speed was 137 knots. and the question was whether or not we had the lowest speed that the crew achieved. i will tell you that the speed was significantly below 137 knots and we are not talking about a few knots. we still have to corroborate some information. this was a preliminary read. the 137 knots came from the crew conversation about their approach speed. we need to take a closer look at the raw data on the flight data recorder as well as corroborate that with radar and air traffic information to make sure that we have a very precise speed. again, we are not talking about a few knots here or there. we are talking about a significant amount of speed below 137. if i could ask you to raise your hand to be acknowledged and identify yourself and your outlet that would make this a lot easier. yes, sir. [ inaudible ]. the question is, could we provide additional explanation about the stick shaker activation and the go around. what i shared with you was prior to impact there was a stick shaker that activated. this is both an oral and physical cue to the crew that they are approaching a stall. it s called a stick shaker but there is a yoke that the pilots are holding and that yoke vibrates or shakes and it is telling them that a stall is approaching. that activated four seconds prior to impact. there was a call out for a go around from one of the crew at 1.5 seconds prior to impact. and the call out is communication between the crew that they want to go around. that means they want to not land but apply power and go around and try to land again. that call came 1.5 seconds before impact. yes, ma am. so based on those recordings that you just explained, are you finding preliminary findings pointed to pilot error. are we finding pilot error? what i will tell you is that the ntsb conducts very thorough investigations. we will not reach a determination of probable cause in the first few days that we are on an accident scene. we want to make sure that we gatherer all of the perishable evidence and the facts. we have just been here for a few hours, not even a full day yet. we have preliminary information but we have a lot more work to do. we need to interview the crews and the first responders. we need to validate the raw data on the flight data recorder as well as on air traffic tapes. we ll be working to do that. steve gregory. can you tell us and characterize again at what point did something seem to go wrong? did it seem to go wrong from the data recorderer or from the voice recorder? where did the discrepancy enter first? from the information that we have on the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder where did things begin to go wrong and which one occurred first? what we need to do is corroborate the information on both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder to overlay that with the crew s position, their spatial position as they are approaching the run way. there is a lot more work that needs to be done. some of the things we are seeing on the flight data recorder are mirroring some of the things that are going on on the cockpit voice recorder. the command for increased throttles or increased power from the engines, we also are seeing a go around request about the same time. yes, ma am. [ inaudible ]. the question was about the two fatalities.
the question was about a previous event that occurred where there was another haul loss involving a 777 at heathrow a few years ago and whether or not we evaluated that event and identified similarities with this event. in that event there were specific issues identified. those issues had to do with frozen fuel. this aircraft is equipped with pratt and whitney engines. [ inaudible ] we have not identified any specific similarities with that cause of the heathrow event but it is very early in our investigation. seems like you are hedging against mechanical. the question is, it seems as
from all the entities we are working with. in the back. the first question is we identified the nationality of the victims. with would like to mention that that is not something that the ntsb did. that was provided by other entities. the ntsb does not identify victims. we leave that to the experts in the area, the coroner in this case of the county or the medical examiner in other jurisdictions. the ntsb does not do victim i.d. and we did not do it in this case. i expect we will be on scene for at least a week conducting evidence gathering, interviews and creating factual information. if need be we will be here longer. we tell people it takes 12 to 18 months to complete an investigation. however if we identify any safety issues that we think need immediate attention we have the ability to issue safety recommendations at any time. yes, sir. are there cameras on the run ways and are they always recording? have you seen that footage? i will defer to the airport officials. we have requests any footage recorded on the airport that would record the accident sequence or the after math of the accident. we found in past investigations that the video footage whether it is surveillance or security video or whether it is video provided by the public can be very helpful. and along those lines we do have an opportunity for if anybody has any photos or video that
their landing speed and they failed to engage the auto throttles but they believe they had done it and the power didn t come up, they were monitoring and having an expectation that the auto throttles would put power in to maintain speed. when it didn t happen they had to realize something is wrong. i now have to take manual control and do something. then, again, that is the problem where they didn t perceive any kind of problem until the problem manifested itself about seven seconds out. by the time they took corrective action gravity took over and it was really too late for them to recover. so, are you suggesting that it is possible that the pilots did not realize they were going too slow. they thought they were at one speed but they were actually at a different one? is that what you are suggesting? there is a multitude of probability. that is why the safety board will dissect the cvr to see how the airplane was configured and see if the automation was being used by the crew. typically the pilots will set the airplane up with an auto throttle and in anticipation of the speed the automated system tries to maintain it. the crew didn t monitor and notice it until the last minute. that puts them behind the power curve. by the time they try to take the corrective action and push the power to full power for the go around by the time the engines started to spool up the airplane was settling to the ground. another question here that i think was raised. we learned today or at the end of the day yesterday that the guide path technology was not operational at sfo. the folks from sfo seem to suggest that that in no way shape or form should have played a role in what happened. mention about required systems. based on what you heard from the ntsb is there any suggestion that those systems could have helped prevent this if they would have been functional? i don t get the impression that the glide slope was the problem. it was a visual approach and pilots are trained to dot that without reference to the glide path. but i am concerned about the power being at idle whether thet auto throttles were engaged because the pilot is supposed to keep hands on the throttles for that reason and he is watching the speed decrease. as the speed decreases he starts to push the throttles forward whether the auto throttles do it or not. what does that tell you? i don t like to look back and quarterback what a captain has done or the co pilot. i can tell you that that is very unprofessional to not be in a position to control that aircraft regardless of what the auto pilot is doing. if the plane is not doing what the pilot wants he clicks all of that off and he hand flies that aircraft. does that suggest a question to you, then, why that would not have happened? . possibly inattentiveness. perhaps they were very tired from a ten hour flight and got distracted. maybe something else went on. thank you for your time today. msnbc will continue to follow this story and bring you the latest developments out of san francisco. for now, join the ed show already in progress at the essence festival in new orleans. you see the special psyllium fiber in metamucil actually gels to trap and remove some waste. and that gelling also helps to lower some cholesterol. it even traps some carbs to help maintain healthy blood sugar levels as part of your diet. now that s one super hard working fiber. metamucil. 3 amazing benefits in 1 super fiber. [ whirring ] [ dog barks ]
what their struggle was to get used to what you have everyday. reporter: multiple generations of families to a positive event. it s been a week long full of protests and rallies in new york city and times square as well as los angeles and california where rallies were a little more violent blocking the interstate. the verdict has passed but time to move forward to other major issues, stand-your-ground laws and other race issues like racial profiling. jamie: great report. thank you very much. kelly: politicians of all parties have been dealing with race issues since the founding of this country. let s take you back through history how one prominent democrat robert f. kennedy handled a crucial moment back on april 4th, 1968. that was the day that martin luther king was assassinated. what we need is not division, what we need in united states is not hatred. what we need in united states is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another feeling of justice of those that still suffer within our country whether they be white or whether they be black. [ applause ] kelly: he said that time was not to divide the country but bring the country to unity. he was urged not to announce mlk s death but he went ahead anyway but two days later he was also shot to death in los angeles. and it s royal baby fever in great britain. it s sky high has everyone awaits for baby to arrive. all eyes on the london hospital where the duchess is likely to give birth. future king or queen of england so the we. amy kellogg is there and letting us know if anything has happened. it s not any minute but hopefully soon and relieved by the reports that the duchess has left her parents home and has come back to london because the longer she stayed out there, the more likely it was a contingency plan would have to be activated in an emergency for to her give birth out there. the any not any by the press has gone past full term was broken briefly by some imposters who at that lovely evening hour, pulled up to the ward, with drivers and ear pieces and hurried in like a married couple only as the cameras moved after them like a school of fish. they revealed themselves as a publicity stunt. people seem certain that kate will make a great mother begin the interests she has shown in children so far and particularly vulnerable children. she has been known in the past couple of years, very personal attention to some of the sick children. he has said he wants to be the delivery room with his wife. prince philip playing squash when charles was born however the story goes that he quickly high tailed it over to see the queen and presented with flowers and champagne. she wasn t a queen at that
but in later years, her career was marred by controversy. she resigned from the hearst newspapers after sparking an uproar with comments on jews living in israel. the president releasing a statement today, what made helen thomas the dean of the white house press corps was not just the length of her ten ui but her fierce belief that our democracy works best when we ask tough questions and hold our leaders to account. she died at her home in washington. she was 92. jamie: growing concerns this week about the implementation of president obama s healthcare law. falling care act. we have seen lots of changes to it. from the delay of the employer mandate and pushing back to other key parts to the critical supported of unions. does president obama need a new strategy what is rolling out to be his signature plan? let s bring in washington
been much more difficult for him had a lot of these unpopular parts took effect before. now people on the hill that are concerned, he is facing reelection next year and if the employer mandate and other unpopular positions take effect, they are going to have be the ones defend it. so what we re seeing is a real crumbling of support among his own party. the truth about the law in my opinion is starting to come out. jamie: what about the employee mandate. are you hearing or finding that unions are also concerned that one the mandate is in place, employers will perhaps have an incentive to hire lower hour workers, not 40 hour workweek workers. do they have something to lose here? absolutely. i think you put your finger right on it. the big signal that a lot of changes was about to happen, you have seen more and more unions step out and publicly condemn the law and demand changes be made. any time you are talking about democrats, when you get the unions involved and they started pushing democrats around, you know that democrats are in real trouble. you know they are very scared because without the union support, democrats are going to have a real hard time in the election. that is exactly what has happened here. the problem is when president obama delayed the implementation of the penalty for employers who fail to provide insurance, he didn t provide the same delay for individuals. so it s one of these situations where you have basically help coming in president obama and democrats are willing to help big companies but not give it to individuals? it raises questions about the influence of corporate influence and influence of lobbyists in this town. i think it puts president obama in an unfavorable light and puts democrats in a real bind when they are out on the campaign o campaign trail. jamie: appreciate your help today. kelly: we re just getting started. secretary of state john kerry shuttle diplomacy takes off as israel and palestinians agree to new peace talks but the devil is in the details. jamie: plus heartbreaking new information on the plane crash in san francisco. what investigators have found and released. kelly: motor city running on empty and serving as a warning to other cities teetering on the edge. how the bankruptcy is being felt nationwide. if anybody is think 40-year-old trees going
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
it is not our policy position to respond to this through regime change. we will take an appropriate response, and we are evaluating, the president and his team are evaluating the options available to them. and the president will make an assessment and an announcement in due time. defense secretary chuck hagel made clear that u.s. military forces are ready. suffice to say the options are there, the united states department of defense is ready to carry out those options. if that would occur, that would occur also in coordination with our international partners. but you re ready to go like that? we re ready to go like that. meanwhile, closest allies are lining up in agreement. british prime minister david cameron. now, of course, any action we take, or others take, would have to be legal, would have to be
that could be used to deliver chemical weapons such as airplanes, artillery rockets, and no apparent serious regime targets are included in that risks and they believe the strikes could take maybe two to three days to hit all targets they want. congressional reaction has been cautious and muddled, while senator chris murphy said on our show last night the president should come to congress here for a vote. there s hardly, of course, consensus on that point. of course, congress is out of session. today congressman steve cohen suggested president obama wait until congress returns on september 9th. then congressman cohen all but dismissed that idea. i think we could wait until september the 9th or thereabouts to take action. in many ways, i defer to the president s prerogative and trust the president to do what s right. joining me now, congressman elliot engel, democrat from new york, ranking member of the house foreign affairs committee and has been an advocate of the u.s. intervention in syria. congressman, as best as you can articulate, as someone who i understand supports increased u.s. intervention and military strike here, can you explain to me and our viewers what the concrete mission here, what the concrete goal is of any kind of military action? well, i assume the concrete goal, of course, it hasn t been decided to do this. if seems imminent. but i think the goal would be to say to assad and other assads of the world that crimes of this violent nature cannot go unpunished. if we stand by and watch the murder of innocent men, women and children, children gasping for breath and foaming at the mouth and don t take action, i think it encourages other bad players to do the same thing. so i think at the very least, it s saying that you ve gone too far, and we re going to make it hard for you to use your air
it. it s not with the gassing of innocent children. let me just say, i mean, i share your and i think any decent person s horror at the images we ve seen of children being gassed. absolutely, complete total moral revulsion. it is evil, unquestionably. what, to you, is the principle that separates the death of those innocent children from the 100,000 civilian dead who come before the chemical weapon strike? what is it about that strike that puts it on different terrain than the routine horrific slaughter of innocents that we ve seen duration of this civil war? well, assad in my estimation has been slaughtering his people from the start of this war. this is not something new, but the chemical weapons, the use of chemicals is new. and i think that that is just horrific. all deaths are bad. war is bad. but when you turn gas on to your own people, i think that s just going a bit far. and i think the world has a right to express its revulsion. i liken what s happening in syria today to 1999 in kosovo. there you had an end dangered population which was being murdered by its own government, and nato intervened with strikes, air strikes, and turned things around. i think you have an endangered population now, and i think assad needs to know that there is a line that he cannot cross, and i think the west is going to show him that line. now, it s not just the united states. it s our nato allies. the arab league today seemed to agree. and i just think that they seemed to agree the chemical weapons were used by the assad regime but did quite pointedly stop short. in the past, in libya, they explicitly endorsed the u.n. and allied bombing there. congressman eliot engel, tm from new york. thank you for your time tonight. thank you, chris. joining me now, julia ioffe, senior editor at the new republic covering this story. had a great writeup today about the thinking in the white house. what struck me here is there s this bizarre kind of goldilocks evaluation being done about what this response looks like, not too strong to tip the balance of the civil war, but not too weak so that it actually means something to assad. what is the thinking about the calculation of what this strike should look like inside the white house? well, i think, you know, it s as was once joked, obama is between a rock and a hard place. he s very much haunted by the mistakes of the previous administration that rushed into two wars that have really tired out the country and emptied our coffers. he s not rushing to get into a new one. i think the fact that, for example, that secretary of state john kerry spoke first, but we haven t heard from president obama yet, is significant. i think he s taking his time, but he also wants to show that he will do something, but it doesn t really make sense. you can t really take the chemical weapons attack out of context here. i mean, it is part of this whole war. so, you know, however many people died in this attack, but as you said yourself, 100,000 people died before using conventional weapons. here s one of the things that came across in what you wrote and reported today is that even though the specific responses to a chemical weapons attack, even though prime minister david cameron says the goal has to be to deter the possibility of chemical weapons attacks. it s essentially impossible for us to strike any chemical weapons stashes for the risk of making things worse by blowing up a whole bunch of nerve agents that you then send spiraling into the air. well, it s not just that, you destroy the depots and then people can come in and lute them. the containers that aren t exploded. that is really a surefire way to set these things loose on the world. you don t know where they ll go after that. but in terms of, you know, setting up a sense of consequence, okay, we ll hit him in a few places, we won t hit him too hard so it will be a slap on the wrist so he ll know he can use chemical weapons on a smaller scale, because we haven t punished that before. it doesn t i understand the impulse not to get involved in a another war in the middle east. we have egypt next door spiraling out of control. syria has been a mess for three years. but at this point, you either i feel like you have to do everything or it doesn t make sense to just hit him a little bit. julia ioffe from the new republic. thank you so much. joining us now, advocacy and director of middle east of human rights watch. she s a native of syria. the head of human rights, kenneth roth, i ve been following him on twitter, he has been incredibly strong in condemnations of the behavior of the assad regime, particularly as it pertains to the use of chemical weapons, indiscriminate slaughter of civilians. what s your feeling about the imminence of this military strike justified quite explicitly on humanitarian grounds as a way of enforcing an international norm human rights and i believe in, which is the prohibition of kchemical weapon. for us as human rights watch, you do not gas your own people like you just said and everyone s saying. then the effects of this attack will be judged by the sequence of such horrific attacks. we will only be able to judge whether this was successful if we see a real halt to the atrocities conducted over the past tsh. what is your calculation about whether we have either the military capability or the will to do that or whether we can do that in this way being described now there s this single surgical moment of punishment that enforces the norm and then we stop. then we just let them get back to the civil war. it s a very complex situation that s witnessed so many abuses. this is not the first abuse human rights watch has documented. been going on and on including the use of missiles and many kinds of arms that cannot distinguish between civilians and competence, anyway. now, what will come out of this particular attack if it happens is just speculation today. okay, but that is exactly the speculation that anyone engaged in this policy has to deal with. what do you say to the congressman, congressman eliot engel who makes the argument those in support of intervention have made, been making a while now, which is the world cannot sit idly by and watch such atrocities? as someone from human rights watch, how do you respond to that? we have not advocating for or against the intervention. if the intervention really is to happen, which is looks like it will, then for us, all must respect the law forward. they should not target civilians, they should not use weapons that are prohibited. they should not give either par parties to this conflict,
persuade a majority of the american people that it s the right thing to do. and then each member of congress is going to have to decide if i think it s the right thing to do for the america s national security, and the world s national security, then how do i vote? ultimately, you listen to your constituents, but you have also got to make some decisions about what you believe is right for america. laura: now, when the president tried to explain why he went to congress he instead made a stark confession. did i not put this before congress just as a political ploy or symbolism. i put it before congress because i could not, honestly claim that the threat posed by assad s use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians women and children posed an imminent direct threat to the united states. laura: bingo. that is one of the main reasons why the american people left, right, and center are so vehemently against blowing one dime in syria or jeopardizing the lives of our military personnel there there is no imminent threat but there are major questions that this administration cannot to this day adequately answer. questions about the identity and motivation of the rebels. questions about how we payr als about what our real objectives are and achievable after mission creep. after a week of trying to sell this the administration and its supporters in the g.o.p. establishment have raised more questions than they have answered. this is why, with the exception of a called dry of washington elites left right and center are united against action in syria in this country. will our representatives be guided by the bipartisan demands of the people
more chaos and more suffering in the end by innocence. a stronger, more prosperous america. not more establishment wars of choice will lead to a more stable, peaceful world. that s the memo. now on to the top story. reaction with us now is robert kagan. an old friend and senior fellow at the brookings institute. mr. kagan. now you and i over the years have talked a lot about iraq and you are a learned scholar and incredibly prolific writer. in the end when you look at this today, hat the administration not lost ground in the past week when they tried to sell this war, justify the war and maybe even circumscribe the length, the duration and commitment in this war? i think they have clearly lost ground and not just this past week. the public mood really shouldn t be that surprising when you consider that for five years president obama has been telling the american people that they should be nation-building at home, not involved overseas.
populationism popped up for no reason. what happened in iraq and afghanistan both wars i was a huge supporter of. and i love our troops. i do a lot as much as i can to help them. see the public doesn t the bang for the buck. we are weaker after all these military engagements. china hasn t been involved in any wars lately have they? they are pretty strong right now. first of all your history is excellent it was a reaction to world war i. ultimately an overreaction. and the problem that, you know, american public opinion can go swinging wildfully one side all the way to the other side. whose fault is that? it s the elite s fault, is it not? it s everybody s fault. in the case of the 20 s and 30 s. the elite was exactly where the public was. i think what the real question is does any of this matter or not? and that the public opinion, you know perfectly well we were both supporters of the iraq war and so was the overwhelming majority of the iraq people. laura: what happened not carrying about. i don t think he didn t care there was bad military decisions made and we paid a big price and we are still paying a price for it and i agree with. you this is are the pa of the legacy of iraq because people see the broken men who came back and women the clasped economy and jobless here. iraq is in total chaos. it was in better shape before barack obama decided to pull out every last american troop and made that decision. obama has been a disaster there no doubt about that. that people have been making terrible mistakes there is no question about it. but, unfortunately that doesn t absolve us from the need to make a decision now about what s in our interest. who are we funding in syria today? i mean, you know what we found out about factions inside the opposition mood. there were factions inside the syrian movement and clearly there is al qaeda al qaeda affiliates
although, how much more i guess the question i would like to ask is how much will would he be hurting if we are living in a world where all kinds of dictators are using chemical weapons, weapons of mass destruction, where we have retreated in the face of iranian challenges in the face of russian challenges and face of hezbollah. believe it or not, things can get worse. the fact that we are suffering economically at home does not mean it s in our interest to do nothing about what s going on overseas. up next, president obama faces uphill battle to convince congress to support military action in syria. so can he change enough minds to get what he wants? we ll have a special report. right back. [ male announcer ] this is pam. her busy saturday begins with back pain, when. hey pam, you should take advil. why? you can take four advil for all day relief. so i should give up my two aleve for more pills with advil? you re joking right? for my back pain, i want my aleve.