The morning brings the grim news that body parts and debris from EgyptAir Flight 804 have been found in the Mediterranean.   Speculation about the cause of the attack is underway, and has focused on the possibility of terrorism.  There are several signs that point to an intentional human cause rather than engine trouble or other ordinary mechanical failure.  One is the absence of a distress call.  But most telling is the strange maneuvers the plane seems to have undertaken:

At some point before dropping off radar, the plane swerved 90 degrees to the left and then made a 360-degree turn to the right before plunging first to 15,000 feet, then 10,000 feet, Greek officials said.

What Greek officials described as swerving was likely pieces of the aircraft being picked up on radar as they fell from the sky, U.S. officials told CNN on Thursday.

“It’s very difficult to come up with a scenario that jibes with some sort of catastrophic failure. (The evidence so far) leads us down the road to a deliberate act,” said Miles O’Brien, a CNN aviation analyst.

Former CIA officer Fred Fleitz gave a radio interview on the subject yesterday.  He mentioned, in addition to these details, claims of a fireball by fisherman witnesses.  That raises the possibility of a bomb, which would explain why pieces of the aircraft would be picked up heading in different directions.  Fleitz discusses the problem of security at airports given that British and French security professionals have identified people with Islamic State (ISIS) sympathies working at airports.  “These are people behind the scenes,” he said, “baggage handlers and mechanics, who could easily put a weapon on a plane.”

Similar speculation occurred on the O’Reilly Factor last night, where former US Special Forces Master Sergeant Jim Hanson suggested that we look beyond ISIS and al Qaeda in the investigation of this crash.  “This is Egypt,” he pointed out, “I think it’s worth looking at the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a terrorist organization that was in power in Egypt until the Egyptian military threw them out of power and threw their leader, Mohammed Morsi, in prison with a death sentence.  So the Brotherhood is a very likely suspect.”

O’Reilly pointed out that, insofar as investigators are pursuing a terrorism theory, all such groups have to be treated as suspect.  It was interesting, he went on to add, that no one had claimed credit.  That is out of order with ISIS-backed attacks, as they normally do claim credit for their strikes.  Another guest, Aaron Cohen, suggested that this implied a ‘lone wolf,’ self-radicalized terrorist.  However, ISIS is typically quite ready to claim credit for their work as well.  A genuinely unclaimed attack is unusual.

There is a recent precedent in Egypt, however, that at least the Egyptian government does believe was a Brotherhood attack:  the bombing assassination of Egypt’s leading prosecutor of Brotherhood terror cases.  Public Prosecutor Hisham Barakat was killed in an attack that involved a bomb allegedly built with assistance from Hamas.  Hamas itself is a Brotherhood offshoot, and originally known as the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood.  Confessions obtained by Egyptian security are dubious proof, of course, but the attack better fits the pattern being suggested by these security professionals than the work of ISIS or al Qaeda.

Nevertheless, it is quite early for such speculation to be taken as binding.  Egypt’s government is searching for the black box recorders at this hour, and hopefully new details will emerge that will allow us to understand better what really happened here.

UPDATE:  Via HotAir, ABC News asks why a red-eye, half-empty flight was targeted if it was a terrorist attack.  If the Egyptian assassination is the right precedent, the answer may be on the flight’s passenger list.  Rather than sending a message of terror, the attack could have been another targeted killing.