collect. from the cnn center in atlanta, georgia, this is your cnn sunday morning. thank you for being with us. as always, we like to say good morning to all of our forces watching us on the american forces network. thank you for all you do. let s start with a picture from the air race crash in nevada. could give investigators information about exactly what happened. see this? this is something, it appears, breaking off the tail of that plane that crashed. this was just after the plane veered out of control and crashed into the crowd. federal investigators are checking this out. a component has been recovered in the area where that was observed, but i think it s critical that we have not identified the component. it s been examined. so we don t know what the component is or even if it came from this particular aircraft. we are clearly going to focus on that, and that s part of the informational gathering that s going on right now. nine people died in that crash. seven
a new video shows the pilot of yesterday s ill fated reno air race talking about his plane months before the crash. jimmy leeward says his team tried to make the plane more arrow i do ma am mick. he was killed when his world war ii spiraled toward the crowd the exact cause is under investigation. investigators on the scene of another air crash this time in martinsburg, west virginia. the plane there bursting into flames. the pilot s condition unknown. the struggle to secure the libyan capital underway. rebel fighters trying to wipe out what s left of qaddafi s have a jesus name. rick ache a new controversy over a book that goes inside the obama white house. the book is called confidence men, wall street, washington, and the education of a president. in it the author claims one former staff describes feeling like, quote, a piece of meat.
that they received a may day. that s at least from some viewers that are sending me some tips. at this point, we have not been able to confirm casualties, though. they are calling this a mass casualty. keep in mind, this event draws hundreds of thousands of people all weekend long. friday night is really when it gets picking up. and this is when that crash happened. devastating scene. so many injured. and still trying to find out what happened and how many deaths there might have been. mackenzie, this event, the reno national championship air races, has a troubled history. in 2007 and 2008, 4 pilots were killed at this event over those two years. have they done anything to change their regulations or their safety procedures since 2008? yeah, you know, of course lawrence, they have enacted an emergency plan in light of those deaths.
miles per hour. this was a vintage aircraft but a highly, highly modified one. they re modified not only for speed but for the additional control that the pilot will need over an aircraft that is modified to go that fast. when you have engines that big and that much power packed into these types of planes, you need to change the pilot s controls to allow for maneuverability. this is a highly modified aircraft. the pilots following in this race an oval path around pylons. the distance and speeds depending on the class of aircraft. we have a bit of tape here from a woman who was an eyewitness to this event. she has been to a number of air races and seen aircraft pull out of races but not like the way that this ended tonight. listen. the races were going on on the third lap, second or third lap. it came up over this hangar that
stead airfield in reno including the nevada governor. you re watching msnbc live. we re covering the air disaster at the reno air races. i m sorry it s taken so long to get back out to you so late. as you can tell, we ve had a lot of people that we ve gotten together and we ve been discussing other elements of this tragedy so we can move forward. first of all, our hearts go out to all of the families, the fans, those that were injured today. we re still working on some of the positions as well as you can imagine. there have been a couple comments. the ntsb is taking over the