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Jordan Begins Series of Airstrikes on ISIS Targets; Jordan's Increased Involvement in Struggle against ISIS Analyzed; TransAsia Pilot: "Mayday, Mayday, Engine Flameout"

Aired February 05, 2015 - 08:00   ET

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

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Jordanians want to increase the number of airstrikes they're carrying out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At the end of the day it's going to take a regional force beyond Jordan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't want to see it being American ground forces carrying the heavy load again.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's got to have moderate Arab nations that are bringing this force to bear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: May day, may day, engine flameout.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The final seconds of TransAsia Airways flight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A flameout means that the engine has lost its combustion.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This toddler somehow survived.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Screaming, yelling. It was just total panic.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Smoke and flames poured out of a packed metro- north train.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was very lucky to be able to walk out of that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why was the car on the train tracks and what caused this accident to be failed?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota, and Michaela Pereira.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. We have breaking news, a first even here on CNN. We have learned Jordan is carrying out airstrikes against ISIS right now in retaliation for the murder of their fighter pilot.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Of course you'll remember Jordan's king had promised relentless war against the terror group. Is this the beginning of that new plan? Let's get right to Barbara Starr. She is live at the Pentagon for us. What do we know, Barbara?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. At this hour a U.S. official tells me the first round of Jordanian airstrikes against ISIS in Syria is now underway. This obviously very sensitive business in terms of exactly where the planes are flying, the targets they're striking. We can also tell you U.S. warplanes, as you would expect, are flying alongside in support of the Jordanians, the U.S. providing intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting assistance.

Also on standby combat search and rescue assets, aircraft and other airplanes from the United States in case a pilot were to go down, if they were to be shot down or have mechanical trouble and their plane goes down. So everything in place and now underway.

The Jordanians are flying F-16s. That is their main airframe in their air force. This is what had been widely expected for the last several days as the Jordanians made a number of public statements that they would be taking action. All of this had been worked over the last several days within the coalition to get the targets.

Now one of the big questions is what about ISIS, ISIS on the ground. They are -- you know, they are far from blind to all of this. They know that Jordan, they know that the coalition is coming after them. So the question will be when these war planes go overhead, what ISIS targets will they find? Will ISIS have tried to have run away and hide? Will ISIS stand and fight? This may now be the big unknown in the coming hours, where is ISIS and can the Jordanians get to them? Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: So, Barbara, the news that you're breaking is the air administration have begun in Syria in Jordan. What about outside of Syria, what about Iraq?

STARR: I think you'll see what we've seen for the last several months now, the coalition, including the United States, going after a number of targets in Iraq and Syria. The targets in Iraq are sort of an ongoing part of the coalition air war strategy. They fly every day. They look for targets and they strike targets as they find them.

The Jordanians, of course, have been promising very specific retaliation for the murder of their pilot, but it all works into the same overall air strategy -- planes flying overhead looking for targets being ready to strike them when and where they find them. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: OK, Barbara Starr, thanks so much for all of that breaking news. We'll check back with you.

We want to bring in now CNN's Atika Shubert. She is live in Amman, Jordan. What's the latest there, Atika?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. We actually saw four fighter jets fly overhead. And what we understand from the minister of information is that these jets have just returned from a mission in Syria. And they actually flew over the village of Aye, which is where King Abdullah was visiting with the Kasseasbeh family. And we understand the king told the father of that Jordanian pilot who was killed, tool him that those planes had just returned from a mission to hit Raqqa, Raqqa being of course the ISIS stronghold in Syria.

Now we understand that the Jordanian military will give more details shortly and possibly also expecting a statement from King Abdullah himself. We'll keep you updated when those come in.

CUOMO: All right, let's get some more on this right now. We have Mike Rogers, a CNN national security commentator. He's the former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and represented Michigan as a Republican. And we have CNN military analyst and executive dean at the University of Phoenix Major General James "Spider" Marks. Gentlemen, thank you very much.

Mike, let me come to you first, maybe make a little bit more news here. You know King Abdullah. You understand the capabilities of his military. We're talking about airstrikes, but we know the need is about boots on the ground. May there be news there as well?

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: Well, again, I don't know exactly what their plan is and probably we shouldn't talk about it if we did, but I can guarantee you that if those strikes are going to be effective, they're going to have to have special capabilities folks on the ground in places around Syria. They have a very capable intelligence service. The Jordanian intelligence service who has certainly focused a lot of resources in the ISIS problem in Syria. And you can bet your bottom dollar if those strikes will be effective that there are folks guiding those aircraft to the right targets.

CUOMO: Right. That's all --

ROGERS: That is really important.

CUOMO: That's the key. Target acquisition. Jordan had been withholding their intel assets, namely their ability to infiltrate terror groups. The U.S. very light on that front. Now that they're fully engaged, that will help, no question about that.

So let's talk, Spider, about why this is good, why we like this, why from the coalition standpoint this is a good move. And that comes down to something you've been talking about from the beginning, which is, general, that this has to be the region's war, not the U.S.'s war. How might this move by Jordan change the game?

GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, the moderate Arabs have to step up. Jordan is, as the congressman indicated, a magnificent ally, very trusted, very deeply engrained in terms of how we do business, how we do business, very transparent, has been for decades. So with Jordan's acknowledgment that this is totally egregious, totally beyond the palebar barbarism that we haven't seen before and now involved is a very good step.

Now, what we hope, Chris, is that this will encourage others to pick up the pace. Certainly the Saudis are involved, Bahrain is involved. We have to continue to push to get their further involvement. But this is what America does. Look, we lead and we hope that others will follow. If they don't, we'll continue to lead. We talk about having a coalition, and it needs to have this level of participation. Ultimately this will only collapse, ISIS will only collapse if moderate Arabs are involved in creating that collapse and saying enough.

CUOMO: Right.

MARKS: The U.S. can lead but they have to pick it up.

CUOMO: The fundamental problem, Mike, is fighting a fight that's going on in somebody else's backyard. Now, the military part on the ground obviously fundamental but it's deeper than that as you have taught us in the past. When you look at Jordan as an example, great ally, right, but Hamas, ISIS, other terror groups have firm roots in Jordanian society. The population there divided, 6.5 million people, but 2,000 foreign fighters estimated. Do you think that this turn will bleed into that and Jordan will start addressing the tendencies of its own?

ROGERS: Well, you know, the king has been trying to moderate different factions in Jordan for some time, and he's done a pretty good job of trying to find that balance. He does have problems in Jordan, and many believe that there was a time a few years ago where the kingdom -- his kingdom was certainly in question. I don't think that's the case anymore. He's plowed through that. He's opened up certain segments of the Jordanian society in order to try to be more inclusive.

The problem is in that region you will always find this brand of extremism that will seek to cause harm, and if you recall, ISIS, one of their first targets when they started this operation was Jordan. They were talking about going into Lebanon and Jordan. So that's where they have to concern themselves. And if you recall, the two executions they did of Al Qaeda suicide bomber attempts in Jordan were related to Baghdadi who was the forerunner to ISIS in Jordan at a wedding. So this has deep roots for them. I think the king has taken this very personal, and he will not -- he will be relentless in this and, candidly, can help bring the other Arab nations together in a way that I think the administration was having some difficulty in doing.

CUOMO: That would be the key.

All right, now one step sideways, general, and feel free to just dismiss what I'm about to say out of hand and tell me why, but this is happening, this sea change in Jordan's perspective, because they are pissed off about how their pilot was killed. It was done with disrespect. They were was led on. And it was done in a way that was offensive to them culturally. Is that the right formation here, eye for an eye? Is that not playing into ISIS's mentality about how we rule the world?

MARKS: Chris, it is. The issue at this point is that we must get beyond the fact that King Abdullah might be pissed off and that the Jordanian people as a whole are outraged by what they saw in how ISIS treated their pilot. But they had to also assume that there wasn't going to be a positive outcome no matter how it happened.

So at this point what Jordan is doing is absolutely the correct step. It needs to galvanize others, but it will be very objective. Jordan will be a part of the Arab tasking order. It will be a coordinated effort on the part of central command, which really is executing all the operations that are taking place, both in Syria and northern Iraq. So it now is very much -- it's a military operation with that level of precision and it has to be sustained. It can't be a revenge attack. It can't be vitriolic. We can't allow emotions exclusively to guide these actions. If emotions brought them in, that's fine, Chris, but at this point it needs to be such a relentless aggressive attack all completely objectively controlled so that you can achieve results on the ground, and it needs to be sustained.

CUOMO: I hear you, general. I mean, Mike, I guess, look, maybe it's semantics, but to me it doesn't feel like it is. Your motivation matters because what is the goal? The means is the military. The means is the diplomacy and changing the lives of these people who are vulnerable to extremism because of their lot in life. But it matters that they're saying they did this to us, now we're going to do it to them. That's eye for an eye mentality. That's rough justice. Isn't the bigger problem in that part of the world that you do have a big division between the haves and the have notes in a way that allows that to be appetizing to the desperate?

ROGERS: Well, you know, so some degree, that's been the million dollar question in the debate. How do you change the economics on the ground to change the fact that people can be hopeful and have some social mobility? Clearly that's the case.

But one caution here. The king has been interested in attacking this problem for years. He's been to the United States several times over the last few years saying this is going to be a problem. It's going to be a bigger problem. He'd come back and say now it's a big problem, going to get worse.

CUOMO: Right. You know from the intel side --

ROGERS: The reason this is important it allows the politics at home -- this allows the politics at home in Jordan, in the UAE, in Saudi Arabia, it allows them to galvanize their forces to go in. That's why I think this is so important.

CUOMO: You know that over the years it's been such a desperation to use the intel assets that they had infiltrating terror groups, and that cooperation wasn't there. Let me give a final word to you, general, and then we'll move on with this.

MARKS: Chris, thanks. The issue that Jordan has been dealing with primarily up until the last couple of days has been an incredible refugee problem which is the spillover from Syria and the other neighbors. That's been job number one. King Abdullah has tried to get his arms around that and be a good humanitarian in terms of trying to provide that part of the solution to the problem. Now he has a motivation to get involved kinetically in this fight.

CUOMO: And maybe he can use the refugee as an entree in reaching out to his allies also in saying help me with this part of it, help me with all of it. General, thank you so much for helping us understand what it means on the ground. And Mike, invaluable your knowledge of the king and how things work in Jordan, so fundamentally important in moving forward. Thank you, gentlemen. Michaela?

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Chris, we are learning more now about what was going on in the cockpit of the TransAsia Airline plane that crashed into the river in Taiwan killing 32 of the 58 people on board. A Mayday call was made, the voice On the Recording saying "Mayday, mayday, engine flameout seconds before that plane went down." And 12 people remain missing, 14 others survived the disaster. Investigators are now examining the data that was downloaded from the plane's recovered black boxes.

CAMEROTA: Secretary of state John Kerry holding a news conference at this hour in Kiev saying the U.S. will pledge $16.4 million in humanitarian aid in the Ukraine. Kerry saying the west is not seeking a conflict with Russia and he's hoping Russia will take advantage of a diplomatic solution.

CUOMO: Breaking overnight, listen to this, 80 million of us just got our data stolen. Anthem Insurance, that's America's second largest insurer, they were hacked. The personal information, and I mean like everything, birthdays, Social Security numbers, even income levels of their subscribers now in the hands of hackers. Anthem says it will offer free credit monitoring and identity protection services to those affected.

CAMEROTA: Just terrible. It feels like that's happening more often.

How did a driver get stuck on the tracks as a commuter train came barreling towards her? That's just one question for investigators looking into the deadly crash outside New York City. We'll have the latest developments next.

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CAMEROTA: Two transportation disasters this week, the TransAsia crash in Taiwan and Metro-North crash north of New York City. What have investigators learned so far to stop these from happening in the future?

Let's turn to Mary Schiavo, she's our CNN aviation analyst and the former inspector general of the Department of Transportation, and David Soucie, CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector. Nice to have both of you with us again on NEW DAY. Mary, I want to start with you. We know from the mayday call in the TransAsia flight that the pilot says, "Mayday, mayday, engine flameout." What does that tell you? MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, that means that the engine

was losing power. It was not producing thrust. There can be a lot of reasons for it, but basically you've got an engine failure and it looks like it was an engine failure on the left engine.

CAMEROTA: and, Mary, is it possible for a pilot to ever recover from an engine flameout?

SCHIAVO: Oh, yes, absolutely on a twin engine plane, of course, on a multi-engine plane, you have the other engines which are by regulation and by design capable of carrying that plane on and continuing to fly. However, the most dangerous time in flight to lose an engine is on takeoff and that's exactly what happened here. When you look at the radar tracings, it appears that they lost the engine or the engine power in the left engine just after takeoff. And then of course they had to pass over a very crowded, congested area and they just weren't able to gain altitude or increase power. Most dangerous time.

CAMEROTA: David, back in 2010, there was a similar plane crash in Australia and the Australian Transportation Safety Board put together an animation of what went wrong. Can you help us understand what we're seeing in this animation?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Absolutely. What this animation was created from the black boxes after the accident was a training flight in which the trainer pulled back one of the engines to try to simulate an engine out. Well, what happened was the engine failed when that happened, so did the auto feather system allowing the propellers -- which allow the propellers to go into a streamline position. This didn't happen, so the drag on the left side was so severe that it caused the left wing to fail, or the left wing to stall, in which the aircraft rolled over to the left. Almost identical to what we see -- what we've seen in these dramatic videos.

CAMEROTA: and, David, it does seem almost identical. When I first saw that animation, I thought that it was an animation of what happened this week with TransAsia. So what do we learn from that animation?

SCHIAVO: Well, what we learn there is that it is possible that the -- well, as Mary pointed out, if the aircraft engine goes into an auto feather position, it's perfectly capable of continuing flight. There shouldn't have been any problem with that continuing flight, making it go around and come back around and land. So obviously something beyond that happened. The engine failure might have been the primary cause, but this is a secondary cause, something that happens afterwards. An accident is never caused by one thing. It's always a culmination of several things together that cause accidents.

CAMEROTA: Mary, this same model airplane that was involved in this TransAsia crash, this ATR-72, was involved in another crash back in July. Is there something possibly wrong with this model?

SCHIAVO: Well, possibly wrong with the model and possibly wrong with the engine. The one in July, less than a year ago, they had engine problems there as well. And there are reports out of Taipei that on this plane, when it was delivered back in April, that both engines were replaced at or upon delivery, which is highly, highly unusual. And there is undocumented -- it isn't confirmed report -- that the pilot on this flight had complained about this engine on a prior flight. So a lot of things for the investigators to look at, but fortunately a lot of clues. So these engines and this aircraft model are suspect and the government has ordered an inspection of both.

CAMEROTA: Mary, I want to stick with you for one second as we transition to what investigators are learning about this Metro-North railroad crash. Back in 2008, Congress approved a GPS system for trains that were designed to improve safety. Can you explain how that would have changed what happened this week and why that hasn't been installed yet in railroads.

SCHIAVO: Sure. What Congress envisioned was something called positive train control. They said back in 2008 that all of the rail companies in America had to propose to the Department of Transportation a plan to implement this. And their plans were due in in 2010, and they were supposed to have them in place by December 2015. They're not going to meet it because some of the equipment necessary wasn't even invented.

But what it is is a series of computer monitors and they're the computer monitors on the tracks, at the crossings, and in the train. And it tells the train if there's an obstruction on the track, if the train is going too fast, if the rails are out of alignment. And so basically it's kind of like a GPS system for a train and it's supposed to dramatically decrease accidents on the rail lines of the United States of America.

Just isn't in place yet because things have to be invented and, of course, it's an issue of money. Railroads spend about $100 billion a year on safety and maintenance. And that's not enough, believe it or not.

CAMEROTA: It sounds like that might have changed what happened this week in this deadly train crash, had it been installed.

David Soucie, Mary Schiavo, thanks for all of your expertise. Great to talk to you.

SCHIAVO: Thank you.

CUOMO: All right, here's a question for you. Why would a judge tell the mother of a murder victim not to cry in court? That's what happened in the Aaron Hernandez trial. Is the judge out of line? What's going on here. We're going to take a look.

PERREIRA: And are you leaving hundreds of dollars on the table each month? You may be if you're not refinancing your mortgage. Christine Romans will explain.

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PEREIRA: All right. Here we go with the five things to know for your NEW DAY. No. 1, breaking news for you. Jordan launching airstrikes against

ISIS after it vowed a relentless war in response to the terrorists' brutal killing of their fighter pilot. U.S. war planes are flying alongside Jordan providing support.

"Mayday, mayday, engine flameout." Those are the chilling final words from the cockpit before a TransAsia turboprop plane crashed into a river in Taiwan, killing 32. Investigators are now studying the data from the plane's black boxes.

Federal investigators are on site of Tuesday's deadly Metro-North crash north of New York City. They are focusing on why an SUV was on the tracks before the crash and whether it was gas from that vehicle or the third rail that fueled the massive fire.

Secretary of State John Kerry saying the world cannot ignore the violence Russia is prompting in eastern Ukraine. Speaking in Kiev, he's now demanding Russia remove troops and heavy weaponry and agree to a diplomatic resolution to that crisis.

America's second largest insurer hit by a massive hack attack. The personal information of as many as 80 million current and former Anthem customers may have been compromised.

We do update the five things. Be sure to visit newdayCNN.com for the latest version. Chris.

CUOMO: The Aaron Hernandez murder trial, we haven't seen one start like this in a while. You've got sisters on both sides of the case. You've got incriminating security footage from inside the defendant's home. Now this warning from the judge to the victim's mother. You could forget this guy is even a famous athlete; that's how much is going on.

Susan Candiotti takes us inside the circus.