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Intelligence, a cell phone conversation saying, the deed is done, we don't know what the intelligence is other than they have some piece of evidence. >> i gather it's not the latter, not someone saying the deed is done, but we don't know what the difference is. but it itself, neither of these two streams, neither the forensics, nor the intelligence are conclusive. but when you put them together, they believe that there's growing indications that it was a bomb. but they can't conclude what brought the plane down one way or another yet. >> tom, you've been looking at this as if it were a crash. ...

What we would call a catastrophic fire engine failure type of situation, it would be possible it could have caught to the rest of the airplane and caused this heat sensing device to, you know, activate. but, you know, at this point it's really anybody's game. you can look at various, at various other aspects. would the heat have been noticed had the airplane just broken apart for what we're talking about in the tail strike? you know, that's a hard thing. this is 14 years after that tail strike occurred. did it cause fatigue? we're talking about composite material that really has not been under...

Kate? >> thanks so much. i want to bring in tom costello. other officials talking to andrea mitchell saying it's likely, but premature to say that this was a bomb. what do you know about what investigators would be looking at at this point? >> well, one thing that has drawn their attention from the beginning is the fact that the tail section of this plane, as we've said before, landed a good three miles or so from the rest of the plane. so was the tail section torn off, as a result of an explosion, a bomb, or is it only coincidence that that is generally the area that had the tail strike in 20...

I know the british have long and dope ties. and at any rate it is plur py. the crew through there was a problem. >> i don't know to me at least with what little evidence they have. something was certainly up. and we don't know what it was. we have seen a number of government saying ah we better not fly over the sinai anymore. we are going back to the ukraine accident before with the malaysian airplane. suddenly after the horses are out in the barn. we better not go there. and it makes me wonder what they knew about before it happen. >> there was speculation that there is a tail strike. and we ...

After a number of years, you know, there was a failure. >> reporter: the cause traced back more than seven years when the plane's tail scraped the ground on landing. the repairs were not done properly. the plane eventually ripped away from the plane mid-flight and then there was this doomed 747 that broke apart in the air. investigators say metal around the repair work weakened and eventually caused a catastrophic structural failure. since 1982, 31 planes operated have had tail strikes. >> a tail strike can cause a problem. and it may not be an immediate problem. it may take years for the prob...