Malaysian plane crashes on Ukraine-Russia border - live

[David Guyatt]

Parry tears 60 minutes apart accusing them of wilful fraud.[URL="https://consortiumnews.com/2015/05/26/more-video-fakery-on-mh-17/"]

The Consortium:[/URL]

More Video Fakery on MH-17

May 26, 2015

Exclusive: Australia's "60 Minutes" program refuses to admit the obvious: that it messed up in determining the location where the "getaway" video was taken after last July's Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down. Instead, the show presented an update with more deceptive video, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
After being caught red-handed presenting misleading video about the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down, Australia's "60 Minutes" program could have acknowledged its obvious error and apologized to its viewers. Instead, the program has resorted to hurling insults toward me for noting the discrepancies and engaging in more video sleights-of-hand to compound the journalistic malfeasance.
In an update posted on YouTube on May 24, the program's host Michael Usher acknowledged that the original amateur video of a possible BUK anti-aircraft missile battery after the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of MH-17 did not match up with the program's video attempting to replicate that scene in the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk.
But Usher insisted that was just because his crew couldn't get access to the location where the "getaway" video was shot. He dismissed the obvious differences as simply a case of using a different camera angle.
Yet, then, Usher pulled two fast ones on his viewers. The first was to present a view of the intersection in Luhansk taken by a traffic camera "just before the shooting" and then matching it up with video taken by his crew. Usher noted that his crew's video contained many of the same landmarks, including a church in the background.

Screen shot from Australia's "60 Minutes" update on its story about the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. According to host Michael Usher, the image was taken from a traffic camera shortly before the MH-17 shoot-down on July 17, 2014.

But that's irrelevant to the question of whether the July 17 "getaway" video matched up with the same intersection. Usher is trying to trick you as in a shell game by pretending that the fact that he and his crew found a scene matching what you see in a traffic camera is the same as finding the scene matching the "getaway." They're two entirely different points and nothing significant in the "getaway" video matches the scene of Usher's intersection.
Usher then moved to his second sleight-of-hand by showing the one thing that supposedly does match up: a non-descript utility pole. In the update, he claimed that his crew found that matching pole along the roadway in Luhansk. Yet, except for some unexceptional electronic device strapped to the pole there is nothing else that looks the same.

A screen shot from the so-called "getaway" video supposedly taken shortly after MH-17 was shot down showing the road that the suspected BUK anti-aircraft missile battery was taking.

Indeed, the key landmark in that part of the "getaway" video is a house in the background to the left of the pole. But Usher's video doesn't show a house. Instead, Usher's video added an insert showing the pole from the "getaway" video that conveniently obscures the spot where the house should be.

A screen shot from Australia's "60 Minutes" update supposedly showing a utility pole in the "getaway" video and matching it up with a pole in an intersection of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. However, note that the inset partially obscures the spot where a house appeared on the original video.

At this point, one has to wonder how premeditated Usher's manipulation of the program's viewers has become. You would think that showing the house would have been the slam dunk proof that Usher's crew did find the right location. Instead, the program obscures exactly that spot.
Also, in the long-range view from the traffic camera, what you see is a commercial intersection with no house matching the house in the "getaway" video. The "getaway" scene after the MH-17 shoot-down clearly depicts a much woodsier setting than Usher's intersection.
And, look at the two images of the poles and the surrounding areas. Except for the fairly routine electronic devices strapped to the poles, there really isn't anything that looks the same. Below the pole in the "getaway" video there appears to be one band, yet in Usher's there appear to be two. And, note the intense foliage to the right of the pole in the "getaway" video. It's not there in Usher's scene.
Yet, as Usher's update rushes these images past the viewers, it's hard for them to grasp all the quick editing moves that seem designed to deceive them. These deceptions are what Usher offers to seal the deal with his viewers.
Those camera tricks and the flurry of smug insults delivered by Usher (referring to skeptics of his presentation as "Kremlin stooges" and "Russian puppets") reveal a newsman and a news show that are less than objective or professional.
If Usher had real evidence showing that he had found the spot where the "getaway" video was taken, why did he include something as irrelevant as the traffic-camera video while pretending that it was somehow probative, when it wasn't?
And, why is his key evidence a non-descript pole that sits on a roadway that doesn't match with the scene in the "getaway" video? And, why did his producers insert that "helpful" inset that obscures what would have been the only meaningful landmark in the "pole scene" the house that doesn't appear to be there?
Initially, I had thought that blogger Eliot Higgins simply had given Usher and his team bad coordinates and they had made a serious but honest mistake. Generally, in journalism, before we accuse someone of mass murder even a demonized figure like Russian President Vladimir Putin we like to have real evidence, not misleading images. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Fake Evidence Blaming Russia for MH-17?" and "You Be the Judge."]
I had assumed that Usher and his team may just have gotten overly excited and jumped to a faulty conclusion. However, with the update and the additional fakery it now appears that they are engaged in a willful fraud.

[Magda Hassan]

I never watched the 60 Minutes hatchet job. I could see from the ads there had been no investigation of it at all and knew where their 'sources' came from. So good to see that Robert Parry is addressing their bull shit.

[David Guyatt]

Slowly evidence of the truth is appearing. Now we can add this small shard to the other accumulated facts.

MH17 crash: Western governments knew risks of Ukraine overflights: report

DateAugust 23, 2015

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Possible Buk missile parts found at MH17 site

Dutch prosecutors say they have found parts that may belong to a Buk missile system among the recovered wreckage of MH17 that was shot down over eastern Ukraine last year.

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Western governments knew the dangers of flying over eastern Ukraine before Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 crashed but did nothing about it, German investigative journalists say.
Correctiv, which describes itself as the first non-profit German-language investigative newsroom, has won a partial court victory in its quest to find out what governments knew before the tragedy.
The Administrative Court in Berlin this week partly upheld Correctiv's right to know and ordered the German foreign office to disclose facts the office had withheld.

An armed pro-Russian separatist stands at the crash site last year. Photo: Reuters

Writing on Correctiv's website, David Schraven said its investigation showed the office had detailed information of the dangers of flying over eastern Ukraine several days before MH17 took off.
Ukrainian officials told ambassadors of Western countries at a July 14 briefing last year that Russian tank units had intervened in the conflict. As a result, the Ukrainians said, there had been a dramatic escalation in air combat, according to Schraven's report.
A few hours before the briefing a Ukrainian military plane flying at 6200 meters had been shot down over eastern Ukraine. Only Russian missiles or the Russian air force could be responsible, his report cites the Ukrainians as saying. The separatists would not have had appropriate military equipment.

Eastern Ukrainian man Dima stands in the field where he came across a diver's watch near the wreckage. Photo: Kate Geraghty

Three days later flight MH17 plunged to the ground, killing all 298 on board including 39 people who called Australia home.
But the doomed flight was one of hundreds that crossed the crisis zone that week, with Russian Aeroflot, Singapore Airlines and Ukrainian International Airlines having the most flights. Some airlines, including Qantas, British Airways, Air France and Polish airline LOT, had avoided it for some time. Changing course would result in longer flying times and increase airlines' fuel costs.
The German foreign office has said that civilian flights over eastern Ukraine and their safety were not discussed at the July 14 briefing.

Flowers and mementos placed at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 near the settlement of Rozspyne in Donetsk. Photo: Reuters

However, Correctiv says it has a copy of a report on the briefing by Dutch diplomat Gerrie Willems that contradicts the office's claim.
Presented in German by Correctiv, the Willems report says the briefing was attended by staff of the embassies of the European Union member states, the United States, Canada, Brazil and Japan.
Although there is no specific mention of civil aviation, the Willems' report refers to the escalation in aerial combat.
"This escalation meant automatically that civil aviation was at risk.
"According to our investigation, the German ambassador to Ukraine, Christof Weil, passed this information on to the foreign office," Schraven wrote.
Correctiv printed a photograph it said was from the Ukrainian President's website that shows Mr Weil at the July 14 briefing.
The German foreign office had refused to release information about the briefing, arguing it had been confidential and that all those attending had acknowledged this.
Correctiv responded by saying that the Ukrainian President's website had published information from the meeting on July 15.
The Administrative Court of Berlin has now ordered the foreign office to tell Correctiv whether Mr Weil did write a report on the briefing and when the office told the Chancellor's Office and the German Defence Ministry about the content of the Weil report.
In addition, the office must reveal when German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was told about the escalation of the war.
"We want to know why thousands of people were at risk and why no warning was issued," Schraven wrote.
"Because that was the duty of the foreign office: to warn the airlines and through them all travellers of the dangers over eastern Ukraine."



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/mh17-crash-w...z3jkewy1oB
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Source

And this damning piece from the enormously respected Ray McGovern:

'Political Hacks' Wrote US Report Linking Russia To Crash Of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17: Ex-CIA Analyst

By Clark Mindock @clarkmindock on August 21 2015 6:31 PM EDT

A bicyclist rides past wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, near Hrabove, a village in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, Dec. 15, 2014. Reuters



A U.S. government report implicating Russia in the July 2014 crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was created by political writers rather than intelligence analysts, a former CIA analyst-turned-political activist told Russia's Sputnik News. Sputnik is wholly owned by the Russian government, which reportedly backs Ukrainian separatists accused of firing a missile at the plane as it flew near the Russia-Ukraine border.
"What [U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry] offered was a 'government assessment,' which means it was written in the White House, which means it was a political document written by political hacks, and that the intelligence analysts would not sign on to it," Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, toldSputnik. McGovern was previously known for implying that President George W. Bush could have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York City and Arlington County, Virginia.

Retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern holds a copy of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution as he participates in a news conference held by the whistleblower group ExposeFacts.org at the National Press Club in Washington, April 27, 2015. Reuters
The United States was not the only entity pointing fingers at Russia, however. A group of British investigative journalists in November found what they called "solid information" that the Buk missile system said to have fired the rocket that brought the plane down could be traced back to Russia.
"It seems clear the launcher came from Russia, and the government bears the responsibility for killing hundreds of innocent civilians on MH17," Eliot Higgins, the journalist who led the investigation, said at the time, as Ukraine's KyivPost reported.
Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board. The plane, a Boeing 777, was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and lost contact with air traffic control about 50 kilometers from the Ukraine-Russia border. The crash occurred during the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and other airlines soon began avoiding that airspace.

Source

[Magda Hassan]

The media rarely comments on the origin of the 'Russian Buk missile' and implies that only Russia can have these. The Ukrainian military and the Russian military were one and the same thing as they were one and the same political entity until recently. Upon independence the Ukraine still had a soviet military. So that they found pieces of a 'Russian buk missile' is entirely unsurprising regardless of who fired it. It certainly does not confirm any Russian origin or involvement.But this is rarely clarified by MSM.

[David Guyatt]

An excellent analysis from Ray McGovern:

From Consortium News

Propaganda, Intelligence and MH-17

August 17, 2015

Exclusive: Propaganda is the life-blood of life-destroying wars, and the U.S. government has reached new heights (or depths) in this art of perception management. A case in point is the media manipulation around last year's Malaysia Airlines shoot-down over Ukraine, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
During a recent interview, I was asked to express my conclusions about the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, prompting me to take another hard look at Official Washington's dubious claims pointing the finger of blame at eastern Ukrainian rebels and Moscow based on shaky evidence regarding who was responsible for this terrible tragedy.
Unlike serious professional investigative reporters, intelligence analysts often are required by policymakers to reach rapid judgments without the twin luxuries of enough time and conclusive evidence. Having spent almost 30 years in the business of intelligence analysis, I have faced that uncomfortable challenge more times than I wish to remember.

President Barack Obama delivers a statement on the situation in Ukraine, on the South Lawn of the White House, July 29, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

So, I know what it feels like to confront issues of considerable consequence like the shoot-down of MH-17 and the killing of 298 passengers and crew amid intense pressure to choreograph the judgments to the propagandistic music favored by senior officials who want the U.S. "enemy" in this case, nuclear-armed Russia and its Western-demonized President Vladimir Putin to somehow be responsible. In such situations, the easiest and safest (career-wise) move is to twirl your analysis to the preferred tune or at least sit this jig out.
But the trust-us-it-was-Putin marathon dance has now run for 13 months and it's getting tiresome to hear the P.R. people in the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper still claiming that the U.S. intelligence community has not revised or updated its analysis of the incident since July 22, 2014, just five days after the crash.
Back then, Clapper's office, trying to back up Secretary of State John Kerry's anti-Russian rush to judgment, cited very sketchy evidence in both senses of the word drawn heavily from "social media" accounts. Obviously, the high-priced and high-caliber U.S. intelligence community has learned much more about this very sensitive case since that time, but the administration won't tell the American people and the world. The DNI's office still refers inquiring reporters back to the outdated report from more than a year ago.
None of this behavior would make much sense if the later U.S. intelligence data supported the hasty finger-pointing toward Putin and the rebels. If more solid and persuasive intelligence corroborated those initial assumptions, you'd think U.S. government officials would be falling over themselves to leak the evidence and declare "we told you so." And the DNI office's claim that it doesn't want to prejudice the MH-17 investigation doesn't hold water either since the initial rush to judgment did exactly that.
So, despite the discomfort attached to making judgments with little reliable evidence and at the risk of sounding like former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld it seems high time to address what we know, what we don't know, and why it may be that we don't know what we don't know.
Those caveats notwithstanding I would say it is a safe bet that the hard technical intelligence evidence upon which professional intelligence analysts prefer to rely does not support Secretary of State Kerry's unseemly rush to judgment in blaming the Russian side just three days after the shoot-down.
An Extraordinary Tool'?
When the tragedy occurred U.S. intelligence collection assets were focused laser-like on the Ukraine-Russia border region where the passenger plane crashed. Besides collection from overhead imagery and sensors, U.S. intelligence presumably would have electronic intercepts of communications as well as information from human sources inside many of the various factions.
That would mean that hundreds of intelligence analysts are likely to have precise knowledge regarding how MH-17 was shot down and by whom. Though there may be some difference of opinion among analysts about how to read the evidence as there often is it is out of the question that the intelligence community would withhold this data from President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Kerry and other top officials.
Thus, it is a virtual certainty that the Obama administration has far more conclusive evidence than the "social media" cited by Kerry in casting suspicions on the rebels and Moscow when he made the rounds of Sunday talk shows just three days after the crash. On NBC's "Meet the Press," Kerry told David Gregory that "social media" is an "extraordinary tool." The question is, a tool for what?
The DNI report two days later rehashed many of the "social media" references that Kerry cited and added some circumstantial evidence about Russia providing other forms of military equipment to the rebels. But the DNI report contains no mention of Russia supplying a Buk anti-aircraft missile system that Kerry and the DNI cited as the suspected weapon that downed the plane.
So, why does the administration continue refusing to go beyond such dubious sources and shaky information in attributing blame for the shoot-down? Why not fill in the many blanks with actual and hard U.S. intelligence data that would have been available and examined over the following days and weeks? Did the Russians supply a Buk or other missile battery that would be capable of hitting MH-17 flying at 33,000 feet? Yes or no.
If not supplied by the Russians, did the rebels capture a Buk or similar missile battery from the Ukrainians who had them in their own inventory? Or did some element of the Ukrainian government possibly associated with one of Ukraine's corrupt oligarchs fire the missile, either mistaking the Malaysian plane for a Russian one or calculating how the tragedy could be played for propaganda purposes? Or was it some other sinister motive?
Without doubt, the U.S. government has evidence that could support or refute any one of those possibilities, but it won't tell you even in some declassified summary form. Why? Is it somehow unpatriotic to speculate that John Kerry, with his checkered reputation for truth-telling regarding Syria and other foreign crises, chose right off the bat to turn the MH-17 tragedy to Washington's propaganda advantage, an exercise in "soft power" to throw Putin on the defensive and rally Europe behind U.S. economic sanctions to punish Russia for supporting ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine resisting the new U.S.-arranged political order in Kiev?
By taking a leaf out of the Bush-Cheney-Tony-Blair playbook, Kerry could "fix the intelligence around the policy" of Putin-bashing. Given the anti-Putin bias rampant in the mainstream Western media, that wouldn't be a hard sell. And, it wasn't. The "mainstream" stenographers/journalists quickly accepted that "social media" was indeed a dandy source to rely on and have never pressed the U.S. government to release any of its intelligence data.
Yet, in the immediate aftermath of the MH-17 shoot-down, there were signs that honest intelligence analysts were not comfortable letting themselves be used as they and other colleagues had been before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
To buttress Kerry's shaky case, DNI Clapper arranged a flimsy "Government Assessment" reprising many of Kerry's references to "social media" that was briefed to a few hand-picked Establishment reporters two days after Kerry starred on Sunday TV. The little-noticed distinction was that this report was not the customary "Intelligence Assessment" (the genre that has been de rigueur in such circumstances in the past).
The key difference between the traditional "Intelligence Assessment" and this relatively new creation, a "Government Assessment," is that the latter genre is put together by senior White House bureaucrats or other political appointees, not senior intelligence analysts. Another significant difference is that an "Intelligence Assessment" often includes alternative views, either in the text or in footnotes, detailing disagreements among intelligence analysts, thus revealing where the case may be weak or in dispute.
The absence of an "Intelligence Assessment" suggested that honest intelligence analysts were resisting a knee-jerk indictment of Russia just as they did after the first time Kerry pulled this "Government Assessment" arrow out of his quiver trying to stick the blame for an Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus on the Syrian government.
Kerry cited this pseudo-intelligence product, which contained not a single verifiable fact, to take the United States to the brink of war against President Bashar al-Assad's military, a fateful decision that was only headed off at the last minute after President Barack Obama was made aware of grave doubts among U.S. intelligence analysts about whodunit. Kerry's sarin case has since collapsed. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case."]
The sarin and MH-17 cases reveal the continuing struggles between opportunistic political operatives and professional intelligence analysts over how to deal with geopolitical information that can either inform U.S. foreign policy objectively or be exploited to advance some propaganda agenda. Clearly, this struggle did not end after CIA analysts were pressured into giving President George W. Bush the fraudulent not "mistaken" evidence that he used to make the case for invading Iraq in 2003.
But so soon after that disgraceful episode, the White House and State Department run the risk that some honest intelligence analysts would blow the whistle, especially given the dangerously blasé attitude in Establishment Washington toward the dangers of escalating the Ukraine confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. Given the very high stakes, perhaps an intelligence professional or two will summon the courage to step up to this challenge.
Falling in Line
For now, the rest of us are told to be satisfied with the Sunday media circus orchestrated by Kerry on July 20, 2014, with the able assistance of eager-to-please pundits. A review of the transcripts of the CBS, NBC, and ABC Sunday follies reveals a remarkable if not unprecedented consistency in approach by CBS's Bob Schieffer, NBC's David Gregory (ably egged on by Andrea Mitchell), and ABC's George Stephanopoulos, all of whom hewed faithfully to a script apparently given them with two main talking points: (1) blame Putin; and (2) frame the shoot-down as a "wake-up call" (Kerry used the words repeatedly) for European governments to impose tight economic sanctions on Russia.
If the U.S. government's hope was that the combination of Kerry's hasty judgment and the DNI's supportive "Government Assessment" would pin the P.R. blame for MH-17 on Putin and Russia, the gambit clearly worked. The U.S. had imposed serious economic sanctions on Russia the day before the shoot-down but the Europeans were hesitant. Yet, in the MH-17 aftermath, both U.S. and European media were filled with outrage against Putin for supposedly murdering 298 innocents.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders, who had been resisting imposing strong economic sanctions because of Germany's and the European Union's lucrative trade with Russia, let themselves be bulldozed, just two weeks after the shoot-down, into going along with mutually harmful sanctions that have hurt Russia but also have shaken the EU's fragile economic recovery.
Thus started a new, noxious phase in the burgeoning confrontation between Russia and the West, a crisis that was originally precipitated by a Western-orchestrated coup d'état in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, ousting Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych and touching off the current civil war that has witnessed some of the worst bloodshed inside Europe in decades..
It may seem odd that those European leaders allowed themselves to be snookered so swiftly. Did their own intelligence services not caution them against acquiescing over "intelligence" from social media? But the tidal wave of anti-Putin fury in the MH-17 aftermath was hard if not impossible for any Western politician to resist.
Just One Specific Question?
Yet, can the U.S. concealment of its MH-17 intelligence continue indefinitely? Some points beg for answers. For instance, besides describing social media as "an extraordinary tool," Kerry told David Gregory on July 20, 2014: "We picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar."
Odd that neither Gregory nor other "mainstream" stenographers have thought to ask Kerry, then or since, to share what he says he "knows" with the American people and the world if only out of, well, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. If Kerry has sources beyond "social media" for what he claims to "know" and they support his instant claims of Russian culpability, then the importance of his accusations dictates that he describe exactly what he pretends to know and how. But Kerry has been silent on this topic.
If, on the other hand, the real intelligence does not support the brief that Kerry argued right after the shoot-down, well, the truth will ultimately be hard to suppress. Angela Merkel and other leaders with damaged trade ties with Russia may ultimately demand an explanation. Can it be that it will take current European leaders a couple of years to realize they've been had again?
The U.S. government also is likely to face growing public skepticism for using social media to pin the blame on Moscow for the downing of MH-17 not only to justify imposing economic sanctions, but also to stoke increased hostility toward Russia.
The Obama administration and the mainstream media may try to pretend that no doubt exists that the "group think" on Russia's guilt is ironclad. And it seems likely that the official investigations now being conducted by the U.S.-propped-up government in Ukraine and other close U.S. allies will struggle to build a circumstantial case keeping the Putin-did-it narrative alive.
But chickens have a way of coming home to roost.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-years as a CIA analyst, he served as chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch, and prepared and personally conducted early morning briefings of thePresident's Daily Brief. In January 2013, he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

[David Guyatt]

The cat is out of the bag, but the US won't discuss it, as admission will destroy their carefully built propaganda drive to isolate Russia. It's another case of duplicity and deceit before truth - and fuck the suffering families. When is this shoddy and shitty attitude going to end?

From Robert Parry:

The Ever-Curiouser MH-17 Case

March 16, 2016

Exclusive: The shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine has served as a potent propaganda club against Russia but the U.S. government is hiding key evidence that could solve the mystery, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
The curious mystery surrounding the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, gets more curious and more curious as the U.S. government and Dutch investigators balk at giving straightforward answers to the simplest of questions even when asked by the families of the victims.
Adding to the mystery Dutch investigators have indicated that the Dutch Safety Board did not request radar information from the United States, even though Secretary of State John Kerry indicated just three days after the crash that the U.S. government possessed data that pinpointed the location of the suspected missile launch that allegedly downed the airliner, killing all 298 people onboard.

A Malaysia Airways' Boeing 777 like the one that crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. (Photo credit: Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland)

Although Kerry claimed that the U.S. government knew the location almost immediately, Dutch investigators now say they hope to identify the spot sometime "in the second half of the year," meaning that something as basic as the missile-launch site might remain unknown to the public more than two years after the tragedy.
The families of the Dutch victims, including the father of a Dutch-American citizen, have been pressing for an explanation about the slow pace of the investigation and the apparent failure to obtain relevant data from the U.S. and other governments.
I spent time with the family members in early February at the Dutch parliament in The Hague as opposition parliamentarians, led by Christian Democrat Pieter Omtzigt, unsuccessfully sought answers from the government about the absence of radar data and other basic facts.
When answers have been provided to the families and the public, they are often hard to understand, as if to obfuscate what information the investigation possesses or doesn't possess. For instance, when I asked the U.S. State Department whether the U.S. government had supplied the Dutch with radar data and satellite images, I received the following response, attributable to "a State Department spokesperson": "While I won't go into the details of our law enforcement cooperation in the investigation, I would note that Dutch officials said March 8 that all information asked of the United States has been shared."
I wrote back thanking the spokesperson for the response, but adding: "I must say it seems unnecessarily fuzzy. Why can't you just say that the U.S. government has provided the radar data cited by Secretary Kerry immediately after the tragedy? Or the U.S. government has provided satellite imagery before and after the shootdown? Why the indirect and imprecise phrasing? …
"I've spent time with the Dutch families of the victims, including the father of a U.S.-Dutch citizen, and I can tell you that they are quite disturbed by what they regard as double-talk and stalling. I would like to tell them that my government has provided all relevant data in a cooperative and timely fashion. But all I get is this indirect and imprecise word-smithing."
The State Department spokesperson wrote back, "I understand your questions, and also the importance of the view of these families so devastated by this tragedy. However, I am going to have to leave our comments as below."
Propaganda Value
This lack of transparency, of course, has a propaganda value since it leaves in place the widespread public impression that ethnic Russian rebels and Russian President Vladimir Putin were responsible for the 298 deaths, a rush to judgment that Secretary Kerry and other senior U.S. officials (and the Western news media) encouraged in July 2014.

Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Once that impression took hold there has been little interest in Official Washington to clarify the mystery especially as evidence has emerged implicating elements of the Ukrainian military. For instance, Dutch intelligence has reported (and U.S. intelligence has implicitly confirmed) that the only operational Buk anti-aircraft missile systems in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, were under the control of the Ukrainian military.
In a Dutch report released last October, the Netherlands' Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) reported that the only anti-aircraft weapons in eastern Ukraine capable of bringing down MH-17 at 33,000 feet belonged to the Ukrainian government.
MIVD made that assessment in the context of explaining why commercial aircraft continued to fly over the eastern Ukrainian battle zone in summer 2014. MIVD said that based on "state secret" information, it was known that Ukraine possessed some older but "powerful anti-aircraft systems" and "a number of these systems were located in the eastern part of the country."
The intelligence agency added that the rebels lacked that capability: "Prior to the crash, the MIVD knew that, in addition to light aircraft artillery, the Separatists also possessed short-range portable air defence systems (man-portable air-defence systems; MANPADS) and that they possibly possessed short-range vehicle-borne air-defence systems. Both types of systems are considered surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Due to their limited range they do not constitute a danger to civil aviation at cruising altitude."
One could infer a similar finding by reading a U.S. "Government Assessment" released by the Director of National Intelligence on July 22, 2014, five days after the crash, seeking to cast suspicion on the ethnic Russian rebels and Putin by noting military equipment that Moscow had provided the rebels. But most tellingly the list did not include Buk anti-aircraft missiles. In other words, in the context of trying to blame the rebels and Putin, U.S. intelligence could not put an operational Buk system in the rebels' hands.
So, perhaps the most logical suspicion would be that the Ukrainian military, then engaged in an offensive in the east and fearing a possible Russian invasion, moved its Buk missile systems up to the front and an undisciplined crew fired a missile at a suspected Russian aircraft, bringing down MH-17 by accident.
That was essentially what I was told by a source who had been briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts in July and August 2014. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com's "Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts" and "The Danger of an MH-17 Cold Case."]
But Ukraine is a principal participant in the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which has been probing the MH-17 case, and thus the investigation suffers from a possible conflict of interest since Ukraine would prefer that the world's public perception of the MH-17 case continue to blame Putin. Under the JIT's terms, any of the five key participants (The Netherlands, Ukraine, Australia, Belgium and Malaysia) can block release of information.
The interest in keeping Putin on the propaganda defensive is shared by the Obama administration which used the furor over the MH-17 deaths to spur the European Union into imposing economic sanctions on Russia.
In contrast, clearing the Russians and blaming the Ukrainians would destroy a carefully constructed propaganda narrative which has stuck black hats on Putin and the ethnic Russian rebels and white hats on the U.S.-backed government of Ukraine, which seized power after a putsch that overthrew elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014.
Accusations against Russia have also been fanned by propaganda outlets, such as the British-based Bellingcat site, which has collaborated with Western mainstream media to continue pointing the finger of blame at Moscow and Putin as the Dutch investigators drag their heels and refuse to divulge any information that would clarify the case.
Letter to the Families
Perhaps the most detailed although still hazy status report on the investigation came in a recent letter from JIT chief prosecutor Fred Westerbeke to the Dutch family members. The letter acknowledged that the investigators lacked "primary raw radar images" which could have revealed a missile or a military aircraft in the vicinity of MH-17.

Russian-made Buk anti-aircraft missile battery.

Ukrainian authorities said all their primary radar facilities were shut down for maintenance and only secondary radar, which would show commercial aircraft, was available. Russian officials have said their radar data suggest that a Ukrainian warplane might have fired on MH-17 with an air-to-air missile, a possibility that is difficult to rule out without examining primary radar which has so far not been available. Primary radar data also might have picked up a ground-fired missile, Westerbeke wrote.
"Raw primary radar data could provide information on the rocket trajectory," Westerbeke's letter said. "The JIT does not have that information yet. JIT has questioned a member of the Ukrainian air traffic control and a Ukrainian radar specialist. They explained why no primary radar images were saved in Ukraine." Westerbeke said investigators are also asking Russia about its data.
Westerbeke added that the JIT had "no video or film of the launch or the trajectory of the rocket." Nor, he said, do the investigators have satellite photos of the rocket launch.
"The clouds on the part of the day of the downing of MH17 prevented usable pictures of the launch site from being available," he wrote. "There are pictures from just before and just after July 17th and they are an asset in the investigation." According to intelligence sources, the satellite photos show several Ukrainian military Buk missile systems in the area.

Secretary of State John Kerry denounces Russia's RT network as a "propaganda bullhorn" during remarks on April 24, 2014.

Why the investigation's data is so uncertain has become a secondary mystery in the MH-17 whodunit. During an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on July 20, 2014, three days after the crash, Secretary Kerry declared, "we picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar."
But this U.S. data has never been made public. In the letter, Westerbeke wrote, "The American authorities have data, that come from their own secret services, which could provide information on the trajectory of the rocket. This information was shared in secret with the [Dutch] MIVD." Westerbeke added that the information may be made available as proof in a criminal case as an "amtsbericht" or "official statement."
Yet, despite the U.S. data, Westerbeke said the location of the launch site remains uncertain. Last October, the Dutch Safety Board placed the likely firing location within a 320-square-kilometer area that covered territory both under government and rebel control. (The safety board did not seek to identify which side fired the fateful missile.)
By contrast, Almaz-Antey, the Russian arms manufacturer of the Buk systems, conducted its own experiments to determine the likely firing location and placed it in a much smaller area near the village of Zaroshchenskoye, about 20 kilometers west of the Dutch Safety Board's zone and in an area under Ukrainian government control.
Westerbeke wrote, "Raw primary radar data and the American secret information are only two sources of information for the determination of the launch site. There is more. JIT collects evidence on the basis of telephone taps, locations of telephones, pictures, witness statements and technical calculations of the trajectory of the rocket. The calculations are made by the national air and space laboratory on the basis of the location of MH17, the damage pattern on the wreckage and the special characteristics of the rockets. JIT does extra research on top of the [Dutch Safety Board] research. On the basis of these sources, JIT gets ever more clarity on the exact launch site. In the second half of the year we expect exact results."

Quinn Schansman, a dual U.S.-Dutch citizen killed aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Photo from Facebook)

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to stonewall a request from Thomas J. Schansman, the father of Quinn Schansman, the only American citizen to die aboard MH-17, to Secretary Kerry to release the U.S. data that Kerry has publicly cited.
Quinn Schansman, who had dual U.S.-Dutch citizenship, boarded MH-17 along with 297 other people for a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014. The 19-year-old was planning to join his family for a vacation in Indonesia.
In a letter to Kerry dated Jan. 5, 2016, Thomas J. Schansman noted Kerry's remarks at a press conference on Aug. 12, 2014, when the Secretary of State said about the Buk anti-aircraft missile suspected of downing the plane: "We saw the take-off. We saw the trajectory. We saw the hit. We saw this aeroplane disappear from the radar screens. So there is really no mystery about where it came from and where these weapons have come from."
Although U.S. consular officials in the Netherlands indicated that Kerry would respond personally to the request, Schansman told me this week that he had not yet received a reply from Kerry.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com

[David Guyatt]

More from Robert Parry on MH 17 who won't allow the US story to go unchallenged even though the US clearly wants it to die quietly

Kerry Balks at Supplying MH-17 Data

March 25, 2016

Exclusive: The father of a young American killed aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014 says Secretary of State Kerry balks at turning over U.S. data that Kerry cited three days after the tragedy in eastern Ukraine, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Secretary of State John Kerry has rebuffed a request from the father of the only American citizen killed aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 for Kerry to disclose the radar and other data that he cited in 2014 in claiming to know the precise location of the missile launch that allegedly downed the airliner over eastern Ukraine killing 298 people.
In a letter to Kerry dated Jan. 5, 2016, Thomas Schansman, the father of American-Dutch citizen Quinn Schansman, asked Kerry to turn over that data to aid the investigation seeking to identify who was responsible for shooting down the plane on July 17, 2014. In a letter dated March 7, 2016, but just delivered to Thomas Schansman on Thursday, Kerry expressed his condolences and repeated his claim to know where the missile launch originated, but did not provide new details.

Quinn Schansman, a dual U.S.-Dutch citizen killed aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Photo from Facebook)

Kerry wrote, "The assessment I provided to the media three days following the shoot down remains unchanged, and is corroborated by the findings of the Dutch Safety Board [DSB]. Flight 17 was shot down by a BUK surface-to-air missile fired from separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine."
But Kerry's assertion is not entirely correct. Despite Kerry's claim on July 20, 2014 three days after the shoot-down to know the location of the missile launch, the Dutch Safety Board reported last October that it could only place the likely launch site within a 320-square-kilometer area that included territory under both government and rebel control. (The safety board did not seek to identify which side fired the fateful missile.)
Why the U.S. government has dragged its heels about supplying the evidence that Kerry claimed to possess just days after the tragedy has become a secondary mystery to the allegations and counter-allegations about whodunit. That Kerry would not even elaborate on that information in response to the father of the lone American victim is even more striking.
In an email to me with Kerry's letter attached, Thomas Schansman wrote, "the message is clear: no answer on my request to hand over satellite and/or radar data to DSB or public."
Plus, Kerry's credibility has come under a darkening cloud because of recent disclosures undermining his repeated claims on Aug. 30, 2013, that "we know" that Syrian government forces were responsible for the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus. Despite Kerry's assertions of certainty in that case, he presented no verifiable evidence and it has since been confirmed that the U.S. intelligence community lacked "slam dunk" proof.
Nearly a year after his "we know" performance regarding the Syria-sarin case, Kerry staged a reprise expressing similar certainty about the MH-17 case again dumping the blame on the target of an intensive U.S. propaganda campaign, this time Russia, which was backing the rebels in eastern Ukraine. Kerry again failed to supply supporting evidence (beyond some dubious references to "social media").
Cracks in the Story
Also, some of Kerry's MH-17 assertions have shown cracks as more information has become available. For instance, despite Kerry's putting the blame on the ethnic Russian rebels and their supporters in Moscow, Western intelligence now says the only functioning Buk anti-aircraft missiles in the area were under the control of the Ukrainian military.
According to Dutch intelligence and implicitly corroborated by U.S. intelligence Ukraine's Buk batteries were the only anti-aircraft missiles in the area capable of hitting a commercial airliner flying at 33,000 feet. That information was contained in a little-noticed Dutch intelligence report last October citing information from the Netherlands' Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD).
MIVD made its assessment in the context of explaining why commercial aircraft continued to fly over the eastern Ukrainian battle zone in summer 2014. MIVD said that based on "state secret" information, it was known that Ukraine possessed some older but "powerful anti-aircraft systems" and "a number of these systems were located in the eastern part of the country."
MIVD added that the rebels lacked that capacity, having only short-range anti-aircraft missiles and a few inoperable Buk missiles that had been captured from a Ukrainian military base. "During the course of July, several reliable sources indicated that the systems that were at the military base were not operational," MIVD said. "Therefore, they could not be used by the Separatists."
U.S. intelligence, which had eastern Ukraine under intensive overhead surveillance in summer 2014, implicitly corroborated MIVD's conclusion in a U.S. "Government Assessment" released by the Director of National Intelligence on July 22, 2014. It listed weapons systems that Russia had provided the rebels but made no mention of a Buk missile battery.
In other words, based on satellite imagery and other intelligence reviewed both before and after the shoot-down, U.S. and other Western intelligence services could find no proof that Russia had ever given a Buk system to the rebels or introduced one into the area. If Russia had provided a Buk battery four 16-foot-long missiles hauled around by trucks it would have been hard to miss.
There was also logic to support the notion that a Ukrainian team may have been responsible for the MH-17 shoot-down. At the time, the Ukrainian military was mounting an offensive against the rebels, who had resisted a U.S.-backed coup on Feb. 22, 2014, which ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych, who had strong support among Ukraine's ethnic Russian minority in the east.
As the Ukrainian offensive claimed territory that the rebels had held, the Ukrainian military moved several Buk anti-aircraft missile batteries toward the front, presumably out of concern that Russia might directly intervene to save the rebels from annihilation.
Plus, on July 16, 2014, a Ukrainian warplane was shot down apparently by an air-to-air missile believed fired by a Russian jet, giving reason for the Ukrainian anti-aircraft batteries to be on edge the next day, looking for Russian aircraft intruding into Ukraine's airspace.
(Another possible scenario, reportedly examined by U.S. intelligence analysts, was that a rogue Ukrainian team working with a hardline oligarch hoped to shoot down Russian President Vladimir Putin's plane returning from a South American trip at about the same time and with similar markings as MH-17.)
But the evidence that the only operational Buk batteries were under control of the Ukrainian military did not fit the U.S. propaganda needs of blaming Russia and the rebels. Any indication that the post-coup Ukrainian government was responsible would instead put the U.S.-backed Kiev regime in a negative light.
So, it makes sense in a "strategic communications" kind of way for Kerry and other U.S. officials to leave the conventional wisdom blaming Putin and Russia for the 298 deaths in place for as long as possible. Kerry told Thomas Schansman that he and the other families of victims should expect a long wait before the perpetrators are brought to justice.
Expressing Condolences
In the letter to Thomas Schansman, Secretary Kerry wrote, "As a father myself, I can only begin to imagine the pain and loss you have endured with your son's tragic passing. My heart goes out to you and your family."

Secretary of State John Kerry denounces Russia's RT network as a "propaganda bullhorn" during remarks on April 24, 2014.

Kerry then added, "This investigative work is not easy, and bringing those responsible to justice will not be a quick process. However, Quinn, your family, and the families of all the others who died that day deserve such justice, and we will continue to do everything possible to achieve it."
But the "everything" doesn't apparently include releasing the data that Kerry claimed to have just days after the crash.
On July 20, 2014, Kerry appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" and declared, "we picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar."
In the letter asking Kerry to release that data, Thomas Schansman noted Kerry's similar comments to a news conference on Aug. 12, 2014, when the Secretary of State said about the Buk anti-aircraft missile suspected of downing the plane: "We saw the take-off. We saw the trajectory. We saw the hit. We saw this aeroplane disappear from the radar screens. So there is really no mystery about where it came from and where these weapons have come from."
Yet where the missile launch occurred has remained a point of mystery to the Dutch-led investigation. Last October, the Dutch Safety Board put the missile launch in a 320-square-kilometer area. Almaz-Antey, the Russian arms manufacturer of the Buk systems, conducted its own experiments to determine the likely firing location and placed it in a much smaller area near the village of Zaroshchenskoye, about 20 kilometers west of the DSB's zone and in an area under Ukrainian government control.
Earlier this month, Fred Westerbeke, the head of the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team, told the families of the victims that the inquiry had yet to pin down the missile launch site, saying "In the second half of the year we expect exact results." In other words, on the second anniversary of the shoot-down, the investigators looking into the MH-17 tragedy still might not know what Kerry claimed to know three days afterwards.
[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com's "Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts"; "The Danger of an MH-17 Cold Case"; and "The Ever-Curiouser MH-17 Case."]

[David Guyatt]

Well, it looks like the US and Ukrainian propaganda about Russia being responsible for the downing of Malayasia's MH17 flight is unravelling. About time too.

Imagine that: Malaysia and Russia are now goin g to jointly investigate what happened because neither trust the western consensus...

From the Australian National Review (via Maggie).

Malaysia to start independent investigation into MH17 tragedy

• Commentary
  

May 31, 2016
 By: Atreyee Chowdhury

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The Malaysian government has said that it will start an independent investigation into the alleged shooting down of a Malaysian civil aircraft in Ukrainian air space.
Recently, a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Razak in Sochi led to the two leaders agreeing to coordinate an investigation into circumstances that downed the plane over Ukraine.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down about 50 km from the UkraineRussia border and crashed near Torez in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. All 300 passengers and crew were killed.
After a meeting with Vladimir Putin, Malaysian PM Najib Razak said, "I saw that we made positive steps on the path to justice for families and victims of MH17 when the Russian President and I agreed that after our next steps will be determined, we will outline the research results of the joint investigation team in October." Making a call to reject speculation, Najib also urged the importance to refrain from premature conclusions. Meanwhile, the Minister of Transport in Malaysia has reportedly sent a letter to the Dutch Commission requesting that a Russian expert be included in the investigation team.
Following the development, Ukraine complained to US Secretary of State John Kerry that Russia had managed to get Malaysia on its side. Ukrainian authorities also asked US authorities to prevent the joint investigation to be conducted by Russia and Malaysia. Lack of evidence to implicate Russia has prompted Malaysia to investigate the issue. Since the airplane belonged to Malaysia, it has the right to seek a reason that caused the crash of the flight. The move is an indication that the nation is not happy with the findings of Dutch investigators.
Malaysian officials also said that Russia was very supportive during the initial days of the crash. However, Russian presence in official invetigations was denied at the time, even though Malaysia had explecitly requested for it.
Furthermore, all independent findings of Russian investigators were avoided. After the meeting between the heads of the states, Transport Minister of Malaysia, Liow Tiong Lai sent a letter to the Commission of Inquiry of the Netherlands requesting that Russia be included in the investigations. The request set off an alarm as Malaysia's claim cannot be refused. This has made international observers suspicious on why Ukraine is reluctant to include Russian experts in the probe team.
Russia had earlier requested the UN to consider its findings to analyse the case. Russian authorities have always maintained that the Dutch commission had started investigations based on a prejudiced assumption and had worked backward to prove it. Russia has since maintained that it has evidence, which could reveal more information on the crash.
The deputy chief of Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency, Oleg Storchevoy, said, that Dutch investigators had ignored the principle of "sequence of conclusions," one of the most fundamental rules when conducting probes into air crashes.
Even if Russian officials are not included in the Dutch investigative Commission, Russia and Malaysia have agreed to announce the results of their own investigation in October 2016.

- See more at: http://www.australiannationalreview.com/...RzEDd.dpuf

[Magda Hassan]

Definitely better doing it themselves. The western sources are discredited and not to be trusted.

[David Guyatt]