we heard the toothpaste tube threat, brian has gone through the various incarnations, computer cartridge, the underwear bomber. al asiri and al qaeda have invested a lot in developing new meth thotds to get around our screening. so when you ve got information that s credible, even when it s not specific, especially at the time where you know that there s a threat to the olympics, you want to be you want to alert the airlines so they can i think you ll probably see more swipes if you re boarding a plane headed for the u.s., more of these bomb detections, trace element tes that you see at an airport from people boarding with their carry-on luggage, flights bound for the u.s. from overseas. until they get more information or are able to either dismiss or confirm the threat. but for the department of homeland security, to go ahead and issue a warning like this, they have to have something to justify it. people are going to be nervous
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we don t quite know who the passengers were on this. a lot of turkish individuals work abroad often doing construction. it could also be ukrainians perhaps going to istanbul as well, a lot of ukrainians or russians, too, consider turkey to be a good holiday destination for them, though programs not this time of year, but the key things that raised everybody s eyebrows the demand to be taken to sochi and the timing, of course, the timing was right in the opening ceremony of the 2014 winter olympics after weeks of concerns about security threats and, wolf, as we ve been talking about in the last 48 hours, this toothpaste tube threat, the possibility according to u.s. officials the militants might try to use toothpaste tubes or cosmetic tubes to get explosives on board an airliner. another reason why istanbul feeds in this, may have been raised eyebrows, it s one of two places with direct flights here to sochi, the one being frankfurt. a lot of things that have got people extraordinarily
points in that city so we will make this more or less a green zone because it s in the very highly guarded area but not as quite as protected as the opening ceremony. and now, peter, when we go to the bigger picture of russia overall, this becomes very different. think about this. this is a country, population of 143 million people, 53,000 miles of train track and more than 60 airports, bus stations, hospitals, public buildings, homes. a tremendous number of places out there that terrorists could strike. absolutely. it wouldn t be as good as striking at the olympics. but they ve struck transportation hubs in the past. we had the attack in volgograd. there s a toothpaste tube threat. it s going to be so hard to attack something like the opening ceremonies. it s fair and sensible for us to say that is the biggest red zone out there, the idea that
welcome back in the crossfire tonight lawrence korb and michael reagan. we re following tonight s breaking news. cnn has learned airlines are being warned about possible bomb ingredients in toothpaste or cosmetics tubes travelers are taking to the olympics. let s go to sochi, russia, with cnn s nick paton walsh for the latest. nick, we ve heard so much about the ring of steel, a security blanket around the site of the games there. do you know if the russians are recalculating their security plan now in light of the toothpaste tube threat? they certainly say they ve done everything they possibly could already to make this games the safest. 37,000 security officials coming here. we ve seen helicopters yesterday rotating around the sky, three at a time. three surveillance balloons up in the air as well. and an internet dragnet as well