MH370: The Plane That Disappeared (2023) s01e03 Episode Script
The Intercept
1
- [waves crashing]
- [seabirds squawking]
[tense music playing]
[waves roaring]
[in French] And that's where I saw
the plane debris, around there.
[tense music turns ominous]
[man in French] If it's from a crash,
there are people who died.
So we immediately thought of the families.
That's when we got on the radio
and called the police.
- [waves crashing]
- [birds squawking]
[rapid beeping]
- [beeping stops]
- [sinister music playing]
[news jingle plays]
[reporter 1] Breaking news on the search
for Malaysia Airlines flight 370
[reporter 2] A piece of plane debris
has washed up
on the French Indian Ocean island
of La Réunion.
[reporter 3] But investigators believe
the debris in the images
is consistent with a Boeing 777,
the same as the missing Malaysia jet.
- [reporter 4] This seems real.
- If it's a 777 part, it's MH370.
[reporter 4] There's no doubt.
There's nothing missing.
No doubt. Also, it has indications
it's been in the water for a long time.
It's a terrible day for the families.
[ominous music playing]
I personally lived in 100% complete denial
about the plane having ended its flight
in some sort of crash.
So everything was spiraling out of control
for my for me, again, in my life.
[Ghyslain in French]
For me, the debris was the point
at which I started thinking,
"Fine, they're not coming back."
We faced something that forced us
to accept that they were here.
It's accepting
that they won't come back. That's it.
[wistful music playing]
[in English] I personally don't believe
MH370 crashed in the south Indian Ocean.
So, the first time I saw that in the news,
my honest feeling,
"Who planted it there?"
"Who brought the piece there?"
[suspenseful music playing]
[suspenseful music turns chilling]
[Piers Morgan] We don't have the answers.
This is one of the great mysteries
in aviation history.
[tense, chilling music playing]
[music turns somber]
[camera shutters clicking]
It is with a very heavy heart
that I must tell you
that an international team of experts
have conclusively confirmed
that the aircraft debris
found on Réunion Island
is indeed from MH370.
[reporter 1] It's a huge break in the
biggest aviation mystery in decades.
[Mike] It was huge news
among the people in the Independent Group.
It was the first hard evidence that
the plane went down in the Indian Ocean.
[reporter 1] The area
where they think the plane came down.
All of those white dots simulate possible
pieces of debris coming off MH370.
It was gratifying to learn that
it reinforced the theories
that we had been advocating.
[telephones ringing]
[Mark] Up to that point,
the only information available
that the plane ended up
in the southern Indian Ocean
was really the Inmarsat data.
- [radar bleeping]
- [electrical static]
Now, the debris washing up
was confirming that.
It was the first time that there was
an independent bit of evidence
that the flight had ended up
where we roughly said it had ended up.
When debris was found,
it put the lights out
on the spoof scenario,
which was my theory that the Inmarsat data
had been maliciously altered
to make it look like the plane went
one way when it actually went the other.
The plane clearly had not gone north,
because here's a piece
of the actual, physical plane.
But
as I thought about it,
I thought to myself, "Okay."
"I need to convince myself 100%
that this came from MH370."
[soft orchestral music playing]
- [traffic humming]
- [honking]
[Blaine] My love of adventure and travel
and solving mysteries
came from when I was very young.
I've always wanted to go
to every country in the world
and learn about it
and any unsolved mystery anywhere,
I wanted to be
the one to solve it and know about it.
[camera shutter clicks]
I'd been involved in a Facebook group
discussing Malaysia 370
and I wanted to know
what I could possibly do to help.
So after the flaperon was found,
I knew that more debris was out there.
[waves crashing]
I talked to oceanographers.
I said, "Well, I want to go
find more debris."
"Where should I go?"
And they said,
"There will be debris in the Mozambique
Channel on the coast of Mozambique."
"Go there, and you'll get lucky."
And that's what I did.
So I went to Vilanculos,
a town on the Mozambique Channel.
And I asked people around Vilanculos
if they'd seen any aircraft debris.
Now, I met a guy who said,
"Ah, there's a sandbank."
"And that's where all the fishermen go
to get their nets, buoys, floats."
- [waves crashing]
- [seabirds squawking]
So I went with him.
And we were walking along,
maybe about 20 or so odd minutes
into the search,
and suddenly,
I'm like, "Whoa, what's that?"
So I walk over
and it's this gray triangle
and it has "no step" written on it.
[suspenseful music playing]
And I held it in my hands.
And I'll tell you,
that was the moment that I knew
in my heart and in my mind,
that I had a piece of Malaysia 370.
[ominous music playing]
There are new developments tonight
involving that piece of debris,
discovered off Eastern Africa,
possibly belonging
to the missing
Malaysia Airlines flight 370.
Malaysian authorities reiterated today
that photographic evidence suggests
it likely came from a Boeing 777.
And we're hearing more
from the American who found it.
[Blaine] This is definitely
from an airplane.
This could be from a Boeing.
This could be from a 777.
This could possibly be
from Malaysia 370.
[camera shutters clicking]
From the pictures shown,
there is a high probability of, uh
the plane debris is from a Boeing 777.
[camera shutters clicking]
I'd been told to go to Mozambique
to look for debris.
I did and I found it.
I was also told by oceanographers
that the best place was Madagascar.
So I went there
to find more debris.
- [plane engine buzzing]
- [suspenseful music playing]
[reporter 1] Blaine Gibson has found
at least 20 pieces of wreckage.
Seven pieces are classified
as almost certainly from MH370.
Another ten are likely
or highly likely to be off the plane.
This is by far the most significant piece
that has been found.
[waves crashing]
[Jeff] Blaine Alan Gibson
had displayed an uncanny knack
for finding pieces of debris.
Something no one else
had been able to do deliberately.
He's the only person who can go out,
walk along a beach
and pull up a piece of debris.
This piece of debris,
which we believe is from Malaysia 370
Oh. Yeah, look.
Oh, my God.
[Jeff] And he is now responsible
for most of the pieces of debris
of MH370 that have been recovered.
The majority of physical evidence
about MH370
comes through the hands of one guy.
[reporter 2] He's a modern-day
Indiana Jones
who spent over two years
scouring the world on a mission
to find answers about the Malaysian plane.
[Jeff] For Blaine, it seemed easy.
And the question that I had to ask was,
"How is this possible?"
If I had been right
that MH370 was a Russian plot
that involved making it look,
falsely,
like the plane had gone
into the southern Indian Ocean
then the implication was
that the debris was part of that same plot
and was planted
by someone working for the Russians.
And it wouldn't be the first time
that Russians had planted
false aircraft debris
to mislead investigators.
Korean Airlines flight number 007
with 269 people aboard,
was on a flight from New York to Seoul
via Alaska and Tokyo.
The state department says
the plane was shot down
near the Soviet Sakhalin Island.
[Jeff] Back in 1983,
the Soviets had shot down
a Korean airliner over Japanese waters.
[reporter 3] Japanese radio monitoring
shows the Soviet jets
were controlled from the ground.
[reporter 4] It's now a race against time
for the retrieval of the black box.
[Jeff] As American and Japanese officials
were looking for the wreckage,
the Soviets planted false acoustic pingers
on the seabed to mislead their efforts.
Is it possible
that this could be something like that?
I wondered if it would be possible
to find any evidence
linking Blaine to Russia.
[soft, tense music playing]
It turned out to be incredibly easy
to find links between Russia and Blaine.
And I was able to pull
registration records
that showed he had set up this company
with two business partners
from central Russia
back in the early '90s.
He had been present
when the Soviet Union had collapsed.
He could speak Russian fluently.
So he had, at this point,
decades of links to Russia.
[sinister music playing]
[Blaine] I very much doubt
that Jeff Wise would go on Netflix
and accuse me of being a Russian spy.
He has absolutely no basis for that
and he knows
that it would be very serious defamation.
[tense music playing]
[Ghyslain in French]
The first time I heard about Blaine
was when he found his first debris.
It's a very funny story.
He gets on a boat, lands on a beach
thinking, "Maybe there's debris there."
He spends two hours on that beach,
finds debris,
and conveniently,
all the English-speaking media
are there too.
Weird, huh?
What a coincidence!
[in English] Middle of nowhere.
[in French] On a deserted beach.
That's Blaine for you.
[Blaine in English] I've been accused of
absolutely horrible things that are just
They're so ridiculous, they are laughable.
I've been accused
of being an American spy,
a Russian spy,
a Chinese spy,
an international organ trafficker,
an international sex trafficker.
I mean, you name it.
It is just patently ridiculous.
[tense music playing]
[Jeff] I really didn't have any proof
that he was connected
to Russia's military intelligence,
or planted debris.
But I wasn't the only person
to be suspicious about Blaine.
- [traffic humming]
- [horns honking]
[ominous music playing]
[traffic humming]
[Florence] Blaine Gibson
became the king of debris
on the east coast of Africa.
But I give zero credential or credibility
to what he finds. That's for sure.
When you look at
the Australian report on this debris,
they say that these pieces
are highly likely to be part of MH370.
"Highly likely" essentially means
that they have not been able
to prove that it is part of MH370.
So they can only guess that it's possible
because it looks like a piece of a plane.
- [shutter clicks]
- [suspenseful music playing]
But despite that,
the authorities had confirmed
that the flaperon was part of MH370.
This was the first piece of debris found
on the beach of Réunion Island.
And so, I was very eager
to look at it in detail.
I started digging much deeper.
And the first thing which I heard
from an inside source
within the investigation,
was that it was missing its ID plate.
- [shutters clicking]
- [ominous music playing]
A metallic part
which is either riveted or glued
with a very specific mastic,
and which is obviously
expected to sustain all kinds of pressure,
atmospheric, humidity, heat, cold.
[horns honking in background]
I discovered
that there is only one instance
where you do take off
the ID plate from a plane part,
and this is when a plane is dismantled.
- [drilling]
- [metallic clunk]
The fact that it was missing
was an enormous red flag
that should have
immediately made you think,
"Well, this must come
from a dismantled plane."
- [ominous music playing]
- [plane engine buzzing]
Once the investigators realized
that they don't have this ID plate,
they said, "Never mind,
we will find other reference numbers
that eventually will help us identify
where this debris comes from."
They say that several serial numbers
found on the flaperon
were sent to the manufacturer
to try and find records
in the archives of the plant.
I actually knew from an inside source
within the investigation
that they had sent 12 numbers,
and that out of these 12,
there was only one
serial number which was matching.
[dramatic music playing]
Only one?
When I heard that I was like, "What?"
This is not good enough
to establish beyond doubt
that this flaperon is part of MH370.
[camera shutters clicking]
But despite that,
the flaperon is confirmed, uh,
as part of MH370.
An international team of experts
have conclusively confirmed
that the aircraft debris
is indeed from MH370.
[Ghyslain in French] The connection
between the debris and the plane
If you look at what we've been told,
it's pretty thin. "It's the same type
of paint as the plane."
Or when they tell us,
"It was the only crash in the area,
so it must be the plane."
Uh [blows out]
The proof of a connection
between the debris
and the plane wasn't convincing.
[tense music builds, climaxes, then stops]
[rapid beeping]
[beeping stops]
- [waves sloshing]
- [somber music playing]
[Grace] We marked 1,000 days
since MH370 disappeared
and decided that we would make a trip
to Madagascar with Blaine.
- [camera shutters clicking]
- [indistinct]
The fact that Blaine was finding debris
there was some form of inspiration.
There are a lot of people
who don't like Blaine.
But personally,
he's always been very respectful
of the next of kin and what we need.
[Danica] I think it's completely unfair
how Blaine's been treated.
I believe his intentions are good.
And I'm quite happy if he wants to go
and keep searching for as long as he can.
So, God bless Blaine.
- [dramatic music playing]
- [water sloshing]
[Jiang in Mandarin] When we the
families went to Madagascar ourselves
to search for the debris,
I had mixed feelings.
A kind of sorrow,
anger
A kind of
fear.
And the feeling
of missing
my mother.
[in English] Jiang Hui.
Mm.
- The same place.
- Same place.
MH370 cove.
- [dramatic music playing]
- [indistinct conversation]
[Jiang speaking Mandarin]
It's the same.
[in Mandarin]
When I had the debris in my hand,
I thought,
"This was probably the thing
that was closest to my mother
in her last moments."
[man in English]
This is an interesting piece.
[Jiang] Yeah.
- [breathes deeply]
- [silence]
[water crashing, gurgling]
- [wind howling]
- [ocean roaring]
[reporter] Over the past two years,
everything's been thrown at the search
in the plane's most likely resting place,
according to satellite imaging
from the British company Inmarsat.
120,000 square kilometer area
in the southern Indian Ocean.
But nothing has been found there yet.
[Peter] The search stretched on
for a very long time.
We'd been searching for over two years.
But the longer we searched,
the more certain we became
that we would find it.
[waves crashing]
I met next of kin.
I absolutely empathized
with what they were going through.
And, you know,
I tried to reassure them that
we were doing everything we possibly could
to find the aircraft
and and bring their loved ones home.
So, we just needed to persevere.
We needed to continue.
[splashing, gurgling]
[in French] Maybe they genuinely
wanted to keep going, sure.
But
No, there was no chance
they'd ever find the plane.
No chance.
The plane's not there.
[in English] By this time,
the mystery is still unresolved.
We don't know
what happened to the plane.
It still could be the pilot.
It still could be hijackers.
What happens next is
probably the biggest gobstopper of all.
There is this explosive new report
that suggests the pilot
who flew the downed MH370 plane
flew a similar route on a home simulator
just a month before this plane went down.
[Jeff] From almost the very beginning,
we knew that the captain had
a flight simulator in his basement.
This is a YouTube video that I made.
Many airline pilots really love flying
and it's not unusual at all
that Zaharie had a flight simulator.
But if he flew
the exact same route on the simulator
that the plane
later turned out to have flown,
it's hard to imagine he could be innocent.
- [shutters clicking]
- [shouting]
[reporter 1] During the investigation,
hard drives from the home flight simulator
belonging to the pilot of MH370,
they were obtained by investigators,
given to the FBI.
The FBI then did a thorough analysis
of those hard drives
and were able to find data points.
According to this article
[Jeff] It turns out that the FBI
had known this information
ever since they'd gotten
their hands on the simulator data.
But it only surfaced in the media
two years later.
[reporter 2] The yellow line is the
presumed flight path that the plane took.
The red line is the one
that was on that simulator.
[Jeff] The simulator data points
seem to indicate
the plane followed a route
up the Malacca Strait
and then into the southern Indian Ocean
until
the fuel runs out.
[music crescendos and fades]
[reporter 3] This could be
the strongest evidence thus far.
[Mike] When that evidence came out,
that definitely raised a lot of eyebrows.
A lot of people thought
that it could be a smoking gun.
[ominous music playing]
But this wasn't quite what it seemed.
Yes, the simulated plane
flew up the Malacca Strait,
but then it seems like
the plane's location was manually changed.
He repositioned it by,
essentially, taking the cursor
and moving it on a sort of global map
down into the southern Indian Ocean.
He didn't actually fly into
the southern Indian Ocean.
He just put it
in the southern Indian Ocean,
actually hundreds of miles away
from the search area.
So, as with anything in this case,
you can see what you want to see.
[reporter 4] The pilot flew
a simulated flight that
[Mike] While I don't think taking
the simulator data by itself
proves a whole lot,
it certainly correlates pretty well
with the general facts as we know them.
And, you know, it's very odd
that you would have a simulation end
with fuel exhaustion
in the southern Indian Ocean.
[reporter 5] That simulated flight
[Mike] The simulator data
is not the whole puzzle.
It's just one piece
in the puzzle that fits.
[reporter 6] We've spoken to families
this morning about this news,
they say they are frustrated by it.
[Ghyslain in French] When the incident
happened, the pilot's flight simulator
was seized by the FBI at his home.
People need to understand that the FBI
had this information before anyone else.
Then, a few years later,
"Ah! On the pilot's flight simulator
is the same route he flew."
The FBI was up to something.
For me, once again, it's more proof
the Americans are involved.
The FBI never handed anything
either to the official inquiry in Malaysia
or to the French judges.
Not even one report.
So we'd like to know what they did.
[soft emotive music playing]
[Marie] I mean,
the FBI isn't famous for its culture
of transparency.
But in this specific case, uh
we're talking about
a request for judicial cooperation,
as part of a judicial investigation
benefitting from confidentiality.
I find it pretty scandalous
that in a case such as this one,
we witness this much bad faith
and such a silence. Really.
[emotive music playing]
[Ghyslain] I believe Malaysia was
what we call in French,
"The Stooge" in the story.
They were updated, kept quiet somehow.
So it's the Americans
leading the investigation from the outset.
It's the British
who are locating the plane, with Inmarsat.
Okay.
And it's the Australians
leading the search.
Everybody's locked out.
"Move on, nothing to see here."
Nothing.
Zero.
- [soft music playing]
- [birds chirping]
[Florence in English]
When you're a journalist,
of course you trust the authorities.
Your first instinct is not to imagine
that these people are lying to you.
But as far as I was concerned,
the problem with this official narrative
of the plane crashing
in the southern Indian Ocean
that everyone was expected to believe,
is that it had basically no proof.
First, if the official narrative
is to be believed,
MH370 flew over the airspace
of six different countries,
namely, Vietnam, Thailand,
Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore,
and eventually Australia.
Yet not a single one of these countries
have been able to produce
radar images of MH370.
[indistinct chatter]
Despite the fact that, yes,
it is Malaysia who said,
"We have seen MH370 U-turn."
[indistinct chatter]
[Ghyslain in French] So here's what
they told us after a week,
"Our military radar saw the plane
that night, fly back over Malaysia."
But we've been given no proof
that the Malaysians really saw the plane
on the radar that night.
- [reporter in English] Utter confusion.
- I don't think so.
[in French] the key elements
don't come with proof attached.
So why believe the official story
when they're withholding
essential pieces of evidence?
[reporter in English] Excuse me?
Why won't you speak to the relatives?
- [indistinct panicked shouting]
- [camera shutters clicking]
Another thing,
which I found very interesting,
was the fact
that MH370 supposedly flew over
an air base called Butterworth,
which is under Australian command.
[engine whirring]
[Florence] How can you believe
for a second
that a rogue B777
would fly over an air base
without immediately triggering
the scrambling of jets,
some kind of interception,
some kind of alert?
No, not at all.
Nothing happens.
And all of this is all the more incredible
when you realize that at that time
[explosions]
when MH370 disappears,
we had two major
military exercises going on
in the South China Sea involving the US.
[indistinct commands]
[Florence] So, in essence,
you had an incredible concentration
of military power in the region.
It's completely inconceivable
that, in this day and age,
we would lose a B777.
It's even more inconceivable
that we would lose it
in such a highly-monitored region
of the world.
[indistinct chatter over radio]
This is completely not credible.
So the only thing we can rely on
to say the plane crashed
in the southern Indian Ocean
is the handshake pings from Inmarsat.
So, the question
you ask yourself is obviously,
"Who is Inmarsat?"
Very interestingly,
they actually have a specific branch
called Inmarsat Government
providing services to the militaries
of the biggest powers in the world.
Including the US.
So, once you understand how close
Inmarsat and the US government are,
is it that hard to believe that
the data provided by Inmarsat
was actually engineered or fabricated
in order to provide a cover-up
for what truly happened to MH370?
[dramatic music playing]
In my opinion,
MH370 did not U-turn.
Whatever happened,
it happened in the South China Sea.
[dramatic music continues]
[music turns sinister]
And I was not the only one to think this.
[Cyndi] I knew what I had.
I knew that I had evidence
in the South China Sea.
The more I searched,
the more debris I found.
So, I feel certain
that this is where MH370 ended up,
was off of Vietnam.
At that point, I already had contacted
Malaysia Airlines.
I tried to reach out to so many people
to tell them that this debris exists.
Nobody was listening to me.
Florence contacted me. We discussed MH370.
She asked me what I thought,
and I told her what I had.
I told her, "We need to remember,
we have the oil rig worker
that said he saw fire
in the sky that night."
[electronic tweet]
The Cathay pilots
said they saw a large debris field.
What happened to them?
Where's that evidence?
When I talked to Florence, she said,
"I've talked to several people
and they tell me the same thing."
[Florence] This was just one more voice
telling me that there must be
a cover-up of sorts of what truly happened
in that region that night.
At that point, I really wondered,
"What could it be
that placed MH370 at the heart
of the greatest mystery
of civil aviation?"
[plane engine whirring]
[pensive music playing]
So, I looked very closely at the cargo.
What I found was very interesting.
And that was 2.5. tons of electronics
listed as walkie-talkies,
radio accessories, little things.
And this cargo had been delivered
under escort and loaded
on MH370 the very night
without having been scanned.
I thought this was very odd.
It's public knowledge that China
was very eager to acquire
highly sensitive US technology
in the field of surveillance,
stealth drone technology.
So, something like this
could be at the heart
of what happened to MH370.
Maybe the US found out that MH370
was actually carrying problematic cargo
to China at the eleventh hour
and did their utmost to stop the cargo
from arriving to its destination.
[plane engine buzzing]
That's when I remember
Ghyslain told me that
two US AWACS planes were involved.
[whimsical music playing]
But I didn't really know what to do
with it until I met someone
for a completely different conversation
related to MH370.
And this source happened to be
a former US Air Force member.
He said, "Oh, the AWACS."
"Their jamming capabilities
are phenomenal."
And I think that's
when the penny dropped for me.
[engines whirring]
Because I realized that the AWACS
had this capability to completely jam
the communication system of MH370,
making it disappear from the screens
of the traffic controllers.
[chilling music playing]
[music fades]
[soft, tense music playing]
So now I finally had
a technical explanation to how and why
MH370 suddenly disappeared.
And I tried to pull all this together
in some kind of hypothetical scenario
covering what may have happened to MH370.
[bleeping]
[rapid beeping]
[beeping slows then regulates]
[ominous music playing]
[indistinct chatter]
[Florence] So we know that, on that night,
this very mysterious
and very suspicious cargo,
without having been scanned,
and which has been delivered under escort
is loaded on MH370.
[seatbelt warning pings]
The plane takes off as planned,
41 minutes after midnight.
[engine buzzing]
[chilling music playing]
The plane reaches its cruising altitude.
[Zaharie] Malaysia 370,
maintaining level 350.
[plane engine whirring]
[Florence] Everything is
completely normal.
[indistinct chatter among passengers]
[dramatic music playing]
So at 1:19 a.m.,
MH370 is requested
to change over to the Vietnamese airspace.
[air traffic controller] Malaysian 370
contact Ho Chi Minh 120 decimal 9.
Good night.
[Florence] Captain Zaharie signs off
with his now infamous "good night."
- [Zaharie] Uh, good night, Malaysian 370.
- [radio cuts out]
[chilling music playing]
[Florence] So, MH370 enters
a no man's land
and this is the perfect moment
for an interception to take place.
[sinister music playing]
So it's possible, in that moment,
the two US AWACS moved into action
and jammed MH370
[dramatic music playing]
[music halts]
[bleeps]
making it disappear from the radar.
[tense music playing]
Now, MH370 cannot communicate.
Maybe it receives an order
from the AWACS to go and land
somewhere nearby.
[indistinct conversation over radio]
When Captain Zaharie receives the order,
it's possible that he says, "No."
He does not accept this order.
[man] One hundred degrees.
[tense music playing]
[Florence] I think he just continued
on his planned route, going to Beijing.
[tense music builds]
The tension would have
continued to increase
as Zaharie refused the orders.
Eventually, MH370 is getting close
to Chinese airspace.
So, the AWACS planes have to back off.
And, as horrible as it may seem,
they still need to stop the plane
and its precious cargo
from arriving to Beijing.
So
either through a missile strike,
or a midair collision,
MH370
met its fate.
[dramatic music builds]
[music fades]
I'm the first one to say
that it sounds incredibly far-fetched
and that it has still some loose ends.
But I believe I'm certainly much closer
to the truth than the official narrative.
The most important part of my job
has been to demonstrate
that the official narrative
was a fabrication.
[pensive music playing]
Oh, boy.
[clears throat]
I'm just reluctant to talk
about Florence or Jeff
or these conspiracy advocates.
Uh, they're just such a distraction.
I've been watching people like Florence
get tremendous publicity for her book.
All kinds of interviews.
All kinds of newspapers.
These are people
that don't really understand
the facts and the data.
[telephone ringing]
The accusations that somehow Inmarsat
fabricated or manipulated the data
are are simply wrong.
The data is the data.
I I don't understand
why anyone would think
that we would want to manipulate
or change any data associated with this.
It's not who we are
and to accuse things differently is
I find it hurtful and and
Uh, yeah, it impacts me.
[Blaine] The theory that this plane
was shot down in the South China Sea
No.
There'd be debris all over
the South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand
And that means that
the radar turning back is wrong.
That means that
the Inmarsat data is wrong.
That basically denies
all the evidence that there is.
I mean, there's no way
that you could get China,
America, Australia, England,
Malaysia, Vietnam, all together
to have a big conspiracy
to cover up what happened to the plane.
Those guys aren't friends.
[laughs]
They're going to squeal.
They're going to talk.
So, there's just no way.
It just didn't happen.
I think, unfortunately,
some people were so into their own
little theories and agendas, and so on,
that they seem to be losing objectivity.
And that's sad.
[reporter] Jeff Wise joins me now.
Thanks so much for being with us.
First of all,
do you really think it went to Kazakhstan?
At the risk of sounding flippant, um
opinions are like assholes,
everyone's got one.
Um
Cut that, please.
But it's true. [laughs]
I mean, I've heard every sort of theory,
every sort of conspiracy theory.
You know, I just find it
galling and extraordinary
that people could,
um
in the face of the evidence,
come up with some of the most bizarre
and crazy conspiracy theories.
[rapid beeping]
The search is over
for the missing Malaysian airliner
that vanished nearly three years ago.
Investigators overnight
officially suspended the effort
to find the Boeing 777
with 239 people aboard.
We need to suspend the search
until further credible evidence.
That was a huge, very heartbreaking moment
for, like, all the next of kin,
because our hopes
were largely pinned on the
the continuation of the search.
I don I felt completely shattered.
[reporter] Voice 370, a support group
for next of kin, said in a statement,
"Commercial planes cannot be allowed
to disappear without a trace."
How could such a long search
not produce any, like, result?
[seabirds squawking]
Not even Like, zero. Nothing.
[melancholic music playing]
[Peter] We felt really bad.
It was, um We'd been so involved
for such a long time.
[birds squawking]
To ultimately fail, um,
impacted on all of us.
We We grieved.
And we felt we'd let the families down.
This will never leave any of us
until such time as that aircraft is found.
And there are still 239 souls on board
who need to go home.
[rapid beeping]
[ominous music playing]
[reporter 1] Investigators released
their final report overnight
on the disappearance
of Malaysia Airlines flight 370.
[reporter 2] The investigative team says
the Boeing 777 was airworthy.
The pilot was very competent
and showed no signs of stress
or behavioral changes.
And they cannot rule out
unlawful interference by a third party.
- [man] Good evening
- [shutters clicking]
We are unable to determine
with any certainty
the reasons that the aircraft diverted
from its far flight plan route.
[dramatic music playing]
- [shutters clicking]
- [indistinct chatter]
It is so frustrating that every time
we come for a meeting like this,
nobody, nobody is able to answer
any of our questions.
The only good thing that happened
was that they stopped
accusing Captain Zaharie
of bringing down MH370.
[somber music playing]
[Ghyslain] Eventually,
even the official investigation
stopped short of accusing the pilot.
They're not saying it anymore.
The only conclusion is
that it wasn't the pilot.
It obviously wasn't the pilot.
So, the Malaysian
official investigation is over.
They don't have an answer
but they're done anyway.
That's what's good about
the French justice system.
They can't stop,
they're not allowed to stop
until they find the truth.
So that's good, and it works for us.
I don't want to stop either
until we have an answer.
If it takes ten years,
then it takes ten years.
[soft music playing]
[music turns suspenseful]
[music softens]
[Jeff in English]
What's so mania-forming about MH370
is that it's incredibly important.
We're talking about
hundreds of human lives
and the entirety
of the world air transport system.
So it really matters.
So, did MH370 drive me mad?
Yes! But it needed to drive me mad.
It's important.
And it's good that it drove me mad.
It's a reasonable assumption
that the disappearance of MH370
was an intentional act.
And part of the mystery is, "Who did it?"
As much as I'd like to know the answer,
we may never know.
And we just have to live with that.
There's another part of the mystery,
"Where is it?"
And that is a question
with a definitive, concrete answer.
Because the existence
of this plane is a tangible reality.
It is somewhere.
And everybody wants the same thing.
Everybody wants to find MH370.
[somber music playing]
[reporter] For all of these families
who've lived in this state of limbo
ever since that day,
it seems, sadly,
that that state of not knowing
is going to continue, uh,
for the foreseeable future.
[Blaine] We need to bring
the answers to the families.
We need to bring the answers
to the flying public.
We need to show
that a plane can't just disappear.
We owe them the proof.
We owe them the explanation.
We owe them that closure.
[waves lapping]
[wistful music playing]
Well, I don't know
whether I'll ever get closure but
I will try for as long as I can
to find my mother,
to find out what happened.
[somber music playing]
[Ghyslain in French] I believe
there are people out there
who know something,
who know the true story.
We're still here and waiting for answers.
We want answers.
[emotive music playing]
[Danica in English] It's hard to think
that we will get the answers
to what happened.
I promised him from day dot
that I would bring him home
and I would find him.
I haven't done that.
And until I do,
there will be no peace.
[Intan] Yeah, we're still hopeful.
We'll never leave hope behind.
We'll never ever leave hope behind,
no matter what happens.
We deserve to know the truth.
My My children deserve to know
the truth.
[plane engine buzzing into the distance]
[emotive theme music playing]
[theme music fades]
- [waves crashing]
- [seabirds squawking]
[tense music playing]
[waves roaring]
[in French] And that's where I saw
the plane debris, around there.
[tense music turns ominous]
[man in French] If it's from a crash,
there are people who died.
So we immediately thought of the families.
That's when we got on the radio
and called the police.
- [waves crashing]
- [birds squawking]
[rapid beeping]
- [beeping stops]
- [sinister music playing]
[news jingle plays]
[reporter 1] Breaking news on the search
for Malaysia Airlines flight 370
[reporter 2] A piece of plane debris
has washed up
on the French Indian Ocean island
of La Réunion.
[reporter 3] But investigators believe
the debris in the images
is consistent with a Boeing 777,
the same as the missing Malaysia jet.
- [reporter 4] This seems real.
- If it's a 777 part, it's MH370.
[reporter 4] There's no doubt.
There's nothing missing.
No doubt. Also, it has indications
it's been in the water for a long time.
It's a terrible day for the families.
[ominous music playing]
I personally lived in 100% complete denial
about the plane having ended its flight
in some sort of crash.
So everything was spiraling out of control
for my for me, again, in my life.
[Ghyslain in French]
For me, the debris was the point
at which I started thinking,
"Fine, they're not coming back."
We faced something that forced us
to accept that they were here.
It's accepting
that they won't come back. That's it.
[wistful music playing]
[in English] I personally don't believe
MH370 crashed in the south Indian Ocean.
So, the first time I saw that in the news,
my honest feeling,
"Who planted it there?"
"Who brought the piece there?"
[suspenseful music playing]
[suspenseful music turns chilling]
[Piers Morgan] We don't have the answers.
This is one of the great mysteries
in aviation history.
[tense, chilling music playing]
[music turns somber]
[camera shutters clicking]
It is with a very heavy heart
that I must tell you
that an international team of experts
have conclusively confirmed
that the aircraft debris
found on Réunion Island
is indeed from MH370.
[reporter 1] It's a huge break in the
biggest aviation mystery in decades.
[Mike] It was huge news
among the people in the Independent Group.
It was the first hard evidence that
the plane went down in the Indian Ocean.
[reporter 1] The area
where they think the plane came down.
All of those white dots simulate possible
pieces of debris coming off MH370.
It was gratifying to learn that
it reinforced the theories
that we had been advocating.
[telephones ringing]
[Mark] Up to that point,
the only information available
that the plane ended up
in the southern Indian Ocean
was really the Inmarsat data.
- [radar bleeping]
- [electrical static]
Now, the debris washing up
was confirming that.
It was the first time that there was
an independent bit of evidence
that the flight had ended up
where we roughly said it had ended up.
When debris was found,
it put the lights out
on the spoof scenario,
which was my theory that the Inmarsat data
had been maliciously altered
to make it look like the plane went
one way when it actually went the other.
The plane clearly had not gone north,
because here's a piece
of the actual, physical plane.
But
as I thought about it,
I thought to myself, "Okay."
"I need to convince myself 100%
that this came from MH370."
[soft orchestral music playing]
- [traffic humming]
- [honking]
[Blaine] My love of adventure and travel
and solving mysteries
came from when I was very young.
I've always wanted to go
to every country in the world
and learn about it
and any unsolved mystery anywhere,
I wanted to be
the one to solve it and know about it.
[camera shutter clicks]
I'd been involved in a Facebook group
discussing Malaysia 370
and I wanted to know
what I could possibly do to help.
So after the flaperon was found,
I knew that more debris was out there.
[waves crashing]
I talked to oceanographers.
I said, "Well, I want to go
find more debris."
"Where should I go?"
And they said,
"There will be debris in the Mozambique
Channel on the coast of Mozambique."
"Go there, and you'll get lucky."
And that's what I did.
So I went to Vilanculos,
a town on the Mozambique Channel.
And I asked people around Vilanculos
if they'd seen any aircraft debris.
Now, I met a guy who said,
"Ah, there's a sandbank."
"And that's where all the fishermen go
to get their nets, buoys, floats."
- [waves crashing]
- [seabirds squawking]
So I went with him.
And we were walking along,
maybe about 20 or so odd minutes
into the search,
and suddenly,
I'm like, "Whoa, what's that?"
So I walk over
and it's this gray triangle
and it has "no step" written on it.
[suspenseful music playing]
And I held it in my hands.
And I'll tell you,
that was the moment that I knew
in my heart and in my mind,
that I had a piece of Malaysia 370.
[ominous music playing]
There are new developments tonight
involving that piece of debris,
discovered off Eastern Africa,
possibly belonging
to the missing
Malaysia Airlines flight 370.
Malaysian authorities reiterated today
that photographic evidence suggests
it likely came from a Boeing 777.
And we're hearing more
from the American who found it.
[Blaine] This is definitely
from an airplane.
This could be from a Boeing.
This could be from a 777.
This could possibly be
from Malaysia 370.
[camera shutters clicking]
From the pictures shown,
there is a high probability of, uh
the plane debris is from a Boeing 777.
[camera shutters clicking]
I'd been told to go to Mozambique
to look for debris.
I did and I found it.
I was also told by oceanographers
that the best place was Madagascar.
So I went there
to find more debris.
- [plane engine buzzing]
- [suspenseful music playing]
[reporter 1] Blaine Gibson has found
at least 20 pieces of wreckage.
Seven pieces are classified
as almost certainly from MH370.
Another ten are likely
or highly likely to be off the plane.
This is by far the most significant piece
that has been found.
[waves crashing]
[Jeff] Blaine Alan Gibson
had displayed an uncanny knack
for finding pieces of debris.
Something no one else
had been able to do deliberately.
He's the only person who can go out,
walk along a beach
and pull up a piece of debris.
This piece of debris,
which we believe is from Malaysia 370
Oh. Yeah, look.
Oh, my God.
[Jeff] And he is now responsible
for most of the pieces of debris
of MH370 that have been recovered.
The majority of physical evidence
about MH370
comes through the hands of one guy.
[reporter 2] He's a modern-day
Indiana Jones
who spent over two years
scouring the world on a mission
to find answers about the Malaysian plane.
[Jeff] For Blaine, it seemed easy.
And the question that I had to ask was,
"How is this possible?"
If I had been right
that MH370 was a Russian plot
that involved making it look,
falsely,
like the plane had gone
into the southern Indian Ocean
then the implication was
that the debris was part of that same plot
and was planted
by someone working for the Russians.
And it wouldn't be the first time
that Russians had planted
false aircraft debris
to mislead investigators.
Korean Airlines flight number 007
with 269 people aboard,
was on a flight from New York to Seoul
via Alaska and Tokyo.
The state department says
the plane was shot down
near the Soviet Sakhalin Island.
[Jeff] Back in 1983,
the Soviets had shot down
a Korean airliner over Japanese waters.
[reporter 3] Japanese radio monitoring
shows the Soviet jets
were controlled from the ground.
[reporter 4] It's now a race against time
for the retrieval of the black box.
[Jeff] As American and Japanese officials
were looking for the wreckage,
the Soviets planted false acoustic pingers
on the seabed to mislead their efforts.
Is it possible
that this could be something like that?
I wondered if it would be possible
to find any evidence
linking Blaine to Russia.
[soft, tense music playing]
It turned out to be incredibly easy
to find links between Russia and Blaine.
And I was able to pull
registration records
that showed he had set up this company
with two business partners
from central Russia
back in the early '90s.
He had been present
when the Soviet Union had collapsed.
He could speak Russian fluently.
So he had, at this point,
decades of links to Russia.
[sinister music playing]
[Blaine] I very much doubt
that Jeff Wise would go on Netflix
and accuse me of being a Russian spy.
He has absolutely no basis for that
and he knows
that it would be very serious defamation.
[tense music playing]
[Ghyslain in French]
The first time I heard about Blaine
was when he found his first debris.
It's a very funny story.
He gets on a boat, lands on a beach
thinking, "Maybe there's debris there."
He spends two hours on that beach,
finds debris,
and conveniently,
all the English-speaking media
are there too.
Weird, huh?
What a coincidence!
[in English] Middle of nowhere.
[in French] On a deserted beach.
That's Blaine for you.
[Blaine in English] I've been accused of
absolutely horrible things that are just
They're so ridiculous, they are laughable.
I've been accused
of being an American spy,
a Russian spy,
a Chinese spy,
an international organ trafficker,
an international sex trafficker.
I mean, you name it.
It is just patently ridiculous.
[tense music playing]
[Jeff] I really didn't have any proof
that he was connected
to Russia's military intelligence,
or planted debris.
But I wasn't the only person
to be suspicious about Blaine.
- [traffic humming]
- [horns honking]
[ominous music playing]
[traffic humming]
[Florence] Blaine Gibson
became the king of debris
on the east coast of Africa.
But I give zero credential or credibility
to what he finds. That's for sure.
When you look at
the Australian report on this debris,
they say that these pieces
are highly likely to be part of MH370.
"Highly likely" essentially means
that they have not been able
to prove that it is part of MH370.
So they can only guess that it's possible
because it looks like a piece of a plane.
- [shutter clicks]
- [suspenseful music playing]
But despite that,
the authorities had confirmed
that the flaperon was part of MH370.
This was the first piece of debris found
on the beach of Réunion Island.
And so, I was very eager
to look at it in detail.
I started digging much deeper.
And the first thing which I heard
from an inside source
within the investigation,
was that it was missing its ID plate.
- [shutters clicking]
- [ominous music playing]
A metallic part
which is either riveted or glued
with a very specific mastic,
and which is obviously
expected to sustain all kinds of pressure,
atmospheric, humidity, heat, cold.
[horns honking in background]
I discovered
that there is only one instance
where you do take off
the ID plate from a plane part,
and this is when a plane is dismantled.
- [drilling]
- [metallic clunk]
The fact that it was missing
was an enormous red flag
that should have
immediately made you think,
"Well, this must come
from a dismantled plane."
- [ominous music playing]
- [plane engine buzzing]
Once the investigators realized
that they don't have this ID plate,
they said, "Never mind,
we will find other reference numbers
that eventually will help us identify
where this debris comes from."
They say that several serial numbers
found on the flaperon
were sent to the manufacturer
to try and find records
in the archives of the plant.
I actually knew from an inside source
within the investigation
that they had sent 12 numbers,
and that out of these 12,
there was only one
serial number which was matching.
[dramatic music playing]
Only one?
When I heard that I was like, "What?"
This is not good enough
to establish beyond doubt
that this flaperon is part of MH370.
[camera shutters clicking]
But despite that,
the flaperon is confirmed, uh,
as part of MH370.
An international team of experts
have conclusively confirmed
that the aircraft debris
is indeed from MH370.
[Ghyslain in French] The connection
between the debris and the plane
If you look at what we've been told,
it's pretty thin. "It's the same type
of paint as the plane."
Or when they tell us,
"It was the only crash in the area,
so it must be the plane."
Uh [blows out]
The proof of a connection
between the debris
and the plane wasn't convincing.
[tense music builds, climaxes, then stops]
[rapid beeping]
[beeping stops]
- [waves sloshing]
- [somber music playing]
[Grace] We marked 1,000 days
since MH370 disappeared
and decided that we would make a trip
to Madagascar with Blaine.
- [camera shutters clicking]
- [indistinct]
The fact that Blaine was finding debris
there was some form of inspiration.
There are a lot of people
who don't like Blaine.
But personally,
he's always been very respectful
of the next of kin and what we need.
[Danica] I think it's completely unfair
how Blaine's been treated.
I believe his intentions are good.
And I'm quite happy if he wants to go
and keep searching for as long as he can.
So, God bless Blaine.
- [dramatic music playing]
- [water sloshing]
[Jiang in Mandarin] When we the
families went to Madagascar ourselves
to search for the debris,
I had mixed feelings.
A kind of sorrow,
anger
A kind of
fear.
And the feeling
of missing
my mother.
[in English] Jiang Hui.
Mm.
- The same place.
- Same place.
MH370 cove.
- [dramatic music playing]
- [indistinct conversation]
[Jiang speaking Mandarin]
It's the same.
[in Mandarin]
When I had the debris in my hand,
I thought,
"This was probably the thing
that was closest to my mother
in her last moments."
[man in English]
This is an interesting piece.
[Jiang] Yeah.
- [breathes deeply]
- [silence]
[water crashing, gurgling]
- [wind howling]
- [ocean roaring]
[reporter] Over the past two years,
everything's been thrown at the search
in the plane's most likely resting place,
according to satellite imaging
from the British company Inmarsat.
120,000 square kilometer area
in the southern Indian Ocean.
But nothing has been found there yet.
[Peter] The search stretched on
for a very long time.
We'd been searching for over two years.
But the longer we searched,
the more certain we became
that we would find it.
[waves crashing]
I met next of kin.
I absolutely empathized
with what they were going through.
And, you know,
I tried to reassure them that
we were doing everything we possibly could
to find the aircraft
and and bring their loved ones home.
So, we just needed to persevere.
We needed to continue.
[splashing, gurgling]
[in French] Maybe they genuinely
wanted to keep going, sure.
But
No, there was no chance
they'd ever find the plane.
No chance.
The plane's not there.
[in English] By this time,
the mystery is still unresolved.
We don't know
what happened to the plane.
It still could be the pilot.
It still could be hijackers.
What happens next is
probably the biggest gobstopper of all.
There is this explosive new report
that suggests the pilot
who flew the downed MH370 plane
flew a similar route on a home simulator
just a month before this plane went down.
[Jeff] From almost the very beginning,
we knew that the captain had
a flight simulator in his basement.
This is a YouTube video that I made.
Many airline pilots really love flying
and it's not unusual at all
that Zaharie had a flight simulator.
But if he flew
the exact same route on the simulator
that the plane
later turned out to have flown,
it's hard to imagine he could be innocent.
- [shutters clicking]
- [shouting]
[reporter 1] During the investigation,
hard drives from the home flight simulator
belonging to the pilot of MH370,
they were obtained by investigators,
given to the FBI.
The FBI then did a thorough analysis
of those hard drives
and were able to find data points.
According to this article
[Jeff] It turns out that the FBI
had known this information
ever since they'd gotten
their hands on the simulator data.
But it only surfaced in the media
two years later.
[reporter 2] The yellow line is the
presumed flight path that the plane took.
The red line is the one
that was on that simulator.
[Jeff] The simulator data points
seem to indicate
the plane followed a route
up the Malacca Strait
and then into the southern Indian Ocean
until
the fuel runs out.
[music crescendos and fades]
[reporter 3] This could be
the strongest evidence thus far.
[Mike] When that evidence came out,
that definitely raised a lot of eyebrows.
A lot of people thought
that it could be a smoking gun.
[ominous music playing]
But this wasn't quite what it seemed.
Yes, the simulated plane
flew up the Malacca Strait,
but then it seems like
the plane's location was manually changed.
He repositioned it by,
essentially, taking the cursor
and moving it on a sort of global map
down into the southern Indian Ocean.
He didn't actually fly into
the southern Indian Ocean.
He just put it
in the southern Indian Ocean,
actually hundreds of miles away
from the search area.
So, as with anything in this case,
you can see what you want to see.
[reporter 4] The pilot flew
a simulated flight that
[Mike] While I don't think taking
the simulator data by itself
proves a whole lot,
it certainly correlates pretty well
with the general facts as we know them.
And, you know, it's very odd
that you would have a simulation end
with fuel exhaustion
in the southern Indian Ocean.
[reporter 5] That simulated flight
[Mike] The simulator data
is not the whole puzzle.
It's just one piece
in the puzzle that fits.
[reporter 6] We've spoken to families
this morning about this news,
they say they are frustrated by it.
[Ghyslain in French] When the incident
happened, the pilot's flight simulator
was seized by the FBI at his home.
People need to understand that the FBI
had this information before anyone else.
Then, a few years later,
"Ah! On the pilot's flight simulator
is the same route he flew."
The FBI was up to something.
For me, once again, it's more proof
the Americans are involved.
The FBI never handed anything
either to the official inquiry in Malaysia
or to the French judges.
Not even one report.
So we'd like to know what they did.
[soft emotive music playing]
[Marie] I mean,
the FBI isn't famous for its culture
of transparency.
But in this specific case, uh
we're talking about
a request for judicial cooperation,
as part of a judicial investigation
benefitting from confidentiality.
I find it pretty scandalous
that in a case such as this one,
we witness this much bad faith
and such a silence. Really.
[emotive music playing]
[Ghyslain] I believe Malaysia was
what we call in French,
"The Stooge" in the story.
They were updated, kept quiet somehow.
So it's the Americans
leading the investigation from the outset.
It's the British
who are locating the plane, with Inmarsat.
Okay.
And it's the Australians
leading the search.
Everybody's locked out.
"Move on, nothing to see here."
Nothing.
Zero.
- [soft music playing]
- [birds chirping]
[Florence in English]
When you're a journalist,
of course you trust the authorities.
Your first instinct is not to imagine
that these people are lying to you.
But as far as I was concerned,
the problem with this official narrative
of the plane crashing
in the southern Indian Ocean
that everyone was expected to believe,
is that it had basically no proof.
First, if the official narrative
is to be believed,
MH370 flew over the airspace
of six different countries,
namely, Vietnam, Thailand,
Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore,
and eventually Australia.
Yet not a single one of these countries
have been able to produce
radar images of MH370.
[indistinct chatter]
Despite the fact that, yes,
it is Malaysia who said,
"We have seen MH370 U-turn."
[indistinct chatter]
[Ghyslain in French] So here's what
they told us after a week,
"Our military radar saw the plane
that night, fly back over Malaysia."
But we've been given no proof
that the Malaysians really saw the plane
on the radar that night.
- [reporter in English] Utter confusion.
- I don't think so.
[in French] the key elements
don't come with proof attached.
So why believe the official story
when they're withholding
essential pieces of evidence?
[reporter in English] Excuse me?
Why won't you speak to the relatives?
- [indistinct panicked shouting]
- [camera shutters clicking]
Another thing,
which I found very interesting,
was the fact
that MH370 supposedly flew over
an air base called Butterworth,
which is under Australian command.
[engine whirring]
[Florence] How can you believe
for a second
that a rogue B777
would fly over an air base
without immediately triggering
the scrambling of jets,
some kind of interception,
some kind of alert?
No, not at all.
Nothing happens.
And all of this is all the more incredible
when you realize that at that time
[explosions]
when MH370 disappears,
we had two major
military exercises going on
in the South China Sea involving the US.
[indistinct commands]
[Florence] So, in essence,
you had an incredible concentration
of military power in the region.
It's completely inconceivable
that, in this day and age,
we would lose a B777.
It's even more inconceivable
that we would lose it
in such a highly-monitored region
of the world.
[indistinct chatter over radio]
This is completely not credible.
So the only thing we can rely on
to say the plane crashed
in the southern Indian Ocean
is the handshake pings from Inmarsat.
So, the question
you ask yourself is obviously,
"Who is Inmarsat?"
Very interestingly,
they actually have a specific branch
called Inmarsat Government
providing services to the militaries
of the biggest powers in the world.
Including the US.
So, once you understand how close
Inmarsat and the US government are,
is it that hard to believe that
the data provided by Inmarsat
was actually engineered or fabricated
in order to provide a cover-up
for what truly happened to MH370?
[dramatic music playing]
In my opinion,
MH370 did not U-turn.
Whatever happened,
it happened in the South China Sea.
[dramatic music continues]
[music turns sinister]
And I was not the only one to think this.
[Cyndi] I knew what I had.
I knew that I had evidence
in the South China Sea.
The more I searched,
the more debris I found.
So, I feel certain
that this is where MH370 ended up,
was off of Vietnam.
At that point, I already had contacted
Malaysia Airlines.
I tried to reach out to so many people
to tell them that this debris exists.
Nobody was listening to me.
Florence contacted me. We discussed MH370.
She asked me what I thought,
and I told her what I had.
I told her, "We need to remember,
we have the oil rig worker
that said he saw fire
in the sky that night."
[electronic tweet]
The Cathay pilots
said they saw a large debris field.
What happened to them?
Where's that evidence?
When I talked to Florence, she said,
"I've talked to several people
and they tell me the same thing."
[Florence] This was just one more voice
telling me that there must be
a cover-up of sorts of what truly happened
in that region that night.
At that point, I really wondered,
"What could it be
that placed MH370 at the heart
of the greatest mystery
of civil aviation?"
[plane engine whirring]
[pensive music playing]
So, I looked very closely at the cargo.
What I found was very interesting.
And that was 2.5. tons of electronics
listed as walkie-talkies,
radio accessories, little things.
And this cargo had been delivered
under escort and loaded
on MH370 the very night
without having been scanned.
I thought this was very odd.
It's public knowledge that China
was very eager to acquire
highly sensitive US technology
in the field of surveillance,
stealth drone technology.
So, something like this
could be at the heart
of what happened to MH370.
Maybe the US found out that MH370
was actually carrying problematic cargo
to China at the eleventh hour
and did their utmost to stop the cargo
from arriving to its destination.
[plane engine buzzing]
That's when I remember
Ghyslain told me that
two US AWACS planes were involved.
[whimsical music playing]
But I didn't really know what to do
with it until I met someone
for a completely different conversation
related to MH370.
And this source happened to be
a former US Air Force member.
He said, "Oh, the AWACS."
"Their jamming capabilities
are phenomenal."
And I think that's
when the penny dropped for me.
[engines whirring]
Because I realized that the AWACS
had this capability to completely jam
the communication system of MH370,
making it disappear from the screens
of the traffic controllers.
[chilling music playing]
[music fades]
[soft, tense music playing]
So now I finally had
a technical explanation to how and why
MH370 suddenly disappeared.
And I tried to pull all this together
in some kind of hypothetical scenario
covering what may have happened to MH370.
[bleeping]
[rapid beeping]
[beeping slows then regulates]
[ominous music playing]
[indistinct chatter]
[Florence] So we know that, on that night,
this very mysterious
and very suspicious cargo,
without having been scanned,
and which has been delivered under escort
is loaded on MH370.
[seatbelt warning pings]
The plane takes off as planned,
41 minutes after midnight.
[engine buzzing]
[chilling music playing]
The plane reaches its cruising altitude.
[Zaharie] Malaysia 370,
maintaining level 350.
[plane engine whirring]
[Florence] Everything is
completely normal.
[indistinct chatter among passengers]
[dramatic music playing]
So at 1:19 a.m.,
MH370 is requested
to change over to the Vietnamese airspace.
[air traffic controller] Malaysian 370
contact Ho Chi Minh 120 decimal 9.
Good night.
[Florence] Captain Zaharie signs off
with his now infamous "good night."
- [Zaharie] Uh, good night, Malaysian 370.
- [radio cuts out]
[chilling music playing]
[Florence] So, MH370 enters
a no man's land
and this is the perfect moment
for an interception to take place.
[sinister music playing]
So it's possible, in that moment,
the two US AWACS moved into action
and jammed MH370
[dramatic music playing]
[music halts]
[bleeps]
making it disappear from the radar.
[tense music playing]
Now, MH370 cannot communicate.
Maybe it receives an order
from the AWACS to go and land
somewhere nearby.
[indistinct conversation over radio]
When Captain Zaharie receives the order,
it's possible that he says, "No."
He does not accept this order.
[man] One hundred degrees.
[tense music playing]
[Florence] I think he just continued
on his planned route, going to Beijing.
[tense music builds]
The tension would have
continued to increase
as Zaharie refused the orders.
Eventually, MH370 is getting close
to Chinese airspace.
So, the AWACS planes have to back off.
And, as horrible as it may seem,
they still need to stop the plane
and its precious cargo
from arriving to Beijing.
So
either through a missile strike,
or a midair collision,
MH370
met its fate.
[dramatic music builds]
[music fades]
I'm the first one to say
that it sounds incredibly far-fetched
and that it has still some loose ends.
But I believe I'm certainly much closer
to the truth than the official narrative.
The most important part of my job
has been to demonstrate
that the official narrative
was a fabrication.
[pensive music playing]
Oh, boy.
[clears throat]
I'm just reluctant to talk
about Florence or Jeff
or these conspiracy advocates.
Uh, they're just such a distraction.
I've been watching people like Florence
get tremendous publicity for her book.
All kinds of interviews.
All kinds of newspapers.
These are people
that don't really understand
the facts and the data.
[telephone ringing]
The accusations that somehow Inmarsat
fabricated or manipulated the data
are are simply wrong.
The data is the data.
I I don't understand
why anyone would think
that we would want to manipulate
or change any data associated with this.
It's not who we are
and to accuse things differently is
I find it hurtful and and
Uh, yeah, it impacts me.
[Blaine] The theory that this plane
was shot down in the South China Sea
No.
There'd be debris all over
the South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand
And that means that
the radar turning back is wrong.
That means that
the Inmarsat data is wrong.
That basically denies
all the evidence that there is.
I mean, there's no way
that you could get China,
America, Australia, England,
Malaysia, Vietnam, all together
to have a big conspiracy
to cover up what happened to the plane.
Those guys aren't friends.
[laughs]
They're going to squeal.
They're going to talk.
So, there's just no way.
It just didn't happen.
I think, unfortunately,
some people were so into their own
little theories and agendas, and so on,
that they seem to be losing objectivity.
And that's sad.
[reporter] Jeff Wise joins me now.
Thanks so much for being with us.
First of all,
do you really think it went to Kazakhstan?
At the risk of sounding flippant, um
opinions are like assholes,
everyone's got one.
Um
Cut that, please.
But it's true. [laughs]
I mean, I've heard every sort of theory,
every sort of conspiracy theory.
You know, I just find it
galling and extraordinary
that people could,
um
in the face of the evidence,
come up with some of the most bizarre
and crazy conspiracy theories.
[rapid beeping]
The search is over
for the missing Malaysian airliner
that vanished nearly three years ago.
Investigators overnight
officially suspended the effort
to find the Boeing 777
with 239 people aboard.
We need to suspend the search
until further credible evidence.
That was a huge, very heartbreaking moment
for, like, all the next of kin,
because our hopes
were largely pinned on the
the continuation of the search.
I don I felt completely shattered.
[reporter] Voice 370, a support group
for next of kin, said in a statement,
"Commercial planes cannot be allowed
to disappear without a trace."
How could such a long search
not produce any, like, result?
[seabirds squawking]
Not even Like, zero. Nothing.
[melancholic music playing]
[Peter] We felt really bad.
It was, um We'd been so involved
for such a long time.
[birds squawking]
To ultimately fail, um,
impacted on all of us.
We We grieved.
And we felt we'd let the families down.
This will never leave any of us
until such time as that aircraft is found.
And there are still 239 souls on board
who need to go home.
[rapid beeping]
[ominous music playing]
[reporter 1] Investigators released
their final report overnight
on the disappearance
of Malaysia Airlines flight 370.
[reporter 2] The investigative team says
the Boeing 777 was airworthy.
The pilot was very competent
and showed no signs of stress
or behavioral changes.
And they cannot rule out
unlawful interference by a third party.
- [man] Good evening
- [shutters clicking]
We are unable to determine
with any certainty
the reasons that the aircraft diverted
from its far flight plan route.
[dramatic music playing]
- [shutters clicking]
- [indistinct chatter]
It is so frustrating that every time
we come for a meeting like this,
nobody, nobody is able to answer
any of our questions.
The only good thing that happened
was that they stopped
accusing Captain Zaharie
of bringing down MH370.
[somber music playing]
[Ghyslain] Eventually,
even the official investigation
stopped short of accusing the pilot.
They're not saying it anymore.
The only conclusion is
that it wasn't the pilot.
It obviously wasn't the pilot.
So, the Malaysian
official investigation is over.
They don't have an answer
but they're done anyway.
That's what's good about
the French justice system.
They can't stop,
they're not allowed to stop
until they find the truth.
So that's good, and it works for us.
I don't want to stop either
until we have an answer.
If it takes ten years,
then it takes ten years.
[soft music playing]
[music turns suspenseful]
[music softens]
[Jeff in English]
What's so mania-forming about MH370
is that it's incredibly important.
We're talking about
hundreds of human lives
and the entirety
of the world air transport system.
So it really matters.
So, did MH370 drive me mad?
Yes! But it needed to drive me mad.
It's important.
And it's good that it drove me mad.
It's a reasonable assumption
that the disappearance of MH370
was an intentional act.
And part of the mystery is, "Who did it?"
As much as I'd like to know the answer,
we may never know.
And we just have to live with that.
There's another part of the mystery,
"Where is it?"
And that is a question
with a definitive, concrete answer.
Because the existence
of this plane is a tangible reality.
It is somewhere.
And everybody wants the same thing.
Everybody wants to find MH370.
[somber music playing]
[reporter] For all of these families
who've lived in this state of limbo
ever since that day,
it seems, sadly,
that that state of not knowing
is going to continue, uh,
for the foreseeable future.
[Blaine] We need to bring
the answers to the families.
We need to bring the answers
to the flying public.
We need to show
that a plane can't just disappear.
We owe them the proof.
We owe them the explanation.
We owe them that closure.
[waves lapping]
[wistful music playing]
Well, I don't know
whether I'll ever get closure but
I will try for as long as I can
to find my mother,
to find out what happened.
[somber music playing]
[Ghyslain in French] I believe
there are people out there
who know something,
who know the true story.
We're still here and waiting for answers.
We want answers.
[emotive music playing]
[Danica in English] It's hard to think
that we will get the answers
to what happened.
I promised him from day dot
that I would bring him home
and I would find him.
I haven't done that.
And until I do,
there will be no peace.
[Intan] Yeah, we're still hopeful.
We'll never leave hope behind.
We'll never ever leave hope behind,
no matter what happens.
We deserve to know the truth.
My My children deserve to know
the truth.
[plane engine buzzing into the distance]
[emotive theme music playing]
[theme music fades]