her people will say, i don't want to take any chance whatsoever so i'll go ahead and have the prophylactic operation. so it's an incredibly personal, maybe one of the most personal decisions in medicine. >> personal decision, but when angelina jolie does it it has public impact. doctor, thank you. make sure to follow the show on twitter. that's it for today. i'm john berman in for jake tapper. i turn you now over to wolf blitzer. happening now. obliterated. rescuers make their way to the remote and extraordinarily rugged site where an airliner slammed into a mountain. a scene of absolute devastation. new details on what may have caused the plane to go into a dive suddenly during what should have been the saich safest part of the flight. a black box has been found. what clues will it provide? allegations that israel spied on secret nuclear negotiations with iran and

leaked what it learned. a blistering report reveals a huge number of shootings by philadelphia police with half of the suspects turning out to be unarmed. what's behind the shocking numbers? we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room". >> announcer: this is cnn breaking news. our breaking news. investigators are now starting to pore over a black box from an airliner that went down with 150 people down. the germanwings airbus a320 from barcelona to dusseldorf with 154 passengers and 6 crew members suddenly went into a dive and minutes later slammed into a mountain. all on board are presumed dead. video from the scene shows widely scattered debris. one official says the plane was obliterated. the remote crash site is very difficult to reach. extremely rough. and the weather is bad.

with more rain and snow on the way our correspondents analysts are guests are standing by with the latest developments. i'll speak live with the former national transportation safety board chair. let's start with pamela brown. >> the cause of the crash is still very much a mystery, the plane in the crash considered the workhorse of aviation. it has an impeccable safety record and just received a maintenance check yesterday. yet just as it reached cruising altitude today, a terrifying turn of events took place. tonight new images show first responders carefully traversing the jagged french alps where the germanwings plane went down. investigators say just three minutes after the doomed flight reached a cruising altitude of 32000 feet usually the safest part of a flight something went horribly wrong. flight tracking sites show the plane cruised to 38,000 feet

before a descent. its last known altitude was 6,000 feet. >> this airplane didn't fall out of the sky. something occurred that i believe controlled it to get out of the sky and i believe it was done through the crew or as mentioned through the autopilot. >> a french government official says the plane was obliterated upon impact. then came the grim announcement from french president francois hollande hollande. >> translator: there are many victims 150. >> everyone on board is presumed dead including two babies. the flight took off 10:01 in barcelona, spain, en route to dusseldorf, germany. french authorities say there was no distress call from the plane. >> you would think some sort of communication would have gotten out. that does disturb me to some degree. however if this was a serious

emergency that this airplane was experiencing, this crew was experiencing, they play have been focused on taking care of their airplane. >> first spot of the wreckage above a village in france with no service roads. despite the challenging conditions, the french insuperior inster said crews found one of the plane's black boxes but recovering bodies could take days. that's because of the rugged terrain and weather. officials say it's causing a lot of challenges to rescuers. it's too early to know what exactly happened until the black boxes and debris are analyzed. at this point, the white house says there is no nexus to terrorism. french authorities are taking the lead with the investigation. >> thanks pamela. what could have caused the airliner to go into a dive shortly after reaching its cruising altitude which should have been the safest part of the flight? our aviation correspondent rene marsh has been looking into some of the possibilities. >> wolf the facts we do have

make this crash even more perplexing. this is an aircraft that we're talking about here essentially as pamela said the workhorse of the aviation community. we know that it has an impeccable safety record. the aircraft had received its maintenance check just yesterday. and the captain of the plane we can also tell you has been with the airline for more than ten years. so what could have gone wrong? you can see that the plane's rapid descent, it was very steady. when you look at these flight tracking web sites you can see that it was not an abrupt descent. you look at the line there and you get the impression this was very much so a controlled descent. and the pilots did it quite rapidly. why would you want to do that? one reason could be a loss in cabin pressure. we saw that with aloha airline flight in 1988. that particular aircraft made so many takeoffs and landings the

convict strant pressurization and depressurization it caused stress to the skin of the plane. that caused some extensive damage to the fuselage. that led to loss of cabin pressure. at 38,000 feet in the air if you don't have oxygen, you're essentially going to pass out. so you want to get your mask on. what the pilot will often do is get the plane to a lower altitude so passengers can breathe. but what's so puzzling at this point is essentially, you know before it crashed into these mountains here why is it for so many minutes the pilots did not communicate with air traffic control? was it a situation in which perhaps they were incapacitated? we don't know. of course that's something that investigators are going to be looking into. of course there's also pilot error and we also know that potentially mechanical error could be an issue. this is a highly highly computerized aircraft, wolf. >> and they haven't found any evidence to believe, as we

noted, it could be terrorism or anything along those lines. no evidence of that at all, at least not yet. rene, thanks very much. there's deep shock and an outpouring of grief at the airport in barcelona, spain, where the flight originated. let's go there. cnn's carl penhall is on the scene for us. what's it like over there, carl? >> reporter: well, wolf in the course of the afternoon, we've seen scores of family members and relatives coming to the crisis center that's been set up at barcelona airport terminal 2. many of them have been arm in arm with other relatives, many of them weeping as they come through the gates here all with their heads down not wishing to speak to the media at this time. their priority is to get with airline authorities to get information firsthand. also in that crisis center teams of medics and psychologists are on hand to help them with the support that they need at this time. overnight they'll be moved to

three motels around barcelona airport. come the morning, lust thaunz saturday ais looking at the opportunity of flying them closer to firsthand information. what lufthansa is looking at is the -- a lot of those people on board could have been tourists returning home or going on vacation. others we understand from local media could have been spanish businessmen heading to trade fairs in parts of germany. we do know as well that at least 16 people on board were teenagers, german teenagers, who had been on a school exchange program in a town just north of barcelona. they were on that flight along with their two teachers. we're also hearing not only german, not only spanish, we're hearing from the colombian government that two colombians were on the flight. we're hearing from our affiliate

tv stations in australia. they're quoting the australian foreign minister that australians were on the flight also that turks may have been on the flight. certainly a very koss mowcosmopolitan list of passengers. >> we're hearing from officials in washington they're checking to see if any americans were on the plane also. karl penhaul, thank you so much. deborah hersman, she chaired the national transportation safety board, now president of the national safety council. deborah deborah, thank you for joining us. even though the searchers are having great difficulty accessing this crash site, there are photos of the plane, debris. how much will investigators learn from the actual wreckage itself itself? >> they're going to learn the most when they recover the black boxes, the cvr and the svr.

but they can learn a lot from the debris field, particularly if they find something on the flight data recorder that kind of guides them to a part of the aircraft, one of the four quadrants of the plane, the nose tail and two wings, if there were any control surface problems or control ability issue highydraulic or engine problems they'll want to look at that debris. but the black boxes are the best information they can get. >> i know they've found one, i'm not sure which. there are conflicting reports about that. what's most important if they only find one? >> you know, that's like trying to ask someone to pick between their children. they're both really important. the flight data recorder will give them poe leshltentially 1,000 parameters of what the aircraft was doing, what control wrz directed. it will give them a lot of information about the aircraft.

but the cockpit voice recorder is really critical information because it will tell you what the pilots were doing, what they were saying to each other, what they were identifying as problems or even if they knew there was a problem. you can hear things such as slurred speech if people become incapacitated, you can hear that. they're both really important. some of the recorders out there are dual combination recorders. but i think we're going to have to see what they brought off that mountain. >> and once they get both if they're dual recorders or whatever, once they have both how long does it take to get the information from those recorders and start learning what happened? >> well if they don't have a lot of damage to the recorders, they can get information off of them literally within a few hours. they can audition or do a quick listen to the cdr and really sketch out what they heard particularly in the part that's really appropriate to the

investigation. with the flight data recorder it does take a little bit longer to make sure they're able to corroborate all of the times and the information but, again, they can get a real quick view just within a couple of hours if they're not damaged. >> deborah hersman, please stand by. we have more to assess. new information is coming in. we'll take a quick break. much more with the former head of the ntsb, right after this.

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recovered. we're back with deborah hersman, the former ntsb chair, now president and ceo of the national safety council. deborah in december a lufthansa dropped 4,000 feet in one moment after the autopilot lowered the jet's nose. how closely should investigators be looking at the autopilot system on all of these airbus planes? >> you know, i think they'll be looking at all past events to try to identify any similarities. in this event, at least with respect to the loss of altitude is very difficult. they really want to understand what caused this aircraft to descend and the way it did, whether it was manual by the pilots or whether it was done by the autopilot. >> the flight was originally flying at cruising altitude about an hour after takeoff at 38000 feet. that's thought to be the safest point of a flight right?

what are the options investigators are considering as to what went wrong? >> you know cruise flight is actually one of the safest parts of flight because i don't see as many events. but when you have a loss of control or you have an event that's catastrophic, you actually have the potential to lose the entire plane like you're seeing here in this situation. so it's really important for them to understand what was going on. i know there are going to be so many things going on. they could be looking at pressurization of the aircraft. they could be looking at equipment. there apparently the aircraft had been inexpected. there was maintenance done just the day before. they'll want to look very closely at the maintenance records if anything was changed or anything was checked, they'll want to know what that was. geb begin, the black boxes will give them a road map. investigators like to get them

early so they know what clues to go after. >> what does it tell you that there was a distress call from the air traffic control tower on the ground obviously not necessarily from the plane itself from the cockpit? >> well you know, pilots are always taught to aviate navigate, communicate. it's really about flying the airplane first if there's something going on. but given the amount of time that lapsed between when they left their cruise altitude to the ultimate crash, there was a lot of time at least to send out a beacon, a distress call something. so not seeing that from the crew is really going to be an important point for them to understand why didn't this crew communicate that there was something happening on the airplane when they had that much time? so that leaveds us to ask did they have that much time? the fact that air traffic control put the call out, it's really important because it's

none dmoen straighting they're tracking the airplane trying to communicate and actually being proactive about saying there's a problem. everyone is going to be looked at in the investigation and the amount of time that lapsed between when decisions were made and communications happened will be critical. >> once it went from 38,000 feet and began a controlled desent over the next six, seven, eight minutes whatever it was until it crashed into the french alps no communication whatsoever. they'll be be listening very closely assuming they find the cockpit voice recorder to see what if anything was said if the pilots were even talking to each other, or if they were out cold and it was just sort of in a controlled descent. >> that's right. there's a lot of things that could have gone on. so understanding what situation the pilots were facing is important. but also the settings that the aircraft was in. again, whether the controls were manually manipulated or whether they were automatically set and

the aircraft was just following a plugged-in trajectory or rate of descent. that will be important to investigate rz. >> do they automatically look at the pilots in a situation like this to determine if there could have been anything that could have caused a pilot or co-pilot to want to do this? there have been cases of pilots wanting to commit suicide right? >> sure. i think that always comes up in investigations early on to understand the human, the machine and the environment. clearly when they're looking at the humans they're looking at their experience, their history, not just whether or not they've had the proper training and the amount of hours in the cockpit but also their work/rest history. are they fatigued? are there things going on in their lives, personal or work that need to be paid attention to? they will be looking at toxicology tests. investigations at their very

nature look at everything. they'll look at the aircraft at the maintenance, then they'll look at the environment. was there anything going on? what were the weather conditions? what could have affected this flight differently than all of the other flights that were in that area? >> if you were investigating, what's the first thing you'd be looking for? >> well certainly those boxes. like i said if you get those boxes they will give you the road map to what's next, where you want to go, what steps you want to take who you want to talk to. it will really point you in the right direction. but i think with respect to these early hour fz any crash, it's all about the victims and their families and making sure that they get taken care of and get the information in a timely manner. you've got to pay attention to that when you're on the ground. >> deborah hersman, thanks very much for joining us. >> thank you. coming up, rain, snow and frozen terrain. that's slowing the search and

recovery in the french alps. and why was there no distress call from the airliner before it went down? our aviation experts are standing by. stay with us. you're in "the situation room." floor mats... clear coats... >>you're getting warmer... leather seats... >>and this... e that. get your credit swagger on. become a member of experian credit tracker and find out your fico score powered by experian. fico scores are used in 90% of credit decisions. ♪ its effects on society really came about because, not because i was selfish and wanted one for myself, which i did. its because i had, had a passion. my whole life i wanted to teach myself to build computers. i wanted to build these things for free. i just wanted to do it for the world and you know when you want something, that's what you do the best. ♪

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>> the terrain is making things very, very difficult. even on a clear day, it is hard to get to where this crash site is. there are no towns around. there are no roads in and no roads out. basically, the only option is choppers. you can drop folks in there. they have to hike down or go to the nearest town and still have to hike to get into this location. you can see extremely remote. we do know that during the crash their visibility was okay. we had relatively clear skies. but we also know things are going to change very very quickly into the next 12 to 24 hours, making for very difficult circumstances as those searchers go out there. so once the plane took off, we know that conditions were okay. but as we go forward in time, wolf, we have a cold front moving in. what that is going to do is bring in rain and possibly bring in snow depending on the elevation, the exact elevation of that crash. we could also get some snow in the next 24 to 48 hours. of course, we are going to

continue to watch it. it could be at least two days though, before we have a little bit of clearing. the choppers can't get out when you have the low ceiling, the low clouds. we also know that if rain and snow is in the area, it is going to make conditions even more difficult. >> jennifer thanks very much. let's bring in our panel of experts, our aviation analyst and former ntsb managing director peter goelz, our law enforcement analyst and david soucie -- getting the first images of the crash scene, we see a lot of small pieces of the plane. what does that say? >> it hit the ground at a very high rate of speed. when you see fragmentation like that, that means the plane went straight in. that's going to make it extremely difficult for the investigators. they're into the going to get a whole lot out of the wreckage. and more importantly, it's going

to make it very difficult to identify the victims. >> david soucie, it looks like from these images it suggests that the plane broke apart upon crashing into that mountain as opposed to breaking apart in the air right? >> it did. there appears to be be one and possibly two scatter points at which it hit the ground at one point and then another just ahead of that. but my primary concern at this point in this accident investigation would be be the safety of the inspectors and the on-site investigators. the last thing you want to do is add to the victim list by having somebody get hurt out there. that's what they're watching for first. i've had to spend the night in the mountains before on an accident when i wasn't able to be extracted. i caution them and please be careful. >> miles, as you know there was not a distress call from the cockpit. was it possible that the pilot and co-pilot didn't know they were desaending until it was too late? >> i suppose that's possible

wolf. it's unlikely however. i think what you have here is not the typical template for an emergency situation, which would be -- think of sully. you declare an emergency. it's a mayday. you look for the nearest landing field. you certainly wouldn't continue on to a mountain range if you had a problem like this. was the crew incapacitated or was there a problem with the pressurization system which allowed them to -- and they couldn't get a radio call off? was the plane not set up for altitude hold on the autopilot and it went down without them being awake, if you will? i suppose that's a possibility. but you can't -- none of this stacks up for the typical professional pilot response to an emergency. >> tom, i guess right now u.s. officials and others are saying they don't see a nexus to terrorism or anything like that. but they're locking at all of these various options, right?

>> right. there's none known at this point but it's not impossible. isis has support groups in spainl. you remember the charlie hebdo attack, the female went from barcelona to istanbul. we've had cases where isis recruited people to fly from barcelona. there are moroccans who go into spain to go to isis and use barcelona. >> the white house in their statement say they see no evidence of terrorism, but, peter you're very familiar with how these investigations go. and remind our viewers -- i don't want to cast dispersions on the pilot or pilots -- they're looking at the backgrounds of both right? >> absolutely. when you have an event like this, you dig into the background of the pilots. it's not unheard of that pilots occasionally do irrational things. and they will check and see if they had any financial

difficulties, any psychological challenges that had revealed themselves prior to the accident. they're going to look at every option. >> i remember you i believe were part of the team that investigated that egypt air crash, right? >> we looked at egypt air in which the co-pilot flew the plane into the ocean on purpose. >> you concluded after all your evidence this was suicide by the co-pilot. >> yes, we did. that was not the first time. there was also a silk air in accident in the '90s where we saw suicide. >> it's so mysterious in the final six or seven minutes or so there was no distress call, nothing coming from the cockpit. that raises all sorts of questions because, even if they were trying to deal with the navigation system or whatever how long does it take to hit a button and say mayday mayday mayday? >> certainly not that long. that is the biggest question in this for me, and it kind of

smacks of an accident in 1972 of the l-1011 flying into miami and they had difficulties and were distracted by the fact that the landing gear wouldn't go down. they were so focused on that three people in the cockpit, they didn't notice that the autopilot had tripped off and the aircraft desaendcended into the everglades. so this seems that it may fit that profile, that the aircraft was descending but they were zrablgt distracted by another emergency and couldn't take corrective action until it was too late. >> why they wouldn't try to land at marseilles which has a huge runway. we're getting new information on the investigation into today's deadly airliner crash. we're also following other important stories here in "the situation room." breaking now, israel denies spying on nuclear talks with

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we'll have much more coming up on the airliner crash that took 150 lives. is there a problem with similar planes here in the united states? but there's other important news breaking right now. at the white house today, president obama refused to comment on a "wall street journal" report that israel is

spying on the talks over iran's nuclear program. also acquired information on confidential u.s. briefings and used that information to lobby u.s. lawmakers. a senior official in israel tells u.s. that the reports that iz rile was spying directly on the united states says the reports are utterly false. let's bring in jim acosta the latest on this very sensitive story. what are you learning? >> reporter: at a news conference with the new president of afghanistan, president obama refused to accept benjamin netanyahu's explanations about his stance on palestinian statehood and there are new signs, the "wall street journal" art condemn one of them, that this relationship is not only getting worse. >> describing his relationship with benjamin netanyahu as businesslike, president obama said there's nothing personal in their disagreement on two key issues, the iran nuclear talks and prospects for palestinian

statehood. >> this can't be reduced to a matter of somehow let's all hold hands and sing kumbaya. >> reporter: the president rejected netanyahu's latest solution, something the prime minister rejected just before his reelection. >> he pointed out that he didn't say never, but that there would be a series of conditions in which a palestinian state could potentially be created. but of course the conditions were such that they would be impossible to meet anytime soon. >> reporter: making matters worse senior obama officials complained to the "wall street journal" that israel is spying on the iranian nuclear talks. it is one thing for the u.s. and israel to spy on each other. it another thing for israel to steal u.s. secrets and play them back to u.s. legislators to

undermine u.s. diplomacy. the president tried to laugh that off. >> as a general rule i don't comment on intelligence matters in a big room full of reporters. >> reporter: but lawmakers are puzzled. john boehner denied receiving any classified information from the israelis. >> i'm not sure what the information was, but i'm baffled by it. >> reporter: as did the top two men on the house intelligence committee. >> we have not been briefed by the israelis on anything that's in the "wall street journal" article at all. >> none of those cases have the israelis discussed with me anything that i would consider clad fied or even all that sensitive. >> the israeli prime minister's office is denying it all saying the allegations are utterly false, the state of israel does not conduct espionage against the united states or allies. but the accusations are not completely new. just last month, the white house was openly complaining about israeli leaks. >> there's no question that some of the things that the israelis

have said in characterizing our negotiating position have not been accurate. >> reporter: and republicans suspect some of the anonymous complaints about israeli's spying coming from administration officials are just more sour grapes from the white house over netanyahu's meddling in the iran nuclear talk as one gop aide said it's flat-out laughable that the israelis had to tell the u.s. congress this is a bad deal with iran, wolf. >> another major decision by the president today. he announced he would slow down the pace of the u.s. withdrawal of troops from afghanistan. tell us why this change occurred. >> reporter: that's right. right now there are roughly 10000 u.s. troops in afghanistan. the president set out a time line to cut it to half by the end of the year. the president is now halting that drawdown doing that because he says he has a better relationship with the new afghan government, afghan president. the u.s. has high hopes for him and i think they're trying to

make this commitment to him to show him that and have hopes they can keep a lid on the taliban in the next couple of years. the white house is adamant that a near total withdrawal by the end of president obama's term. >> he says all u.s. troops will be out even if the withdrawal is slowed down between now and then. thanks very much jim. coming up more on today's deadly crash. what caused an airliner with 150 people on board to crash into a mountainside? but up next there's a shocking new report on police shot shootings in one of the country's major cities including dozens of cases where the suspects were unarmed when police fired their guns. bles is computing to empower cancer researchers. it used to take two weeks to sequence and analyze a genome; with the microsoft cloud we can analyze 100 per day. whatever i can do to help compute a cure for cancer,

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we have much more coming up on the investigation into today's airliner crash that took 150 lives. there are thousands of similar planes in the sky, including right here in the united states. here's the question, are they safe? stand by. there's new information coming in. but we're also following a scathing new report exposing a staggering number of police shootings in philadelphia including many instances of officers shooting unarmed people. brian todd has been looking into this report. brian, what are you finding out? >> an astounding report from the justice department tonight on the dangerous situation on philadelphia's streets. it says police-involved shootings in that city have gone way up consistently in recent years even while the violent crime rate is going down. in philadelphia 26-year-old brandon tate brown pulled over for driving with his headlights off, shot and killed by police.

the d.a. says tate brown fought with officers, reached for a gun. tensions boiled over at a community meeting when the d.a. declined to bring charges against the police. the tate brown case part of a staggering pattern of shoot willings by philadelphia police. in a new report the justice department says over the last suspects or their guns otherwise discharged at least once a week. mark tyler says the relationship has been poisonous for decades. >> many times, persons are walked up to with the presumption of guilt and you've got to prove that you are innocent. >> reporter: 59 unarmed suspects were shot about 15% of all of the police shootings. almost half those incidents according to the report were quote, threat prevention

failures cases where police thought they were going for guns but they were reaching for cell phones or something else. the stats don't tell the whole story. in those moments, how tough is it? >> it's dark out, i've just chased somebody we may be wrestling to secure that person's arrest and suddenly that person is reaching into a place, maybe reaching towards me maybe throwing punches at me or trying to reach for my weapon. that is a hard hard decision to make in a millisecond. >> reporter: the overwhelming number of suspects in philadelphia are african-american. almost 60% of the police officers involved were white. 34% black. but justice department officials stress they are not alleging racial discrimination in these cases. philly's police chief is not trying to hide the problem gls in case you haven't noticed i'm not black myself. i'm not proud of the fact that we have a disproportionate

amount of crime happening in african-american communities. >> reporter: they say the main reason is inadequate training tossed into street patrols, not enough threat perception training. and this is all not easy to fix with budget cuts over the past few years, police departments don't have the money to train or to replace police officers on the street while they are being trained. wolf? >> brian, how many of these police shootings turned out to be fatal? >> that's a shocking number wolf. almost a quarter of them. a justice department official told me 88 suspects shot and killed by philadelphia police between 2007 and 2013. that is 23% of all the suspects shot wolf. one of the staggering figures in that report. >> staggering indeed. brian, thank you. joining us is our justice reporter evan perez, and law enforcement analyst, tom fuentes, former assistant director of the fbi. what do they do about this?

>> now they've got to work with the justice department. charles ramsey actually requested this from the justice department. now they are going to implement training and try to get the cops to respond better to these situations. charles ramsey is also the head of president obama's task force on 21st century policing systems. it's a little embarrassing that the guy who is heading this commission trying to improve policing around the country, heads the police department with this kind of problem. >> he's got an excellent reputation as an outstanding cop. as you know tom, this whole issue of what's called threat perception failures almost half of the times the cops got it wrong. they thought it was a real threat and apparently it wasn't. >> the police officers are out there in the dark wolf. somebody reaches in their pockets and into their pants or jacket. police officers don't have x-ray vision. they don't have the ability to see in complete darkness.

threat perception is what they think is happening and they may get it wrong because of that alone. these are difficult situations as the former assistant director said. and it's very easy to second guess and that split second decision that the officer is making we could talk about it for the next ten years whether it could be made or not be made. >> would it make any difference to use tasers for example, instead of lethal weapons? >> well the problem with a taser is it's one shot one chance and maybe it will work and maybe it won't. if you're an officer and you're in fear of your life you're going to go for the pistol, not the taser. there are several officers and it's a standoff and you can decide well like a golfer i'll pick this club instead of that club. that's great. in the heat of the moment it's not going to make a difference. >> much different than ferguson? >> much different. there's not racial discrimination being the cause of this simply training. and i think that's the fix here.

>> guys, thanks very much evan and tom. an airliner slams into a mountain. why was there no distress call?

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happening now, deadly nosedive. cnn is heading to the remote mountainside where 150 were killed on board, including students and babies.

so what went wrong? why did an airbus jet like this one suddenly fallout of the sky during the safest part of the flight? thousands of passengers are flying on similar planes right now. zimmerman versus obama. the man acquitted in trayvon martin's death is publicly blaming president obama for racial tensions in america but he's apparently not blaming himself. and ted cruz's surprise. the senator and newly announced presidential candidate reveals new personal information in a one-on-one interview withcnn. i want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer. hundreds of first responders are gathering on a remote mountain site where an aircraft plunged out of the sky. the search has been called off for the night but the helicopter crews have spotted wreckage of the german airliner in the

french alps along with some remains of 150 people on board. at least one of the airbus a320 black boxes have been found. why did the plane have a rapid descent after at a cruising altitude which is one of the safest points in a flight. we are going to cover all of the breaking news. let's again with our aviation correspondent rene marsh. she has the very latest. rene? >> the airliner is in pieces. nothing bigger than a small car. the mystery tonight is what went so terribly wrong on board an aircraft with an impeccable safety record it just passed a maintenance record the day before and had experienced pilots in the cockpit. tonight, this is the challenging rocky terrain first responders and investigators are

navigating. germanwings flight 9525 with 150 people on board went down in the snowy french alps where peaks are as high as 10,000 feet. what seemed like a routine flight from barcelona to dusseldorf suddenly turned deadly. the flight took off at 10:01 a.m. local time. flight tracking sites show the plane climbed to a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet before starting an unplanned descent, dropping to 11,400 feet over eight minutes. >> it seems to me it was still a controlled descent. >> around 52 minutes after takeoff, air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane. its last known altitude 6,000 feet. then flight 9525 disappeared from radar. >> translator: a terrible very sad day for germanwings and the whole lufthansa family. i have to inform you that we've been informed that a germanwings

airliner had an accident. >> reporter: a french government official says the plane was, quote, obliterated. human remains strewned several hundred meters. french aviation authorities say the pilot did not send a distress call or signal that there was trouble. it was air traffic control that declared an emergency because they couldn't reach the pilots by radio leaving many unanswered questions. >> normally even if you're on an oxygen mask in a depressurizized plane filled with smoke, you can still set the transponderer. if they are overcome in a fashion, they may not be able to respond. >> reporter: ground teams have located one of the plane's black boxes, critical in finding out what went wrong on board this plane that's considered the workhorse of aviation.

the plane had over 58,000 flight hours. it is an older plane so that's a lot of flight hours but nothing to raise a red flag. as far as the ntsb and potential u.s. involvement in this investigation, i've been on the phone with them today and at this point no indication that the french have asked for the ntsb's assistance. wolf? >> we'll see if that changes. rene thanks. president obama has called angela merkel and has offered assistance if needed. many of the passengers on board were german. fred pleitgen is joining us from dusseldorf germany, where flight 9525 was headed. you're learning more about the passengers fred? >> reporter: yeah absolutely wolf. and one of the things that you have to note is that germany really is a nation that's in mourning. also a nation that's quite frankly, devastated and shocked. i mean keep in mind this is a

country that prides itself on its ingenuity and certainly airline safety has something to do with that as well. of course at this point in time it's the victims and victims' families that are at the center of the sympathies here a crisis center has been opened at the dusseldorf airport. also lufthansa and germanwings say they are going to bring everybody who has relatives who were killed in this flight wants to go near the crash site there as well. let's have a look at how this day unfolded here. devastated family members are gathering here at dusseldorf airport where the doom flight was headed. and also at barcelona airport where the flight originated. a crisis center has been set up with a team of psychologists for those who need care. relatives, many crying were escorted by police and airport staff as they made their way through the airports. officials believe there were no survivors after the airbus a320 crashed tuesday in the foothills

of the french alps. >> translator: on board, there were 144 passengers including two babies on board as well as six crew members. two were in the cockpit and four in the cabin. >> reporter: 16 students and two teachers from this high school in northwest germany are among the 150 presumed dead. the students had spent a week as exchange students in spain and were returning when the flight crashed. >> translator: the whole city is shocked and we can feel it everywhere. this is the worst what happened. >> reporter: the students are among the 67 germans the airline believes were on the flight. angela merkel is expected to travel to the crash site on wednesday. officials in spain said 45 passengers had spanish names. >> translator: there are no known survivors. there's a high number of spaniards, germans and turks.

>> reporter: human remains are strewned for meters. it could take days to recover the bodies because of the mountainous terrain and bad weather are making it difficult to reach the crash site. >> translator: we express our deepest sympathy for the passengers' families and the crew members' families. we will do as much as possible to find out the reason for this crash. >> reporter: we have also learned that two of the passengers on board were opera singers performing in barcelona for about a month. one of those singers was traveling with her little baby. so that's one of the two babies that were killed on this flight. also passengers from various other countries on board as well. a big, big tragedy, not just here in germany but for many other countries as well. >> certainly is fred pleitgen in dusseldorf where the plane should have landed an hour after

it took off. thank you for that report. i want to take you closer to the crash site right at the foot of the french alps. nic robertson has just arrived in the area. he's joining us on the phone right now. nic, set the scene for us. what's it like over there? >> reporter: well wolf we're still making our way through the french alps and to the recovery site. we're climbing through the mountains and we're over 3,000, 4,000 feet in some places. the temperature is dropping close to zero. there's heavy rain. we're hitting patches of fog. the crash site is even higher in the mountains. the terrain there is very steep, very rugged where the aircraft hit the hillside. the access to that area is very difficult. there is snow on the ground. helicopters will be the main way in for the recovery teams. what we're being told by officials tonight is that this weather, the low clouds they

believe there could be snow at the altitude of the crash site tonight where we have rain a little lower. there will be snow higher up. they believe that this could well hamper the recovery effort. they have paused for the night. it's dark here right now but they hope to begin with first light in the morning and that's going to depend on the weather conditions and right now it's raining here quite steadily and we're hitting patches of fog and it will be quite lower on the mountain tops at the crash site. >> and the wreckage is really spread around a huge area, given what happened when that plane crashed into the side of that mountain at a fast fast speed. >> absolutely. hundreds of meters is how it is being described, no larger than a small car. and the concern is that tonight if the temperature at that altitude it could be as high as

2,000 meters and we're talking about 6,000 feet maybe a little lower and the temperature gauge on the vehicle we're driving in now, when we get up within a couple of thousand feet of that altitude it drops to almost freezing. and the recovery teams are saying that if it is frozen they will need additional equipment for the recovery work. it will make it harder to discover the debris and the remains on that hillside wolf. >> nic robertson making his way to the crash site over there in the french alps. we'll stay in close touch with you. in the meantime let's bring in our aviation correspondent peter

goelz, david soucie and aviation analyst miles o'brien is on the phone as well. when they pick up all this wreckage -- forget about the so-called black box -- what can they learn about the accident spread over the wide area in the french alps? >> with this kind of accident a high rate of impact it's going to be difficult to get any kind of real evidence without the black boxes. this was a composite aircraft. you know made of composite materials. it shatters on impact at this kind of speed. unfortunately, they are not going to get much from the fuselage. they will always get information from the engines. >> the search operation, phillip, is going to be really really difficult because of the nature of this area. talk about that. >> it's a remote area. the crash site is 1,614 meters inaccessible by car. we've seen the french military police essentially on the

ground. one must presume that they were dropped by helicopter. there are investigators from the bea, french air accident investigational authority. they are on the ground. at least one more to come from paris. their equivalence from germany as well. this area is complicated, as nic robertson just said on the ground. it's nighttime. any search and rescue operations halted. it's very unlikely that there will be any survivors, of course and, as your reporter said it's now raining down on the ground. it could possibly be snowing up in the hills. that makes things a lot more difficult. it took a while to get those first images. french television was able to get a helicopter over the crash site and this plane disintegrated. >> the french president francois

hollande said he doesn't believe that there's any survivors. joining us from perth, australia, jeffrey, you can see on the screen the plane was completely obliterated. what can we tell from your perspective, the small pieces of debris being found once the search operation resumes with daylight? >>. >> look clearly the aircraft has impacted the mountains at high speed. i don't believe the pilots had any idea where they were. they had the emergency descent from altitude. the plane appeared to be under some sort of control because it did level off at about 6,000 feet we understand or 7,000 feet. but impacted these mountains which are up to about 9,000 feet i should say, so mercifully at the last minute the passengers and the crew would not have been aware of the

impact but the question then is how come the aircraft ground proximity warning system didn't alert the pilots or was that part of the problem, they had some aviation problems, electronic problems possibly. but this is a terrible tragedy, wolf. >> it certainly is. it's the second fatal airbus a320 crash, jeffrey, in less than three months. there are around 3600 of these airbus a320s around the world. it's a very popular plane. could there be a bigger problem here with the plane's manufacturing? >> look, i don't believe so wolf. you're absolutely right. very popular aircraft. the backbone of the world's airlines along with the 737. one of the things about this airline, it does about five or six sectors a day. it had 58,000 hours on the clock. 47,000 flight cycles on the

clock. each of these flights is a bit over an hour. so we have to look at it in the context of five or six flights a day whereas a 747 might do one flight a day. it's a hard-working airplane. i don't believe it's an airbus problem. otherwise this would have surfaced a long time ago. this type has been in service since 1998. this was delivered in 1991 to lufthansa, immaculately maintained by one of the best maintenance aircraft outfits in the world. it should check all the boxes. >> is there a potential problem of a plane like this being overused? >> no not at all. i mean i recently wolf flew on an airplane that was 37 years old.

it was i ammmaculately maintained airplane. an airplane doing over 100,000 flight hours and 80 and 90,000 cycles is not an issue as long as it's well-maintained and you couldn't get a better maintenance outfit than lufthansa. >> are there unique weather concerns when you're above the mountains, let's say you're flying at 38,000 feet and all of a sudden you begin this descent, are there weather conditions that could have contributed to this problem? >> the weather was reported to be fine at 38,000 feet. now, whether, for instance there was an icing issue, the pitot tubes, the senators that feed the computerized airplane or its flight data whether they stop of course i wouldn't have thought so. certainly the weather was a factor when it got down low.

but i don't think the weather was a factor at altitude. >> they have to figure out what happened and figure it out quickly because there's so many of these airbuses flying around the world right now. jeffrey, everyone else stand by. we're going to take a quick break. much more on the information coming into "the situation room" right after this. denver international is one of the busiest airports in the country. we operate just like a city and that takes a lot of energy. we use natural gas throughout the airport - for heating the entire terminal generating electricity on-site and fueling hundreds of vehicles. we're very focused on reducing our environmental impact. and natural gas is a big part of that commitment.

we're back with our analysts and the deadly breaking news. 150 people on board the germanwings plane all dead. it's being described as a picture of horror. let's get back to our panel of experts. david soucie the flight was

originally cruising at what 38,000 feet. that's thought to be the safest point of a plane. about an hour after takeoff, an hour before it was supposed to land. what are the options that investigators are considering as to what possibly could have forced this plane to all of a sudden begin what seemed to be a controlled descent. >> well mostly all bets are off right now as far as what might have caused it. but there are a few clues that are very telling and that is that it was a controlled rate of descent. it appears that there was control. something caused this descent to occur, whether it was caused by the pilot or something on board the aircraft. so the first thing we look at on the cockpit voice recorder is what was going on in the cockpit. of course we don't have that yet. we have the flight data recorder that tells us what p hahappened. it doesn't tell us why it happened. that's the second clue that needs to be figured out. they are looking for the cockpit voice recorder.

i'm concerned with the snow coming in tonight and if you notice the foliage has been burned away. now you're dealing with a lot of mud. this snow tonight and then melting tomorrow could easily cover up and hide a lot of evidence and hopefully not but even cover up the cockpit voice recorder making it very difficult to recover. >> david, isn't there some sort of a beeping sound that comes out of that cockpit voice recorder for 30 days? >> you know that is called the underwater locator beacon and tached tach attached to the flight data recorder but unfortunately, unless it's under water, it won't send that signal out. it's the pitch of a dog whistle. you have to bring in tools to do that. but unless that is sitting in a puddle of water, it's not going to be sending out anything and even at that point you wouldn't be able to hear it unless you're in the same puddle of water. unfortunately, there's nothing to help you find it at this point. >> that's pretty depressing. miles o'brien, could this have

been pilot error? >> well i don't think you'd rule anything out at this point, wolf. pilot error is on the list as investigators go through the three big buckets that they look at which are, the human being, the machine and the environment. i'm downplaying that initially at least. the machine itself we need to look at the maintenance records, so if there was some specific problem with the airliner and the cockpit voice recorder and i suspect they'll find it in due course because the wreckage while in a rough area is concentrated in a relatively small space. it's not like it appears as if it was an in-flight breakup. so what was going on in the cockpit is what we're going to be talking about in the coming days. was there a mistake made by the crew or was this a deliberate act by the crew or some other

individual on the plane that would cause not an emergency descent but a rapid descent, no radio call and a flight that continues onto the mountains. none of that ends up in the realm of a typical emergency scenario. pilot error will be on the list and some sort of deliberate act here. >> on that point, tom fuentes, terrorism, they really don't have a clue right? >> no they don't know if it's that or not until they get the recorders and they know what the discussions were going on in the cockpit with the crew and where did the flight data recorders go. it does not look like an explosion or rocket attack because that causes bigger pieces raining down on the ground. this looks like a high-speed impact into the side of a mountain. >> philip what are you hearing from your officials in france? >> here's what our reporters know on the ground. >> this is french 24 tv? >> yes, french television. that was the domestic

television got into a helicopter and were able to fly over the scene. they saw these tiny pieces of this airplane the largest one seemingly the size of a small car. they were being told as they were flying over the scene, and they saw the code on the side of the airplane on the fuselage so they were able to identify the plane, of course and there were bodies and body parts there on that scene. there's also what has been recuperated, one of the black box recorders has been found. that's heading back to paris. you probably know more about this than i do but somewhere between hours and days all the way until sunday i've been hearing, sunday of this week to be able to get the contents of that black box recorder and to find out a little bit more. and in terms of getting those pieces of the airplane off that mountain to be able to really investigate and, of course getting the bodies back to their respective countries could take a long time simply because of

the remoteness of this area. we're looking at around a week again. of course because of the weather conditions as we just heard, possible mud in the area and snow as well this could take a long time. it's an ugly scene and could get more difficult to really find out what happened there. >> yes. stand by everyone. more information coming in. just ahead, we're going to map out the many's flight path. we're looking for clues about what went so horribly wrong and how the pilots responded. a new federal report reveals philadelphia police officers have shot unarmed suspects with alarming frequency. are they biassed or are they simply badly trained? stay with us.

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we're back with the breaking news on the passenger plane that crashed in the french alps. these enormous pressure to try to figure out why the airbus a320 plunged from the sky. more than 3,000 of those aircraft are in service right now, many of them flying right here in the united states. cnn's tom foreman is taking a closer look at what possibly went so wrong. is this looking like a catastrophic failure, tom? >> it does not look like a catastrophic failure in flight because if you have a plane this big and it loses a taylor wing, tail or wing it would be

scattered all over the place, not in one area. if you had someone in the cockpit that disabled the crew and they passed out, maybe it could happen then. but they have oxygen masks right there so that also does not look likely. >> is it possible this is a problem that they were dealing with it and they just ran out of time? >> that's one of the ideas here. if you look at the overall pattern of how this plane came easing in talking about relatively fast not that fast though. over a long straight distance. maybe they were dealing with a problem, thought they could deal with it and simply ran out of space and time. but here's the problem. if they had this much control, let's go back to the big map, then why did they not veer away from the mountains? why didn't they try to go to one of the airports? they could have easily hit somewhere along the coast there. so there's no evidence of that. that's one of the things arguing against that possibility, wolf. >> a big airport there in

marseille with a long run way. is it possible that the pilots didn't know they had a problem? >> if you had some sort of false reading from the pitot tubes that gave you an idea that your speed or altitude was wrong or something that made you unaware situationally about where the plane was, it's true they could become distracted and didn't realize they were flying into the mountains. this sounds outrageous but, in fact it has happened before wolf we don't know if any of these scenarios is really what happened. we do know that investigators have to look at all of them right now. >> they certainly do. tom foreman, thanks very much. let's go back to our analysts following new details on this plane crash. david soucie in november a lufthansa airbus dropped 4,000 feet in one minute after the autopilot lowered the jet's nose. how closely should investigators be looking at the autopilot

system of these airbus planes? >> well understand wolf these airplanes have been flying for a long long time and these problems would arise more frequently if it was something that was repetitive. however, that being said it's going to be looked at. every aspect of this airplane is going to be looked at. what has to be done first is find out where you are going going to focus all of your efforts. these investigations could go on for years and years and years. if you say you're going to look at every possibility, which you have to do you have to narrow those possibilities to the most likely and probable and right now we don't have a lot of facts. i would expect that the cockpit voice recorder is going to give us the most of the reasons why, when that's found, and i'm confident it will be and the flight data recorder already in their possession it's going to be analyzed. it won't take very long. it's just a matter of downloading the information onto a computer and doing the analysis. if there's any delay, it will be

because of the analysis portion, not because of the actual downloading of the information. >> peter goelz, if you got your hands on the maintenance records of this specific plane, what would you be looking for? >> to see that every bit of maintenance that had been required was done and was there any unusual maintenance events in the recent past that you know drove special work to be done on the plane and could it have been a con trib bu tore factor? maintenance is going to be poured through from the day the plane was manufactured to see what if anything, could have occurred. >> what happen if they find the cockpit voice recorder peter, and there's nothing on it no talking, it's silent in there, which is possible right? >> yes. it's happened in the past. that's going to lead to greater mystery, that they are going to have to dig and get that data recorder because that's got upwards of 1,000 parameters that will tell you what the plane is doing and it will also reinforce

recommendations about video recording in the cockpit. >> they do not have that. >> they do not. >> a lot of people think they should have that. >> pilot unions don't want that recording. rugged terrain has made it very difficult for search recovery teams to reach the crash site in the french alps. bad weather is making the situation even worse. let's go to meteorologist jennifer gray for an update of what is going on over there. >> the terrain itself is going to be the most challenging aspect of this. you literally have to hike in to where the crash site is. add to that the nasty weather that is there as we speak. we know when the plane took off, the weather was okay but then after it crashed, that's when we start to see the bad weather move in. we're looking at rain and we're looking at even snow in the higher elevations and depending on the exact elevation of where the crash site is they could actually pick up a little bit of

snow in the next it24 to 48 hours. we could get clearing as we go through the next couple of hours. it could possibly be during the overnight hours. that's the bad news during all of this. as the front continues to push forward, we're going to see cloudy conditions which is not good news when you're trying to get helicopters in the area. we could see that rain and then of course that snow as well. we're looking at the clouds and messy weather to last for at least the next 24 hours and possibly go through the next 48 hours, wolf. not helping the searchers as we go through the next 24 hours. >> very quickly, tom fuentes, if you were brought into this investigation, you're a former assistant director of the fbi, what would you be looking for specifically? >> the passenger list who was on that list passenger and crew all of the background that you could have how many different countries they go through dealing with their services throughout europe the fbi, fbi offices in europe the host countries interpol every

bit of possible data you could get on the people that had anything to do with that plane. >> including the pilot and co-pilot? >> everybody. >> all right. thanks very much guys. stand by. more news that we're following here in "the situation room," including a shocking report that finds that shootings by police there have soared with many of the suspects unarmed. and george zimmerman is back. he's saying he doesn't feel guilty about his fatal shooting of trayvon martin. he's accusing president obama of fanning racial tensions in the case.

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stand by for more on the breaking news on that deadly plane crash in the french alps. right now there's another story we're following here in "the situation room." an alarming new u.s. justice department report showing that shootings in philadelphia by philadelphia police officers have gone way up while violent crime has actually been going down. nearly 400 suspects were shot over eight years. that according -- that's about one shooting a week. 59 of those suspects were unarmed and almost half of those incidents, police mistakenly believed the suspects were reaching for weapons when they weren't. the report blames the problem in large part on inadequate police training. it doesn't include any allegations of racial discrimination. let's bring in our justice reporter evan perez, our law enforcement analyst tom fuentes and cnn anchor don lemon. so what has the justice department been doing about this? >> wolf they work for the philly police department.

now what they are working with is to try to implement recommendations to improve training to make sure that the police on the beat are able to respond to these situations and, you know without the use of force. >> so do the police have enough training if they go to arrest somebody and somebody is going to reach in their pocket and get their driver's license or something, sometimes they think they are going to go for a weapon or a gun and they shoot and kill them. >> that may be wolf but it's not strictly a training thing when you're in the dark and somebody pulls that out and that happens. chief ramsey did a smart thing here. he knew that there had been so many police shootings, he ordered the study and the study says do more training. now he can say, pay for more police training and policing and if they don't, they've got him and the department -- >> it can't hurt right? >> no it can't hurt. but the city is going to have to approve the expenditure for that training. >> he didn't just order the report though. it was found out after a report

showed that crime was down that the shooting of suspects or people was still up. he was pushed to order that report after a philly.com investigation. so it wasn't just chief ramsey going, hey, i'm going to get this report. we've been talking about ferguson. this is way more important than ferguson. this is bigger than ferguson and perhaps we should be focusing on this because it talks about police training police tactics. and about whether police are being too heavy handed and this is way more damning because philadelphia is a small city. it's bigger than ferguson much smaller than new york but it shows in the years they did this study in philadelphia they saw more police shootings than new york city which has five times the number of residents and officers. that's serious stuff, wolf. >> and if it's happening in philadelphia which as don correctly points out, it's a major city i assume this is happening in other major cities as well. >> it's the same story around the country. i think this is the theme that

ferguson has brought to life but, as don says this is not just a philly problem. there's, you know the justice department has brought cases like this against the new orleans police department oakland, seattle. there's a variety of these types of investigations around the country. this one was done cooperatively with the philly police. and they were smart to do it this way because that way they are not getting sued to be forced to make changes. >> let me shift gears. let's talk don, about george zimmerman. he's back in the news today. his law firm posted a picture of him accusing the president of fanning racial tensions around the trayvon martin shooting. listen to this. >> president obama held his rose garden speech stating if i had a son, he would look like trayvon. to me that was clearly a dereliction of duties pitting americans against each other solely based on race. >> it's been two years since zimmerman, don, was acquitted of

murder in the trayvon martin death and in the video he says he can't feel guilty for surviving. >> not only did he say he does not feel guilty he believes it was god's will and he doesn't feel guilty for surviving. i think many people feel that george zimmerman should not have followed trayvon martin and he would be alive today. even if george zimmerman feels he is right, at this point, even his own former attorneys are saying he should probably just go away for a while and sit down and be quiet. that is my feeling. i cannot believe that he went back to his attorneys after the justice department investigation and then asked to be put on tape so that he could talk about the investigation. perhaps he should just be quiet because he is a free man and there's a dead teenager involved. the country really doesn't want to hear from him. >> what do you think, tom fuentes? >> i agree with tom on that point. but what bothers me is when shootings of teenagers and young

black men get involved trayvon martin comes up. zimmerman does not deserve to be put in the category of trained police officers. he shouldn't have had a gun or running around in that community. >> i agree. >> he shouldn't have been in a position to encounter trayvon martin. he should not be included in the narrative of police shootings. >> does he happen to be in a position of authority, at least what he believes. >> he's not a trained police officers. >> you're absolutely right. what is he doing nowadays? >> he says he's trying to move on with his life and, as don says this is not the way to do it. this guy is applying for a job anytime soon this doesn't really help. >> it certainly doesn't. guys thanks very much. don will be back with a whole lot more on this story and all the day's important news at 10:00 p.m. eastern on his show "cnn tonight" at 10:00 later tonight. just ahead, a revealing cnn interview with the republican senator and newly announced

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is. a crash in the french alps

that killed 150 people. human remains are strewn over a vast area of the french alps. there's a breaking story involving senator ted cruz. it may rattle his conserve difative base a day after he announced his candidacy. dana tell us what he had so say? >> reporter: ted cruz has been one of the leaders, if not the biggest on the fore front of trying to repeal obama care. he's had the luxury of making that argument in a pure way because he personal and his family haven't gotten their health care through obama care because they got it through his wife's company. she's no longer working there and things have changed. listen to this. >> you and have your family have been getting your health insurance through your wife's

job, her company has been goldman sachs. she's left that. where are you getting your health insurance now? >> she's taking an unpaid leave of absence. we'll be getting through new health insurance. we'll be on the federal exchange like millions of others. >> for right now the irony is unbelievable that you have made your name fighting against obama care and you now are going to sign up to get your insurance through that very process, obama care. >> it was the case before obama care that federal employees could get health insurance through their jobs. it's not a new development. i'll get my insurance through my job like millions of other americans. >> will you take a subsidy from your job, which is the federal government. >> we'll follow the text of the law. i strongly oppose the exemption that president obama illegally

put in place for members of congress because harry reid and the senate democrats didn't want to be under the same rules as the american people. >> that means you will follow the subsidy. >> we should follow the text of the law. >> the law you want to repeal. >> we should follow the text of every law, even laws i disagree with. >> reporter: let me explain the question about government subsidy. i was asking about the fact that many republicans have tried to kind of get around the fact they did have had to sign up for obama care and kind of try to stay politically pure by saying you know what i'm going to do this because i have to but i'm not going to take the subsidy which will be the employee contributions. he didn't answer there. later his spokeswoman told me if he does do obama care he would not take that contribution. >> how unusual is it for a republican who strongly poses

obama care the affordable care act as it's known to sign up for it. >> reporter: it's a great question and it's part of the pushback we have been get frgting from the cruz campaign. there are lots of republicans who have had to sign up for their own personal health insurance through obama care. as i said some of them decide not to take the employer contribution because they don't want to take the money from the federal government but a lot of them have had to do that. having said that others have as he had done before gone for their spouses work. others have gone just on their own outside of the exchange into the individual market and the point that the cruz campaign makes is that that is just almost prohibitive now because they insist the obama care system has ruined the individual market. it is not unusual but given ted cruz and how he made his name

and the fact he announced for purpose on the fifth anniversary of obama care is noteworthy. >> he had no other choice since his wife was taking a leave of absence from goldman sachs. the only option was to go on the federal government exchange program. if he would have gone on private health exchange it would be even expensive. >> reporter: there are other options. the cruz campaign is pushing back saying to note presumably we will go on obama care. as this story has exploded suggesting he will find an an tell alternative. there are other ways to do it but he has a wife and two small girls and they're trying to figure out how to do it. there is way to get insurance without going through obama care. it is possible.

>> all right. we'll see what happens. thanks very much. that's it for me. join us again tomorrow right here on "the situation room." you can watch us live or dvr the show so you won't miss a moment. outfront. what caused the plane with 150 people on board to fall out of sky? 45 minutes into the flight of cruising altitude the plane plunged nearly 27,000 feet for eight straight minutes. tonight a cnn exclusive, ted cruz is fight to repeal obama care. he just admitted he's signing