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France Formally Asks FBI to Help Investigate; Friend Remembers American Crash Victim. 10:30-11a ET

Aired March 26, 2015 - 10:30   ET

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


[10:29:39] TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: In terms of the pilot or co-pilot in this particular case, they're going to be -- and would have already been scouring personal social media. If he has Facebook or Twitter, e-mails, phone calls, friends, neighbors, relatives for some sign of whether the individual had mental problems, whether the individual had financial or marital troubles or girlfriend problem -- something along those lines or joined a group. And that extremist group can be, you know, among many different groups that operate all over the world and particularly in Europe.

So that they don't know but that's what they've been looking at and will continue to look at very closely. And under the European system, the magistrate, the prosecutor runs the investigation, unlike in the U.S. where the FBI would be running the investigation.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And it bears repeating both -- from both press conferences that we've had today from the French prosecutor in Marseille as well as from the CEO of the airline itself, they have no idea as to motive of the co-pilot. What would have led the co-pilot to bring down this aircraft? What would have led the co-pilot to have locked the door of the cockpit? To have not allowed the pilot back in and to have begun the descent of this aircraft -- bringing it into the side of the mountain.

Tom, we'll continue to check in with you.

We are going to take a short break. More coverage -- ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:35:13] COOPER: And good morning. Thanks for joining us.

Again, a morning of huge developments in the crash of Flight 9525. Joining me from Washington: Rene Marsh, CNN aviation analyst -- reporter and government regulation correspondent.

Rene, we've now heard two press conferences, both from the French prosecutor and from Lufthansa's CEO. Essentially they're saying they still have no idea of motive and as of yet they don't plan to actually change their policies of just allowing one person to be in the cockpit if the other pilot needs to take a break.

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Right, and I would say, Anderson, two things stood out to me in these press conferences. The first issue you just brought up which is they don't have protocol in place in which they have here in the United States, which essentially is, if someone, a pilot, co-pilot, has to leave the cockpit, either a trusted member of the crew or a flight attendant will come in so the pilot or whoever is in the cockpit is never there alone.

So that's in place here. Not the case as far as Lufthansa goes.

The other thing that really got my attention is the fact that there is this no psychological testing. We do know here, as it stands in the United States, pre-employment, at the very least, pilots not only go through a medical test, but they also are tested as to whether they are sound enough for the position.

Granted, many of the pilots I spoke to say that there are the six- month medical examinations, no follow-up psychological advances examinations per se. That's usually left to the individual to self- disclose during that examination.

But I would have to think that after this, there would be some changes at least in pre-employment, in that you are analyzing that an individual is in a sound state of mind to be in the cockpit and flying a plane and responsible for hundreds of lives -- Anderson.

COOPER: Yes. Rene Marsh, thank you very much.

I do want to show we now have a picture of the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz is his name. He's 28 years old, a ten-year veteran, a relatively new hire for Lufthansa not a pilot who has been there for all that time. But the CEO of the airline saying that he had worked as a flight attendant during his training, that he was 100 percent fit to fly as far as they knew, that his flight performance had been perfect.

And again, Richard Quest, they not only have firm confidence in their current pilots, but they have no idea why Andreas Lubitz would have done this.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: And that is something that comes up again and again in Carsten Spohr's press conference this morning. This continuing reference to Lufthansa pilot -- the importance that they place on safety, the importance they place on the integrity of their pilots. And Carsten Spohr saying that confidence has not been shaken by what has happened today.

He's been a co-pilot -- Lubitz has been a co-pilot since 2008. So it's 2013 he became a co-pilot. He started his training in 2008. He trained both in Bremen and in Phoenix, Arizona, which is the main area, of course, where so many pilots train.

COOPER: I mean it is extraordinary when you see the photograph of him and you try to imagine what was going on in this man's mind? What was it -- was there a political motivation? Was it some sort of emotional disturbance? Was it something going on in his life? Why would this man -- smiling in this photo, posing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco -- why would he kill 149 people on board this flight? QUEST: And that was the -- we saw the German minister who looked

shocked. Carsten Spohr says he's speechless. The prosecutor says he can't understand it. But you always have to remember, we're talking about all the different procedures. Two people in the cockpit -- this, that and the other -- somebody has to fly the plane.

There's always going to be a human being, at least at the moment, whose hands are on the controls, and no amount of psychological testing and no amount of whatever procedures you put in place ever ignores that inescapable fact, a human flies the plane. You can try to mitigate it, the risk, but you're never going to eliminate it.

COOPER: And while we continue to look at this picture, I want to bring in Paul Ginsberg, who's with professional audio laboratories, a specialist on recorded evidence. Paul, it's extraordinary to me that the microphones in the cockpit are so close to the co-pilot in this case that you could hear the breathing of the co-pilot.

[10:40:03] They said there was continued breathing. They knew the co- pilot was alive -- that this hadn't been a medical emergency, that the pilot was not incapacitated, that he was alive and had control of this aircraft.

PAUL GINSBERG, FORENSIC AUDIO EXPERT: Yes, it was very surprising. I've worked cases with black box recording downloads where, when there was an impending, just run off the runway, you could hear the increased breathing in both pilot and co-pilot. And clearly each one has a separate channel, you know, so that we know for sure that it was the co-pilot at this point.

COOPER: Also we learned today from the prosecutor I mean just the chilling fact that in the final minutes or so, you can actually hear passengers screaming in the plane itself.

GINSBERG: The cockpit is a very, very noisy place. So that sound of the people screaming and the banging on the door had to be really high decibel level to overcome that. Because we generally have to use enhancement techniques just to get through that noise to hear anything. And they were at a very high level.

COOPER: Also audio investigators will listen to the alarms going off, the warnings that are going off. That also paints part of the picture of what is happening in the cockpit.

GINSBERG: Yes, it does. In fact, the cockpit area microphone and channel are designed to pass more frequencies than just human frequencies because they need to be able to detect after the fact whether or not there were any alerts, warnings, hail hitting the windshield, any number of mechanical noises.

COOPER: So are you saying there are just two microphones in the cockpit on the pilot and the co-pilot? Or are there other microphones as well?

GINSBERG: There's another. The pilot and co-pilot have special noise canceling microphones to cancel out some of that noise and give you a much clearer rendition of their voices. In addition, there's a cockpit area microphone that records the entire environment in the cockpit.

COOPER: Obviously the flight data recorder still being looked for. We heard from our Nic Robertson earlier just the difficulty that recovery workers are having. Helicopters are not able to land at the crash site itself. They have to be lowered from a cable. So not only are they looking for the flight data recorder, also, obviously looking for the remains of the passengers.

Three Americans were among the 150 people who were killed in the crash of Flight 9525. We know the identity of two of them, Yvonne Selke and her daughter Emily. Friends say they were on vacation together. Emily apparently loved to travel with her mom.

Shawn Wilson worked with Emily for more than a year at Carr Workplaces in Arlington, Virginia. She joins me now. Thank you for being with us. I'm so sorry for your loss.

You know, I spoke to two friends of Emily's last night. They say they find it hard to believe that this has all taken place, that Emily is, in fact, gone. It must not seem real to you either.

SHAWN WILSON, FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE OF EMILY SELKE: It does not. It is completely surreal. And you know, you hear about these things on the news, but once it actually affects somebody that you know, it just is something that you can't completely fathom. You know, I think we're all still trying to come to grips with what went on.

COOPER: Tell us about Emily, what was she like?

WILSON: She was the light at every tunnel. She truly was able to brighten up a room when she walked into it. We laughed and smiled every single day that we were at work together. So she is definitely one that is able to make relationships with other people. So she was definitely loved within our family at Carr Workplaces and with our clients as well.

COOPER: Did you know that she was taking this vacation with her mom?

WILSON: Yes, we did know that she was on vacation, yes.

COOPER: And at this point, I'm wondering, when the news -- when you heard the news, how did you hear it and what was the reaction of those in the workplace?

WILSON: So I found out from one of our -- her name was Mary Leslie. She was on Facebook that morning. So she reached out to her direct manager and then to me. So we found out about it through the power of social media, which is a really difficult way to find out about it. But it was also where we were seeing the immense outpouring of love from her friends and family that were talking about the loss of Emily and her mom.

COOPER: Emily had been a music industry major in college, and her friends say that she loved music, that was a big passion of hers. How long she had worked at the company that you work with?

WILSON: She started with us in January of 2014. She just passed her one-year anniversary with us and has been an amazing asset to our organization.

COOPER: I'm so thankful that you were able to come in and tell us a little bit about Emily. Shawn, thank you so much. Again, I'm so sorry for your loss and the loss of all your colleagues.

[10:45:09] Again, it is something that the family members, that friends are still trying to wrap their minds around, trying to come to the reality that their loved ones are gone, and now to learn that the co-pilot of the flight was responsible for the deaths of the 149 passengers and crew members on board that flight as well as his own death.

We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the downing of Flight 9525.

We're getting some reaction from a friend of the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, the man who authorities say is responsible for crashing this aircraft killing 149 passengers and crew members on board as well as killing himself, hired as you see in September of 2013. He was German.

We heard earlier in the day from Lufthansa saying that they are speechless. That he started training with them back in 2008, that his flight performance was perfect, and that they have believed he was 100 percent fit to fly.

Let's listen to what his friend said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[10:49:55] PETER RUECKER, KNEW ANDREAS LUBITZ (through translator): Andreas was a very nice young man who underwent training here. He was a member of the club. He was funny.

Sometimes maybe he was a bit quiet. He was a boy like many boys we have here. He was integrated well and had fun here I think.

I am speechless. I cannot give you any explanation for that. The way I knew Andreas, this is inconceivable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: "Speechless", those are the exact words also used by the CEO of Lufthansa.

Our Justice Correspondent Pamela Brown is also monitoring developments for us this morning. Pamela -- just an incredible turn of events over the last several hours, this story first broke by the "New York Times" based on a single source essentially leaking them information from that voice recorder. Not confirmed last night by Lufthansa, but we heard it just a short time ago from the CEO, confirming what the French prosecutor in Marseille.

Now we understand that the FBI has officially been brought in to help with the investigation.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's just an amazing turn of events here. Really tragic -- Anderson. Just to kind of put this in perspective, the law enforcement officials I've been speaking to here in the U.S. really are shocked by this development.

Yesterday when I spoke to them, you know, everyone was still waiting for the dust to settle, to figure out where to go with the investigation. And now they're getting a better idea.

And in light of all of these developments, Anderson, we know that the French have now formally asked for the FBI's assistance. From very early on, FBI agents in Europe were already part of the investigation helping to cross-reference names from the manifest with U.S. databases. We know that didn't turn up anything.

But now this is sort of the next step in the process where the government leading the investigation, the French, are now asking for the U.S. assistance. We don't know what that assistance is going the look like yet. Officials I've been speaking with say we still have to see how the investigation unfolds to see what we can offer.

I can tell you, though, that the FBI could help in forensics. We know in the Paris attacks, Anderson, the terrorist attacks there in January, the forensics, the laptops and electronics from the suspects there were sent to the lab -- FBI lab in Quantico, in Virginia to be analyzed.

We also know the FBI has a robust behavioral analysis unit. And they're going to want to look at the -- investigators involved in this case are going to want to look at the background of this co-pilot. They could have teams of people looking specifically at his finances, looking specifically at his relationships and his mental health. They want to get down to the bottom of what happened here.

And again, even though the French are leading the investigation, the FBI does have a keen interest in figuring out what happened given the fact that three Americans were on board -- Anderson.

COOPER: And Pamela, also obviously they're going to be looking at any political motivation, any other kind of motivation.

BROWN: Absolutely. Right now terrorism hasn't been ruled out. As we heard officials say, there's no evidence of it yet. But they're going to want to look if a certain ideology perhaps prompted the co-pilot to deliberately crash the plane into the Alps. And of course, If they do find any political motivations, anything else that may have motivated him, any sort of ideology, then of course, that may change the calculus a bit toward something else. Everything still is on the table -- Anderson. COOPER: And what's not known is how long the co-pilot had this idea

in mind. Whether there had been other times when he was in an aircraft where he had thought about doing this or whether this was the first time. Again, that is not known at this point.

Pamela, I appreciate the reporting, Pamela Brown.

I want to bring in our aviation analyst, Mary Schiavo; also Scott Miller, he's a former pilot for Northwest Airlines. He's also a flight instructor and professor of aeronautics.

Scott, what do you make of this? I mean I think what a lot of people didn't realize is that the door which closes and locks -- the standard setting for that can be overridden by somebody who's locked outside of the cockpit who can get back in. But in this case it seems the co- pilot would have put the mechanism on to lock which is not something that can be overridden from the outside.

SCOTT MILLER, FORMER PILOT FOR NORTHWEST AIRLINES: Yes, that's true. I've heard the word "speechless" a lot this morning. And I have to say that word about covers it pretty well for me, too. You know, it's so difficult to try to get my head wrapped around this, that we have the procedures in place. Of course, with the events of September 11th, we need to ensure the cockpit is secure at all times during flight.

We are humans and we do have physiological needs. And in the industry we like to think that we have procedures in place that can accommodate that, instill and ensure the security of the aircraft, ensuring that the pilots are the only ones that have access to the cockpit and have the ability to secure that cockpit is a requirement for security.

[10:55:08] This definitely changes the calculus and some really big thought is going to needed to be put in this situation to ensure safety in the future.

COOPER: And Scott, it's not a requirement apparently in Europe and it's certainly up to individual airlines in Europe as to whether or not they have a rule in place about a single individual being able to be inside the cockpit. Is it a rule in the United States that any time there's only one person in the cockpit that a flight crew member has to come in as well? Or is that something that's just left up airline to airline?

MILLER: No, that is a regulatory requirement here in the United States. And overseas, you know, each government has their regulatory body making those decisions. I firmly believe the system we have in the United States is the way to go, if for no other reason than if you have a single pilot in the cockpit, I believe that pilot should be focused simply on flying the aircraft, ensuring that the aircraft flight path is where it needs to be and that everything is being taken care of. And having a second individual responsible for the cockpit security while the flight crew member is in the back of the airplane is the way to go.

COOPER: Mary Schiavo, you work a lot with passengers. In terms of what this means for the loved ones of those who died on board this aircraft, does it change the responsibility of the airline? Does it change the litigation which is no doubt going to take place down the road?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, it will change the litigation somewhat. The airline is responsible for its passengers even in the event of a deliberate act such as this. The insurer, I believe is Allianz. And the Montreal Treaty says that the airline must be responsible. It sounds like they'll step up and do that.

And there's precedent for that. For example, Egypt Air, the airline's insurer was responsible. Silk Air, same thing there.

But we've got another huge clue here, and that is when the French ask the FBI to come in, the FBI is a huge resource because we can't overlook that Mohammad Attah, the ringleader of the September 11 downings of the four planes went to school in Germany and then some of the hijackers trained in Phoenix. I think the French are asking the FBI to come in not just because there were Americans on board, but because this person, this co-pilot did some training in phoenix as did some of the 9/11 hijackers and also had connections in California.

I think the French are looking to make sure to rule out any terrorist connections and to find out what he did in the United States. And I think the FBI is a huge resource because they learned so, so much after September 11, 2001. Another important lead here that we've got.

COOPER: To remind our viewers, the pictures that you have just been seeing there, the man posing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, that is Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot, the man responsible for the mass murder of 149 people on board this flight.

I want to go to our national correspondent Sunlen Serfaty who's at the White House. Is there any official reaction yet from the White House about the revelations that this co-pilot brought down this plane?

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well -- Anderson, after learning this new information, the White House still holds that they believe that there is no indication that there's any connection to terrorism. We posed this specific question after this new development about this potential deliberate act by this co-pilot came out.

And the National Security Council tells us in a statement, quote, "We refer you to the French authorities for an update on the investigation. There is no indication of a nexus to terrorism at this time." Now, I should note that this is the very same statement that the National Security Council also issued in the hours after the plane crash happened on Tuesday.

We do know there has been coordination between the United States government and the French government, and authorities investigating these communications, but we're not sure what conversations are being had right now at this time after these new revelations.

This morning the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest he says that it's his hope and they will offer any help to the French government but it's his hope and the White House's hope that this investigation is conducted as quickly and efficiently as possible -- Anderson.

COOPER: Sunlen Serfaty at the White House. Sunlen -- thank you very much.

"Speechless" was the word used by Lufthansa CEO; French prosecutors giving a press conference earlier this morning as well. The information, Andreas Lubitz, 28 years old, a co-pilot who is believed now solely responsible for bringing down flight 9525.

Our coverage is going to continue throughout the day obviously. I'll be back on "360" tonight at 8:00 p.m. Thank you very much for joining us.

"AT THIS HOUR" with Berman and Bolduan starts now.