Return to Transcripts main page

Live From...

Evolution Versus Design; NTSB Holds Press Conference on Miami Plane Crash

Aired December 20, 2005 - 13:30   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: A developing story right here in Atlanta, Georgia, a massive apartment fire. Tony Harris still working this story from the newsroom.
Tony, any new details?

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, absolutely, Kyra. Here to tell you that the firefighters appear to be making some great progress in bringing this huge apartment fire under control. This is in Dekalb County, Georgia, Buford Highway, right here in the metro Atlanta area. You're seeing a lot of white smoke right now, and that's a good sign. It indicates the firefighter may be getting the upper hand on this. Remember when we first joined you at the top of the hour, there were flames literally just reaching out from the roof of this apartment complex. That is not the case right now. Anywhere from 40 to 45 firefighters working the scene. There are three aerial ladders in place, literally pouring water, raining water down on those flames, and the firefighters are Fairly confident that the fire can be contained to this structure. No word of injuries right now, Kyra.

We'll continue to follow it for you.

PHILLIPS: All right, Tony, thank you so much. We'll check in with you. Also we're following Governor George Pataki right now, holding a news conference about the transit strike. Let's listen in.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

GOV. GEORGE PATAKI, NEW YORK: I'm not going to project -- it should end right now. They're in court. There will be significant consequences to the union and its members if they continue to break the law, and I would just urge them to put the interest of New Yorkers first, to do what the MTA has done, negotiate in good faith at the table and stop breaking the law.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, governor.

PATAKI: OK, thank you all very much. Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Not a happy governor there in New York, Governor George Pataki. We caught just the end of that news conference there down in Times Square, talking about the transit strike. Just repeating fact that these workers are breaking the law, and we've talked about those fines.

Chris Huntington telling us possibly $25,000 a day, possibly even more, of fines and money that will cost each one of these transit workers as they take on each day of a strike.

Meanwhile, I mean that doesn't even include what's happening to the city of New York, as you look at the gridlock here and just the economic impact this strike is going to make. We're on this story. We'll bring you all the latest developments of course as they happen.

Now we're talking about a victory for evolution today in one of its most closely watched court tests since the Scopes Monkey Trial. A federal judge in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania says it's unconstitutional to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. The judge rejected a Dover, Pennsylvania school board policy requiring teachers to raise doubts about the validity of evolution and to refer students to a book that promotes intelligent design as an alternative theory.

Critics say intelligent design is an attempt to inject religious creation theories into the public school science curriculum. An attorney for 11 parents who had sued the school board called the ruling a vindication for his clients. There's no immediate reaction from the lawyers who argued in favor of intelligent design. Eight school members who supported the intelligent design policy were voted out of office in November. Although today's rule only affects one school district, it's sure to have an impact on the evolution debate.

Let's go straight to CNN's faith and values correspondent Delia Gallagher. She's been reporting on this, talking a lot about this.

Delia, just in the past six months, the issue of intelligent design has been on the front page of so many newspapers, the main topic on so many talk shows. We've been talking about it, debating it. What do you think? Is this a conservative fad, or is it going to be around for a while?

DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN FAITH & VALUES CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, this topic of creationism, evolution, and now intelligent design and evolution, has been around since the scopes trial of course way back in 1925. It's hit the Supreme Court several times since then. And this case in Dover is one of the reasons why we have been talking about it so much in the last few months. And This verdict, Kyra, I have to tell you is fascinating. The judge's language is scathing in this, against the school board members who tried to get this idea of intelligent design into the high school there in Dover High.

I want to read you a little bit from this verdict. It's 139 pages. There's a lot of judgment here. But let's read a little bit of this. The judge says, "Those who disagree with our holding -- i.e., that intelligent design is unconstitutional -- "in the science class, will likely market as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist court, rather this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill- informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interests law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on intelligent design, who in combination, drove the board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy.

Now, you mentioned, Kyra, about some response from both sides, and we do have that response just in a few moments ago here to CNN. We have Richard Thompson, who was one of the lawyers for the Thomas Moore Law Center, representing the school board in this case. He called the verdict a troubling decision.

He says, quote, "The founders of this country would be astonished at the thought that this simple curriculum change established religion in violation of the Constitution they drafted."

We also have response from the ACLU who represented the 11 parents in this case, and he says "Children in public schools deserve top-quality science education and freedom from religious indoctrination, and today were granted both."

So you can see, Kyra, that this verdict has unleashed already on both sides coming out to defend what they see as this argument against science and religion in the classroom. But the judge is clear in his verdict, that this is an attempt to bring religion into a public school science classroom that should not be allowed.

PHILLIPS: So the decision in Pennsylvania obviously has been made. So let's move on to other parts of country. A lot of people still making arguments and battling for it, against it. It's not going to go away anytime soon, is it?

GALLAGHER: No. This is the first time that it's in a federal court. So this is -- intelligent design in a federal court, let's be clear on that. And so this is an important case as a precedent for other cases that may come to the federal courts.

At the moment, you've probably got a lot of school boards around the country who are looking at this. But who have not yet reached the court level. Remember, back in Dover, these 11 parents got together to sue the school district in order to bring it to the court. So we have a situation here of a federal court which sets a precedent legally. The decision is only binding on the Dover high school district. But certainly the precedent is going to be important, should the case come to other federal courts around the country.

And of course it's extremely important simply as a talking point to see what a federal judge makes of intelligent design. He went into the argument very specifically. They had a lot of testimony about what is intelligent design, and does it count as a science? So this six weeks trial was really intelligent design on trial, as such.

PHILLIPS: Faith and values correspondent Delia Gallagher, thanks, Delia.

So do you have questions about God? The author of "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God But Were Afraid to Ask" joins us next on LIVE FROM. We're going to take your e-mails questions, too. Some of these are doozies. We can't wait to see what he says.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: 'Tis the season to celebrate, be with loved ones and reflect back on the year. It also has many of us thinking about God. Why do we need him? Who is he? Why does he let bad things happen, especially during the holidays?

Well, a new book takes questions like these and offers some insight, sometimes humorous, about this serious and many times complex subject. It's called "Everything You Wanted To Know About God, But Were Afraid To Ask."

Author Eric Metaxas joins me live from New York. Eric, great to see you.

ERIC METAXAS, AUTHOR: Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

PHILLIPS: Well, why did you write the book?

METAXAS: I wrote the book because it didn't exist. I had this kind of conversion experience about 17 years ago. God came into my life in a big way. And I realized that I wanted to tell people, I wanted to share this faith that I had with friends.

And I was looking around for books that I could just sort of give to them, and I didn't find anything that seemed to sum up the Christian faith, the Bible, whatever -- in a way that was not confrontational, strange, awkward.

Like I wanted something that kind of had some humor in it and that could kind of open up the conversation as opposed to just shut it down and pretend to have all the answers. And I'll be honest with you. For years, I just kept looking for that book, and finally I thought, maybe I'll take a crack at writing it and I actually did.

PHILLIPS: Well, you bring up a good point. There's a lot of books out there that just makes it sound so simple and so easy, a very black and -- you know, you lay the questions out and these answers are very black and white. But you really -- you tackle so many questions that a lot of people ask but you -- I like how you throw in history and examples, I mean, going all the way back to the 1700s.

METAXAS: Yes.

PHILLIPS: And, of course, I'm going to ask you about some of that in a minute. But I want to -- do you mind, because we solicited e-mails yesterday, and because of the breaking news, obviously, we had to roll in to today. But we continue to get more and more. Can I throw some of these questions out at you?

METAXAS: Throw away.

PHILLIPS: OK, here we go.

METAXAS: I mean, fire away.

PHILLIPS: Now, here's a big one. This probably would take you six hours to answer. But Rick from California wants to know, "Where did God come from?" METAXAS: You know, a lot of people are asking that question. Actually, this is one of these things -- I think part of why I wrote this book is because I want people to understand that it's OK to not know the answers. Like, there's certain things, like that one, where the first answer to that question is to say, there's a mystery there.

With our finite human minds, we can't give like a three sentence answer and say, OK, let me tell you where God came from. Boom. We really don't know. The point is that -- we know that God always existed, that God is outside of time.

But we're inside time, so it's pretty much impossible for us to understand what that means to be outside of time. So the real answer to that is we don't know. It's a mystery.

PHILLIPS: And that of course leads into Mike from New Hampshire. He says, "can you point to any scientifically, repeatable, verifiable proof of God's existence?"

METAXAS" Proof of God's existence -- well, not -- I get into this in my book, like what do we mean by proof? The fact of the matter is, like brilliant people like Isaac Newton, even Albert Einstein, to some extent -- but all kinds of brilliant people have believed in the existence of God, the God of the Bible.

But you can't reduce God to something that you could prove in a lab. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't use our minds to sort of intellectually, logically, try to discern the difference between sort of pie in the sky nonsense and truth.

And I really think it's important, especially, you know, people who want to know what does the Bible say. We should challenge faith with hard questions, because it should be able to take the hard questions.

If God is God, he's the God of all truth, not just the God of spiritual truth or religious truth. And so I think that it's important that we have a dialogue between science and faith because, frankly, I think faith can take it.

PHILLIPS: Yes, you bring up a good point. Albert Einstein, you mentioned him. He had this amazing relationship with Gandhi. Could you just imagine sitting down with the two of them and talking about God, religion, how everything started?

METAXAS: I just want to know what they would eat.

PHILLIPS: That's a good question too.

METAXAS: Yes, I'll put that in the next book.

PHILLIPS: There you go. That will be the next one, what would they eat if they were talking about God. Steve wants to know, "if God is real, why would it allow people to deal with tragedies like AIDS, cancer, and human bondage without doing something to intervene?"

METAXAS: Not to mention the transit strike ...

PHILLIPS: Yes.

METAXAS: ... because I walked here. Well, actually, that's -- you know, honestly, that's the big question. That's the one question that almost everybody would put first. When you say to them, ask anything you want about God, and that's my first question.

As a believer, I have that question. And what I find interesting about some of these questions is people who are atheist, people who are agnostics or people who are devout believers all have the same question. They say how can we have this good God, who is full of love, who allows this evil and suffering?

So first of all, I want to acknowledge that it's a great question. And I don't think you ever really get that question answered. Personally, I find that the first answer, again, is like, we don't really know. But we do know -- what do we know? We know that God loves us and he's with us when we're suffering.

So I think that the idea of God being sort of behind the clouds and ignoring us while we're suffering is something we need to disabuse ourselves of. He's a God who's with us in our suffering and our pain basically.

And I also think it's important to say that the way the world is today isn't the way it's supposed to be, whether you believe in the fall literally -- you guys were talking about creationism before. Whether you believe in that literally or figuratively, the point is that the world isn't the way it was meant to be.

God created this perfect world and things are broken and now we have evil and suffering. And part of that comes from free will, which I get into in the book. Obviously we don't have time to go into that, but that's a question which takes several pages to kind of frame.

PHILLIPS: Chapter 18, "Jesus is more than a moral."

METAXAS: I'm not hearing anything. I don't know if ...

PHILLIPS: Did we lose you?

METAXAS: ... my feed has gone dead here.

PHILLIPS: Can you hear me, Eric? We'll try and get that fixed. Should we take a quick break? What do you think? All right. We'll take a quick break. All right. We'll try and get connected with Eric Metaxas again. We're talking about his book here, "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About God, But Were Afraid To Ask."

As we work on that, we're going to take you to a quick break. You know, Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, right? But do these guys know about the song, about the most famous reindeer of all?

(MUSIC) PHILLIPS: Oh, yes they do, but I bet you didn't know how a cowboy and a songwriter made Rudolph a living legend. We've got the scoop, straight ahead of LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Today a song that changed the legend of Santa Claus. Back when Clement Clarke Moore penned his Christmas classic "The Night Before Christmas," he wrote about eight tiny reindeer.

Today, many of us think about nine reindeer. That's because of a catalog writer and a singing cowboy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(SINGING -- RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER -- VARIOUS RENDITIONS)

PHILLIPS: (voice over): Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer may live at the North Pole, but he was born in a department store. Robert May wrote copy for the catalog of the Montgomery Ward chain. He created Rudolph in 1939 for a storybook that Wards gave to shoppers.

May's boss worried at first about the red nose, saying it was a trait associated with drunks. But May's story about a reindeer who was first taunted, then celebrated for being different, struck a chord with the public. And by 1946, 6 million copies had been distributed.

In 1948, May enlisted the help of his brother-in-law, songwriter Johnny Marks. The result was the song we know today. But we might not know it if it weren't for a singing cowboy.

Gene Autry, the movie and radio star, was better known for horses than reindeer. But his recording of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" sold six million copies the very first year. Autry's recording became the second biggest Christmas single of all time, right behind Bing Crosby's "White Christmas."

As the years went by, many other performers recorded the song, everyone from Dolly Parton to the Beatles to Lynard Skynard and a 1964 television cartoon that became a holiday classic.

Robert may died in 1976. Johnny Marks died in 1985. And Gene Autry passed in 1998. Even Montgomery Wards is gone. But Rudolph lives on every Christmas, guiding Santa's sleigh --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rudolph with your nose so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?

PHILLIPS: And reminding each new generation of children that there's nothing wrong with being a little bit different.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: We're going to bring you, by the way, all this week a little background on various different holiday songs, just like what you just saw. Our writers each picked a song and they wrote the history. Pretty neat stuff.

We were talking about the book "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God but Were Afraid to Ask," with Eric Metaxas. We got connected with him again back in New York. Sorry about that, Eric. Took a little break, had a little "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" singing and now we're back talking about God.

METAXAS: I enjoyed the Rudolph segment, by the way.

PHILLIPS: Good, thank you very much. Our writers have been working hard on those segments. We were taking a number of questions from e-mail, but -- and obviously there's a number of questions here in the book I wanted to ask you about.

You brought up neat little pieces of history, things about people, just being in the news, I never knew about. And in this one section -- I think it was chapter -- 17, when you are talking about -- no, I think it was chapter 18.

METAXAS: But it was a chapter?

PHILLIPS: There it is. "Jesus: More than a Moral Teacher and Great Role Model." You actually talk about Buzz Aldrin. Tell me about this story, how he actually wanted to take communion during his transmission back to Earth.

METAXAS: And he did take communion on the moon. It's something I wanted to put, sort of weird interesting stuff like this into the book. It's all Q & A. There's certain little tidbits of history I wanted in there as well, just because people don't know about them. People find it really interesting.

One of the most amazing things I discovered was that Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, he knew he was doing something that was one of the most epochal moments in human history and wanted to do something significant.

At the time, 1969, he consulted with his pastor and he decided his pastor would bless the wine and the wafer, wine and bread, and he would take it to the moon and when they landed, when The Eagle landed, before they got out of the capsule, he would take communion and read from scripture. And he did that.

Because Madeline Murray O'Hare, sort of a famous atheist, had sued NASA over transmitting something around -- I guess it was Apollo 8 -- from Genesis at Christmas a couple years before, they decided they could not air this publicly. So he did it privately.

Before he and Neil Armstrong got out of the capsule, he took communion and read from scripture. It's an amazing story. That's why I put it in the book. It's true. I actually met Buzz Aldrin and asked him about it and he said it's true.

PHILLIPS: Wow. All right. Chapter -- another little piece of history, Chapter 14. "How Can Anyone Take The Bible Seriously?" You start right off talking about 1785 and William Wilberforce. METAXAS: William Wilberforce is a hero of mine. He's another one of these people that not too many people not about. If it weren't for William Wilberforce, our history as Americans would be different. He became a Christian very seriously at the end of the 18th century.

The first thing he knew when he became a Christian, was slavery is wrong. And in the British Empire, the end of the 19th century, 18th century, that was not something you could say. But he said it and he felt convicted by the bible and by God to say slavery is wrong--

PHILLIPS: Eric, forgive me, we have to go to the NTSB presser on that Miami plane crash. We want to listen...

MARK ROSENKER, ACTING CHAIRMAN, NTSB: ... The underwater phase of documentation of the accident and have turned the channel and everything back to us and the Coast Guard.

The salvage crew can now begin its efforts to raise the aircraft. The company that's doing that work is a company called Atlanta Air Recovery. It could take as long as the rest of this afternoon and a significant piece of tomorrow.

Wreckage will be moved, once brought up, by barge to a secure location where our investigators will then go through the wreckage and begin the on-scene aspect of understanding what happened.

A team has been dispatched to the chalk headquarters in Ft. Lauderdale to secure the company's maintenance and flight records. That has been done. And I want to thank the media for its good work in getting the telephone number out that enabled us to get significant number of valuable calls from witnesses.

As far as the video is concerned, we still -- we hear there's some additional videos out there, but no one has come forth with them. We hope that that does happen so that we can begin that analysis.

And finally, before I turn it over to Captain Maes, at 7:30 this evening, after our progress meeting where we bring in all of the disciplines that are working on this investigation, we will give you a progress report and a press conference at approximately 7:30 at the Biscayne Marriott in the Fisher (ph) Island Room.

Captain Maes. We'll take questions after his presentation.

CAPT. JAMES MAES, U.S. COAST GUARD: Good afternoon, I'm Captain James Maes, the commander of Coast Guard Sector Miami and also the Captain of the Court for Miami.

This afternoon at 1:30 after reviewing the assessments done by the FBI divers, with the Miami-Dade police divers, we've been working with the Biscayne Bay pilots.

We've determined that we can reopen Government Cut, the main ship channel, and we are right now in the process of working out the details of scheduling the cruise ships that have been delayed for the last day or so.

There's some other vessel traffic in the Miami River that we're working with right now, to get scheduled. Coincidentally, with the departures and arrivals of the vessels, we'll be coordinating the positioning of the salvage barge and the efforts that will be going forward with the salvage operations for the airplane.

Thank you very much. We'll take questions now.

QUESTION: What's the status -- are they allowed to operate normally and are any of their planes --?

ROSENKER: At this point, they're operating as they wish to. The FAA has not done anything as far as a grounding order.

QUESTION: No other planes been affected?

ROSENKER: I'm sorry.

QUESTION: Were there other planes being affected?

ROSENKER: They will be looking at the documentation to see what we believe needs to be done. That's what we did with the maintenance record. That's why we secured them. That's why we also secured the flight records.

QUESTION: Are you satisfied (inaudible)--

ROSENKER: Right now, we have accounted for 19 of the bodies. Captain Maes, you're in the recovery side of it.

MAES: Yes, I don't think there's more to be said there. We've accounted for 19. We have reports there were 20 on the aircraft. And so the 20th remains unaccounted for at this time.

QUESTION: Mr. Rosenker, do you know yet if there was any sort of emergency communication from that plane before it went down?

ROSENKER: We still don't have access to the flight data recorder. We were hoping that the divers might have been able to get to it. Unfortunately, the way the records are situated, it doesn't's lend itself to access very easily. So we will be able to get to it once the wreckage is pulled out of the water.

QUESTION: Is there both a flight data recorder and a TBR (ph)?

ROSENKER: No, only a cockpit voice recorder. There was no requirement for a flight data recorder on this aircraft.

QUESTION: Mr. Rosenker, are there any special complications for your team given the age of the aircraft? It's not very often that you (INAUDIBLE).

ROSENKER: No. We go through the same process, the same methods, the same techniques. In a unique way, it may well be a tinier bit easier because it's a relatively simpler aircraft compared to a more sophisticated modern jetliner.

QUESTION: How is the home video going to help you in the investigation of the crash?

ROSENKER: The video that we are looking at right now that we see by the networks and the stills that we see in the newspapers are helpful and are an important aspect, an important element to our investigation. Now, they're not the complete answer, clearly. But it is rare that you get an opportunity to see an accident while it is going on.

So we believe that there will be great information gleaned from it once we're able to enhance it and understand what we are seeing in the video. It is still very early to understand what we've seen, other than perhaps a separation of a wing, perhaps, and the fuselage.

QUESTION: What does the video that you have seen so far, what you have been able to see, we've all been able to see, what does it suggest to you?

ROSENKER: It doesn't suggest anything other than what we see, which is a separation of a part of the aircraft from the main fuselage.

QUESTION: Do you actually expect to be bringing things, parts out of the water today, or is the whole thing...

ROSENKER: Well, we're going to work as quickly and as safely as we possibly can. You must realize that this is a delicate operation.

Remember, it's not just lifting something off the ground. You're lifting something from water. There's weight, obviously, in that. So you must do it in a very scientific and a very slow way. Otherwise, you'll break things apart.

So that's why it's not just the kind of thing where you can pick up a part and move it up. There is a great deal of science to this type of recovery, I assure you.

QUESTION: Can you describe what the wreckage is like?

ROSENKER: Yes. We actually saw -- through the FBI documentation, they have a very unique camera. It's a very interesting camera. It's called a Consburg (ph) Hawkeye. And what that camera is able to do is penetrate the water itself, and any of the silt or any of the -- any of the current and cloudy water that may be there.

You're actually looking through it. It's almost like being able to look through fog. And because of that, we had a very good view of the wreckage. Specifically, what we've seen is a fairly mangled aircraft, unfortunately.

QUESTION: You've discussed the age of the aircraft itself. Do you know yet the age of the engine and what -- how long it's been since those engines were maintained? ROSENKER: The retrofit occurred, we believe, sometime in the mid '80s. The maintenance records will tell us when they have been maintained, and at what level of maintenance, whether it's heavy or routine maintenance. So we'll get a good idea once we begin to really examine the maintenance records on this aircraft, and, of course, the rest of the fleet.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Is that a routine step, or do you have some reason to believe (INAUDIBLE)?

ROSENKER: We're looking at it. That's a part of the method that we use.

We always have a maintenance group. There's nothing unusual about looking at that. Remember, we're looking at a whole host of things. We're looking at structures, we're looking at the (INAUDIBLE), we're looking at operations.

We'll even take a look at what weather may have to do with this. We'll take a look at any air traffic control. And as we begin to take things and say that we do not believe this had any impact on this accident, then those phases will begin to drift off.

We won't need them anymore. We won't need to talk about whether if we believe weather has not had a substantial impact on this accident, if air traffic control, we won't have to deal with that. Those aspects of the investigation right now are being handled out of our headquarters in Washington.

QUESTION: What do you know about the pilot, the copilot? Have you identified then, checked their records?

ROSENKER: The records of the pilot are being handled by our human factors group. They'll be looking at those records, they'll be taking a survey and analysis of the 72 hours prior to the accident.

We don't have those yet. The report has not been given to me yet. So at this point, I can't discuss the pilots' experience, the type of ratings they have, that type of thing.

QUESTION: Can you release their names?

ROSENKER: No. We do not release names at the NTSB.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: You can't very well ignore all of the birds around here. Is this an accident that a large pelican could have caused? Bird impacts...

ROSENKER: I understand. Bird impacts clearly have significant threats. At this point, nothing is off the table. We're going to look at everything. So I'm hesitant to say no, but I'm hesitant not to give it a good, thorough look. We're going to look at anything that potentially was in the air, including a bird. Our operations people, our structures people will be able to understand what happened once we get a good look at the aircraft.

We're working, in reality, in the blind, and I'm trying to give you as candid a group of answers as I possibly can without having a aircraft on the ground to be able to have every one of our experts look at it. The aircraft is in the water. We've done as much as we can in the water. It is now up to the salvage team to get this aircraft onto the barge, moved over to a secure location, so that we can begin the actual investigative phase of the aircraft itself.

I'll be able to take two more questions, and then this evening...

QUESTION: Is that going to happen today or tomorrow?

(CROSSTALK)

ROSENKER: I'll be able to take two more questions, then we'll finish up with as much of the detail as we possibly can after our progress meeting this afternoon, this evening, at 7:30.

QUESTION: You said the voice recorder was in a difficult position to extract. Can you go into more detail on that?

ROSENKER: It's in -- it's in the tail section of the aircraft, we believe. And it's difficult for us to get to it the way -- the way it's sitting and the way the tail has been mangled up.

QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE)

ROSENKER: Some of the seats we have in custody right now in an area. Others are still onboard the aircraft.

Thank you very much. I will see you this evening.

PHILLIPS: That's the acting chairman for the NTSB, Mark Rosenker. Also, you can see along there with Captain James Maes, U.S. Coast Guard, talking about the crash that took place yesterday at Miami Beach. Nineteen people killed, one person still has not been recovered.

You may remember this exclusive video we brought to you yesterday, actually seeing part of that plane come apart. Even Mark Rosenker talking about that's basically all they have right now, is that videotape where you see the fuselage and one of the wings of that aircraft splitting. And then you saw the explosion, you saw what happened afterwards.

They will be raising that aircraft today at some point. Atlanta Air Recovery will be doing that. It will then be moved to a secure location, where they will -- the NTSB will be able to investigate that remaining part of the aircraft to try and figure out why it crashed there into Miami Beach. Also, they have already secured the flight records on that aircraft. They will be studying those. And they don't have the flight data recorder yet. It's a cockpit flight data recorder. They will not be able to get that until they raise that aircraft. That, of course, will help investigators answer a lot of questions.

So we'll continue to follow this developing story as we get more information on the raising of that aircraft to find more answers to why it went down yesterday.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com