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Clashes Over Iran Deal; Search for MH370; Former Univ. of Cincinnati Officer Indicted for Murder; Wide Range of MH370 Crash Theories. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired July 30, 2015 - 08:30   ET

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


[08:30:00] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The Iran deal. The administration is trying to sell it to Congress. This week, Senator Ted Cruz said, "if this deal is consummated, it will make the Obama administration the world's leading financer of radical Islamic terrorism." What do you think of that statement?

GOV. BOBBY JINDAL (R), LOUISIANA: Well, look, I disagree with the bill, and I've been one of the strongest critics of this bill. I do think it could lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. I think it undermines Israel. I think it is bad for America.

I wouldn't have said those words. I don't agree with those sentiments. Look, I think that those of us that have been opposed to this deal have been the voice of reason. And I don't think we should give up that position. At the end of the day, the terrorists or the radical Islamic groups and individuals out there and the state sponsors of those terrorists have been Iran and some of these other countries that have, you know, that have sponsored some of these groups. I wouldn't have used that rhetoric. Again, I oppose the deal, but I don't think that rhetoric's helpful.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Do you think the rhetoric's gotten a little too hot in this race? Donald Trump calling immigrants from Mexico rapists. Mike Huckabee saying the United States would lead Israel to the oven if the Iran deal. Now Ted Cruz calling the Obama administration, you know, state sponsors of terror. Mitt Romney has just tweeted. He essentially says he doesn't agree with the rhetoric, it hurts the cause.

JINDAL: Well, a couple of things. Look, I know there are a lot of candidates that are going to say whatever they have to say to be as outlandish as possible. Maybe they think it will help them get into that debate stage or move in the polls?

CAMEROTA: And has it helping them get attention?

JINDAL: Well, look, I can tell you what we're going to do. We're focused on substance. I'm the only candidate that's offered detailed plans on how to repeal and replace Obamacare. I'm the candidate that's outlined specific plans on education reform, where the dollars follow the child, on energy independence, on reinvesting in our military.

This is a serious election. When I tell the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire and these other states, if you're looking for somebody to manage the slow decline of our great country, don't vote for me. If you're looking for somebody who will go to D.C. and make the big changes, say and do the things you're not allowed to do, I'm your candidate.

Now, I do think voters are looking for somebody who will upset the apple cart, take on the establishment, but I think you can do that without saying outlandish statements.

CAMEROTA: Governor Bobby Jindal, thanks so much.

JINDAL: Thank you all.

CAMEROTA: A pleasure to have you on NEW DAY. Thanks for coming in.

BERMAN: Nice to have you here.

JINDAL: Thank you both for having me.

CAMEROTA: What is your take on all of this? Please tweet us using the #newdaycnn or post your comment on facebook.com/newday. We love reading those. I speak for both of us.

BERMAN: Yes, always.

CAMEROTA: Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right.

We are going to continue to follow our breaking developments in the Flight 370 mystery. Is the plane debris found in the Indian Ocean a huge breakthrough? We are going to take you live to Reunion Island for the very latest.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:35:45] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAMEROTA: We do have breaking news to tell you about because we could know today if a piece of debris is from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. This washed up on Reunion Island. That's near Madagascar. And investigators are heading there at this hour to examine what is being called a very significant development.

So let's get back to CNN's Robyn Kriel. She is live from Reunion Island with the very latest.

What do we know, Robyn?

ROBYN KRIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, hi there.

Yes, what we know from the Australian Transportation Authority is that surface currents, wind direction and just how high an object floats, all of these makes it not an exact science where debris such as from the MH370 could end up. And, indeed, if this does - if this piece does turn out to be part of the Boeing 777 that has been missing for 500 days, Michaela, an agonizing wait for family members, then that is exactly what happened.

Now, MH370, the wreckage found, here's what we know. Boeing 777 wing component found, same model as the MH370. Only one Boeing 777 has crashed over waters and is currently unaccounted for. Boeing has conducted initial assessment of the debris. Australians are analyzing barnacles on the wing. And France and Malaysia are leading the investigation. Reunion, Michaela, is a French island and that piece of debris will be transported to Toulouse, where France's equivalent of the Civil Aviation Authority, the BEA. That's where the tests will start. Malaysian authorities will be there too to help the French authorities to really oversee the investigation.

Also, Michaela, a Malaysian vessel headed here to begin searching for if there is any other debris lying around, floating around rather, and being washed up onto shores.

PEREIRA: Yes, the next 48 hours will be so key. Robyn Kriel, thank you for that. We appreciate it.

Lots to discuss with our aviation analysts. We have CNN aviation analyst Les Abend, as well as the director of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, David Gallo. He's also the - lead the search for missing Air France Flight 447.

Gentlemen, it's been some time since we've talked to you.

Les, I know that you have flown a 777. How confident - what level of confidence do you have that this debris is MH370?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Yes, and I - I still - I still fly 777. I'm skeptical. you know, most pilots are that way. When I look at an airplane, I look at a pristine wing when I walk around it -

PEREIRA: Sure.

ABEND: And I see, you know, an intact aircraft. This piece, to me, when I - my first reaction was, that looks awful bulky to be a 777 because it's such a cleanly designed wing. And - and it looks to be too big for what we're calling the flapper-on (ph).

PEREIRA: Yes.

ABEND: However, that being said, Boeing is making some pretty strong statements saying that this - this indeed could be it. I'm very encouraged by it. It's compelling. I'm hoping that we have something that -

PEREIRA: More concrete.

ABEND: More concrete that the - the people can bite their teeth into.

PEREIRA: You fly them when they're pristine. David, unfortunately, you see them on the other end of the spectrum. So your expertise would be used to seeing debris.

DAVID GALLO, DIR. OF SPECIAL PROJECTS, WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION: Yes, sadly.

PEREIRA: Sadly, you're used to seeing debris. Give us an idea of the condition of this debris after 500 or so elements. Give us an idea of how the planes parts would react to the elements, the sea water, the sun, et cetera.

GALLO: Well, the most important thing is that creatures have been growing on and around that piece of the plane for 500-plus days if it's been in the water that long. And with the right team of biologists -

PEREIRA: Barnacles and such, right?

GALLO: Barnacles and such, exactly. And it's past the - the oceans are not the same - the same all the way across. They've got patches where things like to grow, places where things don't like to grow and different chemistries. So if you look at it like a piece of evidence, like a CSI ocean, the right team of biologists can actually dig into that and see if it can tell some sort of story about where it came from and what it went through.

PEREIRA: Isn't that fascinating how biology can play a part in this as well. And, David, we know that we certainly learned a whole lot from you about the currents in that area of the world in the southern Indian Ocean.

GALLO: Right.

PEREIRA: We know that they can move fairly quickly. They move in a counterclockwise motion from east to west. We understand also that they have been modeled. If we could have modeled it, why were we not necessarily searching that specific area off the coast of Madagascar before?

[08:40:11] GALLO: Well, it's - those pieces of the aircraft, if it is, in fact, from - I'm with Les, you know, I'm holding on here until I hear something from the BEA, from the French because they'll be very careful.

PEREIRA: Fair enough.

GALLO: Yes, so it's - you know, those pieces have been on the move every day for 500-plus days. So you would - hopefully if you backtrack 500 days, it should take you right back to the search area, the prime search area. And so it's - it would be - have been premature to look over there within a weeks' time or two weeks' time. So they're still floating around there. Their -

PEREIRA: Fair enough. Les -

GALLO: Yes.

PEREIRA: We know that - and there's a lot of eyes out there right now looking in that area, especially along the coastline of Reunion Island. So, Les, if - let's just sort of suppose that this is from MH370, are they - what are they able to learn about what perhaps took that plane down by just looking at that chunk? Can they tell a story from that debris?

ABEND: It's going to be difficult. I mean we need to - you know, I need to defer to our analyst, David Soucie, to get into the - more of the details of it. But you can tell if it was a high speed, high impact type situation. That's a very vulnerable part of the airplane, what came off of it. You know, what we can tell now, if that's indeed the part, period, some of the conspiracy theories are going to go away as far as the airplane being parked in Pakistan, any of the stans (ph). I mean it just - that definitely will take away some of those theories. But at this point, they don't have a whole lot to work with. I think it validates the search area by virtue of the drift of where that part ended up.

PEREIRA: And quickly, David, are there other possibilities that investigators - you know at this stage in the game you have to consider every possibility. Is there - are there possibilities they need to be considering still here?

GALLO: No, I think we're going to have to wait and see what this piece can tell us and if there are other pieces around Reunion before they get - jump to those things.

PEREIRA: All right, David Gallo, Les Abend, great to have you here with us. Thanks for your expertise.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Michaela.

As you know, there have been so many theories about what happened to the missing Flight 370. We look at some of the more plausible ones, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:45:49] BERMAN: We'll have much more continuing coverage of the search for Flight 370. But first, a former University of Cincinnati police officer expected in court this morning after a grand jury indicted him on murder charges for the shooting death of an unarmed man, Samuel DuBose. The incident, caught on Officer Ray Tensing's body camera, really troubling video. It shows a different account than what the officer originally described.

I want to bring in the Mayor of Cincinnati, John Cranley. Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for joining us. I know this is a challenging time for your city.

MAYOR JOHN CRANLEY (D), CINCINNATI: It's very challenging. However, I'm very proud of our police department and our prosecutor for coming to the right outcome and our police department handling everything with great professionalism. Of course, it wasn't our officer involved in the shooting, but our police department, of course, were monitoring the protests last night to make sure nothing got out of hand and, of course, it didn't.

BERMAN: Joseph Deters is the DA, called this a senseless and asinine shooting. We've all had a chance to look at this video and it is troubling today. I wonder what your reaction is.

CRANLEY: Well, it is troubling. I had a chance to meet with the family, the DuBose family, yesterday morning. It was very sad. We cried together. It's a time of tragedy, obviously. And I think, given police community relations around the country, it was important that the justice system work. And Joe Deters, I think, followed the facts, he followed the video and came out with the right charges and I know that made a big difference to the family and to the civil rights community generally.

BERMAN: One of the things that's troubling to a lot of people is that the police report appeared to differ from what ultimately the video revealed. The police report said that the officer, Ray Tensing, was dragged in the car. And we certainly don't see that on this video. So we talk about troubling, how troubling is it to you that there appears to be some kind of intentional effort by the police who did this report to alter what actually happened?

CRANLEY: Well, if that's true, it's obviously very disturbing. And again, this was a campus police, not the Cincinnati police. In fact, over the last year with issues going on in Baltimore and in Florida and in St. Louis and Ferguson, our police/community relations have been touted across the country as a role model. And so our police officers, in my opinion, would not have stopped somebody for a front license plate and would not have escalated the way this escalated.

But our police department -- and I've called for reform of the university police department, so has the civil rights community, and clearly reform and practices are in high order.

BERMAN: Is it time to reconsider whether to allow the university police department to have jurisdiction over that specific area? Do you need your own cops working the beat there?

CRANLEY: That's certainly going to be one of the questions that we are going to have to tackle in partnership with University of Cincinnati, which is obviously a very important partner with the city Cincinnati. You know, it's a huge university, a wonderful university and this is obviously a tough time for them.

You know, we went through tough times in Cincinnati in 2001 and we came out with this thing called the collaborative agreement which is held up as a role model around the country. And we, at a minimum, will require that UC follow all of those practices and procedures in the future.

BERMAN: What's your message to people in the community who look at this and say, not again? I mean, not again. We have this video of a white officer, albeit a campus officer, shooting an unarmed black man in the car there. How do you convince the community that things are going to get better?

CRANLEY: Well, first of all, any institution that is done by human beings is going to have error and problems. And the question is when those horrible things happen, are people held accountable?

Remember in the Garner case in Staten Island there wasn't even an indictment and most people who saw the video thought there should be.

In our community, not only were the police/community relationship strong so that the police and the civil rights community yesterday were all urging peaceful protests, but our prosecutor brought the right charges.

And so I think Cincinnati -- a horrible thing happened here, but I think we can actually be held up as this is the way it's supposed to work.

[08:50:03] BERMAN: Mayor John Cranley, would have never happened without the body cameras. I know you're a supporter of the body cameras as well.

Mr. Mayor, great to have you here with us. Greatly appreciate it.

Michaela?

PEREIRA: All right, John. We will have more on the Flight 370 search and the discovery raising a whole lot of hopes. We're also going to take a look at the range of theories into what really happened to that missing plane. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Investigators trying to definitively determine whether debris on an island near Madagascar belongs to missing Flight 370. It's been more than a year since that plane disappeared and it is still unclear what happened to it but there are plenty of theories.

CNN's Sara Sidner reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good night. Malaysian 370.

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "Good night, Malaysian 370," the last words anyone would ever hear from the ill-fated flight, causing unimaginable grief and unleashing theories from the technical to the sinister.

Among them, the pilot crashed the plane on purpose. Investigators looked into whether suicide could have been a reason. Ultimately, the International Independent Investigation Committee said it found no indications that would cast suspicion on him or the crew.

Terrorism. Did someone commandeer or hijack the plane to crash it? Experts are divided on this issue, but hijackers usually have clear demands. That never materialized.

[08:54:59] And no terrorist group claimed responsibility, which led investigators to believe those options are not viable.

The plane landed somewhere. As the months ticked by and no pieces of the plane were discovered, some speculated whether it was possible the plane had landed. But no communications from the people on board or hijack demands made that seem less possible.

Mechanical failure. A theory that a catastrophic electrical or mechanical failure brought the aircraft down is still being considered.

Rapid decompression. The plane suddenly loses cabin pressure and the passengers and crew become unconscious. The plane, on autopilot, flies until it runs out of fuel and crashes.

But without more evidence, they are all just theories, leaving grieving families in limbo, wondering what happened to those they lost.

Sara Sidner, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: That's why the answers are so important to keep pushing for.

BERMAN: And if this debris is part of the plan, it will answer some questions, but not all. But not all.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely. Because none of those theories are that satisfying. You still want to know why would that happen. But hopefully today we are that much closer to this piece of the puzzle.

PEREIRA: CNN will continue its coverage of the debris that could belong to Flight 370. It continues with "NEWSROOM" and Carol Costello right after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)