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U.S. Official: Increasing Focus on Those in Cockpit; Mystery of Flight 370

Aired March 15, 2014 - 19:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Jim Sciutto, thank you. Great reporting.

I'm going to begin this evening, though, with some breaking news tonight in the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

A U.S. official is now telling our Barbara Starr that the U.S. intelligence community is increasingly focus on, quote, "those in the cockpit" of that flight, as being deliberately responsible for the missing jet. Plus, the same U.S. official telling CNN now that the search is now focused in the southern Indian Ocean.

I want you to look at this -- this is as ABC News is reporting that the abrupt left turn that the plane made off of its original flight path was actually preprogrammed. It was preprogrammed, raising a lot of questions tonight about whether this was a rogue pilot or a hijacker in that cockpit.

I want to get straight now to CNN's Barbara Starr who has been working her sources nonstop on this story.

Barbara, a lot of significant developments here. First, let's talk about those in the cockpit being deliberately responsible. What more can you tell us about this?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Don. Well, I think the first thing we always have to say is that these are working theories, working hypothesis, and actions. This is not yet -- there is not yet enough data to come to absolute conclusions.

I've talked to a number of U.S. officials. They tell me in particular one official says they are now focusing on the theory that those in the cockpit were responsible for the deliberate act that took this plane down.

How did they come to this conclusion? It's either the pilot, the co- pilot or both, and that they do not know, but it does start with the left-hand turn. What this official is telling me is that the plane came out of Kuala Lumpur. It was handed off by Kuala Lumpur air traffic control.

At that point, before Vietnam's air traffic control picked it up, the cockpit, the plane made a left-hand turn, a very deliberate left-hand turn, preprogrammed or not, may not be totally relevant. They made a deliberate left-hand turn, this official telling me, between two air traffic control jurisdictions. It's the perfect place to begin to disappear, and that was the first step. The plane then flew out of into the Indian Ocean.

So why do they say that the ones in the cockpit and not a hijacker in the passenger cabin? The theory is this, Don -- if it had been a passenger that emerged from the passenger group, try to get into the cockpit, in the post-9/11 world, those hundreds of passengers on board would have revolted, would have tried to stop them, would have tried to have gotten into the cockpit. What was the reason the passengers stayed in their seats, stayed calm by all accounts for the five or more hours that the plane continued to fly?

They had -- the theory is, why did they stay in their seats? They had some kind of voice message, if you will, over the voice system from the crew, from the pilot, the co-pilot, telling them that everything is fine, maybe saying that they were going to be diverted to another airport or something like that, until the plane most likely they say flew into the southern Indian Ocean.

It's a key question here. Not enough data to come to the conclusion, but those passengers by all accounts most likely stayed in their seat. Why did they do that? They certainly didn't think a hijacking was going on from a passenger in the cabin that suddenly got out of their seat -- Don.

LEMON: And very interesting, maybe did not know, maybe they just didn't know. They thought that all things were, you know, fine on the plane, that they didn't know that anything was wrong. But also, you're right, Barbara, when you say this is the perfect place. Just before Vietnamese air space, they turned everything off, and then veered off course.

Here is the question, though, we have heard of two possible paths that this missing jet could have taken. One to the north, from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, so -- then another toward the southern Indian Ocean. Where -- why are the officials now zeroing back in on the Indian Ocean, Barbara?

STARR: Well, you know, let's go back to that crucial turn between Kuala Lumpur and Vietnam. The people who flew this route knew that they were headed north to Beijing, essentially. This is a 90-degree turn to the west. And they don't turn back. So, you know, if you are a passenger on this plane, you know that you are not going in the right direction, and somebody has to tell you why that is.

LEMON: Right.

STARR: So it flies to the west. It flies out into the Indian Ocean.

The reason that they are not too convinced in the U.S. government about this northern track that we have shown repeatedly even though the Malaysians technical analysis shows it is technically possible, all of those countries up in that northern region have significant radar, military, civilian radar capabilities. They are very competent. They would have known of something coming across their air space. They would have had a radar signature of an unknown aircraft.

If it landed, it would have been in a large airport, if it crashed, they wouldn't have seen it. The U.S. military and intelligence community has gone back over all of its radar and the satellite data from the region, they haven't found anything. So, that northern track, they are still going the look at it, but the officials are telling me that's not first on their list. By default, they are looking again very seriously at that southern Indian Ocean region, Don.

LEMON: Barbara Starr with the breaking news, thank you very much for that, Barbara.

We wanted to get to Barbara first, because she had the breaking developments here. There's a lot of fast-moving developments today. Here is what we know right now. Malaysian police today said -- they searched the pilots' homes outside Kuala Lumpur. Police were also seen leaving the home of the co-pilot carrying small shopping bags.

And we also learned today, that the latest words communicated from the plane, "all right, good night" were said after the plane's systems already started to shut down. Meaning, whatever caused this plane to disappear was already happening when those words were spoken, but still, so many questions, so many questions that we want to get through.

Again, we wanted to start with the breaking news and what we know, but let's talk about the possibilities, and we want to start here at the front of the plane. Was something going on in the cockpit between the pilot and the co-pilot? Did a passenger make their way up from the back of the plane to the front of the plane into the cockpit, or were they able to somehow finagle a key mechanical system on the plane?

Was there a problem with one of the engines? If there was, there should have been some communication. Royce Rolls would have known that by now.

Or was there a catastrophic explosion onboard this plane? Specifically, let's talk about in the back, in the cargo hold, where we have those lithium batteries that we have heard so much about, that helps to power the plane, or something inside of the a passenger's luggage.

Did this plane crash into the ocean or intact, intact, somewhere did this plane was it somehow maneuvered and it landed in enemy territory?

We're going to explore all those possibilities tonight, and with that said, we want to get now to the theories of what happened to Flight 370. This is your Saturday night mystery, as well as the world's Saturday night mystery. We're going to try to unravel it string by string, and piece by piece and try to figure out exactly what happened.

Arthur Rosenberg is an aviation engineer and attorney. And Jeff Wise is the author of "Extreme Fear". Let's start with the news that we just heard. The intel, right? Increasingly saying that something happened in that cockpit, this plane was deliberately steered in another new direction and they are looking now at the pilots.

ARTHUR ROSENBERG, AVIATION ENGINEER AND ATTORNEY: Sure. I don't think there's any question at this point when you look at the sequence of events beginning with the time that the plane left Kuala Lumpur at 12:30. It's the dead of night, and air traffic control is quiet, and there are not a lot of planes flying.

Forty-five minutes out, we know from the prime minister of Malaysia that the transponder was likely turned off, that the ACARS system was likely turned off, and then, now -- now we know OK, good night is spoken.

LEMON: Yes. But not only do we know that, Jeff, but we know it is turned off in the key areas where it would not be detected, where no one would sort of think of anything. First, it with ACARS system was turned off.

ROSENBERG: Sure, sure.

LEMON: And then the transponder, just before it gets into the Vietnamese air space. Was this possibly a suicide mission for the pilots, or do the pilots have some sort of terror -- can be terror- related or sort of terror-group?

JEFF WISE, AUTHOR, "EXTREME FEAR": Well, we can't speculate about motives right now, but we can talk about the behavior of the plane has become increasingly clear. So, it appears from the Malaysian radar returns that the plane followed not only a track to the west, but then it followed a zigzag course from the northwest over the Andaman Sea.

That's significant. That shows someone who is familiar, intimately familiar with the procedures of airline flight. They were proceeding from waypoint to waypoint. They were very knowledgeable about how planes fly.

Why would they do this?

LEMON: They have to program that in there. They believe that was preprogrammed.

WISE: Well, you know, whether you program or fly it by hand, the point is, why would you do that? Why would you fly from waypoint to waypoint if you're trying to slip away? Because you're hiding in plain sight perhaps, because you want to be -- so, if someone, if a military controller was seeing this split moving across the screen, he would think, well, this is a standard route that the commercial airliner would fly. So, that's a piece of data.

Now, this morning, it was really stunning revelation, with the prime minister of Malaysia, himself, revealing these two red arcs that we've seen a lot of today. The Malaysians have been criticized for not being forthcoming now for the data. LEMON: Right.

WISE: Today, they sent the prime minister, himself, to go before the world press and say, this is a piece of data that we have analyzed exhaustively. The United States has helped us. We are very firm in believing that this is actually the case.

LEMON: Right.

WISE: And so, as I've written on "Slate" today, if we take this as one of the bedrock facts that we know about this case, it's highly significant and absolutely would rule out any of these accident scenarios that you mentioned briefly earlier.

LEMON: And the thing about this being preprogrammed, again, that this is ABC News reporting. But my question that I want to ask you -- when you talk about the transponder being turned off, when you talk about all systems being turned off, can you do remotely? Can something turned that off, or does it have to physically be turned off as controlled by the pilot or co-pilot themselves?

ROSENBERG: Yes, the easy answer to that is you have a captain in the left seat, you have a co-pilot in the right seat. In between the two of them are the main console for avionics for navigation, the transponder is simply two the three clicks to the left on the switch that turns and it's off. The ACARS display actually can get turned off in the cockpit. The ACARS system, itself, probably would require someone to go into the electronic bay underneath the cockpit where they sit.

LEMON: All right. Arthur and Jeff, stand by. We're going to go over every single bit of the plane. Again, this is the exact type of plane that is missing now, a triple -- Boeing 777. We're going to go over it from front to back, and from tail to front, and also from wing to wing, and try to figure out exactly what happened. Take you through every single scenario that could have occurred.

Next, more of these theories as the investigation focuses on what happened inside of the cockpit, and why some say that the passengers could have overtaken the plane.

Plus, the last communication from Flight 370 was more than seven hours after takeoff. Could it have reached land?

And later, what would someone have to know about the Boeing 777 to take it over?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back now to more of our breaking news coverage about the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. U.S. officials now telling our Barbara Starr the U.S. intelligence community is leaning toward a theory that those in the cockpit, the pilots of the Malaysia Airlines flight were deliberately responsible for whatever happened to the vanished aircraft.

I want to go back to our panel now of expert.

Evy Poumpouras is security and threat assessment expert. Arthur Rosenberg is an aviation engineer, and then also Jeff Wise, is the author of "Extreme Fear".

First to you, Jeff -- does this change anything here when we look at this?

WISE: I think this is -- if this is heading the way it seems to be heading, I see this is a real game-changer. You know, people have been scratching their heads because it doesn't make any sense. And it doesn't make any sense because we're looking at the past incidents to try to understand what's happening here. I think it's so different from anything that's happened, that it's going to be a paradigm shift.

And if it is as it appears that the pilot and/or the co-pilot seized control of this plane for some as yet undisclosed nefarious purpose, it's going to change our psychology in a way that 9/11 did. So, I think this is going to be on the scale of 9/11 in terms of changing the way people think about airplane security.

Before, pilots were the trusted inner circle. They are the bedrock which could, upon this entire security apparatus as rested, the doors were latched door from the inside, there's a dead bolt. Now, if these people are indeed responsible for this act, the safety of the people in their hands, I don't think we'll ever look at pilots the same way. We won't trust them quite as completely as we did before.

LEMON: That's a very big statement that you are making there.

WISE: Well, listen, it's based on just what at this point is --

LEMON: If it continues to go the way it appears to be going?

WISE: Well, right. I mean, like I said, what happened today in the Kuala Lumpur, the prime minister coming out to say that the plane flew for at least seven hours, that is not an accident. That was an intentional act.

LEMON: Evy, you know, officials have said that among the things that are being considered is whether or not, again, the pilots had anything to do with it. But also was there a passenger or passengers somehow involved in this. And the passenger getting into the cockpit or the passenger able to get to some sort of finagle, some sort of key mechanical system in the plane that's behind, that's in front of the cockpit door, I should say.

EVY POUMPOURAS, SECURITY AND THREAT ASSESSMENT EXPERT: You know what's disturbing about this whole incident? We should have been analyzing and assessing the pilots and the passengers from day one. When you're doing an investigation like this -- yes, you want to look at the plane. At the same time, you want to look at those two individuals who have the stolen passports. But in tandem, you want to do what, a forensic analysis or profile of the pilots.

We should have been doing that from the beginning, not trying to figure it out now, into day eight. And the same thing, you have all those passengers, you want to do an assessment on those passengers as well.

LEMON: But do we know that wasn't done from the beginning? It appears that it wasn't, but do we know for sure?

POUMPOURAS: It doesn't look like it was done, especially from the source of information because in the beginning, they were doing what? Everybody was being steered to mechanical, technical. Nobody really wanted to talk about this in the beginning.

LEMON: And that's -- you're right. Everyone was saying, this appears to be a catastrophic mechanical failure. It appears that something happened on the plane, to the electrical or the mechanical system.

POUMPOURAS: Yes. And what did Interpol do. They came out and said, we don't believe that there's anything nefarious going on, we don't believe that there's anything terrorist-hijacking related.

LEMON: But how would it behoove or what would have a pilot or co- pilot have to gain by steering this plane somewhere else. I was asking, are they somehow involved in some sort of terror group? I'm just putting the question out there.

ROSENBERG: Yes. But, you know, first to do a takeoff on what you said. There were 239 reasons on that airplane that should have been investigated from day one. You have the pilot and the co-pilot now which are the prime suspects in this great mystery. You have another 237 people behind them, of which two we knew were traveling with fraudulent passports.

And I put this out here for discussion, and no accusations, but Malaysia was the source of two of the 9/11 hijackers, they left Malaysia, and they went to San Francisco. I think that, again, this is just my personal view -- I think that Malaysian government was extremely sensitive to even postulating the idea that this could have been a terrorist act.

LEMON: Game changer, as Jeff said, if this happens. The reason I got this model is because of my conversation with you yesterday when we talked about those lithium batteries that are -- would be in the cargo hold, and also helps to power the plane.

So, where -- take through that and what are the possibilities of that? Because now, they are leaning towards the pilots, but still, we don't know what happened here.

WISE: We know that wasn't a lithium fire.

LEMON: You don't think it was?

WISE: Impossible. This flew for seven hours. It went some 2,200 miles.

LEMON: Agreed? ROSENBERG: Yes. I mean, at this point, with the information that we got today from the prime minister, which is what you and I talked about yesterday, it certainly looks like this was a deliberate intentional action, this was a plan from the moment this plane took off from Kuala Lumpur. This was well-conceived. This was executed at the exact moment of the handoff between the Malaysian controller and the Vietnam controller who to this point in time, I don't know if they have ever reported that they made contact with the airplane.

And what did they do? They made a U-turn in the air, they and headed back southwest.

But just to answer your question, the lithium batteries would be in the cargo hold of the airplane, which would be -- which would be in the area here.

WISE: This camera right in front of you.

ROSENBERG: OK. And the cargo bay in this plane is enormous. So we don't know exactly where they were. The lithium batteries that are used to provide electrical power are towards the back end of the airplane. The electrical power is also provided. There's multiple redundancy in this airplane.

There are more than one generator on each engine, and in addition to the generators, there is something called an APU in the back of the airplane, an auxiliary power unit, which can be used to generate electricity for that airplane. If that doesn't work, the lithium batteries are available, and if that doesn't work, they have a thing called a RAT, a ram air turbine, which is like a little (INAUDIBLE) that they drop into the free stream and spins real fast and generates electricity.

LEMON: Hold that thought. Excuse me, we're going to talk a little bit -- excuse me, a little bit lot more about this, a lot more I should say, about what could have happened on this plane.

Also, we'll talk about the possibility of this landing someplace intact, we talked about the noise yesterday of the engines. And you are saying with the new engine, it is entirely possible.

More on this, the last communication from the jet came from -- came more than seven hours after the takeoff, could it have reached land? That is the question.

Plus, an investigation focuses on the deliberate act inside of the cockpit. Was it a rogue pilot or was it a hijacker? More on our breaking news right after this short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Back now to our breaking news coverage in the search for the missing Malaysian jet airliner that went missing more than a week ago. CNN's Barbara Starr learning that those in the cockpit, the pilots of the Malaysian Airlines flight were deliberately responsible for whatever happened to that jet. We're also learning investigators are zeroing in on the southern part of the Indian Ocean. Still, one scenario remains, the plane may have flown in this pattern, northwest over western China, possibly into central Asia.

I want to bring Jim Sciutto back. He's been doing amazing coverage on this all day, knows this region like the back of his hand.

I want to focus now -- much of the focus now has been on the Indian Ocean, but, you know, it's possible that this plane flew anywhere. Why now the shift to western China?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, this arc is interesting and again, like you have said and we have said many times, we don't know who is behind this. They are talking about the cockpit, we don't know what motivated them to do it.

But this is interesting because that arc takes you up to Xinjiang. Xinjiang, part of western China, it's largely Muslim, and there are groups of this region that wants to separate from China. That fight has become violent at times and is even verged into terrorism. Just in the last several months, there was a suicide car bombing, what the Chinese called a suicide car bombing, right in the middle of Beijing in Tiananmen Square, in September.

There was a knife attack -- remember this knife attack in a train station brutally, and a dozen people were killed with knives and, you know, basically a suicide attack. So, you have this building kind of terrorist force in Xinjiang at this time, and then this arc crosses it, that's interesting, right? It raises questions.

Now, when I talk to the intel officials and experts like Peter Bergen, they say, OK, these groups might have the ambition to do something like this, but do they have the capability? Up to this point, that's something that's well beyond what was understood to be their capability, you know, because this will be a major plot.

LEMON: Can we talk about the Uighurs here? As we do, I want to read something. This was about the Uighurs, we're explaining information on the Uighurs right here.

OK. So, they are saying that the Uighurs, this region has been under control, China's control, since 1949, and since then it has had issues with China, Uighurs leaders, right?

The "Reuters", here's what they say, I want to read this quote first. It says, "The fight against China is our Islamic responsibility and we have to fulfill it."

How significant would a group like this to take over --

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: To explain to our viewers, you think of China as this kind of homogenous place, right? Everybody looks Chinese. When you get into Xinjiang, this is more Muslim and Central Asian frankly than the rest of China is. People look Caucasian, they have Caucasian features. The landscape there, the traditions, the history, the culture, much more like Afghanistan than China.

And, you know, here's Tibet. We talked a lot about Tibetan independence, that's something that gets a lot of popular support here. There's equal, if not equal, or greater independence movement in Xinjiang and one that is more violent to this point.

So, that's why when you look at that arc, it crosses that area, just like if there was an attack on the U.S. and the arc crossed over Pakistan or Afghanistan, you say, hey, wait a second, there are groups there that don't like us, that at least raises questions.

LEMON: But here's my question, bottom line it for us -- what's in it, either for the pilots or for the hijacker to go to any of this? What is in it?

SCIUTTO: Well, this is -- we're entering the realm of speculation, and trying to get inside these guys heads. I mean, conceivably, taking over a plane, using it for a later date, as a target, as a missile. You know, this is something that might enter into their calculus. Now, if the intention though was just to crash the thing into the ocean, why fly for six or seven hours? You can fly for an hour and do that.

So, that's why, you know, it's still a mystery, but it does raise the possibility of other uses for that aircraft later. And again, as you and I have said many times, too early to determine what that is, but it does create theories.

LEMON: It's good to have you here reporting on the story.

SCIUTTO: Great to be here.

LEMON: Thank you very much, Jim Sciutto. And more on our breaking news on the disappearance of Flight 370. We're going to go live to Malaysia for the latest on the investigation, why the timing of the last words heard from the cockpit become a central focus of the investigation. Plus, who uttered those last words? Was it a rogue pilot or was it a hijacker?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Breaking news and a new focus on the search for that missing Malaysia Airlines jet. As U.S. official now telling our Barbara Starr that the U.S. intelligence community is increasingly focused that those in the cockpit, the pilots are responsible for the plane's disappearance. We also know that somebody in the cockpit turned off a critical tracking system just before the last radio transition, and that message from the cockpit, "all right, good night."

Back on the ground the investigators are taking a closer look at the pilots and the co-pilot and you can see police exiting the home of the co-pilot. A source telling CNN officials -officials went through the home of the pilot earlier in the day. We go through Andrew Stevens in Kuala Lumpur. And Andrew, what are you learning about these two men? ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, at this stage we're still getting quite a lot of background about these two men, Don. But it does fit the pattern of the prime minister yesterday saying that the investigation on the ground is refocusing, refocusing on the crew and on the passengers. Obviously, on the crew, the pilot and the co-pilot are going to be key. This is what we can tell you at this stage.

After the prime minister had his news conference here, police then raided the homes of both the co-pilot and the pilot. One of our reporters is actually outside of the home of the co-pilot and they saw plain clothes taking away bags full of documents and full of objects. I don't know, we don't know what is in them at this stage, Don.

And likewise, we are being told by the Malaysian police unofficially that the raid also carried out in the pilots' house as well. Now the pilot is Zahari Akmed Shah. He is 53 years old. Now, he would be and he would be of particular interest given the developments over the last 12 hours or so, because he in his house had a flight simulator, and we have known this for some time, but the police have not actually been into the house that we are aware of until yesterday.

And now we don't know what he was using that flight simulator for, and he has been described by friends as an aviation geek. He flies model planes. He's an examiner, and he is a very senior pilot. He's had 18,500 hours of flying under his belt, and he had a simulator. His friends say he was always very, very enthusiastic about anything to do with aviation.

We don't know what was on that simulator, and yet, we don't know what sort of programs he had set up, but what I can tell you about him is, from the friends, he is seen as a community member, and he works with underprivileged children. He works on environmental issues, and he is a father of three grownup children and he's grandfather indeed, 53 years, married and lives with one of his children in that house that the police raided. The family though are not there.

LEMON: All right. Andrew Stevens in Kuala Lumpur. Thank you very much for your reporting. We'll get back to Kuala Lumpur throughout the evening here on CNN.

We want to take a closer look now at the pilot and the co-pilot of Flight 370. Joining me now, CNN's Richard Quest and Eric Stacklebeck, he's a terror analyst for CBN. First to Richard. Richard, I want to take a look at what we know about this co-pilot. Let me give you some information here. The pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53 years old, lives in a gated community outside of Kuala Lumpur. As you heard Andrew Stevens say, about 18,000 or more flying hours. He joined the airline back in 1981, married, three children, one grandchild, and supervised some pilot training for Malaysian Airlines.

Here's what we know about the co-pilot. Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, joined Malaysian Airlines back in 2007, 2,700 or so flying hours, was in the process of transitioning to the Boeing 777-200. He lives with his parents and some of his four siblings. Does that tell you anything?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION EXPERT: No, I mean, he lives with his parents is normal in Asia, cost of living and things like that. People of culture, people do stay living at home much later. So a 27- year-old living at a home is strictly irrelevant. What it does tell me, because I know the sort of the makeup of the crew that would have been on that flight. There would have been, and that captain was an extremely experienced captain. Why? Because the first officer was inexperienced on the 777.

He was just transitioning, and he had spent some months in the simulator learning about the 777, and now he was moving to the actual metal itself, and so he was always flying with a very senior captain, a training captain. And that is what happened on the flight that I was with him.

LEMON: You flew with the first officer?

QUEST: Yes, and on that occasion, we had an extremely senior captain in the left-hand seat, and here again, you have a very senior captain, 18,000 hours. That is way up there in terms of the number of hours. What we can deduce because these family details. There have been cases before where pilots have gone awry and they've had almost perfect family backgrounds with children, and so we can't sort of necessarily import too much from that.

LEMON: And the fact that he had a simulator in the house is not - is that out of the ordinary? Look, the size of the sim that he had is certainly out of the ordinary, but he has had it for some time by all accounts, and everybody says it is because he loves the flying. And remember, he has been flying a long time.

LEMON: OK. I want to get to Eric now.

And Eric, we've heard - have you heard I should say anything about the pilot and co-pilot that has raised red flags for your, because NBC is reporting a simulator was taken from the pilot's house during that search?

ERICK STAKELBECK, TERROR ANALYST: Yes, Don, I think one more interesting nugget here with the co-pilot, apparently, he got in some hot water back in 2011 because he let some people into the cockpit, which he shouldn't have done. I guess some passengers and maybe showing off and showing them around, but that I think raises a red flag.

Look, it is very tough, and Richard probably knows this a lot better than me being an aviation expert to break into the cockpit. So it seems that the potential scenarios here, it is narrowed down the possibly someone on the crew, or possibly a hijacking, a terror angle, and I have to say, Don, I think it is pretty outrageous that it took Malaysian authorities seven days to search the homes of the pilot and the co-pilot and start to show an interest in the crew.

What are we doing here? That is outrageous, and seems that the Malaysian government throughout this whole process of the past eight days has done everything they could to ignore any possible nefarious intentions here with this plane's disappearance here and I don't know why. LEMON: Listen, we're getting confirmation today that the homes of the pilot and the co-pilot have been searched as we have talking about and an official tells CNN that the Malaysian government wanted a reason, a reason to search the homes of the pilot and the co-pilot and for several days now, they have waited for 24 hours and 36 hours but they needed some technical analysis collected about the radar, about the satellite data to give them sufficient reason to inspect those residences. And so, I think that you are right, the question is why couldn't that have been done, what more reason do you need than a plane is missing?

STACKELBECK: Yes, Don. I think absolutely. This is now an international mystery, right. This is the leading story around the world, and so you would think, and I think that the alternatives here, the possibilities have narrowed. Look it was either the pilots at this point, according to the Malaysian authorities either the pilots or potentially a hijacker, and why would you not look at the crew, and it just strains all credulity, quite frankly.

LEMON: Richard?

QUEST: I just want to point out one thing because I know some people are concerned about this, but Malaysian Airlines does have hardened cockpit doors like every other international airline that would fly to Europe or anywhere else. Malaysian's door, they are electronic. They are hardened so you can't just easily break through them.

LEMON: Standby, both of you gentlemen, more on our breaking news into the disappearance of flight 370. We have all the angles covered for you. Why the timing of the last heard from the cockpit may mean something very sinister happened on the plane. And what would someone have to know about a Boeing 777 to take it over?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Back now with our breaking news tonight in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. A U.S. official now telling our Barbara Starr that the U.S. intelligence community is increasingly focused on "those in the cockpit of the plane." They believe one of those people is deliberately responsible for the missing jet.

Could terror have been the motivation here? Back with me is CNN's Richard Quest and Erick Stackelbeck. He is a terror analyst for CBN News. Richard, last voice communication in the cockpit, "all right, good night." And that was said after acre system, the transponder system were turned off. What does that tell you?

QUEST: It tells us by the time, the transponder was turned off or disabled, by the time whoever said "all right, good night" along with whatever else they said, this incident has already gotten under way, because the ACARS was disabled as the plane went out over the eastern coast of Malaysia, and the prime minister told us this. I'm just giving you exactly what we know from the P.M..

LEMON: All right. Here's the questions, in the haze of information, do we know that the prime minister has his information correct? QUEST: Oh, he was very careful in the way he put the time line today. Acars disabled, plane goes out, last known position over the South China Sear and then turns to the left, and then this double arc which you now (INAUDIBLE) potential that you are now seeing now.

LEMON: Erick, do you want to weigh in on this?

STACKELBECK: Yes, look, I think, if we are talking about a possible terror angle, and look, we don't know any thing for sure. Obviously, now, it is all speculation, but it's one of the possibilities absolutely. I think there's a few alternatives there. Number one, you have Malaysia in the past. Now it's a majority Muslim country. Historically more moderate, but Al Qaeda has been active there.

In 2000, there was actually a large Al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, also the 9/11 hijackers a few of them passed through Malaysia, and guys, a very interesting wrinkle that nobody I really heard no one talk about. Just this week in New York City, there is a major terrorism trial going on right now in New York. Actually, the trial of Osama Bin Laden's son-in-law, and during that trial, a convicted terrorist testified that back in 2001, there was an Al Qaeda plot to activate a Malaysian cell to hijack an airplane using a shoe bomb to the blast into the cockpit.

Look, we don't know obviously, but I think -

LEMON: And all of this you are talking about and the different scenarios, does this speak to intent to you, Erick?

STACKELBECK: Well, absolutely intent. If you are a terrorist and you want to hijack an airplane, you absolutely have intent. You have a lot of different things you can do with that airplane. You can use it as a missile in the future, you can crash it, and you can make a political statement, and speaking of political statements, Don, we have the Uighurs in western China. You were talking about in a previous segment, look, these are some nasty customers linked to Al Qaeda. We have seen Uighurs show up at Guantanamo captured on the battlefield. The majority of passengers on this flight, Don, were Chinese citizens and if you want to make a statement against China and we know the Uighurs, they want to break away from China, form their own state. If you want to make a political statement, no better way than hijacking a Beijing bound flight but again, we're speculating.

LEMON: Richard Quest, eager to get in on this.

QUEST: These are all very real possibilities and need to be put on the table now, because what changed this morning was the prime minister saying that it is deliberate and basically going and all of the authorities concur. One point to make on the pilots though that just keep in mind that if it was one of the pilots, if, if, if, why go to all of this trouble of turning the plane around and flying it for six or seven hours in the opposite direction?

You are at the helm of the thing. Egypt Air. Why go to all of the trouble of everything else there? So let's just have a moment here, and yes, they are on the, and a piece of the jigsaw that's on the table that will be investigated.

LEMON: Yes, but here's the thing. If it is a passenger, or someone on board this plane, they went to great lengths, and they were very knowledgeable about when to turn the acars system off, and when to turn the transponders off, how to hit these waypoints and how to get that plane if they indeed landed this plane intact somewhere, they knew what they were doing.

QUEST: Yes, but you have just with respect, you just sort of gone over another -

LEMON: I said if.

QUEST: But really -

LEMON: Well, we are all saying if, because you don't know either.

QUEST: Let's leave that if to one side. Let's leave that if to one side and let's just talk about the actual commandeering of the aircraft.

LEMON: Yes.

QUEST: Sorry, go ahead, Erick.

STACKELBECK: I'm sorry, Richard, I didn't mean to interrupt. Just a quick point here, Al Qaeda, if we are talking about that possibility, Al Qaeda has had pilots, trained pilots in its ranks over the years, which I think is a potential red flag here as well. These are not just guys in caves dancing around. Our enemy, Islamic terrorists are very sophisticated in some ways there are no dummies. These are educated guys.

LEMON: Go, Richard.

QUEST: So we're talking here about a situation, clearly something happened in the cockpit, and it was deliberate and the prime minister has said that. We don't know why and we don't know who, but we do know now because of Barbara Starr's excellent reporting, that they are looking at the pilots, and that is a very major shift for the whole world of aviation.

LEMON: And I appreciate your expertise, both of you, stick around.

All night, CNN will be covering the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. All night we will be on the air until 11:00 p.m. Eastern.

Next, what would someone have to know about a Boeing 777 to take it over. 10:00 p.m. Eastern, I should say.

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LEMON: Back now to that breaking news tonight in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a U.S. official now telling our Barbara Starr, our Pentagon correspondent, that the U.S. intelligence community is increasingly focused on "those in the cockpit f the plane."

I want to bring back now Arthur Rosenberg, he's an aviation engineer and he's going to talk about the Boeing 77. You gave me great information yesterday, you've been giving our viewers great information.

We're talking about the possibility of what happened now in this cockpit. So I want to know, the systems in this cockpit, can a passenger have gotten into the cockpit. Do they needed to get into it if they wanted to do something (INAUDIBLE) some sort of major mechanical electrical system and then we'll talk about the engines.

Let's talk about the cockpit first.

ROSENBERG: OK. First off, the cockpit door on this airplane is reinforced, so it's not like the cockpit doors of old, they are tissue paper thin, you could kick them in, you could gain access. These doors are security doors which are designed to withstand an attempt to access the cockpit.

In addition, I'm not sure about this plane but many of these planes had a dead bold on the inside that can be locked from the pilot and the co-pilot side, which would absolutely prevent anybody from accessing it.

A more vulnerable scenario would be that if the pilot or co-pilot would allow a flight attendant in, at that point in time, someone then could, obviously access the airplane. As far as equipment base, the electrical bay of this airplane is actually located towards the front of the airplane. There are some variations -

LEMON: But do you have to get to the cockpit to get to the electrical bay? Well, there have been various reports about that.

ROSENBERG: Well, I've actually heard both reports. One indicating that the electrical bay is underneath the level of the cockpit and can be accessed from the inside and I have heard another report that there actually was an access cover that required a special screwdriver that had a special screw that had to be turned and kind of was a security lock to get into the area.

LEMON: Going back to something that we talked about earlier when we were talking about the scenario of lithium batteries, right? And if it was, it would be in the cargo hold, but this plane isn't necessarily powered or helped powered by lithium. We're talking about lithium batteries being stored in the cargo hold.

ROSENBERG: In fact, one of your viewers actually commented, right? You know, so let's just make that absolutely clear. This airplane is not like the Boeing 787 which is powered largely with lithium batteries, but in the context that we were speaking, this plane from what we have been told had a large number of lithium batteries that were in the cargo bay of the airplane.

LEMON: I've got about 10 or 15 seconds left, and we were talking about the engines being quiet enough on this plane so that it can land on an airstrip somewhere and go unnoticed, and it can because these are quiet engines you say?

ROSENBERG: Yes, if you compare these engines to the engines of old, the straight turbo jet engines they screamed when these planes flew over, but this plane when it flies over is largely very quiet and the engines are quiet, and it is, it contributes to a stealth form of landing.

LEMON: Thank you very much, Arthur Rosenberg, an expert on aviation.

We're going to cover this entire scenario from stem to stern on this plane, and what could have happened. Back with our breaking news right after this.

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