thousands of college students kurn turned out in the gold and snow to make a human wall. this is not an obituary for the head of the westboro baptist church. he's gone, dead at the age of 80. but someone, despite himself, actually did bring out the best in meepeople, and endep being a very, very clarifying thing for all of us. that does it for us tonight. see you again tomorrow night. have a great night. paul ryan takes it to the streets and gets fact checked. it's now morning in australia and the planes are back over the water for day 15 of this search. >> lost contact with a plane bound for beijing.

>> feared to be down. contact was lost a few hours ago. >> all right, good night, the last words from the cockpit to air traffic controllers. >> it's been three days now. >> now four days in. >> five days after the plane disappeared. >> what looked like a really big breakthrough. >>'ll the release of three grainy satellite photos from china. >> they found nothing whatsoever. >> now 12 days in, 13 days. >> new and credible information has come to light. >> two pieces of debris that may be from the missing plane. >> the southwest corner of australia. >> we made no sightings. >> this could be a very time consuming, lengthy process. >> flight 3770 has now been missing for 14 days. >> time is running out to find the black boxes. >> there is a total crew numbers. >> 239 souls on board .. >> as a mother, i want closure. >> a lot of questions this morning, not a lot of answers. >> who, what, where, how. >> why. >> was there a catastrophic breakup in flight. did somebody hijack that plane? >> is there any hope this plane landed somewhere?

>> how could a plane disappear. >> this is really a race against time. >> i want to know. one way or the other, i want to know. >> good evening to you. i am ari melbur in for lawrence, o'donnell. for the first time tonight, we're learning about the conversation between the cockpit crew of malaysia flight 370 and air traffic controllers. a transcript of the last 54 minutes of communication with the jetliner was released by the british telegraph newspaper. that ended with a line from the co-pilot that has come to be viewed quite ominously, quote, all right, good night. it doesn't look like the transcript is shedding much light on the mystery, however. aviation experts tell nbc it looks quite routine. and while it's friday night here in new york and the eastern hemisphere, it's now morning on what is the 15th day of the search for flight 370. and the best leads are being pursued in that search off of australia's southwestern coast. that search, however, is not at

full capacity right now. that's because one of the best pieces of machinery in this effort, an american p-8 poseidon plane is currently grounded for its routine maintenance. you may have heard about it. it's got to kind of technology that allows for a simultaneous search both under water and on the ocean surface. in all, there are six planes in the air for saturday's mission. most of them australian. three chinese planes are set to join the search today. and two more from japan will arrive by sunday local time, also coming from malaysia. chinese officials are sending four ships to help, but those are also a few days away. the royal australian navy joins the search on the water with a ship that is called the hmas success, which is what many are hoping it will be able to achieve somehow. and the british royal marine is sending the echo. the target area is the same today. a patch of ocean about 1,500 miles off perth. the focus, what could be pieces of the plane that were initially

spotted via satellite. and it's a challenge for investigators who are relying more now on trained human spotters on the naked eye after early radar sweeps of the area found nothing. australia's prime minister is also promising the search will continue. >> it's about the most inaccessible spot that you could imagine on the face of the earth. but if there is anything down there, we will find it. we owe it to the families of those people to do that. >> for more, we have the editor in chief of airline ratings.com, an aviation editor for the west australian newspaper. greetings, jeffrey. and give us your take first op the signoff line from the cockpit, all right good night which is getting attention now in the context of the entire transcript. >> yeah, look, good evening. look, the sign off is actually technically incorrect. the international civil aviation organization is quite specific

about the protocols of discussions with air traffic control. and the pilots, whoever is manning the radio, in this case the co-pilot, the co-pilot should have signed off mh 370 contact ho chi minh center on 120 decimal 9 good night. he's supposed to acknowledge his flight number, supposed to acknowledge the instruction, whether it's to contact a new contract control scepter, where to slime and send, and then any niceties you like like good night or good day. that's not what happened. all right, good night. one wonder the, one speculates, maybe all right didn't mean all right. maybe it's a cryptic message that things weren't all right. he was under duress. who knows. but it's certainly not international protocol air traffic control pilot discussion. >> yeah, jeffrey, we're going to dive into that further with some

of the experts i have on set. one of the things i want to ask you since you're there in the region is what else can you tell us here at the beginning of day 15? what is the update on the ground and in the air, so to speak. >> sure. >> the weather is considerably better in the search area. and six aircraft, as you mentioned, are being launched. more assets are on the way. and i know the prime minister of australia, mr. tony abbott has sort of hosed down or softened slightly the expectation of finding something. they're very wary of the trauma that the relatives and the loved ones are going through, the passengers and crew onboard. but at the same time, while he may have softened the comment a little bit about what we might find, the opposite is the case as far as the assets are concerned. a lot more aircraft are coming. and on the ground, folks at the air base are confident they're

going to find something. but it may be days, it may be even weeks before they actually track down the debris if that, indeed, is what that satellite has found. >> all right, jeffrey thomas, a busy time for you and everyone out there. thanks for spending time with us in perth, appreciate it. >> back with us tonight, we have robert hager, retired news aviation correspondent and returning is a former corporate pilot. let me go right to you robert on the transcript. you know a lot about this. give us the context. >> i thought it might be important to understand, first of all, this came from the newspaper and we're taking their word for it. they believe it's an accurate transcript, but nbc doesn't know for sure. >> not independently confirmed other than the british newspaper. >> right. it's a transcript of the conversation the pilots have with the air traffic controllers. so the recording is made back at air traffic control.

it's just what was said over the airwaves. so it's not to be confused with a cockpit voice recorder which would give you the ambient sound, tell you what the pilot and co-pilot are saying to each other. this is only what they're reporting back. we're just getting the formal stuff. it is quite spare and appears for from my mind very normal. >> right. >> it doesn't tell you, in other words, if it was the cockpit voice recorder tell you if there was some scuffle in the cockpit. you wouldn't hear it on this. >> we don't have that as people think more of surveillance information which would be incredibly interesting. but let me ask you on jeffrey's sort of argument here, is that somehow suspicious? but we've been told in other contexts that there are many other official ways that you could have put out a distress signal if that was the desire of the pilots. >> yes. that's absolutely true. you're right. >> anthony? >> well, you know, this is actually a reporting or it should be a recording. because in the tower, all the transmissions are recorded and

kept for a specific period of time. so i suspect that this is an accurate transcript. now, from a pilot's perspective, and from a detective's perspective, i'm looking at this transcript and i'm watching meticulous aircraft crew procedure. from the very beginning. they're repeating the orders from atc. they're repeating it in the same exact language, what runway to take. what altitude to go to, what frequency to report to. and then suddenly that changes at the end. suddenly it goes from strict protocol to an informality that's incongruent with the rest of the transcript. >> i don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole, but under that theory, and in these kinds of investigations, you have a theory of the case. you have more than one. but under that theory, it would seem to me that if you thought the pilots were in on something, they wouldn't go casual.

they would be as strict as possible because they would be in control if the theory of the case is that then they wanted to do something nefarious. >> agreed. however, in this particular case, i don't think it was the pilots. there is nothing yet that has come out during the course of the investigation so suggest that the pilots had any affiliation with radical groups, criminal group, et cetera. any suggestion by the malaysian government that it could be the pilot has to be viewed with some suspicion. since the captain of that aircraft was a member and staunch supporter of the opposing party, which was a democratic party. the existing malaysian government has been in place for 37 years. >> from the u.s. context it would be like saying someone is in the democrat or republican party. that oassociation is not that significant. >> this is from chuck hagel's

chief spokesman. take a listen to this. >> the acting transport minister asked secretary hagel to consider providing underseas surveillance equipment to help them locate the black box and/or the whatever wreckage might be under water. >> as everyone focuses on this over the long term, how much money and how many resources does everyone put in here? and the significance of that is kirby is basically saying the obama administration and secretary hagel stand ready to help however asked. but how long in your experience will that go on? because of the import and the international interest, is there an endless supply of resources? at least from the rich countries? >> i think on a humanitarian basis and more on the help of assisting the industry to find out what happened, the u.s. is probably willing to make a pretty good investment in supplying these unmanned subs and things like that. and the commercial industry has

been good, too, about renting them out for these sorts of searches. but the whole thing is significant. it shows you what a long and laborious task it's going to be to try to search the areas with this kind of expensive equipment, unless we find the boxes before the pingers give out. >> this is a big haystack. an expensive one. >> it's an expensive one, but the families need to know, the aviation community has to know and the public demands to know. what we have here is unprecedented in aviation history with regard to the black boxes. it was two years before the black boxes were found in the air france case. so those black boxes can still be located after the 30 days. it's not as easy, but it can happen. >> all right. and that's one of the clues we have our eyes on. thank you both. appreciate it. coming up, russian president

vladimir putin has a new move in ukraine and it's an important one. and later, how the nra is actually interfering with president obama's agenda in america. an is a blank canvas. [ woman #2 ] to share a moment. [ woman #3 ] to travel the world without leaving home. [ male announcer ] whatever the reason. whatever the dish. make it delicious with swanson.

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>> yes. >> that was national security adviser susan rice just today stating the obvious that yes, the ukraine crisis is prompting a reassessment of the u.s./russian relationship. there were actual fireworks that lit up the skies in crimea and moscow in what they're calling a celebration of russian president vladimir putin sign into law that bill annexing crimea officially into russia.

but celebrations or not, the u.s. and west continue to reject this act by situation. >> the rest of the world says they reject and will never accept the annexation of crimea, this is an act in blatant violation of international laws and the sompb sovereignty and territorial area of ukraine. >> this afternoon, a spokesman said of the sanctions, we will react every time and it will not go unnoticed. but russia finally joined the 56 other countries in the organization for security and cooperation in europe in an agreement to send international monitors to ukraine. a new report in "the daily beast" suggested the annexation of crimea may just be the beginning, however, and russia may be using spies to infiltrate

eastern and southern ukraine. in the article, the daily beast writes the intelligence report suggests provocateurs would seek to pay off ukrainians to attend pro russian rally and in general fan the flames of separatism. since then, eyewitnesses say that's exactly what's happened. joining me now, a senior fellow at the atlantic council. and john schindler, former intelligence analyst and officer with the national security agency. welcome to you both. john, let me start out with you. picking up on the daily beast piece where you're quoted saying russia used this kind of operation to invade georgia, there's a precedent here. speak to that, which we would call bad news. and also put it in the context, if you will, of the international monitors, which some are calling a piece of good news.

>> first of all, it is a piece of good news. i think moscow will thwart the monitors to the extent they can get away with it. but it is good news. the bad news is moscow is using a playbook they've refined very well using intelligence operatives to create trouble, o far beyond just collecting intelligence. we have to expect this in the east and south of ukraine, too, and that's what's going on right now. the russians are very, very adept at this. this is almost a core competency for the russian intelligence services. we have to expect that. >> what you're talking about is choreography. and adrian, i want you to speak to this. you know some of the balance here. the laws of power, which is a famous book by robert green that's sort of like an art of war style book, one of the classic laws throughout the era is the idea that you should win

always through actions and never through words. and there's an element of that here obviously in the putin strategy. the records are wasting people's time or offering cold comfort. is that part of the choreography and the dance of putin or are you more optimist? >> there are russian foreign operatives in large numbers operating throughout ukraine. they're in the high numbers coordinating these rather small but sometimes very violent demonstrations of 3,000 to 5,000 people in the eastern regions. the big issue is that most of the public is not joining. putin expected a much more vigorous response. they got a somewhat better response in crimea. i believe he thought this was a

dress rehearsal not for what they would do in -- >> you say not welcoming it in mainland ukraine. >> they're nervous about the introduction of russian troops. they've seen this stuff. you know, people just want to move peacefully. and if you look at the polling data in eastern ukraine and in western ukraine, it's between 9% and southern ukraine, 9% and 13% who want to separate and join russia. so there isn't a huge base. yes, they could fament some attacks. and here the coming of the delegation is extremely important. 56 countries sending monitor, evaluating whether there are far right group the working and if there's sbimation dags. that's the same thing. he may be taking a break and looking to make some small concessions. opening the door for clarity about what's really going on. >> we should be clear. sometimes the idea of monitors are harshly criticized in the

rite wing part of american foreign policy discourse, yet we know that international monitors can have a huge role as either a pretext for invasions and we saw that in iraq and other places or as an offramp. i mean, this is a potentially significant thing. russian's ambassador to the u.n. spoke tonight to "this evening with charlie rose." we have an early excerpt. he says all the regions in ukraine including eastern and southeastern regions, which are very restive because of what they see in kiev, they should discuss a new constitution, maybe federalized ukraine. why can't it be a federation, sure, they can use the russian language, they can elect their own governors. this is our view, the russian ambassador says. this is our proposal to ukrainians and our western colleagues. the way to stabilize the capitol hill situation in ukraine. john, your thoughts?

it's perhaps a more minimalist rather than maximum approach to all of this. the games are not necessarily working the way the russians thought they would in crimea. at that point, vladimir putin, and he is the decider here, if i may quote w, he is the decider here. >> anytime you want to quote w here, you go ahead. >> i'm on the right network, got it. is it an offramp towards federalization, a finlandization of ukraine, if you will, from russia's security viewpoint or does he want to double down. in the interest of world piece we all want him to back off a bit pl the intelligence game is not going quite the way he hoped but we're also very early in this fight yet. i think there's a long game going on here.

and we're going to see how that works out and we don't know yet. >> you can't even square all of the statements coming out of the kremlin. they don't all match. >> and that's intentionally so. keep that in mind. >> we are out of time. i want to thank you for your time tonight. >> thank you. it's great to be here. >> when the senate finally reformed the filibuster, the nominees were supposed to start sailing through. why did two progressive obama picks just hit a roadblock? is that's an important debate. and paul ryan, you may have heard about this one. he made some waves with his announcement that the inner city doesn't work because men there don't want to work. that's his claim. i actually worked up a fact check for the republican budget guru. (vo) you are a business pro. maestro of project management. baron of the build-out. you need a permit...

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>> in "the spotlight" tonight, the president's agenda. after record levels of obstruction in president obama's first term, it was a big break through when the senate changed its rules to stop gop filibusters of the president's nominees. >> breaking news from the u.s. senate where msnbc has learned that democrats are poised to deploy the controversial nuclear option to change the rules of the senate and clear the way for several of president obama's judicial nominees that are currently being blocked by republicans. >> now, those are the permanent rules now.

obama's nominees can bass pass 51 votes and the republicans can't filibuster. but in early march, you may remember this, the senate voted down obama's selection to run the civil rights division at the doj. and this week, the senate basically put obama's surgeon general nominee on ice. both nominees hit turbulence because of the right wing's new strategy. instead of rely on a united gop obstruction, the effort now focuses on issues that might just peel away a few democrats. there was a smear campaign about his legal work for a convicted murderer. i should mention that's the kind of legal work that chief justice john roberts and countless lawyers in both parties have done. and for the surgeon general nominee, there was a feverish nra campaign to link and define his health advocacy to the issue of gun rights.

seven democratic senators ultimately came out against the nominee. while there are estimates 10 democrats would bail if that vote were held anytime soon. so far these democrats are fearing basically a much larger cost in voting for these presidential picks than whatever they feel in a backlash in progressives for giving in republican tactics. but that may be changing. welcome gentlemen. and doctor peterson, let me start with you. you know these issues, you know what's happened here. and much of our audience and people who care about these issues understand the kind of smear tactics that are going on. why do you think this has worked so well against a few democratic senators and is it changeable?

>> are the tactics different since the filibuster isn't in the arsenal anymore? >> the first nominee we're talking about who defended bujimal, that was an important wedge issue from the right to use against people who need the law enforcement support. law enforcement are going to not come out in favor of any candidates who support that because of the complexities around that particular issue. what we're seeing with the nra and with dr. murphy is unfortunate as well. you have a really qualified candidate. really the policy issues are confused here, right? i mean the surgeon general is not going to write policy about gun krole. they're trying to curtail any possibility with respect to a public health conversation. they're doing it very, very successfully. >> i don't know if these kinds of tactics can work when we're not in the run-up to a midterm

election and where there are not democra democra democrat vulnerable in states like louisiana and arkansas. that may not happen in an off election moment. >> that's an excellent point. i spoke to some senate staff. they said look, after november he might get through. he also lost the vote of senators up in cycle. let me read to you what rand paul said about this. mark? >> yes. >> let me read to you what rand paul said. quote in his efforts to curtail second amendment rights, dr. murphy has continually referred to guns as a public health issue

on par with heart disease and thus diminishes the role of mental health in gun violence. new ber one aren't guns dangerous from a public health perspective? and number two, doesn't talking about them as a dangerous weapon, can't that co-exist with also talking about mental health? >> well, sure. i think it can. and i think that's why the nra has a particular dog in this fight with the surgeon general nomination. you know, it fits with the broader strategy of obstruction and, you know, opposing the obama white house. but i think it's also important to recognize a surgeon general who's after newtown, the aware of gun violence as a publish shoe has fwroun. the overwhelming consensus of the american medical community. i've talked to many doctors in

the course of my reporting on gun violence, pediatrician, emergency room doctors, medical researchers, they all agree that gun violence is a significant public health issue and should be viewed through that lens. and, you know, i think if the surgeon general was going to lead the charge with that, there would be a real threat. >> let me jump in on that point, mark. it's funny. in looking at this, i saw this much more as pure politics. and them looking for something to do to gin up their base and mess with the president, which we know they like to do. but you're coming from a different policy point. you're arguing they're actually threatened by the skbritcy of this post. but the idea that from a medical legitimacy standpoint, this is a threat to the way they want this issue understood? >> that's right. i think it's both in this case. think about what c. everett coop did in the 1980s with big tobacco. it has serious influence and public awareness and moral

authority. nra is very savvy politically. they're exploiting an election year. they'll do anything to aid their allies in congress. that's part of what's going on here. but i think they see the surgeon general as a potential threat. >> dr. murphy is seeing this in energy rooms from his understanding of how mental health issues play into this. mental health, the nra is not prepared to have this kind of bat until a moment where public opinion is already against them. >> you taught me tonight. thank you both. >> coming up, we have a fact check on paul ryan and his views of what's wrong with the inner city. [ male announcer ] it's simple physics...

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>> i'm a republican. >> shale gas. scott greenberg is explaining why he's a hipster republican or something. he's part of the gop's latest outreach attempt at young people. comedian john oliver hasn't even launched his new show yet. he's "the daily show" guy. he's got a new thing coming up called "last week tonight." but he's already released a satirical interpretation of that rnc ad. >> i don't like it when people tell me what to do. you should buy health care or don't carry a concealed weapon into that park or that leather jacket is too small for you. standard deductions are boom shakalaka. when it comes to energy policy for this country, i'm for everything, solar, wind, shale gas, oil, panda blood, the elderly, bones of first generation immigrants. what else? i'm a republican because e'm

under the impression that lower cost for energy companies will result in savings being passed on to the consumers, which is cray-cray. >> you can get the votes if you use the slang. that's all you have to do. >> a message to paul ryan -- try visiting a real inner city. that's next.

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>> we have got this tail spin of culture in our inner cities in particular of men not working and generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work. and so there's a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with. >> no. that is factually incorrect. before we get to the fact check though let's go to wisconsin where this wednesday, some of ryan's constituents aren't having it. >> the next day you said that statement was inarticulate. i don't believe that. you said what you meant. fine. the bottom line is this, this statement is not true. i'm going to point out to you why it's not true. there are people in the inner city who are white, hispanic, who are armenians, danish, all types. >> that's exactly right. >> and everybody worked.

you got here in a car or a truck or something. somebody from the inner city helped make that. >> that's right. >> their conversation continued for about seven minutes. and while ryan tried to be respectful throughout, he didn't retract his basic argument. and his argument is false in three key ways. first, ryan's asserting that inner city men don't even try to work. and that makes this an epidemic. so let's look at employment in our cities. the labor department counts 49 urban areas oof over a million people. half of those cities have unemployment below the national average of 6.5%. another 14 are within one point of national average. in fact, only six of those cities are over two points higher, riverside, providence, las vegas, cleveland and chicago. in other words, most of our cities have unemployment at or near the national average. you might want to know that before building an argument around the idea that an entire geographic population has given up on work.

second, ryan repeats a smear against the poor and underemployed that's so common on the right he may not even realize that he was doing it at the time. he said they don't want to work. they don't even think about it. this is the idea that your attitude determines whether you're employed. there's a certain independent spirit to that argument. it characterizes the ayn rand fiction that paul ryan writes into so many of his proposal ps .but it's mickically false. the main driver is national economy and business cycle. that's true whether you live in the inner city or a suburb or an exurb or a farm or a houseboat. take a look at this, for example. you can see from this chart from the state government website although there are obvious differences between the unemployment rate and a handful of states that have different makeups and between the national unemployment rate, they all dropped and they all rose around the same time when the recession hit unemployment rose in all of

these places. and when the economy improved, they all improved. a local federal reserve bank recently made the same point in a report. the recession has sharply eliminated jobs and people are working less in places where more jobs were lost. meaning, the general trend of the recession is the driver of labor participation not, you know, whether people are thinking about work. and then there is ryan's third and final error. when he got around to offering a solution in that interview. >> if you're driving from a suburb to the sports arena downtown by these blighted neighborhoods, you can't just say i'm paying my taxes, government is going to fix that. you need to get involved yourself, whether through a good mentor program or some religious charity, whatever it is to make a difference. >> yes, when you drive to the sports arena, don't forget to stop the car and mentor people. it is a perfectly fine

volunteering activity, of course. everyone from jfk to president obama has heralded all kinds of volunteering as a small and option part of public service. but it's not a national policy. no one who's serious about education policy thinks these challenges in our country are going to be addressed on an option part-time basis. and again for our fact check, the numbers bear that out, as the mentor national partnership found among at-risk youth, 35 pfs say they never had an adult mentor of any kind while they were growing up. of any kind, let alone a consistent mentor that could provide guidance through the years. those are young people now going through life without a mentor and without the benefits of having one when they were younger. so if these kinds of appeals aren't fixing the problem, then we have to decide what else we want to do about it as a community, as a government. so that's what paul ryan got wrong. now still, i do think this could

lead to more people getting it right. ryan's blase stigma criticism of the inner city was embarrassing. it offended his constituents back home and many black leaders have spoken out, criticizing its assumptions and correlations with, of course, stereotypes long used against black americans. and it had so many factual errors, con flating individual choices with the national recession, misunderstanding the scale of how mentorship actually works, then i think mr. ryan's policy analysis may have wound up sounding like the very trait he wanted to criticize -- his analyalysis sounded lazy. but criticism of bad ideas is healthy and shaming someone for shameful ideas is necessary. mr. ryan is to his partial credit now hearing some critics ou at home and he agreed to meet with his colleagues in the black caucus about this whole debate. for more research, the mayor of

patterson new jersey just invited paul ryan to town. quote, come to patterson, congressman ryan and i'll take you around the streets of one of the poorest streets in new jersey and you can meet the families of people who work two times three jobs to put food on the table and clothes on their children. since you seem not to understand causes of inner city poverty, they will be happy to explain to you the forces which have caused our urban cores to spiral downward to the point of despair. now, we at "the lost word" reached out to ryan's office today and they said the congress, quote, appreciates the invitation. that's good. and i think we would all appreciate it if he would do a little more work before the next time he accuses people of slacking off. that's the end of our "fact check." coming up, a sneak preview of this weekend's special report on the mystery of the flight 370. straight ahead. check it out.

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plausible theories about flight 370. maybe three buttons max. plausible theories about flight 370. >> up next, some of the mor plausible theories about flight 370. >> up next, some of the mor plausible theories about flight 370. thanks! smart phones make life easier. that's why esurance is introducing video appraisal. you can use your smart phone to video chat with a claims expert. they'll assess the damage and help settle your claim faster than ever. welcome to the modern world. esurance. backed by allstate. click or call. does it end after you've expanded your business?? after your company's gone public? and the capital's been invested? or when your company's bought another? is it over after you've given back? you never stop achieving. that's why, at barclays, our ambition is to always realize yours.

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ocean. >> you can see everything and nothing. there's no sign of flight 370. >> how could an airliner with 239 people aboar just vanish? >> planes don't disappear. this is not a science fiction movie where all of a sudden it's there and it's gone. >> we have never seen anything like this. >> no, this is unpress debited. unprecedented. >> it's the longest a commercial plane has been missing in the history of aviation. >> we don't know. >> so many theories, so few answers. >> the evidence right now leads us to believe it's an intentional act. the question is by who. >> could satellite images provide key clues? >> it must be stressed that these sightings, while credible are still to be confirmed. >> as the families of passengers endure overwhelming anguish and uncertainty.

>> they cling to hope. >> i want to know. one way or the other, i want to know. >> but will we ever know what happened that night in the skies between kuala lumpur and beijing? >> we could be talking about this forever. this person, whoever took command of the airplane just flew off into aviation history. in the absence of wreckage, the number of theories explodes. could the plane have been hijacked and flown somehow undetected to an unknown location? one theory is the way this plane was able to go undetected, it flew in the shadow of another plane and so on the radar it was picked up as a moving object.

>> a pilot could pull up in the shadow of another plane and it would disguise the blip. you would only see the information from the first plane and wouldn't see thel blip from the second plane. the first plane being shadowed would see the other plane pulling up or they would pull them up -- there's cockpit equipment that shows you if another plane is in your immediate vicinity. >> if not in the air, could something or someone have interfered with the plane from the ground? >> is it possible that the plane could have somehow been hacked remotely? >> the question about being hacked has come up in the recent past. because this is a digital airplane. but the faa requires manufacturers of all the radio equipment and the aircraft to have proper shielding and interference type precautions in place. you can't have somebody hack into a system and errantly change a heading on a navigation system, work it into the electric system and start shutting down systems.

>> another theory pursued by investigators, structural or mechanical failure caused by a fire or other cataclysmic event requiring a swift response from the cockpit. perhaps even causing the pilot to make that left turn to head toward the nearest runway. >> the initial ideas that a catastrophic event had occurred in flight and resulted in disabling the crew or some other catastrophic event did not prove to be as viable because the airplane deviated so far from the flight plan track. >> after satellite imagery show what some think is debris from flight 370, search teams begin to focus on an area almost 1,500 miles off the coast of australia. >> the possible finding of this debris really would confirm some scenarios and it would discard other scenario ps .

>> it looks like this plane flew until its fuel was exhausted. and it flew, it looks like on auto pilot. was that because the pilots were incapacitated? were they dead? did somebody hijack the plane? did hijack the plane, did some in the cockpit have a psychotic episode? we don't know, but when a plane flies for seven to eight hours on autopilot, you have to believe something happened in that plane. >> that special airs sunday at 7:00 and 10:00 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc. now, it's time for "lockup." due to mature subject matter, viewer discretion is advised. i hit him in his jaw and he fell on the ground, and i got on top of him. >> the convict