China accused of dumbing down photos of missing plane

The chairman of the House committee that deals with counterterrorism said Thursday the Chinese government may have delayed releasing satellite images related to a missing Malaysian jetliner in order to deny U.S. officials knowledge of their surveillance systems.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said that Chinese officials, if they were confident in their findings, should have immediately released the photos they believed showed debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight.

“All I can think about that is that the Chinese may not want us to know how sophisticated this system is, and they may have actually dumbed down some of those photos before they put them to out,” King said in an interview on CNN’s “New Day.”

{mosads}“I would think that, you know, certainly human life, that they should have put them out right away and put other factors aside,” King continued. “I mean, as I guess almost half the plane was Chinese citizens. And you would think that in a time like this, an international crisis, the Chinese would have come forward. But maybe they thought that the images they would show would, you know, show a level of sophistication beyond what we think they have.”

Chinese officials said Wednesday that they had discovered satellite images showing debris from Malaysia Airlines’ Flight 370, which has been missing since losing contact with air traffic controllers about an hour into its trip from Kualu Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing last Friday.

The airplane was a Boeing 777 that was carrying 239 passengers and crewmembers at the time of its disappearance.

Malaysian officials have disputed that the Chinese images are pictures of Flight 370, saying a search of the area where the images were believed to be captured turned up no remnants of the missing airplane.

The disappearance of the flight has sparked terrorism fears. Reports emerged in the initial days that two passengers were traveling on stolen passports, but officials later ruled out a connection between the passports and the plane going missing.

Aviation officials have said that it is highly unusual for a large airliner to disappear out of the sky without a trace.

The disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines’ flight has drawn parallels to a 2009 Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean and wasn’t found for days.

Malaysian officials have been criticized for their handling of the search, with relatives of passengers complaining that they have been given conflicting information.

The U.S. has sent officials from the National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration, and Department of Defense to Asia to assist with the search.

The State Department has confirmed that at least three of the passengers who were on board the missing plane were American citizens.