here on cnn at 3:30 as brooke baldwin counts down some of the top stories of 2014. join me back here on "the lead" today at 4:00 eastern time. and brianna keilar picks up from here. hi, there. i'm brianna keilar in for wolf blitzer. it is 1:00 p.m. here in washington. 6:00 p.m. in london. 9:00 p.m. in moscow and 2:00 a.m. thursday in eastern indonesia. whether you're watching from around the world, thank you for joining us. we begin with the search for more victims of airasia flight 8501. and the search for answers about what caused the plane to crash. right now, weather is slowing the recovery effort. searchers have recovered seven bodies so far, though. the first two arrived in simple wooden caskets with the numbers 001 and 002 on them. the head of the search operation says one of the seven bodies was that of a flight attendant. there is conflicting information

about whether wreckage from the plane has been spotted under water. a search official told cnn he believes sonar equipment detected the wreckage at the bottom of the see. but the ceo of airasia says that hasn't been confirmed. finding the plane's black boxes is a top priority. the flight data and cockpit voice recorders are key to figuring out what went wrong here. they contain information on air speed, altitude direction, as well as the conversations and the sounds from the cockpit. preparations are under way to identify the remains of the crash victims once they've been recovered. tents have been set up on the grounds of a hospital in surabaya indonesia, and a sign of the grim task ahead, refrigerated containers where the remains will be kept while waiting for identification. before they're flown to surabaya the bodies are arriving in borneo. and our paula hancocks has the latest from there. >> reporter: this is the first-stop hospital for the

victims of the airasia crash on the west coast of borneo. overnight on wednesday, two more bodies were brought to this hospital. sirens announced their arrival and red cross and hospital workers were waiting with gurneys for two ambulances. they were then rushed into a special wing that's in this hospital where hospital workers were waiting to treat the bodies and also to carry out the initial identification. what they'll be doing is they'll be trying to look for identifying marks for height gender facial recognition, anything that could tell them who these victims are. the families had been asked to give these kind of details, to give up-to-date photos just for this eventuality. the bodies are then prepared and placed in a casket. then it will be flown to surabaya and for formal identification by the family. the process of retrieving these bodies appears to be very slow in part because of the weather.

there has been heavy rain at the site of the crash and in the nearby locations. there has been high waves and also high winds. that makes it very difficult for the divers with little visibility but also for the ships and the aerial support to be able to do their job. the fear at this point is that that bad weather could continue for the next couple of days making what is already an agonizing wait for those families even worse. paula hancocks cnn, on the west coast of borneo. >> for more on the efforts to find the rest of the plane and the victims, i'm joined now by "the wall street journal's" science correspondent andy paster we have cnn analyst david soucie and aviation analyst peter goelz. there are seven bodies that have been found. this is not very many bodies found over the last couple of days of searches. does it tell you anything or are expecteding more will be found? >> you would hope they would find more bodies during the next day or two.

the only thing this could do if you could identify where these vicks were seated on the plane, where the flight attendant -- what station was she assigned to it might give you some indication of how the plane separated, how the plane broke up. but it's really very preliminary. we're in for a little bit of a long haul. >> you think we'll find that information out or we may not hear soon? >> it's going to take finding the black boxes for us to get that information finally. >> andy "the wall street journal" reporting that indonesia said sonar shows the plane was upside down. why would this be significant? >> it could be significant depending on the angle of the plane going into the water. but i think it would be good to step back a little bit and talk about the whole system of aviation the dispatchers, the regulators and as sad as it is for the families and to look at what this pilot may have done

it's important to look at the broader system. indonesia has a spotty aviation safety record over the years. this is the first fatal crash since 2007. but there have been egregious incidents and accidents since this. and one of the questions that people keep asking me and also one of the things that pilots keep telling me is how is it possible that the route of this flight was going directly into such an intense thunderstorm? in the u.s. it would never be done and dispatchers whouf aould have alerted the crew probably to steer away from that thunderstorm long before they ever got close to it. so i think it's important to look at the specifics of the crash. but i think it also behooves everybody to take a broader look at what the country has done over the years or not done. and also the system that this airline had in place for safety. >> david, can you talk a little bit about what andy just said that in the u.s. this plane would have been steered around this? we've been talking a lot about

this about whether there would have been something different. i haven't heard a lot of people say that. they've said that the pilots really should have been trained to flight in conditions like this. what do you think? >> well i believe that he's right on a lot of levels as far as stepping back and taking a look at the regulatory system. it's important to understand though that the aviation system and the regulatory system worldwide is based on continuous improvement. what that means is that there is propensity or there's a possibility of failures within that system. what's important about our regulatory system is that we learn from those and that we improve. the faa is one of the first regulatory systems. the asian system is one of the last. when i was with the faa in early 2000 the chinese were coming to the united states to learn our regulatory system. we worked with them to come up with what their aviation regulatory system is. asia is also one of these that's trying to get in there. indonesia is a little bit more behind malaysia a few things

going on there that we could talk about for a long time. but a doctor i interviewed up in montreal said that prior to his regime, the president had gone down to indonesia to try to make sure that they were complying with these standards and practices and the annexes within the system. it's important to remember too, it is a continuous improvement program and they're very good at learning more. but there is room for improvement certainly. >> certainly something to -- and you're nodding as well, peter. clearly something to be learned from this, as you said, andy. i wonder peter, there are a lot of i guess, criticisms of the malaysian airline search from the march crash this year. do you think because of that you have officials being more cautious about whether the plane has been found? we're hearing these conflicting reports about it. the ceo saying no we haven't necessarily found it. >> i think there's always

misinformation as both andy and david will confirm. there's always misinformation during the early stages of an accident. and we're still in the early stages. and you need to be very careful. people want to give good news out. they want to see things that tend to be positive. you have to take it with a grain of salt. you have to be careful. you have to be verify -- verify the information. and i think andy's right. the whole issue of dispatch is a critical one. there were planes taking off before and after this plane that were flying a very similar route. and we need to know whether the dispatch system in that part of the world really takes into account the challenges of the weather. >> especially with the growth that we're seeing of air travel in that area. andy, there is new and improved gps technology. this is already out there. it hasn't been implemented.

some say that it's because technically it's not going to save lives. it's just going to help locate aircraft if they crash. and in the scheme of things, that does happen infrequently. but it would help locate lost planes. do you think this is a valid argument for why you shouldn't implement it? >> i don't think so. for example, if there had been survivors in this crash, three days is an unacceptable time for rescue crews to get to them. that's one point. secondly i think the industry treated malaysia 370 as a one-off accident, never happen again, so let's not really spend a lot of time or money. they're doing some things but not very much. and i think that's really a backward way of looking at it because in today's world, in today's digital world, first of all, three days is an eternity and neither passengers nor airline officials nor regulators should be sitting back and saying, it's okay not to find the plane for that long or much longer.

and secondly the point is that there is technology available at some cost and i think that the average flyer would say it's unacceptable to have even one example of malaysia 370, let alone another one. and i would like to make one other very quick point getting back to the history of indonesia. we don't want to beat up on the regulators. i certainly don't. but if you look at their history. there are egregious accidents and incidents not in the long-ago past but this year and last year of lion aircraft the captain violated all the safety rules trying to land at bali and crashed into the water. luckily no one was killed. and even this year a lion airplane landed in bali and bounced four times and seriously injured some passengers. so yes, airasia has a good safety record has never had a fatal accident. but you can't look at it in isolation. the country has had tremendous problems over the years. they say they're improving but

their accident rate is still twice what the worldwide accident rate is for western-built jets. and i think that has to be part of this investigation if we're going to be serious about finding out what happened and why it happened. >> it is very key, as you say. andy pasztor, peter goelz, david soucie thank you. crews continue to work at the crash site. for those working at the scene, they're not really trying to recover victims but gather crews that will explain what caused this tragedy. and we'll also get the latest on weather conditions there at the site that they're dealing with. we also want to hear from you. please tweet us. use #8501qs on twitter. we'll have our experts here to answer your questions. and later, what's being done to make sure the 1 million people expected to gather in times square for new year's eve will be able to celebrate safely?

big waves, strong winds, heavy rain this is what crews are battling as they try to recover more victims from the crash of airasia flight 8501. chad myers joining us now from

the cnn weather center. this is very important, this search. you have both on ships searching. you have planes searching. the aerial search was suspended today because of the bad weather. what are the conditions going to be like in the hours and days ahead? >> rain clouds and wind of 30. i know that sounds bad. but the model run that just expired and we got a new one said rain, clouds, wind to 50. so somehow we're going in the right direction but still a wave at 15 20 feet high doesn't help find pieces of an airplane in the water. it gets too mixed up. we're actually in pretty good shape. the problem is, it's dark. so not many crews out there. you don't have aerial searches in the dark. and even though this is the best weather we've had all day. by morning, we have more weather moving back in. that's the kind of diurnal pattern we have here. in the morning, cloudy and stormy. by late afternoon, it goes away.

by night, it's great. that's the problem with this search and we talked to a couple of researchers earlier that said if this is the case for the next few days we need to start doing the underwater search during the night when it's calm doesn't matter whether it's day or night down there. it's all dark down there anyway. but the water is turbulent, visibility isn't that good. the rainfall rate is going to be about 4 inches the next two days a lot of cloud cover, a lot of rain. when the clouds come down, the planes can't fly high enough. this is the only real positive story to my map today. we are over here in a 25, 30-mile-per-hour range. earlier today, the models were saying 55 miles per hour. and that's just an unusable sea state. you can't get boats, ships, anything in there. even if you found something, you can't retrieve it because the waves are so big. we're getting better. looks like by saturday there may be a real big break in this

action. but this is the itcz where we expect storms this time of year. and they are. air comes together at the surface, it goes up and you get thunderstorms. if we didn't have thunderstorms, probably wouldn't be talking because the thunderstorms likely had something to do with this plane. >> yes definitely. and this weather, this tricky weather, does it do anything to the debris? there's obviously still a lot of objects, we would imagine, out there waiting to be discovered. are they getting scattered farther afield? >> absolutely. and there are some objects that are sticking up 4, 6 inches out of the water. some may be higher. the higher they're sticking up out of the water, the farther they get blown by these winds. if they're slightly below the surface, they don't move very much at all. and if it's a black box and goes into the ground into the silt down there, it's not going to move. you'll see a scaling of how far the top layer moves, the middle

layer debris moves and the bottom layer doesn't move very much at all. this is the box area we've been watching. it wouldn't surprise me just like mh-370 when they moved the search areas around that we begin to look more up in the northwest. right now, looking above the surface, that's where the wind pushed all that debris. >> and you could see some of it even coming onshore in the weeks ahead here. chad myers, thank you. later, we are going to get an update on how victims' families are coping in surabaya indonesia, where 8501 took off on saturday. next we'll be taking you live to times square for a look at how police and security officials are getting ready for one of the biggest public gatherings of the year.

new york city is getting ready to ring in 2015. but it will happen under intense security. heavily armed counterterrorism teams, bomb-sniffing dogs rooftop patrols, helicopters, all of this part of the security plan to keep the expected 1 million big apple revellers safe. but this year brings some

mounted headaches. the potential for demonstrations against the nypd and the recent targeting of police officers. rosa flores is live from times square for us. are you seeing this security rosa? is it more noticeable this year? >> reporter: brianna, the biggest takeaway is that although revellers are going to be here about 1 million of them they will not be able to notice the changes in security. take a look behind me. you see a lot of the revellers already here. you can see some police officers as well of the nypd. but the nypd does tell us that they do plan to beef up security. so why? well it's because of the increased number of threats that have come in through social media. all this after two police officers were ambushed and killed here in new york city. so they're going to be monitoring social media heavily. there will be more eyes and ears here in times square like you

mentioned. they're going to have eyes in the sky as well helicopters hovering overhead to make sure that everything is secure. the other thing that they're also keeping an eye on is protests. why? because protests have been erupting in this city since those two police officers were killed. so there's a specific detail that will be on standby and that can be activated at a moment's notice. but, again, brianna, the biggest takeaway here is people from around the world are going to be here in times square watching on television and they're not going to notice anything different. the scene is going to be the same. the experience of the ringing in of the new year will be the same. brianna? >> rosa flores in times square for us thank you. as you get ready to celebrate the new year, others have already started. this is sydney australia. let's take a picture there. beautiful, spectacular fireworks

display over the harbor. happy new year to my relatives there in sydney. and you might be able to make out, that opera house there, there it is to the left, gorgeous in the lower left corner. 1.5 million people crowding the harbor to watch this gorgeous show. and not to be outdone, auckland new zealand, began its celebration on the tallest manmade structure in new zealand. and we have some pictures from pyongyang, north korea. the usually reclusive country threw this big celebration at midnight. by tradition, north korea welcomes the new year by ringing the pyongyang bell. and in beijing, more fireworks, also a laser light show, of course. pretty amazing, welcoming 2015 in. you may recognize the iconic olympic venue known as the bird's nest. we will end on these happy faces of children there in china, happy 2015 wherever you are.

and certainly do not miss anderson cooper and kathy griffin anchoring cnn's "new year's eve special" live from times square at 9:00 eastern tonight. i'll be watching because you never know what's going to happen. it's always a lot of fun. still ahead, if you have some questions for us about the airasia air crash, please share them on twitter at #8501qs. next we'll get a live update on family members who are waiting to hear more from those in charge of this crash investigation.

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welcome back to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm brooke anderson reporting from washington. it's almost impossible to imagine the agony for relatives of those on board airasia air

flight 8501. the agonizing wait for crews to recover the bodies of their loved ones. cnn's andrew stevens is at the airport in surabaya, indonesia. you've been covering this from the beginning. you've seen the grief that family members are going through. are they getting all of the answers that they need? are they being kept updated in a timely manner? >> reporter: they've being kept updated as much as they can be. but it is an anguished wait for them because at the moment, the weather conditions are so bad that they can't actually continue to bring bodies out. so at the moment only seven bodies have officially been brought from the debris field. and they are still searching for the main the primary fuselage where the plane went down. most of it they think now intact. and that grim scene about 40 meters under the water the

fuselage of the plane with people still strapped that theiro their seats inside. the weather not playing its part. so after the shocking news that the plane had indeed crashed into the sea, now this long and agonizing wait for the bodies to be retrieved. only two have so far come back to here in surabaya. and what will happen now is they're taken to a special hospital where they are id'd. those first two arrived a few hours ago and still no official confirmation on the ids. so officials are being very very cautious about making sure they have the right people. they've asked for dental records, for photos for distinguishing marks and they've asked for something that could match up with dna samples. that's the sort of steps they're taking at the moment. there's nothing really to be done for the families other than just wait. that's what they're doing at the moment. in fact, they've just moved. this was the crisis center behind me up until about three

or four hours ago. the families were relocated to a hotel close to the hospital where the bodies are now being taken. so that is now going to become the focal point. they are there. they just have to wait. >> that's the new information center where they've been moved? and that is so that the families can move into this phase of identifying their loved ones? >> reporter: yeah, that's right. they're going to be closer to where their loved ones are being taken. they will be asked to verify if they can. but, remember these are bodies which have been in the water for several days now. so it will be difficult, many experts say, to actually distinguish who they are. so that's why the dna is needed. they're down there. they're still getting the same sort of support they were here, obviously. there are counselors there. there are lines of contact being set up to the search and rescue operators. where we're hearing is the weather conditions -- the search was officially called off about

two hours before darkness. and the conditions are likely to be very much the same today. we still have several hours before daylight. but there are very high winds there on the scene. there is heavy rain which really cuts the visibility. and perhaps most important, there's big waves there. we were told up to 20-foot waves. so you can imagine the difficulties the search parties are going to have. divers haven't been able to get into the water yet. there are vessels down there with sonar equipment. but at the moment they still haven't located that fuselage. they think they may have. but they can't confirm it. so they're the sort of frustrations creeping in for the search parties at the moment and the weather is likely to continue as it is for perhaps the next 48 hours. >> way too long for these families hoping for answers. andrew stevens thank you so much from surabaya for us. as these families wait for word on their loved ones, investigators are hard at work trying to figure out what caused flight 8501 to crash. cnn's tom foreman is looking at

all the factors at play in this investigation. one of the big focuses here is going to be the flight path, tom. >> absolutely. they want to find out if anything unusual happened in that little bit less than an hour that the plane was flying. and then critically what led to this plane disappearing from radar there and then showing up here in the red area where they found the debris? 60 to 120 miles is now the estimate of where this debris is from there. that's a big range even though a lot of wild currents are going on out here, what made that happen? that's going to involve three levels of searching in the ocean. the first one, what we're hearing the most about right now is the surface of the water. all the debris they find on the surface of the water is important to the investigation, probably not the most important pieces but in critical positions right now because they show where other things might be. how is that? if you move down through the water column and you look at all the currents that are at work

out there, the things chad mentioned a while ago, you can reverse engineer from where you find things on the surface to get a reasonable estimate as to where that big portion of the fuselage is below the water, if in fact the plane came down intact. that could take a pretty cool while to do. but that third layer of searching, not the surface, not the middle but the third layer is probably where they'll find the most critical evidence out there because if you think about it, that's really where you're going to find the heavy parts of the plane. and those are going to be the parts that really matter in all of this. you're going to be talking big parts of the wing, big parts of the tail big, heavy things like the engine, each about 9,000 pounds. landing gear the cockpit and the all-important data and voice recorders. it's to get to that third level of searching that they have to spend so much time right now on the first two layers, the top and middle layers. because those are pointers that

could lead them to the big part of the fuselage that everyone wants to find. >> thinking back to for instance twa flight 800 back in 1996 crashed off of long island it was pretty extraordinary how much of the wreckage investigators were able to recover. is that the hope with this that they'll be able to recover almost enough to essentially reconstruct this plane? >> that's exactly what they want to do. take a look at what they found with twoa 800. they found about 95% of that plane. this was also in about 100 feet in the water. say you have breaks in the storms and eventually they stop altogether. this search went on for months. ten months they found the final victim in the water. but they did find all of them and 95% of the plane. this matters because this is what will tell you whether there was a fire on the plane, whether there was scorching somewhere or an explosion of some sort. whether a wing or a tail tore off early, whether there was an

electrical problem. this is how you do it. they get all the pieces, they put them all together. but i will caution, this can be a long process. even if they find all of this in a reasonable amount of time and have great success, remember the twa report the final report on what happened on twa 800 took four years to come out. so people may have initial answers early on. but final answers really could take quite a while. >> yeah. and very important to get to the very end of that. such a painstaking process. tom, thanks so much. coming up we're going to get the latest on the controversy over house majority whip steve scalise's appearance before a white supremacist group back in 2002. but first, our panel of experts is going to answer your questions about the crash of airasia flight 8501.

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the investigation into the crash of airasia flight 8501 will be a long, difficult process. the first priority is to recover the bodies of the victims. then crews will focus on finding the flight voice recorder. many of you are tweeting questions about the investigation using #8501qs. we'll answer those questions now with our panel. we have david soucie and we have peter goelz with us. this one is for you, peter.

why is it easier to find an iphone than to find a plane? do they not have more than one tracking device? i think that's something a lot of -- you lose your iphone and you find your device. >> that is a question that andy passtor earlier in the show was talking about. the aviation industry is dragging its feet on implementing realtime tracking of its aircraft. it's a complicated issue but not so complicated that it can't be addressed. i think we should focus on open ocean, transoceanic flights and put in the devices and mandate that there's communication every minute every 30 seconds. but that's the first step. >> five to ten years, is that what we're hearing for implementation on something like that? >> it's far too long. we should do it in a much more accelerated basis. >> yeah. david, for you, when a plane

goes into a stall like experts are theorizing in this case, does it lose all power, is that why we didn't hear any communication? >> no. a stall has nothing to do with the electrical supply or anything of that manner. the stall is just simply a stall of the air that goes over the top of the wing which creates lift. so all the other systems should be functioning normally. >> and the engines are working, right? >> that's correct. >> so it's about really getting the air speed up getting the plane pointed in a direction to get the air speed up so that you can get that lift back? >> right. because you're trying to get the air flow back over the wing the top of the wing to be smooth rather than having a burble. that defeats the lift. the challenge here is if you're on power-on a deep stall and you're in that situation and the

air burble is over you fall flat than allowing the air to get over the top. >> jessica perry tweeting if a large plane were to crash on land or in shallow water, could the impact possibly register on a seismograph if one were near enough? >> it could. in fact i think the shanksville tragedy in 9/11 that that registered on certain seismographs. it could also -- if the explosion in midair twa was picked up by a satellite. so there were other instrumentation across the globe that if they're positioned right can pick up these tragedies. >> that will register the force? >> yes. >> and certainly with the shanksville one, horrible tragedy, but we're talking about a plane going 600 miles per hour into the ground. >> that's right. in this case unlikely it would have registered. >> and then i have a question for you which is we talked

yesterday about how even in the case of finding some of the bodies they tell us things whether clothes are on. the first bodies that were found it appeared did not have clothes, only undergarments. now one of the other bodies recovered is that of a flight attendant in uniform. so what does that tell us? >> well it all depends on how the plane broke up as it hit the water. the pieces are going to come apart. and it's not uncommon -- and i think david would agree -- that in the final moments of a crash that pieces of the aircraft can come undone. and it might be that the tail broke off right at the very end and some people in the back of the plane were ejected or it might simply have been the force of the impact on the water. we just don't know yet. it will be important to find out where that flight attendant was serving. what was her position where was she sitting on the plane? >> david, cindy lou has tweeted a question she wants to know

how rare is it to even find bodies in a crash like this? >> it's not rare at all. it's part of the investigation. as peter said there's a lot of information you can get from those bodies. but, yeah, they're usually found. this scenario is not odd to me either in that there's only been ten bodies found. but it's been three or four days and it's been drifting. but the other thing, too, many times, like in air france 447, many of the passengers are still strapped to their seats and went down with the aircraft. >> but dozens were found floating. right now, we're at seven, i believe, for this. so the search will continue and there are issues with weather right now. peter goelz, david soucie, thank you so much for your expertise. what challenges do recovery crews face as they're searching for the wreckage of airasia's airbus 320? we're exploring the wreckage of a world war ii bomber in lake michigan. (sternly): seriously? where do you think you're going? mr. mucus: to work, with you.

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back to our top story now, the recovery of flight 8501. a small amount of debris has been found. so far though none of the expected larger pieces of debris have been located. crews now dealing with a depth of only around 100 feet. it's similar to what's found in lake michigan. our george howell takes a look at a similar salvage operation there. >> reporter: from up here the waters look vast and the horizon

seems endless. but for this team of salvagers and divers. >> airplanes look like airplanes. we're looking for an image of an airplane. >> reporter: in no way is this the search for a proverbial needle in a haystack. the crew here knows roughly where to look. and after years of searching charts and records, they find themselves on the verge of a big find. >> the worst the crash is they put it back together. >> reporter: the depth of lake michigan not more than several hundred feet in this area. the team uses sonar to find the exact location. and within a matter of minutes -- >> right there. boom right there. see it? oh, yeah. look at that. >> reporter: they find what they're looking for. >> drop the buoy. >> reporter: drivers drop in and take us down below. they capture these stunning images of a world war ii bomber

that crashed into lake michigan nearly half a century ago. >> the engine sank first, right away, the other part floated a little bit. the pieces are there but about 100 feet apart. >> reporter: back then the great lakes served as a training ground for aircraft carriers and pilots learning to land on the short runways. this dive bomber crashed though the pilot survived. this salvage expert hopes to raise money to raise the plane and put it on display in chicago. >> you show one of these things a 6-year-old the first time they see them their eyes light up. >> reporter: finding the submerged plane, but he still hopes to recover the wreckage before locating and raising more planes from the world war ii era, still sitting at the bottom of the great lakes. the one thing this team knows for certain, persistence and patient do eventually pay off. george howell, cnn, chicago.

a move today by palestinian president muhammad abbas could deal another blow to middle east peace efforts. he signed a bid to join the international criminal court. it was after a resolution was rejected calling for palestinian statehood. this could set the stage for the an american air strike in somalia killed one of the region's top terror leaders. the target was the head of intelligence and security for al shabab a terror group with links to al qaeda. his vehicle was hit by missiles fired from an unmanned drone. the strike comes a few days after another al shabab leader was captured by somali troops. it's been a strong year on wall street to say the least. dow jones industrial average up about 9% for the year. let's look at how things are

looking today. the last trading day of 2014. checking the big board, up 12 points. and next i struggle with my eyes lately. i think too much staring at my iphone. down 12 points. let's talk about this story. one of the house gop leaders is trying to overcome a lot of questions today. what impact will representative's appearance before a white supremacist group have on republicans as they take over the majority role in both houses of congress. we'll talk about that.

>> scalise says he didn't know who the group was at the time. john boehner backed scalise making this statement. he said he made an error in judgment and it was wrong and inappropriate. here to talk about this senior politics editor for "the daily beast" and cnn digital correspondent chris moody. with the scalise controversy is one thing but you have michael grimm, the congressman from

staten island stepping down because he's admitted to a felony here. this isn't really a great start, right? >> this is not what they wanted to be talking about going into the new congress. they wanted to talk about tax reform and keystone and things they're going to do to make regular americans' lives better. they are stuck with these scandals. it harkens back to the last republican congress before they lost the majority where there were these scandals and leadership had trouble dealing with them. now michael grimm stepped down. steve scalise is holding steady. nobody is calling for him to step down. it doesn't look good for him. he hasn't explained this away. >> if he haven't explained this away what more does he have to explain and is he safe and i know these are a lot of questions, if something else comes out, is he toast? >> from what i understand from team boehner, or boehner world, they are waiting to see if there's another shoe to drop. if not, he's probably safe. if there are other speeches that

he's given or there's just another couple of weeks of media coverage of this with new information, that's a real trouble for scalise. without it time will pass and he'll survive given enough time. >> it doesn't seem like it's the trent level yet. when trent lott had to step down. it doesn't seem to raise to that level quite yet. >> something steve scalise said on monday. he was talking about, hey, i would talk to anyone trying to make the point that this wasn't an endorsement of this point of view. he said "i spoke to the league of women voters a liberal group. i still went and spoke to them. i spoke to any group that called and there were a lot of groups calling." so league of women voters yes, not in line with steve scalise's politics but i think why is he saying this? why is he even bringing up i went and spoke to the league of

women voters. isn't he kind of alienating other people too? >> it's a terrible comparison to make. we've seen an evolution of statements. from day one it was his staff saying it was a staffing error and then it evolved and i knew about it and shouldn't have done it. which one is it? there will be more questions when he knew who the group was and if he himself chose to speak with them or sought them out. there's also the story about his connection to david duke's aide as well. this is bigger than just one talk. >> if he knew who the aide was and who the aide worked for. >> and his relationship to that aide. >> we were really good friends. somewhere steve scalise is saying stop talking about me. >> this speaks to a bigger issue than steve scalise for republicans. this speaks to the fact that republicans now control congress. they are looking toward 2016. they are trying to appeal to women. to minority voters. what does this do?

how does this affect that? >> i think michael steele former rnc chairman said it best. it's two steps forward, three steps back. and this takes them three steps back if not more steps back. they may be moon walking at this point. it undermines this narrative they have been trying to push that we're getting better and more diverse. look at our upcoming stars. they are from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds. it really undermines the fact that this guy is in leadership. he's not just some random backbencher. that's problematic for them. >> what about the -- explain this to maybe a lot of people who don't know who steve scalise is why is he someone speaker boehner would want to keep in his position and maybe also can we just be honest maybe have done a favor for, right? >> scalise is a guy that a lot of people can get behind.

as whip it's his job to have a strong relationship with members of the republican conference and so he's a very important crucial part of that leadership team. if the people in that congress lose faith in that person it is real trouble for leadership. >> and republicans as well are trying to start off this new congress unified. that's also playing into this right? >> absolutely. they don't want to be talking about this. they are trying to make this more like a bump in the road rather than, you know a pothole that makes one of the tires go flat. they are trying to put this behind them and move forward and as chris said if there are other instances, it's going to be an even bigger problem. >> big problem for someone that's the number three republican in the house. jackie chris, thank you so much. and that is it for me. i'll be back at 5:00 eastern on "the situation room." we'll be talking much more about our breaking news coverage of airasia flight 8501. the search currently suspended in terms of aerial searches but

we'll be looking to see if weather conditions calm down. for our international viewers, "amanpour" is next. for our viewers in north america, "newsroom" starts right now. hello. happy new year's eve. this is a cnn special live coverage of the deadly airasia plane disaster. as each piece of wreckage and each body is pulled from the sea, investigators are learning more about what may have happened in the minutes just before flight 8501 hit the water. i want to start with this video. simple wooden boxes. you can see they have bleak numbers there. 001. 002. these are the victims. seven of them. local reports saying a teenage boy and a woman believed to be a flight attendant are among the first of the 162 people recovered from the java sea. a task that is