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South Korean Ferry Disaster; Underwater Search for Flight 370 at "Critical Juncture"; U.S. Plans Military Exercises in Eastern Europe, Sends Troops To Poland and Estonia

Aired April 19, 2014 - 18:00   ET

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

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Sciutto in today for Don Lemon. Thank you very much for joining. We are closely following the major international stories and we begin with breaking news on Ukraine.

We are learning the U.S. plans to conduct military exercises in Eastern Europe, sending troops to Poland and Estonia. These just days into a deal among Russia, Ukraine, and the West. We are going to go live to Ukraine in just a second. In fact, we are going to go live to Fredrik Pleitgen is in the Ukraine now.

Now Fred, describe for us any reaction you're hearing there now to this news we were just able to confirm that the U.S. is going to conduct military exercises both in Poland and in Estonia in the north on Russia's border?

Sorry. We are losing Fredrik Pleitgen in there in Ukraine. We are going to effort to get him back to react on this.

I want to give you now the latest on the ferry disaster in South Korea, one of another in a major international story that we are following. The death toll there stands at 36. Divers today recovered three more bodies from inside the sunken ship. Still, another 266, mostly teenagers, remain missing.

We will have a live report from the port where families are holding vigil for their missing children. And we want to talk more about the rescue and recovery efforts there.

Joining me now is Mario Vittone, a 21-year veteran of the U.S. Navy and U.S. coast guard. He is a rescue swimmer and he writes often on maritime safety issues. Thank you for joining us.

And I want to start with a question that strikes me. It has been a number of days since the ferry went down. There are still rescue efforts under way there. You know these situations very well. Is there any realistic hope finding people still alive inside that ship?

MARIO VITTONE, (RET.) U.S. COAST GUARD: I think we have gone from -- we have moved from hopeful to miraculous if there is someone alive still on the ferry. I think it's been a very long time. The water is very cold. And even if they managed to get into a completely dry space, the temperature of the water around the hall would make it just terribly cold inside and I wish I could give you a better idea about that, but I don't think -- I think we are looking at a recovery now and no longer a rescue.

SCIUTTO: Right. It's always difficult in these situations because you don't want to away any possible hope and certainly take every opportunity but you also want to be realistic.

VITTONE: Right.

SCIUTTO: One thing that divers on the scene have discussed there this is the idea of raising the ship because they are concerned about the pressure differentials and it's hard for them to get inside the ship. Can you explain to our viewers what advantage that would be if they bring the ship up?

VITTONE: Well, if you can bring the ship up and out of the water or at least higher than the water, that pressure goes away. What they are talking about is if they get to a space and if behind a certain water tight door, let's say, it's dry, they wouldn't be able to open that door and if they did then it wouldn't be dry any more, right?

So those pressure differentials make it impossible to enter the ship in certain spaces. And so, even if you thought someone was behind a space, if they were opening the door would cause hazard for everybody. It would be much safer for everyone if they can bring the ship up.

SCIUTTO: Looking one of the most frustrating things about this certainly for the families involved, even for our viewers, is the idea that the captain and his two first mates, third mate, you know, the most senior officers on the ship, that they left before everybody else and, in fact, after telling everybody else on the ship to stay put, saying it was safer to stay put. I mean, are there any circumstances where they would have reason or excuse to do this?

VITTONE: I've been thinking about that two days and I can't think of any reason staying put is a good idea. In fact, there is drills and procedures and they always include go to muster station and we have heard they didn't tell them where that station was and they might have a safety brief and those things will come out in the investigation. But it's never a good idea to just sit there and wait.

And I get that maybe there was a hazard he felt with moving people around the ship. But given the weight of the ship and the weight of passengers, moving around didn't cause any hazards. So I think he traded this perceived idea being safer for actually being safer and he should have moved into the deck, I think.

SCIUTTO: What an incredible thought. A hundred years after the "titanic" went down, when that key lesson was, of course, get people in the life rafts and, you know, be prepared and have enough life rafts on board for them. And even just a couple of years after the Costa Concordia case where you also had a captain leaving the ship, you would think that the shipping industry around the world was so much coverage of situations like this their first reaction would be to act quickly, to get people into those life boats. Do you find it amazing particularly in country like, you know, South Korea is a major industrialized nation? Do you find it surprising that it didn't have, you know, those kinds of reactions in place?

VITTONE: Well, you know, Korea builds 30 percent of the ships in the world and only behind China ship. They are a big maritime country. But this is the 100th ferry accident we have had in the last 12 years. And the disconnect for me is we have the training and the drills but what people know to do in emergency and what they actually do in emergency are different just like the Concordia and with this accident.

So every captain in the world is saying, I would have done something different, but in that situation that is how that crew behaved. And I think what needs to happen really is we have to start paying attention to not just what the drills are but how the people react in an emergency and it's an entirely different set of training rules.

SCIUTTO: And yet one more place where there needs to be a lesson learned.

Thanks very much Mario Vittone.

We are going live to Jindo now. That is right on the cost of where this ferry went down. We have our Kyung Lah joining us off the port area, the city where those parents anxiously awaiting for news about their children.

You probably heard that commentator there, Kyung, just about how unlikely it is that there is survivor inside, particularly with how cold the water is. How are parents coping through that as they wait for answers?

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, what we actually are hearing them say the exact opposite, that they don't want to hear that. In a Q&A session they had with some of the coast guards yesterday, many of the parents saying why aren't you trying harder? My child is probably still alive. There are miracle stories that we have heard over the past. And that's what these parents are clinging to.

You can see over my right shoulder that there is a white tent. That has been filled with parents ever since the ship went awry, every since this disaster began about five days ago. And they just don't want to go there. They don't to believe that so many high school students, their lives may be over.

So at this point, it's a very delicate dance between how the government is handling this and what they are telling the families and the families are starting to become very agitated. They are very angry and they are also very upset because as you can imagine, Jim, the amount of grief, the overwhelming grief that these families are going through is culpable.

SCIUTTO: Well, as a parent myself, you know, I've struggled to imagine it and I don't even want to think of it, so I empathize. You know, it's interesting and we talked about the missing Malaysian flight. You were there covering that as well and certainly frustration among the families. Do you see, for instance, as South Korean government confers with parents when to use large sea cranes to lift the ship, do you see the South Koreans learning some lessons with how the Malaysians handled or arguably mishandled the search for the Malaysian flight and handling the families that are trying to be more differential in effect?

LAH: They certainly appear to be. They are very -- two very different cultures and there's a different level of respect that each government commands from their people, but there is a growing distrust. The same sort of distrust we saw among the Chinese and the Malaysian family members to the government, to the Malaysian government to how the Koreans here are reacting to their government because of the initial report they came out saying that children have all been rescued. This happened moments after this disaster began. The parents initially thought all of their children had survived. And then to be dramatically told that wasn't the case; that laid the groundwork for a deep level of distrust that these parents have and it certainly snowballed to this point.

SCIUTTO: Yes. It must be impossible to satisfy at this point.

Thanks very much to Kyung Lah covering the tragedy there.

Now, after more than a month of fruitless searching, could the hunt for flight 370 be moving to a different area in the coming days? We are going to talk to our panel of experts about the latest news and what it means if the Bluefin-21 comes up empty this time. That's right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: There was some pushing and shoving and shouting today at one of the holiest sites in Christianity.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYING)

SCIUTTO: This is outside the Jerusalem church where Christians believe Jesus was buried after crucifixion. A Unites Nations envoy says Israeli guards denied him and other diplomats entry to the church. Robert Serry is U.N. peace envoy to the Middle East. He says he was pushed against a metal fence and crashed by a crowd before guards finally let him pass.

This is Easter weekend and religious tension is running high in Jerusalem. Israeli government officials haven't commented on the incident which you can see happening right there.

Now back to the hunt for the Malaysian airlines flight 370. It is an extremely critical phase and we have learned about a key deadline. The Bluefin-21 underwater drone will finish its entire search mission in five to seven days after the experts shrunk the search area for focus the mission.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HISHAMMUDDIN HUSSEIN, ACTING MALAYSIAN TRANSPORT MINISTER: The narrowing of the search for today and tomorrow is at a very critical juncture.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: So here is the bottom line, if the blue-fin 21 comes up empty in the next week, it will be time for all search crews hunting for flight 370 to stop, regroup, and reconsider. The whole search operation may need fresh thinking.

Joining me now to discuss is David Gallo. He is head of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Arthur Rosenberg, aviation lawyer engineer and a pilot himself, and CNN aviation analyst Michael Kay.

David, I want to begin with you because this talk of this deadline, you have a great success rate what is found in Air France after two years. Very difficult conditions as well. What is the significance of this going through, saying, yes, we have another week to look at the search area that we have to find, at which point, we are going to rethink if we haven't found anything? What is the significance of that?

DAVID GALLO, CNN ANALYST: The logical thing to do. I mean, we have a ways to go yet. We have a five to six more days. A lot could happen in that time. I think that is about halfway through that area. But if they find nothing, you know, we have to go back to the pingers and the best evidence we have that this is the resting place of Malaysian flight 370.

SCIUTTO: So you go back and if you haven't found something, let's relook at those pings from the data recorders to make a reassessment --

GALLO: Let's make sure we didn't miss it (INAUDIBLE) which is possible. I know they have been being careful, but you want to be sure you don't leave that area until you're positive it's not there.

SCIUTTO: OK, Arthur, another question for you. Because there has been frustration from the beginning on a lot of levels about sharing of information certainly from the Malaysian government side and saw that with radar data early on. But you have some frustration aimed at Inmarsat which is the satellite company that provided the data, the pings that were coming from the jet's engine before it disappeared. Do you think there were really use if that data was released publicly and therefore, you can have more people looking at it, in effect crowd sourcing, right, the analysis of where this plane?

ARTHUR ROSENBERG, AVIATION ATTORNEY: Absolutely. We have actually talked about that quite a bit. You know, the Inmarsat data that Doppler phase shift that they did is actually very priori proprietary. But they worked with Boeing. They worked with the NTSB. They worked with the FAA. They worked with the Australian. But the world really wants to see the nitty-gritty of that data. And putting it out there, we would get a whole lot of other people involved in the analysis.

I think it would be very helpful from both from a technical standpoint and from a practical standpoint that the families would actually see some progress and some transparent sane openness in sharing of information.

And while we are talking about that I would add to it, it would be very nice if the Malaysians released the radar data which we have talked about, you know, as an ongoing thing. And I mean, we have the airplane at one altitude, dropping to another altitude, 39,000 and 45,000.

I think we look that, these are the constituent elements that comprise getting us to the area that were in together with the pings from the flight data recorder which we spoke about in the last segment which gives us more of a microscopic precision on where that wreckage might be.

SCIUTTO: Of course. The issue of that is sensitivity because that is military data and these countries don't want to expose vulnerabilities, capabilities that which I imagine would be a problem.

ROSENBERG: Let me just say just one thing. That Malaysian radar is not the best radar on the planet. I don't think they would be disclosing any great military secret. They had a plane which flew across the Malay Peninsula with impunity for over 30 minutes and be like going from New York to L.A. --

SCIUTTO: And not raising an alarm.

But Michael, I imagine that is why they don't want to release the data because there is more.

MICHAEL KAY, FORMER ADVISOR TO THE UK MILITARY OF DEFENSE: Yes. Just joining the dots on your point on (INAUDIBLE) should we be open for- to-that data and the drift free (ph) of what seems to be conflicting data coming from the Malaysians on the radar. The last thing in the world we need is for information to be open from misinterpretation. It has to be analyzed by the experts. And the experts should have that. In terms of the radar data, the thing that I find personally frustrated is that we have been given some facts that drawing no conclusions.

And what I'd like the Malaysians to do is if they would rather analyze the information on the altitude changes, how they actually got the altitude changes. We have been around this a million times in terms of the limitation of primary radar. There is no transponders or second surveillance data doesn't work and draw some conclusions to it. So when they come on the world stage and they do give us some information, there has to be conclusions as to what it actually means, rather than we think it went to 39,000 feet and descended to 4,000 feet with no equivocal evidence. And I think we need to be going back and interrogating that.

So not just stopping the pings, going back to Inmarsat, looking at what that data shows and then going back to Malaysia and drawing some conclusions and getting the bigger picture rather than just focusing and putting the --

SCIUTTO: That is the whole investigation of why this happened and you're still at the stage, though, where is the plane, right?

KAY: Of course, the where, the what and the why. We are still on phase one. Let's not go to phase three before we understand what phase one is and phase two which is the what when new get the black boxes.

Well, they certainly could be more sharing on all side and we will have another opportunity to speak about this.

Thanks very much to our expert panel again.

Now, we are learning, in another international story that we are following, that the U.S. is planning new military exercises near Russia in response to the situation in Ukraine. Could this show a force and draw the U.S. closer to a confrontation with Moscow? We will ask an expert after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: There are new details today on the crisis in Ukraine. CNN has learned a company of about 150 U.S. troops will soon be training in Poland. Another company similar size heading to Estonia, both nations bordering Russia or near Russia which is caused concern among U.S. allies in the region because of its recent military movements in and around Ukraine. The exercises will take place in the coming weeks as part of an ongoing operation.

So now, let me bring in Angela Stent. She is professor of government at Georgetown University, also the author of "the limits of partnership U.S./Russian relations in the 21st century.

Angela, thank you so much coming on. You know that relationship between U.S. and Russia so central to this crisis. Let me ask you about these latest developments, these training exercises. Small number of troops, but to be rotated in and out, a continuing rotation there. What kind of message does this send from the U.S., from NATO to Russia?

ANGELA STENT, PROFESSOR, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: Well, I think we need to reassure our allies. Clearly the Baltic States and Poland, you know, have been very concerned that 40,000 Russian troops that amassed at the border with Ukraine, they say that they have been conducting exercises the past few weeks. At what point President Putin told chancellor Merkel that he was going to start withdrawing those troops, absolutely nothing has happened.

So, there poised said, there is a great -- the tension is rising, an agreement was signed on Thursday that is not being implemented in the east of Ukraine. So we really need to show Russia that we stand by our allies and that we are very concerned about what is happening there.

SCIUTTO: Does 300 troops split between two countries send that message compared to the 40,000 Russian troops off the eastern border of Ukraine?

STENT: Well, at least it shows that we are going to have a more or less permanent presence for foreseeable future by rotating them in and out. Before that we didn't have those kinds of forces there. So, it's a message. It is not a proportionate message, but it is the beginnings of, you know, making sure that we do have troops there most of the time.

SCIUTTO: Sure. And at fair point, because there are also going to be more air patrols, more ships as well, part of a broader plan.

I wonder if I can ask you because you reference this agreement that the U.S./Russia, EU and Ukraine signed in Geneva a short time ago on Thursday to deescalate tension that require this pro-Russian militants to vacate these building. They have seized. They haven't done that yet. Did you see this pack is holding up?

STENT: I don't. I'd be very dubious. Not only have they started to vacate the buildings but they are strengthening their presence in some of them and want to hear snob (ph) that they are cutting off internet access that they are really strengthening their control there.

The question about this agreement is who is supposed to implement it? And it's not clear. The separatists in the east saying they won't stand down until the government in Kiev stands down too because they say it's a legitimate government.

So absent some other group of people or force going there, and making sure that these separatists vacate the building, I'm not sure how that is going to happen.

SCIUTTO: Angela, broadly, if I can ask you just briefly, can the U.S./Russia relationship recover from the events of these last few weeks in Crimea, in eastern Ukraine or is this permanently damaging?

STENT: Well, I think it's certainly damaging for the foreseeable future and I'm sure for the rest of President Obama's term in office because this is a relationship that wasn't in good shape before the Crimea events happened. Remember, Mr. Putin gave political asylum to Edward Snowden last summer and two days ago, Edward Snowden appeared on a show. So really flaunting the fact he is still there.

So, I think it's going to be very difficult to recover. That doesn't mean that at some point in the future there won't be attempts made to improve it. But I would say that we would still be working with Russia on issues like Syria, Iran, the arctic, post 2014 Afghanistan. So there are areas where we have to work with Russia, but it's going to be much more difficult.

SCIUTTO: Right. Let's hope those areas of cooperation keep up.

Thanks very much to Angela Stent, professor at Georgetown University.