when you talk to intelligence and law enforcement officials, it s clear that it s more than just chatter. you have seen the series of attacks by isis overseas. egypt, yemen, around the world. then you overlay that with the intelligence. clear clearly, there has been some signals suggesting the july 4th date and weekend. they have confidence. this isn t just this is the holiday and there s parades, we will put a warning out? this is different than that. they are going to great expense and extent to coordinate. i believe you agree with fran. something is wrong here. this is very serious. the government law enforcement is on full alert. look at the context, the attacks in tunisia, tourists killed the beheading in france bombing in kuwait calls for attacks, the coincidence of fourth of july. you have chatter and i think these people very much would like to hit us very soon at
this may be potentially the most complex counterterrorism overlay for this event ever. officials across the nation it s not just in new york are ramping up security bracing for a possible terror attack. today the chairman of the homeland security committee, peter king told cnn, this is the most intense level of concern he has seen since 9/11. joining me fran townsend. and former cia operative bob baer. deborah they are talking about a terror attack against the united states they are looking at complex plans from isis. you say that something is wrong here. yeah. this has a different feel. around holidays or anniversaries they ramp up security. there s chatter. this is more than that.
least one of these pilots. and i actually have some first-hand knowledge of what would happen in the united states. there have been a few cases. in one case it was a few years back, pilots came out on a charter flight to judge a wet t-shirt contest. not only were they disciplined by their airline but they were prosecuted for civil aviation violations by the faa. any behavior such as this would be prosecuted by the faa as a civil aviation security violation. they would be fined. they could evenly possible lose their flying privileges. the faa takes a really dim view of this behavior as they should. so there is precedent in the u.s. that the faa would take action against such pilots in addition to their airlines. fran townsend, let s again hypothesize here. nobody has a clue what is responsible for this plane disappearing or where it is. but let s assume for a moment it was a terrorist operation. who are the most likely people to have had the capability to do this and the willingness
two people on board have stolen passports. now reports that the copilot had invited two young women into the cockpit on a flight in 2011. i ll talk exclusively to one of those women in a moment. what does it all mean? tonight i ll ask the experts, including a man who s seen it all, dan rather. was a catastrophic failure, hijacking or something else? the vanishing of flight 370. joining me steve wallace, former director of the faa s office of accident investigation. attorneys michael verner, bill palmer, a commercial pilot and author of understanding flight and associate director of search for the homeland security center at the university of southern california. welcome to all of you. fran townsend, let me start with you. it seemed like yesterday everyone was trying to push back on the idea this could have been an act of terror. but today the cia seemed to put it back into play and said, look, we just don t seem to know
on board. we know of two people on with fraudulent passports. to fran s comment about who else was on board and relationships, that s very important. what we ll do now we ll look at that plane as the center of this investigation, look at what might have happened in the cockpit, at everyone that had access to that aircraft from the point of origin, including the grounds crew, maintenance, baggage handlers, who could have had access to that plane, what went on it and who went on it to find out exactly what we re dealing with. i want to play this clip from john brennan, director of the cia. this is what he said today about the investigation. the cia are working with fbi and tsa and others, our malaysian counterparts are doing everything they can to try to put together the pieces here. clearly this is still a mystery which is very disturbing. until we can find out where that aircraft is, we might have an opportunity to do some other forensic analysis that will lead us in the right dire