria that can take down aircraft.

They would like to get these into the hands of the rebels there, but the Americans are stopping them from doing so. So Syria policy is one of the big reasons the Saudis are upset. The other big reason, Iran. Saudi Arabia and Iran are the two biggest regional powers in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is the Sunni Muslim power and Iran is the Shiite Muslim power.

Iran has always been seen as the biggest threat to Saudi Arabia almost an existential threat. They are deeply afraid of the Iranians. The Saudis and the Iranians really treat the Middle East as like a proxy war playground. You can feel this even in the country I live in. I'm based in Beirut, Lebanon. You see how the Saudis and Iranians are always wanting for influence.

So now because Iran has had a warming of relations with the U.S., that has made the Saudis even angrier. They see this as a threat. They don't want the Iranians to be able to develop a nuclear program. They see this warming of relationship between the U.S. and Iran as a real threat to not just Saudi Arabia but the Sunni Islamic contingent in the Middle East.

COSTELLO: I don't like to term it as a warming of relations between the United States and Iran, but I think most Americans would say, why is America trusting Iran? That's a real concern in this country as well. JAMJOOM: Yes, absolutely. I mean, the Saudis have said for many years, they do not want to see the Iranians get a nuclear program. They see that as a threat not just to the region in the Middle East, which always seems to be just about to erupt over something but also to the entire world.

They have said that for over a decade now. They do not want Iran to have nuclear capability. The fact that there has been this reproach, the fact that John Kerry has spoken with the Iranian foreign minister, the fact that the Iranian nuclear program is being considered, steps are being taken, that really irritates the Saudis.

Because of that, President Obama wanted to go to Saudi Arabia. He wants Saudi Arabia to remain a key ally in the Middle East. But the Saudis, you know, they are angry and have been expressing that anger in many ways. It seems like they are going to continue to do so. A lot is riding on this meeting today. Will President Obama be able to sort of ameliorate the situation and make King Abdullah happy? We just don't know yet -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Mohammed Jamjoom, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Washington State bracing for more heartache today as authorities expected to report a substantial rise in the death toll from that devastating landslide north of Seattle. At least 17 bodies have now been recovered, nearly 90 people are still missing. Dan Simon is live in Arlington, Washington, near a rescue command center with more. Hi, Dan.

SIMON: Good morning, Carol. It has been six days now since this catastrophic event and I think it is possible we will get a better sense in terms of number of people dead and the number of people missing. There is going to be a news conference in a couple of hours. Authorities are preparing everyone here in this area that the news is going to be quite bleak. They say that the death toll is going to rise significantly.

At this point, as you said, there are 17 confirmed dead although we know that seven more people have been found in the debris. They just haven't taken the bodies out yet. Those bodies near to be cleared by the medical examiner's office before they update the death toll officially. In terms of the number of people missing, as you said, it has been a confusing number. At one point, it was 176. It dropped down to 90 and still, an enormous amount of people.

That gives you a sense in terms of the utter devastation that we are dealing with. First responders say there is still a disbelief in terms of the things they are seeing. It is not just seasoned rescuers that are going in there and searching through the debris. We are also talking about people that are untrained, community volunteers, who are out there looking through the debris, for people's belongings, looking for bodies. We spoke to one of them yesterday afternoon. Take a look.

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SIMON: When you say you are digging by hands, can you explain what that means? Are you literally using your hands?

GORDON STOROE, COMMUNITY VOLUNTEER: Yes, gloves on, garden tools. You try to move some debris and mud out of the way. You are literally, a handful of dirt at a time to get every board out of the way. It is so deep. It's six, seven feet deep. It is just roots, trees, wood, shards of glass, window frames. Anything. Those houses are blown into pieces. I can't believe it.

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SIMON: You possibly can't tell, Carol, but it is continuing to rain. We have a light drizzle. There is supposed to be a lot of rain this weekend. That's only going to add to the misery out here. We are talking about a search area that spans an entire mile and mud that is 30-40 feet deep. We are still talking about significant challenges for all the crews that are working around the clock -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Dan Simon reporting live this morning.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Malaysian officials face empty seats after Flight 370 families walk out of a briefing in protest.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We usually do about half an hour to an hour at a time. It is quite fatiguing on the eyes, quite fatiguing on the body. We change over quite regularly.

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COSTELLO: The partner over one passenger on board Flight 370 said her resignation over Monday's announcement means all eyes were lost. It has now turned to anger. Sarah Bajc is the partner of American, Philip Wood. Bajc says she is angry that Malaysian officials could be so irresponsible in making that announcement. She believes there are other things that could have happened to the flight. Bajc also says today's new search area does not raise her hopes.

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SARAH BAJC, PARTNET PHILIP WOOD WAS ABOARD MH370: We have seen them change their plan of attack an infinite number of times so far. It has each time been a false lead. That doesn't mean this time won't be more substantiated. I do take comfort in the fact that the Australians are taking a concrete hand in this. But I can't keep guessing what's going to work and not work. I have to focus on being positive and trying to push a positive message forward and wait until there is actual concrete proof.

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COSTELLO: Of course, the families of Flight 370 passengers have been demanding answers for three weeks now. Today, they again took action in dramatic fashion. Some 154 relatives walking out of a briefing. One accused Malaysian authorities of hiding facts saying people will be held accountable. CNN's David McKenzie is with family members in China.

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DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For days family members have been sitting, listening calmly to briefings from Malaysian authorities. Many of them complaining they are not getting the answers they want. So, today, they stood up. This man, getting up saying they are united, that the Malaysian authorities have been hiding the truth and that they will get their punishment, all of the family members stood up and walked out.

(on camera): This hotel has been their environment for weeks now, stuck in a cycle of meetings, recrimination and anger. Now, they say they want to go to KL to complain. David McKenzie, CNN, Beijing.

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COSTELLO: A Malaysia Airlines special assistance team has been supporting the families throughout their ordeal. The one caregiver says they can't give the relatives the one thing they want.

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INTAN DARLINA MUHAMMAD, MH-370 CAREGIVER: You try to give them anything and everything you possibly can and it is still not good enough. The only thing they want that was the one thing we couldn't give them, just answers. They didn't care for the lavish rooms or the food. They didn't care for those. They just wanted answers.

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COSTELLO: Despite rising tensions, the caregivers spoke of one friendship that's developed between a colleague and a passenger's relative. Let's talk about the passengers and how they are coping. With me now, CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Hi, Sanjay.

I know you can only speak in generalizations, but there are different stages of grief I would suppose. When you first hear of the loss of a family member, you are kind of in shock, but then that shock turns to something else.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. I mean, you go through periods of denial and questioning and anger and then eventually comes acceptance in almost all cases. But you are absolutely right. You are seeing the manifestations of all those different stages. Look, there is a real physical impact of this as well besides the pragmatics of, you know, they are not sleeping.

They may not be feeding themselves, spending time with other loved ones and developing those relationships, your cortisol levels. Your stress levels stay high. You are on edge and it causes all sorts of different physical problems. They have so much to deal with that it doesn't even meet the eye here. COSTELLO: I think that would perhaps get me the most. A sense that you have no control over anything. You don't have any control over the investigation. You can't go out and look for your loved ones. You are not getting any answers. You are totally out of control.

GUPTA: There is lack of control. There is unpredictability and there is uncertainty. Those three things together if you talk to psychologists, those three things make it a very difficult, if not untenable situation. What is interesting is this whole idea there are so many people around the world talking about their loved ones, looking for their loved ones, this whole investigation. That is called the heroic period. It is bolstering up to your feelings. Eventually, that does go away. After that period ends, there can be even a larger crash than from the initial incident itself.

COSTELLO: I interviewed a man who lost his stepmother and his father on an Egypt Airlines flight that went down off the coast of Nantucket. He said, what's really important is that these families have to draw together, to find strength in one another. That's really the only thing that helps.

GUPTA: It really seems to be. It is this notion that it is us against the world a little bit. When you saw the lashing out at the cameraman, for example, he is not the government. He is a reporter. He is doing his job. He is somebody else that is not part of this group of people that are grieving. Everybody is distrusted and lashing out.

COSTELLO: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks so much.

GUPTA: You got it, thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, we will have more on those angry families of the Flight 370 passengers. Some say they have been lied to and they want answers now. Alaska former FBI assistant director, if Malaysia could really be hiding things from them. We'll be right back.

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