The Malaysian authorities have asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation for help in recovering data that was deleted from a home flight simulator belonging to one of the pilots of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, in the hope that it will provide some clue to what happened to the plane.
The expansion of the American role in the investigation came as governments struggled to narrow down the vast search zone for the plane, which stretches across two hemispheres, and as relatives of some of the 227 missing passengers angrily protested the Malaysian government's handling of the so-far fruitless hunt.
Investigators have said the plane's extraordinary diversion from its intended course - the aircraft shifted from a northeastward path across the Gulf of Thailand to a westward one across the Malaysian peninsula, was probably carried out by someone on the plane who had aviation experience. Attention has focused on the two pilots - Capt Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and his junior officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27. The Malaysian police, who found that Zaharie had built a flight simulator in his home, said on Wednesday that some data was erased from the simulator on February 3, more than a month before the ill-fated flight.
"The experts are looking at what are the logs, what has been cleared," Khalid Abu Bakar, inspector general of the Malaysian police, told reporters at a news conference in Sepang, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, the capital. He declined to comment further.
Because of evidence suggesting that whoever diverted the missing plane, a Boeing 777-200, knew how to disable the plane's communications systems and make course changes, the data recorded in Zaharie's flight simulator may shed light on whether he was involved, and may have rehearsed actions before the flight. But building and using flight simulators at home is a popular hobby among aviation enthusiasts, and the deletion of data from his simulator may have been routine housekeeping with no significance.
Zaharie did not keep his simulator a secret: he posted a video on YouTube more than a year ago showing him sitting in front of it.
Hishammuddin Hussein, the Malaysian defence minister and acting transportation minister, emphasised that "the passengers, the pilots and the crew remain innocent until proven otherwise."
He said the authorities had received background-check information from the home countries of all the passengers on the plane except Ukraine and Russia. "So far, no information of significance on any passengers has been found," he said.
To speed its efforts, the FBI will probably make copies of the simulator's hard drive and have its contents digitally relayed back to agents and analysts in the US who specialise in retrieving deleted computer files. "Right now, it's the best chance we have of finding something," said a senior law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation. Unless the pilot used extremely sophisticated technology to erase files, the FBI is likely to be able to retrieve them.
It was not clear whether the Malaysians have asked American law enforcement officials for help with any other parts of their inquiry. The Malaysians have kept American investigators at a distance since the plane vanished in the early hours of March 8, angering some lawmakers in Washington who believe the FBI should have been playing a larger role in the investigation from the beginning. A small team of FBI agents in Malaysia has received briefings on the investigation, but have not been asked to help with the inquiry.
Despite this, American law enforcement officials and intelligence analysts in Washington checked the names of the passengers on the plane to determine whether any of them had known links to terrorists, but that yielded no connections. As part of the American efforts, FBI agents interviewed family members of the passengers in the US and Europe, and conducted link analysis - a computer-based investigative technique that tries to discern connections between individuals based on extensive government and airline databases - on the pilots and on two Iranian passengers who were travelling on stolen passports.
The 12 days since the plane, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, disappeared from air controllers' screens have been troubled by confusion that has compounded the anguish of family members waiting for news.
The frustrations felt by family members and friends of the missing Chinese passengers erupted before a briefing by Malaysian officials Wednesday in a hotel conference room in Sepang. As reporters waited for the news conference to start, several protesters who said they represented families of the passengers unfurled a banner that read: "We oppose the Malaysian government concealing the truth. Delaying time for saving lives."
"All our feelings are the same: we demand to know the truth," said Xu Dengwang, one of the protesters. "It's not about compensation, it's about the truth."
"We've waited, and waited, and waited, and Malaysia Airlines says kind words, but the Malaysian government hasn't told us anything," said Mr. Xu, a middle-aged man from Beijing who said a relative of his had been on Flight 370.
After a scuffle, the police eventually pulled down the banner and forced the protesters out of the room.
About two-thirds of the 227 passengers on the plane were Chinese citizens. Some of their family members have come to Malaysia, hoping for word that the plane has been found. Those hopes appear increasingly bleak, and the protesters said that until now they had been prevented from telling reporters about their mounting frustration with the Malaysian government's erratic response.
"We need to know the truth," said one member of the group, a middled-aged woman who declined to give her name or the name of her missing kin. "The Malaysian government is a bunch of cheats. All the governments of the world must join together to pressure the Malaysian government to give an explanation."
Mr. Hishammuddin, the government minister who has overseen the Malaysian search effort, said he would investigate the protest. "One can only imagine the anguish they are going through," he said in an emailed statement.
While investigators grapple with the minutiae of machines and people on the missing plane, searchers are confronted with sobering limits on their reach across huge areas of sea and land. The plane's whereabouts remain little more than a matter of educated guesswork, based on satellite signals and other data gleaned by analysts.
©2014 The New York Times News Service
