egyptian police and carried out an attack in cairo in 2014 where a senior police colonel gave them insider information. they have that track record. it is plausible they did manage to recruit somebody at sham el-sheikh and other people at the airports in the middle east and that s reasons why there are new security precautions for airports in the midwest coming into the united states. robert, the fact it is said the bomb was placed in the plane prior to take off. if an insider is there, in terms of security where do you go from here? anderson, these planes are indefensible. you can take a detonator the size of a pencil and have a device that can bring down an airplane. what do you do about the cleaning staff?
hold of the plane possibility with the help of an airport insider. if they can get a guy in the airport in sham el-sheikh to plant a bomb, could they have someone like that in other airports in the middle east? absolutely, don. in fact, they can have somebody like that at almost any airport. it really depends on the airport s ability to vet their personnel and make sure that nothing changes in those personnel files and also in the people themselves, are there financial issues for the people and sympathetic to a terrorist group. those are questions that have to be asked in the initial vetting process but throughout the person s employment and sensitive place like an airport. another question for you, cedric, this new isis video suggests that russia was targeted because of its air strikes in syria. do you think that the fight against isis is about to escalate further now? i do, don. i think this is in essence one of these game-changing vents.
sham el sheikh it could only happen there because of lax procedures. if it is true they are not interviewing those who work at the airport thanks seems to be we don t know. isn t the clock ticking. we don t know because frankly the egyptians haven t had any press conferences. they had interviews but nothing like the regular daily press conferences that we would have expected. transparency is not something they are used to. we complained about malaysia and at least they had press conferences. you get these. there is no measure of a correct decimation of information of where this stands and into that vacuum you ve got the brits and the americans screaming bombs. you ve got the russians and egyptians saying no it s not. richard, good to have you on. want to apologize for the internet difficulties. up next, what we know about the isis affiliate that claimed responsibility and right now a claim of responsibility for
by the co-pilot of that plane bringing the plane down, crashing it into the sea, the egyptians simply rejected the findings of the ntsb. i think this lack of trust perhaps between egyptian and american officials goes back many, many years. nothing new there. ben wedeman, thank you very much. we ll focus closer in a moment on the real state of security in sham el sheikh, talking to someone that ran most of the challenging terror operations. first, more on what to make of the intelligence picture tonight. joining us is former fbi super vicery special agent ally sufan and former federal assistant homeland security and former top homeland security official for the commonwealth of massachusetts. ellie, sounds like president obama is not as far out in front of this as david cameron was. what do you make of his comments? well, i think, you know, we have to be very careful.
capacity but in spite of that, they acre knowledge thnom ackn overseeing the security taking off to the u.k. from here. they are giving them that option and the understanding we have here is that a lot of other nations are going to be looking for the same kind of facility, wolf, in the meantime, those restrictions on all but hand luggage continued to be in place giving broader credence to that concern and those reports coming out of the u.k. today this perhaps could have been where that security infrastructure fell down here. nima, is there a sense at the airport where you are there in sham el sheikh there is one mass murder or several mass murderers on the loose now? reporter: the egyptians are absolutely not consciencing any debate about this. they are saying wait until the