d daddy s a hero. daddy, can we play ponies? right after we do foldies. tide boost is my tide. what s yours? so if ydead battery,t tire, need a tow or lock your keys in the car, geico s emergency roadside assistance is there 24/7. oh dear, i got a flat tire. hmmm. uh. yeah, can you find a take where it s a bit more dramatic on that last line, yeah? yeah i got it right here. someone help me!!! i have a flat tire!!! well it s good. good for me. what do you think? geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. i m s.e. cupp. the president looking to a new nis fiscal fight. the rest of hasandy aid bill up for a vote. xlees with tax breaks for rum distillers? i need a drunk. i m kry is tal ball. are we turning our kids in to narcissists? a dope. lance armstrong comes clean to the queen of talk but who needed the interview more, lance or oprah? i m shooting straight coming to guns. ready, aim? the cycle is on fire. the house is back and getting serious about the constitution. members spent 1:05 reciting the entire u.s. constitution. it s the basis of our government, of course, but this is only the second time ever the entire document was read aloud in the house. we the people of the united states in order to form a more perfect union no person except a natural-born citizen shall be eligible to the office of president. the powers to all cases of law and equity. full faith and credit given in each state to the public acts. congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the united states. the validity of the public debt of the united states authorized by law shall not be questioned. the right of citizens of the united states to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. the right of the citizens of the united states to vote shall not be denied on account of sex. the 18th article of the amendment to the constitution of the amendment is hereby repealed. ah, the constitution from those opening lines we the people to the 21st amendment, wahoo! glorious document. i think i heard a clap or two in there about the debt and the nation paying bills and closer and closer to running out of cash to do it. remember, raising the debt ceiling isn t additional spending but allows the government to pay the bills it s already racked up on money it s already spent. today, fitch ratings which sets credit ratings for countries around the world warned the u.s. could lose the aaa rating, the highest there is, if there s not a quote median-term deficit reduction plan put in place. what will it take to get a deal? we start with dan gross. his latest piece is titled obama brinksmanship puts gop in tough spot on debt ceiling. so dan, you write that while you fall off a cliff, you only bump your head in to a ceiling but economically the ceiling has the capacity to deliver far more damage. you are talking like my friend steve kornacki here. what is failing to raise the debt ceiling? why is that going to be catastrophic? well, you know, first of all the stock and bond markets will really go haywire in a way they didn t when we were about to go over the fiscal cliff because government bonds are held by everybody. chinese central bank, japanese central bank, every single bank financial institution out there. so if there s any question over the value of those and they start to decline, these institutions have a great amount of leverage and interconnected with everything else and sort of see what happened in 2008. it s also this issue of, you know, who gets paid? if you start to have to say maybe soldiers get paid but not paying for the fuel or these doctors will get paid, you know, government is a huge force in our economy. like it or not. and the number of companies that would really be affected from walmart to every defense contractor to giant health care companies, if their ability to collect money that is owed to them is then put in doubt, that triggers a whole, you know, range of activities of other people wanting to collect debts from them. sounds really scary. do me a favor, though, and crawl in to president obama s head for me and tell me why you think in 2006 he voted not to raise the debt ceiling and said the fact we re here today to debate raising the debt limit is a sign of leadership failure, the sign the u.s. government can t pay his own bills. what was he thinking there? voting against an increase of the debt kreeling is what you do in the opposition party. oh, okay. in congress. this is going back for the last many years. yeah. all the republicans in the senate voted for increases when bush was in office. they vote against it when obama is in office. and vice versa. the problem or challenges now is the house where republicans don t want to vote for it and we need them, you know, it is sort of a luxury you have when the opposition controls the house. you can vote against it and have
engaging in this behavior so bad for the country. there s, you know, a long piece in politico where they were talking about, you know, what boehner s doing and manages this, and there s a line there when someone said we may have to let them do a partial government shutdown just to let them get this out of their system before they go on to approve what needs to be done and i think, you know, the challenge of leadership is to tell the people who you are leading that what they want is not realistic or that it doesn t make sense. i think boehner s modus operandi is to do some sort of last-minute deal. i think that s part of the psychology here. that you let these people, you know, they don t want to approve a debt ceiling, didn t come here to approve it and before they ll do it, they have to do something that lets them get that energy out of their system. and unfortunately, that might be the best strategy that he actually has, but you know, overall in terms of the president s and democrats approach, i think the president did a wonderful job and the democrats got a good deal in the fiscal cliff deal and the president s negotiating strategy of not negotiating on the debt ceiling has really put republicans in the corner where they re sort of backing away and saying maybe we can go in another direction but one thing i m concerned about is when i look back at 2010 and the big losses that democrats sustained there, part of the reason was because we ceded the debate to the republicans and allowed them to frame the conversation around the debt and the deficit and if you look at gallup polling, you can see that the debt and the deficit and government dissatisfaction with government which is another strong place for republicans to fight on are rising, are increasing in importance for voters in terms of what they re concerned about so i m concerned and wonder if you think this is right, that democrats may be setting themselves up to be on weak terrain sort to speak in terms of 2014 congressional elections by allowing this debate to be focused on the debt and deficit. people never stop and always in campaign mode and i think with obama the issue is, he has a campaign and wants to get in governing mode and that s why you see the changing of the discussion of the framing and why i think they suffered the losses in 2010 when it wasn t just a matter of issues, they weren t getting their voters out to the polls and i think it s more we saw it last fall when there was a big debate between obama and romney and the sort of democratic and gop view of what we should do with the budget deficit and what we should do with taxes and talked about in great detail and relentlessly. although, if i could we saw how that turned out. that was more about the future of the middle class and traditionally a stronger place for democrats to be. this is still a question about priorities or at least if i m doing the messaging and strategy on this, do you want we have a limited number of resources. we have a fair amount of debt. assume we all want to reduce our deficits and reduce the amount of debt. do we want to do that by cutting social security and medicare and taking these entitlements and the safety net and fundamentally changing it or do we want more cash from individuals and from companies and whether you do that through higher rates or tax reform or getting rid of deductions, you know, that s a debate worth having and i think one that democrats can be in a pretty decent position to win if they talk about it in the right way. dan gross, thanks for coming. thank you. next, developing news this afternoon on the latest sandy aid bill before congress. a house vote is expected tonight but there s plenty of opposition and maybe for good reason. we re spinning as the cycle rolls on for tuesday, january 15th. hey sis, it s so great to see you. you, too! oh, cloudy glasses. you didn t have to come over! actually, honey, i think i did. oh? you did? whoa, ladies, easy. hi. cascade kitchen counselor. we can help avoid this with cascade complete pacs. see, over time, cascade complete pacs fight film buildup two times better than finish quantum. to help leave glasses sparkling shiny! too bad it doesn t work on windows. okay, i m outta here. cascade. the clear choice. some brokerage firms are. but way too many aren t. some of the ones that push mutual funds with their names on them aren t. why? because selling their funds makes them more money. which makes you wonder isn t that a conflict? am i in the best fund for me, or them? search proprietary mutual funds . yikes, it s best for them. then go to e-trade. we ve got over 8,000 mutual funds
fight between two powerful republicans going strong. rand paul is here and like mark levin, is ready to react to this. i have nothing personal against senator paul. if we disagree on certain issues we disagree. his response seems to be he has something personal against me. that s okay, can he just get in line on that front. and here we go, welcome everybody, i m neil cavuto and this is your world a controversial world. mark levin speaks as the top two low pressures raise a stink. we hope to get on chris christie soon, we ve had him on a number of times in the past so hope springs eternal. we have kentucky senator rand paul. do you think it s gone too far? i think it s time to dial it down. we have enough democrats to attack maybe republicans can quit attacking republicans.
york related republicans, including those who were pushing for sandy aid, the same aid that you had referred to as part of the gimme gimme mentality are angry at you. wait, you know some of this, neil, comes from people who aren t fully discussing the issue. i actually did support sandy funding. i supported doing it one year at a time and paying for it by taking money from money that we re sending overseas in foreign aid. i was objecting to spending four years worth all at once without sufficient oversight, without offsetting the cost by cutting so i was never against the funding. i was just against doing the funding without offsetting it with spending cuts. you know, senator, rifts come in both parties but this one seems to be particularly pronounced and one may be preceded by john mccain and your run-ins with him in the past and he told the new republic when asked whether he would support you if you were the party s nominee in 2016 over hillary clinton he said it s going to be a tough choice. what do you make of that? i think there was a chuckle that supposedly went along with that interview, and you know, john mccain and i are friends. we don t always agree on everything. we had a dust-up today on the floor over foreign aid because i think it doesn t help our country to send money to egypt particularly when we have cities like detroit and chicago decaying in our country that i don t think we have money to be sending overseas and so i offered to try to obey the law that says when a military coup happens you have to stop funding, then that money could be used for some bridge projects in our country and to help infrastructure when we desperately need it. so we have a disagreement on that. that doesn t mean i don t respect john mccain as a war hero and i try to keep things on a less personal way, less personal kind of a battle and i think with governor christie it s gotten a little too personal, so we re ready to kiss and make up. all right, it doesn t look at
home because we were $1 trillion short. governor christie can t point to any votes that i ve ever voted to bring pork barrel projects to any state. i do work to try to bring money home from overseas and use it here at home but really it s just not accurate. i would probably say i m the most fiscally conservative or not one of the most fiscally conservative members of congress so it really kind of doesn t stick or make any sense. he s referring to the general sense of the states, sir, that new jersey spends roughly 38.3 billion in taxes that go to washington, and gets not nearly any of that back. in the case of kentucky, it s 26.5 billion and you get more than that back. none of that has anything to do with me. those formulas are based on poverty and i m one of the leading proponents of saying to folks who are getting entitlements that i think if you re working and able-bodied, you shouldn t be on the dole, and if you are, cannot help yourself, then we ll find some way to help you but poverty formulas have nothing to do with me. i didn t create these programs so it s kind of a stupid point to blame me for poverty you tried to clarify that kentucky gets a lot of this because you have two big military bases. it is and it does have to do with military spending. they could say new jersey they have ft. dix, the weapons station, mcguire dix and air force base. the bottom line is what this is about is we re trying to figure out those of us who are conservative and who believe in a strong national defense how do you have enough funding? i m willing to cut entire departments. in my five-year balanced budget i cut entire departments but i actually bring in military spending above the sequester level. void the sequester for the military because that cuts so much spending. my problem with some of the more liberal members of the republican parties, they re not willing to cut spending other
cuts and i think, frankly, if the american people could vote on whether or not we send the money to egypt or to new jersey and new york, i m all with them. what if that takes a long time, senator? the frustration governor christie showed at the time was that this was taking really, really long and the folks in new jersey were really, really hurting and they needed it. my amendment was the same day that they passed the appropriation. if they would have passed my amendment they would have gotten their money but gotten one year s worth and it would have been offset with spending cuts. gotcha. and the spending cuts occur over time but the bill would have happened at exactly the same speed of time. it s really about whether or not you want to have responsible government or whether or not you want unlimited spending without offset cutting. do you like chris christie? i don t really know him but i think the party s big enough for both of us. you re off to a bad start it would seem, the two of you. excuse me? you re off to a bad start, it would seem, the two of you. yes, but i think i m an easy going guy to tell you the truth. i ve had many dust-ups with the more eager for war faction of our party and we still get along, we sit next to each other at lunch and as far as i m concerned we re still personal friends even if we disagree on some issues. i m sorry, sir, if he were the nominee for 2016 for president will you support him? i will support whoever the republican nominee is? chris christie included? whoever wins and that includes chris christie. there had been thought the two of you would make a nice ticket, that had been bounced around. we re going to have to would you be interested in that? bell vae we ll have to patch up. i m inviting him for a beer any time he d like to sit down at the pub around the corner from the senate and have a beer. have you heard anything on that invite? it hasn t been formalized, i just thought of it. just now? we ll formalize it and put it in writing, i think we could sit down, have a beer and mend things and at times people have said chris christie has some libertarian leanings so it s ironic that we see him criticizing libertarians in the party or libertarian influences because some libertarians had high hopes he had libertarian leanings. i don t really know. do you think he drew the line maybe because of the 9/11 experience and so many lost in his state that he drew the line when it compromised our national security? i don t know. that it put many peoples lives in danger and we to deal with a lot of victims of those disasters. i don t know. i think it really has to do with a bigger, broader issue about whether or not we re going to be the party that protects the fourth amendment and privacy. i think we need to be the party that protects privacy and internet freedom. i think that s the least of it, senator. you re closer to the fire than i am but that seems like a very big philosophical battle being waged right now within the party. do you agree? we ll see. like i say, the offer to have a beer with chris christie stands. if he wants to break bread and see if we can find common ground i think it will help the party to not have us feuding. when you say break bread or have a beer you re open it to it being in trenton as much as d.c.. we could always negotiate a middle ground like philadelphia. real quickly, sir, while i ve got you here, you re very concerned about pouring good money after bad in egypt and you say the president pushed and already broken what is a recognized standard of giving money to countries when there s a military coup or an overthrow, whether justified or not, that the money stops. where does that stand now? well, we had a vote on my amendment today and i informed both republicans and democrats that if they voted against my amendment they were voting against the rule of law. the law is very explicit. it says if there is a military coup all aid must end but i also think the aid is actually counter-productive. i think it s dangerous to israel because i think these tanks and weapons and planes could potentially be used by crazy strong man that could arise in egypt and used against egypt. i don t think they do any good for the people. they re not buying any bread. they re buying tanks that may well be rolling over protesters, they re buying tear gas made in pennsylvania that they spray the protesters with. we now have a military in charge that s disappearing people. we rightly criticized the soviet union for disappearing, torturing and putting people to death that are in criminal custody. they re not even announcing what s happened to the muslim brotherhood and i m not a fan of the muslim brotherhood but at the same time i m into the a fan of disappearing people without charges or trial either. senator rand paul, maybe governor chris christie is watching and we ll broker an agreement to get the two of you to chat.
back at their hotels after spending another day interviewing survivors and collecting samples. they ll be coming home on saturday raising speculation that a strike might be on hold until after they re safely out of damascus. when it comes to who s with us, our major ally with us in this, british prime minister david cameron, who s facing his own resistance, but others say they won t join in the strike without u.n. support. as we suspect, that won t happen since russia holds veto power on the u.n. security council. russia is a big assad supporter. assad s other ally is iran which is vowing to strike israel. as a precaution, they re calling to issue gas masks. turkey is constructing bunkers and they re sending experts to the syrian border. because there are so many parts, we re looking at this in three sections. first, we re looking a the the pentagon, what s going on behind closed doors at the white house and finally the role of congress in all of this. they re being briefed tonight on u.s. intelligence. we start with nbc news pentagon correspondent jim mikel chef ski. how long before we strike? once the president gives the go ahead, the order to launch those missile strikes against the syrian regime and much of those chemical delivery targets, it could be a matter of hours because those targets have been put in place for some time now. they tinker with them on a daily basis when they see them move, some military forces and equipment from here to there. they have the basic target set down. to go after those delivery systems, the rocket launchers, ar till ler ris, tanks. again, they emphasize as the president and the white house
sequenc sequences, and as one official said, we d be doing the same thing. there was a little bit of mutual admiration going on there military to military in the fact that the russians would, in fact, be gathering around what looks like will be some missile strikes out of the med here in a few days. all right. it s great to see you. joining us now at the table is former white house mid east advisor, mark ginsburg. great to have you here. underneath it all is our credibility that s on the line. on one end if we don t respond we re sending a message to the world that it s okay to use chemical weapons and we are not able to follow through on our word. on the other end, if we do take action which it sounds like we will, then you re poking a much bigger hole in the hornet s nest. the next question is, what comes up next? that s what i tried to address this morning when i wrote an article for the huffington post. the morning after is the worst. was the president s goal to punish assad or to deter him or both? if it s to punish him, well, we can fire cruz missiles, he gets his punishment, takes out several control and command centers and god knows what else. if it s to deter him from using chemical weapons again, it is the imponderable that no wironen answer. how many cruz missiles does it take? how many times can we do this before the president leaves for the g-20. the key is not to just punish. it s to deter assad from using the chemical weapons again. we re not really committed here to removing assad from power so that s going to be a continued problem. we seem to be wanting to police the conflict. you can do this, you can kill hundreds of thousands of people, but you can t gas them. i understand the humanitarian problem there, but as a military
maybe 1,000, maybe 3,000 and all the other millions who are refugees. so the bottom line is the same. this is not going to solve the fund amt al problem. assad is going to remain in power. this is not an attempt to engage in regime change. if it deters him from using chemical weapons again, then for all intents and purposes the president achieved the goals of what the limited strike is about. you know, ambassador, as i ve been thinking through this conflict and what our approach should be, i keep thinking about something that lawrence wright wrote. he talks about how in 1983 hezbollah bombed our barracks in lebanon, in beirut, and killed 2841 of our marines. reagan made the decision to pull our troops out of lebanon. meanwhile, osama bin laden was watching these events unfold and essentially learned the lesson that america was cowardly, that they couldn t take a punch in the nose and that emboldened him to later on launch the attacks that we know he launched. i keep coming back to that because to me it seems like we have to figure out what type of strikes, what targets to strike. but isn t the bottom line here that the president said we have this red line of chemical weapons and if you cross that there will be enormous consequences. if we fail to deliver those enormous consequences, we lose all of our credibility in the reason gone, we lose all of our ability to act as a deterrent. iran is watching this and learning perhaps the same lessons that osama bin laden learned in 1983. krystal, the fact is international law was violated. the president s statement of crossing the red line occurred six to eight months ago. syria s used chemical weapons some months ago.
that was played out on america. the lesson was you don t go in the first place. we essentially intervened in a civil war in lebanon, the role then by intervening, the limited role that was designed expanded and it resulted in hundreds of americans being killed. the president with bipartisan support saying we ve got to bring these troops home before this gets worse. i think there s a parallel that makes people nervous. yeah, we say this is going to be limited but are we going to get sucked into something bigger here? the fact of the matter is i am so against boots on the ground, so against us involving ourselves militarily in a conflict that is beyond our control to shape anymore. i am so against having us be in a situation where we repeat the same mistakes of the past. what this white house wants to do is in effect almost a libya type conflict. sanitized conflict. the white house seems to be
their theories. the big question, and i think, jeff, you said this, a reward would be pennies on the dollars. exactly. why isn t there a reward posted? a reward would be pennies on the dollar for what this search is costing. thanks for joining us. good evening. it s 11:00 on the east coast. 11:00 a.m. in malaysia. we begin with several pieces of information. item one, the search zone is focusing on the southwest coast of australia. item two, investigators tell us the path it took, the path caught on radar suggests the rout was preprogrammed to hit certain navigational points. item three, the fbi is examining data from the captain s home flight simulator. we have a lot to get to. first, because these developments have been stacking up day after day, i just want to take a moment tonight to try to get everyone back on the same page with what we know so far. it begins on the morning of the 8th, flight 370 takes off from kuala lumpur bound for beijing. the final stream from the acars data reporting system is received on the ground at 1:07. then at 1:19, the first officer utters first round, leaving malaysian air space, telling controllers, good night. two minutes later, the radar transponder cuts out or is turned off. thai military radar is following it and between 1:21 and 1:28 a.m. detects that left turn back toward the west and south. at 1:30 a.m., air traffic controllers lose contact with the plane. acars transmission does not happen. this what is believed to be flight 370 is tracked way off course. from there there s no solid information. we only know according to a satellite ping received at 8:11 in the morning, investigators say the jet turned north or south and flew into those two huge arcs of territory in open ocean. investigators now are focusing closer on that southern route. we ll talk to a u.s. navy commander involved in that. a major development, one that everyone hopes will bring badly needed answers. more now from kuala lumpur. [ speaking foreign language ] reporter: a mother s grief and frustration finally boiling over. relatives of the missing passengers today storming into a normally subdued briefing room, demanding answers. after about five chaotic minutes, she and others are dragged out by malaysian officials. the malaysian government says they regret the incident, but the reality is neither they nor anyone seems much closer to solving the mystery of what happened to flight 370. could a clue be found in the pilot s home flight simulator? malaysian authorities say data from the simulator was deleted on february 3rd, more than a month before the plane went missing. the fbi today saying it has sent a copy of the simulator s hard drive to its forensics lab in quantico, virginia, hoping to recover the deleted files. the malaysian authorities also disclosed a tantalizing detail. they have new radar information about the plane s path, provided by another country. what exactly it shows the malaysians aren t saying. meanwhile, operational crews are beginning to narrow their search, believing it s more likely the missing jet traveled along the southern corridor, away from the heavily pop populated asian continent. investigators say they re focusing on an area roughly the size of new mexico, about 1600 miles off their southwest coast, using what information they know about currents and the plane s possible last position to make an educated guess on just where it might be. we are going to talk to a u.s. navy commander in that region. kyung lah joins us. you were in the room with heart-breaking pleas from relatives of the missing passengers. are they feeling that same frustration, that sense of just kind of anger? reporter: that anger and anguish, yes. that s felt across all nationalities, all the families here. and while it is a mystery for the rest of the world, for them it s very much about the loss of human life. this mystery about what s happened to fathers, sons, mothers, daughters. but as far as what that other woman said, calling the malaysian government liars, we haven t heard that from the people who are malaysian citizens. because frankly we haven t had any access to them. as far as the chinese families, they absolutely feel that across the board, we re hearing it out of beijing and here. they don t believe the malaysian government has been transparent at all. they feel they have botched this investigation. the government for its part, anderson, saying that the best way that they can help these families is to simply find the plane. kyung, appreciate the reporting from kuala lumpur. later on in the program i m going to speak to the family of paul weeks who was on the plane and was on the way to a new job in mongolia. he s an engineer. he actually gave his wedding ring and watch to his wife in case something happened. i m going to talk to his brother and sister about that. i want to bring in evan perez breaking the navigation story for us tonight. some of this can get really technical, evan. just to start with explain exactly what a way-point is and what is significant about this information we re getting. think about your gps. you can enter longitude and latitude in your gps to try to direct you, navigate you to a particular place. now in the sky for pilots, they also have to include altitude. so essentially it s a place in the sky where a pilot can direct to direct an aircraft and the computer system on board the aircraft to take the aircraft. and so the navigational systems on the plane essentially uses these five digit codes to direct where to take the aircraft, anderson. so explain the breaking news on this tonight. what is new that we now know? well, one of the things that we ve been wondering is how the investigators know that the aircraft deviated from its course. we know there is some radar. but how can they know with certainty? we know that the investigators have discovered that the aircraft went to two specific way-points away from the course thought was scheduled to go towards beijing. so what they believe this indicates is that whoever was doing this, whoever moved the aircraft off its scheduled course, specifically was directing it to these particular way-points. again, away from its scheduled course. if it was being manually flown it probably would not have headed to these way-points, is that correct? that s the understanding the investigators are looking at. now when a pilot normally turns an aircraft using the yoke, they feel if somebody was manually turning the aircraft it wouldn t specifically go to these particular way-points. so they believe this indicates perhaps that someone with some skill, someone who had some knowledge, entered these way-points for the aircraft to go to these particular places. and then of course it disappears. it doesn t answer the final question that we all have which is who did this, why and where did the aircraft go after it disappeared, anderson. and when were these entered in. evan perez, appreciate it. this seems like evidence pointing towards human intervention. the question was it pilots doing their jobs or someone up to no good? with us former cia counterintelligence expert and others. i m confused by these way-points and what the significance of the idea of having these two way-points is. can you try to explain it? a way-point really is a definition of the route in the sky. that s something that somebody would enter in. absolutely. but two particular different ones? we keep going back to there were two particular way-points. i don t see where those way-points came into play on this. i see the airplane might have been directed toward them. as a matter of fact, i looked on an en route chart to try to find the way-points that allegedly they turned toward. i still contend that the way-point they were headed for was a diversionary airport and specifically entered in by the captain. that s conjecture. i may fall on my sword on that one. but i don t see where the acars machine could actually i know through our dispatch process where they would know exactly what was put into that machine. they just don t know. that s not information they utilize or is helpful to them specifically. and jeff, the fact that this pilot deleted information from his simulator, you can look at it with a nefarious interpretation of that or he s an organized guy. he s cleaning up his files. what do you make of it? we only have part of the information on that. in order to determine whether it was nefarious or not or benign we need to know the other part. that is were there other flights on that simulator that he didn t delete. so in other words, what s left on the hard drive of that simulator and what is absent on the hard drive of that simulator. if only selective routes have been taken out of it, only a portion of his experience on the simulator has been deleted, then that makes me raise my eyebrow and says i find it difficult to find a benign explanation for that. les? i understand your point, jeff. but the way i m looking at it is from the standpoint of maybe there was a flight that pilots are organized people. and they feel that maybe the hard drive is going to take too much room and they delete a particular flight. but on a humorous note it might have been a profile he might have been practicing for his recurrent training and just a profile because this is not the kind of thing you can really do. but he may have deleted it because he was embarrassed it didn t go well or something to that effect. it s open to interpretation. mary, you ve been involved with the fbi in these investigations. are there circumstances where they couldn t retrieve the data because now the fbi and quantico willing be looking at it? yes. in circumstances where they can t retrieve the data is in instances where someone has erased it and knows how to do it effectively. you don t just erase you overwrite it or destroy certain things. you have to not just erase it but take extra pains. that too might be very interesting to show how they have overwritten it or erased it or deleted certain things. when i was inspector general we worked aviation crimes with the fbi s aviation crimes unit. and we many times had to recover computer data. they were pretty good. so i would bet on the fbi. i think they will be able to get whatever was on there. i just have to believe they re going to be able to see what those files were. unless and i would be surprised to learn this unless this erasure was so good and competent it wasn t just erased but overwritten. how complex an operation is this? might it take weeks or months? i don t think so, anderson. you re talking about hours and days rather than weeks and months. they ve got a tremendous capability. but remember just as in this case we ve had countries who have been reluctant to share with us their radar information because it shows what their true capabilities are, the united states if they have information that tells us well no good will come of it, we can t help those missing by releasing this in such a way and show our capability, they may not do so. i would hope that they would err on the side of getting that information out there. but we too have to protect our capabilities. mary, you raise an interesting point. that even if they can t find what the information that s been overwritten, the mere fact that information was intentionally overwritten can be meaningful. it depends what the erasure is. i guess i have to confess this. all of us who have flight simulators, you want to land, try to see if you can land. most of us don t do it successfully. but you want to try to see if you can land at the weirdest places on earth. you want to see if you re really good. so just flying around the earth and seeing different places might not tell us much of anything. that s what you do with like a microsoft flight simulator. where they went, what was there, what wasn t there, what s missing, the pains taken to take it away, if anyone else was on the flight simulator. all those things. i m pretty confident if it s there to be gotten that the fbi will get it. they re just so good at it. jeff, the fbi is also we re told analyzing the copilot s computer. you see a number of sort of cumulative acts, operational acts. what do you mean by that? what i mean by that, anderson, is nothing significant in the crime or terrorism world happens without some planning, casing and the act itself if you re going to be successful. those are the operational acts that lead up to a major incident or terrorism crime. rehearsals on the flight simulator might be interesting to go back and see what other routes had this chap captain flown in the months and weeks prior to this particular incident. on the simulator you mean. or in real life. what other trips has he taken. why as a senior captain did he bid the airline people will know what i m speaking about that he bid this trip. was this a good trip for a captain with his seniority or was this kind of a dog of a trip but he bid it? that could raise questions about okay, there s not a good reason for him to take this trip. there must be something else afoot. mary, do you agree with that? yeah. but there s a really important point, too. he makes a great point. because just flying on the simulator we can all fly weird places on the simulator. but you would have had to have gone there to make the contacts. because what s the point of knowing how to land someplace if once you get there you can t do anything with yourself, with the plane, with the plot. so there has to be more than that on the computer. there has to be additional contacts. by the way, since it was the copilot who spoke last and whose voice sounds normal, what we also want to know is much more information about him and is this how he spoke to air traffic controllers? other people who fly with him need to provide a lot of information about him. he s the only one we know that s living and talking when the turn is made. again, though, mechanical anomalies is still very much at play for investigators. that s something we re going to look at tonight as well. jeff beaty, good to have you on. mary schiavo as well. les abend will stick around. two of his colleagues will join us. we ll run through all the evolving scenarios investigators are looking at now, including some you ve been tweeting us about. tweet us using #ac360. follow me @andersoncooper. next intensifying focus off australia. we re going to hear from a commander in the u.s. navy s seventh fleet which has planes and vessels in the area. later we ll dig deeper into the possibility of a fire on board and parallels to the crash of swiss air flight 15 years ago. what can we learn from that flight that might be applicable to this? we ll be right back. ameriprise asked people a simple question: in retirement, will you outlive your money? 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[ meows ] the internet of everything is changing everything. cisco. tomorrow starts here. or it s pittsville, brah. it s never too late to learn a foreign language! go and smell the roses! president obama weighed in today on the search for flight 370 and america s role in the search. listen. we have put every resource we have available at the disposal of the search process. there has been close cooperation with the malaysian government. and so not just ntsb but fbi. anybody who typically deals with anything related to our aviation system is available. and so our thoughts and prayers are with the families, but i want them to be assured that we consider this a top priority and we re going to keep on working. and chief among the hardest working people on the planet tonight members of the u.s. navy s seventh fleet in that southern search area off australia on the ocean and above it using aircraft that can detect almost anything. 26 countries involved. cooperation according to the commander is mostly good. though indonesia has refused to allow a number of search planes to go through the air space. commander marks joins us now. commander marks, i know you can t comment on reports about indonesia not allowing u.s. aircraft to fly over air space today. but i want to ask you on this southern route, to you is that the most hopeful? is that the most important area to search now? i think you just have to look at the areas that have been least searched. so we first covered the gulf of thailand. we completely saturated that. we moved to the andeman sea. we completely saturated that. flying from kuala lumpur, we penetrated deeply into the bay of bengal. that s from our side because the indians were flying over there, too. i think really it s simply a matter of this southern area has been searched the least. so we re out here and australia is out here. and at this point that s all you can do. you find the areas where you haven t looked, where there may have been information that came from satellites whether that s military or governmental or commercial, and you go to those. and so that s what we re doing. if you are able to find debris, does that automatically mean that you would be able to figure out where the plane went down if in fact the plane did go down in the water? would you be able to automatically figure out based on tides and time? great question. and the currents and the wind and the sea state plays such a huge factor. being so long from that initial flight takeoff, it s such a huge variable. so what we normally do in the u.s. navy, when we come upon this situation we immediately launch a helicopter and we establish a central point where we think the last known contact was. that s called a datum. so from this datum we calculate the currents and the winds. and that is why these search areas slowly expand. and so for what we usually do for a search and rescue you look at that first 72 hours. it can grow fairly big but within your helicopter range. well, now that is completely a different scenario. and the current and the winds and the set and drift on there play a huge factor. we can track that slightly we can drop a sonar buoy and get a kind of a gps position that tracks the environmentals, but it s such a long period of time it is certainly a huge factor. and really no one can say if a piece of debris started in one area where it is ten days later. this may be a dumb question, but are you still hopeful? are you losing hope? with each day that passes by this gets more and more difficult. you know, this what is we train for. and our pilots, our air crews, even our maintainers on the ground, our mission is to fly these planes and to search. and the way i think of it personally is, each of those people on that aircraft, they have families associated with them and friends. and i know they want closure no matter what happens. and i know if it were me and my family i d want the u.s. navy out here looking and that s what we re doing. commander marks, i m glad you re out there. thank you. you re welcome. thank you. incredibly difficult task right now. digging deeper, i want to bring in a veteran of these kinds of things, david gallo co-leader of the search for air france flight 447 also retired airline pilot ron brown. david, you heard the commander there saying they re searching off the coast of australia because they ve already basically thoroughly searched the northern part of the indian ocean. do you basically just keep on expanding out until they ve searched the entire area the plane could possibly have reached given the amount of fuel it had? anderson, we need to find some clue about where that aircraft is. we can t be mapping the entire indian ocean. and if that plane impacted the water, even came down gently there s going to be some clue. and the navy is well suited to be able to find those bits of that plane. i m hoping still with the families that it s sitting on land someplace. but this is the way to exclude the ocean. david, it s interesting though what the commander said which was that given the amount of time that has gone by, even if they find some debris on the water, that doesn t guarantee that they ll be able to pinpoint where the plane entered the water if in fact it did, correct? right. well, air france 447 it was five days. i thought that was a long time after the tragedy before the first wreckage was found. but it was two years, not continuously at sea but giving mobilizations and the like, two years before we found that aircraft on the bottom. so you re right. it s no guarantee. but you know what, there s some very talented modelers out there that can look at wind currents with models and then backtrack that information to try to find the location. and even if it s not exactly right or if there s a lot of error in it it cuts down the search area. could cut it down dramatically. it s important stuff. ron i ve been getting a lot of questions on twitter about this new search area. maria asks, how busy is the flight path? did the plane have enough fuel to get that far? as far as we know it had enough fuel. hello, we have breaking news now on the search for malaysia airlines flight 370. the australian broadcasting corporation is reporting that authorities may have found objects related to the missing plane, and they are citing the prime minister tony abbott. australia has been leading the search in the far southern reaches of the plane s possible path. we re also hearing that the prime minister may in fact address parliament say thing is new and credible information. it s come to light from satellite imagery. two possible objects related to the search have been dent tide. they have deployed an aircraft to inspect these objects. three more aircraft will follow. once those extra aircraft arrive, they will conduct an extensive search. we re being told that the task of locating these objects is extremely difficult right now. australia s search operations centered in the city of perth. andrew stevens joins us from there now live. andrew, what are the details that you have on what they may or may not have found. my mistake, we do not have andrew. but he has been covering this. what we have been hearing over the last few hours is that this search area has dramatically narrowed from an area of almost 3 million square miles, now down to an area about the size of the state of colorado, about 110,000 square miles. still, a massive area, but we know that the focus has been on the southern arc, right at the extreme end of that southern arc off the coast of western australia. and apparently the officials managed to narrow down the scope of the search area, because they yielded a lot more information from the satellite pings, which the plane had been giving off every hour for about seven our eight hours or so. so what we know right now is that we re hearing from australian authorities that there is possible debris related to this plane. 13 days now or 12 days now they have been searching for this missing flight. and now we have what could be credible evidence of debris floating in the water. of course, there are still many unanswered questions, what is that debris, how far has it floated. richard quest is standing by in new york with more on this. and so richard, could this be the break that everyone has been waiting for? oh, absolutely. you have to put it in terms that it s unlikely that the australian prime minister would be holding a news conference if there wasn t a high degree no one is going to say, and i suspect he s not going to come out and specifically say because there would have they have have to retrieve the debris and ensure that there is a very high degree of certainty about it, but bearing in mind the aus t l australians in the last 48 hours took over the searching down in the south china sea sorry, the south indian ocean. enormous number of assets have been deployed, including the uss kidd which sent its planes to the western coast of australia for that very purpose, john. they said it would be easier for long-range search to search out of perth rather than being stuck on a ship in the middle of the ocean. so it s fascinating tonight that the australian prime minister is going to make this press statement, floating debris believed to be potentially from malaysian airlines flight 370. we have had this sort of news before, just a week ago with the chinese photographs, the satellite photographs. but i m supposing that there must be a fair degree of certainty or at least confidence in what they re finding. we understand that prime minister tony abbott of australia has spoken to his malaysian counterpart about this news which we are now getting to us here at cnn. that two possible objects have been found. richard, sorry to interrupt, but this does not mean that this is where the plane went down because this debris could have floated quite a distance. in the number of days since the incident happened, absolutely. but one thing i do know is that the oceanographers will not only have done the models of where debris would have floated but they would have gone further and written specific models for this area. so they will now be thinking the, we know the time, we know the water temperature, we know the winds, we know the prevailing weather during the last week. they will be factoring that in, the oceanographers, and they are extremely experienced at being able to take that information and work out roughly where the debris will be. now how far, if you re asking me how far could that debris have moved over the last ten days, i don t know. but if you look at the map that we re seeing at the moment and you interpret where the route of the aircraft was, and what could have happened in the last 10, 12 days, then you start to see why the australians believe that there is a strong level of confidence. and on one other point, in the last days or so, more and more people have come to the conclusion that it is the south china sorry, the south indian ocean, i beg your pardon, the south indian ocean which was the more realistic of the two paths, not the northern path or western path up towards india and kazakhstan. richard, what we are hearing is that the debris was detected by satellite imagery. a very similar situation to what we had with the chinese satellites about a week or so ago, detecting that debris off the coast of vietnam. that turned out to be a false start. but a lot of people were talking back then this was very large debris to be spotted by a satellite. so i know we re speculating here, but is that going to be a similar situation now, that this will be large pieces of debris because it has been seen by a satellite. the problem with the chinese pictures, almost from the moment there were many of us, myself included, that hoped it was correct. but quite quickly, experts on the 777 said because the chinese last friday the chinese put out a statement which they actually said how big the pieces of debris were. they said they were 70 x 70. quickly, experts of the 777 said there is no single piece of the aircraft that measures those dimensions. so that hugely assisted them in discounting that relatively quickly. i m assuming whoever s satellite they have used in this situation, they ve done exactly the same process. they ve locked up the debris. they measured it with a high degree of certainty. we have had debris from the moment this incident happened. we had a table drum richard, sorry if i may interrupt. we have andrew teastevens on th line now. he s covering this story for us from perth where the search on the australian end has been based from, perth is the state capital of western australia. andrew, very early stages but it is coming from the prime minister s office. they are deploying assets to try and inspect this debris from flight 370. what else can you tell us? that s right, john. at this point we have to be very cautious. what we can tell you is that the australian state-owned media operation here is saying that tony abbott, the australian prime minister is telling the house that two pieces of debris have been spotted in the southern indian ocean. he says that they could possibly be related to mh-370. certainly at this stage, not saying definitely. a plane has been diverted from its earlier search area to the destination where this debris is believed to be floating. that is due to be on the scene around about now, john. and we understand another three aircraft have already been dispatched to that same area. at the moment, what we can see is tony abbott is being reported by the australian broadcasting corporation, those two pieces of objects have been found, and the possibility is that they are from mh-370. andrew, we ve had this situation over the last 24 hours or so that there s been this new radar information coming from the pings which were given off hourly by flight 370 and with that satellite information they have managed to narrow down this search area. so describe the area that they have been looking at, which is where it appears that these objects are. yes, that s right. i mean, it has been narrowed down significantly, given the fact that the malaysians only 24 hours ago saying they are putting equal emphasis on the northern and southern corridors, which is a combined area, roughly the size of the australian land mass. the southern corridor, they have narrowed their search down to that. so within that, there is a zone of 300,000, which they are focusing on at the moment, john. we don t know why specifically they are focusing on this area. it is being reported that they have satellite intelligence from the u.s. and also from australian satellite sources, as well. obviously, satellites and radar is an important instrument. [ indiscernible ] more so there is a satellite surveillance facility in the center of australia, which is jointly operated but effectively run by the americans. we don t know what satellite information is coming from there. certainly it s been established from our u.s. sources the southern corridor has been a more likely search target based as well on the simple process of elimination, given that the northern corridor where it consists of at least 11 countries, some of which have very significant radar and technology, such as china, nothing has been seen or reported certainly from the northern corridor. so the u.s. has been deploying assets along the southern corridor and helping australia with the search. andrew, stand by. for anybody just joining us, this is the breaking new. the australian broadcasting news is quoting that the prime minister is saying two possible objects related to the search for flight 370 have been identified by satellite in the southern indian ocean and right now a royal australian air force plane is heading to excuse me is heading to that area to try and find establish exactly what this debris may be. other planes are heading there, as well. we know that the meshes are there, new zealand also has planes and assets in the region. but it is the australians who are taking the lead in all of this. i would like to go back to richard quest right now. richard, we had a very similar situation to this about a week or so ago. we were just talking about it just a short moment ago when they did find debris on the satellite image by the chinese. turned out to be nothing. this seems a lot more substantive. okay, do we have richard? okay. i m sorry, richard has gone to work the phones to try to find out more about what we re dealing with. we still have andrew stevens on the line with us right now. okay, one moment, please. so andrew, we were talking about this area. we re also looking at a situation that this is a very remote part of the world and it s also a very deep ocean. so if there is debris on the surface, there s the possibility there could be a lot of debris below the service with a lot of challenges trying to get there. absolutely, and also we need to take into account the currents and tidals, so any debris that s on the surface will have moved significant distances, perhaps hundreds of kilometers from the zone where that debris may have been found. so a lot facing the searchers, again the fact that some places in the indian ocean is 7,000 meters deep and the average depths is around 4,000 meters. so there is enormous problems and challenges still facing the searches. it s also key to note that the devices which are triggered when a plane crashes into the sea, will send out distress signals for about one month. so we re about halfway into that one month. so there is a time limit on locating this aircraft. [ indiscernible ] so huge amounts of challenges for the search parties, but we can t rule out how significant this latest news is, because we have gone from an area of 2.2 million square kilometers down to what could be a significant sighting in the southern ocean. resources are now being focused in the southern ocean, in this area of the southern ocean. so just to recap, we do know that an orion aircraft is expected to be on the scene where the satellite images picked up two pieces of debris. we don t know with any degree of certainty if they are related to the plane, but an orion is due there about now. it is 11:45 in the morning here in perth and three more planes dispatched. so we should get some better understanding of exactly what is there. we have andrew stevens on the line with us in perth. we have richard quest on the line in new york. i would like both of you to stay with us. we do have i would like to read that statement once more in case you are joining us that we have from the australian prime minister. this is what he told parliament a short time ago. new and credible information has come to light for the search of flight 370 in the southern india ocean. information based on satellite imagery of two possible objects related to the search have been identified. a royal australian aircraft has been diverted to inspect the object and due to arrive about now. the statement reads, three more aircraft will also follow and conduct a more expensive search. the task of locating these objects is extremely difficult. the prime minister has spoken to his malaysian counterpart. that is what we re being told. the prime minister has said to the house just a short time ago in the australian capital. richard quest is on the line with us right now. we know, richard, there are a lot of assets in this region, including the most advanced sub hunter that the americans have, the p-8. no doubt that will be deployed in some manner to look at this debris? oh, absolutely. they will be sending everything they ve got and a great deal more over to find this. the fact that the prime minister now, look, john, you re much more of a student of australian politics than i am. but the fact that the pm chose to make a statement in the house, new and credible information is the phrase he uses. not just we found some debris, but credible information. based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search. and listen to this, following specialist analysis of this imagery, two possible objects have been identified. now, i m guessing the phraseology there was, he doesn t say we found two objects and we re looking to identify them. he says the objects have been identified. so i m starting to come to the conclusion that the prime minister wouldn t make such a statement to the house if he didn t have a very strong view that this was not only credible, but had been interpreted and accepted. okay. so we re now at the stage where after 12 days of what has been a very frustrating search, possibly the biggest search ever for a missing civilian for a missing airliner. we now are at the position where the australian aircraft is over the area where two objects have been identified and we are awaiting official word. it is pretty much my understanding, that that plane is there and that it is due to arrive back in australia, on australian soil in about four hours from now. no doubt if there is any information to come from, this it will be radioed back. so we should find out exactly what may or may not have taken place or been found rather in that search. but at this stage, as you said, richard, this is looking to be by far the most promising lead that we have had since this began. and it is also a reflection, i think, as andrew stevens was just reporting from perth a moment ago, of the number of assets being deployed. when the royal australian air force were given the job of searching the south indian ocean, they took at it with gusto in the sense they were very honest about it. they made it quite clear that this was a huge task. adding to australia s own very sophisticated ability, remember, it was the australian air investigation that investigated the engine explosion out of singapore. they have enormous experience in their own right doing searches. you know this better than i will, john. as a maritime nation, as an island, albeit a continent, australian has exceptionally good maritime searching abilities. so what the prime minister says, look, i can t say it is and i can t say it isn t. but having done this long enough, you get a feeling of what might be happening and the pm speaking to the house in that way is very strong, credible evidence. absolutely. richard, stand by for us. i would like to go back to andrew stevens. andrew, it was just yesterday that the australians were saying that this search of this area could take up to weeks and now they have narrowed it down to what could be a matter of hours. in fact, we are expecting some kind of statement from prime minister tony abbott maybe in about 25 minutes from now. i think the key here is the information and where it s coming from. this is satellite information, so the physical search in the absence of any specific information about pin pointing areas by satellite, which have taken several weeks, even though it has been significantly refined as we now know, it still would have been several weeks to comb that area. now, though, satellite information, we don t know where that s come from, but it is very sophisticated satellite operations, operated jointly by the australians and the u.s. in central australia. so the information obviously coming from satellites, that allows them to pinpoint this area and as richard said, given the number of false starts here and the fact that the malaysian government has taken so much criticism, tony abbott is going to be very hesitant to say anything that he may have to backtrack on. so at this stage, what he s telling the house is very significant. remember that there are currents, we are 13 days into the search. so whatever debris seen there, it will have moved considerable distances from a crash site. so there s still a lot of work to do. we just need to underline we don t know whether this debris is linked. it was a false start with the chinese last week, which turned out to be nothing. s okay. if you are just joining us, the news is now coming from the australian prime minister that significant objects have been identified in the southern indian ocean. he released this information just a short time ago to the australian parliament. this is what he said. the australian maritime safety authority has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search. following specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified. we must keep this in mind, the task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult, and it may turn out that they are not related to the search for flight mh-370. nevertheless, i did want to update the house on this potentially important development. okay, that was the australian prime minister tony abbott addressing the lower house of the house of parliament just a short time ago. richard, what was notable there, and understandable is that word of caution coming from tony abbott that this may not actually turn out to be anything, but it seems at this stage that it might just be. indeed. tony abbott, now we heard a little bit more. he has given a caveat to it, that it might not be 370. so he s i don t use the word, i would never say this about a prime minister, that he s hedging his bets, but the fact that he made the statement, he didn t have to make a statement, john. he could have just simply put out a press release. the royal australian air force could have put out a statement. the maritime search authority could have just put out a statement. he says it s credible. he says it s confirmed or satellite has confirmed the objects. i m guessing and assuming having looked at this for some time that they have very they have got a very realistic view that this is what they ve been searching for. let us be clear, it would be a blessing that they have found something in the south indian ocean. but this would really just be the beginning of the next part of the whole process. so in other words, we find more debris, work out the back workout where the debris may have come from using currents and temperatures and slowly start to see if you can find the bigger debris field. what we know, john, is the debris field, and there s always something on a plane that floats. the life rafts, the seat cushions. part of the wing, part of the tail. the moment they find a sizable debris field, and there should still be something there, they are very much closer to finding the aircraft itself. and let s just look at some of the politics of how this played out. this is cnn breaking news. i m don lemon in new york. and the breaking news is that new information is coming from australia being reported by the australian broadcasting company that two objects possibly belonging to that missing flight 370, two objects have been found off the coast of australia. david suchi, who is a former faa safety investigator, this appears to be a significant development, the most significant development we ve had so far. very much so, don. the report says, credible information. how long has it been since we heard that? this is verbatim, the prime minister of australia says, new and credible information has come to light in relation to the search for malaysia airlines flight mh-370 in the southern indian ocean. the australian maritime safety authority has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search. following specialist analysis of the satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified. i can inform the house that a royal australian air force orion has been diverted to attempt to locate the objects. this orion is expected to arrive in the area about this time. three more aircraft will follow this orion. they are tasked for more intensive followup search. we re also hearing there will be a press conference coming from sho shortly. the information is coming from the prime minister. it is almost midnight here in the united states eastern time, and it s almost noon in perth, australia. i want to go now to mary schiavo. she is standing by now. again, this is a very significant development. i don t think australia would be doing this if they didn t think there was some importance to this, mary. oh, i agree. i am sure they realize how important, even if this is the wreckage, even if it s the very first piece, the clue also tumble forth, was there a fire, an explosion, do they have the pitting p pitting patterns. the evidence can finally start, and most important they can take where the pieces are, reverse the current track, find out where the currents have led over the past 12 days, and then start in earnest the search for the block boxes. australia now saying that they believe they have found two objects that are significant here that may be related to the missing malaysian airline mh-370. that plane vanished on march 8. it s been missing now for 13 days without a clue. they found two objects in the southern indian ocean. a p-3 ship has been directed to this new destination and three other aircraft are being dispatched, as well. again, it is almost midnight here in the u.s. eastern time and noon in perth, australia, where this is very close. m let s go to cnn s richard quest. australia released information saying they were going to expand their search off their coast and now we re finding this. let s remember what the prime minister of australia said in the house of parliament. he said the australian maritime safety authority has received satellite imagery of objects. now, listen to this. he says he calls this credible, tony abbott says it s credible, and he says, two possible objects have been identified? does he have stronger evidence that they are from 370? we know now that aircraft are heading over in that direction. the pm has warned that retrieving those objects will not be easy. but this, don, is you don t get a prime minister standing up in the house of commons or the houses of parliament in australia and using words like that. he caveated it by saying it may not be anything, but this is the best we ve had so far, don. this is the strongest lead. and richard quest, we want to hear from the prime minister just a short time ago. listen. the australian maritime safety authority has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search. following specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified. that s the australian prime minister speaking there at the house of representatives just a short time ago. richard quest, stand by. mary schiavo, stand by. everyone stand by.
also expect the president to address russia s annexation of crimea? reporter: probably so just because this dominated the discussion so much. the g-7 meeting which was held as a part of the nuclear security summit wasn t really, the move wasn t originally part of the plan. it wasn t because of the esflepevents that happened in ukraine. suspending with the biggest economies in the world. russia was supposed to host in june in sochi. it is a big step. the question, though, is, specially among critics, will this have any effect? the u.s.ed administration, other countries repeatedly said, there is still a door open to discussion, to a diplomatic solution. there is a chance for deescalation. we can change things if russia decides to change course. for everything that has been said and all the talks that have been held, not only among western countries but talks with russia, nothing has changed that course. so it remains to be seen now what could constitute escalation for additional and more damaging sanctions to be issued and what could be deescalation. we ask that question yesterday. michelle, we re going to jump out. the president has now taken the stage with the prime minister of the netherlands. the two men are addressing the congregated press there. let s listen to what they are saying. i am proud to present our summit communique to you today. building of the progress remains early in washington and seoul. this communique sets the bar even higher. we have taken major steps towards meeting all three main objectives of the nss process. i will say a few words about each. the first objective is to reduce the amount of dangerous nuclear material in the world. the less dangerous nuclear material there is and the better the nuclear security, the smaller the chance that terrorists will be able to get hold of it. it s that simple. i m pleased that the 53 countries and four international organizations here have confirmed their commitment to continue reducing stocks of dangerous nuclear material, uranium and plutonium. a number of countries have announced the intention to hand over the highly dangerous to the u.s. as xhar chair of the summit, i naturally welcome these announcements. we are also making progress on the second objective, improving the security of nuclear and radioactive material. we have confirm our ambition to improve the security of materials that can be used to make nuclear weapons and the security of radiological sources that terrorists could use to make dirty bombs. the commitment of the nsa became more complete. the fear that the dirty bomb would cause doesn t bear thinking about, not to mention the possible disruption to society. i m specially pleased that we are including this area. furthermore, the nss countries have encouraged implementation of the iaa nuclear security guidelines. a significant number of us have decided to take this commitment even further. as chair of the summit, i m delighted to announce that two thirds of the countries on the initiative of the united states, korea and the netherlands, have pledged to incorporate these important recommendations into the national legislation. this is a message and represents potential progress. i can t stress enough how important it is. fortunately, in a group of countries supporting this initiative is growing. our ultimate goal is, of course, for all nss countries to follow this league and set an example for other countries. he many pleas i am pleased with the growing awareness of nuclear material. it is important to determine the origin of the material and trace that. we are listening. michelle kosinski, i wanted to bring you in briefly before president obama speaks. the president will also probably at some point have to address a rather large domestic issue which is brewing. the white house plans to change and modify and in some ways do away with the current system of the nsa collecting telephone data. can you explain what this change will be? reporter: yes. feel free to cut me off when this starts again. there is a delay in what i can see and here. we wonder how much this issue came up in discussions with other european nations also. during this series of meetings. it has been this highly controversial, really played out in the media, irritation, of how much spying was gone on. similar, was overplayed. it came out later that we know that the u.k., germany, other european countries do this same kind of data collection as well as spying. here is what the president wants to do. he has been working with congress. soon, in the coming days, his administration says, he wants to propose a law that would change the way this is done. right now, the nsa is the one that collects this bulk data, phone records, that americans make on a day it day basis. they keep it for five years. what s been highly controversial in the past is that the nsa can essentially choose its own investigations and authorize them. the president wants the phone companies to collect the data and keep it possibly. although, that might be done by some third party. the administration didn t make that clear. the president wants it such to be such that the nsa would have to go to a judge for every search it would want to do. that judge would have to say yes or no as to whether that specific phone number could be likely tied to terrorism. there are some other changes too. keep in mind, this is a proposed piece of legislation. what it would do would take the nsa out of the business of collecting and storing the data. of core, turse, the nsa would s be able to gain access to the data when needed. the bigger question is, will congress pass this law? how long could that take? in the meantime, the president has authorized for 90 days an will continue in 90-day increments to authorize the collection and the processing of that data as it stands right now. the president is about to speak now. let s go back to the the hague to listen to president obama. i would like to say a few words about the tragedy that recently took place back in the united states. over the weekend, a massive landslide swept through a tiny town called oso in washington state. while i won t get ahead of the ongoing response and rescue operations, we know that part of this tightly knit community has been lost. first responders acted bravely despite still dangerous conditions. the american red cross has opened multiple shelters and the people of washington state have been quick to help and comfort their fellow citizens. i just spoke to governor insly who swiftly declared a state of emergency and i signed that emergency declaration to make sure he has got all the resources he needs from my administration. they are in contact with them on an on going basis, fema and the army core of engineers has been on site to offer their assistance and expertise. i would ask all americans to send their thoughts and prayers to washington state and the community, oso, and the families and friends of those who continue to be missing. we hope for the best but we recognize this is a tough situation. now, as for our work here in the hague, i want to just repeat the extraordinary work that mark has done in helping to organize this. some of the people of the netherlands, your hospitality has been remarkable. your organization has been flawless. to all the people who were involved in putting this together, including those that are putting up with what i caused, i m told there is a dutch word that captures the spirit that doesn t translate exactly into english but let me say my first visit to the netherlands has been truly kozelik. i convened the first nuclear summit in washington four years ago, because i believed we need a series and sustained global effort to deal with one of the greatest threats to international security, the specter of nuclear terrorism. we made further progress at our second summit in seoul and under your prime minister s stewardship, we have built on that progress here. keeping with the spirits of these summits, this was not about vague commitments but about taking tangible and concrete steps to secure more of the world s nuclear material so it never falls in the hands of terrorists. in particular, i want to come mend bell judge and it will i for completing the removal of their excess supplies of uranium and plutonium. japan announced it will work with the united states to eliminate hundreds of kilograms of weapons from one of their experimental reactors. that s enough for dozens of nuclear weapons. dozens of other nations have agreed to take specific steps towards improving nuclear security in their own countries and to support our global efforts. some have pledged to convert their research reactors to low enriched uranium which cannot be used to make a bomb. we have set new goals for implemented or nuclear security measures, including sharing more information to ensure we are all living up to our commitments. i have made it clear the united states will continue to do our part. our nuclear regulator will develop new guidelines to strengthen cybersecurity at our nuclear power plants. we have pledged to pursue the production of a key medical isotope used to treat illnesses like cancer without relying on weapons useable materials and we are going to work to install more radiation detection equipment at ports and transit sites to combat nuclear smuggling. all of this builds on our previous efforts. 12 countries and two dozen nuclear facilities around the world have now rid themselves entirely of highly enriched uranium and plutonium. dozens of nations have boosted security or created new centers to improve nuclear security and training. the international atomic energy agency is now sfrotronger and m countries have ratified the treaties in international partnerships at the heart of our efforts. we have seepn a fundamental shit in our approach. we still have a lot more to do to ensure the ambitious goals we set years ago. i believe this is he sengs to the security of the entire world and given the catastrophic consequences of even a single attack, we can not be complacent. i ll clothes by reminding everybody that one of the achievements of our first summit in 2010 was ukraine s decision to remove all its highly enriched uranium from its nuclear fuel sites. had that not happen, those dangerous nuclear materials would still be there now and the difficult situation we are dealing with in ukraine today would involve yet another level of concern. so it s a vivid reminder that the more of this material we can secure, the safer all of our countries will be. we made progress. we have got more to do. we are going to continue our work. i look forward to hosting the fourth nuclear security summit in the united states in two years. thank you again, mark and all your team as well as the people of the netherlands for this outstanding summit. thank you, mr. president. we will go straight to the questions now. the first question will be the associate press. thank you, mr. president. you have been criticized during this dispute with russia as not understanding president putin s motivations. you and others said you thought putin was reflecting or pausing his encouragement to crimea. did you misread his intentions and what do you think his motivations are now? when you spoke about the nsa review in january, you said you weren t sold on the option of having phone companies hold meta-da ta and you thought it raised additional privacy concerns. what has changed since that time and do you think congress will pass the legislation you are seeking? mr. prime minister, there are leaders in europe who have concerns about the sector sanctions the president has proposed on russia s economy. do you think any of those leaders have had their concerns alleviated during their talks with the president over the past few days? thank you. let me see if i can remember all of these. with respect to president putin s motivation, there has been a lot of speculation. i am less interested in motivation and more interested in the facts and the principles that not only the united states but the entire international community are looking to uphold. i don t think that any of us have been under any illusion that russia has been very interested in controlling what happens to ukraine. that s not new. that s been the case for years now. that s been the case dating back to the orange revolution. what we have said consistently throughout this process is that it is up to the ukrainian people to make their own decisions about how they organize themselves and who they interact with. it has always been our belief that ukraine is going to have a relationship to russia. there is a strong historic bond between the two countries. that does not justify russia enroaching on ukraine s territorial integrity or sovereignty. that s exactly what s happened. i said, very early on, that should russia do so, there would be consequences. working with our european partners and our international partners, we have put in place sanctions that have already had some impact on the russian economy. now, moving forward, we have said and i want to be very clear about this, we north recognizing what has happened in crimea. the notion that a referendum sloppily organized over the course of two weeks would somehow justify the breaking off of the crimea and annexation by russia, somehow that would have a valid process. the overwhelming majority of the world rejects. we are also concerned about further encroachment by russia into ukraine. so what i announced and what the european council announced was that we were consulting and putting in place the framework, the architecture for additional sanctions, additional costs should russia take this next step. we also said and will continue to say is that there is another path available to russia. the ukrainian government has said it is prepared to negotiate with russia, that it is prepared to recognize its international obligations and the international community has been supportive of a diplomatic process. that would allow a deescalation of tensions, a moving back of russian troops from ukraine s borders. and rapidly organized elections that allow the ukrainian people to choose their leadership. my expectation is that if the ukrainian people are allowed to make their own decisions, their decision will be that they want to have a relationship with europe and they want to have a relationship with russia. this is not a zero sung game. i think that prime minister and the current government have shown remarkable strength and are prepared to go down the diplomatic path. it is now up to russia to act reresponsibly and show itself to be, once again, willing to abide by international rules and international norms. if it chooses to do so, i think there can be a better outcome. if it fails to do so, there will be additional costs. those will have some disruptive effect to the global economy but they will have the greatest impact on russia. so i think that would be a bad choice for president putin to make. ultimately, he is the president of russia and he is the one that s going to be making that decision. he just has to understand there is a choice to be made here. with respect to even though this was directed at mark, i just want to address this issue of sectoral sections. so far, we have put in place sa sanctions that impact individuals, restrict visas being issued to them, freezes their assets. we have identified one bank in particular in russia that was well-known to be the bank of choice for many of the persons who support and facilitate russian officials from carrying out some of these activities. what we have held off on are more broad-based sanctions that would impact entire sectors of the russian economy. it has not just been my suggestion but the european council s suggestion that should russia go further, such sectoral sanctions would be appropriate. that would include areas potentially like energy or finance or arms sales. or trade. that exists between europe and the united states and russia. what we are doing now at a very technical level, examining the impacts of each of these sanctions. some particular sanctions would hurt some countries more than others. all of us recognize that we have to stand up for a core principle. that lies at the heart of the international order and that facilitated the european union and the incredible prosperity and peace that europe has enjoyed now for decades. so although it could cause some disruptions to each of our economies or certain industries, what i ve been encouraged by is the firmness and the willingness on the part of all countries to look at ways in which they can participate in this process. our preference throughout will be to resolve this diplomatically. i think we are prepared, as we ve already shown, to take the next step, if the situation gets worse. finally, on ukraine, i think it is very important that we spend as much effort on bolstering the economy inside of ukraine and making sure that the elections proceed in an orderly fashion. so my hope is that the imf is able to complete a package for ukraine rapidly to stabilize their finances, their economy. . osce and other international organizations are sending in observers and monitors and we are providing technical assistants to make sure the elections are free and fair. the sooner the elections take place, the sooner the economy is stabilized, the better positioned the ukrainian people will be in terms of managing what is a very challenging situation. with respect to the nsa and i will be just brief on this, i said several months ago that i was assigning our various agencies in the i.c., the intelligence community, to bring me new options with respect to the telephone database program. they have presented me now with an option that i think is workable. it addresses the two core concerns the people have. number one, the idea of government storing bulk data generally. this ensures that the government is not in possession of that bulk data. i want to emphasize once again that some of the dangers that people high pott size when it came to bulk data, there were clear safeguards against but he recognize that people were concerned about what might happen in the future with that bulk data. this proposal that s been presented to me would eliminate that concern. the second thing the people were concerned about is making sure that not only is a judge in the program overall but looking at each individual inquiry that is made into a database. in new plan that s been presented to me does that. so overall i m confident that it allows us to do what is necessary in order to deal with the dangers of a nefarious attack and addresses the dangers that people have raised. i m looking forward to working with congress to make sure we go ahead and pass the enabling legislation quickly so that we can get on with the business of effective law enforcement. let me make it absolutely clear that the european union and the u.s. and yesterday we saw alignment within the summit. we are working very closely together. i can fully support all the answers which you just gave on the question you asked. maybe i can add one thing, which is the effect of the russian economy is very much gas and oil dependant. that means that economic sanctions, if they will be necessary, and we are not there yet, if economic sanctions would be necessary, because this conflict would escalate to the next stage, if this were to happen, these sanctions would hit russia very badly and obviously, you can never guarantee that the people in europe and canada, in the u.s., would not be hurt. obviously, with he will mae wil sure we will design these sanctions in such a way they will have maximum impact on the russian economy and not the european, the japanese, the american economy. we work very closely together and seek total alignment. next question. reportedly, there are about 30,000 russian troops on the border with ukraine. what guarantees can you give to the people of eastern ukraine and to the people in the baltic states, mole da va, other countries, that they will not be next when it comes to the russian politics of annex sayings. with regard to that also, is this a done deal? is there any doubt in your mind that putin will return crimea to where it belongs according to the west or is this diplomatic show of force basically to prevent another land grant somewhere else? on the second question first, on the issue of crimea, it is not a done deal in the sense that the international community by and large is not recognizing the annexation of crimea. the facts on the ground are that the russian military controls crimea. there are a number of individuals inside of crimea that are supportive of that process. there is no expectation that they will be dislodged by force. so what we can bring to bear are the legal arguments, the diplomatic arguments, the political pressure, the economic sanctions that are already in place to try and make sure that there is a cost to that process. i think it would be dishonest to suggest that there is a simple solution to resolving what has already taken place in crimea. although, history has a funny way of moving in twists and turns and not just in a straight line. so how the situation in crimea evolves in part depends on making sure the international community stays unified, indicating this was an illegal action on part of russia. with respect to the russian troops that are along the border of ukraine at the moment, right now, they are on russian soil. if they stay on russian soil, we oppose what appears to be an effort of intimidation by russia has a right legally to have its troops on its own soil. i don t think it is a done deal. i think that russia is still making a series of calculations. again, those calculations will be impacted in part by how unified the united states and europe are and the international community is in saying to russia, this is not how in the 21st century we resolve disputes. i think it is particularly important for all of us to dismiss this notion that somehow russian speakers or national inside of ukraine are threatened and that somehow that would justify russian action. there has been no evidence that russian speakers have been in any way threatened. if anything, what we have seen are provok coutours that have created scuffles inside ukraine. when i here analogy to kosovo where you had thousands of people who were being slaughtered by their government, it s a comparison that makes absolutely no sense. i think it is important for everybody to be clear and strip away some of the possible excuses for potential russian action. with respect to the broader issue of states that are bordering russia and what assurances do they have about future land grabs, as you put it, obviously, some of those countries are nato countries and as nato allies, we believe that the cornerstone of our security is making sure that all of us, including the united states, are abiding by article 5. the notion of collective defense. what we are not doing is organizing even more intensively to make sure that we have contingency plans and that every one of our nato allies has assurances that we will act in their defense against any threats. that s what nato is all about. that s been the cornerstone of peace in the transatlantic region now for several generations. so we will uphold that and there will be a series of nato consultations. it is going to be coming up in which we further develop and deepen those plans. i have not seen any nato members who have not expressed a firm determination with respect to nato members. now, those countries, border countries, that are outside of nato, what we can do, is what we are doing with ukraine, which is trying to make sure there is sufficient international pressure and a spotlight shined on the situation in some of these countries and that we are also doing everything we can to bolster their economies, make sure that through various diplomatic and economic initiatives that they feel supported and they know we stand by them. when it comes to a potential military response, that is defined by nato membership. that is what nato is about. jon karl from abc news. mr. president, thank you. in china, syria, and egypt and now in russia, we have seen you make strong statements, issue warnings that have been ignored. are you concerned that america s influence in the world, your influence in the world, is on the decline and in the light of recent developments, do you think mitt romney had a point when he said that russia is america s biggest geopolitical faux. if not russia, who? mr. prime minister, do you think these sanctions will change vladmir putin s calculation, cause him to back down? do you see where do you see a russian red line where if they go any further, into eastern ukraine and moldova where options beyond sanctions have to be considered? thank you. well, jonathan, i think if the premise of the question is that whenever the united states objects to an action and other countries don t immediately do exactly what we want, that that has been the norm. that would pretty much erase most of 20th century history. i think there is a distinction between us being very clear about what we think is an appropriate action, what we stand for, what principles we believe in versus what is, i guess, implied in the question, that we should engage in some sort of military action to prevent something. the truth of the matter is that the world has always been messy. what the united states has been consistently able to do and continue to be able to do is mobilize the international community around a set of principles and norms and where our own self-defense may not be involved. we may not act militarily. that does not mean that we don t steadily push against those forces that would violate those principles and eye deals we care about. so, yes, you are right. syria, the syrian civil war is not solved and yesterday syria has never been more isolated. with respect to the situation in ukraine, we have not gone to war with russia. i think there is a significant precedent to that in the past. that does not mean that russia is not isolated. in fact, russia is far more isolated in this instance than it was five years ago with respect to georgia and more isolated than it was certainly during most of the 20th century when it was part of the soviet union. the point is that they are always going to be bad things that happen around the world. the united states is the most powerful nation in the world. understandably, is looked to for solutions to those problems. we have put all evidence of our power behind solutions and working with our international powers. standing up for the principles and ideals in a clear way. there are going to be moments where military action is appropriate. there are going to be sometimes where that s not in the interest of national security interest of the united states or some of our partners. that doesn t mean we are not going to continue to make the effort or speak clearly about what we think is right and wrong. that s what we have done. with respect to mr. romney s assertion that russia is our number one geopolitical faux. the truth of the matter is that america has got a whole lot of challenges. russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors. not out of strength but out of weakness. ukraine has been a country in which russia had enormous influence for decades, since the break up of the soviet union. we have considerable influence on our neighbors. we generally don t need to invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them. the fact that russia felt to go in militarily and lay bare these violations of international law indicates less influence, not more my response then continues to be what i believe today, which is, russia s actions are a problem. they don t pose the number one national security threat to the united states. i continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security when with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in manhattan, which is part of the reason why the united states showing its continued international leadership has organized a form over the last several years that has been able to help eliminate that threat in a consistent way. there is no geopolitical conflict that can be solved without the united states. therefore, i applaud the fact that president obama s administration is active in every aarenrena. the initiatives that secretary kerry was taking in the middle east. i was in the region and spoke with leaders in israel and the palestinian territories. they are extremely grateful for the fact that america is providing leadership. this is a difficult issue. it can t be solved overnight. there is no magic wand that can handle this. i spoke with the president in the economic forum in january. we have now the fact that i was label to over 30, 40 years we spoke with an iranian leader. it was possible. it seems it is holding. america provided leadership there. i applaud president obama s role in all these major issues. it is necessary, because the united states is the leader of the free world and needs to provide leadership and he is doing that. your question on president putin, it would be difficult to exactly judge what is happening in the leadership in moscow, in russia at this moment. as i said earlier, i highly undiversified economy like the russian economy, which is so much oil and gas dependant, which has not invested in infrastructure and other areas of the economy, will be worried in the financial sector or in weapons or in trade or indeed, in energy. there could be potential sanctions that will hurt them. we have to design in such a way that it will particularly hit russia and not europe, the u.s., canada or japan. that is what we are working on. we hope we won t need it. i cannot envision this conflict ending up in a military conflict. i don t think it is likely i don t think anybody wants it. i tote little agree with president obama s answers on article 5 where the conflict will be taken to the board in the nato countries. luckily, that is, at this moment, not the case. questions. you met a lot of leaders here. many were angry about the nsa story. have you fixed the relationships with these leaders and the second question is, many are shocked by the extent of which the nsa collects private data. today, we read in the new york times that you plan to end the systematic collection of data of americans but can you address the concerns of the dutch and the rest of the world about their privacy? first of all, we have had a consistent, unbreakable bond between the leaders of europe over the last several decades. it s across many dimensions, economic, military, counter terrorism, cultural. any one issue can be an irritant in the relationship between the countries but it doesn t define those relationships. that continues to be the case and that has been the case throughout the last couple of years. as i setd in a spooech i gave earlier thisser yoo, the united states is very proud of its record of working with countries around the world to prevent terrorism or nuclear proliferation or human trafficking or a whole host of issues that all of us would be concerned about. intelligence plays a critical role in that process. what we ve seen is as technology has evolved, the guidelines and structures that con train how our intelligence agencies operated have not kept pace with these advances in technology. although having examined over the last year, year and a half what s been done, i m confident that everybody in our intelligence agencies operates in the best of intentions and is not snooping into the privacy of ordinary dutch, german, french, or american citizens. what is true is that there is a danger because of these new technologies that at some point, it cob abused. that s why i initiated a broad-based review of what we could do. there are a couple of things we did that are unprecedent. in my speech, i announced that for the first time, under my direction, that we are going to treat the privacy concerns of non u.s. persons as seriously as we are the constraints that already exist by law on u.s. persons. we are doing that not because we are bound by international law but because ultimately it is the right thing to do. with respect to some of the aspects of data collection, what i ve been very clear about is that there has to be a narrow purpose to it, not a broad-based purpose but rather based on a specific concern around terrorism or counter proliferation or human trafficking or something that i think all of us would say has to be pursued. and so what i ve tried to do then is to make sure that my intelligence teams are consulting very closely at each stage with their counterparts in other nations. so that there is greater transparency in terms of what exactly we are doing, what we are not doing. so some of the reporting here in european as well as the united states, frankly, has been pretty sensationalized. i think the fears about our privacy in this age of the internet and big data are justified. i think the actual facts people would have an assurance if that if you are just ordinary citizen, in any of these countries, that your privacy, in fact, is not being invaded. i recognize that because of these revelations, that there is a process that s taking place where we have to win back the trust, not just of governments but more importantly of ordinary citizens. that s not going to happen overnight, because i think that there is a tendency to be skeptical of government and to be skeptical in particular of u.s. intelligence services. so it is going to be necessary for us, the step we took that was announced today, i think is an example of us slowly, systematically, putting in more checks, balances, legal processes. the good news is, that i m very confident it can be achieved. i m also confident that the core values that america has always believed in in terms of privacy, rule of law, individual rights, that that has guided the united states for many years and will continue to guide us in the future. thank you very much, everybody. thank you again. you have been listening to president obama in a news conference with the dutch prime minister. there is the president finishing up with the dutch prime minister. i think really some of his most expansive comments to date over the crisis in ukraine, the president is saying there is no simple solution. he is saying it would be dishonest to suggest there was a simple solution to undo what s already done. in other words, get russian troops out of crimea. he did lay down something of a marker about what the united states would do if russia acts further. he took something of a rhetorical slap at vladmir putin calling russia a regional power. the sanctions are meant to isolate russia economically and politically. also, taking a stab at a bit of a slap at his ego if you will and those kind of comments will make it back to vladmir putin. let s bring in wolf blitzer. he is nour in our d.c. bureau. we noticed the comments and the two leaders and president obama talking about the linking of arms between the remaining g-7 countries about what they are doing to isolate russia. they are pretty much united right now. i think there were some substantive disagreements on specific steps if, in fact, the russians up the ante if you will. if they do anything beyond holding on to crimea. the president basically said that s a done deal. the facts on the ground. he realizes that russia is now in control of crimea even though the u.s. and european allies, almost all of the world, still reguards russia as part of ukraine. they are in charge and the president himself even acknowledged a whole lot of people in crimea who are happy about that. he did warn if the russians do take steps going against other parts of ukraine or if they were to take steps against other countries in that part of the world, eastern europe, certainly, if any steps were taken against nato allies like poland, estonia, lithuania, latvia, charter 5 of the charter would go into effect. you attack one and you attack all. the united states would have to come to the aid of that ally. he did acknowledge for all practical purposes russia is now in control of crimea. he didn t lay out the limits. he said there would be military support if russia encroaches on nato countries. wolf blitzer, in washington, we know you will be covering much more on wolf at 1:00 p.m. we are going to take a quick bre break. when we do come back, we will take a look at the search for flight 370. would get in between my dentures and my gum and it was uncomfortable. 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(announcer) love. it s what makes a subaru, a subaru. so when my moderate to severe chronic plaque psoriasis them. was also on display, i d had it. i finally had a serious talk with my dermatologist. this time, he prescribed humira-adalimumab. humira helps to clear the surface of my skin by actually working inside my body. in clinical trials, most adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis saw 75% skin clearance. and the majority of people were clear or almost clear in just 4 months. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal events, such as infections, lymphoma, or other types of cancer have happened. blood, liver and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure have occurred. before starting humira, your doctor should test you for tb. ask your doctor if you live in or have been to a region where certain fungal infections are common. tell your doctor if you have had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have symptoms such as fever, fatigue, cough, or sores. you should not start humira if you have any kind of infection. make the most of every moment. ask your dermatologist about humira, today. clearer skin is possible. he thought it was the endn for his dof the conversation.d. she didn t tell him that her college expenses were going up. or that she maxed out her card during spring break. when the satellite provider checked his credit, he found out his daughter didn t pay her bills. but he s not worried. now he checks his credit report and score at experian.com, allowing him to keep track of his credit and take a break of his own. experian. live credit confident. now, to what is happening at this hour with the malaysia plane airlines mystery. families of the passengers are still trying to come to grips with the devastating announcement from the malaysian government that according to the data they have, they believe the plane went down in the southern indian ocean and no one aboard survived. hundred of family and friends marched furious over what they say are lies coming from the government. obviously, you can see the crowds flashing the police. once they got to the embassy, the families gave a petition there. on the search front, australian maritime officials suspended search efforts today because of storms, high seas, gusty winds in the southern indian ocean. we are told that crews are likely to be back on task tomorrow. australian officials are cautioning the search operation is xl i kate complicated. we are not searching for a needle in a haystack but trying to determine where the haystack is. this is 3,500 meters deep, 2,500 kilometers from perth. they say they have called off search operations in the so-called northern corridor. they base that decision on the new analysis of satellite data. we are going to bring in a couple of guests to help us sort it all out. we have steven, a former ntsb airliner, a commercial and air force pilot. we have dr. bob arnot. he is with us once again as well. a pilot and veteran aviation correspondent. thank you so much for joining us. steve, i want to start with you. the problem today is a lack of search. there is no search going on. they had spotted debris of some kind, wanted to get a closer look. how much of a setback is this? it s certainly a setback. i think the safety investigation needs to be ongoing, and, of course, you ve got to identify a crash site before you can begin the investigation in earnest. so a bit of a setback, but an act of nature so we ve got to comply with that and we ll be done with in a day or so. and hopefully they ll find the wreckage and the crash site soon. we appreciate that optimism. bob, let s talk to you about this information that we saw. the malaysian government deliver to the world and to the families of the passengers. and i think the families specifically were struggling with the fact that they said this information has led to us believe that the plane went down in the south indian ocean with the absence of any wreckage. how do we accept this information as a definitive cause or result of what happened? i really think, given the malaysian government s track record, it s a little hard to take it at face value here. this is a very, very sophisticated analysis. as you know, it s based on what they call the doppler effect. when you hear a siren coming towards you, that frequency changes, that s the doppler effect. well, they re looking at the satellite versus airplanes flying away from it. first time it s of been done. none of us have seen the data. i think the chinese are right. we want to look at this data to make sure they really got it right this time, because they certainly had it wrong most of the last couple weeks. and steve, as we know, we are in a race against time. quite literally here. those black boxes, they stop pinging after 30 days or so after the plane, you know, disappeared. there will not be some of the equipment they need, the tow pinger locater won t arrive. they won t get it on the ship until april 5th and could stop pinging by april 8th. that s very difficult. they re up against it here. i agree. the pinger is important in finding the black box. but keep in mind, air france 447, it was almost two years before we found the recorders on the bottom of the ocean. so, yeah, it would be nice if we could do it via pinger, and a navy ship can find it with their equipment. but if it s not found by the end of the battery life of the recorder the pinger battery life, that is, they ll at least continue to search with all their other sophisticated equipment until they find it. want to say a big thank you to bob arnot. a real delight. thanks so much. we talk about the families and it s really important to always bring the focus back to them. they say they re not going to believe the government s version of what happened until they see proof with their own eyes. joining us to talk about the grief and frustration they are displaying right now, you know, it s very hard for all of us to see is heidi snow. heidi understands this. heidi lost her fiance in the twa 800 crash. since then, she has become a leading advocate for survivors, founding the group a.c.c.e.s.s., and she has trained care teams and aid disaster responders for major airlines. she this also the author of the book surviving sudden loss. heidi, we re all looking at these pictures and hearing just the emotion coming from the people in beijing and kuala lumpur. when you see it, you have such a unique perspective. what do you see? well, for me, it always brings me and all of us back. we had over 1,000 calls to help to a.c.c.e.s.s. over the years for different air disasters and a lot of calls from people from past air disasters, as well as a few of these families now. and for those of us who have been through it before, it brings us back to that crash site, the family assistance center. we all remember being there, just looking for answers. just holding out hope. and i feel like they re very much in that situation right now. and basically, we just kind of went back and forth, hold south hope and then going back to facing the reality that they may never come back to us and our lives are going to be forever changed. and we re going to have to live without them. and until there s some kind of confirmation through wreckage or some type of remains, i really believe that there really is no closure or any way to really get out of going back and forth with this hope that we cling on to and going back it to the reality. i think there needs to be a lot more evidence for the families to really be able to accept that their loved ones actually are gone. and i remember so well at the site, the varying personalities, we really learned at a.c.c.e.s.s. everybody goes through their grief in their own way. and a lot of the emotions that we have seen do remind me of what it was like. we had people who were very quiet, who were in shock. then we had those people who were very angry. and then we had people who were just sobbing. and so it really does resonate with all of us who have been there before. and after interviewing hundreds of people for our book, so much of what we re watching now just really is what the common reactions are for all of us. and what distinguishes air disasters from other types of losses is this waiting period. is this not having answers. and we certainly have a lot of people at a.c.c.e.s.s. who still do not have any remains or any confirmation from other air disasters that their loved ones actually were on board. so it is something that we all live with and one of the things we find most important is really being able to talk to somebody else who has been down that road. and who has had to go through this process. by pairing them according to the relationship of their loss and specific circumstances that they re facing. so we match mothers to mothers, siblings to siblings, spouses to spouses. and if remains are not found, we pair them up with somebody else who also had to wait a long time. so we really find that what has helped the most for our families is really being able to validate some of these feelings that are extremely difficult. and this is such a difficult time, and the rest of the world, i think it s hard for them to understand the hope piece. but all of us know that. because we would do anything we could to keep them alive. heidi, we want to say thank you, because we know this work that you do is ongoing. you have spoken with us before about the ongoing need after the press conferences are over. after the cameras go away. thank you so much, heidi snow. it works with providing emotional support services to survivors and family members of air aviation disasters. it thank you so much for joining us. you can read more about heidi s support group, aircraft casually emotional support services at