Malaysia turns to FBI for help in plane inquiry

Sepang, Malaysia: Malaysian authorities say some data was deleted from a flight simulator that one of the pilots of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet had built in his home, and they have turned to the FBI for help in recovering the data, in the hope that it will provide some clue to what happened to the plane.

The expansion of the U.S. role in the investigation came as governments struggled to narrow down the vast search zone for the plane, which stretches across two hemispheres, and as relatives of some of the 227 missing passengers angrily protested the Malaysian government's handling of the so-far fruitless hunt.

Investigators have said the plane's extraordinary diversion from its intended course, from northeastward across the Gulf of Thailand to westward across the Malaysian peninsula, was probably carried out by someone on the plane who had aviation experience. Attention has focused on the two pilots - Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and his junior officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27. The Malaysian police, who found that Zaharie had a flight simulator in his home, said Wednesday that some data was erased from the simulator on Feb. 3, more than a month before the ill-fated flight.

"The experts are looking at what are the logs, what has been cleared," Tan Sri Khalid Bin Abu Bakar, inspector-general of the Malaysian police, told reporters at a news conference in Sepang, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, the capital. He declined to comment further.

Because of evidence suggesting that whoever diverted the missing plane, a Boeing 777-200, knew how to disable the plane's communications systems and make course changes, the data recorded in Zaharie's flight simulator may shed light on whether he was involved, and may have rehearsed such actions before the flight. But building and using flight simulators at home is a popular hobby among aviation enthusiasts, and the deletion of data from his simulator may have been routine housekeeping with no significance.

Hishammuddin Hussein, the Malaysian defense minister and acting transportation minister, emphasized that "the passengers, the pilots and the crew remain innocent until proven otherwise."

He said authorities had received background-check information from the home countries of all the passengers on the plane except Ukraine and Russia. "So far, no information of significance on any passengers has been found," he said.

It was not clear whether the Malaysians have asked U.S. law enforcement officials for help with any other parts of their inquiry. The Malaysians have kept U.S. investigators at a distance since the plane vanished in the early hours of March 8, angering some lawmakers in Washington who believe the FBI should have been playing a larger role in the investigation from the beginning. A small team of FBI agents in Malaysia has received briefings on the investigation, but have not been asked to help with the inquiry.

Despite this, U.S. law enforcement officials and intelligence analysts in Washington checked the names of the passengers on the plane to determine whether any of them had known links to terrorists, but that yielded no connections. As part of the U.S. efforts, FBI agents interviewed family members of the passengers in the United States and Europe, and conducted link analysis - a computer-based investigative technique that tries to discern connections between individuals based on extensive government and airline databases - on the pilots and on two Iranian passengers who were traveling on stolen passports.

The 12 days since the plane, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, disappeared from air controllers' screens have been troubled by confusion that has compounded the anguish of family members waiting for news.

The frustrations felt by family members and friends of the missing Chinese passengers erupted before a briefing by Malaysian officials Wednesday in a hotel conference room in Sepang. As reporters waited for the briefing to start, several protesters who said they represented families of the passengers unfurled a banner that read: "We oppose the Malaysian government concealing the truth. Delaying time for saving lives."

"All our feelings are the same: We demand to know the truth," said Xu Dengwang, one of the protesters. "It's not about compensation, it's about the truth."

"We've waited, and waited,  and waited, and Malaysia Airlines says kind words, but the Malaysian government hasn't told us anything," said Xu, a middle-aged man from Beijing who said a relative of his had been on Flight 370.

After a scuffle, the police eventually pulled down the banner and forced the protesters out of the room.

About two-thirds of the 227 passengers on the plane were Chinese citizens. Some of their family members have come to Malaysia, hoping for word that the plane has been found. Those hopes appear increasingly bleak, and the protesters said that until now they had been prevented from telling reporters about their mounting frustration with the Malaysian government's erratic response.

"We need to know the truth," said one member of the group, a middle-aged woman who declined to give her name or the name of her missing kin. "The Malaysian government is a bunch of cheats. All the governments of the world must join together to pressure the Malaysian government to give an explanation."

Hishammuddin, the government minister who has overseen the Malaysian search effort, said he would investigate the protest.

"One can only imagine the anguish they are going through," he said in an emailed statement.

While investigators grapple with the minutiae of machines and people on the missing plane, searchers are confronted with sobering limits on their reach across huge areas of sea and land. The plane's whereabouts remain little more than a matter of educated guesswork, based on satellite signals and other data gleaned by analysts.

The United States has employed its constellation of spy satellites in the search since its earliest stages, and is now using the satellites' ability to capture high-resolution images to help narrow down the search area, a senior U.S. military official said.

Officials are using imagery taken during the satellites' regular orbits, and have not yet instructed the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates the satellites, to redirect any specific satellite to focus solely on the search, the U.S. official said. The satellite imagery would be most useful in detecting any debris floating on the ocean.

"The satellites are being used, but so far they haven't found anything," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

On Monday, after consultations with the Malaysian government, the United States said it would soon withdraw a Navy destroyer, the Kidd, from the search effort and rely instead on two Navy surveillance aircraft - a P-3 Orion based for now in Kuala Lumpur, and a newer, more advanced P-8 Poseidon, based in Perth, Australia.

Designed to hunt enemy submarines, the P-3 and P-8 aircraft are equipped with sophisticated electronics and advanced sensors that would be used to try and spot any debris from a possible crash. With the search now focusing on the southern Indian Ocean west of Australia, the aircraft can hunt in that area more quickly and efficiently than a surface ship, military officials said.

The senior military official said the Malaysians were now focusing more on the southernmost of the two possible regions where the airplane could be because of a lack of evidence that it had flown over land toward the northern region.

Malaysian officials said on Monday that the southern search would be coordinated by the Australian and Indonesia governments. On Wednesday, Australian organizers said that they had narrowed down their search area by half, though it was still huge - an expanse of deep ocean the size of Italy.

John Young, general manager for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's emergency response division, said the focus had been narrowed using new data analysis of the plane's likely fuel consumption.

The new area of focus in the Australian-led part of the search covers 89,000 square nautical miles, and is roughly 1,200 nautical miles southwest of Perth, Young said, adding that nothing had been found in the areas covered so far. The searchers have a good view of the water and have been able to spot marine life, "so we know we can make sightings, but there were no results relevant to the search," Young said.

Like other officials involved in the multinational search, Young stressed the sheer difficulty of finding the plane, let alone possible survivors, more than a week and a half after the jet disappeared.

"We still have grave fears for the safety of anyone that may have managed to escape the aircraft in the southern ocean," Young said. "It remains a big area. There is a lot of work to be done yet."

(Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Michelle Innis from Sydney, Australia.)