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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Jun 23, 2016 6:08:43 GMT -7
Poland to exhume 2010 presidential plane crash victims for renewed investigation
Published time: 22 Jun, 2016 17:20  The debris of Polish President Lech Kaczynski's Tu-154 aircraft at Smolensk airfield's secured area. The remains of the late Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and other victims of the 2010 presidential plane crash will be exhumed and examined by Polish prosecutors as part of a re-launched government investigation. “Comprehensive post-mortem examinations, also using computer tomography in the field of toxicology and DNA will be important for determining the injuries of the victims and the causes of their deaths, as well as to reconstruct the final moments of the disaster and its causes. It is vital to clarify the underlying thread of the investigation, despite several years having passed since the disaster,” a prosecution spokesman told the victims' relatives at a meeting on Tuesday, explaining the prosecutors’ decision, Radio Poland reports. The meeting was attended by the leader of Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of the president who died in the crash. The investigators are now holding negotiations with Polish and foreign experts, whom they hope will conduct the exhumations. The dates of the procedures are not yet determined but temperatures in Poland allow exhumations to be carried out from mid-October to mid-April, AP reports. The move follows the decision of the PiS government to re-launch the investigation into the case. An inquiry initiated by the previous government of the Polish Civic platform (PO) party immediately after the crash returned the verdict of pilot error. The president’s plane crashed in dense fog on approach to Smolensk Airport in western Russia and two separate commissions of aviation experts in Poland and Russia concluded that insufficient crew training and human error in adverse circumstances were the causes of the crash. Some PiS party members claim that the crash might have been caused by an explosive device placed on board of the plane. The plane “disintegrated” meters above the ground, Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said on Tuesday in Warsaw at the ceremony marking the re-launch of the investigation. At the same time, Jaroslaw Kaczynski repeatedly accused former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who is now the head of the European Council, of being indirectly responsible for the crash through negligence. Prosecutor Maciej Kujawski said autopsy documents received from Russia are incomplete and in some cases erroneous. Doubts raised by the documents led to nine exhumations in previous years. In six cases, bodies were reportedly wrongly identified, the prosecutor added, stressing that new exhumations are needed to confirm all the identities as well. PiS officials also accused Moscow of dragging out the investigation and withholding evidence, as it did not return the black boxes and the plane's wreckage to Poland. Russia repeatedly dismissed all accusations and stressed that the black boxes and the wreckage are still needed for its own ongoing investigation of the crash. The PiS government merged the posts of prosecutor general and justice minister in March. This gives the authorities more direct control over the restarted investigation. Meanwhile, a Polish court found Paweł Bielawny, the former deputy head of the Polish Government Protection Bureau (BOR), guilty of negligence in a case connected to the crash. Bielawny was found guilty of "knowingly neglecting his duties and exposing Kaczynski to danger by failing to order a proper inspection of Smolensk Airport and failing to send experienced officers to await the plane's landing,” Deutsche Welle reports. He was given an 18-month suspended sentence and fined 10,000 zlotys ($2,569). At the same time, the court said that no explosives were involved in the Smolensk crash. “The court has no reason to believe that the Smolensk disaster was caused by an attack using explosives,” Judge Paweł Dobosz said on Tuesday, as quoted by the Radio Poland. “The BOR properly checked the Tu-154 plane for explosives before the flight on 10 April,” he added. Six years after the crash, conspiracy theories about its causes still circulate in Poland. Some allege it could have been a coup attempt allegedly orchestrated by Moscow. Others go as far as claiming the crash was caused by an "armored" birch tree or an artificially-produced fog. The plane crashed near Smolensk on April 10, 2010. The catastrophe took the lives of 96 people, including the president, his wife, the central bank chief, all senior military commanders and several lawmakers. The aircraft was en route to a ceremony to commemorate the 1940 Katyn Forest Massacre, in which thousands of Polish officers were executed by Stalin's secret police. |
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Nov 15, 2016 9:12:59 GMT -7
Smolensk plane crash: Polish late president's body exhumed
By Adam Easton BBC News, Warsaw 7 hours ago 
Family members, investigators and a priest went to Wawel Cathedral for the exhumation
 A hearse is brought in.The remains of the late Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria have been exhumed as part of a new investigation into the fatal plane crash in Smolensk six years ago. The crash killed the couple and all 94 others on board. Some families agree with the procedure, but 17 families appealed to church and political leaders to prevent what they called a "ruthless" and "cruel" decision. In an opinion poll last month, just 10% of respondents supported the exhumations. President Kaczynski's plane crashed in dense fog just short of the runway of a former military airbase in the Russian city of Smolensk on 10 April 2010. Senior state and military officials had been on their way to a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre in which more than 20,000 Polish officers were murdered by the Soviet secret police. Russian and Polish investigations concluded the crash was mainly caused by pilot error. Both reports said the pilots warned officials that the weather conditions were not sufficient to attempt a landing but a decision was taken to descend to see if the runway could be sighted. The pilots flew too fast and too low and ignored repeated electronic warnings to pull up before smashing into the ground. The tragedy initially united the country in grief but it has subsequently caused much division. The investigations' findings have never satisfied President Kaczynski's twin brother, Jaroslaw, who leads the governing Law and Justice party, which took office a year ago. Mr Kaczynski's close ally, defence minister Antoni Macierewicz, has launched a fresh investigation. He has previously spoken about two explosions moments before the plane crashed and the examinations will check for traces of explosives. Indeed, about one quarter of Poles believe that President Kaczynski was assassinated. While more than two thirds of Poles do not believe the crash has been fully explained, a majority believe the crash was an accident. Previous probes explicitly ruled out an explosion. Mr Macierewicz has been investigating the crash circumstances for more than five years now - he led an earlier parliamentary probe whilst in opposition - but he has yet to publish any new evidence disproving the previous findings. |
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Post by karl on Nov 15, 2016 10:40:31 GMT -7
The following is not an activity report of a now retired CIA officer, but for his own reasons, a retell in his own wording of his own analysis of the Russian manner of putting out diplomatic wild fires. For it is a bit in the grey area of violation of the secrecy Act he has previously signed for making public his findings, but to each their own manner of conscience healing.
Retired CIA Senior Scientific Intelligence Officer Euguene Poteat speaks out
Russian Image Management
By Eugene Poteat, LL.D
Charleston Mercury, Oct. 21, 2010
Making Unpleasant Historical Truths About Poland Disappear
The KGB’s latest intelligence coup, and NATO’s latest intelligence disaster
Times change, but the ways countries hide unquestionable acts of genocide, remain the same. And attempts to force acknowledgement of, or to commemorate, such acts can trigger desperate, sometimes bizarre acts of revenge or disavowal.
S. Eugene Poteat, LL.D
Turkey uses their current strategic usefulness to force the U.S. to be equally blind to the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1923 when 1 million indigenous Armenians were killed, an act perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern Turkey. Japan refuses to acknowledge their atrocious slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Chinese women, children and men in 1937 in the Nanking (China) massacre. The 1994 Rwandan genocide of almost a million Tutsi - a killing of 20% of the population - was denied, then quickly glossed over, and then legally deemed forgotten to hasten a half-baked reconciliation.
The 1992 to 1995 genocide of Bosnians at the hands of Serb nationalism resulted in 200,000 killed and 2 million refugees - and constant official renunciation of guilt. The Muslims in Somalia slaughtered the defenseless Somali subsistence farmers to steal land, animals and crops, while the ineffective U.N. waffled, doing nothing, claiming it was relying on assurances by the Muslim government that these were small, harmless skirmishes.
The denials continue. Genocide is underway now in Darfur in the Sudan. Even the U.S. downplays its own genocide, two centuries ago, of indigenous American Indian tribes – to steal their land, after slaughtering their animals and people - after decades of white settlers violating treaties, proclamations, and assurances with them.
Into this sordid history comes the recent misbegotten idea by the Polish people to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the 1940 slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers and others in the Katyn Forest [near Smolensk, Russia] carried out by the Soviet secret police: an event long denied by the USSR, [4] and continued by modern propagandistic, Putin-inspired Russian ‘historians.’ The slaughter came under orders from Lavrentiy Beria, head of the NKVD, and endorsed by Stalin and the Politburo. Beria was Vladimir Putin’s KGB predecessor. The Katyn forest victims included 8000 military offices, the rest being doctors, professors, lawmakers, police officers, public servants, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, priests, and anyone considered Poland’s “intelligentsia.” Poland’s current president, Lech Kaczynski, his wife and twin brother Jaroslaw, along with other top government officials, the chief of the Polish General Staff, senior military officers, president of the National Bank of Poland, the deputy foreign minister, senior members of the Polish clergy, and relatives of victims of the Katyn Forest massacre, gathered at the Warsaw airport, before boarding their official government airplane for Smolensk, Russia. At the last minute, it was decided that Jaroslaw would not board the airplane, but stay behind since their elderly mother was severely ill.
The Poles Forgot One Thing… the Russian Motto: Maintain Total Deniability
The trip to Smolensk was expected to highlight Russia finally admitting culpability in the massacre, after long having blamed it on the Germans, an atrocity they had tried to conceal for over 70 years. As for the reception committee, it had different ideas. Putin wasn’t looking forward to such an occasion. Into this poisonous reception brew was President Kaczynski’s well-known public criticism of Moscow and Putin, a habit that has ended the lives of others within Russia - and abroad. A few discouraging Russian requirements - that Kaczynski could not attend in any official capacity - did not halt the Poles. Kaczynski would go anyway on non-official, “personal” business. To Russians, such a distinction would be meaningless, not lessening the possible international excoriation of such an event.
A problem ripe for a modern, Russian solution: a tragic, ‘natural’ accident.
Yes. The airplane crashed at 8:41 am Moscow time, April 10th, on its final approach to the Smolensk airport, in bad weather, killing all 96 people on board, The crash of the plane decapitated the cream of the top officials who were behind the push to expose the secret police files of past and current collaborators of both the Polish and Soviet/Russian secret police. With these people now dead there is no political top cover in Poland to continue this effort. This is exactly what Putin wanted. Prime Minister Tusk is a weak and manipulable guy who hated the late Polish President. The Russians now have their creature to work in place, with no opposition from a strong anti-communist President. Practically everyone in Poland, and many others around the world, strongly suspected that Russia, especially Putin, must have had a hand in the crash. Not an unusual claim since the same accusations followed the poisoning and/or mysterious ‘natural’ deaths of Putin critics: Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko, among others.
The airplane
The airplane was a 20-year-old Russian TU-154M that had been refurbished and upgraded in Russia four months before, and probably completely bugged. The TU-154 is a three-engine model similar to the older Boeing 727. The airplane was equipped with all the necessary electronic navigation and instrumentation to land safely, even in foul weather. The instrumentation was the latest and best, and included a standard ILS (Instrument Landing System) receiver which would guide the airplane to the edge of the Smolensk runway - providing the ILS receiver and ground based transmitters are reliable and working properly.
The TU-154M was also equipped with an American made TAWS (Terrain Avoidance and Warning System), latest models called GPWS (Ground Proximity Warning System). During the airplane’s refurbishment a satellite phone system was also installed. Satellite phone installations can cause interference with an airplane’s other instrumentation, which was encountered, and fixed, during installation. President Kaczynski used the satellite phone to speak with his twin brother in Warsaw during the flight to Smolensk. The plane was also equipped with two Russian made black boxes that record an airplane’s vital signs, one Polish made black box, and a cockpit voice recorder that can give crash investigators clues to the causes of a crash.
Smolensk airport
The ILS ground transmitters at the Smolensk airport is the Russian version of the U.S. ILS system, which transmits two beams; one called the glide slope for the airplane to follow in descending to the runway, the other to keep the airplane aligned horizontally with the centerline to the runway. ILS ground installations can, under certain circumstances, be unreliable, as when an automobile might be parked or moving in front of the transmitting antennas. American pilots landing ILS must be insured by the control tower the ground in front of the ILS antennas are clear of objects, such as parked or moving automobiles.
The pilot of the TU-154, with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on board, had successfully landed at Smolensk airport only days before the crash. The pilot, fluent in Russian, had no problems in communicating with the Smolensk control tower. Interestingly, the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, had flown into Smolensk three days before the crash—but he arranged to have his own portable landing system brought in, probably a GCA radar (Ground Controlled Approach radar) which can talk the pilot to a safe landing in bad weather. Putin departed after 3 or 4 hours. My guess is that Putin’s pilots knew the Smolensk ILS could be unreliable and wanted their own GCA there for safety. Forty minutes before the crash, a Russian YAK-40 airplane with 40 people on board landed safely. Twenty minutes before the crash a Russian AWAC airplane did a touch-and-go at the airport then flew on to Moscow
The crash
The Smolensk airport was fogged in, but the airport had not been declared as closed. As the TU-154 approached the airport, the tower suggested the pilot divert to Moscow. This is standard practice by both military and civilian flights around the world. The pilot responded that he would make one attempt to land, but if that failed, he would fly on to another, clear airport. At the outer marker, two kilometers from the runway, the airplane was on track. At the inner marker, one kilometer from the runway, the plane was suddenly 40 to 60 meters to the left of the centerline and 2.5 meters above the ground, below the glide path, and traveling 280 K/hr, with throttles applied (for a go-around) at the time of the crash. The aircraft’s reported speed of 280 K/hr has to be an error. This is twice the speed of a normal landing approach. At this point the pilot applied full power to abort the landing attempt, but it was too late. The plane struck trees, flipped over, and crashed well short of the runway.
The aftermath, the Cover-up, Denial and Deception
Russian president Medvedev announced that Russia would work closely with Poland in the crash investigation to learn the cause- Russian pabulum for Western ears. Immediately after the crash, and before any investigation had begun, the Russian “Minister of Security” in Moscow announced the cause of the crash was pilot error [good of them to wait until the crash happened], and blamed it on the pilot’s poor command of Russian in communications with the control tower. Edmund Klich, chief of Polish investigating committee later revealed to the Polish parliament that the Russian traffic controller who talked with the pilot of the presidential plane had disappeared. The Russians said that he retired. The Polish pilot was known to speak flawless Russian, but in this investigation, a minor technicality. Russians quickly took control of the crash site, recovered the black boxes, and - never to miss an intelligence-gathering opportunity – stripped the 96 dead passengers of personal effects, luggage, laptop computers, flash drives, cell phones, sensitive papers, names, telephone numbers, correspondence, documents, and top secret military and diplomatic codes—a coup for Russia's intelligence service. Because of the intelligence value from the crash, and the need for the smoothest of public sleight-of-hand with the coming denials, Putin placed himself in charge of the Russian crash investigation.
A master who knows his craft.
On June 6th, Russia announced publicly that four of their soldiers had been charged with the theft of credit cards from the bodies of some of the victims and using the cards to obtain cash - within two hours of the crash. This announcement will surely convince the world that Russia has changed its murderous ways and that all their recent murders were just tragic, isolated crimes. Russia also announced that there were two other people in the cockpit during the approach, A Polish Air Force general, the pilot’s boss, who probably urged the pilot to try to land, and an unidentified woman. Although this happens frequently, just to watch - I have done this myself - the Russian message was clear; it was their own fault.
The Russians delayed for weeks before returning the less sensitive items, but kept items of intelligence value. The bodies were shipped to Moscow for “autopsies.” No Polish medical people were permitted as witnesses. Only after six days was Kaczynski’s cell phone returned.
Russian security officers interrogated Polish family members who traveled to Moscow to recover the bodies, sometimes for hours, denying access to the bodies until after the interrogations. There has been no verification that all the bodies were accounted for. The bodies were returned to Poland in sealed coffins for burial and families of the victims were not permitted to open the coffins. Under Polish law, official permission from the state prosecutor's office is required to exhume a body, and that office has denied family requests, apparently for fear of offending Russian sensibilities.
As for the investigation, the Russians have kept all the airplane’s black boxes and refuse to release or comment on their findings, except to say it could be a year before any results are announced. It could indeed take a long time. Putin’s ‘commission’ investigating the crash needs time – for memories to fade and time to concoct a Russian-version of the cause of the crash. Perhaps as long as it has taken Russia to acknowledge responsibility for the Katyn massacre, yet to happen. While the Russian investigation is in violation of a few agreements – the Chicago Convention that governs international air crashes and a bilateral 1993 agreement that joint commissions would conduct investigations of aircraft disasters affecting both countries - Russian violation of agreements is S.O.P. A Polish aviation official, in touch with the Russian investigation, reported to Poland that "We know everything that happened but the Russians forbid us to tell you." So does anyone with room temperature
IQ following this event.
Merely A Conspiracy Theory?
Conspiracy theories abound. Looking at the Katyn Forest massacre, the behavior of other countries guilty of similar genocides, the KGB’s history of killings, genocides, murders and assassinations to rid itself of rivals, critics or anyone who has become inconvenient or a vocal opponent, it is no wonder the Poles – and others – see the heavy Russian hand behind the crash. There was the Soviet genocide in the 1920s when they starved nearly 20 million Ukrainians to death, killing millions of their own people throughout the life of the USSR. So what is another hundred in a crash to get rid of those pesky Poles, and their temerity at seeking, in Smolensk, to rub in the face of Russia some sordid account of a wartime massacre? And it was payback for Poland’s alliance with NATO. For many of us from the intelligence community we well remember the Soviet practice of manipulating navigational beacons to lure American military planes into Soviet territory to be shot down, “for violating sacred Soviet airspace.” They thought nothing of shooting down Korean Air Boeing 747, knowing it held several hundred civilian passengers. The Russian solution now is to make it go away quickly - as quickly as that ill-fated commemoration will be forgotten.
Policy-wise, the Russians saw our decision to grovel before them (the "reset", the giving up of ballistic missile defense after we promised the Czechs and Poles, our acquiescence to their activities in Georgia and Ukraine, our begging for their non-help on Iran, et al.) as a green light to do what they did with the plane crash. They concluded we would say nothing - and we didn't.
And what, if anything, can America do? Nothing. Their plate is full with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a vast ecological disaster unfolding in the Gulf, North Korea starting the next war between the Koreas, and at home, unrest over the illegal invasion of America by Latinos hiding under the misapplied term of “immigrant,” a failing economy, and other political tsunamis.
Besides, strategic utility isn’t reserved only for Turks. Aren’t the Russians helping in America’s war on terrorism? That means American outrage and concerns over the Polish ‘accident’ will have to be as hollow and toothless as Russia’s ‘investigations’ to solve the crash mystery. The Poles, however, see this as Yalta II, i.e., another sell-out by the US. Poland is seething over this; the Obamisti may think this will fade away, but the Poles and the rest of Central Europe know better. For them this is a monumental betrayal.
Life - as is history - is unfair. The Poles are in the same spot as the Armenians, the Somalis, the Tutsi, the American Indians, the Incas, the Eskimos, and others. Crucial alliances trump acknowledgement of prior bad acts. I ignore your genocides, you ignore mine. The guilty get a free pass. Or, in the argot of modern TV sitcoms: Nobody Talks, Everybody Walks. And then there is the old KGB saying, "It is no accident, Comrade!"
By Eugene
Karl
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Post by Jaga on Nov 16, 2016 21:19:46 GMT -7
John, thanks for being on a top of the news and updating us about exhumation. Thanks for pictures. I believe, like Karl that this is a crazy idea and conspiracy theory. Politics is amazingly gruesome these days. www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/14/poland-exhumes-presidents-lech-kaczynski-remainsThere are expected to be exhumations of 10 Smolensk victims this year, with a total of 83 victims to be exhumed and re-examined by the end of 2017. According to polling by Ipsos, only 10% of Poles support the move, and the planned exhumations have sparked protests among some of the victims’ relatives. In a letter to political and clerical authorities, more than 200 relatives of 17 people who died wrote: “Six years after those terrible days we stand alone and helpless in the face of a ruthless and cruel act: our loved ones are to be taken out of their graves … We, the families, have for months unsuccessfully expressed our objection to the announcement of this incomprehensible and unjustified venture.” |
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