RUSH: You know, folks, I’m sitting here and I’m watching CNN, and you can tell by watching, they are loving this. By the way, I think I read where Anderson Cooper has openly admitted this is the biggest story, the most intriguing, the most exciting in his career. He can’t get enough of this, the missing Malaysian airliner. Now, at some point, ladies and gentlemen, whatever happened is going to be learned, whatever happened is going to be reported. And I’m gonna repeat again, my fear is that whatever happened, whatever the explanation is, is not going to be believed by people. There have been so many cockamamie, out-of-this-world, ridiculous conspiracy theories that a relatively, comparatively simple explanation will not be believed.

I’ll give you an example. TWA Flight 800 took off from JFK. It was on the way to Paris. It was a Boeing 747. Over East Moriches it exploded. Jim Kallstrom at the time ran the New York office of the FBI. He was the lead investigator. Jim Kallstrom is a good friend of mine. I know him from work with the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. He’s one of the founders. In fact, they’ve got their big annual soiree tomorrow night at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. I’m not going ’cause I can’t hear anything in there. It’s really a shame.

The last time I went I could not hear one word. And because of the acoustics in there, I don’t know how to describe this, but I felt like I was in the middle of a concussion of air, that the PA system had something in it that just — I was feeling ill. I had to get out of there. I couldn’t hear a word so it’s a waste of time to go. I can’t talk to anybody and I end up sitting there looking like an idiot. When you can’t hear you obviously have to fake paying attention, sometimes your eyes get droopy, whatever.

But, anyway, Kallstrom is a man of complete, total integrity, unquestionably. And eventually he, the FBI, the NTSB, and there were other groups, came up with an explanation, and that was there was a fuel tank in the middle of the airplane. It was not filled because they didn’t need a full load of fuel to get to Paris. Which, by the way, raises another question about this Malaysian thing that nobody’s asking and I can’t believe it and I’ll get back to it in a minute if I remember. But while the investigation “What happened to TWA 800?” was on the way, remember all the things that people said they saw? “I saw a rocket launched from out there in the Atlantic. Yeah, there were two guys, two guys out there, suspicious looking guys in a boat. It looked like what they had was a missile. I swear I saw an explosion up there.”

Well, that’s all it took. Then the official explanation came, which was that something sparked the fumes in that empty fuel tank, causing the explosion. Nobody accepted it. To this day everybody believes that there’s a conspiracy to hide from people what really happened to TWA 800. And that’s just an example. They came up with an explanation that they swear by. They had the PowerPoint presentation, various video slides and pictures. It was kind of funny watching the coverage. Some of the news people were actually asking on air, “Wait a minute. I see a parachute, could somebody have survived? Is that somebody?”

The plane blew up at like 20,000 feet and they were watching debris fall. “Hey, look, that might be a passenger.” It’s not possible. All kinds of the strangest, weirdest things happened. So nobody believed it. To this day there are a lot of people that think it was a government cover-up, that it was a missile, that it was terrorism. Nobody’s claimed credit for terrorism. Nobody’s claimed credit for blowing up TWA 800, but that’s my point. This is gonna be even worse, because there were witnesses to that plane crash. There were witnesses in East Moriches. There were witnesses the wreckage came out of the sky and they were able to find it and put it back together. And there’s nothing here. I mean, there’s literally nothing.

Now we’ve got some people on a small island in the Maldives claiming that they saw the plane fly over their island low enough that they could read the logo on the tail. And that would prove the contention that it was flying low to escape radar coverage and, i.e., was hijacked and all of that. So the simple explanation is not gonna happen. That’s the big problem with what people like CNN are doing. I’m telling you, they are so into this, and Anderson Cooper thinking it’s the biggest, most intriguing, exciting story he’s ever covered, and others, they’re saying the same thing. When this is solved, whenever that it is, whenever there is an explanation, I’m gonna make a prediction to you right now.

CNN is gonna continue to cover this story 24 hours because they’re getting ratings for the first time in 20 years. They are not gonna let this go. I’m not gonna predict what the coverage will be, maybe it’ll be rooted in “we don’t believe the explanation.” Or maybe, “we’re gonna find guests who don’t believe it,” but they’re gonna keep this alive. I just want to warn you, they’re not gonna let it go. They’re gonna turn this into a reality show. This may be the first stages of the Missing Airliner Network. May even rename CNN.

But here’s the question, folks, that maybe it’s been asked. I haven’t heard it asked. And it seems to me fundamental to many of the theories that have been proffered here. The regulations for commercial air travel, like this airplane was scheduled to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Now, I don’t know what that flight time is, but the regs are for everybody that you’ve got to carry an additional two hours of fuel in the event you end up in a holding pattern because of weather, or if you have to be diverted, you have to carry enough fuel. Every flight plan declares a primary secondary airport. If you can’t make your destination, where you gonna go? You have to have enough fuel to get to that destination. And the easiest way to calculate is that you load up for two hours more.

Now, the Boeing 777, at a full load, can probably go 14 hours or longer. What we need to know — and it is known — is how much fuel was on this airplane that we could really narrow the search area significantly, and maybe this question’s been asked and answered; I haven’t seen it. But if this airplane couldn’t fly for eight hours or nine hours based on the fuel it took off with, then searching there is gonna be — and particularly if you’re flying at low altitude, like they claim they were doing to avoid radar detection.

When you fly at low altitude, you just burn fuel like you can’t believe. That’s one of the many reasons you fly high. It’s the most economical up there, and the reason for that is the air is thinner and it takes less propulsion to get you through it at the speed you want to travel. Down here, thicker air, higher air pressure takes more fuel to get you through the air and stay in flight and all that.

So the amount of fuel they had will be really indicative of what the search area should be. Now, I apologize, those who have been watching this 24/7, if that question’s been asked and answered, then I will go find it. I haven’t heard it. I haven’t seen it. But if you want to have some fun, turn on CNN and turn off the sound and just watch the talking heads get as worked up as they do, as if this is some sort of heated debate. You turn the sound down and watch, “What the hell? What are they getting so worked up about here?” It’s one way to entertain yourself.