Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Official: Shinseki On "Thin Ice" With Obama; Navy Official: "Pings" Not From Flight 370; NTSB: Passenger Jet And Cargo Plane Came Within A Quarter Mile Of Each Other; Brad Pitt Attacked At Movie Premiere

Aired May 29, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): That equates to ten separate clues and we're racing to the next one.

(on camera): All right, he just tweeted that the money is right near the Golden Gate Bridge and we'll be there in just about a minute.

(voice-over): And that's where we find Izzy Miller.

IZZY MILLER, FOUND HIDDEN CASH: Hello.

SIMON: With a crisp bill in hand.

MILLER: I just rolled out of bed and I saw the tweet and ran down here and somehow managed to be the first person.

SIMON: The envelope wedged in this box.

(on camera): What do you think about what he's doing?

MILLER: I think it's awesome. It's a totally fun thing to do and the fact that he's doing it in a philanthropic and charitable mindset makes it even cooler.

SIMON (voice-over): It's old-fashioned cash and San Francisco tech coming together for a noble purpose. Dan Simon, CNN, San Francisco.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Good luck, Twitterverse. I'm Don Lemon. Thank you for putting up with me. The next hour of the CNN NEWSROOM with Ana Cabrera begins right now.

ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Ana Cabrera in for Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me. Let's begin this morning with that VA scandal. It is still growing. Outrage is boiling over in Washington and beyond. There's a new interim report straight from the VA inspector general that details even more shocking failures at the Phoenix VA facility. The 1,700 veterans waiting for doctors' care. They were never scheduled for an appointment, so they weren't even put on a wait list. The fear is they were simply lost in the system, perhaps forgotten. For those who did make the wait list, they had an average wait -- an average -- of 115 days for their first appointment.

We also learned the investigation has widened yet again to include 42 VA facilities now under investigation all across the country. This report released just yesterday came as VA officials wept to Capitol Hill for a real grilling from lawmakers. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How you can stand in a mirror and look at yourself in the mirror and shave in the morning and not throw up.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's unforgivable.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's question about destruction of documents and you don't even know who did it or their motive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is nearly a decade of excuses.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The house is on fire, and nobody's going to survive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of you, I think, got to find something else to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Of course, at the center of all of this, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, a man described by White House officials as, quote, "on thin ice" with President Obama. More high-profile members of Congress are now calling for his resignation and among them, Senator John McCain.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I really believe that General Shinseki should review, in his own mind, whether he can adequately serve the country, carrying out the responsibilities given the things that have happened on his watch.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Now, it's not just Republicans anymore who want to see Shinseki step down. Democratic Senator Mark Udall from Colorado tweeted "In light of IG report and systemic issues that Department of Veterans Affairs, Secretary Shinseki must step down." And that was followed by a handful of other Democrats then calling for Shinseki's resignation.

Joining me now, CNN senior investigative correspondent, Drew Griffin, who of course, broke this story. So Drew, tons of calls now for Shinseki to resign. Is that really going to fix what seems to be this system wide crisis at VA hospitals? DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ana, there's two crises going on here. One is very much political, and the other is the administration of the VA itself. The political crisis, I feel, is only going to get worse as more and more details emerge, not just from Phoenix but now across the country at these 42 other hospitals being investigated.

And each time those details emerge, you're going to have more calls for the secretary, Eric Shinseki, to resign. So if you want to get beyond the political crisis, I think that is why the White House is signaling that Eric Shinseki is on very thin ice.

As for the VA, it has shown it can't manage itself. It appears there needs to be some kind of a change in the way it operates. Do you trust that to the people who got us into this mess, or do you bring in somebody else? And I think that's what the White House is now trying to weigh.

CABRERA: Everybody wants to see somebody held accountable for all of this. At least if we could blame somebody, it would make people feel better. But then again, critics of those who are calling for Shinseki's resignation are saying, well, if you get rid of Shinseki, then the focus is going to turn to finding his replacement. It could get bogged down in some of the procedural hurdles and all of that. Is that a valid concern, do you think?

GRIFFIN: I mean, it's valid that they're making that, but keep in mind Shinseki has been in that office since 2009. Our indications are, from memos we've uncovered, he's known about these very issues since 2010. This stuff has been quite well known in the VA. The VA just wasn't paying attention.

So now what the politicians are saying, and quite frankly what many veterans groups are saying, is do we trust these same administrators, this same staff, this same group of people who got us into this mess, and quite frankly ignored the mess to lead us out of it?

You know, at some point, if you were turning around a company, Ana, you'd have to say, enough is enough. We do need new leadership to turn around what is obviously a ship that's been going in the wrong direction.

CABRERA: All right, we keep hearing more problems, but not enough solutions right now. Drew Griffin, we know you'll stay on top of this. Thanks so much.

GRIFFIN: Thanks.

CABRERA: Now to a devastating setback in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. The Bluefin-21 has now wrapped up its search mission with no sign of the missing airliner or the 239 people on board. And adding to the pain now, a U.S. Navy expert says the pings that had once seemed so promising are not connected to the missing plane's black boxes. They may have even come from the search ships themselves.

Earlier on CNN, Sarah Bajc, the partner of passenger, Philip Wood, expressed her frustration over the search efforts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH BAJC, PARTNER OF FLIGHT 370 PASSENGER, PHILLIP WOOD": They're not running it like an investigation. The tail is wagging the dog. They made a determination of where they thought the plane went, and now they've force fed all of the information to satisfy that. There are just too many inconsistencies and too much -- I mean, I call it overt incompetence for it to be accidental. I mean, nobody can be so stupid as to make so many mistakes over and over and over again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Will Ripley is covering the story from Tokyo. Will, where do we go from here?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, where we go from here, Ana, is a very slow, painstaking, grueling search. Now that this roughly 330- square-mile area that the Bluefin was searching that they thought these pings may have indicated the presence of black boxes that has turned out not to be the case.

Now this new search area, 23,000 square miles could take a year, maybe longer. They'll have to bring in private contractors to do a lot of this work. Those contractors aren't even going to get to the search area for two months. And then you think about the obstacles, Ana. We've already seen just how difficult it is to truly map out and understand the ocean floor in this area that is really more unknown than the surface of the moon.

Some of the places where these searchers are going to have to look, the water there, more than 3-1/2 miles deep. So if this search has taught us one thing so far, it's that nothing is certain, and that this is going to be a very slow process. Many more months of waiting for closure for the families of these 239 people.

CABRERA: Tough to hear. Will Ripley, stay with us. And let's bring in Thomas, the vice president and group manager at Teledyne Marine Systems, which makes some of the pinger locators that have been used in this search for the flight. Also Mary Schiavo, the aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Transportation Department.

Thomas, I want to start with you. First, are you surprised about this latest news that the pings didn't come from the black boxes?

THOMAS ALTSHULER, VICE PRESIDENT, TELEDYNE MARINE SYSTEMS: No. I mean, that was always a possibility. I think we talked about this over the last couple of months, that the frequency was slightly lower than what is the prescribed 37.5 kilohertz requirement for the aviation pinger. There are a whole bunch of reasons that could potentially be, but there are also other man made sources that could generate that type of signal. So it was an attractive target, let's say, to look at, but it wasn't a definitive target. And so the failure and the lack of finding a real item on the bottom is not necessarily surprising. CABRERA: And lots of time and effort happening and going into this one focused area. Mary, it wasn't just the pings that had led investigators to this area. Are there other reasons that we should still keep looking here or is this a lost cause now?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I wouldn't say it's a lost cause. The biggest reason and the same reason that led the searchers to this area is the Inmarsat data. Right now that's really the only hard data, if you will, that the investigators have. Some people say it's not such hard data, but that's really all there is. Although the Australians have said they are going to perhaps look at waypoints to see what possible routes there could have been. And now with the underwater hydrophones from the nuclear test ban agency. So they're looking at other avenues. But right now the search will still there because of Inmarsat.

CABRERA: As you mentioned, some new technology will come into play in this next phase. Thomas, are we going to have something different than we haven't already seen?

ALTSHULER: Not for a long time. So as they start to bring in a broader area search capability, and that would be using towed sonar systems, deep side scan systems, that process becomes slow. The area expands for surge. It's just going to be the same kind of sonar maps that the Bluefin-21 was generated probably at a lower resolution, but now over a very large area. So the search could go on for months or a year, and it's really an incredibly large area to try to build a map of.

CABRERA: And Will, I want to bring you in for one last quick question. Are you hearing anything about where this search is going next in terms of physical location? Could we be looking at a completely different area in the next phase?

RIPLEY: Well, the Inmarsat data basically gives the search teams this 23,000 square mile area where they believe there's the greatest likelihood that the plane went down. And then Mary also pointed out that, you know, that United Nations network of underwater microphones may have detected some sort of a sound around the time that could have been a plane crashing.

Although as we've seen so many false leads in this case, we have to couch that with the fact that it's very unlikely that the microphone detected a plane crashing, and it could have been a natural event. Nonetheless, you have this team that have been analyzing this data, and it's in this 23,000 square mile that they're going to be searching. They're going to be canvassing, and they're going to be looking for this plane.

CABRERA: It's 23,000 square miles, that's a lot to cover. Will Ripley, Thomas Altshuler, thank you so much. Mary Schiavo, please stay with us because we have another airline-related story. Another close call at a U.S. airport. An Alaskan airlines jet about to land comes dangerously close to another plane. That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) CABRERA: Another mid-air close call involving a passenger jet. The latest near-miss, an Alaska Airlines jet coming within a quarter mile of a cargo plane. Now, this happened on Tuesday in Anchorage. The passenger jet landed safely. Nearly 150 people were on board, but this is just the most recent close call. You might recall two passenger planes came within a mile of each other on takeoff at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport this month.

And then back in April, United Airlines jet taking off at Newark International came within just yards of another plane that was landing. There was another near-miss in Hawaii on April 25th. And a fifth incident, May 10th, at JFK. So this isn't just a perceived increase in these events.

The FAA says there were more than 4,300 near-misses in 2012, and that, of course, is way up from the nearly 1,900 that happened in 2011. Staying with us, aviation analyst and former Transportation Department Inspector General Mary Schiavo. Mary, why are we seeing so many more of these incidents?

SCHIAVO: Well, there's a problem with air traffic controller training and discipline, and mistakes by air traffic controllers, these are called operational errors when you have near collisions in the air or near collisions at the airport when the planes are under control by air traffic controllers. And they've been on the rise for a number of years.

Back in 2009/2010, the Office of Inspector General, my old office, did a study. Some of the report of increase is because the FAA now gives amnesty to air traffic controllers if they will report their own mistakes. But the IG found that aside from that amnesty program, the numbers are on the rise, and they do plane it on training and discipline at the FAA.

CABRERA: So it is an air traffic control problem, you're saying, mostly with training, or is it also with numbers? Do we not have enough air traffic controllers?

SCHIAVO: Well, we have enough air traffic controllers to do the job. The FAA is required to keep, according to federal air regulations, a required number of controllers on the job, both in the air traffic control towers and in the en route facilities. There are a required number, they must keep them.

But there is a need to train a vast number of controllers to replace the controllers that were hired after President Reagan, in the early '80s, fired illegally striking air traffic controllers. Those controllers are retiring, and there's a need for a great number of controllers, but that's another problem.

Turns out that the time to train an air traffic controller has increased in some cases doubled. And the FAA has not been very responsive to Congress and to the Office of Inspector General to explain why it now takes twice as long to train a controller. In some cases as long as three years.

CABRERA: I guess, most importantly, I need to ask how concerned should we be as passengers?

SCHIAVO: Well, we need to be concerned because but for the wonderful equipment called TCAS, the Traffic Collision Avoidance System, these near-misses would have disastrous. So we have wonderful equipment on board, but we also want the human element to contribute. So we need to be worried, but there's not much a passenger can do except obviously stay on major well-known recognized scheduled carriers because in the United States for passenger aircraft, that TCAS is required. It's the law.

CABRERA: Not real comforting, but we appreciate your advice on that issue. Thank you so much, Mary Schiavo. We really appreciate it.

Still to come, Brad Pitt attacked while attending the premiere of Angelina Jolie's new movie and the guy arrested for it, well, he's apparently known for pulling other stunts just like this in Hollywood. Nischelle Turner is following the story for us this morning -- Nischelle.

NISCHELLE TURNER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Yes, he has a long list of incidents dating back two years ago. We'll tell you all about it when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: Brad Pitt appeared unfazed after he was struck in the face at a movie premiere in Los Angeles. It happened when Pitt was signing autographs at the premiere of "Maleficent," the movie featuring Angelina Jolie. Now police say the suspect hopped the barrier and went right for Pitt. He was arrested on suspicion of battery there. Nischelle Turner is with us now from New York with a look at exactly what happened.

TURNER: Well, Ana, it's funny, I was just on television yesterday talking about Emma Watson and her having security detail at her graduation. People thought it was a little bit weird, but you know what? Celebrities do things like that because of situations like this. The man who attacked Brad Pitt has been at this for a while. He calls himself a prankster.

He's a Ukrainian TV host who has also tried his hand at acting. He's been banned from red carpets all over the place, but he keeps showing up, and somehow he keeps getting close, way too close, to Hollywood's a-list.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TURNER (voice-over): It was like any red carpet event. Brad Pitt signing autographs for fans. When suddenly -- a man swings at the superstar. Police say striking him in the face. It happened at the premiere of partner, Angelina Jolie's new film, "Maleficent." When the man lunged, security moved in, quickly taking him down. He was cuffed.

Police identified him as Vitalii Sediuk, a 25-year-old Ukrainian TV host who is notorious in Hollywood for his red carpet-crashing antics. Two weeks ago he was dragged off the red carpet at Cannes when he tried to crawl under actress America Ferrera's dress. He is best known for this, getting slammed himself.

Will Smith took a swipe at the prankster back in May 2012 after he tried to kiss Smith on the mouth. And in 2013, he stormed the stage at the Grammys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel sorry for that, but I know what I did. It's crazy.

TURNER: Explanation from the red carpet crasher himself to HLN's A.J. Hammer right after the Grammy incident. Sediuk saying he took the opportunity because he's a fan of Adele's.

VITALII SEDIUK, ACCUSED OF ATTACKING BRAD PITT: Adele is my favorite singer, so I can go on with Adele. And in the beginning, and I thought, well, I'm sitting in my place. And if I stay here for a while and, like, organize every time they would ask me to believe because I sat probably in my seat. It belonged maybe, allegedly, to Adam Levine. I tried to do that as fast as possible, and then I was kicked out and arrested.

TURNER: But after that, the incident only ramped up and the pranks got bolder. He made headlines earlier this year for getting too close for comfort to Leonardo Dicaprio and Bradley Cooper at separate red carpet events. And now he finds himself back in jail and back in the headlines again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TURNER: Now, at this incident last night, he apparently was in the crowd of fans where Brad Pitt was signing autographs. A lot of celebrities do that at red carpet premieres. Eyewitnesses say he jumped over the barriers, and that's when he struck Brad Pitt. Now, after all of this, Ana, Brad Pitt did continue to walk the red carpet. He didn't do any interviews. He kind of walked the crowd, waved at the reporters and kept going right on inside.

CABRERA: Well, glad to hear he's OK. What about security, though? I mean, this obviously proves, this guy has done it before, and he continues to do it. Something's wrong here.

TURNER: Well, you know, it's tough because there's two sides to it. I don't know if I would actually say something's wrong because as far as covering the event or being on the red carpet, there is security in that area, and there is a check-in place there. So you do have to be accounted for and checked in.

But if you've seen a red carpet premiere, they shut down the street a lot of times. They want fans to come out and see the stars and have it be a big party and fun atmosphere. On the periphery, there's always a lot of fans there and most times celebrities want to be good to their fans. They go across the street and they sign autographs for the people waiting.

The fans there that want to see them. That's what happened here. That man was in that crowd, not necessarily at the premiere. So it's hard to manage what you do in a situation like that. You want the fans there, but you can't check every single person that comes up to the barrier.

CABRERA: Maybe this guy needs a restrain order of some sort.

TURNER: You're right.

CABRERA: He's done it way to many times. Nischelle, thanks so much.

Still to come, House Speaker John Boehner speaking out just moments ago about the VA scandal, and now he says accountability lays squarely with the White House.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)