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Pings Detected; U.S. Equipment Plays Key Role; Source: MH370 Skirted Indonesia's Radar; Oscar Pistorius Takes the Stand

Aired April 07, 2014 - 09:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, new hope.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New developments over the last few hours has been the most promising lead we have had.

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COSTELLO: Two new pings.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We detected about 50 more minutes or so of this pinging.

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COSTELLO: Consistent with a plane's black box.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It will sweep over that area, take a series of still pictures, transmit it to the vessel on the surface so that they can kind of see what they're looking at.

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COSTELLO: Are we closer to finding missing Flight 370?

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There will be a positive development in the next few days, if not hours.

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COSTELLO: New information coming in every hour.

And breaking right now --

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OSCAR PISTORIUS: I would like to take this opportunity to apologize.

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COSTELLO: Blade runner Oscar Pistorius taking the stand.

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PISTORIUS: I can promise that when she went to bed that night, she felt loved.

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COSTELLO: A special edition of NEWSROOM starts now.

Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me.

Breaking overnight, what's being described as the most promising lead yet in the search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. The Australian naval ship, Ocean Shield, has picked up signals from what could be the dying batteries of the plane's flight recorders. The so-called black boxes. The ship is outfitted with high-tech equipment on loan from the U.S. Navy and considered extremely reliable.

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AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON (RET.), CHIEF COORD., JOINT AGENCY COORDINATION CENTRE: I've heard the - the -- what we've got is we've got a visual indication on our screen and we've also got an audible signal. The audible signals sounds to me just like an emergency (ph) locater beacon. And what we're talking about, there were two separate pingers.

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COSTELLO: CNN's Will Ripley is in Perth, Australia, with more.

Good morning, Will.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

Yes, right now the Ocean Shield is literally in a race against time, listening under water, trying to find those signals that the ship found twice over the weekend. Signals that could help solve the mystery of Flight 370. But it takes about eight hours to do just one pass and time is literally running out possibly just hours before the batteries in those black boxes fade away for good.

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RIPLEY (voice-over): If this really is the missing plane, and that's still a big if, how could you even begin to describe such a discovery?

COMMANDER MARK MATTHEWS, U.S. NAVY: It certainly would be a miracle if this does turn out to be the aircraft location.

RIPLEY: Miracle, a strong word with an even stronger warning from U.S. Navy Captain Mark Matthews. MATTHEWS: I caution not to be overly optimistic here. We've got some work to do before that we can - before we can say that we have a true contact here.

RIPLEY: Matthews' team is on the Ocean Shield using a towed pinger locator, or a TPL, listening for pings from MH-370's black boxes. Over the weekend, they heard two promising signals in the southern Indian Ocean. One of them held for more than two hours.

MATTHEWS: What id' like to do before I absolutely say with certainty that it is the aircraft is, one, reacquire the signal, two, deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle with the side scan sonar to map the debris field, and then, three, switch out that sonar with a camera unit and take photographs of what would be the wreckage.

RIPLEY: Slow and tedious work nearly 15,000 feet, almost three miles down. The extreme depth pushing the limits of the underwater drone, the Bluefin 21, that would do a visual search for wreckage.

MATTHEWS: But certainly, you know, we're jumping to conclusions here. We need to definitely reacquire the signal to confirm that it is the aircraft.

RIPLEY: Their biggest obstacle, time. The black box batteries are rated for 30 days, a deadline that's already passed.

MATTHEWS: Cautious measured optimism, right? We certainly want to reacquire it before we say, yes, we've done something good here.

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RIPLEY: Yes, you know, caution definitely is the key word here. It's so important because, as of right now, there's still a lot of work ahead and still no official confirmation that this is connected to Flight 370.

But, Carol, I've been on this story for several weeks now and I have to tell you, this is the first time talking to these team members that you can sense some excitement. In fact, there were even cheers when the pings were announced over the weekend that they had detected these signals. So, there's cautious optimism, but definitely lots more to do.

COSTELLO: Oh, you've got that right. We're keeping our fingers crossed. Will Ripley, thank you so much.

American ingenuity is playing a key role in today's refined search, supplying both the high-tech pinger locater and the underwater drone that would canvas the ocean floor. CNN's Brian Todd takes us inside the manufacturer, Phoenix International, for a closer look at what the pinger locater can and cannot do.

Take it away, Brian.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, some days ago we got access to Phoenix International's facility near Washington, D.C. They are the company that makes the towed pinger locater and that Bluefin 21 that Will was talking about. That's that autonomous underwater vehicle that can rove around. Now, what is extraordinary here is that usually the towed pinger locater, before they deploy it, they -- the manufacturers told us they have to find a confirmed piece of wreckage from a plane. Only then do they really deploy the towed pinger locater so that they can then narrow down the search area.

Well, this discovery, if it is indeed the black box that they've detected over the weekend, would be extraordinary because they did put the pinger locater in the water as kind of a last ditch effort, a shot in the dark at trying to find this thing, even though they did not have a confirmed piece of wreckage. And if it is indeed the signal, it would be a fantastic pull for this device.

It does have some limitations. It can go up to 20,000 feet below the surface of the sea. It can detect the pinger locater from up to two miles away. But there are things that can obstruct it. Under water obstacles like mountains and hills under water can obstruct it. Bad weather can cause problems for the pinger locator. As Will mentioned also, it has to make long passes. It takes hours to make long, slow passes over an area. So that is a restriction as well.

And there you see the animation of the Bluefin 21. That is not tethered as the pinger locater is. So the Bluefin 21 has a little bit more flexibility. It can go to great depths and it does map the debris field. What it's got is a side scan sonar capability and also picture- taking capability which is key here. It will now likely go down to that area where the pings were located, try to take some pictures, see what's there, map the debris field if there is one there and send those pictures back to the vessels, Carol. That's going to take some time. But now the work of the Bluefin 21 is very, very crucial.

COSTELLO: Yes, I was just wondering, Brian, why they didn't launch the Bluefin 21 right away.

TODD: Well, again, it's a matter of narrowing down the search area. You know, they said that - you know, again, without a piece of wreckage confirmed, just putting the pinger locater in the water was a big risk. And some people even called it maybe a waste of time, a waste of resources.

Well, it looks now like that may not be the case. So -- but you really, in most cases, according to the manufacturer, you really do need a point where you can start. You need some kind of a piece of wreckage, something indicating that you're near the area where the plane went down before you should use these resources. They didn't have that this time, but they got fortunate, maybe.

COSTELLO: Maybe. Brian Todd, many thanks.

I want to bring in Thomas Altshuler now. He's the vice president of Teledyne Marine Systems, which makes detection equipment that the Chinese used to locate those signals.

Good morning, sir.

THOMAS ALTSHULER, VICE PRESIDENT, TELEDYNE MARINE SYSTEMS: Good morning.

COSTELLO: I want to get to the equipment the Chinese used in just a minute, but first I want to talk more about that pinger detector on the Ocean Shield and what it picked up because it's much more reliable. Officials say it will take days to confirm if the signals came from the black boxes. Why is that?

ALTSHULER: Well, they want to go through and do several passes over the pingers or over the target that they've seen and understand the signal that's come back. There are naturally occurring and there are other types of systems that emit at the same frequency. So verification and basically locating a smaller area where that pinger might be will allow the Bluefin 21 to be more efficient when it goes and starts to map using the side scan sonar and potentially the camera.

COSTELLO: Commander William Marks (ph) with the U.S. Seven (ph) Fleet says the Ocean Shield with that American pinger locater on board, it picked up a signal that was strong and then faded away as the ship moved away, right? So that would mean maybe that the block boxes are in one place and the signal would be louder and as you move away it would get softer. The signal was also sustained, he says, for up to two hours. What does that mean? Can you explain?

ALTSHULER: Sure. That's actually what you would think would happen. So if you were relatively close to the pinger on the path that the ship is going in, the tow fish (ph) is going, that's the locater that they're towing behind the vehicle or behind the ship, what you would find is that you would be far away from it and you're moving at about a knot, maybe two knots. And so very slowly you approach the area that the pinger would be at. You're picking it up. It's getting stronger. You pass over the top or adjacent to it and then you pull the sled past and you start to lose the signal. So, at the speeds that the ship is moving, at the ranges that the pinger locater, the towed pinger locater can detect, it is quite probable that you would see as much as a couple of hours of detection.

COSTELLO: OK. So with a couple of hours of detection, that seems pretty meaningful to me. And, of course, I don't know what I'm talking about, right, that's why you're here. So what more do they need to convince them that these noises are coming from those black boxes?

ALTSHULER: Well, given the cost of what we're trying to do and the efficiency of making sure that you have a good use of your resources, spending more time over top of the potential target is -- has no downside whatsoever. The pinger has a lifetime. You're looking for that sound. The Bluefin 21 does not have a pinger detector on it. So once you put that asset in the water, you're really not using the pinger anymore, you're using a debris field as what you're looking for. So going over, trying to narrow the search area even tighter will be more efficient in the long run.

COSTELLO: So let's talk more about this Chinese vessel. It also picked up a sound using a different kind of pinger locater, if you will, about 350 nautical miles from where the Ocean Shield picked up sounds that may be coming from those black boxes. Your company made the type of devices that the Chinese were using. Are those devices reliable in this instance?

ALTSHULER: No. In reality - and I have one right here. Let me see if I can get it up. It is a device that's made for shallow water work. It's designed for a diver to go in at a few hundred feet and look for a pinger or look for some kind of an emitting device in the water. And so if you go forward and you think about this, you're putting this in the water. You're hoping that you get a strong enough signal from deep in the ocean.

It is very low probability - it's a very low probability that you would actually see that. It's not impossible, but it is a - it's really a glimmer of hope is what you would say. And given the strong detection by the Navy system, that's a much more attractive target to go look at.

COSTELLO: Because that type of pinger - like we're looking at the pinger locater device that the Chinese were using and it looks - I don't know, it doesn't look like it could detect sound at any great depth in the ocean.

ALTSHULER: Well, it's designed to go to 600 feet. It's particularly so that you can put the device to 600 feet. But it's all going to be about how the sound propagates in the water column. And propagation is very complex. It has to do with a lot of the fundamental properties of the ocean, the temperature, the salinity. And so it's really harder without understanding the water column right at that point to understand how far, how - you know, what kind of range it can detect. But it is -- the device that we manufacture is for shallow water applications.

COSTELLO: Thomas Altshuler, thanks for clarifying. We appreciate it.

ALTSHULER: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, off the radar and quite possibly on purpose, Nic Robertson tells us about a developing twist in the disappearance of Flight 370.

Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Senior Malaysian officials, Carol, telling us that they believe whoever was flying MH-370 was trying to avoid radar detection. More on that when we come back after the break.

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COSTELLO: There was another big development to tell you about this morning. Flight 370 skirted Indonesia. The source told CNN whoever was flying the plane was skillful enough to successfully fly around that country, Indonesia, as it vanished from the radar. The question is why?

Tom Foreman is here now, along with Nic Robertson, also with me, Les Abend, a 777 pilot and an editor at "Flying Magazine."

Nic, I want to start with you. Tell us more about what you find out. What did that source tell you?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They believe whoever was flying the plane was trying to avoid detection by Indonesian civil and military aviation. They don't know why that was the case. What they do say is that obviously after trying to avoid detection there, the aircraft then flies off to a very remote part of the southern Indian Ocean where there wouldn't be a lot of radar detection either.

The inference that they're taking, whoever was flying it was hoping to get somewhere where -- to travel somewhere without detection, without people knowing where they were going and to end up somewhere remote. Of course, this sort of adds in to the information we had in the early days where the flight takes off from Kuala Lumpur, flies towards Beijing, makes that hard left, flies back across the Malaysian peninsula.

The question back then, was this some kind of turn because of mechanical failure? Now with these other turns that they're seeing more accurately, it gives them perhaps a fuller picture of whether or not, or what type of mechanical issue may or may not have been there, as well as sort of a better idea of the psychological profile of whoever is flying the aircraft, Carol.

COSTELLO: Interesting. So, Tom, it is true the plane flew around Indonesia. Take us through the final route.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is what they've been talking about. Up here it turns in theory, you would say if it were going this direction and somebody is not controlling it, it would naturally go right down over here, but instead it did turn again here. Then, as it continues on its way, it goes out here and this is really what they're talking about.

Look at this -- right around this point, this sweep around the tip up here before heading south. The question is, if they were disabled, if there was a massive fire and people weren't able to function at all, how would this happen, although there's a possibility they were partially able to function in some fashion and then heads down here. It just really isn't clear.

The pattern has been there for quite some time, Carol, we've talked about this. What hasn't been clear is any motivation. What we're really talking about here is Indonesian officials saying they think there is a motivation. This wasn't an accident, it was on purpose. But again, it raises the question.

If they were trying to go somewhere, where were they going? There's effectively nothing out here, Carol.

COSTELLO: And supposedly if a skilled person was flying the plane, they knew how much fuel was available, right?

FOREMAN: They would know. There's no way they had extra fuel on board. They would know where they were going. Yes, there are some tiny islands in some places out here and a lot of conspiracy theories say they were going to those islands. But that would be an easier thing to spot than the idea of searching for something under water. And there's been no evidence of any of that.

So, again, this goes to the nature of why did the plane disappear? Not where it is.

COSTELLO: Right. OK. So, Les, first off, even if the plane flew around Indonesia, it was still in an established flight pattern. Why wouldn't Indonesia still pick it up?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, it's a perplexing issue to me. Tom articulated it well. It makes no sense.

As a pilot, I have a good idea where air space is. But as far as how far the radar extends, I really -- I really don't have a clue on exactly how far -- because I naturally assume that I'm going to be under radar contact, primary or with a discreet code via the transponder.

So, it makes no sense to me. I think this is something that occurred, that degraded the flight controls, made the crew possibly incapacitated by smoking fumes. I've been talking about this, you know, now, ever since this whole scenario took place.

But to me, it makes -- it's a big hole in this whole situation. There's no way I would consider the fact that I would be undetected, especially going across Malaysian peninsula first and then around and out into the middle of the ocean. It makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

COSTELLO: OK. So another clue, but it doesn't really lead us to any answers.

Nic Robertson, Tom Foreman, Les Abend, thank you so much.

Still to come, Oscar Pistorius takes the stand and offers a dramatic apology to Reeva Steenkamp's family.

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OSCAR PISTORIUS, OLYMPIC RUNNER: There hasn't been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven't thought about your family.

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COSTELLO: Coming up next, we'll take you live to Pretoria, South Africa, for more of this moving testimony. I'll be right back.

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COSTELLO: We'll get back to our coverage of the missing Malaysian airlines flight in just a minute. But first, to another big story we're following today. For the first time, we're hearing from Oscar Pistorius in his own words about the night he shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. This morning, the Olympic runner took to the stand in his own defense.

In an emotional apology, Pistorius choked back tears as he spoke directly to Steenkamp's family.

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PISTORIUS: I'd like to apologize and say there's not a moment and there hasn't been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven't thought about your family. I wake up every morning and you're the first people I think of, the first people I pray for. I can't imagine the pain and the sorry and the emptiness that I've caused you and your family. And I was simply trying to protect Reeva. I can promise when she went to bed that night she felt loved.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN's Robyn Curnow joins us now from South Africa.

Robyn, tell us what it was like in the courtroom.

ROBYN CURNOW, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, you couldn't see his face because we can only broadcast audio. But in that courtroom, it was very powerful. He was standing up and he seemed trembling. He was obviously crying, sobbing when he made the statement.

And what was interesting about it is he turned his back to the judge and directly addressed Reeva Steenkamp's mother who was sitting there. I couldn't see her face or her reaction on television. It looked like she was quite unemotional, at least on television.

But as for Oscar Pistorius, he made a real effort to try and look her in the eye and apologize, so much so that the microphone wasn't picking up enough of his conversation and the judge had to say to him, listen, I know you want to look that way, but you have to address the court and kind of told him to turn around and speak to the court, not to Mrs. Steenkamp.

So, it was a very powerful piece of -- it was very difficult to watch actually. It felt very intimate, very personal.

COSTELLO: Another emotional moment in court is when Pistorius talked about how he has trouble sleeping because of nightmares following Steenkamp's death. Let's listen.

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PISTORIUS: I have terrible nightmares about, about things that happened that night where I wake up and smell, can smell, I can smell the blood, and I wake up to being terrified. If I hear a noise, I wake up just in a complete state of terror, to a point that I'd rather not sleep than fall asleep and wake up like that. (END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Why did he share that story?

CURNOW: Sorry. Repeat that question.

COSTELLO: Why did he share that story?

CURNOW: You know, it's a good point. I think what is so key about his testimony is that he comes across as authentic, as somebody, of course, who is remorseful and somebody who has a clear understanding of the implications of what he did. I think that was clear, is that he's very much struggling with the consequences of his actions. Of course, that's important in terms of trying to assess the credibility of his story.

So I think that plays very much into it. Of course, this is not a jury system. This kind of emotional response, this emotional kind of story is not going to hold as much water as it would, perhaps, in a U.S. courtroom. The judge is going to rule on facts here.

Still, at the same time I think it was -- played a very key role and key part in at least telling the court, telling the judge that he was authentic and he really genuinely appears to be struggling with Reeva Steenkamp's death and the role he played in it.

COSTELLO: Another interesting moment is when Pistorius talked about (AUDIO GAP) relationship with guns. He related a story that his mother owned a firearm. Listen.

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PISTORIUS: My mother had a lot of security concerns. We obviously grew up in a family where my father wasn't around much, so my mother, she had a pistol, and she would often get scared at night and she would phone the police.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where did she keep her firearm, for instance?

PISTORIUS: My lady, she kept her firearm under her bed -- under her pillow in a padded little type of bag.

(END VIDE OCLIP)

COSTELLO: So, I would suppose, Robyn, he related that story to show he grew up with a sense of insecurity at home and always felt he needed protection.

CURNOW: Exactly. It wasn't just that story. I mean, that was powerful in itself. Remember, we've had this information come out. But he also kept his gun under the bed.

But it wasn't just that story. I mean, I sat in that courtroom and I think his list of how he or friends or family had been affected by crime went on for about 45 minutes.