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Bluefin 21 Sub Deployed In Search For MH370; Official: All Passengers Remain Suspects; Police: "Raging Anti-Semite" Killed Three; Ukraine Stand-offs Continue As Deadline Passes

Aired April 14, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

CARO COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM --

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's time to go under water.

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COSTELLO: breaking overnight, going to the floor of the ocean.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the best lead we have.

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COSTELLO: This underwater vehicle two miles down now scanning for Flight 370.

Threat of civil war: Ukraine erupting overnight. Gas-soaked toilet paper rolls used as makeshift bombs, every hour getting more tense.

Jewish Center attack.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: there's a guy with a rifle here shooting at people.

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COSTELLO: A white supremacist on the eve of Passover allegedly opens fire killing three.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was asking people before he shot if they were Jewish or not.

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COSTELLO: Suspect Glenn Miller under arrest this morning as a community starts to heal. You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM. Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. After 38 days, the search for Flight 370 now moves deep under water. For the first time a 16-foot long, unmanned submarine has been launched to scan the ocean floor for those black boxes. But this new strategy will now drag out the search a lot longer.

This Bluefin 21 submarine takes six times as long to search as the towed pinger did. Each mission will take 24 hours to complete. Today the submarine can only cover an area of about 15 square miles. The entire search area for those black boxes is much larger. It's the size of Los Angeles. That means the search with just the submarine could take up to two months.

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ANGUS HOUSTON, JOINT AGENCY COORDINATION CHIEF: I would caution you against rising hopes, that the deployment of the autonomous underwater vehicle will result in the detection of the aircraft wreckage. It may not. However, this is the best lead we have, and it must be pursued vigorously. Again, I emphasize that this will be a slow and painstaking process.

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COSTELLO: Also this morning, the head of the search team says an oil slick was found in the search area, but it will take several days to figure out where that oil came from. CNN's Will Ripley has more on this new phase in the overall search. He's in Perth, Australia. Hi, Will.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Things are really slowing down here in Perth as you mentioned. The search chief, Angus Houston, says the Bluefin 21 is now scanning the ocean floor in an area so remote it is brand new to man.

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RIPLEY (voice-over): The search for MH370 is moving into a dark corner of the world that in some ways is more mysterious than outer space.

CHARI PATTIARATCHI, COASTAL OCEANOGRAPHY PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA: We know less about our deep ocean than we know of the moon's surface.

RIPLEY: Chari Pattiaratchi and his research team took this video in the Southern Indian Ocean, the professor of coastal oceanography at the University of Western Australia thinks this is what the search zone nearly 3 miles down could look like.

PATTIARATCHI: It's dark, very cold.

RIPLEY: With pressure so intense, it crushes a Styrofoam cup to a fraction of its size. The missing plane is believed to be 4500 meters, nearly 15,000 feet down.

PATTIARATCHI: It's flat and the sediment is silt.

RIPLEY: The extreme conditions will test the limits of the U.S. Navy's Bluefin 21, which is beginning to slow, painstaking process of mapping the ocean floor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Patience, people need to have patients.

RIPLEY: U.S. Navy Captain Mark Matthews says one mission takes 24 hours. Two hours down, 16 hours of scanning, two hours up. Another four hours of downloading data from side scan sonar, which maps out the ocean floor.

CAPT. MARK MATTHEWS, U.S. NAVY: You see the traces of the outlines of the objects.

RIPLEY: Pattiaratchi's team also took this video of what the next step, the salvage phase would look like. Under water robots would grab small pieces of the plane and pull them up, a ship would have to hoist up any large pieces.

PATTIARATCHI: Bottom line, it's a very, very slow process.

RIPLEY: A process that's just beginning, meaning MH370 families could wait months or even years for the answers and closure they so desperately need.

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RIPLEY: They have already waited so long. We are in day 38 of this search. Still not one piece of physical debris from this plane. Carol, we are being told not only by search teams, but also by the experts that the chances of finding any debris on the water are very slim right now.

COSTELLO: All right, Will Ripley reporting live from Australia this morning. To say the underwater search is going to be slow, well, you heard Will say it. That's an understatement. Again, the Bluefin 21 travels six times slower than the towed pinger locator. It takes about two hours just to get to the ocean floor. That's two and a half miles down mind you.

Here's sort of how this submarine works. It uses side scan sonar to build a picture of the ocean bed. It's equipped with a GPS system and it has the ability to travel down to about two and a half miles. The maker of this device says the pressure at those depths is equivalent to having a Cadillac Escalade balance on your finger nail. Hard to imagine, right?

Let's bring in Thomas Altshuler. He is the vice president and general manager of Teledyne Marine Systems. His company specializes in data collection and communication products for remote environments. Welcome back, Tom.

THOMAS ALTSHULER, VP, GENERAL MANAGER, TELEDYNE MARINE SYSTEMS: Good morning.

COSTELLO: OK, so to say this is a complicated process is an understatement, right?

ALTSHULER: Absolutely. This is a slow, arduous task. These vehicles are incredibly sophisticated. They're designed to do this, but they're designed to do it at a very slow pace.

COSTELLO: We keep hearing about this side scan sonar. You were kind enough to provide us with an example of what these images might look like. I want to put them up on the screen and have you take us through them. So what are we seeing?

ALTSHULER: What you see is almost like -- it's called a swath from the side scan but it's almost like a highway. You have an image on the left, an image on the right and a center open area where you have no data in the middle. That's actually called the nader (ph) gap. What happens is the way the system has to work is it has to do what we call mowing the lawn. It will go forward, take data.

It will come back and overlap the swath so you can fill in all the data. The thing about the Bluefin and is true with all AUVs, the data is collected on the vehicle. It's brought to the surface, downloaded and processed. So it's a slow process of collecting the data and then processing all of this information that's collected by the vehicle.

COSTELLO: These pictures you provided, this is fascinating because these are real pictures of crashes that were found underwater.

ALTSHULER: I think you have two. I think you have one of a World War II plane that crashed in the harbor in Iceland in around '42, '43. That's a vehicle that we use as a test for our AUVs in Iceland and the other is a ship that sank in World War II also. That's about 100 meters of water. Even there it's difficult to operate. That's 45 times shallower than what you're seeing right now with the Bluefin has to do.

COSTELLO: Will the Bluefin provide color images like these?

ALTSHULER: Those are false color images. All it's getting back is sound waves. You have to think about this very differently than a real photograph. A photograph you're actually seeing what at least a representation of what we see with our eyes. This is just sound waves bouncing off the material on the bottom and then return to the sonar system and then it's just a processing problem to make it digestible by humans. This is made so that the human can visualize it. The data is really just a bunch of 1s and 0s that come back from the system.

COSTELLO: I'm going to ask you a completely uneducated question. When we all saw the movie "Titanic." If they could get pictures deep down in the ocean. Do we have that kind of technology?

ALTSHULER: Absolutely but not on these types of vehicles. These vehicles are primarily designed to fly maybe 50 meters from the bottom of this particular survey that they're doing right now and then generate this kind of image. We can get closer to get pictures. What you saw with "Titanic" is a remotely operated vehicle. That vehicle is on a tether and it gets very close. At that point you can actually start to light the environment and then take deep water video or still pictures.

So that technology exists. It's been down deeper than where they think MH370 is it, but it will be some time before we get that. Every step it gets slower. Putting an ROV down is even slower than an AUV. You have to know what you're looking for.

COSTELLO: Why aren't we using more than one Bluefin?

ALTSHULER: These are pretty rare capabilities. The U.S. Navy has some vehicles, some private companies have some vehicles. This is very cutting-edge technology. It's very sophisticated and expensive. So there are just that many assets around.

COSTELLO: Thomas Altshuler, thanks. Thanks for those fascinating images. We really appreciate because it made it much easier to understand. Thank you so much.

ALTSHULER: Thank you.

COSTELLO: As the strategy shifts in the Indian Ocean, it becomes even more important to find those black boxes. This weekend, Malaysia's acting transportation minister said until the flight recorders are located it's difficult to clear the passengers and crew of any wrongdoing. I know what you are saying, what? Because it wasn't long ago that Malaysia's inspector general, the police, cleared all the passengers. Listen.

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KHALID ABU BAKAR, MALAYSIA'S INSPECTOR GENERAL OF POLICE: As we have said earlier, only the passengers have been cleared. The rest, no.

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COSTELLO: Fast forward to Sunday when these comments were made from Malaysia's acting transportation minister.

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HISHAMMUDDIN HUSSEIN, MALAYSIAN ACTING TRANSPORTATION MINISTER: There is an ongoing thing. I don't think that he would have meant that they've all been cleared because unless we find more information specifically on data in the black box, I don't think any chief of police would be in a position to say that they have been cleared.

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COSTELLO: Sumnima Udas is Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia this morning with more. Hi.

SUMNIMA UDAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There appears to be a disconnect between the agencies here. That's been a problem from the very beginning. The acting transport minister tried to explain that flip- flop saying he actually thinks the police chief was trying to say nobody on board had a suspicious background, not that they had been cleared from the investigation. Of course, he went on to say nobody can be cleared from the investigation until those key black boxes have been found.

Authorities have questioned about 205 people so far. Mostly family members of those on board and the investigation continues. They're looking at four main angles here, Carol. They're looking at hijacking, terrorism, personal problems, and psychological problems. But I must also add, Carol, that it's not just the Malaysian authorities who are here investigating. There are many other agencies involved, also representatives from companies like Boeing.

You've also got the FBI, the NTSB. This is a massive operation, massive investigation and not much information is really coming out from anywhere because authorities say that could jeopardize the investigation -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Sumnima Udas, thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a suspect accused of going on a deadly rampage at two Jewish centers just before Passover. Why are investigators calling the attack a hate crime? We'll talk about that next.

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COSTELLO: A white supremacist has been identified as the suspect in a deadly shooting rampage outside of a Kansas City Jewish Community Center and a Jewish retirement home. The suspect is identified as 73- year-old Frazier Glen Miller. Police said Miller first killed a grandfather and his 14-year-old grandson and then he drove about a mile and killed a third victim. This morning President Obama spoke about the attack at an Easter breakfast.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: This morning are prayers are with the people of Overland Park. We're still learning the details but that much we know. A gunman opened fire at two Jewish facilities, a community center and a retirement home. Innocent people were killed. Their families were devastated. This violence has struck at the heart of the Jewish community in Kansas City.

Two of the victims, a grandfather and his teenage son attended the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, which is led by our friend, Reverend Adam Hamilton. During my inauguration Reverend Hamilton delivered the prayer and I was grateful for his words. He joined us at our breakfast last year and at the Easter service for Palm Sunday last night he had to break this terrible news to his congregation.

That this occurred now as Jews were preparing to celebrate Passover, as Christians were observing Palm Sunday, makes this tragedy all the more painful and today as Passover begins, we're seeing a number of synagogues and Jewish community centers take added security precautions. Nobody should have to worry about their security when gathering with their fellow believers. No one should have to fear for their safety when they go to pray. As a government, we're going to provide whatever assistance is need to support the investigation. As Americans, we not only need to open our hearts to the families of the victims, we've got to stand united against this kind of terrible violence, which has no place in our society. We have to keep coming together.

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COSTELLO: That we do. With me now, Evan Bernstein, he is with the Anti-Defamation League. Welcome, Evan.

EVAN BERNSTEIN, NEW YORK REGIONAL DIRECTOR, ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE: Hi, Carol. How are you?

COSTELLO: I'm good. Thank you so much for being here on a difficult day. The suspect, Frazier Glen Miller, yelled Heil Hitler from a police car after his arrest. Listen.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Heil Hitler!

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COSTELLO: Evan, after that is there any doubt in your mind that this is a hate crime?

BERNSTEIN: I think it's very hard not to start seeing this as a hate crime. It's certainly an anti-Semitic incident when you have two Jewish institutions that are targeted, you have the person that is a known white supremacist for over 30 years spouting off his views against Jews and other minority groups. And obviously what we just heard out of the back of the squad car, I think it's getting closer and closer, I'm sure, to law enforcement making that official claim.

COSTELLO: It makes you sick, doesn't it?

BERNSTEIN: It does, it does. We put out a report, the Anti- Defamation League last week, warning institutions about the potential like this. To actually see it happen is such a tragedy for the entire Jewish community, but specifically Kansas City and that Jewish community and the general community that's been effected by this.

COSTELLO: Going back to the suspect for just a second and you mentioned some of his background. He's a founder and former leader of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party. He was caught by the FBI with a stock pile of deadly weapons. In other words, he's long been involved in this business of hate. Were you aware of him?

BERNSTEIN: We were aware of him. I know other organizations were, but the Anti-Defamation League definitely knew about him. It's very hard. We track people and it's hard to know when specifically they're going to potentially do something like this. Again, he is a suspect. He's not guilty until he's proven guilty. Similar situations at the Holocaust Museum in Washington there was a similar incident. It shows that one person with the mind-set of that kind of hate can really damage a community in the deepest way.

COSTELLO: I know that your organization sent out a warning to Jewish organizations across the United States at this very sensitive time. Has there been a significant spike in these kinds of attacks?

BERNSTEIN: Unfortunately throughout history Jews have been a target around the holidays. We always feel it's necessary for Jewish organizations to try to ramp up security in the best way they possibly can to protect themselves. It's something we unfortunately have to do on an annual basis. Now because of what happened we really hope that institutions across the United States really use this horrible tragedy as a learning experience and can look at their own systems they've in place, emergency evacuation systems and other security systems to make sure that, God forbid, this does happen that the least amount of casualties or harm can come to their people.

COSTELLO: Evan Bernstein, thanks so much for being with me. I appreciate it.

BERNSTEIN: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, pro-Russia activists in Ukraine dig in their heels as a key deadline passes.

And voters may be forced to choose what kind of country they belong to. We'll be right back.

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COSTELLO: A bit of developing news to tell you about right now. We were just talking about the tragedy in Kansas where those three people were killed at two separate Jewish community centers, allegedly by a white supremacist. The U.S. attorney general has now ordered the Kansas shootings be investigated as a possible federal hate crime. We'll keep you posted.

In other news this morning, pro-Russia demonstrators in Ukraine show no sign of ending their standoffs. Just today, protesters forced police out of a new building in Eastern Ukraine. They set fires and broke out windows throughout the building.

And one man in a police uniform who was severely beaten had to be taken away by ambulance. This comes as a deadline passes for those activists to lay down their arms and surrender from the two other buildings they occupy. Senior international correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh is in Ukraine.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A messy response from the Ukraine government. They set a deadline for the protesters to put down their arms. The Kiev threats was they would then send in the army. We've seen very little sign of that happening at all, in fact little sign of the Ukrainian government or law enforcement at all. Now almost ten towns where these pro-Russia protesters have taken over key buildings.

There's clearly division in Kiev where some political leaders are saying there shouldn't be a military intervention and others suggesting it's time for the people to step up resistance. The really question where is that singular leadership from the central government in Kiev?

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WALSH (voice-over): Across Eastern Ukraine confrontation and violence are the new language of protest. Officials warning that the threat of civil war looms closer than ever. Overnight, an emergency meeting at the United Nations Security Council convening at Russia's request. The Russian ambassador calling the situation very dangerous, placing the responsibility for avoiding war on the west.

In Ukraine's second largest city Sunday, pro-Russia activists attacking those supporting the Ukrainian government. This amateur video captures severe beatings. Further east, closer to the Russian border, militants are taking over government buildings. This was the scene where the police station was stormed late Saturday. The captain tries to stop these men, "I'm pro-Russian, an Afghan veteran," one policeman cries but pushed aside.

Shots in the air. Now the station is occupied now by militants, surrounded by barricades. A Ukraine security officer was killed and another injured in a shoot-out apparently with militants. The pro- Russian groups well armed and organized in uniform, and prepared to use their weapons. Ukrainian officials issuing an ultimatum to those occupying government buildings either to disarm or face a full scale anti-terrorist operation. Moscow accuses Ukrainian authorities of declaring war against their own people.

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WALSH: Carol, a curious other development, too, the interim president suggested perhaps a referendum might be offered here to decide the fate of Eastern Ukraine. Oddly enough it will be held on the same day as presidential elections to both choose a new president, but also determine what that president will be president of. We're waiting to see what Kiev's main move is here. Do they use force, continue to negotiate?

Of course, all eyes are across the border, 40,000 Russian troops and Moscow has clearly said may intervene if they see abuses against who they refer to as compatriots, those pro-Russian protesters here -- Carol,

COSTELLO: Nick Paton Walsh reporting this morning. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, as the search for Flight 370 moves deeper under water, we'll take look at what kind of conditions the Bluefin-21 will have to deal with. Tom Foreman is live in Washington. Good morning.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. The conditions will be very different than anything we've seen so far in this search and in every way more daunting. Carol, in just a minute.

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