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NEW DAY

Flight 370 Satellite Data Released; Intense Clashes In Eastern Ukraine; Tornado Damage In North Dakota; Nigerian Official Claims to Know Where Girls Are

Aired May 27, 2014 - 06:00   ET

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


CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, the data family members of Flight 370 have been asking for is finally released. What does this Inmarsat raw data show and what is missing? Answers ahead.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: New details about the killer behind that rampage in Santa Barbara and his parents' desperate attempts to stop him as the families of his victims, all college students, speak out.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Located. The Nigerian government says they've found hundreds of the schoolgirls kidnapped by a terror group, but they aren't able to rescue them. So what happens next?

CUOMO: Your NEW DAY starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY, with Chris Cuomo, Kate Bolduan, and Michaela Pereira.

CUOMO: All right, welcome back. I hope your Memorial Day was memorable. Now as we find ourselves on a Tuesday, what is the date, what is it, like the 26th?

BOLDUAN: The 26th.

CUOMO: Thank you very much.

BOLDUAN: Yes, exactly.

CUOMO: Appreciate that. About 6:00 in the East. Got that part right. And obviously, the big story this morning is going to be that families of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the passengers, they've gotten something they've demanded for months.

The Malaysian government releasing the data that led searchers to look for the jet in the Southern Indian Ocean. The release will allow for independent analysis of what has become the biggest mystery in the history of aviation.

CNN's Richard Quest joins us with more from Los Angeles. I have it in my hands, Sir Quest, some 50 pages of data and when I look through it, do you know what I get? Nothing. I don't understand anything in this, Richard. Is that is going to be a common frustration?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: It will be and I can tell you, this is the processed version. If you had received the original version, as I saw it Inmarsat last week that was a full-page tightly printed number, number, number, at least they have extracted the numbers, Chris. They've made sense of it, but they have not made sense of it for the likes of you and me. This isn't designed for us to understand it.

This is designed for people who understand satellites, communications. Those sort of things, to realize what Inmarsat has done. Inmarsat is doing this for reasons of transparency. When I got exclusive access to the Inmarsat control room, to the scientists, to the engineers last week, I met the man who was responsible for leading the team and coming up with the whole concept of the plane flying south.

I asked Mark Dickinson, at the end of the day why was he so convinced, what did this show? Would it be possible to say where the plane went?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: To be clear, you're letting people make judgments on your work. You're not inviting them to redo your work.

MARK DICKINSON, WGE PRESIDENT OF INMARSAT SATELLITE OPERATIONS: No. As I say, redo the work require experts in many different fields. We gathered those victims within the investigation team to allow that to happen. But this is providing some transparency in what data came back and forth between the plane and ground station and how that data has been subsequently used.

It allows people to see what techniques, what things have been accounted for. But certainly provides I'm hope aggregate deal of transparency in terms of the analysis that's been done by Inmarsat and almost by the other teams in the investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: Chris, the important point there is that they have done the testing with their model and other organizations have done the same testing with their own model on many different planes including the same aircraft over dozens of flights and it all proves the numbers work.

CUOMO: Here's the problem. Disclosure is confidence. If you don't release your analysis and your process of how you reached your conclusion, you're fueling more questions than answers. Have they set themselves up for disappointment here?

QUEST: They are perhaps -- but they can't release all the analysis for the simple reason that you've got to know information about the satellite modem on the aircraft. You need to know more information about the satellite itself. It goes up and down 1,000 kilometers in a range a day. The ground station, they brought all these engineers together. You see, what they haven't done in all of this is compile it into one book, if you like, one report.

It's all in bits and bobs on different spreadsheets from different people that has come together for a conclusion. Yes, I suppose they could write a book or a thesis on the subject, but they were more concerned with getting the information and working it. And so far, as Dickinson said to me, nobody has proven it to be incorrect.

CUOMO: But how can they prove it incorrect when they don't know how the conclusion was reached in the first place? It's a little bit of a circular argument. I think if an investigative agency was asking this company to explain how you came to the conclusion of where this plane is they would have given a different set of information, not data, but a different set of information to them to help clarify their position that near not doing here and the question is why.

QUEST: Right. But what they did do is once they have come up with their model on the frequency and the speed and all these things, other organizations took this same data and this data and this data is straight from the plane. This is not processed in that sense and they worked with their own models. Now, where I think everybody -- where they're falling down is not saying which other organizations verified the data because I think if we knew, for example, was it Boeing, Rolls Royce, the NTSB, the AAIB.

If those organizations put their head together and said, yes, we did take the Inmarsat data and we have verified it to be true. What we're left with is Mark Dickinson saying, guys, this isn't a frolic of Inmarsat. Others have verified what we've done. We now need to perhaps hear from those other to confirm it.

CUOMO: Disclosure is confidence when it comes to a mystery. That is for sure. Richard Quest, thank you for helping us get through the weeds on this this morning. Let's see where this data leads. Appreciate it.

BOLDUAN: Let's turn now to California where a memorial service is planned today for the six victims of the mass killing spree in Isla Vista, California. This morning, we're learning new details about the killer himself, Elliot Rodger. Friends say Rodger recently found -- fought with his roommates over noise in their apartment. Those were three of his victims found stabbed to death.

CNN's Sara Sidner is live in Santa Barbara with much more. Good morning, Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. You know, we are now hearing from more of the families of the victims of those students who were either stabbed or gunned down here. You know, their pain is searing. They are trying to understand what happened. And they know they're going to inevitably have to bury their children.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER (voice-over): Vigils held across California honoring all six UC Santa Barbara students killed in the stabbing and shooting rampage by 22-year-old Elliott Rodger before apparently taking his own life. Parents inconsolable including the mother of 20-year-old Weihan Wang, one of three men deputies say Rodger stabbed repeatedly in his apartment. Classmates of 20-year-old Cheng Yuan Hong. The sheriff says the gunman was apparently mentally disturbed and for at least a year he had been planning to attack women and those he saw as a popular kids. Taping this YouTube video titled "Retribution."

ELLIOT RODGER: Love, affection, adoration, you think I'm unworthy of it. That's a crime that can never be forgiven.

SIDNER: Rodger also outlined his grievances in a diatribe more than 100 pages long. "I will kill them all and make them suffer," he wrote, "just as they have made me suffer." One of Rodgers childhood classmates mentioned in the document describing him as quiet.

LUCKY RADLEY, FRIEND OF SHOOTER: He didn't say much. I don't remember him saying anything. He only spoke when he was spoken to.

SIDNER: A family friend says Rodger's parents feel a pivotal moment was missed last month when six deputies conducted a well-being check on Rodger after his mother discovered other chilling videos posted online, documenting his, quote, "loneliness and misery." But the officers say they found nothing alarming during their check.

JAMES ALAN FOX, CRIMINOLOGIST, NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY: We would like to believe we would like to collect all the data and evidence and be able to identify mass murderers before they act but we simply cannot do it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: Now, the victims were all UC Santa Barbara students. As far as what's happening on the campus they have decided to close the school for today and there will be a memorial. We have seen one or two memorials before. Massive, hundreds of students and people from the area, just from Isla Vista showed upholding candles on this campus. We expect it to be a large memorial today. This community is suffering through it.

CUOMO: All right, Sara, we will get deeper into that story later on this morning. Appreciate the reporting from you.

Overnight, ramped up fighting between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists in one of the country's most volatile eastern cities. There are reports of at least 40 deaths so far. Clashes began Monday when separatists stormed an airport. Ukraine air and ground forces counter attacked. Now the new government there is vowing to take up the stakes and take the fights to insurgents.

Chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto is in Kiev with more. This has become a new flash point, true?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: No question. A bigger one now, particularly after the election, Chris. I spoke to a senior Ukrainian official this morning who said in his words, it is now or never for Ukraine to fight this militancy. He went on to say that in his words, we have been patient for far too long.

I think what you're seeing here is that after this election, this new government, the new president, Poroshenko feels they have a mandate to go after these terrorists as they call them and go after them hard. And you're seeing that in some of these moves of the last 24 to 48 hours, a major assault on a major airport here in the east.

And the Ukrainians responding with attack helicopters, steps you would not have seen in the run-up to the elections. The U.S. ambassador here, Geoffrey Pyatt telling me this morning that we are now entering the most kinetic phase of this operation. It is getting hotter here -- Chris.

CUOMO: Kinetic phase, we'll see what that means on the ground. What do we know about the militants? Can the Ukrainian military take them on successfully?

SCIUTTO: It's going to be a big challenge, Chris. I tell you, I spoke to a senior Ukrainian military official this morning who put the estimate of the number of militants in the east at 15 to 20,000. This includes pro-Russian separatists of Ukrainian nationality and Russians of Ukrainian officials believe who have come across the border including Chechens.

Just by comparisons at the peak of the Iraq war U.S. military officials put hard core militants there at 8,000 to 12,000. You are talking 15,000 to 20,000 here, well supplied. It's believed supported by the Russian government. That signals a long anti-insurgency fight. We were out there the last several days in the east.

They were able to shut down the election in the east, these militants. Shut down a major airport yesterday. They are very powerful. It looks like you've got to brace yourself for a long fight here.

CUOMO: Well, I'll tell you that really gives you some perspective when you say that the number is twice what the U.S. and allies were dealing with in Iraq. Jim Sciutto, thank you very much. Be safe my friend. Let us know what happens -- Mich.

PEREIRA: Let's look at more of your headlines at 10 past the hour. Still no comment from the White House or the CIA after the administration accidentally released the identity of the agency's top spy in Afghanistan. The agent's name was included on a list of attendees at a military briefing for President Obama during his surprise visit to Bagram Airfield. The White House quickly recognized the mistake, but not before some 6,000 journalists got that list. We'll have much more later in this hour.

New this morning, an American doctor has been killed after two gunmen opened fire in Pakistan. Mehdi Ali Qamar, a cardiologist from Ohio was with his wife and toddler when he was shot ten times at close range. Police say the family was leaving a cemetery after visiting relatives' graves before the gun fire broke out. Qamar had recently take a sabbatical and was planning to voluntarily treat patients at a nearby heart institute.

This is just in the CNN, six chemical weapons inspectors had been kidnapped in Syria according to the Syrian Foreign Ministry. The inspectors are with the organization for prohibition of chemical weapons looking into claims that the Assad regime is pouring gas on a rebel-held village. Five Syrian drivers were also kidnapped. We are not quite clear yet on who carried out those abductions. We will keep following this story for you.

Back here at home, a twister touched down in North Dakota injuring some nine workers at an oil patch near Waterford City. One woman was able to capture the enormous tornado on video. You can hear her fearing for her life.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Father, God in heaven, Lord, Jesus, Lord Jesus, help us God, my Jesus. We got nowhere to go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: That's the frightening thing. Bring in meteorologist, Indra Petersons, not knowing where to go when you see something like that bearing down on you.

INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: This is the good news. They actually got the warning they needed yesterday. They were not in a risk area for severe weather yesterday. Of course, where you always want to go is the lowest level of your house, the most interior room that you have. It was just this one cell that popped up right before 8:00 p.m. last night. They did get the warning that they need.

Today more severe weather expected out there. Eastern portions of Texas, Waco down through Corpus Christi. Only one side of the equation. Heavy rain is also going to be the storm. Three to six inches of rain in addition to the rain they've seen. You know the concern for flooding will be out there and high and we go through the next several days. Look at the moisture funneling in from the gulf.

That is affecting the entire eastern half of the country. Heaviest where the low is. No matter where you are today, east of the Mississippi, you are still talking about a threat for scattered showers. Yes, it was a beautiful weekend in the northeast. Temperatures were warm, dry. Now you've added the rain.

The temperatures are going down, too. Boston, high is 55. New York City, still nice, 88 for one day, guys. By tomorrow, dropping down as well. Down to 62 degrees. The good news, it changes by the end of the week. Flip-flop and we warm up. Not too bad. Rainy. Feels like Monday, it's Tuesday. Feels like Monday today.

BOLDUAN: Coming up next on NEW DAY, Nigerian officials say they know where the hundreds of kidnapped girls are. Why are they not going in to get them and what the can U.S. do about it?

CUOMO: There are frightening new details coming to light about the California killer, but figuring him out is the easy part, what else could have been done to stop him? Changes need to be made and we have experts ahead with ideas.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BOLDUAN: Welcome back to NEW DAY.

This morning, the Nigerian military says it knows where the nearly 300 abducted schoolgirls are being held but the country's defense chief says that they won't go in with force to free them because they're concerned the girls could be killed in the process. Those girls, you will remember, were kidnapped now six weeks ago. Aside from this video we are showing you, they have not been seen sense.

Let's bring in, Retired Major General James "Spider" Marks, CNN military analyst and the former commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center, to discuss.

Spider, it's great to see you as always.

MAJ. GEN. JAMES MARKS (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Hi, Kate. Good morning.

BOLDUAN: It's a little bit confusing for anyone -- for anyone reading into it. The country's defense chief in Nigeria says that they know where the girls are. The U.S. is not confirming that at all, at least to this point. First off, do you believe that?

MARKS: Not really. No, not at all. I would tell you that if they know where the girls are located the last thing you want to do is announce it to the world. What you want to do is go retrieve them if you have the capability. If you don't then you keep your mouth shut until you can do something about it.

You don't want to tell your population or you don't want to tell your world that you know where they are but there's nothing we can do about it. It's a bad combination.

BOLDUAN: The defense chief goes even further saying, we know where we are, but we're not going to go in using force to get them out because we -- there's a concern the girls will be killed in the process. If not going in with force when you're dealing with a group like Boko Haram militants, what's the option, negotiation?

MARKS: No, negotiation is truly not an option with Boko Haram, and they've indicated that. In fact, the Nigerian government has even said that they're not going to negotiate in terms of release of some possible prisoners they already have in exchange for the girls.

When you have intelligence and you can do something about it you go about the business of doing it. Clearly what you have is a very large concern for collateral damage. That means the girls -- many girls are probably going to be killed if there was a rescue operation and if the girls are separated in a bunch of different locations, that doubles and triples the effort that needs to take place because you have to conduct simultaneous operations and all have to be led by very, very well-trained folks and they have to be preceded by precise and targetable intelligence.

I don't think they're there. BOLDUAN: And Arwa Damon made a really good point, it goes right to your point. She said this, that Boko Haram is a decentralized group. So, if you would go about negotiating with one group for the release of some girls when they've been split up, that negotiation may not have any bearing with another group that they would need to get other girls released from.

How do you account for that?

MARKS: Kate, very, very true. The difficulty is when you're really dealing with an ideology that has been galvanized into these various little pockets. So, you don't deal with that very effectively.

The real challenge for the government, the real challenge of the United States in its on-going efforts to help, you know, we had some special forces individuals in country and we're also conducting some drone operations to try to find and really precisely locate these young ladies is what can you do about it? And if they are in different locations, this becomes a very, very -- very, very precise mission that needs to be undertaken.

Only the United States has the capability and some of our allies have the capability to conduct an operation like this. But it would really take the cooperation of the Nigerian government and they've demonstrated that they really -- I mean, with this latest proclamation they demonstrated a level of incompetence that is quite alarming.

BOLDUAN: That's what I was going to ask you -- when you take a step back, you could see it as a source of optimism if they really do know where the girls are but then it's almost canceled right out when they say we're not going to go in because we're afraid we might kill them in the process.

What do you think is going on? What would motivate the defense chief to come out and say something? It's such an unorthodox approach.

MARKS: Well, I think -- let's look at it from this perspective. There might be an effort on the part of the Nigerians to try to declare something that may or may not be true. We can put that off to the side for a second.

But if you're looking to get Boko Haram to move these young ladies, there's an advantage potentially in that, if that any time you move a group like this, you start kicking up dust, as we say, which means your intelligence is alerted in advance and it can start to pick up the indicators of what might be going on with an announcement like this. But this is very high risk for the government to indicate this if they're trying to illicit that type of a response because the only outcome generally would be a bad one and the ones that would be put at risk would be these young ladies.

BOLDUAN: It will be interesting to see what if we do get more response from U.S. official, especially to hear what the Pentagon has to say about this throughout the day.

Spider, it's great to see you. Thank you so much. Six weeks on, still those girls are missing.

Tomorrow, we are going to bring you an interview, very important interview, I would say. My interview with a young girl who survived a horrible attack by Boko Haram herself. Her name is Debra Peter (ph). And she's going to share her brave story. That is tomorrow on NEW DAY.

Chris?

CUOMO: Coming up on NEW DAY, shocking details about the California shooter. There were red flags. The family said they tried. Others, too. The cops even came. Why are we powerless to stop someone like this?

And, the raw data from Flight 370 finally released. So, do we know why they think the plane is in the ocean or was information withheld again?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Welcome back to NEW DAY.

Here's a look at your headlines:

Families of Malaysia Airline Flight 370, passengers seeing one of their demands met. Inmarsat and Malaysian officials releasing a satellite data used in the search for the missing jet, including the signals used in plotting the possible flight path to the southern Indian Ocean. The release of this data will allow for independent analysis of what happened when that plane vanished nearly three months ago.

Rescue workers continue looking for three people that are missing after major mudslide in western Colorado. That slide happened a day -- after a day of rain on Sunday. It impacted irrigation for farmers in Mesa County. The three missing men went to investigate the slide when authorities believe a second mudslide swept them away. That region remains unstable. Officials are concerned about the risk of another mudslide coming through.

Pope Francis announced plans to meet with victims of sexual abuse next month. He said he will have zero tolerance for anyone in the Catholic Church who abuses children. The pope plans to meet with eight victims, and the head of the Vatican's investigation unit. U.S.-based survivors group though said the statement does not go far enough. The pope's announcement comes after a three-day Mideast tour where he invited Palestinian and Israeli leaders to the Vatican for prayer.

Twenty minutes -- 28 minutes -- I almost missed the clock there, Chris. Sorry about that.

CUOMO: Don't cut me short. Don't cut me short.

PEREIRA: I'm sorry. CUOMO: We're learning more about the man who took six lives in Isla Vista. Friends are neighbors are coming forward, telling a story of a man going over the edge.

If so many knew, including the cops, why wasn't he stopped? It seems to be a simple question with a very difficult answer.

Joining us now is Dr. Jodi Gold, director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, associated with Weill Cornell Medical College. And Mary Ellen O'Toole, retired senior FBI profiler and forensic behavioral consultant.

Thank you to both of you for being with us.

Looking at the videos, hearing the evidence, seeing the manifesto, it doesn't seem to me, Mary Ellen, you need to be a forensic expert to see the red flags here. But what jumps out at you as to what needed attention?

MARY ELLEN O'TOOLE, RETIRED SR. FBI PROFILER: Well, what jumped out was what he said in that video in particular, and, of course, in the manifesto. There were indications that he had both homicidal and suicidal thinking. He was also very tempered in how he presented in that video, which to me told me that he was not out of touch with reality.

So, that made his threats even more likely to occur. So, it was really the totality of everything he said that jumped out to me as a red flag.