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8.2 Magnitude Earthquake Rocks Chile; Australian Heads towards Search Area; Supreme Court Strikes Down Donor Limit; Mystery of Flight 370

Aired April 02, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: What if the earthquake had struck land?

KATE HUTTON, SEISMOLOGIST, CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: Well the shake -- the ground shaking would have been stronger. So more buildings would have been damaged and there probably would have been more loss of life and property damage.

COSTELLO: I was stunned myself. The Chileans were pretty calm through all of this. There was no panic.

HUTTON: Well if -- if you look at the map that's behind me, you will see all the magnitude 8 plus earthquakes that have occurred in Chile since -- in the last 140 years.

So they are very used to these earthquakes there. And they do a lot of drill activity and they know what to do in an earthquake and panic is not on the list.

COSTELLO: Yes and that's a good thing. Why so many earthquakes there?

HUTTON: It's because two very quickly-moving plates, in other words, up to five inches a year, which is fast for a tectonic plate are converging. And the Nazca plate is being sub ducted underneath the South America plate. And because the rate is so high, they have the largest earthquakes more often.

COSTELLO: OK, so we have just had several quakes in California over the past couple of months, over the past year. Now this big one in Chile there was an earthquake in what Yellow Stone too. I mean is it a sign, is it just coincidence or -- or is this something you expect as a scientist?

HUTTON: Well, if it is not coincidence, it's very low in the noise. The most obvious aspect of earthquake activity is that it is random, if you look at the long-term. And you know if you have a magnitude eight earthquake somewhere and you look around there are magnitude fours and fives all the time. So there is always something that will correlate with it. In this case it just happens to be in a populated area.

COSTELLO: Dr. Kate Hutton thank you so much for joining me this morning.

HUTTON: Oh thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, high-tech U.S. equipment scheduled to reach -- reach the Flight 370 search zone tomorrow. Now Malaysia is asking the United States for more deep sea help. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: With the clock ticking on the black box pinger signal, an Australian ship is racing toward what is believed to be Malaysia Flight 370's most likely occasion. The ship is called "The Ocean Shield". It's armed with the U.S. Navy ping locator and an underwater robot. It'll take another day to reach its destination about 900 miles off the coast of Australia.

Paula Newton is tracking the journey of "Ocean Shield". She joins us now. Hi, Paula.

PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And hello, Carol. Yes that "Ocean Shield" is supposed to be on the scene in that search area in less than 24 hours. Now the problem is that search zone has not been narrowed. But also today Carol a British submarine, the "HMS Tireless" is very close to the scene as well. This search still continues, it is pretty exhaustive, the planes have returned for tonight. We expect them back up in the air just in the next few hours.

The problem though Carol is that they had changed the search zone. It has now moved a little bit closer to shore and further to the east. And this has a lot of people questioning about whether or not they have already completed the other search zone. And what that means for the likelihood of them finding something any time soon.

COSTELLO: Yes I was just going to ask you if there is any way to narrow that search zone even more. Any new information coming by, a satellite or radar?

NEWTON: Well we did try and ask the task force here, the Joint Coordination Center to see if they had any new information. They did not say if they were able to narrow that search zone at all saying only though Carol that from March 28th to April 1st, that they had basically completed the search area. They had done an exhaustive search and hadn't found much that was of interest.

And you wonder now where this search is going. We hope to hear more in the next few hours. Really the Malaysian Prime Minister should here on the ground in the next couple of hours. He has a tour of this base tomorrow one-on-one talks with the Prime Minister of Australia and the people running this search.

And we hope that in the next few hours, we will have a little more clarity about where they are searching and why.

COSTELLO: Paula Newton reporting live for us this morning. Thank you. Malaysia is also reaching out today for more U.S. military assets in the search for that plane. Their quest is coming on the sidelines of a meeting of South Asian Defense Ministers in Hawaii. Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel, is hosting that meeting.

CNN's Barbara Starr will monitor it for us. She joins us live from the Pentagon. Good morning.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Well the Malaysian Minister, even before he left for Hawaii, said he was going to ask Chuck Hagel for more military equipment for deep sea search and salvage. Not clear what he thinks he is going to be asking for. Hagel has said he'll consider of course any request. But the problem remains getting that debris field narrowed down before any of this equipment can really be used.

When they scheduled this ministerial months ago, nobody you know could even expect that this would be a major topic. But on the way over to Hawaii, Hagel talked to reporters on the plane about exactly what he thinks needs to be talked about here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHUCK HAGEL, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Like any of these tragedies and we don't yet know what happened. There are always lessons to be learned, what could have been done, maybe what should have been done, what needs to be done better.

But coordination is a key part of this. How do we bring all the complement of full assets of nations together to cooperate and connect when you have these disasters?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: Talking about if there is a next time, hopefully there won't be but there is another incident like this how to do it better the next time. But right now Carol of course all the focus on trying to find debris from Flight 370 -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Of course Barbara Starr reporting live from the Pentagon.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM. The Supreme Court makes a big change in how much money an individual person can donate to a political campaign. It's already causing ramifications across the country. We'll have a live report from Capitol Hill next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: OK, back to our breaking news because it's causing a lot of consternation already. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the limits on how much an individual can donate to a political campaign.

Our chief congressional correspondent, Dana Bash, is on Capitol Hill with reaction to this. But first of all, explain this ruling to our viewers. DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well right now, there is a limit on how much an individual can give across the board in a campaign cycle. Right now, the limit is $123,200 that's for this election cycle. The Supreme Court rule reading of this that that limit is no longer. So if -- if John Smith out there wants to give more than that and wants to give to candidates across the country, he is able to do that, because it will likely bust through that cap. That cap no longer exists.

However, there is still a cap, it seems, on how much John Smith can give to a single candidate. So if John Smith wants to give to a presidential candidate, he is still limited in how much. If John Smith wants to give to a congressional candidate, there is still a limit on that. What is not -- what is not limited anymore, thanks to this ruling is the overall amount he can spend. He can spend money on congressional races all across the country, whereas before he couldn't do that.

COSTELLO: Gosh OK so political ramifications of it. What are people saying on The Hill about this?

BASH: We already have reaction from the top Republican on Capitol Hill, the House Speaker, John Boehner. And he is very happy about this. Republicans for the most part have thought that limits really stifle free speech, which is effectively what the Justices who -- who voted for this agreed with.

And here is what the Speaker said about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), HOUSE SPEAKER: What I think this means is that freedom of speech is being upheld. You all have the freedom to write what you want to write, donors have the freedom to give what they want to give.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now, we have not heard officially from Democrats on Capitol Hill yet but I'm sure we'll hear momentarily from them. By and large, their point of view has been that there should be limits because the flood of money into campaigns is a detriment. That is why there was a bipartisan push but mostly on the Democratic side to do the McCain- Feingold campaign and finance law, which this Supreme Court ruling effectively strikes down at least another part of it today.

But also, just kind of, you asked about the political ramifications, bigger picture. You definitely have seen after the Citizens United ruling a few years ago which allowed a flood of money which sort of spawned these super PACs which unlimited money, millions and millions of dollars into outside groups. There has been a lot of frustrations among candidates, because they have felt that they certainly when the money is coming their way it tends to help them.

But there is also a limit in how much they can control their own message and can control their own campaign, because they can't get on the air waves sometimes with their own things that they want to say, because these outside groups are coming in and blanketing the air waves with things that sort of take them off course.

This ruling might, from that perspective add to that. Again it just puts more money into the campaign year but it is a little bit different because there still is that limit on individual campaigns and individual candidates.

COSTELLO: I'm just getting over that money has freedom of speech. As they have always said, money talks and it really does. Dana Bash thanks so much.

BASH: Thank you. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The cockpits for Malaysia Airlines will now be staffed differently in the wake of Flight 370. Changes in security procedures include never leaving a pilot or co-pilot alone at the flight controls. Whenever the captain or first officer leave that cabin, a senior cabin steward now must wait in the cockpit until the pilot or co-pilot comes back.

For more on these new rules, let's go to our simulator, our 777 simulator with Martin Savidge and pilot trainer Mitchell Casado. Good morning, gentlemen.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Carol. You know, we were talking about these new rules and what we were really sort of discussing is the fact that Malaysian Airlines has been a bit behind the curve when it comes to these kind of new security implemented practices. I mean domestic and other international carriers do it, right?

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER: For a long time. Ever since September 11th, they have been doing this.

SAVIDGE: And the idea is so that one pilot or co-pilot is never alone in the cockpit, because we have seen in previous incidents where it is possible that somebody could do a great deal of harm by themselves.

CASADO: Yes. They wait for that opportunity where they are alone in the cockpit and they do whatever they want.

SAVIDGE: We wanted to point out something that's on this particular aircraft, Carol and located in the cockpit. It might be just out of view but it is actually a locking mechanism here. It is simulated but it essentially is the control for automatically locking and unlocking that door -- right?

CASADO: That's correct. So outside the door, we have an electronic key pad and the crew can dial in a code and we get a time in the cockpit and after a certain amount of time, a certain amount of seconds, if we don't do anything about access or deny access, the door will automatically open. SAVIDGE: So, in other words, the pilot, who may be in here with a flight attendant or a senior flight crew member, could hear someone coming back in. If for any reason they suspect that person coming in now doesn't have a good intent, then they can actually deny. They can lock the door and lock someone out. So it's a very complicated system and there are many other security measures we won't go into that are done to protect the cockpit both from those inside and those trying to get in from the outside.

COSTELLO: OK. So I'm going to ask you this question. If a pilot really wanted to sabotage the plane, is there really anything that could stop him or her.

CASADO: If it was the pilot, at that point, if they are in the cockpit and the door is locked, they have the ability to lock the door, sadly no, there is really not much you can do.

SAVIDGE: There are self-defense tactics that are taught to crew members so the co-pilot, of course, you would expect a struggle. If that co-pilot has been incapacitated, Carol, you are right. It is a real problem once there is only one person now at the controls and the door is securely locked. This is why you do strong background checks and mental health background checks.

COSTELLO: That's right. Hopefully, you do them more than once. Martin Savidge, Mitchell Casado -- thanks so much.

I'm back in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: As you well know, we have very few clues in the disappearance of Flight 370. But according to the Malaysian government, it is not for lack of trying. The country's top police officer said this about the pace of the investigation, quote, "We have to clear every little thing. You cannot hurry us in whatever we are doing."

Well, let's talk about this. CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the Department of Transportation, Mary Schiavo is here. Welcome, Mary.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: Investigators in Malaysia came out today and said they have cleared all 237 passengers on board that plane. Does that surprise you?

SCHIAVO: Well, no. I mean it takes a long time to do that many people, clear that many persons and do their backgrounds and check all sorts of things out about them but if they have been working diligently, that's good. That was a lot of work and it's good that that's done. What remains to be done apparently is the pilots -- to clear the pilots and the crew, the rest of the flight attendants. So we're waiting to hear on that. COSTELLO: The investigators said, you know, we are going over every little thing. Please don't hurry us. We're working. Do you believe him?

SCHIAVO: I do. I think they got off to a very slow start. But there have been little clues that have come out here and there. And some things are just contradictions. For example, at first, we heard on the transcript they had originally said it was the co-pilot's voice.

Now, they say they are not sure. That's a pretty easy thing to check. You just find people who know their voices, who worked with them. The pilot had 18,000 hours. He must have worked with a lot of people. For that to still be a mystery is rather odd.

So you can tell they are looking at things and reexamining things and that's good. The problem is, by ruling everything out, no evidence doesn't mean you have evidence of a crime. So they are going to have to keep looking until they can find a motive and actually find a crime. Right now, they don't have one.

COSTELLO: OK. Well, let's then go back to those new rules that Malaysia put into place, you know regarding the cockpit, that the pilot and co-pilot can never be left alone in that cockpit. Somebody else has to be in there until the other pilot returns. Should we really read anything into that beyond they're just improving their safety measures?

SCHIAVO: I think the most important thing to read into it is they are playing a little bit of catch-up. You know, while they are not federal regulations, they are guidelines, rules followed by most of the airlines in this country. It has several reasons for it, not just for security reasons that if somebody is bent on ill-will, you know, bent on criminal activity in the cockpit, you have a second person there.

There is also a practical reason. There have been cases where pilots where one is out or and the other one is in have been taken ill, in a couple cases, a pilot has actually died in flight. And recently, we had a case where a pilot locked himself out of the cockpit.

So, you know, it is kind of important to have two people -- we have a what's called the two-person cockpit rule. Two people in the cockpit at all times and it just makes sense. It is common sense, it's good practice and it's good security.

So I think Malaysia air is just catching up with some of the world's airlines.

COSTELLO: OK, so you have been following this case closer than anyone, I would guess. Do you have any theories at this point as to what happened?

SCHIAVO: Oh, well, sure. I mean there is just no shortage of theories. But you know, I try to look at what's most likely. What do the previous accidents tell me? What do the facts and the statistics tell me. The facts and statistics tell me most of the time what you find is there is some sort of a mechanical problem, a failure, a catastrophic event. Quite often, what the NTSB finds at least is that the pilots have not been trained to adequately respond to that event. And I suspect that's it.

COSTELLO: Mary Schiavo, thanks as always.

And thank you for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"@THIS HOUR" with Berman and Michaela starts now.