Captain Blamed for Cruise Accident; Huntsman Dropping Out of Race; Romney Gives Cash To Struggling Supporter
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome back to STARTINGT POINT. I'm Soledad O'Brien. Updating you on our top story this morning: That cruise ship in Italy is now slipping and the rescue operations, because of that slip, have now been put on hold. There are some developments that come out of this shipwreck. And also this morning, we're talking about Jon Huntsman, who has announced that he is getting out of the presidential race. He's going to get that official in just a few hours. It looks like he's going to be backing Mitt Romney. What does all that mean? Plus, do you guys see this? Mitt Romney reaching into his wallet and gives money to a struggling supporter. We're going to go inside that good deed ahead and see what was it all about? And the Golden Globes. Ricky Gervais was back, almost as mean as he was the last time. It does make the show much more entertaining. Here talking about how the Golden Globes measures up against the Oscars. It's very funny. Listen.</s>RICKY GERVAIS, GOLDEN GLOBE HOST: So the Golden Globes are to the Oscars what Kim Kardashian is to Kate Middleton, basically. But a bit louder, a bit trashier, a bit drunker, and more easily bought.</s>O'BRIEN: I love that.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Name one of the foreign press members. Name one.</s>O'BRIEN: All of that. Plus, NFL Hall of Famer quarterback Fran Tarkenton is going to join us. He's going to talk about Tim Tebow and whether or not God does care who wins. STARTING POINT begins right now.</s>O'BRIEN: OK. We start with our new developments to get to. That cruise ship, now the rescue mission, has been suspended. This all happening in Giglio, Italy, because the cruise ship is slipping. Italian prosecutors are ruling out technical error. That means they are pointing to human error, and the CEO is apologizing. The captain of the ship has been arrested. He's being charged with manslaughter and also abandoning ship. The ship hit rocks, and there is a 160-foot gash in the side. You can see how it's listed over to the side, 2,300 tons of fuel that are onboard. So far, there's no sign of leaking yet. But that's one of the concerns as it slips. Fourteen people are reported missing, including two Americans. There are six people who have been confirmed as dead. The passengers have been talking about what happened. And in their words, it was absolute chaos and confusion.</s>VIVIAN SHAFER, PASSENGER ON BOARD COSTA CONCORDIA: There wasn't anybody to help you. I mean, really, the passengers were loading the life boats by themselves.</s>RONDA ROSENTHAL, PASSENGER ON BOARD COSTA CONCORDIA: We had to go about four or five gates down before we found a life boat we could get into. And then the people were very angry that we got on that life boat because it was very crowded.</s>O'BRIEN: Captain Jim Staples is a captain with 17 years of experience. And Robert Almeida is the editor of gCaptain.com. He's also a former U.S. Navy officer. They are joining us this morning. Nice to see you, gentlemen. We're going to bring in our panel as well. Why don't you, Captain Staples, start with exactly what could have happened in your mind? When you se a picture of a ship basically on its side and now looks like it's slipping with a massive gash, and everyone is saying -- the CEO and the cruise line are saying human error. What do you think happened?</s>CAPTAIN JIM STAPLES, WAS A CAPTAIN FOR 17 YEARS: Well, my first concern when I saw the vessel laying on its side is what in the world was she doing so close to the beach? Any shipmaster knows you need to keep the vessel in good water. And to be that close, I said to myself, boy, that's probably a lapse in judgment here. Something definitely went wrong with some decision making.</s>O'BRIEN: So the captain of the ship is a guy named Francisco Schettino, and here is what he told the media in Italy.</s>FRANCESCO SCHETTINO, COSTA CONCORDIA CAPTAIN (through translator): I don't know if it was detected or not, but on the nautical chart, it was marked just as water, at some 100, 150 meters from the rocks. And we were about 300 meters from the shore more or less. We shouldn't have had this contact.</s>O'BRIEN: So it sounds like he is saying that it was some kind of technical error, either the GPS didn't work or the maps were wrong. What do you think of that, Robert?</s>ROBERT ALMEIDA, EDITOR, GCAPTAIN.COM: A hundred meters from shore and 150 meters from shoal water, and the ship is about 300 meters long. So, you know, it's an open bay at the end of the day. You know, if the ship was even slightly off course or had any sort of mismatch on the radar systems or if anything really went wrong, they would have immediately been in extremis in that situation. And, you know, they had plenty of area to monitor and leave that bay. So, there's no reason a prudent mariner would have put himself in that situation. You know, if had anything -- you know, really, if something went wrong, they would have been on the rocks. Or if they had been -- if their navigation had been slightly off, they would have been on the rocks, which was exactly what happened.</s>O'BRIEN: While we'll be asking some questions, I'm going to throw up a map so people can see. If you look, you can see the sort of yellow line, which is the line that this cruise ship was supposed to take. Show my map. There we go. This is Google Earth here. You can see the yellow line that they were supposed to take and then the line they actually did take is the red one. This is look how close that --</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Had they taken this route before? I mean, this is my question. This allegedly is supposed to be a route they had taken before. They should have known that it was rocks and not water there.</s>O'BRIEN: Well, the bigger question to me is the chaos that people describe. Literally it sounds like --</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let's talk about was the crew trained for such an emergency.</s>RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It's funny. I was just thinking, I spent the last month in Iowa and New Hampshire hearing that the solution to every single problem in society is less oversight, less government. And when something like this happens, the first instinct, the first question you ask is, who was regulating? What were the requirements? Why --</s>REIHAN SALAM, CO-AUTHOR, "GRAND NEW PARTY": My reaction is the opposite because you have to accept that certain things are dangerous, and that you actually --</s>SALAM: That's when you decide it's going to be foolproof, that's what's dangerous.</s>O'BRIEN: OK. So, let me get back to my experts. Captain Jim Staples, what the passengers describe sounds like literally out of the movie, like just complete, utter chaos, where they were getting contradictory advice on whether they should stay in the rooms or not. And then I think also the fact that the captain is out doing television when people are still who seem possibly trapped on that ship, what kind of training goes into this? I mean, how off kilter is this?</s>STAPLES: Well, this is definitely very heavily regulated industry. There are standards in place that the crew has to be trained by. It's through the STCW that there's a standard for certification of watch keeping. Every crew member has to go through it, depending on the level of your job description. But everybody has the basics from abandon ship to fire on boat drills. This is a standard type training that the IMO has put in place. This needs to be done. And what we need to look at is the institutions that are training these seamen to see if they do meet the same standards that we have here, say, in the United States or Northern Europe. A lot of these sailors come from third world type countries. You'll have different ethnic groups onboard, nationalities. You'll have language problems. And this seems to be from what I'm hearing quite a bit of the problem, was the utter chaos. It seems to me that the vessel did not have a boat drill before they left. The crew and passengers --</s>O'BRIEN: Don't they have to have a boat drill? Let me ask you a question about that. You're supposed to have a boat drill within 24 hours, apparently, and they didn't have one before they left. But it was within that 24-hour window, I believe.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it was like 5:00 p.m. That's pretty late.</s>STAPLES: That's correct.</s>O'BRIEN: Why would you have a boat leave at all without the drill?</s>STAPLES: Well, that's what the regulations are. And if that's what the regulations are, that's what the standard is for the company. We have a code out there called SOLAS, and that came about because of the sinking of the Titanic in 1914. Because of the Titanic, SOLAS came out. And this has the requirements that are mandatory for boat drills. But these are minimal standards. These are not the maximum standards. So there's nothing to say that the company could not put in their procedures, which is under the ISM, the International Safety Management procedures, which came about in 1998, to cover the human element that's involved when sailing ships. So there's nothing to say that the vessel could have had a boat drill prior to sailing. It's common sense that this would make a prudent decision to do something like this with this amount of people onboard. You have 4,500 people onboard a ship that are very unfamiliar with anything onboard a ship, with where the life boats are, and the signals that are sounded. So, you know, it would be prudent to have a drill prior to that.</s>O'BRIEN: Yes, it sounds like chaos.</s>STAPLES: To my understanding here in the United States, it does happen.</s>O'BRIEN: Yes, it does.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Captain, has the black box been recovered at this point and what do we know about that?</s>O'BRIEN: And what happens with that boat? When do you get the box?</s>STAPLES: There's a VDR on board. It's a voice data recorder onboard. This is up on the bridge. And what it does, it monitors not only the voice but also all the data and input that's being put into this box, so-called box. It will take care of the speed, the gyro headings, what the helmsman was doing when he was steering the vessel, the engine order, where the engine was with RPMs. If there was any kind of electrical malfunction with the engines, that will show up. So they'll get a lot of information off this voice data recorder as to what was happening. But one thing they will know is that they will be able to chart exactly where that vessel was and the time that they had the impact with the ledge.</s>O'BRIEN: All right. Captain Jim Staples joining us, and Robert Almeida as well. Thanks, gentlemen. Appreciate your time. Our other top story this morning is Jon Huntsman. He is calling it quits today and he says he's going to be backing Mitt Romney. Let's get right to CNN political reporter Peter Hamby, because he broke that story for us. He's live in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Impact of this announcement, do you think, Peter?</s>PETER HAMBY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, I don't think there's going to be a huge impact in the race. Huntsman was not really catching on in the polls especially here in South Carolina but also nationally. And you have to wonder, will this help Mitt Romney? Again, probably not. I mean, maybe around the margins if there are some moderate- leaning voters here in the South Carolina primary. And the race becomes a close one on Saturday, you know, maybe that could help him. But Huntsman doesn't have a big donor network, and there's not a lot of friendliness. They have a frosty relationship, Romney and Huntsman. I think the immediate impact on the race you will see in the debates tonight and our CNN debate on Thursday night. You have a shrinking stage. You have five candidates, and especially if Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum trying to break out of that anti-Romney pack, it gives them more space and more time to train their fire on Mitt Romney. We have been going through all of these debates over the last year. You got -- sorry go ahead.</s>O'BRIEN: I was going to ask on our panel, what's the likelihood? I mean, it's been really Mitt Romney leading, even the South Carolina polls show kind of Gingrich closing the gap fairly well. What do you think is the likelihood with this dropout of Jon Huntsman?</s>STEVE KORNACKI, SALON.COM: Well, to me, this is -- this is sort of the perfect microcosm of the Huntsman campaign, because it's going to get a ton of attention today and it will really is going to have no impact on this race. And it's sort of like his entire campaign is --</s>SALAM: He's a very effective surrogate for Mitt Romney if Mitt Romney wins that Republican nomination. Mitt Romney for John McCain was a very effective surrogate, and Huntsman -- he might wind up with a seat in the cabinet, something like that. But I think that he actually does appeal to moderates and even some Democrats in a way that other Republicans don't.</s>BROWNSTEIN: The bigger development I think is Newt Gingrich finally crystallizing the ideological argument that they probably should be having with Romney starting in October but didn't. The case that he's making now that he simply can't trust him, he's moderate, he doesn't -- he isn't really with you on the issues, it may be too little, too late. But South Carolina is a pretty conservative Republican electoral vote and has been for the establishment.</s>O'BRIEN: I think we have a clip of Newt Gingrich sort of saying that. Let's listen.</s>NEWT GINGRICH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: One, you have a governor who put Planned Parenthood, for example, the largest abortion provider in the country, into Romneycare by law, with no right to life group, somebody who raised $730 million in taxes, somebody who is for gun control, and who had a 400 percent increase on taxes on guns. I think it's pretty challenging for a candidate once you get to the real record for that candidate to arouse the enthusiasm and the excitement of the conservative movement.</s>KORNACKI: Where was that in December?</s>BROWNSTEIN: And November.</s>KORNACKI: The fact that it's come to this, first of all, at this point and that it's Newt Gingrich that had has fallen into to make this case tells you how lucky Mitt Romney has gotten this process.</s>SALAM: Gingrich's moderate heresy is going well beyond anything Mitt Romney has done. I think it's -- Steve is absolutely right.</s>BROWNSTEIN: You know, the argument is there to be made, but there's no candidate to make it. I mean, the story of this race has been that the right is ready to find an alternative to Romney and has never been presented an alternative to Romney, and he may be able to achieve what John McCain did in 2008. A plurality win in South Carolina with a very low number among Republicans and conservatives, pulling together enough of those coastal, more pragmatic Republicans and effectively putting a stake in the race right there.</s>O'BRIEN: And we'll talk about what that means for the general election down the road. I want to get to some of the stories that are making news this morning. Alina Cho has got that for us. Hey, Alina.</s>ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Soledad. Good morning. Thousands of Syrians are welcoming Arab League monitors in the town of Zabadani. They are even carrying them through the streets on their shoulders. The city has been under siege for weeks. The U.N. secretary general is now issuing a demand to the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad: stop killing your people. A brand new photo has been leaked on Twitter what appears to be Casey Anthony cuddling with a puppy. Last week, Anthony talked about having adopted a dog in a video diary that also leaked online. Now, a new article in "People" magazine reveals that Casey is living alone in St. Lucie County, Florida. Twenty-four million customers at risk. Online retailer Zappos says it was the victim of a hack attack, and that's how many people were apparently affected. Zappos sent an email to customers yesterday telling them about the security breach. It said critical credit card information was not accessed, but other data like names, addresses, and phone numbers may have been. And a failed Russian space probe has crashed into the Pacific Ocean. It went down about 775 miles off the coast of Chile. The 15-ton probe was supposed to land on one of the moons of mars. Russian officials had hoped it would send back soil and rock samples, but the probe's engines failed to boost it out of the earth's orbit during its launch back in November. Houston, we have a problem.</s>O'BRIEN: Yes, a big old problem, Houston. All right. Alina, thank you. Still ahead this morning: Mitt Romney hands out cash to an out of work voter in South Carolina. We're going to talk to her about just how that happened. Plus, the Golden Globes buzz. Ricky Gervais was meaner than ever, and people loved it. We'll take you live to L.A. in just a moment.</s>GERVAIS: The Golden Globes are just like the Oscars, but without all that esteem.