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Five Planes See Objects After Search Shift; Christie Comments On Travel Scandal Probe

Aired March 28, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin. You are watching CNN. And here we are a new day, a new suspected crash zone. Here it is the search zone for Flight 370 shifting now by hundreds of miles and now multiple planes have spotted objects in this new location. So take a look at this. This is the first time, we are seeing anything like this.

This photograph from CCTV that is Chinese State Television and it shows what is described as a suspicious object spotted by a New Zealand military plane. Another plane heading back to the same area to try to relocate this item. Spotted two blue rectangular objects. Incredibly here, five out of 10 search planes spotted objects in the water below. So that is new today.

The big question, why the dramatic shift in location. Well, analysts say this is based upon calculations of all the satellite data they've been going over suggesting that the plane indeed flew faster, which in turn burned through more fuel shortening the potential flight path.

So let's go to CNN's Will Ripley who is live at 2:30 in the morning his time in Perth, Australia. Will Ripley, what do we know about the latest debris sightings by actual human eye?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, this is unprecedented in the search because as you mentioned this is the first time that two planes from two different countries were able to locate the same patch of debris. You see the photo that's going viral right now from CCTV, this is one of what we are told are many photos that are being studied at this hour.

They are taking a very close look at these. You can only tell so much though from a photo. So what's also happening right now is there are five ships heading to this area and they expect to arrive tomorrow morning. They are going to the site where this debris was spotted. They are going to pick it up, take a look at it and then go from there. Very, very promising developments out there with the new search zone.

BALDWIN: What about the plan, Will, for tomorrow or really today for you?

RIPLEY: Yes, that's right. A few hours from now, the planes are going to back up. They are going to fly out. This search zone is also closer to the Australian coastline. It only takes a couple of hours to get out there. The weather forecast is good. We had great success today. Five of the planes were able to spot debris and see it with their own eyes.

That's going to happen again tomorrow. They are going to keep looking. Keep scanning this area and searching. In the meantime, those five ships will join a Chinese vessel, which is already in place. They are going to be looking for debris as well because the real key here now that we have a lock on. We have a physical picture. We know where it is. We need to get it in the hands of who know and can analyze it.

BALDWIN: OK, so that's happening. Here's the next question. We keep going back to much ado about all these other chunks of debris fields from previous satellite images. Are those no longer pertinent to this search?

RIPLEY: You know, satellite pictures, they are certainly valuable in the sense that we look at them and it's something tangible that we can see. But what is more valuable to the people who are closely investigating the case is all of the data and the radar images and the satellite images. They are looking at all of this because they can calculate the altitude the plane was flying at.

How fast the plane was going. That's why they changed the search area because they put all of those pieces and realized that the plane burned too much fuel at the beginning of the trip and wouldn't have been able to go far south in the area they were searching for the past week.

So while it may have seemed like a setback, it was actually a great development forward in the investigation to be able to say no, this is the wrong area. This is the correct area we are looking for. You saw today, they are already coming up with some positive developments with spotting this debris.

BALDWIN: It's incredibly encouraging. Let's hope they actually can recover this and back track and figure out what happened. Will Ripley in Perth. Will, thank you so much.

Let's pull away from this story and go straight to the New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Folks, now he is taking questions. This is the first time this has happened in two months. Take a listen.

GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), NEW JERSEY: -- any voters if they consider this issue at all, they consider my candidacy if there is one. I have a feeling it will be a very small element of it if any at all. In terms of my decision making, simply not the way I would make a decision. The way I'll make a decision about whether to seek any future office would be do I think it's best for me and my family? And secondly, do I have something unique and particular to offer that particular office at that particular time?

If the answer to those two questions is yes, then I will seek that office and if the answer to either of those questions is no, I won't. There won't be anything else that will enter into it because anybody who tries to game out the politics of this kind of stuff years in advance, they have shown that's a fool. Sure. There is nothing that is permanent about that.

The same way there is nothing permanent about my standing being extraordinarily high. There is nothing permanent about this stuff. Anybody who thinks I said that all along when my polls were good, you weren't here. I said that all along to folks when my polls were really high. They came down when you make decisions and do things and events occur. They impact you.

So you know, it's a no moment to me though. Kelly in the end, you know, if I were running for re-election tomorrow, maybe it would be a moment to me. I've already run for re-election and got 61 percent of the vote. If I was running for something else sometime in the future, you know what they care about in the few days before the election, not the ones now, they don't mean anything.

In the end, I got to tell you, they are not what I'm most concerned about as I stand here today. I'm the governor of New Jersey. I have a job to do. I will do my job the best way I can. As I've said dozens of times if I do my job the best way I can, my future will take care of itself.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Inaudible) the laws about the state and local who are broken and there was a public safety and you made aware of this in early October. You admitted to that. Your staff and some of your staff is aware of that. Most of them are former federal prosecutors. How is it that this went on for roughly eight weeks or so where all of these former federal prosecutors were accepting really what was the word of a couple of sales men in the study.

CHRISTIE: It's colorful, Brian. Why don't you get to the question and cut the commentary back a little bit?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They cannot understand that the executive director, the top person --

CHRISTIE: Not my top person. Can you get to it already? I will answer it. They didn't, first off. The first time this came into my conscious was the "Wall Street Journal" story of October 1 or 2. Somewhere in that neighborhood. When the executive director leaked his memo to the newspapers. He had written weeks earlier. And I said to two former prosecutors, the chief of staff and chief council, find out for me what's going here.

Now the way you do that is, in a normal circumstance where you are dealing with an operational issue with the Port Authority is to go to our people at the Port Authority and ask them what's going on. They came back and said this was a legitimate traffic study. We blew the notifications to the executive director. That's our fault. It was a legitimate traffic study and he is just upset because he didn't know about it.

I got to tell you contextually that made perfect sense to me. As you can see from the report, there was a history of conflict between these folks at the Port Authority. I heard about conflict between Chris Ward, the former executive director and our folks, Pat Foy, the current executive director on a regular basis. That's why I believe that the best way to deal with this at least something to consider is taking the Hatfields and the McCoys and moving them to separate homes because they haven't been able to get along with each other despite my best efforts and the best efforts of Governor Cuomo and many of our predecessors.

So nobody dropped the ball here. You are looking at them from the editorializing and the question and everything else from the perspective of what you know today. If I knew then what I knew today, I would have done a lot of things differently but we didn't. We went and asked the questions and we got what we believed to be satisfactory answers back from the folks we put at the Port Authority and believed it was an operational issue with the Port Authority that they needed to deal with.

We told them to deal with it. That's where it ended. So part of the problem is with all of us looking through the retrospectroscope. You are always smarter and you always know more when you have that. We didn't have that then. I think it's unfair characterization to say that our folks didn't do anything for eight weeks.

The report lays out that they went and pursued a number of avenues all the way to the December 13th press conference to challenge and question people about what went on here and what each individual's role was. It wasn't effective because people didn't tell us the truth. But you can't -- it's not fair in my view to say that people didn't do their job and tried to get the answers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Governor, some of your closest aides thought this kind of behavior was appropriate. I'm wondering what have you learned from this experience and what have you changed about how you govern now?

CHRISTIE: Well, first of all, I would say that one of my closest aides participated in this and for that she was fired. That's the first thing I did. To set a different tone here was that people need to understand if you participate in this kind of conduct, you will not be permitted to hold the public trust. And the authority that goes along with a senior position in this government.

Secondly as I've said before, I have done a lot of soul searching on this over the last 10 or 11 weeks. You know, for me it's going to be about making even clearer to people what is acceptable conduct and what isn't. I will say also as I said yesterday, I think that anybody who works for me and believes that something like this was going to be something that would be pleasing or acceptable to me didn't know me in the first place.

From that perspective, I am not only disappointed in them, but it's obvious to me that I have to make even clearer as we move forward in the future and I have already about what is acceptable conduct and what is not. That's a constant challenge when you are running a large organization and it's one that I did not do as well as I needed to do obviously with this happening and one that I could intend to focus on more as we move forward.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But have you changed any of your procedures?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Governor, yesterday, Mr. Mastro informed us that just the attorney general declined to participate in the internal investigation by your outside counsel. It's kind of just a two-part question. One, did that concern you and two, did the attorney general talk to you to offer you an explanation? He was having the trouble and is the resignation.

CHRISTIE: As I said in the statement, he called me this afternoon and on the first part of your question, I spoke to General Sampson on January 8th. And I asked him what he knew about this and if he had involvement and authorized it or had any idea about it. He said absolutely not. That rang true to me because his honesty over his entire career, they did not have an operational role. His role as a policy role and so I wouldn't expect that David would be involved in any kind of day to day operational issue like the traffic study at the Port Authority.

In terms of his and his firm's lack of participation in interviews conducted by Mastro group. He explained to me that there were issues of attorney-client privilege that he feared would be compromised if he participated in interview. I didn't push it any further because it wasn't my role to push it any further, but that was the explanation he gave me and I had no reason not to believe that.

So again, I think his role was not central in any of these things nor has it been alleged. Those decisions that he had to make based upon his ethical obligation through his clients. That was the decision he made whether I agree with them or not. It's a different matter. In the end, he had their own individual obligations to clients and what they think they can and cannot say publicly because of that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Over the past months I shared with the governor my desire the service to the Port Authority. In that conversation they wanted to continue his service, did you ask stay on?

CHRISTIE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Inaudible)?

CHRISTIE: I will stay on as long as I think I'm able. This preceded by the way his discussion with me about leaving the Port Authority goes back a year. He's 74 years old and he was tired. That's what he told me. I said well, I'm in the middle of a re- election campaign and going through a transition if I'm re-elected and why don't we deal with these things at that time and not in the middle of all of this. I prefer you to stay. He did.

David has been talking to me for the better part of the year about wanting to move on because he just was tired. He had served a long time. He is 74 years old and said Chris, I would like to spend more time doing other things. I asked him as governor to please stay and give me the time in what I hoped was going to be a transition to a second term to be able to make the decisions during a period of time and in deference to me and long-term relationships, he was willing to stay on. John?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Governor, a couple weeks ago, there were a few reports about the 2011 toll ways and those reports portrayed your role in that roll out a little different low than it was portrayed at the time. Do you want to respond to the stories and explain again what your role if any was?

CHRISTIE: Yes, not really. My view is that those are the types of operational things that the Port Authority works on all the time. Governor Cuomo and I eventually came to an agreement on what we thought and appropriate toll hike would be.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Inaudible)

CHRISTIE: Sure. A few things. One, when an administration needs to respond, appropriately and at my direction swiftly to inquiries from both the legislative committee and from a prosecuting office. You need to bring a law firm in to do that. We don't have the capacity in-house to do that nor would people think it would be appropriate for us to do that. So there was never any question in my mind that we will have to bring in the law firm from the outside to be able to shepherd all the responses that were needed to the subpoenas served by the legislative committee and the United States Attorney's Office.

We wanted to do that as quickly and cooperatively as we could. We wanted a significant law firm with the type of resources available to them to be able to do this kind of job as quickly as possible. I also made perfect sense to me and is best practices with the Department of Justice. When you have a problem like this, you conduct an internal review to find out what happened and make recommendations to try to prevent this conduct in the future.

Having the same group do all of that made sense to me for both efficiency perspective and effectiveness perspective. No matter who I chose to do this, questions would be raised by some as to those people's objectivity. My answer to that is lock at the report. We gave them unfettered complete access to everyone in this government and allowed them to interview people multiple times if they so desired on multiple occasions in order to try to get to the bottom of things.

They gave them complete access not only to the people's professional e-mails, but to their personal e-mails and personal devices to be able to review text messages as well. The objectivity in this report is based on two things. One, the breath of it and the access they had without restrictions to any information they wanted and secondly the reputation of the six people running these things.

These are six former federal prosecutors who I can guarantee you have worked hard to develop the reputations that they have earned over the course of their career and would not give away those reputations to do some type of slip shod job for me.

Lastly as to relationships with the firm, after seven years, Heather, as U.S. attorney in the state and nearly five years as governor, there is probably not a major law firm in this country if not in the region that I don't have a relationship with over that time and some personal connection to. In the end what I decided to do is pick the people I thought were best to do the job and I did.

The report will stand the test of time, but it will be tested by the other investigations that are ongoing and it is limited as they pointed out in small part by the access that they had and didn't have to certain people. By the end, in the report it doesn't claim to be anything but what it is. It is exhaustive and thorough and I don't have second thoughts about who he selected or the process. No matter what, you will be criticized and when you are, you have to answer it and answer it directly. That's what we have done through the report.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Inaudible)

CHRISTIE: Let's be clear. As you know, I have been known to use a word or two and myself as have a number of you as well. It showed mow a lack of judgment that caused me to lose my confidence in bill's judgment. So that's the basis upon which I made the decision. And a decision that I stand by today because it was made purely on that basis. Not on the basis of anything else. No, I don't have any change of heart on that at the moment. As far as the future goes, I'm not as you know getting into hypothetical questions about the future. Kevin?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Inaudible)

CHRISTIE: I would have liked it on January 8th if I could have had it. You know, as I said many times before, I would hope that everybody would speak to the group, but I also have a healthy respect for people's constitutional rights. I am again not going to be critical for exercising with the advice of their lawyers, the constitutional rights. But in the end, Kevin, I don't know if we will ever know the motive. When I was here January 9th, it mystifies me on every level why this was done. I hope to have an answer to why it was done. I don't know when and if they will ever know. You bet I hope to.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Inaudible) did you raise that issue with him before he tendered his resignation? Did he raise that with you and what is your review of that as he continues the examinations and close ties to the firms?

CHRISTIE: Charlie, you know, if you look at many of the commissioners both currently on the Port Authority and over history, there has always been those type of connections and potential conflicts. This is what happens when you asks people to come from the private sector and serve in a non-compensated part time position in a role with the Port Authority, the way to deal with that is appropriate refusals. When the Port Authority has business that might cause a conflict with the business interest or representation you might have.

My understanding over the course of time is that not only General Sampson, but other members on both sides would engage in appropriate refusals when necessary. I hope that that's what the general did and trust that's what he did in most if not all of the instances. That's an issue for him to deal with directly. I'm sure he will. I have every faith and trust and confidence in David's integrity as do people on both sides of the aisle over the course of the last 40 years that he had been involved in.

I have complete confidence that he acquitted himself in a way that was appropriate and ethical. If it turns out that there were some instances that were not handled in that way, that's something that we will deal with. I don't think to get to the core of your question, that you can expect that when you ask people from the private sector to come in and do these jobs in a part-time non- compensated way that you can ask them to give up their private sector life, which they used to support themselves and their families.

The way to deal with that is to try to have an effective robust conflict system where folks refused when appropriate and I trust that is being attended to at the Port Authority and if not, it should be attended to with even greater care. You have a follow up?

BALDWIN: All right, so Governor Chris Christie there in Trenton, New Jersey really sort of doubling down on maintaining that he only learned about the traffic closures, this mess based upon news reports in October of last year. That's a direct contrast to what we learned very recently from David Wildstein. The former protege and political ally who maintains he told Chris Christie about that as the lane closures were happening.

The fact that the governor was speaking, this was the first news conference he held since January 9th, that marathon 109-minute news conference when it burst open, this is the first time he is speaking since his own governor's office has exonerated him. His own office based upon the internal investigation that Chris Christie clearly defended the merit.

Gloria Borger, our political chief analyst joining me and Dana Bash, our chief congressional correspondent joining me as well. Ladies, Gloria, first to you and Dana, what jumped out at you the most?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, the first thing that jumped out of me is that he announced the resignation of the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, David Sampson, who is a long time friend and ally. He said this resignation had been in the works for a year because Mr. Sampson is 74 years old. He said he has been tired for a while. He wanted to do something else.

As you know, Sampson did not speak to the investigators who were doing the report for Governor Christie's office and he has potential legal liability here and he could shed light on this. Although the governor said he told him he anyhow nothing about the lane closing. It was interesting that his resignation was announced today and we still don't know the motive for the lane closing after this entire report.

BALDWIN: Dana Bash, here's my other question because much has been spoken about and Chris Christie was saying his own office would not be doing a slip shod job. He said listen, I have connections to different attorneys in this state. He said it was exhaustive and thorough. Do these critics have a point? It's his office lawyer exonerating him.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Sure. You see editorial after editorial calling it a white wash and it's hard to know how much is in the report and how much was left on the cutting room floor. It is not an independent report. We will have to wait for other investigations that are still going on. The investigation is one that is going on by the Democratic legislature. The big picture, it's important to see and look at what Chris Christie is doing. This is kind of a role out of Chris Christie and the 2.0 maybe.

Coming out with this report and having this press conference pointed out at which he hasn't done in about two months and doing a couple of TV interviews. This is all him trying to reinforce the idea that he didn't know. There a couple of aides who went rogue and didn't support the kind of atmosphere that he has put out there in his governor's office, trying to reassure people all across the country especially Republican donors and grass roots voters and activists, he is not the politician that maybe people think he is now. He is a different guy. It will be hard for him to continue.

BORGER: The polls show that this is a man who is under water in favorability. He is a man who is under water with independent voters who are very important to him. As Dana points out, he has to shore up that group of support within his own party and with independence if he is going to make a real run for the president.

BALDWIN: We will see how Chris Christie fares.

Chris Christie 2.0, Dana Bash, as you call it.

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: Dana and Gloria, thank you very much.

BORGER: Sure.

DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Brooke.