Passport Theft Adds to Mystery of Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet --- HONG KONG — Investigators trying to find out what happened to a Malaysia Airlines jet that disappeared somewhere over the Gulf of Thailand on Saturday morning were examining the usual causes of plane crashes: mechanical failure, pilot error, bad weather. But the discovery that two of the passengers were carrying stolen passports also raised the unsettling possibility of foul play. -- By early Sunday morning, there was little to go on: no wreckage of the jet, a Boeing 777-200 with 239 people aboard, and other than oil slicks on the surface of the gulf, no clue that a crash had even taken place. The airline said the plane had recently passed inspection, and Malaysia’s deputy minister of transport, Aziz bin Kaprawi, said the authorities had not received any distress signals from the aircraft. The plane was flying at 35,000 feet with no reports of threatening weather when it last made contact. -- After officials in Rome and Vienna confirmed that the names of an Italian and an Austrian on the manifest of the missing flight matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand, officials emphasized that the investigation was in its earliest stages and that they were considering all possibilities, including terrorism. -- “We are not ruling out anything,” the chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, told reporters at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia on Saturday night. “As far as we are concerned right now, it’s just a report.” -- Using a system that looks for flashes around the world, the Pentagon reviewed preliminary surveillance data from the area where the plane disappeared and saw no evidence of an explosion, said an American government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the subject matter is classified. A team of aviation experts led by the National Transportation Safety Board was on its way to the area. -- If all aboard were killed, it would be the deadliest commercial airline accident since Nov. 12, 2001, when an American Airlines Airbus crashed just after takeoff from Kennedy Airport en route to the Dominican Republic. -- A senior American intelligence official said law enforcement and intelligence agencies were investigating the issue of the stolen passports. -- American authorities were scrutinizing the flight manifest closely, the official said, noting that forged travel documents are also used routinely by smugglers and illegal immigrants. -- American authorities were scrutinizing the flight manifest closely, the official said, noting that forged travel documents are also used routinely by smugglers and illegal immigrants. - More, NYTimes, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html?hp&_r=0