After it simply vanished into thin air. Heres the latest information were getting. U. S. Officials say an automatic system on the plane was pinging satellites for hours after air Traffic Controllers lost all contact with the aircraft. Investigators think the plane continued flying during that time. A senior u. S. Official says theres a significant likelihood potential at least its now at the bottom of the ocean but no conclusions can yet be reached. A reuters report suggests the plane was deliberately flown hundreds of miles off course towards the andaman islands near india. Theres heightened suspicions that increase the opportunity that foul play may have been involved. And the search area for the missing plane has expanded further into the indian ocean as well as the South China Sea. The United States today sent the destroyer the uss kidd to scour the indian ocean in search of the aircraft. Lets bring in barbara starr. Does the Ship Movement seem to give credence to the comment by a senior u. S. Official that the plane may be at the bottom of the indian ocean right now . Well certainly it is one working theory at this point, wolf. You know, malaysian officials countries from across the region sending their ships, their aircraft to look for any sign of a debris field from this aircraft. Thats going to be the first thing theyre going to look for. And actually, a u. S. Navy aircraft, a longer range Surveillance Aircraft flew its First Mission into the indian ocean earlier today. Flew out about a thousand miles, didnt report seeing any debris field and came back. The kidd will use its helicopters. There will be more surveillance flights. Theyll look at this from the surface of the ocean, from the air, anything they can use basically, though, they want to stay with ships and aircraft at this point because thats their best chance of using those very specialized radars to look out and see if they can find anything that looks like debris on the ocean surface. If they find it, then they will hone in on that area. But a number of nations participating in this now as the malaysians are beginning to share more information clearly about what they know, some of those pings, some of that data received by satellites now being used to calculate perhaps where the best opportunity to look may be. Barbara, yesterday i spoke with a commander, commander William Marks of the u. S. Navys seventh fleet in the pacific, and he told me that the search was expanding dramatic going, from his words, from a chessboard to a football field. Give us an update on how extensive this u. S. And International Search operation has now become. You know, wolf, it started on the east side of the malay peninsula, if you look at the map in the gulf of thailand. Relatively speaking, thats a fairly constrained piece of water. They had a lot of ships in there, a lot of aircraft and within days the expression you heard is its saturated with searchers. They were able to look very quickly at every bit of that water, they say, and didnt find anything. Some of the data now pointing them to the west side of the malay peninsula, into the indian ocean. That is thousands of square miles of ocean. I think its safe to say they wont be looking at all of it. Theyre able to calculate how much fuel might have been left on board, the range of the aircraft, the data they got making them focus in on a much more specific area. Its still very large. Its going to take a lot of time, but perhaps, perhaps with the information they have in hand and the clues were seeing, they can begin to focus in on it. I should add the indian military, the indian navy and their aircraft are coming at this from the other side, through the bay of bengal sort of at the northwest top end of this piece of water. They are joining the search very actively, theyre looking in the more northern area, the u. S. Looking in the more southern area. Wolf . Barbara starr with the latest information from the pentagon. Thank you. So is the missing plane deliberately flown toward that Remote Island chain in the indian ocean. Could it have landed somewhere or is it more likely that it crashed into the indian ocean . Lets discuss the latest theories with tom fuentes, hes the former fbi director hes now a cnn Law Enforcement analyst. If this reuters report is true that the plane deliberately seemed to be moving toward the andaman islands in the indian ocean, part of india, what does that say . The question would be how far did it fly in that direction and whether it turned at all and how precise is their information about knowing that it flew that way . Because if it flew over indonesia on its way over the indian ocean, indonesia has 17,000 separate islands. We see on the map here the large islands of sumatra and below it ja java, but there are 17,000 islands the majority of which are not even inhabited. If the plane crashed on one of those on an uninhabited island there would be almost no one to know about it and it would be hard to see through the jungle canopy to see the debris. The 9 11 hijackers with the crash in the field in pennsylvania, that plane dove into the plane so deep it was barely visible in an open field. It was difficult to see from the air much less if it would have been a wooded area or jungle area with leaves and trees blocking the ground view. Thats another issue. Let me bring john golia into this conversation. A former ntsb board member and Aviation Security expert. Whats your assessment of these various theories . Because it seems to be getting more confusing by the hour. Well, based on the information thats been running around and we have to look at it with a very jaundiced eye, it clearly indicates a purposeful act, something turned the transponder off, somebody attempted to disable the acars system, we know the airplane turned off course. We have reports of signals being emitted from the airplane in a different course than what was originally set for the flight. All of that indicates somebody did that. Not the airplane. It wasnt a catastrophic failure. Somebody has accomplished these tasks, especially the ones that were accomplished over time. So it clearly is beginning to look like a terrorist or an act of piracy. Or foul play. Or suicide. Yeah, tom, go ahead. Yes, i would agree with that. The notion of catastrophic mechanical failure less likely, the notion na someone deliberately turned off the transponders and directed this plane in this direction for whatever reason more likely . Yes, and that requires two things to be true. Is one that, you know, it was deliberately turned the direction it was turned and deliberately continued to fly, which would indicate that it didnt explode over the original flight path where the original searches were conducted. And secondly, though, the data would have to be accurate concerning the tracking and whether it was going to one way point or another, that would require knowledge of the sophistication of the radar system, Malaysian Air force used, compared to the sophistication of the airport at kuala lumpur. We sent over ntsg and faa experts to look at the data, how modern is the equipment theyre looking at, how high is the resolution to know that its Accurate Enough to make these kind of judgments . So john, if a plane was flying for five hour hs afts af losing Communications Contact with Ground Control, how accurate are these pings that have now been detected pointing this plane in this direction of the indian ocean . Well, theyre pretty accurate, to give you that something sent a signal from some point. And the point has to be triangulated. Its not being broadcast on lat long and giving you that data. Its just telling you that its out there. Now there is systems that can provide that information, but were told that malaysians didnt pay for the boeing Health Monitoring system. Its a feebased service. And they only put it in for their engines and the engines will tell you a number of parameters based on the engines needs not so much the airplanes needs but one is the altitude. They can tell us how high the airplane is, but it wont tell us what direction the airplane is going in. Theres a lot of deduction going on. Yeah, go ahead. A lot of deduction going on based upon deduction based upon the scarce information we now have. I want you to stand by, john, and i want tom to stand by as well. Well take a quick break. Up next well go inside a boeing 777 cockpit simulator to find out what the pilots who fly this jet have to do to keep it in the air. Plus another possible lead into the whereabouts of flight 370 involves a seismic event off the coast of malaysia. We have details of that coming up as well. We learned that Technology Allows us to be craft oriented. No ones losing their job. Theres no beer robot that has suddenly chased them out. The technology is actually creating new jobs. Siemens designed and built the right tools and resources to get the job done. [ chainsaw whirring ] humans sometimes life trips us up. Sometimes we trip ourselves up. And although the mistakes may seem to just keep coming at you, so do the solutions. Like multipolicy discounts from Liberty Mutual insurance. Save up to 10 just for combining your auto and home insurance. Call Liberty Mutual insurance at. [ thump ] to speak with an Insurance Expert and ask about all the personalized savings available for when you get married, move into a new house, or add a car to your policy. Personalized coverage and savings. All the things humans need to make our world a little less imperfect. Call. And ask about all the ways you could save. Liberty mutual insurance. Responsibility. Whats your policy . A seven day cruise to alaska or the caribbean from just 549. Thats seven days to either marvel at mayan ruins. Savor the very best local flavors. Or sail in glistening glacier bay. With a cruise line voted best in alaska. A seven day cruise to alaska or the caribbean from just 549. Call your travel agent or 1. 888. Book. Now for this limited time offer. Princess cruises, come back new. Key question in the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370, exactly what happened in the cockpit that night. Martin salvidge is joining us just outside toronto. Hes inside the cockpit of a boeing 777 simulator. Thats quite an array of buttons and lights for pilots to worry about. What pilots would have been doing that fateful night. Yeah, hello, wolf. Youre right, it does look very daunting initially when you look at this. But much of the systems aboard this aircraft are automated. I wont say that anybody can fly this plane, thats certainly not the case. But the days of when you used to have to fly in the old analog world, theyre a world away from this cockpit. Weve loaded in this simulator everything we know about flight 370, thats the Malaysian Airliner thats now vanished. We loaded in the destination. We took off from kuala lumpur, were en route to beijing. Were essentially following the same route they had mapped in, weve got it logged in on the very complicated gps system that they have here, castada who is the pilot here. Were quickly going to auto pilot. Whats pretty shocking to me and im sure a lot of our rurs is how easy it is to turn off the planes transponder. Thats the transponder that sends signals to Ground Control stations telling where the plane is, all sorts of very important information. First of all, show our viewers how easy it is for a pilot or someone who gets into that cockpit to turn off the transponder. Sure. Yeah. Okay. So heres the big huge dashboard. The transponder youre talking about is located right here, right next to my knee. It looks relatively small. It is. But its hugely important to the navigation of the airplane, as you point out. The way you would turn it off and you would, i stress, never do this while flying in the air, but to turn it off, you would take it and turn this small switch three clicks to the left and boom, youve turned it off. That essentially means this signal in is no longer broadcasting telling the air Traffic Controllers on the ground who you are, where you are or what youre doing. Doesnt mean you dont show up on radar, you do, youre still a blip, but now youre an unidentifiable blip. One other thing ill show you about the transponder, if you put it back on and if it was a hijack situation, someones now in the cockpit with a gun to your head, it will send a signature. You reach down, enter a code. This is not that code, but it could go like this and now youre transmitting an emergency message that everyone on the ground immediately gets, alarm bells, youve been hijacked. The plane is not in your control. Whats chilling you remember reading the 9 11 commission, of those four planes that were hijacked on 9 11, three of the transponders were shut down right away by the hijackers. They obviously had training in a cockpit, they knew what they were doing. They immediately shut down the transponders, how long would it take to shut down or disable the planes other key instruments giving indications to air Traffic Control or others on the ground where the plane was . The transponders very easy because of the fact that when youre on the ground you are supposed to turn it off. Youre no longer needing radar. So thats why the on off switch is so accessible. The other equipment you talk about, whether it be the radios, and there are many frequencies that they could be using, whether they use the acars system, thats the system that basically transmits what the airplane is do, even the engines are reporting in without necessarily the pilots input. To disable those, thats something far more complicated. Not as simple as an on off switch, you might have to get into some of the Circuit Breakers and the other more convoluted systems to try to shut that down. What that says is if somebody was shutting them off and in a series over time, they knew what they were doing. It wasnt just somebody who happened to stumble in on the cockpit. This is someone thats familiar with the flight deck of a 777200. Martin savidge in that simulator for us. A good explanation. Thanks so much. Was the disappearance of flight 370 a deliberate act . Thats a key question. Well speak live with our National Security analyst about the role of the cia in this investigation. Piano. Violin. Hey, what are you doing . Music lesson . Whoo [ bell rings ] [ female announcer ] by their second kid, every mom is an expert and more likely to choose luvs than first time moms. And luvs with nightlock offer our largest absorbent area ever. They lock away wetness better than huggies, even overnight. Live, learn, and get luvs. As investigators try to figure out what happened to Malaysia Airlines flight 370, theyre looking at a number of possibilities including the possibility of terrorism. The cia director the other day said theyre not ruling out the idea of terrorism, in his words, quote, not at all. Our National Security analyst robert behr joins us from irvine, california. Also joining us to discuss whats going on, tom fuentes, our cnn Law Enforcement analyst, former assistant fbi director. How likely is it that terrorists may have commandeered this aircraft and done with it whatever they wanted . What do you think, bob . Well, you know, thats sheer speculation at this point. I always discount the conspiracy theory, but now that its clear, its fairly clear that this planes been diverted and somebody with knowledge of a boeing 777 did divert it, its terrorism or someone in the crew had other motivations. Thats what the cia is looking at, who on that plane would have an interest in crashing it into the krouground or stealing it . Theyre going through the passenger list, theyre founding on the malays to give them full disclosure on who got on the airplane. Who else besides the two iranians got on with fake passports, there could be others . And then looking at the chinese individual passengers trying to figure out motivations. Theres a lot they have to go through. Theres a paragraph, tom, that jumped out at me from todays wall street journal lead story. Ill put it up on the screen. U. S. Counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliners transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe. At one briefing, according to this person, officials were told investigators are actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted, quote, with the intention of using it later for another purpose. That sounds, you know, obviously we have no confirmation of that, but if thats what u. S. Officials are briefing various National Security types, that would be explosive. It would be, wolf. Youre talking about not crashing it into the ocean, not crashing it into land but taking it somewhere where it could land without detection and mentioned that indonesia has 17,000 islands, but the radius, given the flight, fuel and speed of that aircraft, if it was in one piece and flying capable, you could go 3,000 miles. So that plane could be on the ground, it could have been taken back east, they could have turned the direction route again and landed in the philippines or Northern Australia or taken it to ind xwra or taken it to another part of china. The areas of possible landing, now you have to look at is there a flat open area big enough to do that . But the other thing about if youre going to steal the aircraft, once you land it, youre going to have to be able to refuel it, service it and still have 250 people to deal with. What would you do with them . And especially youd have to make sure for another purpose. How farfetched do you think that theory is in. I think its farfetched but not completely impossible. You can take an airplane like this we used to do that in the cia, especially with helicopters. And you can fly it, use it as a weapon by flying it behind another airliner in a flight route and in an american city, for instance. So it would show up