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New Day

Objects on Sea Floor Believed from Flight 8501; Motorists Stranded by Snow Rescued

Aired December 31, 2014 - 07:00   ET

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

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ten victims have now been recovered, which means there are 152 souls who have not been recovered. And in addition to that, there's the matter of the so-called black boxes, the voice and data recorder that they hope to find eventually. But the top priority is finding the bodies of all the people who are aboard this flight.

We know of the ten people, nine were passengers, and one was a flight attendant and that is known because she had her flight attendant's uniform on when she was recovered. Right now, it's pouring rain, it's been very foggy, smoggy, the waters have been rough and the search was called off just before dusk.

It's now nighttime. They wouldn't be searching at this point, anyway, but they're hoping to resume again tomorrow on the first day of the year 2015. But the search so far has been very difficult.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN (voice-over): This morning, the first group of recovered passengers arriving in Surabaya, in an emotional ceremony in caskets marked 001 and 002. This as Indonesian authorities focus on pinpointing the last known location of AirAsia flight 8501, officials confirming sonar imagery located wreckage believed to be from the aircraft, submerged at the bottom of the Java Sea.

GEOFFREY THOMAS, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF/MANAGING DIRECTOR, AIRLINERATINGS.COM: What's going to be of particular interest is what parts of the airplane are there -- the wings, the tail -- just to sort of try and understand whether the plane broke up in flight or remained intact.

TUCHMAN: Other reports suggest the plane may be lying upside-down, according to "The Wall Street Journal."

On Tuesday recovery teams bring in pieces of debris ashore, along with the remains of six passengers and a flight attendant. Authorities now faced with a gruesome task: recovering more of the passengers from the wreckage and identifying the bodies for grief-stricken families.

But some still hold onto hope, one woman with six family members on board telling CNN, "There is nothing confirmed as far what happened to the passengers and we are still hoping there is a miracle and they survive." At the crisis center here in Surabaya, relatives gather for a prayer

service inside the airport. Next, the hunt for clues, answers as to what brought down AirAsia Flight 8501, likely contained in the plane's flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, otherwise known as the black boxes, located in the tail section of the aircraft.

THOMAS: I'm hoping by first thing next week that we're going to have a very clear picture of what happened to this airplane, because the industry absolutely needs to know, urgently, what went wrong.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN: What keeps haunting me as I'm reporting this is that many of these people went on this AirAsia plane on Sunday, because they wanted to go to Singapore to celebrate New Year's.

And now here in Indonesia, we're five hours away from the stroke of midnight and the year 2015, and it's just so sad for the family members who are behind me in this crisis center now, where they have been talking with counselors and watching newscasts and getting information.

Many of them, most of them are now leaving as we speak, because they're moving the crisis center from here at the airport to a hospital about an hour away from here, because that's where the bodies of their loved ones will be brought -- Christine.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: That's where they -- that's where they want to be. Gary Tuchman, thank you so much for that this morning and all your reporting all night long.

Joining me now are CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Mary Schiavo. She also represents victims and families after airplane disasters. Also, thrilled to be joined by CNN aviation analyst and PBS science correspondent Miles O'Brien.

Miles, I want to start with you, because there is this reporting from the scene that's a bit conflicting and confusing. You have investigators telling us that sonar has located what they believe to be the plane, and you have the CEO of AirAsia, Tony Fernandes, saying no, there's no confirmation. They have not used sonar to confirm that what they're seeing down there is the plane.

What do you make of it? Often in these kinds of disasters the reporting can be conflicting, and it can change. And there are a lot of people who have access to a lot of different information. What do you make of that contradiction this morning?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I think you summed it up well, Christine. As you well know, you've got all kinds of jurisdictions involved. The company, the governments, the fishermen on the water. Everybody is saying something. And it's very difficult to sort these things out in the middle of it.

I think what we should take away, however, is that, clearly, this site, wherever it is, is in shallow water and is something this is not going to be too terribly difficult to find. You know, you were on with David Soucie just a little while ago.

When you consider the depth here, 100 feet or 140 feet, whatever, you can scuba dive at those depths. We're not talking about something several thousand feet deep.

So the idea that it's going to take a hugely long time to find the black boxes, the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, I think, is something we should put aside. We will get this information quickly, and we'll get this answered quickly. And there will be a lot of confusion until that happens.

ROMANS: Mary, I think that, you know, you talk about the fact that you can put a diver in the water. It's 100 feet deep. But there are a lot of waves. It is foggy; it's monsoon conditions. They are right to be patient and go slow here. They think they know where the plane is. They're starting to bring bodies back. But they have to make sure that there are no other injuries or fatalities here.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, that's right. And they're going to go slow with the black boxes. If they have the plane, if the rear part of the fuselage is intact, they'll have a pretty good idea where things are. And then they can keep the priority on bringing home the remains, on getting those bodies. Because if the storm breaks up the plane and there's further dissipation, it's going to be harder to recover the bodies, first and foremost, much less the black boxes.

So I think going slowly now, waiting out the bad weather, is probably the best course of action.

ROMANS: Mary, many of our experts are saying now there are ten bodies that have been recovered, at least 10, but most of those bodies have not been recovered. I guess the assumption among our experts is that many of those people are still strapped into their seats. Is that what you would be assuming at this moment?

SCHIAVO: Yes. And we've seen that in other water accidents in the past: TWA 800, Air France 447. Some people will be right there in their seats, and of course, they would have been given the command by the pilot in that bad weather to buckle down and give it an extra tug. So that's what we expect, and that's what we find in many accidents like this.

ROMANS: Miles, let's talk about the debris found about 60 miles from the last known location of the flight. When you look at that map and you see where the debris field or the debris that has been found is, what does that tell you as a pilot about what those pilots might have been trying to do from the moment that there was the last radar sighting, the moment there was the call asking to ascend and it was denied, to the moment that the plane went down.

O'BRIEN: You know, we got to be a little bit careful here in using that radar information to draw a lot of conclusions about this. I think the difference between where that debris is found and where,

ultimately, the aircraft is found at the bottom of the sea, that's very important. Because that will tell you what was falling off the airplane and when. Did it break up? Did portions of it fall off because of turbulence or hail or some strange excursion of the flight because they were trying to handle it in a difficult weather situation?

Or did it, was it able to largely drop from the sky intact? Was it sort of an aerodynamic stall, as we saw in the case of Air France 447?

So -- but yes, what's really important here is that the size the debris field is really key to coming up with an idea as to whether it broke up in flight.

One other thing which I think we should be asking for and asking authorities for is there's plenty of primary radar coverage in that part of the world. And going back to TWA 800, one -- you know, they didn't have a lot of evidence from the black boxes, because it was so sudden. One of the things that helped them determine what happened was they used primary radar, and they could see big pieces, radar returns of that aircraft as it broke up mid-air. So that could be a useful thing, as well.

ROMANS; You talk about useful information, Mary. One thing that I -- I'm struck by, is this is not macabre curiosity about what happened to this plane. What happened to this plane is incredibly important to recreate in a similar -- simulator so we know what happened and that it doesn't happen again.

SCHIAVO: That's right, I mean, going through literally piece by piece, step by step, and the air accident investigators do that.

And in fact we do that when we take the case later on. We literally have to recreate the flight. We do computer simulations. We go through every sound in the cockpit. And we put it on top of the flight data recorder, so you can have a picture with literally hundreds, if not thousands of inputs of data to make it very clear.

And in the old days they used to say the only thing that would be gone after an accident like this would be evidence of icing. But that's not true anymore, because you have the ice protection warning systems on the plane. So even that would be recorded in the black box, if there was some sort of icing problem with the pitot tubes or the attitude indicator. So that's on the black box, too.

ROMANS: You know, Miles, after the TWA Flight 800 -- quickly, we don't have much time -- but after TWA Flight 800, they put together almost 95 percent of that plane. That was a remarkable feat that really told them a lot about what happened.

O'BRIEN: Right. I don't think you'll see that in this case. In the case of TWA 800, there was just virtually no information on the black boxes; it was so sudden. So they were really at wit's end trying to figure out what happened there. I suspect in this case it won't be necessary. ROMANS: All right. Miles O'Brien, thank you so much.

Mary Schiavo, thank you both for your insights, and happy New Year to both of you. Thank you.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: In other breaking -- or a developing story, really, breaking overnight in Southern California, more than 100 drivers trapped on a snowy highway have just been rescued. A car accident led to major delays during a winter storm happening there, a rare one. By the time the accident was cleared, many cars were just unable to get out, thanks to a foot of snow.

We want to turn to Sara Sidner, who is live along the foothills of the San Bernardino National Forest just off the highway.

Great to hear that this rescue has taken place, Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it really is. And what you can't see right now, there are gusts of wind that keep coming through here, very strong gusts of wind. And people might say, a foot of snow, what's the big deal? Well, what's happening is, even with our vehicle, we could not even get up near to where the rescue was happening, because every now and then you get these gusts and our car is literally getting pushed across the road.

Now, imagine that with the road icy, with just enough snow to make your car move around, and that's what happened. Some people got into an accident. They suddenly find themselves stranded. The snow comes in. Then they're stuck. And so that's what happened.

And we are glad to hear that all 139 people who needed to be rescued because the temperatures have dropped quite a bit, too. We're in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains. And it is chilly here. And you know for Los Angeles, and for California, this is really cold for a lot of folks. And so people were scared. They were calling the rescuers.

Now they have been rescued. They are in a shelter in a church. They're going to have to probably stay there overnight and for a while, because they've got to get this cleaned up. They're still some cars that are stranded out there and they did close for a while, the road that leads up to the mountains. A lot of folks just going up there for fun, it's going to be New Year's Eve night. But this did not turn out the way they expected it to.

PEREIRA: Good work on the part of San Bernardino County Fire, getting those people home and to -- or at least to safety, and then hopefully, they'll get home.

Sara, thanks so much.

We know that the National Weather Service has warned that tonight is going to be the coldest night of the season there in Los Angeles. There's a hashtag, #LAcold. We're watching because the folks at the Rose Parade, tomorrow, it's going to drop down to freezing.

ROMANS: Wow.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: That's quite rare.

ROMANS: Some of the people in those cars, they were coming back from the ski trip. So they had ski boots, ski gloves, skis.

PEREIRA: Thank goodness.

ROMANS: They had everything they needed.

PEREIRA: They were prepared.

ROMANS: Poppy Harlow has got some other headlines for us this morning.

HARLOW: A lot going on this morning. Good morning to you guys.

Good morning, everyone.

Edmonton, Alberta, hit by the worst mass violence it had seen in almost 60 years. A man described as depressed going on a rampage, shooting and killing eight people in two separate locations before turning the gun on himself. Police say a domestic dispute triggered this violence, with a woman killed Monday and seven others killed on Tuesday, including two children. We are being told the gunman's family had actually contacted the police. They were looking for him when all of this occurred.

Investigators say the death toll could rise in that fire, that dramatic fire off of Greece's Adriatic coast on that ferry. There is confusion, because officials say migrants may have stowed away on the ship. So far, 11 people are confirmed dead. Dozens more could still be missing, and officials are working to reconcile a passenger list with each and every person who was rescued and who was on board.

And severe flu is now an epidemic here in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control says the flu is widespread now in 36 states. Fifteen children have died from the flu across nine of those states in September.

Part of the concern here, officials said recently the flu vaccine this year that millions of us already got is not a very good match for this year's strain of flu. We'll have a lot more on that coming up later this hour.

And be mindful, if you see some pricey bottles of red and white wine on the black market. If you're shopping for wine on the black market. Get this: Thieves have stolen about $300,000 worth of rare wine from the famed restaurant French Laundry.

PEREIRA: Not French laundry.

HARLOW: That is in California's Napa Valley. It happened apparently on Christmas day after the restaurant closed down for a six-month remodeling job. Seventy-six bottles were taken from the wine cellar.

PEREIRA: No.

HARLOW: Some of them worth about $15,000 a bottle.

ROMANS: Who knew there was a black market for rare French wines that just fall off the back of a truck.

PEREIRA: Poppy, a got a bottle of wine.

HARLOW: but this is one of the most famous restaurants in the country if not the world.

PEREIRA: Yes. Six months to get a reservation, it's rumored.

HARLOW: I've never been able to get in there. Exactly. And apparently, you know, you think were they planning this, right, to come in the day that they closed down to start renovation.

ROMANS: Every single person who has been in and out of that place, including...

PEREIRA: This is more than just the angel's share, I think. All right, Poppy. Thank you so much.

HARLOW: You got it.

PEREIRA: Wreckage of Flight 8501 possibly found on the bottom of the Java Sea. The U.S. has military assets ready and in place to help in what could be a massive recovery effort. We'll talk about those details ahead.

ROMANS: And the U.S. pointing the finger at North Korea for that big Sony hack attack. But some have another theory. An inside job? Too wild to be true? The government says no way. We're going to ask a cybersecurity expert.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Sonar equipment may have found objects believed to be from AirAsia Flight 8501 at the bottom of the Java Sea. The U.S. now has a second naval ship, the USS Fort Worth, at the port of Singapore. It is ready to deploy, to assist in a massive recovery effort.

Joining me now to discuss what goes on and what goes into a mission like this is retired U.S. Army general and CNN military analyst General Spider Marks.

Really good to have you here, sir, and a happy new year to you.

GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Thank you, Michaela. You, as well.

PEREIRA: So let's talk about this. We know there are U.S. assets. One is on scene, the USS Sampson. We know the USS Fort Worth is ready to deploy in Singapore to aid in this. What will the focus of the U.S. military assets be? MARKS: Well, that's a great question. Primarily, this is an

intelligence-collection capability. Once that's taken care of, then it becomes, once you've refined the area that you want to search, and clearly in the midst of all of that, there is this ongoing effort to recover bodies, which makes it a very -- puts a very, very human face on all of this.

But what the U.S. brings to bear is an incredible intelligence capability and an incredible logistics capability.

Now, one of the pieces of kit that's going to show up that has not been mentioned yet is a P-8 Poseidon, which is an anti-submarine aircraft -- or an anti-submarine warfare aircraft. It's an air breather; it's a fixed-wing aircraft.

PEREIRA: OK.

MARKS: Which has an immense capability. Its mission is to find heavy metal objects under the water, i.e. submarines.

PEREIRA: Yes, yes.

MARKS: So it will be a perfect match for this capability -- for this mission set, and it's brand new. It just came out about a year ago. The U.S. has a finite number of those, but it's a very capable capability. It's land-based. It can fly over the ocean, and it's down-wing capabilities, to any one of these ships that will be in the area, will allow us to have a great intelligence picture and to refine the search area.

PEREIRA: So interesting to hear you keep using that word, intelligence. Because when we talk to you mostly, we talk about intelligence from a perspective of military operations, for example in Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria. And in terms of counter-surveillance or things like that. But this intelligence is surveillance of a different nature, isn't it?

MARKS: Well, it truly is, but these capabilities clearly fit the requirements that we're -- that we're looking at right here.

It gives us a very broad sweep of the area. It allows us -- and the key issue in this thing, it allows us to narrow the search area. So you can eliminate areas where you don't want to spend time and precious resources.

PEREIRA: Right.

MARKS: And it really allows you to kind of focus in and get very precise, very deep and very persistent, is what you want to be able to do.

Once we -- once this search allows for the identification of a very refined area, and we begin to uncover some of this, the mystery surrounding the loss of this aircraft, now you're into a very large logistics mission, as well.

PEREIRA: Right.

MARKS: And the United States can certainly help immensely. But Indonesians have the lead in this, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Yes, and I wanted to ask you about that.

MARKS: And we will support them in that.

PEREIRA: Because logistics are so key. We know what a massive and emotional operation it is, especially for the Indonesians who were -- made up the bulk of the passenger manifest. So we understand that they obviously have a great interest in leading this investigation. But you have all of these other nations. Talk about the coordination of that. When we come, the U.S. comes with their military assets to aid, we've got our helicopters flying, that is a massive logistic operation.

MARKS: It truly is. And what you have in that part of the world is nations that have worked together routinely. But there is no overarching apparatus in place, much like would you see in Europe with NATO. Where you have preexisting procedures, things fall in place, scenarios have been worked out, priority -- and people start doing things automatically to support and to lean in, if you will.

In this particular case it is based on the willingness of the participants, but certainly you have that with the Indonesians, the Malaysians, the Singaporeans, certainly the Thais. They have worked together before, but it is based on a loose structure.

PEREIRA: Right.

MARKS: The United States comes in, and what they're able to do since they, the United States has very strong bilateral relationships with each one of these nations, they are able to come in and be the glue that allows the lead nation, Indonesia, to get the job done.

PEREIRA: Give me a little context on, actually, how that happens. I'm very curious. We -- obviously, the U.S. is willing to assist in a matter such as this. We have great relations with these nations, et cetera. Do we -- does the U.S. offer, or is the U.S. requested to come in and help? How does that negotiation happen?

MARKS: Yes, what happens in this particular case is, certainly, when an incident like this occurs, the United States immediately makes an offer to assist, and this is what it looks like. They have certain capabilities. They also have command and control. They have access to satellite capabilities, which many of these nations do not have. And then we have a sharing and a transparency that takes place.

So we offer; simultaneously the request comes forward. So there's an agreement in place that says, when these kinds of conditions occur, the United States will routinely step up.

And what's wonderful about the United States, obviously, is that this is a nation that really leans in, effectively, and as a matter of routine. You don't see a number of other nations right now, similarly, that have an interest leaning forward to make this work.

PEREIRA: We certainly have the capabilities. It's great to know that the U.S. is sending assistance, much-needed assistance at a time that is so difficult for Indonesia. It's very personal. It's very personal to all of us when we see an airliner go down full of families, young people, children, fiancees, missionaries, et cetera.

General Spider Marks, we appreciate your perspective and your intelligence. Thanks so much.

MARKS: Thanks, Michaela. Happy New Year to you.

PEREIRA: To you, as well.

Christine.

ROMANS: All right. Thanks, Michaela.

Wreckage possibly belonging to that flight, AirAsia Flight 8501, possibly detected on the bottom of the Java Sea. We've got the latest developments, information that's coming in right now in a live report.

Plus, was the Sony hack an inside job? All along American officials have been pointing the finger at North Korea. Did the U.S. jump the gun? We're breaking it down coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: Good morning. You're watching NEW DAY. Welcome to our viewers in the U.S. and around the world. Happy New Year's to everyone.

Developments overnight in the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501. Sonar equipment may have located wreckage believed to be from the plane on the bottom of the Java Sea. That's what investigators are saying. Four more bodies have been recovered, bringing the total number to at least ten. Two of the victims' bodies have arrived in Surabaya for

identification.

Meantime, bad weather hampering search efforts which have been called off for the day. Divers are hoping to get back in the water soon. But AirAsia's CEO now says the weather forecast for the next few days is not looking very good.

For more on the latest developments, we want to get right to Gary Tuchman live in Indonesia.

I know, Gary, they're awaiting more bodies to be returned there in caskets in a similar ceremony like we saw earlier today.

TUCHMAN: Yes, Christine. We saw an incredibly moving ceremony a few hours ago here at a naval air base. That's right behind the airport where we're standing right now, the airport where all these people, 162 people took off on Sunday, on this ill-fated flight. And what it was, was an Indonesian air force plane landed, and aboard

the plane were two caskets, the first two victims who were found in the water. They were taken off the airplane. The caskets had number 001, number 002. They did not know their names. They still don't know the names, as far as we know at this point. There was an honor guard of more than 100 army, air force and navy troops here in Indonesia. And they loaded the caskets onto hearses, and the hearses were then brought to a police hospital, they call it, which is about an hour away, and that's where their bodies will be identified.

Now behind me is a crisis center here at the airport. That's where family members have been gathering to seek help, to seek solace. One of the most valuable things they've had is each other. These families are all going through the same thing, and that gives an immense amount of comfort in a situation like this.

But the crisis center is now closing down, because they're having the families go to this hospital. Because ultimately, that's where they hope all the bodies are brought. That is a great concern amongst some of these family members that their loved ones' bodies won't be found. Most of them, they have accepted they have died. Now they just hope their bodies are found. That's all they can hope for as we come to a new year -- Christine.

ROMANS: All right. Gary Tuchman, thank you for that -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right. Thanks so much, Christine.

Was the Sony hack attack an inside job? The FBI has said all along that North Korea was responsible for the cyberattack on Sony Pictures last month. However, a private security firm, a cybersecurity firm says that it now has evidence that it collected that points to an inside job. U.S. officials pushing back, saying the firm only focused on a narrow slice of the information and intelligence.

What do we make of all of this? I want to ask Howard Schmidt. He's a former cybersecurity czar in the Obama administration. He is a partner at Ridge Schmidt Cyber LLC.

Good morning to you, and happy New Year. Thank you for joining us, Howard.

HOWARD SCHMIDT, FORMER CYBERSECURITY CZAR FOR OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Good morning, and happy New Year to you, too, as well. And happy to be here.

PEREIRA: I'm glad you are here.