happens in sochi, how are republicans going to blame this on obama? i don t think you can blame it on obama. that s refreshing. this is all set up for vladimir putin to take credit for everything in russia. he s pulling the strings so much today in the world that we live in, whether it s syria iran. whether it s the olympics, iran. i call him the puppet master. we re all on the strings of this puppet master. he makes sure once you arrive in sochi, nothing will happen. the safest place on the planet because he s been given the authority to kill if he needs to. i hope you re right about the safety. i m glad there s some good news today coming from michael reagan that republicans will not blame problems in russia on president obama. it seems the united states has empowered russia to be a bigger player on the international stage than maybe they deserve credit for. let me show you some numbers, larry. russia is ranked among the worst
volgograd blast. they re not really a corporate structure. they re separate cells, often very young, a lot younger than some of the militants we ve seen in the past decade, often in their early 20s. the oldest ones get to 30 before they re killed by russian special forces, but they re the ones with the radical ideology, organization, and in cases the sheer will to die in cases like these. we ve seen people who sought the culture, sought the fundamentalist underground that they provide and possibly if you see some of the more recent acts they ve done, the bombmaking seems to be a little more sophisticated. possibly this may be with where the concerns are emfa naturing from. nick paton walsh on the ground in sochi. ivan watson watching what s going on as well. thanks to both of you for your excellent eyewitness accounts for what is going on. that s it for me. thanks very much for watch. crossfire starts right now. this is cnn breaking news.
probably got the information from some intelligence sources who warned american airlines and european airlines watch out for this. you go back and you take a look. underwear bomber, shoe bombers, they figure out what they can do to get around the existing system. the problem with the boston marathon, they like big events like this. if not the olympics, they ll pick something else, the world cup in brazil. do we know that it was u.s. intelligence? that s classified, we don t know. but we know the warning came from dhs, that we do know. larry made a great point of we can never be 100% protected. interesting to me in this post-9/11 environment we try to comfort ourselves that we can be. we take off our shoes, dump out our water. there s only so much we can do and only so much the united states government can do to protect americans and others in sochi, in russia. but be honest, michael i m not going to be honest? god forbid if something
wolf, what s the latest? s.e. and sally, a government source tells cnn the threat is real, adding and i m quoting now we have very good information from a credible source. the threat involves either a toothpaste tube type bomb or some other types of concealed explosives in cosmetic tubes. officials also assume the explosives would be on a plane coming into russia from europe, shall we say, rather than from the united states, but that s an assumption. the source saying the u.s. is taking this threat seriously, so are other countries. so there s a lot going on right now certainly only hours before the start of these winter olympic games. back to you. indeed, thanks, wolf. so my question is why are we having the olympics in sochi anyway? it s already a target for terrorists and host country russia is an untrustworthy bad actor with a history of human rights abuses. we re sending them our olympic athletes while al qaeda might be
as the literal one on the ground here. they ll surely say this is the most security that they can provide in first place. should point out, though, there s a whiff that they may have known about this threat highlighted today by u.s. officials. liquids have been banned on the flight that i took from moscow to sochi. and there are other flights it seems, too, where these have been banned. there s been a history of explosives on russian aircraft. in 2004 two suicide bombers blew two aircraft out of the sky simultaneously and many thought they brought the explosives on in face cream tubs. concern already for the russians but they ve done as much as they can at this point although i m sure the new warnings may cause some new concerns here. s.e.? thanks, nick. we know about this toothpaste threat because of intelligence gathering. which might suggest we should emphasize gathering more intelligence internationally rather than on blowing people to bits with unmanned drones. of course, the