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Finding, Salvaging MH-370 a Monumental Task; Cover of Hillary Clinton's Memoirs Unveiled as Administration Documents Are Released; Mt. Everest Avalanche Launches Search for Missing.

Aired April 18, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: What does all of that tell you? Anything new?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, it tells -- the theories will go this way. Somebody was at the controls. And we know they were, because we have already been told that many or all of the maneuvers, the change in direction were deliberate. That's the phrase used by the authorities.

BALDWIN: Right.

QUEST: What it doesn't tell us -- and I will disagree to the nth degree -- it does not tell us, was it nefarious? There will be those who will choose to take that road at this point. I would suggest the middle road is best taken because all it tells us is somebody did it.

BALDWIN: Richard Quest with information just in from his source to CNN from the Malaysian officials. Thank you so much.

Coming up here, a live report from underwater. Because if this plane wreckage from Malaysia Airlines flight 370 is somewhere on the bottom of the ocean, finding it, bringing it to the surface will be a monumental task. So Martin Savidge is getting a firsthand look at what it would be like.

Hi, Martin.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Brooke. Yeah, you're right. What if the black box is trapped? We will show you one technique for trying to set it free, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Just past the bottom of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

As we've now been reporting, a senior Malaysian aviation source tells CNN that flight 370 had four emergency transmitters on board that would emit a signal. Interesting to note that the source added it is odd that the transmitters did not activate or go off or, at the least, weren't picked up by the emergency monitoring satellite.

Meanwhile, this Bluefin-21, now on its fifth mission, diving deep below the ocean surface, desperately searching for debris or something from this plane.

Finding debris would be something positive here for the search but finding these two black boxes would be something better. On an ocean floor nearly three miles deep, the task is not at all easy.

CNN's Martin Savidge is live in the waters of British Columbia for us. And we should be clear that Martin is down there in a manned submarine, not like the one being used to search for the plane at least at the moment.

Martin, I'm going to hand it to you and your colleague there. Explain to me the task of trying to find something to see something through all of this murky water.

SAVIDGE: You're right. It is murky down here.

Phil (INAUDIBLE) is the man who knows things when it comes to underwater recovery.

And that is an obstacle, isn't it, often. You're never going have perfect visibility.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. The fact of the matter is, as soon as you start moving around a wreck, the bottom is at all silty, you start stirring up the bottom and kicking it up with your thrusters. And you have to wait for it to settle down and it could take a while.

SAVIDGE: What we wanted to show for you here, it's a show and tell, Brooke. Assuming the black box, maybe if it did go in the water, for MH-370, it could be entangled, trapped, maybe by wires, maybe by debris, so this process is to show you to clear, say, wiring or tubing that could somehow be in the way.

Phil, could you give us a demonstration?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure. We have an umbilical cutter.

SAVIDGE: That's what we see on the right hand side, is that correct?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right. You see there's a piece of cable there now.

Jeff, you want to bring up AUV and start, we'll cut that cable.

(CROSSTALK)

SAVIDGE: Jeff is our pilot here in the back. He is going to be working this -- is a pneumatic?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hydraulic.

SAVIDGE: Hydraulic, sorry. You did tell me that.

And this blade is slicing through very slowly into this piping here. That's why, when they talk and stress, if they do find debris under water and do try recovery -- (CROSSTALK)

SAVIDGE: It looks like it's cut. Yes, you will see the others and retreat.

But, you know, that is just one piece here, Brooke. And at depth, it will take you a long time to start clearing a lot of debris. So moving just one piece is only just one small event. We're talking about hours, right Phil?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

SAVIDGE: You could be down here doing this.

The capability -- this, of course, not capable of going that deep. But long term, you could be 15 hours or more.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, you could.

SAVIDGE: Yeah, Brooke?

BALDWIN: Here's my question. This is for you or Phil. We were talking about the AUV, this Bluefin could help find the aircraft. But what are the advantages and disadvantages of using an AUV versus an ROV versus controlled by man?

SAVIDGE: Yeah. That's a very good question.

What Brooke was asking was that the differences between an AUV, an ROV or in a submersible like this. A submersible is completely autonomous?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The AUV stands for autonomous underwater vehicle. But they have to be pre-programmed because there is no way to control them from the surface. Once they submerge, it is impossible to communicate with them until they surface again.

SAVIDGE: Can they retrieve anything?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. They have no manipulator compatibility. It's strictly for a survey. And they do a good job. They can cover areas that are preprogrammed and look for sonar like the Bluefin is doing right now.

SAVIDGE: The ROV, what's the drawback with that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The ROV is a remotely operated vehicle. So it is operated at the surface so all of the ROV's power comes from the surface. All of the communication atop the climber, so you are handing a machine looking at the video camera and operating from the surface. That means you must have a link down, a tether or an umbilical. If you can imagine having 20-odd thousand feet of umbilical, that's four miles of cable going down to this robotic machine and working around a wreck. All of that could well get snarled up. That's one of the big problems with working in those conditions with ROVs. Now the manned submersible, although there are very few in the world that can go the depth we're talking about, it depends, and they can move around without nagging umbilicals. But they have all sorts of limitations. It's just trying to pick the right ones or the right combinations. Once the AUVs have done their work of surveying, hopefully, then it's up to the deepwater ROVs and manned submersibles to work together to bring up whatever needs to be brought up or do a survey where they can do a survey.

SAVIDGE: But as we just demonstrated for you, time and time is what it's going to take. It's dangerous work.

BALDWIN: Indeed. It's important to be familiar with all of these pieces of technology. We heard from the transport minister saying, yes, we may use more resources. It could be some of what Phil outlined.

Martin and Phil, my thanks to you, live below the surface there in Horseshoe Bay in D.C. A million times, thank you.

When we come back, a fatal disaster on Mt. Everest claimed the lives of 12 incredibly experienced guides. Any my next guest has not only summited Everest but he has survived an avalanche and he climbed with one of the brave Sherpas who died. That's next.

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BALDWIN: Welcome back. At this hour, our good folks in Washington are speed reading through hundreds of pages of documents from the Clinton administration. They papers have just been released by the Clinton Library. This is the very same day that Simon & Schuster has unveiled the cover of Hillary Clinton's upcoming memoir. Here it is. It covers her service as secretary of state and is entitled "Hard Choices."

Brianna Keilar is with us now from Washington, D.C. She is our senior political correspondent.

And, Brianne, in your speed reading, have you found anything in the news worthy?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Bombshells, no, but this really does add a lot of color to what went on during the Clinton administration. As we speak, we're going through 7500 documents.

So what do we have so far? A lot of stuff on health care reform, which was a huge and failed effort. One of the things that is so interesting, several months before it fell apart, the White House pulled it. They thought it was going to be a winning issue. That's goes to show how quickly things went down hill. On the Democratic target list for members of Congress, who might go along with it, and in the end, there was not a vote, was a Pennsylvania congresswoman named Marjori Margoli Mesdinski (ph), who as you know, is now Chelsea Clinton's mother in law. And one of the interesting things that you might file in "what's old is new again," President Clinton voicing concern that people needed to be assured that if people liked their health insurance, they could keep it. BALDWIN: I have heard that before.

KEILAR: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: As far as the book is concerned -- let's throw the cover up again. It's meant to cover Hillary Clinton's time as secretary of state and to burnish her legacy. But, Brianna, as we look around today and we see what's happening in Ukraine and Syria, relations with Russians, the stalemate in the Middle East, a lot of the legacy is unfinished or has not turned out as well as one wanted. Could her biggest claim become a burden if she were to run?

KEILAR: That's the question. What is she going to say she accomplished? One of the big issues for Hillary Clinton is she doesn't have one or two big slam dunks that she can say, here is what I did that is so important. She recently struggled to really explain that a couple of weeks ago in New York. She described the process of being secretary of state is like running relay race. You take the baton and do your stint and pass it on. But the big issue for her here is when you look at polls, a lot of people say one of her biggest assets is her time as secretary of state. That's why you're seeing Republicans really poke a hole in that. That's why we're awaiting her side of the story, which will come out June 10th.

BALDWIN: One bit of her legacy, she's about to become a grandmother. That's some exciting news for the Clintons for sure.

Brianna Keilar, thank you very much.

When we come back, it is now the deadliest accident on the world's higher mountain. And Conrad Anker has not only summited Everest, he has survived an avalanche and knows a lot about what this is like. We will talk to him about the single biggest tragedy on this beautiful mountain, next.

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BALDWIN: Now to what has become the single deadliest on the earth's highest mountain. An avalanche on Mount Everest killing at least 12 Sherpa guides, and now rescuers are racing to find others who are still missing. Sherpas, this is an ethnic group of people who live in the Himalayas. They are guides and, in this particular incident, they were preparing the route to the summit for climbers. Three people are seriously wounded, including this Sherpa guide who is in intensive care at a hospital. Four others are missing.

Let's bring in mountain climber, Conrad Anker, who joins me live from Montana.

Conrad, you have climbed Everest three times. You have summited with one of the guides who has died. You have survived an avalanche. What was your reaction when you first heard about this?

CONRAD ANKER, PROFESSIONAL MOUNTAIN CLIMBER: It was a pit in my stomach. It was going up through the ice falls, the single most dangerous stretch on Everest and perhaps anywhere that climbers travel. The Sherpas will go through that ice fall probably four times the amount the climbers go through, so they are exposed to greater risk. It's just a game of odds sometimes. And it's very sad that it was Avin Kagy (ph), who is a close friend of mine.

BALDWIN: Help us understand. We are coming up to really the best possible window of the year for climbers to summit Everest. So these Sherpas, the one you mentioned, who you have summited with -- explain to us, these are natives of the mountains. They know these mountains so well. What were they doing at the time? Were they preparing the route?

ANKER: The route that they were on through the ice falls is prepared so the ice falls doctors put that in. There is rope that goes up and down it. So you're basically on this rope highway that you go up and down on. My guess is these guys were carrying loads up to the advance base camp, so they were stocking it with food, fuel and supplemental oxygen for their climbs. I'm not sure if they were on their way up or their way down. But a sherak (ph), which is a hanging glacier on the west shoulder, cut loose and then swept down and wiped them out.

BALDWIN: What was it? 1999, you survived an avalanche? Do you know when one is coming? How much time do you have?

ANKER: In 1999, an avalanche came off of a high shoulder, an ice avalanche. As if came down, it increased in size. You do have a moment where you realize that things are changing rapidly. You go from a thought process to automatic reaction to save yourself. I ran a different direction. My partners did. And I survived. I imagine having being in the ice fall, looking up at the horseshoe, this feature of ice, but it was always a matter of time when that was going to release. And unfortunately, it came down when there was a group of Sherpas working in the ice fall.

BALDWIN: With the Sherpas, especially the one you summited Everest with -- and I think just being as familiar as they are with this mountain, how technically advanced are they?

ANKER: Technical skills, probably not the same as a Western climber like myself. I spent my life climbing. So when I go to the Himalayas -- I have climbed in Alaska. I have earned my merit badges. I've mentored. For a lot of the Sherpas, it's a family type business. Well, my uncle got me this job and I have a pair of boots that fit. Next thing you know, they're in a climbing harness and in a very dangerous place that would require a lot of knowledge to do it safely. This is a new generation of Sherpas. He has technical skills, multilingual there on social media. He's my equal.

BALDWIN: Yeah.

ANKER: So that was good to see them at that point. But regardless of the one's ability, if you are in the ice fall, it's a matter of chance. Because if it cuts loose, there's really not much you can do.

BALDWIN: Such a tragedy in such a beautiful place in this world. Conrad Anker, I'm sorry about the passing of your colleague.

Quick break and back after this.

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