patrick.net

By John R. Schindler • 05/25/18 12:50pm

.... the notion that Putin’s forces would blow up an airliner, without regard for innocent life, is anything but far-fetched. They’ve already done it. I am referring, of course, to the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) over eastern Ukraine, an active warzone at the time, on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew aboard the doomed Boeing 777.

Most of them died a horrific death when a missile exploded at the aircraft’s nose as it cruised at 33,000 feet. This explosion killed the pilots instantly and led to the rapid break-up of the Boeing, its pieces falling in flames six miles to earth. Wreckage and mangled bodies were scattered over a 20-square-mile area in the war-torn Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

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... Intelligence Community has known the full, terrible story of the MH17 shootdown from practically the moment it happened. Thanks to American acumen in SIGINT and satellite imagery, spies in Washington within mere days of the disaster knew who did it—and how the nightmare unfolded. As reported by The Washington Post only five days after the crash, American intelligence knew that the Kremlin was lying about its innocence in this sordid affair. The Obama White House authorized a limited release of intelligence information, based on “sensors that traced the path of the missile, shrapnel markings on the downed aircraft, voiceprint analysis of separatists claiming credit for the strike, and a flood of photos and other data from social-media sites” as the Post put it, to rebut Kremlin disinformation about the incident.

However, this was a tiny fraction of what our Intelligence Community knew about MH17. As three IC officials have confirmed to me, Washington possessed damning information about the shootdown, including SIGINT which left no doubt that the Russian military—specifically the 53rd Air Defense Missile Brigade—downed the airliner. Detailed, top-secret intelligence from the National Security Agency, which the White House was briefed on within a couple days of the disaster, told the tale. Nevertheless, the Obama administration elected to sit on this bombshell, allowing dishonest Kremlin narratives to gain traction as the public tried to ascertain what exactly had happened to the doomed jetliner.

Although it’s a rare thing for a White House to release top-secret SIGINT to the public to clear the air about an important issue, there’s an eerily exact precedent on hand. On the first day of September 1983, a Soviet jet interceptor downed Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747, close to the Soviet border, killing all 269 passengers and crew. Thanks to its intelligence bases all over the world, NSA within hours had hard evidence of what happened. Signals intercepts proved that the pilot of a Soviet Air Force Su-15 interceptor shot down the Boeing on orders from his superiors, including his chilling report back to his bosses: “The target is destroyed.”

Moscow was denying that it had any idea of what happened to the missing airliner, so President Ronald Reagan decided to push back. Taking a risk, the White House ordered the release of the top-secret NSA intercept to the public, and just five days after the loss of KAL 007, our ambassador to the United Nations, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, played the tape before the U. N. Security Council, publicly accusing the Kremlin of mass murder. This was a diplomatic defeat and humiliation of the highest order for the Soviets, tarring the regime with mass murder before the world.

President Barack Obama could have done the same four years ago, letting the world know just what the Kremlin did by releasing relevant intelligence, yet he chose not to do so. The pushback which Western countries are finally mustering over the murder of 298 innocent people, while admirable, is long overdue. It could – and should – have happened in late July 2014, led by the United States. This is just another example of the Obama administration’s troubling unwillingness to confront Putin and his regime over its mounting crimes and misdemeanors. By refusing to take a stand against Russian aggression, President Obama encouraged more of it—culminating in direct Kremlin interference in our 2016 election, with fateful consequences we are living with today.


http://observer.com/2018/05/kremlin-responds-to-netherlands-australia-blame-russia-for-mh17-crash/