Go north, then turn to the west, and as they get by reunion, go south. Its a big circle where everything collects because its not being pushed around. Somehow this piece might have gotten spit out and washed up on to reunion, but it doesnt tell us where the wreckage is on the bottom of the ocean or where the black box is and it really doesnt help us understand better what happened to mh37 mh. Rose and the implications of the death of taliban leader mullah omar. We are negotiating with this very opaque movement and then the leader dies. What happens next . I think its going to be very complicated. On the plus side, if the Movement Starts splitting, you are able to negotiate with a more moderate elements. On the negative side, there is no one figure who can bring them altogether and say, hey, were going to do a deal. That person was really mullah omar, unlikely that his success will have the ability to have a peace negotiation. Rose we plead with the editor of the new yorker magazine looking at people like bill cosby. It gives us a way of looking at the world. The content is not so much about new york, but everything is informed by a certain way that new yorkers think. You know what im talking about. And, you know, it has to do with a kind of sort of skeptical intelligence. I think a compassionate intelligence. We tried very hard to, you know, make it a magazine that is ultimately sympathetic. Rose possible evidence about the missing Malaysian Airline, mullah omar and new York Magazine when we continue. Funding for charlie rose is provided by american express. Additional funding provided by. And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose we begin this evening with the discovery of debris which could be from the missing malaysian flight mh370. The boeing 777 vanished en route from kuala lumpur to beijing in march of 2014. 239 passengers and crew went missing. The object was found on the Indian Ocean Island of reunion. It appears to be a torn wing flap and will be shipped to france for further examination. Joining me now from washington is retired colonel stephen ganyard, former marine corps pilot and Deputy Assistant secretary of state, hes also an abc news contributor and president of the Strategic Services firm. I am pleased to have him back on the program. Steve, thank you so much. Thank you, charlie. Great to be back with you. Rose tell me what we have discovered here and what it might tell us and where it might lead us. Well, i think there is good news and bad news. The good news is that, after 16 months, an airplane that just disappeared where the whole world could not fathom how a huge aircraft with all these people on board could disappear, we finally have what i think is a part from that airplane that will tell us, yes, that airplane crashed and, yes, those people are gone. On the other hand, we look at it and we say its probably 4 to 5,000 miles away from where it originally hit, had 16 months to drift around be in what we call the independence jan ocean gire, the currents that move in the indian ocean move counterclockwise so from the impact point where we think the airplane hit off the western khost of australia, those currents go north, turn west, and then as they get by reunion, go south, so its a big circle. Its what they call a garbage gire where everything collects because its not being pushed out. Somehow this piece got spit out and washed on reunion but it doesnt tes where the wreckage is on the bottom of the ocean, it doesnt tell us where the black box is and doesnt help us understand better what happened to flight mh370. Rose so in the end, we may have this and not be able to find where the wreckage is. Right. I think what were seeing here is not going to be helpful in finding the airplane. The focus of the investigation needs to stay back on the track that the atsb, the australians have been looking at for months now and working through the winter months. This will bring, i think, some closure to the families, but beyond that, its not going to tell us much thats useful to find out what happened. Rose can they tell if this debris came from the missing 777 . I think were about 99 there now. We know there is a part number, not a serial number, so it doesnt identify exactly the part came from this airplane. It does say it came from a 777. We know its white, the malaysian plane was white, only one missing in tinneddian ocean, so we can say from power of deduction this is probably the piece. One of the things, when i was looking at it today, if when you look at it, it appears the barnicles are all over this piece of flapperon as we call it. That suggests it was emerged some depth below the surface. You say, why didnt we see it after the aircraft went missing because sometimes when the aircraft hit the water, they either break into little pieces or some float on the surface, but some get waterlogged and some will float a couple of inches to six feet below. Thats what carbon fiber does as we know with airplanes that have crashed that use that did modern sort of material. So it would suggest this was floating somewhere just below the surface and got spit out of that indian ocean gire and washed up on the beach. Rose this investigation has been ongoing. I know you had conversations with the people involved in that process. Where is the Investigation Pre the discovery of this debris . Ive talked with the investigators three times in the past six months. Its a very impressive crew. They have ive thong you could ask for, help from other countries, boeing and the french are helping. So they have everything you need to have a professional crew. I played stump the stars with them over and over again. I said, off the record, let me try to stump you and i was unable to do it. Im very confident in the science theyre looking at. The last time we talked, there was an arc, you remember the pings from the satellite, and there was a last ping that they think was the ping when the aircraft lost electrical power. So its like, you know, if you have a transistor radio and it runs out of batteries and makes a noise, thats the last ping they think they heard which gives them a good idea of where the airplane, is somewhere along the arc in a 60,000 square kilometer arc. Now, they knew exactly how much gas the airplane had at the top of its climb and the general track, so they have a pretty good idea of where it would have come down. Heres the really interesting thing. Over the people ive met with the australians and ill tell you what my personal feeling is when i first met with them, they were, like, there is no way this will escape us, we are going to find this airplane. The last time i met with them, theyre a little nervous because they looked at 50,000 out of 60 kilometers and expanded to 120,000 on a geometric proportional expansion because they still havent found it. Theyve extended the time theyre going to be looking for the airplane out to october. Remember its winter in the southern indian ocean so the weather is very difficult, the seas are difficult, but theyre a little nervous they havent found it. I asked them, i said, between you and me, totally off the record, were having a beer in the bar, what do you think . They said, 100 , were going to find this. As they go along, theyve got two scenarios. Theres two end of flight scenarios. The first they modeled was the scenario where youre at altitude, everybody is unconscious on the airplane. The airplane flies along, runs out of gas. When it runs out of gas, it runs out one engine at a time so youre going to get asymmetric thrust. Supposedly you would think the auto pilot is on but its going to try to correct but you will get the motion where the airplane is rolling around till the other engine flames out, then it will trim up and do various stalls, like a falling leaf into the water. In that scenario, i think they have a pretty good idea of where the area that that airplane might be. That is if everybody was asleep. The thing that is disturbing today that what we see on this flap run is its fully in tact. If the airplane were going to fly into the water at a very steep angle at a high rate of speed, that flap rung would you not be in tact. The only way you would see it in tact is if the airplane hit the water at a slow speed. The idea if it hit at a slow speed and you see the tip looks like it might have been shaved off by hitting the water, if somebody tried to land that airplane after running out of gas, thats a really, really chilling idea to think that there was somebody alive in that cockpit, flying that airplane after it had run out of gas and was gliding into the ocean. Rose make sure where your head is, its a chilling idea but a . I think everybody believes this was a murder suicide. Nobody believes this was mechanical. A lot of people believe, well, it just flew out to sea. He pointed it straight at the south poll, flew it out to sea, dumped the cabin pressure, everybody dies in the back of apocksy and cold and they fly off into oblivion. If they didnt and tried to land the airplane, there may have been people alive when they hit the water. Rose do the people you talked to within the met for of talking to you and rihaving a beer in a bar, what else it they believe . Nobody knows enough to believe anything. They can think a couple of scenarios, and the one that gives them the nightmares is the second scenario where somebody is conscious because, as i said, you can backtrack from where you know the airplane was when it was at the top of its cruise and leveled off and how much gas it had, so you have an idea of where it might have run out of gas, and you can sort of draw a circle around that. If somebody, when it ran out of gas, was at the controls, they could have flown that airplane in any direction. Were trying to look for consistency so we can narrow the area we want to look for the airplane. But if they were flying it and heading this direction towards the south pole and decided to go 90 degrees to the right, you just opened up a really dig search area because this airplane at that altitude is actually a pretty good glider. It can glide out to about 125 miles after it had run out of gas. So now, after youve gone to all this trouble to try to narrow and focus your search area in this wild, open ocean, if somebody did something right at the end that was unpredictable, you made it very difficult, and if it was murdersuicide, you would think somebody would think, well, im going to make it extra hard at the end and do something unpredictable. Rose when we talk about murdersuicide, we think of one of the pilots murdering the other and then committing suicide . Yes. Rose were not talking somebody coming in and murdering both of them and then its possible. There are convoluted ideas about how that would happen but i dont think so. It points there are too many things that you remember when the airplane was flying north when they were between the vietnamese and Malaysian Air defense zones so theyre in that gap, you had to be a pilot to know you were sort of in that radar gap and to type way points and change way points and to have the airplane fly, to know where the transponder switch and the acar switch was, this suggests somebody highly trained on how to fly that airplane. Rose is this approaching Amelia Earhart mystery . I think its worse. She was doing something everybody knew was dangerous, she was a pioneer. Its a very sad story, a mystery. Here, this is a murder. There were 200someodd People Killed by somebody who had some sick wish to take them to his own end and, so, its chilling in that there was an act of evil, there were multiple acts of evil perpetrated against the flying public, and everybody flies, and everybody understands how safe flying is, and then you get Something Like this, and, boy, it chills you. Rose and your best guess is to whether they will find something or not . Well, im an optimistic guy, charlie, so im going to say 70 . I think we have between now and october. The weather will start Getting Better in the southern indian ocean, but i think that they have the technique, they have the most sophisticated kinds of technologies available, and theyre doing exactly what everybody in the world thinks they will be doing. Theyve had this peer review, theyve got everybody, theyve got every scientist in the world, and theyve looked at it and refined it. So if we dont find it, i will be shocked, but its got to happen between now and october. Rose they shipped the debris back to paris because this was a French Island . Correct. Correct. The french are actually quite good in accident investigations, so i would be a little bit worried if they shipped it to malaysia or some country that was not as capable or has demonstrated a good investigation capability. Rose neither the experience nor the equipment. Correct. Rose thank you so much, a pleasure to have you back on this broadcast. My thanks to abc news as well. Well be right back. Stay with us. Rose we continue with a look at confirmed death of taliban leader mullah omar. He was forced from power by u. S. Led coalition in 2001 and long been considered the ghost leader of the group. Taliban released a Statement Today from his alleged family saying he died of illness. It apologized for any mistake mullah omar made during his rule of afghanistan. The Afghan Government announced yesterday omar died two years ago in pakistan. Reports of his death cast uncertainty over faith of current peace talks taking place between the taliban and afghanistan. Joining us from washington, matthew rosenberg, National Security reporter for the New York Times. Also peter bergen, cnns National Security analyst. I am pleased to have them on this program. Peter, let me begin with this question, why would they keep it quiet that he died . And how long do you think, from your sources, he has been dead . Well, i mean, answering the second question first, i mean, i think thats still not very still pretty unclear. We do have the Afghan Government saying he died in april 2013. Like a lot of things in pakistan and afghanistan, you know, that may not be completely correct. Why did they keep it secret . Theres no one else that can really replace it. If you think about the claim, charlie, he said he was commander of the faithful. This is not just saying i am head of the taliban. This is the claim i am leader of all muslims everywhere. Its a rarely invoked religious title really the Prophet Muhammad and his immediate accessers were commander of the faithful. So there is nobody in the second tier of the taliban that could really claim that title. Well see some succession struggle. Some said his son might take over. A couple of other leading contenders, but none have the stature of mullah omar. Rose lets assume it was two years or less, does this mean people have been making decisions in his name with the impermature of his reputation as and spirituality . Yeah, i think thats true. Weve already seen, you know the taliban is hardly a unified movement. There are essentially three big pardz of it, the afghan, Pakistani Taliban an and other network. These groups may go their separate ways. Others play submit off and others may be more inclined to align with i. S. I. S. Weve seen that with small taliban groups in afghanistan and pakistan. This is an opportunity for i. S. I. S. Rose matthew . I think one person seems to have been giving orders in the taliban in the last few years, the mullah. There was a lot of disaffection for him so it sets out for a power struggle because he is one of the guys who wants to take over and its so much hard tore make peace if you have all these internal factions vying for power. Rose hes obviously number two and has been reaching for and he is said to be one of the likely contenders. Is the other his son. His son is one and there are a few others. Another one from Guantanamo Bay may be backing the son. The other problem with the taliban, its hard to tell exactly whats going on inside. At its core, this is a group of clerics, many whove known each other for years, not a whole lot of outsiders in the inner circle of powers there. Its incredibly difficult for western and even the Afghan Intelligence agencies to get inside the leadership and figure out whats going on. Rose peter, ive asked a lot of people after Osama Bin Laden was discovered and killed, why not mullah omar. I mean, you must know where he is or some approximation. They would always say, we think here but have not had clarification. I would say, if you knew, would you get him . They would say, well, of course. It says quite a bit by our intelligence agencies funded to the tune of 80 billion a year which is like a trillion dollars as of 9 11plus, that it comes that omar died two years ago, he had 20 million on his head and was one of the most wanted men in the american National Security arena. But as matthew said, this is a very opaque movement. Out of curiosity, i looked at when was the last time we could have had definitive proof of life of omar. Looks like the last audiotape came in 2005. Since then, written communiques once a year in the end of ramadan. So there was very little evidence he was alive even when he was alive, and the most basic facts havent been clarified. We have a recent biography saying he was born in 1960 but that wasnt clear at aller, and it gets to this question are we negotiating with this very opaque movement, and then the leader dies, when happens next. And, you know, i think its going to be very complicated. On the plus side, if the Movement Starts splitting, you are able to negotiate with a more moderate elements. On the negative side, theres no one figure who can bring them all together and say, hey, were going to do a deal. That person was really mullah omar, but unlikely the will have the same success for a pales negotiation. Rose did we know he wanted to negotiate and wanted a deal or do we assume so because if he didnt they wouldnt have done it . I would be curious to see what matthew says but i cant believe they didnt start negotiating for some kind of deal out omars input. If you think about i