Lack of access among hindrances for U.S. in investigating Egypt crash

Washington — The United States has spent billions over the past 14 years improving its ability to gather intelligence across the globe, much of that money intended to ensure that acts of airborne terrorism like the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, never happen again.

But since a Russian charter jet crashed in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt last week, a combination of factors have limited the ability of the United States to quickly piece together information sufficient to determine with confidence why the plane fell from the sky.

With only impressionistic intelligence from intercepted communications, no access to the crash site in the Egyptian desert and no reliable claims of responsibility for the crash, U.S. officials have been far more cautious in assessing the cause of the disaster than even their closest allies, the British.

Intelligence officials said that they had intercepted communications from militants based in Sinai before and after the crash but that the intercepts are inconclusive. In the days leading up to the crash, U.S. spies intercepted an electronic communication discussing “something big in the area” related to aviation, a senior U.S. official said on Friday. But it was a single intercept that conveyed no specific time or place — the kind of militant chatter the analysts see all the time, the official said.

Separately, officials said there were a number of intercepts after the plane crash, in which militants seem to be boasting about helping bring the plane down. But these types of conversations are typical after a major disaster and are not conclusive, the officials said, partly because militants will often claim credit with one another or to their bosses about violence in which they played little or no role.

Some in Washington also pointed out the oddities of the claims of responsibility coming from the Islamic State’s Egypt affiliate. Earlier this week, the group posted an audio message on a social media site gloating about the crash — claiming credit but giving no evidence to prove it was responsible.

“We are not forced to disclose the mechanism of our downing it,” a man’s voice said on the message. “So you “The circumstantial evidence leans toward foul play, but our people want to get it right.” may bring the wreckage of the plane and search it, and you may bring your black box and analyze it,” the man continued, challenging investigators to “prove we did not bring it down.” It was the second message from the group since the crash.

In times past, the Islamic State has made much more expansive use of social media to promote its role in terrorist attacks, often providing video to substantiate claims of responsibility.

All of this has led U.S. officials to believe that while there is certainly a strong possibility that a bomb destroyed the plane, it would be foolish to make firm declarations at this point.

“The circumstantial evidence leans toward foul play,” said Sen. Angus King of Maine, the independent who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, “but our people want to get it right.” King said that his committee received a briefing from the CIA on Thursday afternoon about the plane crash.

British officials, including Prime Minister David Cameron, have said publicly that they believe that a bomb most likely brought down the plane. President Barack Obama said that was a “possibility,” but insisted that there was still not enough information to make a firm determination.

American and British officials insist that they are all looking at the same information, and that the British are hoarding no secret intelligence to support their public claims about the Russian jet. Instead, one senior British official identified as one reason for the discrepancy in public statements the fact that Britain has much more at stake than does the United States.

With tens of thousands of British tourists in Sharm elSheikh and eight to 10 charter planes from Britain traveling there each day, any decision by Cameron’s government to cancel flights and strand vacationers was going to anger tour operators and the broader travel industry. The government, then, had to show it was canceling the flights for good reason.

The biggest limitation for both the British and Americans, however, is that they have no access to the crash site itself, where they might find explosive residue or other evidence that might be definitive about what caused the crash.

“The evidence that we’d need to say it was definitely a bomb is scattered across the desert — and we’re not there to pick it up,” said one U.S. defense official.

A senior Obama administration official said that the United States had offered technical assistance to the Egyptians to help them in the investigation, including seasoned government air-crash investigators and their equipment. The Egyptians turned it down.

“It was pretty clear that they wanted not only to control the investigation, but the information coming out of the investigation,” the official said.

It is not unheard-of for allies to spurn such help. Japan declined U.S. offers to assist in measuring and tracking radiation levels after the tsunami and nuclear disaster at Fukushima, and U.S. officials later said they believed that it was at least in part to control information about the accident and damage.

The results of the investigation will also have a significant economic impact for Egypt, given the amount of revenue generated by Westerners who flock to Sharm el-Sheikh’s tony resorts.

“Sharm el-Sheikh is the Miami Beach of Europe,” King said. “It’s going to be difficult for the Egyptians to acknowledge that it was indeed a terrorist attack.”