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New Day

Heat Flash Detected At Time Russian Plane Crashed; Carson Leads Trump in Second National Poll; Obama Ramping Up Efforts to Help Ex- Inmates Find Jobs. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired November 03, 2015 - 06:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:33:40] MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Good to have you back with us here on NEW DAY. Thirty-three minutes past the hour.

A U.S. satellite detected a heat flash around the same time Russian MetroJet Flight 9268 crashed in the Sinai Saturday morning. That could help investigators figure out if a missile or bomb brought down that plane, killing all 224 aboard. Russian airline officials ruling out human error or technical problems as a possible cause, even though aviation experts say it's far too early to make that determination.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: China tells the U.S.: don't patrol near our artificial islands. The U.S. is doubling down, going from one to two patrols in the South China Sea every three months within the 12-mile nautical range. One Pentagon official calling the schedule a, quote, "regular but not constant poke in China's eye".

China says those islands are theirs on their territory, calling the U.S. patrols a provocation that could lead to war.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Another poll shows Ben Carson surging in the Republican race. He leads Donald Trump now 29 percent to 23 percent in this NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" national poll.

Meanwhile, despite all the complaints about the debates, Trump, Kasich, Fiorina and Christie deciding not to sign a letter of demand for the next debate.

PEREIRA: After years of being blamed for the closure of brick and mortar book stores, online shopping giant Amazon.com in a very ironic is opening its first brick and mortar bookstore in Seattle.

[06:35:07] CUOMO: Wow. What --

PEREIRA: The books for sale are based on customer ratings and preorders on amazon.com. Visitors will get to test drive Amazon devices like the Echo, Fire TV and tablet.

So interesting, I remember when this first started. What is going to happen to the mom and pop bookstores and we saw so many close. And now, the pendulum swings the other way.

CAMEROTA: Yes. They're going back to the future or something like that.

CUOMO: They're doing the big box version of books is what they're doing.

CAMEROTA: Right.

CUOMO: As they expand their business model they're using it as a showcase, the way Apple does.

CAMEROTA: Yes, absolutely interesting stuff.

CUOMO: It's like a Costco.

CAMEROTA: Sure is.

All right. It is the first week of November as you know, snow piling up in the Sierra Mountains in California and Nevada.

PEREIRA: Oh, my goodness.

CAMEROTA: Yes, it's happening. As much as 8 inches.

PEREIRA: Winter is on.

CAMEROTA: Apparently it is.

CUOMO: Safety first, skiing second.

PEREIRA: No, skiing first.

CAMEROTA: The system is heading east, I hate to tell you, Michaela, bringing rain and storm later this week. Yuck.

Let's get to meteorologist Chad Myers.

Hi, Chad. What are you seeing?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Alisyn.

Hey, I'm seeing 12 to 18 inches of snow on top of Monmouth mountain just from the latest storm. More snow into Idaho, into Salt Lake City, into Colorado. All the skiers are excited. Yes, an El Nino winter. Most of the snow may be farther south than you'd like but we'll take snow in Park City, Durango, Telluride, Purgatory, all these places are already thinking about opening early.

We're seeing a couple spots opening this weekend here in central Colorado. So, it's going to be very nice. We're watching one other thing. It's cold here, it is warm and foggy here, a lot of fog in the central plains today. It is muggy. There may be airport delays, as we would expect with very low ceilings.

Right now, Chicago and St. Louis, down to about a quarter mile at some of the airports there. I expect a delay there, too.

But warm weather across the east coast. Temperatures in the 70s today in New York City. I know, it's snowing in California and it's 72 in New York. That's just the way it's going to be. Cold on one side, warm on the other.

CUOMO: He clearly has it backwards.

MYERS: Sixty-eight, 67 and a decent couple of days for you guys.

PEREIRA: Freaky Friday on a Tuesday.

CUOMO: We'll have you on to correct, because you obviously have this backwards, Chad. We let you do it this way and you can redo it later on. It's good. Two hits for the price of one.

Thank you very much, my brother. Good to see you.

MYERS: Good to see you.

CUOMO: So, this U.S. satellite might unlock the mystery of what crashed that Russian passenger jet, 224 families waiting for information. Does this new heat signature information mean something for us? We're going to dig deeper on NEW DAY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:41:37] CUOMO: So here's the new information about this downed plane in Egypt. Satellite images picked up a heat flash over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula just as this Russian airliner fell out of the sky midflight. The U.S. is not ruling out terrorism as a possibility as opposed to a probability, but there are new messages coming from the Russian airline now about what this could have been and couldn't have been.

So, let's look at the pieces and try and figure this out, because there are 224 families that demand answers.

We have CNN national security commentator and former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Mike Rogers.

It is good to have you with us this morning, sir. Please explain what this heat signature is and what it could suggest.

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: A couple of things. From what I've read, it looks like it's in the proximity of the aircraft itself. It says there was a large burst in and around that aircraft.

So, it could have been a fuel tank that exploded. It could have been a fuel line that ignited or it could in fact have been something that exploded inside the aircraft other than a mechanical error, meaning there could have been a bomb on board, or that last option could have been that there was a missile that'll struck that aircraft. I think that's probably the least probable given its height and speed and what we believe that the terrorist groups in that area might be in possession of.

CUOMO: James Clapper, the head of national intelligence, had this to say about the possibility of terrorism, specifically is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does ISIS have the ability to shoot down an airliner?

JAMES CLAPPER, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: It's unlikely but I wouldn't rule it out. We don't have any direct evidence of any terrorist involvement yet. ISIL in a tweet claimed responsibility for it. And there is a very aggressive ISIL chapter in the Sinai. But we really don't know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Clapper is known as a deliberative man, he is not known for being hyperbolic or exaggerating things, but what is he acting off here right now, just the possibility? Because we don't have anything that would substantiate a terrorism claim, right?

ROGERS: Well, no, not the claim itself. You have to say, do they have the capability? An investigator would go down all of those lanes. Do -- does someone in that area have the capability to do it? Even when you look back at history, even 2014, there was lots of arms shipments going into groups that would be in the Sinai, including surface-to-air missiles.

So, not just ISIL and ISIS, but also you have Hamas we believe had the ability and capability with operating the surface-to-air, even shoulder fire missiles. Now, the height would have been an issue. We don't think they had anything that could get that high.

But you can't rule it out completely. Why? Some of those weapons were coming from North Korea. And some of those weapons were coming from other places that were getting smuggled in.

And then, remember, Chris, when Morsi was head of Egypt, it was an absolute arms bazaar. That whole thing was thrown open. There were weapons flying around all over which, by the way, created the instability in the Sinai. I think that's when president now al-Sisi came in, and is now trying to put some security efforts back into the Sinai.

CUOMO: So --

[06:45:00] ROGERS: All of that stuff led to lots and lots of weapons. And that's why I think you have to have that one question: did they get ahold of something that could have possibly hit that aircraft?

CUOMO: Sure, but you also have the fuselage, which is going to show, if it shows anything at all, the introduction of an external force that took this plane down or a massive explosion. That's one of the things that's fairly obvious on early detection. So, you'll know, right?

ROGERS: They'll absolutely know. They'll know by the sound on the voice recorder.

CUOMO: Right.

ROGERS: They'll be able to analyze that.

You can tell if something blew out or something struck something and it blew apart. You'll be able to -- the forensic guys will be able to tell that in pretty short order, actually.

CUOMO: Have you heard anything about some of the data that's being focused on in a hyper way or dismissed as spurious of rapid ascent at the beginning of this flight, that this plane was at an extreme pitch going up very quickly on takeoff? Is there any reason to believe that is predictive of anything?

ROGERS: No. I don't think so. It really depends on what was going through the pilot's mind. I don't think there was any threat. From everything I've seen, there was no real threat, matrix there, that would allow them to believe they would have something to worry about on the ascent.

Now, that doesn't mean they didn't have a piece of information we may not have. The Russians may have shared it with their folks and not anyone else. That's certainly a possibility. But we haven't seen anything that would indicate why that would be out of the ordinary.

CUOMO: All right. Well, certainly, the situation demands attention, 224 families waiting for answers.

Mike Rogers, thank you for helping us understand the situation.

ROGERS: Thanks, Chris.

CUOMO: Mick?

PEREIRA: All right. President Obama looking to change the game for former convicts and releasing low-level offenders from prison. We're going to discuss this and debate it, ahead.

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[06:51:04] PEREIRA: Federal agencies are being given the order to ban the box. President Obama says the agencies can no longer ask perspective employees about criminal convictions on job applications. The president no doubt trying to cement his legacy as he nears the end of his seventh year in office.

We want to discuss this and more with Ben Ferguson, CNN political commentator and host of "The Ferguson Show". Marc Lamont Hill is here with us as well, CNN political commentator and host on BET News.

I feel like you two aren't going to agree on much. But I think we'll indulge ourselves anyway. What's say? We like a good, robust debate.

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: You love one eat and I love you both.

All right. Let's first talk about this ban the box aspect, the idea of removing criminal convictions from job applications. I'll go out on a limb and say Ben Ferguson, you don't support this?

BEN FERGUSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No, I think it's a pipe dream. I think it's a legacy builder. I think the federal government should not be used as Barack Obama's own political experience or idea, when the reality is, employers need to know who they're hiring.

PEREIRA: What about second chances? And I paid my debt to society, Ben?

FERGUSON: I'm OK with second chances. That can be up to the discretion of the individual that's hiring. But to come out and say we're going to ban the box and anything negative you've ever done in your past will never come up in a possibility in the future of affecting you is unrealistic.

We teach children all the time, your actions can cause consequences, good and bad. If you're a citizen that does a good job, goes to school, you're going to get a better job. If you're out there committing crimes, it can affect you in a negative way. That's just the world we live in.

PEREIRA: OK. Marc, what about you? What do you think? That employers and the public need to know?

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: To say it's the world we live in, it doesn't have to be the world we live in. We can make changes to the world we live in. One way to do that is by banning the box.

Second, it's not for Barack Obama's personal political or ideological laboratory. He's not guessing at this work. This is not a pipe dream. We've seen states ban the box all around the country, my home state of Pennsylvania being one of them.

And what we've seen is that it hasn't had negative impact on hiring. It hasn't led to increased criminality among employers.

And, lastly, Ben is misrepresenting the facts here, I'm sure by accident. He's suggesting that no one is accountable and employers somehow don't have access. Somehow employers don't have access to people's backgrounds.

For important jobs and security jobs, you still can do background checks. If I'm going to be the head of a security company, I'm going to go into trading, I'm going to do all sorts of jobs, media jobs even, they can still do a background check. It's not as if employers don't get to find out that their security guard is an ax murderer. They just don't have to look at the application --

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: I want to ask. There's more things to talk about because there's -- we also know that starting this past Friday, thousands of federal inmates were released from prison due to a reconsideration on sentences against drug criminals, basically low- level drug offenses, some 6,100 prisoners totally. We should point out, mostly Hispanic and African-American men incarcerated for drug trafficking crimes are being let out.

The president, we'll listen to his sound bite, insists this is not about releasing violent criminals. Listen to him last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I've said repeatedly, if you have violent criminals they need to be incapacitated. They need to taken off the streets. And nobody's more invested than I am in continuing the trend towards reduced crime.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: So why not, Ben, why not release these low-level drug criminals?

FERGUSON: Because not all --

PEREIRA: Offenders, rather.

FERGUSON: -- of them are low-level as the president is implying. I talked to two different prosecutors that said about 70 percent of the cases that they had that deal with drug trafficking are usually pled down into lower deals. Many times, we wouldn't know if that person who's in prison was in prison for a weapons charge, for example.

And the other thing is when you traffic drugs, it's not a victimless crime. And you may say it's not that big of a deal, they're just pushing drugs. They're ruining people's lives and community's lives by pushing these drugs. It's not a victimless crime.

The people that get addicted to these drugs while they're making money, that is a victim who should be represented in the court.

[06:55:03] Those are not people we should look at like oh, they stole a candy bar in a grocery store.

PEREIRA: Marc, have at him. Go ahead.

HILL: The only victim is the straw man he's beating up on. No one --

FERGUSON: It's not a straw man --

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: Ben, let him finish.

HILL: Yes, but, Ben, no one has come on television or in a public policy forum or press conference or briefing and said the drugs are harmless or a victimless crime. You're disputing an argument that no one is making.

The argument is that we are compounding the damage done to communities when we keep people incarcerated for longer sentences, for excessive sentences. It cost taxpayers money. It's criminal-genic. In other words, you go to prison and become a worse or better criminal. You don't come out in society a better person.

And most importantly, there are studies, there's evidence, there's data that shows that when you let people out in these types of programs, crime doesn't go up. In fact in 2011 when 30,000 people were let out in 2011, guess what, crime went down.

PEREIRA: So, Ben, what do we do? Do you not agree there isn't a prison overcrowding problem?

FERGUSON: I think there's an overcrowding problem but I also think part of the problem is we let them -- put people in and we let them out so quickly that it doesn't seem like it's a real place for people to actually go when they do commit crimes.

I'll give you an example. It's not actually funny, Marc. If you talk to somebody who's been addicted to drug or watch a kid die from an OD from some of these drug pushers that you're letting out of prison, it's not funny to their family at all.

HILL: You keep pulling out dare stories.

FERGUSON: It's no a dare story, it's reality.

I'll give you a great example -- the individual that robbed me, who had been in prison three times before for pushing drugs, two of them were violent offenses and they were both pled down.

PEREIRA: They're not going to let that person out of jail.

FERGUSON: That's not true. The individual did not have the gun crime on their record when it was pled down. So when you go in and you say that individuals that we're letting out are nonviolent offenders, if you talk to the prosecutors, they're saying it's not that simple. Many times, 70 percent as prosecutors told me yesterday, they plea the deal down so it looks like the criminal has a nonviolent crime.

PEREIRA: OK, Marc, 20 second rebuttal. Go ahead.

HILL: OK, real quick, one, that 70 percent is not backed by data. That's Ben's anecdotal evidence. I just want to be clear to the people of America that that's not a fact.

FERGUSON: Talk to D.A.'s.

HILL: I do but that's not data. A bunch of anecdotes doesn't make data. The bigger point here, that I was laughing at actually was not people being addicted to drugs. It was this idea that we let people out so quickly.

The whole point of sentencing reform is that we kept people in prison too long. Even the most conservative judges have said we've incarcerated people too long, particularly black and brown people under Rockefeller drug policy and other policies. They were put in decades for drug offenses.

People are in jail too long. They're in jail aren't too short, they're in jail too long. We need a reform that makes sense, and locking people up does not solve the problem. We need reform and repair.

PEREIRA: I'll leave it there, gentlemen. Thank you both, Marc Lamont Hill, Ben Ferguson. They debate, you decide. You can get in on the conversation, tweeting using #NewDayCNN, or jump on the Facebook, leave your comments there.

We are following a lot of news on this Tuesday morning. So, let's get right to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does ISIS have the ability to shot down an airliner?

CLAPPER: Unlikely, but I wouldn't rule it out.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A flash was detected by a U.S. satellite.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was this plane being properly maintained?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No clear explanation as to what brought that plane down.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ben Carson is now leading nationwide. It's Marco Rubio that's surging.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He was very, very disloyal to Bush. I don't like that.

JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm not sure I'm Captain America.

OBAMA: It turns out they can't handle a bunch of CNBC moderators.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'd ask parents to pretend they ate all their Halloween's candy.

UNIDENTIFIED BOY: You're a big (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED BOY: I don't want to see you ever again.

UNIDENTIFIED BOY: I ate all of it. Daddy, too.

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

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: There's the sun, finally. It is coming up. Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to your NEW DAY.

Up first, a fresh clue that could reveal what caused the crash of that Russian passenger jet. It's called a heat flash. It was detected by a U.S. satellite at the very same time the plane went down in the Sinai killing 224 people.

CUOMO: We're also digging deeper into the safety record of MetroJet. The Russian airline recently rebranded itself, changing its name after a deadly plane fire four years ago. Now, there's speculation about the stability of the finances. What could have that meant in this situation?

Let's begin our coverage with CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

U.S. officials now say that heat flash was detected over Sinai at the time of the incident by a U.S. satellite.

What is a heat flash? It's an infrared signature of a picture of heat against the natural environment. So, it was the plane. Something associated with the plane, they believe.

What was it? Did it happen in midair? Could it have been an engine or fuel tank exploding or did it happen on the ground?