Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Malaysia Flight Crashes with 295 on Board; Biden Communicates with Ukraine President; Questions about the Black Box.

Aired July 17, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: In terms of the investigation, the investigating authority has to be part of IKO, that's a given. It's a treaty requirement. Separatists will not get anywhere near it. It will have to be the Ukrainian government, the Russian government, they all provide problems. An independent authority, that looks like it will it have to be something --

(CROSSTALK)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm told we're now getting new video of debris falling from the sky. I've not seen in this video. Let's take a look at --

(VIDEO)

QUEST: That could be -- that's very likely to have been or could be material that exploded and then went up into the explosion, and is then coming down from -- with the fireball that we saw, rather than -- or it could be, god forbid, pieces of the plane that followed on, from it falling out of the sky. But my initial thinking would be it's part of the explosion that went up with the fireball.

COOPER: Jeff Wise, aviation analyst and columnist, joining us.

Jeff, it's good to have you with us.

We haven't talked to you yet. What are your thoughts seeing this video?

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: My first reaction was utter incredulity. I mean, the unlikelihood of having the same type of aircraft from the same carrier within a matter of months.

COOPER: You're referencing the other flight --

(CROSSTALK)

WISE: Right, 370. That plane remains a mystery. Still don't know what happened to it, who did what, when and why.

The other thing that struck me is the fact is -- to what Richard touched on earlier -- this plane was -- this daily flight between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur flew the same route every day. And so every day you've got who knows how many planes going over areas where there might be a shooting war on the ground. One of the busiest routes over south Asia goes right over northern Afghanistan, over the tribal areas of Pakistan. It's almost a separate world when flying at 35,000 feet. They have their own rules, their own territory, and you can really ignore what's going on on the ground. Until today, I think, as Richard alluded to, we maybe rethink that idea.

COOPER: I think that's a really important point. We have all flown at that altitude, and it does feel like you are above it all. You're above the fray, you're above the clouds. You're in your own little world there, and it all seems very peaceful and hushed and everything is fine. The idea that a missile could be fired from the ground, hit a plane at that altitude and bring it down is just -- it's stunning.

QUEST: We're not just talking about, you know, long-haul flights from Europe to Asia. You're talking about a vast swath of European low- cost carriers. The Easy Jets, the British Airways jets --

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: All using this route.

QUEST: They're all flying in this area. At last, they were until today. But the Turkish Airlines down to Istanbul. This is a major thoroughfare.

What we now know, of course, they're all stopping. We heard from KLM, Turkish, B.A., Air France. They're all going to avoid that area. But until now, this war, this civil war in eastern Ukraine had been violent and brutal. But there had not been an indication there was the capability, until recent days, of this sort of event. And therefore, airlines continued and regulators continued to allow them to fly these routes over this area.

COOPER: I also wonder if terror groups around the world seeing this are suddenly now going to be emboldened with the idea, if we can get our hands on equipment like this, I mean -- I hate to even bring this up. But you look at ISIS forces in Iraq, which now have access to huge amounts of equipment.

WISE: And that's a very good appointment. Because inside those organizations you have people with the requisite military training to operate this equipment. We have seen this in Syria where rebels have captured the SA-8 and been able to operate against the Syrian air force. So we may see this more and more as terror groups have qualified people in them to operate these systems. And as we were talking earlier, this system would require a certain level of expertise. This is a fairly complicated system. It's a multiple vehicles, multiple radars. You know, it's not something you just pick up and shoot.

COOPER: And I want to bring in again, David Soucie and also Miles O'Brien.

David, you brought up an interesting point right before President Obama spoke, and I think it's important to zero in on it more. I don't want to give it short shrift or let viewers think we're giving it short shrift. You said this was not a missile but this plane came down for some other reasons. What do you base that on? And does your opinion change at all with this new video we're seeing?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: No, it doesn't really, Anderson. This new video shows, as Richard Quest pointed out to me -- at an impact site, you can get debris flying 10,000 feet, 5,000, 10,000 feet up into the air, because of the actual explosion itself. So it's not uncommon to have debris this close to when the accident happened falling from the sky. Any debris that would have happened when the aircraft came down would have closely followed the aircraft and it wouldn't be located at this point, because of the fact the aircraft is moving at 480 miles per hour, so where it breaks apart, those pieces are far from the impact zone.

So what my concern was at first was that we might be jumping to a conclusion, and as an accident investigator, that's the hardest thing not to do, is to jump to the most obvious conclusion, and the most coincidental conclusion. So when you look at this video, though, you'll miss things that are in front of your face. And by looking at this video, not the one showing now, but the one prior when we showed the actual impact point, you can see there is nothing leading to that impact point. In a missile explosion -- and I've asked Spider Marks to confirm this -- that any aircraft he's seen blown out of the sky by a missile of any kind, there is a trial of smoke that leads down to the impact zone. And you don't see that in this video. There is nothing leading down. At first, I thought there was. There seemed to be a dark line above it, but that's just vergara coming from the clouds above, a little bit of moisture. So that is not what happened here, in my estimation. That vessel was not on fire before it hit the ground.

COOPER: So you're basing this really on this one video, saying that because you don't see a smoke trail before the impact on the ground, you don't believe that the plane was in any way on fire or had been hit by any kind of a missile?

SOUCIE: Yeah. If it had been hit by a missile or was on fire before that impact, you would see evidence of that in the air.

COOPER: Lieutenant Colonel?

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yeah.

Hey, David, this is Rick Francona. If I described the warhead to you, what we're looking at is 150 pounds of a high explosion fragmentation warhead, proximity fused, would that change your opinion at all?

SOUCIE: I don't know what you're even talking about. Why would that have anything to do with this?

FRANCONA: No. I'm saying, if what struck the aircraft was a 150- pound warhead that was radar-fused to go off in the neighborhood of it, would that change your opinion?

COOPER: So you're saying, rather than a missile that actually struck the aircraft, and this is an actual device, you're saying --

(CROSSTALK) SOUCIE: You're talking about a delayed explosion that was implanted?

FRANCONA: No, no, no. I'm talking about the warhead --

(CROSSTALK)

FRANCONA: -- on the suspected missile, the alleged missile that would have hit this. It's 150 pounds of high explosion with fragmentation, and it's a radar proximity fuse. So would that give you the same kind of characteristic you were describing?

SOUCIE: Well, it certainly would. First of all, you're talking about implanting the head of that warhead missile into an aircraft flying at 32,000 feet at 480 knots. So it would have to have gotten into the aircraft and exploded later? Is that what you're trying to say?

(CROSSTALK)

SOUCIE: If it explodes in the air, if it impacts the aircraft at all in the air, then it would cause a fire on board that aircraft. There is no way it wouldn't.

COOPER: Rick, you're saying you don't think that's necessarily the case.

FRANCONA: No, I'm not explaining this correctly, I guess. No, what I'm saying --

(CROSSTALK)

SOUCIE: I must not be hearing you. I'm sorry, Rick.

COOPER: Go ahead, Rick. Go ahead and explain what you believe what might have happened with the missile.

FRANCONA: If this was the BUK missile that everybody is talking about, the standard warhead on that missile is set to go off in the proximity of the aircraft, not just strike the aircraft.

COOPER: So doesn't actually hit the aircraft?

FRANCONA: No.

COOPER: It goes off --

(CROSSTALK)

FRANCONA: It's not a kinetic hit. And what -- it's about 150 pounds of fragmentation.

COOPER: And so you're saying --

(CROSSTALK)

FRANCONA: I don't know what kind of damage that would cause to that aircraft, but would that give that kind of signature you were talking about?

SOUCIE: Well, maybe I could compare that to just an engine that has titanium parts. When that engine comes apart -- and let's look at Sioux City, for example. When that engine comes apart, you're sending fragmentation, at least that much, maybe more, but it does explode, it does impact the aircraft. Anywhere on that aircraft, even if it's an impact like you're talking about away from the aircraft and not through the aircraft, it would cause something to make the aircraft go down. Unless it was an electro-magnetic pulse or something that was caused by it, it would have shut down all the electrical systems and thereby the aircraft could have glided down.

But in this case, to me, it's just suspect. I'm not saying it's not a missile, Rick. I'm just saying it's suspect to me, because if there is something significant enough in a missile or any kind of impact to that aircraft, it would have caused some sort of fire on board, whether it was a true impact or whether it was radar exploded like you said. Either way, something to bring the aircraft down would have started some kind of smoke, some kind of fire, if the engines were out, in my mind. Of course, I'm not a military expert such as you.

COOPER: Jeff, your thoughts.

WISE: I wanted to point out there is a bit of a historical precedent here. 1983, a Soviet fighter shot down a Korean Airlines 747. And in this case, you saw the plane stay aloft for a while. The pilots lost control of the tail so weren't able to maintain the correct pitch and went up and down and eventually crash. But it seemed, in that case, to have crashed in one piece.

COOPER: Miles O'Brien joining us, aviation analyst.

What do you make of David's thoughts? And, again, David raises I think the most important point here, that for -- as an investigator, which David is, you don't want to speculate. You don't want to go into it. You don't want to rule anything out at this stage.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. And that's the most important point here. What -- you just have to systematically go through this. We have plenty of evidence -- there was an in-flight break-up here. We have seen pieces of wreckage in other locations that do not -- they're not impacted by fire or explosion. We see that streaming-down wreckage, which is hauntingly similar to the footage you see after the explosion of the "Challenger," which we have all seen many times. So in flight, something happened here. It broke up. Was it an explosion on board or was it an explosion from the ground that came up in proximity?

This is a radar-guided device that is most suspect at the moment, the BUK. Because it has the range to reach that altitude, about 30 miles disk horizontal range. If that particular device, which is designed to explode in proximity, guided by radar, not the heat of the engines. Now, a heat-seeker will go to the engine and you'll get exactly what David is talking about. But if it, in fact, exploded in proximity of the tail, you would not necessarily get a fire on the aircraft, but you certainly would lose control of the aircraft, it would break up in-flight. It would match everything we're seeing here.

But going back to what David said, putting blinders on at this stage is not a good idea at all. I think we have plenty of evidence right now on the ground, and there will be concrete evidence, to find out if the explosion happened internally, it blew outward, or broke up from something -- an external force. That kind of information will be there, will be available.

One thing that's important, we should take a look at a 30-mile disk around where this happened and see if there are military installations there, see if there are BUK missile launchers. They're mobile but, nevertheless, we have a lot of assets trained in this area. We can probably find out where this was -- where this all originated from, if, indeed, it did come from the ground. These are all answerable questions. Very important that we make sure the Ukrainians follow through on their statement earlier to make this transparent, objective and international in nature. It cannot be just a Ukrainian investigation.

COOPER: No doubt about that, Richard?

QUEST: None whatsoever. Absolutely not. It would be unthinkable. I mean, first of all, you're going to have Rolls-Royce involved, because it's their engines. Then the NTSB, because the plane was made in the United States. State of manufacture, state of design. But ultimately, you're going to have to have credibility. And that's only going to come from a major investigation.

One thing, just to say -- Anderson, Delta Airlines has just put a statement, if I may: "Out of an abundance of caution," Delta says, "Delta is not routing flights through Ukrainian air space and monitoring the situation." The flight was not a co-chair with Delta. Delta doesn't operate over the region.

COOPER: It is extraordinary, though. And you know, I fly as much as anyone, and I don't know why I hadn't thought of this previously. But the idea that planes would have been flying over this part of Ukraine all this time for the last three-and-a-half months seems, now, of course, like an extraordinary lapse.

QUEST: When you have a full-scale war like the Iraq war or the Iran- Iraq war or Kuwait, you avoid it. Planes went miles out of the way, to avoid, because they knew military with the most sophisticated hardware was at battle there. But this -- as Fareed was saying, this has been a battle -- small arms fire that's escalated. And people have sort of -- had a few warnings over Crimea when Russia was seeming to be directly involved. But now you have had this part further up in the eastern part of Ukraine. No one has really realized the severity and the sliding slope of violence that's taken place until this terrifically awful event.

COOPER: Our senior White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, joining us with some more information on communication, I think, between Russia and U.S.

Jim, what are you hearing? JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Actually, Anderson,

want to point out the vice president, traveling in Detroit today, just got off the phone, according to the White House, with Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko. He's offering assistance to the Ukrainians, obviously, to determine what happened in that plane crash.

But also want to point out that Vice President Biden has been on the phone with Poroshenko four times in the last couple weeks. He's President Obama's point man when it comes to dealing with Ukrainians. During these series of phone calls between Biden and Poroshenko, they've been talking about these escalating hostilities we've seen on the Ukrainian-Russian border. The vice president well aware of this almost as much as anybody in the U.S. government about what's going on there.

I also want to point out what may or may not have caused the crash of that plane, I did talk to a senior administration official just moments ago, who said, listen, at this point, we don't have anything to add to the remarks made so far by the president. You saw what the president said earlier in Delaware. His remarks about the plane only lasted 38 seconds.

Anderson, I think that indicates that this White House at this point is trying to be very, very cautious. Not jumping to any conclusions and really just trying to get the details straight before coming out with more information -- Anderson?

COOPER: Certainly, as we should.

Jim Acosta, appreciate that.

We're going to take a quick break. We'll have more information about the black box when we come back. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: And welcome back to continuing coverage of the Malaysian flight which has crashed with 295 people on board.

I want to go to our Nick Paton Walsh.

There's been a lot of questions about the black box and about who exactly is in control of the crash site and who will have access to the crash site.

Nick, what are you hearing?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I've just spoken again to the self-declared security council of the separatists and the Donetsk People's Republic. He ran around, checked with the people armed the self-declared prime minister of the separatists and confirmed they do not have the black box. There had been reports on Twitter, suggestions it was in their possession. He said, no, they do not have it, and if they did, they would say so. That's what he's telling us. He said if they do get their hands on it, and he said there are people on the ground conducting preliminary investigations while, they say, under the threat or fear of potential rocket attack by the Ukrainian military. If they get their hands on the black box, they want to give it over to international investigators and they say they want a transparent international investigation about what happened.

But it's key here at this point, we don't know the whereabouts of this black box. That's what everybody is going to need to pore over to work out how on earth this did happen. This man says he's en route to the crash site at the moment.

And just to be clear, this is a key figure around the leadership here. If that black box was in separatist possession in such a way that it could be handed over to international investigators and not just squirreled away in part of the local population, I think it's clear he would know. And at this point, they're saying they don't have it. Where it is, still a mystery -- Anderson?

COOPER: And we should point out, some Russian media had reported about an hour or two ago, it was reported the black box had been found. That's not what this man is saying.

Is it clear exactly, though, Nick, who is in control of the crash site and also how widespread the crash site is? They talk about wanting an international team. Would they allow access to Ukrainian authorities, to Russian authorities? Is there any -- have they had any communication, to your knowledge, with any kind of international body at this point?

PATON WALSH: No, I think, actually, using the media in many ways to communicate what they want. They want international investigators, and that's clearly not the Ukrainians to whom they appeal to assist them in allowing those international investigators here, and doesn't mention Russia in that, too. The relations between these separatists and Moscow have been frayed. They consider themselves abandoned by Russia. A separate story. They want international investigators, they say, and they will provide access.

But they say their people, self-declared prosecutors with the republic -- no idea who they are -- they are at the site of the investigation now, doing their preliminary investigations.

Now, we have seen lots of social media traffic, locals poring over the wreckage, moving around there, pictures from the crash site. This man part of the prime minister's self declared prime minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, a key aid, and a number of cars. They say when they get to the site, they're going to try and find out more information. The key thing, they don't have the black box right now. Although, they appear to have people on the site. They say they're worried about being hit by Ukrainian rockets. No evidence to back that up but that's part of their narrative to suggest they're working under difficult conditions as well. Bear in mind, this is a brutal war where lots of heavy weapons used in the last two weeks -- Anderson?

COOPER: CNN national security analyst, former CIA officer, Bob Baer, joining us, as well. Bob, when you hear about some local prosecutors from a separatist

group headed toward the crash site for their own investigation, the idea of, you know, people kind of combing over this crash site without really any experience in doing this, that raises all sorts of questions.

BOB BAER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST & FORMER CIA AGENT: Anderson, I don't trust anybody in this, the Russians, the Ukrainians, or the separatists. We're not going to get a clear version on it, authoritative version. We clearly need investigators on the ground. But right now, the people who know best what happened there is Russian intelligence. I just don't think we're going to hear an honest account out of them. But I think at some level the Russians are culpable, simply because they're sending so many weapons into eastern Ukraine that, you know, this is almost inevitable this would happen. But the Russians are just not cooperating.

COOPER: You're saying whether or not they were manning this -- a weapons system, whether, if, in fact, it was a missile that brought down this plane. Even if there were no Russian personnel there or involved or pressing the button to launch, you're saying they're culpable because of the entry of the weapons systems into this region.

BAER: Exactly. I don't think the Russians brought this airplane down. I think that's a conspiracy theory we shouldn't entertain. I think when you send these weapons in, sophisticated and trained people, which are clearly coming across the border from Russia, this shouldn't come as a surprise. And what I can't understand is why civilian airliners were flying over this area, which is just a huge error on their part.

COOPER: Certainly seems that way.

And Richard Quest, we have been talking about that here, along with Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona and Jeff Wise, aviation analyst.

Again, the absurdity of the idea of local prosecutors taking taxis or cars to the crash site to comb over the wreckage, that's the last thing you want on a crash site.

QUEST: First of all, it's extremely dangerous. I mean, there are chemicals. There are pieces of giant metal. It is wickedly dangerous, frankly, for anybody not in the most experienced form to be going over the wreckage.

Secondly, you could do terrible damage to preserving the information that's there.

COOPER: Right.

QUEST: The black box will be important in this case, but so will that wreckage. They will be able to tell from that wreckage what happened.

And finally, this is an exceptionally complex area of aviation analysis and investigation. It's going to have to -- even the Ukrainians would be hard-pushed to investigate this under the old regimes. The Russians could do it but there's questions about the transparency of the investigation.

COOPER: Right.

QUEST: So the whole thing is fraught with operational difficulties.

COOPER: Ukraine's foreign minister is expected to speak any moment. We're going to take a short break and then we'll bring that to you live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the Malaysian flight crashing with 290 souls on board. No information yet on who was on board the aircraft. Obviously, the notification of families is a crucial component of all this. And obviously it's made all the more complicated by the international nature of this flight, a flight which left Amsterdam heading for Kuala Lumpur, a flight which obviously had people connecting from other European capitals, as well. An unknown number of Americans on board this flight, as well. Still a lot to learn about the human side of this tragedy, which is why we have been focusing so much on the strategic and the military aspect, exactly who brought down this aircraft, if, in fact, it was some sort of a missile fired at the aircraft.

Chad Myers has more information on who else was flying in this region at the time.

Chad, what are you learning?

MYERS: Just in this little area here, I'll take you into the area, Donetsk and to the red zone. That circle right there, that would be the crash site. This is the Malaysian Air number 17, one of the last pings we get here from flight radar, 24. 21 other planes on this map at this time. I will slide you ahead to right now and we will see that very, very few planes are even close within this area. And at this point right here, obviously where anything happened, 200 miles in radius, not a single plane there at all.

And let me show live what's going on. All the planes that were flying through this air space on 980 or 991, the airways we're talking about, all now well down to the south over Romania, Hungary, Slovakia. The plains avoiding that Ukrainian air space -- Anderson?

COOPER: Still so unimaginable to think about all those planes for so long, over the last three, three-and-a-half months of this conflict flying over that region. Again, just something that really -- internationally, there hadn't been given too much thought to, other than the FAA, which had stopped U.S. planes from flying over Crimea.

QUEST: And the Europeans. The Europeans, along with the FAA, they had stopped people flying or aircraft flying over Crimea and the Black Sea because that a potential battle after the referendum.

COOPER: We're talking three months ago.

QUEST: Right. But this further area north, no one had quite grasped the severity of this. And the pilots I've been speaking to this morning say they have been concerned for some time flying over Ukraine knowing there was a real risk of something happening in that area.

In terms of what happens now, well, this area will be avoided by airlines. We're already seeing that left, right and center. But it wasn't part, Anderson, this wasn't part of the current restricted zone at the moment.

COOPER: Still so many questions to be answered. And there's going to be a lot of finger pointing over the next several hours, couple of days, even weeks as this investigation begins to intensify.