MH370: The Plane That Disappeared (2023): Season 1, Episode 2 - The Hijack - full transcript

A Malaysia Airlines plane,
with nearly 300 people on board,

has crashed in Ukraine
near the Russian border.

Flight MH17 took off from Amsterdam
just after midday local time.

It was bound for Kuala Lumpur.

I woke up one morning

and there was a Malaysian plane
splashed across the TV.

Instantly, I thought it was MH370

and then I saw MH17 and I went,

"Hold on."
"Can't be another Malaysian plane."

US intelligence has concluded
it was shot down

by a surface-to-air missile.



The odds of losing
two airplanes within a six-month period

is unprecedented.

And both 777s too.

Again it happened
to Malaysia Airlines plane.

Again it happened to my colleagues.

And...

it just so happened that this time,
they can bury their loved ones.

Because we also...

Yeah.

We also want to bury our loved ones.

I just went numb. Completely numb.

And...

I just couldn't believe it.

We kept thinking,
"There is probably some kind of plan



to destroy our credibility."

A series of actions
trying to bring us down.

Ukrainian president called
the downing of a Malaysian Airlines

passenger plane an act of terrorism.

It turned out
that it was a Russian army unit

under the command
of Russia's military intelligence.

Malaysia Airlines hadn't had a major
accident since the '90s

and now within a span of four and a half
months, they'd lost two, big 777s.

I had to wonder,

"Is this just a coincidence?"

And if there was a link
between the two of them,

the underlying truth had to be way darker

then anyone had anticipated at that point.

We don't have the answers.

This is one of the great mysteries
in aviation history.

Australia will lead
the search in the Indian Ocean

for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.

In the months that followed
the shoot-down of MH17...

As I thought about

the idea that maybe the Russians
had caused both of these events,

the search for MH370 was already underway.

Experts say the jet
going down in the Indian Ocean,

more than 1,800 kilometers

off the West Australian coast.

It's a vast area,
a huge responsibility

for Australia as they try and find
any trace of flight 370.

Tonight, there are 43 ships,

58 aircraft,

from 14 different countries,
all working together to try to find clues.

The area they're searching is far larger

than the continental United States.

We're not searching
for a needle in a haystack,

we're trying to define
where the haystack is.

The search team
still insists the debris field

is here on the ocean floor,

a location they say
satellite data points to.

The official account

was that the plane definitely went south
into the southern Indian Ocean.

Because that's where the last electronic
signals had been detected.

The Inmarsat data says
the plane went south.

I can't imagine someone I loved

lost in the southern Indian Ocean
in 4,000 meters of water.

I mean, that's just...

inconceivable.

There was 239 families
who were desperate for answers.

And...

I made a promise at that time

that I'd do everything I could,
as an individual,

to bring their loved ones home.

But it was
a very, very difficult area to search.

What you hope for is a nice,
flat, soft plane.

But there were

volcanoes, underwater mountains,

every bit as big and wide
as the Grand Canyon.

The weather at times
is appalling down there.

They measured a wave of 24 meters.

It was definitely not
for the faint-hearted.

So, we knew the chances were
it would take a long time.

This is what
a year of grieving looks like.

The relatives of the missing
have experienced denial, anger, sadness.

But with not a single trace of the plane,

acceptance is a long way off.

This is why I am here
speaking to you today.

This is why I'm here going through
this heart-wrenching episode,

talking about my feelings. It's not easy.

I think, for everyone, it had been a very
difficult year for the next of kin.

When I decided
to then address the public on that day,

I was just speaking to them as
a daughter missing her mother.

But I'm doing it because I need to know

that I've done everything
that I can for my mother.

Even if she's not here.

I think I still lived my days

thinking my mom
would walk through the door any minute.

Because we had not discovered any debris,
there was absolutely nothing.

So my daughter asked me,

"Where is Papa?"

"If Papa died,

where is his grave?"

She asked me again and again.

"Why Papa work on airplane?"

"Why didn't Papa go work somewhere else?"

"If Papa go worked somewhere else,
Papa wouldn't go missing."

A whole year

had gone past

and we were still no further ahead

than we were from March 8th.

Just seemed surreal to be
standing there still, 12 months on.

And all I had

is him

walking out that door
and kissing us goodbye.

And that was still,

a year on, all I had.

Planes go up.

Planes go down.

What planes don't do
is just vanish off the face of the earth.

I remember when it was missing
for a week and we were all incredulous.

You know, we said to one another,

"I can't believe it's been a whole week
and we still haven't found this plane."

And then, after a month,
"We still haven't found this plane."

And then a year later...

"We're still looking for this plane?"

The profundity of this mystery,

and the incompetence
of the Malaysian authorities

to answer anybody's questions

had presented a vacuum.

And there was a lot of people out there

who were claiming that they had solved it.

On social media,
conspiracy theories

about the missing plane are going viral.

The real Malaysian Airlines flight
was hijacked

and flown to Iran

in preparation for a terror attack.

Theories are bouncing off the walls.
Everyone's got an idea.

Fire from lithium batteries
in the cargo hold brought the plane down.

Speculation is rife.

News has broke that
a fisherman from Indonesia

claims he saw the damaged plane
covered in smoke as it flew overhead.

Another conspiracy,

an outrageous insurance scam.

Some of these people
showed up outside my office,

would chase me down in a car park.

It was quite scary. I remember
spraining an ankle once trying to escape

one of these people who really just wanted
to bring their theory to me.

Four days after
flight disappeared,

there was a patent issued
for a new semiconductor technology.

Others wonder,
"Did it land on the US military base

known as Diego Garcia?"

We're trying
to sift through this waterfall

of misinformation and speculation...

and nonsense.

The totally bizarre.
A meteorite hitting it.

Perhaps, some suggest,
North Korea took the airplane.

Does this mean
an alien was on the plane?

And abducted everyone on board.

It gets even weirder.

Sometimes you just feel like
you're drowning in horseshit.

Because there's
just so many baseless ideas.

If you want to believe in a theory,

make sure that it concurs
with the Inmarsat data

that told the scientist how far

the plane was from the satellite.

This is the key clue of the entire mystery

and people are choosing
to just say, "Fuck it."

And yet the plane wasn't where

the data said it was supposed to be,

in the southern Indian Ocean.

That seemed to me something
that had to be grappled with.

We had to address the issue

of why wasn't the plane
where it was supposed to be?

Where had we gone wrong?

The story was so incredible.

I decided to suggest to Le Monde,

a French daily newspaper,

to revisit the story
for the one-year anniversary.

Just saying,

"Guys, this plane
has been completely missing for a year."

I'm a journalist and I've been a reporter

covering Asia-Pacific
for the last 30 years.

The fact that
there was not a single piece of debris

was the biggest issue.

There was nothing tangible, credible,

that the families could relate to.

And the captain
was made the potential villain.

I realized that
we had to start from scratch again.

And I need to have my own

understanding of who this man is.

There was a very consistent

and hostile campaign related to

his private life, his mental health.

There were also accusations
that he may have had

political motivations

to disappear MH370.

He was a fan of Anwar Ibrahim,

who was the leader
of the opposition party.

Zaharie attended Anwar's
pro-democracy rallies and meetings.

Local press are now asking,

"Did Zaharie purposely down the plane
to make a political statement?"

But he left no message, uh,

whatsoever, political,

uh, or goodbye to his family,
or any suicide note.

None at all.

And the more I looked at his life,

the less I could see a reason for him

to be angry or to be unhappy.

Hi everyone. Uh...

This is a YouTube video that I made as a

community service.

This was a man

who was doing YouTube videos to help

sealing your windows

or fixing your air conditioning.

This is the cheapest solution
that you can do.

And it's very effective.

In my opinion,
he was certainly not an extremist.

What I did was line up interviews
with members of his family.

My very first encounter

was with his older sister, Sakinab.

He's a very gentle, very caring

person.

Sakinab, when I met her,
was obviously very upset.

First, because she lost this precious
little brother that she loved so much,

but also because she had to endure

these insinuations
that he was responsible for this disaster.

Captain Zaharie is

known as one of the best pilots
at Malaysia Airlines.

And all the crews

definitely don't agree with

that kind of accusation
towards Captain Zaharie.

When the spotlight
focused on Captain Zaharie,

I took offense to that.

Because I know him personally.
I know him very well.

And he's a person
who is very professional.

There's no way he could have done this.

If there's no proof,
then you shouldn't assume

someone did that.

Especially maybe because
I'm a criminal lawyer,

and being innocent until proven guilty
is very important to me.

People say
everyone may have a darker side.

Okay. Maybe, then.

But, as far as I'm concerned,

based on all the information
I gathered and I read,

my answer is, "No."

"He's, he's not guilty."

So, it's a year on.

It seems to me increasingly problematic

that the plane has not been found,
no debris has been found.

All... The entire search effort
at this point

is based on the satellite data.

But...

ships and planes
from 12 countries had been scouring

millions of square miles of ocean
and found not so much as a seat cushion.

So the entire edifice is resting on this

rather scant set of electronic signals

and the fairly advanced mathematics
that was used to understand them,

by the Inmarsat company.

At the time, I was still working with
my colleagues in the Independent Group.

They were this kind of
amateur band of self-styled experts,

who are obsessed with data and facts.

We exchanged information,

about 18 of us, where we were working
around the clock on it.

I became very,
very involved on a daily basis,

corresponding with people
in the Independent Group.

And also people
at CNN and other news organizations.

I know it's complicated,

but what do you see
as the biggest problem?

The biggest problem is that Inmarsat
hasn't released enough detail

to allow outsiders
to confirm any of their analysis.

Really, all the faith
has been in this data.

Finally, the Malaysians
did release all of the data

gotten from the Inmarsat company.

Inside the report
was a paragraph that said,

this piece of equipment

that controlled the plane's communication
with the satellite

had been turned off
when everything else was turned off

and then it came back to life.

That, to me,
changed the entire tenor of the subject.

Because if you wanted
to abscond with an airplane,

and if you wanted to turn it off
and make it disappear from a screen...

why would you turn the system back on?

Maybe there was something really wrong

with that Inmarsat data.

Maybe it had been tampered with.

So I spent a lot of time
trying to figure out

how could you turn the box off
and back on again?

And I quickly learned that

most airline pilots
are not trained how to do it.

The airlines don't want them to do it.

So there is no
on and off switch in the cockpit.

So this is the main equipment center
of a commercial airliner.

This is where essentially all the brains
and the electronics...

The 777 uses electronics
to do everything.

All of this resides
inside the electronics bay.

Effectively, the electronic brain
of the whole plane.

...equipment racks where...

And, in there,
you can switch off this equipment.

And you can deactivate the system
by pulling those. You've got relays.

So the question is, then,
"How do you access the electronics bay?"

And this is the part
that really blew my mind.

The electronics bay
is under an unlocked hatch,

under a piece of carpet
at the front of the first-class cabin.

Effectively anybody on that plane
can pull up a carpet...

and have control of the airplane.

There's a hatch that leads to
the avionics compartment,

or the E&E bay, as we call it.

And that hatch is in between
the first class and the cockpit.

So, there is a possibility that

somebody could have got
into the avionics compartment.

And they can disable
the communication system.

Suddenly, it's not so clear
that it was the pilot after all.

It's like an Agatha Christie mystery.

Everyone in the manor house
is now a suspect.

We were starting to think,

"How can they tell us they don't know?
It's impossible."

When you follow the story closely,

you can only conclude
that none of it makes sense.

We're not being shown proof
of the radar sighting.

"We can't find the plane.
We can't find debris."

We're not being shown anything. Nothing.

We're asked to believe in pure nonsense.

Someone I knew told me,

"Mr. B would like to meet you."

This person had information.

He's someone who's very connected.

Connected to the secret services.

The first time I met him,

the first thing he told me...

"The Americans know
full well what happened."

"Because there were two American AWACS

that were monitoring the area
at the time the plane disappeared."

These AWACS are Boeing planes
with a huge radar like a mushroom on top.

And this radar basically monitors
everything underneath the Boeing.

It's like a small satellite above

the Earth that sees everything
that's happening in a 600-km radius.

Mr. B said these two planes must have

perfectly tracked the MH370,
regardless of its state at any moment.

They know where it crashed.
They know where it is.

It's difficult
when you receive information

saying the Americans are involved.

I know that if I say it,
people won't believe me.

But when I understood
there was a "pact of silence,"

that we were being lied to
and that we had to do something,

I told myself, "Time to communicate."

Ghyslain Wattrelos, good morning.

You're fighting to understand
what happened...

I accepted
every single interview

to say "We're being lied to.
Journalists must join in."

It's obvious that,
given the information I've received,

there are people whose job is
to keep me away from the truth.

Until one day I thought,

"I'm not performing at work, so let's quit
and go all in on the investigation."

So that's what I did.

Good evening,
Ghyslain Wattrelos.

You have lost your wife
and your two youngest children...

We're being fed nonsense.

We can't get any information.

We have to get together
to do something ourselves.

So that's when
we started coordinating with the families.

The families... um...

from different countries gathered,

which was very important.

In doing so, we could make up

for the deficiencies
of the non-transparent investigation.

Uh...

and information coming from Malaysia.

It was pretty risky.

It was an investigation.

But we were going
against more powerful forces than us.

We're here to hand a petition in
to the president

because it's been a year

and they have said nothing
and done nothing.

What we did was,
we pressed charges for "act of terrorism."

Why an "act of terrorism?"

Well, because terrorism ranks highest

on the hierarchy of judicial matters.

In France, the moment you press charges,
judges are assigned

and the judges
have to conduct an investigation.

Hello, how are you?

- Very well, and you?
- Very well.

The thing you
need to realize is that,

across the globe, there's only
one source of judicial information.

It's here.

There's a truth to uncover.
It's not a mystery.

We owe it to everyone.

Not only to Ghyslain but also to those

who didn't get that opportunity
to have investigating magistrates

in their own countries.
We owe it to everyone.

I find myself in a fight,

and this fight keeps me going.

I'm just trying to get to the truth,
for myself and everybody else.

Many times,
the name of Ghyslain Wattrelos,

the French man, the angry French man,

uh, was put out to me.

And eventually, I decided
to see for myself what he had to say.

One day,

someone from the newspaper Le Monde
contacts me and tells me,

"I'm the correspondent for Le Monde.
It would be great if we could chat."

Ghyslain told me
that he had been approached by

a senior member
of the intelligence service,

who told him that the Americans knew

exactly what had happened.

And that two US AWACS planes
were involved.

When I met this source,

I established for myself
that he was a credible,

a genuine member
of the intelligence community.

He was just one more voice

telling me that

the true story of MH370

is completely different
than the official narrative.

There were some
kind of fringe characters who were

making noises about maybe the
Americans had covered it up.

Um, but especially after
what happened to MH17,

it seemed much more likely
that the Russians were involved.

Now, originally,
thanks to the Inmarsat data,

there were these two routes,
north and south.

I started to worry about the possibility

that somebody aboard the plane,

who was sophisticated
and had malicious intent,

could have deliberately changed
the Inmarsat data,

in order to make
the plane look like it went south,

when it really went north.

It turns out

that on Boeing airplanes,

it is physically possible
to alter the data,

which allows you to determine
which of these two routes is right.

It was a eureka moment.

Because now we have
an alternate explanation

for what happened to this plane.

If the plane went north,

it would have wound up

at the final ping in Kazakhstan.

A poor country in Central Asia that is not
capable of a sophisticated hacking attack,

but which is a client state of Russia.

Now, remember that
Russia had shot down MH17,

a sister airplane of MH370.

It had been blasted out
of the sky over eastern Ukraine.

So, my prime suspect

was that the same intelligence service
was also involved in MH370.

That, in fact,
there was potentially a link

between these two
very similar aircraft accidents.

At that point,

I looked in the passenger manifest

and I saw that there were three ethnically
Russian men on board the plane that night.

When I looked at the seating diagram,

my eyebrows went up,

because one of them was sitting

about 15 feet from the unlocked hatch
into the electronics bay,

at the front of the first-class cabin.

The next question was, "Well, what would
the motive be for Russia doing this?"

Reports have surfaced
of Russian troops landing in Crimea.

Moscow has indeed gone ahead
with an armed invasion of...

MH370 happened in the context

of Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014.

The crisis in the Ukraine has escalated
and taken a new turn this morning...

Several hundred Russian troops
have landed in the Crimea region.

The networks, the newspapers,
the mainline media, everyone

is lasering in on this event.

And when MH370 happened

it had the desirable effect of
stopping anybody from talking about that.

Sir, where is the focus
of your search right now?

Can you confirm if the plane
has turned back?

You can't deny

that the disappearance of MH370

was a perfectly timed
and spectacularly convenient distraction

for Russia from the condemnation
it was facing from the rest of the world.

As crazy as it seemed, even to me,

I had to keep going

as long as this possibility existed.

So eventually, I laid it all out.

This is how I think it went down.

It's 1:15 in the morning.

Zaharie is flying over the South China Sea
in the dark of a cool, calm night.

Passengers, tired and anticipating

a boring overnight flight.

The three Russians aboard the plane

begin their operation.

Somewhere over the South China Sea,

someone's making a ruckus

near the first-class compartment.

The flight attendants
hurry to see what's going on.

As this happens,

the Russian in first class slips forward.

He lifts the carpet...

raises a hatch

into the electronics bay.

Down in the hatch,

the Russian is surrounded
by banks of computers.

He's in the nerve center
of the airplane, the electronic brain.

He plugs into the computer
of the plane's flight control system.

The plane moves closer and closer
to the edge of Malaysian airspace.

Malaysian 370
contact Ho Chi Minh, 120 decimal 9.

Good night.

Uh, good night, Malaysian 370.

The people on board the plane

still have no idea
what's happening or why.

Now the plane
is in this operational no man's land,

where nobody's looking at them.

Inside the electronics bay,

the Russian agent turns the equipment on.

The plane vanishes from
air traffic controllers' radar screens.

He now has
complete control of the aircraft.

The captain and the co-pilot are confused
as the lights blink on their display.

And none of their communications
equipment is working.

And then even more shockingly...

the plane suddenly banks
violently to the left.

The plane is in maneuver
that neither one of them has commanded.

Down in the electronics bay,

the Russian agent

has started to depressurize the airplane,

letting the air out of the cabin.

At the same time, he turns a knob
on an oxygen bottle stowed on the wall,

which cut off the emergency oxygen systems
that the pilot and the co-pilot rely on.

In the cabin,

the masks fall down from the ceiling.

The flight crew
suddenly realizes that they can't breathe.

In the minutes that follow,

the captain and co-pilot
lose consciousness.

And the cabin falls quiet.

The Russian agent in the electronics bay
has turned the plane towards the northwest

and deliberately altered
the Inmarsat data.

Now, if anyone looks at the

trail of digital breadcrumbs
that the plane's about to leave,

they'll misinterpret the signal
as meaning that the plane has gone south.

When in fact,
their plane is actually going north.

MH370 proceeds onward through the night,

receding gradually from its phantom twin.

And ultimately winding up

over the deserts of central Kazakhstan.

For the hijackers,
it's mission accomplished.

I knew that it sounded crazy.

I knew that it was far-fetched.

I knew that people would have
a hard time swallowing it,

but even though it might
torpedo my reputation,

I felt like I had to go public.

I had to bring people's attention
to the problem

that this plane possessed a vulnerability.

He thinks it's possible
Russian hijackers sent the plane north.

Do you really think it went to Kazakhstan?

Well, it's not something I believe.
It's a hypothesis that I pieced together.

I went on TV and it was scary.

I felt like my ass
was hanging out the window.

What reaction are you getting
from this theory?

It's a lot to swallow, I grant you.

Are you getting calls
from people saying this seems realistic?

In the comments sections,
a lot of people are outraged, furious.

Some people are very angry at me.

Nobody goes into the E&E bay,

reprograms the BFO, lands in Kazakhstan!

I'm intimately familiar with

how that satellite system works,
as are a number of my colleagues,

and we're absolutely certain
that the plane turned south and not north.

It was surprising that Jeff decided to

take off on this route.

I was correct in thinking that

I would get a frosty reception
from some quarters.

The Independent Group,

which had staked its reputation
on the idea that the plane went south,

did not want to brook
any opposition from me.

They kicked me out.

Jeff's work, in my opinion,

is simply a fiction that he has woven

and convinced himself is feasible.

But it's all based on fantasies.

It's not based on reality.

I knew the weaknesses of my own case.

And I knew the strengths of my own case.
But the proposition that I was making

was easy to ridicule.

You think that somebody
possibly tampered with the satellite data.

But the company
that is behind this system...

- I think it's called Inmarsat?
- That's right.

...says they haven't used
this in the past to track planes.

The idea that now it's being used
and then also tampered with

feels far-fetched to them.

The idea that someone, um, predicts

that we would analyze
this data in this way,

um, when we'd never done it
in the past before,

doesn't seem particularly credible at all.

Anyone who gets into the hatch

can disable the transponder

and disable the communication systems.

But it is impossible to fly the aircraft
from the avionics compartment.

It is impossible.

I've gone deep on this.

I know that.

I know it sounds like something
out of a Tom Clancy novel.

But the fact is,

even if there's no way that anyone

could fly a plane
from the electronics bay,

we know for a fact
that it is physically possible,

from inside of it,
to turn off all the electronics

that make the plane
visible to the outside world.

So my scenario,

as crazy as it might seem,

at least attempted to explain

the disappearance of MH370.

That all gets lost.

And I'm just lumped
with the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot.

But, the fact is, if the data was right

and it had told us where the plane went,

how come they hadn't managed
to find a single piece of it?

If your data is right,
the plane should be there.

Where is the plane?

Where is the wreckage? Show me the plane.

This is CNN breaking news.

And we are following
breaking news just in to CNN.

It is too soon to confirm right now,
but we can tell you at this point

that some debris has been found
in La Réunion...

La Réunion island
is being checked for any connection

to missing Malaysian flight 370.

The piece was found on a rocky beach on
the French territory in the Indian Ocean.

Boeing's investigators believe it is,
in fact, a piece of a wing.

Perhaps a flap from a Boeing 777...

Everyone's wondering,

"Is this a remnant of the missing
Malaysia Airlines flight 370?"

When the flaperon was found

I was not surprised.

This is exactly
what I had said would happen,

that the first piece of this plane would
be found by someone walking on the beach

somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

New developments involving
that piece of debris

discovered off eastern...

I knew immediately

I wanted to be the one to solve it.

I wanted to find the plane
wherever it was.