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The usual generic suspects have been mentioned as possibly being responsible for the plane’s disappearance: terrorists, hijackers, and suicide pilots. Considering the sophistication of the planning and execution of this operation it’s hard to imagine any terrorist organization, band of hijackers or suicidal pilot would be capable of pulling it off. And to what end? What “terror” has been wrought by the plane’s disappearance other than to those on the plane? Where are the hijackers’ ransom demands? Where is the crazy pilot’s suicide note or any other type of communication or clue about ending his life and that of hundreds of passengers in his care?

No, none of those would be capable of this plan. It was done by a highly sophisticated group with vast training, coordination and resources at its disposal. Still it would be impossible for such a group to exist, plan and execute its operations without the knowledge of the top spy agencies in the world…

…unless, of course if the organization responsible for the actions on Flight 370 was one of the top spy agencies in the world.

That brings us to the question of WHO are the top spy agencies in the world, and WHY would any of them want this plane to be taken off its course, all communications shut down, and to disappear without a trace?

In no particular order, here are the countries considered to have the most powerful, sophisticated spy agencies in the world:

US, Israel, UK, Russia, Germany, France, Australia, India, Pakistan, China.

These countries’ spy agencies are probably the only organizations capable of planning and executing such a flawless, precise, and perfect operation without detection or discovery. Now, the questions comes down to WHICH one and WHY?

Set that aside for a moment and consider how super powers, say the US for example, might protect itself from a specific type of terrorist threat – namely a suitcase nuclear devise or other WMD being flown into a major populated, strategic city and detonated, on an international flight from a country where terrorists, say Muslim extremists, are known to exist? In other words, what measures does the US take to keep a WMD from being flown in on a direct, commercial flight from a hostile country like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc., to New York or Washington DC to be detonated upon arrival?

Of course, the first line of defense would be to keep such a WMD from making it on the plane in the first place, but that can’t be the last line of defense. Security, baggage handlers, etc. in such countries can’t be blindly trusted. They could be terrorist or sympathizers themselves, and facilitate the placing of a WMD on a flight bound for the US.

No, it would be naïve to assume that countries like the US don’t have a plan in place in a case where it’s learned that a plane already off the ground has a WMD on board for the purpose of inflicting major damage at the plane’s destination.

Would they just shoot the plane down and kill a few hundred people in order to save a few million? Quite possibly, as a last resort, but that scenario has major problems, as well. The WMD might still be detonated by any terrorist(s) on board, albeit not over its intended target, but even if the WMD was never used, the other terror target would be hit with pinpoint accuracy – the econom target. Imagine the repercussions and ripples if the US shot down a commercial plane from say, Egypt, that had a suitcase nuke on it, minutes before it got to its intended target - Washington DC. Panic would still ensue because if 1WMD made it on board, how many others could there be out there? International travel would instantly come to a halt. The world’s economies would crash.

So, if you are a world superpower, what do you do to prevent from having to publicly shoot down a plane with a WMD that’s already in the air, and still keep it from making it to its intended target?

You have agents, disguised as normal citizens, on the plane with the authority and means to execute various plans to cover a variety of emergency situations, including learning of a WMD onboard.

The US has armed federal marshals on domestic flights, so it would be reasonable to assume they have equivalent international agents on international flights, especially from certain, suspect countries. In fact, it would irresponsible for the US to not have such agents on such flights.

In a scenario where US secret agents on an international flight are alerted that the plane they are on headed for Washington DC has a suitcase nuke “somewhere” on the plane, terrorist(s) with a trigger may or may not be on the plane, or it might be a bomb that can be remotely detonated, say by cell phone, what would the pre-planned operation be that the agents would execute?

First priority would be to divert the plane off its original programmed flight path and away from any other highly populated, strategic locations. Secondly, prevent the device from being detonated at all. Last, but not least, keep the entire episode from becoming known to the public.

If you combine this scenario with the aforementioned list of the world’s most powerful spy agencies, you will arrive at the most plausible theory that explains various aspects of this very mysterious Flight 370 situation.

Flight 370 was bound for Beijing - the capital of China with a population of over 21 million. It was coming from Malaysia, where Islam is the dominant religion. Malaysia has produced numerous terrorists such as Azahari Husin, Noordin Mohammed and Zulkifli Abdhir – all Islamic extremists responsible for multiple incidents. They are/were bomb-making experts and trained many in the “art”.

China has its own “war on terror”. Muslim Uighur separatists have been seeking to leave China and form a Uighur majority country since just after the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Muslim Uighurs attended extremist camps all over Afghanistan pre-2001 and there used to be several at Guantanamo Bay. They consider China to be an occupying and oppressive occupier. They have carried out terror incidents in China, and China has responded with strikes and raids. If there is any group that has a motive for attacking China it is one within the Muslim Extremist Uighur Easter Turkestan Independence Movement. In fact, one of Chinese Muslim extremist groups within that movement DID claim “credit” when the plane went missing. They are the only ones who have.

Maybe the group didn’t know all the details, but were they already aware that the plane was going to be used in some way as a weapon against China?

Somewhere in the mixture of Malaysian Muslim extremist bomb-making experts, Iranians (who are rapidly developing their nuclear abilities) traveling on stolen passports, and the Muslim extremist Chinese separatists, maybe they got a suitcase nuke or other WMD on the plane designed to destroy Beijing, its citizens and the Chinese economy.

If you are the Chinese, are you going to leave the security of 20+ million of your people and the future of your country up Malaysian airport security screeners and baggage handlers? Of course not. You are going to have highly trained Chinese agents on the plane, ready to execute a pre-planned strategy based on the threat. The Ministry of State Security (MSS) is one of the most powerful and most active Chinese intelligence agencies. Its most successful spies are agents stationed throughout the world posing as ordinary citizens.

Evidently 20 employees of Freescale Semiconductor, which develops components for hi-tech weapons systems and aircraft navigation among other things, were on board Flight 370. This Texas-based technology firm has several manufacturing sites in Kuala Lumpur and China; 12 of the employees were from Malaysia and eight were from China.

The passengers on board were engineers and other experts, said Mitch Haws, Freescale vice- president, global communications and investor relations.

"These were people with a lot of experience and technical background and they were very important people," Haws said.

Again, to think that some of these highly skilled Chinese workers or other Chinese on the plane were not spies/agents would be naïve.

Perhaps sometime after take-off of Flight 370, the Chinese secret agents on board receive word from Beijing that there is a suitcase nuke (or other WMD) on the plane, and to execute the pre-planned operation for such an event. Either through cooperation with the pilot/co-pilot or coercion, the highly skilled Chinese agents calmly and quietly enter the cockpit and take control of the situation. The passengers are unaware of anything unusual going on.

The Chinese agents re-program the plane’s flight computer to take the plane off its original destination, and put it on another pre-planned course.

This accomplishes priority #1 of taking the plane off the flight plan to Beijing.

They have the co-Pilot maintain the appearance of “normal” by telling ground control “all right, good night” and give no indication to the passengers that anything is wrong, other than maybe announce a slight alter of the flight plan to “avoid turbulence”. This is to avoid tipping off any terrorist(s) on board that their plan has been discovered and prevent a mid-air detonation of the bomb.

Without knowing who the terrorist(s) on board are (if there are any on board) and/or where the WMD is, how do you disable the terrorists and/or their ability to detonate the WMD? Any announcement of a bomb, or questioning of passengers, or a search of the plane is going to obviously alert any terrorist(s) on board that they plot has been discovered.

Taking the plane to a very high altitude accomplishes several objectives. Everyone without an oxygen mask goes unconscious and eventually dies. The agents, and possibly the pilots were the only ones with access to oxygen masks to maintain consciousness. That altitude also makes it impossible for a cell phone signal to be established were someone to try to detonate the bomb with a phone call. Once every passenger, meaning every potential terrorist, on board is dead, the plane can drop to the lowest possible altitude and continue on its new flight path to its ultimate destination to avoid radar detection. This is to keep any terror groups from knowing where the plane is, as they might try to have a “chase” plane catch the jetliner and remotely explode the bomb. This also keeps anyone else from knowing where the plane ultimately went and what ultimately happened to the plane.

This is also why they disabled all transponders and communications - so the plane couldn’t be tracked or communicated with.

So where did the plane go to? The Chinese would want it be somewhere hidden, where they alone have access to it to defuse any threats, and to destroy any evidence that there was ever any threats to avoid the panic and collapse the would result if it became public knowledge a suitcase nuke was nearly detonated over Beijing. One possible destination would be China's Taklamakan Desert. The region - described by Encyclopaedia Britannica as a "great desert of Central Asia and one of the largest sandy deserts in the world" - has no shortage of space far from prying eyes. The BBC's Jonah Fisher tweeted on 15 March: "Being briefed by Malaysia officials they believe most likely location for MH370 is on land somewhere near Chinese/Kyrgyz border." This theory rests on an extraordinary run through the radar systems of several countries, but that is exactly what the new pre-determined flight plan programmed into the computer would have been designed and capable of doing.

Huang Huikang, the Chinese Ambassador to Malaysia, said that search and rescue operations in the Chinese territories of the northern corridor had begun, Xinhua news agency reported. Mr Huang also confirmed that background checks on Chinese nationals did not uncover any evidence suggesting they were involved in hijacking or an act of terrorism against the plane. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei also told a briefing that China had deployed 20 satellites to search for the missing jetliner in Chinese territory which covers a northern corridor through which the aircraft could have flown. In other words, China is telling the world not to bother looking any deeper into the Chinese citizens on the plane and not to bother looking in China itself because they have all of that covered. How convenient.

Other than that, it is striking how quiet the government of China is being on this incident. The vast majority of the passengers on the plane were Chinese on a flight headed for China, yet the Chinese seem to be letting others take the lead in the investigation and not making demands or complaints about the “investigation”.

To complete their operation, there’s really only 1 more thing China needs to do to end the speculation of where they plane is. They need to plant some scraps of the plane far away from China, perhaps adrift in the Indian Ocean, somewhere extremely difficult to access where the water is very deep and nearly unsearchable, so it can be presumed the plane and passengers are at the bottom of the ocean, never to be found – precisely where the search is now being focused. It won’t be surprising when all of the deep water searches come up empty as the rest of the plane and the remains of the passengers were quietly and quickly destroyed at a remote location in China shortly after their disappearance.

After Australia’s announcement of the search in the aforementioned area, China's icebreaker for Antarctic research, Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, is on its way from Perth to search the area. Up to five more Chinese ships, with three ship-borne helicopters, were steaming towards the search zone from across the Indian Ocean. Australian authorities said they had not asked for the ships to search the area. Perhaps China just wants to make sure, “something” is found.

It's at the bottom of the ocean, dude.

so ok.....leading spy spooks.....now, given the recent revelations regarding NSA....who has the capability to intercept cargo manifests on a global basis, be it marine shipping or aircargo....just speculation on my part

US, Israel, UK, Russia, Germany, France, Australia, India, Pakistan, China.

These countries’ spy agencies are probably the only organizations capable of planning and executing such a flawless, precise, and perfect operation without detection or discovery. Now, the questions comes down to WHICH one and WHY?

Ah—no.

Other than one single piece of evidence — all other evidence points to the an obvious result. The plane suffered a mechanical failure of some sort. The pilots were reacting to that failure — turning the plane back to Malaysia. After programming in the waypoint, the plane systems caused the plane to rapidly change height. This asphyxiated the passengers and crew. The damaged plane continue on its last set course until it ran out of fuel and crashed in the Ocean.

The “fact” inconsistent with this is the very reliable Malaysian government’s change of the purported waypoint turn to before the last communication. We may never know — but more than likely, this will prove to be incorrect.

If the plane were hijacked, or a function of a bad actor — it seems a straight ditch into the Ocean would be appropriate. It is possible that the pilot — feeling suicidal, decided to knock out his co-pilot and than asphyxiate the passengers to spare them. Once done — he couldn’t bring himself to drive the plane into the ocean. He may have killed himself, taken poison to knock himself out, or sat there in a psychosis as the plane continued on until it ran out of fuel.

Either way — that thing is in the Indian Ocean.

I still beleive it was hijacked and then shot down by India or Malaysia . . .

Another theory seeded by parochial concerns, just what we need. What would be the theory of a, let’s say, Paraguayan peasant, I wonder?

I’m telling ya that the whole damn plane with the people inside were the only good people left on the planet and so they were all raptured away.

The tribulations and plaques begin in....5...4....3.........

I don’t buy your premise.

Nothing is clear.

The altitude changes may be quite inaccurate, according to experts in the field, so making theories based on 45,000 feet etc., is meaningless.

The statements out of Malaysia keep changing and can’t be trusted. Did the “turn around” happen before or after the last communication from the plane? That story has changed and there seems to be confusion on that point.

We don’t know much of anything.

I think this theory is better than most. I’m not entirely on board with the “act of anti-terrorism” though. My guess: state sponsored agents from Pakistan or Iran are involved and the plane will reappear on O.B.L “death day” May 2nd.

I dunno. Alot of poo pooing going on here, but this sounds at least as plausible as alot of other suppositions I have heard. Scary as hell, and possible if you ask me!

At two weeks after the fact, much remains unknown.

We have all seen the conjecture and while it is easy to get caught up in the tin foil hat theories (and some fun too), we should not get wrapped up in them.

Travis McGee reminded me of what I already knew but had forgotten in the excitement, namely Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is the most likely.

The more complicated the theory (meaning the more players required to complete) the less likely the success and the odds of someone not keeping the secret grows geometrically and it being the likely answer is inversely proportional.

Sudden Jihad Syndrome (Travis' description) by the pilots is the most likely as it requires the fewest number of actors. However, in this case the Jihadi violated the "make it public" aspect. This oversight does not discount Occam in the slightest.

(Now donning tin foil hat) Alright, now we have ventured off into the possible from the likely, and this is a new dimension where anything is possible, but Occam's Razor needs to rule here also. As I pointed out, that as the number of participants grows, the chances of failure grow geometrically. Failure being not reaching the target, to being foiled before the plan even gets into motion.

If we are to consider the the likely outcomes one has to look beyond the simply obvious. The theories of the plane being taken somewhere simply don't hold up under scrutiny. It requires too many players to keep quiet, to make their goals and the complicity of government entities, which this is an act of war, and it risks cataclysmic fallout for the regime involved in the (highly likely) event of exposure. If you think the Chinese are going to sit idly by while an act of war is perpetrated on it's citizens by another government within it's military reach, you are sadly mistaken.

While China State Security has the ability to control information it is not impervious.

The tin foil hat theory that I like the best is an attack on Diego Garcia first posited here. China, Iran, and Russia, would benefit if Diego Garcia were out of commission if even for a few months let alone Bath-House Barry deciding to close it after such an attack.

In furtherance of such an attack Diego Garcia is the the middle of the ocean, and anything approaching from the west is a thousand miles from anywhere. You have to ask...of a plane of 200 passengers what percentage of those passengers actually turn off their cell phones? If the defecation hits the rotary oscillator why did none of these passengers dial their cell phones because 43K altitude is not far enough out of range for cell service and they were not there for very long. Even if all the passengers had been asphyxiated the phones would still be pinging the towers. You have to go where there are NO CELL TOWERS....like the middle of the ocean.

Now, let us remove our tin foil hats and return to Occam's Razor. How does any of what anyone has proposed (myself included) line up with the K.I.S.S. principle detailed by Occam? It does not. It is like Dan Brown and the DaVinci Code. It makes for a great movie, but an impossible reality.

Their may have been Chinese agents aboard that plane, and their instructions would be in the event of a hijack to head out over the ocean, and descend to 5000 feet to use up the fuel ASAP since the fuel consumption is astronomical at 5K opposed to 35K. which is where the Deigo Garcia plan falls apart. Sure, Diego Garcia is closer to Kuala than Bejing by 500 miles a plane would make it there at 35K feet, not at 5K and would have run out of fuel long before it got there or anywhere near it from it's last reported location and altitude.

Replacing tin foil hat. One must consider that the sum of the parts is worth more than the whole, and the idea that the plane would be repainted and refitted with a WMD and inserted into the traffic pattern simply isn't going to work. The logistics of that requires even more co-conspirators and we are now approaching logarithmic growth of risk of exposure from geometric sticking to Occam. With respect to the sum of the parts, that is more likely but we are still approaching log style growth in the potential for failure and exposure.

Still with the tin foil hat, you shut down the electrical busses as posited by Goodfellow, kill the engines and they could be retrieved and reused later like Never, Say Never Again of James Bond fame, IFF the plane were run out of fuel and splashed at manageable depth and 14K feet of ocean isn't it.

Now that we have discussed the possible and Occam the most likely is Sudden Jihad Syndrome on impulse. Pilot or co-pilot or even the navigator who was not a Malasian Air employee.

Remember the first rule of practical joke wars. The best practical joke....is the one that never comes. The best Jihad WMD attack, is the one that never comes and the victory is the surrender of our liberties for the sake of preventing the attack that never arrives. There is your end game in a nutshell and it only takes one guy shouting Allah Akbar and pushing the yoke forward. At 700 knots vertical speed, there would be zero left to find but a few scattered bits a flotsam.

The islamo-nazis get us to surrender more of our liberty to prevent them from attacking us and they're one step closer to victory over the west. We are looking in years...they are looking in centuries and every act that advances islam even a millimeter is one less millimeter for us.

” It was done by a highly sophisticated group with vast training, coordination and resources at its disposal.”

The most diabolical, unforgiving, impossible to defeat organization that ever did or ever will exist is responsible for this tragedy. Gremlins

Even though Flight MH370's Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, was disabled just as MH370 reached the eastern coast of Malaysia, it cannot be totally disabled. ACARS uses an active communication system that “pings” plane systems to see if they have updates--even if the data-transmission system is shut off. The ACARS system on the plane will still return the ping if it still has power. Flight 370 continued to send return handshakes to those pings for more than seven hours, which means that the flight was still in the air, or on the ground with its engines running.

Now, my fine FReeper friends, if the plane flew for more than 7 hours, where is it and what is happening with it? 554.4 mph x 7.5 hours = 4,158 miles of feasible flight. Get that World Atlas out and draw an arc from where it was last picked up by radar to all land areas. Time to get those Google Earth satellite trackers working. However, I have a more insidious scenario which connects some dots:

Flight has 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board. Suppose the plane has indeed landed somewhere. If you were to connect the dots and knows something about the criminal mind, you know the plane is not just sitting on the ground and the pilots drinking up all the on-board alcohol. This is a perfect hostage situation. The criminals who have landed, I speculate, are talking to the Malaysian government and making demands. They have a Boeing 777 and passengers and crew. They are talking big ransom money and making political demands. They are making threats. One of the demands, of course, is no talking about their exchange. If the Malaysian government talks about what they know, the rest of the world would make sure a paramilitary operation would come after them. The hostage takers know that. If the Malaysian government talks, passengers die. All the talk about satellite sightings of debris is just a way to divert talk away from the real situation. And, dead passengers would mean the end of the United Malays National Organisation's (Umno) control over Malaysia. This puts the Flight 370 situation into a political context and the Malaysian Umno Party on thin ice.

The last election in May gave Umno a thin parliamentary majority, with the growing influence and the spread of the Shia sect of Islam in Malaysia. Umno has declared war on Shia Muslims, gays, lesbians, trans-sexuals, liberals and those who have insulted Islam. This has driven support away from the Umno party to rival parties PAS and PKR. Flight 370 Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was a supporter of the People’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) led by Anwar Ibrahim. Could Captain Zaharie Amad Shah be given special support by a country with pro Shia connections? You can count on it. More than 67% of the world's Shi'as live in four nations: India, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan. In Iran, 90 to 95% of the Muslim population is Shia. The distance from Malaysia to Iran is 3677.58 miles. It is my speculative conclusion that Flight 370 is not in Pakistan, as some have theorized, but in Iran.