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All 67 People Aboard Plane and Helicopter Presumed Dead; Flight Simulator Shows Challenges Around Reagan National; German Lawmakers to Vote on Immigration Restrictions; Contentious Hearing for Patel, Gabbard, RFK Jr. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired January 31, 2025 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:30:00]
CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. Recovery efforts on the Potomac River will resume later today at the site of the deadly collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter. Authorities say none of the 67 people on board survived and sources report more than 40 victims have been pulled from the water so far.
Both of these so-called black boxes were recovered on Thursday. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders are already being examined at a laboratory. We're also learning more about the victims, including one of the airline pilots.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LOGAN THOMAS, FRIEND OF FIRST OFFICER SAM LILLEY: I just didn't even put two and two together at all until this morning. I got in my car and had just come from a workout class and was just scrolling through social media for a minute and saw posts about it and just thought there's no way.
[04:35:00]
I thought maybe this person got hacked and that's why they're saying this. But this more digging and realized that it was him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MACFARLANE: Well, first officer Sam Lilley was engaged to be married in the fall. Meanwhile, a source tells CNN there was one air traffic controller working two tower positions at the time of the collision. But we're also told that this is not out of the ordinary.
Well, divers are still searching for at least 14 victims who are believed to be missing. Experts say they're dealing with thick mud and near zero visibility in the Potomac River.
More now on the emergency efforts from CNN's Brian Todd in Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hundreds of first responders continue to take part in a massive recovery operation on the Potomac River following a deadly midair collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and a Black Hawk helicopter.
DISPATCHER: Crash, crash, crash, this is an alert 3. Crash, crash, crash, this is an alert 3.
OPERATIONS: Where's the alert 3?
DISPATCHER: It is off the approach into runway 33. Approach into the runway 33. Helicopter crash.
TODD (voice-over): Within minutes after the fireball was spotted in the skies near Washington's Reagan National Airport, the first emergency personnel arrived to the crash site on the Potomac River, eventually numbering nearly 300.
Crews immediately got into the water in what the DC Fire chief called a dangerous situation.
CHIEF JOHN DONNELLY, DC FIRE AND EMS: I think it's an extremely complex operation. Not only are we only diving in one site, we're diving in two. We're working around jagged metal, which is hard on our divers' protective equipment, and we're working in a contaminated environment that involves jet fuel. So it doesn't get any harder than that.
TODD (voice-over): The president of the Firefighters Association says at one point there were close to 50 divers in the water. Water that had temperatures in 30s and 40s, and they had a lot working against them.
EDWARD KELLY, GENERAL PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIRE FIGHTERS: The swift current was a challenge. Searching the fuselage, there's a lot of sharp objects in the cockpit. So it was a very difficult and risky and dangerous rescue attempt.
TODD (voice-over): All the dive crews are searching in an area where the water is about waist deep and also has pieces of ice and debris floating in it.
DR. BEN ABO, EMS AND DISASTER PHYSICIAN: You have hypothermia to deal with. You have to have dehydration. We all have to deal with all the elements coming together in something that's already very technical, very hazardous, and just truly very dangerous.
STEVE SAINT-AMOUR, PLANE CRASH RECOVERY SPECIALIST: What we have up here is a piece of fuselage.
TODD (voice-over): Salvage expert Steve Saint-Amour has handled more than a hundred operations to recover bodies and debris from plane crashes. He believes the divers in this operation are facing some unique dangers.
SAINT-AMOUR: You have an aircraft that, you know, has, you know, essentially disintegrated and, you know, wherever the fuselage is broken, you know, it's a sharp edge. You know, it'd be like working, you know, in the middle of, you know, a thousand razor blades. The hazard of cutting yourself is significant.
TODD (voice-over): Another challenge, the murkiness of the water.
SAINT-AMOUR: A lot of what the divers are going to be doing is by, you know, tactile, you know, touching and feeling, you know, their way, and that's definitely going to present a problem.
But with that acoustic camera, they will be able to get a really, you know, reasonable image of what it is that they're working on.
TODD: Steve Saint-Amour says at this stage, the divers and other first responders are contending not only with physical challenges, but also with emotional exhaustion. He says in operations like this, with a lot of public attention, they know that people want answers and that puts more pressure on them to complete the recovery.
Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MACFARLANE: Well the collision followed multiple near misses in the airspace around Reagan National in recent years. A CNN analysis shows passenger planes came close to helicopters during their approach to the airport twice in the past three years. The planes took evasive action to avoid collision. And their pilots reported they never saw the helicopters, which flew about 300 feet below them.
In a separate incident, two military choppers came close to each other. Helicopters are supposed to follow a specific flight path in that area and stay at or below 200 feet or about 60 meters.
According to flight tracking sites, the Black Hawk involved in Wednesday's incident was flying at that altitude. And it appeared to be inside its designated path before it veered slightly to the west just before the collision.
The airspace above Washington, DC, is one of the busiest aviation operation centers in the U.S. CNN's Jason Carroll went inside a flight simulator and spoke with a flight instructor to get a sense of what conditions may have been like for the pilots on the night of the collision. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON CARROLL, CNN U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm here with Aaron Murphy. He's a commercial pilot. He's also a flight instructor. He has logged hundreds of hours in flight simulators like the one that we are in right now.
And what he's doing is he's put up on the simulation. This is what the approach to Reagan airport would actually look like.
[04:40:00]
Now, this is not a CRJ 700. It's a 737, but it gives you an idea of what these pilots would be, or any pilot for that matter would be looking at on approach to Reagan. Correct?
AARON MURPHY, FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR: That's correct. So as you can see out the window right now, the only way, you know, there's a river beneath us is because of the -- what we call a black hole. There is no definition. There are no lights. We know there's a bridge going across the river just ahead of us here. And that's how we know that's water.
And of course, you know the area flying in here as a pilot, you would recognize you would know already that is a river. But that's what it looks like at night.
CARROLL: When you're training these pilots on approach, what are some of the things that you specifically are telling them to look out for?
MURPHY: Number one, other traffic, which unfortunately is a situation that just happened yesterday. Looking out the window right now, for example, you see how the lights have a bit of a twinkling effect. A lot of that can camouflage other aircraft. The lights within that carpeting of lights, it can be very difficult to see other moving vehicles. And not only that, but then you have moving vehicles on the roadways in the lights.
CARROLL: And so very difficult obviously, to see something like a Black Hawk helicopter.
MURPHY: A hundred percent, yes. It would be very difficult to see an aircraft like that.
This airport is a known hotspot in aviation. So coming into Reagan, number one is traffic. Even though you brief it and you discuss it and you're ready and you've got it sorted out. This is a perfect example of how sometimes things just unfold in a way that you really don't expect.
CARROLL: Even with experienced pilots.
MURPHY: Yes. And if you listen to some of the reports that CNN has done with some -- some other very famous pilots that we have, they have said that they've been into this airport many, many times with helicopters flying underneath them. So it's a standard procedure.
Something was different last night. Something happened that was different enough to bring the airplanes together. The aircraft came together.
CARROLL: Whenever there was an air traffic tragedy lessons are learned. I'm wondering if you think what lessons might be learned at this time.
MURPHY: This is a procedural accident. We need to get deeper into the procedures of how the helicopters are flying up and down the river, and even how the aircraft are approaching and doing that circling approach to land on 33. We need to fine tune that. There's been lots of different situations at this airport. It's a hotspot in the aviation community.
CARROLL: Because of all the traffic.
MURPHY: Many pilots know this already and that's why you have specialized training to fly into that airport for exactly this reason.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MACFARLANE: Now ahead, German conservative lawmakers are expected to side with the country's far right to drastically restrict migration. A live report from Berlin coming up.
[04:45:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MACFARLANE: Germany's parliament is debating a proposal that would drastically restrict migration. But what makes it remarkable are the votes that helped to get it this far. CNN's senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen is joining us from Berlin with the details.
And Fred, with a country facing a national election in less than a month, Germany's opposition conservatives here have broken with what seems decades of precedent in a bold move. Just explain what's happened.
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. It's a big discussion here in Germany. First of all, those who drafted the law came up with the very German title of Zustrombegrenzungsgesetz, which essentially means a law to curb the influx of migrants into Germany.
Now, if you look at the measures themselves, they do appear to be fairly tame, actually. One of the things is to define the curbing of migration into Germany as something of a law here in this country, rather than the managing of migration as it is now. They also want to give more authority to Germany's federal police to try and stop illegal border crossings into Germany as well.
A lot of these things are considered common sense by many people here in this country. But as you correctly pointed out, the big issue here is who is voting for this law. Now, one of the parties that has already voted for the first reading of this law is the ultra-right- wing AfD, the Alternative for Germany, which is considered a right- wing extremist organization in parts of this country. Some of their places in the states of Germany.
What the more left-leaning parties like, for instance, the party of Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrats are saying, the Green Party as well, is that the conservatives have torn down what they call a firewall, where the democratic parties here of this country have decided that they are not going to work together with the AfD to try and push legislation through. That's already led to protests in front of the party headquarters of the Christian Democratic Union here in Berlin.
They are defending themselves. They are saying, look, this is common sense legislation, and common sense legislation does not become less common sense just because the wrong people or people you don't like are voting for it.
Again, this is something that has caused a huge uproar in parts of society. It's also something, quite frankly, that is a big discussion point in German media, in German society. And as you put it correctly, it comes just a couple of weeks ahead of a very key election here in this country, where, of course, the position of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is very much at stake, and Friedrich Merz, who leads the conservative faction here in German parliament, put this law through.
It also, of course, comes, Christina, as well, after we've seen a string of high-profile crimes committed by mostly rejected asylum seekers, actually the last of them being an Afghan rejected asylum seeker who killed a two-year-old boy in a stabbing that took place.
[04:50:00]
And that really is what set all of this legislation in motion, with the conservatives saying that they cannot no longer stand by and watch this happen, and therefore to them they say it doesn't matter who votes for their proposal, they just want to see it pushed through at the German parliament, Christina.
MACFARLANE: Yes, and Fred, this motion, as we know, is still being debated. There's been no vote passed just yet. But I have to ask, you know, what this spells for the forthcoming elections, and whether or not this could potentially open the door to future collaborations between the conservatives and the AfD, which I think is something Olaf Scholz is saying and is concerned about.
PLEITGEN: Yes, I think you've hit the nail on the head there. That is exactly what the Social Democrats are saying, what the Green Party is saying as well. They're saying, look, how can we trust the conservatives in the future?
Who's to say that Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative faction here in German parliament, if he's going to get this law passed with the votes of the AfD, who's to say that he wouldn't allow himself to be voted Chancellor by the AfD and possibly even go into a coalition with the AfD? Certainly, he has said that that is absolutely not going to be the case. He also says that just because this law is being passed with the votes of the AfD does not make it a cooperation with the AfD.
Nevertheless, it is something that the parties who are against the conservatives, primarily the Social Democrats under Olaf Scholz, of course, is trying to keep his own position. He says, look, how can you trust this man to be the Chancellor of Germany if you can't even trust him on a vote like this?
So it's definitely one of the things that could very much, if you will, change the dynamics of the election campaigns that are going on in this election that is coming up very soon.
Of course, one of the things that we have to point out is that aside from the economic situation here in Germany, which is in a pretty dire condition, immigration is by far the most prolific topic. And really right now, especially with this latest string of attacks that have taken place, a lot of German political parties are trying to find their footing and define how they move forward in their election campaigns as this issue plays such a huge role among German voters -- Christina.
MACFARLANE: Yes, well, just a few weeks left until that national election. We will watch this space for now. Fred Pleitgen, live from Berlin there. Thanks, Fred.
Now showdowns on Capitol Hill. The U.S. president's most controversial department nominees face sharp questions from members of their own party. The latest on the Senate confirmation hearings next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MACFARLANE: Three of U.S. President Donald Trump's most controversial nominees faced bypasses and grillings during confirmation hearings on Thursday. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tapped to lead health policy, was pressed on his controversial vaccine views by one GOP senator.
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[04:55:00]
SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R-LA): Will you reassure mothers, unequivocally and without qualification, that the measles and hepatitis B vaccines do not cause autism.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY NOMINEE: I'm not going into the agency with any --
CASSIDY: That's kind of a yes or no question. Because the data is there. And that's kind of a yes or no. And I don't mean to cut you off, but that really is a yes or no.
KENNEDY: If the data is there, I will absolutely do that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MACFARLANE: Meanwhile, Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, faced questions about her views of Russian aggression and U.S. government surveillance. She appeared evasive when asked about intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D-CO): Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America? That is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high.
TULSI GABBARD, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE NOMINEE: Senator, as someone who has --
BENNET: Your answer, yes or no, is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America?
GABBARD: As someone who has worn our uniform in combat, I understand how critical our national security is.
BENNETT: Apparently you don't. Apparently you don't.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MACFARLANE: Well, the nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel, was pushed on his vows to prosecute Mr. Trump's so-called deep state enemies, as well as his skepticism of the January 6th U.S. Capitol attack. But he says he opposes some of the president's pardons for January 6th rioters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I concede he has the authority. I'm asking, was he wrong to do it?
KASH PATEL, FBI DIRECTOR NOMINEE: And as we discussed in our private meeting, Senator, I have always rejected any violence against law enforcement. And I have, including in that group, specifically addressed any violence against law enforcement on January 6th. And I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MACFARLANE: And some breaking news coming into CNN. Hamas has just released the names of the three hostages set to be released tomorrow. This is the latest round of hostages freed from captivity in Gaza under phase one of the ceasefire deal reached with Israel.
In response, Israel has been releasing dozens of Palestinian prisoners it's been holding. The Israeli Prime Minister's office says it has received the list, and we will bring you further details of this as soon as they become available to us.
But for now, that is it for this edition of CNN NEWSROOM. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Christina Macfarlane. CNN "THIS MORNING" is up after this quick break. Stay with us.