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Hijacked EgyptAir Flight Lands In Cyprus; Egyptian Government: Plane Hijacker Seif El Din Mustafa Arrested; Clinton Campaign: Debates Depend On Sanders' Tone. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired March 29, 2016 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, breaking news in that hostage standoff in Cyprus after an EgyptAir flight to Cairo forced to divert by a distraught man who hijacked the plane. Moments ago we saw at least one person getting off that plane. Earlier, we knew seven people were still being held on board. The incident is not believed to be terror-related, but still yet, another concerning chapter surrounding air travel overseas.

We're joined now by CNN counterterrorism analyst and former CIA counterterrorism official, Philip Mudd. Also with us here in the studio is CNN law enforcement analyst, former FBI special agent, and former air marshal, Jonathan Gilliam.

Gentlemen, we want to show those live pictures as much as we can so we can talk through what we just witnessed happening. Our producers, during the break, said they saw several people running from the plane, Jonathan. Give us an indication of what that says to you. We knew there were seven people, crew and passengers, among those seven.

JONATHAN GILLIAM, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Sure. Well, the fact that these people are running versus the other people that were walking when they got off, maybe the tension is a little bit more heightened right now and it appears to me -- it looks like they might be maneuvering for a response to go in there and take this guy down.

But, as we were talking off air, before you do any type of a takedown you kind of want to make sure that this guy does not have a bomb strapped to him because if you rushed a plane and he has a bomb and he detonates it, you're just going to kill your men sending him in there.

PEREIRA: OK, so here's one of the things that you want to do, I suppose. Tactically, you want to talk to those people that have just come off the plane --

GILLIAM: Sure.

PEREIRA: -- most recently. Find out what they know, find out what they saw --

GILLIAM: Right.

PEREIRA: -- and witnessed. How the man's demeanor was, how he was dressed, if he could have had a suicide belt on.

GILLIAM: Right. He could be deteriorating. A lot of times when people are emotionally disturbed --

PEREIRA: Fatigue.

GILLIAM: -- they get in there, they get fatigued, they get hungry or tired or just emotional, and they start to deteriorate. Listen, we're not talking about somebody who's completely emotional stable to go in and do something like this, so --

PEREIRA: So, in terms of the plane -- because, to me, I would think that they'd want to handle this a little differently when you're tactfully approaching this -- if you're going to do, as you said, a takedown. But you handle it almost as though this was a hostage in an apartment. You treat this as a room, correct?

GILLIAM: It's a room. That plane is a room. It's no different than -- I mean, it's got some differences. I mean, there's windows everywhere on the plane that he can look out but there are ways that you can approach the plane that, obviously, give you more of a sneak- up ability on the plane to where they can't see you from the front and the back, typically, so that's going to give them a little bit more of a stealthy approach. But, overall, you treat a plane as one large room --

PEREIRA: Right.

GILLIAM: -- with a couple of other small rooms with the bathroom and the cockpit.

PEREIRA: Let's bring in Phil Mudd. Phil, as we all came into work this morning I think we were all on edge that this was potentially a terrorist situation. Egyptian officials -- a civil aviation authority says they do not believe that it is terrorism. They believe that this is a distraught, estranged husband trying to reach out to a wife. But look, our collective nerves, as a flying public, are on edge. Do we need to take this seriously -- be concerned about air travel, or do we all just need to take a collective deep breath?

[07:35:00] PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: I'd say take a deep breath for a simple reason. This is, in my world of analysis, what we call a framing problem. The framing most Americans will have when they look at this incident in the morning is they're going to couple it with Brussels -- two incidents in a continent of hundreds of millions of people -- and say well, I feel nervous. I don't know why I feel nervous? There's dead people. We've seen the incidents in Paris.

If you frame this question differently -- that is, compare Europe to the United States and the incidents of violence against an individual in Europe -- if you traveled to Europe you're much less likely to be subject to an incident of violence than you are here in the United States, so it's how you ask the question. Are you nervous? Sure, that's OK. That's not the same question as whether you should be worried about traveling to Europe. I'd get on a plane tomorrow if I were traveling.

PEREIRA: Wait, so you really have no qualms about air travel?

MUDD: No.

PEREIRA: You have no qualms about traveling to Brussels, France -- to Europe right now?

MUDD: Heck, no. They've got better coffee. It's 7:30 in the a.m. I'd get on a plane tomorrow. Again, just because I look at these problems statistically and most people look at them emotionally.

PEREIRA: Let me interrupt for a second and we'll get to your caffeine in a second. (Video playing) Now, see here. This is the video we were talking about. We saw three people -- this is live. Those three more people coming off the plane. I was about to say earlier we saw somebody come out of what appeared to be the cockpit, but two other people run down the plane.

But that was just live, so we know five people, Jonathan, have now come off this plane. We were told there were seven people hostage with an additional one person the kidnapper -- or, the hostage taker -- they're running. As you said, that speaks to maybe the anxiety they're feeling --

GILLIAM: Sure. There goes some more.

PEREIRA: -- or the fear. This is a previous moment.

GILLIAM: OK. So, you know what I think might occur here -- I'm just kind of going out on a limb here -- is when -- as you start to get the passengers and the crew off of that plane, law enforcement, based on what they're getting from the interviews --

PEREIRA: This is the crew.

GILLIAM: -- these individuals that are coming off the plane -- it's going to kind of motivate and direct what type of an assault they're going to do on that plane or if they're going to do one at all. But I would think that if they are under the assumption that he does not have a bomb on him, you may see them assault this plane pretty quickly. Otherwise, they've got all day. They can just stand back and as he was saying a second ago, take a collective breath and just try to talk the guy out of the plane.

PEREIRA: You talk about this when you talk to us about other hostage situations. Law enforcement has time on their side --

GILLIAM: Sure.

PEREIRA: -- especially when you're dealing with a distraught, potentially emotionally or mentally disturbed person.

GILLIAM: Right, but you don't show up just to talk. You have the tactical unit there to the side. In the same way you don't just show up to go and take everybody down. You have the negotiators there with you, and I'm assuming that they do -- our law enforcement goes over and trains with their law enforcement in different places in the world, so I'm assuming that they're probably acting in a similar fashion.

PEREIRA: Just to let you know -- those of you watching at home -- we are looping this a little bit, but by our count we have seen five people emerge from this plane. We had been told earlier by Egyptian authorities that there were seven people and the kidnapper -- or the hostage taker, rather -- on board this plane, so five people left.

Interesting. Looking at this situation, Phil, does anything about this whole idea -- a distraught man, distressed, wanting to -- almost like an old-fashioned hostage taking on an airplane, making demands of authorities. Does anything about this speak to you of security lapses at the airport there in Egypt?

MUDD: Not yet. There's a couple of questions I'd have in this case. First, you remember, EgyptAir lost a plane over the Sinai in a missile strike from ISIS last year. My first question is whether we had any indication of him getting on the aircraft in this case. Yes, yes.

PEREIRA: Phil, can you just hold on one second. Our producers want to show you something. This is the moment that we have when the -- yes, you can see an individual crawl out of the cockpit and jump to the ground and then run away. Does that make you maybe think that he was able to get out on his own -- escape? Not necessarily be released?

GILLIAM: That very well could be. That is one of the escape routes out of the cockpit of a plane and it appears that's just one of the, potentially, the pilots right there, although we don't know that. They could have the crew pushed back completely in a different part of the plane. But listen, if you're going to get the opportunity you should go for it. Obviously, that individual knows how to climb out of that plane right there.

PEREIRA: Knows how to climb and that speaks to it being a crew member on board.

MUDD: That's about the people that I was looking at. It looks like they were wearing vests. Did you notice that? That they were wearing some sort of either protective vest or something?

PEREIRA: It's hard to know if that's a uniform or if that's --

MUDD: That's what it looks like.

GILLIAM: It might be. Yes, it might be a uniform. Flight attendants -- and I think typically on this plane, and I could be wrong, but I think on this plane you're going to have two pilots and four crew people, although it could be a few more flight attendants than that, but --

PEREIRA: And there could be crew on board that weren't officially working. They may be just deadheading. GILLIAM: Sure. This is what you're talking about when they come up here. I think those are vests because flight attendants typically do wear a vest and that looks like white shirts on underneath their vests.

PEREIRA: Just a uniform vest. Not like a security vest of any sort.

GILLIAM: A uniform, right.

[07:40:00] PEREIRA: Phil, back to what you were saying about the idea of security lapses at the airport because I think this is something important as they look now. They're talking, obviously, to everybody that has come off that plane as we watch this live scene play out. We're going to take a harder look at the security there in Egypt.

Egyptian officials saying no, we don't believe that he actually has a suicide vest because we know security has been increased greatly in the last little while. Is that what you're hearing? Has it been increased? Has the quality of that security increased?

MUDD: I think so, but look at this situation. It's not clear to me that anything went wrong here. We have questions about who got on the aircraft and why. My guess is we're going to find that there is nothing that indicated to officials that this individual shouldn't have been on the aircraft. So then you have the simple question, did they follow standard policy and procedure when somebody on the aircraft threatened to take the aircraft down?

I would say, in this case, the first question for the pilot is policy, procedure, training and I think we're going to discover that this happened exactly as it should have happened. That the pilot did what he was supposed to do.

PEREIRA: Well, let's follow this thread that there was a suicide vest. That the hostage taker, indeed, has one.

MUDD: Yes.

PEREIRA: OK, let's go with that presumption right now. Would that not have shown up in airport screening, or could you separate those components prior to passing through security -- put them together after security and board the plane?

MUDD: Let me tell you something. If we find that he had a vest that should have been discovered in pre-screening, anybody in my position is going to say let me get this straight. We went through the downing of the aircraft over the Sinai last year and months later you still couldn't come up with sufficient procedures to ensure that another person couldn't get on an aircraft with an explosive device? That would be stunning to me, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Well, and Jonathan, I saw you raise your eyebrows as we were saying that because the fact is I think that is why there's a certain amount of reasonable skepticism of the Egyptian authorizes coming out saying we don't believe he has a suicide vest. GILLIAM: Right.

PEREIRA: This is not terror-related. I think people want to wait a bit, given what happened with the Metrojet crash last year.

GILLIAM: Yes, another good point with that and maybe go a little bit off topic here, but when the officials come out and say that immediately, from a bad guy perspective they can immediately turn around and hijack a plane and say no, no, no, we just want to go see someone, we're emotionally disturbed, and then turn this into a terrorist incident.

That's the way that these people think -- these professional people that use terrorism, which is fear and intimidation to cause a political change. This is the way they think. They'll see this and they'll say we didn't think about that.

PEREIRA: Right, but this is not out-and-out terrorism as we've seen in recent years, right?

GILLIAM: No, not at all.

PEREIRA: Because we know that this guy was making demands.

GILLIAM: Yes.

PEREIRA: He tried to get the plane to go further. The plane didn't have enough fuel, thus, they had to land in Cyprus.

GILLIAM: Right.

PEREIRA: He wanted to talk to his wife. He made demands. This was not just making a statement -- a violent, horrific statement.

GILLIAM: Right, but the speed at which I see authorities come out and try to downplay things a lot of the times -- I think there's no reason to rush in trying to downplay stuff. I think they should let it play out, especially when it's on air like this. Let it play out. Let the authorities do what they do and then give the details as they come out a little slower.

PEREIRA: As they come. Remarkable to see this man running for his life, really. It looks as though he was able to escape. We'll have to find out more details when we can. Jonathan, Phil Mudd, thank you so much.

Aly, I'll turn to you.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Michaela. We're going to bring in CNN's Ian Lee. He is live in Cairo. He's been monitoring this hostage situation. Ian, what can you tell us about what we've watched of these people, just in the past few moments, coming off this plane?

IAN LEE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The situation is still very much fluid there. Their goal is to end it peacefully through negotiations, although I just talked to someone who was a passenger on the plane and I'll tell you a bit about that. She just mentioned, though, when she got off, the security presence around it.

But she said when that plane took off from Alexandria going to Cairo everything seemed to be normal. She said she wasn't concerned until she looked out the window and saw the Mediterranean. Now, Alexandria to Cairo is about a 45-minute flight. At no time does it cross over the Mediterranean. She was growing worried.

That's when the flight crew went around telling passengers that the plane had, in fact, been hijacked. There wasn't an announcement over the intercom. The crew members went to each passenger. The passengers then started -- many of them breaking out crying about the situation. The passenger I talked to wasn't able to get a look at the hijacker, Seif El Din Mustafa. She wasn't able to look at him.

[07:45:00] She said the hijacker, during this entire time, was in the tail end of the plane with the curtain drawn. That he was giving orders to the crew from there. At one point during this flight the crew went around and collected the passports of every passenger on the flight. And as you can imagine, it was a very tense moment. These hijackings don't usually end well with them landing at an airport.

People were scared, they were crying, but the passenger told me that the crew did an expert job trying to keep everyone calm during this situation. The plane was able to make it to Larnaca and once it landed the passenger said that the hijacker ordered women and children to leave the plane. Moments later he said that all Egyptians can, in fact, leave the plane. And as this passenger described, when she was disembarking from the plane security was everywhere. There was police on the bus that she was on.

But she said when they were getting off the plane it was very orderly. That the crew made sure that everyone got their luggage, that they got off the plane in an orderly fashion, that there was no panic. Nothing that could spook this hijacker.

But the one thing that really stands out is this hijacker, for the most part, did not want to be seen by the passengers. He was in the back. He did not make any sort of statements. Didn't make any sort of speeches. Just was giving orders to the crew.

CAMEROTA: Ian, what an account you've just given to us from one of the passengers. Can you imagine how terrifying it would be to suddenly see the Mediterranean Sea and know that that was not your destination -- where you were going -- and then to have all of the passports collected by the flight crew at the behest of the hijacker? That is terrifying.

We are hearing from the Cyprus minister right now that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- that the hijacker has been arrested. We're hearing from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that this situation has been quelled and that the hijacker has been arrested.

Ian, it's been very tense watching this video right here because we watched some of this unfold live on our air, or just moments afterwards, where you can see what looks like the pilot sort of scaling down the side of the plane and then running for cover. Ian, do you know the status of the Americans who were on board?

LEE: Right now we do not know the status of the Americans. We do know that there were eight Americans on board. The last count of foreigners on board was three, although they did not give us the nationalities of those foreigners. But it does look like, if this is in fact, that they were able to arrest him -- hopefully this was done peacefully. That no one was hurt in this operation.

This person, according to the passenger I talked to, seemed to be fairly disturbed. Of course, you would have to be to hijack an airplane. But the main goal of this whole operation was to make sure that it ended peacefully and that no one was hurt during this operation. So if it is, in fact, that this person has been arrested, we will be waiting to see what is the state of the other passengers on that plane.

CAMEROTA: Ian, stand by for a second. We have some other questions.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Jonathan, why collect all the passports of the people on board?

GILLIAM: That is a question that I cannot answer. That, to me, was the oddest thing out of this that I've heard. Again, he's an emotionally disturbed person. We may find out later maybe he thought she was on board. I don't know, but maybe he was looking for somebody in particular. Maybe he had ulterior motives that we don't yet know and that he was using that as a ruse that he was going to see his ex- wife. I don't know. I can't speculate, but I will tell you that doesn't make any sense to me.

LEMON: And to order all of the Egyptians off the plane. Everyone who's Egyptian can get off the plane now.

GILLIAM: Right. It very well could -- I mean, listen, I don't want to speculate too hard but these are questions that I'm keying in, as are you, that this is unusual. I want to say this. When Captain Sullenberger landed the plane in the Hudson River, I was the first FBI agent there. There was another detective from the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Shawn O'Connor, that showed up.

We grabbed the first two passengers off that plane and we interviewed them very quickly to find out what -- and we interviewed them separately. They both said the same thing. Then we found the captain afterwards and decided that this was not a terrorist incident. This was actually a bird strike.

But you see how important it is for these passengers. If you're on a plane and something is going down, if you remain calm you're going to be able to get details like this. That thing about the -- you know, as quickly as they can tell about the passport issue, that's going to cause investigators and officers that are preparing potentially for a takedown, a little bit of a heightened alert because it just doesn't make any sense.

LEMON: All right, John, thank you. [07:50:00] CAMEROTA: Jonathan, thanks so much for all that expertise, and to Ian Lee for giving us that account of the first passenger to speak coming off the airliner. We do believe now that the situation has been quelled and that the hijacker has been arrested, but we are staying on top of this story of the hijacked EgyptAir flight. We will bring you all of the latest.

Plus, Bernie Sanders wants to debate Hillary Clinton in New York, but her camp says that he needs to change his tone first. We'll ask team Clinton what that means, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:54:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOEL BENENSON, CHIEF STRATEGIST, HILLARY FOR AMERICA: But Sen. Sanders doesn't get to decide when we debate, particularly when he's running a very negative campaign against us. Let's see if he goes back to the kind of tone he said he was going to set early on. If he does that, then we'll talk about debates. But, we're not going to talk about it --

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST, "AT THIS HOUR': So no chance of a New York debate?

BENENSON: I didn't say that. I said we're not going to talk about it. We're going to see what kind of tone he sets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Well, that was Hillary Clinton's camp demanding a new tone from Bernie Sanders. What does that mean and what does Clinton do differently after Sander's big western wins over the weekend? We have here senior spokeswoman for Clinton's campaign, Karen Finney. Karen, great to have you in studio.

KAREN FINNEY, SENIOR SPOKESPERSON, HILLARY FOR AMERICA: Great to be with you.

CAMEROTA: So, why set a condition for a future debate?

FINNEY: Well, I think what Joel was getting at was a couple of things. We had a process whereby we were talking about adding additional debates. That seemed to be working just fine. And then we see this kind of stunt, as Brian Fallon pointed out yesterday. They send this public letter about let's -- demanding a debate. At the same time, we see reports about how they're doing polling on new lines of attack on Hillary Clinton.

And so it just felt like, hold on here. You don't get to set the terms and the conditions around when or where we debate. We've had a process. Let's stick to that process rather than public stunts, particularly at a time when you had said at the beginning of this campaign you were -- I don't do negative attacks. I think at one point Sen. Sanders also said I'm not really into polling. Well, now it's all about polling -- how to attack Hillary Clinton. What kind of a campaign is that?

[07:55:00] CAMEROTA: Well, it's a typical campaign. Most presidential campaigns, I would dare to say, engage in some negative ads and some pollings.

FINNEY: Well, but I think -- which I'm all for that, but don't then set a standard at the beginning of the campaign and say one thing and then decide you're going to play it another way just because. And, by the way, I think it's an important point. If we had a debate in New York I can guarantee you Hillary Clinton would do very well, not just because she does well at debates --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

FINNEY: -- but because this is a state that knows her well. Knows that when she says she's going to do something she gets it done.

CAMEROTA: And there you go. So why not do it? If it's to her favor, why not just agree to it?

FINNEY: But I think the point is less about do we agree or disagree about should we debate in New York, and more about let's talk about this -- the tone of this campaign. And, again, let's talk about -- we had a process by which we were talking about debates. Why are we now going to stunts? Why are we now going to saying we're going to publicly attack? He tried that, actually -- some negative attacks. He had negative attack ads that came out going into Illinois and North Carolina and they didn't work, actually.

CAMEROTA: Well, there you go. Isn't it, though, up to voters to decide whether or not they like the negative attacks or they respond to the negative attacks? Why is Sec. Clinton setting the tone for what the Bernie Sanders campaign does?

FINNEY: Well, we're not. We're just going by what Sen. Sanders, himself, said. He essentially said I've never run a negative attack ad ever. Well, if that's the standard, then when you change the standard --

CAMEROTA: I got you.

FINNEY: -- and by the way, I do think that part of what tends to happen as we're having this conversation is people look to the Republican side and want to say well, at least it's not that bad. If that is now the new standard, our country is in a lot more trouble than we might have suspected.

CAMEROTA: So, where are you with it? If Sen. Sanders says OK, no negative ads whatsoever, then she'll have a debate in New York?

FINNEY: We'll have a conversation about it. Like I said, we've had a conversation and it led to the debate in Flint. Let's go ahead and go back to that process and talk about it.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about what happened over the weekend.

FINNEY: Sure.

CAMEROTA: Bernie Sanders had huge wins in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington State.

FINNEY: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Does that change what you're doing on the campaign in terms of how Sec. Clinton will campaign moving forward?

FINNEY: Not at all because look, we still have a very commanding lead and Sen. Sanders needs to win 57 percent of the pledged delegates left. And if you look at the states that are left, we're talking about big states and so far -- all due respect -- that's wonderful that he had those wins in those three states over the weekend, but that's not comparable to the kinds of states and the kinds of performance that we've seen in the states that are coming up.

He has yet to win in a large state with a large African-American population, a large Latino population. I'm thinking of Texas, I'm thinking of Illinois, I'm thinking of Florida. So, he hasn't demonstrated the ability to do that. And again, even in Michigan where he did win, it was a very narrow win. That's not 57 percent, right? And there's only 3 percent left of the pledged delegates in caucus contests, so we feel very good about where we are.

Like I said, I think we're going to do very well in New York. We're going to be very competitive in Wisconsin. We've got Pennsylvania. We've got some big states coming up and I think as we continue and, heaven knows, Hillary Clinton understands delegate math just as well as about anybody, having gone through this.

CAMEROTA: Yes, right.

FINNEY: We just don't see that he's going to be able to make up that difference.

CAMEROTA: I was to ask you, quickly, about the ongoing e-mail saga. We keep hearing that the FBI investigation is ramping up somehow, or they're interviewing more people. What has the campaign heard about the status of this investigation?

FINNEY: Interesting how little leaks kind of keep coming out. You know, we're the same place where we were last week, and that is there is an ongoing review. Hillary Clinton has said she is more than willing to come in and have a conversation. She has urged and encouraged staff people to cooperate. She's cooperating. So it's proceeding and that hasn't changed, so the basic facts haven't changed. We may get stories that try to rehash information from time to time, but that's just something we'll have to live with.

CAMEROTA: Status quo, you're saying.

FINNEY: Absolutely.

CAMEROTA: Karen Finney, thanks so much. Great to have you here on NEW DAY.

FINNEY: Thanks for having me.

CAMEROTA: OK, we are following breaking news. The man who hijacked an EgyptAir flight has been arrested. We'll bring you all the latest. Let's get to it.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your new day. Chris if off this morning. Don Lemon joins us. We've had a lot of breaking news and we have an update for you this hour about the EgyptAir flight that was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus.