out standing next to the egyptian leader, al sisi, in number ten downing street saying this was most likely a bomb, and targeting isis in particular, it is such an indication that they know something. reporter: exactly. that s probably the first question here is whether the president has had talks with prime minister cameron, what they have said. we may not learn a lot about that but that is a very strong indication that a very strong american ally believes this was possibly or very likely a bombing. here yesterday, josh earnest was emphasizing that there is no u.s. commercial airline traffic in and out of sharm el-sheikh and the faa has had security precautions, warnings in that area over the sinai now dating back to sometime in 2014. as you know, the sinai has been a very very volatile place, dating back as far as 2011, following the egyptian revolution and beginning of the arab spring in particular. so it s an area of the world the united states is obviously very concerned about.
don t have the kind of security that we have in other places in the world. a i am not concluding this is a bomb but i would say there certainly is significant reason for suspicion. if it were isis and again, when the brits are telling us there are some signatures or some indications that isis could have been involved, this was not just a boast by isis, that has a lot of implications. it s only september 30th, a month ago, when the russians started supposedly targeting isis although there has been a lot of dispute over that, but when they entered into the field more aggressively with air strikes. so if isis were able to mount something like this against a russian target that quickly, that s pretty rapid from a terror standpoint. well, i think it s very rapid. i think a lot of the people that have flocked to the banner of isis from all over europe, from places all over the world, some of them with many talents, we
have the capability, only because it doesn t require a lot of sophistication, unfortunately, to get a bomb on an aircraft. you have to defeat the airport security. we have obviously much better airport security here at home but even our airport security is far from infallible. if you are able to penetrate it either with a particular device and we don t have a lot of evidence of isis developing non-mechanical bombs the way we have worried about al qaeda, aqap, doing that, but nonetheless, if you have someone on the inside at the airport that can help you smuggle an explosive on to an aircraft, that obviously doesn t require a great deal of sophistication. it just requires having one person in the right or in this case, the wrong place. we do know that isis has a lot of money. they have a lot of money and i will say this about the sinai chapter of isis, the affiliate there, they are growing in numbers and in sophistication,
the latest intelligence suggests a bomb planted by isis or an isis affiliate brought down that russian passenger jet in egypt killing all 224 people onboard. our cnn international correspondent phil black is over at number 10 downing street in london. phil, british officials i take it they ve reached a similar conclusion? reporter: that s right, wolf. earlier today the british government announced that they were concerned that an explosive device may have brought down this aircraft. what we ve seen since then and they ve announced this publicly what we ve seen since then is a strengthening in that language and in its response as well following a meeting of senior government officials here chaired by the british prime minister tonight. the assessment at that meeting was there s a significant possibility, that s the language they re now using, that a bomb was aboard this aircraft. they re strengthening their response in a sense essentially grounding all flights between sharm el sheikh
pretty bad shape anyway. tourism has fallen off up near cairo. this was sort of the last bastian and this is a real blow. i m not trying to cook the evidence but they are not going to be the people who will aggressively come out and say this was a bomb planted. i m sure intelligence agencies of all the countries that are interested in this will be pooling their information. and we ll have some conclusions i suspect within the next few days. but right now i think, you know, you do your job, doyi ll do min and we ll try to get to the bottom of this. you do raise an important point though. this is presumably going to really hurt egyptian tourism. and so much of egypt s economy is based on foreign tourists coming in. it raises the question if in fact it was isis and there s indications it was isis or an isis affiliated group obsessed with planes, passenger planes, all of us remember what happened on 9/11. was the target egypt?