me @theleadcnn. that's it for "the lead." i'm jake tapper. i turn you over to mr. wolf blitzer in "the situation room." the hunt for malaysia flight 370 goes underwater. an urgent race against time to find the plane's black boxes and even as the air search is about to resume. why are officials keeping secret the audio recording of the conversations between the cockpit and ground controllers? even the families aren't allowed to listen. and new details on the bloody rampage at ft. hood as investigators are scrambling to learn why the shooter attacked fellow soldiers. we have new information on the hunt for a motive. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room."

>> there's now a major turn in the search. here's the latest developments. the search is now going underwater. an australian vessel is towing an american pinger locator looking for the black box signals thousands of feet below the surface. a british ship is using the device in the same area. without knowing where to listen, it's a big roll of the dice and there's another huge problem. the batteries powering the black box pingers are due to run out in a few days but the manufacturer tells cnn those batteries were never returned for maintenance and they actually may already be dead. aircraft are getting ready for another day of searching. if they can spot the debris, they can narrow the search for the airliner recordings. we have our analysts and reporters standing by in the united states and around the world with the kind of special coverage that only cnn can deliver. let's go to perth, australia, to

kyung lah. she's got the latest on the search. kyung? >> reporter: wolf, normally at this time in the morning we're talking about the waiting for the search to begin but the search is under way right now. it is happening under the water. there are two pinger locators. there is one from the u.s. navy being towed by the "ocean shield" and another being towed by a british ship. they are starting on one end of a 150-mile track and then they will converge upon each other and meet. it is frustratingly slow. they move three miles per hour. the u.s. navy says if there is a ping, they can hear it up to 20,000 feet away. it's extremely effective if they are in the right debris area. so, are they there? the u.s. navy captain in charge of in the

dark. >> kyung, the families are increasingly angry and frustrated that malaysia, the government there isn't sharing information they want. >> reporter: what they really want is to hear the audio of whether it's the pilot or co-pilot saying those words, they want to hear the audio. they want to hear what that man said and they weren't allowed to listen to it. so we spoke to the partner of passenger philip wood. she sent us an e-mail statement. she writes, "it is impossible that this relatively sophisticated military power didn't see it. they are clearly hiding something. we just don't know what." she's talking about how the plane flew over malaysia, nobody saw it, she says that they are not releasing the audio. it is making them increasingly

angry and she also points out, wolf, that the malaysian families, yes, they feel the same as the chinese. they may not be as vocal but the sentiment is the same. people are angry and they want more information. >> they certainly do. kyung lah in perth, australia, for us. thank you. let's bring in miles o'brien, plus, c ncnn aviation analyst, peter goelz and former fbi tom fuentes. do you think that they are hiding something? >> i don't know, wolf. i don't know what you would normally be hiding from that broadcast. it's one thing the voice recorders from inside the cockpit, you would have everything that went on in that plane and the cockpit. but this is the ground controllers talking to either the cap pen tain or co-pilot as plane was leaving for takeoff and during the short time that they were on their radar.

i don't know what they could be hiding in that. >> you can't blame them, peter, these families for being so frustrated and angry right now. let us hear the audio, let us know what was in the cargo. these are not complicated issues. >> no, they are not. the faa releases these tapes within days of an accident. the voice recorder, that's more restricted. but the tower tapes, let mem he them hear it. try and make it right. >> miles, these families, a lot of them are hoping against hope that their loved ones may still be alive. they are hearing all of these rumors out there on the internet and they don't have any confidence left, i suspect, in the malaysian authorities. is that your sense? >> yeah. i think this is about confidence and a sense of understanding that the investigation is going in the right direction and there

is basic expertise at the core of it. i wonder if there is something on that recording which might be very key to the investigation. you know, a couple things that come to mind, if there is, for example, a voltage change on the aircraft, that can be detected in the radio transmission. that might be something that could be important. was there sort of an abrupt communication that ended? are there parts of the transcript that have been redacted? maybe they gave it out to try to satisfy the family and the media, for that matter. there could be things in there to hold back part of the investigation. maybe the controller -- it's evidence that the controller is asleep at the switch and they are protecting the controller. so i'm not being an apologist for the investigation. i would love to hear the tapes. but there are some reasons, perhaps, that they are holding back. >> you accept that, peter? >> sure. but then you say that. the issue is, here, maybe

there's another voice in the cockpit that is overheard during the transmission. maybe you hear the cockpit door opening during the transition. but you would say that. there is something on this tape that we're examining but they've lost the confidence in the investigators from early on, this is not the way to recapture it. >> but is there a legitimate reason -- and they can say, look, this would compromise sources and classified information and there's an ongoing investigation, we're narrowing it. presumably there could be legitimate reason other than the fact that maybe they are incompetent. >> there could be a legitimate reason in terms of the investigation. the problem is that this many days into it they don't have the credibility. they are not going to be given the benefit of the doubt by the families or worldwide media because of all times of the past. they've either withheld it or changed it on the fly and that's why now whatever they say is not going to be believed unless they produce it. >> the new development now,

peter, in the last 24 hours, now they are underwater with sophisticated sonar and other devices. they are trying to determine if they can hear that ping from the black boxes. but as we've been saying all along, they are not -- they are looking for a needle in the haystack but they are not even sure they found the haystack? >> exactly. we've said this from day one. this is extraordinarily difficult, months, perhaps years, dropping it into the water and unless they have some classified information that says this is the spot, really it just smacks desperation. it's tough. >> is there any reason why they can't release the cargo manifest, what was in the belly of that plane? >> i have no idea. that should be another thing and it's not just what was in the plane, what part of the storage area of the plane was it put in is another issue. >> what do you think about that, miles? the family wants to know what was in the cargo. >> the lithium batteries is what comes to mind when they think

about this. these sort of batteries do not fly below passenger aircraft in the united states and there's a lot of fire suppression on the aircraft but it can cause a lot of problems, up to and including electrical failures which could knockout communication, perhaps depressurization. there's a scenario that you can build on. why not lay that on the table so we have an understanding. >> have you ever seen in a disaster investigation, four weeks into it and obviously everybody knows so little? >> we have two or three facts, wolf, that are really out there and verified by the authorities themselves. it's extraordinary. completely unprecedented on so many levels. >> have you ever seen anything like this, peter? >> never in my life.

it is -- as miles said, it's extraordinary. they haven't handled it well. >> and you worked in the ntsb for a long time so you're familiar with u.s. investigations of aviation disaster. >> and we had tough investigations. some of the investigations went on for four years but you pass out information, you identify it as factual, you keep the families informed and they trust you. >> have you seen anything like this before? >> no. but we've had so many of these over the years that we've been able to refine the way it's investigated, the way it's reported in the media, you know, what should be released to the public as soon as possible. you know, part of the -- i guess the excellence in the way we might conduct something like that is based on bad experience over the years and they have not had that benefit. but they have had the benefit to be able to learn from other countries like the u.s., like great britain, like the french and maybe that's been part of the problem, is not taking the advice of people who have been

through this and there's a reason why we do it the way we do it. >> everyone is going to learn major lessons from this experience moving forward so we don't have to endure this kind of disaster down the road. stand by. up next, as the search goes underwater, planes are getting ready to resume the search for any traces of flight 370. i'll talk with one of the commanders of the operation. he's standing by. and new details on the ft. hood shootings. we're learning more about what may have set off the deadly rampage. (dad) well, we've been thinking about it and we're just not sure. (agent) i understand. (dad) we've never sold a house before.

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as the serge search goes underwater. the aircraft is getting ready to resume the search for flight 370. joining me on the phone of the royal new zealand air force, commander, thanks for coming in. any strong led today? any progress, as far as you can tell? >> good evening, wolf. the search has another aircraft going up, day 29 today. eight nations, 16 aircraft, 600 people, including ships involved in this. but there is nothing significant to report in terms of finding the aircraft. >> and the underwater severarch they are looking at what they suspect could be an area of interest. how confident are you, commander, that they are even looking in the right place? >> well, in terms of radar and sonar from the underwater

effort, yesterday we went out and dropped some self-locating gps. those will be used in the coming days for modeling because the sea currents will carry those things and they will be used to model and articulate where the next stage of the search is. it continues to ee solve. >> do you still believe that you will find something on the surface of the indian ocean? >> we have an aircraft that's been recently upgraded and people are well-trained and motivated. we're doing our upmost to help with the recovery. if there is something on the surface, i'm very confident that we will find it but it's a matter of making sure that we're in the right area, right time, right weather conditions. so all of the pan letlanets nee align. we've still got a long way to go. >> the last time you used an

actual satellite image to try to pinpoint something, when did that occur and how effective, if at all, was it? >> i haven't engaged in the recent satellite imagery stuff but i know that those are being used by the coordinating authorities in australia along with other means in terms of underwater and the submarine in the several area for all of the aircraft. the authorities are using every available method to try and make sure that you locate this aircraft. >> tell us, commander, why the search zone, the area you suspect this area could be located keeps shifting, sometimes by hundreds of miles. >> one of the main things is the sea current themselves. we've dropped locator buoys yesterday to help assist in the recovery to make sure that we are searching in the right area. it's obviously a very large area with a lot of uncertainty in it

and as each day goes along, this is day 29 of the search. the search area can get bigger. we're using other means, as you said before, satellite imagery and other means available to us to make sure that we're locating this thing. >> have you ever seen a situation like this, commander, 29 days into the disappearance of malaysian airlines flight 370 and all of a sudden there's nothing, really, there are 239 people missing, a huge boeing 777 missing. have you ever seen anything like this without a trace? >> certainly it's unprecedented in my career. i've never been involved in a search that has gone on that long. i've also never been involved in a search that was actually this remote. it takes three hours to fly from perth. we're getting around 4, 4 1/2 hours in the search area and then another three hours back. so it's a very long day for all of the crew involved.

i can assure you that everyone is doing everything that they can to find this plane. it's an amazing effort. it's great to see something on the surface and we'll pick it up. >> commander kevin mcevoy, good luck to you and all of the men and women working as this multinational search effort. thank you. coming up, the pinger locators had good success in the past and the search for flight 370's recorders is still a roll of the dice. and we'll tell you why. and a chain of events leading to the deadly shooting rampage at ft. hood, texas. stay with us. you're in "the situation room." ♪ norfolk southern what's your function? ♪ ♪ hooking up the country helping business run ♪ ♪ trains! they haul everything, safely and on time. ♪ tracks! they connect the factories built along the lines. and that means jobs, lots of people, making lots and lots of things. let's get your business rolling now, everybody sing.

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the search for flight 370 has now gone underwater. there's a race against time to find the black boxes before the batteries on their signal beacons die. even as air crews take off and an urgent search for debris and they are listening below the

indian ocean for the all-important signals. cnn's brian todd is here in "the situation room". he's got more details on this enormously complicated venture. >> the batteries on that pinger sent signals from the black box and are expected to run out within days if they haven't already. the towed pinger locator is now searching on a 24/7 schedule. some say right now, given how little information there is on the plane's location, too much is being asked of that technology. it can descent 20,000 feet below the surface, detect this sound coming from the black box's pinger from two nautical miles away. >> we're asking a big, big ask. it was never designed to do this. >> reporter: officials at phoenix international, the manufacturers of the pinger

locator, agree that these conditions are far from ideal. to be effective, it needs a starting point and a confirmed wreckage from flight 370. >> if they haven't found debris, is it pointless to use this? >> your question pointless, it's not a good description. it is very, very difficult if they have not found debris to even know where to start. >> reporter: the pinger locator's limitations, it's passive. it doesn't send out signals to pick them out. obstructions like underwater hills or mountains can impede it. >> weather is a big factor. if the boat is doing this on the ocean waves, now you're attached to this thing and so this thing goes up and down and it's much less stable in the water. >> reporter: the first towed pinger locator was designed in 1976 in the last 18 years it's been used four times in major commercial air crashes. in 2009, it passed right over

the black box from air france flight 447 in the atlantic and failed to find the pinger. the manufacturer says that's because the pinger broke off from the black box. it may have been damaged. but in three other cases, success. a 1996 air crash in the caribbean. the egypt air crash in the atlantic in 1999 and the 2007 of an adam air jet. the black boxes were found but the search areas were relatively small. malaysia air is the fifth attempt and it's still a long shot. >> we've got nothing to lose. it's certainly got a better shot on the indian ocean than it does alongside the dock in perth. >> airline's pilot association, they are calling for stronger pingers to be used, better emergency transmitters and that kind of equipment. that's a very strong signal from the airline pilots association as it relates to this case. today we got another vote of confidence on the tow's pinger locator expressing total

confidence in that device. they said if that pinger is still working, if they are searching in the right area, they will find it. the pinger locator's track record speaks for itself, wolf. >> the locators have been successful in finding locators in military crashes, right? >> that's right. one very prominent one. the manufacturer says that there's been several instances where it's found military planes because of its success record there. in 1997, a u.s. and a german plane collided off the coast of africa. the tow's pinger locator found the pinger locator found it in those crashes. let's bring in richard quest along with colleen keller, a senior analyst at mettron, a defense contractor who helped in the search of air france 447. colleen, you were brought in after they basically gave up. it still took two years to find

the flight data recorders, cockpit voice recorders. you came in and came up with a new strategy and helped them. here's the question. if you were brought in to this current search, what would you do? >> well, wolf, we're just raring to go on this search. the first thing we have to do is look at all of the data that they have and estimate the uncertainty for the data. it's the radar and endurance cancellations and lay all of that out on the map and validate for them that they are looking in the right spot, existing right now. and then on top of that we would start accounting for their searching. every time they do a search and don't find something, that's very good information. and from my experience in the air france search investigation, the surface searches were not very well documented. we got pretty conflicting and vague information about where they looked. and so it was very difficult to use that. it's critical right now to preserve the information that they've got documenting their search efforts so we could pick this up as a cold case and keep

looking into it. >> richard, is it worth using the sophisticated and expensive pinger locator under the water without any really strong lead where they are looking? >> the best answer that i can give you is from that last report. it may not be doing much good but it's doing more good than if it was sitting at the harbor in perth. unless they've got some very strong evidence and, frankly, they haven't told us, which would be a bit of a disgrace. if they were sitting on some very strong evidence that they believed it was there and they deployed the pingers because of that and they are just going about this without letting the public know, i think that would be nothing short of scandalous at this point. there are families that want to know. the public wants to know. the traveling public wants to know. so we have to assume, wolf, that we are doing this because it's better than just leaving it tied up alongside. >> given the fact that the

batteries will run out in the next three, four, five, six days, top, if you will, colleen, what are the chances of finding those black boxes in the next few days given the fact that they are just randomly searching. >> well, wolf, you can't fish if you don't put your bait in the water, just like richard said. the pinger locators are not doing anything if they are not in the water listening. so it doesn't hurt but it would sure be nice to be putting them in the water where we know they have a higher probability of detecting something. we need to keep remembering that we found the air france wreck without the pinger locator. it's still possible to do that. if you have lots of time and lots of money, you can map the part of the ocean and if it's there, you'll see it, more or less. so it can be done. it's just inefficient and that's the problem here, will they run out of money or will they run out of time before they find it?

>> colleen, so much of that water, the surface underneath the water there, the bottom of the indian ocean has never been mapped to begin with. >> well, i guess we'll be et going maps when we do it this time, wolf. that's the best thing i can say. it's possible to map it. it's just a matter of, do you have the will to do so. >> once the black box batteries are dead, richard, what do they do then? >> i think what they do then is continue what they have been doing. they have been working one step ahead. they've not been relying on finding the black box because of the pinger, nice or desirable though that would be. my feeling here, wolf, is that we know for a fact that the malaysians have said that they are looking at if they don't find the black boxes and don't find the wreckage but the minister didn't want to talk about or speculate what plan b was. my guess is that it's a regrouping of the entire operation to review, as colleen

says, review the science, review the search and the locations and then plan for the next time when they would go out, which would probably be next year. but we're still off of that. >> if they do a complete review, a regrouping, as richard says, colleen, how surprised would you be if the technical data, how surprised would you be that we're looking at a totally wrong area, would that shock you? >> no, actually, it wouldn't shock me at all. i can point to other searches, notably the search for steve fosset, that if they looked for the data correctly, they may have revisited the area where they actually found him eventually. so these things happen, you know, we might be sitting on a piece of information that would lead us to the correct spot and it's going to take a careful

review of everything after all of the dust has settled in this and we have given up looking for the pingers to figure that out. >> colleen keller, richard quest, guys, you've been very, very helpful to us and to all of our viewers. thanks to both of you for joining us. we're going to continue our search for malaysian flight 370 and there's other breaking news emerging right now out of the ft. hood shooting. cnn has learned that the gunman started stockpiling ammunition weeks ago. we have new details from the investigation. that's coming up. i always say be the man with the plan

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we're going to continue our

special coverage of the search for flight 370. but first there's breaking news about the shooting rampage in ft. hood, texas, in which a gunman killed three people and wounded 16 others before turning the weapon on himself. officials say the shooting may have been triggered by an argument. let's go live to our cnn justice correspondent pamela brown. she's at ft. hood with the very latest. pamela? >> reporter: wolf, military officials confirming today there was an argument that escalated between lopez and another soldier in the moments right before the shooting happened. officials believe that was the impetus that caused lopez to snap and we're learning more that it started over a leave request form. cnn has learned in the weeks before his deadly rampage at ft. hood, army specialist ivan lopez was creating a stockpile of ammunition. sources say when lopez bought

his .45 caliber semiautomatic handgun at guns galore on march 1st, he also purchased what one source calls a large amount of ammunition. the 34-year-old returned to the store repeatedly to buy even more bullets. it's the same place where major nidal hasan bought the weapon that he used in the 2009 ft. hood attack. in a press alert today, they believe the shooting started after a dispute with a soldier. >> we believe the precipitating fact for was an argument in his unit area. >> reporter: he picked up a form on wednesday to request for time off. one of the soldiers injured in the attack said that after lopez was told to come back on thursday, he snapped, returning a short time later with his gun. >> the first guy he shot right in front of my son was killed.

and then he turned the gun towards jonathan, aimed it, and fired. >> reporter: investigators are still trying to piece together an exact motive of the shooting and why lopez came on base armed. tonight they are looking at evidence, such as his gun, extra ammunition, his reported mental health issues and the medication that he was prescribed, like the sedative ambien. while lopez, an iraq war veteran, had a spotless war record, he also appeared to have an unstable psychiatric condition. >> he was seen just last month by a psychiatrist. he was fully examined. and as of this morning, we had no indication or record of that examination that there was any sign of likely violence. >> reporter: sources tell cnn that police searched the apartment where lopez recently moved with his wife and young daughter but have found no evidence such as a suicide note

to explain the shooting. and lopez's family broke its silence for the first time today through a statement released by a family spokesperson and in the statement the father says, "my son must not have been in his right mind. he wasn't like that." also, we're hearing from friends of lopez that he was struggling to support his wife and daughter and family back in puerto rico but, wolf, this is an ongoing investigation with more than 150 investigators on the case. >> pamela brown at ft. hood for us, thank you. let's bring in barbara starr. barbara, while officials say an argument may have triggered all of this, they are still doing a very incentive investigation right now and it may be very early in that investigation? >> absolutely right, wolf. they are going to have to look at everything. they will look, they are looking at his medical records, his mental health history, what issues he had. he had said that he thought he had a traumatic brain injury.

he was in the process of being evaluated for posttraumatic stress. he had a number of prescription medications, as pam said. the argument with fellow soldiers may have been the precipitating factor as the army says but they will look at the underlying causal factors. what else might have been going on with this soldier? one of the things sources are telling me is they believe he may have had some adjustment problems. he's only been at ft. hood a couple of weeks. this is a massive military base. he came here, he had a new job as a truck driver, a new boss, a new chain of command, was looking to get better housing, perhaps, they think, was trying to settle in to a very large new military installation where he may not have known very many people and it's still an open question how much the medical team at ft. hood might have known the details about what had been going on with him in the

past. wolf? >> mental health is particularly important, not just to this investigation, barbara, but to the military in general right now. they've got a big problem there. >> they do, wolf. the mental health of the force is one of the biggest issues. it ranges from the crisis in suicide and several years ago in the middle of the war in iraq, ft. hood had a huge spike in the suicide rate. they instituted programs, they brought that down the suicide. it's the battle injury of posttraumatic stress, the injury of traumatic brain injury. there are tens of thousands of troops who have served over the last 13 years who suffer from a variety of both these illnesses and conditions. and so in this case it's exceptionally important, sources say, they have to find out as much as they can about what happened because every one of these cases adds to the military's body of knowledge about what is going on with the troops and it's the only way

they believe they can continue to try and improve the mental health of the force, wolf. >> barbara starr, thanks very much. today we also learned the names of all three men shot and killed at ft. hood. there will be a memorial service for them on wednesday. 39-year-old sergeant danny ferguson entered active service in 1993. he served in kuwait, iraq, and afghanistan. his fiance, who is also a soldier, says ferguson was killed while trying to hold a door shut to stop the gunman and likely saved lives. staff sergeant carlos lazanec rodriguez was 38 years old, had been on active duty since 1995. sergeant timothy owens was an army counselor who served in iraq and kuwait and had been on active duty for the last decade. he was 37 years old. our deepest, deepest condolences

to the families of those three soldiers. coming up at the top of the hour, the latest on the search for flight 370. it's saturday morning. search planes should be taking off soon. also coming up, a rare week of good news for president obama that has democrats wondering if their prospects for the midterm this year may be a little better than they had hoped.

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♪ we'll continue our special coverage of the search for flight 370 in just a moment but there's other news we're following including a new report on the u.s. economy. it shows employers created

192,000 jobs in march plus more jobs than first reported back in january and february. the unemployment rate is unchanged from february, holding steady at 6.7%. the news wraps up a week that's given president obama a number of things to celebrate. let's go to our white house correspondent michelle kosinski. she's got the very latest. >> hi, wolf. you could say not a bad week around here. numbers surprising even to the administration. job gains over the course of years, but does the average american even know that and will it matter enough for democrats at election time? the president didn't talk economy today, but the addition of nearly 200,000 american jobs last month had the administration putting it out on social media. nearly 9 million jobs gained in the last four years. more than 2 million this past year. >> thank you. >> reporter: after that something of an obama care victory lap this week. 7 million americans signed up,

giving the president fodder to hit out at critics on many key items. >> you've got some republicans saying we shouldn't raise the minimum wage because -- they said this -- because, well, it just helps young people. now, first of all, i think it's pretty good to help young people. i don't know what's wrong with helping young people. folks say that, the next thing you know they'll say, get off my lawn. >> reporter: at times sounding like a sort of stump speech heading into midterm elections, but it's not as if these positive numbers have translated to a hike in approval ratings, hovering in the 40% range. you're good at putting these numbers out on social media, 8.9 million jobs, but would the average american know that? and what do you do with the message from there? >> our strategy has been to focus on expanding economic opportunity for everybody in this country.

>> reporter: whether the message is getting out strongly enough to sway the undecided or motivate democrats to vote in numbers in midterms is something this administration is concerns about. republican criticism has been vocal and consistent. >> you know, the president likes to focus on income inequality. but incomes are lower under his watch. >> reporter: this week's elements of good news are not being taken for granted. >> we're certainly not satisfied. we continue to believe that there's a lot of work that can and should be done to strengthen our economy, to support the private sector as it leads our recovery. >> reporter: and the president had several events this week also going into next week focusing on the economy. the administration may be without fully answering the question of whether these positives translate to the american public, whether that message really registers says that the focus will be continuing, expanding economic opportunity with a special focus on the middle class, wolf. >> michelle kosinski reporting for us from the white house. thank you very much.

let's take another look right now, some other stories we're monitoring here in "the situation room." powerful storms that caused damage in the central united states are heading east right now hitting a swatch of the country from the deep south to ohio valley. the main threat is thunderstorms with strong winds and hail. storms knocked out power for thousands in memphis, tennessee. heavy rains caused flooding in ohio, a flood warning in indiana. these same storms brought tornadoes to texas and missouri yesterday. here's a picture you don't see every day. this is hillary clinton meeting with the russian punk band pussy riot after an event called women in the world last night. secretary clinton took questions, she high fived with the chair of the international monetary front christine lagarde. she was coy about her political future but she did open up about inequality for women in the workplace. >> there is a double standard, obviously, we have all either experienced it or at the very

least seen it. and i think in many respects the media is the principal propagator of its persistence. >> nancy pelosi gave her thoughts on the workplace so-called double standard in a new interview with cnn's candy crowley. >> if hillary clinton thinks there's a double standard, she's been in the main event, that is the presidential race, then i respect that. for my own standpoint, i never expected anything but a double standard. i don't know if it's the media or people say things that's news that you have to cover. >> you can see the full interview with nancy pelosi on cnn's "state of the union," that airs this sunday 9:00 a.m. eastern only here on cnn. coming up the hunt for malaysia airlines flight 370 goes underwater today. an urgent race against time to find the plane's black boxes even as the air search is about to resume.

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talk to farmers and get smarter about your insurance. we are farmers. call 1-800-470-8502 and see how much you can save. happening now, the search for flight 370 goes deep. ships are desperately scanning underwater at this moment knowing they may have only a few hours left to try to find those so-called black boxes. passengers' families are growing more suspicious than ever. this hour what they want and can't get from investigators. are malaysian officials hiding something? and new leads on the ft. hood gunman's family. they're sharing information about his mental health. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." this is cnn breaking news. the aerial search for flight 370 is about to resume, but the

big focus right now is on the desperate hunt that's going on under the water for the first time. ships are deploying devices that can scan below the surface of the southern indian ocean and listen for those pings from the jet's plaque box-- black boxes. it's an around the clock operation at a time when every minute counts. our correspondents are around the globe and we have a team of aviation experts to cover this critical new phase of the search. let's bring in rene marsh, she's got the latest. >> just for perspective here, it was four weeks ago this evening that the world got the news malaysia airlines flight 370 with 239 people on board vanished from radar never to be seen again. and at this four-week mark, search crews continue to make only educated guesses about where this plane is. it's a shot in the dark and search teams need a stroke of

luck. that's the hunt for flight 370 one month in. overnight the search dramatically changed, moving under water off the west coast of australia. >> that area is being pinged because -- picked because on the basis of the analysis and on the six hours of pings we have the exchange between the satellites, the inmarsat state and the aircraft. >> two ships the australian "ocean shield" and the british "hms echo" are scanning a track of deep blue sea around the clock inching along at about two to three miles per hour. they'll eventually converge. the "shield" is equipped with a pinger locator which the towed behind the vessel. it detects pings from the black boxes in water as deep as 20,000 feet. >> i remain cautious but optimistic. >> reporter: former adviser to the uk ministry of defense says

investigators are maximizing their options, but it will still be tough. >> look back at some of the major crashes in recent contemporary history, it would seem implausible to be able to find two black boxes without having any form of even slight indication that there was debris nearby. >> reporter: the signals can only be detected from one to two miles away. but this could be futile if the pingers are no longer working. that's why the surface search is still critical. >> you don't get smoke without fire. so looking at the lower probabilities, i would still be highly vested in what information the aircraft assets can be ascertaining over that area, the p-3 orion, the p-8 poseidon, the 76. these aircraft can travel at 240 knots plus which is four mile ps a minute. it can search areas a lot greater than a ping locator can. >> reporter: the bluefin 21, an

underwater robot is also aboard "the shield." crews will launch it if pings are detected, to scour the ocean floor. the disappearance of flooit 370 has caused a change at u.s. airports. today it was revealed to congress passports of travelers leaving the united states are now checked against interpol's database of lost and stolen documents. until now only arriving passengers were checked. it's a move to further crack down on passport fraud. malaysia airlines was criticized for not using the database at all when two men were able to get on board flight 370 with stolen passports. as one lawmaker said today, if people who are seeking asylum can do it, so can terrorists. so they really want to make sure that that loophole is closed. >> just takes a split second to go to that interpol computer to check to see if it's a stolen passport. every country should be doing that, not just the united states, united arab emirates, a

few other countries do it. they should all be doing it. important lesson. i want to go to australia for the latest in the search. in the air and for first time under the water. kyung lah is at the stabging ara in perth with the very latest. >> wolf just about this time that the very first of the planes take to the air. we've got gnot gotten any detai about what the air search would look like. but what we did see yesterday was a total of 14 planes taking to the air. now we have those underwater vessels, those towed pinger locator, one from the uk and one from the united states. it's a meticulous painful search underneath the water. it will be supported by a heavy air presence. just like we heard rene mention, wolf, it is from the air that they are most hopeful that there will be something spotted to give those locators a place to

go. >> and weather conditions, i assume, are okay today, right? >> okay is the best way to put it. the weather is actually not going to be as excellent as it was yesterday. yesterday had terrific visibility. today the weather is going to be a little bit worse from the south, there is a weather system moving in. it will cause a little more cloud activity there, but we should point out it is still going enough to search. they're still feeling positive about taking to the air today and staggering the flight search. >> i know they're pumped. we hope they find something. kyung lah in perth, australia. after four long and rather heartbreaking weeks flight 370 families are making new and specific demands of malaysian authorities. we now have new details of what went on in a rather tense closed-door meeting earlier today. our senior correspondent joe johns is joining us now live from kuala lumpur with much more

on this part of the story. a heartwrenching story indeed. what's the latest over there, joe? >> wolf, first it was the families of chinese passengers who emerged angry from a briefing with authorities, now the families of mostly malaysian passengers who up until now have been more conciliatory, are showing signs of their frustration with the process as well. the problem is that many people here in kuala lumpur are looking for facts to help them try to understand what happened, but so far all the authorities can offer them are theories. anger, frustration and suspicion dominated the meeting between the passengers' relatives and malaysian investigators and officials. the partner of american passenger philip wood who attended the three-hour session told cnn, quote, it is impossible that this relatively sophisticated military power didn't see it. they're clearly hiding something. we just don't know what. a journalist and a family member of a flight 370 passenger, both

present at the closed-door briefing, tells cnn officials have refused to release the audio recording of air-to-ground conversations from the cockpit. they did, however, release a transcript of the recording this week. the families are suspicious because officials changed their story about whether the last words came from the captain or co-pilot. and that the final message was good night, malaysia 370 and not all right, good night, as they had heard for days before. malaysian officials gave no explanation for the discrepancy between the two quotes, but it was another blow to their credibility. the recording is part of the ongoing investigation and has not been released. they also haven't released flight 370's complete cargo list. early in the investigation, officials said the plane was carrying fruit, some electronic equipment and a load of lithium batteries, which if stored improperly, can be a fire hazard. the airline's ceo said the batteries were packed properly and not considered hazardous.

officials did answer a few questions telling the families the plane made a westward turn after it lost contact rather than turning east and then looping around to head west. the families also want to know more about the satellite data that tracked the plane after it left its intended route. they want a representative of the satellite company inmarsat to attend the next briefing. also, since some family members don't trust the satellite data, they want a search of the remote indian ocean island of diego garcia. it isn't on the plane's projected path but some of the passengers' still relatives still buy the conspiracy theory that the jet was hijacked and either flown to a military base and hidden or shot down as it approached. in the end, the passengers' relatives left the meeting dissatisfied. fortunate say that malaysian law enforcement officials have not been willing to release certain information because, in their view, this is still a criminal

investigation and until and unless the evidence suggests otherwise. wolf? >> joe johns in kuala lumpur for us. good report, joe. thanks very much. let's bring back our aviation analyst miles o'brien along with our aviation correspondent rene marsh and our aviation analyst peter goelz and law enforcement analyst tom fuentes. these families are frustrated right now. what should malaysian authorities really do to help them in this period of agony? >> they can start out by answering questions. joe's report indicated they only answered a few questions. when we would do -- when i would do family briefings. >> when you were at the ntsb. >> i would sometimes stay three or four hours afterwards answering individual questions. that's the most critical thing. families are torn by this. they don't know what's going on. they don't know what happened. they don't know what's next. >> miles, are you surprised by this lack of transparency, openness with the families?

forget about the public right now, but with the families? >> it isn't rocket science to treat these people with kid gloves and a proper amount of respect. i mean, the truth is, they want to blame somebody. and the malaysian officials are inviting themselves to be the target of that blame instead of just simply clueing them into the process, helping them understand what's going on in a systematic way, giving them information before the rest of the world hears it. every time they come out of these meetings, they are unsatisfied. and it's just as simple as communicating and in so doing developing a certain amount of confidence in the investigation. the two go hand in hand obviously. >> the longer they don't provide this information, tom -- and you're a former assistant director of the fbi -- the more these conspiracy theories will develop, the notion that maybe this plane is on the island of diego garcia in the indian ocean where the u.s. has a major base over there. they're going to hear all these conspiracies on the internet, they're going to start believing

it because they want to believe their loved on ed ones are aliv? >> that's right. the transcript that was released does not match what they first said was the final radio transmission between the tower and the plane. so now they may not want to release the entire recording because it may be a third version and be inconsistent with the first two that don't match. every time they have something that doesn't match, it only adds to all the conspiracy theories, as you mentioned, and the disbelief and distrust of the government. >> i didn't know, rene, that passports -- that u.s. customs agents only checked passports for stolen passports coming in and now you report that they're going to check for departing passengers as well based on the fact, what, two iranians had stolen passports, got on the malaysian airline flight in kuala lumpur. >> that's one change we're already seeing at our own u.s. airports as a direct result of

the disappearance of flight 370. as one lawmaker put it, this was a loophole. only looking at the passports of those coming in, this has changed and this is matching up with people who are leaving the united states as well. but another issue revealed today is despite the fact that there's 40 million pieces of information inside that database about missing or stolen passports, there are so many countries that are not contributing to this database. so many other loose ends out there where there may be missing or stolen documents that are just not making it into the database and that continues to be an issue. >> this makes the head of interpol this these countries are not cooperating with what they should be doing and what's available. >> during the time i was on the executive committee of interpol he continued the battle worldwide. he created this data base after 9/11. it has 40 million records in it. he's trying to get all the countries who are member

countries of interpol, 190 countries, to make these queries. he's got a hard time getting anybody to want to do it. the excuses in the past about it takes too long is not true. it takes 0.2 seconds on interpol's private network. >> scan a passport within 0.20 seconds to know where it's real or stolen. >> something that could be a problem with some of the countries is some just don't have the resources or the setup to communicate between agencies in order to get that information there. so that foundation is not in place and so that's another issue in itself. >> this underwater search, miles, that started today, is this just going to be a matter of random luck, they might come across those black boxes that the bat ris are still sending out those beeps if you will, the pings? >> i think that's a good way of putting it, wolf. here they are at the end of the expected shelf life of these pinger devices, the batteries. they might last a little longer

and certainly they don't drop off like a cliff. they'll trail off. the range will diminish on the pings, obviously, making it harder to find them. but you have the vessels out there with the equipment and, you might as well drop them in the water before the bat ris are expected to go out just to see if you might get lucky. i guess it would be a shame if they just sat out there and day 30 passes and they haven't even tried. they might as well try but this is a hail mary. >> as they say might not help but can't hurt. what do you say, peter, to the fact that they found nothing on the surface at all. they've had a lot of ships out there, they've had a lot of planes flying around. they've found nothing. >> they're not in the right location yet. and this has been so difficult because they have so little of the fundamentals to search for. they don't have good radar data, these are suppositions, they're doing their best. but clearly they're not there yet. >> is there anything else that

the u.s., for example -- chuck hagel the defense secretary says if the malaysians need more, if the australians need more, the u.s. will be there. is there more that the u.s. should be doing? >> i don't know how many more resources the u.s. could devote to that, but i don't know what more the u.s. could do as far as the analysis of satellite data and radar data, we've had a number of best experts analyze it. that's the best they could come up with given the gaps in coverage all over the world. >> what are you hearing, rene, if in fact they find nothing over the next four, five, six days, the batteries are still operating, assuming they are, they don't find the black boxes, it goes to a new chapter. what are you hearing they'll do then? >> what next? you would think that they would continue to search. they would continue to refine that data. we do know that in addition to the underwater, they haven't totally abandoned the air searches. that continues as well. but you know the bottom line is this gets -- we think that this

is tough now, it gets really tough if those pingers aren't pinging any more. it truly is tough. you may say air france flight 447, you know, the pinger locator didn't detect the black boxes and they still found it two years later. that's true, but at least in that case we had debris, we knew the last known location. we don't have those solid facts here. so just makes things very difficult. but you would think -- >> miles, wrap this up for us. where do we go from here? >> i don't mean to laugh. this is obviously very serious stuff, but that's an expression that more of anything as to how few option s there are. so the pingers go out. let's assume for a moment they don't hear anything, which is probably the odds are. the air search isn't going to continue as long as the weather holds up. there will be a point when the vessels on the water won't be able to do their work.

they won't be able to get the devices in and out of the ships because of high seas. that will have to end. besides at a certain point you have to assume those pingers aren't pinging at all and you have to get into more sophisticated work like side-scan sonar. you just don't do that without any information about where to go. so i'm afraid we're entering into this really scary point in time where we move into the enduring mystery phase of this. it goes into the winter, then hopefully there will be some other resumed search afterward. as the australians have said, we'll search till hell freezes over. down in that part of the world, that's coming up. >> it certainly is. and let's not forget 229 people are missing still in a huge u.s.-made boeing 777 is missing as well. still ahead, she's the mother of a passenger. was under suspicion early in the flight 370 investigation. now she's talking exclusively to cnn about her son and why he was

traveling on a stolen passport. the search for the plane is a big guessing game right now. we'll show you why it could change again at any moment.

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"crossfire" won't be seen tonight so we can bring you more of our special coverage of the mystery of flight 370. just minutes from now it will be exactly four weeks since flooit 370 was supposed to land in beijing but never did. early in the investigation a lot of attention was focused on two iranian passengers traveling with stolen passports. now the mother of one of those

young men is revealing why he was determined to get on that plane. she spoke exclusively with our senior international correspondent sara sidner. >> this mother is tormented by the words she saw used in conjunction with her son. terrorism and suspect. she has asked us not to show her face for fear her family will be harassed. >> my son isn't a bad boy. he wanted to study. he wanted to work. and wants to be freedom. >> reporter: her son is initially suspected in the disappearance of malaysian airlines flight mh-370. the iranian teenager and his friend managed to board the flight with stolen passports. investigators later determined they had nothing to do with the flight's disappearance. >> i thought maybe they got him

in the airport. they didn't give him permission to fly. >> reporter: were you hoping they had caught him? >> yes. >> reporter: it turns out he was trying to leave there quickly to get to his mother who has cancer. she needed his help. because he is 18 she couldn't bring him to germany legally where she's awaiting refugee status along with his younger brother. he decided the quickest way to get to his mom was to use a stolen passport. did you think you were going to die, is that why you wanted him with you and he wanted to be with you? >> yes. that sickness reminds me of the time, short time, we have short time. >> reporter: shorter than she could ever have imagined. >> to lose your son is hard for every mother, but i'm here al e alone. even i don't have any passport yet. >> reporter: so she can't travel to malaysia to be close to the investigation and information

like the other families of passengers aboard mh-370. she is also still undergoing cancer treatment. >> these three weeks was more difficult than the rest of my life. i want to say that they are alive somewhere else. but i need -- i need to know what happened. >> reporter: after reading our story about her eldest son onlip, she decided to speak to us via skype. >> it was the first time i talked with somebody. i felt that you understand me.

i felt you near me. i appreciate you. >> reporter: thank you. a mother with no support system at home crushed by the burden of waiting to find out what happened to her first born son. sara sidner, cnn, kuala lumpur. leaders of the search operation openly acknowledge they're making an educated guess about the possible crash site, and that's why the target area has changed a number of times. our tom foreman is looking into this part of the story for us. he's joining us from our virtual studio. tom? >> yeah, wolf, really the hopes for those families, for finally getting an answer to where in the world this plane went rests upon two things right now. they start with an educated guess, then it comes down to sonar, two types of sonar. let's talk about first one first and i'll bring it in right here. you're talking about passive sonar, which is the listening ability of sonar, that's the pinger locator they've now deployed out there.

it basically tows behind a ship up here and listens to see if it can hear the black box, data recorders pinging on the bottom of the ocean, to see if they can find them. you have to get pretty close, within a couple of miles and this is a slow laborious process. the ship up top is traveling only four or five miles an hour at best. if you're standing on the deck, you'd have a light breeze in your face. that's the passive sonar. it's listening for anything it can find. beyond that there's also some active sonar at work here. let's go underwater and talk a little bit about what that involves. essentially what we're talking about now is a robot. that's the other thing that's been deployed out here, a robot that goes down and will sail along about a half a football field up off the ocean floor, and it's emitting sound. it's emitting waves out here and bouncing it off everything on the ocean floor here. now, remember, they're going from about a mile and a quarter deep to maybe 2 1/2 miles deep in the area they're searching right now, very limited area,

but by bouncing those signals back and collecting them, they can create images. and those images give them a picture of the ocean floor. if you see something there that tells you you found a part of the plane, well, then that's obviously a big thing. if you just see something worth going back and checking out again, that's of some value. but we cannot stress enough, wolf, all of this depends on location. if they're in the wrong place, it doesn't matter how great this technology is, it simply cannot find anything and the scope is very small and very focused. wolf? >> tom foreman, thanks very much. we're getting some breaking news here in "the situation room." we just learned that this will be the biggest search day so far. it's already saturday morning in the area. more planes will be in the air. more ships scanning the indian ocean for flight 370. let's go back to perth, australia. cnn's kyung lah has the very latest. pretty dramatic development. really massive search today. >> certainly a massive search

and the australian prime minister said he would be throwing everything he can at it and that we're still in the ramp-up phase, certainly the numbers are reflecting that. i can actually hear the turboprops of, we believe, one of the search planes, one of the very first search planes taking to the air. the numbers that we're getting now from the australian authorities who are running this, 15 planes will take to the air, those will be 11 military planes, 4 civilian planes. there will be 11 ships at sea. we're not real clear on whether those two ships that are pulling the pinger locators, that they are included in that number or not. so what they're trying to do is, in addition to having the underwater search, also trying to continue to look at this area from the air using spotters. one thing we should point out, wolf, is that the search area will be concentrated in the general area that it was yesterday. still looking at three specific areas hoping to find something. wolf