airport. here in russia, russian officials have been noticeable for not commenting on this yet, for not knocking this down. what the top aviation body here in russia has said is that it is up to egyptian investigators to investigate this because it happened on their soil. but interestingly they the aviation organization here goes onto say that it is against the law for another state to break the information first or talk about what s going on in that investigation without the authority of the other state, in this case egypt, and without that other state, egypt, talking about it first. so russia clearly is giving an indication here whatever it knows it s saying that it can t speak out loud without first getting the permission of the egyptians. the other piece of interesting detail we ve learned here a newspaper in st. petersburg, a well-respected newspaper here, the oldest newspaper in the town, has reported that some of the bodies aboard the aircraft
unfolding. er erin is there. the egyptians are leading the investigation. a u.s. official tells cnn intel suggestions someone from the airport not far away from where you are right now was directly involved. what are you picking up over there? reporter: wolf, right now egyptian officials remain tight-lipped. no reaction so far from egyptian officials or russian officials. we spoke to the foreign minister who said it was too soon and pointed to this on going investigation and the focus on that investigation right now very much on the so-called black boxes according to equipment s civil aviation authority. they have successfully downloaded all the data from the flight data recorder.
another u.s. company. shouldn t your former employer be invited into helping this investigation? by treaty, they had a right to be there as an accredited representative. early monday morning they contacted the state department and the state department told them they would be issuing a travel ban and they would prefer not to have ntsb wait a minute. the state department based on what you re hearing told the ntsb don t send investigators to look at the wreckage. they said they will issue a travel ban, which they have for u.s. citizens, that this was a dangerous area and they were not going to send people in. of course, it s a dangerous area but you would think this is important to figure out exactly what happened. i think the ntsb made the decision they did not want their employees put in that kind of harm s way. are you surprised by that, richard? i m surprised bearing in mind the bea and germans and russians and a variety of other people
sharm el sheikh now where the flight originated. what are egyptian officials telling you, erin? reporter: hi, wolf. we have yet to hear from egyptian officials about this latest u.s. intelligence assessment. although earlier we did hear from the egyptian foreign minister who told cnn that it is too premature to draw any conclusions about what happened to the plane, pointing to the ongoing investigation. now, in terms of that investigation all eyes on the so-called black boxes. egypt s civil aviation authority saying that they have successfully downloaded all of the data from the flight data recorder. they have yet to draw any conclusions from that information though so far. they say that in terms of the cockpit voice recorder they say that was damaged. they say it will take a bit longer to assess that, but that is seen really as vital clues as
on conclusions from the investigation. erin mclaughlin, thanks very much. we ll check back with you. in the meantime let s get more now. joining us former ntsb managing director, our cnn aviation analyst peter goelz, paul cruickshank, our aviation correspondent richard quest and former head of security for israel s el al airlines. paul, isis is taking responsibility, credit in their word, for this. they re doing so publicly. they won t say how they did it. why would they be coy? well, i think the reason they may be being coy if it is indeed them is that they ve perhaps recruited an insider at sharm el sheikh airport to help them infiltrate this device on to the aircraft. and they didn t want to expose this mole or somebody they paid off at the airport. they were very, very coy indeed in their statement. an audiotape released today saying we re not going to tell you how we did this, it will be up to you to find out.