[Daryn Kagan, Cnn Anchor:] A sonar crewman from the USS Greeneville now says that civilians in the sub's control room did, in fact, distract him from his work. Our CNN military affairs correspondent Jamie McIntyre broke this story, has had a number of breaks as the story developed, out of Hawaii and out of the Pentagon and joining us now from the Pentagon. Jamie, good morning, again.
[Jamie Mcintyre, Cnn Military Affairs Correspondent:] Well, good morning, Daryn. Last night, the National Transportation Safety Board revealed that one of the submarine's crew members, whose job it is to record the location of nearby ships on a paper log, told investigators that he was distracted by 16 civilian guests who were all jammed into the control room. The crew member, identified as a fire control technician, is supposed to update something called the CEP, the contact evaluation plot, a manual plot of each contact bearing and the ship's course over time. He says he stopped updating that because that log because there were so many civilians present. The Navy, also, after analyzing information from a new piece of equipment on board the Greeneville something called the sonar data logger has been able to figure out that the Japanese fishing boat was picked up by passive sonar 71 minutes before the accident. But it's not clear why that information did not get to the skipper of the ship or how they didn't know at the time that the accident took place, that that the ship was overhead.
[John Hammerschmidt, Ntsb:] The Greeneville reportedly gained passive sonar contact with a surface vessel, at 12:32 local time, that Navy analysis has shown was the Ehime Maru.
[Mcintyre:] The NTSB also says the ship's engineering officer did see the fishing boat through his periscope, but only after the accident; by the time he made it up a ladder to the bridge, the training vessel had already sunk. The NTSB says that, in the periscope sweeps that preceded the surfacing drill, one guest said she did see a ship on the display monitors that were visible in the control room, but she said when she later saw the actual fishing vessel on a display monitor in another room, she didn't think it was the same ship she'd seen earlier Daryn.
[Kagan:] Jamie, that sound we just heard from the NTSB. Meanwhile, the Navy having its public inquiry was originally supposed to start tomorrow; that, now, though has been pushed back to when and why?
[Mcintyre:] Well, they say they'll now schedule this court of inquiry to begin on Monday. They just said they needed more time for logistics and for the people involved to prepare for this proceeding. This is a formal proceeding, under which all of the testimony is given under oath, and in which the parties to the investigation and that's the captain of the ship, the executive officer, the officer of the deck; all of them had been named as parties, which means they could be potentially subject to punishment down the road they're all given representation and basically get a chance to prepare their case for this very formal investigative process. So the Navy says they now plan to start that on Monday instead originally it was going to begin tomorrow.
[Kagan:] And where does that actually take place, Jamie?
[Mcintyre:] That will be in Hawaii, on the base of Pearl Harbor in one of the military courtrooms, It's presided over by three admirals a three-star, a two-star and a one-star who have broad powers to subpoena witnesses and take testimony in a public forum that is very similar to a court proceeding, although it's not a trial.
[Kagan:] Jamie McIntyre, at the Pentagon, thank you so much.