it s also just about the one-year anniversary when isis declared its allegiance in sinai to the isis main group of the amir. we have seen a different number of isis plots using aircraft. 9/11 most notoriously and the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, there have been other, cargo plane plots. al qaeda is very attracted to using aircraft as trying to pull off spectacular international attacks. does that mean we should just expect isis to look in that same direction? is this a surprise? have we seen isis look toward aircraft in the past to get the terroristic message across? reporter: well, airports and aircraft have always been tar gets for terrorists, even go back to the attacks in the 70s and 80s by palestinian groups.
that here so, you know, all of which is to say it s very suggestive. there are some things in intelligence that they re not telling us. we have a sense of what some of it is and we can t report it. but all of those things together, rachel, the physical stuff and the intelligence lead them in a direction but don t get them to the conclusion. clearly we have in terms of thinking about isis or a group like them, we obviously have motive. the question is whether they have means and i think that brings us pretty specifically to the question of whether or not we understand enough about the security of the airport from which this aircraft took off and any security concerns around this airline specifically. is sharm el sheikh considered to be a dangerous place in terms of terrorist risk at the airport? well, it s certainly a dangerous part of the world. right. the thinking was that the airport s security was actually not bad. now, there are two ways a bomb can get on an airplane. one i
off. most people blew it off as bluster and wishful thinking. it was perceived as the group wanting credit to do with something they could not do with. they issued another claim of responsibility. they said it really was them. they bragged that they would never explain how they did it but they downed that plane. and you know what? the old cautions and caveats still remain in place. a group like isis and its affiliate in the sinai, they have every incentive to claim it s their work even if it is not. they would love to get credit for killing this many innocent civilians, particularly now that russia claims to be fighting against isis in syria to bolster the syrian dictator bashar al assad. to that point, russia has every incentive to blame it on a become or terrorist attack even if it s not because they would love to divert from the concern that their own plane crashed because of just something so dumb as a maintenance issue.
telling us. we have a sense of what some of it is and we can t report it. but all of those things together, rachel, the physical stuff and the intelligence lead them in a direction but don t get them to the conclusion. clearly we have in terms of thinking about isis or a group like them, we obviously have motive. the question is whether they have means and i think that brings us pretty specifically to the question of whether or not we understand enough about the security of the airport from which this aircraft took off and any security concerns around this airline specifically. is sharm el sheikh considered to be a dangerous place in terms of terrorist risk at the airport? well, it s certainly a dangerous part of the world. right. the thinking was that the airport s security was actually not bad. now, there are two ways a bomb can get on an airplane. one is that a passenger can carry it on and we have been told that intelligence officials have scrubbed both the passenger
crash. richard, of course, covering isis for years. thank you so much for hanging with us. sorry about the delay. it s not a problem at all. can you hear me? i can hear you! god willing. thank you. reporter: the science works. the magic of television. let me ask you, richard, about, obviously, the bottom line here again is we do not know if i sis is just bragging. taking credit for something that they couldn t conceivably have done or didn t do in this instance when they say they brought down this plane. if they did bring down this plane, if they did get a bomb on this plane, for example, somehow, is this a big expansion about what we know about their capabilities particularly in that part of the sfwhorld. reporter: it depends, really. isis has enormous capabilities in iraq and syria. the group operates tanks, it controls cities, it controls the lives of millions of people. and isis has been expanding very rapidly. it is not like al qaeda. al qaeda was difficult to join.