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A Look at Sonar AUV Technology; Everest Avalanche Kills 12; Michael's Announces Hacking Security Breach; Cali Chef Feeds Homeless Kids; Chelsea Clinton Pregnant; Republicans, Conservatives Dispute ObamaCare Claims; FBI Agents Recount Boston Bombers Manhunt
Aired April 18, 2014 - 15:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour, you're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.
The Bluefin-21, right, this is what they're looking for -- using to look for this missing plane, Malaysian Air Flight 370. This is really, so far, their surest shot to do anything, to find debris, to find wreckage.
But after five missions now, this underwater drone might be getting some help. CNN's Rosa Flores takes a closer look at sonar AUV technology.
Rosa?
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ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This World War II era plane crashed off the coast of Massachusetts in 1947. For more than 50 years, it remained lost on the bottom of the ocean.
Over a decade ago, an AUV, an autonomous underwater vehicle, discovered the missing plane.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coming up.
MIKE MULROONEY, FIELD SERVICE TECHNICIAN AT HYDROID:: Having the right tool is always the best case that you're looking for.
FLORES: Hydroid makes the Remus family of AUVs. This is the Remus 600. A larger AUV, the Remus 6000 found Air France Flight 447 in 2011.
Mike Mulrooney was a senior field technician on that mission.
MULROONEY: At the end of the day we knew what we were doing was to try to help people answer questions about what happened to that flight.
F:PRES: So if the Bluefin-21, which is currently being used in the search for Malaysia Flight 370 can't find the missing jet, searchers could call upon the Remus 6000.
It can navigate in waters almost 5,000 feet deeper than the Bluefin- 21.
MULROONEY: It will basically be able to operate in most of the world's oceans.
FLORES: When searchers asked the U.S. government for an AUV, the Navy said the Bluefin-21 was the only deep water vehicle it had available.
After the Remus AUVs use side-scan sonar, they usually come back with what's called low-frequency images. These are pictures it took of the submerged plane in Massachusetts.
MULROONEY: And this shows up as different from the surrounding area, indicating that there is something different on the bottom for us to go look at.
FLORES: But take a look at these images taken at a higher frequency.
MULROONEY: You can clearly see the body of the plane, the two wings.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: An SB2C --
FLORES: Here is what it looked like in its glory days.
These AUVs also have still camera and video capabilities, giving investigators perspective and a better picture of the bottom of the ocean.
Rosa Flores, CNN, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BALDWIN: Rosa, thank you so much.
And now to the race to find at least four missing people on the Earth's highest mountain, an avalanche on Mount Everest killed twelve guides earlier. This is now the single deadliest accident on this mountain.
And just a short time ago, I talked to a professional mountain climber by the name of Conrad Anker. In fact, he's climbed Mount Everest three times, summited Mount Everest with one of the guides who's now died, and survived an avalanche.
This is what he told me today about this tragedy.
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CONRAD ANKER, PROFESSIONAL MOUNTAIN CLIMBER: It was just a pit in my stomach, and I -- it's -- going up through the icefall, the Khumbu Icefall, is the single most dangerous stretch of climbing on Everest and perhaps anywhere that climbers travel on.
The Sherpas will go through that icefall probably four times as the amounts that clients will go through, so they're exposed to greater risk, and it's just a game of odds, sometimes. And it's very sad that it was (inaudible), who was a close friend of mine. BALDWIN: Help us understand, because we are coming up to really the best possible window of the year for climbers to summit Everest.
And 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 incredibly well.
What were they doing at the time? Were they preparing the route?
ANKER: The route that they were on through the icefall is pre- prepared, so the icefall doctors put that in. There's rope that goes up and down it. So you're basically on this rope-highway that you can 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 clients.
And I'm not sure whether they were on their way up or their way down, but a serac, which is a hanging glacier which is on the west shoulder, cut loose and swept down and wiped them out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Conrad Anker, thank you again for talking to me.
Three of these guides are seriously injured, including a Sherpa in an intensive care unit in a hospital.
Coming up, it was one of the biggest, one of the scariest bugs to hit the World Wide Web in years, but despite a fix to the so-called "Heartbleed Bug," your information online may still be at risk.
Plus, many conservatives have spent years and years arguing against ObamaCare. The botched roll out didn't exactly help.
Now the tides may be turning in the president's favor. We will explain next.
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BALDWIN: Yet another security breach, one of the nation's biggest retailers, Michael's, the craft giant, says millions of customers have been impacted in a breach that lasted eight months.
What does this mean? Let me go to CNNMoney tech correspondent Laurie Segall, live in New York. And. Laurie, I saw this this morning and I thought, again?
LAURIE SEGALL, CNNMONEY TECH CORRESPONDENT: I know. You're right. Three million customers affected over that eight-month period, Brooke.
And what these hackers did is they essentially targeted the point-of- sale system, so they were able to take credit and debit card numbers, your expiration dates on your cards.
And I should say this. The breach happened between May of 2013 and January of 2014, seven percent of transactions affected.
This, obviously -- this comes on the heels of the Target hack that affected 110 million customers.
And so what Michaels is doing now, they're saying we can offer up 12 months of identity protection and credit monitoring.
But I had the exact same reaction as you. I just thought to myself, I can't believe we are seeing this again, and it's not going to be the last time.
BALDWIN: And that's frightening, in and of itself. We all have to protect ourselves with our numbers and our PIN numbers and everything else.
And then, as we are talking about hacking, Heartbleed, right, that was that bug that impacted the majority of us on the Internet. Where do we stand on that?
SEGALL: You know, I spoke to one hacker, and he said, Laurie, this is the bug that nearly broke the Internet. It affected so many people.
And for a while we all had to sit tight and not even change our passwords, because Facebook, Gmail, they all had to update their sites to get rid of this bug.
Now, most of them have, so you can likely go on and change your passwords.
But what you can do is go to a Web site called HeartbleedCheck.com. Type in the Web site -- you can type in "Facebook.com." It will tell you whether or not it's safe and you can actually go in and change your passwords.
And when we talk about passwords, I actually spoke to David Kennedy who is what we call an ethical hacker. He hacks to find security flaws in systems, and I asked him what's the best way to make your password unhackable.
Listen to what he said.
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DAVID KENNEDY, FOUNDER, TRUSTEDSEC: I don't actually know any of my passwords inside of my head. I only know one password.
But my passwords are literally anywhere between 32- and 50-characters long, and they are completely unique to where you're never going to be able to guess those.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SEGALL: You know, he also said he uses something called a pass phrase which is just essentially a sentence that you'll remember, but if you look, it has so many characters. So that's something he uses.
And he also gave me some additional tips for users. He says never use the same password for different sites. That's really important.
Also use a password storage program like KeyPass. And also use two- step verification. You can sign up for that on Gmail, Facebook, where you actually sign in and you get a text message and then you can actually -- it's a couple of different steps before you're able to log in.
All of that to keep you safe, because as we see, Brooke, it seems like things keep getting worse.
BALDWIN: Thirty? He had me at 32- to 50-characters at least for a password. Do you do that? I know I don't do that.
SEGALL: I definitely don't. But I should and I will.
BALDWIN: Note to self -- Laurie Segall, thank you so much.
SEGALL: Thank you.
BALDWIN: When we come back, we will take you live to Boston. You see that? We're waiting for two pretty big names from the championship team, David Ortiz and Jonny Gomes about to sit down here.
Huge weekend in Boston, of course, you have Monday's marathon, Patriots' Day, so exciting. We will take it live.
Plus, this week's CNN Hero, they are called "motel kids," children one step away from homelessness.
Their parents can't provide decent meals, but for nearly 10 years, Californian chef Bruno Serato has made it his mission to feed them free of charge.
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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR, "AC 360": Please join me in honoring CNN Hero Bruno Serato.
When Bruno Serato was honored as a CNN Hero in 2011, he was serving pasta to nearly 200 low-income children a day in Anaheim California.
BRUNO SERATO, CNN HERO: The pasta is ready.
COOPER: Since being awarded, Bruno's program has grown significantly.
SERATO: Who likes more pasta?
Now, we are 1,000 kids a day, every single day, Monday through Friday.
COOPER: Reaching kids in three more cities in Orange County.
SERATO: Each time I prepare a meal, each time I serve a kid, I know I give security to a little kid, and he has a full stomach before he goes to bed.
You like my pasta? COOPER: But Bruno does more than just filling their stomachs.
SERATO: I request one idea -- to share the table together, dining emotionally with the family and kids together eating a plate of pasta together.
Bellissimo!
COOPER: Bruno's group has also gone beyond food. He's helped move 55 homeless families out of motels and into their own apartments.
SERATO: What do you think?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love it. Thank you.
SERATO: You save their life completely. Change their life completely.
COOPER: With no plans to slow down, Bruno's meal program will be in its fifth city this summer.
SERATO: My goal is to be all over the nation. How can I stop when children are starving? The day the children are not starving, I will stop.
Pasta!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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CHELSEA CLINTON, FORMER FIRST DAUGHTER: Mark and I are very excited that we have our first child arriving later this year.
And I certainly feel all the better whether it's a boy or girl that she or he will grow up in a world full of so many strong female leaders.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Listen to those cheers.
In case you had not heard, Chelsea is pregnant, which means Hillary Clinton might be running for the White House as a grandma.
Bill Clinton once famously said his wife wants a grandchild more than she wants to be president.
More politics now, because if reaction from right-wing media's any clue, ObamaCare is still a bust, despite yesterday's announcement, which we took live right around this time yesterday.
We saw the president stepping out in the White House daily briefing, telling the world 8 million subscribers here of ObamaCare, which by the way, exceeds the goal set by the White House. Some conservative blogs and talk-show hosts are running negative stories today, some charging that this 8-million figure is a scam.
Democrats, however, are crying victory. They're embracing the milestone.
So let's go to Washington to my colleague, Jake Tapper, host of "THE LEAD," and you know, we know Republicans plan to run against ObamaCare.
We saw the president yesterday, you know, sort of addressing them head-on, minutes into that daily briefing, saying, let's move on.
But does this mean that the Republicans then would be running on a gimp leg, so to speak, come November?
JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: I think Republicans plan on still running against ObamaCare, especially in states where that proves, at least according to polls right now, to be effective.
A lot of those blue Democrats who are currently representing red states, such as Louisiana, Arkansas, perhaps in West Virginia where there's an open seat, Alaska certainly, the Republicans will continue to run against ObamaCare.
But the president, of course, trying to stop that, trying to put on a positive spin, trying to talk about the successes and achievements of ObamaCare, certainly, 8 million people having enrolled is a much higher number than we anticipated when the Web site was first introduced --
BALDWIN: Right.
TAPPER: -- last fall.
There's still a lot of questions we don't know the answers to when it comes to that 8 million figure.
We don't know how many of those individuals didn't have insurance before. It's possible that millions of them, probable that millions of them had insurance and those policies were possible because they didn't meet the requirements of ObamaCare, so they then sought new policies on the Web site.
We also don't know how many of the people who have enrolled have actually paid the premiums. I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but there was a time when I had health insurance, and I didn't pay the premium, and then went to the doctor.
Guess what. I didn't have insurance, even though I thought I had, and even though I had enrolled. You don't pay the premium; you don't have insurance.
BALDWIN: You're out.
TAPPER: So the estimates are usually about 80 or 90 percent of the individuals who enroll actually do pay the premiums, but that's not 8 million.
So there's still a lot we don't know. The president is trying to get ahead of what is proving in key states to be a liability for the midterm elections.
BALDWIN: OK, Jake Tapper, thank you so much.
We'll see you in 10 minutes on "THE LEAD" there, live --
TAPPER: Thanks, Brooke.
BALDWIN: -- in Washington. Appreciate you.
Coming up next, just ahead of the first Boston Marathon since last year's bombings, Deborah Feyerick sits down with FBI counterintelligence veterans to look exactly at how these alleged bombers were caught and what the really priority was in the manhunt into Watertown, who could forget, one year ago.
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BALDWIN: I want to leave you with some images from Boston here. We're waiting, we're waiting with bated breathe here for two pretty big names, Jonny Gomes and David Ortiz from the 2013 World Series Championship team, the Boston Red Sox.
We're waiting for them because this is the first time we will hear from them, of course, ahead of Marathon Monday, ahead of Patriots' Day, just to talk a little bit about how they're feeling.
They've got a couple of games this weekend, you know, really this team instrumental in this city of Boston and the notion of being "Boston Strong." So we're waiting for that.
But, come Monday, all of Boston will show why they embrace this now mantra of "Boston Strong." The 2014 marathon will be under way to push the city forward, but the past is not lost, of course not, on what happened last year after those blasts on Boylston Street at that finish line.
It was the search for the suspects that captivated the attention, of course, of people in Boston and, really, all across the nation.
CNN's Deborah Feyerick sat down with two of the FBI's tiptop people who describe some of those key moments, lifting the veil here on the manhunt and how it all played.
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DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The force of the two blasts, 12 seconds apart, said it all.
What struck you about it?
STEPHANIE DOUGLAS, FBI EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Just the magnitude of it. It wasn't something small. It wasn't something insignificant.
FEYERICK: Within minutes more than 1,000 police and federal law enforcement agents would embark on the largest investigation and manhunt of its kind in the United States.
By the time you got to the crime scene, this is what it looked like, correct?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a scene of utter devastation and carnage. There was evidence strewn all over the place.
FEYERICK: At FBI headquarters, chief of the National Security Branch Stephanie Douglas was keenly aware of the stakes.
DOUGLAS: We had to be concerned that there were other bombs or other co-conspirators elsewhere outside of Boston.
FEYERICK: Authorities knew at least one killer was on the loose but where, what next? By Tuesday investigators pieced together the pressure cooker bombs, identifying them as similar to those made in an al Qaeda bomb making manual.
RICHARD DESLAURIERS, FORMER BOSTON FBI SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: We were collecting pieces of the pressure cooker bombs, pieces of backpacks used to contain the bombs.
FEYERICK: A major break in the case came less than 36 hours after the attack.
DOUGLAS: A couple people from our counterterrorism division came in with the laptop like this. They said we think we know who did it.
FEYERICK: Of the more than 12,000 videos from businesses and marathon spectators, something unmistakable at the second blast site.
DOUGLAS: You see a man in a white ball cap. The hat is turned around backwards, walking into the frame of the shot.
DESLAURIERS: He places that backpack down on the ground, sliding it off his shoulder. Maybe 15 minutes later he makes a cell phone call.
After that cell phone call concludes very shortly thereafter, you hear the first bomb go off farther down near the finish line.
He glances quickly to the left, but walks diligently and deliberately to the right about 15 to 20 seconds after he departs the view of the camera the second bomb goes off.
FEYERICK: That video has never been seen by the public but is - expected to be shown at trial in November.
What does that suggest to you when this man took a cell phone call before walking away?
DOUGLAS: That there was another conspirator.
FEYERICK: That co-conspirator was identified later that day, another crucial lead.
DESLAURIERS: This video depicted the individual then called black hat walking with white hat down Boylston Street, both of them carrying black backpacks.
FEYERICK: It had been three full days, with the suspects still at large, a game changing decision.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Today we're enlisting the public's help to identify the suspects.
FEYERICK: For the Tsarnaev brothers, things were about to unravel.
How important was it for you and the bureau and everyone else involved in the investigation that the two suspects be taken alive? DOUGLAS: Very, very important.
FEYERICK: But that's not what happened.
UNIDENTIFIED CALLER: They have explosives, some type of grenades, they're in between houses down here. Shots fired.
FEYERICK: Following an eight-minute fire fight in Watertown, police wrestled a wounded Tamerlan to the ground.
His brother, driving an alleged stolen car, tried to free him. Instead, police say, he ran him over.
Tamerlan was fingerprinted and finally identified by name. Brother Dzhokhar was identified later in a boat. He was less than two-tenths of a mile from where he abandoned his vehicle.
DESLAURIERS: We didn't know if he had bombs on him, weapons on him.
FEYERICK: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will stand trial in November.
Deborah Feyerick, CNN, Boston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BALDWIN: Deb, thank you.
And just a quick note to all of you. I am thrilled to head back to Boston tomorrow. We will be live Monday on Patriots' Day.
Thirty-six-thousand runners strong, that was what we heard from the vice president when he spoke earlier this week at that tribute ceremony. It will be the biggest, best marathon to date in that city.
We will talk to survivors, we'll talk to some celebrity Bostonians, several Red Sox you will certainly recognize, and just talk to folks along the race route about why this city one year later isn't just "Boston Strong," it is "Boston Stronger."
For now, I'm Brooke Baldwin. Have a wonderful weekend.
Stay right here, watching the CNN. We go to Washington. "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.
