Intel assessment: Missing flight may have been taken off course deliberately
An assessment of the disappearance of a Malaysian airliner last year suggested a person in the plane’s cockpit deliberately took it off course, CNN reported Thursday.
Officials told the network that the preliminary assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies was based on early satellite and other evidence and was not intended to be released to the public.
{mosads}The assessment does not state firmly what is believed to have happened, but it does fit within a line of thought in the intelligence community that the disappearance can be traced to a deliberate act.
Reports emerged Wednesday that officials believe they have spotted debris that matches the missing plane near France’s Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean.
Malaysian officials are reportedly sending investigators of their own to the island to confirm whether the debris is from the missing plane.
The plane was last detected by air traffic controllers about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
Officials from multiple nations have conducted a prolonged search for the plane since then, focusing first on the Gulf of Thailand and later on the southern Indian Ocean.
Satellite images of potential debris in the water that officials believed could have been related to the missing plane raised officials’ hopes — falsely — of finding the aircraft’s remnants last spring.
The plane was carrying 239 passengers and crew members at the time of its disappearance.
— Keith Laing contributed
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