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Five Ocean Gyres Attract World's Trash; Tour of Washington State Mudslide Devastation; Utter Devastation in Mudslide; Transcripts of Flight 370 Conversations Released; Voice Analysis Software May Help Those Who Knew Them Distinguish Pilot's, Co-Pilot's Voices; White House Says 7 Million Obamacare Sign-Ups

Aired April 01, 2014 - 15:29   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Just about the bottom of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

And we have now learned that families will be meeting with aviation tech experts in a closed-door briefing. Both Malaysia Airlines and the Department of Civil Aviation will be there, although it's not exactly known what information they may share.

But at the very least, it is another step toward transparency. Let me remind you, it is 3:30 in the morning where the search is taking place on day 26, and officials have only just released that transcript, this two-and-a-half page transcript from the cockpit of Flight 370. And here it is. As far as experts are concerned -- and we have talked to many -- they tell us it's all pretty routine, reading this thing over.

But perhaps the biggest mystery today surrounds that left turn here, the veering off course. Malaysian officials say the jet's hairpin turn to the west was deliberate at least, and this is now a new word we're hearing, criminal at worst.

And you have this new "Wall Street Journal" report says flawed coordination was the reason search teams were looking in the wrong part of the Southern Indian Ocean for days, hundreds of lives taken somewhere in the depths of hundreds of thousands of miles of ocean.

And I'm not only speaking of Flight 370 here, but also the voyage of the HMAS Sydney. It was a vessel that also disappeared off of Australia's West Coast.

And CNN's Atika Shubert actually spoke to a man who helped find the Sydney, and he help can't help but see these eerie similarities between the ship and the plane.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These are the first images of the HMAS Sydney more than 60 years after sinking in battle with all 645 on board lost at sea.

This was taken in 2008 off the coast of Western Australia, the same waters where Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is believed to have gone down. MICHAEL MCCARTHY, MARINE HISTORIAN: The sadness on board, to see those images, is going to be matched again if that occurs in this case.

SHUBERT (on camera): But it looks like it actually sank upright.

(voice-over): Michael McCarthy was on the team that found the Sydney after more than 25 years of searching. He sees eerie similarities in the search for Flight 370.

MCCARTHY: You have an enormous area where it could be or may not be. You have a similar depth of water. You have similar emotions.

SHUBERT: But the search today has the advantage of technology. If satellite images and search planes can find debris from the plane in time, the flight data recorder should be sending out a signal.

But the search for HMAS Sydney shows that, even without that signal, wrecks can still be found using sonar scans. It just takes time. McCarthy describes the process.

MCCARTHY: That then just mows the lawn back and forward, until you finally find the signal, which tells you there we have our wreck. And that takes a while even if know where you have got to go.

SHUBERT: By salvaging the Sydney, McCarthy and his team were able to pinpoint exactly what happened when it sank. And investigators will be hoping to do the same with Flight 370. But solving the mystery is only part of the search.

MCCARTHY: It wasn't what happened. It wasn't so much whose idea was right or who was wrong, but whether the relatives got a sense of closure, to use a terrible word, because it's not really closure, is it? But they had a sense of one less mystery to them.

SHUBERT: This deep-water mystery now solved gives hope to those still seeking answers to Flight 370.

Atika Shubert, CNN, Freemantle, Australia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Atika and he mentioned the fact that the families want these answers, right, so they continue to search for this plane.

And we're now discovering what can happen when the world cares so, so much about what exactly is in the ocean and floating on top of it.

Talk about ocean junk here, in the search for the plane, we're learning a little bit more. Search teams -- look at this -- spotting possible debris, have ended up, thus far, picking up junk, garbage here.

Turns out the MH-370 search zone off Australia is near one of five gyres in the world. So gyre, it's a technical term for the way ocean currents can rotate. And in that rotation and all the swirling you saw, the gyres attract huge amounts of trash, things we use every day like coffee stir sticks.

I mean, we found this picture, just to give you an example of how these stir sticks from one activist group, how they found them, more than a thousand. And, as you can, they've been turned -- look at this -- into artwork.

But my next guest with that group that created that artwork from trash found when members traveled the Pacific, he is Marcus Eriksen. He is the executive director of the 5 Gyres Institute.

And, Marcus, 5 Gyres because you've been to the five, subtropical gyres in the Indian Ocean, you have been in this part of the world where they're searching.

Before we get to that, you brought me some props. Show me.

MARCUS ERIKSEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CO-FOUNDER, THE 5 GYRES INSTITUTE: Yeah, I brought you a few things from the five, subtropical gyres. We sailed in 2010 right through the search area from Perth, Australia, to Mauritius, and what you find in all five, subtropical gyres is the same kind of debris.

There's lots of big stuff from the fishing industry, like fishing buoys. You can see the orange, yellow and black buoys.

Above from a plane, you don't know what these things are until you get down in the water and pick them out. You find they're fishing gear.

And this is a truck tire from the Japanese tsunami. So, a year and a half after that tsunami, we sailed from Tokyo back to Hawaii and found this debris.

So debris persists and accumulates in the gyres.

BALDWIN: So when you're out there, because I haven't been to this part of the southern Indian Ocean, when you're out there and you're just out on a boat, is it -- are you seeing this junk surrounding the boat, or do you have to go to the gyres to see this stuff?

ERIKSEN: Well, they're kind of few and far between, the buoys and the debris. So, as you said around, you'll see a buoy on the horizon.

When you look down at the ocean's surface, you'll see a lot of smaller particles. So in these gyres, the sun is breaking the big pieces into smaller pieces. There are billions of small particles of plastic, but you'll come across a lot of big stuff along the way.

BALDWIN: So this is the challenge, right, because we not only have those planes going over, trying to find the plane debris, but we have -- you know, the investigators at the time made such a big deal about these satellite images that the Thailand and the French and others had found with the 300 floating objects one day, and the 122 pieces another day.

Is it entirely possible that what you're holding could have been what they thought they saw on a satellite image?

ERIKSEN: Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure lots of the images they're looking at is this collection of background debris that's been there for years, if not decades.

I mean, the 300 pieces, there are 300,000 pieces already there floating behind the scenes that they're picking up and thinking that they're from the aircraft and they're from not.

BALDWIN: Is there any way to distinguish between a tire and a piece of a floating cushion, let's say, from a plane?

ERIKSEN: I think not until you get down to the water's surface. A satellite image might not have the resolution to discern a piece of luggage from a buoy or a truck tire.

But once you're down there on the ocean's surface, you begin to see the kind of debris that's out there, fishing industry stuff, lots of buoys and fishing nets, lots of smaller items.

All the single-use plastics we use are finding ways into the ocean gyres. We can't fix the plane crash, but we can fix this plastic problem.

BALDWIN: That's what I wanted to get to, because I feel like, accidentally, it's this ocean junk that's really been spotlighted because of this horrific mystery.

But what's being done with the trash? Is anyone's government taking any kind of responsibility, helping?

ERIKSEN: Well, what's happening is we're seeing a change. We're seeing producer responsibility happen, and that is when you make a product, to think about the back end of it, like, what happens to the stuff we consume and throw away? Where is "away?" We're finding away is our oceans.

So when you make a product, if it's for a single-use, throwaway application, maybe plastic isn't the best material.

So we're seeing companies change, and some governments are reacting to it. You see bag bans and phone bans happening across the United States and around the world.

So solutions are happening slowly, but producer responsibility is the key.

BALDWIN: Marcus Eriksen, thank you for bringing your props and showing us firsthand what is in the water. Marcus Eriksen, executive director of The 5 Gyres Institute, thank you, sir.

Coming up next, we will take a closer look at the latest message from the cockpit to air traffic control, and we'll take you inside the flight simulator to show you exactly how that message was communicated.

Plus, this new video just in to CNN of that deadly landslide in Washington state, we are now seeing exactly how much damage was caused there.

CNN's Anna Cabrera got an up-close look. We will check in with her live, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We'll get you back to our special coverage of that missing plane in a minute, but first, just into us here at CNN, new video showing just the utter devastation from the deadly landslide in Washington state.

The number of people confirmed dead now at 27, still missing, 22. And CNN's Anna Cabrera is live with us from Arlington, Washington. Just back from this tour, Anna, tell me what you saw.

ANNA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's so hard to describe. You have to see it with your naked eye to really understand that utter devastation you mentioned, Brooke.

The ground zero of this landslide in this debris field is just a couple of miles beyond this roadblock here

We rode in in some vans along with some emergency personnel who took us right up to the landslide search zone.

In fact, we were walking along part of the roadway where they've cleared part of Highway 530 that was covered, and what we saw was a community that was just mutilated.

We have video and can show you some of those pictures. Some of that mud and debris you see along the side of the road is what was homes, and you can't even make out those different pieces of the homes because the pieces are so small.

It gives you a sense of just how powerful that land and water was when it came ripping through this valley.

You can see some tires in the debris. You can see a few large appliances. You see cables that were perhaps attached to telephone poles or something like that that are all twisted and mangled.

It's just a sad and messy situation in there, and because you can see just how high some of these debris piles are, it gives you a better understanding, gives me a better understanding of why this search effort is taking so long, because there is just such a vast amount of area, and such a depth of debris to get through, Brooke.

BALDWIN: That brings me to my next question, because I've been following this story very closely, reading that some of the tough crews had such a tough time getting to the bodies that are marked with orange ribbon because it's too tough to recover them. Can you give me an update on that process? Are there still bodies in the mud?

CABRERA: Officials believe there are still bodies in the mud, but they haven't even found all of the bodies that are possibly there.

We were told that there are some areas in that large debris field -- we have some overhead shots, too, that you might be able to see in the video and that gives you a sense of the area, and you do see those ribbons.

Some of those ribbons are marking a grid system of sorts that they've set up to help them say we've checked this area and we can move on to the next area.

We also were told that a lot of what you're seeing in some of the video was underwater until the past 24 hours, which made it really difficult to even get in and search those zones.

They've been using pumps to get all that water out, and they also have had dogs in there, dogs with incredibly sensitive sense of smell that can even detect some human scent some 10 feet lower beyond water, beyond muddy debris.

And so those are some of the areas that they are trying to search today.

Again, we asked the commander who was there with us, it was Lieutenant Burke, actually, who is one of the information officers on scene helping to give us the information to pass along to our viewers.

And he said, we don't know how long this is going to take. Our goal is to try to find every victim that's possibly still out there.

But at this point, it's sort of like looking into a crystal ball about how long that could take and whether they will be able to find all of the missing.

At this point, there are 22 people still missing, Brooke.

BALDWIN: For those families to pay their final respects as they want to.

Anna Cabrera, thank you to you and crew for giving us that closer glimpse at the deadly landslides there.

Coming up next, who spoke the final words in the cockpit? Was it the captain? Was it the co-pilot? Could it have been someone else?

Find out how investigators may be determining through voice analysis.

Plus, in mere minutes, President Obama will be speaking live from the Rose Garden, the day after the deadline to sign up for ObamaCare, and the White House is talking up the numbers.

But Republicans are not buying it. Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Now that this two-and-a-half-page, printed transcript from Malaysia Flight 370 has been released, there is still plenty of criticism about why investigators are still not knowing exactly who was speaking.

Officials have also been criticized for incorrectly reporting details of the conversation.

CNN's Martin Savidge has been our source for really understanding the inner workings of a Boeing 777. He joins us from that flight simulator with flight instructor Mitch Casado.

So, gentlemen, help us understand just the transmission from the cockpit there down to air traffic control, and from everyone I've talked to, pilots and experts looking at the transcript, they said nothing unusual here.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It does look fairly normal. Even before this transcript came out, Mitchell and I decided to, with the simulator, run through everything we knew of 370, going from waiting at the gate, the passengers loading, then the pushback, the taxi on the runway, the takeoff, everything.

And pretty much, it came out exactly the same. I won't say used the same radio calls, but almost the same, step by step.

So it doesn't seem under the ordinary, with the exception that Mitchell found one point towards the very end, 1:01:14 in the morning, the airline reports in, "Malaysian Three-Seven-Zero maintaining flight level three-five-zero," meaning 35,000 feet, "and just about six minutes and 40 seconds later, repeats it."

And that seemed a bit odd, didn't it?

MITCHELL CASADO, COMMERCIAL PILOT/INSTRUCTOR, UFLY: Yeah, it's a little odd only because there's no indication that they switched frequencies.

Now, if they said contact another center and report your altitude, of course, you would expect that.

But on the same frequency for a second time after the first time they were acknowledged, that's a little odd.

SAVIDGE: Yeah, they weren't prompted in any way. So that's the only oddity we could find.

BALDWIN: OK. The only oddity. Gentlemen, thank you very much, because I want to talk specifically about the forensic organization really looking into who uttered those last, final words, now that we know it wasn't exactly "all right, good night." It was something else.

Tom Fuentes, let me bring you in, our law enforcement analyst and former FBI assistant director.

From a -- Tom, from a criminal-investigation perspective, how exactly, using voice analysis, how does one figure out who was speaking?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Hi, Brooke.

In a case like this, you can bring in companies that do that kind of work. The government does that kind of work.

But really, you have a small company here, a small group of pilots and air traffic controllers, that would pretty much -- they should be able to recognize the voice pretty easily of the captain and/or the co- pilot.

Now, some of the voice-recognition software applications, it becomes a little more difficult when the speech is short, not long sentences or paragraphs like you have here, just quick radio messages, back and forth.

Also, the chance of having it garbled, ambient noise in the cockpit behind, the sounds of, you know, motors or engines or bells or whistles or whatever also would interfere with that.

So, really, there is software out there. There are applications. They're not a hundred percent, but in this case, just the humans that know both guys listening to their voices would probably be just about as effective.

BALDWIN: And then deducing, if it's not one of those two guys, realizing that it would be this third party and then it begs the question, who would that be?

When they are listening, Tom, and you mention ambient noise, what about other factors, things you really can't see when you're reading a transcript that you could hear, like fear or stress, mumbling from either a co-pilot or a pilot?

FUENTES: Well, a couple things with that. First of all, the recording is from the ground when the microphone is keyed and they are receiving.

This is not the uninterrupted, voice-cockpit recording that you would hope to have later from one of the black boxes, so that's a little bit different.

Secondly, in terms of stress, it's an acknowledged that the co-pilot is making his first ride without a check pilot, and he's now riding with a very experienced captain who he may look up to and may want to impress, so the idea of being nervous in that situation, it may not reveal.

You would expect a certain degree of stress, just the situation for that pilot.

BALDWIN: What about background noise? What could they gain from hearing that? FUENTES: If there's some kind of warning bells or fire alarms going off, but again, you know, you would have the co-pilot or pilot keying their microphone to speak to the ground controllers and then with the idea that during that five-second transmission the ground might be able to hear something that might sound like a fire alarm, it'd be pretty hard to imagine making a calm, "OK, good night," or normal transmissions when alarms are going off in the cockpit.

BALDWIN: It sounds like there's a lot that they could be listening for. We may never hear this, but let's hope investigators are listening to it, over and over and over.

FUENTES: That's true.

BALDWIN: Tom Fuentes, former FBI, CNN law enforcement analyst, thank you, sir, very much.

Much more on our special coverage here of Flight 370 in a moment, but also happening right now, take a live look at the White House, because President Obama, minutes from now, will be speaking from the Rose Garden.

Here we are, the day after the deadline to sign up for ObamaCare, and the White House says, in this last-minute push, they reached their goal.

Great news for them, but Republicans are suggesting that the administration is cooking the books.

We'll tell you who is right, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: The president is scheduled to speak just minutes from now. We expect that he will trumpet the news that, against all expectations, Obamacare -- are you ready for this as we look at live pictures here of the Rose Garden -- Obamacare has apparently met its role of signing of 7 million people.

Not an April Fools' joke, not kidding, here is White House spokesman Jay Carney.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I've been at the White House from the very beginning and have seen people say that meaningful healthcare could not be done more times than I can count.

From before the law passed when such a transformation of the healthcare system was thought to be politically impossible to the day that it reached the Supreme Court, throughout an election year when it was the principle subject of debate --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That was Jay Carney. And now this picture, this is a picture of the president getting the news, comes seven big smiles there in the Oval Office.

Gloria Borger is in Washington. She's our chief political analyst. And, Gloria Borger, we know the president will be speaking very, very shortly, so -- and we know we'll have a chance to vet those numbers.

But several months ago it kind of looked like the Keystone Cops, the way it rolled out, and here we have the president, does he finally get to say victory?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah. I think he will not crow about it, and I was just talking to a senior White House adviser.

I said, so, look, what he's going to do? Is he going to go out there and crow about it, brag about it?

He said, look, he's going to say, we're meeting our goals, we're doing well, and he's going to talk about it in the context of what it actually means for the country, you know, these 7 million people who have signed up, four-and-a-half million now get Medicaid.

So over at the White House, they are pretty pleased with the way this turned out, as you can well imagine, given the way it started with the bungling of the Web site. We were talking about 100 people signing up at one point, remember, not that long ago?

BALDWIN: Now we have north of the 7 million figure, so you are now hearing that the president will not be crowing, but he will be pleased.

But there is the other side of the story as we well know, the Republicans, because they plan to make Obamacare issue number one in the mid-terms this fall.

House speaker John Boehner still talking repeal, look at this here. This is a quote from yesterday.

But, Gloria, as far as repealing Obamacare full on, has this ship not sailed?

BORGER: Yeah. I think that it's a lot harder to make the political case when people have something to say you're going to take it away from them, and you say now you can be insured without pre-existing conditions, and are you going to take that away from people?

So I think the notion of running on large-scale repeal may appeal in some quarters in conservative districts, but I think, generally, the Republicans would do well to have a plan to replace ObamaCare if they have that.

I do think they've got legitimate questions that they're asking, which is how many previously uninsured people have actually enrolled in this? How many people have paid? And, you know, Kathleen Sebelius, the head of HHS, who is running this show, says that 80 to 90 percent of the people have paid.

But the big question out there, Brooke, is, in 2015, when the insurance companies have to start re-evaluating premiums here, how much are premiums going to go up?

We don't know the answer to that question because we don't know what the risk pool looks like.

Will it have a lot of sort of a balance between younger and older people, or will it be geared to older, sicker people?

BALDWIN: We'll find out. I have to leave it, Gloria, with you there, but we'll watch for the president in a matter of minutes

Gloria Borger, thank you. We'll take it live from the White House at the Rose Garden in just about 15 minutes from now.

I'm out of here. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thanks for watching.

Jim Sciutto in for Jake Tapper. THE LEAD starts right now.