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Update on Fort Hood Shooting; Talking with a Woman Who Works at Fort Hood; Fight 370 Search Latest

Aired April 03, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Good afternoon. I'm Brooke Baldwin, live here in Killeen, Texas, just outside of one of the main entrances here to Fort Hood. And you are watching special CNN coverage of two major stories this afternoon. The first here in Fort Hood, where an entire military post is grieving and trying to understand why one of their own, an Army specialist, attacked his own peers.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: That is really an unbelievable story. I'm Don Lemon, live in New York, where time is running out in the hunt for Flight 370 as the search area moves and the black box battery life runs out. The Australian prime minister says this is the most difficult search in human history. But, Brooke, we'll get to all of that in a moment.

BALDWIN: First, let's begin here in Fort Hood, where the killed and the wounded are not coming from the battlefield but from their own base. Again, for the second time in fewer than five years, a soldier has opened fire. He is Specialist Ivan Lopez, an Iraq War vet, shot and killed three fellow military members, wounded 16 others, just about almost 24 hours ago here. Among them, Major Patrick Miller.

Take a look at this photo here. This is from his FaceBook page. His mother via Twitter identified him as one of the wounded and has asked for the public for prayers for her son's recovery. Miller's attacker, unlike what happened in 2009, will not see trial because Specialist Lopez, father of a three-year-old little girl, put and turned the gun on himself after he came across a military police officer yesterday afternoon here at Fort Hood.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. GEN. MARK MILLEY, COMMANDER, FORT HOOD: He was approaching her at about 20 feet. He put his hands up and reached under his jacket and pulled out the .9 mill and she pulled out her weapon and then she engaged and then he put the weapon to his head. It was clearly heroic what she did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let's be clear here, the focus today, two-fold. One, on this military family as they have lost several people here, focus on the victims, and, two, the why, the motive. Investigators have not ruled out terrorism. They also know Lopez served nine years as a member of Puerto Rico's National Guard. They say he was troubled. Military leaders did reveal this morning he was depressed, he was anxious, having a tough time sleeping. He was given a number of prescriptions, including, they mentioned this morning in the armed services committee for the Senate side, he was given Ambien, but he had not - at least not yet been diagnosed with PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN MCHUGH, ARMY SECRETARY: He was seen just last month by a psychiatrist. He was fully examined. And as of this morning, we had no indication on the record of that examination that there was any sign of likely violence, either to himself or to others, no suicidal ideation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So the next question, how did he get the gun? Did he get it legally? With no official quote/unquote mental defect, Lopez was able to legally buy this 45 semiautomatic pistol from a store not too far from where I'm standing here in Fort Hood.

So with me now, Sig Christianson, cofounder of Military Reporters and Editors and a reporter at "The San Antonio Express-News."

And, Sig, you have been covering military, you were telling me, 17 years, deployed nine times. You were here at Fort Hood in November of '09. You were here for the Hasan trial last year. The biggest difference -- because it's easy to see the similarities, right? But the biggest difference seems so far is motive and this being truly just soldier on solder, isolated incident.

SIG CHRISTENSON, SENIOR REPORTER, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS: That's correct. You know, Nadal Hasan was a disturbed person. But when that incident occurred, the first thing a lot of people talked about was his declaration before he started shooting was then "allah akbar (ph)." And then he started shooting. There's no report at all of even Lopez doing that. Nobody really knows if there was an argument that took place prior to this. That's what my sourcing tells me. The Army hasn't confirmed it. so that's the biggest difference. One - right away it had a suggestion of terrorism. The other one does not so far. As General Milley said, they're still looking into it. But that's what we are led to think that this was just a disturbed individual who nobody accounted for what he did.

BALDWIN: And let's be clear, because there have been a lot of questions today about, you know, the fact that he illegally carried his legally purchased firearm here on post. He lives off post or lived off post with his wife and young daughter, but you can, if you live on post and you register that gun with a commander, correct me if I'm wrong, you can bring a firearm on post, correct? And they're not going to check every single car. But this place is huge.

CHRISTENSON: There are tens of thousands of motorists who drive on to this post every day. It's impossible to check every car. It just can't be done. And the same problem happens with a lot of other installations around the United States. So if has registered the weapon with his command, he can take it to a firing range, he can shoot it there. Typically soldiers don't have to do that. In fact, many won't. They'd rather that the Army not know that they have personal weapons.

BALDWIN: You told me they tell you, they don't trust the government. These are members of the U.S. military.

CHRISTENSON: More than a few.

BALDWIN: Wow.

CHRISTENSON: That's correct.

BALDWIN: I talked to a 21-year-old soldier who, you know, was shaking practically when she was sharing some very candid moments with me. And she was saying she wasn't surprised when she heard about this. She expects there to be another incident. She describes Fort Hood as a black hole, said here in particular was -- suicides were rampant and doesn't actually blame the shooter, blames leadership, blames lack of help, lack of treatment. I imagine the Army would say otherwise.

CHRISTENSON: That's a mouthful. Let's start with what we know. Fort Hood is not the only post that was having a suicide problem. Fort Campbell had 22 suicides one year. Fort Hood set the record at one point. There have been a number of posts, Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, Fort Hood, Fort Carson and Joint Base Lewis-McChord. They've sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers through the war zone and we're repeatedly deployed these people again and again and again. We've never done that before. So nobody really knows what that does to soldiers who have never -

BALDWIN: Mental.

CHRISTENSON: It's possible. Most soldiers seem to do just fine. There are plenty of soldiers out there who do not. But you can't blame the post. I'm not there yet.

BALDWIN: Yes.

CHRISTENSON: I don't think that's the problem.

BALDWIN: But is there a sense, off the record, that these soldiers don't want to be - to quote this young woman who I talked to, they're labeled as crazy if they go and seek help. That it's just something you're just really not supposed to do. Is that fair?

CHRISTENSON: Some people may feel that way, but I think the Army has come a long, long way -

BALDWIN: Yes.

CHRISTENSON: In the last few years on that issue. And I hope they have because there have been plenty of people who have suffered trauma, who wrestle with suicidal thoughts and the real issue is that once you've got them in your care, how are you being treated? That's the big question. I've seen soldiers who think they're being treated well, they've done well in their treatment programs. I've heard from soldiers who are not very happy with the system. And it's all across the board. But to go back to Fort Hood, you know, every - you'll find soldier who hate every post they've been to. You'll find some that are happy with the post. I don't know that Fort Hood is the issue here. He was sent here in February.

BALDWIN: But we don't know why he left his last post, correct?

CHRISTENSON: We don't know why. We don't even know where that post was. And, of course, all of us are here hoping we can get some answers from these people.

BALDWIN: Yes.

CHRISTENSON: Because there are too many questions out there.

BALDWIN: Those are some of the pieces of the puzzle that we all want answers to. Sig Christenson, thank you very much. I really appreciate it, with "The San Antonio Express-News," military reporter, veteran, thank you very much.

CHRISTENSON: Thank you.

BALDWIN: And so, Don, back up to you.

LEMON: We'll get back to Brooke in a moment.

In the hunt for Flight 370, Malaysia's Flight 370, we're expecting a big operations news conference from Australia. It should happen at any moment. We don't know exactly what time the news conference will happen. Earlier, though, one Australian official said they'll keep looking for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 until hell freezes over. Twenty-eight 28 days into the hunt and the search is running on borrowed time now. Crews are desperately trying to get a ping from the plane's black box before the batteries run out of juice. A British ship arrived in the search area just a short time ago and an Australian ship is almost there, carrying a sophisticated pinger locator.

We're going to go live now to CNN's Will Ripley. He is in Perth, Australia.

So, Will, what are you hearing about this big operations news conference in the works from Australia's Angus Houston?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you know, we really don't know exactly what Mr. Houston is going to be telling us at the news conference later today. It's early in the morning here in Perth. But we're getting a sense that it is going to be something major regarding the operations of this, which coordinates all of the operations regarding the search. That same source that told us this big news conference is coming, also told us that that British ship you mentioned, the Echo, which is equipped with sonar equipment, which means it listens in the water for any sounds, any pings, we know that that ship is going to be doing a specific search sometime tomorrow. Specific meaning it's not random. They're actually going somewhere and listening for something specific. What that is, we don't know. But this is a pretty significant development.

But again, we just don't know exactly what is going to be happening. And the Ocean Shield just hours away now from the search zone, equipped with those high tech tools from the U.S. Navy. So, Don, we're going to have a lot of resources, a lot of assets in place. The British submarine, this ship, and the Ocean Shield as well, all honing in on this newly refined search area.

LEMON: Let's talk about the American side, the American side-scanning sonar. Can it get to work sooner?

RIPLEY: Yes, you know, the side-scanning sonar, which is that underwater drone that the Ocean Shield is equipped with, it can absolutely get to work. But the problem with this technology, even though it's very good and very sophisticated, it still needs a more refined search zone to look in, because even if you're covering 150 square nautical miles per day, you have a search area that is 100 times larger than that and so your chances of being close to a plane in that large area are pretty slim, which is why we continue this process. But, you know, we now have a lot of ears in the water, ears meaning technical ears, this sonar equipment listening for these fading pings, which just literally have days left on the battery life.

LEMON: If the battery is still going. Thank you very much, Will Ripley in Perth, Australia.

And up next, realistically, how long can they continue searching at this speed? Plus, is it the most difficult search in human history? We'll compare it to other unsolved aviation mysteries.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Also ahead today, Don, here in Texas at Fort Hood, we are learning much more about this 34-year-old Army specialist who opened fire yesterday afternoon, including how his own wife found out.

Plus, I had just returned from one of - really one of the more candid interviews I have ever done. This young Fort Hood soldier opened up to me in a way I had never seen, who said living here is like jail.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This place is definitely a black hole.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: The hunt for Malaysia Flight 370 may be on the verge of a new chapter. CNN has learned this, that the man leading the search will hold a big operations news conference in the coming hours. We are waiting to see what time Australia's Angus Houston will speak on this.

Plus, we have learned a British navy ship will conduct a specific search for Flight 370 in the Indian Ocean. Earlier, Australia's prime minister described massive challenges. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: This is probably the most difficult search ever undertaken. The most difficult search ever undertaken. Even though we are constantly refining the search area, even though the search area is moving north, it is still an extraordinary remote and inaccessible spot, at time subject to very difficult sea conditions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: And speaking of difficult, I want to show you this. Exhausted relatives of people on board that flight, 370. Some can barely hold up their heads as they waited for a news briefing. And that wait is keeping them in agony for the 28th day, the 28th day. With me now is aviation analyst Jeff Wise. He's a science writer as well.

Jeff, let's focus on this big operations that they're talking about. Big operations. What are the possibilities that they can talk about in this news conference? What are big operations changes?

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, look, it's either going to be, we found something, or we didn't find anything and we're probably not going to find something. That's how I interpret this to be. You know, I mean, this is the way that it's been going. I mean we started this, you know, last week with such high hopes. And every time there was a - any kind of something in the water, you know, it was billed as a positive lead and the -

LEMON: So the top possibilities, we didn't find - we didn't find something or we found something. And chances are --

WISE: You know, I think - I think like most of us, I've sort of learned pessimism at this point.

LEMON: Yes.

WISE: It just seems we've been disappointed so many times and so many times. We started out with such positive, optimistic language.

LEMON: I want to drill into this a little bit more -

WISE: OK.

LEMON: Because your new article slammed Malaysia and Inmarsat for not releasing ping data. And here's what you wrote. You said, "I am saying that the evidence that MH370 is in the Indian Ocean is very shaky indeed. I am criticizing not the idea that it's in the Indian Ocean, but the confident assertion that it must be. What are you saying?

WISE: Listen, the only evidence we have at all about the fate of this aircraft, unless the authorities know something that they're not leading on, all their behavior certainly wouldn't lend us to believe that. All that we have are these pings, these 13 dataless pings that were sent between the satellite and the airplane. And we can't really assess what they mean because Inmarsat and Malaysians are keeping them secret.

LEMON: But - and it's also what we do have as well is a mathematical probability.

WISE: Well, they generated this mathematical model but they won't tell us how it's built -

LEMON: How it's (INAUDIBLE).

WISE: They won't tell us what the raw data is that they've fed into it.

LEMON: So then how much confidence can we put into that?

WISE: Well, I mean, for so much of this search we've been really, you know, investing our confidence in the authority of this state of, you know, the Malaysian prime minister.

LEMON: Yes.

WISE: The office of the Australian prime minister. And we've been disappointed because they've made these great claims about, you know, that the Malaysia prime minister confidently asserted that the family should accept that their relatives are dead (ph). He didn't use those exact words, but essentially in his language lead them to believe that their relatives were dead and they should just deal with it.

LEMON: OK. So, you know, last night it was the last question I asked you on our live coverage last night at 1:00 in the morning, right?

WISE: Right.

LEMON: I said to you, you know, I read the quote from the Australian prime minister. It said we are -- we may never find this plane basically is what he said. We may never get to the bottom of this search, but we will do all that we can to keep trying. I think that was a foreshadowing. I'm not sure if you --

WISE: Well, it was such a huge sea (ph) change from that optimism and confidence that we'd seen just a few days before that it really seemed like it wasn't so much conveying information to us, but preparing us emotionally, setting the stage, you know, setting expectations for what we should expect to see going forward.

LEMON: Yes. He said this was the biggest search ever, most difficult search ever. Do you believe that?

WISE: In history.

LEMON: In history. Do you believe that? Considering Amelia Earhart and so on.

WISE: Well, Amelia Earhart was a huge mystery, but it was a totally different technological age.

LEMON: Right. WISE: mean other than modern era, there is nothing that remotely compares to this. I think that's been true all along, yes.

LEMON: Jeff Wise, we'll see you back here throughout the day and evening on CNN. Thank you.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Don, thank you so much.

We're here live covering the tragedy at Fort Hood and we will explain how the shooter's wife found out exactly what happened when -- the moment she discovered, after hearing about the shooting that it was her own husband. Hear how her neighbor tried to console her.

Also ahead, I will share an incredibly compelling interview. I spoke with a very young soldier here at Fort Hood. She's only been here for a couple of months and she told me Fort Hood, and I'm quoting her, "is a black hole." She says that this kind of tragedy, not a matter of if but will happen again if nothing is done to fix the system. Don't miss this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Just about the bottom of the hour here. I'm Brooke Baldwin live standing outside the main entrance of Fort Hood. And as we cover this tragedy that happened not even 24 hours ago, I wanted to just get a little perspective as far as how these soldiers are feeling off post and on. And within this last hour or so, I was able to get that perspective from a young woman who, we're not showing her face, we're not sharing her name, but she wanted to tell me her story.

She was practically shaking speaking to me. She knows folks who knew those who were killed. She told me she grew up in a military family, believes in the military, wanted to join, give up her college scholarship because she wanted to help provide for her family. But coming here to Fort Hood she said has really been like hell. She talked to me about the suicide rate here. She talked to me about why she doesn't necessarily blame what the shooter did. And if things don't change, again this is just her perspective, it will happen again.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: So I am sitting in the car with someone who is stationed here at Fort Hood. We're not going to say who she is, what she does, but what is it like on post right now?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a pretty chaotic state. This place, they call it the great place. At the end of the day, it's really not the great place. People just hear things that go on, but they really don't understand that this place is definitely a black hole. This place is a stressful place and we don't have as much attention (ph) as we should. People are saying, oh, yes, this is just another massacre and they're going to forget about it. And it's not going to be on everybody's mind until we have people step up and say, hey, there needs to be change here. We're going to continue to have incidents like this. And at the end of the day, that's a sad realization that, you know, we're going to have to come to.

BALDWIN: You were saying to me, when we were talking before, you've only been here a number of months.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.

BALDWIN: And you don't want to be here anymore. You want to go back to basic training because it's that bad. What about Fort Hood is that bad?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's between leadership, just the quality of life. Like it's people in jail have a better life than a lot of these soldiers here. And if you don't have a family and you're a single soldier living in the barracks, it can be miserable. And, you know, we have a lot of people in behavioral health and nobody really understands how bad somebody's mental stability is or, you know, how hard it is to keep your sanity here being at Fort Hood.

BALDWIN: You're almost shaking talking to me. Why -- why?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's just that frustrating being here. You know, we have our big leaders, you know, at the Pentagon or whatever. They're, oh, yes, our soldiers are ready (ph) to take pay cuts. You know, we need to focus on our equipment and all this. No, they really should be focused on our quality of life because right now it's not up to par. And we're going to keep having situations like this unless, you know, our government steps in and says, hey, look, we need to take care of our troops, our soldiers and their families.

BALDWIN: Take care how? Take care how?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean, offer more things like, you know, people say, oh, they have PTSD. They're going to blame it on this. PTSD is a serious thing. People don't give, you know, the mental challenges that people face enough credit. Like it can change you. like, I mean, I have a disabled vet, you know, mom who has PTSD and she's not the same person as she was when I was younger from being deployed because she doesn't get the proper attention she needs. So if we sit there and fix the underlying problem of, you know, people saying they have these mental disabilities, our quality of life will be better or the fact that, you know, we have to do crazy things, we lose our sanity knowing that we don't get paid enough to work as much as we do. I could flip burgers right now and make more money.

BALDWIN: You say -- you described Fort Hood as this black hole. You said something. You said you don't blame this 34-year-old shooter for doing what he did.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As awful as that sounds, at the end of the day, I can't be mad at him. I blame his command. I blame the people not giving him that help that he needed. I'm more than sure he reached out to people. And I pray for all those families that were affected by this incident. But people just don't understand what it is to have the life that we do here at Hood. BALDWIN: People have said already that the Army was doing everything right. This man was undergoing anxiety and depression treatment. He wasn't have suicidal thoughts. He was on drugs. He was on Ambien. They were monitoring him. What was the Army not doing in your opinion?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just because they are saying they're doing these things, doesn't mean it necessarily was true. You know, my unit alone, if you go to behavioral help, you're listed as a crazy person. And they will treat you differently than what you would if you were just a normal soldier just sucking it up. Because they - a lot of people don't get the help because they don't want to be listed as crazy. They don't want to be treated differently.

BALDWIN: How are you treated differently if you're listed with any kind of mental issue?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Basically you're not good enough. You're different. You - you're crazy. You're crazy. That's the bottom line. Like you don't deserve to be treated like, oh, this soldier over here that, you know, can perform all these duties without freaking out about something. Well, maybe that soldier didn't endure the same thing another soldier did and they need to realize that. That's just crazy.

BALDWIN: You said suicides are really bad here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Definitely. And that's something that people are overlooking and they think it's just like - oh, those people are being selfish. No, they're not being selfish. They're reaching out. They're showing signs and nobody's just making the effort to do something about it. And sometimes you have to figure out, that's - that's just life.