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Erin Burnett Outfront
Malaysia PM Will Not Declare Flight 370 Lost; Malaysia PM: Pings Are "All We Have"; Search Area 90 percent Scanned, No Sign Of Jet; New Photo Appears To Show Stowaway's Footprint
Aired April 24, 2014 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Next, breaking news in the search for Flight 370, the prime minister of Malaysia in an exclusive CNN interview. Is he saying the plane went somewhere else?
Plus, the final texts and e-mails from passengers. Can they still be retrieved even if their phones have been at the bottom of the Indian Ocean for weeks? An OUTFRONT investigation.
And breaking news in the South Korean ferry disaster. New information about why the ship sank. Let's go OUTFRONT.
Good evening, everyone. I'm Erin Burnett. OUTFRONT tonight, the breaking news, a major figure in the Malaysia Airlines investigation finally breaking his silence only on CNN. Malaysia's prime minister today sat down with Richard Quest, his first television interview since the plane disappeared 49 days ago.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NAJIB RAZAK, MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: It's a bizarre scenario, which none of us could have contemplated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Now the prime minister would not confirm to Richard that the plane actually crashed. Richard Quest is in Kuala Lumpur tonight. And Richard, as the search has become, you know, more and more targeted, a lot of people have been saying look are, they focusing too much on one area? Do they actually know where the plane went? I want to play one of the most incredible moments from your interview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NAJIB: This is very, very different from the Air France incident, very different from the Silk Air incident. This is totally unprecedented. What do we have going for us? What is the evidence? The evidence simply lie with the pings, the handshakes that we have analyzed. That's all we have.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: That's all we have, he says, Richard. That's pretty incredible. RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely extraordinary. I was surprised myself that he was -- he was as blunt as that. I thought he might be dressed up with a little bit more of well, the expertise and this and that, all of which is here in KL. But as you and I and Arthur and Jeff and everybody have said on OUTFRONT over the weeks that we've been doing this, take away the handshakes from Inmarsat, take away the pings from the Ocean Shield and you're left with absolutely nothing. And I can tell you, I've had meetings at very senior levels from airline to governmental, everybody agrees the same thing -- Erin.
BURNETT: And Richard, you also asked the prime minister whether he is sure the plane even crashed. I mean, that was also an extraordinary moment. Let me play how you asked it and what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUEST: I ask you again, Prime Minister. Are you prepared to say that the plane and its passengers are lost?
NAJIB: At some point in time I would be --
QUEST: But not now?
NAJIB: Right now, I think I need to take into account the feelings of the next of kin. And some of them have said publicly that they're not willing to accept it until they find hard evidence.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Richard, this is the man who a month ago said the plane, the flight ended in the Southern Indian Ocean.
QUEST: And he hasn't changed his view on that one bit. But he told me specifically, Erin, the words were very carefully chosen, just as much as they were when they used the word deliberate to describe somebody flying the plane, not giving away nefarious or mechanical fault. So the use of the phrase end in the Indian Ocean was very deliberate itself.
He is not going to go to that next stage until -- until there is some evidence that the families can latch on to. Not because he is a naive fool and doesn't realize what the truth probably is, but because as the prime minister of the country that is responsible for the investigation, he believes that is his duty to those people who suffered.
BURNETT: All right, Richard, stay there. I want to bring in Les Abend and Arthur Rosenberg. It was an extraordinary interview. He said to Richard, what do we have going for us? What is the evidence, the evidence is the pings and the handshakes. That's all we have. Let me start with you and this issue with the handshakes.
ARTHUR ROSENBERG, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: First, let me give Richard compliment because I thought that interview was spectacular. The questions were focused, the answers he got from the prime minister reflected the quality of the questions. Now, my largest takeaway on the positive side from this interview was this. When the prime minister was meeting with the Inmarsat people and the other experts to determine a location of the airplane, he said to them and he reported in the interview where is it? And they told him that it was in the location where we're looking now.
The prime minister responded that's basically halfway to the South Pole. Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? And they said we are as confident as we can be. From my take of that from a prime minister, a head of state who has a lot more access to information than we do, I think that's a shot in the arm for confidence that we are looking in the right spot.
BURNETT: All right, let me ask you, Les, because I don't think you feel the same way. He said what evidence do we have? The pings and the handshakes. That's all we have. You now are worried about these pings.
LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I am worried about these pings and this is not my area of expertise so I'll qualify that statement. I'm worried about the fact that after talking to some of our own analysts that are involved with this type of thing that these pings may not be from the black box from the standpoint of the -- they felt that the frequencies should be spot on, and they weren't that doesn't mean that the search area calculated by Inmarsat is not the appropriate search area. It may 23409 be just where the Bluefin-21 is right now.
BURNETT: That's a crucial question. Let me play what the prime minister said to Richard, how Richard asked about the Inmarsat data and what the prime minister then said. Here he is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUEST: Moving to when the Inmarsat data is brought to your attention, did you have any doubts when Inmarsat said and your adviser said we believe now the plane flew for seven hours or so, six and a half hours or so and this is where it went. Did you -- you must have had quite a shocked reaction.
NAJIB: To be honest, I found it hard to believe to begin with. Because how could a plane that was supposed to be heading to Beijing, you know, they could decide that the plane and that halfway to Antarctica, it's a bizarre scenario, which none of us could have contemplated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Richard, do you have any fear there is an overreliance on this data? Look, just because it's the only data doesn't mean it's bad, but it is the only thing they got.
QUEST: You just contradicted yourself in the question, Erin. Because with respect, because it's the only data, therefore there has to be reliance on it. If you strip away that data, you are left with nothing. And if that data does prove to be inaccurate, then you are going back up the chain to 2:22 when the military radar stops -- stops tracking the aircraft. And then you really are, pardon the phrase, without the proverbial paddle because where do you go then? Look, they may have to do that. But at the moment, their confidence is still there both in the handshake because of the way it's been done and the experts who looked at it.
BURNETT: Right.
QUEST: And the pings because of the nature of it.
BURNETT: Now, of course, time is ticking, though, Les, if you're concerned about the black box pings, indeed, whether the pings come from the black box, should they be looking at other avenues?
ABEND: Well, I think, I'm with Richard. I think the Inmarsat data is solid because really, like Richard said --
BURNETT: And you talked to Inmarsat yourself.
ABEND: I have.
BURNETT: You talked about that on the show. They have gone through the wobbles that might have been the plane and why they feel so confident.
ABEND: The performance of the aircraft, the endurance of the aircraft, all that they've gone through. So yes, I'm confident that Inmarsat has led us in the right area or toward it. But it may be a bigger area than is being searched right now. And I had a lot of confidence that we were actually listening to signals from the black boxes. And after speaking to some analysts that it seems to me that this may not be the right frequency and that disturbs me, but then again, I think this airplane is still in the ocean.
ROSENBERG: On the issue of the pings from the black boxes, I'm going to have to disagree with you, as much as it pains me to do that.
BURNETT: Arthur, you traffic in disagreement.
ROSENBERG: I do. I do. I think those pings were right on. I think that the frequency difference, the 37.5 kilohertz, which we're all making a big deal about.
BURNETT: That's what it's supposed to be transmitting on. It came in lower than that.
ROSENBERG: I think that's reflective of the incredible pressure where they were. You're down almost three miles. The temperature variations. I spoke to the same analysts and I walked away with I think they've got it. And when you take the pings from the black boxes together with the Inmarsat data and the radar data, albeit there was some assumptions about performance to the airplane, fuel burn speed, things like that, again, it coalesces right in this area, which is where they are. It's a large area. Give it a little more time.
BURNETT: All right, we're going to be getting in just a couple of moments the details on where they are on the search. Thanks to all three because we do have those breaking headlines crossing -- should be crossing literally any moment. We're going to get new details from Perth on exactly the status of the search.
Plus, passengers and their final words. Can text messages be retrieved from cell phones that have been on the ocean floor three miles deep for weeks? Well, the results of our exclusive OUTFRONT investigation are ahead.
And the teenager who survived a five-hour flight in the plane's landing gear. His father speaks out tonight.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BURNETT: Breaking news as investigators are down to the last 10 percent of the designated search area. So far in that area no evidence of Flight 370. The American Navy's underwater drone on its 12th mission may soon be conducting its last in the area. Miguel Marquez is in Perth. Miguel, what are you learning tonight?
MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we believe that 12th dive is probably complete by now and they're downloading the data and finishing it up. So presumably, they are through very close if not entirely the area of 150 square miles of the area around that second ping. That then raises the question what next. Will they continue to do a little more searching around that area? Are there places they want to get to, or will they move on to another area, or even possibly reset the search entirely -- Erin.
BURNETT: And Miguel, that's just incredible to reset the search entirely. But I guess they have to look at that, because the area you're talking about, it's not just any old area, it's the area that they said was the single most promising area that they have.
MARQUEZ: Right. Yes, although there is the area of the first ping, which is several miles north of there that they could also go to. This is the one they really thought they had it on so there might be other parts of it that they want to look into further. If they have to reset, you're talking about bringing in new gear, new search vehicles, possibly new ships. New individuals to help run all of that. Possibly the Ocean Shield would have to come back, fuel up in port and take on resources and then come back out. A lot has to happen if they have to reset that search -- Erin.
BURNETT: And Miguel, you still are hearing they're going to keep looking, though, broadly in the Indian Ocean. It's a huge space. But broadly in the Indian Ocean.
MARQUEZ: Of course, yes. Look, the prime minister said the entire area of interest is about 700 kilometers by 80. That's about 21,600 square miles of ocean. They have now searched about 150 of that. So they have a lot to choose from. They want to narrow that down as much as possible. But at the moment, they are looking at probably a much wider search if Bluefin doesn't come up with anything in this area, and if they don't decide to go to some other where the first ping was heard just before the second -- Erin. BURNETT: Thank you very much, Miguel. It's incredible how much we don't know. The Malaysian prime minister telling CNN exclusively, you just heard it, he won't even say that MH370 crashed. Something so fundamental unknown and as we search for answers, investigators are still focusing on the pilot and the crew. Sumnima Udas spoke with the wife of one of the flight attendants in this OUTFRONT exclusive.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SUMNIMA UDAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Paris, Frankfurt, London, they have traveled the world together, both working as flight attendants for Malaysia Airlines. But on the night of March 7th, Hasnan missed his bus to work, so Othaman dropped him off to the airport. His last words, I love you.
INTAN MAIZARA OTHAMAN, WIFE OF MH370 CREW MEMBER MOHD HASNAN: Along the way he is holding my hand. Keep on saying that he love me. It's a normal conversation, a normal goodbye, yes.
UDAS: Their 4-year-old daughter still wonders where her father is.
OTHAMAN: She has been asking about her papa every night, every morning.
UDAS (on camera): What do you tell her?
OTHAMAN: Lately I have to strength to tell that papa might come back, papa might not come back. We just pray.
UDAS (voice-over): Now eight months pregnant, Othaman says she can barely keep herself together.
OTHAMAN: If I receive a call on my phone, I was like please, I'm hoping that's him.
UDAS: Hoping because as nothing else, no evidence, no answers.
(on camera): Most Malaysian families of passengers and crewmembers on board Flight 370 have been hesitant to speak up. But now after attending a series of government briefs, they are so outraged, they want someone, anyone listen to them.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The end of the day it's just frustration most of the time because we feel that, like I said, not enough information.
UDAS: Do they look like they're trying to help you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know if I can trust them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can completely understand their need to find answers. However, as I said in the briefing just now, we are looking for the answers ourselves.
UDAS (voice-over): To make matters worse, the families of crewmembers are living with the fact that their loved ones have not been cleared from suspicion, the most scrutinized perhaps captain of the plane, Zaharie Hamid Shah. She met his family at one of the briefings.
SYAFINAZ HASNAN, SISTER OF MH370 CREW MEMBER MOHD HASNAN: They're very quiet, very quiet people. I think they're very emotionally down as well.
UDAS: She says the MH370 crews' families don't believe the captain is responsible. Othaman will eventually go back to work, fly again for Malaysia Airlines. But right now she says she can't even bear the sight or the sound of an airplane. Sumnina Udas, CNN, Kuala Lumpur.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BURNETT: OUTFRONT next, the teen who survived a five-hour flight in the wheel well of a plane. Tonight his father speaks out.
And breaking news off the coast of South Korea. What caused the ferry to capsize.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BURNETT: Tonight a new image is said to show the footprint of the 15- year-old who stowed away in the wheel well of a flight from California to Hawaii. Now, we can't independently confirm the authenticity of the footprint, but this picture was obtained by our affiliate, KHNL. They say that it shows the teen's footprint on the wheel well.
Last night, we showed you these images of footprints on the gear of the same jet. And for the first time, the father of that teen is now speaking out. Revealing why he believes his son, who remains in protective custody tonight, took this trip in the first place, a trip that should have killed his son. Temperatures inside that cramped compartment, which is not pressurized were most likely up to 80 degrees below zero as the jet cruised for six hours at 38,000 feet. David Mattingly is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A stowaway plot that at first might have seemed so daring and so calculated continues to be revealed as ill-conceived and utterly reckless. When a 15-year-old climbed the airport perimeter fence in San Jose, avoided detection for six hours, and hid in the wheel well of a 767, there is still no indication he had any idea where he was going. Only that he was home sick for his family in Somalia.
Mohamed Olad of "Voice of America" spoke to the boy's father today in California, who believes his son will be home soon.
MOHAMED OLAD, "VOICE OF AMERICA": The father believed that the son was -- he didn't know the plane, where it was going, and he was like a stowaway boy who wanted to run away from home, to send his message that he was very sick for home.
MATTINGLY: Perhaps unconscious for most of the ordeal, the teen was clearly not prepared to endure a five-hour flight with little oxygen and sub-zero temperatures. After landing in Maui and regaining consciousness, he was spotted by a startled baggage handler.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He appeared to be disoriented, weak, kind of staggered as he was walking. And, you know, totally disoriented and walked up to one of the baggage handlers that were hooking up some baggage carts out on the airplane.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Flight attendants, please prepare the cabin for landing.
MATTINGLY: The FBI quickly ruled out terrorism, but questions persist about the teen's emotional well-being.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was really shocked.
MATTINGLY: California classmates describe him as shy and withdrawn. His father said he was having difficulty in class. The boy remains in a Maui hospital under protective custody of state child welfare services. With no word on exactly what drove him to try something so desperate and so dangerous. David Mattingly, CNN, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BURNETT: Pretty incredible. You heard, he was staggering and was disoriented, but that's it. He should have been dead. It's a miracle.
Coming up, breaking news off the coast of South Korea. We have the death toll numbers just coming in at this moment and new information about why the ship sank.
And the results of our exclusive OUTFRONT investigation, can the final texts and e-mails from Flight 370's passengers be retrieved from phones that have been sitting three miles beneath the ocean surface?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BURNETT: Breaking news, the death toll from the capsized ferry rising tonight. The number is now 181 people, 121 are still classified as missing. So why did the ship suddenly take on water? We can tell you tonight investigators are now taking a closer look at two things specifically. One, renovations made to the ship last year. A South Korean politician says the ship's owner expanded the top floor, making room for an additional 117 passengers. That also, of course, shifted the center of gravity. They're also secondly focused on cargo.
Our own Kyung Lah is OUTFRONT on a boat in the search area.
And, Kyung, what are investigators saying about two crucial things, these renovations and the cargo?
KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They're drilling down on those two very things, and they're looking at one other thing as well, whether or not the ship may have made too sharp a turn, and then those two items may have contributed to this disaster.
So, the investigation picking up speed. The search here on the water also continuing as the nation continues to grapple with the loss of so many young lives.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LAH (voice-over): The difficult healing process begins in Ansan, South Korea, home to the 325 high school students on board last week's ferry disaster.
Students returned to class this morning for the first time, but outside the halls, a somber moment. The young bodies of some of those who passed were driven by the school one last time. The school's gates now covered with flowers, yellow ribbon, and hundreds of personal messages to their friends and classmates.
One nearby shop owner showing CNN a video of a young man who is believed to have perished on the ferry.
"He was sitting here playing guitar, talking about how important this trip was to him, she says. I feel so bad that I could not be there, all of us. We could have done something."
That anguish turning to anger for many families who pulled a deputy director with the coast guard from his office today, ripping his shirt and punching and slapping him. The focus of their frustration: the pace of their investigation.
Among those arrested: the ferry's engineer. He told investigators that he was not aware of any problems with the ship when it ran into trouble. And today with his hands cuffed and his head down, he maintained that he was with the ship until the end.
"We were ordered to leave," he says. "The ferry was completely overturned. There was no other way to go."
And as the search continues for those missing inside the ferry, one diver telling a gut-wrenching story, of finding a boy and a girl with their life jackets tied together.
The 58-year-old diver says he tried to separate the two, but failed. "I felt as if this was because they didn't want to separate."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LAH: Back here live at the search site where you're looking at is the ferry, which is right above where divers are heading down to try to recover more bodies. You can see the divers in those small boats. We've seen them slipping under the water. It is a very difficult search.
And while this is happening, there were also some crewmembers arrested. The total number of crewmembers now, Erin, is 15, 20 survived. So, only five who survived have not yet been netted in this criminal dragnet -- Erin.
BURNETT: Thank you very much, Kyung Lah.
And I want to go to Chad Myers now here with me in the studio with more.
I mean, why this ferry could have capsized. Obviously, we're looking at the renovations that could have added 180 tons of cargo. Let's talk about those renovations first --180 tons are added to the ship. Show me how that could have happened in a way that destabilizes it suddenly.
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Literally now, you're almost like you're putting a mattress on top of your minivan, and you're going around the corner. You have a lot of weight on top of your minivan.
The difference between this and MH370, though, the fact that we have the captain, we have the crew, we have the piece, all of it together. We're not going have to put this back together like MH370. We will get an answer here.
Now, there could have been a mechanical. The rudder could have stuck one way or the other, the hydraulics could have been wrong with the rudder as the helm has been turned that rudder.
There could have been some center of gravity issue. Here's the center of gravity. Down here lower in the water, but when you start to run the ship as long as they did, you start to use fuel. Fuel is used as ballast.
So, the renovations that were put up on top, we can get right to that full screen, how the renovations look, this is the before, a little lower back here. Here is the after. You see the little bit of extra desk up here. That's all steel. That's heaviness.
BURNETT: So at the same time as they move the center of gravity up, they're running on fuel which is low, that really makes it more precarious, I would imagine.
MYERS: In order to make this work, you have to do something down below the water line to make it stable again. And they probably did. They probably added more water ballast.
A lot of the ships, literally, have saltwater ballast. They fill the bottom of the boat with saltwater and they drive along to keep the boat upright. But it's all a matter of what you can do, how you do it, and if you do it correctly.
We do know that there were renovations. We also know that the containers don't always match up to what should be on the ship. We know that this is what the maximum cargo. This is what the boat is listed for. The ship should have 88 cars, 60 trucks or 247 shipping containers. It had this.
This is the manifest, 124 cars. Now that's a bigger number. But if you come down here and you look at the shipping containers, it's much less. So it's all a matter of weight and where do you put that weight. The higher you put the weight on those cargo containers above the deck, above the water line, the more it wants to tip over.
BURNETT: And also, some people may say the renovations, I get you, could have shifted the center of gravity. But they were made last year. The ferry has gone back and forth a lot.
MYERS: Absolutely.
BURNETT: Why this time? That's where you getting at it come downs to this particular load of cargo, and whether that third mate turned too quickly. The fuel was just too low. All the things combined suddenly.
MYERS: This was not the first turn the ship made. The ship was in route for a long time.
BURNETT: Nine hours or something.
MYERS: It was under way for a very long time. So this ship had made different left turns, different right turns to get into that channel as well. But the six knot current one way and a seven knot current going the other way, depending about it was slack tide, high tide, or low tide, those are things that maybe a third mate, a helmsman who's never been in that particular channel may not have been familiar with.
BURNETT: All right, Chad Myers.
MYERS: But we're going to get to this. We're going to understand this when it's all said and done.
BURNETT: Because we have the wreckage. We're going to know.
MYERS: Exactly.
BURNETT: All right. Well, OUTFRONT now, retired Captain Paul Roden. He's an expert of naval engineering and ship stability.
And, Paul, obviously, just heard Chad. You know, talking about these renovations, low fuel levels, cargo, which was unclear whether it exceeded the limit or not because of the breakdown. Does this add up in your mind to this is why the ferry sank?
CAPT. PAUL RODEN, SHIP STABILITY EXPERT: Yes. Hi, Erin. Thank you.
It does add up. I think you all covered it quite well. In designing a ship like this, a naval architect will use analysis and stability criteria to ensure to a high degree of probability that the ship will be operated safely. Things can interfere with that, such as if the ship is not loaded, according to the stability plan or the loading plan, or if there are compounding factors that would impact the ship.
For example, the ship is going to be designed to sustain threats such as icing or rushing of passengers to one side, or even a high speed turn. However, when you compound these factors, that is when you can potentially run into danger.
BURNETT: So when you hear about a renovation, just take that alone, right, where you see the before and after. All of the sudden, there is a whole another deck added, and it's added at the top. Does that in and of itself concern you? Or is that something that would be common and they should be able to adjust for? Or is that something that just by the nature of doing it, will inherently make that ship more at risk?
RODEN: It wouldn't typically concern me, because you would expect in doing such a modification that other modifications are going to be made in conjunction with that.
For example, they may be adding additional weight down low, as Chad explained. It's a matter of exactly where the center of gravity is. And you can add weight to a ship. You can add it high. But you must compensate to ensure the center of gravity stays in a place that ensures positive stability.
BURNETT: And what about the cargo? You know, when you see a maximum cargo list, is that something that crews really pay attention to? I mean, 3,968 tons. Do they really pay close attention to that, or do think they they're sailing all the time with hey, plus or minus?
RODEN: No, I think crews would be paying attention to that. They know they want to operate the ship safely. So they must load according to safe stability criteria. If that's not followed, that might be one reason why the ship could have run into some danger.
BURNETT: And what about this issue of fuel and that fuel may be low because they were nine hours in. Obviously, they had enough to get where they're going.
But would low fuel be something that, as Chad was saying, they use as ballast to try to balance the ship on the bottom or no?
RODEN: That is typical. The fuel is down low. And as fuel is consumed, that means you're removing weight from down low in the ship.
And it is true that you might typically add saltwater ballast just to ensure that the ship maintains positive stability. But the crew operating the ship must always be monitoring the center of gravity of the ship and ensure it's in a safe condition.
BURNETT: Do you think it's fair to say, then, as a bottom line that this -- I mean, this could have happened in a lot of cases.
You imagine a lot of these runs are routine. These people are, yes, they're professionals. But they're running this ferry every day. This is happening all around the world.
RODEN: I would not say that. Mainly because I know that ships are designed to safe stability criteria. And again, you run into danger when the plans are not followed and in operating the ship, or if there are multiple conditions that as I said would compound each other.
For example, a higher than normal center of gravity together with a high speed turn. Again, together with shifting cargo to one side of the ship. Those could all have a compounding effect of resulting in unsafe operation.
BURNETT: Captain Roden, thank you. Good to have you on again.
RODEN: Yes, thank you.
BURNETT: And coming up, our OUTFRONT investigation. So, could cell phone data solve the mystery of Flight 370? We wanted to know if those last moments when passengers may have texted the truth, will we ever know what those texts say? Well, we have an answer.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BURNETT: And now, let's check in with John Berman. He has a look at what is coming up on "AC360".
Hey, John.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, Erin. Thanks so much.
You know, ahead, we're going to have much more on the breaking news here. The Bluefin searching the waters off the coast of Australia could be finished searching the area targeted by the sonar pings. That could happen any time tonight. We're going to speak with Sarah Bajc, whose partner Philip Wood on Flight 370, of course, and ask her about the frustration of not definitively knowing what happened to him.
Also ahead, when the recovery operation is finished off the coast of Korea, the ship there, it will become a crime scene. We'll speak with two salvage experts about how to get that ship to the surface and unlock the secrets of what went so terribly, terribly wrong. That's all at the top of the hour -- Erin.
BURNETT: All right, John. We're looking forward to seeing you in just a few moments.
And now our breaking news coverage continues on Malaysia flight 370 tonight. Malaysia's prime minister telling CNN exclusively, he is not even sure the plane crashed. So, now, the hunt is on, as he opened the door to -- well, he has his own theories.
One piece of evidence that could solve this is passengers' cell phones. Did the passengers on board the flight try to send text messages? If they did, those final goodbyes to family members and friends could solve the entire investigation.
Forensic expert says personal cell phones could be the key to solving the biggest aviation mystery in history.
Ted Rowlands is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Some of the final messages from passengers on Flight 370 could be with the missing plane at the bottom of the Indian Ocean -- unsent texts, e-mails and photos to loved ones. But could they be retrieved if the plane is found?
CHAD GOUGH, 4DISCOVERY: Absolutely. It's a matter of finding the devices to determine what kind of damage was associated with them and handling them properly.
ROWLANDS: We decided to see if it's possible by putting this cell phone in saltwater.
(on camera): We turned off the transmission on this phone and then tried to send e-mails and texts. Right now, I'm going to take some video of the Chicago River and some stills. And we'll see if those survive.
(voice-over): We took our phone to Chicago's Shedd Aquarium and met chemist Allen LaPointe and fish biologist George Parsons.
Using water from the aquarium's ocean floor exhibit, they prepared this pressure chamber for our phone.
ALLEN LAPOINTE, SHEDD AQUARIUM: We have the salt compositions right. We have the temperature very cold. Not as cold as it will be in the Indian Ocean, but pretty close. And now we've got a pressure chamber.
ROWLANDS: The plan is to leave our phone in water for a week and see if our test e-mail, text, video and photos can be retrieved.
LAPOINTE: It's 2:30 on April 8th. And we're going to place it into our chamber right now. This is going directly into saltwater that simulates the Indian Ocean.
ROWLANDS: Within seconds, saltwater fills the inside of the phone. Eight days later, two of our computer forensic experts come to the aquarium to remove the phone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can definitely see the salt corrosion building up on the outside of the phone. It's just whether or not it made its way all the way inside, built up on top of the electronics and whether or not it corroded the memory chip or the data storage.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's going to overflow a little bit.
ROWLANDS: Because oxygen will quickly increase corrosion, our phone is kept in water.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to keep it in the same water it was in until we can get it back to the lab and get it in a solution where we can begin to clean it up.
ROWLANDS: A few hours later, at the 4Discovery lab --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look how it just ate the plastic.
ROWLANDS: To retrieve the data, the phone is pulled apart. The board, which includes the memory chip, is bathed in an 80 degree ultrasonic cleaner several times. And any tiny salt deposits are chipped away.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the most important part. This is where all the data is held and stored. So this is actually looking pretty good.
ROWLANDS: The chip is then actually removed, using heat.
SCOTT HOLEWINSKI, GILLWARE DATA RECOVERY: It was in pretty good shape. So the next step, quite honestly, is to just pop it into an adapter like this.
ROWLANDS: Eventually, there it is. The e-mails I tried to send, the text message, even the photos and a portion of the video we recorded of the Chicago River. And while our experiment with the aquarium tank is not the same as the Indian Ocean, our experts believe they could also retrieve data from cell phones on Flight 370.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The chips are fairly well protected. We were able to get the data off. I think it would be possible.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BURNETT: I mean, Ted, that's pretty incredible. And they simulate it, that is pretty important to emphasize to people -- yes, it was the Chicago aquarium. But they did that pressure compartment. So, you're looking at the pressure that these phones might be in if they're three miles below the surface.
ROWLANDS: Yes, the pressure was a little bit lower in our experiment because I couldn't ramp it up to the Indian Ocean. But the pressure did make an effect on the phone. They say the key is that chip. And if the chip is still intact, they can pretty much get anything off of it.
BURNETT: All right. Ted, please stay with me. I want to bring Mark Rasch to the conversation, former computer forensic analyst.
And, Mark, you know you just saw Ted's reporting. I mean, this is pretty incredible. Most people sort of dismiss this out of hand. They say why do you want to do this investigation? Of course, these phones would be ruined.
But, obviously, they're able to get this off. They're confident.
So what else can they're going to be able to find? Do you think they're going to be able to get all the text messages, everything?
MARK RASCH, FORMER COMPUTER FORENSIC ANALYST: Well, the first is whether or not there are any messages on the phone.
BURNETT: Of course.
RASCH: And that has to do a lot with what happened on the plane. If people were -- if the phones were on and they were running and people were sending text messages, even if they couldn't hit a cell tower, then that will be stored on the phone. And those might be able to be retrieved, depending on a lot of environmental conditions.
BURNETT: And, Ted, let's talk about those environmental conditions, because we just saw the piece there that corrosion on the phone, which was pretty substantial. Were you able to get everything off that you sent, and particularly some of the last things that you sent off?
ROWLANDS: Everything that we put on the phone, they were able to get off. Except the video, it was a little grainy in portions, that it wasn't the complete video. But everything that we put on, basically, they were also able to retrieve. They were also able to retrieve 85 percent of the things that we thought we had erased going back.
This was an old phone from a CNN colleague that was used for years. They were able to get all of that information as well. It's really incredible. If you think about it, Erin, potentially there are hundreds of these cell phones from the flight and crew from Flight 370. They're almost like these little mini black boxes, if they can be found.
BURNETT: It's incredible, Mark. There's 239 pieces of crucial data. Let me ask you this, Mark -- is there a way to track down where the plane is through these cell phones, if it is at the bottom of the ocean down, three miles, and you have all these phones, with all this data, 239 phones, probably a more than that, a lot of people probably have more than one, and they're down there. Could they find them now?
RASCH: Well, you can't use the phones to find the plane. But you can use the phones to find out where the plane was once you have recovered the phone.
BURNETT: OK.
RASCH: The problem with the phones were, while they were on the plane, there was no place for them to communicate with. And right now at the bottom of the ocean, presumably where they are, there is nothing for them to communicate with either.
BURNETT: So, you're saying you couldn't put a ship like the Ocean Shield on the surface with some type of tower to try to find those phones now.
RASCH: Right, the batteries are long dead, and they're not transmitting, even if they were at the time. They would be long dead.
BURNETT: But you will be able to get the flight path, because you're saying you can sort of backtrack once you do the analysis like Ted just went through.
RASCH: Once you get the phone, if the phone was on, it would have been receiving a GPS signal from satellites in space. That means it knows where it was. If you can tell where the phone was, you can tell where the plane was before it crashed.
BURNETT: Ted, how surprised were you? You say it was stuff from years before. I mean, I am actually frankly shocked. I would have thought that if there was any environment that would destroy data, it would be the pressure of -- let me emphasize again, a Cadillac sitting on your fingernail, on those phones. I'm amazed.
ROWLANDS: Yes, the pressure would not affect those phones in that space because it is so tight. But to be honest, they were confident going into it when we approached them to do this. The confidence level did weigh in a little bit in the middle of the experiment when they saw the condition of the phone after it was in that pressure cooker, if you will, from the Shedd Aquarium. But they did it, and they were very pleased that they did it.
And now, they do think -- when you think about the Korean ferry incident, those phones will be easily retrieved, and that data will be easily garnered, and that could not only tell what happened for investigators, but it could leave very heartbreaking, but also important messages to the family if they're handled properly.
BURNETT: All right. Thanks very much to both of you. We appreciate it.
And still to come, officials in Maryland declare war on a pair of birds. With a headline like that, there is only one person on this show that can talk about it. That is Jeanne and she is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BURNETT: Man versus bird in the great state of Maryland, and the birds aren't backing down.
For the story, we turn to Jeanne Moos.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Attention, motorists -- all lanes are open but the traffic camera is blocked, blocked by a pair of birds?
Meet the ospreys, ready for their close up on a traffic camera pointed at an approach to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, can't see?
Too bad, they're building a nest. As the biologist John McKnight explains?
JONATHAN MCKNIGHT, BIOLOGIST: This time of year, Osprey is fairly regularly chose wacky places to build a nest.
MOOS: First, they build a nest, then Maryland transportation authority workers tore it down, ospreys build another one, same place, the workers tore it down. The birds rebuild, the workers remove, with the approval of Fish and Wildlife since no eggs had yet been laid.
One Washington, D.C. TV station followed the flap live.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We actually build that --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A live look right here actually --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're really charismatic creatures. They're two feet tall. They have a six-foot wing span.
MOOS: The Transportation Authority even gave them names.
After all, ospreys tend to mate for life. Three times, Ozzie and Harriet built nests, only to have them destroyed.
(on camera): And then came the last straw, make that the last stick, a big stick.
(voice-over): Ozzie and Harriet were going for four.
What did the spokesperson for the Transportation Authority do?
JOHN SALES: I did my best Charlie Brown impression and I said --
CHARLIE BROWN: Good grief!
MOOS (on camera): Yes, well, what do you think Ozzie was saying to Harriet after their third nest was destroyed?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Harriet, this is ridiculous!
MOOS: But like the old sitcom, this story has a happy ending, the Transportation Authority built Ozzie and Harriet a new home. The platform was placed about 10 feet away from the latest camera they were blocking.
Workers put some of their old nest material in the platform, and voila! The ospreys came adding more twigs. She likes it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's going to be awfully big house for just the two of us.
MOOS: Who said anything about just two? Ospreys build nests to have chicks. Ozzie and Harriet laid down the law! It's our way over the highway.
Jeanne Moos, CNN --
CHARLIE BROWN: Good grief!
MOOS: -- New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BURNETT: Now, it may not surprise you that the female did most of the work, hello, people, after all. Harriet did pretty much all of the nest building. And I want to tell you this -- the camera moved around and when it would turn and point right at her she would get agitated, and she would peck at it.
Guess she wanted to show them who was boss. All right, and before we go, tonight on CNN, the season finale of "Chicagoland," great strides have been made in Chicago, but the city still has a lot of work to do. Did you see the shootings last weekend? What are they going to do next?
"Chicagoland" airs tonight, 10:00, 9:00 Central.
Thanks so much for joining. We'll see you again tomorrow night.
John Berman is next on "AC360".
