back at their hotels after spending another day interviewing survivors and collecting samples. they ll be coming home on saturday raising speculation that a strike might be on hold until after they re safely out of damascus. when it comes to who s with us, our major ally with us in this, british prime minister david cameron, who s facing his own resistance, but others say they won t join in the strike without u.n. support. as we suspect, that won t happen since russia holds veto power on the u.n. security council. russia is a big assad supporter. assad s other ally is iran which is vowing to strike israel. as a precaution, they re calling to issue gas masks. turkey is constructing bunkers and they re sending experts to the syrian border. because there are so many parts, we re looking at this in three sections. first, we re looking a the the pentagon, what s going on behind closed doors at the white house and finally the role of congress in all of this. they re being briefed tonight on u.s. intelligence. we start with nbc news pentagon correspondent jim mikel chef ski. how long before we strike? once the president gives the go ahead, the order to launch those missile strikes against the syrian regime and much of those chemical delivery targets, it could be a matter of hours because those targets have been put in place for some time now. they tinker with them on a daily basis when they see them move, some military forces and equipment from here to there. they have the basic target set down. to go after those delivery systems, the rocket launchers, ar till ler ris, tanks. again, they emphasize as the president and the white house
sequenc sequences, and as one official said, we d be doing the same thing. there was a little bit of mutual admiration going on there military to military in the fact that the russians would, in fact, be gathering around what looks like will be some missile strikes out of the med here in a few days. all right. it s great to see you. joining us now at the table is former white house mid east advisor, mark ginsburg. great to have you here. underneath it all is our credibility that s on the line. on one end if we don t respond we re sending a message to the world that it s okay to use chemical weapons and we are not able to follow through on our word. on the other end, if we do take action which it sounds like we will, then you re poking a much bigger hole in the hornet s nest. the next question is, what comes up next? that s what i tried to address this morning when i wrote an article for the huffington post. the morning after is the worst. was the president s goal to punish assad or to deter him or both? if it s to punish him, well, we can fire cruz missiles, he gets his punishment, takes out several control and command centers and god knows what else. if it s to deter him from using chemical weapons again, it is the imponderable that no wironen answer. how many cruz missiles does it take? how many times can we do this before the president leaves for the g-20. the key is not to just punish. it s to deter assad from using the chemical weapons again. we re not really committed here to removing assad from power so that s going to be a continued problem. we seem to be wanting to police the conflict. you can do this, you can kill hundreds of thousands of people, but you can t gas them. i understand the humanitarian problem there, but as a military
maybe 1,000, maybe 3,000 and all the other millions who are refugees. so the bottom line is the same. this is not going to solve the fund amt al problem. assad is going to remain in power. this is not an attempt to engage in regime change. if it deters him from using chemical weapons again, then for all intents and purposes the president achieved the goals of what the limited strike is about. you know, ambassador, as i ve been thinking through this conflict and what our approach should be, i keep thinking about something that lawrence wright wrote. he talks about how in 1983 hezbollah bombed our barracks in lebanon, in beirut, and killed 2841 of our marines. reagan made the decision to pull our troops out of lebanon. meanwhile, osama bin laden was watching these events unfold and essentially learned the lesson that america was cowardly, that they couldn t take a punch in the nose and that emboldened him to later on launch the attacks that we know he launched. i keep coming back to that because to me it seems like we have to figure out what type of strikes, what targets to strike. but isn t the bottom line here that the president said we have this red line of chemical weapons and if you cross that there will be enormous consequences. if we fail to deliver those enormous consequences, we lose all of our credibility in the reason gone, we lose all of our ability to act as a deterrent. iran is watching this and learning perhaps the same lessons that osama bin laden learned in 1983. krystal, the fact is international law was violated. the president s statement of crossing the red line occurred six to eight months ago. syria s used chemical weapons some months ago.
that was played out on america. the lesson was you don t go in the first place. we essentially intervened in a civil war in lebanon, the role then by intervening, the limited role that was designed expanded and it resulted in hundreds of americans being killed. the president with bipartisan support saying we ve got to bring these troops home before this gets worse. i think there s a parallel that makes people nervous. yeah, we say this is going to be limited but are we going to get sucked into something bigger here? the fact of the matter is i am so against boots on the ground, so against us involving ourselves militarily in a conflict that is beyond our control to shape anymore. i am so against having us be in a situation where we repeat the same mistakes of the past. what this white house wants to do is in effect almost a libya type conflict. sanitized conflict. the white house seems to be
their theories. the big question, and i think, jeff, you said this, a reward would be pennies on the dollars. exactly. why isn t there a reward posted? a reward would be pennies on the dollar for what this search is costing. thanks for joining us. good evening. it s 11:00 on the east coast. 11:00 a.m. in malaysia. we begin with several pieces of information. item one, the search zone is focusing on the southwest coast of australia. item two, investigators tell us the path it took, the path caught on radar suggests the rout was preprogrammed to hit certain navigational points. item three, the fbi is examining data from the captain s home flight simulator. we have a lot to get to. first, because these developments have been stacking up day after day, i just want to take a moment tonight to try to get everyone back on the same page with what we know so far. it begins on the morning of the 8th, flight 370 takes off from kuala lumpur bound for beijing. the final stream from the acars data reporting system is received on the ground at 1:07. then at 1:19, the first officer utters first round, leaving malaysian air space, telling controllers, good night. two minutes later, the radar transponder cuts out or is turned off. thai military radar is following it and between 1:21 and 1:28 a.m. detects that left turn back toward the west and south. at 1:30 a.m., air traffic controllers lose contact with the plane. acars transmission does not happen. this what is believed to be flight 370 is tracked way off course. from there there s no solid information. we only know according to a satellite ping received at 8:11 in the morning, investigators say the jet turned north or south and flew into those two huge arcs of territory in open ocean. investigators now are focusing closer on that southern route. we ll talk to a u.s. navy commander involved in that. a major development, one that everyone hopes will bring badly needed answers. more now from kuala lumpur. [ speaking foreign language ] reporter: a mother s grief and frustration finally boiling over. relatives of the missing passengers today storming into a normally subdued briefing room, demanding answers. after about five chaotic minutes, she and others are dragged out by malaysian officials. the malaysian government says they regret the incident, but the reality is neither they nor anyone seems much closer to solving the mystery of what happened to flight 370. could a clue be found in the pilot s home flight simulator? malaysian authorities say data from the simulator was deleted on february 3rd, more than a month before the plane went missing. the fbi today saying it has sent a copy of the simulator s hard drive to its forensics lab in quantico, virginia, hoping to recover the deleted files. the malaysian authorities also disclosed a tantalizing detail. they have new radar information about the plane s path, provided by another country. what exactly it shows the malaysians aren t saying. meanwhile, operational crews are beginning to narrow their search, believing it s more likely the missing jet traveled along the southern corridor, away from the heavily pop populated asian continent. investigators say they re focusing on an area roughly the size of new mexico, about 1600 miles off their southwest coast, using what information they know about currents and the plane s possible last position to make an educated guess on just where it might be. we are going to talk to a u.s. navy commander in that region. kyung lah joins us. you were in the room with heart-breaking pleas from relatives of the missing passengers. are they feeling that same frustration, that sense of just kind of anger? reporter: that anger and anguish, yes. that s felt across all nationalities, all the families here. and while it is a mystery for the rest of the world, for them it s very much about the loss of human life. this mystery about what s happened to fathers, sons, mothers, daughters. but as far as what that other woman said, calling the malaysian government liars, we haven t heard that from the people who are malaysian citizens. because frankly we haven t had any access to them. as far as the chinese families, they absolutely feel that across the board, we re hearing it out of beijing and here. they don t believe the malaysian government has been transparent at all. they feel they have botched this investigation. the government for its part, anderson, saying that the best way that they can help these families is to simply find the plane. kyung, appreciate the reporting from kuala lumpur. later on in the program i m going to speak to the family of paul weeks who was on the plane and was on the way to a new job in mongolia. he s an engineer. he actually gave his wedding ring and watch to his wife in case something happened. i m going to talk to his brother and sister about that. i want to bring in evan perez breaking the navigation story for us tonight. some of this can get really technical, evan. just to start with explain exactly what a way-point is and what is significant about this information we re getting. think about your gps. you can enter longitude and latitude in your gps to try to direct you, navigate you to a particular place. now in the sky for pilots, they also have to include altitude. so essentially it s a place in the sky where a pilot can direct to direct an aircraft and the computer system on board the aircraft to take the aircraft. and so the navigational systems on the plane essentially uses these five digit codes to direct where to take the aircraft, anderson. so explain the breaking news on this tonight. what is new that we now know? well, one of the things that we ve been wondering is how the investigators know that the aircraft deviated from its course. we know there is some radar. but how can they know with certainty? we know that the investigators have discovered that the aircraft went to two specific way-points away from the course thought was scheduled to go towards beijing. so what they believe this indicates is that whoever was doing this, whoever moved the aircraft off its scheduled course, specifically was directing it to these particular way-points. again, away from its scheduled course. if it was being manually flown it probably would not have headed to these way-points, is that correct? that s the understanding the investigators are looking at. now when a pilot normally turns an aircraft using the yoke, they feel if somebody was manually turning the aircraft it wouldn t specifically go to these particular way-points. so they believe this indicates perhaps that someone with some skill, someone who had some knowledge, entered these way-points for the aircraft to go to these particular places. and then of course it disappears. it doesn t answer the final question that we all have which is who did this, why and where did the aircraft go after it disappeared, anderson. and when were these entered in. evan perez, appreciate it. this seems like evidence pointing towards human intervention. the question was it pilots doing their jobs or someone up to no good? with us former cia counterintelligence expert and others. i m confused by these way-points and what the significance of the idea of having these two way-points is. can you try to explain it? a way-point really is a definition of the route in the sky. that s something that somebody would enter in. absolutely. but two particular different ones? we keep going back to there were two particular way-points. i don t see where those way-points came into play on this. i see the airplane might have been directed toward them. as a matter of fact, i looked on an en route chart to try to find the way-points that allegedly they turned toward. i still contend that the way-point they were headed for was a diversionary airport and specifically entered in by the captain. that s conjecture. i may fall on my sword on that one. but i don t see where the acars machine could actually i know through our dispatch process where they would know exactly what was put into that machine. they just don t know. that s not information they utilize or is helpful to them specifically. and jeff, the fact that this pilot deleted information from his simulator, you can look at it with a nefarious interpretation of that or he s an organized guy. he s cleaning up his files. what do you make of it? we only have part of the information on that. in order to determine whether it was nefarious or not or benign we need to know the other part. that is were there other flights on that simulator that he didn t delete. so in other words, what s left on the hard drive of that simulator and what is absent on the hard drive of that simulator. if only selective routes have been taken out of it, only a portion of his experience on the simulator has been deleted, then that makes me raise my eyebrow and says i find it difficult to find a benign explanation for that. les? i understand your point, jeff. but the way i m looking at it is from the standpoint of maybe there was a flight that pilots are organized people. and they feel that maybe the hard drive is going to take too much room and they delete a particular flight. but on a humorous note it might have been a profile he might have been practicing for his recurrent training and just a profile because this is not the kind of thing you can really do. but he may have deleted it because he was embarrassed it didn t go well or something to that effect. it s open to interpretation. mary, you ve been involved with the fbi in these investigations. are there circumstances where they couldn t retrieve the data because now the fbi and quantico willing be looking at it? yes. in circumstances where they can t retrieve the data is in instances where someone has erased it and knows how to do it effectively. you don t just erase you overwrite it or destroy certain things. you have to not just erase it but take extra pains. that too might be very interesting to show how they have overwritten it or erased it or deleted certain things. when i was inspector general we worked aviation crimes with the fbi s aviation crimes unit. and we many times had to recover computer data. they were pretty good. so i would bet on the fbi. i think they will be able to get whatever was on there. i just have to believe they re going to be able to see what those files were. unless and i would be surprised to learn this unless this erasure was so good and competent it wasn t just erased but overwritten. how complex an operation is this? might it take weeks or months? i don t think so, anderson. you re talking about hours and days rather than weeks and months. they ve got a tremendous capability. but remember just as in this case we ve had countries who have been reluctant to share with us their radar information because it shows what their true capabilities are, the united states if they have information that tells us well no good will come of it, we can t help those missing by releasing this in such a way and show our capability, they may not do so. i would hope that they would err on the side of getting that information out there. but we too have to protect our capabilities. mary, you raise an interesting point. that even if they can t find what the information that s been overwritten, the mere fact that information was intentionally overwritten can be meaningful. it depends what the erasure is. i guess i have to confess this. all of us who have flight simulators, you want to land, try to see if you can land. most of us don t do it successfully. but you want to try to see if you can land at the weirdest places on earth. you want to see if you re really good. so just flying around the earth and seeing different places might not tell us much of anything. that s what you do with like a microsoft flight simulator. where they went, what was there, what wasn t there, what s missing, the pains taken to take it away, if anyone else was on the flight simulator. all those things. i m pretty confident if it s there to be gotten that the fbi will get it. they re just so good at it. jeff, the fbi is also we re told analyzing the copilot s computer. you see a number of sort of cumulative acts, operational acts. what do you mean by that? what i mean by that, anderson, is nothing significant in the crime or terrorism world happens without some planning, casing and the act itself if you re going to be successful. those are the operational acts that lead up to a major incident or terrorism crime. rehearsals on the flight simulator might be interesting to go back and see what other routes had this chap captain flown in the months and weeks prior to this particular incident. on the simulator you mean. or in real life. what other trips has he taken. why as a senior captain did he bid the airline people will know what i m speaking about that he bid this trip. was this a good trip for a captain with his seniority or was this kind of a dog of a trip but he bid it? that could raise questions about okay, there s not a good reason for him to take this trip. there must be something else afoot. mary, do you agree with that? yeah. but there s a really important point, too. he makes a great point. because just flying on the simulator we can all fly weird places on the simulator. but you would have had to have gone there to make the contacts. because what s the point of knowing how to land someplace if once you get there you can t do anything with yourself, with the plane, with the plot. so there has to be more than that on the computer. there has to be additional contacts. by the way, since it was the copilot who spoke last and whose voice sounds normal, what we also want to know is much more information about him and is this how he spoke to air traffic controllers? other people who fly with him need to provide a lot of information about him. he s the only one we know that s living and talking when the turn is made. again, though, mechanical anomalies is still very much at play for investigators. that s something we re going to look at tonight as well. jeff beaty, good to have you on. mary schiavo as well. les abend will stick around. two of his colleagues will join us. we ll run through all the evolving scenarios investigators are looking at now, including some you ve been tweeting us about. tweet us using #ac360. follow me @andersoncooper. next intensifying focus off australia. we re going to hear from a commander in the u.s. navy s seventh fleet which has planes and vessels in the area. later we ll dig deeper into the possibility of a fire on board and parallels to the crash of swiss air flight 15 years ago. what can we learn from that flight that might be applicable to this? we ll be right back. ameriprise asked people a simple question: in retirement, will you outlive your money? 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[ meows ] the internet of everything is changing everything. cisco. tomorrow starts here. or it s pittsville, brah. it s never too late to learn a foreign language! go and smell the roses! president obama weighed in today on the search for flight 370 and america s role in the search. listen. we have put every resource we have available at the disposal of the search process. there has been close cooperation with the malaysian government. and so not just ntsb but fbi. anybody who typically deals with anything related to our aviation system is available. and so our thoughts and prayers are with the families, but i want them to be assured that we consider this a top priority and we re going to keep on working. and chief among the hardest working people on the planet tonight members of the u.s. navy s seventh fleet in that southern search area off australia on the ocean and above it using aircraft that can detect almost anything. 26 countries involved. cooperation according to the commander is mostly good. though indonesia has refused to allow a number of search planes to go through the air space. commander marks joins us now. commander marks, i know you can t comment on reports about indonesia not allowing u.s. aircraft to fly over air space today. but i want to ask you on this southern route, to you is that the most hopeful? is that the most important area to search now? i think you just have to look at the areas that have been least searched. so we first covered the gulf of thailand. we completely saturated that. we moved to the andeman sea. we completely saturated that. flying from kuala lumpur, we penetrated deeply into the bay of bengal. that s from our side because the indians were flying over there, too. i think really it s simply a matter of this southern area has been searched the least. so we re out here and australia is out here. and at this point that s all you can do. you find the areas where you haven t looked, where there may have been information that came from satellites whether that s military or governmental or commercial, and you go to those. and so that s what we re doing. if you are able to find debris, does that automatically mean that you would be able to figure out where the plane went down if in fact the plane did go down in the water? would you be able to automatically figure out based on tides and time? great question. and the currents and the wind and the sea state plays such a huge factor. being so long from that initial flight takeoff, it s such a huge variable. so what we normally do in the u.s. navy, when we come upon this situation we immediately launch a helicopter and we establish a central point where we think the last known contact was. that s called a datum. so from this datum we calculate the currents and the winds. and that is why these search areas slowly expand. and so for what we usually do for a search and rescue you look at that first 72 hours. it can grow fairly big but within your helicopter range. well, now that is completely a different scenario. and the current and the winds and the set and drift on there play a huge factor. we can track that slightly we can drop a sonar buoy and get a kind of a gps position that tracks the environmentals, but it s such a long period of time it is certainly a huge factor. and really no one can say if a piece of debris started in one area where it is ten days later. this may be a dumb question, but are you still hopeful? are you losing hope? with each day that passes by this gets more and more difficult. you know, this what is we train for. and our pilots, our air crews, even our maintainers on the ground, our mission is to fly these planes and to search. and the way i think of it personally is, each of those people on that aircraft, they have families associated with them and friends. and i know they want closure no matter what happens. and i know if it were me and my family i d want the u.s. navy out here looking and that s what we re doing. commander marks, i m glad you re out there. thank you. you re welcome. thank you. incredibly difficult task right now. digging deeper, i want to bring in a veteran of these kinds of things, david gallo co-leader of the search for air france flight 447 also retired airline pilot ron brown. david, you heard the commander there saying they re searching off the coast of australia because they ve already basically thoroughly searched the northern part of the indian ocean. do you basically just keep on expanding out until they ve searched the entire area the plane could possibly have reached given the amount of fuel it had? anderson, we need to find some clue about where that aircraft is. we can t be mapping the entire indian ocean. and if that plane impacted the water, even came down gently there s going to be some clue. and the navy is well suited to be able to find those bits of that plane. i m hoping still with the families that it s sitting on land someplace. but this is the way to exclude the ocean. david, it s interesting though what the commander said which was that given the amount of time that has gone by, even if they find some debris on the water, that doesn t guarantee that they ll be able to pinpoint where the plane entered the water if in fact it did, correct? right. well, air france 447 it was five days. i thought that was a long time after the tragedy before the first wreckage was found. but it was two years, not continuously at sea but giving mobilizations and the like, two years before we found that aircraft on the bottom. so you re right. it s no guarantee. but you know what, there s some very talented modelers out there that can look at wind currents with models and then backtrack that information to try to find the location. and even if it s not exactly right or if there s a lot of error in it it cuts down the search area. could cut it down dramatically. it s important stuff. ron i ve been getting a lot of questions on twitter about this new search area. maria asks, how busy is the flight path? did the plane have enough fuel to get that far? as far as we know it had enough fuel. hello, we have breaking news now on the search for malaysia airlines flight 370. the australian broadcasting corporation is reporting that authorities may have found objects related to the missing plane, and they are citing the prime minister tony abbott. australia has been leading the search in the far southern reaches of the plane s possible path. we re also hearing that the prime minister may in fact address parliament say thing is new and credible information. it s come to light from satellite imagery. two possible objects related to the search have been dent tide. they have deployed an aircraft to inspect these objects. three more aircraft will follow. once those extra aircraft arrive, they will conduct an extensive search. we re being told that the task of locating these objects is extremely difficult right now. australia s search operations centered in the city of perth. andrew stevens joins us from there now live. andrew, what are the details that you have on what they may or may not have found. my mistake, we do not have andrew. but he has been covering this. what we have been hearing over the last few hours is that this search area has dramatically narrowed from an area of almost 3 million square miles, now down to an area about the size of the state of colorado, about 110,000 square miles. still, a massive area, but we know that the focus has been on the southern arc, right at the extreme end of that southern arc off the coast of western australia. and apparently the officials managed to narrow down the scope of the search area, because they yielded a lot more information from the satellite pings, which the plane had been giving off every hour for about seven our eight hours or so. so what we know right now is that we re hearing from australian authorities that there is possible debris related to this plane. 13 days now or 12 days now they have been searching for this missing flight. and now we have what could be credible evidence of debris floating in the water. of course, there are still many unanswered questions, what is that debris, how far has it floated. richard quest is standing by in new york with more on this. and so richard, could this be the break that everyone has been waiting for? oh, absolutely. you have to put it in terms that it s unlikely that the australian prime minister would be holding a news conference if there wasn t a high degree no one is going to say, and i suspect he s not going to come out and specifically say because there would have they have have to retrieve the debris and ensure that there is a very high degree of certainty about it, but bearing in mind the aus t l australians in the last 48 hours took over the searching down in the south china sea sorry, the south indian ocean. enormous number of assets have been deployed, including the uss kidd which sent its planes to the western coast of australia for that very purpose, john. they said it would be easier for long-range search to search out of perth rather than being stuck on a ship in the middle of the ocean. so it s fascinating tonight that the australian prime minister is going to make this press statement, floating debris believed to be potentially from malaysian airlines flight 370. we have had this sort of news before, just a week ago with the chinese photographs, the satellite photographs. but i m supposing that there must be a fair degree of certainty or at least confidence in what they re finding. we understand that prime minister tony abbott of australia has spoken to his malaysian counterpart about this news which we are now getting to us here at cnn. that two possible objects have been found. richard, sorry to interrupt, but this does not mean that this is where the plane went down because this debris could have floated quite a distance. in the number of days since the incident happened, absolutely. but one thing i do know is that the oceanographers will not only have done the models of where debris would have floated but they would have gone further and written specific models for this area. so they will now be thinking the, we know the time, we know the water temperature, we know the winds, we know the prevailing weather during the last week. they will be factoring that in, the oceanographers, and they are extremely experienced at being able to take that information and work out roughly where the debris will be. now how far, if you re asking me how far could that debris have moved over the last ten days, i don t know. but if you look at the map that we re seeing at the moment and you interpret where the route of the aircraft was, and what could have happened in the last 10, 12 days, then you start to see why the australians believe that there is a strong level of confidence. and on one other point, in the last days or so, more and more people have come to the conclusion that it is the south china sorry, the south indian ocean, i beg your pardon, the south indian ocean which was the more realistic of the two paths, not the northern path or western path up towards india and kazakhstan. richard, what we are hearing is that the debris was detected by satellite imagery. a very similar situation to what we had with the chinese satellites about a week or so ago, detecting that debris off the coast of vietnam. that turned out to be a false start. but a lot of people were talking back then this was very large debris to be spotted by a satellite. so i know we re speculating here, but is that going to be a similar situation now, that this will be large pieces of debris because it has been seen by a satellite. the problem with the chinese pictures, almost from the moment there were many of us, myself included, that hoped it was correct. but quite quickly, experts on the 777 said because the chinese last friday the chinese put out a statement which they actually said how big the pieces of debris were. they said they were 70 x 70. quickly, experts of the 777 said there is no single piece of the aircraft that measures those dimensions. so that hugely assisted them in discounting that relatively quickly. i m assuming whoever s satellite they have used in this situation, they ve done exactly the same process. they ve locked up the debris. they measured it with a high degree of certainty. we have had debris from the moment this incident happened. we had a table drum richard, sorry if i may interrupt. we have andrew teastevens on th line now. he s covering this story for us from perth where the search on the australian end has been based from, perth is the state capital of western australia. andrew, very early stages but it is coming from the prime minister s office. they are deploying assets to try and inspect this debris from flight 370. what else can you tell us? that s right, john. at this point we have to be very cautious. what we can tell you is that the australian state-owned media operation here is saying that tony abbott, the australian prime minister is telling the house that two pieces of debris have been spotted in the southern indian ocean. he says that they could possibly be related to mh-370. certainly at this stage, not saying definitely. a plane has been diverted from its earlier search area to the destination where this debris is believed to be floating. that is due to be on the scene around about now, john. and we understand another three aircraft have already been dispatched to that same area. at the moment, what we can see is tony abbott is being reported by the australian broadcasting corporation, those two pieces of objects have been found, and the possibility is that they are from mh-370. andrew, we ve had this situation over the last 24 hours or so that there s been this new radar information coming from the pings which were given off hourly by flight 370 and with that satellite information they have managed to narrow down this search area. so describe the area that they have been looking at, which is where it appears that these objects are. yes, that s right. i mean, it has been narrowed down significantly, given the fact that the malaysians only 24 hours ago saying they are putting equal emphasis on the northern and southern corridors, which is a combined area, roughly the size of the australian land mass. the southern corridor, they have narrowed their search down to that. so within that, there is a zone of 300,000, which they are focusing on at the moment, john. we don t know why specifically they are focusing on this area. it is being reported that they have satellite intelligence from the u.s. and also from australian satellite sources, as well. obviously, satellites and radar is an important instrument. [ indiscernible ] more so there is a satellite surveillance facility in the center of australia, which is jointly operated but effectively run by the americans. we don t know what satellite information is coming from there. certainly it s been established from our u.s. sources the southern corridor has been a more likely search target based as well on the simple process of elimination, given that the northern corridor where it consists of at least 11 countries, some of which have very significant radar and technology, such as china, nothing has been seen or reported certainly from the northern corridor. so the u.s. has been deploying assets along the southern corridor and helping australia with the search. andrew, stand by. for anybody just joining us, this is the breaking new. the australian broadcasting news is quoting that the prime minister is saying two possible objects related to the search for flight 370 have been identified by satellite in the southern indian ocean and right now a royal australian air force plane is heading to excuse me is heading to that area to try and find establish exactly what this debris may be. other planes are heading there, as well. we know that the meshes are there, new zealand also has planes and assets in the region. but it is the australians who are taking the lead in all of this. i would like to go back to richard quest right now. richard, we had a very similar situation to this about a week or so ago. we were just talking about it just a short moment ago when they did find debris on the satellite image by the chinese. turned out to be nothing. this seems a lot more substantive. okay, do we have richard? okay. i m sorry, richard has gone to work the phones to try to find out more about what we re dealing with. we still have andrew stevens on the line with us right now. okay, one moment, please. so andrew, we were talking about this area. we re also looking at a situation that this is a very remote part of the world and it s also a very deep ocean. so if there is debris on the surface, there s the possibility there could be a lot of debris below the service with a lot of challenges trying to get there. absolutely, and also we need to take into account the currents and tidals, so any debris that s on the surface will have moved significant distances, perhaps hundreds of kilometers from the zone where that debris may have been found. so a lot facing the searchers, again the fact that some places in the indian ocean is 7,000 meters deep and the average depths is around 4,000 meters. so there is enormous problems and challenges still facing the searches. it s also key to note that the devices which are triggered when a plane crashes into the sea, will send out distress signals for about one month. so we re about halfway into that one month. so there is a time limit on locating this aircraft. [ indiscernible ] so huge amounts of challenges for the search parties, but we can t rule out how significant this latest news is, because we have gone from an area of 2.2 million square kilometers down to what could be a significant sighting in the southern ocean. resources are now being focused in the southern ocean, in this area of the southern ocean. so just to recap, we do know that an orion aircraft is expected to be on the scene where the satellite images picked up two pieces of debris. we don t know with any degree of certainty if they are related to the plane, but an orion is due there about now. it is 11:45 in the morning here in perth and three more planes dispatched. so we should get some better understanding of exactly what is there. we have andrew stevens on the line with us in perth. we have richard quest on the line in new york. i would like both of you to stay with us. we do have i would like to read that statement once more in case you are joining us that we have from the australian prime minister. this is what he told parliament a short time ago. new and credible information has come to light for the search of flight 370 in the southern india ocean. information based on satellite imagery of two possible objects related to the search have been identified. a royal australian aircraft has been diverted to inspect the object and due to arrive about now. the statement reads, three more aircraft will also follow and conduct a more expensive search. the task of locating these objects is extremely difficult. the prime minister has spoken to his malaysian counterpart. that is what we re being told. the prime minister has said to the house just a short time ago in the australian capital. richard quest is on the line with us right now. we know, richard, there are a lot of assets in this region, including the most advanced sub hunter that the americans have, the p-8. no doubt that will be deployed in some manner to look at this debris? oh, absolutely. they will be sending everything they ve got and a great deal more over to find this. the fact that the prime minister now, look, john, you re much more of a student of australian politics than i am. but the fact that the pm chose to make a statement in the house, new and credible information is the phrase he uses. not just we found some debris, but credible information. based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search. and listen to this, following specialist analysis of this imagery, two possible objects have been identified. now, i m guessing the phraseology there was, he doesn t say we found two objects and we re looking to identify them. he says the objects have been identified. so i m starting to come to the conclusion that the prime minister wouldn t make such a statement to the house if he didn t have a very strong view that this was not only credible, but had been interpreted and accepted. okay. so we re now at the stage where after 12 days of what has been a very frustrating search, possibly the biggest search ever for a missing civilian for a missing airliner. we now are at the position where the australian aircraft is over the area where two objects have been identified and we are awaiting official word. it is pretty much my understanding, that that plane is there and that it is due to arrive back in australia, on australian soil in about four hours from now. no doubt if there is any information to come from, this it will be radioed back. so we should find out exactly what may or may not have taken place or been found rather in that search. but at this stage, as you said, richard, this is looking to be by far the most promising lead that we have had since this began. and it is also a reflection, i think, as andrew stevens was just reporting from perth a moment ago, of the number of assets being deployed. when the royal australian air force were given the job of searching the south indian ocean, they took at it with gusto in the sense they were very honest about it. they made it quite clear that this was a huge task. adding to australia s own very sophisticated ability, remember, it was the australian air investigation that investigated the engine explosion out of singapore. they have enormous experience in their own right doing searches. you know this better than i will, john. as a maritime nation, as an island, albeit a continent, australian has exceptionally good maritime searching abilities. so what the prime minister says, look, i can t say it is and i can t say it isn t. but having done this long enough, you get a feeling of what might be happening and the pm speaking to the house in that way is very strong, credible evidence. absolutely. richard, stand by for us. i would like to go back to andrew stevens. andrew, it was just yesterday that the australians were saying that this search of this area could take up to weeks and now they have narrowed it down to what could be a matter of hours. in fact, we are expecting some kind of statement from prime minister tony abbott maybe in about 25 minutes from now. i think the key here is the information and where it s coming from. this is satellite information, so the physical search in the absence of any specific information about pin pointing areas by satellite, which have taken several weeks, even though it has been significantly refined as we now know, it still would have been several weeks to comb that area. now, though, satellite information, we don t know where that s come from, but it is very sophisticated satellite operations, operated jointly by the australians and the u.s. in central australia. so the information obviously coming from satellites, that allows them to pinpoint this area and as richard said, given the number of false starts here and the fact that the malaysian government has taken so much criticism, tony abbott is going to be very hesitant to say anything that he may have to backtrack on. so at this stage, what he s telling the house is very significant. remember that there are currents, we are 13 days into the search. so whatever debris seen there, it will have moved considerable distances from a crash site. so there s still a lot of work to do. we just need to underline we don t know whether this debris is linked. it was a false start with the chinese last week, which turned out to be nothing. s okay. if you are just joining us, the news is now coming from the australian prime minister that significant objects have been identified in the southern indian ocean. he released this information just a short time ago to the australian parliament. this is what he said. the australian maritime safety authority has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search. following specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified. we must keep this in mind, the task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult, and it may turn out that they are not related to the search for flight mh-370. nevertheless, i did want to update the house on this potentially important development. okay, that was the australian prime minister tony abbott addressing the lower house of the house of parliament just a short time ago. richard, what was notable there, and understandable is that word of caution coming from tony abbott that this may not actually turn out to be anything, but it seems at this stage that it might just be. indeed. tony abbott, now we heard a little bit more. he has given a caveat to it, that it might not be 370. so he s i don t use the word, i would never say this about a prime minister, that he s hedging his bets, but the fact that he made the statement, he didn t have to make a statement, john. he could have just simply put out a press release. the royal australian air force could have put out a statement. the maritime search authority could have just put out a statement. he says it s credible. he says it s confirmed or satellite has confirmed the objects. i m guessing and assuming having looked at this for some time that they have very they have got a very realistic view that this is what they ve been searching for. let us be clear, it would be a blessing that they have found something in the south indian ocean. but this would really just be the beginning of the next part of the whole process. so in other words, we find more debris, work out the back workout where the debris may have come from using currents and temperatures and slowly start to see if you can find the bigger debris field. what we know, john, is the debris field, and there s always something on a plane that floats. the life rafts, the seat cushions. part of the wing, part of the tail. the moment they find a sizable debris field, and there should still be something there, they are very much closer to finding the aircraft itself. and let s just look at some of the politics of how this played out. this is cnn breaking news. i m don lemon in new york. and the breaking news is that new information is coming from australia being reported by the australian broadcasting company that two objects possibly belonging to that missing flight 370, two objects have been found off the coast of australia. david suchi, who is a former faa safety investigator, this appears to be a significant development, the most significant development we ve had so far. very much so, don. the report says, credible information. how long has it been since we heard that? this is verbatim, the prime minister of australia says, new and credible information has come to light in relation to the search for malaysia airlines flight mh-370 in the southern indian ocean. the australian maritime safety authority has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search. following specialist analysis of the satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified. i can inform the house that a royal australian air force orion has been diverted to attempt to locate the objects. this orion is expected to arrive in the area about this time. three more aircraft will follow this orion. they are tasked for more intensive followup search. we re also hearing there will be a press conference coming from sho shortly. the information is coming from the prime minister. it is almost midnight here in the united states eastern time, and it s almost noon in perth, australia. i want to go now to mary schiavo. she is standing by now. again, this is a very significant development. i don t think australia would be doing this if they didn t think there was some importance to this, mary. oh, i agree. i am sure they realize how important, even if this is the wreckage, even if it s the very first piece, the clue also tumble forth, was there a fire, an explosion, do they have the pitting p pitting patterns. the evidence can finally start, and most important they can take where the pieces are, reverse the current track, find out where the currents have led over the past 12 days, and then start in earnest the search for the block boxes. australia now saying that they believe they have found two objects that are significant here that may be related to the missing malaysian airline mh-370. that plane vanished on march 8. it s been missing now for 13 days without a clue. they found two objects in the southern indian ocean. a p-3 ship has been directed to this new destination and three other aircraft are being dispatched, as well. again, it is almost midnight here in the u.s. eastern time and noon in perth, australia, where this is very close. m let s go to cnn s richard quest. australia released information saying they were going to expand their search off their coast and now we re finding this. let s remember what the prime minister of australia said in the house of parliament. he said the australian maritime safety authority has received satellite imagery of objects. now, listen to this. he says he calls this credible, tony abbott says it s credible, and he says, two possible objects have been identified? does he have stronger evidence that they are from 370? we know now that aircraft are heading over in that direction. the pm has warned that retrieving those objects will not be easy. but this, don, is you don t get a prime minister standing up in the house of commons or the houses of parliament in australia and using words like that. he caveated it by saying it may not be anything, but this is the best we ve had so far, don. this is the strongest lead. and richard quest, we want to hear from the prime minister just a short time ago. listen. the australian maritime safety authority has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search. following specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified. that s the australian prime minister speaking there at the house of representatives just a short time ago. richard quest, stand by. mary schiavo, stand by. everyone stand by.
also expect the president to address russia s annexation of crimea? reporter: probably so just because this dominated the discussion so much. the g-7 meeting which was held as a part of the nuclear security summit wasn t really, the move wasn t originally part of the plan. it wasn t because of the esflepevents that happened in ukraine. suspending with the biggest economies in the world. russia was supposed to host in june in sochi. it is a big step. the question, though, is, specially among critics, will this have any effect? the u.s.ed administration, other countries repeatedly said, there is still a door open to discussion, to a diplomatic solution. there is a chance for deescalation. we can change things if russia decides to change course. for everything that has been said and all the talks that have been held, not only among western countries but talks with russia, nothing has changed that course. so it remains to be seen now what could constitute escalation for additional and more damaging sanctions to be issued and what could be deescalation. we ask that question yesterday. michelle, we re going to jump out. the president has now taken the stage with the prime minister of the netherlands. the two men are addressing the congregated press there. let s listen to what they are saying. i am proud to present our summit communique to you today. building of the progress remains early in washington and seoul. this communique sets the bar even higher. we have taken major steps towards meeting all three main objectives of the nss process. i will say a few words about each. the first objective is to reduce the amount of dangerous nuclear material in the world. the less dangerous nuclear material there is and the better the nuclear security, the smaller the chance that terrorists will be able to get hold of it. it s that simple. i m pleased that the 53 countries and four international organizations here have confirmed their commitment to continue reducing stocks of dangerous nuclear material, uranium and plutonium. a number of countries have announced the intention to hand over the highly dangerous to the u.s. as xhar chair of the summit, i naturally welcome these announcements. we are also making progress on the second objective, improving the security of nuclear and radioactive material. we have confirm our ambition to improve the security of materials that can be used to make nuclear weapons and the security of radiological sources that terrorists could use to make dirty bombs. the commitment of the nsa became more complete. the fear that the dirty bomb would cause doesn t bear thinking about, not to mention the possible disruption to society. i m specially pleased that we are including this area. furthermore, the nss countries have encouraged implementation of the iaa nuclear security guidelines. a significant number of us have decided to take this commitment even further. as chair of the summit, i m delighted to announce that two thirds of the countries on the initiative of the united states, korea and the netherlands, have pledged to incorporate these important recommendations into the national legislation. this is a message and represents potential progress. i can t stress enough how important it is. fortunately, in a group of countries supporting this initiative is growing. our ultimate goal is, of course, for all nss countries to follow this league and set an example for other countries. he many pleas i am pleased with the growing awareness of nuclear material. it is important to determine the origin of the material and trace that. we are listening. michelle kosinski, i wanted to bring you in briefly before president obama speaks. the president will also probably at some point have to address a rather large domestic issue which is brewing. the white house plans to change and modify and in some ways do away with the current system of the nsa collecting telephone data. can you explain what this change will be? reporter: yes. feel free to cut me off when this starts again. there is a delay in what i can see and here. we wonder how much this issue came up in discussions with other european nations also. during this series of meetings. it has been this highly controversial, really played out in the media, irritation, of how much spying was gone on. similar, was overplayed. it came out later that we know that the u.k., germany, other european countries do this same kind of data collection as well as spying. here is what the president wants to do. he has been working with congress. soon, in the coming days, his administration says, he wants to propose a law that would change the way this is done. right now, the nsa is the one that collects this bulk data, phone records, that americans make on a day it day basis. they keep it for five years. what s been highly controversial in the past is that the nsa can essentially choose its own investigations and authorize them. the president wants the phone companies to collect the data and keep it possibly. although, that might be done by some third party. the administration didn t make that clear. the president wants it such to be such that the nsa would have to go to a judge for every search it would want to do. that judge would have to say yes or no as to whether that specific phone number could be likely tied to terrorism. there are some other changes too. keep in mind, this is a proposed piece of legislation. what it would do would take the nsa out of the business of collecting and storing the data. of core, turse, the nsa would s be able to gain access to the data when needed. the bigger question is, will congress pass this law? how long could that take? in the meantime, the president has authorized for 90 days an will continue in 90-day increments to authorize the collection and the processing of that data as it stands right now. the president is about to speak now. let s go back to the the hague to listen to president obama. i would like to say a few words about the tragedy that recently took place back in the united states. over the weekend, a massive landslide swept through a tiny town called oso in washington state. while i won t get ahead of the ongoing response and rescue operations, we know that part of this tightly knit community has been lost. first responders acted bravely despite still dangerous conditions. the american red cross has opened multiple shelters and the people of washington state have been quick to help and comfort their fellow citizens. i just spoke to governor insly who swiftly declared a state of emergency and i signed that emergency declaration to make sure he has got all the resources he needs from my administration. they are in contact with them on an on going basis, fema and the army core of engineers has been on site to offer their assistance and expertise. i would ask all americans to send their thoughts and prayers to washington state and the community, oso, and the families and friends of those who continue to be missing. we hope for the best but we recognize this is a tough situation. now, as for our work here in the hague, i want to just repeat the extraordinary work that mark has done in helping to organize this. some of the people of the netherlands, your hospitality has been remarkable. your organization has been flawless. to all the people who were involved in putting this together, including those that are putting up with what i caused, i m told there is a dutch word that captures the spirit that doesn t translate exactly into english but let me say my first visit to the netherlands has been truly kozelik. i convened the first nuclear summit in washington four years ago, because i believed we need a series and sustained global effort to deal with one of the greatest threats to international security, the specter of nuclear terrorism. we made further progress at our second summit in seoul and under your prime minister s stewardship, we have built on that progress here. keeping with the spirits of these summits, this was not about vague commitments but about taking tangible and concrete steps to secure more of the world s nuclear material so it never falls in the hands of terrorists. in particular, i want to come mend bell judge and it will i for completing the removal of their excess supplies of uranium and plutonium. japan announced it will work with the united states to eliminate hundreds of kilograms of weapons from one of their experimental reactors. that s enough for dozens of nuclear weapons. dozens of other nations have agreed to take specific steps towards improving nuclear security in their own countries and to support our global efforts. some have pledged to convert their research reactors to low enriched uranium which cannot be used to make a bomb. we have set new goals for implemented or nuclear security measures, including sharing more information to ensure we are all living up to our commitments. i have made it clear the united states will continue to do our part. our nuclear regulator will develop new guidelines to strengthen cybersecurity at our nuclear power plants. we have pledged to pursue the production of a key medical isotope used to treat illnesses like cancer without relying on weapons useable materials and we are going to work to install more radiation detection equipment at ports and transit sites to combat nuclear smuggling. all of this builds on our previous efforts. 12 countries and two dozen nuclear facilities around the world have now rid themselves entirely of highly enriched uranium and plutonium. dozens of nations have boosted security or created new centers to improve nuclear security and training. the international atomic energy agency is now sfrotronger and m countries have ratified the treaties in international partnerships at the heart of our efforts. we have seepn a fundamental shit in our approach. we still have a lot more to do to ensure the ambitious goals we set years ago. i believe this is he sengs to the security of the entire world and given the catastrophic consequences of even a single attack, we can not be complacent. i ll clothes by reminding everybody that one of the achievements of our first summit in 2010 was ukraine s decision to remove all its highly enriched uranium from its nuclear fuel sites. had that not happen, those dangerous nuclear materials would still be there now and the difficult situation we are dealing with in ukraine today would involve yet another level of concern. so it s a vivid reminder that the more of this material we can secure, the safer all of our countries will be. we made progress. we have got more to do. we are going to continue our work. i look forward to hosting the fourth nuclear security summit in the united states in two years. thank you again, mark and all your team as well as the people of the netherlands for this outstanding summit. thank you, mr. president. we will go straight to the questions now. the first question will be the associate press. thank you, mr. president. you have been criticized during this dispute with russia as not understanding president putin s motivations. you and others said you thought putin was reflecting or pausing his encouragement to crimea. did you misread his intentions and what do you think his motivations are now? when you spoke about the nsa review in january, you said you weren t sold on the option of having phone companies hold meta-da ta and you thought it raised additional privacy concerns. what has changed since that time and do you think congress will pass the legislation you are seeking? mr. prime minister, there are leaders in europe who have concerns about the sector sanctions the president has proposed on russia s economy. do you think any of those leaders have had their concerns alleviated during their talks with the president over the past few days? thank you. let me see if i can remember all of these. with respect to president putin s motivation, there has been a lot of speculation. i am less interested in motivation and more interested in the facts and the principles that not only the united states but the entire international community are looking to uphold. i don t think that any of us have been under any illusion that russia has been very interested in controlling what happens to ukraine. that s not new. that s been the case for years now. that s been the case dating back to the orange revolution. what we have said consistently throughout this process is that it is up to the ukrainian people to make their own decisions about how they organize themselves and who they interact with. it has always been our belief that ukraine is going to have a relationship to russia. there is a strong historic bond between the two countries. that does not justify russia enroaching on ukraine s territorial integrity or sovereignty. that s exactly what s happened. i said, very early on, that should russia do so, there would be consequences. working with our european partners and our international partners, we have put in place sanctions that have already had some impact on the russian economy. now, moving forward, we have said and i want to be very clear about this, we north recognizing what has happened in crimea. the notion that a referendum sloppily organized over the course of two weeks would somehow justify the breaking off of the crimea and annexation by russia, somehow that would have a valid process. the overwhelming majority of the world rejects. we are also concerned about further encroachment by russia into ukraine. so what i announced and what the european council announced was that we were consulting and putting in place the framework, the architecture for additional sanctions, additional costs should russia take this next step. we also said and will continue to say is that there is another path available to russia. the ukrainian government has said it is prepared to negotiate with russia, that it is prepared to recognize its international obligations and the international community has been supportive of a diplomatic process. that would allow a deescalation of tensions, a moving back of russian troops from ukraine s borders. and rapidly organized elections that allow the ukrainian people to choose their leadership. my expectation is that if the ukrainian people are allowed to make their own decisions, their decision will be that they want to have a relationship with europe and they want to have a relationship with russia. this is not a zero sung game. i think that prime minister and the current government have shown remarkable strength and are prepared to go down the diplomatic path. it is now up to russia to act reresponsibly and show itself to be, once again, willing to abide by international rules and international norms. if it chooses to do so, i think there can be a better outcome. if it fails to do so, there will be additional costs. those will have some disruptive effect to the global economy but they will have the greatest impact on russia. so i think that would be a bad choice for president putin to make. ultimately, he is the president of russia and he is the one that s going to be making that decision. he just has to understand there is a choice to be made here. with respect to even though this was directed at mark, i just want to address this issue of sectoral sections. so far, we have put in place sa sanctions that impact individuals, restrict visas being issued to them, freezes their assets. we have identified one bank in particular in russia that was well-known to be the bank of choice for many of the persons who support and facilitate russian officials from carrying out some of these activities. what we have held off on are more broad-based sanctions that would impact entire sectors of the russian economy. it has not just been my suggestion but the european council s suggestion that should russia go further, such sectoral sanctions would be appropriate. that would include areas potentially like energy or finance or arms sales. or trade. that exists between europe and the united states and russia. what we are doing now at a very technical level, examining the impacts of each of these sanctions. some particular sanctions would hurt some countries more than others. all of us recognize that we have to stand up for a core principle. that lies at the heart of the international order and that facilitated the european union and the incredible prosperity and peace that europe has enjoyed now for decades. so although it could cause some disruptions to each of our economies or certain industries, what i ve been encouraged by is the firmness and the willingness on the part of all countries to look at ways in which they can participate in this process. our preference throughout will be to resolve this diplomatically. i think we are prepared, as we ve already shown, to take the next step, if the situation gets worse. finally, on ukraine, i think it is very important that we spend as much effort on bolstering the economy inside of ukraine and making sure that the elections proceed in an orderly fashion. so my hope is that the imf is able to complete a package for ukraine rapidly to stabilize their finances, their economy. . osce and other international organizations are sending in observers and monitors and we are providing technical assistants to make sure the elections are free and fair. the sooner the elections take place, the sooner the economy is stabilized, the better positioned the ukrainian people will be in terms of managing what is a very challenging situation. with respect to the nsa and i will be just brief on this, i said several months ago that i was assigning our various agencies in the i.c., the intelligence community, to bring me new options with respect to the telephone database program. they have presented me now with an option that i think is workable. it addresses the two core concerns the people have. number one, the idea of government storing bulk data generally. this ensures that the government is not in possession of that bulk data. i want to emphasize once again that some of the dangers that people high pott size when it came to bulk data, there were clear safeguards against but he recognize that people were concerned about what might happen in the future with that bulk data. this proposal that s been presented to me would eliminate that concern. the second thing the people were concerned about is making sure that not only is a judge in the program overall but looking at each individual inquiry that is made into a database. in new plan that s been presented to me does that. so overall i m confident that it allows us to do what is necessary in order to deal with the dangers of a nefarious attack and addresses the dangers that people have raised. i m looking forward to working with congress to make sure we go ahead and pass the enabling legislation quickly so that we can get on with the business of effective law enforcement. let me make it absolutely clear that the european union and the u.s. and yesterday we saw alignment within the summit. we are working very closely together. i can fully support all the answers which you just gave on the question you asked. maybe i can add one thing, which is the effect of the russian economy is very much gas and oil dependant. that means that economic sanctions, if they will be necessary, and we are not there yet, if economic sanctions would be necessary, because this conflict would escalate to the next stage, if this were to happen, these sanctions would hit russia very badly and obviously, you can never guarantee that the people in europe and canada, in the u.s., would not be hurt. obviously, with he will mae wil sure we will design these sanctions in such a way they will have maximum impact on the russian economy and not the european, the japanese, the american economy. we work very closely together and seek total alignment. next question. reportedly, there are about 30,000 russian troops on the border with ukraine. what guarantees can you give to the people of eastern ukraine and to the people in the baltic states, mole da va, other countries, that they will not be next when it comes to the russian politics of annex sayings. with regard to that also, is this a done deal? is there any doubt in your mind that putin will return crimea to where it belongs according to the west or is this diplomatic show of force basically to prevent another land grant somewhere else? on the second question first, on the issue of crimea, it is not a done deal in the sense that the international community by and large is not recognizing the annexation of crimea. the facts on the ground are that the russian military controls crimea. there are a number of individuals inside of crimea that are supportive of that process. there is no expectation that they will be dislodged by force. so what we can bring to bear are the legal arguments, the diplomatic arguments, the political pressure, the economic sanctions that are already in place to try and make sure that there is a cost to that process. i think it would be dishonest to suggest that there is a simple solution to resolving what has already taken place in crimea. although, history has a funny way of moving in twists and turns and not just in a straight line. so how the situation in crimea evolves in part depends on making sure the international community stays unified, indicating this was an illegal action on part of russia. with respect to the russian troops that are along the border of ukraine at the moment, right now, they are on russian soil. if they stay on russian soil, we oppose what appears to be an effort of intimidation by russia has a right legally to have its troops on its own soil. i don t think it is a done deal. i think that russia is still making a series of calculations. again, those calculations will be impacted in part by how unified the united states and europe are and the international community is in saying to russia, this is not how in the 21st century we resolve disputes. i think it is particularly important for all of us to dismiss this notion that somehow russian speakers or national inside of ukraine are threatened and that somehow that would justify russian action. there has been no evidence that russian speakers have been in any way threatened. if anything, what we have seen are provok coutours that have created scuffles inside ukraine. when i here analogy to kosovo where you had thousands of people who were being slaughtered by their government, it s a comparison that makes absolutely no sense. i think it is important for everybody to be clear and strip away some of the possible excuses for potential russian action. with respect to the broader issue of states that are bordering russia and what assurances do they have about future land grabs, as you put it, obviously, some of those countries are nato countries and as nato allies, we believe that the cornerstone of our security is making sure that all of us, including the united states, are abiding by article 5. the notion of collective defense. what we are not doing is organizing even more intensively to make sure that we have contingency plans and that every one of our nato allies has assurances that we will act in their defense against any threats. that s what nato is all about. that s been the cornerstone of peace in the transatlantic region now for several generations. so we will uphold that and there will be a series of nato consultations. it is going to be coming up in which we further develop and deepen those plans. i have not seen any nato members who have not expressed a firm determination with respect to nato members. now, those countries, border countries, that are outside of nato, what we can do, is what we are doing with ukraine, which is trying to make sure there is sufficient international pressure and a spotlight shined on the situation in some of these countries and that we are also doing everything we can to bolster their economies, make sure that through various diplomatic and economic initiatives that they feel supported and they know we stand by them. when it comes to a potential military response, that is defined by nato membership. that is what nato is about. jon karl from abc news. mr. president, thank you. in china, syria, and egypt and now in russia, we have seen you make strong statements, issue warnings that have been ignored. are you concerned that america s influence in the world, your influence in the world, is on the decline and in the light of recent developments, do you think mitt romney had a point when he said that russia is america s biggest geopolitical faux. if not russia, who? mr. prime minister, do you think these sanctions will change vladmir putin s calculation, cause him to back down? do you see where do you see a russian red line where if they go any further, into eastern ukraine and moldova where options beyond sanctions have to be considered? thank you. well, jonathan, i think if the premise of the question is that whenever the united states objects to an action and other countries don t immediately do exactly what we want, that that has been the norm. that would pretty much erase most of 20th century history. i think there is a distinction between us being very clear about what we think is an appropriate action, what we stand for, what principles we believe in versus what is, i guess, implied in the question, that we should engage in some sort of military action to prevent something. the truth of the matter is that the world has always been messy. what the united states has been consistently able to do and continue to be able to do is mobilize the international community around a set of principles and norms and where our own self-defense may not be involved. we may not act militarily. that does not mean that we don t steadily push against those forces that would violate those principles and eye deals we care about. so, yes, you are right. syria, the syrian civil war is not solved and yesterday syria has never been more isolated. with respect to the situation in ukraine, we have not gone to war with russia. i think there is a significant precedent to that in the past. that does not mean that russia is not isolated. in fact, russia is far more isolated in this instance than it was five years ago with respect to georgia and more isolated than it was certainly during most of the 20th century when it was part of the soviet union. the point is that they are always going to be bad things that happen around the world. the united states is the most powerful nation in the world. understandably, is looked to for solutions to those problems. we have put all evidence of our power behind solutions and working with our international powers. standing up for the principles and ideals in a clear way. there are going to be moments where military action is appropriate. there are going to be sometimes where that s not in the interest of national security interest of the united states or some of our partners. that doesn t mean we are not going to continue to make the effort or speak clearly about what we think is right and wrong. that s what we have done. with respect to mr. romney s assertion that russia is our number one geopolitical faux. the truth of the matter is that america has got a whole lot of challenges. russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors. not out of strength but out of weakness. ukraine has been a country in which russia had enormous influence for decades, since the break up of the soviet union. we have considerable influence on our neighbors. we generally don t need to invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them. the fact that russia felt to go in militarily and lay bare these violations of international law indicates less influence, not more my response then continues to be what i believe today, which is, russia s actions are a problem. they don t pose the number one national security threat to the united states. i continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security when with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in manhattan, which is part of the reason why the united states showing its continued international leadership has organized a form over the last several years that has been able to help eliminate that threat in a consistent way. there is no geopolitical conflict that can be solved without the united states. therefore, i applaud the fact that president obama s administration is active in every aarenrena. the initiatives that secretary kerry was taking in the middle east. i was in the region and spoke with leaders in israel and the palestinian territories. they are extremely grateful for the fact that america is providing leadership. this is a difficult issue. it can t be solved overnight. there is no magic wand that can handle this. i spoke with the president in the economic forum in january. we have now the fact that i was label to over 30, 40 years we spoke with an iranian leader. it was possible. it seems it is holding. america provided leadership there. i applaud president obama s role in all these major issues. it is necessary, because the united states is the leader of the free world and needs to provide leadership and he is doing that. your question on president putin, it would be difficult to exactly judge what is happening in the leadership in moscow, in russia at this moment. as i said earlier, i highly undiversified economy like the russian economy, which is so much oil and gas dependant, which has not invested in infrastructure and other areas of the economy, will be worried in the financial sector or in weapons or in trade or indeed, in energy. there could be potential sanctions that will hurt them. we have to design in such a way that it will particularly hit russia and not europe, the u.s., canada or japan. that is what we are working on. we hope we won t need it. i cannot envision this conflict ending up in a military conflict. i don t think it is likely i don t think anybody wants it. i tote little agree with president obama s answers on article 5 where the conflict will be taken to the board in the nato countries. luckily, that is, at this moment, not the case. questions. you met a lot of leaders here. many were angry about the nsa story. have you fixed the relationships with these leaders and the second question is, many are shocked by the extent of which the nsa collects private data. today, we read in the new york times that you plan to end the systematic collection of data of americans but can you address the concerns of the dutch and the rest of the world about their privacy? first of all, we have had a consistent, unbreakable bond between the leaders of europe over the last several decades. it s across many dimensions, economic, military, counter terrorism, cultural. any one issue can be an irritant in the relationship between the countries but it doesn t define those relationships. that continues to be the case and that has been the case throughout the last couple of years. as i setd in a spooech i gave earlier thisser yoo, the united states is very proud of its record of working with countries around the world to prevent terrorism or nuclear proliferation or human trafficking or a whole host of issues that all of us would be concerned about. intelligence plays a critical role in that process. what we ve seen is as technology has evolved, the guidelines and structures that con train how our intelligence agencies operated have not kept pace with these advances in technology. although having examined over the last year, year and a half what s been done, i m confident that everybody in our intelligence agencies operates in the best of intentions and is not snooping into the privacy of ordinary dutch, german, french, or american citizens. what is true is that there is a danger because of these new technologies that at some point, it cob abused. that s why i initiated a broad-based review of what we could do. there are a couple of things we did that are unprecedent. in my speech, i announced that for the first time, under my direction, that we are going to treat the privacy concerns of non u.s. persons as seriously as we are the constraints that already exist by law on u.s. persons. we are doing that not because we are bound by international law but because ultimately it is the right thing to do. with respect to some of the aspects of data collection, what i ve been very clear about is that there has to be a narrow purpose to it, not a broad-based purpose but rather based on a specific concern around terrorism or counter proliferation or human trafficking or something that i think all of us would say has to be pursued. and so what i ve tried to do then is to make sure that my intelligence teams are consulting very closely at each stage with their counterparts in other nations. so that there is greater transparency in terms of what exactly we are doing, what we are not doing. so some of the reporting here in european as well as the united states, frankly, has been pretty sensationalized. i think the fears about our privacy in this age of the internet and big data are justified. i think the actual facts people would have an assurance if that if you are just ordinary citizen, in any of these countries, that your privacy, in fact, is not being invaded. i recognize that because of these revelations, that there is a process that s taking place where we have to win back the trust, not just of governments but more importantly of ordinary citizens. that s not going to happen overnight, because i think that there is a tendency to be skeptical of government and to be skeptical in particular of u.s. intelligence services. so it is going to be necessary for us, the step we took that was announced today, i think is an example of us slowly, systematically, putting in more checks, balances, legal processes. the good news is, that i m very confident it can be achieved. i m also confident that the core values that america has always believed in in terms of privacy, rule of law, individual rights, that that has guided the united states for many years and will continue to guide us in the future. thank you very much, everybody. thank you again. you have been listening to president obama in a news conference with the dutch prime minister. there is the president finishing up with the dutch prime minister. i think really some of his most expansive comments to date over the crisis in ukraine, the president is saying there is no simple solution. he is saying it would be dishonest to suggest there was a simple solution to undo what s already done. in other words, get russian troops out of crimea. he did lay down something of a marker about what the united states would do if russia acts further. he took something of a rhetorical slap at vladmir putin calling russia a regional power. the sanctions are meant to isolate russia economically and politically. also, taking a stab at a bit of a slap at his ego if you will and those kind of comments will make it back to vladmir putin. let s bring in wolf blitzer. he is nour in our d.c. bureau. we noticed the comments and the two leaders and president obama talking about the linking of arms between the remaining g-7 countries about what they are doing to isolate russia. they are pretty much united right now. i think there were some substantive disagreements on specific steps if, in fact, the russians up the ante if you will. if they do anything beyond holding on to crimea. the president basically said that s a done deal. the facts on the ground. he realizes that russia is now in control of crimea even though the u.s. and european allies, almost all of the world, still reguards russia as part of ukraine. they are in charge and the president himself even acknowledged a whole lot of people in crimea who are happy about that. he did warn if the russians do take steps going against other parts of ukraine or if they were to take steps against other countries in that part of the world, eastern europe, certainly, if any steps were taken against nato allies like poland, estonia, lithuania, latvia, charter 5 of the charter would go into effect. you attack one and you attack all. the united states would have to come to the aid of that ally. he did acknowledge for all practical purposes russia is now in control of crimea. he didn t lay out the limits. he said there would be military support if russia encroaches on nato countries. wolf blitzer, in washington, we know you will be covering much more on wolf at 1:00 p.m. we are going to take a quick bre break. when we do come back, we will take a look at the search for flight 370. would get in between my dentures and my gum and it was 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(announcer) love. it s what makes a subaru, a subaru. so when my moderate to severe chronic plaque psoriasis them. was also on display, i d had it. i finally had a serious talk with my dermatologist. this time, he prescribed humira-adalimumab. humira helps to clear the surface of my skin by actually working inside my body. in clinical trials, most adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis saw 75% skin clearance. and the majority of people were clear or almost clear in just 4 months. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal events, such as infections, lymphoma, or other types of cancer have happened. blood, liver and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure have occurred. before starting humira, your doctor should test you for tb. ask your doctor if you live in or have been to a region where certain fungal infections are common. tell your doctor if you have had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have symptoms such as fever, fatigue, cough, or sores. you should not start humira if you have any kind of infection. make the most of every moment. ask your dermatologist about humira, today. clearer skin is possible. he thought it was the endn for his dof the conversation.d. she didn t tell him that her college expenses were going up. or that she maxed out her card during spring break. when the satellite provider checked his credit, he found out his daughter didn t pay her bills. but he s not worried. now he checks his credit report and score at experian.com, allowing him to keep track of his credit and take a break of his own. experian. live credit confident. now, to what is happening at this hour with the malaysia plane airlines mystery. families of the passengers are still trying to come to grips with the devastating announcement from the malaysian government that according to the data they have, they believe the plane went down in the southern indian ocean and no one aboard survived. hundred of family and friends marched furious over what they say are lies coming from the government. obviously, you can see the crowds flashing the police. once they got to the embassy, the families gave a petition there. on the search front, australian maritime officials suspended search efforts today because of storms, high seas, gusty winds in the southern indian ocean. we are told that crews are likely to be back on task tomorrow. australian officials are cautioning the search operation is xl i kate complicated. we are not searching for a needle in a haystack but trying to determine where the haystack is. this is 3,500 meters deep, 2,500 kilometers from perth. they say they have called off search operations in the so-called northern corridor. they base that decision on the new analysis of satellite data. we are going to bring in a couple of guests to help us sort it all out. we have steven, a former ntsb airliner, a commercial and air force pilot. we have dr. bob arnot. he is with us once again as well. a pilot and veteran aviation correspondent. thank you so much for joining us. steve, i want to start with you. the problem today is a lack of search. there is no search going on. they had spotted debris of some kind, wanted to get a closer look. how much of a setback is this? it s certainly a setback. i think the safety investigation needs to be ongoing, and, of course, you ve got to identify a crash site before you can begin the investigation in earnest. so a bit of a setback, but an act of nature so we ve got to comply with that and we ll be done with in a day or so. and hopefully they ll find the wreckage and the crash site soon. we appreciate that optimism. bob, let s talk to you about this information that we saw. the malaysian government deliver to the world and to the families of the passengers. and i think the families specifically were struggling with the fact that they said this information has led to us believe that the plane went down in the south indian ocean with the absence of any wreckage. how do we accept this information as a definitive cause or result of what happened? i really think, given the malaysian government s track record, it s a little hard to take it at face value here. this is a very, very sophisticated analysis. as you know, it s based on what they call the doppler effect. when you hear a siren coming towards you, that frequency changes, that s the doppler effect. well, they re looking at the satellite versus airplanes flying away from it. first time it s of been done. none of us have seen the data. i think the chinese are right. we want to look at this data to make sure they really got it right this time, because they certainly had it wrong most of the last couple weeks. and steve, as we know, we are in a race against time. quite literally here. those black boxes, they stop pinging after 30 days or so after the plane, you know, disappeared. there will not be some of the equipment they need, the tow pinger locater won t arrive. they won t get it on the ship until april 5th and could stop pinging by april 8th. that s very difficult. they re up against it here. i agree. the pinger is important in finding the black box. but keep in mind, air france 447, it was almost two years before we found the recorders on the bottom of the ocean. so, yeah, it would be nice if we could do it via pinger, and a navy ship can find it with their equipment. but if it s not found by the end of the battery life of the recorder the pinger battery life, that is, they ll at least continue to search with all their other sophisticated equipment until they find it. want to say a big thank you to bob arnot. a real delight. thanks so much. we talk about the families and it s really important to always bring the focus back to them. they say they re not going to believe the government s version of what happened until they see proof with their own eyes. joining us to talk about the grief and frustration they are displaying right now, you know, it s very hard for all of us to see is heidi snow. heidi understands this. heidi lost her fiance in the twa 800 crash. since then, she has become a leading advocate for survivors, founding the group a.c.c.e.s.s., and she has trained care teams and aid disaster responders for major airlines. she this also the author of the book surviving sudden loss. heidi, we re all looking at these pictures and hearing just the emotion coming from the people in beijing and kuala lumpur. when you see it, you have such a unique perspective. what do you see? well, for me, it always brings me and all of us back. we had over 1,000 calls to help to a.c.c.e.s.s. over the years for different air disasters and a lot of calls from people from past air disasters, as well as a few of these families now. and for those of us who have been through it before, it brings us back to that crash site, the family assistance center. we all remember being there, just looking for answers. just holding out hope. and i feel like they re very much in that situation right now. and basically, we just kind of went back and forth, hold south hope and then going back to facing the reality that they may never come back to us and our lives are going to be forever changed. and we re going to have to live without them. and until there s some kind of confirmation through wreckage or some type of remains, i really believe that there really is no closure or any way to really get out of going back and forth with this hope that we cling on to and going back it to the reality. i think there needs to be a lot more evidence for the families to really be able to accept that their loved ones actually are gone. and i remember so well at the site, the varying personalities, we really learned at a.c.c.e.s.s. everybody goes through their grief in their own way. and a lot of the emotions that we have seen do remind me of what it was like. we had people who were very quiet, who were in shock. then we had those people who were very angry. and then we had people who were just sobbing. and so it really does resonate with all of us who have been there before. and after interviewing hundreds of people for our book, so much of what we re watching now just really is what the common reactions are for all of us. and what distinguishes air disasters from other types of losses is this waiting period. is this not having answers. and we certainly have a lot of people at a.c.c.e.s.s. who still do not have any remains or any confirmation from other air disasters that their loved ones actually were on board. so it is something that we all live with and one of the things we find most important is really being able to talk to somebody else who has been down that road. and who has had to go through this process. by pairing them according to the relationship of their loss and specific circumstances that they re facing. so we match mothers to mothers, siblings to siblings, spouses to spouses. and if remains are not found, we pair them up with somebody else who also had to wait a long time. so we really find that what has helped the most for our families is really being able to validate some of these feelings that are extremely difficult. and this is such a difficult time, and the rest of the world, i think it s hard for them to understand the hope piece. but all of us know that. because we would do anything we could to keep them alive. heidi, we want to say thank you, because we know this work that you do is ongoing. you have spoken with us before about the ongoing need after the press conferences are over. after the cameras go away. thank you so much, heidi snow. it works with providing emotional support services to survivors and family members of air aviation disasters. it thank you so much for joining us. you can read more about heidi s support group, aircraft casually emotional support services at
to the russians. we no angela merkel has some concerns about that, because the trade flows between germany and russia both ways are huge, but so far, wolf. that test hasn t been put to the countries. they re still talking with one voight. maybe it s only that that s brought putin back from the brink. even so, i would put it this way. 200 points on the dow, it s scotch miss. it could disappear tomorrow if things turn nasty again. certainly could. this is a real volatile situation. richard quest, thanks very much. remember, you can always follow us on twitter. tweet me @warm frontblitzer. tweet the show @sitroom. let any step in with van jones and s.e. cupp. president obama s work is paying off he says have laid mer putin has hit the pause button. which means as much as when russia hit the reset button. the debate starts right now. tonight on crossfire , until pressure from president obama, is vladimir putin backing down? there have been some reports that president putin is pausing for a moment. is he proving his republican critics wrong? on the left, van jones. on the right s.e. cupp. in the crossfire, howard dean, former presidential candidate, and paul wolfowitz, a former deputy defense secretary. is the obama doctrine working? are some republicans undermining the president abroad? tonight on crossfire. welcome to crossfire. we re continuing cnn s breaking news coverage of the crisis in ukraine. i m s.e. cupp on the right. we have a former presidential candidate and former pentagon official. today we saw big hits that the tough diplomacy with russia might work. kerry delivered a billion dollar package to kiev. behind the scenes, the obama administration has put together a crippling set of proposed economic sanctions. while the president is busy doing his job, his republican critics keep trying to undermine him. freshman senator and self-appointed foreign policy expert ted cruz writing under the headline language of fools have laid mer putin running rampant shows how the obama administration s abdication of global leadership is making the world a more dangerous place. thank you very much for that help in a crisis, ted cruz. ted cruz is taking cheap shots. meanwhile, his republican friends are actually trying to raise money on this crisis. instead of actually trying to solve it. i just think that s terrible, s.e. let s moveon.org. here on kroich kroich, former governor howard dean and former deputy defense secretary paul wolfowitz. clearly, clearly president obama has underestimated vladimir putin. russia is stalling on syria, undermining our negotiations in iran, and now russia is invading ukraine. i m not suggesting that obama has made putin a bad actor. russia has been a bad actor for quite some time, but can t you agree that putin has been emboldened by our weakness in that region? no, i don t agree with that. first of all, i think it is true that putin has not kept his word on syria. i think what putin s actions are against international law. i think the president is doing the right thing. he s ratcheting up the heat, slowly enough that putin has a chance to back off. one problem with putin is not only he s broken the law, but he now has to back down an save face at the same time. he needs the opportunity to do that. the president needs to titan the vise, and not making it to some of the rhetoric is great, especially with what secretary kerry has said, the fact that he s taken the ukrainian foreign minister with him is a good thing. you can talk about tightening gradually, but there s i think we re long past the point where some firm action should be taken. let me be clear, the firm action is to begin to scare the 100 or 200 richest people in russia who are the prop of putin s regime and have the money illegitimately. that s the money at risk. that needs to be done and done quickly. the brits, usually or stronger allies are putting the can i bosch. david cameron in a leaked piece of paper, said it was leaked today, said yesterday, that he wasn t interested in any kind of thing that might take russian money out of the city of london. talk about a message of weakness. putin is the problem here, not ted cruz. i have criticism of obama s behavior up to this point. i would say, for example, on this example, you know, putin looks at the red line in syria, the chemical weapons thing. he doesn t but the way to make him take it seriously is to do something now. if cameron doesn t like it, tell the british people that enabling london s theft of money. i didn t say weakness. i said rhetoric and reality. duly corrected. isn t the reality that they face the same situation when putin ran into georgia, and they did nothing? two wrongs don t make a right where i come from. we should say something about american values and interests at stake here. and it is taking place in a very unstable where every country has large minority interested in it. what would you have done difficultly this week, what would you have told him to do? i would go bad further. i would say don t talk reset with a man who s declared his goal in life is to restore the soviet union. i would not have whispered i ll have more flexibility after the election. fair enough. what would you have done this week difficultly? you start with evaluating him realistically. what do you think he thinks of our study? i really have no use for the russians at all. i haven t for a long time. i like the russians. i don t like putin. the history of russia since the revolution has not been a pretty one in terms of their can i correct you on that for a minute? yeah. in 1994, a different russian president, boris yeltsin agreed with ukrainian independence. the ukrainance in return gave up their nuclear weapons and allowed the russians to have this base in crimea. putin is not a typical russian. he s a typical kgb cold war the point i m trying to make is i do want to say that if i m behind the scenes, i want to screen the russians carefully and slowly. i think the ukrainance have handled this incredibly well. they just kicked out an incredibly corrupt president who really had no stanton anymore. they have an unstable government, because they re trying to put this together. for them not to fire a shot was very, very smart. they would have ended up where the georgians did. this is tough stuff. i don t have to tell you that. you ve been in the seat. it s not a matter of saying we have to support the president. it s a matter of saying we need to give this president time to get to the result he needs to get to. i think running going too fast and too hard is probably a mistake. do you agree with the ambassador we should cancel our appearance at the g-8? eventually yes, but let s work up to that carefully. i assume somebody is telling vladimir putin, this is what you can expect in the next few days. if you don t do something to i don t think have laid march pew people tell putin there s always a back channel, always a way that somebody is talking to somebody in the kremlin. i presume they re saying this is what is really going to happen. let me bring up recent poll numbers on president obama. he came into office in 2009 and said he wanted to restore image around the role, but this poll asked if americans think the president is respected abroad. in the five years he s been in office, it s dropped 26 percentage points president isn t that an indictment of the foreign policy? i think that s hard to say. almost every president, including his predecessor is at their nater of this time in the second term. if you think the president kicks his dog, he might get better numbers. don t you think the president has made some very serious foreign policy mistakes. we don t need to color the entire administration, but you would add miss his s made some mistake. i this was that was a mistake. putin bailed him out. a farce cal but that s on putin. we need to hold him accountable for that red line. i think we need to do that. let me ask you a question. even looking at russia. if you look at what obama has been able to do, first of all, he didn t what he said was we re going to do three pragmatic things air rights over russia. he got that done. he said he was going to get russian table on iran. he actually has gone some things done here with regard to russia, and now the eu really is the one that how system obama s fault at this stage? look, you talked about what american public opinion, judging what foreigners think about the united states. i care about one foreign are at this moment and it s vladimir putin. he kind of gave his opinion, maybe is changing his mind, but the last statement is a warning that he will do it elsewhere in ukraine. i think we re talking about how to manage risk here. no one wants this thing to blow up into a military confrontation, but peeten seems to think he can keep pushing and pushing. we re going to find out. in the next few days. he s going to stay where he is or advance into eastern ukraine. if he does that, i think you ll see some major stuff going on. we blamed obama and bush, but there s one person who also bearing blame here. i ll ask howard dean about her, next. 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this is ridiculous conversation, s.e. it really isn t. this is going to haunt her for the next two years. these are talking points. it s beneath your show to put out partisan talk you don t think she s responsible for setting the tone of naivete with a clearly bad actor? first of all, it was joe biden s idea, and second of all the president s idea and that was before hillary clinton was even asked to be secretary of state, first of all. second of all, it is irresponsible not to talk to a major glob power and try to work stuff out with them. as van earlier said, what about the disarmament agreement, which is still successful, which the president had to get through, thanks to people like dick lugar, we prevailed. this is ridiculous washington talk. i hope you re right, i have a feeling this might come back to haunt her. i m sure it will, and people won t give a damn. people give a damn. this is a this is the ted cruz talk of the this is also s.e. cupp. people are talking about it. you don t want to be in the same seat with ted cruz. i don t mind. as we get to you, actually talk does matter and some of the talk from the republicans has been incredibly irresponsible. i want you to see this tweet from one of the great republican leaders, lindsey graham. he said it started with benghazi. when you kill americans and nobody pays a price, you invite this type of aggressio aggression, #ukraine. here is lindsey graham, a foreign policy guru sending out mean tweets, blaming the president for this. don t you think that s irresponsible? lindsey graham has to speak for himself. i think it is a risky world when people begin to think forget benghazi. people look at syria, and they see the president of the united states says assad must go. he says chemical weapons mustn t be used. now they have agreed chemical weapons are used and we do nothing. frankly he was fighting the act, which have labeled some of the cleptocrats didn t. don t you think this type of stuff it s not like anything the democrats ever did. i know! where is this i ve got one more indignant thing which i think is even worse, and this is from the head of the republican senate campaign saying president obama s leadership on the world stage has been marked by weakness, indecent and incompetent. say you re committed to restoring real american leadership by contributing today. they are actually raising money in the middle of a crisis. are you really sure that democrats have not done just that a million times? that feels an hypocrite cal. do you think this type of stuff is appropriate? i m not here to condone or approve. that s not the way i talk and it s not the way i like people talking about us in the administration, but believe me, the democrats in my experience do it three or four times more than republicans. so, you know, it s the pot calling the kettle black. maybe so. but honestly it s not the biggest issue of the time, by the way. putin is not judging his behavely what ted cruz or lindsey graham says. he s judges behave by what he thinks president obama is going to do. so far he hasn t seen much. i have not seen the republicans support the president on anything. name one thing that the republicans have supported him on. we did support your administration when it came to immigration and health care reform. we did try to stand with you on the wars. unfortunately the republicans have not stood with the president on anything. the republicans have supported the president in afghanistan. i don t know i think better than democrats. the republicans supported the president on his asia policy, particularly his breakthrough in burma, which was a genuine success. and democrats did not support the president on his syria policy. they didn t vote for it, either. i know a lot of democrats who are privately unhappy, as maybe howard is privately, at what looks like, sorry to say it, weakness in the face of a villain out tie rant. just today, it s still teetering on the brink of disaster. take a look at this encounter. i mean, that s intense stuff. today the russians moved forward with a preplanned intercontinental ballistic missile test which would been scheduled. i don t know that he had to do it today, but he decided to. isn t putin showing he s ready to go? we have to find that out. look, we re not going to commit troops to this. of course not. of course not. so that leaves one other possibility. that s some sort of diplomacy coupled with sanctions, which i hope is where the president is going. again, i revert to what i said earlier. first of all, we don t know what s going on behind the scenes, but i m sure something is, because it always does. secondly, what the president should be doing, and i suspect he is, is tightening plenty i have advance notice. i think he s trying to avoid any rhetoric that he doesn t have to get into. he needs to get putin to stand down and putin to save face needs to show he s doing it. so far, there hasn t been a shot aimed at another soldier on the other side. once that happens, it s almost impossible to put that the genie back in the bottle. are you confident we can talk putin down? not at all. i think putin has to see something tough in his face. we re consumed with who in the united states is to blame for all this. the man to blame is vladimir putin. the tragedy and we should emphasize this more than we do is that you know, boris yeltsin was comfortable ukrainian independence. things were going well till this thief became the tie rapt of russia. taking russia back into the 20th century. shevardnadze was the president. the succession of crooks. it wasn t till the orange revolution putin started to get nervous. you re right shevardnadze wasn t in russia. weigh in on today s fire back question. is president obama underestimate std vinnie polit ing it vladimir putin? we also have the outrage of the day including how republican indifference is now hurting more than 2 million americans when we get back. 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[phones rings] okay, i ll send it. one hundred seventy-two dollars for a chemistry book, what is it, made of gold? just use citi popmoney. boom. ah, she s feeling lucky. hey sweetie.cancun, yeah no, you ll be spending spring break with your new chemistry book. with citi popmoney it s easy to send money to just about anyone, anytime. visit your local branch or citi.com/easierbanking to learn more. . welcome back. it s time for the outrage of the day. i am outraged on behalf of 2.3 million of our fellow americans. these are active job seekers the republicans refuse to give any help or support to. you ve got the job market that s still tough. folks need more time to look for jobs. plus, a little bit of gas money to get to job interviews. that s why congress should have extended unemployment benefits straight out. unfortunately, just before christmas, republicans said no way. that is unbelievable. they extended, these same republicans extended unemployment five times under george w. bush but under obama, the gop decided it wants to be the party of scrooge all year long. i wish that extending unemployment benefits would actually get people back to work. i m sorry to say. helps them find work. it doesn t. my outrage. this is a warning to parents out there. please shield your children s eyes. i m about to do something you don t want them to see. ready? that there got a columbus ohio fifth grader suspended from school for three days. the charge? exposing other students to a level two look alike firearm. yes, those words exist. i d sure hate to see what a level three looks like. this is the kind of ridiculous childish progressive nonsense that makes it nearly impossible to have a real conversation about curbing gun crime because if you start with dumb ideas like this, how can anyone take you serious will i? let s also curb obesity and alcoholism by banning the hand gestures that accompany them. this is ludicrous. grow up, people. well, or the nra s gazillions of dollars they spend. this is going to solve everything. let s check in our fire back results. is president obama underestimating putin? right now 56% of say an yes, 44% say no. ambassador, are you surprised by the results?
being on. let s reset at the top of the hour now. i m anderson cooper. thank you for joining us. we re following two major breaking stories that the hour. the downing of malaysian airlines flight 17 that killed 298 people in ukraine. and i m wolf blitzer reporting from jerusalem. the other major story, the breaking story we were following, the crisis in gaza, where israel launched a major ground offensive and it continues. a lot to get you up to date on in this hour. president obama today laying out the priorities and the aftermath of the airline crash in the ukraine. the priorities, learning the truth first, he say then acting. there has to be a credible international investigation into what happened. the u.n. security council has endorsed this investigation and we will hold all its members, including russia, to their word. in order to facilitate that investigation. russia, pro-russian separatists and ukraine must adhere to an immediate cease-fire. evidence must not be tampered with. investigators need access to the crash site. and the solemn task of returning those lost on board the plane to their loved ones needs to go forward immediately. here s what we know. when malaysian airlines flight 17 went down yesterday, most of the people on board, 189, were from the netherlands. president obama today identified by name one american who was also killed. the airline announcing today that they will make an initial cash payment of $5,000 to the family of each passenger. it sounds like very little amount of money. meant to cover travel expenses, immediate expenses, to the crash side. an audio recording ukrainian officials say they intercepted. and one of the voice on the tape describing debris falling from the sky and saying, quote, he s 100% sure the plane is a civilian aircraft. the question of course, did anyone know it was a civilian aircraft before they shot it down. whichever side of the you d cra ukraine conflict is found spons ashlgs these deaths were not involved in that conflict. an asian airliner filled with people from all over the world. and everyone agrees there will be some sort of backlash, certainly some impact. jim sciutto is our chief national security. the question now is where will that backlash come, who will feel it, what form will it take. most likely russia. the president clearly treading very carefully here in his comments about the white house. saying we have to be certain first of exactly what happened. so they re taking their time. but, more and more, the evidence coming from the u.s. side and the ukrainian side points to some russian involvement. the president said so in so many words. he said that this, in his words, is not an accident. a plane cannot be shot down without sophisticated equipment. and he says that sophisticated equipment, including anti-aircraft missiles, are coming from russia. we re just learning now that the working theory of u.s. intelligence now is that this missile system, which both u.s. and ukrainian officials believe was responsible for taking down this passenger yet, this buk system we ve talked a lot about, anderson, that it was supplied to the rebels by russia. that would be a shocking revelation if confirmed. because it means russia would not just be indirectly responsible for this, but directly responsible. and that means greater consequences. the trouble is, how severe are those consequences. just a day before this crash, president jim, i just got to interrupt you. there s a pentagon briefing. we ll go to that live. and that support has included arms, material and training. as we investigate who did this and why, this terrible tragedy underscores the need for russia to take immediate and concrete steps to deitescalate the crisi in ukraine. and i have one update on cape bray. the crew aboard cape bray continue their work to neutralize materials from the stockpile. as of this morning, the crew has neutralized just over 15% of the df, which is a sarin precursor. this amount has been verified by the international organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons. he s no longer talking about the aircraft itself. actually, let s listen as he is taking questions. let s just see yeah, let s listen in. of russian heavy weapons across the border into ukraine and the president spoke about training, all of that. can you go through this and tell us the latest u.s. assessment, u.s. military assessment, of what the russians have been doing in transferring heavy weapons, surface to air missiles, artillery, other heavy weapons across the border, to separatists on the ukraine side and the training and assistance that you believe russian elements, the russian military, is giving to these separatists. no hint that russian support for the separatists have ceased. in fact, we continue to believe that russia continues to provide them with heavy weapon, military equipment, financing as well. they continue to allow these russian fighters to enter the ukraine freely. there have been, as you know, we ve acknowledged that some tanks, armored personnel vehicles, have made their way across the border. it is a it has been a steady concerted campaign by russia s military to continue to support and resource, advise, these separatists. have you seen there is some video out there, i don t know that you ve seen the particular video, have you seen evidence that an sa-11 or buk missile system would cross the border at some point from russia into ukraine, and what can you tell us about that system and the sophistication and training that would be needed by russian separatists to actually be able to operate it effectively? i don t have specific information about a buk system making that transit. we re not ruling anything in or out at this point. it is it is a sophisticated that said, it is a sophisticated system. the missile itself, the saa 11, which is the one we believe was used to down flight 17, is a sophisticated piece of technology. and it it strained credulity to think it could be used by separatists without at least some measure of russian support and technical assistance. they didn t just do it on their own? it strain e eed crew duality think it could be used without assistance. you have evidence of that? we want investigators to do their work. i don t have an indication now that a system was brought over and we don t exactly know who is responsible for firing that missile or with or with what assistance. what i m saying is that system is fairly sophisticated. so what is the level of their training and assistance? does it include russian forces going across the border into ukraine to work as advisers or trainers side by side with the separatists? there s been russian there s been incursions across the border by russian aircraft so, i mean, i think we have we don t have any reason to suspect that they haven t provided some measure of support on the other side of that border. i mean, these paramilitary forces that we don t talk about as much anymore certainly didn t act or behave or like some ragtag militia. so nobody s suggesting that russian military advice and assistance hasn t somehow crossed that border. it s just unclear exactly how much and when and who. again, that s what the investigators are going to look at. we got to let them do it. are we to believe it was just a coincidence that the president announced sanctions directly on the maker of this buks system just the day before? i won t get into the thought process behind the president s specific decisions. clearly, these are another round of targeted sanctions. designed to change the calculation and president s putin s behavior and decision making. what you re seep m to think what you re suggesting [ inaudible ] i have no information that s the case. second question, what s the working theory about the intent? was this an intended military target gone awry? or was this simply an act of terrorism perhaps? we don t know. again, that s what we ve got to let investigators figure out. we don t know what the motive was here. what is your theory? what is your working theory? i don t think we have a working theory at this point. this just happened yesterday. there s teams of investigators now trying to get to the site and pore through this. we just have to let them do their job. admiral, people in this department have said before that there were about 10,000 to 12,000 regular russian troops inside the russian side of the border, which is a build-up from a couple of weeks ago. is that still your estimate? have those forces changed since this attack yesterday? can you tell us about, you know, as much as you can what they re doing or what their posture is in terms of a potential incursion? yes, that s a great question. i don t know of any major change to that presence. it s roughly, still, about 10,000 to 12,000. and it fleck wait fluctuates ae bit from week to week. the point is, it has been, over time, a steady increase of these combined arms tactical battalions across the border on the russian side but to the southeast of ukraine. and they are close to the border. in many cases, closer than those forces who were more aligned along the east. if you remember, we had tens of thousands that were along the eastern border with ukraine, but not as close as these units appear to be. all they re doing is further escalating tension. it s difficult to know what their intent is. that s a question you should ask the russian military defense. they re there. they re going by size week by week. they do nothing more than escalate tension. is that process separate from these regular i haven t seen any indication they re actively involved in the provision of support to the separatists. i haven t seencontinuing to mas along that side of the border. justin. two questions. do that massing of forces, does that include air, defense, artillery systems like the sa 11 that was used in malaysian have you seen air defense equipment on the russian side of the border in that build-up? i don t have an inventory of what they ve got with them, justin. we assess these are combined arms units. in other words, it s not just infantry troops, but they have artillery capability, they ve got armor capability. they re combined arms. and they re very ready. this is a very capable force. though smaller in number than what was aligned along the border before. i don t have a complete inventory of what they ve got. an estimate of about 12,000 russian troops on the border in the russian side. obviously, the u.s. has been tracking the work of russian special operations forces, russian advisers, russian intelligence services, in ukraine. is there an estimate of the size of that advisory presence inside the eastern ukraine by russian forces? is it a handful? is it 1,000 guys? i don t have the number for you on that. that s less important than the fact that they continue to do it. and we continue to see this support and resourcing and advice given to these separatist groups. we have every indication that support is russian, coming from the russians. in ukraine we believe there are there is russian support for the separatists inside ukraine, yes. admiral, when the general was here a couple weeks ago, he said specifically that the ukrainian separatists were receiving training on russian territory on using what he called vehicle born anti-aircraft systems. how much training, can you elaborate, has that intensified in recent weeks, and was he referring to an as-11-type system? i don t know what assessment he was referring to but we agree some separatists have received training in these vehicle born systems. there s no question about that. i don t have i mean, i don t have an estimate of how many and who s doing it. that would have to raise particular alarms, wouldn t it? it s one thing, small arms. but vehicle born anti-aircraft systems, that s pretty serious. it is pretty serious. we ve been taking it serious. we ve been monitoring the situation there as closely as we can. and we ve been nobody in the pentagon has been shy about talking about the continued threat posed by these separatist elements in ukraine or by those combined arms forces continuing to amass along the border. phil. has the pentagon or u.s. government increased its surveillance of the area along the border in the wake of this disast disaster? i would just say that we re monitoring events as closely as we can. and i really don t have any more to add than that. you don t want to say whether it s increased or not? we re monitoring events as closely as we can. i ll go back to the general s comments. were there any warnings given to the commercial airline companies or any civilian airline authorities about the existence or this level of training for those taking place there was a notice to airmen put out. i think you know that. that warns civilian aircraft to fly, to take care over the skies of ukraine and to fly at higher altitudes. not an expert on that entire process but there was an international notice to civilian air carriers about that. was that prompted by what the general said, the training of vehicle born you d have to talk to the faa and other agencies that handle that. i don t know what prompted it. i think it was obviously if you re going to issue a warning like that, it s based on concerns that you have about surface to air missile activity and capabilities. yeah. you said that you don t know what the intent was of whoever fired the missile. were there any indications there were other airlines, perhaps ukrainian military planes, in the sky at that time? also, is there any concern the president keeps saying put be wants to stop this, he can. are there any concerns perhaps this is a situation that is poised to spiral out control and perhaps russian doesn t have the control of the separatists and, if so, how are you preparing? on your first question, i don t know. this is ukrainian airspace. i remembfer to them to speak ab that. we wouldn t have that here. on your second question, i think the president s been very clear about what the responsibilities and obligation of president putin and moscow are right now. which is to deit s calculate the tension. respect the territorial integrity of ukraine. and cease support for the separatist activities. which i said at the outset, in some cases, is intensifying. even after yesterday s incidents? i don t know of any big delta between their support from yesterday to today. we haven t seen any sign that it s not that it s stopping. yes. admiral, there had been previous to yesterday s tragedy, there had been two or three, at least, ukrainian transport planes shot down. does your intelligence and your knowledge indicate the system that shot down the plane yesterday was a more powerful, more sophisticated system requiring more training, or was it similar to the system that was used to shoot down the ukrainian transport planes? it s again, we re investigating this right now. it s unclear exactly what brought down the other aircraft you re talking about. i mean, we know they were shot down, but those those incidents are still being looked into. i don t have any great visibility on what brought them down. but i d like to just kind of bring you back to the larger point here. that these aircraft are being shot down. and while it s unclear exactly who s pulling the trigger here, it s pretty clear it s doing nothing to deitescalate the tension inside ukraine and to bring to this crisis a peaceful resolution. now innocent people simply flying from one city to another have been killed. and brought into this. so let s not lose sight of the big picture here. it matters a lot less, you know, exactly what system it was and a lot more that it happened and it needs to stop. just a quick follow, do you believe whoever shot this plane down could have mistaken for a ukrainian military transport? ei m not going to get into te motivations, the intent, the reasoning that went into this. that s for the investigators to figure out. we simply don t have that level of detail at this point. ma am. normally friend or foe measures on systems like this? if it was an accident, would that reveal a dangerous lack of training on the part of whoever was using it? i don t know yet. i m not an expert on that system. i wouldn t begin to get up here and try to dissect it for you. investigators are going to pile through this. exactly who are these investigators? it will be it s an international investigation. does it include dod, does it include cia there s no plans right now for a dod representative on this. i won t speak for other agencies. i believe there will be some other entities from the federal government, individuals going over there to participate in it. i don t have the makeup of the team. it will be an international investigation. do you anticipate i have no expectation right now there will be a dod rep on this team. the president said he saw no role for the u.s. military in responding to this. but what ever happened to that list of requests for equipment that the ukrainians sent at the beginning of this? yeah, we continue to review requests for, or ukrainian requests for military assistance. some $33 million that the president has authorized of material has been getting to ukrainian, ukrainian armed forces and border services. the support continues to flow. we continue to take a look at their needs and addressing each in turn. last i remember, it was mres. is there any do you have a more complete list? yes, there s been more. the recent deliveries include radios, body armor, individual first aid kits, sleeping mats, uniform items. over the next few months, additional items will move through to include night vision goggles, thermal imageers, kevlar, some additional radios. there s been some other equipment given to ukraine s border guards. barbed wire, alarms systems. excavato excavators. trucks, generators. xun cations. communications. gear. part of a package of more than $33 million now that the president has approved and that stuff continues to flow. listening to a spokesman at the pentagon. want to bring in our jim sciutto. want to bring in our chief national security correspondent jim sciutto. one of the things the spokesman from the pentagon said earlier, said it strained credulity they could do this without russian assistance, it was a fairly sophisticated device used. although they certainly don t foe who pushed the trigger. that was exactly the line i was thinking, anderson, the most significant from that press conference. follows on with what the president was saying earlier, this is not an accident, in the president s words, that they can t shoot the separatists couldn t shoot down the plane without sophisticated assistance. that assistance coming from russia. then on the floor of the security council, saying the systems are complicated, it s likely the separatists would have needed russian help, russian training. and now in addition to that, anderson, you have the u.s. intelligence community saying it s their working theory at this point that that missile system itself, the actual launcher, came across the border from russia. we have some audio we ve obtained, again, from ukrainian officials, seeming to show that that launcher came across the border. so that gives direct, as popposo just indirect, goes to the question you asked earlier, who bears the consequence to this. the president, goingrd too, you have to envision him marshalling support for stiffer sanctions against russia. yesterday, there had been some thought perhaps there was a system captured by pro-russian rebels from the ukrainian military. but as you just said, a senior defense official is at thing cnn their work theory abeimong the military is russian military supplied this buk missile system. it s a if question. this is what i was told. their working theory is this missile system came from a ukrainian base in crimea and that it was transferred from crimea to eastern ukraine, but via russian territory. if you look at a map, it would have to go from ukraine, through, you know, one route would be to take it through russia. that was their working theory. one of the comeing, many questions that hasn t been established yet. based on the statement from the pentagon, the president, our u.n. ambassador, that they would at least need training to operate this thing as well and that adds more responsibility. we re going to talk, when we come back, to a reporter on scene at the crash site for the latest on exactly what s happening there. we ll be right back. great. but parallel parking isn t one of them. you re either too far from the curb. or too close to other cars. it s just a matter of time until you rip some guy s bumper off. so, here are your choices: take the bus. or get liberty mutual insurance. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won t raise your rates due to your 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maps out and split up the territory. at the same time, it wasn t a sophisticated approach. they were still tying white cotton to stakes and basically walking through the fields and marking these spots. and the local population started emerging from their homes. people in the village down below sort of walking their cows trying to make sense of what had happened. many of them still in deep shock. there had been some reports of possible looting or removal of items or removal even of debris. did you see any of that? i myself didn t. i spoke to a colleague who had been sort of at the outskirts of the perimeter and saw a few guys going through suitcase that had fall en from the sky and talkin about whether to take a guide book. to say there s been extensive looting, at least during the morning period while i was there, is pretty difficult. you know, the perimeter there is being controlled. there s one rebel commander there who told me essentially by three groups. one is a set of fighters from nearby. the cosacks appear to be the wild card as always in this situation. so it s a little more difficult to say what s happening on their side of things. did yesterday you had talked that in some cases they were moving bodies, sort of trying to get all the victims together. does that continue today? did you see that? no, they haven t actually been touching the bodies at all from what i ve seen. they as far as we know have been asked through back channels. the prime minister of the donetsk people republic has been asked not to touch the bodies by malaysian and dutch authorities, suggesting people are still hoping there will be a chance for folks, international observers and investigators to enter the area. the concern of course is you have hundreds of bodies decaying in a field before anyone has a chance to get to them. it s summer here. it was raining actually earlier in the day. to put it simply, it s not ideal conditions. did it seem to you that most i mean, obviously, investigators are going to be looking at what kind of wreckage pieces of the wreckage and also even people themselves. are most of the people i m not sure how to ask this, are most of the people intact? i think it s about 50/50. i did a walk-through this morning and sort of in the daylight and counted roughly 50, 50 bodies, and i d say at least half of them are so mangled you simply couldn t identify them. some just kind of twisted corpses that look almost picasso-esque. but at the same time there are others that if handled properly, could be clearly identified. are there still we ve seen images of large pieces of wreckage. are most of the pieces very identifiable? most of the pieces of the debris? are there large chunks of the aircraft still intact? it seeps the debris split into sort of two clusters as it fell from the sky. the tail fin sort of further up the road. and some other debris scattered in that vicinity. and then the main crash site, which is closer to the village at the lower end of the field seems to be where the fuselage, the engines, landed. a lot of that has been burnt out. the flight hadn t taken off too long before it went down, so there was a lot of fuel still in the tank. you can really see that when you walk through the crash site. some of the alloy from the plane has sort of melted, resolidified. silver on the ground. in terms of do you have any information about black boxes or flight data recorders? there have been conflicting reports cy don t have anything that i could confirm. i ve heard the same conflicting reports that everyone has all day. and folks are continuing from both sides. to report at one moment that they have them and the next moment that they don t have them. so i think it s, again, a moment where it s worth waiting, not rushing to conclusions. and letting the situation play out a little bit in order to find out what s actually going on. ukrainian officials said they have been trying to get access to the site. in some cases, there work has been hampered. do you see any evidence officials from ukraine or accident investigators either doing work or trying to get access to a site? in the morning, there was nobody from ukraine or international groups there. i heard a group of observers visited the site. apparently there was an incident where some of the cosack guards either didn t understand exactly who the osce was or didn t appreciate their presence and caused some problems in terms of entry to the site. though rebel leaders have assured me that they will continue to and intend to allow international observers and journalists to work, they said their command is not to let locals on to the site. but beyond that, they don t plan to inpose any restrictions. i know you have also been talking to a number of pro-russian rebel leaders and spokespeople. what are they telling you, in terms of claims of responsibility, in terms of what they want to see happen? you know, it s an interesting question. it points to a larger problem. in terms of the long-term standing of eastern ukraine. most of the rebels here, i would say frankly across the board, deny responsibility for this. they claim it s a provocation conjured up by the ukrainian authorities in kiev. many of them claim they don t have is the equipment or that they don t have enough of the components of this missile system buk to actually hit this plane. when it comes to the fighters themselves, i think it s a moment where perception proves to be more powerful than reality. for these folks, even if evidence is presented by the western by western governments or by kiev, it s politicized in the eyes of the rebel fighters. these are men who have been fighting now for three months, if not a little bit more, and they ve given up their regular lives. there doesn t seem to be anyone saying that they re ready to rethink their position or to rethink their cause as a result of the malaysian airlines disaster. so the video posted by ukraine s interior ministry on its facebook page showing a buk system, according to the ukraine officials, heading towards russia, with one missile missing, things like that, that s all discounted by anybody in the rebels who you talked to? absolutely. to put it mildly, they don t trust a word that kiev says. i think anything that s released by the current authorities in kiev is seen in rebel eyes as fabricated, as intended to essentially to draw nato into ukraine. that s the understanding. the rebels think ukrainians want to establish more precedent to involve nato forces in ukraine in order to escalate western involvement and western attachment to the new government in kiev. is there anything else you want people to know about the crash site, about what is happening there right now? you know, i think one, for me, the important thing to note is there s still a lot of work to be done in order to secure the bodies. there s a lot of people talking about talking about the parts of the plane. talking about establishing evidence chains in order to have a proper investigation. and all of that is it s certainly important, but i think, especially for the for anyone who s walked through that scene, the bodies, the effects of the people on board, would receive as much attention as the more politicized debris are there capabilities there to properly handle the victims of this crash? are there morgue facilities? are there refrigeration, you know, mobile refrigeration trucks? can at this point, do they need all that to help? i think they do need all of that. i don t think they have it. the rebel quote/unquote minister alexander boridi mentioned today they don t have the proper equipment to store and secure and maintain the bodies so that s perhaps an area where the international community, observers could play a role, seems to be a point on which the separatist leadership is ready to cooperate. how easy is it to get to this site? i mean, is it because it s, you know, as we ve seen in past instan instances, it s very possible you may have family members wanting to come to the crash site as soon as possible. is how remote is it? how possible is it to actually get there? it s about 90 minutes from the regional capital donetsk where i m actually right now. it s off in a classic ukrainian countryside village, down sort of pothole-riddled roads, but the main issue i think for anyone traveling in this region right now is effectively the roads are controlled by the separatist groups. you have to pass through a series of checkpoints in order to move along the roads. i don t imagine they would be particular particularly happy or particularly kind to visiting foreigners. all journalists here have to receive accreditation through the separatist authorities. without that press card, you end up you end up held, held back from moving, moving around. it s not a at the same tie, there s still there s still fighting going on. there s still skirmishes. the city near to the crash site. so it s not an especially safe place to be traveling, although, again, i imagine on the issue of the bodies themselves and the folks impacted by the crash, the rebels seem a bit more willing to meet in the middle. noah schneider, i know, it s been an exhausting night for you. thank you. we ll continue to check in with noah in the coming days. up next, i ll talk to my panel about preserving what is a crime scene, multiple crime scenes, over a wide area, and the investigation of the crash. at every ford dealership, you ll find the works! it s a complete checkup of the services your vehicle needs. so prepare your car for any road trip by taking it to an expert ford technician. because no matter your destination good maintenance helps you save at the pump. get our multi-point inspection with a synthetic blend oil change, tire rotation, brake inspection and more for $29.95 or less. get a complete vehicle checkup only at your ford dealer. joining know new is the former inspector general of the nstb. our military analyst. and in washington, peter golz, a specialist in aviation and international crisis management. also joining us is david soucie, cnn aviation analyst. appreciate all of you being with us. david, we were just hearing from noah schneider about the crash scene. from what he said, in terms of trying to, trying to investigate this, what challenges lay ahead? this really isn t just one crime scene, this is multiple crime scenes spread out over a great distance. yes, it is. documenting it is a challenge just when it s a singular accident but now you ve got several different things that have to be treated as accident sites. if bodies are falling separately, those have to be documented as well, what tract tra jektry the object that hit the ground went what will give clues what type of explosion it was, what type of speed. there s a lot of conclusions to be had. if those are moved, it can lead you down the wrong path. even the conditions of the victims are important in all of this to determine what happened. that s absolutely right and of course the method of bringing down the plane, the residue. at this point, the air crash investigators can tell you it was a you know, a missile brought down a plane and how the plane came down. but at this point, i would be inclined to say this is not an article 13 iko accident investigation and treat it as an international crime scene explain the difference, how do you mean? at that point, like we did in 9/11, the united states, after the four planes on 9/11, the ntsb was not in charge, the fbi was in charge, because it was an international criminal investigation. you have many more powers. you have the power literally to seize evidence. you can go in and get what you want and what you need. they need that right now. just looking at the crime scene and the report, great report, but it s out of control. rick, how do you see it? well, you know, they need to get the evidence and as david said i think it s important we find out how that weapon impacted that aircraft, to find out what it did and that might give us a better clue as to the condition of the weapon. we re hearing different reports about where that came from. was it a front-line russian piece of equipment? was it something taken from a ukrainian base? was it modified? this would be important. peter golz, just as, you know, as noah was talking about, the priority is obviously dealing with the victims of this crash, dealing with them in a sensitive way, dealing with them in a humane way, in a dignified way. and right now they don t have the capabilities on the ground really to do that. no, they don t. what has to happen is there has to be international action to form a recovery team that goes in immediately. that is promised protection by both the ukrainians, the separatists and the russians. and if that kind of protection s not promised and not delivered, then there s got to be sanctions immediately placed. i mean, the evidence going to be there. after twa flight 800, we tested the explosive residue and the explosive evidence of a missile detonating near aircraft skin. the investigation will know what the marker is on that case, in this accident. they will see the evidence. but the most important thing is to get a team in immediately to begin recovering the victims and treating them with some dignity and that really is in the hands of the russians, the ukrainians and the and in terms of the black boxes, the flight data recorders, they are important, but even david soucie, even if they have been removed and again, we have not been able to confirm it, and noah has not been able to confirm the status of them, there is still the wreckage themselves, from the victims themselves. there is more to be learned than what the boxes would tell us. and at the very most with the black boxs, whether there was a warning or not, whether they had been tried to be contacted, taken evasive action to say we re off track, there is someone who doesn t want us to here, do they start to turn the other way. that would be the black box information. but as far as we have talked about earlier with the impact of what type of effect the ballistic missile that hit the aircraft or exploded outside the aircraft, that is important information to know so you can decide whether it came from. and have you ever seen a crash/crime scene like this? yes, i have. in terms of the different actors in play. yes, pan am 103, september 11, klo-7, and with the residue on the bodies and the plane, but now you re in an international criminal man hunt. and in the midst of conflict. in the midst of conflict and how they re going to secure even and the workers to come in and retrieve the bodies, they need to have security. they don t want to be harmed in that process. mary schiavo, david soucie, rick francona, we appreciate you being with us. president obama saying there were hiv aids advocates on board, committed to finding a cure. sanjay gupta looks at the global impact of their loss now. reporter: the health community around the world in utter shock. the international aids society says a number of its members were on board malaysia airlines flight 17. they were heading to the aids 2014 conference in melbourne, australia, scheduled to start this sunday. typically attended by thousands from all over the world. and among them, leading hiv experts. their loss, likely to have an impact on research regarding diagnosing, treating and curing the disease. president bill clinton is one of the keynote speakers at the conference. he says it s awful, sickening, what has happened to so many people. they were doing so much good. we do this on a regular basis, have these international aids conferences. and i try to go to all of them, because i m always so inspired by what other people are doing and what we can learn from them. and so since i left office, it s been a kind of a regular part of my life, thinking about those people being knocked out of the sky. it s pretty tough. reporter: one of the victims, prominent dutch scientist, lang. i first met him in 2004 when he presided in bangkok. those who knew him say he was a hard core scientist with the heart of an activist, who worked tirelessly to get affordable aids drugs for hiv positive patients living in poor countries. one small example of his work. he was the one that argued if coca-cola could get refrigerated beverages to places all over africa, then we should be able to do the same with refrigerated hiv medications. it s going to be a huge impact, both on people who worked closely with him, people in his lab, and on the society as a whole. it s an incredible loss. we are all just bracing ourselves to arrive and find out who else may have been on that flight. it s just unbelievable. it s really real yet. reporter: the world health organization tells us glen thomas was on board that flight. he worked with us here at cnn during our coverage of the ebowla outbreak. he was planning his 50th birthday celebration. his life and so many others cut tragically short. and dr. sanjay gupta joins me live from the cnn center in atlanta. what more can you tell us about the victims and the work that they were doing? this international aids conference has been around for some time. nearly 30 years now. and this is the one sort of conference where researchers from all over the world were working sometimes in large labs and small labs, funded in different ways, came together to try and share the research, to really accelerate what was happening in the world of hiv/aids. jep lang, one of the first people to look at maternal to child transmission of hiv, do some of the early research in that area. and trying to figure out how to prevent it. we ve covered these types of stories. it s impossible to try you could not overestimate the impact of the sort of work that many of these people did who were lost on that flight. i think more people will come in to fill those ranks, but it s going to really cast a pallor over the society s meeting. this is a brain trust of people who have dedicated their lives to it and spent years on it. and knowledge like that. obviously beyond the human tragedy for their families, for their friends, for all who knew them. for this has an impact on globally on efforts fighting hiv/aids. we re talking about the last 30 years, when we have really started to research and focus on hiv/aids since the early 80s. and there are people who have spent their entire lives, interprofessional lives doing nothing but this. as you say, they re wealth of experience, knowledge, brain trust, that s that was their whole life. and so those people, again it s not to say there aren t other people who can fill those ranks, but some real leaders. jep lang, i interviewed him in 2004 in bangkok, talked to him about some of the work they were doing at that time. and he was the president of the whole organization. so gives an idea of the stature of this man, as well. a huge loss. globally. dr. sanjay gupta, appreciate it. thanks very much. our extensive coverage of the malaysian flight 17 and conflict in the middle east continues with brooke baldwin after a quick break. and i ll be on tonight. the cadillac summer collection is here. during the cadillac summer s best event, lease this all new 2014 cts for around $459 a month or purchase with 0% apr and make this the summer of style. of swedish experience in insidperfecting the rich,ars never bitter taste of gevalia. we do it all for this very experience. 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