665 MH17 cf Iran Air 655, Siberia Airlines 1812 & TWA800

MH17 cf Iran Air 655, Siberia Airlines 1812 & TWA800

This newsletter is at http://mailstar.net/bulletins/140721-b2419.rtf

Newsletter published on 21 July 2014

(1) MH17 cf Iran Air 655, Siberia Airlines 1812 & TWA800 - by Peter
Myers, July 21, 2014
(2) MH17 cf Iran Air 655, Siberia Airlines 1812 & TWA800 - Metabunk
(3) Siberia Airlines 1812 shot down by Ukraine military on 4 October 2001
(4) Ukraine had been bombing rebel positions in eastern Ukraine
(5) Maps of the Ukraine battlefield - WarfareStudies
(6) Separatist rebels boasted of capturing Buk launcher from a Ukrainian
army base
(7) Separatists said they had seized a Buk system from Ukraine, with
which to repel airstrikes
(8) “We did warn you - do not fly in our sky" - PRO-Russian separatist
Igor Girkin
(9) Prior warnings to avoid the airspace
(10) Malaysian jet tragedy propagandized - Ron Paul
(11) Ron Paul: Don't Blame Putin For Malaysian Jet Shoot Down
(12) Australian political establishment threatens Russia over MH17 crash
(13) West organised a putsch in Kiev and drove Ukraine into civil war;
German media war talk against Russia
(14) Malaysia crash shares anniversary with TWA Flight 800
(15) CNN's Anderson Cooper says TWA 800 ‘Shot Down’, later Corrects Himself
(16) Was TWA 800 Shot Down By a Military Missile? - What Really Happened
(17) Why Congress Must Reopen the TWA 800 Investigation - by Jack Cashill

(1) MH17 cf Iran Air 655, Siberia Airlines 1812 & TWA800 - by Peter
Myers, July 21, 2014

In the wake of the shooting down of MH17, Western commentators have
blamed Russia and indulged in war talk against it.

They insist on treating Russia as a defeated party which lost the Cold
War and which ought to fall in with Western designs.

In reality, Gorbachev was aiming at a union of East and West in a World
Government; to further it, he was prepared to shed Stalinism and the
Soviet empire.

He was betrayed by Western leaders, whose economic prescriptions reduced
Russia to poverty. They proceeded with their own imperial designs
towards a "One World" dominated by the 1%, removing socialist regimes
which had been Soviet allies at one stage (Tito, Saddam, Gaddafi, and
possibly Assad). They sponsored Colour Revolutions using Gene Sharp's
non-violent blueprint, but eventually supplied weapons too.

Ukraine was the last straw for Russians. Like Yugoslavia, it contained
within itself a Clash of Civilizations, based on religious conflict
(Catholic vs Orthodox). The West backed Catholic Croatian separatists
against Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. Yet when Russia is doing much the
same thing in reverse (in Ukraine), the West wants to go to war.

Forgotten is the fact that Viktor Yanukovych had been elected President
democratically; that US and German leaders addressed rebels in Kiev
urging them to overthrown his Government, after he refused to sign an
Association Agreement with the EU. That the February 22 coup which
expelled him had been Western-backed.

Also forgotten is that the Ukraine military itself shot down Siberia
Airlines flight 1812 in 2001. It paid compensation to the passengers'
families, but not to the airline. No talk of war then.

The US shot down Iran Air 655; the media treated this as an accident,
and the US never acknowledged responsibility.

The downing of MH17 coincided with the anniversay of the destruction of
TWA800. New information indicates that this an accident caused by a
stray missile, but US authorities have covered it up.

(2) MH17 cf Iran Air 655, Siberia Airlines 1812 & TWA800 - Metabunk

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/mh17-malaysian-777-carrying-295-people-shot-down-over-ukraine.3965/

MH17 Malaysian 777 Carrying 295 People Shot Down Over Ukraine

Discussion in 'Flight MH17' started by ConspiracyAtheist, Thursday at
8:29 AM.

[...] # David

     In 2001 the Ukraine military shot a plane out of the sky by
accident.     Maybe this a similair situation.

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia_Airlines_Flight_1812

# Hevach

     BombDr said: ?

         I'm understanding Hevach's assertion to mean that it was
intentionally shot down, (by parties unknown) but mistaken for another
aircraft.         Shot down 'in good faith', if such a phrase makes
sense - un-friendly fire...

     Yeah, this was my intent in comparing it to Iran Air 655. The
missile that shot down 655 was certainly launched intentionally, and it
hit its selected target, but there was never intent to destroy a
civilian aircraft.

     Jason said: ?

         One would think these rebels would have an iPhone handy, so
that they can see who's flying above them. So mistakes like this don't
happen

     Smart phones are not as widespread in Eastern Europe as they are in
the west. This also assumes the app works in their country (most aren't
available in all markets and many will disable themselves if you're in
those areas), that the local infrastructure was sufficiently intact and
hasn't been damaged in the many months of fighting, and that the
government hasn't been shutting down their cell phones. There's also a
high chance rebels would have ditched cell phones that could be used to
track their location or tapped to intercept their communications.

     On top of that, if it was rebels, they're probably untrained in
operating the weapon they were using, just adding to the number of ways
they could screw up.

(3) Siberia Airlines 1812 shot down by Ukraine military on 4 October 2001

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia_Airlines_Flight_1812

Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 was shot down by the Ukrainian military
over the Black Sea on 4 October 2001, en route from Tel Aviv, Israel to
Novosibirsk, Russia. The plane, a Soviet-made Tupolev Tu-154, carried an
estimated 66 passengers and 12 crew members. Most of the passengers were
Israelis visiting relatives in Russia. No one on board survived. The
crash site is some 190 km west-southwest of the Black Sea resort of
Sochi and 140 km north of the Turkish coastal town of Fatsa and 350 km
south-southeast of Feodosiya in Crimea. Ukraine eventually admitted that
the disaster was probably caused by an errant missile fired by its armed
forces.[1] Ukraine ended up paying $15 million to surviving family
members of 78 victims ($200,000 per victim).

[...] Ukrainian military officials initially denied that their missile
had brought down the plane [...] However, Ukrainian officials later
admitted that it was indeed their military that shot down the airliner.
[...]

On 20 November 2003, an ex gratia compensation agreement was signed
between the governments of Ukraine and Israel. [...] Ukraine agreed to
pay the family of each of the 38 Russian citizens killed the sum of
$200,000 - the same amount agreed over each of the 40 Israelis killed.
The settlement was ratified by the Russian parliament in May 2004 and
president Putin signed it into law in June 2004. [...]

On August 22, 2007 Kyiv Appeals Court has dismissed the victims'
relatives suit against the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, ruling that
military of Ukraine bear no liability for the accident. The court
decision conflicts with report of the IAC group which had investigated
the accident on Russia's behalf. [...] In 2004, Siberian airlines filed
a lawsuit, against Ukrainian defense ministry and the Ukraine State
Treasury, at a Kiev court seeking more than $15.3 million in
compensation for the loss of the passenger jet. However, the Kiev
Interregional Commercial Court of Appeal, in September 2011, rejected a
compensation claim from the Russian airline. An appeal to Kyiv’s
Economic Court of Appeals was rejected, in May 2012. The ruling was
further upheld, in December 2012, by Ukraine’s Supreme Commercial
Court.[29][30] As of January 2013 the court proceedings continued. [...]

     * This page was last modified on 20 July 2014 at 09:07.

(4) Ukraine had been bombing rebel positions in eastern Ukraine

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/07/16/pers-j16.html

The bombing of eastern Ukraine

Peter Schwarz

16 July 2014

The brutal actions of the Kiev government against the cities of Donetsk
and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine are directed not simply against a few
thousand pro-Russian separatists who have entrenched themselves there.
The means being employed are determined by the desired ends.

The bombardment of these densely populated areas by jet fighters, rocket
launchers and heavy artillery; the blood-curdling calls with which
Ukrainian President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk are whipping
up the soldiers; and the deployment of the fascist-ridden National Guard
are intended to terrorise and intimidate all those who oppose the
political and social aims of the regime in Kiev.

For the first time since the NATO bombardment of Belgrade fifteen years
ago, another European city with a million inhabitants—Donetsk—is being
fired on with heavy weapons. To some observers, the actions of the
Ukrainian forces resemble the Israeli attacks on Gaza, to others, the
destruction of the Chechen capital of Grozny by the Russian army. The
aptness of these comparisons is confirmed not only by Russian sources,
but also by eyewitness reports from Western journalists.

According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which sent a reporter to the
besieged city of Slavyansk, with some 120,000 residents, up to 1,500
homes have been destroyed or damaged. Every day since early May, at
least ten corpses of people killed by gunfire or bombing, many of them
civilians, were delivered to the coroner.

The population has been deprived of food. Electricity and water supplies
have been cut off for weeks. One witness reported that 500 families had
to survive for two-and-a-half months on just 100 loaves of bread,
supplemented only by what they could obtain from their vegetable gardens.

Now the 1.5 million inhabitants of Donetsk and Luhansk face a similar
fate. Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and President Poroshenko have urged
Ukrainian troops to act ruthlessly.

Yatsenyuk called the insurgents “sub-humans” that had to be “rubbed
out.” Poroshenko warned the rebels that they would pay for each dead
Ukrainian soldier with the lives of hundreds of their own people, his
threats recalling the methods of the Nazis, who in World War II shot
dozens of hostages for each soldier killed by partisans.

Some Western governments have felt obliged to call on Poroshenko to
exercise more restraint. They have done so only to cover their own
tracks. The Ukrainian president discusses his every move with
Washington, Berlin and Warsaw, with which he is in daily contact. He is
advised by Western military experts. On Monday, he discussed the
formation of a combined Ukrainian-Polish-Lithuanian Brigade with Polish
Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a proposal that is soon to be agreed in writing.

The brutality with which the regime in Kiev is acting against the
opposition in its own country arises from the policies it and its
Western backers pursue. The billionaire Poroshenko embodies the alliance
of the Ukrainian oligarchs with international capital. They have come
together to exploit Ukraine’s wealth and its working class, to break the
country from its centuries-old political and economic ties with Russia,
and subjugate Russia to the dictates of the imperialist powers.

Poroshenko owes his office to the Western-backed February 22 coup that
expelled his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, after Yanukovych refused to
sign an Association Agreement with the European Union. Poroshenko was
subsequently elected president under conditions where large sections of
the population abstained or were intimidated by far-right forces.

Since his election, the new president has relied on the
ultra-nationalist and fascist forces that played a major role in the
coup. He has neither changed the government nor ordered new
parliamentary elections. The nationalist Fatherland Party continues to
hold the premiership and head the seven most important ministries,
although its presidential candidate, Yulia Tymoshenko, received only 13
percent of the vote. The fascist Svoboda Party, whose candidate Oleh
Tyahnybok received just 1.1 percent of the vote, has three ministers.

The armed forces had initially balked at firing on their own people and
had been weakened by desertions. They have since been packed with
ultra-rightists and fascists. Journalists who visit the Right Sector
offices in Kiev, which are adorned with Swastikas, are boastfully told
that hundreds of the group’s members are fighting in and alongside the
army in Donbas in the east. Poroshenko needs these forces to suppress
the working class, for whom his policies have disastrous implications.

The Association Agreement with the EU, which he has now signed, severs
the link between Russia and the steel and coal industries of the Donets
Basin that were built up in the Soviet era. It threatens to turn the
entire region into an industrial desert, with the sort of mass
unemployment that can presently be seen in parts of France’s Lorraine or
Germany’s Ruhr.

Many Ukrainians, especially those with Russian roots, rightly fear that
the encroachments of NATO and the EU will provoke a war with Russia,
which could trigger a nuclear world war.

Moreover, the Association Agreement requires that the country be
subjected to the strict austerity measures of the EU and the
International Monetary Fund. For the desperately poor majority of
Ukrainians, this means even deeper poverty and the gutting of social
benefits without which they cannot survive.

It is left to the German Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party to
promote these thoroughly reactionary policies as steps toward freedom
and democracy and glorify the oligarch Poroshenko and his ultra-right
supporters as democratic luminaries.

The events in Ukraine confirm what was already apparent in Greece and
other countries: in the depths of crisis, the EU and European capitalism
have nothing to offer working people other than social degradation,
exploitation and war.

The only way out of this impasse lies in the unification of European
workers in a struggle for the United Socialist States of Europe. Only
the establishment of workers’ governments and the unification of Europe
on a socialist basis can prevent the continent from descending into
nationalist conflicts and war, and create the conditions for utilising
and developing its rich resources and productive forces, in alliance
with the international working class, for the benefit of society as a whole.

(5) Maps of the Ukraine battlefield - WarfareStudies

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/07/more-sanctions-on-russia-after-ukrainian-forces-defeated-.html

July 17, 2014

More Sanctions On Russia After Ukrainian Forces Defeated

Six days ago the Ukrainian troops fighting local federalists in the
south-east were hit hard by an artillery barrage and had major losses.
This map shows their locations of the four nominal brigades on the right
bottom in a narrow south-eastern strip along the Russian border. The
plan for these troops was obviously to cut off the federalists from the
Russian border and to surround them. But that risky plan on a thin
logistic string worked against them. Repeated artillery attacks and
disorganization have left them incapable of further advances.

The Ukrainian troops have now themselves been surrounded and are cut off
from their resupplies. Their attempts to break out of the encirclement
failed and they can now either flee to Russia or surrender to the
federalists:

     Earlier on Wednesday the press service of the DPR told ITAR-TASS
that its militiamen had divided the Ukrainian military units into
“several sectors” in the areas of the Amvrosievka, Izvarino and
Saur-Mohila localities near the Russian border.

     The Ukrainian military units attempted to form a convoy and head
for the port city of Mariupol, but failed as the DPR fighters encircled
them.

     In recent days the Ukrainian armed forces had suffered serious
losses, and support to their rear services had been axed, the press
service said adding that the army units were trying to retreat covering
their rear.

The Ukrainian troops seem to be desperate with little left to better
their situation.

It is this desperate military situation of the Ukrainian coup-government
troops, I believe, that let Obama put new sanctions on Russian
companies. The European Union did not follow up with sanctions of its
own and the damage to the Russian economy will thereby be very limited.
It was a stupid and self defeating step for Obama to take. What U.S.
companies, including the oil majors, will now still be welcome in the
rather large Russian market?

The military situation as well as the propaganda tide has turned against
the U.S. supported coup government in Kiev. Now even the BBC admits that
many coup supporters and the "National Guard" forces are Nazis including
foreign ones.

Posted by b on July 17, 2014 at 09:06 AM | Permalink

https://twitter.com/WarfareStudies

https://twitter.com/WarfareStudies/status/489309324305793024

#Ukraine Situation Map, July 11 - 14 #Donestk #Lugansk
pic.twitter.com/0JNEMl5C9S

Bigger Map is at
https://38.media.tumblr.com/f394fec69f4ba4fb5330ff026ff6c186/tumblr_n8spyaNMNZ1th9jsso1_1280.jpg

(6) Separatist rebels boasted of capturing Buk launcher from a Ukrainian
army base

http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2014/07/flight-mh17

Flight MH17: The evidence

Jul 18th 2014, 8:39 by M.J.S.

THE circumstantial evidence for what happened to Malaysia Airlines
Flight 17 and to the 298 people on board is already powerful. But there
are still many unresolved questions, the answer to which will have a
major bearing on what happens next. There is little or no doubt that the
aircraft, which was flying above eastern Ukraine at 33,000 feet, was
shot down by a Russian-designed surface-to-air missile, almost certainly
a Buk missile (known as the SA-17 in the West) or just possibly a more
powerful S-300 (designated SA-10 by NATO). Both systems are in use by
Russian and Ukrainian forces. It appears that the missile was launched
from Chernukhino, near Snezhnoye, about 80km from Donetsk, in territory
controlled by Russian separatists and about 20km from the main crash
site. That is easily within the range of even the earliest Buk systems
which were developed in the 1970s by the Soviet Union.

Early on July 17th, several hours before MH17 was destroyed, journalists
from the Associated Press reported seeing a launcher near Snezhnoye that
they said looked like a Buk system. Igor Sutyagin, a Russian expert at
RUSI, a London-based think-tank, says that four hours before news of the
shooting down spread, reports were coming in from social media of
sightings of the launcher near what became the crash site. Previously,
there had been reports about separatist rebels boasting of having
captured Buk missiles from a Ukrainian army base near Donetsk. The
reports first surfaced on June 29th and were mainly carried by Russian
state news agencies. According to sources, the story first ran on TV
Zvezda, the news agency of the Russian defence ministry. A major
question is whether the missile system was really stolen or whether the
story was planted to provide cover for the Russians providing the rebels
surreptitiously with advanced weaponry.

A further question is whether the rebels would have had the technical
capability of operating the system without Russian military help. The
answer is that a properly trained crew would normally be needed, but
that a partially trained crew might be able to work it without fully
realising what they were doing. That seems the most likely explanation
for what happened. On July 14th a Ukrainian military cargo plane, an
Antonov-26, with eight people on board was brought down over the village
of Davydo Myilske in the Luhansk region, a few miles from the Russian
border. The aircraft was flying at 21,000 feet, well beyond the altitude
range of shoulder-fired missiles, such as the Strela, used by the rebels
to shoot down planes before. It seems that the people responsible for
the destruction of MH17 thought they were taking out another military
plane and not a civilian airliner.

Last night Ukraine’s intelligence agency, the SBU, released audio from
what appeared to be intercepted phone calls between rebels and a Russian
intelligence official. In one call, a separatist leader, Igor Bezler,
says that they “have just shot down a plane”. In a later call,
apparently from the crash site, another man says that Cossack militiamen
have shot the plane down and that it was a passenger airliner. When
asked if there are any signs of military equipment among the wreckage,
he replies “absolutely nothing”.

It all suggests a tragic mistake made by reckless incompetents who may
or may not have been receiving direct help from Russian handlers, who
may or may not have been operating with official approval. Russia’s
president, Vladimir Putin, after a call yesterday with Barack Obama that
began before news of the shooting down had broken, has already tried to
shift responsibility for the crime to the renewed offensive in the east
by Ukrainian forces ordered by President Petro Poroshenko to regain
control of territory ceded to the rebels. Some Russian commentators have
even tried to pin the blame on the Ukrainian armed forces—an incredible
charge because the Ukrainians have had no need to use air defence
systems against an enemy that has no aircraft.

In the hours and days ahead, as more information about exactly what
happened emerges, the great question will be what part, if any, Russia
played in the tragedy of Flight MH17.

(7) Separatists said they had seized a Buk system from Ukraine, with
which to repel airstrikes

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/how-ukraine-crisis-has-worsened

How the Ukraine crisis has worsened in the past week

Conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces had
intensified before jet with 298 civilians on board was shot down

by Martin Farrer Friday 18 July 2014 16.07 AEST

Fighting between forces of the pro-western Kiev government and
separatists who want union with Moscow has intensified in the past week,
with Ukraine and Russia blaming each other for cross-border attacks.

[...] Monday

Poroshenko claims that serving Russian military officers were taking
part in operations in east Ukraine, after an An-26 transport plane with
eight military personnel on board was reportedly shot down near the border.

Rebels say 12 more civilians were killed in Luhansk following rocket
attacks and airstrikes.

Tuesday

A top Ukrainian military official ups the ante by telling a live
television audience in Kiev that he fears a Russian invasion is
imminent. "Ukraine, like never before, stands on the cusp of a
wide-scale aggression from our current northern border," says national
security and defence council deputy secretary Mykhaylo Koval.

Ukraine blames pro-Moscow separatists for killing at least six Ukrainian
soldiers in attacks on government military posts and checkpoints near
the border with Russia.

Rebels blame Ukrainian planes for a bombing raid on the small town of
Snizhne, 88km south-west of Luhansk, which kills 11 people. Ukraine
denies the claim, saying its aircraft were grounded after the shooting
down of the transport plane.

Wednesday

The US escalates sanctions on Russia for supporting the rebels. The move
sends the Russian stock market plunging.

Rebels claim responsibility for shooting down two Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 jets.

Thursday

A Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 fighter jet is brought down near the border by an
air-to-air missile from a Russian plane, Ukraine claims. They also say
rockets launched at Ukrainian troops in the area were fired from the
Russian village of Kuibyshevo.

Ukraine security service chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko claims he has
"unconditional evidence" that Russia was involved in shooting down the
An-26 plane on Monday.

An Associated Press reporter says he saw seven rebel tanks parked at a
petrol station outside the eastern Ukrainian town of Snizhne. In the
town, he also observes a Buk missile system. (On 29 June, Russian
newswire ITAR-TASS quoted separatists in Donetsk as saying they had
seized control of a missile defence army unit equipped with the Buk system.)

Ukraine's border service says it has evidence that five Grad
multiple-rocket launchers and two armoured personnel carriers were
brought across the border on Wednesday from Russia.

(8) “We did warn you - do not fly in our sky" - PRO-Russian separatist
Igor Girkin

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/prorussian-military-man-igor-girkin-claims-we-did-warn-you-after-mh17-shot-out-of-the-sky/story-fni0fiyv-1226993751629?nk=419b13578218449702e90a05b5625ef1

Pro-Russian military man Igor Girkin claims ‘we did warn you’ after MH17
shot out of the sky

   STEPHEN DRILL

   HERALD SUN

JULY 18, 2014 3:34PM

PRO-Russian separatist Igor Girkin and the self-proclaimed Prime
Minister of Donetsk Alexander Borodai have been linked to the bombing of
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

The radical military man and shadowy so-called politician have been
leading a pro-Russian rebellion against the Ukrainian government.

There are claiming autonomy in Donetsk, a small region in eastern Ukraine.

Girkin allegedly claimed credit for the attack on a Russian social media
page.

“The plane has just been taken down somewhere around Torez (Donetsk
Oblast). It lays there behind the Progress mine. We did warn you — do
not fly in ‘our sky’,” he said through his account on VK, the Russian
version of Facebook.

“And here is the video proving another ‘bird’ falling down. The bird
went down behind the slagheap, not in the residential district. So no
peaceful people injured. There is also information about another plane
shot.”

The posts were later removed but Girkin, who also goes by the name of
Strelkov, or shooter, has been labelled as the prime suspect in the
bombing that has shocked the world.

Audio footage of a telephone calls between militants and their
commanders confirms their shock when they realised they shot down a
commercial passenger jet with 298 people on board.

Girkin, is part of Russia’s military intelligence department, according
to the Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv Post .

He took control of a Ukrainian base that had powerful Buk missiles on
June 29.

Alexander Borodai (centre) reportedly arriving the crash scene.

The radical is the military muscle to back up the political will of a
former public relations consultant who declared himself Prime Minister
of the Republic of Donetsk in May.

The pair met in the 1990s when Borodai was a journalist covering a
Russian conflict in Chechnya.

The “republic” has not been recognised by any international country and
is widely believed to be a front for Russia’s expansionist plans. [...]

(9) Prior warnings to avoid the airspace

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2696161/BREAKING-NEWS-Malaysian-passenger-plane-carrying-295-people-crashes-Ukraine-near-Russian-border.html

Putin blames Ukraine for loss of Flight MH17 with 298 innocent souls but
DOESN'T deny Russian separatists shot it down with missile - as McCain
warns there will be 'Hell to pay'

By MICHAEL SEAMARK and RAY MASSEY and LOUISE ECCLES and LUCY CROSSLEY
and SIMON TOMLINSON and JOHN HALL and DARREN BOYLE and MATT CHORLEY

PUBLISHED: 01:28 AEST, 18 July 2014 | UPDATED: 06:01 AEST, 21 July 2014

[...] As relatives gathered at airports for news of missing loved ones,
it emerged that airlines had twice been warned about the risk of flying
over an area where two Ukrainian military aircraft had already been shot
down this week.

In April, the International Civil Aviation Organisation advised carriers
to consider alternative routes after outlining ‘the possible existence
of serious risks to the safety of international civil flights’.

On Monday, Eurocontrol – the body that coordinates all traffic across
European airspace – sent out an official note to airmen, known as a
Notam, repeating the warning and saying it ‘strongly advises’ avoiding
the airspace.

But many carriers continued to use the route because it was shorter and
therefore cheaper.

Why was MH17 flying through a warzone? European safety watchdog warned
against using Ukraine airspace since APRIL [...]

In April, the European Aviation and Safety Agency warned: ‘Taking into
consideration the recent publication by the Russian Federation of a
series of notices to airmen (NOTAMs) modifying the Simferopol FIR which
is under the responsibility of Ukraine, and their intent to provide air
traffic services (ATS) within this airspace, the Agency draws the
aviation communities’ attention to the possible existence of serious
risks to the safety of international civil flights.

[...] ‘Due to the unsafe situation where more than one ATS provider may
be controlling flights within the same airspace from 3 April 2014, 0600
UTC onwards, consideration should be given to measures to avoid the
airspace and circumnavigate the Simferopol FIR with alternative routings. ‘

On July 8, the State Aviation Administration of Ukraine closed its
airspace to civilian aircraft after rebels shot a military transport
aircraft that was flying over 20,000 feet.

The restriction, warned commercial aircraft from transiting

British aircraft were warned to avoid the area altogether. A Notice to
Airmen, seen by Mail Online warned: ‘Due to the potential for
conflicting air traffic control (ATC) instructions from Ukrainian and
Russian authorities and for the related potential for misidentification
of civil aircraft, UK aircraft operators are strongly advised to avoid,
until further notice, the airspace over Crimea, the Black Sea and the
Sea of Azov.’

(10) Malaysian jet tragedy propagandized - Ron Paul

http://rt.com/usa/174008-ron-paul-malaysia-ukraine-crash/

Published time: July 19, 2014 03:38

Referring to the tragic downing of a Malaysian Airlines plane over
eastern Ukraine, former Texas congressman Ron Paul warned against
jumping to conclusions over the culprits.

Drawing parallels between the potential for a Russian-made missile
system's connection to the attack of the passenger jet on Thursday over
the restive Donetsk region of Ukraine and the capture of US-made weapons
by Islamist insurgents in Iraq, Paul pointed out that the missile's
potential source of manufacture was largely immaterial.

"That may well be true, but guess what, ISIS has a lot of American
weapons," said Paul. "We sent weapons into Syria to help the rebels and
al-Qaida ends up getting it -- it doesn't mean that our American
government and Obama deliberately wanted ISIS to get American weapons."

"So who gets the weapons is a big difference between how they got them
and what happened and what the motivations were," Paul added. "So even
if it was a Russian weapon -- doesn't mean a lot."

Speculation of direct involvement by the Kremlin, whether directly or
through "proxies" in the form of pro-Russian militia in Ukraine, in
particular seems propagandized, Paul told NewsMax on Friday.

Unverified video footage has been circulated as proof of involvement by
Ukrainian militia members, though the aircraft's black boxes have yet to
be retrieved, and there remain many questions unanswered as
investigators have trickled into the crash site.

"Under these circumstances, it's very difficult to get the real
information so everybody's angling to propagandize and make their
position known," said Paul.

"It'd be unwise to say, well, the Russians did it, or the Ukrainian
government did it, or the rebels did it."

The 'Buk' anti-aircraft system in question has been the source of wide
speculation in Western media. In use since the 1970s, the weapons system
was designed and produced by the former Soviet Union and have been
present in Ukraine since its dissolution, and has seen deployment in a
number of countries including Finland, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Belarus.

(11) Ron Paul: Don't Blame Putin For Malaysian Jet Shoot Down

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Ron-Paul-Putin-Malaysian-flight/2014/07/18/id/583590/

Friday, 18 Jul 2014 02:44 PM

By Courtney Coren

Many are pointing fingers at Russian President Vladimir Putin for giving
weapons to the pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels that are being linked to the
shootdown of the Malaysia Airlines jet that crashed in Ukraine, but
former Rep. Ron Paul says that Putin shouldn't be blamed.

"Putin is a little bit smarter than that," Paul told John Bachman on
"America's Forum" on Newsmax TV on Friday. "I don't think he would ever
come close to participating in an act like this."

The Texas Republican said that the fact that Russians may have provided
the weapons to the Ukrainian rebels is not enough to put the blame on
the Russian president.

"That may well be true, but guess what, ISIS has a lot of American
weapons," he said. "We sent weapons into Syria to help the rebels and
al-Qaida ends up getting it -- it doesn't mean that our American
government and Obama deliberately wanted ISIS to get American weapons."

"So who gets the weapons is a big difference between how they got them
and what happened and what the motivations were," Paul added. "So even
if it was a Russian weapon -- doesn't mean a lot."

The former Texas congressman says that he does find it "interesting the
way the flight was changed -- make it land in Russia and it would have
been a greater detriment to the Russians and the Cold War could be resumed."

Paul contends that "there's a lot of people itching for the Cold War and
they don't want to do anything to even talk with the Russians."

The former Republican presidential candidate says that the United States
shares responsibility for the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

"It's pretty evident that the whole problem in Ukraine started
approximately a year ago when the Europeans, along with the United
States, overthrew an elected government and overthrew [former Ukrainian
President Viktor] Yanukovych -- insisting that there'd be civil strife
over there," he explained.

The United States instituted sanctions against Russia Tuesday aimed at
Russia's financial institutions and defense sector, which Paul considers
"acts of war."

"They want to put on these sanctions, which are actually acts of war and
the consequence is usually economic blowback," he said.

Paul says that sanctions are "seductive," but that in reality it "is
just war talk, war mongering."

"If we get into a fight with a country and war breaks out, the very
first thing we do is put on sanctions and blockade them and try to keep
resources out of their country," he said.

"So if you start with that, I consider this an act of war. It's not
quite like shooting at each other," the Texas Republican added.

Paul says that we should approach the situation with the downed
Malaysian jet "cautiously."

"Under these circumstances, it's very difficult to get the real
information so everybody's angling to propagandize and make their
position known," he said.

"It'd be unwise to say, well, the Russians did it, or the Ukrainian
government did it, or the rebels did it."

(12) Australian political establishment threatens Russia over MH17 crash

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/07/19/aust-j19.html

By Will Morrow

19 July 2014

The entire Australian political establishment has seized on the tragic
deaths of 298 people in the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in
Ukraine--including 28 Australians--to ratchet up the escalating US-led
provocations against Russia.

Before any investigation team reached the disaster site in eastern
Ukraine, the Liberal-National Coalition government of Prime Minister
Tony Abbott, supported by the Labor Party opposition and the Greens,
accused Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine of shooting down
the plane, and called for retribution against the rebels and Russia itself.

In an interview with Melbourne-based radio station 3AW yesterday
morning, only hours after the incident, Abbott declared that it "seems
certain" that the plane was brought down by a "Russian-supplied
surface-to-air missile."

Abbott then proceeded to turn the political reality in Ukraine on its
head, declaring: "What's been happening for many months now is an
attempt by Russia to bully a neighbour. Now this is just outrageous."

In fact, the civil war in the Ukraine, which created the conditions for
the tragedy, is the outcome of the fascist-led coup, orchestrated by the
US and Germany, which overthrew the elected government in February.

Implicitly calling for massive retaliation, Abbott declared: "I don't
say there are easy responses when a large and powerful country attempts
to bully a smaller and less powerful neighbour."

In a speech to parliament hours later, Abbott warned that "the bullying
of small countries by big ones, the trampling of justice and decency in
the pursuit of national aggrandisement and reckless indifference to
human life should have no place in our world."

For all the accusations of Russian "bullying of small countries," the
real attitude of the Australian establishment was revealed by the fact
that not a single parliamentarian referred to, let alone condemned,
Israel's bombardment and invasion of Gaza--a war crime against a
defenceless and entrapped Palestinian population of 1.8 million people
that has already claimed hundreds of lives. (See: "Oppose the Israeli
invasion of Gaza")

Abbott's denunciations of Russia were immediately joined by Labor
opposition leader Bill Shorten, an individual identified in diplomatic
cables published by WikiLeaks as a "protected source" of the US embassy
in Canberra. Shorten declared that "the missile that brought down
MH17--and the missiles that have claimed numerous other Ukrainian
aircraft--could not possibly be made by the people who possibly fired
them. These separatist terrorists are obtaining these instruments of
murder from elsewhere. This must be investigated--and it must be stopped."

Shorten's use of the term "terrorist" to label the oppositional and
pro-Russian separatist movements in Ukraine directly echoed the rhetoric
employed by the right-wing and rabidly anti-Russian and anti-Semitic
regime in Kiev.

Shorten issued a blanket guarantee of Labor's support for any government
retaliatory measures against Russia. He stated that Labor "understands
the difficulty and complexity of the decisions you face," and "there
will be many understandable calls for all sorts of action." In
particular, he indicated that Labor would support the Abbott government
if it refused to allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the
G20 summit in Brisbane this December.

Following Shorten, Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt declared: "As the
member for Melbourne and on behalf of the Greens, I want to associate
myself with the remarks of the prime minister and the leader of the
Opposition."

As well as seizing on the MH17 disaster to amplify the international
demonisation of Russia, the Abbott government is exploiting the tragedy
for domestic purposes. Under conditions of mounting social tensions and
class antagonisms, the crash is being utilised to cultivate an
atmosphere of national emergency and appeal for "national unity."

Abbott announced a national day of mourning to be held in the near
future, and ordered all government flags to be flown at half-mast today.
The corporate media played its expected role, giving wall-to-wall
amplification of the accusations against Russia, while publishing
emotive short biographies and photos of the Australians who lost their
lives.

Yesterday, the Abbott government summoned Russian ambassador Vladimir
Morozov for a dressing down by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Bishop
reportedly insisted that Russia support a UN Security Council
investigation into the crash, and demanded that Morozov answer whether
Russian weapons could have been used to down the plane.

In a press conference following the meeting, Abbott denounced Morozov's
claim that responsibility for the crash rested with the Ukrainian regime
in Kiev. Abbott warned that the events were a "test" for Russia and that
its "whole standing in the world is at risk here." Describing Morozov's
response as "deeply, deeply unsatisfactory," Abbott declared: "We all
know that there are problems in Ukraine. We also know who is very
substantially to blame for those problems."

Following a phone discussion today between Abbott and US President
Barack Obama, the White House issued a statement that declared: "The two
leaders discussed the importance of a prompt, full, unimpeded and
transparent international investigation, and they stressed the need for
immediate access by international investigators to the crash site."

Philippa King, Australia's representative on the UN Security Council,
issued a series of demands on Russia during an overnight emergency
session in New York. She declared that "it must end its provocations and
any support for separatist forces. It must control its border with
Ukraine and prevent the flow of weapons, equipment and fighters from
Russia into Ukraine."

Labor's Bill Shorten repeated his call today for Russia to be excluded
from the G20 talks. "I put on record again," he told journalists, "if
the Russian Federation doesn't co-operate and help us get to the heart
of what has really happened in this senseless act of murder, the
government should indeed consider not inviting the Russian President
Putin to Australia."

Whatever the immediate circumstances of the downing of MH17, one thing
is certain: responsibility above all rests in Washington, Berlin and the
other imperialist centres, including their backers in Canberra, which
have plunged Ukraine into civil war as part of a drive to encircle and
ultimately dismember Russia. The tragedy is now being exploited by the
Obama administration and its allies to increase their pressure and
threats against the Putin regime, further raising the risk of a
catastrophic nuclear war.

The Australian political establishment's role in supporting this
reckless agenda is yet another demonstration that it functions as the
one of the chief diplomatic adjuncts of the imperialist intrigues
carried out by Washington in every corner of the globe.

(13) West organised a putsch in Kiev and drove Ukraine into civil war;
German media war talk against Russia

Following Malaysian plane disaster: German media pushes for
confrontation with Moscow

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/07/19/germ-j19.html

By Peter Schwarz

19 July 2014

Barely 24 hours after the crash of a Malaysian passenger jet over
Ukraine, leading German media outlets are pushing for an escalation of
the confrontation with Russia.

In February, the German government, working closely with Washington,
supported the coup in Ukraine that brought a pro-Western regime to
power. However, Berlin has been more cautious than Washington in
imposing sanctions on Russia due to concerns over German economic
interests. And in the wake of the recent spying scandal, calls for
greater German independence from the US in regard to foreign policy have
grown louder.

Now, the advocates of aggressive action against Russia are using the air
disaster to go back on the offensive and force more cautious voices to
retreat.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) has published two articles
online calling for stronger action against Russia. On Thursday, Reinhard
Veser wrote under the headline "Moscow's Aggression" that the shooting
down of the Malaysian passenger plane was a tragic consequence of the
war in Ukraine. While it remained to be clarified "who the guilty are,"
it was already clear, the newspaper wrote, "who is responsible for this
war"--namely Russia. Even if there was no proof that Russia was to
blame, "there are enough facts to speak of Russian aggression against
Ukraine."

In other words, even if there is no proof that the Russian military or
pro-Russian separatists shot down the plane--and even if it should
transpire that the Ukrainian armed forces were responsible--Russia will
still remain the guilty party. The commentary concludes that it is "high
time for harsher sanctions than those that have been agreed in Brussels."

On Friday, Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger reiterated the same theme in an
article entitled "Mass Murder Over East Ukraine." "Is the death of
around three hundred people... the unsettling event that brings about a
turn in this conflict?" he asks. He then denounces Russia: "It wants to
interfere in this conflict; it wants to destabilise Ukraine; it wants to
safeguard its influence." The European Union "must now decide whether it
tightens the sanctions screw or whether it continues to chase
illusions," he concludes.

Stefan Kornelius has written a commentary in the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Kornelius, who enjoys close relations with the US, has long defended
Germany's strategic alliance with the United States and demanded harsh
action against the Putin regime. More recently, he has begun to waver,
criticising the US for its spying activities in Germany.

The World Socialist Web Site has noted that "his future orientation will
ultimately depend on the course the German ruling elite steers as it
tries to return to an aggressive and militarist foreign policy."

For the moment, Kornelius seems to have come to the conclusion that the
trend is again swinging towards Washington. He, too, has to admit that
up to now there have only been "indications" that Russia or the
separatists allied with Moscow are responsible for shooting down the
plane. However, like Reinhard Veser in the FAZ, he sees this as irrelevant.

"Without Russian support and the mobilisation of fighters by Moscow,
this war would long have been contained," he declares in an article
headlined "The Monster Created by Putin." He continues: "As long as
Vladimir Putin does not call the pro-Moscow militias to order, they will
continue with their irrational and murderous struggle."

If proof comes to light of the separatists' or Moscow's complicity,
"then Russia must feel the full weight of the sanctions--also and
especially from Europe," Kornelius demands. He does not stop there,
raising the question of military intervention. "The shooting down leads
directly to the UN Security Council, [where] Ukraine may ask for
military support," he writes hopefully.

Where the FAZ and Süddeutsche go, Die Zeit and taz must go as well.

In Die Zeit, Carsten Luther bluntly calls for a military confrontation
with Russia, under the headline "This Shooting Down Changes Everything."
He writes: "Since so many passengers were on board from Western
countries, the dispute between Russia and Ukraine is internationalised.
There is no avoiding further sanctions against Russia, and this time
they must not be surgical and selective. And under these conditions,
participation by Western forces in military operations is no longer a
taboo."

Taz is also advocating military confrontation. In the fashion typical of
the Greens, their foreign affairs editor Dominic Johnson first demands a
"full investigation," only to threaten military violence if Moscow does
not "cooperate fully."

"If local obstacles are put in the way of clarifying the deaths of the
298 passengers, Kiev's international allies could take this as grounds
for more actively pursuing the forcible restoration of Ukraine's state
authority throughout the country," writes Johnson. "It is still an
exaggeration to speak of a fateful hour for war or peace in Europe. But
maybe not for long."

That the hacks in the bourgeois media are exploiting the deaths of
nearly 300 innocent people to call for war with Russia, which could
culminate in a nuclear world war with untold casualties, exposes the
falsity of their arguments.

The shooting down of a passenger jet, if that is what happened, is a
terrible crime. But it is the Western powers that bear the main
responsibility for creating the circumstances in which such a crime is
even possible.

In their attempts to bring Ukraine, with its raw materials, transit
routes and productive agricultural land, under their control, and to
encircle Russia, they organised a putsch in Kiev and drove the country
into a civil war. German imperialism is pursuing the same aims as in the
First and Second World Wars, when it violently occupied Ukraine. And it
is collaborating with the same forces: the governing Fatherland Party
and its fascist coalition partner Svoboda hail Nazi collaborators like
Stepan Bandera as national heroes.

Washington and Berlin stood by approvingly as their fascist allies
attacked political opponents and massacred 40 people in a trade union
building in Odessa. They have encouraged President Poroshenko to act
brutally against his opponents in the east of the country and bombard
the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. Under these circumstances, it was
inevitable that the conflict would escalate.

Condemnation of the Western warmongers does not mean support for Russian
President Putin. He defends the interests of the oligarchy that emerged
from the restoration of capitalism. But this does not excuse the
warmongers on German editorial boards who are calling for war on behalf
of German imperialism.

(14) Malaysia crash shares anniversary with TWA Flight 800

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2014/07/17/malaysia-flight-17-twa-flight-800-annivesary/12784535/

Glenn O'Neal, USA TODAY 4:32 p.m. EDT July 17, 2014

Oddly, today's crash of a Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shares a date with
another major airline disaster, the crash of TWA Flight 800 over Long
Island on July 17, 1996.

The plane was flying from New York's John F. Kennedy International
Airport to Paris when it exploded near Long Island, killing all 230
people aboard. Terrorism was initially suspected, and a number of
witnesses on shore came forward with accounts of seeing a flare, rocket
or "streak of light" headed toward the plane before the explosion.

After a four-year investigation, however, the NTSB determined that a
fuel tank explosion — sparked by a short circuit in the wiring — caused
the crash. The safety board found that witnesses were vague or imprecise
in their recollections.

The FBI also conducted an investigation, and it did not find evidence of
a crime.

(15) CNN's Anderson Cooper says TWA 800 ‘Shot Down’, later Corrects Himself

http://freebeacon.com/culture/anderson-cooper-twa-800-shot-down-corrects-himself/

Anderson Cooper: TWA 800 ‘Shot Down’, Corrects Himself

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff July 17, 2014 4:24 pm

CNN’s Anderson Cooper mistakenly described TWA Flight 800, the plane
that exploded over Long Island in 1996, as “shot down off the coast of
Long Island”, before hastily correcting himself:

“I apologize for misspeaking about that anniversary.”

Thursday’s crash of a Malaysian plane in Ukraine has been compared to
TWA Flight 800, which crashed eighteen years ago on the same date–July
17. After a lengthy FBI investigation, a spark in the fuel tank was
eventually found responsible for the explosion. ==

CNN's Anderson Cooper says TWA 800 was shot down:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/UFLb49pPSe4?rel=0&hd=1

CNN's  Anderson Cooper corrects himself:
http://www.youtube.com/v/BUqbteKLkzg?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0

(16) Was TWA 800 Shot Down By a Military Missile? - What Really Happened

http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/CRASH/TWA/twa.php

Was TWA 800 Shot Down By a Military Missile?

By Michael Rivero

(17) Why Congress Must Reopen the TWA 800 Investigation - by Jack Cashill

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/07/why_congress_must_reopen_the_twa_800_investigation.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/07/jack-cashill/needed-a-new-twa-800-investigation/

American Thinker  July 7, 2014

Why Congress Must Reopen the TWA 800 Investigation

By Jack Cashill

On July 2, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced
that it would not reopen the investigation into the destruction of TWA
800.  This was the Boeing 747 that was blown out of the sky ten miles
south of the Long Island coast on July 17, 1996, killing all 230 people
on board. The TWA 800 Project, a team of former aviation investigators
and scientists, had petitioned the NTSB to examine evidence that pointed
toward a missile strike on the airline.  Not surprisingly, the NTSB,
which had invested four years of resources to prove some other theory,
any other theory, chose to stick to its original findings that flammable
fuel/air vapors somehow caused the explosion.

Books have been written on this subject – I co-authored one of them with
James Sanders, First Strike – so readers can access the body of evidence
for a missile strike on their own.  An excellent point of entry is the
documentary produced last year by the TWA 800 Project, simply called TWA
Flight 800 and now available via streaming on Netflix.

One of the six whistleblowers profiled in that documentary deserves
special attention.  His name is Hank Hughes.  At the time of the
explosion, he was a senior accident investigator for the NTSB and was a
member of the “Go-Team” that headed immediately to the crash site.

Hughes was responsible for determining whether or not any proposed
scenario for the cause of the crash was consistent with the damage to
the airplane interior.  So disturbed was Hughes by what he calls an
“egregiously conducted investigation” that he attached a detailed
affidavit to the TWA 800 Project’s petition to re-open the
investigation.  What follows is a summary of that affidavit.

As Hughes points out, Title 49 of the U.S. Code gives the NTSB full
authority to investigate all commercial airplane crashes.  That did not
happen with TWA 800.  The FBI was “immediately and overwhelmingly
present” at the site and quickly took control of the investigation.
Initially, the agency did so, says Hughes, “under the presumption that a
criminal act had occurred.”  Even in these circumstances, however, the
FBI had no lawful authority over the NTSB.  Indifferent to the law, the
FBI seized control, and the NTSB leadership yielded without protest.

As it happened, the FBI agents had so little experience in aviation
disasters that Hughes had to give them a tutorial on evidence handling.
  By that time, however, much of the damage had already been done.
Unlike the NTSB, which records interviews, FBI agents simply take notes.
  As a result, the interviews the agents conducted with the hundreds of
eyewitnesses were “neither thorough nor reliable.”  That
notwithstanding, the FBI would not allow the NTSB to talk to the
witnesses for months, and only then under strained circumstances.

Despite its collective lack of know-how, the FBI also kept NTSB
investigators away from various pieces of wreckage.  FBI agents made a
practice, in fact, of screening physical evidence before NTSB
investigators could see it and “withheld wreckage with suspicious damage
patterns for unknown periods of time.”  In some instances, the FBI took
evidence from the reconstruction hangar in Calverton, NY without
allowing the NTSB to see it or analyze it.  “These prohibitions were
tantamount to undermining a federal investigation,” says Hughes, “and
violated NTSB standard operating procedures and regulations.”

FBI agents were not the only culprits.  Hughes openly accuses the NTSB’s
Dr. David Mayer of changing location recovery tags on the wreckage.  By
reclassifying where in the debris field an item was recovered, a
dishonest investigator could create a crash scenario to fit a more
politically acceptable outcome.

“I personally witnessed Dr. Mayer changing wreckage recovery tags on
interior wreckage components without proper authority,” says Hughes.
“Mayer’s changes falsified the factual record of the actual physical
locations from which those components were recovered.”  When Hughes
challenged Mayer, Mayer told him, “I didn't want to confuse the
Chairman.”  That chairman was Jim Hall, an experience-free political
appointee.

TWA investigators had independently come to distrust Mayer and made
their objections known as well.  It troubled them and Hughes that
several NTSB officials signed off on Mayer’s report despite the
accusations of tampering.  These officials solved the problem by having
a Navy captain, who knew little about the database problems, testify at
a December 1997 NTSB hearing instead of Mayer.  In this way, says
Hughes, NTSB brass “curtailed all meaningful discussion of the database
details while protecting Mayer from being held accountable, criticized
and/or embarrassed.”

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
(IAMAW) also expressed concern about the efforts of Mayer and others to
alter the database.  Its coordinator, Rocky Miller, was told ominously
by a top NTSB official, “If you believe in corporate memory, you will
keep your mouth shut.”  To its credit, the union did not shy from
telling the truth in its final report: “A high pressure event breached
the fuselage and the fuselage unzipped due to the event. The explosion
[of the tank] was a result of this event.”

Contrary to NTSB regulations, Hughes, although a group chairman, was not
allowed to write an analysis of what he found.  The evidence his group
gathered led him to much the same conclusion as the IAMAW’s.  The
pattern of seat damage and passenger injuries strongly suggested not a
low-speed fuel tank explosion, as the NTSB would later insist, but “a
high-order explosion from a military-type explosive detonating a
significant distance away from the airframe.”  Says Hughes, “This was
the first time in my 26 years as an NTSB accident investigator that I
had been ordered not to write an analysis.”

Hughes was not the only high-level investigator whose analysis was
suppressed.  As he notes, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Wetli and
the NTSB’s Aero-Medical Forensic Consultant, Col. Dennis Shanahan, M.D.,
were also told not to submit analyses of their findings.

The most spectacular bit of mischief involved the CIA.  The FBI had, for
no good reason, commissioned the CIA to create an animation to prove
that the 270 eyewitnesses who reported seeing something like a missile
saw something other than a missile.  The CIA analysts concluded that
what they saw was a noseless aircraft rocketing into space for another
3,500 or so feet before crashing into the sea.  This scenario, says
Hughes unequivocally, “is physically impossible given what the FAA radar
tracking data shows.”

According to Hughes, the CIA analysts knew this was impossible, but FBI
honcho James Kallstrom went ahead and showed the animation at a wrap-up
press conference to prove that there was “absolutely no evidence” that a
criminal event destroyed the aircraft.

At both public NTSB hearings, the first in 1997 and the second in 2000,
Kallstrom made sure there was no eyewitness testimony.  “The suppression
of eyewitness accounts at an NTSB hearing was unprecedented,” says
Hughes.  “This has never occurred before or since the NTSB investigation
of TWA Flight 800.”  The aforementioned Dr. Mayer worked with the lead
CIA analyst for sixteen months to align the witness accounts with the
CIA’s impossible zoom-climb scenario.

There is much more, and I would invite those interested to read Hughes’s
testimony in full.  “During the course of my 42-year career as an
investigator,” Hughes concludes, “the investigation of TWA Flight 800
was the only case in which I witnessed deception, lies and corruption on
the parts of investigators and their management. The extraordinary
measures to which the NTSB, FBI and CIA went to falsify and distort
witness statements or accounts of what occurred, to alter and hide
physical evidence and to mount a false public relations campaign to
misinform the public, was unconscionable.”

Given its need to protect the “corporate memory,” no one really expected
the NTSB to open this potentially criminal can of worms on its own.  Now
it is left to Congress, and if Congress does not act, no one will.

On July 2, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced
that it would not reopen the investigation into the destruction of TWA
800.  This was the Boeing 747 that was blown out of the sky ten miles
south of the Long Island coast on July 17, 1996, killing all 230 people
on board.

The TWA 800 Project, a team of former aviation investigators and
scientists, had petitioned the NTSB to examine evidence that pointed
toward a missile strike on the airline.  Not surprisingly, the NTSB,
which had invested four years of resources to prove some other theory,
any other theory, chose to stick to its original findings that flammable
fuel/air vapors somehow caused the explosion.

Books have been written on this subject – I co-authored one of them with
James Sanders, First Strike – so readers can access the body of evidence
for a missile strike on their own.  An excellent point of entry is the
documentary produced last year by the TWA 800 Project, simply called TWA
Flight 800 and now available via streaming on Netflix.

One of the six whistleblowers profiled in that documentary deserves
special attention.  His name is Hank Hughes.  At the time of the
explosion, he was a senior accident investigator for the NTSB and was a
member of the “Go-Team” that headed immediately to the crash site.

Hughes was responsible for determining whether or not any proposed
scenario for the cause of the crash was consistent with the damage to
the airplane interior.  So disturbed was Hughes by what he calls an
“egregiously conducted investigation” that he attached a detailed
affidavit to the TWA 800 Project’s petition to re-open the
investigation.  What follows is a summary of that affidavit.

As Hughes points out, Title 49 of the U.S. Code gives the NTSB full
authority to investigate all commercial airplane crashes.  That did not
happen with TWA 800.  The FBI was “immediately and overwhelmingly
present” at the site and quickly took control of the investigation.
Initially, the agency did so, says Hughes, “under the presumption that a
criminal act had occurred.”  Even in these circumstances, however, the
FBI had no lawful authority over the NTSB.  Indifferent to the law, the
FBI seized control, and the NTSB leadership yielded without protest.

As it happened, the FBI agents had so little experience in aviation
disasters that Hughes had to give them a tutorial on evidence handling.
  By that time, however, much of the damage had already been done.
Unlike the NTSB, which records interviews, FBI agents simply take notes.
  As a result, the interviews the agents conducted with the hundreds of
eyewitnesses were “neither thorough nor reliable.”  That
notwithstanding, the FBI would not allow the NTSB to talk to the
witnesses for months, and only then under strained circumstances.

Despite its collective lack of know-how, the FBI also kept NTSB
investigators away from various pieces of wreckage.  FBI agents made a
practice, in fact, of screening physical evidence before NTSB
investigators could see it and “withheld wreckage with suspicious damage
patterns for unknown periods of time.”  In some instances, the FBI took
evidence from the reconstruction hangar in Calverton, NY without
allowing the NTSB to see it or analyze it.  “These prohibitions were
tantamount to undermining a federal investigation,” says Hughes, “and
violated NTSB standard operating procedures and regulations.”

FBI agents were not the only culprits.  Hughes openly accuses the NTSB’s
Dr. David Mayer of changing location recovery tags on the wreckage.  By
reclassifying where in the debris field an item was recovered, a
dishonest investigator could create a crash scenario to fit a more
politically acceptable outcome.

“I personally witnessed Dr. Mayer changing wreckage recovery tags on
interior wreckage components without proper authority,” says Hughes.
“Mayer’s changes falsified the factual record of the actual physical
locations from which those components were recovered.”  When Hughes
challenged Mayer, Mayer told him, “I didn't want to confuse the
Chairman.”  That chairman was Jim Hall, an experience-free political
appointee.

TWA investigators had independently come to distrust Mayer and made
their objections known as well.  It troubled them and Hughes that
several NTSB officials signed off on Mayer’s report despite the
accusations of tampering.  These officials solved the problem by having
a Navy captain, who knew little about the database problems, testify at
a December 1997 NTSB hearing instead of Mayer.  In this way, says
Hughes, NTSB brass “curtailed all meaningful discussion of the database
details while protecting Mayer from being held accountable, criticized
and/or embarrassed.”

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
(IAMAW) also expressed concern about the efforts of Mayer and others to
alter the database.  Its coordinator, Rocky Miller, was told ominously
by a top NTSB official, “If you believe in corporate memory, you will
keep your mouth shut.”  To its credit, the union did not shy from
telling the truth in its final report: “A high pressure event breached
the fuselage and the fuselage unzipped due to the event. The explosion
[of the tank] was a result of this event.”

Contrary to NTSB regulations, Hughes, although a group chairman, was not
allowed to write an analysis of what he found.  The evidence his group
gathered led him to much the same conclusion as the IAMAW’s.  The
pattern of seat damage and passenger injuries strongly suggested not a
low-speed fuel tank explosion, as the NTSB would later insist, but “a
high-order explosion from a military-type explosive detonating a
significant distance away from the airframe.”  Says Hughes, “This was
the first time in my 26 years as an NTSB accident investigator that I
had been ordered not to write an analysis.”

Hughes was not the only high-level investigator whose analysis was
suppressed.  As he notes, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Wetli and
the NTSB’s Aero-Medical Forensic Consultant, Col. Dennis Shanahan, M.D.,
were also told not to submit analyses of their findings.

The most spectacular bit of mischief involved the CIA.  The FBI had, for
no good reason, commissioned the CIA to create an animation to prove
that the 270 eyewitnesses who reported seeing something like a missile
saw something other than a missile.  The CIA analysts concluded that
what they saw was a noseless aircraft rocketing into space for another
3,500 or so feet before crashing into the sea.  This scenario, says
Hughes unequivocally, “is physically impossible given what the FAA radar
tracking data shows.”

According to Hughes, the CIA analysts knew this was impossible, but FBI
honcho James Kallstrom went ahead and showed the animation at a wrap-up
press conference to prove that there was “absolutely no evidence” that a
criminal event destroyed the aircraft.

At both public NTSB hearings, the first in 1997 and the second in 2000,
Kallstrom made sure there was no eyewitness testimony.  “The suppression
of eyewitness accounts at an NTSB hearing was unprecedented,” says
Hughes.  “This has never occurred before or since the NTSB investigation
of TWA Flight 800.”  The aforementioned Dr. Mayer worked with the lead
CIA analyst for sixteen months to align the witness accounts with the
CIA’s impossible zoom-climb scenario.

There is much more, and I would invite those interested to read Hughes’s
testimony in full.  “During the course of my 42-year career as an
investigator,” Hughes concludes, “the investigation of TWA Flight 800
was the only case in which I witnessed deception, lies and corruption on
the parts of investigators and their management. The extraordinary
measures to which the NTSB, FBI and CIA went to falsify and distort
witness statements or accounts of what occurred, to alter and hide
physical evidence and to mount a false public relations campaign to
misinform the public, was unconscionable.”

Given its need to protect the “corporate memory,” no one really expected
the NTSB to open this potentially criminal can of worms on its own.  Now
it is left to Congress, and if Congress does not act, no one will.

This newsletter is at http://mailstar.net/bulletins/140721-b2419.rtf