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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Thailand Terror Attack: Police Search for Bomber; Hundreds of Clinton Emails Flagged for Review; GOP Candidates Divided on Birthright Citizenship. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired August 18, 2015 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:14] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news this morning. Police searching for a man they believe could be behind the terror attack in Bangkok. At least 22 dead, more than 100 injured. We're live with new information overnight.

Hundreds of Hillary Clinton e-mails flagged for secrets. Did the former secretary of state handle classified information through her private e-mail server? New developments ahead.

Donald Trump's controversial immigration plan dividing those running for president igniting a new debate over birth right citizenship.

Good morning, and welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans. It is Tuesday, August 18th. It is 4:00 a.m. in East. Nice to see you this morning. John Berman has the day off.

Let's begin with this breaking news this morning in Thailand. Police in Thailand on the hunt for a man they believe may be connected with a deadly attack in Bangkok. Officials say the man is seen on closed circuit TV but they cannot confirm his identity just yet. Authorities now looking at footage going back as far as two weeks prior to the attack to see if they spot anything suspicious.

There is devastation in the city following that blast that killed 22 people. More than 100 other people hurt after a terrorist pipe bomb targeted a Hindu shrine in the heart of a Bangkok shopping center, an area popular with locals and tourists. The explosion shattering windows creating panic in the street.

We're also getting a look at some of the frightening video captured at the very moment of the blast.

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ROMANS: CNN's Asia Pacific editor Andrew Stevens on the phone for us from Bangkok this morning.

Andrew, just the pictures are just devastating.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN ASIA PACIFIC EDITOR (via telephone): Absolutely, Christine. The death toll currently standing at 22, that bomb that police was primed to detonate with maximum impact. Meaning it was timed to go off when the shrine area was at its busiest, 7:00 o'clock in the evening. A lot of Thais coming home from work going into that shrine to pay respects, to receive blessings. A lot of tourists there as well. That is when that pipe bomb went off.

They say that they, Christine, that they were called. They were given warning that there would be an attack, but they weren't given any further intel than that. So, they didn't know where and when. News coming in, but there has been another smaller explosion in the city.

This is at a pier on the river which runs through the city not far from a luxury hotel district. Authorities are on the scene at the moment. We're being told there were no injuries. That's important to note.

We're just getting that news in at the moment. As you said, police have released this picture of a man in a yellow shirt. They say they cannot identify whether he's Thai or whether he's foreigner. He's seen carrying a black backpack. He's close to the actual shrine in the street.

He later was pictured without that backpack. So, that's where we are at the moment. Police still are looking for that person. There are more than 120 people injured, some seriously, and the hunt goes on at this stage, Christine.

ROMANS: Andrew, no one has come forward to claim responsibility. No groups have come forward to claim responsibility. They just really -- aside from looking for the man in the yellow shirt, there's no indication of what a motive is yet.

STEVENS: There's no clear indication. The police were saying earlier telling some news agencies that they thought this was a target against tourism which by association would be attacking the economy of Thailand. But that said, although we think that's the case, we don't know who's behind it. There have been a lot of theories, a lot of leads they need to track down. There are suggestions it could be an extension of the political rivalry we've seen on the streets for several years now between pro and anti-attacks of the prime minister's supporters and also oppositions.

There have been problems in the past in Bangkok, nowhere near what we've seen last night. There's also speculation they could be tied to an insurgency in the south of Thailand. Again, it's very localized on the border of Malaysia and have not involved Bangkok at all.

So, there are those two theories. There's another theory that it could be the work of separatists from China, Muslim separatists from China in the Xinjiang province as some Uyghur (INAUDIBLE) were deported from Bangkok quite recently.

[04:05:06] So, there's a lot of speculation and avenues that police need to explore at this stage, but they're not saying what they're favoring, what they expect for the investigation to go.

ROMANS: All right. Andrew Stevens for us live this morning in Bangkok, Thailand. I know you're covering the story very closely. Let us know if there are any developments this morning. Thanks for that, Andrew.

All right. More follow-up this morning in the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal. Intelligence officials now recommending 305 of Clinton's emails from here private server be transferred to their agencies for consultations. Of course, officials looking to see if any classified information was sent and received, something Clinton has long assured the American people never happened.

With only 20 percent of the e-mail on the server sampled, how much worse could the issue become for the Democratic front-runner?

CNN's Pamela Brown has more from Washington.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine.

Three hundred and five documents from Hillary Clinton's private server have been referred to various intelligence agencies for consultation to determine whether the contents are classified. That's according to a court filing from the State Department. This is after intelligence community reviewers from five different agencies joined the process of looking at Clinton's e-mails. And the court filing says, quote, "Out of approximate lid 20 percent of the e-mails the intelligence review jess have recommended 305 documents, approximately 5.1 percent for referral to their agencies for consultation."

So, this filing is update for a federal judge on review efforts in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and basically these intelligence agencies will now have to determine whether or not there is classified information in these documents and whether or not these documents should be released to the public as part of this lawsuit.

And Hillary Clinton, as we have heard, repeatedly has denied sending or receiving information marked as classified through her personal server. It's unknown at this point if any of the 305 flagged e-mails contain classified information, but this does come at a time when the FBI is investigating the security of Clinton's private server -- Christine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: All right. Pamela Brown, thank you for that.

So, will Joe Biden run? Some calls growing louder for the vice president to enter the presidential race.

One place though those calls aren't growing louder, the White House. Democratic Party source says support inside the party is said to be best. Many in the White House are already heavily invested in the Hillary Clinton campaign. There's also concern a Biden run would put the president in an impossible spot, having to choose between supporting his vice president and former secretary of state.

Donald Trump back on the stump after not getting picked to serve on a jury in New York City. So, he's back to pushing his first major policy proposal on immigration. Some of his GOP rivals are already pouncing on the immigration plan calling it unworkable. So, would it ever have a chance in congress?

CNN's senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny has a look.

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JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine.

Well, it's back to the campaign trail for Donald Trump. He was not picked for jury duty on Monday. After spending several hours there, he was not selected. He was let. He'll be back out campaigning. He's been selling his new immigration plan. It's the first real policy proposal that he's introduced so far in his young campaign.

It's drawing some praise for some anti-immigration reform activist, but it's drawing much criticism from some of his Republican rivals.

JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I appreciate the fact that Mr. Trump now has a plan, if that's what it's called, but I think the better approach is to deal with the 11 million people here illegally in a way that is realistic.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump's eight page plan is actually gibberish. It is unworkable. Mitt Romney said his biggest mistake is a candidate for president was embracing self-deportation. That hurt our party.

Donald Trump's plan is force deportation. It's not going to work. It is unworkable.

ZELENY: All of the controversy or most of it centers around the so- called birth right citizenship, a provision in the 14th Amendment that allows U.S. citizens if you were born here the right to citizenship. Donald Trump says he wants to do away with that. Of course, that takes a lot of work. It would take a 2/3 vote in both the House and Senate, it would take a ratification of 3/4 of the state legislatures.

But that is one of the key provisions at the center of Donald Trump's immigration proposal. He'll be selling that on the road as the week continues. They're all gearing up towards the next presidential debate, the CNN presidential debate in September in California -- Christine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: All right. Jeff Zeleny, thanks.

Some of Trump's Republican opponents are touting similar aspects of their own proposals. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal writing on Twitter, "We need to end birth right immigration for illegal immigrants."

Scott Walker also saying he supports ending birth right citizenship. He's also in favor of the wall and against amnesty. Lindsey Graham told CNN Monday that policy needs to be changed.

[04:10:00] He said he has said in the past he'd consider a constitutional amendment to change the law that grants citizenship to any child born in the United States.

Rick Santorum also -- has also said birth right citizenship should end as part of a comprehensive immigration overhaul.

All right. Congress is in recess. States under Republican control are wasting no time targeting funding for Planned Parenthood. At least five states are now trying to cut off money by ending contracts allowing Planned Parenthood to service people with Medicaid. All this follows hidden camera videos claiming to show Planned Parenthood is profiting from fetal tissue sales, a charge Planned Parenthood denies.

It turns out a hack of the IRS was three times as big as first report the. As many as 334,000 taxpayer accounts were accessed. The initial estimate in May was only 114,000 taxpayers. Identity thieves used the agency's give transcript program to access personal information although it's unclear whether the data was stolen from everyone.

White House is working to get air travel up and running to and from Cuba by the end of the year. The hope is to have commercial flights by December which would mark the biggest expansion of economic and tourism ties between the U.S. and Cuba since the 1950s. Technically only Congress can lift the decades old travel ban but the president has authority to grant exceptions.

Time for an early start on your money this Tuesday morning. Mostly lower around the world. Look at Shanghai's benchmark index, down more than 6 percent. The majority of companies listed fell by 10 percent. Earlier this summer, you recalled the Chinese market started collapsing wiping out trillions of dollars in value. The government, the Chinese government taking dramatic steps to prop stocks up. But this return to volatility this morning is here the sharpest decline since the end of July.

The global selloff in commodities is still going. Aluminum, copper, zinc all down by more than 1 percent. Oil, crude oil hit a new 6.5 year low yesterday. It's down again right now about $42 a barrel. Again, we're expecting, you know, $2 gas potentially by early this fall.

Twelve minutes past the hour. Search and rescue crews reaching the site of a deadly plane crash in Indonesia. Investigators finding the plane's black box overnight. We're live with new developments, next.

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[04:15:23] ROMANS: The worst fears confirmed this morning from that missing Indonesia plane. The bodies of all 54 passengers and crew had been located, after the wreckage of the Trigana flight was found in a mountainous region of Eastern Indonesia. The black box also now in the hands of investigators as helicopters are deployed to begin the evacuation process. CNN's Kathy Novak on the phone with the very latest for us this

morning.

Kathy, what's the latest?

KATHY NOVAK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Well, Christine, it's taken two days to get to the site. It's been two days since villagers report seeing this plane crash into the mountains. But this area is so treacherous and the weather has been so bad that rescue crews have not been able to get in. And now we are told just now we've been told the choppers have been called off because of bad weather and the crews again cannot get to the site.

So, so far, even though the bodies have been located, not a single one has been able to be transported back to the nearby airport so they can start the process of trying to identify them and return them to these grieving families. Also, the black box needs to be transported back so we can get those answers about what exactly went wrong here. This is an airline with a very checkered safety record, many questions being asked about what caused the crash into this area in this mountainous region of Papua province in Indonesia, Christine.

ROMANS: Let's talk more about that safety record, that checkered safety record. We have seen just rapid expansion of air travel in Asia. You know, just a couple of decades ago it was unheard of for so many people to be entering the middle class, to be flying so -- with such ease around the region but the rapid expansion of air travel in the region does not come necessarily with the rapid expansion of safety.

NOVAK: That is the major concern and over the next couple of decades or less the market in Indonesia is expected to triple. So, so many of these small airlines coming on board, and especially servicing these small domestic routes. People are traveling to these small areas. The roads don't reach a lot of these cities and they're forced to travel by air.

As you say, now more people can afford to do it, but the safety record of the Indonesian airlines as a whole is being brought into question. Most of the Indonesian airlines cannot fly into European space. Garuda, the national carrier, is not on that list anymore. It used to be on that list but it has lifted its game. And now, the focus will be to get back to the situation across the country so that more people can be confident when they get on the planes in Indonesia, with this kind of safety record that we're talking about.

ROMANS: Just a tragedy, just a tragedy. Fifty-four people. Thank you for that, Kathy Novak.

All right. The Environmental Protection Agency set to propose the first ever federal regulations aimed to cutting methane emissions from oil and natural gas really. The agency wants to cut a dramatic reduction of meth then 40 to 45 percent over the next decade. The move by the EPA part of the president's climate change agenda. The EPA has already announced new rules designed to reduce carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent by the year 2030. For the first time in almost a decade, the Pentagon is deploying

soldiers to help fight raging wildfires out west. Some 200 active duty military personnel will join the fight. Right now, 25,000 firefighters, 25,000 firefighters battling these fires in ten states, seven of them out west. Drought conditions, triple digit heat, wind have created the perfect climate for fires. Nearly two dozen fires are burning in Washington state alone destroying dozens of homes.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They came quick. It came hot and heavy, and then the winds kicked up and it just was unstoppable.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We thought it was a little fire and it started spreading this morning and the wind got faster and faster.

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ROMANS: In California more than 13,000 firefighters are battling nearly two dozen fires. Federal officials say the U.S. Forest Service is now spending 50 percent of its budget fighting fires.

For more now let's get to meteorologist Pedram Javaheri.

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Hey, Christine. Good Tuesday morning to you.

Look at the satellite images here from space, looking 22,000 miles down towards portions of Northern Carolina. You see the plume here of smoke from last Thursday, then you fast forward to this past Monday, in the last 24 hours, the smoke certainly there, all of it, across eastern areas of Washington and Oregon, as well as in recent days.

The concern is they're going to remain very dry over the coming weeks. What has already occurred, 7 million acres of land today that burned across the U.S.

[04:20:00] That's roughly the size of the state of Massachusetts when it comes to how much damage has been done. That's more 2 million acres above what is considered normal for this time of year in the fire season.

Rainfall is absolutely there. Millions of gallons of it comes down over the eastern part of the country, very little to absolutely no moisture in the forecast. I think that storm system exiting portions of the Plains working towards the Midwest.

The concern if you're in the Northeast, notice some of the summer variety. Storms are getting to get ignited as daytime heating building. Temperatures should be in the low to mid 80s. But again, a few thunderstorms will pop up by early afternoon hours -- Christine.

ROMANS: All right. Pedram Javaheri, thank you for that, Pedram.

Protestors demand answers in the series of chemical explosions that devastated a Chinese port city. More than 100 people dead. Dozens of people are still missing. CNN is there, next.

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ROMANS: Growing anger and calls for compensation after those deadly warehouse explosions in northern China. Some homeowners there are demanding the government buy back their homes saying chemicals in the air make it unsafe to live there. There are investigations now into workplace safety and negligence at the warehouse. The number of missing from the explosions climbs.

CNN's Will Ripley is live outside a school in Tianjin where displaced are being housed -- Will.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Christine.

We've actually shifted locations to an abandoned railroad track sitting in the shadow of thousands of apartments which were devastated by the blast, many of them under construction.

[04:25:06] But here's the concern: the explosion more than half a mile away propelled dangerous chemicals. You can see this barrel, when it rains a white hiss starts to come out of this. In fact, we observed the same phenomenon, piles of this stuff lying around this entire area sitting near residential areas.

We brought it to the attention of the government and since then we've seen them bring up cleanup crews to investigate it and in some cases remove the chemicals. But still, that's a major concern for the residents. That's why they're telling the Chinese government they want to be reimbursed for the cause of their homes since they say it was a lack of oversight that may have played a role in this.

We are seeing some criminal prosecution, not prosecution but certainly investigation as a result of all of this damage to the infrastructure, and to the buildings in this area.

Ten officials who are in the company of the Ruihai Logistics Company that owned the chemical warehouse at the center of this explosion, they have been detained. The Chinese highest prosecuting authority is saying charges could be filed for not being honest about how many chemicals are being stored at the facility putting 700 tons of sodium cyanide which can turn into hydrogen cyanide when exposed to water, very deadly in just small doses, and with rain in the forecast, there is concerned about the chemical reaction here, Christine, and residents are fearful of the long term effect, especially parents with children who might have to come back and leave amongst this -- Christine.

ROMANS: I know. Parents are fearful. They're also angry. They want the government to buy back their homes. They don't want to move back in in many cases, because they just don't know what all is out there.

Thanks so much for that, Will. We'll talk to you very, very soon.

Breaking news this morning: the manhunt intensifies for the terrorist behind a deadly bomb blast in Bangkok. Police zero in on a man seen on surveillance video. We're live with the investigation next.

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