Stonerproduced satire. But the white house is certain that it is kim jongun. Hours ago, president obama swinging back going after north koreas digital terrorists. Well tell you how. And the pop culture lead welcome to the future. Reality has finally caught up with marty mcfly. 2015 is the year he shot to in back to the future and the sequel. If this is the future where is my hoverboard . Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the lead. Im jake tapper. We begin with our world lead. Recovery teams scouring the most probable area where airasia flight 8501 went down and some new discoveries ending what little hope some families had left replaced now by pain and by grief. Today the team of rescue workers, divers, pilots, sailors from across the globe found some 20 additional bodies passengers and crew from the fated jet that crashed into the java sea, all but certainly early last sunday morning. Today the uss sampson aided in the search. Bad weather continues to slow the mission forcing divers to end their underwater sweeps early. Still the days somber returns runs the total number of victims reclaimed from the city to 30. Indonesian authorities said theyve only been able to identify four of the passengers. The fact there are 132 more people left to find and 158 to identify, its a little unnerving. Aviation and Safety Experts say the majority of the missing are likely all together still strapped into the the planes main cabin. Wednesday, an indonesian search official told cnn he thought sonar equipment detected something that looked like the main fuselage at the bottom of the sea. But now search and rescue officials are backing off that statement. Cnns Suzanne Malveaux has the latest on this. They dont know where this one big chunk of the plane is but they found something from the main cabin . They did, what appears to be a panel within the plane. It is now 4 00 in the morning there as daybreak comes, theyll start searching again for bodies and debris. Its a race against time now because searchers are desperately in need of a break in this bad weather. Day six of the search for airasia 8501 and only 30 bodies have been recovered of the 162 people on board. And from the plane, just a few pieces of debris. Today indonesian officials recovered this one resembling a window panel. The biggest obstacle searchers say, is the treacherous weather. Translator the main obstacle was the height of the waves and the strong current. It was enough to stop us from continuing the search. Reporter high winds threaten helicopters above and 13foot waves batter ships and divers below, making this search painstakingly difficult. The frequency of the waves is the big thing. Theyre just so tight together its too hard for boats to launch and recover equipment. The torrential rains happening every day, the divers are facing potentially zero visibility with all the dirty water. Reporter the International Search effort is in the shallow waters of the java sea, an area 2,000 square miles or roughly the size of delaware. Sunday will be the best day of the search. And that may be the day that they actually can find something because waves will be about two to three feet. Reporter but another two days adds to the agony for families who have been waiting for answers since sunday. Only four bodies have been identified. For those families they can at least begin to say goodbye. Like the parents of the 22yearold Flight Attendant who posted on instagram two weeks ago a love message to her boyfriend. Translator she knew the risk but she loved this. It was her dream. She loved traveling. Translator goodbye goodbye nisa. Heartbreaking goodbyes. You heard chad say the weather will be Getting Better on sunday. The analysts ive talked to said you only need two weeks of clear weather. Thats the window they need. Suzanne malveaux, thank you so much. Families of the missing remain huddled in surabaya. Its been a particularly difficult test of faith for a small group of worshippers from a church group that has only 45,000 congregants around indonesia. Cnns david molko is live in surabaya indonesia, outside the makeshift Crisis Center there. David, patience with the search with the airline wearing thin for some of these families. What are they saying . Reporter hi, jake from here in surabaya. Were about an hour from first light, from sunrise, the morning call to prayer just sounding across the entire city behind me a few minutes ago and certainly hopes and prayers from the 162 families of the passengers and crew on board flight 8501. There is a sense of frustration. The frustration is not necessarily with the airasia officials or with the search teams but how long its taking for the remains to come in. 30 bodies recovered as suzanne mentioned. Only four identified at this point. The mayor of surabaya, 78 people were from her city here the city of 3 Million People here in eastern java. The mayor says shes frustrated too, but she trusts the search teams to do the best they can and get everybody back as soon as possible. David, we learned hours ago that russia has pledged to send a team to help in the search. What will they be doing to help the effort . Reporter this just coming in to us from russian state media that russia is sending two planes. Theyre actually on the ground in jakarta, along with a couple dozen divers. Thats going to obviously add manpower to get more teams into the water in part to recover anything spotted from the air or ships and in part to take a closer look at the ocean floor. Depths pretty shallow out there. Were told in the 100 to 150foot range. But its murky and when you have choppy seas on top, that doesnt make it easy at all. Generally, weather conditions expected to get better after a couple of days. But i have to tell you, its rainy season here in indonesia, this is the tropics, its common to get cloud cover, afternoon thunderstorms. Well wait and see what happens in the days ahead. At this point, 158 families still waiting for answers. David molko, thank you so much. I want to go to cnns tom foreman to help explain where exactly the search area is shifting to and why the weather continues to really hold up the search effort. Tom . If you look at this this isnt a bad location here. This is only about 100 miles from the nearest major city out here to this location. And this is where, of course they have found this debris that has been paying a lot of attention its not bad. Wave talked about this area being about the side of rhode island. Lets say its an area about 45 miles on each side. Thats how you get your 2,000 square miles. So its not an unsearchable area. But along this weather persist, it is a serious problem. This is the depth out there. Its about 100 feet in the area theyre most looking at right now. Not bad. But as long as you have heavy chop up here you know from just being to the beach what it does it creates a cloud of sand and dust and particles down here. Thats hard for a diver down here, cant see anything. Hard for planes to spot from above and hard for vehicles like this because they have to be hooked to these things, guiding these things. Very hard to do if the ocean is going up and down and up and down. There may be help when they bring in devices like the poseidon. These are aircraft designed to do a lot more than just look. They can look in an electronic way below the water. Buff but even then can only cover so much ground at a time. They have to have not just a clear day but several clear days to let all of that get operating well. Then they have to have a little bit of luck. They still have some time if you look at the black box. Still plenty of time left until its going to be gone about 24 days left on the batteries. But you know they have to be watching that as they fight the elements and the water and all that uncertainty out there. Tom foreman thank you so much. In addition to the urgent task of recovering the passengers who are still missing, investigators are of course racing to find the flights black boxes, as tom just referenced. Officials need these recorders to determine what exactly happened to airasia 8501 and to try to prevent it from happening again. To get their insights on the next steps, lets bring in david soucie and les oben. Seems the prevalent theory is the plane stalled in midair. We dont have a definitive answer as to what happened but thats what a lot of experts think is most likely. What does that mean stalling, and how common is it . Well its very uncommon, especially in a jet airliner. But stalling basically means that the wing no longer is developing the lift that it should to keep the airplane airborne. This is something we do train for in the simulation. This is a serious situation. In reference to the climb that was purportedly indicated by air traffic control, a 20,000hour captain is going to know that this is hes reaching a point of the Service Ceiling of the airplane where its max certified that this potential is there if he subjects the airplane to unusual type situations. So im leaning toward the fact that something mechanical erroneous indications in the cockpit displays got to the point if this stall occurred. Because the captain had a lot of experience. Can we rule out definitely any theories about how this plane went down . What do you think is most likely to have caused the crash . I think with reference to your first question the only thing that we could potentially rule out is that it was a successful ditching or that it came close to being a successful ditching because hef clear evidence the aircraft broke up. The second thing is did it break up in the air or on the ground . Well know that as we find more evidence and as the evidence is released to us to analyze. But as far as ruling anything out, thats the only thing i can see ruling out. What i think caused this is just too early to tell at this point. Les, this particular plane is an airbus a320. Tell me about the mechanics of a plane like this. Anything about an a320 that makes it more susceptible, more risky to fly . No, not at all. This is a very reliable airplane. And it does have a system like most any type of commercial airliner. It has a system that prevents a stall from occurring even if a pilot is to let that happen. The airbus has a pretty serious system where it will take over and actually bring the nose down so that the stall situation is reduced to prevent it from even happening. So if they got erroneous indications that this was occurring from their instruments, then that system might have taken over at the wrong time. Thats a possibility. But, listen like dave soucie says anything is certainly possibility. David, weve had a lot of bodies discovered in the last day or so. Now a window pane. Sonar is maybe picking up where the tail is. Thats unconfirmed as of yet. Do you think investigators are close to finding out where the main cabin is where the main body of the plane is . It would appear that way, especially if the sonar is accurate. But, again, they say the sonar is picking this and that up. And then the ceo comes back and says no, we have no evidence of that. So im hesitant to jump with both feet on anything at this point. Like mh370 the data is sparse. And when it comes out, its contradicted. So im waiting to hear that. But i do think at this point theyre much much closer than we ever dreamed of being with mh370. And from this phase forward, they have to identify and find that main wreckage especially the tail and start retrieving these boxes. They have a lot of work to do particularly in the conditions that tom had outlined earlier. And hes right, one day of clear is not going to help them a whole lot. There needs to be three or four days of clear and they may not get that for quite some time. Hoping for good weather. Les, david, thank you both so much. In National News just hours ago, the u. S. Now issuing new sanctions against north korea. The punishment Just Announced may just settle any question of whos responsible for the cyber attack at least as far as president obama is concerned. Could this be the proportional response the president called for after the sony hack . Thats next. [ female announcer ] knows her way around a miniskirt. Can run in high heels. Must be a supermodel, right . You dont know aarp. Because aarp is making finding the career you love no matter what your age, a real possibility. Go to aarp. Org possibilities to check out life reimagined for tools, support, and connections. If you dont think ive still got it when you think aarp, then you dont know aarp. Find more surprising possibilities and get to know us at aarp. Org possibilities. Narrator these are the tennis shoes skater kid whoa narrator that got torture tested by teenagers and cried out for help. From the surprised designers. Who came to the rescue with a brilliant fix male designer i love it narrator which created thousands of new customers for the tennis shoes that got torture tested by teenagers. The internet of everything is changing manufacturing. Is your Network Ready . Welcome back to the lead. Im jake tapper. Our National Lead today, the u. S. Government firing back against north korea just hours ago. The white house announced president obama has authorized additional sanctions in response to the north korean regimes quote ongoing, provocative, destabilizing and repressive actions and policies particularly its destructive and coercive cyber attack on Sony Pictures entertainment, unquote. I want to go to jim acosta whos traveling with president obama in honolulu, hawaii. What do we know about these sanctions and what the u. S. Is targeting in north korea . Reporter the u. S. As you know already has sanctions in place against north korea. North korea, sanctioned to the hilt but these sanctions on top of whats already in place. They specifically go after what the white house calls any and all officials of the north korean government. And they specifically lay out individuals and groups that are being targeted in these sanctions, specifically talked about in these sanctions, the rgb, north koreas Intelligence Organization that is believed to be behind their Cyber Operations. Also a company known as comed and another company tied to north koreas Defense Research and development. So clearly not only going after the Cyber Operations of the north korean government but some of these firms that finance all of that. In addition to that we should point out that the white house and Administration Officials on this Conference Call earlier this afternoon really said this was just the beginning of what theyre going to be doing and going after north korea after that cyber attack on sony. And that was interesting because, as you know in the days after the president s comments on all this before he left for hawaii there was that vast internet outage in north korea and there was speculation the United States was behind that. One Senior Administration official said perhaps the North Koreans were behind that outage and seemed to say the u. S. Was not behind that attack but they were cagey about that. Jim acosta traveling with the president and trying to decipher what is said by Administration Official on this. The white house and u. S. Intelligence officials are standing by their assertion that north korea was behind the cyber attack against sony despite evidence presented by outside american experts this week that calls that into question and in some cases suggests that a former employee of the studio may have been at least partly responsible. What makes the fbi so sure that north korea was responsible . Cnn justice correspondent pamela brown has been talking to her sources and joins me live to discuss that part of the story. Will we hear more from the fbi about the evidence it has to back up this assertion that it was definitively north korea . Its possible but its unlikely that the fbi will be revealing any big rev lags behind this case anytime soon. The more incriminating evidence they have is classified. So highly unlikely that a lot of this evidence would be declassified and presented to the public. But we know the director of the fbi will be at Fordham University next week at a Cyber Security forum and we expect him to touch on that. Whether or not he will reveal any new evidence is unlikely. It would seem to suggest the actions by the president today, additional sanctions, more targeted sanctions against individuals in north korea, would seem to suggest that theyre just dismissing the skepticism voiced by other Cyber Security experts, some of them on our show many talking to other media, that north korea is unquestionably behind this. Theyre saying no no were 100 sure. Absolutely. They said they sent out a press release earlier this week saying we back up the fbi, undermining what they previously said. The fbi has been adamant ever since these naysayers have come out and the Cyber Security firm you talked about, believing it was an insider job. Fbi officials have reiterated the point that this is the conclusion we reached, it was a joint effort not just with us but with foreign partners, with the private sector with other agencies. And these Cyber Security firms making these assumptions and reaching these conclusions theyre not privy to the same mountain of evidence that we are, thats what theyre saying. They dont have the inside look at what really happened here. Are any of the people who were sanctioned today directly tied to the hack . Do we even know who the individuals are behind the hack . Law enforcement sources weve been speaking with say theyre still investigating that, still trying to figure out who the individuals are, who the players are. I think thats a big reason why we havent seen any criminal charges. Remember these sanctions theyre not criminal charges so the people listed the companies and the individuals, im told are not directly tied to the hack. They might have been indirectly tied to it. But i think the u. S. Is trying to get to what they can get to in this case. Interesting. Pamela thank you so much. Forget resolutions for this new year. Potentially president ial candidates are checking off their lists ahead of 2016 the work to be done. And the movie predicted you would be driving a flying car and riding a hoverboar