let s not forget about all the speculation that followed the disappearance of the malaysian airliner and let s recognize that most of that was bunk. and i think it s important here to focus on the facts and right now, all we know is that there was some type of explosive decompression. it s possible it was a bomb. it was possible it was a maintenance issue. that s all we know. evan, thank you so much. stand by there. and tom costello, he s absolutely right. we don t know what happened to this airplane. the reason we re talking about it right now, is because of things that we re hearing out of the uk, out of the british government and out of a u.s. official. give us some guidance. what would they be looking at right now to try to figure out whether this was indeed an explosive device? so three points i d like to make on that. evan is absolutely right. the sourcing on this, though, the initial comment about this may have been a bomb, came from number 10 downing street, from
worth of diamonds right from the point where the armored car was delivering the diamonds to the aircraft. this requires intelligence information, penetrating the outer perimeter of the airport and this is a major international european airport. so there are all sorts of problems that we have. joining us on the phone is nbc news terrorism expert evan coleman. you re hearing all of this develop this afternoon. we have reports now out of the british. we have a u.s. official saying that evidence indicates this could have been a bomb. what do you make of that, from your vantage point, as someone who studies terrorist groups and extremist groups? i think we need to take a step back here and take a deep breath, because there s a lot of speculation here that this is linked to terrorism and there s no public evidence to that effect whatsoever. there have been several would-be isis claims of responsibility for this possible suspected