[Blitzer:] Let's get back to our coverage of the Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia. Investigators are focusing right now on the train's speed, 106 miles an hour around a 50 mile-per-hour curve at the time of the crash. But according to the engineer's attorney, he spoke to ABC earlier today, the engineer doesn't remember everything about the crash.
[Goggin:] We know the fact that the train was going at an excessive speed, but the reasons why are still to be determined.
[Unidentified Male:] We know the emergency brake was hit but has your client given you an explanation as to why the train was going so fast?
[Goggin:] He has not. He has I believe as a result of the concussion, he has absolutely no recollection whatsoever of the events. I'm told that his memory is likely to return as the concussion symptoms subside.
[Blitzer:] Let's bring in our analysts, our experts joining us now. Mary Schiavo, she's an aviation and transportation expert, also the former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Peter Goelz is joining us, the Aviation Analyst, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board. And Paul Ginsburg, forensic audio expert, who cited numerous federal accident investigations. Peter, we know the speed. That's pretty much determined, right? So give us the checklist that investigators for the NTSB are going to be using as they take a closer look at the engineer who was in the locomotive at the time.
[Peter Goelz, Cnn Aviation Analyst:] Well, Wolf, first they're going to look at his schedule over the past 72 hours or more to make sure that he had the appropriate rest, that he wasn't fatigued. They're going to subpoena and pull his phone records to make sure he was not texting or on a cell phone. They're going to pull his medical record and see whether he was taking any medication, whether he had any lingering medical issues, and they're going to review his operational record. Was he familiar with this route? Had he had any problems in the past? Had he ever been censured for, you know, violation of company rules? They will go over this guy with a fine tooth comb.
[Blitzer:] He was a young guy, only, what, 32 years old. A limited amount of experience as well. On that point, Paul, take us inside what the investigators are looking at. They've discovered that so-called black box. How much information can they glean from that?
[Paul Ginsberg, Forensic Audio Expert:] Well, the black box is something like a flight data recorder and flight communications recorder as well. It's two in one. It gives us date, time, GPS location, direction, speed, and then a number of variables as to how the controls in the cabin were set. That is throttle, brake, horn activation, bell. There's something called a reverser switch and a power cut-off. All of these data pieces are put together. And in addition, when they do get the cell phone, they will go over it with forensic software to determine whether anything had been deleted and compare that to telephone company records. So there's a lot of data coming in.
[Blitzer:] Mary, we know there was a video camera in front of the train seeing what was it, going on in front, but there was no camera inside the locomotive to take a look at the engineer, for example, and what was going inside there. Even though for years a lot of experts have said there should be cameras inside. Why aren't there cameras inside?
[Mary Schiavo, Cnn Aviation Analyst:] Well because of a misguided notion that you have an expectation of privacy in the cab of a train or the cockpit of an aircraft, and you don't. There have been a lot of worker representatives and worker unions that have said that's an invasion of an expectation of privacy, and it simply isn't. We have cameras on the clerks at the Seven-11, you know, every banks, et cetera. And so, in many ways, it's just been push-back from the representatives of the employees. But I think it's absolutely imperative and it has been for years. And we were talking about this back on September 11, 2001, how a camera in the cockpit there, just like in the train cab here, would have made, perhaps, all the difference in the world.
[Blitzer:] And, Peter, you agree with Mary on this, right?
[Goelz:] Absolutely. There is no reason not to have cab facing cameras in our railroad system. It would help investigators and it, as Mary said, it is not an invasion of privacy.
[Blitzer:] And, Peter, these positive train control systems that would automatically prevent a train from going too fast into a dangerous curve, there's supposed to be in effect throughout the northeast corridor by the end of this year. And this area of Philadelphia, they certainly were not in place yet. We're showing our viewers this whole area. It's supposed to be in effect by the end of the year. Why is it taking so long and why are some now saying it's going to take a whole lot longer, maybe through until 2020?
[Goelz:] Well, I'm not sure it's going to take much longer in the northeast corridor. Amtrak has said they're going to get it done this year. But it is a far more complex challenge technology from a technology standpoint. We have numerous railroads you know there were the six major freight lines. We have numerous passenger lines. We have numerous short lines. There's no single technology coming off the shelf that you go out and purchase and say, all right, this is the PTC system we're going to have. They're switching their communications and their signalization of all these lines are different. It's been a tremendous challenge. The government has spent billions. The railroads have spent billions. It is it just hasn't come together in the time frame that Congress has wanted.
[Blitzer:] And, Paul, you know, do you have any doubt, and you've been involved in a lot of these investigations, that in the end we will know precisely why this occurred, we'll be able to draw important lessons from it, even if the engineer, we don't know if the engineer is going to cooperate or not cooperate, but let's say the engineer decides to lawyer up and not cooperate, will the public still have full knowledge of what happened?
[Ginsberg:] Well, as Peter said, we do not have any microphone in the cab of the train, unfortunately. I've worked on cases where I had to enhance recordings made from the external microphone to try to pick up what happened in the cab. It's very difficult because the outdoor notice is horrendous at that speed. Will we ever know? We will know exactly how the controls were set and at what point. We'll know the exact speed to the tenth of a mile per hour. And we'll have video from the front-looking camera, again, that is not swivel-able. And we'll know all of that data and hopefully there'll be some additional input from the cell phone and from the engineer himself. And that's what we can hope for.
[Blitzer:] Let's hope let's hope. Paul Ginsberg, Peter Goelz, Mary Schiavo, guys, thanks very much for joining us. Coming up, more than 700 potential terror suspects have travel to Syria to fight or support ISIS and authorities now believe nearly half of them have returned to the United Kingdom, and may be trying to take direct attacks launch direct attacks there. We have details when we come back.