Did pilot commit SUICIDE? CIA boss says it is one theory agency is looking at as Malaysian police say they are carrying out psychological profiles of everyone on plane
- CIA head John Brennan: 'No theory can be discounted' in hunt for clues
- It came after he was asked if it was possible the pilot deliberately crashed
- Brennan also said 'terrorism has not yet been ruled out of investigation'
- Malaysian police say one of the two men on stolen passports was Iranian
- Was asylum seeker, 19, 'not terrorist', and his mother was waiting for him
- Smartphones of missing aboard flight MH370 'are still ringing', families say
- 19 families of missing claim to be connected - airline have also called crew
- Growing frustration for relatives with no information on their missing
- Angry relatives threw water bottles at officials unable to offer any answers
John Brennan, head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said: 'I think you cannot discount any theory', when asked if it was possible the pilot deliberately crashed the Boeing 777.
His intervention came as Malaysian police say they are carrying out psychological profiles of everyone on board the plane, which vanished on Saturday carrying 239 people after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.
The theory could offer an explanation as to how the plane 'disappeared' from civilian radar tracking its movements, as the pilot could simply have switched off the transponder shortly before it vanished.
Scroll down for video
'Could it just have been some kind of catastrophic event? I do not think people at this point should rule out any lines of inquiry.'
'I think there's a lot of speculation right now - some claims of responsibility that have not been, you know, confirmed or corroborated at all,' he said.
He added that there were a host of unanswered questions including why the plane's transponder stopped emitting signals and what was the role of passengers carrying stolen passports.
WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED?
A mid-air explosion: The lack of debris could be explained by it falling into Malaysian jungleA terrorist attack: Director of CIA has said terrorism could not be ruled out
Power failure: Possibly caused by deliberate cutting of power to communication instruments
Electronic warfare: 20 passengers on board were experts in this technology.
Hijacking: Radar data indicates the plane might have made a U-turn.
A pilot error: There is a chance of them in all air mysteries, claim experts
Structural failure: Possibly involving damage sustained by an accident in 2012
Pilot suicide: There were two large jet crashes in the late 1990s caused by this
Aeronautical black hole: Plane is stranded hundreds of miles from current search area
He added: 'What about the transponder? Why did it sort of, you know, just disappear from the radar?'
The former counter-terrorism adviser to President Barack Obama said there had been 'some claims of responsibility' over the missing jet that had 'not been confirmed or corroborated'.
But when asked if he could rule out a terrorist link, Brennan said: 'No, I wouldn’t rule it out.'
He said there were many unanswered questions about the Malaysia Airlines flight.
He said: 'We are looking at it very carefully. Clearly this is still a mystery.'
He added: 'I think at this point we again have to be patient and wait for the authorities to investigate.
'There are many questions. Who had the ability to turn off the transponder? How can one such action be masked?
Brennan's comments came at a rare public speaking appearance at an event in Washington organised by the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank.
Earlier today relatives claimed they were able to call the cellphones of their missing loved ones
According to the Washington Post, family of some of the 239 people on board the vanished Boeing 777 said that they were getting ring tones and could see them active online through a Chinese social networking service called QQ.
One man said that the QQ account of his brother-in-law showed him as online, but frustratingly for those waiting desperately for any news, messages sent have gone unanswered and the calls have not been picked up.
This new eerie development comes as the Malaysian authorities said they had identified one of the men on two stolen European passports who were on the flight - and that he was not considered likely to be a terrorist.
The dramatic shift raises the possibility that it flew undetected, crossing mainland Malaysia, before ditching into the sea.
However the phantom phone calls and online presence set off a whole new level of hysteria for relatives who have spent the past three-days cooped-up in a Beijing hotel waiting for some concrete information on the missing plane.
Repeatedly telling Malaysian Airlines officials about the QQ accounts and ringing telephone calls, they hoped that modern technology could simply triangulate the GPS signal of the phones and locate their relatives.
However, according to Singapore's Strait Times, a Malaysia Airlines official, Hugh Dunleavy has confirmed to families that his company had tried to call the cellphones of crew members and they too had also rang out.
He is reported to have told relatives that those phone numbers have been turned over to Chinese authorities.
One man who had asked police to come to his house and see the active QQ account on his computer was devastated to see that by Monday afternoon it had switched to inactive.
According to China.org.cn, 19 families of those missing have signed a joint statement confirming that their calls connected to their loved ones but that they rang out.
The relatives have asked for a full investigation and some complained that Malaysian Airlines is not telling the whole truth.
'This morning, around 11:40, I called my older brother's number twice, and I got the ringing tone,' said Bian Liangwei, sister of one of the passengers according to IBT.
At 2pm, Bian called again and heard it ringing once more.
'If I could get through, the police could locate the position, and there's a chance he could still be alive.'
However, at a press conference in Beijing, Malaysian Airlines spokesman Ignatius Ong said one of the numbers that had been passed on to the airline's head office in Kuala Lumpur failed to get through.
'I myself have called the number five times while the airline's command center also called the number. We got no answering tone,' said Ong.
Indeed, authorities Authorities hunting for the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner expanded their search on land and sea Tuesday, reflecting the difficulties in locating traces of the plane more than three days after it vanished.
Malaysia Airlines said in a statement the western coast of the country, near the Straits of Malacca, was 'now the focus' of the hunt. That is on the other side of peninsular Malaysia from where flight 370 was reported missing.
WHY ARE THE PASSENGERS' PHONES STILL RINGING?
After three days, wouldn’t the phone batteries be dead by now?Not necessarily. Smartphones are renowned for their poor battery life and will typically last up to around 24 hours. But the batteries of older phones can last considerably longer.
For example, the Nokia 100 boasts a standby battery life of a staggering 35 days. Smartphone batteries can also last longer if the handset isn’t being used, and especially if the phone is in Flight Mode.
However, if the phone is in Flight Mode, it switches off all wireless activity meaning calls wouldn’t be able to connect, effectively ruling out this theory. If the phone batteries are dead, wouldn’t the call go straight to voicemail?
In a word, yes. However, the process of sending the call to voicemail can differ depending on the service provider.
For example, the majority of phones will go straight to voicemail, or callers will get an out of service message if voicemail hasn’t been set up.
This will occur even if the phone is underwater, or not near a cell signal.
However, some service providers will ring once or twice before the phone goes to voicemail, or cut off. This may explain the reports that claimed phones rang before seeming to hang up. Some reports claim the phones are just ringing and ringing though. How is this possible?
Telecoms expert Alan Spencer told MailOnline that if the phones are really ringing, they can categorically not be under the sea.
He added that the phones will only be ringing if they are ‘switched on, not in water, the battery is charged, and [they are] near a mobile cell site.’
This means that if the phones are genuinely ringing, the plane needs to have landed on land – not in the sea – and be in a location where there is cell service, rather than landing in the middle of a jungle, for example. Why can’t network operators locate the phones?
A number of family members have asked the network operators why they can’t use the phone’s signal to locate the missing people.
Professor William Webb, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, told MailOnline: ‘The phones definitely won't be working. They'll be underwater, out of coverage and by this time out of battery.
‘So there's absolutely no way they could be used for triangulation.
‘As to why they are ‘ringing’ it'll be the same as if they were out of coverage - in some cases it may ring before going to voicemail.’What about the T3212 timer I’ve read about?
The T3212 is a timer that causes a phone to periodically send a message to the network saying where it is.
But Professor Webb said this only works when the phone is turned on and it is in coverage. It won't work when the battery is dead.
What about reports that passengers are appearing online, on the QQ social network?
When people sign into social networks including QQ, as well as Facebook, they appear online.
This is the case whether they’ve signed in on a phone, tablet, PC, and laptop.
if missing passengers are shown as online, they may not be using the service on their phone. Instead they may still be logged in on another device.
If this other device shuts down or goes into standby, however, or there is a long period of inactivity, the social network will log them out, which may explain why some accounts went from online to offline over a period of three days.
The Boeing 777 had 239 people on board when it vanished off radar screens early Saturday morning en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, triggering a massive international search effort.
Authorities began their hunt at the point the plane was last known to be, a spot in the seas between Malaysia and Vietnam. With no debris found, they have systematically expanded their search to include areas where the plane could have in theory ended up given the amount of fuel it had on board.
They have also said that the plane might have tried to turn back to Kuala Lumpur. On Sunday, Malaysia's air force chief said there were indications on military radar that the jet may have done a U-turn.
Vietnamese planes and ships are a major component of the international search and rescue effort.
He said that military units near the border with Laos and Cambodia had been instructed to search their regions also.
'So far we have found no signs (of the plane) ... so we must widen our search on land,' he said.
Experts say possible causes of the apparent crash include an explosion, catastrophic engine failure, extreme turbulence, pilot error or even suicide.
This deepening of the already baffling mystery into the disappearance of flight MH370 comes as it was claimed that the two passengers traveling on stolen passports on the plane were Iranian nationals.
A friend of one of the two men told BBC Persia that he played host to the pair in Kuala Lumpur after their arrival from Tehran before they took off on the fateful journey.
The two men were using the passports of Christian Kozel - a 30-year-old Austrian and Luigi Maraldi, a 37-year-old Italian.
The friend, who knew one of the men from school said that both purchased the illegal and fake passports in Malaysia and one-way tickets to Amsterdam.
BBC Persia's UN correspondent Bahman Kalbasi told the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper that the two men were not sinister and were only 'looking for a place to settle.'
Investigators in Malaysia are voicing skepticism that the airliner that disappeared early Saturday with 239 people on board was the target of an attack, U.S. and European government sources close to the probe said.
Neither Malaysia's Special Branch, the agency leading the investigation locally, nor spy agencies in the United States and Europe have ruled out the possibility that militants may have been involved in downing Malaysia Airlines Flight.
But Malaysian authorities have indicated that the evidence so far does not strongly back an attack as a cause for the aircraft's disappearance, and that mechanical or pilot problems could have led to the apparent crash, the U.S. sources said.
'There is no evidence to suggest an act of terror,' said a European security source, who added that there was also 'no explanation what's happened to it or where it is.'
Interpol confirmed on Sunday at least two passengers used stolen passports and said it was checking whether others aboard had used false identity documents.
Even so, one U.S. source said Malaysian authorities were leaning away from the theory that the plane was attacked.
Their view was mostly based on electronic evidence that indicates the flight may have turned back toward the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur before disappearing.
Even that information has not been clearly confirmed, and investigators and intelligence sources say the fate of the Flight MH370 is still shrouded in mystery.
Such contact could have helped investigators determine what happened.
Also raising doubts about the possibility of an attack, the United States extensively reviewed imagery taken by spy satellites for evidence of a mid-air explosion, but saw none, a US government source said. The source described U.S. satellite coverage of the region as thorough.
With no success so far, authorities were planning to widen the search from Tuesday, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the head of Malaysia's Civil Aviation Authority, told reporters on Monday.
'Unfortunately we have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft,' he said.
'As far as we are concerned, we have to find the aircraft. We have to find a piece of the aircraft if possible.'
Azharuddin said a hijacking attempt could not be ruled out as investigators explore all theories.
Frustrated relatives of Chinese passengers threw water bottles at airline officials during briefing
Angry relatives threw water bottles at Malaysia Airlines officials after they were unable to offer any more information on the disappearance of flight MH370.Four members of staff of the airline faced relatives of Chinese passengers on board the flight during a briefing yesterday afternoon.
According to The New York Times, one of the relatives shouted 'All Malaysians are liars', before adding 'do you know what "liars" means?'
Meanwhile, more than 100 of the relatives, who have been holed up in a Beijing hotel anxiously awaiting news of their family members, have signed a petition demanding answers and government assistance, The Washington Post has reported.
The airline sent professionals to counsel and support the families over the weekend.
Over the last three days the search mission has grown to include nine aircraft and 24 ships from nine countries, which have been scouring the Gulf of Thailand on the eastern side of Malaysia.
Apart from the sea, land areas are also being searched.
The plane took off from Kuala Lumpur, on the western coast of Malaysia, early Saturday en route to Beijing. It flew overland across Malaysia and crossed the eastern coast into the Gulf of Thailand at 35,000 feet (11,000 meters).
There it disappeared from radar screens. The airline says the pilots did not send any distress signals, suggesting a sudden and possibly catastrophic incident.
An earlier statement had said the western coast of Malaysia was 'now the focus', but the airline subsequently said that phrase was an oversight.
'The search is on both sides,' Civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said, adding that the previous statement didn't mean that the plane was more likely to be off the western coast.
No comments:
Post a Comment