Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Search Continues for Remains of AirAsia Plane in Java Sea; Seven-Year-Old Lone Survivor of Kentucky Plane Crash; Jury Selection for Boston Bombing Trial Begins; Sex Abuse Claims Against Prince Andrew

Aired January 05, 2015 - 08:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are at day nine. It has been more than a week since AirAsia Flight 8501 disappeared.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are in an area where some bodies have been found. Conditions are less than ideal.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The trial for Boston marathon suspect starts in hours. He faces 30 federal counts. Three were killed, 264 injured in the attack.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is my only chance if there's any sort of closure.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: British royalty is involved in a sex scandal.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She alleges she was kept three years by the prince's former friend.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She's going to have to prove this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to NEW DAY. It's Monday, January 5, 8:00 in the east. I'm Alisyn Camerota with John Berman. Tremendous aggravation this morning as another unsuccessful day comes and goes in the search for AirAsia Flight 8501.

Nine days since the crash, no black box, no pings. One of the objects thought to be part of the plane turned out to be a ship wreck in the Java Sea.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So now new questions are emerging about whether icing of the engines could have been a key factor in bringing that plane down. The search area has been revised once again, this time to the east, with muddy waters doing the search crews no favors. For the latest let's get to Anna Coren right now on the ground in Indonesia. Good morning, Anna. ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, John. Recovery teams working

against the clock to try and find the bodies, the 162 passengers on board that ill-fated AirAsia flight that crashed nine days ago. And 37 bodies have been retrieved, but the remainder of bodies in the Java Sea decomposing in the warm tropical waters.

Now, the search has been called off tonight because of bad weather, but there are real fears that it could take weeks if not longer to locate the bodies and debris as well as those vital black box flight recorders.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COREN: Authorities ramping up the search for AirAsia 8501 with crews scouring the Java Sea both in the air and by water. By the afternoon at least three bodies, two male and one female, pulled from the water and taken to land. Severe weather breaking long enough for officials to deploy a total of 57 divers to investigate several large objects detected by sonar imagery. The USS Fort Worth is also assisting, using sonar equipment to scan the ocean floor.

Meanwhile, Indonesian authorities extend the massive operation east beyond the so called most probable area, but crews have already retrieved dozens of bodies and located large pieces of debris believed to be from the aircraft.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: The position of where they find the debris is extremely important because of the fact you can determine whether there was an inflight breakup or the extent of the breakup once it hit the water.

COREN: Now nine days since the airbus 320 went missing, and so far no signals have been detected to help hone in on the critical black boxes.

JEFF WISE, SCIENCE WRITER: The voice recorder in the cockpit tells you what the people are saying, also records sounds. You might hear a bang, for instance. You've also got this data recorder that's telling you what kind of thrust settings the engines were on. So you really can recreate in a great level of detail what was happening with the plane and why it came down.

COREN: Also Indonesian officials revealing that AirAsia did not have the permit to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route on December 28th, clarifying that the airline was approved to fly the route only four days a week which did not include Sunday.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COREN: Now, a full investigation is obviously underway but realistically on one will know what happened to that plane until they recover those black boxes. The flight between here, Surabaya, and Singapore has been suspended. AirAsia says it will cooperating with the investigation. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Anna Coren, thanks for all that background. So what's next in the crash investigation? Let's bring in Miles

O'Brien. He's a CNN aviation analyst and a science correspondent for PBS. Miles, nice to see you. You study this stuff all the time. What's your theory on how this crash happened?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: When I hear icing brought this plane down, I wonder if maybe something got lost in the translation. A lot of hail ingested into the engines and hail striking the aircraft could very well match what we've seen here. But if it was as simple as the engines flaming out either because of a lot of moisture or they iced over, there are devices in the engine that are supposed to prevent icing of the engines, if that were the case, you would have an aircraft perfectly flyable with no power. And so it has a lot of glide capability at that altitude, perhaps as much as 100 miles, and with the several minutes of glide time, the crew could point toward land and get on the radio. So I think something much more catastrophic happened.

CAMEROTA: So your theory is that it was hail. Can airplanes though the fly through hailstorms?

O'BRIEN: Well, it depends on how big the hail is. It can cause some serious structural damage if you get into a situation like that. And we don't know for certain it was icing. That could be a contributing factor. There's the possibility of getting caught in a massive updraft that could cause all kinds of problems and put the aircraft into a stall. Or it could have been some combination of all that, which is usually the way these things go. It's very seldom one thing. It's usually a chain. If you take one link out of the chain, you don't have an accident.

CAMEROTA: And do we think this is a surprise storm, or a surprise weather pattern that this plane confronted? Or was there a way to steer around it?

O'BRIEN: There's always ways to steer around thunderstorms. They're very intense. They don't last long. They're very localized. It's a matter of directing yourself around them. In that part of the world, if you decided not to take off because of thunderstorms either current or predicted, you'd never have a flight complete its mission. So what pilots do is they take a good look at the weather. They determine where the front may be, they fly toward it. And as they get closer, they use their onboard radar and listen to what other pilots are saying and they make a determination of how to get around safely. You don't fly into them. If you fly into them you've made a big mistake.

CAMEROTA: Miles, you and I have had occasion unfortunately to talk about various crashes. And I was on a five hour plane flight last night. I'm a nervous flier as I've confessed to before. And one of the things that always comforts me when I'm nervous is I hear experts like you saying planes can hand turbulence. Lanes can handle much more turbulence than we even know. They're built, they're designed to handle turbulence. But then I hear you say if it encounters an updraft, it gets into big trouble.

O'BRIEN: Well, you know, yes, there are limits, right. I mean, we're talking about airplanes that are designed, frankly, to be as economic with fuel as possible. So they're designed to the edge of the safety envelope, if you will. There's a lot of automation in these aircraft now and there's a lot talk about how the automation is great 99 percent of the time. But in that one percent, that one percent when things go horribly wrong, you really want the human being making the decision. And there's some question as to whether the human beings, the crews are not as adept as pilots because of that very automation. In other words, the plane hands over control at the worst possible time, and the crew may be not properly trained to deal with it.

CAMEROTA: What a catch 22. So Miles, what's your theory on why they haven't been able to hear any of the pinging from the black boxes?

O'BRIEN: I hate to beat this horse, but in this day and age in the 21st century, we're trying to stick basically a microphone in the water and listen for a ping to figure out what happened to this airplane is just extraordinary to me. As far as we know the pingers didn't work during Air France 447. These are things that may or may not work when they encounter water. The battery might not have been charged. Who knows? The fact we don't have real time telemetry sent up to the cloud is absolutely scandalous. The airline industry needs to do something about this now.

CAMEROTA: So do you think the tail broke off, which is where the black boxes are housed? And if so, how will they find the wreckage they need and the investigative clues to this plane?

O'BRIEN: Well, it's just a matter of time. It's relatively shallow water, just horrible weather there. The very weather that we think is part of this crash is making it difficult for the searchers to do their job. It will happen. I'm a little surprised they haven't heard the pings. But it's, again, with the waves and the shipping traffic that's already there, it's a noisy environment. So the best I think we can all hope for is just a little break in the weather and I think things will come into place.

CAMEROTA: OK, we will all hope for. Miles O'Brien, thanks so much for your expertise. Great to see you.

O'BRIEN: You're welcome.

CAMEROTA: Let's go over to Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Alisyn, thank you so much. Here are your headline at this hour.

Really an amazing story out of Kentucky. A seven-year-old girl miraculously survived a plane crash that killed four members of her family, including her parents, her sister, and a cousin. Seven-year- old Sailor Gutzler managed to walk almost a mile through the woods without shoes in near freezing temperatures to find help. She ended up at the door of Larry Wilkins who told us about the treacherous conditions that little girl faced.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LARRY WILKINS: To know that the good lord was with her, if she had walked the other direction, you probably wouldn't have found her for a week. She would be walking into just more woods. It's probably as the crow flies maybe a quarter of a mile from where that plane crashed. But you couldn't walk it in a straight line. I'd say she walked three quarters of a mile. She had a creek bed to go through, briar bushes to go around, fallen trees to walk around.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: It's really amazing. Federal investigators are hoping now that the little girl can answer questions into why the plane went down. She was injured. She has minor injuries surprisingly. She's expected to be fine. A fund for little Sailor has been set up.

A brazen act of defiance by hundreds of New York City cops once again turning their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio at a funeral for a fallen officer. It happened during the funeral service Sunday for detective Wenjian Liu just as the mayor began his eulogy. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton had warned officers to keep politics out of the ceremony. Many officers blame the mayor for the anti-police climate in the wake of the chokehold death of Eric Garner.

The son of a Wall Street hedge fund founder is in custody this morning suspected in his father's murder. Police allege 30-year-old Thomas Gilbert Jr. fatally shot his father Thomas Gilbert Sr. following an argument in the father's New York City apartment on Sunday. They say the son fled the scene, barricaded himself inside his own apartment for hours until officers broke down the door and arrested him.

Publishing giant Harper Collins is now apologizing for omitting Israel from the new Atlas of the Middle East. The company says the Atlas has been pulled and the remaining supply will be destroyed. The book apparently was intended for Middle East students. The publisher was apparently concerned the inclusion of Israel would be considered unacceptable in the region. You can imagine that decision triggered quite a backlash. Harper Collins now saying it is sorry for the, quote, "offense it caused."

BERMAN: It's really making a statement, isn't it, because you have groups like Hamas which refuse to recognize existence of Israel. And when you publish an atlas that does the same, in a way you're getting yourself right in the middle of the discussion.

CAMEROTA: You're not allowed to erase countries because of political correctness, or whatever that was, misguided political correctness.

PEREIRA: Absolutely misguided.

CAMEROTA: Michaela, thank you.

The trial against Boston bombing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's is about to begin with the death penalty potentially waiting for him down this legal road. So we will take you live to Boston for more.

And royal scandal, a woman accuses Prince Andrew and others of sexually abusing her when she was a minor. Another man named in that lawsuit, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. He will be here to speak with us live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: This morning, jury selection finally begins in the trial against Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. We're learning this morning that talks were held on a possible plea deal, but they fizzled out when the government would not rule out the death penalty. Tsarnaev's defense claims that he was manipulated by his older brother Tamerlan who was killed in a confrontation with police day after the marathon attack. CNN's Deb Feyerick is in Boston with a trail preview. Deborah?

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, prosecutors are planning on moving ahead with this trial beginning today. 1,200 jurors expected at the court house over the next couple of days. They're going to be filling out questionnaires and then they will be questioned by both prosecutors and defense, as both sides work to pick an impartial jury.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK (voice-over): Right near the marathon finish line on a holiday Monday in Boston, two explosions, 12 seconds apart.

RICK DESLAURIERS, RAN FBI'S BOSTON OFFICE: It was a scene of utter devastation and carnage down there.

FEYERICK: The homemade bombs kill three people, shrapnel tears through more than 200 spectators. Rick DesLauriers ran the FBI's Boston office.

DESLAURIERS: We were collecting pieces of shrapnel that had been contained inside the bombs, pieces of the pressure cooker bombs, pieces of the backpacks.

FEYERICK: Day three, a break in the case. Of the more than 12,000 images and surveillance videos from businesses and spectators, a man in a white ball cap at the second blast site.

DESLAURIERS: He places that backpack down on the ground, sliding it off his shoulder, and stands and mills around. A short time later, maybe 15 minutes later, he makes a cellphone call. Very shortly thereafter you hear the first bomb go off.

FEYERICK: Day four, the FBI asks the public for help finding two men, later identified as Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Now on the run, officials say the brothers execute MIT police officer, Sean Collier, car jack an SUV, and get into a shoot out with police. Watertown police chief, Ed Deveau, says 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev is shot, but manages to reload about four times.

EDWARD DEVEAU. WATERTOWN POLICE CHIEF: He runs out of ammunition and throws his gun at my sergeant and he starts to run.

FEYERICK: Officers tackle Tamerlan. His brother tries to scatter police to free him.

DEVEAU: He drags his brother down, he's lodged underneath the stolen SVU, and he smashes into one of our cruisers.

FEYERICK: By sunrise Friday, millions in Boston area are in lockdown. When it is lifted that night, a resident 911. The suspect is hiding in his boat.

FEYERICK (on camera): He has a sniper rifle pointed right at his head.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, yes.

FEYERICK: Because he was still a threat. You didn't know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was still a threat. We didn't know if he had bombs on him.

FEYERICK (voice-over): After a tense standoff, Tsarnaev surrenders. At the hospital he is questioned by FBI interrogators then read his rights.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK (on camera): Now Tsarnaev's lawyers have repeatedly asked to delay this trial so that they can have a bit of additional time to prepare. About two weeks ago, when Tsarnaev was last here at this courthouse, he arrived very, very early, but right now no sign and no confirmation that he's actually inside. Though he has the right to be here, he has the right to sit across from those perspective jurors and make sure they see him just as much as he sees them. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Okay. Deb Feyerick, thanks so much for that. For more, let's go over to John.

BERMAN: All right, thanks so much, Alisyn. Joining us now, Evan Perez, CNN justice reporter, and Jeffrey Toobin, CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor. And, Evan, earlier today you broke some news. There were discussions about a plea deal between the federal prosecutors and the defense but they fell apart.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: They fell apart because the government refused to take the death penalty off the table. This is obviously a case that a lot of us pretty much I think know what the outcome at least of the first phase of the trial is. Everyone expects that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is going to be found guilty. The issue is whether or not they're going to put him to death as a result of that, an that's where these talks hit a snag between the government and his defense.

BERMAN: And the Feds wouldn't take the death penalty off the table, and the defense has a famed lawyer.

PEREZ: Right.

BERMAN: Judy Clarke who did, you know, Zacarias Moussaoui, the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph who was the Olympic park bomber, also Jared Lee Loughner who shot Gabby Giffords and killed a number of people there. She is known for being able to get deals. She couldn't do it here.

PEREZ: That's right, and that's one of the things that when she was brought on this case, we all expected that this was going to end up in a plea deal and this is exactly the path that she tried to take. It appears that the government decided that there was not much more that they wanted to do here and they wanted to proceed with trial. This is, you know, the death penalty is something that the victims and the survivors in this case all support it seems like.

BERMAN: All right, Jeffrey, let's talk about the jury selection right now in Boston. It's interesting because there have been people (INAUDIBLE) that moved for a change of venue. Get this out of Boston. Too many people in the Boston area are connected to the marathon bombings. However, that area may be a little bit of a boon for them, too. This is anti-death penalty state, where they don't have the state death penalty, so it's interesting, isn't it?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: You know, there hasn't been an execution in Massachusetts since 1947. It's known as one of the most liberal politically states in the country, and Boston, that part, is the most liberal part of the state. So they will be drawing from a jury pool that has at least some potential for people on it who are not at all sympathetic to the death penalty, even if, like everyone, they're outraged by the nature of the crime.

BERMAN: You're threading a needle, both sides are threading this needle in the jury selection where you want to find someone who doesn't have a friend, or a relative, or know someone who was at the marathon. And, let me tell you something, that's tough in Massachusetts. Almost everyone I know knows someone who was effected. But at the same time, that same person has to be at least willing to accept the possibility of the death penalty.

TOOBIN: Right. I mean, what - - the legal term is death qualified jurors, jurors who will consider imposing the death penalty. If you are philosophically opposed to death penalty in all circumstances, you're not eligible to be on the pool as part of the jury. So that skews the group somewhat in a more pro-death penalty direction, but there are a lot of people who theoretically are for the death penalty, but when they look at someone across the table, especially perhaps a young man, the big argument in this case is going to be how much he was influenced by his older brother. There's the possibility that one person, and that's all it takes, could say no.

BERMAN: Let's talk about how this trial will play out, because I think you just mentioned what will be the defense for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, perhaps the only defense, which is to say my brother made me do it, my older brother who was persuasive and charismatic, he got me involved in this whole thing. I don't know if that will be a defense in terms of guilt or innocence, but it could be something that helps in the death penalty phase.

TOOBIN: Frankly, I don't know how the guilt phase will go other than to say it's a slam dunk. It is not really much in dispute that someone else could have been involved in this conspiracy. However, the big issue, as you point out, will be how much influence Tamerlan had. But, you know, what the prosecution is going to point out is how much independent action the younger brother had. How many things he did on his own, placing the bombs, getting the ingredients, spending months putting this together. At any point he could have pulled out, turned his brother in, and obviously he didn't.

PEREZ: Some of his own statements as well.

TOOBIN: Right, yes.

BERMAN: There are the pictures, there are the photos, there's the physical evidence, there's the bomb making stuff in the apartment, and then there's this. There is the writing that was left behind inside the boat that he was hiding in that said this from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, allegedly I suppose, "We Muslims are one body. You hurt one, you hurt us all. Stop killing innocent people and we will stop. The U.S. government is killing our innocent civilians. I can't stand to see such evil go unpunished." So, in addition to all of the physical evidence, you have a motive right there that was written on the boat.

TOOBIN: And that's after the bombing. I mean, that's after he saw the horrible carnage, the three dead, the 8-year-old child dead, the hundreds of horrible injuries. Even after that, he is talking, you know, explaining his motives. That is going to be very tough to explain to the jury, even if he was influenced by his brother.

BERMAN: And Eric, you know, I mean Evan I should say, I was talking about Attorney General Eric Holder, Attorney General Eric Holder opposes the death penalty.

PEREZ: Right. He's an opponent of the death penalty. He's criticized it a lot, but he has authorized it in this case. He also on Friday authorized it in the case of the shooter who killed the TSA agent in the shoot out at L.A.X. last year. So, he is willing to go this route in certain cases. And. you know, it's not a surprise that he did it on this one.

TOOBIN: The jury will be told one thing, you know, in the penalty phase, which is by the prosecutors. If not in this case, when? If this kind of crime doesn't deserve the death penalty, what does? That's a tough argument to refute.

PEREZ: And Massachusetts is known, I mean, juries in Massachusetts, federal juries have handed down the death penalty before in recent years.

BERMAN: But haven't been executed in a long, long time.

PEREZ: That's right.

BERMAN: This is a case of allegedly premeditated murder, acts of terrorism, a lot of people killed in an iconic moment when the whole world was watching. So, you're right.

Jeffrey Toobin, Evan Perez, thanks so much for being with us. Alisyn? CAMEROTA: All right, John. There's a growing sex scandal that's rocking the British royal family. A woman claims Prince Andrew sexually abused her when she was a minor. And he's not the only high- profile person named. She also accuses famed Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. He will be here live to respond.

And how hard is it to reach the AirAsia search zone? Our Paula Hancocks traveled there and went out with search crews. She shows us the treacherous conditions.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Buckingham Palace rarely goes on the record about pending legal matters, but the palace is speaking out about a new sex claim abuse against Prince Andrew. Four separate statements rejecting the allegations of sex with a 17-year-old identified as a woman named Virginia Roberts.

In a lawsuit filed in the U.S., Roberts says a wealthy investor forced her into sex slavery when she was a minor to please his powerful friends, including Prince Andrew and well known attorney Alan Dershowitz.. Mr. Dershowitz is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, and he joins us now.

Alan, nice to see you as always, but this woman is making very serious and scandalous allegations against Prince Andrew and you. Have you ever met this woman named Virginia Roberts?

ALAN DERSHOWITZ, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL, EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF LAW: No, absolutely not. I don't know who she is. She's made it up out of whole cloth. She said I had sex with her on Jeffrey Epstein's island. I was on his island once with my wife. The records will show this. My wife, my daughter, a prominent Harvard Business School professor, his wife, brother-in-law, sister-in-law and their children. I was never out of my wife and daughter's sight for the 24 hours I was on the island.

She said I had sex with him (sic) on Jeffrey's Epstein's ranch in New Mexico.

CAMEROTA: With her.

DERSHOWITZ: I was there for about an hour once before the building was complete. No one was in the building, I just toured the building. She said I had sex with her on Jeffrey Epstein's airplanes. The flight manifest will prove conclusively I was never on any airplanes with her.

She's making it up out of whole cloth, but the real villains are the lawyers, Paul Cassell, a former federal judge, and Brad Epstein who filed this without doing any checking. If they had just checked the manifest, if they had just checked with me, if they had just checked the witnesses, they would know not to fire this kind of stink ball in court without checking. These lawyers will be disciplined. I am seeking their disbarment, and that's what ought to happen to them.