POLISH JOURNALIST POINTS TO RUSSIAN COVER-UP

I've said it before but it bears repeating when a report from a Polish journalist who chooses to remain anonymous for his own safety, echoes claims that Russia is not being transparent with respect to its investigation into the plane crash that killed the Polish president and 95 top government officials last April. A writer for Big Peace, who goes by the name Sun Tzu has published the report from the Polish journalist:

Via Big Peace:

On April 9th the plane crash killed Polish president Lech Kaczynski, his ministers, the Army’s highest commanders, members of Parliament and many other officials in Smolensk, Russia. President Kaczynski and his delegates flew to pay homage to 22,000 Polish officers murdered in Katyn forests near Smolensk by the Russians in the biggest still unpunished war crime.

The first president who offered his condolences to the Polish nation in the face of the death of their best leaders was Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He took Poles, who were in a state of deep shock after the loss of their president and 95 high state officials, by surprise and in an hour after the catastrophe as he established himself as the leader of an investigative committee.

I've also said before that if this was an accident, it virtually defied astronomical odds when you factor in all of the tragically ironic coincidences that must have taken place. When doing so, those odds almost necessarily must be astronomically longer than odds that the crash was the result of foul play.

All that being said, there is one thing that would greatly silence the conspiracy theorists. That one thing would be complete transparency from Putin and friends. After reading this report in full, it becomes obvious that Russia is not being all that forthcoming with the evidence.

In my view, that alone gives credence to those who suspect foul play, especially when mathematical odds are factored into the equation.

Read it all.

REPORT: RUSSIA STONEWALLING PLANE CRASH INVESTIGATION

Forget conspiracy theories. I've long maintained that it doesn't apply when looking at the facts - and the odds. When a Polish plane carrying that country's president and 90+ senior officials, crashed on April 10th, the odds of it being an accident were likely longer than the odds of foul play. The reason President Lech Kaczynski was flying to Russia was to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacres, in which over 20,000 senior polish officials were killed at the hands of Stalin's NKVD, which was a pre-cursor to the KGB, an agency Vladimir Putin was - and is - very loyal to.

The date, the location, the deaths of polish leaders, Putin's tendency to deal harshly with political opponents, and his dislike for Kaczynski are tragically ironic, yes but what are the odds that such a disaster was an accidental coincidence? Are they longer than the odds it was intentional? When factoring in all of those things, I'd bet they are.

As I have long said, under that premise, Russia's willingness to cooperate with the investigation will either extinguish suspicion or raise more flags. Now we have a report from the Irish Times that Poland is getting impatient with Russia's stonewalling:

POLAND HAS accused Russia of failing to hand over crucial evidence relating to the plane crash that killed Polish president Lech Kaczynski and 95 other people in April.

“The Polish side will be waiting for information and explanations about the reasons hampering the Russian side in forwarding the appropriate documents,” Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said yesterday. “Now, when the probe is entering its final phase, our co-operation is worse than at the beginning,” he added.

Mr Kaczynski’s aircraft crashed as it tried to land at fog-bound Smolensk airport in western Russia. The president and his group – which included his wife and many of Poland’s senior political, military and financial figures – were travelling to a commemoration ceremony at Katyn, where Soviet forces massacred more than 20,000 Polish officers in 1940.

Jumping to conclusions that foul play was involved is not advised. However, Russia could have gone a long way in dissuading people from doing so by being - shall I say it - transparent.

Read it all.

Click HERE for my April 10th post.

REPORT: POLISH PLANE BROUGHT DOWN BY ARTIFICIAL FOG???

Talk about fodder for the conspiratorial mind. I'm not sure if this is being taken seriously but it seems to be coming from some top levels of government - two notions in particular. Notion #1 is that Polish officials are looking into the possibility that 'artificial fog' could have been manufactured and placed above the Smolensk airport before a Polish plane carrying that country's president and 90+ top officials, crashed on April 10th. Notion #2 is the possibility that the plane's controls may have been manipulated from the ground.

Uh, I think the possibility that there was foul play in this crash should absolutely remain on the table. As I've said before, the tragic irony and many macabre coincidences surrounding this crash definitely warrant consideration of that scenario. Russia's lack of complete transparency only fuels it.

But this struck me as an odd course of action.

Via the London Telegraph:

Poland reportedly wants access to US satellite photography that might cast new light on the weather conditions at the time of the crash, according to Gazeta Prawna, a Polish newspaper.

Prosecutors want help from American experts as to whether “there is a scientific and technical capacity to generate artificial fog”, the paper said.

Citing a source close to the investigation, the newspaper said the possibility that somebody may have created an artificial fog bank has now come under official analysis as Polish experts work to determine the causes of the tragedy.

The requests for U.S. Satellite imagery as well as exploring if the U.S. has any recordings of the cockpit recordings from NATO's Signals Monitoring Network seem very reasonable. Putting forth the suggestions that 'artificial fog' and remote control seem quite outlandish.

That said, this latest report should keep the story in the news.

Read it all.

REPORT: U.S. CONGRESSMAN WANTS INVESTIGATION INTO POLISH PLANE CRASH

The macabre coincidences surrounding the horrific plane crash of a Polish plane carrying that country's president and nearly 100 top officials were so numerous, the odds of this crash being an accident struck many - including myself - as being far longer than the odds of foul play. That is not to say it didn't happen that way; there was reportedly a dense fog and very low visibility. However, as I wrote back on April 10th, the ironic circumstances surrounding these deaths were simply too many to default to a position the crash was accidental.

Now a Polish website is reporting that U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has drafted a resolution calling for an investigation into the crash:

It recalls the facts then existing, including that:

- Polish experts on security and aviation representatives of the Ministry denied access to the crash site.

- Polish investigators submitted only a copy of the record of registrars.

- Polish investigators not being provided the same black boxes .

- More than 50,000 Poles have signed the appeal for the establishment of an international commission of inquiry.

The proposal of Congressman Peter T. King was transferred for consideration by the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

As I wrote on the day of the crash, there are plenty of reasons to approach this accident with healthy skepticism. The one thing that would go a long way in assuaging that skepticism would be a word we've become very familiar with over the last two years - transparency. If the aforementioned report is correct, it would appear that transparency in Smolensk, Russia is not all that popular.

It would seem to me that the main objectives of an investigation are to establish the cause. If the cause was accidental, there would be no reason to be anything less than transparent. Once an investigation demonstrates foul play, it would again seem to me that suspects and motives are then explored. If it is true that the investigation is being hampered, an entirely new set of questions need to be raised. If accidental, there would be no need to hamper an investigation.

h/t to Free Republic

REPORT: NSA DELIVERS SATELLITE IMAGES TO POLISH AUTHORITIES

Via Free Republic, an article in the Polish RMF 24 has been translated and is likely to provide some important missing information about the plane crash that killed the Polish president and nearly one hundred high-ranking Polish officials. The translation is a bit choppy but decipherable.

NSA has reportedly delivered images from a satellite to Polish authorities. Among other things, it might show how much fog was above Smolensk. This would be important because it's a primary reason given for the crash. Additionally, the images could show if the plane was burning before it crashed.

Here is the original Polish story on RMF 24.

via Free Republic:

Translated: Satellite Images Taken Over Smolensk by NSA Given to Polish Authorities
rmf24 ^ | May 5, 2010 | unknown

Posted on Thursday, May 06, 2010 1:24:44 AM by theanchoragedailyruse

Military prosecutors already have satellite pictures of the presidential Tupolev crash near Smolensk – told a reporter RMF FM Krzysztof principle. Military prosecutors who are investigating the crash, confined itself to stating that it was “very important evidence.”

Investigators have received photos several days ago from U.S. National Security Agency, which, inter alia zawiaduje satellite system of the United States. The proposal in this regard by the Ministry of Defence. Materials are examined by our investigators, but does not give you any, even the general answers to questions about what the camera recorded the American satellites.

The Polish authorities, which occurred to the Americans asking for pictures, counting on the fact that photographs can help to exclude one of the texts adopted by the investigators of a possible terrorist attack. They can also help answer the question whether, in the moment of impact with the ground plane explosion occurred or whether the machine has been shot down.

If the camera recorded the flight of Tupolev despite dense fog, can also reproduce the precise track approach to land at the airport. Such information would be an excellent addition to the data stored in black boxes.

RMF FM Reporters also learned unofficially that the recorders recording conversations in the cockpit of the presidential Tupolev, is the voice of the person who did not belong to the close of the crew. It might have been the voice of flight attendant or another person with the cabin crew. But we can not exclude the possibility that one of the passengers entered the cockpit before landing.

It is also known that Polish prosecutors have still not received any document from the Russian investigators, of which appeared in legal aid. Also, records of autopsies of the victims are yet in the hands of Russian prosecutors. Investigators are hoping that today begins a visit to Moscow, Attorney General Andrew Seremet accelerate the transfer of the evidence.

As I've posted before, here and here, the tragic irony and history behind the Katyn massacre is incredibly searing, so much so that Vladimir Putin and Russia in general needs to be 100% transparent during this investigation.

h/t to Free Republic

VIDEO: ON THE GROUND AFTER POLISH PLANE CRASH

Further work has obviously been done on this video since it first came out in the days after the crash at the Smolensk airport in Russia. When I first saw it, there really wasn't that much to take away from it. Now, however, the video zooms in to critical areas and highlights important aspects with graphic arrows. Gun shots can be heard and the claim here - although in Polish - appears to be that there is a survivor caught on tape (shortly after the :30 mark).

Caveat: the video isn't the greatest and it's not in english but it is interesting to watch. The claim that there was a survivor caught on video may be a stretch but if the intent is to truly get to the bottom of what happened, this video may be a piece to the puzzle.



h/t to Free Republic

BARRACK TO APPEAR ON KFAX 1100 IN SAN FRANCISCO

On Wednesday, April 14th at 5:05pm Pacific / 8:05pm Eastern, yours truly will be appearing on KFAX 1100 in San Francisco with Craig Roberts. The topic of conversation will be the Polish plane crash in Russia on April 10th as well as the Katyn massacre Polish president Lech Kaczynski was on his way to commemorate.

LISTEN LIVE link.

I've previously posted on this topic here, here, here, here, and here.

PLANE CRASH: POLISH OFFICIAL BLAMES RUSSIA

The London Daily Mail is reporting that Polish MP Artur Gorski is pointing the finger at Russia with respect to the plane crash that killed Polish president Lech Kaczynski and several top officials on April 10th.

Via the Mail:

'One version of events says that the plane approached the airport four times, because every time the Russians refused it permission to land - they wanted to send the plane with the president to an airport in Moscow or Minsk,' Mr Gorski claimed in an interview published in the newspaper Nasz Dziennik.

'They came up with some dubious reasons: that there was fog over the airport, and that the navigation system didn't work as it was under renovation, and that airport had a short landing strip.'

The longer the tragic irony and macabre coincidences of this crash continue to be noticed, the more Poland is going to demand answers. It is for this reason that it is absolutely imperative for Russia to be 100% transparent with this investigation. As I said here, skepticism is sure to supercede trust considering both Putin's track record as well as the fact that he is the one overseeing the investigation.

h/t to Drudge

REPORT: POLISH PLANE DUMPED FUEL BEFORE CRASH

There is tacit sentiment out there that no one should jump to conclusions when it comes to what caused the Polish airliner carrying Polish president Lech Kaczynski and nearly one hundred top officials, to crash in Smolensk, Russia. I agree with that. That also should go for the conclusion that it was pilot error, weather, or anything else.

In reading a report from the Times Online, two new facts seem to jump out. The first is a report that the plane carrying Kacynski was dumping fuel prior to attempting to land. This almost necessarily indicates a mechanical problem:

Russia Today and other television stations reported that even before the first attempt to land, the pilot had been dumping fuel — indicating some form of mechanical problem — so by the fourth attempt there was no alternative but to put the aircraft down.

If true, this could likely mean that weather - heavy fog - was not the sole cause of the crash.

Another part of the report seems to provide a possible reason for why the pilot would ignore Air Traffic Control (ATC) after being repeatedly told to divert to Moscow or Minsk:

Kaczynski, whose body was also said to have been found, was a former anti-communist campaigner with a penchant for taunting the Kremlin. He had every reason to believe he was not welcome in Russia. Polish observers said he may have interpreted an order to divert to Moscow as an attempt to sabotage his big day in Katyn, where he was due to attend a mass and give a speech.

Russian media reports said he had once become angry with a pilot who refused to land in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, on the grounds that it was unsafe. The same thing may have happened at Smolensk, aviation experts claimed. They suggested he may have pressed the pilot to make at least two attempts to land.

There is every reason to believe that relations between Putin and Kacynski were tense and strained before the crash:

Kaczynski was not invited to Putin’s event and there was no promise of a warm welcome at the Smolensk airfield yesterday. He was determined to attend the commemoration, though — not, as he put it, “to inflame relations with Russia”, but to support 400 relatives of the victims who were expected to be there. “I hope I get a visa,” he had joked.

Kacynski also backed Georgia in 2008 when Russia invaded:

Kaczynski had angered the Kremlin by siding with Georgia in its brief war with Russia in 2008. Tensions between the two countries grew when Poland agreed to host an American missile defence system. Relations have remained frosty despite Obama’s decision to opt for a simpler version of the system.

Think of the odds. In 1940, over 20,000 Polish officials were gunned down by Stalin's Secret Police (early KGB). Then, in 2010 - 70 years later - the Polish president and several top officials go down in a plane crash en route to commemorating the atrocity. As if that weren't enough to raise skepticism, this isn't the first time a plane carrying people headed to Russia for the purpose of the Katyn massacres went down:

Some Poles saw a connection between Kaczynski’s death and that of Wladyslaw Sikorski, a leader killed in a mysterious plane crash in Gibraltar in 1943 just as he had started delving into events at Katyn.

As I posted more extensively here, Andrew Osborn wrote in the Independent that there are 20 journalists who have mysteriously lost their lives under Putin's reign. One of them - Artyom Borovik - died in a plane crash:

Senior executive at investigative magazine 'Completely Secret' that exposed the misdeeds of the rich and powerful. Died on 3 March 2000 in a plane crash that the authorities believe may not have been accidental.

For the record, I am 100% on board with not jumping to conclusions. The same should go for those who are already willing to disregard foul play.

Link to Times Online piece.

POLISH PLANE CRASH: HEAVY FOG, PUZZLING PILOT BEHAVIOR

According to Accu Weather Reports out of State College, PA., the plane carrying Polish president Lech Kaczynski and nearly one hundred top Polish officials likely did encounter very troubling weather as it attempted to land in Smolensk, Russia to commemorate the anniversary of the Katyn Massacre in which more than 20,000 Polish officials were murdered at the hands of Stalin's secret police. Tragic irony indeed.

Via GTR News:

AccuWeather.com reports weather likely played a significant role in the plane crash that killed Poland’s president Lech Kaczynski on Saturday morning. Accuweather.com meteorologists studied the weather closely at the time of the crash in Smolensk, Russia, and indications show that very dense fog was present before the plane went down.

It's established that the weather was quite bad, though wind was not a factor - just fog. Puzzling, however, are reports that the pilot made four landing attempts at the Smolensk airport - the final attempt ending with the crash - despite both the airport being closed before the attempted landings as well as requests made to the pilot by the tower to land elsewhere, either Minsk or Moscow.

According to the news agency Interfax, the Smolensk Airport was closed due to the thick fog and poor visibility before the crash. The pilot was instructed to land at either Minsk to the west or Moscow to the east. The plane crashed after the pilot’s fourth attempt to land at the closed airport.

This all begs a very logical question: Why would the pilot of a plane carrying so many high ranking Polish officials, including that country's president be so obstinate about landing at a closed airport and by extension, so reckless with such important passengers?

We're told that the black boxes have been retrieved. It would seem to me that with the extremely tragic irony surrounding this horrific event, Vladimir Putin should be 100% transparent about this investigation. Color me skeptical.

h/t to Astute Bloggers

REASONS TO BE SKEPTICAL OF POLISH PLANE CRASH

The Putin government has quite the disturbing history when it comes to dealing with people it doesn't like. Whether it be strong western style leaders who are elected by countries once members of the Soviet bloc, journalists with whom it disagrees, or whistle blowers who used to work inside the Russian government, there is already good reason to question the official story when it comes to the death of the Polish president in a plane crash.

It doesn't take much effort to notice how close together these dots are. For starters, a news release from FOCUS Information Agency states that none other than Vladimir himself will be personally monitoring the investigation of the crash that killed Polish president Lech Kacynski as his plane approached the Smolensk airport.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has set up a government commission that will investigate the crash in the Russian city of Smolensk, in which most likely is killed the Polish president Lech Kaczynski., Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will personally monitor the investigation…

Why on earth would Putin want to personally oversee the investigation unless he wanted absolute control over it? Let's start off with the reason for Kaczynski's visit to Russia. He was on his way to commemorate what is known as the Katyn Massacre,

THE KATYN MASSACRES, in which 22,000 Polish officers, policemen, and civil servants were murdered by the NKVD (Soviet Secret Police), are probably the most notoriously senseless of Stalin's crimes.

Keep in mind that Putin was a proud leader within the Soviet Union's KGB. This from a Washington Post article in 2000:

Putin defends the Soviet-era intelligence service to this day. In recent comments to a writers' group in Moscow, he even seemed to excuse its role in dictator Joseph Stalin's brutal purges, saying it would be "insincere" for him to assail the agency where he worked for so many years. Fiercely patriotic, Putin once said he could not read a book by a Soviet defector because "I don't read books by people who have betrayed the Motherland."

Regardless of whether Putin's fingerprints end up being on this plane crash, a visit to Russia by a pro-western president of Poland intended to commemorate the mass murder of tens of thousands of Polish officers at the hands of Stalin's Secret Police would likely be perceived by Putin as a blatant slap in the face to everything he fervently reveres. As for Katyn, the longer the Polish officers were held, the more their very existence began to anger Stalin's NKVD, led by Laverti Beria until they finally and successfully lobbied Stalin for approval to execute the ones remaining.

Beria finally made an unambiguous recommendation to Stalin on March 5, 1940: "They are all thorough going enemies of Soviet power. saturated with hatred for the Soviet system . . . the only reason they want for liberation is to be able to take up the fight (sic) against Soviet power. . ." The inmates of three camps, 14,700 POWs, and 11,000 Poles held in prisons "should be dealt with by special measures and the highest measure of punishment, shooting, should be applied to them." The victims were not to be informed of the charges or the sentence. The Politburo voted the same day in favor of murder. Stalin signed first, then Voroshilov, Molotov, and Mikoyan: Kaganovlch and Kalinin agreed by telephone.

Anti-Communist has the breakdown of the people that were to be executed:

Eleven generals, an admiral, 77 colonels, 197 lieutenant colonels, 541 majorem 1,441 captains, 6,061 lieutenants and other ranks, 18 chaplains, and the Polish army's chief rabbi were all to be shot in April...

Vasili Blokhin was the name of Stalin's Chief Executioner at Lubianka. To say he was sick is being kind. He actually partook in these executions personally and while wearing an apron:

Some executions were carried out more humanely than usual by Blokhin and his men. In Kalinin (Tver), where the Ostashkov prisoners were killed one by one, each Pole was taken into the prison club room and his identity carefully checked, before being handcuffed and led into a neighboring soundproofed chamber and shot in the back of the neck. The bodies were then dragged through a back door, thrown into covered trucks and taken to the countryside at Mednoe, to the grounds used for the NKVD men's dachas, a site chosen by Blokhin. A total of fifty executioners was used, Blokhin in his leather apron, helmet, and gauntlets taking a leading part. Each evening a body count was telegraphed to Merkulov in Moscow.

Interestingly, Lubianka was the name of Putin's KGB headquarters. Ironically, maybe the most telling quote - again, if it's determined that foul play at the government level was in any way responsible for this plane crash - comes from the Black Book of Communism:

"Katyn, Russia, April 1943. The Germans discovered here the bodies of 4,500 Polish officers buried in mass graves. A Red Cross commission concluded that they had been killed by Soviet troops in the spring of 1940, when around 25,000 people disappeared. Katyn came to be a symbol of mass murder and official lies. Until 1989 the Communist government in Poland and Communists throughout the world attributed the massacre to the Germans."

Lies? As the Soviet Union was falling in 1989, some unpleasant truths about its past were obviously surfacing. As a loyal leader within the KGB, Putin couldn't have been happy about it. In fact, his actions as president and now Prime Minister indicate he's got quite a bit of nostalgia for those times.

It's not like we don't have a history of extremely curious deaths in Putin's Russia. Two in particular are among the most notorious. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was critical of Putin and foretold her own death. She was eventually murdered on October 7th, 2006 - Putin's birthday - in an elevator. Additionally, she fell violently ill in 2004 after drinking tea; she was believed to have been poisoned after reporting on the Beslan school massacre:

Politkovskaya was poisoned on her way to cover Beslan crisis. After drinking tea on a flight to the region, she became seriously ill and was hospitalized—but the toxin was never identified because the medical staff was instructed to destroy her blood tests.

Another death making the news was that of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian defector who was murdered on British soil by what amounted to a nuclear explosion in his body after his tea was poisoned with polonium-210. Litvinenko was not only poisoned less than one month after Politkovskaya's death but he had previously warned her that her life was in danger from the Russian government and that she should flee the country. Unlike Politkovskaya, Litvinenko did flee - to Great Britain - but it didn't help him escape death. Although Politkovskaya is the most well known journalist to suffer this fate in Russia, the Independent chronicles the lives of 20 journalists who met their death under Putin's reign.

Lastly, let us not forget Viktor Yushchenko, a western-style leader who was victorious in a very close election for presidency of the Ukraine. He led what is known as the "Orange Revolution". The opposition did everything it could to see his defeat, including massive voter fraud that Ukraine's Supreme Court ruled against, opening the door for new rounds of elections that ultimately gave Yushchenko the victory. Like Politkovskaya and Litvinenko, Yushchenko was also poisoned prior to the elections everyone knew would be close. Although he survived the poisoning, Yushchenko's face had become severely disfigured.

Regardless of what the real cause of the crash that killed the Polish president, there is an extremely disturbing track record in Putin's Russia of taking aggressive measures to squash the views, careers, and some times lives of those who oppose it. The death of President Lech Kaczynski has far too much history surrounding it to allow any investigation overseen by Vladimir Putin to be the final word.

h/t to Reagan Republican Resistance