that's it for "the lead." i'm jim sciutto. wolf blitzer is in "the situation room." jim, thanks much. new reports suggesting the captain, quote, deliberately diverted the plane. fbi investigators are working around the clock to retrieve data from the piles and the co-piles' hard drives. right now defense secretary chuck hagel says terrorism or political violence cannot be ruled out. and search planes are getting ready to take off once again. they're focussing in on finding what authorities call the most credible lead. so far, 122 objects spotted by a satellite in the indian ocean search zone. i'm wolf blitzer. you ear in "the situation room." extraordinary new information in

the disappearance of malaysia airlines flight 370. we're following two breaking developments. "usa today," newspaper, quotes a senior malaysian investigator as saying police now believe the captain deliberately redirected the aircraft but sources tell cnn there's no firm conclusion on that. and it may be the best lead yet in the hunt for the airliner. aircraft will take off shortly and everyone on board will be looking for 122 objects spotted by a satellite. ranging in size from about three feet to 78 feet. they were floating in the search zone spread over 154 square miles. but the satellite images were taken sunday and storms may have scattered that debris even further. our analysts and reporters there are standing by in washington as well as around the world with the kind of special coverage that only cnn can deliver. first, though, to the breaking news, stunning new details on the investigation of the men who were actually flying flight 370. tonight "usa today" is reporting that the overseas investigation

is focussed in on the captain of the plane and whether he took the plane down deliberately. cnn is learning more tonight about that investigation and what american officials are saying. let's go to our justice correspondent pamela brown for the very latest. pam? >> wolf, while the "usa today" article points to a deliberate act by the 53-year-old captain, is zaharie shah, they still haven't willing to leave anything out. the captain here seen in a new tribute video posted online did not leave suicide note or any other evidence at his home that showed he planned to take down the flight. tonight cnn has learned from sours that after a preliminary review of the hard drive from his home flight simulator, u.s. investigators have found no smoking gun. >> i have teams working literally around the clock to try and exploit that. i don't want to say more about that in an open setting but i expect it to be done fairly

shortly, within a day or two to finish that work. >> reporter: sources say so far it does not appear shah went to great lengths to scrub the hard drive when files were deleted last month or that he had encrypted any of the files. sources say investigators have also not found any incriminating data on the hard drive of his 27-year-old co-pilot seen here in an interview with cnn's richard quest weeks before the plane disappeared. tonight sources say the fbi is still working to build a profile of the men's emotional, financial, and personal backgrounds and to review interviews of family and friends being done by malaysian investigators. >> the first week i think people were looking at mechanical failure. so there's probably just about two weeks of actual time to do a thorough investigation. that's not enough time to really turn over all of the potential clues in an investigation like this. >> shah seen here going through airport security was a aren'ted

pilot who had been with malaysia airlines since 1981, flying more than 18,000 miles. the 53-year-old seen here with his family was married with three grown children. cnn is not showing their faces. the family lived here in a gated community, but a source close to the family says his wife routinely stayed somewhere else when he was flying. in his free time, he posted videos like this one online. showing him in front of his home flight simulator talking not about his job but about his interest in home improvement projects. while shah posted frequently to youtube and facebook, less is known about shah's co-pilot who had just finished his training on the 777 and was on his first flight in the cockpit unsupervised on the jumbo jet. the co-pilot was also engaged to his flight school sweetheart. while there is no concrete proof, evidence at this point, the pilots deliberately

sabotaged that plane, examining them is still a top priority for investigators. but as one of my sources said i don't think there is any prev l prevailing theory right now. there are counterarguments to every theory. the sense i get from talking to sources is people are still baffled by the plane's di appearance. >> they certainly are, pam. thanks. our aviation analyst, the former 777 pilot mark weis and cnn aviation analyst peter goulds, former ntsb managing director and senior law enforcement analyst, former fbi assistant director tom fuentes. so, we're going to be speaking shortly with the world editor from "usa today" on their reporting why they have their sources with malaysian police suggesting that the pilot, not the co-pilot, the pilot may have deliberately diverted the plane for whatever reason. so what are you hearing, tom? you were pretty well plugged into this investigation. >> i've been informed by a senior malaysian government official that there has been no information developed that's derogatory against either pilot, and that includes that they

searched their house and there was nothing left in the house, no suicide note, there's been nothing found about their finances, their personal lives that indicate depression or being an extremist group or some other reason to be motivated to either commit suicide or that they went crazy or that. there's no evidence of it, no indication of it. they did say that the fbi promised that the report should be in the hands of the malaysians by friday or on friday. >> the fbi report of the hard drives from the flight simulator he had in his home as well as their personal computers. >> right. but they've been informed so far nothing derogatory has been developed but the investigation continuing but will be wrapped up within a day or two and they'll have their results by the end of the week. >> that's what you heard the fbi director saying, within a day or so. have they managed, as far as you know, to re-create all the deleted, e valesed files? >> no. i was not given the details of it. that will all come out in the

reports give on the malaysians when the malaysians choose to release that information. >> so, peter, you were involved in the egyptair suicide pilot investigation. to this day, the egyptian government doesn't believe it was pilot suicide. they insist it was something else. you at the ntsb, united states concluded it was pilot suicide. so i raise that because i'm not really surprised the malaysians, for whatever reasons they may have, they don't want to go as far to make an accusation like this against a fellow malaysian. >> that's right. and the egyptians at first were more receptive to our approach, but i can tell you, the ntsb had no doubt about egypt air. we had the evidence. it was clear. but for whatever reason, the egyptians would not accept that. and we had that evidence starting to build early on in the investigation. >> how early? >> we knew within 48 hours that the co-pilot had a confrontation back at his hotel and that he was under severe disciplinary

judgment from the airlines. >> so that was your initial suspicion and then it bore fruit as you continued the investigation. >> absolutely. >> how long did it eventually take you to conclude that for sure it was pilot suicide? >> three weeks. once we got the voice recorder and the voice recorder was transcribed we knew without a shadow of a doubt what had occurred. >> but we don't know, obviously, we don't know, mark, that the pilot or the co-pilot had anything to do with it. for all we know they might have been heroes trying to resist somebody else trying to come boo into the cockpit or whatever. but let's assume one of the piles wanted to do this. could a pile on his own turn off the transponder, turn off the electrical communications capabilities, all the radar, all the pinging, everything else, silence satellite phones that may have been in business class or whatever, all the other communications on that plane. could one individual potentially have done that and continue that plane flight for seven hours into the indian ocean? >> wolf, again, the hypothesis

always existed that this could have happened from the cockpit. again, we don't know if they were heroes or one of them or both of them were trying to take down the airplane, but absolutely somebody from the cockpit, one of the pilots could have taken it down. we've seen world pilots before. it's not a very big part of the population but -- >> what if the pile -- say the pile, 53-year-old zaharie shah, the pilot, wanted to do it. he has a co-pilot sitting next to him, 27-year-old junior pilot, shall we say, and he's resisting. what do you do then? >> if he's resist, again, go back to what we first heard, that there was swings in the altitude. we don't know that that's true, but to me that early on said there could have been a possible struggle in the cockpit to maintain control or to keep control over that aircraft. so that's a real scenario. >> you think that vogs are looking at this possibility, just a possibility, a theory right now that the pilot may

have decided for whatever unknown reason to do something like this? >> they have to look at it. there's no other question. you've got examine it. you've got to put it as a priority. but you can't cyr rhee in zero to the exclusion of others. >> does the fbi -- are they playing a role in speaking to family and friends or simply relying on malaysian thundershowers to do this? are they actually on the ground talking to people about let's say the pilot? >> right. the malaysian government, their police are doing that. but getting back to the original point, in the egyptair case, they defended their pilot because either it's egyptian air's fault for having this pilot crash that plane or it's boeing's fault for the plane breaking in midair and crashing. in this case, the malaysian government isn't innocent whether the pile does or not because if it turns out to be lack of cockpit secure, lack of airport security, somebody from the ground crew, a passenger breaking into the cockpit, all

of that still makes it negligent security on the part -- it's not the pilot versus boeing. it's the pilot and -- >> there was another pilot suicide that you guys worked on. the indonesian silk airlines plane. >> right. >> the u.s. concluded it was pilot suicide. the indonesian government never accepted that either, did they. >> they did not. >> what was their argument then? >> well, they tried to identify it as a rudder problem. but it was clear to us that this plane did not perform the way previous 737 that did have a rudder issue crash and we looked into his background, he had had severe trading lotszs on the monetary exchange. he had just taken out a large life insurance policy. and the way in which the voice recorder was turned off gave us indication. >> mark, you're a 777 pilot. is there any smoking gun evidence, anything you would look at right now to determine if one of the individuals in the

cockpit may have been responsible for this tragedy? >> well, certainly you can go back into the train records, you're going to go back into as we've already heard, their personal histories, financial histories. talk to the people that they flew with before, talk to the cabin crew members, cockpit crew members. was there anything out of the ordinary, if you've known them for years. this pilot had been with them a few decades so he would have had experience to be working with other people. that would have been an area we want -- >> how significant if at all should it be that the pilot, the 53-year-old pilot, zaharie shah, was politically active with the opposition in malaysia? i'm sure they're looking at, that but is that something investigators should be looking at to see how active politically he was with the opposition, especially the opposition leader who was sentenced to a long prison sentence and there were reports that the pilot actually may have been close to the courtroom during that sentencing? >> they looked at it very closely and the fact that he had that political affiliation, they

still don't find any reason based on that that he would crash the plane because of that. that's their determination because of now. but again, it doesn't rule out any of these things aren't true. it just says as of now they have not found -- >> they want really hard evidence, which is totally understandable. you don't want to convict someone who may be dead right now without giving a fair chance for that person to make his case right now. what else should they be looking at if you weren't involved, peter, in this investigation? >> i think you want to go back to look at finances, personal ro relationships, dig into political affiliations and see if there was, as tom pointed out, any change in his personality over the past month or six weeks. i mean, that's where you've got to dig and you've got to dig deeply. >> all those questions are being investigated by malaysian authorities, not -- u.s. officials don't have access to that kind of information, tom, is that right? >> that is a very outstanding police force, the royal

malaysia. the fbi has worked closely with them for more than a decade. al qaeda held their summit meeting in kuala lumpur before the 9/11 event here, so this is not just some -- >> better than the indonesian police force? >> they're good police too. >> because they're the one who is disputed the u.s. conclusion on the silk airlines pile. >> there's political reasons. if there's a way you can introduce a mechanical -- you take a liability off the that country and put it on boeing, the manufacturer, or rolls-royce if they made the engine. >> or if it's national pride. >> national pride. >> in silk air and in egypt, in silk air it was national pride. there was an element that they did not want this to be on their shoulders. in egyptair, there were a number of other national security issues. >> very quickly, what were they? >> if you recall, the malaysian government themselves over the issue of turning the aircraft said human hands turned that plane, not mechanical. they are right there saying it's our liability, either our pilots

or our lack of security that let somebody else come in and take over. but a human flew that plane. they're saying right there it was not -- >> fair point. excellent point. thanks very much, guys. don't go too far awap. up next so, was it a suicide mission? i'll speak with the "usa today" editor about that paper's report suggesting the pilot deliberately diverted the airliner. stand by for that. and it may be the best lead yet in the hunt for the airliner. 122 objects spotted by a satellite. now search planes are getting ready to take off in a new hunt for the debris. it's a growing trend in business: do more with less with less energy. hp is helping ups do just that. soon, the world's most intelligent servers, designed by hp, will give ups over twice the performance,

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as investigators focus on what went on inside the background of the cockpit and the pilots, our pentagon correspondent barbara starr is taking a closer look into that part of the story. barbara, what are you finding out? >> reporter: wolf, when defense secretary chuck hagel and the brit ib minister of it was came here into the pentagon briefing room to talk to reporters earlier today, i asked them whether they had ruled out terrorism once and for all. i want you to listen to what they both have to say. >> i don't think at this point we can rule anything in or out. i think we have to continue to search as we are. and you know the united states continues to stay committed. >> we cannot rule out anything at this stage unless and until we recover the cockpit voice recorder, we will not know for

certain. that search goes on and we too are assisting in the search and we just have to hope that we will be successful in locating that vital piece of evidence. >> so, you know, perhaps a real reflection of the bottom line which is nobody knows at this point, but could it have been a terrorist attack? well, one of the reasons a lot of u.s. government officials are sort of trending away from that idea is there's been no claim of responsibility by any terrorist group, and that's what you would typically see in a terrorist attack. but if, in fact, as people are beginning to suspect, it might have been something deliberate from the cockpit, from someone in the cockpit, always possible they might have had a political motivation, could have been personal trouble, something like that. the idea that it may have been a deliberate action from the cockpit keeps coming back, wolf, to the notion that people are looking at at least around the u.s. government that the plane flew, made some very deliberate turns, flew on for several

hours, something that's not very easily explained, wolf. >> the suspicion being someone deliberately made all those turns, changed the altitude and all of the rest. barbara, thanks very much. let's take a closer look now at the suggestion that the airliner's captain deliberately redirected the plane and that the crash was no accident. that's at the heart of a new article just reported in "usa today." and i'm joined now by the paper's world news editor, william dermotty along with former assistant fbi director tom fuentes and our cnn aviation analyst miles o'brien. william, thanks very much for cominging in. let's talk a little bit about this report that you have. tell us specifically what "usa today" is reporting. >> that investigators who have been on this since day one are telling our reporter on the ground at kuala lumpur that they're focusing solely on the pilot as the reason for the disappearance of the 777.

they believe that there's no mechanical error involved in this, no sort of payne stewart-like folks falling asleep and it falling on auto pilot. they concluded that the pile himself must have been the one to redirect the plane, bringing it down to the southern indian ocean. they ruled out the co-pilot, who was a 27-year-old staff member. they felt he didn't have the ability to do such a thing. they've checked the passenger lists and they believe that no one on the flight could have manipulated the plane in such a way. so now they're interviewing relatives and friends of the pilot to try to figure out if something happened the day, march 8th, the flight took off and perhaps determined what sort of mood he was in or if anyone had an inkling of his plan. >> these are malaysian investigators. your sources are citing, right? >> we have a source, high-level

source who's been working on the investigation since the beginning for the kuala lumpur police. he works for a specialty unit there. >> malaysian force. >> yes. >> that's your source and you've obviously checked wit other sources to see if there's corroboration from fbi or other sources here in washington? >> we're doing that now, so we expect to hear from them sometime. >> this is a high-level malaysian law enforcement-type source who is now saying the focus should be on the pilot, the 53-year-old pilot, zaharie ahmed shah. >> exactly. >> let's ask the former fbi assistant director. you hear the reporting from usa today. >> the sources i have have been saying from the first day that, yes, they focused intensively on the pilots the very night the plane went missing along with passengers, ground crew, luggage handlers, you name it. but nothing has come up that's derogatory about the pilots, that the search of the house came up, both pilots came up with nothing.

the hard drive records have been sent to the fbi. that report is due out shortly by the end of the week. and to date nothing has been developed derogatory. doesn't mean they stop looking at them. doesn't mean it's less intensive today than it was 19 days ago. it just means that from day one to day 19 nothing derogatory has been developed that they can determine. >> have you heard of anything derogatory specifically about the pilot, captain shaw? >> no, in fact, our source tells us they found absolutely no ties to any militant group, they haven't found any evidence of militancy at all, which is why they're baffled as to any sort of motive. >> so why do they come to this conclusion that he might have deliberately wanted to kill himself and all these other folks? >> some of it is process of i e limb nation. they can't find any other rationale for it and according to the evidence they have thus far they don't believe the plane was somehow mechanically disabled so it would fly down that way. they believe it had to be done manually and they feel that the

only person who could have done that on the plane is the pilot. >> the only person with the technical skills to shut down the transmitter, the transponders and all the other communications capabilities and everything else and redirect the plane toward the indian ocean. your source, your law enforcement source in malaysia concludes it was the pilot. >> that's right. so now they're trying to find out from some of the people close to them if there's anything that occurred in the days ahead of the flight that maybe they didn't realize was important but may have been. they compare it to previous investigations where someone had sort of had what they call a freakout where something occurred and they decided to do something very drastic and they had no prior background or inkling that it was going to -- >> so it's just the presumption basically that -- because they don't have any direct evidence that the pild dit it. they're just ruling out other possibilities and they're coming to this conclusion without direct hard, concrete evidence. >> well, no. they don't have any statements

from the pilot or anything that would indicate that. but what they do have is what they say is a lot of circumstantial evidence that who else could have done it. they're focusing on him. >> miles, you're a pilot. what do you think about all this? >> i think that it sounds like they have a hunch. they have a strong hunch. and the fact that the captain would be at the top of the list and they're homing in on it to me frankably isn't much of a news flash. we've been talking about that for a long time. what we see is a lot of evidence of deliberate act, those two separate turns that to curd after the turnback, which could have looked like some sort of decompression e venl, indicates some sort of willful event. who was the person that forced that willful event? certainly suspect number one would be the captain, but i don't know that there's any evidence to say -- to rule out that the co-pilot has 2,700 hours and just came off his initial operating experience, which makes him very capable in the 777. how can they say they don't know for sure that somebody didn't try to commandeer that aircraft?

there's no evidence here. i think so say that the pilot is at the top of list, we all can agree on that, but there is no evidence to prove that. >> intriguing thought and i'm sure "usa today" is going to be doing more reporting. we can confirm this but we're certainly intrigued and we'll certainly follow up. guys, thanks very much. when we come back, the massive search for flight 370 expected to resume any moment now. we're going thrive the staging ground in australia, for the very latest. plus, will the searchers find those more than 100 objects seen floating in those new satellite images? could they be part of the missing plane? new details. stay with us. you near "the situation room." it is estimated that 30% of the traffic in a city is caused by people looking for parking.

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the massive search for flig flight 370 about to resume, the critical question, whether they can find the more than 100 objects revealed in the new satellite images revealed in the southern indian ocean. bryan thomas is taking a closer look at this part of the story. he has new details. >> reporter: a significant

discovery, wolf, oebl p break we've been looking for according to some analysts but those objects are also scattered over an area the size of denver. the question now -- have the objects stayed close together or have the ocean currents and the weather turned against the search teams? malaysian officials called this the most credible lead they have. new images from a french satellite, 122 objects floating in the southern indian ocean. not far from other sightings that could be related to malaysia airlines flight 370. in this possible debris field -- >> some objects were small. others were as much as 23 meters in length. some of the ones appeared to be bright, possibly indicating solid material. >> 23 meters, about 75 feet, roughly the size of one wing on a boeing 777. but these latest images were taken on sunday. the australian air force just searched those same rapidly moving waters and found nothing. >> you come back to the same

place a day later, you're not looking at the same water. it moves, and it moves very fast in this part of the ocean. it moves 20, 30 miles per day. and it moves in a random, chaotic way. >> reporter: experts say the possibility that the objects were clumped together does offer hope that this could be the wreckage of the plane or it could be unrelated. >> it could be something like the docks we saw wash ashore on the west coast of the united states following the japan tsunami or it could be some other remnant that has fallen overboard on an ocean-going vessel. >> malaysian officials are under intense pressure from the chinese, who have 154 passengers on board. the malaysians today gave an extensive briefing to a chinese envoy. but the anger of relatives of those on board still vented in public. in stark contrast, a moment of silence in the australian par lam for the presumed victims. and in the united states, the

first steps toward big litigation over the plane's disappearance, a chicago-based attorney has asked a judge to order malaysia airlines and boeing to provide documents and other information. the lawyers' firm says it plans to build a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the airline and boeing. boeing declined to comment on that and malaysia airlines officials were not immediately available. wolf, litigation already and we have no plan. >> more in the next hour on the potential lawsuit, the legal parts of all this coming up. let's get to more about the search, specifically the 122 objects revealed in those new satellite images. joining us the oceanographer ervik van seville of the climate change research center from new south wales in australia, and colleen keller, with the defense contractor that helped with the search. thanks to both of you for joining us. so you look at these pictures, 122 image, colleen, on this

latest satellite image. it was taken on sunday. yesterday they went out, they've been looking all day. apparently no one has seen anything from the air or on the sea, but what do you make of these images? >> well, wolf, until now we've seen wednesdays and tuesdays, you know, a couple objects floating in the water. but this is what we would expect. we would expect a full debris field. the real question was, what did the currents do to that debris in the last 16 days? my colleagues back in my home office back in virginia have been assembling models of the currents. they're using the hybrid coordinate ocean model and they're running similar leighs to see what a debris pattern would do over a 16-day period. to their surprise, the debris is staying fairly close together and moving in an easterly southeasterly direction so that looks consistent with where we found this debris field on the pictures on sunday. i'm hopeful it's a good lead.

we need to pick up the piece and associate wit the aircraft. >> they did come back, eric, from the search area, 12 planes back in perth getting ready to take off once again. presumably they had the information from the sunday satellite images but they didn't see anything. they came back empty handled. is that surprising to you, eric? >> well, no, because the current that we're talking act, it runs very fast so, this -- we're talking about 30, 50, maybe 60 miles every day that the water moves eastward and northward. but the point is we tone know exactly how it's going to move. we are not capable enough to predict, to forecast how ocean currents move. it's not like what we can do with weather. we can tell you what the weather will be tomorrow. we can't toll you what the weather in the ocean is going to be. >> good point. colleen, if these photos were taken on sunday, why has it taken until wednesday to actually direct planes into that area where these images were

spotted? >> well, i think we had weather delays the last couple days, wolf. that was my understanding. it also may take time to do some photo interpretation on the satellite images to get them down and to look at them. going back to the comment about the ocean currents being pretty unpredictable, i know the australians have over 17 drift buoys in the water right now that are measuring actual currents, and that data would be invaluable in tuning the models to get the exact drift for this debris field. >> so what do you think, erik? you know these waters, studied them in the indian ocean for a long time. how unusual is it for a satellite to spot 122 separate images clumped together in the general same area? >> well, it doesn't happen that often. so the area we're talking act, this close to antarctic, is one of the most pristine areas in the ocean. most of the ocean is horribly littered. it's really lots and lots of pieces of plastic floating around that comes from

land-based sources, from shipping, and if this plane would have gone down in any other place in the ocean in the north pacific or the north atlantic, i would be much more skeptical this was debris from the plane. >> is there a way just from images, colleen, to conclude that this is wreckage from the plane or do they actually have to go into the water over there, lift it, put it on a boat and bring it to shore? >> well, it is very difficult to tell even with the resolution that we've got and i understood these were high-deflinition pictures from the french slil s satellites. but if they did measure an object that's 75 feet long, i have been told that the aircraft would hold together in large pieces like that just because of its composite construction. so i find that encouraging that we found such a big piece because it's much more typical than garbage that comes off ships. >> what do we expect for the weather the next few days, erik?

>> well, we're getting into autumn so, the weather might deteriorate again. it might get worse weather. this is really a part of the ocean where the winds are strongest, where the waves tend to be highest in winter and autumn, where we are now. it will certainly complicate not only the search but also getting peas out of the water. often being on ships on the ocean we need to recover some of our scientific instruments that were in the water, it's very, very difficult for a captain to actually drive a huge ship a300-feet ship next to a piece of debris. and then it takes a lot of effort by the crew to get out there and actually dig it up. in a rough sea that will be very dangerous and very difficult to do. >> very dangerous and very difficult. erik, colleen, thanks very much. we'll check back with you. just ahead, the massive search for the missing flight about to get under way momentarily. we're going thrive the staging area in perth, australia, for the very latest.

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as pilots and crews prepare to head out for another day of searching, let's head out to cnn's atika shubert at the staging area in perth, staaust a australia, where planes are getting ready to take off once again. what's the latest, atika? >> reporter: just started hearing planes refring up, not sure if they tear search planes but we are expecting about 11

planes to head out today, six military aircraft, five civilian. they've got a lot of area covered but of course the most important will be these new images from the french satellite. it's about 154 square miles that they're focused on with 122 objects that they see. some of them as big as 24 meters. so what we're talking about is potentially the debris, but we really need those planes to get up in the air, get down low, and take some picture os to identify what these ones actually are. and they have to do it pretty soon because unfortunately the latest weather report seems to say that the weather will deteriorate later today. so we veal to see how much time the planes actually have to search, wolf. >> one u.s. plane is involved, the p-8, the poseidon. that will be taking off shortly as well. is that right? >> reporter: that's right. in fact, our reporter is scheduled to be on the p-8 po

seeden, a critical plane because it would hunt for submarines and it's able to look for this sort of metal under the water. so hopefully it will be able to get out there, get down low and use the specialized equipment to look for any sort of wreckage that might be on the bottom and use its sonar. but, again, depends on the weather. it hasn't been able to fly -- i think the day before yesterday so it just depends on whether or notitis good enough conditions to get it out there. >> and there are ships in the area already that are searching. they've been there for days, but they're moving closer to these areas where they suspect this debris may be located? >> they are in the search area. in fact, they have five ships in the search area. i'm not sure if they're actually in this particular 154 square miles where the french satellite images are but they're close by and that's a good thing because once they've identified a potential debris, then you actually have to get the ship

there to haul it in and take a look at it, so it will be critical to have them on the scene. >> atika shubert in perth, australia, for us, we'll check back with you. thank you. just ahead at the top of the hour, we'll have the very latest. aww, this audit will take days. what a headache! actually& i don't have a headache anymore! excedrin really does work fast. quiet! mom has a headache! had a headache! but now, i& don't. with 2 pain fighters, plus a booster, excedrin ends headaches fast. in fact for some, relief starts in just 15 minutes. wow, my headache is gone. not gonna happen. excedrin. headache. gone. the was a truly amazing day. without angie's list, i don't know if we could have found all the services we needed for our riley. for over 18 years we've helped people take care of the things that matter most. join today at angieslist.com

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we're going to get back to our special coverage of missing flight 370 mystery in a moment but first other major news we're monitoring right now including new video of president obama just arriving in rome ahead of tomorrow's historic meeting with pope francis. he warned russian president vladimir putin he's up against

the united international front in the face of the escalating ukraine crisis. jim acosta is traveling with the president and had is joining us from brussels. a major speech today. tell us what he said. >> reporter: that's right. that's right, wolf. aides to the president say that his speech today in brussels was written right up until the last minute so the president could make an urgent case that the world is being tested by russia's actions in ukraine. he made a spirited rebuttal to vladimir putin's justification for annexing crimea. he rejected the notion advanced by putin that military intervention is no different than the nato with kosovo. here's what the president had to say. >> it is true that the iraq war was a subject of vigorous debate, not just around the world, but in the united states as well.

i participated in that debate. and i opposed our military intervention there. but even in iraq, america sought to work within the international system. we did not claim or annex iraq's territory. we did not grab its resources for our own gain. >> reporter: and what appeared to be a response to his critics, the president said he's not being naive when it comes to russia. the president, while he has ruled out military action to remove russian troops from that peninsula, he did say nato should engage in more joint military exercises over the coming months and years and he called on nato partners to step up their defense spending. and vowed the u.s. would come to the defense of any nato ally threatened by russia. >> poland, latvia, lithuania,

they want to hear words like that from the president. what about the call to are more sanctions if putin goes into other parts of ukraine. will they be comfortable with even stronger sanctions? >> reporter: they're very nervous about about the economic ripple effects. the president acknowledged that the world economy, the european economy would be hit if russia were to be sanctioned further, especially those energy and oil sectors of the russian economy, but the president said that is a price worth paying. that is a burden worth bearing because the cost of not checking russia if the russian troops were to go into other parts of ukraine, that those costs would be much higher. that's something europe cannot do especially after two years in the last century on this continent. >> he said that the u.s. and russia are not on the verge of another cold war now. jim acosta traveling with the president, thanks very much. was it a suicide mission?

we have no foew focus on the pi including the "usa today" suggesting the captain crashed the plane. the best lead yet. dozens of floating objects photographed by a satellite. [ s the cat that drank the milk... [ meows ] ...and let in the dog that woke the man who drove to the control room [ woman ] driverless mode engaged. find parking space. [ woman ] parking space found. [ male announcer ] ...that secured the data that directed the turbines that powered the farm that made the milk that went to the store that reminded the man to buy the milk that was poured by the girl who loved the cat. [ meows ] the internet of everything is changing everything. cisco. tomorrow starts here.

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happening now, breaking news in the mystery of flight 370. search planes are about to take off and look for a possible area of plane wreckage. dozens of new objects spotted by satellite. experts say this is a very encouraging lead. a new report out tonight on the investigation is putting the focus back on the pilot's state of mind and the suspicions that the plane was deliberately crashed. plus -- flight 370 families holding vigil and clinging to hope. could a new lawsuit help them get the answers they so desperately need? we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room."

zero hour in the search for flight 370. planes are set to take off from perth, australia, as the sun rises. they'll head for a new target area in the southern indian ocean where 122 objects were spotted by satellite. experts call this the most credible lead now. another breaking development. a new "usa today" report quoting a high ranking malaysian police source saying investigators have narrowed their suspicions to the pilot and the theory that he deliberately redirected the plane. u.s. government officials tell cnn there's no hard evidence of that right now. our correspondents and analysts are following every lead. they're here in "the situation room" and around the globe covering this story as only cnn can. first, let's go to our chief national security correspondent jim sciutto. jim? >> despite a massive effort by air and by sea, the biggest lead

in the hunt for flight 370 is coming from satellites miles above the earth. these new images taken by a french defense firm on march 23rd show a potential debris field inside the search area. officials say these white dots show 122 identified objects between 3 and 75 feet in length. >> some of the objects appear to be bright, possibly indicating solid material. the objects were located approximately 2,557 kilometers from perth. >> reporter: the new images are remarkably close to the area where chinese and french satellites captured images several days ago. and at 75 feet, at least one of the objects is similar in size to an object spotted earlier. still search teams caution they won't be able to confirm the debris came from the plane until ships is are able to recover it. >> it must be emphasized that we cannot tell whether potential

objects are from mh-370. nevertheless, this is another new lead that will help direct the search operation. >> reporter: so far none of the 122 objects seen by satellite has been spotted by search planes or ships scouring the area for clues. two new high-tech search aids from the u.s. arrived in australia today. an autonomous underwater vehicle or auv which can help detect sunken objects to departments of 15,000 feet. and a pinger locator that can detect the sounds from the flight data recorder to depths of 20,000 feet. neither of these devices will be of any use until a crash scone is identified. that task remains daunting. >> the crash site is about as close to nowhere as it's fobl be, but closer to australian than to anywhere else. >> reporter: australia is leading the charge, zroeting this remote stretch of ocean

into color-coded boxes, assigning them to individual search teams, then marking them off. as each box is checked off the families of those on board are searching for proof that they're gone. >> most of the families don't believe the bad news. most of the families still think that there will be hope. >> reporter: without that hard evidence stephen wang still clings to the hope that his mother is simply being held hostage. >> they're still negotiating, i think, if they make a deal, maybe our family is back. >> reporter: today is day 20 of the search. there are just around 13 days left until the flight recorder's batteries die out and can no longer give off the pinging signals detected by that new american underwater equipment. there are even some experts who say depending on how those batteries were stored before the flight, that battery life could be even shorter. >> jim sciutto reporting, thank you. let's dig deeper now. the new report on "usa today"

that malaysian police are focusing in on the plane's lead captain, zaharie ahmed shah. it quotes an official involved from the beginning. authorities believe shah, quote, deliberately redirected the plane. let's bring in our justice correspondent pamela brown. your investigative sources are coming up with a different conclusion at least right now. >> at least right now, and that's the key point right there. they tell me investigators have found no smoking gun in either the pilot or co-pilot's background that would suggest a premeditated act, that they'd been planning the plane's disappearance. they did not find a suicide note or find any financial or marital problems. investigators are working overtime to comb through the hard drive from captain zaharie shah's home simulator and from drives taken from the co-pilot,

fariq hamid. >> i have teams working around the clock. but i expect it to be done very shortly, within a day or two to finish that work. >> tonight investigators at the fbi lab in quantico, virginia, are working to finish, looking through those drives. sources tell me investigators are still trying to build a profile of both men's backgrounds using information found on those computers as well as from interviews that malaysian officials have done with their friends and their families. but wolf, again, worth noting neither malaysian nor u.s. officials have implicated either men in the loss of that plane. sources say u.s. investigators have not found any concrete evidence on that hard drive or the search of their homes at this point. >> but they're certainly exploring that possibility. >> yeah, no, absolutely. in fact, my sources tell me they're not ruling anything out. and of course looking at the two men in the cockpit is still a top priority but that source also added there doesn't seem to be any prevailing theory here,

that there's a counterargument for just about every single theory there is. >> pamela brown reporting. thank you. let's go to the area right now, the latest on the search for the plane. atika shubert is in the staging area of perth, australia. the western part of australia. what's the latest there? >> we're waiting for those planes to depart the air base here. they do have to leave quite soon because it's reported that there could be bad weather later on today. so that means a very limited search time. we understand that there should be 11 aircraft operating in the search today. six military and five civilian. and there's also a number of ships now in the search area. and they're all going to be critical for looking at that one particular area about 156 square miles in which french satellites have seen 122 floating objects that could be the debris. now, it's critical that the planes get down low so they can get some pictures the and actually identify what those

objects are, wolf. >> all right, atika shubert on the scene for us. atika, thanks very much. let's hope the weather stays relatively decent so they can get close to the area where the 122 objects were spotted. we've heard that one of the 122 objects spotteded in the indian ocean is long enough to possibly be a wing of the plane. rene marsh is taking a closer look at the potential debris. what are you finding out? >> reporter: we're in week three of the search and pieces of this missing plane could still be floating. but so far none of the satellite images showing these floating oobts in the indian ocean have been confirmed to be a part of flight 370. could search crews be chasing the wrong leads? 3 million partses to a boeing 777 and an more than two weeks of searching not one piece of flight 370 has been found. satellite images from australia, china and france showing

floating objects in the south indian ocean. the latest suggest 122 floating objects, but so far nothing is confirmed to be from the plane. the objects range from 3 to 78 feet. the larger piece could be a portion of the wing. the total wing span of a 777 is about 200 feet. >> the wing carries fuel and so the liquid doesn't leak out. it's sealed. so when a plane using all that fuel and the tanks now are empty, those voids in the wing will now be with air and this would float a wing. >> reporter: but the large objects could be multiple pieces. >> intermingled with wire and other debris so you may have a lot of smaller pieces mixed in which might look like a larger piece from a satellite or the air. >> reporter: the size of debris depends on how a plane hitting the water. if it hit water fast nose first like alaska flight 261 in 2000, the plane would shatter into

thousands of small pieces. a midair explosion like twa flight 800 could produce larger debris and a wider field. but if someone attempted a controlled landing like ethiopian airlines flight 96 is, the plane could break into large pieces. what sinks and what floats depends on what it's made of. >> i think floating today definitely seat cushion, definitely insulation. >> reporter: plastic and composite parts of the plane like overhead bins and even the tail could still be floating. air france 447's tail was floating days after it crashed. heavy metal pieces like engines and the fuselage would sink. all of that considered, these satellite images may not be the lead search crews need. >> they're collecting this stuff almost like a whirlpool effect. 120 items, this could be garbage, plastic bottles, things like this from merchant vessels. >> reporter: time is of the

essence to make that determination. well, here's another possibility in this very vast rough part of the ocean, it is quite possible, according to experts, that search crews could miss these floating objects simply because of the fallibility of the human eye and the possibility that these pieces could essentially just blend in with the water. as one expert told me today historically visual search has about a 78% probability for detection in that first search, and that's in the best case scenario meaning the water is flat and calm, but when you have a lot of wave action like you have there in the indian ocean, of course, that probability of detecting it first time around, it decreases, wolf. >> certainly does. it's a very, very dangerous and very difficult operation. rene marsh reporting, thank you. let's dig a little bit deeper. our justice correspondent pamela brown is still with us. "new york times" reporter michael schmidt joins us. and the world news editor for "usa today." and the former fbi assistant

director tom fuentes. william, i'll start with you, you're reporting breaking potentially new ground. tell our viewers precisely what "usa today" has. >> as pamela says, a look at captain zaharie's background has not found anything that would indicate that he would have been capable of such a terrible act. they've looked into his finances, according to our source, who is a high level source for the kuala lumpur meese department. they found nothing amiss, according to this source. they also haven't found any indication of militancy or ties to militant groups. however, they're drawing their conclusion that he deliberately committed this act and they're doing it based on the fact that they believe he is the only one really capable of doing all the things that had been done on that plane to divert it down to the south indian ocean. >> michael schmidt of "the new york times," you've been doing a lot of reporting on the pilot and co-pilot. what are you hearing? >> u.s. investigators say that's plausible, but as we were saying

before, there's no evidence to back it up. when you hear this come from the malaysians, you have to wonder whether this is just another misstep of theirs. are they just trying to put a book end on the end of this story the same way as when they came out the other day and said that everyone on the plane had died. i'm a bit skeptical. because they seem to be making a conclusion without much to back it up. >> there is a political connection in the sense that he was active with the political opposition in malaysia including with the opposition leader who was sentenced to a long prison sentence and supposedly he was either in the courtroom or near the courtroom during that sentencing and people have been making that political connection for whatever reason. >> well, that's true. we don't know if that's what could have upset him in such a way that he would commit such an act and there's no evidence yet of that except that he was, of course, according to friends, pretty upset about what had happened in the courtroom during

the sentencing. however the police source we talked to is not a political appointee of any sort. and he's been a longtime investigator who has worked on previous investigations against militants of which malaysia has had its share. >> you're reporting that the captain of the plane, the 53-year-old captain was inside the courtroom when this political opposition leader was sentenced? >> at the courthouse. >> okay, because we reported that he was near the courthouse, but not necessarily inside the courtroom. >> at the courthouse. >> so what do you make, tom, because from the beginning we've all said everyone would be derelekt if they didn't look at the pilot or the co-pilot. i'm sure they're looking closely at both of them there's two cases where the pilots according to u.s. investigators did deliberately bring those planes down, killing all the passengers because they wanted to commit suicide.

>> that's true, wolf. but those cases, the opinion that the co-pilots crashed the plane is based on cockpit voice recorders where they could hear the struggle at the cockpit, knew who was at the controls, knew from data recorders what exactly those aircraft did as they crashed. in this case, you don't have that. so this judgment is being made on the absence of other evidence. >> why don't the malaysians release the recordings of what the pilot and the co-pilot were saying to ground control during the first 40 minutes of that flight? they haven't released the audio tape and they haven't released the transcript. >> i don't know. you have to realize there's two separate investigations going on and all the confusions and changes in reporting have been based on the technicians looking at radar, looking at satellites, looking at civil aviation radar from the air traffic controllers in kuala lumpur. that's specific from what the police are doing. police have zeroed in on the cockpit crew, the other crew

members, the passengers, the cargo, the ground crew from day one and they've been unrelenting and haven't come off of that position. all of that, though, has not revealed anything that would indicate that the pilot or co-pilot did this. >> pamela, are you hearing when we heard the fbi director say they expect to complete their investigation of the hard drives of the flight simulator taken from the pilopilot's home and t co-pilot's computer, and they'll make it available to malaysian authorities. will they make it available to all of us? >> my understanding is they'll hand it over to the malaysian authorities and let them decide if they want to release it or not. they're handling this investigation. they gave the fbi that to investigate the data. it has been a full tilt drive to recover that data and paint a better picture of who these two

men are. >> where is this investigation headed based on your opinion, michael? >> just back to the point you were talking about before about this being the pilot who brought it down. if it was the pilot who brought it down, why did he take it in a different direction? why didn't he just take the plane down on the path it was headed on? that's what i don't understand. that doesn't add up. i think in the previous cases in which the pilot took the plane down, they did it on the path that the plane was on. but instead here we're looking off the coast of australia. >> and we think based on the latest -- >> this the black box. it's really orange. the flight data recorder that we have here. one of the suspicions i've heard -- i don't know if you guys want to weigh in. if in fact, we don't know the pilot did this or anyone else did it, wanted to fly seven hours away ditch the plane in the indian ocean because they didn't want anyone to get access to the black box, so they wouldn't hear if there was fighting going on in the cockpit, there wouldn't be any record of any conversations that

were going on or any information from the flight data or the voice recorder. you've heard that suspicion as well. >> that's right. that the recorders may never be found. and then if they are, the voice recorder part of the recorders is probably going to be written over and there will be no cockpit voice recording that occurred at the time of the initial turning off the transponders and the acars stopping the broadcast and the plane making the left turn, then other left turns, all of that will be lost from the voice recorder. these pilot suicides in the past, it was determined by the voices, the data recorder will tell you the plane went up, down, sideways, left, right, but it won't tell you why or who was at the controls. the voice recorder will reveal that information and if it's written over, it's gone. >> if they never find this flight data recorder or the voice recorder, we may never know, william, what happened specifically, right? >> well, right. the investigator that we talked to is -- they're under the impression --

>> the malaysian investigator. >> yeah, the malaysian investigator is under the impression that some relatives of the captain may know a little more about this situation than they're revealing. >> are they saying which relatives, the wife, the kids? >> no, they won't say. but they're focusing on pressing some of the people he knew about an indication that perhaps there is a motive for this or not. there are some actions on the flight that had to be, they believe, done deliberately. through the process of elimination and doing background checks on everyone on the plane, they believe that the captain is really the only one capable of doing that, although the co-pilot has plenty of experience, they just don't believe he would be able to do what was done. >> you've always suspected a human being was responsible, not mechanical failure. >> but if we go back to 9/11, the hijackers didn't have a whole lot of hours in the cockpit yet somehow they managed

to find the world trade center narrow tower and crashed into two different towers without a problem, crash into the pentagon without a problem and they had almost no experience and they made those aircraft do pretty substantial turning and rerouting and descending and altitude. >> you're leaving open the possibility that somebody got in the cockpit. >> i'm leaving everything open, wolf. >> many authorities have looked into the background of the passengers and, according to our source, they found nothing that indicates they took any pilot training like the terrorists did on 9/11 or that they had any ties to militancy which we knew. >> no, i was just curious, we're three weeks into this. the first week they were trying to get their bearings. a focus on whether it was mechanical failure. i want to hear from tom would we really have that in-depth of a look at the passengers to know what we need to know to make decisions? >> no. and that would take months. and you have so system stolen

and lost and counterfeit passports being use in asia, it's easy to add to that false driver's licenses, other information. so you could -- the fact that nothing's come up derogatory on the passengers, it could be they don't even have the right identity for many of the passengers. >> we've got to wrap it up. anything else? >> i find it hard to believe that he couldn't learn how to do this. the pilot was the one with the expertise but given all the information that's out there on the internet, i find it hard to believe that you couldn't learn how to do that. >> someone else. we'll continue our investigation, you continue yours and we'll see what we come up with. guys, thanks very much. still ahead, families in shock and grief. what are their legal rights as the investigation moves forward? especially if there's evidence the plane was deliberately crashed. and mapping out the search in the indian ocean. how crews are trying to track down dozens of possible areas of debris in an area around the size of denver, colorado. tom foreman is standing by. we asked people a question,

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pilot. we're following the breaking news this hour, the search planes heading from perth, australia, back out over the southern indian ocean. they're looking for the newest clue, 122 objects detected by satellite imagery. they'll travel more than 1500 mile just to get to the search area. that's slightly farther than the distance from here in washington, d.c., to denver, colorado. the lack of any solid evidence of the plane so far could complicate any lawsuits or efforts to compensate

passengers' families. let's talk about the investigation and legal options. jeffrey toobin along with our asks analyst miles o'brien and peter goals. jeffrey, assuming the pilot was responsible, pilot suicide that has been the case in at least two other major disasters. who would be legally liable as far as compensating the passengers are concerned? >> let's start with the basics. the basics are that under the international treaty known as the montreal convention, every passenger is almost certainly entitled to about $175,000 from the airline. but if a court proceeding could show that there was the fault of the pilot or otherwise the fault of an airline employee, the airline could be responsible for a great deal more money. so if the pilot or co-pilot brought it down, the airline would be responsible for enormous damages.

>> and would malaysian airlines go along with that if it was determined the pilot for whatever reason brought that plane down in the middle of the indian ocean, would malaysian airlines step up and say, yes, we hired this guy and we're now going to pay off all these families? >> they'd be forced to, i imagine, if that were the case. but we're a long way from proof of that fact. this idea of homing in on the pilot admittedly would be at the top of my list but there are still things we can't rule out including the fact that this plane could have been commandeered. for all we know he was a hero that was trying to get away with a bomb on board from land. >> malaysian airlines no matter what will be shelling out a lot of money. >> they're going to pay, but once their defense goes into litigation, malaysian airlines turns over their defense entirely to their insurance underwriters. they m a