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MH-370 Co-Pilot Turned on Cell Phone; Russia Plane Circles U.S. Navy Ship in Black Sea; Pro-Russian Protesters Take Over Another Building in Ukraine; Answering Views Questions About MH-370.

Aired April 14, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news into CNN. New evidence that the Flight 370 had turned around and was traveling at a lower altitude. This coming from the co-pilot's cell phone. It turns out it was on after the transponder stopped working. A U.S. official with firsthand knowledge of the investigation says Malaysia knows this because the phone was searching for service. It was bouncing off of a cell tower after the jet lost contact. CNN's Martin Savidge is inside the flight simulator with trainer Mitchell Casado.

Martin, what do you make of this report?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's pretty interesting, Brianna. It would seem to back up information that we already had that was verified through Malaysian radar. And that is that the plane did turn off course and did head in the direction of the northern peninsula of Malaysia and that it might have been getting closer to the ground. This verified what we know. We say lower to the ground because, number one, they had to know. Over the South China Sea, at 25,000 feet, if the cell phone is picking up or being received in anyway, they would have had to be closer to land and lower.

We are simulating, by the way, right now, flying over Malaysia at a lower altitude of about 5,000 feet. But remember, it was nighttime. We simulated that it's daylight just to give you a sense of that. But it seems to back up what we already knew -- Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: To you, Mitchell, why would the co-pilot have his cell phone on?

MITCHELL CASADO, 777 PILOT: I can't think of a single reason why he would have his phone on. You're not taking calls, texting or surfing the Internet. So I don't know.

MARTIN: Passengers have told that when you have to turn the cell phone off, the pilots, by training, would turn their own phones off?

CASADO: There is that, and that you are flying the airplane and you're not supposed to be distracted.

MARTIN: Keeping in mind something called the sterile cockpit, which the FAA has had in place in many airlines. That is, remove anything that could be a distraction of the job of safely flying the aircraft. KEILAR: Yeah. Certainly.

Martin Savidge, Mitchell Casado, thanks to you both.

Up next, my panel will weigh in on this. Plus, right now, the so- called Bluefin is searching the ocean floor for wreckage. What will the data tell us once it's downloaded? We will have that coming up.

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KEILAR: Bottom of the hour now. I'm Brianna Keilar.

Let's dissect the new information about the co-pilot's cell phone. It turns out it was on after the transponder in the plane stopped working. A U.S. official with first-hand knowledge of the investigation says Malaysia knows this because the phone was searching for service. It was bouncing off of the cell tower after the jet lost contact with air traffic control.

So joining me to discuss this now, CNN analyst and ocean search specialist, Rob McCallum, from Seattle; and CNN aviation analyst and former Transportation Department inspector general, Mary Schiavo, in Charleston, South Carolina.

I want to ask you first about this, Mary.

What does it tell us about the co-pilot's cell phone? It seems odd that it was on.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It can tell us probably three or 103 things but three things come immediately to mind. First, the dip down to 5,000 feet might have been them searching for a cell signal and the co-pilot was trying to communicate with someone if the plane had lost communications. The second scenario would be that something nefarious was going on and he was out on the flight deck searching for a signal. And the third thing would be that he left his cell phone on as we all have done from time to time. Those are three scenarios that come to me off the top of my head, not all nefarious, of course.

KEILAR: Sure, not all, some simple and an accident. It does remain a mystery as to why that happened.

Rob, I want to move on and talk about the Bluefin. This is an underwater vehicle, basically, an underwater drone that is searching the Southern Indian Ocean right now. What information will the Bluefin be gathering and what will the teams be gathering?

ROB MCCALLUM, CNN ANALYST: It is collecting SONAR information. SONAR is the process by which we use sound rather than light to scan the ocean floor. And it will bring back a hard drive filled with digital data that analysts will then be able to look at and interpret. And it will essentially show a picture of the sea floor. It will show everything that the AUV was able to see and, hopefully, able to find the wreckage on top of the sea floor.

KEILAR: What does the picture look like, Rob? We're not talking about a camera, are we? Is there a camera? We're talking about side- scan SONAR.

MCCALLUM: That's right. We are talking about SONAR imagery. So, you know, these are pictures made with sound rather than light. Anyone that has had an ultrasound or seen the first images of a baby in the womb has probably seen an ultrasound picture, which is actually a form of SONAR. We are just talking about that on an industrial scale.

KEILAR: OK. So that is what we will be looking for.

Mary, if the Bluefin does find something, then what? Does the submersible go back down? What happens?

SCHIAVO: They will want to find all the wreckage and zero in on where the black boxes are or might be. They will finish the mapping with the Bluefin. To pick up or manipulate or handle any of the wreckage, they will have to send in more complicated or a different form of a submersible, one that has arms that can be manipulated, or even there are manned submersibles that they can send in. And the sad terrible task, there are remains and human lives to be considered. And they will have a de-mort service to come in and handle and consult with the families on how they want the remains handled. And that is, of course, the most awful thing of all.

KEILAR: Terrible. And we know that the phases in which recovery would go through would be, first, trying to get the black boxes and then going back trying to see if they can recover bodies, which certainly would matter a lot to the family of these victims.

Rob McCallum, Mary Schiavo, stick around for us. We will be right back with you.

Coming up, more on the special coverage, including that oil slick that was found near the search area. What clues could that give us?

Plus, we're getting word that a Russian jet has flown around an American Navy ship a dozen times. What is Vladimir Putin's big play here?

You're watching CNN special coverage.

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KEILAR: Welcome back. I'm Brianna Keilar.

And we have just learned today about a dramatic new incident involving the U.S. and Russia in the diplomatic standoff over the Ukraine. The Pentagon says that, over the weekend, a Russian air force plane made 12 passes near a U.S. Navy warship, the "USS Donald Cook," which is on maneuvers in the Black Sea. The plane did not fly over the ship but very close to it. During a 90-minute span, it flew all around it, at one point, just 500 feet above sea level. The U.S. ship tried to contact the Russian plane and it got no response.

Today in Eastern Ukraine, meantime, Pro-Russian demonstrators took over another Ukrainian building, at least the tenth city in the regions where buildings are now held by pro-Russian activists. And this came on the same day as the supposed deadline for protesters to abandon those buildings. But that deadline was ignored. No apparent consequences.

Bobby Ghosh is here with me now. He is the editor of "Time International."

Bobby, thanks so much for being with me.

I want to start with this news about the plane. This is provocative. A dozen passes around the warship. Does this come from Vladimir Putin himself?

BOBBY GHOSH, EDITOR, TIME INTERNATIONAL: I wouldn't go that far, but people down the chain of command are taking cues from his own fairly provocative rhetoric and behavior. Even if this incident in open international waters, there is a protocol and a courtesy that usually applies here if military vessels and aircraft from two different countries are passing close to each other. They are meant to let each other know and certainly not fly low and around in the manner that you are describing. That is certainly provocative. That is a poke in the eye.

KEILAR: A dozen times over the course of an hour and a half. You can imagine what it would have been like to be there, just so alarming.

And also, Bobby, we are hearing multiple reports that Ukrainian police are nowhere to be seen in these cities where pro-Russian protesters are taking over government buildings. Why is that? Do we know?

GHOSH: That is a bad sign. It is suggests that the government in Kiev, which is pretty -- which is incompetent already, and it has almost ceded the ground in the east. Whether this is a recognition that they really simply don't have the fire power to stand up to Russian forces, whether they are in or out of uniform, or whether this is a complex that would draw and mount a surprise attack. We'll learn in the next few days. But if you are a Ukrainian speaker in eastern Ukraine now seeing the Russian speaker take over the streets and the administration, they are feeling uncomfortable. It can't be assuring that your government and your police and security forces have essentially walked away from the battlefield.

KEILAR: Very vulnerable.

I want to ask you about something Secretary of State John Kerry said. After Russia invaded Crimea, he warned, quote, "All options are on the table." There was a lot of talk in the West about consequences, the costs for Russia. But President Obama said the West should be careful, quote, "not to promise and then not be able to deliver" in its response. What leverage does the U.S., the West, what leverage is there really?

GHOSH: Not a whole lot. As you pointed out, the president has already took the military option off the table. European partners are not interested in any kind of military engagement. They are not really interested in sanctions. If the U.S. wants to sanction Russia further than it has before, it will have to go on its own. It's not clear that the administration is going to do that.

KEILAR: Bobby Ghosh, thank you so much for breaking it down for us. We really appreciate it.

GHOSH: Thank you.

KEILAR: And now in Africa, medical experts and doctors are working very quickly to contain a deadly outbreak of the Ebola virus. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta is Guinea. He's investigating efforts to stop the disease which has a mortality rate of up to 94 percent. So far, at least 104 have died, including 14 health care workers. Dr. Gupta reports that this outbreak is more serious than those in the past because the virus has spread from rural areas to Guinea's crowded capitol. For information on how you can help, go to CNN.com/impact. You will find articles on the Ebola virus and more. That is CNN.com/impact.

Coming up next, we are answering your questions on the missing plane, including what is up with that oil slick found the search area. Could this be a clue? And how can crews be so sure whether it came from flight 370? We will answer that for you. Stay with us.

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KEILAR: You have questions about flight 370. We have the experts to help answer them. CNN analyst andocean search specialist, Rob McCallum, is in Seattle. And CNN aviation analyst and former Transportation Department inspector general, Mary Schiavo, is in Charleston, South Carolina.

Let's begin with that oil slick that was found by the Australian ship "Ocean Shield" on Sunday night.

Mary, to you first on this.

Mike wants to know if the plane ran out of gas or fuel, right, what could the slick be? Hydraulic fluid, is what he asks. What do you think?

SCHIAVO: It could be, and there are other lubricants and fluids in the plane. You will be able to tell it right away. The hydraulic fluids, the oils and lubricants are very specialized and they have to be approved for use on an airplane. If it was jet fuel, it would be unlike anything used by a maritime application.

KEILAR: That will be scooped up and we should know in a very days what it is.

Rob, Mary Ann wants to know after 30-some on days wouldn't any oil or fuel slick have broken up and be dispersed by now, especially due to storms?

MCCALLUM: That's a good question. But at the moment, everything needs to be explored. Any fluids that went down with the aircraft to this kind of depth will have changed consistently. Often we find fuel oil that has turned a consistency of asphalt. I think it's unlikely that the slick is from MH-370. But it needs to be investigated.

KEILAR: It could be like asphalt? That's not necessarily what you would expect. That's pretty fascinating.

I want to ask you about the Bluefin, this underwater vehicle that is going down to do the side-scan SONAR to map the floor. Mary Kim wants to know, the U.S. supplied the Bluefin 21. Can't another country supply the other one? Is there only one of these things?

What do you think, Mary?

SCHIAVO: There are more than one, but they are owned by other people, private industry mostly. And the Australians said if they needed to get more, they would ask for more. But right now the U.S. Navy has provided this one. They are very expensive and probably would have to be taken off of other jobs. But they haven't asked for additional ones. There aren't many.

KEILAR: Not many, but more than one.

Rob, Kat wants to know, once this data is downloaded, will it immediately go right back out or will the data be reviewed first? So what is it? Does it go right back out?

MCCALLUM: It takes a little while to recharge unless they have another set of batteries, which they probably do. And they probably have another hard drive so they will swap out the batteries and hard drive and redeploy. So I don't think they'll have to wait the four hours.

KEILAR: And recharge it and send it out in less than four hours.

Great answers to those questions, guys.

Rob McCallum, Mary Schiavo, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.

Just ahead, there is a key development in them mystery of flight 370. The co-pilot's cell phone searching for service. This, after the jet lost contact with air traffic control. But why was his phone turned on in the first place? Our experts will weigh in on that.

Plus, we will speak live with the organization that studies hate groups, including the one in which the alleged shooter in the Jewish facility shooting rampage belonged. Find out what the suspect's past may say about a possibly motive.

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KEILAR: It is the most prestigious tournament and the most well- mannered sports, and the winner of the Masters tournament is a guy named Bubba. Bubba Watson captured his second green jacket. Watson is a fan favorite. He hits the ball father than just about everybody. And giving hope to golfers everywhere, he says has never even had a formal golf lesson. He celebrated his victory in style last night. He took the family to Waffle House. That's right.

I'm Brianna Keilar. Special coverage of flight 370 begins now.