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
unsupervised kids tonight, we will continue the debate. caution, you are about to enter the no spin zone. the factor begins right now. hi, i m bill o reilly. thanks for watching tonight. as we present a very special talking points edition of the factor. we begin with the american left. and capitalism. with president obama s job approval numbers falling, and the democratic party having trouble in an election year, you would think that committed liberalns americans would low key it a bit, you would think. but, no, they are upping the rhetoric, especially the anti-capitalism stuff. hillary clinton is widely seen to be the democratic nominee in 2016 for president. she portrays herself as a moderate. that s not good enough for on the far left.llar does hillary clinton sound to you like the right person for this moment? in a time when corporations have hijacked our politics, enabling them to reap all the profit without any compunction to do right by their workers. as someonee who sat on the anti-rabid board of wal-mart for six years, the rightto person to restore workers rights in a time when we re still reeling from a global financial disaster brought on by full hearty bank deregulation is someone who who recently took $400,000 to give two speeches at goldmanhe sachs the person we need tost rest control of the asylum back from the banking inmates? now that anti-capitalistic commentary is the far left signature issue. talking points believes there must bemu oversight on banks andd big business to to do the right thing is foolish and naive. if you don t believe me read a little teddy roosevelt. many on the left want to t dismantle the entire corporate system. and we are seeing the se consequences of that in thences obama administration. now, entering his sixth yearar in office, the president hasent not been a friend tote corporate america. he advocates high taxes topa pay for an entitlement culture. business knows that and has not expanded, preferring to hoard profits or keep themse overseas where theyas cannot be taxed. that s why the job situation and income for working americans is stagnant.good for every good job available, there are plenty of applicants, therefore, salaries are suppressed. the government can provide well-paying jobs on a mass scale. it cannot. and every country that has tried that has failed. 90 miles off the coast of florida look what happen in cuba. that should be affluent country but communism has killed the country. hillary clinton must fight zealot tri on the left. she will defeat it she will get the nomination and mrs. clinton will run as a moderate democrat promising to reform some of president obama s ante business policies. that s what she will do. and that s the memo. now for the top story tonight, reaction, joining us from washington, ellen who worked for president obama s 2012 campaign. and with us in the studio dr. screeny. who teaches political science. where am i going wrong, doctor? i think you are on to something here. i think in my mind this speaks to enormous division and increasing division in the democratic party. so you look and you see the attacks this hillary is getting from the left and not a surprise but i think many people predict that wall street for 2016 will be her achilles hill heel in the same way the iraq war was in 2008. something she will have a fight. if she becomes nominee and elected many on this kind of new left progressive left fear that she is going to be too close it wall street and continue her husband s moderate policy. that s a given. i don t think hillary clinton although they made a big show of being with de blasio who is about as far as left as you get and they were all raw raw and the mayor of new york wants to confiscate everything, i m not quite sure how much. but i have got my bike chained six times. so i bet you have a nice bike too. dr. there is a division in the democratic party like the republican party like the paper people and moderate republicans. growing division between the so-called progressive ring and moderate ring, do you see it that way? i don t see that division historically as you guys see it i see a rhetorical concern, i think about whether hillary clinton is talking to the right people, hearing the right ideas. what are the right ideas? tell me what s right and what s wrong? look, obviously the far left has articulated by ms. ball, the commentator that we use to set it up. believes that hillary clinton is a tool, a shrill, taking money from goldman sachs, 200,000 for two speeches. that s more than i get. that s outrageous. okay? and so they don t want her. they want elizabeth warren. they want this socialist up in massachusetts. that s who they want. maybe what they want is to have elizabeth warren s voice represented in hillary clinton s campaign. i think there is a great unanimity among democrats that hillary clinton would be a great candidate and we would love to have her. i think the concern about whether she is talking to bankers or not is not really real because i don t think that there is any ms. ball said we don t want her. i don t want her. flat out said it and you do you believe as ms. quawl does, is there a division? is it getting to be a brawl type thing or is it oh we just disagree? i think it s a division now. my feeling and my sense is it is going to grow because historically that s what happens with political parties in the united states. parties become begin and become divided. i think we are seeing that and i think bill de blasio s election here in new york city who is now the leading progressive in the country and somebody who we know has been close to the clintons but there is this kind of growing sense that. yeah, but she can t run on de blasio nationwide. and let me tell you this ms. qualls. hillary clinton has got to pull back from president obama. because he got a 19% decline in median income for working americans under obama administration. do you have a big burgeoning stock market that only gets fat cats like me. it doesn t benefit the worker people, union people. and you have this unbelievable unemployment problem because the private industry is saying you know, we are north going to expand. we don t like obama care. we don t like the high corporate tax. we are going it keep all our money in luxenburg, we are not going to bring it back. hillary clinton is going to have to walk back all of that stuff. you know that. well, bill, you, me, and hillary clinton probably all agree that the minimum wage should be increased. i do. but that s small ball. the big thing is jobs that pay well. but we all agree that wall street needed some reforms after the giant meltdown. i haven t geraldo hillary clinton say there is anything that shield roll back in wall street reform. i think it s rhetorical thing. it s a shot across the bough from the left. i don t think it s a real concern. i mean, it is an unsustainable argument that hillary clinton hasn t worked her entire public life to create more opportunity and access to opportunity. i appreciate you ladies coming on. it s a very interesting and important topic. here is what is sustainable. hillarycan t run on the obama economy unless there is a miracle in the last three years. she is not going to repudiate it because there are elements that she agrees with. we will see her walk a moderate line. positive signs from the obama economy you have got to commit. deficit is down, unemployment is down. there are positive signs. i agree with you not all is perfect. you have seen the polls, doctor, lately? have you seen the economic pulls? i have seen the pick polls. you and your little progressive friends may think there is positives but, don t have much time on but, don t have much time on obamacare: next on are my name is jenny, and i quit smoking with chantix. but, don t have much time on obamacare: next on are before chantix, i tried to quit. probably about five times. it was different than the other times i tried to quit. along with support, chantix (varenicline) is proven to help people quit smoking. it s a non-nicotine pill. chantix reduced my urge to smoke. that helped me quit smoking. some people had changes in behavior, thinking or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping chantix. if you notice any of these, stop chantix and call your doctor right away. tell your doctor about any history of mental health problems, which could get worse while taking chantix. don t take chantix if you ve had a serious allergic or skin reaction to it. if you develop these, stop chantix and see your doctor right away as some can be life-threatening. tell your doctor if you have a history of heart or blood vessel problems, or if you develop new or worse symptoms. get medical help right away if you have symptoms of a heart attack or stroke. use caution when driving or operating machinery. common side effects include nausea, trouble sleeping and unusual dreams. my quit date was my son s birthday. and that was my gift for him and me. ask your doctor if chantix is right for you. 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(announcer) love. it s what makes a subaru, a subaru. honestly, the off-season isn t i ve got a lot to do. that s why i got my surface. it s great for watching game film and drawing up plays. it s got onenote, so i can stay on top of my to-do list, which has been absolutely absurd since the big game. with skype, it s just really easy to stay in touch with the kids i work with. alright, russell you are good to go! alright, fellas. alright, russ. back to work! captain: and here s a tip. bellman: thanks, captain obvious. when you save money on hotel rooms, it s just like saving money on anything else that costs money. like shoes, textiles, foreign investments, spatulas, bounty hunters, javelins. a crusade. there cosmtion comes a time when people with values simply have to stand up. think nazi, germany. most of those people did not believe in what hitler was doing. yep. exactly. but did they speak up? nope. did they stand up for what they believed? they did not. and you saw what happened. and if you believe that the same thing can t happen again, you are very wrong. and joining us now from virginia beach is dr. carson. if you mention nazis you know you are going to get hammered. what you said there at the end there intrigued me a bit. you said if you believe it can t happen again see i didn t believe that naziism could happen in the u.s.a. i don t think it could happen nor could communism happen here. do you disagree with me? well, i believe that what can happen is if people do not speak up for what they believe, they can be trampled. their rights can be trampled to various and sundry degrees. now, of course, the objective of many on the left is to take a single word that you are not supposed to say. you can t say nazis and slavery, that s political correctness as you well know. i do not believe in that. i think it s a bunch of crap and it doesn t really belong in the american system where we have freedom of speech and freedom of expression. you don t regr using the buzz word nazi. what you pointed to historically is correct. what you said is absolutely correct the germans were not members of the nazi party. they sat on their butts and they allowed the fanatics to take over that could not happen here because of our system in checks and balances. but, i think what you are worried about it is the obama administration s policies in general taking root. is that what you are worried about? there are a couple of things that i m worried about. i m worried about the fact that the pop police is being silent and is not expressing what they believe because they are afraid. they have been intimidated. by whom? by the government. how? by the government and by the media, by the p.c. police. you say something, all of a sudden like this is a perfect example. you know, you are using an example of how people would not speak up. they try to turn the argument away from that because they know it s true. they know what i m saying is true. but, rather than talk about that, they want to divert the issue to something else. you couple that with the fact that our congress needs to be a little more courageous because the reason we have a divided government is if one branch of the government gets a little bit over exuberant they need to reign them. in we need courage there to do that. politicians encourage, we are not seeing you know but, look, the last time well, maybe not the last time in the fall you said, look, you you were bothered by the irs to an extent that you felt they were trying to intimidate you; is that correct? yeah. i don t think it is cointhe government agency that you can point to in your life, dr. carson s life that you believe was put upon you to shut you up. and it s not just me. we we now have a government that is trying to take over the healthcare of the pop pop pop pop pop why would you put the irs over something so massive. they are the enforcement agency of fines. they because it was ruled a tax by the supreme court foolishly, so somebody has to enforce the taxation element and that s the irs. so, on paper, it makes sense. but you heard the president of the united states tell me, your humble correspondent there is not a smidgen of corruption in the irs. you heard that. right. we heard that and that, to me, is it strains credulity that he actually believes that but that we let people get away with it this is what bothers me. the fact that the congress doesn t stand up and say no, you may not implement this program because the a major portion of it is still under investigation. and we are not done with that. we don t do that in regular life. we don t take somebody who is under suspicion and put them in charge of something major like that. we have to just start doing things that are logical and that make sense again. all right, helping young americans at risk is a powerful talking points you do not want to miss. later, the action from obama s senior advisor valerie jarrett. it requires accountability and people to step up to the plate and work hard and stay in school and excel and dream. but it also requires a community around them to provide a safety net. ck pain. .and a choice. take 4 advil in a day which is 2 aleve. .for all day relief. start your engines fueling the american spirit. can you hear it? 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[ male announcer ] celebrate every win with nicoderm cq, the unique patch with time release smartcontrol technology that helps prevent the urge to smoke all day long. help prevent your cravings with nicoderm cq. that helps prevent the urge to smoke all day long. trwith secure wifie for your business. it also comes with public wifi for your customers. not so with internet from the phone company. i would email the phone company to inquire as to why they have shortchanged these customers. but that would require wifi. switch to comcast business internet and get two wifi networks included. comcast business built for business. now, i was invited to the announcement and i was happy to attend. the initiative is very well intentioned. but some specific things must be done. first, you got to teach children at risk to read. if that takes one-on-one tutoring that s what has to happen. two, you have to provide mentors to individual children that the teachers pinpoint who lack guidance at home. there should be a volunteer program for mentors in every city and town in this country. three. high profile americans including the president and first lady must go on television and the net to warn, to warn young people having babies outside of marriage and bringing children into this world without resources is cruel. it s cruel has to be a campaign, a persuasion so young americans wise up. also, there has to be peer pressure not to get pregnant unless you are in a stable situation. are we all understanding that? right now there is no peer pressure. that has to change. fourth, the initiative has to get local business people to hire kids for summer jobs and internships. children must know about the work place and what is expected there. and, finally, the american law enforcement has to engage children at risk to convince them they are not the enemy. if those five things are part of the my brother s keeper initiative, i can guarantee you america will begin to turn the terrible situation around. but, if people continue not to make judgments about bad parents, disorderly children, chaos in the family unit, we continue to make excuses for all that, problem is only going to get worse. hopefully today the white house made the first step and i believe that american business, law enforcement and we, the people, will step up to help the kids at risk.ea i really believe that andth that s the memo. top story tonight. reaction. senior advisor valerie jarrett. i was pleased you invited me to this.s. people were fainting when i walked in. we were delighted to have you. look, the president mentioned in his remarks a culture of cynicism on the a streets. nicism on the streets. not just blacks but it s the poor and the hard core, what they call gangstas. you know what i m talking about, right? there is a culture of cynicism like we can t make it. we re not going to be art pa of this. we re going to sell drugs and we are going to do what you we want. have you got to get in the afte. we all have a role we play here. this is not a big government program. the government s role is minor. it requires accountability. it requires people to step up to the plate. and work hard. and stay in school. and excel and dream. but it also requires a community around them to provide a safety net. the president talks about his own childhood he wasn t sitting in school. he was very some guidance. he had a lot of guidance. what he says he wants for all of our children is to have that safety net. but he also told them, look, boys, you aring if to have to work hard and you are going to have to act responsibly. have to attack the fundamental disease if you want to cure it now, i submit to you that you are going to have to get people like jay-z, all right, kanye west, all of these gangsta rappers to knock it off. that s number one. i think what these boys need is positive role models as you said. listen to me, listen to you c johnson there today he is a good guy. you have a bunch of these guys and a barrage, barrage, barrage and make it uncomfortable to have a baby out of wedlock. make it uncomfortable to sell drugs. you have got to reverse move, exercise. i want michelle obama to come on this program, right here and i want michelle obama look into the cam randstop say you teenage girls you stop having sex, you stop getting pregnant. this is wrong. i want her to do this right here. it s better iff she isassr actually sitting down in the classroom with the girls, inviting them to the white house. sharing her. that only reaches a few though. i believe that anything doe she does gets covered by the press. can i give you a compliment? would.sh you i believe that mymy brother s keeper program is going to work, okay.ok i think it s going to work. but it will work a lot faster and you will save a lot more lives if you incorporate what i m telling you tonight. you do you know, bill, what i really like is the fact that you are passionate about. this i care. i m a were fer teacher. i had them in my class 40 years ago. the situation has justhil gotten worse. it has. that s why we have to change the trajectory. wee appreciate you coming in tonight. it s a pleasure to beoni here. really? i m having fun. there you go. i am. white house correspondent ed henry will weigh in on the the my brother s keeper program. well, put on a breathe right strip and instantly open your nose up to 38% more than allergy medicines alone. so you can breathe and sleep. shut your mouth and sleep right. breathe right. at od, whatever business you re in, that s the business we re in. with premium service like one of the best on-time delivery records and a low claims ratio, we do whatever it takes to make your business our business. od. helping the world keep promises. upgrafor the most advanced norelshaving experience.00 with gyroflex 3d technology, you can get to those hard to reach places for the ultimate shave wet or dry. guaranteed. visit philips.com/fathersday now to save $50. enroute back to the vatican after a trip to the holy land. before departing today the pontiff honored holocaust victims by kissing the hands of several survivors. the ukraine s president elect wants to talks with moscow and end a pro-rugs insurgency in the eastern part of the country. porchenko promising to open a dialogue. he also said he would not negotiate with terrorists, rebels are calling his election illegitimate. i m kelly wright, now back it to a special o reilly factor. big things. number one, did anything stand out for you? what stood out for me is that the seeds of today were started a year ago this month in chicago is at an event with the president where he was highlighting a program called becoming a man which is sort of an after school sports program in chicago. the president was visibly moved there after meeting with some of the young people who are part of that program. some of those folks were back here today from chicago at the white house. and what stuck out for me then and now was that the president wasn t just sitting there saying i m going it help people and set an example by talking about how great i am. he talked about his failures and whether you are an anchorman or president talking to kids like this. the president opening up about how he basically didn t know his father. that he used drugs. saying things you don t hear a president say could be more effective with these kids by saying look that doesn t mean you are dead end. you could wind up becoming president and becoming anchormen. those messages are all positive. the i chided him in the super bowl sunday interview. i remember. i said come on, when are you going to get off it and start do something big. got into the door today. what i m trying to get across to the nation to valerie jarrett has got to be more personal than that the president can visit kids did at the white house. you can t visit with all kids. you can go on the television and the net and look into the cameraened a say don t g to hurt you. it s not fair to the baby. that s that s what has to be done. got to get pinhead rappers and get these people idolized to start to get that message out that was not included in the initiative broader economic issues not just about this issue inive. make sure the broader economic policies helping people not just of color but helping people all around the country if you look at it just african-american youth unemployment right now is something like 26% in this country. the president has been in office for five years. you can talk about these initiatives. they may make a difference. but the broader economic policies that the president is pushing, that he is fighting it out with the republicans on the hill, those have a huge impact as well. when you have got 26% african-american youth unemployment, i think it s about 15% for hispanic youth unemployment, obviously broader unemployment is bad for people, white, asian, black, you name it but when you look at those kind of numbers there are a lot of policies that need to be put in place. the reason the numbers are there a lot of these kids can t read and speak. that s why we have to get back down to hey, if by the 3rd grade you can t read, it s one-on-one. have you got to teach them to next up, is hip hop harmful to america s youth? 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[ male announcer ] if you can t afford your mication, astrazeneca may be able to help. thanks for watching us i m boiferl, thank you for watching us tonight. harmful entertainment. that is the subject of this east coast s talking points memo. if you saw the factor last night you know that president obama has launched a huge initiative target rother . it s a good initiative as we discussed with the president s senior advisor valerie jarrett. if you missed the interview ing the entertainment factor. these are effecting unsupervised children of all colors. makes billions putting out stuff like this. i fought so hard [bleep] now, if you can t see that unsupervised children might be harmed by that kind of stuff, then you are not responsible person. period. in order to help children at risk, the american society has got to convince them to stop destructive behavior. like using drugs. committing violence, getting enablers to showof apologists d themselves. the fact that this per pettation of young black men, whether you are famous or not famous whether you are a thug or a gangster because, what, because you listen to rap music, rap music is the reflection of our society. o reilly is uncomfortable with this culture. that s understandable. he did not come from this culture. that culture has some validities, if you will. sure. validities. the overall effect of base entertainment is corruption of impressionable children but will never ever get the far left and many in the entertainment industry to admit that the uber left will not make judgments. the industry simply wants to make money. i enormous. the my brother s keeper initiative is a very positive thing for this country. but unless it is coupled with a change in the entertainment culture, it will not reach nearly as many children as it should. and that s the memo. now for the top story underminig black america and what we can do about it here in the studio kevin powell, president of the b.k. nation. b.s. nation standing for building knowledge. where have i gone wrong. i think the issue is not that i myself hip hop culture for 30 years has said some of the things that you are s what you just saw. for adults, as i say, i don t care. i mean, you are an adult, you want this, that s fine with me. i have no problem. but 12 and it s corrupt. i mean, this is a culture of failure. it is dogging black america. i think you are right to call it out. but you know what happens is the critics as you say come out and they say oh, if yo are g talking about black women as hos and bitches. horrible. bad schools, all the environmental barriers to their success and attitude. how do you respond to that? but nothing about building a family. you know, the problem with people like mr. williams is that not only does he not know anything about hip hop culture and its history. oh, stop. actually you don t. because i have never seen you involved with anything to do with hip hop. wait, let him talk. the same thing you are saying now in 2014 mr. williams was said about hip hop when it was balanced in culture in the 198 os and 90s. we saw a diversity of voices same people attacking hip hop. even if you took hip hop out of the equation, poor schools, lack of economic opportunities still be out there. this morning i started my day in brownsville brooklyn. i have a firm in look britain one of the poorest communities in america. these kids are dealing with systemic problem. this initiative is designed to at least bring yesterday said there was a culture of cynicism in these precincts that young men who get into trouble, generally speaking. i think this applies to girls too. they don t want that s not whm saying. what i m saying. even if you listen to hip hop and its totality from the very beginning to the president. is actually as american as apple pie. they are talking about everything else we see in america. talking about it in a way that alienates the system. you can t get a job if you walk in to ibm and use that kind of a presentation. you can t. but what i m say talking, sir, with all due respect first of all we who are having this hip hop culture and the industry that you referenced at the top of the show. we agree about the problems with the industry. it s the ceos who put out this. i m putting the rap yawn is putting the rap on jay-z beyonce and so on. why are you accusing the rap people. basically they used to do ministerial shows with they have black people standing up and doing a minstrel show. the big market for this is white people. it s a white male teen fantasy, they get to use the n word and v. all the sexual references and nasty words. violence. and you asked me to let you finish. give the last words. let me tell you i grew up in brooklyn i come up from crown heights. i grew up in that situation. i have got to tell you when you are saying to young people you can t succeed in the system which is what the president and bill o reilly just said, that is corrupt. that is corrosive to the way (woman) this place has got really good chocolate shakes. 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(announcer) love. it s what makes a subaru, a subaru. and the award goes to ceramics house. congratulations. thank you. the success of your small business depends on results. go vests! all organic, and there s tons of info on our website. that s why you rely on the best for your business. and verizon delivers the best devices on the best network. you re all big toes to me. so go ahead, stream and download with confidence on america s largest, most reliable 4glte network. activate any 4glte smartphone and get $100 off. for best results, use verizon. that corporate trial by fire when every slacker gets his due. and yet, there s someone around the office who hasn t had a performance review in a while. someone whose poor performance is slowing down the entire organization. i m looking at you phone company dsl. check your speed. see how fast your internet can be. switch now and add voice and tv for $34.90. comcast business built for business. what happened while i was away? that is the subject of this evening s talking points memo. well the benghazi situation is fairly clear, it s now apparent the obama administration tried to mislead americans about what happened to ambassador christopher stephens and three other men killed by terrorists in libya. even though a congressional committee is being formed, we pretty much know what happened. what we don t know is if president obama was directly involved. and that will be tough to nail down. what we do know is ambassador stevens traveled to the backwater of benghazi despite the fact it was a dangerous place. organized terrorists knew the ambassador s location causing damage but no one would give the order for the u.s. military to move into libya. no one. thus four americans killed and subsequently, no terrorist have been held accountable. some say fault lies with hillary clinton, then secretary of state. she was running the world and didn t have her attention on libya, why should she? mrs. clinton had her hands full. to blame her for the attack in libya, not fair. yes, security was bad and the state department was warned. but those things are usually handled by others, not the secretary of state. however, after the attack, now hillary clinton should have stepped up and explained the situation. instead, she herself referred to an anti muslim video as insighting the violence. she went along with what the ocbama administration was puttig out there. that was wrong and that s on her. the key question right now is did president obama himself actually come up with the false narrative? no committee will get that defined unless a guy like john dean steps up. his testimony took the president down. so the congressional committee will uncover some facts but unless a white house insider comes forward, the president will not likely be effected. there is a second scandal surrounding benghazi, some in congress don t want to know the truth, just like vice president gerald ford during watergate. they are in denial. the president was in the process of negotiating with the soviet union. the president was trying to handle the war in vietnam. i m sure he turned to those running the reelection campaign and said i have these major matters that involve the national security and well being of the american people and you run the campaign, and therefore i m convinced he had nothing whatsoever to do with watergate. it is erie the same kind of stuff being said today about benghazi. diversion benghazi, benghazi, why aren t we talking about something else? we ve already had thousands and thousands of pages of testimony, four committees in the house, two bipartisan committees in the senate. this is a waste of taxpayer money. again, supporters of the president simply want to know. now, as far as the irs scandal is concerned, the one woman who can break the case has been held in contempt of congress, as you know. if a federal grand jury is convened, ms. learner could be charged with a crime. that is the only way, the only way she might tell the world what happened, if she can make some kind of deal. just one man will make that decision, the u.s. attorney for the district of colombia. it s up to him alone to call for a grand jury. he works for eric holder and appointed by president obama. so talking points does not expect ms. learner to face a criminal proceeding. did the white house actually order the irs to target conservative groups? the president denied it to me on super bowl sunday. we re not likely to get to the bottom of this because the system is flawed. you cannot make learner talk for political reasons and it s the law. a muslim terrorist group kidnapped 300 girls 16 to 18 year ols old. the problem is not getting any better. there are scores of islamic groups terrorizing civilians all over the world, yet, what are the muslim nations doing? very little. there should be a summit organizing against them and if you speak out, you re a bigot, a terrible person. most muslims are good people but a substantial minority cause trouble, syria, iran, openly kill civilians with little repercussion and another problem that seems to have no solution. kidnapping little girls? i mean, that s enough. brit hue may disagree with me about hillary clinton and benghazi. he will be here. our fiber. try phillips fiber good gummies. our fiber. they re delicious, and an excellent source of fiber to help support regularity. wife: mmmm husband: these are good! marge: the tasty side of fiber. from phillips. nineteen years ago, we thought, wow, how is there no way to tell the good from the bad? so we gave people the power of the review. and now angie s list is revolutionizing local service again. you can easily buy and schedule services from top-rated providers. conveniently stay up to date on progress. and effortlessly turn your photos into finished projects with our snapfix app. visit angieslist.com today. whon a certified pre-ownedan unlimitedmercedes-benz?nty what does it mean to drive as far as you want. for up to three years and be covered? it means your odometer. is there to record the memories. during the mercedes-benz certified pre-owned sales event now through june 2nd, you ll get complimentary pre-paid maintenance and may qualify for a two-month payment credit. only at your authorized mercedes-benz dealer. does your mouth often feel dry? a dry mouth can be a side effect of many medications but it can also lead to tooth decay and bad breath. that s why there s biotene. available as an oral rinse, toothpaste, spray or gel, biotene can provide soothing relief, and it helps keep your mouth healthy, too. remember, while your medication is doing you good, a dry mouth isn t. biotene for people who suffer from dry mouth. does brit disagree with me about hillary clinton and benghazi? he joins us now from washington. all right. i don t disagree with you at all about the prospect she may have something to do with a coverup and i think you may well be right that she really can t be blamed except in the broadest sense for the incident itself, except there are things about that we don t know. we don t really know why chris stephens was there. we don t really know why the u.s. had that compound setup in benghazi. there are a number of things we don t know. i m not saying that they implicated her in someway. you know mrs. clinton, correct? personally you know her? yes, i ve known her for years. i didn t know her that well. i did one interview, spent a little bit of time. you correct me if i m wrong because you ve known her for years. she s not a micro manager kind of person. she s the front person. all right? that got sent all over the world, constantly on the go, doing, i don t know what she was doing half the time. couldn t really figure it out. i can t imagine hillary clinton sit there and saying gee, what is going on in benghazi today. bill, we do know what that mission was there and what the ambassador was doing. we ll have a better idea it seems almost impossible that hillary clinton would be paying attention to benghazi no matter how many warnings the state department got, they don t go to her, they go to other people. i just can t see it. is it wrong, remember watergate, the third rate burglary. that was the first. it was almost like the democrats today. it was almost like nancy pelosi, all most the same. third rate burglary. all right? doesn t matter, these guys, the plumbers broke into the watergate to try to find stuff about the democratic campaign. that s what we heard. we heard it and heard it and heard it. that s exactly what we re hearing. this isn t a big deal. isn t it erie? it s almost exactly the same. it s the same in both cases we had a coverup. bill, before we make watergate comparisons, it s worth remembering that nearly 70 people were accused in the end of crimes in watergate and i think 48 or so were convicted. so we re a long way from talking about that. we re not a long way from how the politicians are reacting. we re right there, and when you re talking about a watergate break in for political intelligence, which it was, as opposed to an american ambassador being murdered, which story is more important? there is so much we know and can t say. watergate turned out to be a crime wave and until we see something that indicates something on that scale, i just think that watergate comparisons are best left on the shelf. i disagree respectfully.
us along with our panel as we watch this, the idea this search might have to be stopped for a given length of time, it s not something we certainly have never heard of. we heard that before with air france flight 447, that the flight had already been found. but we re way early on that. we re not i don t think for a moment we re going to be talking about stopping at any time soon. remembering the southern hemisphere winter, it s coming into fall now, then winter will be coming along shortly. i think we re some way off. i d be very surprised if he s going to announce he s bringing friends home tomorrow. absolutely once winter arrives in the southern hemisphere and depths of winter, you won t find them going out. it would be too dangerous with the planes and it would be fruitless. they will do what they did with 447, regroup and look at the evidence and set up a new plan for where they re going to start. david, i mean, can this debris amei mean, some of it would sink after a certain amount of time. what is floating will stay floating for longer than you might expect. the bottom of the cargo compartment, which is a green zinc chromate color. one part of debris is said to be green? yes, which is fairly unique to that aircraft. typically they re painted white and have a different color inside. this aircraft doesn t, it s green. it s a honeycomb structure, it has a sealed epoxyed together, which has sealed air compartments inside it. if it s floating, it s likely to continue to float but certainly not through the winter. and we re anticipating this press conference getting started any time soon. at this point, there are no assets now on scene in terms of the search, even obviously aircraft are not flying given the bad weather, but even ships on the surface that were in the region, had they left the search area? it was ordered out of the search area. there was one ship in the area and it was ordered out because of the waves. the australian military saying the wave length has been extreme, 6 1/2 waves and the swells have been doubled that. the conditions have not been ideal. it is foggy. this is an air known to pilots as a roaring 40s, right at 40 latitude and longitude and you toss in bad weather and it makes it too dangerous to be there on the water or in the air. the press conference that you re seeing, as we show you a split screen here, that press conference is quite unusual. it s actually just right over my right shoulder. it s a bit of a walk but that press conference is nothing that we ve seen here since we arrived. you don t have the defense minister simply fly in and gather the reporters. we haven t had the military come over to us and say, okay, everybody, gather up, it s time to make some sort of announcement. we re guessing at this point it must be something significant. the first highest level minister we ve heard from through all this and we were called to it. we re very anxious what he s going to say. richard? i ve just been advised by one of our producers who says that the minister of defense will be joined by the vice chief of defense staff and the deputy chief of joint operations. so they re pulling in the big brass here. i m guessing we re going to get a very good operational overview and a road map, unless of course whether they re going to tell us they ve identified something. i think it s going to be more operational, this is where we re going, this is where we re going and where we expect to move it forward. most information which has come out, how does it come out from the military, from military authorities? there s not regular press conferences you said? no. we ve had to in some ways because they ve been so overwhelmed by our phone calls call and call and call and call or they released it via social media or on their web site. that s why all of us here on the base are really quite interested in what s going to be announced because richard may very well be right that this is just a plan of what it s going to look like now that we re into day six. but, you know, this is a high-level minister flying into this military base from a distance and, you know, wanting to talk to reporters. we think this might be something significant. when was the search called off for today? it s obviously just past midnight here, very early tuesday morning, very late monday night, however you want to look at it. it s tuesday afternoon in australia. at what point was the search called off? reporter: it was publicly announced about 55 minutes after the first plane was set to take off. in that vein of how do we get that information, it came via press release, it came via social media. it didn t come through an announcement. that s a pretty big deal to simply say we re not going to be searching to. you did notice this morning that the cars were arriving and the crews were arriving. it did sound like they were going to take off. we had been given no indication that today was not going to be a day that they fly. in fact, we had been told that they were going to again take to the air. but whether always is the determining factor of whether or not you can continue an operation like this. about 55 minutes, anderson, is when it was at least publicly told to us that it was not going to be happening today. and this press conference or statement should be any minute. we anticipated it about six minutes ago. in about 24 minutes from now, there s a press conference in kuala lumpur, in malaysia, that is supposed to take place. the fact that there are these two different press conferences, it does give you a sense of just on a very limited scale of the complexity and scale of this entire operation and investigation. i mean, the communication has got to be it s coordinated, it shows the difficulty and the breadth of we have this situation in china right now where you have family members heading toward the malaysian embassy, situations in kuala lumpur where they re preparing for this press conference, a conference in perth, australia. it involves so many different nationalities and personalities. the complexity is unbelievable. the thing about an accident investigation, i don t care how big or small it is, you never know what you did right, you only know what you did wrong. that s really a difficult position to be in. i really feel for these folks doing this investigation. i ve never done an investigation that after the fact want second guessed and even myself second guessed. that s part of getting the experience to do it and i just feel for them right now. they re going through a lot. in terms of the investigation, there are representatives from the ntsb, from british authorities in kuala lumpur working with malaysian authorities. how does something like that get coordinated? what we do is we have an inspector in charge, whether that s the ntsb or delegated to the faa in smaller cases. that gives you a single point of contact and that would be incredibly difficult with all these countries and varying levels of experience and what they can and cannot do. the ntsb is cautious not to go there and take over things. they re very experienced. but when they re not the inspector in charge, they re in a difficult position as well. they re in kind of a tender position of trying to build and contribute to the team without trying to take over and step on egos and everything else that s involved. we heard a short time ago family members in beijing are heading toward the malaysian embassy to protest. there has been a lot of criticism of malaysian authorities. fair or not fair, richard? it s not been a rolls-royce of an investigation. it s not ban gold standard investigation that you might have expected to see out of the ntsb or the double aib in the u.k. or b.e.a. in trafrance. i think the truth is it s been nowhere near as bad as people are saying. the reality is if you were to say how many facts have they got wrong, almost none. have they had to correct or tweak things? undoubtedly. that s the normal way to do things. but to start this mass i m sorry, let me just malaysian airline spokesman is telling cnn malaysian airlines is not sending family members anywhere until they find wreckage of the flight or receive emergency notification from the search and rescue operation in australia. just been given that word. earlier in the day there had been reporting they are looking to possibly flying family members once the debris was found to australia. it s going to depend on when actual debris from the plane is found. this has been unprecedented, everybody agrees. but two weeks ago i ll give you an example of what we re talking about here. everybody says why do they continue looking up in the north when clearly there was radar tracks and all this stuff showing the thing turned around. because it had to be verified it, had to be confirmed. we know it was sent backwards and forwards to the u.s. and k.l. they would have been excoriated if they sent ships all the way down to the south indian ocean, 2.5 thousand miles on a hunch. the malaysians know what they are doing, it s been messy. others may disagree. this is an overwhelming situation in its magnitude. the likes of which we have never seen. it s unprecedented absolutely. an accident investigation in and of itself is an overwhelming thing from the standpoint down right to emotion, as you understand. they probably withheld information as part of the investigation process because some of this has not is not for public knowledge because it s detrimental to the families, to the friends of the passengers. even national security issues are involved given military radar versus civilian radar in countries like malaysia and elsewhere. countries are loath to let their military information be known to enemies or even allies. and it got worse. the plane wasn t where it was expected to be. and suddenly not only do you not have a plane where you expect it to be but you re starting to hear rumors that it s actually gone in the opposite direction and you ve got no evidence. now, if there is a criticism, it goes to the malaysian criticism for not spotting the 370 going across on the night. and there s still a big question of how that could have happened, how could it have crossed malaysian airspace without the military realizing. but the core issue of expecting them to have known that the plane was two and a half thousand miles in the opposite direction, and even that inmarsat said you see a bunch of reporters waiting around where the australian defense minister is said to be making a statement or giving a press conference. it was supposed to take place 12 minutes ago. obviously we are waiting just as the reporters are waiting in the sun there just outside perth, australia. kyung, have officials given any word on what s gone on? we don t. we have a colleague at that press conference right now and ten minutes to 12 they were given ten-minute warning. it was scheduled to happen at noon. we don t know exactly what the delay is all about. we know he s traveling in, the defense minister is traveling in. perhaps there s a travel delay. we simply don t know. but if i could just add one thing to what you and richard were talking about, you know, you mentioned the criticism about malaysia airlines. i was told by a chinese journalist here that they re under the impression that the chinese families are coming here and coming very soon. we ve heard a number of reports of fathers of the passengers heading to the kuala lumpur airport because they were told by malaysia airlines they were going to be traveling to australia. so there is a lot of mixed messaging happening and it very frustrating for the families, it s very frustrating for the people who are emotionally and directly involved. so, yes, there is all this criticism out there but the effect of it is that it s making it much more painful for the parents and the children of the passengers. our david fitzpatrick is at the press conference awaiting it. david, what are you hearing? reporter: anderson, there have been two other members of the australian defense ministry staff joining david johnson here. so far there are about 50 or so members of the media here, there is a line or four orions here. we have to sit here and wait. as soon as we see people walk up, we ll certainly let you know. again, this is just a sign of the kind of coordination on a small scale taking place. malaysian officials are supposed to be giving a press conference 15 minutes from now. on something like this would i mean how much communication is there or would there be between the investigation taking place in malaysia and australian officials with the coordination of release of information? it goes back to the fact there s no singular person in charge of the investigation or controlling the information back and forth. as les pointed out, at some point you have to say what is real information, what s not and what s worth what do we need to spend resources investigating. you could go down all kinds of different routes but at some point you make up a priority mate tririx of the theories and philosophies and put weights on that to come up with mathematical figures to figure out the most likely scenario. i m sorry, go ahead. but to try to dilute that map with what s going on with all of the different participants has just got to be painstaking. we re told the press conference will begin shortly. we re going to take about a 90-second break and bring it to you live when we come back. frequent heartburn? 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[ male announcer ] it s how edward jones makes sense of investing. we are going to make some comments regarding the investigation and the australian and international efforts to hopefully find something regarding flight 370. ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for keeping everybody informed as to what is going on and what is most important event in terms of aviation and maritime safety. today i m here to speak to the crews and the maintainers of these magnificent aircraft that are behind me. i want to take the opportunity to publicly thank all of the crews and all of the teams that keep these planes flying. as you know, it is a four-hour trip down there, two hours on station and then four hours home. this is an extremely remote part of the world. it 3,500 meters deep, 2,500 kilometers from perth. eig it s a massive logistic exercise. there are four australian p-3s, a p-8 from the united states, two illusions from china, there s a p-3 coming from korea with a c-130h this afternoon. i want to thaake the opportunit to thank all of those countries for their assistant. i had lunch with the teams and they re keeping their aircrafts flying and keeping their teams up to the minute enthusiasm. hms success has had to deployed to the west to avoid major weather operations. visa fees will be waived for the families of the passengers and crew of this malaysian aircraft. we will be very pleased to welcome them here to give them some closure in what is an extreme tragedy for them. so for that i come back to the fact that this is an amazing example of international cooperation, particularly between militaries. and may i say as a western australian, we are very pleased to host the chinese, the japanese, koreans and americans into western certainly australians. reporter: are the chinese being flown here to be flown over the logistical area? i don t want to speculate because this is a major operation. this is probably one of the most remote parts of our planet. we want to get that right. we want to assist these families and friends to have some closure, but let s talk about that when we know how many are coming and when they re arriving. reporter: is it very clearly now a case of not looking for survivors but looking for debris and looking for the black boxes? to this point in time we have no successfully identified and recovered any debris from the aircraft in question. reporter: can you confirm this is the place that the plane crashed? reporter: in his view the plane was in the southern ocean. do you share that strength of view? i think if we re going to go on data and information giving us a hint as to what has actually happened, that s all we ve got to go on. the telemetry from the satellite, the inmarsat satellite and the performance of the aircraft is all we ve got to go on. i think we ve got to rely on that and that s what we ve been doing. this lady would like to ask a question. reporter: would you say you are confident with the prime minister assessment that the fate of flight 370 ended in the indian ocean. are you confident about that? i m confident about that because that s the best we ve got at this time. reporter: so you re not surprised they made the call last night, sending the messages to the families? i m not surprised about anything with respect to this. this is a mystery and until we recover and positively identify a piece of debris, everything is virtu virtually speculation. reporter: what s the idea with the search operation? when you have to suspend operations for 24 hours because of weather, these beautiful aircraft behind me are grounded. it is rough, there are 20, 30 meter waves, it is very, very dangerous, even for big ships. reporter: have you received further details from malaysia can support the conclusion delivered by malaysia premier? i will hand over to the vice minister of defense that will tell you everything we have you know about and that we are doing everything we can to, first of all, make a positive identification on a piece of debris. that will mean we re on the right track. that s not going to happen for at least another 24 hours because we ve had to redeploy our ship due to weather. reporter: can you verify the photos the chance provided? i have nothing to add on that. i think you ve seen all the information out there. reporter: were you informed before minister najib made his statement last night? i probably wasn t because i was traveling. the prime minister has been informed as event passed. reporter: do you understand hms success to be confident they re close to what was seen from the air yesterday? it very easy to speculate about being close. close in this part of the world could be several hundred kilometers. if you want to put it in some sore of analogous skipdescripti we are looking for an aircraft from perth in western australia. this is probably one of the largest efforts you ll ever see in terms of maritime surveillance, joint efforts between johnson, china, united states, new zealand, straaustra et cetera. reporter: how urgent is it to find the black box everything urgent. we have to deal with it the best we can. reporter: objects haven t been confirmed. the turning point will be when we pull some piece of debris from the surface of the ocean and positively identify it as being part of the aircraft. reporter: do you have any other details on the support that will be provided to families? at this stage i don t. but bear in mind the prime minister is very, very fixed on assisting malaysia, who is a very good friend of australia in dealing with the families of the crew and passengers on board this aircraft. we ll do what we can within reason. reporter: [ inaudible ]. i m going to hand over to vice chief of defense binskin, who is with the royal australian air force. if i can put the analogy of what we ve got at the moment. we re not searching for a needle in a haystack. we re still trying to find where the haystack is. you re seeing a multi-national effort going on. it is difficult for hms success to be able to find small bits of debris that is washing around in the southern indian ocean at the moment. as the minister said, for safety concerns today, we had to put success to the south. we re hoping for good weather in coming days where the search effort will be joined by a number of chinese ships. we ll have the korean b-3 and we ll have more ships and more aircraft and can refine the search. reporter: it becoming more of a recovery operation than it was before. there are no asset, including the ocean shield heading out there. what s its role, what can it do? it will be joining the search in a couple of days. it takes time to come down and around into the search area. the aim for her will be working to put specialist equipment on board so that as we further refine the search area, that we might be able to go out and look for the black boxes. reporter: has there been a 100% collaboration between the nations in terms of the search? is it under one specific umbrella? actually, the collaboration has been very, very good between nations. for the start of it, there s been a lot of cooperation between the u.s., u.k. and australia. it was the u.k. part of the team that first put us into the place we are now and that s been refined by more imagery from china that everyone is getting a chance to look at. that side of it is very, very collaborative. from the aircraft and ships, there s a lot of collaboration going on by the moment. it a relatively small operation and it growing by the day. is information being passed to malaysia? the answer is yes. do you have information or evidence that maybe there s still doubt that 370 did go down in the indian ocean? the best information we have and i haven t seen the report but the information from the british overnight seeps to indicate more sewurety that it went down in the southern indian nation. as we get more data, we continue to defined the search data. reporter: [ inaudible ]. i won t go into those details. we won t have time for that. but it is to get an indication where you re searching before you can define that. reporter: how long do you think the search will be delayed because of the weather? they are very, very good at measuring the currents. we ve dropped buoys to measure the water. they will keep a very good track on where the current debris field should be. as the weather clears, we ll go back in. at the moment it available by aircraft and we will send ships back in. we have to make sure anything we pick up we can possibly identify as wreckage and then further refine the search area. we re awaiting now a press conference from malaysian airlines scheduled to happen about two minutes from now in kuala lumpur, which is about 12:30 in the afternoon. we re going to bring you the scene of that press conference. frankly not a lot of news coming out of the australian press conference, which was more of an overview, defense minister saying he had flown there to thank all the crews involved in the search. he also thanks all the countries involved who have actually sent air assets and ships, australia, new zealand, japan, china, korea sending an asset later today. he talked about waiving visas for family members of the crews and the passengers and just talked about the rough conditions, the swells that are out in the search area which have forced officials to call off the search at least for today. no word on if the search will continue. let s listen in to kuala lumpur. i am the chairman of the malaysian airlines. as you will be aware, last night the prime minister of malaysia najib razak announced new evidence regarding the disappearance of ma 370 on the 8th of march. based on this evidence, the prime minister s message was that we must now accept the painful reality that the aircraft is now lost and that none of the passengers or crew on board survived. this is a tragic day for all of us at this airlines. while not entirely unexpected after an intensive multi-national search across 2.4 million square mile area, this news is clearly devastating for the families of those on board. they have waited over two weeks for even the smallest of hope of positive news about their loved ones. this has been an unprecedented event requiring an unprecedented response. the investigation under way may yet prove to be even longer and more complex. than it has been since march the 8th. but we will continue to support the families, as we have done throughout. and to support the authorities as the search for definite answers continues. i will now ask our group to provide you with fuller details of our support of the families. . i stand before you today as the group chief executive officer of malaysian airlines but also as a parent, as a brother and as a son. my heart breaks to think of the unimaginable pain suffered by all the family. there are no words which can ease that pain. everyone in malaysia airlines family is praying for the 239 souls on ma-370 and for their loved ones on this dark day. we extend our prayers and sincere condolences. we all feel enormous sorrow and pain. sorrow that all those who boarded flight mh-370 on saturday 8 of march would not see their families again. and those family will now have to live, they have to live on without their loved ones. it must be remembered that 13 of our own colleagues and fellows are also involved. let me be very clear on the events of yesterday evening. our sole motivation last night was to ensure that the incredibly short amount of time available to us, the families heard the tragic news before the world did. wherever humanly possible we did so in person with the families or by telephone using message as a last result of ensuring fully that nearly 1,000 family members heard the news from us and not from the media. ever since the disappearance of flight mh-370, this airline s focus has been to comfort and support the families of those involved and also to support the multi-national search effort. we will continue to do this while we also continue to support the work of the investigating authorities in the southern indian ocean. like everyone else, we are waiting for news from those authorities. we know that while there had been an increasing number of apparent leads, definitely identification of any piece of debris is still missing. but after 17 days, the announcement made last night and shared with the families is the reality that we must face and we now must accept. when we received approval from the investigating authorities, arrangement will be made to bring families to the recovery areas if they so wish. until that time we will continue to support the ongoing investigation. and may i express my thanks to the malaysian government and all those involved in this truly global search effort. in the meantime, our focus will be the same as it has been from the outset, to provide the families with a comprehensive support program. a network of over 700 dedicated care givers, care givers for each the loved ones of those on board have been provided with two dedicated care givers and they provide care, support and counsel to the families. we are now supporting over 900 people and with this program and in the last 72 hours alone, we have trained additional 40 care givers to ensure the families have access to round-the-clock support. in addition, hotel accommodation for up to five family members per passengers, transportation, meals and other expenses have been provided since 8 of march and that will continue. malaysia airlines have already provided initial financial assistance of $5,000 u.s. dollar per passenger to each next of kin. we recognize the financial support is not the only consideration, but the prolonged search is naturally placing financial strain on the relatives. we are, therefore, preparing to offer additional payment as the search continues. this unprecedented event in aviation history has made the past 18 days the greatest challenge to face our entire team at malaysia airlines. i ve been humbled by the hard work, by dedication, heart-felt messages of concern and offers of support from our remarkable team. we do not know why, we do not know how, we do not know how this terrible tragedy happened. but as this airline s family, we all are praying for the passengers and crew of mh-370. ladies and gentlemen, member of the media, i answer the floor for question-and-answer session. please state your name and media organization before you ask the question. i m from hong kong phoenix tv. my name is carol chong. just now you show your sorrow to the family members and we heard their shouts and screams, especially in beijing, the hotel. so up to now they said you delayed the investigations. did you? and actually what is the evidence, exact evidence that you show to get the result? and some of the family members told us they want to they went to australia, they want to go to australia so could you arrange the trip for them? thank you. you will appreciate the missing plane was reported to the authorities and since then it was a matter for the authorities to take over the searching and finding the plane. and it is since then the domain of the authorities. but as i mentioned earlier, our focus, our center of action throughout this period, painful period, was to provide care and assistance to our passengers. certainly this is a time of extreme emotions and we fully understand that impact people, our family. in terms in how they react is emotional, as you may understand. as regards to going to australia, as mentioned just now we have been informed by authorities that visa will be given or granted to those family members, once evidence has been establish established. next question. reporter: my question is so far you haven t found any evidence of wreckage of the missing plane. how are you so sure you are determined to believe that the plane has crashed. how do you believe that? and just based on the analysis of the images and the like? fair enough. i think that s a very fair question. but as you would also appreciate, especially last night as the prime minister came out himself to share that he has been given fairly credible leads that would point to where the plane ended its flight. and as he mentioned that position is very far away, very remote away from the nearest land mass and after 17 days we could on bring ourselves to reach the conclusion. yes, please. reporter: you talked in your statement a minute ago that this was unexpected. why wait so long for the families to be told that? and why such a hurry [ inaudible ]. as far as we take lead from the investigation that continues. and yesterday when the prime minister made the statement, it was very evident that the aircraft ended its flight in the middle of south indian ocean. so we will have to be we just have to follow those evidence as have been presented to us. and what we did yesterday was to share that as quickly as possible to the next of kin. and will i resign? it s a personal decision. reporter: [ inaudible ]. reporter: how the malaysian side provided information and evidence of the mh-370 flight ending in the indian ocean? the investigation is with the authorities and it is best to ask the authorities. okay, the next one, the lady. reporter: from china. i have a question, the first one i would like to rephrase. now we confirm that the plane is end in the south india ocean but is the survival chance totally avoided? the second question is now there are some reports about they find the mh [ inaudible ]. also that airplane and it happened a sharp turn around and very unstable altitude flying reports. so they have very similar so could these events caused by some failure i m sure that will be very important concentration to be taken by the investigators. thank you. reporter: but the first one, the survival chances at the moment, that s how we are looking at it because the plane ended at a place land mass. reporter: can you repeat that? this by the evidence given to us and by the ration deduction that we could only arrive at that conclusion, for malaysia airline to declare it lost the plane and by extension the people on the plane. reporter: thank you. i m from chinese news organization. during these several days i have interviewed some people in malaysia and crews and family members, most of them are not satisfied with the reaction to this emergency. what is your opinion about this? and why you isolate them to the outside world? thank you. they are saying they are dissatisfied with the opinion? could you repeat the question, please? reporter: during this several days i have interviewed some people in malaysia, including family members. most of them are not satisfied at your reaction to this emergency. so what is your opinion about this? and why you isolate them to the outside world? thank you. our first concern, particularly for the families from china, is for their safety and comfort and privacy. and that is the main concern to driver whatever we tried to offer the family members. and in terms of why we keep them hanging on is simply we all shared their hope as well. reporter: why you isolate them from the outside world? probably isolating them is not the correct impression. we certainly put them in a place where they re comfortable and also is where they could have privacy and they have given access to care givers with whatever they require, like visiting the places of worship and things like that. so they are not being closeted. reporter: my condolences. the police have now narrowed the investigation to the crew members and the pilot in particular, could you comment on that? have you had any problems in the past, any disciplinary issues with the pilots or the crew, anything that would point to anything? thank you. i appreciate that. i think it is a fair question. that brings us back to the purpose of this press conference is to share with other than the families of our affected passengers and crew about what we had done last night, that is to break the news. and what we do next, particularly in terms of continuing with our care giving to our passenger s families and what we do in terms of the normal process as you mentioned for events like this. so your question is correct but i think the direct for um is when we meet investigators. thank you. next question will be from the gentleman over there. reporter: you referred earlier to the information that led to last night s announcement but can you say exactly what the analysis was and what the new data was that gave you enough certainty to make that statement? the best is this afternoon proceed with the military, they will be there to explain. reporter: but do you know presumably what the analysis was? what was it? we had been given the indication that we should now arrive at this very sad conclusion. reporter: the questions are i said the best time is whether we have the ministry of transport this afternoon. thank you. the next question will be from the gentleman over here. reporter: in the spirit of helping the families understand what has happened and baring in mind you now do have more information which led you to the conclusion the prime minister announced, what is your best analysis of what actually happened, bearing in mind we have quite some hours before the next press conference. i don t want to speculate in terms of what happened to the aircraft. i think the investigation is ongoing. i think our focus is really for the family members, how to help them moving forward and that s really our focus here. otherwise we are just speculating and i think the investigation is not concluded, i don t want to speculate any more than that. we re spending our time now and the process going forward in terms of how we can meet our legal and moral obligations to the families. thank you. okay, the next question from the gentleman here. reporter: thank you. from cbs news, i want to ask a question about the perception. this has been dealt with a little bit so far at the news conference. some people, the family members, have not been happy with the way this all has come down as far as their isolation in some cases, whatever. some people have suggested or implied that malaysian airline officials have been heartless. have you been heartless? can you respond to that? we can appreciate that. [ inaudible ]. there are also in our numbers who have we really talked with them. so this question of limitation and practical limitation that we re looking at but coming from our bottom of our heart, we re really reaching forward because 13 of the missing passengers and crew and one passenger, member of our family, extremely closely knit, we feel for each other. and that sort of extends to our passengers as well. from the first day we started the family assistance places all over the place and dispatched the family care givers and we probably enabled them to provide whatever was, you know, which we can do. and certainly no amount of compensation or consolation will make up for any loss of life. and we appreciate that. reporter: and one follow-up. are you going to attempt or will your high ranking executives attempt to meet and talk to every family that has suffered a loss? it s being done all the time, sir. we do not display our names when we go. thank you. the next question from the gentleman in red shirt. reporter: global brazil. i know it s a difficult question but how do you see this position of australian government that on will grant the visas for the families when no evidence is found. maybe still there is hope in australia s opinion? well, actually, i can t speak on behalf of australian government. reporter: that s why i say it s a difficult position. do you agree with the position. whether i agree or don t agree, like i said, we are here to ensure that we support the family and to make sure we fulfill their wishes. in this time of human challenge, compassion will rise. so i think protocol notwithstanding, i m sure, as we say, this is unprecedented event and we may be looking at some un way to resolve this. i m sure that the issue will arise and i m sure it will be addressed. reporter: jason from the wall street journal. i understand you are stressed and your focus right now is to help the families, but malaysia airlines is also party to the investigation. so can you tell us after one or two weeks what is the most likely cause for this? can you tell us confidently that it s not a [ inaudible ]. i really appreciate your curiosity, as we are also, but we have to draw a line between what is, you know, should be in the formal domain and what we can do. our focus at the moment is more in terms watch we can do, which is outside the investigation area. reporter: [ inaudible ]. yeah, certainly we will not want to jeopardize or dissipate anything. can i have the last question from the local authority? reporter: from channel 8 asia, i would like to talk about future of how badly has it affected business and well, obviously it has affected the airline. but so far, like i said, we re doing our best to ensure that those that bought malaysia airline tickets, making sure they are being served, being flown safely, comfortably. moving forward is certainly we will look into. obviously it is something that we must basically share with the families of those on board. weep must empathize with them and i think this is a very painful period for the airline and something that we have to share this spirit with the families and passengers and the crew. reporter: [ inaudible ]. our procedures are we have ratchet up our procedures to the