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Flight 370 Co-Pilot Cell Phone Detected as Plane Flew Over Malaysia; White Supremacist Had Long History of Hate; "The Guardian" and "Washington Post" to Share Pulitzer for Snowden Coverage; Q&A on Flight 370 for CNN Aviation Experts

Aired April 14, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour, I'm Don Lemon in for Brooke Baldwin today.

We have just learned the co-pilot of Flight 370 had his cell phone on during the flight. A U.S. official tells CNN that this phone was detected searching -- his phone was detected searching for service near Penang after the plane lost contact.

This information fits the belief that the plane had turned off -- had turned around and dropped significantly in attitude -- altitude.

As for the search, planes are about to be put back into the bunkers and ships will return to shore as the search for the debris field winds down.

And the hunt for Flight 370 is now underwater with the help of a U.S. underwater drone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANGUS HOUSTON, JOINT AGENCY COORDINATION CHIEF: Analysis of the four signals has allowed the provisional definition of a reduced and manageable search area on the ocean floor.

The experts have therefore determined that the Australian defense vessel Ocean Shield will cease searching with the towed pinger locator later today and deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle Bluefin-21 as soon as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Joining me now to talk about this, CNN's Martin Savidge, inside a flight simulator with trainer Mitchell Casado.

Martin, let's talk about this revelation that the co-pilot's phone was on and the phone low enough in altitude to connect with a cell phone tower. What do you make of this?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In a lot of ways, it kind of supports what we already knew or what had been reported previously, and that is, of course, that the aircraft turned off course from Beijing, that it did seem to return towards Malaysia, although at this time over the northern part of the peninsula, and that, as you point out it dropped in altitude.

Because the belief is that, of course, initially they were over the South China Sea at 35,000 feet. The cell phone would have a very difficult time, if at all, it could communicate with the tower.

So, presumably they were overland they were low to the ground. In fact, right now, we are sort of simulating flying over Malaysia at about 5,000 feet.

Remember, of course, it would have been nighttime then. We just made it daylight to be able to show you.

So, it fits, but then the other thing they'll tell you is that it seems very strange.

LEMON: Yeah, it does seem very strange.

Martin -- Mitchell, could this be a simple mistake? A pilot leaving his phone on by accident, or would no pilot make that mistake, because we hear it over and over?

Just a couple months ago we had to completely turn them off. Now we can leave them on, but they say you have to have them in airplane mode.

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER, 777 COCKPIT SIMULATOR: It could be a mistake. We all make mistakes, right?

So, it's possible, but unlikely, because these are professionals, and they know better than to keep their phone on, so --

SAVIDGE: Yeah, I think Mitchell and I discussed, Don, the fact that that phone either came on or was left on is certainly goes against all the training of the pilot and could indicate that in some way somebody on that aircraft was trying to communicate, but that's as far as you can go with it, really.

LEMON: Yeah, we'll figure that out as the investigation continues. Thank you, Martin Savidge. Thank you, Mitchell Casado.

Straight ahead, here on CNN, we're going to talk about the oil slick found near the search area and what it could mean in the hunt for Flight 370.

Plus, he is a white supremacist opening fire on Jewish centers, and we now know his victims were Christians. We're going to talk about his chilling past and ties to hate groups, straight ahead.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: A known racist and suspected killer is expected to make his first court appearance tomorrow.

Frazier Glenn Cross is accused of gunning down three people at two Jewish facilities on Sunday.

Terri Lamano, seen here on Facebook, was a mother and occupational therapist and routinely visited her mother living at a Jewish assisted-living facility.

And the others killed were Reat Underwood and his grandfather, William Corporon, a retired doctor.

The 14-year-old boy was going to an audition at the Jewish community center. Reat was a singer. This YouTube video shows him performing at a school function last year.

Earlier his mother and uncle spoke to reporters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MINDY CORPORON, FATHER AND SON KILLED: As I pulled up I saw that he was lying on the ground, and my first thought was that he had a heart attack. He was just lying there.

But very quickly I realized that it wasn't that, and I knew that my dad was in heaven within seconds.

WILL CORPORON, FATHER AND NEPHEW KILLED: No one believes this will happen to you, to your family.

I know that my dad would have given anything if it could have just been him. He would have stood up and just said take me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Today, authorities announced the killings will be prosecuted as a hate crime.

Joining me now is Mark Potok from The Southern Poverty Law Center. Mark, your group has been following Frazier Glenn Cross for years.

Do you know of anything that could have set him off and possibly triggered this attack or was it all about timing at the right time as Passover began?

MARK POTOK, SENIOR FELLOW, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: Well, I think it may have had something to do with Passover. It probably had a great deal to do with his age. He was 73, going on 74.

We've seen this kind of thing before. When The Holocaust Museum was attacked by another neo-Nazi in 2009, the man was in his late 80s and clearly felt that he wanted to go out in some kind of hail of glory or bullets or whatever.

In this case, I don't think there's anything very obvious as to why the man allegedly began killing over the weekend.

LEMON: What does age have --

POTOK: -- no real obvious acceleration in the kinds of comments he was posting, so it's very unclear.

LEMON: What does being in his 70s have to do with it?

POTOK: I'm sorry. What does what have to do with it?

LEMON: Him -- you said his age. What does that have to do with it? I know a lot of people in their 70s and they're not white supremacists.

POTOK: Look, it's very, very unusual. Criminologists will tell you it's incredibly rare for a man that age, or anyone that age, to engage in a mass murder, really any kind of murder.

What I'm suggesting is that it is possible that he was nearing the end of his life. He was reportedly in poor felt, and he might have felt that, by golly, he was going to leave this world and he was going to take a few enemies with him.

Now, we don't that. There is no known manifesto or really anything explaining his action. I imagine we will hear something about it when he finally goes to trial.

LEMON: Here's the irony. He's a white supremacist. None of his victims, though, is Jewish.

How will that play among his fellow peers? Because there are people on Web sites, white supremacist Web sites, talking about it. He didn't kill anyone who was Jewish.

POTOK: That's right. Look, this man was not well liked by many on the white supremacist right already, and the reason is that he agreed to testify against his comrades in a very famous sedition trial in 1988 in Arkansas.

So, he has spent the better part of the last 20 years or so working his way back into the graces of these people. In the last few years, he published an autobiography about being an oppressed white person and all that kind of thing.

He has also been published in a newspaper called "The Aryan Alternative."

So, there is a lot of skepticism. The incredible news that his victims were, in fact, two Methodists and a Catholic, yes, I think will have some impact out there. There is no doubt that there are other people in the radical right now describing him as an idiot.

But, you know, at the end of the day, the whole story is just a tragedy. Three people are dead, the result of an ideology that has absolutely no basis in reality but nevertheless animated this really loathsome man.

LEMON: People part of a radical white group calling him an idiot, that's ironic in itself. Cross is a founding member of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Was that why your group became aware of him?

POTOK: Yeah, he was -- started that group in 1980. He was actually active in the movement even earlier than that. At a very young age, he joined racist parties like the National States Rights Party.

But when he started the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, he moved to another level, and we certainly did become aware of him.

He started that group and a similar group around the same time, The White Patriot Party. And these were really paramilitary Klan groups. They were quite different than the Klan groups of 20 years earlier in that they were very public.

They were in the streets, marching in fatigues, carrying weapons, and ultimately, as it turned out, they were also receiving training and stolen weapons from active duty Marines at Fort Bragg, so it was quite a scandal.

We sued him. It was a complicated story. We reached an agreement. There was a contempt order brought against him and he fled.

When he was finally recaptured by the FBI, he was found with a lot of C-4 plastic explosives, a whole lot of grenades, weapons, ammunition and a plan, among other things, to murder the founder of The Southern Poverty Law Center, Morris Dees.

So, at that point, he was finally thrown in prison.

LEMON: When you think about somebody who has that sort of ammunition and that sort of past, many people have been asking many why isn't he been called a terrorist? Because he clearly terrorized a whole group of people.

Thank you, Mark Potok. I think -- I appreciate you coming on CNN.

And coming up on "THE LEAD" at 4:00 p.m. Eastern, Jake Tapper speaks with the man who lost his dad and nephew in this attack. Make sure you tune in for that.

And coming up, we're taking a closer look at reports of an oil slick detected by the Ocean Shield ship in the search area. Could it be from the missing plane?

And next, leaks about NSA intelligence gathering from Edward Snowden leading to the highest honor in journalism, that story, right after the break.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: News just in to CNN, spying revelations by NSA leaker Edward Snowden have led to journalism's highest honor.

In the last few minutes, a Pulitzer Prize has been awarded to both "The Guardian U.S." and "The Washington Post," two papers that published revelations about U.S. surveillance practices.

Joining me now on the phone, Brian Stelter, our senior media correspondent and host, of course, of CNN's "RELIABLE SOURCES."

Brian, is this a big win for Snowden?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): This is a big win for Snowden and for people who helped him leak these documents.

For months now, Don, this has been a controversy. This has been a debate among journalists about whether the Pulitzer Prize would be -- would choose to recognize this coverage.

Because on the one hand, this coverage opened up a national and international debate about mass surveillance.

On the other hand, it was based on documents that Edward Snowden handed over. Some people think that was grossly inappropriate. We've heard some people even call Snowden a traitor.

A lot of journalists, of course, say he did the right thing, but this has been a debate going on for a long time, and it's very interesting today this is what the Pulitzer Prize committee decided to do.

LEMON: The question is, you just mentioned partially, but he has been criticized by the Obama administration and by many in the government and many outside the government.

I wonder if this is redemption for those papers and for him for leaking them.

STELTER (via telephone): They are literally cracking the champagne bottles in the newsrooms. (Inaudible) "Washington Post" and "The Guardian" wait all year for the Pulitzer Prizes. They are the highest honor in journalism.

And, in this case, the Snowden coverage is receiving the highest prize of the Pulitzers, which is the Public Service Award. That's a very important term -- "public service."

Clearly, the people who select these stories for prizes believe that what Snowden and what these reporters did was a public service.

And Marty Baron, the editor of "The Washington Post," just spoke to his staff. He said, "Without these documents from Snowden, we never would have known how far this country has shifted away from the rights of the individual in favor of state power."

He went on to say, "As even the president has acknowledged, this is a conversation we need to have."

But by having these prizes be given by the Pulitzer board, it's going to reignite the debate that we've been having for about a year about what Snowden did.

LEMON: Thank you, Brian Stelter. We appreciate you.

Now back to our coverage of missing Flight 370, and you have questions and we have experts to help answer them.

Joining me now is CNN aviation analyst and author Jeff Wise in New York, oceanographer and explorer-in-residence at The National Geographic Society, Sylvia Earle, in San Francisco.

I want to begin with this oil slick now, found from the Australian ship the Ocean Shield on Sunday evening.

Our first question comes from Phil and it's for Jeff. And it says, "If MH-370 ran out of fuel, it seems that there would not be enough residue to create an oil slick unless they were carrying barrels of oil. Would you expect to see an oil slick from this plane?"

Well, the oil slick wouldn't come from the fuel, possibly, but it would come maybe from maybe hydraulics, things or you know other than fuel.

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Right. Well -- that's right. There's hydraulics. There's lubricating oil.

And typically when an airplane's tanks run dry, not every single molecule of fuel gets into the engine and is consumed. There's a little bit left over in the pipes, as it were.

So this isn't a very big slick from what we are hearing. It's a relatively small amount.

Bear in mind, we don't know that this came from the plane. That analysis has yet to be conducted, but it's not inconsistent with a plane that was low or running low on fuel.

LEMON: OK, I want to ask. This one is about the cell phone. People have been very interested. The bulk of our questions in the beginning were about cell phones.

This one comes from another viewer. It says, "Was cell phone use allowed on this flight? If so, then did any passengers or crew members contact family or friends?"

I know we don't know yet but here's a question. Is it likely? I don't think so.

WISE: No, we know that they did not.

LEMON: Not. And so that's why this is such big news today about the co-pilot and his phone constantly trying to get a signal.

WISE: This is why it's so incredible, because up until this moment, we had heard that no such communication took place.

Now, finally, this is what's a little bit baffling, too, is that we're finally hearing after all these many week.

They know there actually was an exception. One phone connected to the cell phone network.

A call didn't go through, but merely the phone attempted to connect with a network through a cell phone tower.

LEMON: OK, I'm going to ask about the Bluefin-21, the sonar and hopefully you can answer that. I don't know if that's outside of your bailiwick.

It says -- this one comes from Charles. It says, "What is the difference between the Bluefin-21 sonar and submarine sonar? Why can't a submarine do the work faster?"

WISE: Well, there's no reason why a submarine couldn't do something similar, but remember, a submarine, if we're talking about a nuclear submarine, you got, you know, dozens or more of crew members on board.

It's a large ship, it's designed to go out into the ocean and do various functions, whereas the Bluefin is specifically designed piece of equipment that's relatively small. It's relatively nimble.

You can program it to just go back and forth, back and forth, like a lawnmower. You can deploy it deep in the ocean and not worry if it gets lost or entangled. There's no lives at stake.

So, it's not that it's completely fundamentally different, but it's a much more appropriate piece of equipment for the job to be done.

LEMON: OK, Stewart (ph) has a question for you, Jeff. "The battery in my watch lasts three years, smoke detector, six months. Why are the data recorders only thirty days?"

That is a very good question.

WISE: That's a great question. Remember that you don't want to have a piece of equipment that's too large, because, every day, thousands of aircraft are flying constantly through the air, carrying this piece of equipment.

So, if you have it too big, it's just wasting fuel, maybe just a little bit, but multiply that by all the thousands of planes. You just don't want to do that.

LEMON: OK, I know. I know that this has more information. It probably takes more energy.

WISE: Right.

LEMON: But have you ever seen a battery in a smoke detector?

WISE: It's a very different job.

LEMON: It's pretty small. It's pretty small.

WISE: But it's doing a small job, too. It's just very passively detecting the chemicals in the air, and in the event that it detects some smoke or carbon monoxide, it goes off. This is a piece of equipment that's putting out an acoustic signal. It's putting out energy into the water. It's just a job that requires more energy, so it requires a big battery and it runs out of --

LEMON: But we have to do it. I mean, this whole 30-day thing, we'd be in a much different place.

WISE: Not really, because remember, the only reason we're looking for this pinger when we did was because it was so close to running out, we said, oh, the heck with it, the chances are one in a million that we'll hear anything --

LEMON: So they hit maybe a one in a million chance, but then the batteries ran out.

WISE: Well, we don't know. We don't know. We'll find out pretty soon, hopefully, whether there was something there or not.

But the reason we were listening now is because the thing was about to run out.

LEMON: Right. Yeah. And you're right. We don't know.

Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate it.

Up next here on CNN, he is a child who lost his life 24 hours ago, allegedly at the hands of a white supremacist.

You're about to hear the beautiful voice of young Reat Griffin Underwood. This video we're getting will definitely inspire you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone. I'm Don Lemon.

Finally, a moment now to appreciate a young life unfairly taken, Reat Griffin Underwood was the youngest of three people killed Sunday when a white supremacist allegedly opened fire at two Jewish facilities.

Reat was 14 and he wanted to sing. He was with his grandfather at the time of his death, auditioning for a talent show. You're about to hear how gifted he was.

This YouTube clip shows the high school freshman in August. singing The national anthem.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REAT GRIFFIN UNDERWOOD, TEEN ALLEGEDLY KILLED BY WHITE SUPREMACIST: Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? (APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Such a beautiful, beautiful voice.

Again, condolences to the families of those victims killed Sunday in Kansas. Reat Griffin Underwood was 14-years-old. William Corporon was 69. Terri Lamano was 53. They are all in our thoughts.

Thank you so much for joining us, everyone. I'm Don Lemon.

"THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.