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Crisis in Ukraine; Nigerian Abduction; Flight 370 Search Reset

Aired May 05, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. I'm Martin Savidge, in for Brooke Baldwin today.

It has been weeks now since more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls were abducted. And the terror group that took them is finally claiming responsibility. In a rambling and absolutely repulsive hour-long video, you hear the chilling claims from the leader of the militant group Boko Haram.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah. There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He command me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: The international outcry centers on a Twitter hashtag appropriately titled bringbackourgirls. This page belongs to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who became the face of education for girls around the world after she was shot by the Taliban.

People around the world have now joined the calls for these 223 girls to be released. But the Nigerian government seems no closer to finding them.

Let me bring in now Emeka Daniel.

Four years ago, your father was abducted while on his way home from work in Nigeria. He was shot and almost died and was only released because your family paid a ransom. And I'm wondering how awful that was for your family.

EMEKA DANIEL, FATHER WAS ABDUCTED: It was a very difficult situation.

You can't sleep. You can't eat. And up to today, I'm still hearing the voice of my when she was crying and my siblings. So, I really feel for these mothers that lost their daughters. It's -- I can't -- you can't really begin to understand what they are going through until you're in that situation. So, this event, this occurrence is like it's a personal thing for me, because I have been through it. I know how it feels.

SAVIDGE: And that's why it's so important to talk to you, because you are the closest link to really understanding in some way. You lived in Nigeria for many years.

DANIEL: Yes.

SAVIDGE: And when you hear people saying that the kidnappings like this are just another day in Nigeria, what do you say to that?

DANIEL: I said, no, it's not. It can't be another day in Nigeria. This cannot be our new normal. Something has to be done.

We have got to come together and fix this situation. When this first happened, I was talking about it. And what I was hearing from my friends and from other people was like, why do I care, that doesn't Nigeria care about its citizens. Nigeria is done. Nigeria is going to disintegrate.

And I refused to believe that. I told them, no, we have to fight for Nigeria, we have to fight for our freedoms. We have to fight for to free these girls. We can't let this be the new normal. We can't let this situation -- like every day in Abuja is one bomb after the other. This cannot be the new normal.

Let us come together and fix this issue. Let the government do something about it. Let us provide security for the citizens. If we can't guarantee the security of young girls, what hope is there for the nation?

SAVIDGE: I agree with you. Yes.

So, you have two sisters, I know, that are still in Nigeria. And there are reports that some of these girls were being sold as child brides for just $12. What does that say about the treatment of girls, women in Nigeria?

DANIEL: That says a lot.

That says how -- this shows how much we value our women. This shows how much we are willing to protect our women. I mean, this have happened in April 14, and it took -- it took up until this past weekend for something to start being done.

It took a rally for the people in Nigeria to start moving to see how they can find these girls. Women are the future of the world. Without women, men don't exist. We have to take care of our women. We have to protect our women. We have to give them a brighter further. We have to let young girls realize that they can grow up and be safe, they can grow up and achieve their dreams without being scared of being kidnapped or raped or assaulted. We have to give them a brighter future.

SAVIDGE: I know that you were at the rally in New York. It was held on Saturday.

DANIEL: Yes.

SAVIDGE: And there are lot of people of course now watching this story, focusing on it that are outraged.

And I'm wondering, how can people far away help?

DANIEL: Well, we have the Facebook group Rock a Crown 234. You can reach us out there.

And we believe that we should all -- we should all -- all come together and try to bring up different ideas and different solutions to this issue, because this doesn't just affect Nigeria. This affects everyone else all over the world.

People are thinking, this doesn't affect my country, but I'm telling them terrorists -- terrorism, terrorists didn't grow -- didn't just wake up one morning and decide to become terrorists. These guys, it takes years for them to decide to go out there and commit these atrocities.

So we have, as the world, as the world, we have to come together and try to find a solution to this problem. We can start by creating jobs and by educating the masses. We should do what we can to let people realize that we care about them, to let the poor man realize we care about you, we remember you, we are going to fight for you.

So, you can reach us out on our Facebook page Rock a Crown 234. We also have a Twitter page, #rockacrown234. And just show your support. Tell us your ideas, what you think should be done. Let us all come together as citizens of the world. Let's come together and find a solution to this problem. Let's not just leave this just to the Nigerian government. We should all come together.

(CROSSTALK)

SAVIDGE: I'm in total agreement. You cannot let it be. It will only get worse.

DANIEL: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

SAVIDGE: Emeka Daniel, a man who knows the horrors of kidnapping through his own family's ordeal, thank you very much for talking to us.

DANIEL: Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity.

SAVIDGE: The next phase in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will be more difficult and it's going to be a lot more expensive, some $60 million, all that for a search with a serious question, or a question mark, I should say, over it.

We have just learned now that officials are going back to the drawing board. They're rechecking the information gathered since the beginning of the search.

CNN's Will Ripley is in Kuala Lumpur with more on this expanding search area. WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Martin, the situation right now is, they need to bring in more equipment to assist the Bluefin 21 in this newly expanded search.

Let me put this in perspective for you. So far, during 18 dives, the Bluefin-21 has covered fewer than 200 square miles. But this newly expanded underwater search area off the coast of Western Australia is 23,000 square miles. That's a huge area to cover. The Bluefin-21 cannot do it alone.

And there is very limited technology. The search chief, Angus Houston, says you can count on one hand the number of devices that exist on the planet right now that can do this kind of work. So the experts have a lot to decide when they get together on Wednesday in Canberra, Australia.

They're going to sit down and try to figure out which assets can most effectively be brought in and used to cover this newly expanded search area. And getting those assets in could take weeks or even a couple of months.

But, before they do that, there's another thing that needs to happen. The team of experts, many of whom were right here in Kuala Lumpur in the initial days and weeks after the plane disappeared, that team is now going down to Australia, where they will once again go through all of the data that they have, everything from the satellite handshakes to the possible pings underwater, to even observations made during the visual search.

They're going to do the math, perhaps do some more simulations to try to determine if their best educated guess still places the missing plane in the Southern Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia. You need to have a little bit of skepticism here. And it's a good idea to reevaluate the data. Even the search chief admits that.

He says the reason is simple; 4.6 million square kilometers have been searched so far. There have been more than 300 flights, more than 3,000 flight hours, 29 aircraft, 14 ships all searching, and so far no sign of the missing plane -- Martin.

SAVIDGE: Will Ripley, thank you very much.

All right. This new expanded search area is about to move into never- before-chartered waters, territory that Australia says will make things a whole lot tougher.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WARREN TRUSS, AUSTRALIAN DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: We know that the water is very deep. And for the next stage involving sonar and other autonomous vehicles, potentially at very great depths, we need to have an understanding of the ocean floor to be able to undertake that kind of search effectively and safely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: The modern term is a reset. Back in the old days, we would say you go back to the drawing board.

Let's talk about all of this with CNN safety analysts David Soucie and Jeff Wise.

Gentlemen, good to see you both.

(CROSSTALK)

SAVIDGE: A team is now being set up to look into the resources that will be necessary for this new task.

Jeff, what do you think? And let's also -- what kind of timeline are we talking about here? And it goes way beyond the Bluefin, I take it.

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I just can't really emphasize how bizarre this search has become.

You know, you remember back in March, when they started conducting these aerial searches of the ocean, and you remember the prime minister went before Parliament and said that he was very excited about this, the first promising lead that they had when they spotted some debris.

And it seemed, well, we have got this Inmarsat data. Now we have this debris on the surface. We are very close to finding it. Well, of course, it turned out that debris was not anything. And then the next bunch of debris was not anything.

And they wound up searching a huge swathe of ocean and then another swathe of ocean, and each time justifying it based on their analysis of Inmarsat data. They wound up sweeping a huge arc, hundreds of miles long, over the open ocean. They finally wound up at this place where they are now. I don't know why -- what justification they would have for this thinking that this political swathe was better than any of the others that they have deemed worthy of investigating before.

They were torn out of -- the pinger battery was about to die. So, they put the towed pinger locator in the water, and lo and behold, they detected something, that they got optimistic about that. Well, that didn't turn out to be anything.

(CROSSTALK)

SAVIDGE: It's been a series of that, gentlemen.

And, David, I want to bring you into the conversation, because that's exactly -- we felt so confident -- or officials seemed to imply that they were so confident this was the right area. And now they are going to back and review the satellite information and whether it has been -- I think the quote was accurately interpreted.

To me, that makes you wonder if they know anything about where this plane may be.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, I still am confident in the fact that the pings that they did find were pings. Jeff just said that he didn't think that they were valid. But I do.

I still do, because I can't -- I have not been told by any scientist, anyone else as to what those pings could have been, what they were coming from or what they were not coming from, whether it was a submarine. We have ruled that out because there is nothing else that does that on a submarine. We have ruled out pingers that would be on whales, turtles, whatever else. There's nothing else would have made those sounds.

So, I'm still confident that it is that pinger. Whether it's at the right frequency or not has nothing to do with it. We have had three other instances where the pinger locator or where the underwater locator beacon had changed frequencies based on a cracked piece inside the unit itself. So, those are -- it's very possible and probable in my mind that the pingers are there. So, why are changing the location?

(CROSSTALK)

SAVIDGE: It's pretty clear that they -- they aren't in the place where they thought. In other words, they would have searched that first. It wasn't like they were holding the good spot to the end, so it wasn't where they thought.

SOUCIE: No, what they did was, they went for the center ping. They had all these pings spread out; they went for the center ping because they had nothing else that could go to the northern ping, which was the most likely -- where it went for two hours.

They didn't have the equipment out there. What are they going to do, just say, well, we will pull this out of the water and head back to the -- head back to bay? They're not going to do that in the middle of the heat of this. So, what they're going to say is, this is the best opportunity we have based on the tools we have, based on the information we have.

So, they stayed there and they searched. And they talked about mowing the lawn. But you look at the pattern of that thing, it's not mowing a lawn. If it is a lawn, it is a very funny-looking lawn, because they didn't do a very good job of screening that area at all, in my estimation.

So, then they come back and now they're going to have to figure out. What we don't want to do is get caught going out there and not have all the tools we need, because, as you go further north, it gets down to 7,000 meters in some areas.

SAVIDGE: Jeff, do you think they will find it eventually?

WISE: I -- the longer that they look in the southern ocean and don't find a single piece of floating debris, nothing on the seabed, I think we have to raise to some serious -- the longer we look in the southern ocean and don't find anything, I think the lower the probability is that it is in the southern ocean, frankly. And you're going to spend a year looking for something? Who is going to pay for this? SAVIDGE: Well, we have to find it, obviously, of course, for the sake of the families, and for the sake of flying in the future to make sure there was no fatal flaw.

Thank you, gentlemen.

(CROSSTALK)

SAVIDGE: It's not going to be -- I'm sorry. But it's not going to be the last time we are going to talk about this. We will come back and do it again. I have got to leave it there. Thanks.

WISE: Thank, Martin.

SAVIDGE: Does Russia want Ukraine wiped off the map? That is of course the fear of the Ukraine's leader. We will speak with a former ambassador about the crisis.

Also ahead, during the NBA playoffs, the best game might be off the court, the fight to see who will own the Clippers, while the NBA tries to take away control. Donald Sterling isn't the only member of his family who wants to keep the team.

And, then, hate paying fees to check your luggage? Wait until you hear how much money the airlines made thanks to you and your bags in one year.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAVIDGE: The temporary leader of Ukraine is warning now that Russia wants his country gone.

I think the word that he has used in the past is eliminated. His warning follows the sudden migration of separatist killing into the large city Of Odessa. And that is a long way from the border region with Russia.

Reports from that region say Ukrainian troops appear to be moving more assertively now, trying to stop what is happening. Russian troops, about 50,000 of them considered to be elite fighters, are revving their engines at Ukraine's borders. And they are posing a possible threat of invasion.

So let's talk more about that.

With us now from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ambassador Nicholas Burns. He's the former State Department spokesman.

And, sir, thanks very much for joining us.

NICHOLAS BURNS, FORMER UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR POLITICAL AFFAIRS: Thank you.

SAVIDGE: We are getting reports of Ukraine, I don't want to say like stiffening their backbone, because that makes it sound like in some way they have been cowardly here, but that they are at least now offering more resistance, pushing back.

If that is true, do you think the trend is going to continue? And how might this threat of buildup of Russian troops on their border impact?

BURNS: Well, the situation in Ukraine grew ominously worse over the last four or five days because you saw two things happening. You saw the Ukrainian government begin to try to take back some of their own property, the municipal buildings, the other government buildings that have been taken over illegally by the armed Russian gangs.

And you have seen that produce further violence and even death in some cases. You have also seen, I think, an increase in Russian government activities in trying to instigate violence against the Ukrainian government, so more armed men taking over town halls in more cities.

In Eastern Ukraine, you have now seen the violence go to Odessa, major Ukrainian port on the Black Sea. And so this situation is certainly deteriorating. The Russian government, I think, at this point is threatening to intervene more to intimidate the Ukrainian government than anything else.

It may be that Putin's design here, his strategy is to bring down Ukrainian authority from within through these Russian armed guards, rather than have the tanks roll across the border. But if violence continues, and if Putin claims, can claim that ethnic Russian rights are being abridged in Eastern Ukraine, it is certainly possible that those tanks could roll across the border at some point in the future.

SAVIDGE: All right, well, let's talk a little bit about the runs buildup on Ukraine's border. The Ukrainian army is by far outgunned.

But we also have NATO. That's of course the Western alliance created more than 60 years ago to answer threats from Moscow. Is there anything at all -- and I realize Ukraine is not a member of NATO, but is there anything at all that NATO could do?

BURNS: I don't think you're going to see -- in fact, I'm quite sure you will not see the United States or NATO forces with the Americans in charge, of course, trying to confront the Russian government over Ukraine.

There is no security commitment that NATO has to Ukraine. Ukraine is a partner nation. It cooperates, but it's not a member, number one.

And President Obama, as well as Chancellor Merkel of Germany, they met here in Russia on Friday, have very clear that the military option is not there. And that's a wise decision. We don't want to see a clash between the United States and Russia in Central Europe over a country that is not formally part of NATO.

On the other hand, NATO can and should do what it can to protect its current members that lie close geographically to Ukraine, like Estonia and Latvia and Romania and Poland. You are beginning to see that happen. But that's not been any consensus, particularly with the European members of NATO, that we should that in a significant way. And that's been a weakness I think of the Western response. SAVIDGE: And, Ambassador, while I have you, I want to talk about something that is not often focused on in this particular crisis, and that's money, or more to the point the economies of Western Europe, because we know -- you mentioned the meeting that took place between Germany's leader and President Obama.

Germany has very strong economic ties with Russia. And I'm wondering is there concern that somehow this -- if it spirals into a shooting war, it already is, but a bigger one, would that affect the economies of Europe?

BURNS: Well, I think, if President Putin were to send Russian troops en masse across the border into Eastern Ukraine effectively to dismember Ukraine and divide the eastern and central and western parts, then you're going to have -- you will see stronger sanctions from the United States, Canada and Europe.

The United States is willing to go stronger sanctions. It wants to do so in concert with the European allies. And those European allies have been resistant because they are dependent on Russian natural gas. They have large manufacturing, export and import contracts with Russia. There would be an economic cost to Europeans.

What the Europeans have to calculate, however, is, by their inaction, are they encouraging President Putin to go further? That's my concern. That's the concern of a lot of people.

SAVIDGE: Sure.

BURNS: Toughness now on sanctions might prevent President Putin from going further.

But if he sees no cost, he might be emboldened to go all the way in Ukraine and divide the country itself. So European passivity here has become a major drag on the United States and on Western policies.

SAVIDGE: And, real quick, we're -- we are out of time. But do you think that it would end with Ukraine?

BURNS: No. You can't be sure. If President Putin were to be able to go into Ukraine unfettered, he might just try to destabilize Moldova, for instance, and so the time for toughness has come with economic sanctions, and that's where the Europeans need to make a big decision.

SAVIDGE: Ambassador Nicholas Burns, thank you very much.

BURNS: Thank you.

SAVIDGE: In other news, the Los Angeles Clippers took care of business in the first round of the playoffs, but the NBA's push to get rid of the team's apparently racist owner, that could take a lot longer, and it could become much messier.

And then, according to some reports, kidnapped Nigerian girls are being sold for as little as $12. The Nigerian president has reached out to the Obama administration for help, so what resources is the U.S. offering? That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAVIDGE: The Clippers head into game one tonight in the second round of the NBA playoffs. They're going up against Oklahoma City, but who runs the Clippers? There is the mystery for you, at least for the future.

Owner Donald Sterling has been banned for life from the NBA after making racist comments. Commissioner Adam Silver said the league will work with Clippers management to appoint a new CEO.

But there is another piece of this puzzle, and that is Sterling's estranged wife, Shelly. She co-owns the team, and threw her support behind the commissioner's plan. But Mrs. Sterling could stand in the way of selling the team.

The NBA's commission said that the sanctions against her husband do not apply to her.

Here now to discuss is CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin.

And, Sunny, Shelly Sterling approved of finding a new CEO, but as team co-owner, she could also stop the sale, couldn't she?

SUNNY HOSTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, it's unclear right now, because we know that the team is being held in this family trust. We don't know the percentage of ownership.

We don't know how much Donald Sterling has. We don't know how much the children have. We don't know how much Shelly Sterling has. But what we do know, as you mentioned, Martin, is that she is a co-owner.

And I have always said, since this story broke, she is a real player here behind the scenes day in and day out. And now we're seeing her sort of take her place, step forward. She's going to gain. She's weighing in on the decision of this new Clippers CEO.

Bottom line is, I really do believe that she is someone to watch. Is there going to be some sort of legal maneuvering if the NBA owners vote to oust Don Sterling as the president, as the owner? Absolutely. I think that she is the one to watch.

SAVIDGE: Well, the mayor of L.A. has publicly stated that he thinks that Donald Sterling will not sell and that he will drag this out. What happens then? What if Mrs. Sterling does want to sell, as co- owner?

HOSTIN: Yes.

SAVIDGE: Can she help facilitate that? It gets really complex.

HOSTIN: It gets so complex.

We do know that Donald Sterling and his wife, quite frankly, use lawsuits for sport. We know that they are litigious. They have filed lawsuits against his ex-mistresses. They have sort of a cornucopia of legal options before them.

If they get divorced, this could be tied up in divorce court, family court. If Donald Sterling wants to sell, but she doesn't want to sell, perhaps she takes him to court, thus more lawyers, more judges involved. Perhaps they sort of file suit before the vote. Perhaps they file an injunction, saying, uh-uh, you can't do anything until this gets sorted out.

Perhaps they file an antitrust suit. Martin, I can go on and on and on. I suspect that we will be seeing his legal hand very, very shortly.

SAVIDGE: And, quickly, just how long potentially could we be talking about for all of this to go forward?

HOSTIN: We're certainly talking about years. I mean, you could really tie a process up in litigation for years and years and years.

SAVIDGE: Wow.

Sunny Hostin, thank you very much.

(LAUGHTER)

HOSTIN: Thanks, Martin.

SAVIDGE: The world was slow to take notice of the more than 200 girls stolen from a Nigerian school, but the ranting of this madman makes their plight impossible to ignore. Is there anything the U.S. can do to bring them home? We will go live to the White House just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)