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Brakes Applied Too Late; Speed Blamed For Train Crash; Engineer Says He Was In A Daze; How To Make Yourself Safer On Trains; Cyber Monday Sales Up 20 Percent; Stocks Take A Tumble; Closing Commissaries; Suspected TB Flight

Aired December 3, 2013 - 13:00   ET

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


WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. We start with new developments in the deadly train crash in New York City and an admission from the train's engineer. Other news outlets have reported that the engineer fell asleep. But now in his own words, the engineer says he was awake but he was, quote, "in a daze just ahead of the crash."

Recovered data recorders show the train hit the 30-mile-per-hour curve at almost three times that speed. It was going 82 miles per hour. The data also showed the engineer slammed on the brakes too late to stop the crash. NTSB investigators say they now know what happened but not why. Four people died in the crash, 19 of the injured remain hospitalized.

Joining us now with more on the investigation our own Nic Robertson who has been watching what's going on from the very beginning. Is the engineer -- I assume he is -- still at the center of this investigation, Nic?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: He certainly appears to be, Wolf. The information that he has will certainly -- will certainly go a long way to tally or not with what was in the event recorders. He has said -- and this is coming from a senior official close to the investigation, a senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation that the driver said, I was in a daze. I don't know what happened.

And this was -- he was referring there to coming along that straight section of track and hitting the curb at 72 miles an hour. He had gone in the previous two minutes from 60 miles an hour to 72 miles an hour on the 30-mile-an-hour rated curve, applying the brakes literally five seconds before the train came to a rest. Essentially, almost as if it was coming off the rails at the same time. So, that does seem to tally with what he's saying.

Obviously, fatigue of all the crew involved is something that the NTSB will be looking at. They will be looking at the 72 hours previous to see what he was doing, where he had been what -- whether or not there might be something that would have caused him to be, in his words, in a daze -- Wolf.

BLITZER: You say he was going 72 miles an hour. Yesterday, the NTSB said he was actually -- the train was going 82 miles an hour as it hit that 30-mile-an-hour curve. Have they revised the numbers today?

ROBERTSON: Wolf, that's my mistake. Eighty-two miles an hour, not 72. He was 12 miles an hour over that limit coming along the straightaway section that was limited to 70 miles an hour coming into that will 30-mile-an-hour bend and coming off the rails.

BLITZER: All right, good. So what else are we hearing from the engineer who we've been pointing out clearly right at the center of this investigation?

ROBERTSON: Well, we know that they have now got the trains back on the track. They will appear to be still not ruling out anything at this stage to what could cause this, whether this was a human error or a mechanical error.

But it does seem to be at the moment that they're leaning away from it being a mechanical error, that the tracks appear to be in good condition, that the trains were put back on the tracks and moved away. And their efforts are really speeding up now to get the track back in a -- back in a situation where it can be handed over to the MTA and that they can begin themselves to make all the repairs necessary before that metro north lane can be put back into use -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Nic, hold on for a moment because we have more questions to ask you.

Americans take more than 100 million train trips every year, that includes short commuter trips and longer Amtrak treks (ph). So, is there anything passengers can do to make themselves safer while on board? Our Chris Lawrence takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A regional train flying around curves at twice the speed limit in Spain.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone was just covered in their own blood and occasionally the blood of others.

LAWRENCE: Or one Washington, D.C. subway plowing into another. And now, a New York commuter train hurtling off the tracks. The crashes can have a number of causes. The one thing passengers can control, where they sit. A seat is safer than standing. And it matters which car you choose. Take it from an expert, a former manager at the NTSB.

PETER GOELZ, FORMER MANAGING DIRECTOR, NTSB: Usually, when I ride the trains, I try not to sit in the first car and not to sit in the last car.

LAWRENCE: Peter Goelz says the middle car gives you the best odds of being protected if the train smashes into something or gets rear ended by another train.

GOELZ: If there's going to be an accident, the first and the last cars often take the brunt of the -- of the force. LAWRENCE: Predicting derailments is harder. Regional trains can travel 100 miles per hour but often have to slow down to 30 around certain curves. If they don't or if there's a problem on the track, it can cause a devastating crash like metro north.

EARL WEENER, MEMBER, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD: Three of the people who died, yes, were thrown out of the car.

LAWRENCE: That's got people wondering why trains don't have seat belts. The government just made them mandatory for newly built buses.

WEENER: And one of the things we'll be looking at during the investigation would be what contribution seat belts might have made to the survivability.

LAWRENCE: But using buses as a basis? It may come down to money. The government rejected making old buses installed seat belts, because it would cost of $40,000 per vehicle.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: And Chris Lawrence is joining us along with Nic Robertson. Chris, seat belts apparently too expensive to retrofit the older buses although newer buses should have them. What about trains? Because three of the four passengers who died on this train derailment, they were thrown out of the cars through the windows and died presumably because of that force. And the speculation is they might have been alive if there had been seat belts and they had been strapped in?

LAWRENCE (live): Well, Wolf, one former NTSB official told me they looked at the idea of seat belts on trains but are you going to do a lap belt? Are you going to do a shoulder harness? When you do that, it's not a matter of just installing the seat belt itself.

A lot of times, you've got to retrofit the entire seat and sometimes the floor itself to make sure that it will hold up. The NTSB officials said there wasn't the data to support that sort of overhaul. And he said when you're talking about commuter trains where people are getting on and off at every stop, he thought it would be almost impossible to implement.

BLITZER: Nic, let me bring you back into this conversation. You were in a train crash yourself. Tell us when that happened and what it was all -- what it was like.

ROBERTSON: Wolf, it was a long time ago in 1984. I was on my way to start literally my first day at work. The train I was traveling in was a sleeper train. And perhaps this goes a little way to addressing just what safety belts can achieve.

The train was traveling from Edinborough to London, a long overnight journey. I was in a tiny sleeper car. The train was going too fast. They tried to go around a 90-mile-an-hour -- tried to go around a 50- mile-an-hour bend at 90 miles an hour. The train came off. The car that I was in ended up climbing the embankment, twisting on its side, smashing into a house. Fortunately, there were no fatalities because the leading cars that took the brunt of the accident, you only had a limited small area to fall out of your bed and hit the wall. I broke my wrist putting my hand out to stop me as we hit the wall.

But the disorientation that you feel, the sort of the sense that you're tumbling, the noises of the rumbling, it was all building and it seemed to take a long time and then was over in an instant. And this realization, the window that had been on the side of the carriage was now in the roof. And you realized that the train has tipped over. What has happened to you? A lot of emotions at that moment.

But the clear one of the things I learned from that particular accident that because I didn't have far to fall, I was restrained to a degree in my bed, fell a short distance to a wall not rattling along the whole length of a carriage which would have been possible had there been seats, my injuries were much lighter than they might have been. The same for other passengers -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Well, you broke your wrist. That's pretty serious. I'm sure you must have been terrified. How do you feel about going on trains these days?

ROBERTSON: You know, Wolf, we were -- I didn't -- I was -- I was a young guy. It was the beginning of my life. The world was going to be full of adventures. And within a few hours, I was back on another train heading south. I turned up for my first day at work with blood on my shirt and a story to tell.

BLITZER: You certainly did and we're glad you're here and you emerged from that crash in good shape, relatively speaking, obviously. Thanks very much, Nic, and thanks for sharing that permanent with us.

And, Chris, good reporting from you. Good information, as well. Don't necessarily sit in the first cabin. Don't sit in the last cabin. Get somewhere in the middle. Those are going to be the high priced seats presumably down the road. Guys, we're going to continue to follow this story.

Let's shift gears though right now. If you were one of the millions of people who went shopping online yesterday, you were part of the biggest Cyber Monday ever. Those record sales were led by a huge increase in the number of people shopping on their mobile devices.

Joining us now with details, Alison Kosik. She's over at the New York stock exchange. Alison, let's break down some of these numbers. How much bigger was this year's Cyber Monday?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, did you get online to do some holiday shopping yesterday?

BLITZER: I did not. I was too busy working here at CNN doing my job.

KOSIK: That's too bad. But for those who did go online, those people helped sales online jump more than 20 percent compared to last year, making it the biggest online shopping day in history. In fact, Comscore says sales totaled $2 billion. That's more than the total that we were expecting. Now, a lot of us actually chose to do our buying on the go. The number of people making purchases on mobile devices rose more than 50 percent.

Now, some of the most popular products people were buying, toys, tablets, clothing, video game consoles. And we also learned this morning that PlayStation 4 sales have topped the 2 million mark. And get this, they've only been on sale two weeks. But there was a lesson in this there for retailers this year that maybe keep more focus on the cyber sales because retailers wound up spending tons of money to stock their stores on Thanksgiving and Black Friday but it turns out consumers actually spent less in stores for the first time since the recession -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Alison, how are the marks doing today? Because it was a huge November, not necessarily starting off so great in December.

KOSIK: Yes, markets actually taking a U-turn today in the red -- deep in the red. The Dow down more than 100 points. You know, investors clearly having a tough time getting into the holiday spirit. This makes it day three for the Dow and the S&P extending their losses.

You know, traders on the floor that I've been talking to say, you know, it's not about the lackluster retail sales that we saw over the weekend but rather this has everything to do with the fed. And worries about if and when the central bank is going to begin pulling back on the stimulus, the $85 billion a month of stimulus that it's been pouring into the financial system.

Now, yesterday what happened is we got a better than expected reading on manufacturing. So, what that's doing is it's raising worries that the fed could scale back the large scale bond buying as soon as December at its December meeting which is happening in two weeks. But you know, much is really going to depend on Friday. Friday is when we get the big employment report which is really a big compass for the fed, and the government is expected to report that employers added 188,000 jobs last month -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, we'll see what happens Friday morning 8:30 a.m. Eastern. Those numbers will be released.

KOSIK: Exactly.

BLITER: We'll see it live here on CNN. Thank you.

It won't affect this year's Cyber Monday but the decision by the Supreme Court could lead to major changes in online shopping. And it's all about how much tax you pay when you shop online. Our Christine Romans explains how this will affect your money.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, on the biggest online shopping day of the year, no less, the Supreme Court punting on the most important issue in retail right now. And that means millions of people may now have to pay state tax on their online purchases. Now, states have been putting pressure on Internet retailers to collect sales tax. And Amazon.com and Overstock.com fought this effort with different results in different courts. It's a patchwork now of rulings and laws.

Now that the Supreme Court has decided not to the weigh in, states are likely to pursue the estimated $23 billion in uncollected sales taxes from Web retailers. An increasing number of states like New York have passed laws forcing Internet-based retailers to collect taxes. Amazon and Overstock complained saying they don't have physical presence in that state. By not getting involved, most retail analysts say the Supreme Court is essentially ending a 20-year tradition of no sales tax on Internet purchases -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Christine, thank you.

Going to the commissary to buy groceries at a discount, certainly a staple of military life for so long. But guess what? The Pentagon is now considering closing those stores. We're going to explain why, what this means for members of the United States military and their families when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: President Obama goes on the offensive today to try to revive his signature health care reform law. The Obama team has spent weeks playing defense over the disastrous debut of the healthcare.gov website. Next hour, though, the president kicks off a new campaign to highlight the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. The administration plans daily events through December 23rd.

But convincing young people to sign up for Obamacare may be a tough sell. According to a brand-new Gallup poll, Americans aged 18 to 29 are the least familiar with the health care law. This is the main group, by the way, the administration needs to attract, to make the whole system work.

Call it crisis management on a global scale. Vice President Biden is on a mission to ease tensions between China and Japan. He and the new U.S. ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, sat down with Japan's deputy prime minister, Taro Aso, today. High on the agenda, how to handle the new air defense zone China has declared over the East China Sea. Biden says he was deeply concerned about Beijing's actions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United States has an interest in low - in the lowering of tensions in this vital region, as I believe all the countries in northeast Asia share that same interest with us.

This underscores the need for crisis management mechanisms and effective channels of communication between China and Japan to reduce the risk of escalation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: The vice president heads to meet with China's president, Xi Jinping, on Wednesday. The U.S. and Japan have refused to recognize China's new air defense zone. Shopping at the commissary is a part of everyday life for U.S. military families. The grocery stores sell to service members and their families at major discount prices. But now the Pentagon is considering closing commissaries to save money. Our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr is joining us.

Barbara, what have you learned about this very controversial proposal?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, this would be a fundamental shift in how military families buy their groceries. The commissaries have been a staple of military life for decades. And I want to run everyone through a couple of numbers just so you see the scope of this program and why the Pentagon's thinking about cutting it, believing they can save money.

Look at this. There are about 178 commissaries in the United States, another 70 or so overseas. The groceries are discounted. A family of four saves about $4,500 a year if they buy their groceries at the commissary rather than out in the commercial world, in the civilian world. And that adds up to about $2.6 billion a year, compared to buying across the board in commercial stores.

But here's the thing. The commissaries cost the U.S. taxpayer about $1.4 billion a year in tax dollars to run. So the Pentagon calculation is, do they really need the commissaries? Should they save that $1.4 billion because now modern life, a lot of families go to the big box stores or the discount stores, the Walmart, the Costco in their towns and communities across the country. But it is going to be very controversial to do this. The Pentagon's emphasizing they're just thinking about it, they haven't made a final decision yet.

BLITZER: Yes, I'm sure there's going to be a huge backlash from active duty, retired military personnel, their families, who certainly, over these many, many years, have come to rely on these commissaries. I assume Pentagon officials are already worried about the potential backlash.

STARR: They are extremely concerned about it. And they know that this is, you know, going to be extremely concerning, especially, as you just mentioned, Wolf, to the retiree communities across the country.

People often move, once they retire from the military, to a nearby military community so they have access to the commissaries. And this of course now becomes then a political issue. Congressmen, senators across the country, where there are commissaries in their communities, are certainly going to hear from their constituents and certainly going to register their objections and concerns to the Pentagon.

Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, I'm sure that there's going to be huge, huge outrage if it goes forward. I suspect it won't. In the end, they'll save that $1.4 billion elsewhere. There's a lot of fat potentially out there that they can deal with in that huge Defense Department budget. And this is so controversial, so personal for so many active duty and retired military personnel, veterans of the military. I suspect it's not going anywhere. They'll find a savings elsewhere in that Pentagon budget.

Barbara, thanks very much.

STARR: Sure.

BLITZER: He was suspected of having tuberculosis and was therefore pulled off a flight. Fellow passengers were told to get tested for the highly contagious lung disease. But now there's a twist. We'll update you in a live report. New information straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Now to an important update on a story we brought you first yesterday, a tuberculosis scare on a flight that landed in Phoenix over the weekend. Casey Wian is joining us now from Phoenix.

Casey, what have you learned about the passenger believed to be infected and potentially contagious?

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, very good news, Wolf, for that passenger and for the other 70 passengers on that flight from Austin, Texas, to Phoenix. Maricopa County health officials say after several extensive tests over the last several days, the passenger has been determined not to have tuberculosis.

He was originally determined as a tuberculosis risk on Saturday after one positive and one negative test back in Texas. Authorities with the Centers for Disease Control were alerted. They put him on a no board list. By the time they got him on that list and by the time air officials were notified, he was already en route in an airplane on his way to Phoenix.

What happened after that? The fire department here at the Phoenix Airport was notified that they had a passenger on the do not board list on the flight. They met the plane. They got this passenger off the plane. And then they warned all of the people on board the plane that they had been exposed to tuberculosis. They were operating under the assumption that anyone put on that do not board list by the CDC had been confirmed to have a contagious disease.

It turns out, you can be put on the do not board list if you meet several other criteria, and it's likely that you have the disease. So that's basically what the fire department is telling us about why they made that announcement to all those passengers that they needed to get tested.

We spoke with one of the passengers on that flight just a few moments ago. Someone who was very concerned about whether he was at risk for contracting this disease. He was, of course, very relieved to hear that county officials now say that there is no risk. Frustrated, though, because he still has not heard anything from the county, still has not heard anything from the airline. But as it turns out, good news story for all of those on that flight, Wolf.

BLITZER: Very good news, although for a couple days, a lot of these people were obviously scared. Now they're told, don't be so scared anymore. No tuberculosis.

Thanks very much, Casey, for that report.

Still to come, the engineer of the train in that deadly New York City derailment says he wasn't asleep as some media have reported. He says he was, though, in a daze. More on the investigation straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)