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Robot and Giant Microphones Join Jet Hunt; Assessing The Artist Known as "W"; Lessons from TWA Flight 800 Investigation

Aired April 04, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin. The search for Flight 370 went below the surface of the Indian Ocean because right now I can tell that this super-sensitive U.S. microphone, this pinger locatorr is now following this 150-mile straight line track at a depth of about 10,000 feet. So it's straining to pick up the ping from the plane's black boxes.

And if they do hear a ping, a robot, also made by the USA, standing by, uses a side scan sonar to map the ocean floor and find the wreckage. But here's the thing, without an above-water debris field or even a piece of plane debris, experts say the underwater assets are a really just a total shot in the dark.

But darkness they can handle since they don't rely on visual sightings or even satellite imagery. The underwater locators can work around the clock. We talk about this high-tech tools to begin this undersea search of this area. Our CNN's Rosa Flores is on the ship with the look at some of the high-tech search equipment -- Rosa.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Unmanned probes like this have searched the ocean for plane wreckage before. It took years of sweeping the ocean bottom, but it found a downed plane, carrying Italian fashion designer, Victorio Misoni, his wife and four others off the coast of Venezuela last year. It helped find Air France Flight 447 after it went missing, locating the wreckage and hundreds of bodies on board. It has found ships that sunk decades ago like the Ark Royal. And these probes allowed even for detailed imaging of the titanic.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: The small ones go down to 5,000 feet. Next class is much larger, it's 15 by 25 feet. It's very large. It adds a lot of battery capability and a lot of hydraulics capability.

FLORES: The autonomous underwater vehicles, AUVs, can go as deep as 20,000 feet sending pulses to find debris. Then maps are drawn to guide search teams. They can find things up to 300 feet under the sea floor. This AUV can only search eight square miles a day. It would take four days to search an area as big as Manhattan. The equipment works around obstacles so it doesn't get damaged and maps them so divers don't get hurt. CHRIS MOORE, ENGINEER, PHOENIX INTERNATIONAL UNDERWATER SOLUTIONS: Underwater obstructions are a concern. We tend to fly the AUV at about a 45-meter altitude of the bottom. Keeps us usually out of the way of obstructions.

FLORES: These types of searches can take months or years, but the payoff is high. Wreckage that gives clues about what happened, data recorders and the thing that matters most, the fate of the people on board. Rosa Flores, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: So that's an idea of how it's going out there. But right now, Chad Myers, bring you in. You have done math looking into the search area. But what I really wanted was a comparison. Talk about 150 miles, how does that compare to the Great Lakes?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: We figured that out. We compared their and changed their kilometers to miles and all that, we came up with about 84,000 square miles. How does that relate? You would have to search in just the current search area, the one they want to be 100 times smaller, superior, Michigan, Huron, and most of Lake Erie, but not Lake Ontario. All of that. I'm going to give a lot of benefit of the doubt to the technology in saying we have heard about this one to two to three mile range on the ping, ping, ping.

I'm going give it three miles, that's the highest. If this listener can listen three miles in both directions, a six-mile wide strip. It's a six-mile wide lawn mower. You go back and forth and try to cover 84,000 square miles, six miles wide at a time at 5 miles per hour. Can't go too fast. It's over 100 days for that one thing to search this one area.

That's why they would want this a hundred times smaller so that they could search it in one day. That's not going to happen. There are a couple out there. But it would take one just a hundred days. Obviously you don't keep looking once you find it. It could be only 25 days. But if it's the last thing they find, 124 days. And the ping's dead by then.

BALDWIN: No dice because the battery's going away. But hopefully with those submersibles that could help find the wreckage, but they have to have the debris. Keep going back to that. Thank you.

Coming up, a closer look at TWA flight 800. These pictures, how they reconstructed the plane. We will tell you how that investigation compares to flight 370. And what does it take for investigators to actually label a crash a criminal investigation? We'll talk to an investigator who worked on the Flight 800 case.

And also ahead, former President George W. Bush. Recognize this guy? This one? Putting his artistic skills on display with paintings of world leaders. So how did he do? Let's talk to an art critic, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BALDWIN: Welcome back. We will take you back to our special coverage, of course, of Flight 370. Sensors down in the water for the very first time today going 24/7, hoping to hear the pings on those black boxes before they run out. Stand by for more reporting on that.

But right now, have you heard of this artist? The painter known at W. Fascinating story. New at the art scene. He has a show that opens tomorrow in Dallas and he opened up to us last spring.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I get the satisfaction out of completing a project and I paint people's pets. And I love to give them their pet as a gift. Now I'd readily concede the signature is more valuable than the painting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: You know, just a hobby, says George W. Bush. Something to keep him off the streets post-oval office of course. And sitting down with his wife with our own John King. That said you have more than one critic is saying, you know what, this guy is pretty good.

Jerry Saltz is joining me right now. He is a senior art critic for "New York" magazine, and Jerry Salts. Is looks like you were ready to dismiss the idea of "W" as an artist, but changed your mind.

JERRY SALTZ, SENIOR ART CRITIC, "NEW YORK" MAGAZINE: That's true. What can I say? I was never a fan of the Bush presidency. I thought he was a bit of a Gremlin on the wing of America but --

BALDWIN: A gremlin, OK.

SALTZ: When I first saw his paintings, I was sure I would hate them. But there was something kind of innocent, sincere, earnest, almost childlike. If you told me a high school senior had painted them, I would believe it. Also, it was so strange to see a man who had seen the entire world paint himself alone in a bathroom in the bathtub naked.

BALDWIN: Let's get deep, Jerry. You're an art critic. What would one be thinking to be painting oneself? Is this, like, a rebirth? Is this symbolic of a new spring? Here I go bringing out my old English major. But seriously, what do you think?

SALTZ: I actually read it more as somebody cloistering himself away. Of returning to a private, one-person world of small spaces, of no other people, of not looking out, but just looking at himself. Not in an introspective way, but just looking. Imagine if Abe Lincoln had served his term and painted afterwards and he gave us paintings of himself in a bathtub. It's almost freakish.

BALDWIN: And then to paint world leaders, right? So he's painting his counterparts. We'll put these up so people can see them if they haven't yet. First, this is Maliki. This is from Iraq and then we have, let's show the next one, this is Bush's friend, Tony Blair, former prime minister of Britain. And then we have this, Vladimir Putin. We have been talking about him a lot in the news.

SALTZ: Wow.

BALDWIN: Why wow? What do you think about this?

SALTZ: I have to say, this is the man that had bush at hello. And Bush looked into his soul and saw a good man, and the strangeness of this portrait, of those eyes just looking right back at us does border on the freakish. And it is really a strange picture especially when you consider that it was painted by George Bush. I would love to have seen him paint, say, scenes from his own presidency, of rove, of Cheney, of Rumsfeld.

BALDWIN: This may be just the beginning.

SALTZ: Well, it's a good begin. If I could give him one council, I would say don't rely so much on the photograph, Mr. Bush. Look at the photograph. Take that as a starting point and then just paint more with your imagination. And the backgrounds could have stuff too. Paint the 2000 election. Paint yourself landing on the aircraft carrier. Let us see your world.

BALDWIN: Jerry Saltz, giving some tips to the former president. I'm enjoying this. Senior art critic for "New York" magazine, sir, come back. Thanks for joining me.

SALTZ: Love to.

BALDWIN: I appreciate it.

SALTZ: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Now to this, 18 years ago a plane crashed, killed 230 people. No one knew why for such a long time. But you are about to hear from someone who worked on this plane. Hear what he thinks Malaysia has all wrong. That's next.

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BALDWIN: You probably remember this story. This plane crashed into the ocean killing all 230 people on board and no one knew why for a very long time. Shortly after takeoff from New York City, TWA Flight 800 crashed off of Long Island's coast. This was back in 1996. People had all kinds of wild, crazy theories about what triggered this particular plane crash.

And my next guest was part of that TWA Flight 800 investigation, which ultimately concluded a fuel tank explosion caused the crash. So HLN law enforcement analyst, Mike Brooks joins me now. We're going to get to that because it's fascinating. But first on the Flight 370 that they're looking for, what do you think Malaysia has done so wrong?

MIKE BROOKS, HLN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: First of all, how does a government just lose a plane? A 777 just doesn't go down and why didn't they pick it up on their radar? You know, people are saying to me, what if they were attacked by another country, would they not know the attack was coming?

BALDWIN: I hope not.

BROOKS: You hope not. But there's no way, no how they didn't know it went down. I find that hard to believe.

BALDWIN: TWA Flight 800 here. You were able to recover 95 percent of the plane. Is it still in the hangar outside of Dallas?

BROOKS: Yes, 95 percent of the plane recovered. The last thing we did, scour for any pieces of debris, we used scallop boats that winter. This happened in July of '96. Right before the winter, and the weather got worse, we used scallop boats to break the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. We were able to recover that.

But think about this, TWA 800 went down, it was told to climb to 15,000 feet. And then a pilot of another plane said they thought they saw an explosion. To this day, there are conspiracy theorists who say it was a missile or a bomb, but it was an explosion in the center wing fuel tank. It was the perfect storm on the oxygen fuel level. There was a short and a pump and that caused the explosion.

BALDWIN: This is a plane you found off of Long Island.

BROOKS: Yes.

BALDWIN: This is not like somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean and it still took four years to ultimately say this is what happened.

BROOKS: Exactly. Four years to complete the investigation. But we were able to pretty quickly rule out -- you know, still to this day, people still think it was terrorists. But we were able to identify the debris fields fairly quickly. Using remote-operated vehicles, side scan sonar. If they find where it went down they could use to identify the debris fields. We had three distinct debris fields. That was a start.

BALDWIN: How quickly?

BROOKS: Within a couple weeks. And then weather came in, and we had to bring all the ships back in and go back out and basically find the debris fields and redraw the debris fields of where they were. And -- but you're talking also it was between 175 to 200 feet maximum of depth. I was out on the USS Oak Hill for about a month. I was at the hangar, out on USS Oak Hill. And I was out with the navy divers. They did a great job.

We were supported by a salvage ship, the grab. And the grasp. They knew exactly what they were doing. The remote operated vehicles we used early on to go down to identify with -- if there were any pieces, big pieces. We could bring the equipment in. But a lot of the victims. It was very, very gruesome. A lot of victims still strapped in their seats. It was an unbelievable operation by the FBI, by the NTSB and the airline unions involved.

When I first got there, they would bring big nets of debris in, and I'm out there and I got here, they gave us debris, I'm starting to look for things with a suit. There were people looking over my shoulders. The unions, flight attendants, the machinists union had a stake in this. They could help give their pieces. Four years before the report was released.

BALDWIN: So different. Mike Brooks, thank you so much.

BROOKS: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Coming up here, on 9/11 we are her husband was one of the heroes that stormed the cockpit of Flight 93. She sat in the room with the other families. She wanted to listen to the cockpit recordings. This as Flight 370 families are being denied the same access. We'll talk to her, coming up.

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BALDWIN: In the search for Flight 370, CNN's Jim Clancy has been reporting from Kuala Lumpur from day one. And he chronicles the twists and turns of this international mystery.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM CLANCY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The story of Flight 370 began at the arrival gate in Beijing. It was listed as delayed some six hours after it disappeared over the South China Sea.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST, "OUTFRONT": We have breaking news right now, Malaysia Airlines confirms it lost contact with the plane carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members. Flight MH370 was headed to Beijing to Kuala Lumpur. It was a Boeing 777-200 and expected to land at 6:30 a.m. local time. Now it's almost 9:00 in the morning in Beijing right now that means that plane is now two and a half hours late.

CLANCY: The confusion, concern, and fear at that hour completely predictable. Everyone dreaded the worst, a terrible accident.

AHMAD JAUHARI YAHYA, CEO, MALAYSIA AIRLINES: We confirm that this flight, MH370, lost contact with air traffic control at 2:40 a.m. this morning.

JAMES CHIN, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, MONASH UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA: Most people at the initial station thought it was a straight-forward crash and came down south of Vietnam and the wreckage would be found quickly. A lot of people took a hands-off approach.

CLANCY: Malaysia waited to reveal details of its own military radar. The plane had deliberately reverse course flying back over the Malay Peninsula on a heading toward the Indian Ocean.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How much of a turn back, 20 kilometers?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are still looking that.

CLANCY: Suddenly anything became possible. Wild internet theories fed fears of an elaborate terror plot led by two young Iranians who boarded with stolen passports. They weren't terrorists, just trying to begin new lives in Europe. Suspicion soon shifted to the only people capable flying the Boeing 777, the pilots. Captain Zaharie Shah, some suspected, had practiced the stealthy turns and changes in altitude on his home flight simulator.

But analysis by the FBI of the simulator's data turned up nothing. No claim of responsibility. No known ties to terror groups among passengers or crew. No motive supported by evidence. Intricate analysis of handshakes took the search to the area where it likely ran out of fuel. With the plane all evidence of what really happened on its flight data recorders --

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: We cannot be certain about much success in the search for MH-370. But we can be certain that we will spare no effort that we will not rest until we have done everything we humanly can.

CLANCY: Who steered the plane off course and why? What happened inside the cockpit? Where did the aircraft go down? And when will we find a trace? There's an abundance of theories colliding with an absence of evidence. After four weeks here, like everyone else, I have only questions and no answers.

Jim Clancy, CNN, Kuala Lumpur.

(END VIDEOTAPE)