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
to the russians. we no angela merkel has some concerns about that, because the trade flows between germany and russia both ways are huge, but so far, wolf. that test hasn t been put to the countries. they re still talking with one voight. maybe it s only that that s brought putin back from the brink. even so, i would put it this way. 200 points on the dow, it s scotch miss. it could disappear tomorrow if things turn nasty again. certainly could. this is a real volatile situation. richard quest, thanks very much. remember, you can always follow us on twitter. tweet me @warm frontblitzer. tweet the show @sitroom. let any step in with van jones and s.e. cupp. president obama s work is paying off he says have laid mer putin has hit the pause button. which means as much as when russia hit the reset button. the debate starts right now. tonight on crossfire , until pressure from president obama, is vladimir putin backing down? there have been some reports that president putin is pausing for a moment. is he proving his republican critics wrong? on the left, van jones. on the right s.e. cupp. in the crossfire, howard dean, former presidential candidate, and paul wolfowitz, a former deputy defense secretary. is the obama doctrine working? are some republicans undermining the president abroad? tonight on crossfire. welcome to crossfire. we re continuing cnn s breaking news coverage of the crisis in ukraine. i m s.e. cupp on the right. we have a former presidential candidate and former pentagon official. today we saw big hits that the tough diplomacy with russia might work. kerry delivered a billion dollar package to kiev. behind the scenes, the obama administration has put together a crippling set of proposed economic sanctions. while the president is busy doing his job, his republican critics keep trying to undermine him. freshman senator and self-appointed foreign policy expert ted cruz writing under the headline language of fools have laid mer putin running rampant shows how the obama administration s abdication of global leadership is making the world a more dangerous place. thank you very much for that help in a crisis, ted cruz. ted cruz is taking cheap shots. meanwhile, his republican friends are actually trying to raise money on this crisis. instead of actually trying to solve it. i just think that s terrible, s.e. let s moveon.org. here on kroich kroich, former governor howard dean and former deputy defense secretary paul wolfowitz. clearly, clearly president obama has underestimated vladimir putin. russia is stalling on syria, undermining our negotiations in iran, and now russia is invading ukraine. i m not suggesting that obama has made putin a bad actor. russia has been a bad actor for quite some time, but can t you agree that putin has been emboldened by our weakness in that region? no, i don t agree with that. first of all, i think it is true that putin has not kept his word on syria. i think what putin s actions are against international law. i think the president is doing the right thing. he s ratcheting up the heat, slowly enough that putin has a chance to back off. one problem with putin is not only he s broken the law, but he now has to back down an save face at the same time. he needs the opportunity to do that. the president needs to titan the vise, and not making it to some of the rhetoric is great, especially with what secretary kerry has said, the fact that he s taken the ukrainian foreign minister with him is a good thing. you can talk about tightening gradually, but there s i think we re long past the point where some firm action should be taken. let me be clear, the firm action is to begin to scare the 100 or 200 richest people in russia who are the prop of putin s regime and have the money illegitimately. that s the money at risk. that needs to be done and done quickly. the brits, usually or stronger allies are putting the can i bosch. david cameron in a leaked piece of paper, said it was leaked today, said yesterday, that he wasn t interested in any kind of thing that might take russian money out of the city of london. talk about a message of weakness. putin is the problem here, not ted cruz. i have criticism of obama s behavior up to this point. i would say, for example, on this example, you know, putin looks at the red line in syria, the chemical weapons thing. he doesn t but the way to make him take it seriously is to do something now. if cameron doesn t like it, tell the british people that enabling london s theft of money. i didn t say weakness. i said rhetoric and reality. duly corrected. isn t the reality that they face the same situation when putin ran into georgia, and they did nothing? two wrongs don t make a right where i come from. we should say something about american values and interests at stake here. and it is taking place in a very unstable where every country has large minority interested in it. what would you have done difficultly this week, what would you have told him to do? i would go bad further. i would say don t talk reset with a man who s declared his goal in life is to restore the soviet union. i would not have whispered i ll have more flexibility after the election. fair enough. what would you have done this week difficultly? you start with evaluating him realistically. what do you think he thinks of our study? i really have no use for the russians at all. i haven t for a long time. i like the russians. i don t like putin. the history of russia since the revolution has not been a pretty one in terms of their can i correct you on that for a minute? yeah. in 1994, a different russian president, boris yeltsin agreed with ukrainian independence. the ukrainance in return gave up their nuclear weapons and allowed the russians to have this base in crimea. putin is not a typical russian. he s a typical kgb cold war the point i m trying to make is i do want to say that if i m behind the scenes, i want to screen the russians carefully and slowly. i think the ukrainance have handled this incredibly well. they just kicked out an incredibly corrupt president who really had no stanton anymore. they have an unstable government, because they re trying to put this together. for them not to fire a shot was very, very smart. they would have ended up where the georgians did. this is tough stuff. i don t have to tell you that. you ve been in the seat. it s not a matter of saying we have to support the president. it s a matter of saying we need to give this president time to get to the result he needs to get to. i think running going too fast and too hard is probably a mistake. do you agree with the ambassador we should cancel our appearance at the g-8? eventually yes, but let s work up to that carefully. i assume somebody is telling vladimir putin, this is what you can expect in the next few days. if you don t do something to i don t think have laid march pew people tell putin there s always a back channel, always a way that somebody is talking to somebody in the kremlin. i presume they re saying this is what is really going to happen. let me bring up recent poll numbers on president obama. he came into office in 2009 and said he wanted to restore image around the role, but this poll asked if americans think the president is respected abroad. in the five years he s been in office, it s dropped 26 percentage points president isn t that an indictment of the foreign policy? i think that s hard to say. almost every president, including his predecessor is at their nater of this time in the second term. if you think the president kicks his dog, he might get better numbers. don t you think the president has made some very serious foreign policy mistakes. we don t need to color the entire administration, but you would add miss his s made some mistake. i this was that was a mistake. putin bailed him out. a farce cal but that s on putin. we need to hold him accountable for that red line. i think we need to do that. let me ask you a question. even looking at russia. if you look at what obama has been able to do, first of all, he didn t what he said was we re going to do three pragmatic things air rights over russia. he got that done. he said he was going to get russian table on iran. he actually has gone some things done here with regard to russia, and now the eu really is the one that how system obama s fault at this stage? look, you talked about what american public opinion, judging what foreigners think about the united states. i care about one foreign are at this moment and it s vladimir putin. he kind of gave his opinion, maybe is changing his mind, but the last statement is a warning that he will do it elsewhere in ukraine. i think we re talking about how to manage risk here. no one wants this thing to blow up into a military confrontation, but peeten seems to think he can keep pushing and pushing. we re going to find out. in the next few days. he s going to stay where he is or advance into eastern ukraine. if he does that, i think you ll see some major stuff going on. we blamed obama and bush, but there s one person who also bearing blame here. i ll ask howard dean about her, next. 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this is ridiculous conversation, s.e. it really isn t. this is going to haunt her for the next two years. these are talking points. it s beneath your show to put out partisan talk you don t think she s responsible for setting the tone of naivete with a clearly bad actor? first of all, it was joe biden s idea, and second of all the president s idea and that was before hillary clinton was even asked to be secretary of state, first of all. second of all, it is irresponsible not to talk to a major glob power and try to work stuff out with them. as van earlier said, what about the disarmament agreement, which is still successful, which the president had to get through, thanks to people like dick lugar, we prevailed. this is ridiculous washington talk. i hope you re right, i have a feeling this might come back to haunt her. i m sure it will, and people won t give a damn. people give a damn. this is a this is the ted cruz talk of the this is also s.e. cupp. people are talking about it. you don t want to be in the same seat with ted cruz. i don t mind. as we get to you, actually talk does matter and some of the talk from the republicans has been incredibly irresponsible. i want you to see this tweet from one of the great republican leaders, lindsey graham. he said it started with benghazi. when you kill americans and nobody pays a price, you invite this type of aggressio aggression, #ukraine. here is lindsey graham, a foreign policy guru sending out mean tweets, blaming the president for this. don t you think that s irresponsible? lindsey graham has to speak for himself. i think it is a risky world when people begin to think forget benghazi. people look at syria, and they see the president of the united states says assad must go. he says chemical weapons mustn t be used. now they have agreed chemical weapons are used and we do nothing. frankly he was fighting the act, which have labeled some of the cleptocrats didn t. don t you think this type of stuff it s not like anything the democrats ever did. i know! where is this i ve got one more indignant thing which i think is even worse, and this is from the head of the republican senate campaign saying president obama s leadership on the world stage has been marked by weakness, indecent and incompetent. say you re committed to restoring real american leadership by contributing today. they are actually raising money in the middle of a crisis. are you really sure that democrats have not done just that a million times? that feels an hypocrite cal. do you think this type of stuff is appropriate? i m not here to condone or approve. that s not the way i talk and it s not the way i like people talking about us in the administration, but believe me, the democrats in my experience do it three or four times more than republicans. so, you know, it s the pot calling the kettle black. maybe so. but honestly it s not the biggest issue of the time, by the way. putin is not judging his behavely what ted cruz or lindsey graham says. he s judges behave by what he thinks president obama is going to do. so far he hasn t seen much. i have not seen the republicans support the president on anything. name one thing that the republicans have supported him on. we did support your administration when it came to immigration and health care reform. we did try to stand with you on the wars. unfortunately the republicans have not stood with the president on anything. the republicans have supported the president in afghanistan. i don t know i think better than democrats. the republicans supported the president on his asia policy, particularly his breakthrough in burma, which was a genuine success. and democrats did not support the president on his syria policy. they didn t vote for it, either. i know a lot of democrats who are privately unhappy, as maybe howard is privately, at what looks like, sorry to say it, weakness in the face of a villain out tie rant. just today, it s still teetering on the brink of disaster. take a look at this encounter. i mean, that s intense stuff. today the russians moved forward with a preplanned intercontinental ballistic missile test which would been scheduled. i don t know that he had to do it today, but he decided to. isn t putin showing he s ready to go? we have to find that out. look, we re not going to commit troops to this. of course not. of course not. so that leaves one other possibility. that s some sort of diplomacy coupled with sanctions, which i hope is where the president is going. again, i revert to what i said earlier. first of all, we don t know what s going on behind the scenes, but i m sure something is, because it always does. secondly, what the president should be doing, and i suspect he is, is tightening plenty i have advance notice. i think he s trying to avoid any rhetoric that he doesn t have to get into. he needs to get putin to stand down and putin to save face needs to show he s doing it. so far, there hasn t been a shot aimed at another soldier on the other side. once that happens, it s almost impossible to put that the genie back in the bottle. are you confident we can talk putin down? not at all. i think putin has to see something tough in his face. we re consumed with who in the united states is to blame for all this. the man to blame is vladimir putin. the tragedy and we should emphasize this more than we do is that you know, boris yeltsin was comfortable ukrainian independence. things were going well till this thief became the tie rapt of russia. taking russia back into the 20th century. shevardnadze was the president. the succession of crooks. it wasn t till the orange revolution putin started to get nervous. you re right shevardnadze wasn t in russia. weigh in on today s fire back question. is president obama underestimate std vinnie polit ing it vladimir putin? we also have the outrage of the day including how republican indifference is now hurting more than 2 million americans when we get back. 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[phones rings] okay, i ll send it. one hundred seventy-two dollars for a chemistry book, what is it, made of gold? just use citi popmoney. boom. ah, she s feeling lucky. hey sweetie.cancun, yeah no, you ll be spending spring break with your new chemistry book. with citi popmoney it s easy to send money to just about anyone, anytime. visit your local branch or citi.com/easierbanking to learn more. . welcome back. it s time for the outrage of the day. i am outraged on behalf of 2.3 million of our fellow americans. these are active job seekers the republicans refuse to give any help or support to. you ve got the job market that s still tough. folks need more time to look for jobs. plus, a little bit of gas money to get to job interviews. that s why congress should have extended unemployment benefits straight out. unfortunately, just before christmas, republicans said no way. that is unbelievable. they extended, these same republicans extended unemployment five times under george w. bush but under obama, the gop decided it wants to be the party of scrooge all year long. i wish that extending unemployment benefits would actually get people back to work. i m sorry to say. helps them find work. it doesn t. my outrage. this is a warning to parents out there. please shield your children s eyes. i m about to do something you don t want them to see. ready? that there got a columbus ohio fifth grader suspended from school for three days. the charge? exposing other students to a level two look alike firearm. yes, those words exist. i d sure hate to see what a level three looks like. this is the kind of ridiculous childish progressive nonsense that makes it nearly impossible to have a real conversation about curbing gun crime because if you start with dumb ideas like this, how can anyone take you serious will i? let s also curb obesity and alcoholism by banning the hand gestures that accompany them. this is ludicrous. grow up, people. well, or the nra s gazillions of dollars they spend. this is going to solve everything. let s check in our fire back results. is president obama underestimating putin? right now 56% of say an yes, 44% say no. ambassador, are you surprised by the results?
factor here is the restoration of calm and direct dialogue. what we need now is on all sides in this matter, cool heads and really a calm approach to this. yes? thank you, martin. there are some reports that the leader of the radical opposition on the ukraine called for leader of chechen terrorists to support ukrainian opposition against russia. does the secretary general have anything to say on this development? look, there are all kinds of reports, some more credible than others. floating about in cyberspace. and i think that we continue to monitor these developments closely. we re aware of various reports but we re not going to comment on every individual one that pops up like that. yes? one follow-up. this is official. the governor of belgrade region in russia reported that there ar are thousands of ukraine fleeing into this region of russia. does the secretary general plan to discuss this issue with vladimir putinputin, maybe some support for the refugees from the united nations? i think the secretary general wants to speak to president putin directly to express his concerns. but also to hear directly from president putin his assessment of the situation. now, with regard to refugees, this is something that if substantiated would be for the refugee agency to look at. i would then reeffer you to the refugee agency. okay, if there are no other questions, thank you very much. so there he is, the spokesman for the united nations secretary general ban ki-moon, speaking on behalf of the secretary general, saying that ban ki-moon is gravely concerned about what s going on right now, a it s the hope that cool heads will prevail, there will be a calm approach, it is said that ban ki-moon will be speaking to the russian president vladimir putin to discuss what s going on. we re following the breaking news out of ukraine, tensions developing now between the u.s. and other countries, it s a serious situation. let s bring in our united nations correspondent richard roth. richard, you re over at the u.n., as we have been pointing out, ban ki-moon can make all sorts of statements, the u.n. security council can there s a limit to what actually is going to emerge other than a few statements. russia would certainly block any significant action by the u.n. security council however they did meet, russian met the u.n. security council yesterday, despite what they could say publicly to the press, and we don t know what goes on behind closed doors. they re meeting here on saturday in an urgent session, ban ki-moon has issued statements on concern on many countries in crisis over his six year office. there may be an open formal meeting where there could be angry opening speeches. the first meeting will be closed doors here at the united nations. there are articles in the u.n. charter that say that the u.n. security council has the right to get involved when international peace and security is threatened. this is at the heart of what the u.n. was originally set up for over 65 years ago when one country moves forces into another. things have changed a lot with terrorism and offstage actors as they re known. we ll see if the security council has any power in this issue, wolf. we ll see what happens if the security council issues statements. the members of the security county still are there right now getting ready for this emergency meeting. the ambassador relishes the spotlight, he gives the most spontaneous, candid comments pointed as they are at the u.s. security council stakeout. he kind of dismisses the secretary general s envoy to ukraine and says it s still a serious matter. but he says russia has the right to do what it wants to based on previous agreements with the ukraine. i assume the u.s. ambassador powell is there. she s found herself in a lot of crises, in her short time in office here. this is old style u.n. emergency sessions involving two different countries, with widespread impact should something happen on the ground. i remember covering a lot of those meetings in the 80s during the so-called battle days, the height of the cold war. we had a 1:00 a.m. meeting on a august 9 of 2008 when russia went into georgia. that was a true emergency meeting overnight. we don t know what s in store in the days ahead. we certainly don t. thanks very much richard roth at the university. so we heard the spokesman for the u.n. secretary general issue a statement saying the secretary g is gravely concerned about what s going on. how is this playing in moscow? i don t think that that s one of the main, sort of, areas that moscow is looking at right now. certainly vladimir putin is going to be speaking to secretary general ban ki-moon, but i don t think that s going to significantly change the course of rush shasian politics. right now what the russians are trying to do is they re trying to decide for themselves what sort of end game they have in mind here. it s interesting that you were talking to diana before about what exactly could be the future for this crimea region. what exactly is russian trying to achieve there? does it want to separate itself from the ukraine? does it want to become more autonomous? those are the real questions that the russians are going to be asking right now. what we have been able to see is that what s going on there on the ground, it s hard to imagine that that is anything else but orchestrated by moscow. if you see the forces that came out there, the way they were disciplined. the interesting thing was, the earliest check points that were set up there were set up by a biker gang were set up by vladimir putin. all of a sudden they surfaced in that area and they started setting up checkpoints together with the local police. clearly the russians have been planning this for a while. this has been going on for a while and it s now come to this stage where we re seeing this overt military action that they have now waved through that you are own parliament. so the u.n. is one of the place where there will be talking going on, there will be statements going on, vladimir putin is going to be talking to the secretary general. but the decision making is something that happens at the kremlin as to what the russian strategic interests are in crimea. those are the real issues that the russians have right now. that s the real planning of what they re thinking about right now, wolf. don t go too far away, let s go get some perspective now on what s going on, some context, angela is joining us, she s the director of the center for russian studies for georgetown university in washington. so you heard the spokesman for the united nations secretary general make a pretty strong statement saying that ban ki-moon is gravely concerned about what s going on and will be speaking to putin. putin, you have met with him on many occasions, professor. putin believes that the russians are right, that the rest of the european union, nato and the russians are all right. this is his upper most priority to make sure that this region is either completely separate from ukraine or at least much more autonomous than it was before to try and exercise as much influence as he can, russia can over the former soviet states. we have to understand that there s very little leverage that we have. and even if people don t go to the g-8 summit, it s clearly much more important for putin to make a stand with the ukraine is much more important than if someone attends the g-8 summit. none of these things amount to great leverage that we have over russia and russia has, as all your correspondents have said, a very direct and a very strong interest in crimea, in ukraine and it s much greater than any other country has. it seems to me, and i want to take a quick break, professor, but it seems to me in the old days of the cold war when there were these kinds of tensions there was a hot line between moscow and russia, that phone, that red phone as it was called, the leaders of the united states and russia would get on and talk. is it a possibility that the president of the united states would have this kind of conversation with putin? well, we do still have a hot line and we know that president obama spoke for an hour with president putin last week. but frankly, ever since the russians granted political asylum to edward snowden in russia, the u.s.-russian relationship has really deteriorated, they don t talk very often. there is a hot line, i m sure they ll use it. people would like to deescalate the tensions, but we have now the worst relationship we have had at least since the russia-georgia war and it doesn t look like it s going to get much better. that happened in 2008. we re going to continue to follow the breaking news out of the ukraine, this is a fast moving story, we saw the president s national security advisors emerge from an emergency meeting over at the white house. we ll resume our coverage right after this. life could be hectic. as a working mom of two 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secretary general making sure he wants to reiterate his call calling for full respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the ukraine. clear, direct message to the russian president vladimir putin. russian troops are already in at least small numbers are already in crimea. christiane amanpour is joining us from lontd right now. christianne, it seems that the president of the united states issues a strong warning, now the unsecretary general, there s been emergency meetings involving the president s top national security a advisers in the white house. we anticipate a statement coming from the who is very soon. this situation seems to be escalating very dramatically and not in the right direction. wolf, you re absolutely right, it s absolutely alarming what russian is down, and direct warnings from the u.n. secretary general, from all the western and security council governments direct warning not to intervene in ukraine, a sovereign nation under which 1994 treaty, russia is bound not to intervene and bound to respect his territorial integrity. they haven t taken a decision on whether to accept the clearly staged russian parliamentary vote to call for intervention in crimea to protect russians there. but it doesn t really matter because everybody believes that a certain amount of russian forces, whatever uniforms they re dressed up in are in ukraine right now, this violates u.s. and russian laws about invading other countries. it s the very thing that russia is always on about in the international community, that no, we can t see any other countries invading, it s all about what s going on in syria and everywhere right now. so it s absolutely unbelievable that russia would be doing this right now and there is no legal basis for it. so the united states needs to leave all the other countries in the security council in the west, like minded countries need to put their maximum pressure on and there is pressure, there is leverage. trade leverage, things that could affect the ruble, things that could affect the russian economy and also the ukrainian government now, the interim government need not, repeat not to launch any kind of military response, if they do, just like what happened in georgia, they will be crushed by the russians and they need not to do that. and beyond that, the ukrainians need to figure out how to reassure russia that it s rights will be respected because naval fleet will be respected. and they need to again reassure the russians in crimea that their rilings will be respected. so maximum diplomacy and maximum leverage right now from all who have it needs to be exerted. yes, there are small numbers of russian troops already in crimea, the russians have port facilities there, a warm water port. but there s 150,000 russian troops engaged in military kp exercises right now. they could move into ukraine very, very quickly and that would dramatically, dramatically escalate this crisis. and all of this that i was just suggesting needs to happen so that that does not happen. it s very alarming, it s alarming because clearly russia is not speaking with one voice, if we re to believe what secretary of state kerry has said, what the british and the fench officials said, they were assured boy ty the russian fore minister that there would be no military intervention. then you have the parliament taking action you ve got the forces that somehow seem to be aligned with russia, militias that do their bidding there, and they re more sophisticated than just militias, they re there violating a promise that they made that they wouldn t be there. russians have told the world that they would not be intervening militarily. they ve got these military exercises that they say were co-incidental as you say, not only 150,000 troops, but hundreds of tanks and aircrafts and dozen of artillery and other kinds of weaponry that s happening there. they are flexing their muscle, the question is how hard are they going to flex and how far are they going to take this flexing and will robust diplomacy go to work right now to use all the leverage possible and to stop, you know, sort of i m sorry, but not standing up to russia s moves which russia has been pulling these kinds of months for a long time now, whether it s over syria or whether it s over all sorts of issues and they need to be told where the red line is. the problem is credibility. as you know, christianne, does the west, the nato allies, the european union, the united states, do they have that kind of credibility with putin that if we were to take such action there would be a response? because presumably, he s saying to himself, you know what? they can cancel the g-8 summit in june, what s so much more important to putin is having control over at least the crimea area of the ukraine. unfortunately, under international law, the russians don t have that right, it is a violation of international law and everybody knows it. we have been talking since monday when all of this started with all of the officials and interlo interlockutores who tried to make this deal to try to resolve the crisis what happened last weekend and they told us it is this 1994 law that spells it out in black and white enshrined by the united nations, the effort torl integrity must be respected. russia signed it along with the united states. and i know you ve been discussing this a lot over the last 24 to 48 hours, and this is because the in return, they were guaranteed these protections. at the same time, the rights and the protect shung of the ethnic russians need to be protected and presumably, russia s long-term having this black sea fleet also needs to be respected. all of that has to happen by diplomacy and not by military action. if russia moves in, this is going to be a multi-year problem to get them out again. and it puts russia then outside the realm of international law. and russia of course is the country that s always preaching to the rest of the world, as i say, syria, the most recent example of not intervening in other countries and not invading other countries do it s a very serious situation right now and very serious and creative diplomacy as to start and presumably it s under way and the u.s. and its allies have to be there to support it. they were going through other diplomatic options when they were meeting in the west wing in the white house moments ago, the president s top national security advisors. the point is, a all of us are alarmed that just yesterday the united states and others were saying we see no preparations, no sort of, you know, the preparations i guess for russian invasion, and then we hear all these developments today. now there hasn t yet been a major russian invasion, but clearly, by sleight of hand, they can do a lot of damage in terms of putting troops, personnel and people in there. everybody needs to take a step back and resolve this situation diplomatically, there was no it the kind of attacks against ethnic russians in crimea that in any event required any kind of emergency action by russia of a military sort whatsoever. i want to show you some video, this is from crimea, these were pro russian demonstrators in russia and remember the crimea area, that was actually in new york. here s the video from crimea, christianne, here s what the russian argument is, and this is what i have heard from various sources close to the russians, they re saying, look, they re inviting russian help because this is what they re arguing, i m just giving you the rush shank argument that they still recognize the ousted ukrainian president as the duly elected, democratic president of ukraine. he s obviously got limited authority, limbed power. he s now seen by the ukrainian parliament in effect a war criminal. but the russians are arguing he s still the president of ukraine. he wants help from russia, the ethnic russians in crimea want help and that s why the russians are justified in doing what they re doing. that is the russian argument that putin will make. reporter: probably. and probably those self-appointed officials now in the crimea region are making the same argument, as we know they are making that argument. the only problem with that is that it lies outside the bounds of international law and it does not seem to be any major reason for that to happen. there have not been mass killings of people in crimea like there were in kiev which presip tated the fleeing of coe vich and the arrest warrant that s being put out for him now. the fact that he s on the lam, yes, he s saying he s still the president, but they have an interim government in kiev, it s supported by the west, you have conversations between vice president bidening and the interim prime minister, yatsenyuk yatsenyou have a date new elections, again, crimea has a certain amount of autonomy, but it is not an independent state that can call for a foreign country, a foreign country to invade it s borders, no matter what russia believes about it s near broad or it s atmosphere sphere of influence and this has brought major problems between russia and the west for the last many, many years. as you can see, what happened in georgia, of course russia does have the military might. and if the ukrainians try to take on any russian intervention, they will be crushed. so again, the interim ukrainian government needs to assure all those in crimea plus russia, it only has the crimea interests at heart, it will allow it to keep its flee for so many number of years, however they decide to deal with this in the future. at the same time, the international sovereignty of the ukraine, under law, signed in 1994, by the united states, britain and russia is the law, and i m afraid, under the current law, unless i m mistaken, crimea has no right to invite another country? we re going to continue the breaking news coverage out of ukraine, and i anticipate there will be a statement coming from the white house fairly soon, much more of our coverage right after this. 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positiveness than negativity. because the negativity can just suck you in. i ve been there. i m don lemon. this is cnn. searchers are focusing on areas of debris sightings but weather could interfere for the hunt for the missing malaysian airliner. ukrainian forces leave crimea as the nation chooses a new president. and the deadly ebola virus. one nation has closed its border at the outbreak and fears seem to be spreading. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m natalie allen. you re watching cnn newsroom. the search has resumed but planes and ships are facing deteriorating weather. more than 1800 kilometers west of perth, australia. australian officials say one of their vessels has a black box detecter and underwater vehicle. on saturday two chinese ships collected white, orange and red objects from the search zone but none has been linked to the missing boeing 777. chinese airplanes have drooped buoys to mark three sites. the latest on the search. atika schubert live from perth, australia. atika. reporter: a number of search planes should be in the search area. also a malaysia c-130 just took off at the air base and expecting another one to take off shortly and join the search. so they have a little bit more time searching today. the weather in this new search area is much better than the ole one but unfortunately a storm is coming up from the south. so that might affect their visibility but we understand from the coordinating team here in australia that they will press ahead and try to get the most out of the search today. hopefully they ll be able to find something soon. right, because the clock is ticking for the flight data recorder. what s the pressure there as far as the time frame goes, atika? reporter: there is a bit of a deadline with the flight data recorder and has a pinger that sends out this signal. but the problem is, the battery on that only lasts for 30 days, so what we re looking at is just a few days left, hopefully it stretches out a little bit further but this is why it s imperative for the australian vessel, the ocean shield to get this towed pinger locator known as a tpl25 out to the area. the problem is even though you have this pinger locator, it doesn t know where to look yet because we don t have any debris field. we haven t found any debris confirmed from the plane so there s nowhere for the locator to really look at this point. but what they re doing can they re trying to bring it out to the area so that at least it will be in position if they do find some debris but at the moment that s all they re able to do, natalie. is there any frustration? are they expressing any frustration? we know this is looking for a needle in the heyaystack and they re used to it but we know they want to find a debris field. reporter: yeah, i think it s difficult and it s tough but on the other hand, a lot of the search teams we speak to tell us this is how it goes and all of a sudden you see something that can be confirmed. but as of yet we have not found any of that confirmed debris. the good news is that we have a lot more teams searching in the area, so a lot greater space is able to be covered. today s goal, cover about 300,000 square kilometers and in addition to the planes there are a number of ships there. i believe there are four ships currently there and another six are expected to arrive over the next day or two. so those ships are just as critical because they re the only ones that can really physically pick up the objects on the water and see what they are. they have been able to look at a few but unfortunately none of them have been from the plane. have any talked about the size of any of these suspected objects that they haven t perhaps identified as being part of the plane yet? reporter: not yet. what we earlier what we were looking at was a lot of satellite images and they were giving estimates on how large some objects were, whether 24 meters or more. the problem, of course, now is that they believe that that was a different search area and that the plane, if it went down was going to be much farther north and since that, since moving the search area we haven t seen as many of those satellite images with those promising leads. so hopefully the serarch planes will come back with more leads for the ship to follow. all right. atika shubert live for us in perth, australia. we thank you. the weather is not looking good in the search area. it is deteriorating. karen maginnis is following that. natalie, we were so thrilled that there was that window where the weather was very cooperative for the search. the search area moved from just out of that roaring 40s region but it is not going to be immune from any of the weather systems that are expected to roar across this area over the next several days. this is the way the satellite imagery is shaping up as we take a look through 4:00 a.m. utc but there we ve got an area of low pressure off the coast of perth. there is a ridge of high pressure from the north but other area of low pressure that promises to usher in wet weather, gusty winds so that will kick up the surf and could also reduce visibility. those are the three items that will be particularly troublesome. this is the search area. about 1800 kilometers off the coast of the west coast of australia. and we re expecting monday or sunday going into monday the clouds will thicken up. the winds are going to become a little bit stronger and it looks like thunderstorms are going to impede things there, as well. but not just for late sunday and into monday, it looks like this could also be a tuesday event. now, it may start tapering off then. this is very difficult to obtain data and with the frequency of storm systems, it s very difficult to forecast for this region so a few days out is about as good as it gets, maybe you can go a little bit further than that. but there you can see the rough weather that s expected to move on in across that region. now, what about the west? we re looking at maybe 60 to 70 kilometer-pour hiv hour gusts. it s not the rain that s the problem. it is going to be the reduced visibility. there s the area of low pressure. here comes some of the showers and this takes you through sunday but then going into monday, there you go, and tuesday, taking a look at that, orange shaded area is where we re looking at 60 to 70 kilometer-per-hour wind gusts and they could be higher. back to you. > not good news on that front but thanks, karen. so these pilots flying the search planes face a number of challenges not just the weather but long days, hard flying and so far, nothing to report as far as being connected to flight 370. still as we learn from atika shubert in perth their morale seems high and paula newton talked to the captain of a canadian patrol plane about the mission. reporter: the location of the mission may have changed but search crews determine to find something, anything in the waters off the coast of perth, australia. the three windows. they are the main ones used. reporter: captain mike mcbetween, a veteran pilot on military exchange takes us on board the p-3 orion sideline aircraft he will fly to the new search site in a few hours. these are the main ones. reporter: search specialists will scan the waters as it flies 500 feet above the ocean. when they find something they re yelling mark, mark, mark. they re on headset and call that mark and we ll have the smoke and have a reference point. reporter: it s still difficult to spot the object a second time. that s just part of the problem for flight 370. unfortunately, if you don t find anything, it brings a bit of a disappointment to the crew. reporter: that s been the hallmark. crews are confident if they keep looking they will have the capability to find debris and much needed clues to help solve this mystery. what does this plane in particular bring to the search? why is it so helpful? with the sensors on board, obviously they re very effective at search and rescue. not only the crew stations but the camera that we have on board and the radar works really well. it s designed for any submarine so picking up a submarine so will pick up small bits of stuff in the ocean. reporter: as captain mcbetween leads this hope today will be the day. reporter: his optimism is something that s been a constant campaign yore for crews still searching. and, of course, the families of those missing are caught in a personal nightmare and some of them say they re also caught in a web of politics and crisis management. sara sidner has the story of one group who believe they have become captives of the malay authorities as they await word of their loved ones. reporter: for weeks malaysian airline officials in kuala lumpur have been protective of the families of those aboard flight 370 shielding them from everything including the media. the families initially appreciated it. but some of the family members from china now say malaysian airlines staff have gone too far making them feel like captives than guests in their hotel. [ speaking a foreign language ] i just wanted to come and meet the minister and meet other family members but i was not allowed to leave and they wouldn t arrange transportation. they wouldn t even let me take a taxi. i lost my freedom. [ speaking a foreign language ] reporter: tempers flared when the mandarin speaking families were told they could not attend a briefing for the malaysian families. most of the chinese and malaysian families are housed in separate hotels and have separate briefings in their native languages. waiting for details of their loved ones has been excruciating, so with no briefing in mandarin the chinese families ask fundamental they could attend the malaysian briefing. the answer was no. the chinese families balked and even tried to hail a cab and were stopped from doing that too. about an hour later after some arguing malaysian airlines finally offered to take them to the briefing. but when they arrived at the everly hotel the chinese families were not allowed into the briefing and told to wait in the room next door. finally, with frustrations boiling over, malaysian officials came to them. this is video taken from inside the private meeting as the chinese families met with the ceo, a translator, the transportation minister and his wife. a pregnant woman whose husband is missing begins by asking authorities if they will search as long as it takes. can you give her the assurance you will do everything you can? [ speaking a foreign language ] let s say he was injured. he s been missing. it s been so many case and there isn t any evidence. reporter: she is comforted by the wife of the malaysian transportation minister. but she reminds malaysian officials that this is not the time to make the families lives more difficult by restricting their movements. translator: please tell the staffs thought to regulate our movements. they cannot handle another shock. please let them be free. reporter: already prisoner, the families say all they want is the truth. sara sidner, cnn, kuala lumpur. we will, of course, continue to follow any new developments in this search off the coast of perth, australia. and with the families, as well. there are some big changes taking shape in ukraine s political scene but some voters there don t seem to care. we ll show you why coming up here. also an outbreak of ebola in west africa has world health officials scrambling. dozens have died and officials fear it is spreading. humans. even when we cross our t s and dot our i s, we still run into problems. namely, other humans. which is why, at liberty mutual insurance, auto policies come with new car replacement and accident forgiveness if you qualify. see what else comes standard at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what s your policy? 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being on. let s reset at the top of the hour now. i m anderson cooper. thank you for joining us. we re following two major breaking stories that the hour. the downing of malaysian airlines flight 17 that killed 298 people in ukraine. and i m wolf blitzer reporting from jerusalem. the other major story, the breaking story we were following, the crisis in gaza, where israel launched a major ground offensive and it continues. a lot to get you up to date on in this hour. president obama today laying out the priorities and the aftermath of the airline crash in the ukraine. the priorities, learning the truth first, he say then acting. there has to be a credible international investigation into what happened. the u.n. security council has endorsed this investigation and we will hold all its members, including russia, to their word. in order to facilitate that investigation. russia, pro-russian separatists and ukraine must adhere to an immediate cease-fire. evidence must not be tampered with. investigators need access to the crash site. and the solemn task of returning those lost on board the plane to their loved ones needs to go forward immediately. here s what we know. when malaysian airlines flight 17 went down yesterday, most of the people on board, 189, were from the netherlands. president obama today identified by name one american who was also killed. the airline announcing today that they will make an initial cash payment of $5,000 to the family of each passenger. it sounds like very little amount of money. meant to cover travel expenses, immediate expenses, to the crash side. an audio recording ukrainian officials say they intercepted. and one of the voice on the tape describing debris falling from the sky and saying, quote, he s 100% sure the plane is a civilian aircraft. the question of course, did anyone know it was a civilian aircraft before they shot it down. whichever side of the you d cra ukraine conflict is found spons ashlgs these deaths were not involved in that conflict. an asian airliner filled with people from all over the world. and everyone agrees there will be some sort of backlash, certainly some impact. jim sciutto is our chief national security. the question now is where will that backlash come, who will feel it, what form will it take. most likely russia. the president clearly treading very carefully here in his comments about the white house. saying we have to be certain first of exactly what happened. so they re taking their time. but, more and more, the evidence coming from the u.s. side and the ukrainian side points to some russian involvement. the president said so in so many words. he said that this, in his words, is not an accident. a plane cannot be shot down without sophisticated equipment. and he says that sophisticated equipment, including anti-aircraft missiles, are coming from russia. we re just learning now that the working theory of u.s. intelligence now is that this missile system, which both u.s. and ukrainian officials believe was responsible for taking down this passenger yet, this buk system we ve talked a lot about, anderson, that it was supplied to the rebels by russia. that would be a shocking revelation if confirmed. because it means russia would not just be indirectly responsible for this, but directly responsible. and that means greater consequences. the trouble is, how severe are those consequences. just a day before this crash, president jim, i just got to interrupt you. there s a pentagon briefing. we ll go to that live. and that support has included arms, material and training. as we investigate who did this and why, this terrible tragedy underscores the need for russia to take immediate and concrete steps to deitescalate the crisi in ukraine. and i have one update on cape bray. the crew aboard cape bray continue their work to neutralize materials from the stockpile. as of this morning, the crew has neutralized just over 15% of the df, which is a sarin precursor. this amount has been verified by the international organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons. he s no longer talking about the aircraft itself. actually, let s listen as he is taking questions. let s just see yeah, let s listen in. of russian heavy weapons across the border into ukraine and the president spoke about training, all of that. can you go through this and tell us the latest u.s. assessment, u.s. military assessment, of what the russians have been doing in transferring heavy weapons, surface to air missiles, artillery, other heavy weapons across the border, to separatists on the ukraine side and the training and assistance that you believe russian elements, the russian military, is giving to these separatists. no hint that russian support for the separatists have ceased. in fact, we continue to believe that russia continues to provide them with heavy weapon, military equipment, financing as well. they continue to allow these russian fighters to enter the ukraine freely. there have been, as you know, we ve acknowledged that some tanks, armored personnel vehicles, have made their way across the border. it is a it has been a steady concerted campaign by russia s military to continue to support and resource, advise, these separatists. have you seen there is some video out there, i don t know that you ve seen the particular video, have you seen evidence that an sa-11 or buk missile system would cross the border at some point from russia into ukraine, and what can you tell us about that system and the sophistication and training that would be needed by russian separatists to actually be able to operate it effectively? i don t have specific information about a buk system making that transit. we re not ruling anything in or out at this point. it is it is a sophisticated that said, it is a sophisticated system. the missile itself, the saa 11, which is the one we believe was used to down flight 17, is a sophisticated piece of technology. and it it strained credulity to think it could be used by separatists without at least some measure of russian support and technical assistance. they didn t just do it on their own? it strain e eed crew duality think it could be used without assistance. you have evidence of that? we want investigators to do their work. i don t have an indication now that a system was brought over and we don t exactly know who is responsible for firing that missile or with or with what assistance. what i m saying is that system is fairly sophisticated. so what is the level of their training and assistance? does it include russian forces going across the border into ukraine to work as advisers or trainers side by side with the separatists? there s been russian there s been incursions across the border by russian aircraft so, i mean, i think we have we don t have any reason to suspect that they haven t provided some measure of support on the other side of that border. i mean, these paramilitary forces that we don t talk about as much anymore certainly didn t act or behave or like some ragtag militia. so nobody s suggesting that russian military advice and assistance hasn t somehow crossed that border. it s just unclear exactly how much and when and who. again, that s what the investigators are going to look at. we got to let them do it. are we to believe it was just a coincidence that the president announced sanctions directly on the maker of this buks system just the day before? i won t get into the thought process behind the president s specific decisions. clearly, these are another round of targeted sanctions. designed to change the calculation and president s putin s behavior and decision making. what you re seep m to think what you re suggesting [ inaudible ] i have no information that s the case. second question, what s the working theory about the intent? was this an intended military target gone awry? or was this simply an act of terrorism perhaps? we don t know. again, that s what we ve got to let investigators figure out. we don t know what the motive was here. what is your theory? what is your working theory? i don t think we have a working theory at this point. this just happened yesterday. there s teams of investigators now trying to get to the site and pore through this. we just have to let them do their job. admiral, people in this department have said before that there were about 10,000 to 12,000 regular russian troops inside the russian side of the border, which is a build-up from a couple of weeks ago. is that still your estimate? have those forces changed since this attack yesterday? can you tell us about, you know, as much as you can what they re doing or what their posture is in terms of a potential incursion? yes, that s a great question. i don t know of any major change to that presence. it s roughly, still, about 10,000 to 12,000. and it fleck wait fluctuates ae bit from week to week. the point is, it has been, over time, a steady increase of these combined arms tactical battalions across the border on the russian side but to the southeast of ukraine. and they are close to the border. in many cases, closer than those forces who were more aligned along the east. if you remember, we had tens of thousands that were along the eastern border with ukraine, but not as close as these units appear to be. all they re doing is further escalating tension. it s difficult to know what their intent is. that s a question you should ask the russian military defense. they re there. they re going by size week by week. they do nothing more than escalate tension. is that process separate from these regular i haven t seen any indication they re actively involved in the provision of support to the separatists. i haven t seencontinuing to mas along that side of the border. justin. two questions. do that massing of forces, does that include air, defense, artillery systems like the sa 11 that was used in malaysian have you seen air defense equipment on the russian side of the border in that build-up? i don t have an inventory of what they ve got with them, justin. we assess these are combined arms units. in other words, it s not just infantry troops, but they have artillery capability, they ve got armor capability. they re combined arms. and they re very ready. this is a very capable force. though smaller in number than what was aligned along the border before. i don t have a complete inventory of what they ve got. an estimate of about 12,000 russian troops on the border in the russian side. obviously, the u.s. has been tracking the work of russian special operations forces, russian advisers, russian intelligence services, in ukraine. is there an estimate of the size of that advisory presence inside the eastern ukraine by russian forces? is it a handful? is it 1,000 guys? i don t have the number for you on that. that s less important than the fact that they continue to do it. and we continue to see this support and resourcing and advice given to these separatist groups. we have every indication that support is russian, coming from the russians. in ukraine we believe there are there is russian support for the separatists inside ukraine, yes. admiral, when the general was here a couple weeks ago, he said specifically that the ukrainian separatists were receiving training on russian territory on using what he called vehicle born anti-aircraft systems. how much training, can you elaborate, has that intensified in recent weeks, and was he referring to an as-11-type system? i don t know what assessment he was referring to but we agree some separatists have received training in these vehicle born systems. there s no question about that. i don t have i mean, i don t have an estimate of how many and who s doing it. that would have to raise particular alarms, wouldn t it? it s one thing, small arms. but vehicle born anti-aircraft systems, that s pretty serious. it is pretty serious. we ve been taking it serious. we ve been monitoring the situation there as closely as we can. and we ve been nobody in the pentagon has been shy about talking about the continued threat posed by these separatist elements in ukraine or by those combined arms forces continuing to amass along the border. phil. has the pentagon or u.s. government increased its surveillance of the area along the border in the wake of this disast disaster? i would just say that we re monitoring events as closely as we can. and i really don t have any more to add than that. you don t want to say whether it s increased or not? we re monitoring events as closely as we can. i ll go back to the general s comments. were there any warnings given to the commercial airline companies or any civilian airline authorities about the existence or this level of training for those taking place there was a notice to airmen put out. i think you know that. that warns civilian aircraft to fly, to take care over the skies of ukraine and to fly at higher altitudes. not an expert on that entire process but there was an international notice to civilian air carriers about that. was that prompted by what the general said, the training of vehicle born you d have to talk to the faa and other agencies that handle that. i don t know what prompted it. i think it was obviously if you re going to issue a warning like that, it s based on concerns that you have about surface to air missile activity and capabilities. yeah. you said that you don t know what the intent was of whoever fired the missile. were there any indications there were other airlines, perhaps ukrainian military planes, in the sky at that time? also, is there any concern the president keeps saying put be wants to stop this, he can. are there any concerns perhaps this is a situation that is poised to spiral out control and perhaps russian doesn t have the control of the separatists and, if so, how are you preparing? on your first question, i don t know. this is ukrainian airspace. i remembfer to them to speak ab that. we wouldn t have that here. on your second question, i think the president s been very clear about what the responsibilities and obligation of president putin and moscow are right now. which is to deit s calculate the tension. respect the territorial integrity of ukraine. and cease support for the separatist activities. which i said at the outset, in some cases, is intensifying. even after yesterday s incidents? i don t know of any big delta between their support from yesterday to today. we haven t seen any sign that it s not that it s stopping. yes. admiral, there had been previous to yesterday s tragedy, there had been two or three, at least, ukrainian transport planes shot down. does your intelligence and your knowledge indicate the system that shot down the plane yesterday was a more powerful, more sophisticated system requiring more training, or was it similar to the system that was used to shoot down the ukrainian transport planes? it s again, we re investigating this right now. it s unclear exactly what brought down the other aircraft you re talking about. i mean, we know they were shot down, but those those incidents are still being looked into. i don t have any great visibility on what brought them down. but i d like to just kind of bring you back to the larger point here. that these aircraft are being shot down. and while it s unclear exactly who s pulling the trigger here, it s pretty clear it s doing nothing to deitescalate the tension inside ukraine and to bring to this crisis a peaceful resolution. now innocent people simply flying from one city to another have been killed. and brought into this. so let s not lose sight of the big picture here. it matters a lot less, you know, exactly what system it was and a lot more that it happened and it needs to stop. just a quick follow, do you believe whoever shot this plane down could have mistaken for a ukrainian military transport? ei m not going to get into te motivations, the intent, the reasoning that went into this. that s for the investigators to figure out. we simply don t have that level of detail at this point. ma am. normally friend or foe measures on systems like this? if it was an accident, would that reveal a dangerous lack of training on the part of whoever was using it? i don t know yet. i m not an expert on that system. i wouldn t begin to get up here and try to dissect it for you. investigators are going to pile through this. exactly who are these investigators? it will be it s an international investigation. does it include dod, does it include cia there s no plans right now for a dod representative on this. i won t speak for other agencies. i believe there will be some other entities from the federal government, individuals going over there to participate in it. i don t have the makeup of the team. it will be an international investigation. do you anticipate i have no expectation right now there will be a dod rep on this team. the president said he saw no role for the u.s. military in responding to this. but what ever happened to that list of requests for equipment that the ukrainians sent at the beginning of this? yeah, we continue to review requests for, or ukrainian requests for military assistance. some $33 million that the president has authorized of material has been getting to ukrainian, ukrainian armed forces and border services. the support continues to flow. we continue to take a look at their needs and addressing each in turn. last i remember, it was mres. is there any do you have a more complete list? yes, there s been more. the recent deliveries include radios, body armor, individual first aid kits, sleeping mats, uniform items. over the next few months, additional items will move through to include night vision goggles, thermal imageers, kevlar, some additional radios. there s been some other equipment given to ukraine s border guards. barbed wire, alarms systems. excavato excavators. trucks, generators. xun cations. communications. gear. part of a package of more than $33 million now that the president has approved and that stuff continues to flow. listening to a spokesman at the pentagon. want to bring in our jim sciutto. want to bring in our chief national security correspondent jim sciutto. one of the things the spokesman from the pentagon said earlier, said it strained credulity they could do this without russian assistance, it was a fairly sophisticated device used. although they certainly don t foe who pushed the trigger. that was exactly the line i was thinking, anderson, the most significant from that press conference. follows on with what the president was saying earlier, this is not an accident, in the president s words, that they can t shoot the separatists couldn t shoot down the plane without sophisticated assistance. that assistance coming from russia. then on the floor of the security council, saying the systems are complicated, it s likely the separatists would have needed russian help, russian training. and now in addition to that, anderson, you have the u.s. intelligence community saying it s their working theory at this point that that missile system itself, the actual launcher, came across the border from russia. we have some audio we ve obtained, again, from ukrainian officials, seeming to show that that launcher came across the border. so that gives direct, as popposo just indirect, goes to the question you asked earlier, who bears the consequence to this. the president, goingrd too, you have to envision him marshalling support for stiffer sanctions against russia. yesterday, there had been some thought perhaps there was a system captured by pro-russian rebels from the ukrainian military. but as you just said, a senior defense official is at thing cnn their work theory abeimong the military is russian military supplied this buk missile system. it s a if question. this is what i was told. their working theory is this missile system came from a ukrainian base in crimea and that it was transferred from crimea to eastern ukraine, but via russian territory. if you look at a map, it would have to go from ukraine, through, you know, one route would be to take it through russia. that was their working theory. one of the comeing, many questions that hasn t been established yet. based on the statement from the pentagon, the president, our u.n. ambassador, that they would at least need training to operate this thing as well and that adds more responsibility. we re going to talk, when we come back, to a reporter on scene at the crash site for the latest on exactly what s happening there. we ll be right back. great. but parallel parking isn t one of them. you re either too far from the curb. or too close to other cars. it s just a matter of time until you rip some guy s bumper off. so, here are your choices: take the bus. or get liberty mutual insurance. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won t raise your rates due to your 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maps out and split up the territory. at the same time, it wasn t a sophisticated approach. they were still tying white cotton to stakes and basically walking through the fields and marking these spots. and the local population started emerging from their homes. people in the village down below sort of walking their cows trying to make sense of what had happened. many of them still in deep shock. there had been some reports of possible looting or removal of items or removal even of debris. did you see any of that? i myself didn t. i spoke to a colleague who had been sort of at the outskirts of the perimeter and saw a few guys going through suitcase that had fall en from the sky and talkin about whether to take a guide book. to say there s been extensive looting, at least during the morning period while i was there, is pretty difficult. you know, the perimeter there is being controlled. there s one rebel commander there who told me essentially by three groups. one is a set of fighters from nearby. the cosacks appear to be the wild card as always in this situation. so it s a little more difficult to say what s happening on their side of things. did yesterday you had talked that in some cases they were moving bodies, sort of trying to get all the victims together. does that continue today? did you see that? no, they haven t actually been touching the bodies at all from what i ve seen. they as far as we know have been asked through back channels. the prime minister of the donetsk people republic has been asked not to touch the bodies by malaysian and dutch authorities, suggesting people are still hoping there will be a chance for folks, international observers and investigators to enter the area. the concern of course is you have hundreds of bodies decaying in a field before anyone has a chance to get to them. it s summer here. it was raining actually earlier in the day. to put it simply, it s not ideal conditions. did it seem to you that most i mean, obviously, investigators are going to be looking at what kind of wreckage pieces of the wreckage and also even people themselves. are most of the people i m not sure how to ask this, are most of the people intact? i think it s about 50/50. i did a walk-through this morning and sort of in the daylight and counted roughly 50, 50 bodies, and i d say at least half of them are so mangled you simply couldn t identify them. some just kind of twisted corpses that look almost picasso-esque. but at the same time there are others that if handled properly, could be clearly identified. are there still we ve seen images of large pieces of wreckage. are most of the pieces very identifiable? most of the pieces of the debris? are there large chunks of the aircraft still intact? it seeps the debris split into sort of two clusters as it fell from the sky. the tail fin sort of further up the road. and some other debris scattered in that vicinity. and then the main crash site, which is closer to the village at the lower end of the field seems to be where the fuselage, the engines, landed. a lot of that has been burnt out. the flight hadn t taken off too long before it went down, so there was a lot of fuel still in the tank. you can really see that when you walk through the crash site. some of the alloy from the plane has sort of melted, resolidified. silver on the ground. in terms of do you have any information about black boxes or flight data recorders? there have been conflicting reports cy don t have anything that i could confirm. i ve heard the same conflicting reports that everyone has all day. and folks are continuing from both sides. to report at one moment that they have them and the next moment that they don t have them. so i think it s, again, a moment where it s worth waiting, not rushing to conclusions. and letting the situation play out a little bit in order to find out what s actually going on. ukrainian officials said they have been trying to get access to the site. in some cases, there work has been hampered. do you see any evidence officials from ukraine or accident investigators either doing work or trying to get access to a site? in the morning, there was nobody from ukraine or international groups there. i heard a group of observers visited the site. apparently there was an incident where some of the cosack guards either didn t understand exactly who the osce was or didn t appreciate their presence and caused some problems in terms of entry to the site. though rebel leaders have assured me that they will continue to and intend to allow international observers and journalists to work, they said their command is not to let locals on to the site. but beyond that, they don t plan to inpose any restrictions. i know you have also been talking to a number of pro-russian rebel leaders and spokespeople. what are they telling you, in terms of claims of responsibility, in terms of what they want to see happen? you know, it s an interesting question. it points to a larger problem. in terms of the long-term standing of eastern ukraine. most of the rebels here, i would say frankly across the board, deny responsibility for this. they claim it s a provocation conjured up by the ukrainian authorities in kiev. many of them claim they don t have is the equipment or that they don t have enough of the components of this missile system buk to actually hit this plane. when it comes to the fighters themselves, i think it s a moment where perception proves to be more powerful than reality. for these folks, even if evidence is presented by the western by western governments or by kiev, it s politicized in the eyes of the rebel fighters. these are men who have been fighting now for three months, if not a little bit more, and they ve given up their regular lives. there doesn t seem to be anyone saying that they re ready to rethink their position or to rethink their cause as a result of the malaysian airlines disaster. so the video posted by ukraine s interior ministry on its facebook page showing a buk system, according to the ukraine officials, heading towards russia, with one missile missing, things like that, that s all discounted by anybody in the rebels who you talked to? absolutely. to put it mildly, they don t trust a word that kiev says. i think anything that s released by the current authorities in kiev is seen in rebel eyes as fabricated, as intended to essentially to draw nato into ukraine. that s the understanding. the rebels think ukrainians want to establish more precedent to involve nato forces in ukraine in order to escalate western involvement and western attachment to the new government in kiev. is there anything else you want people to know about the crash site, about what is happening there right now? you know, i think one, for me, the important thing to note is there s still a lot of work to be done in order to secure the bodies. there s a lot of people talking about talking about the parts of the plane. talking about establishing evidence chains in order to have a proper investigation. and all of that is it s certainly important, but i think, especially for the for anyone who s walked through that scene, the bodies, the effects of the people on board, would receive as much attention as the more politicized debris are there capabilities there to properly handle the victims of this crash? are there morgue facilities? are there refrigeration, you know, mobile refrigeration trucks? can at this point, do they need all that to help? i think they do need all of that. i don t think they have it. the rebel quote/unquote minister alexander boridi mentioned today they don t have the proper equipment to store and secure and maintain the bodies so that s perhaps an area where the international community, observers could play a role, seems to be a point on which the separatist leadership is ready to cooperate. how easy is it to get to this site? i mean, is it because it s, you know, as we ve seen in past instan instances, it s very possible you may have family members wanting to come to the crash site as soon as possible. is how remote is it? how possible is it to actually get there? it s about 90 minutes from the regional capital donetsk where i m actually right now. it s off in a classic ukrainian countryside village, down sort of pothole-riddled roads, but the main issue i think for anyone traveling in this region right now is effectively the roads are controlled by the separatist groups. you have to pass through a series of checkpoints in order to move along the roads. i don t imagine they would be particular particularly happy or particularly kind to visiting foreigners. all journalists here have to receive accreditation through the separatist authorities. without that press card, you end up you end up held, held back from moving, moving around. it s not a at the same tie, there s still there s still fighting going on. there s still skirmishes. the city near to the crash site. so it s not an especially safe place to be traveling, although, again, i imagine on the issue of the bodies themselves and the folks impacted by the crash, the rebels seem a bit more willing to meet in the middle. noah schneider, i know, it s been an exhausting night for you. thank you. we ll continue to check in with noah in the coming days. up next, i ll talk to my panel about preserving what is a crime scene, multiple crime scenes, over a wide area, and the investigation of the crash. at every ford dealership, you ll find the works! it s a complete checkup of the services your vehicle needs. so prepare your car for any road trip by taking it to an expert ford technician. because no matter your destination good maintenance helps you save at the pump. get our multi-point inspection with a synthetic blend oil change, tire rotation, brake inspection and more for $29.95 or less. get a complete vehicle checkup only at your ford dealer. joining know new is the former inspector general of the nstb. our military analyst. and in washington, peter golz, a specialist in aviation and international crisis management. also joining us is david soucie, cnn aviation analyst. appreciate all of you being with us. david, we were just hearing from noah schneider about the crash scene. from what he said, in terms of trying to, trying to investigate this, what challenges lay ahead? this really isn t just one crime scene, this is multiple crime scenes spread out over a great distance. yes, it is. documenting it is a challenge just when it s a singular accident but now you ve got several different things that have to be treated as accident sites. if bodies are falling separately, those have to be documented as well, what tract tra jektry the object that hit the ground went what will give clues what type of explosion it was, what type of speed. there s a lot of conclusions to be had. if those are moved, it can lead you down the wrong path. even the conditions of the victims are important in all of this to determine what happened. that s absolutely right and of course the method of bringing down the plane, the residue. at this point, the air crash investigators can tell you it was a you know, a missile brought down a plane and how the plane came down. but at this point, i would be inclined to say this is not an article 13 iko accident investigation and treat it as an international crime scene explain the difference, how do you mean? at that point, like we did in 9/11, the united states, after the four planes on 9/11, the ntsb was not in charge, the fbi was in charge, because it was an international criminal investigation. you have many more powers. you have the power literally to seize evidence. you can go in and get what you want and what you need. they need that right now. just looking at the crime scene and the report, great report, but it s out of control. rick, how do you see it? well, you know, they need to get the evidence and as david said i think it s important we find out how that weapon impacted that aircraft, to find out what it did and that might give us a better clue as to the condition of the weapon. we re hearing different reports about where that came from. was it a front-line russian piece of equipment? was it something taken from a ukrainian base? was it modified? this would be important. peter golz, just as, you know, as noah was talking about, the priority is obviously dealing with the victims of this crash, dealing with them in a sensitive way, dealing with them in a humane way, in a dignified way. and right now they don t have the capabilities on the ground really to do that. no, they don t. what has to happen is there has to be international action to form a recovery team that goes in immediately. that is promised protection by both the ukrainians, the separatists and the russians. and if that kind of protection s not promised and not delivered, then there s got to be sanctions immediately placed. i mean, the evidence going to be there. after twa flight 800, we tested the explosive residue and the explosive evidence of a missile detonating near aircraft skin. the investigation will know what the marker is on that case, in this accident. they will see the evidence. but the most important thing is to get a team in immediately to begin recovering the victims and treating them with some dignity and that really is in the hands of the russians, the ukrainians and the and in terms of the black boxes, the flight data recorders, they are important, but even david soucie, even if they have been removed and again, we have not been able to confirm it, and noah has not been able to confirm the status of them, there is still the wreckage themselves, from the victims themselves. there is more to be learned than what the boxes would tell us. and at the very most with the black boxs, whether there was a warning or not, whether they had been tried to be contacted, taken evasive action to say we re off track, there is someone who doesn t want us to here, do they start to turn the other way. that would be the black box information. but as far as we have talked about earlier with the impact of what type of effect the ballistic missile that hit the aircraft or exploded outside the aircraft, that is important information to know so you can decide whether it came from. and have you ever seen a crash/crime scene like this? yes, i have. in terms of the different actors in play. yes, pan am 103, september 11, klo-7, and with the residue on the bodies and the plane, but now you re in an international criminal man hunt. and in the midst of conflict. in the midst of conflict and how they re going to secure even and the workers to come in and retrieve the bodies, they need to have security. they don t want to be harmed in that process. mary schiavo, david soucie, rick francona, we appreciate you being with us. president obama saying there were hiv aids advocates on board, committed to finding a cure. sanjay gupta looks at the global impact of their loss now. reporter: the health community around the world in utter shock. the international aids society says a number of its members were on board malaysia airlines flight 17. they were heading to the aids 2014 conference in melbourne, australia, scheduled to start this sunday. typically attended by thousands from all over the world. and among them, leading hiv experts. their loss, likely to have an impact on research regarding diagnosing, treating and curing the disease. president bill clinton is one of the keynote speakers at the conference. he says it s awful, sickening, what has happened to so many people. they were doing so much good. we do this on a regular basis, have these international aids conferences. and i try to go to all of them, because i m always so inspired by what other people are doing and what we can learn from them. and so since i left office, it s been a kind of a regular part of my life, thinking about those people being knocked out of the sky. it s pretty tough. reporter: one of the victims, prominent dutch scientist, lang. i first met him in 2004 when he presided in bangkok. those who knew him say he was a hard core scientist with the heart of an activist, who worked tirelessly to get affordable aids drugs for hiv positive patients living in poor countries. one small example of his work. he was the one that argued if coca-cola could get refrigerated beverages to places all over africa, then we should be able to do the same with refrigerated hiv medications. it s going to be a huge impact, both on people who worked closely with him, people in his lab, and on the society as a whole. it s an incredible loss. we are all just bracing ourselves to arrive and find out who else may have been on that flight. it s just unbelievable. it s really real yet. reporter: the world health organization tells us glen thomas was on board that flight. he worked with us here at cnn during our coverage of the ebowla outbreak. he was planning his 50th birthday celebration. his life and so many others cut tragically short. and dr. sanjay gupta joins me live from the cnn center in atlanta. what more can you tell us about the victims and the work that they were doing? this international aids conference has been around for some time. nearly 30 years now. and this is the one sort of conference where researchers from all over the world were working sometimes in large labs and small labs, funded in different ways, came together to try and share the research, to really accelerate what was happening in the world of hiv/aids. jep lang, one of the first people to look at maternal to child transmission of hiv, do some of the early research in that area. and trying to figure out how to prevent it. we ve covered these types of stories. it s impossible to try you could not overestimate the impact of the sort of work that many of these people did who were lost on that flight. i think more people will come in to fill those ranks, but it s going to really cast a pallor over the society s meeting. this is a brain trust of people who have dedicated their lives to it and spent years on it. and knowledge like that. obviously beyond the human tragedy for their families, for their friends, for all who knew them. for this has an impact on globally on efforts fighting hiv/aids. we re talking about the last 30 years, when we have really started to research and focus on hiv/aids since the early 80s. and there are people who have spent their entire lives, interprofessional lives doing nothing but this. as you say, they re wealth of experience, knowledge, brain trust, that s that was their whole life. and so those people, again it s not to say there aren t other people who can fill those ranks, but some real leaders. jep lang, i interviewed him in 2004 in bangkok, talked to him about some of the work they were doing at that time. and he was the president of the whole organization. so gives an idea of the stature of this man, as well. a huge loss. globally. dr. sanjay gupta, appreciate it. thanks very much. our extensive coverage of the malaysian flight 17 and conflict in the middle east continues with brooke baldwin after a quick break. and i ll be on tonight. the cadillac summer collection is here. during the cadillac summer s best event, lease this all new 2014 cts for around $459 a month or purchase with 0% apr and make this the summer of style. of swedish experience in insidperfecting the rich,ars never bitter taste of gevalia. we do it all for this very experience. 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