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Families Accuse Malaysia Air of Lying; New Details on Search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370; Russian Troops Massing on Ukraine Border

Aired March 28, 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: We've been talking about the anger and frustration of families of Flight 370 passengers have been feeling. Well today they staged a protest walking out of a briefing in Beijing and accusing Malaysian officials of lying to them. I want to talk about that with Tom Fuentes. He's a CNN law enforcement analyst and former FBI assistant director.

Welcome Tom.

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

COSTELLO: These families are so upset they continue to believe that Malaysian authorities are hiding something from them are they?

FUENTES: I don't really think so. But this is more or less a case of now you know killing the messenger. They don't like the fact that they are not being given the information they hoped to receive, which is that the plane has been located. And until they hear that, they are not going to believe much of anything.

You know the Malaysian government early in this case decided that they weren't going to release information until they were able to verify it. And then they received so much international criticism for that. They said, OK, we'll put -- we'll put things out sooner and be more forthcoming and then the technicians kept analyzing, reanalyzing, re- reanalyzing the data causing them then to have to change every day what they said, what they learned, where they think the aircraft went, why they think it went there.

And now, they are kind of in a position, they have lost credibility. And once that's happened at an event, I don't think you can actually get it back. You know now, we have today the search area or last night, the search area being redirected to another location. Well, that's not the Malaysian government's fault. That analysis was actually conducted as I understand by NTSB, reanalyzing the data that's been supplied and looking at it in a different way and using different mathematical formulas.

So the change that's made has not been made at the government's choice. It's just been there are so many people involved now. The Australians are controlling the search itself. And you know technicians from the U.S. and the U.K. and other countries are analyzing the data. And you know the Malaysians are at this point just the messenger.

COSTELLO: Right but let's talk about the criminal investigation that's been ongoing in Malaysia. We've -- we've seen from afar what appear to be some mistakes. For example, the Malaysians waited over a week to search the pilot's home. They didn't talk to his wife immediately. Are we seeing some ineptitude on their part or are we all just sitting back and saying, we know how to do it better.

FUENTES: No some of the -- some of the reporting on that was inaccurate from the beginning. And they looked at the pilots. I know this for a fact. They looked at the pilots and the crews and the passengers and the cargo from the first night the plane disappeared. And -- and that investigation was intense.

Now, they have a different legal system than ours and in the beginning everything pointed to catastrophic loss, mechanical failure and all of that. And in their system, they needed a little more information that it could have been a criminal act on the part of the pilot to justify the actual seizure of his computer and the co-pilot's computer and then sending that to be analyzed by the FBI.

So you know in that sense -- everything else was being done. And the interviews were being conducted immediately and that was ongoing. And a lot more was being done by the police with a much stricter discipline of information if you will concerning that investigation, which is still the case today.

COSTELLO: OK --

FUENTES: They will get -- they will get the FBI report back today. They have been pre-briefed and apparently nothing suspicious or derogatory has come from the examination of the flight simulator computer files and the co-pilot's files. That's being returned back to Malaysia today. That investigation was done by the FBI at the request of the Royal Malaysian Police Force and, you know, so they have followed a fairly intensive investigative regimen from the beginning.

Now the -- again the delay, there was that couple of days, week delay in getting the computers out of that home. But they have the home surrounded and protected to make sure no one went in there and tampered with anything in the interim before they have the legal justification. And again we're trying to compare their legal system to ours. And it's not the same.

COSTELLO: Tom Fuentes, many thanks. I appreciate it.

FUENTES: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the search efforts move and for many, the doubts rise. Are we back to square one? Or is -- is this the best, hopeful sign we've had? We'll talk about that.

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COSTELLO: All right our Kyung Lah has been flying aboard a P8 plane along with American officials. She just landed and she's on the phone right now. Kyung, are you there?

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Hey Carol I just stepped off the US-P8 Poseidon. And I can tell you that it was a very long day of hunting in this new search zone. We took off for a total of about nine hours in the air. We took us about two and a half hours to get there. And they combed the search area that we were assigned, that this particular plane was assigned, for about four hours.

And one of the pilots described it perfectly. It's like mowing the ocean. You go back and forth across the ocean at a low altitude looking for debris.

This plane did spot some debris. And there was a bit of excitement but the plane took to the right they got very, very close to the ocean. Some white debris. Some orange rope, a blue bag, but it wasn't significant enough to say that it was connected to the plane at all.

The ship was dispatched to these coordinates just to make sure. There were a couple of other sightings by two other countries that we heard from the pilot of this PA but as far as we can tell, there hasn't been anything that at least on visual that appears to be any debris directly connected to the plane.

COSTELLO: OK let's back up just a bit -- Kyung.

LAH: As far as the search area, it does appear to be calmer area but certainly a vast area -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Yes I wanted you to just back up a little bit and explain to our viewers. This new search area is 700 miles away from the original search area. And the way that investigators arrived at this new area, they figured the plane was going faster than they previously thought. It ran out of fuel earlier and it probably crashed 700 miles north of where they originally thought.

So the pilots aboard that plane are probably is searching over the past several days. Are they frustrated that they -- this is now a whole new area and the other area doesn't matter anymore. How are they feeling about that?

LAH: You know, the interesting thing is that it just looks like they are doing their job. You know it's -- I kept asking the same thing. How can you stare out the window and look at this seemingly endless space again and again and again. This was their ninth time out at sea at a completely new area. And they just seemed to be taking it in stride.

What I heard from several of them is that they understand as people who take to the air, three of them were pilots, they understand the feeling of families needing something in case of a catastrophic end. And so that's something that they seem to be carrying with them throughout the day that helps them with certainly is a difficult, difficult search.

COSTELLO: I want to put up a new image that we got into CNN. This is from a New Zealand plane. They spotted debris down in this new search area that might be something. Because we've heard the new debris was spotted by five different planes. This debris is rectangular in shape. And this is sadly the only image we have.

But you can see that rectangular shape there. Other images surrounding that one are different colors and they are a bit longer. But most of them are rectangular. So I'm just going to ask you a question Kyung because I don't know in what order these planes take off? So did the P8 take off after hearing word that debris was spotted in this new area?

LAH: I don't know the breakdown of when the New Zealand plane spotted that debris and when the P8 spotted this debris. I can tell you that the white debris that was spotted by this one, one of them appeared to be circular. Then others were, you know, various shapes that were also white. But that's you know one of several in this particular sighting, the way the pilots and the crew members explained it to us is that one patch of white debris, some orange string and then a blue bag.

COSTELLO: So as you're looking out the window and you're seeing this debris, you are probably getting pretty excited too, right?

LAH: Yes. I mean actually it happen -- I couldn't see all of it but there was a camera that is just in front of the front landing gear and you know saw a very brief shot of what looked like, you know to my very untrained eye, some rope. But you know I couldn't tell what that was. And so yes at one point, sure, everyone on board got a little excited. But it's impossible to tell from that distance what anything is.

COSTELLO: I read an article online and you know, you can take this with a grain of salt. I understand that. But this article said that, you know, these planes are going out so often that the pilots now and the crew on board are suffering from fatigue. Have you seen any sign of that?

LAH: Fatigue is a big concern. I won't say that it is a problem because it is something that they are all aware of, at least the crew that we were with. You saw them rotate after 30 minutes to an hour, they were constantly self-checking or checking each other and making sure that they rotate because of fatigue. Certainly if you stare out at the same space again and again and you have to stay alert, that going to be a problem.

And that's why they constantly talked about it. They were constantly standing up and changing positions. That is something that they all worry about.

COSTELLO: All right. I want to bring in Richard Quest, our aviation correspondent and Tom Fuentes, our FBI expert. I want to bring them back into the fold. Richard, can you explain to our viewers how they arrived at this new search area in the Indian Ocean?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they went back and they looked at the data concerning the earliest part of 370's flight when it was still over the South China Sea in the Straits of Malacca. And they recalculated what they knew from the radar data and what the speed they believed. They realized that the plane had burned more fuel in those very first hour or so, hour and a half of the flight.

Well, obviously, just like your car, if you drive heavily at the beginning of a journey, you are not going to have that much gas left for when you are further along the road. And that's what happened here. They then recalculated there would have been less gas. The plane couldn't have flown as far but they knew it still had to fly for six hours because of the various pings.

Long and short of it, Carol, they are able to work out, because it still has to be in the corridor. It still has to follow the pings. It had to be further north. Therefore, that's how they worked it out.

COSTELLO: So Tom, that means these five satellite images that we have been talking over the past several days are probably meaningless now. This latest debris that these pilots spotted in the Indian Ocean on naked eye that the debris was actually there, so should we feel more hopeful?

FUENTES: Well, Carol, that's a big difference. You are right. The other debris was photographed by satellites. By the time anybody out there with an airplane, that was four, five days later, and the planes found nothing day after day after day.

This time, you have the planes themselves, seeing objects in the water. That's a huge difference. They are able to drop buoys and mark the spot, which will help move the objects, hopefully, will move with the current and they'll be able to track that through the buoys and get a ship there to pick something up. And that's a huge difference.

You have real time observation of objects in the water, not five-day- old reports.

COSTELLO: And Richard, five different planes spotted this debris. I know there is a Chinese ship in the area but of course, it's is nighttime now. It will still be hard to find even though there is a ship in the general vicinity, right?

QUEST: Yes. But I -- look, I was optimistic with the 300 Thai satellite objects but for the same reason that I'm optimistic about these. The more reports you get, the more optimistic you can become. So, in the old zone when we were getting reports of hundreds of objects, you thought, yes, this clearly must be it because they are in the right area.

It is the same principle here. Here we have five flights. All of whom have seen something, whereas previously they have seen nothing. We now know that they are in the right zone according to the latest data. Remember, Carol, it is the best lead they have got. It is not perfect from a long way. But it's the best. So I am cautiously optimistic, because they have seen something today because five have seen something today on their first sortie over the zone. COSTELLO: OK. So Tom, I'll ask you a question from an investigative standpoint. The search area keeps shifting. That has to be frustrating. You spend so much time looking in a particular area and it turns out to be the wrong area. Not only that, you have what, nine or ten days until the batteries start to die and those flight recorders are under water.

FUENTES: That's true. But the investigators try to keep their emotions in check. And if you get a new location or rule out an old location, you move on and go diligently after the new information.

And I think Kyung Lah's report that the personnel, the military personnel on that aircraft, you know, a moderate amount of enthusiasm but you're not going to see, you know, more than that because they're disciplined. They are trained to keep their emotions in check as much as possible and keep doing their job.

It is not going to be time to celebrate anything yet in terms of finding debris until a piece has been fished out of the water and examined and identified as being part of the airplane.

COSTELLO: Tom Fuentes, Richard Quest -- thanks as always. I'll be right back.

FUENTES: Thank you, Carol.

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COSTELLO: Tensions are mounting in Ukraine. U.S. officials say up to 40,000 Russian troops have amassed near the Ukrainian border. Those troops and Russia's recent annexation of Crimea are sparking fears of a further military incursion.

Speaking to CBS News, President Obama expressed concern.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You've seen a range of troops massing along that border under the guise of military exercises. But these are not what Russia would normally be doing. And you know, it may simply be an effort to intimidate Ukraine or may be that they have additional plans.

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COSTELLO: CNN's Karl Penhaul joins me now from the Russia-Ukrainian border. And this is an amazing report. Take it away Karl.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol we are just a few miles that way from the Russian border. We are in northeastern Ukraine right now. What I want to show you we have moved a few miles up the road from where we were last hour that I spoke to you.

Behind me, a Ukrainian armored personnel carrier with machine guns mounted on the front of it is as well. That is being dug into a defensive position. There are other positions a little further up the road that Ukrainian military doesn't really want me to show you. There is a TAC tank, there's other hardware there as well.

And they're in this position here to defend a strategic bridge -- a strategic bridge inside of Ukraine that leads from the Russian border. And that is in case Russian troops come across here because as you mentioned, the Pentagon's figures, 40,000 Russian troops massing on the other side of that border.

The Ukrainian government says the figure was almost twice as high. The Ukrainian government also says that the Russians have tanks, they have artillery pieces and they have attack helicopters.

Now, of course, the local population here as well, on high alert -- they are not taking anything for granted. They know the Ukrainian military down in Crimea, folded and practically surrendered to the Russians. They also know that they expect very little military help from the Western powers including the United States.

The local civilians have been coming together and forming self-defense committees. They have been going to army and navy surplus stores buying their own uniforms for about $120 at times. They are wearing British military uniforms, German military uniforms, any military uniforms they can get their hands on and putting together these self- defense brigades. They have been digging trenches alongside the highway, putting up barricades of sandbags and also car tires that they say they will set on fire and put up smoke screens if the Russians roll across.

And that is the big question. It's something that President Obama himself alluded to. The Americans right now don't know what really the Russian intentions are. They know that force across that side of the border is so big and so fast, it could be here with zero warning, Carol.

COSTELLO: I just can't imagine the courage in the face of Russian military might. They're digging trenches and setting tires on fire. It is astounding. Karl Penhaul, reporting live from Ukraine.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"@ THIS HOUR" with Berman and Michaela after a break.

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