The Danger of an MH-17
‘Cold Case’
The Obama administration continues to drag
its feet on releasing U.S. intelligence
evidence on who shot down Malaysia Airlines
Flight 17 six months ago, a failure that has
given the guilty parties time to scatter and
has created a new breeding ground for
conspiracy theories.
By Robert Parry
January 19, 2015 "ICH"
- "Consortium
News"
- I’m told that President Barack Obama has
received briefings on what this evidence
shows and what U.S. intelligence analysts
have concluded about the likely guilty
parties — and that Obama may have shared
some of those confidential findings with the
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak when
they met on Dec. 24 in Hawaii.
But the U.S. government has
gone largely silent on the subject after its
initial rush to judgment pointing fingers at
ethnic Russian rebels for allegedly firing
the missile and at the Russian government
for supposedly supplying a sophisticated Buk
anti-aircraft battery capable of bringing
down the aircraft at 33,000 feet.
Since that early flurry of
unverified charges, only snippets of U.S.
and NATO intelligence findings have reached
the public – and last October’s interim
Dutch investigative report on the cause of
the crash indicated that Western governments
had not shared crucial information.
The Dutch Safety Board’s
interim report answered few questions,
beyond confirming that MH-17 apparently was
destroyed by “high-velocity objects that
penetrated the aircraft from outside.” Other
key questions went begging, such as what to
make of the Russian military radar
purporting to show a Ukrainian SU-25
jetfighter in the area, a claim that the
Kiev government denied.
Either the Russian radar
showed the presence of a jetfighter “gaining
height” as it closed to within three to five
kilometers of the passenger plane – as
the
Russians claimed in a July 21
press conference – or it didn’t. The Kiev
authorities insisted that they had no
military aircraft in the area at the time.
But
the
34-page Dutch report was silent
on the jetfighter question, although noting
that the investigators had received Air
Traffic Control “surveillance data from the
Russian Federation.” The report also was
silent on the “dog-not-barking” issue of
whether the U.S. government had satellite
surveillance that revealed exactly where the
supposed ground-to-air missile was launched
and who may have fired it.
The Obama administration
has asserted knowledge about those facts,
but the U.S. government has withheld
satellite photos and other intelligence
information that could presumably
corroborate the charge. Curiously, too, the
Dutch report said the investigation received
“satellite imagery taken in the days after
the occurrence.” Obviously, the more
relevant images in assessing blame would be
aerial photography in the days and hours
before the crash.
In mid-July, eastern
Ukraine was a high priority for U.S.
intelligence and a Buk missile battery is a
large system that should have been easily
picked up by U.S. aerial reconnaissance. The
four missiles in a battery are each about
16-feet-long and would have to be hauled
around by a truck and then put in position
to fire.
The Dutch report’s
reference to only post-crash satellite
photos was also curious because the Russian
military released a number of satellite
images purporting to show Ukrainian
government Buk missile systems north of the
eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk before the
attack, including two batteries that
purportedly were shifted 50 kilometers south
of Donetsk on July 17, the day of the crash,
and then removed by July 18.
Russian Claims
Russian Lt. Gen. Andrey
Kartopolov called on the Ukrainian
government to explain the movements of its
Buk systems and why Kiev’s Kupol-M19S18
radars, which coordinate the flight of Buk
missiles, showed increased activity leading
up to the July 17 shoot-down.
The Ukrainian government
countered these questions by asserting that
it had “evidence that the missile which
struck the plane was fired by terrorists,
who received arms and specialists from the
Russian Federation,” according to Andrey
Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s Security
Council, using Kiev’s preferred term for the
rebels.
Lysenko added: “To disown
this tragedy, [Russian officials] are
drawing a lot of pictures and maps. We will
explore any photos and other plans produced
by the Russian side.” But Ukrainian
authorities have failed to address the
Russian evidence except through broad
denials.
On July 29, amid
escalating rhetoric against Russia from U.S.
government officials and the Western news
media, the Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
called on President Obama to
release what evidence the U.S. government
had on the shoot-down, including satellite
imagery.
“As intelligence
professionals we are embarrassed by the
unprofessional use of partial intelligence
information,” the group wrote. “As
Americans, we find ourselves hoping that, if
you indeed have more conclusive evidence,
you will find a way to make it public
without further delay. In charging Russia
with being directly or indirectly
responsible, Secretary of State John Kerry
has been particularly definitive. Not so the
evidence. His statements seem premature and
bear earmarks of an attempt to ‘poison the
jury pool.’”
However, the Obama
administration failed to make public any
intelligence information that would back up
its earlier suppositions. In early August,
I
was told that some U.S.
intelligence analysts had begun shifting
away from the original scenario blaming the
rebels and Russia to one focused more on the
possibility that extremist elements of the
Ukrainian government were responsible.
A source who was briefed
by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that
they had found no evidence that the Russian
government had given the rebels a BUK
missile system. Thus, these analysts
concluded that the rebels and Russia were
likely not at fault and that it appeared
Ukrainian government forces were to blame,
although apparently a unit operating outside
the direct command of Ukraine’s top
officials.
The source specifically
said the U.S. intelligence evidence did not
implicate Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko or Prime Minister Arseniy
Yatsenyuk but rather suggested an extremist
element of the armed forces funded by one of
Ukraine’s oligarchs. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Flight
17 Shoot-down Scenario Shifts”and
“Was
Putin Targeted for Mid-air Assassination?”]
But then chatter about
U.S. intelligence information on the
shoot-down faded away. When I recently
re-contacted the source who had been briefed
by these analysts, the source said their
thinking had not changed, except that they
believed the missile may have been less
sophisticated than a Buk, possibly an SA-6.
What was less clear was
whether these analysts represented a
consensus view within the U.S. intelligence
community or whether they spoke for one
position in an ongoing debate. The source
also said President Obama was resisting
going public with the U.S. intelligence
information about the shoot-down because he
didn’t feel it was ironclad.
A Dangerous Void
But that void has left the
debate over whodunit vulnerable to claims by
self-interested parties and self-appointed
experts, including some who derive their
conclusions from social media on the
Internet, so-called “public-source
investigators.” The Obama administration
also hasn’t retracted the early declarations
by Secretary Kerry implicating the rebels
and Russia.
Just days after the crash,
Kerry went on all five Sunday talk shows
fingering Russia and the rebels and
citing evidence provided by the Ukrainian
government through social media. On NBC’s
“Meet the Press,” David Gregory asked, “Are
you bottom-lining here that Russia provided
the weapon?”
Kerry: “There’s a story
today confirming that, but we have not
within the Administration made a
determination. But it’s pretty clear when –
there’s a build-up of extraordinary
circumstantial evidence. I’m a former
prosecutor. I’ve tried cases on
circumstantial evidence; it’s powerful
here.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Kerry’s
Latest Reckless Rush to Judgment.”]
But some U.S. intelligence
analysts soon offered conflicting
assessments. After Kerry’s TV round-robin,
the Los Angeles Times
reported on a U.S. intelligence
briefing given to several mainstream U.S.
news outlets. The story said, “U.S.
intelligence agencies have so far been
unable to determine the nationalities or
identities of the crew that launched the
missile. U.S. officials said it was possible
the SA-11 [a Buk anti-aircraft missile] was
launched by a defector from the Ukrainian
military who was trained to use similar
missile systems.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s
“The
Mystery of a Ukrainian ‘Defector.’”]
In October, Der Spiegel
reported that the German intelligence
service, the BND, had concluded that Russia
was not the source of the missile battery –
that it had been captured from a Ukrainian
military base – but still blaming the rebels
for firing it. The BND also concluded that
photos supplied by the Ukrainian government
about the MH-17 tragedy “have been
manipulated,” Der Spiegel reported.
And, the BND disputed
Russian government claims that a Ukrainian
fighter jet had been flying close to MH-17
just before it crashed, the magazine said,
reporting on the BND’s briefing to a
parliamentary committee on Oct. 8, which
included satellite images and other
photography. But none of the BND’s evidence
was made public — and I was subsequently
told by a European official that the
evidence was not as conclusive as the
magazine article depicted. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Germans
Clear Russia in MH-17 Case.”]
So, it appears that there
have been significant disagreements within
Western intelligence circles about precisely
who was to blame. But the refusal of the
Obama administration and its NATO allies to
lay their evidence on the table has not only
opened the door to conspiracy theories, it
has threatened to turn this tragedy into a
cold case with the guilty parties – whoever
they are – having more time to cover their
tracks and disappear.
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
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