Dear Readers,
For this issue of my newsletter I want to share
something I wrote in July, 2014, shortly after a Malaysian airliner en route
from Amsterdam to Malaysia was shot down over Ukraine. The piece is especially
timely in light of the May 27 release of an investigative report in Holland
alleging to have “definite” proof that the MH-17 airliner was shot down by a
Russian BUK missile. That May, 2018 report presents no definitive new forensic
evidence. Rather it relies on assertions and speculations by sources, including
the UK-based Bellingcat, an intelligence operation receiving funds from among
others, the NATO-linked Atlantic Council, where he is listed as “Nonresident
Senior Fellow.”
In 2014 Bellingcat first engaged in assertions of
Russian shooting of the MH-17 that were fraudulent and today would accurately
be called fake news. Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins posted a photo on July 14, 2014
under the headline, "Found: The Buk Missile Launcher That Downed Flight
MH17." Higgins wrote that the photo had been taken in the town of Snizhne.
It was actually proven to have been taken in the town of Torez and under
weather conditions significantly different to those on the day of the MH-17
crash. Higgins claimed it was unimportant when the photograph was taken or
where…
Further, in the initial attempt to blame Moscow,
on July 19 2014, Kiev’s Security Service (SBU) published photos online that it
claimed showed ‘Russia’ secretly withdrawing a BUK-M surface-to-air missile
system from the Ukraine civil war zone. At the time SBU Chief Vitaly Naida
declared to press “The SBU … is getting clear evidence of Russian citizens’
involvement in the terrorist attack (on the Malaysian Airlines Boeing)”.
However, bloggers immediately spotted the photos were of a Kiev air-defense
system no. 312, previously pictured in March that year. With this background in
mind, the latest attempt to reuse the badly discredited Bellingcat blog as
investigative source for the latest attempt to again cast blame on Moscow, is
highly revealing. With this in mind, I thought it worthwhile to reprint for you
my initial investigation of the MH-17 affair written in July, 2014.
***
Censorship? One
important note to all of you readers to underscore how the internet is being
increasingly censored and critical websites or authors such as yours truly are
coming under increasing attack. In March this year, 2018 I self-published via a
subsidiary of Amazon, my newest book, Manifest Destiny: Democracy as
Cognitive Dissonance. For the first two months, sales were building strongly.
Then in early May just two hours after a major interview on the book on a very
popular critical media in the US, I received an email, unsigned, from the
Amazon publishing company announcing that my book had been delisted. Reason
given was a vague claim the book contained information available for free on
the internet and that their customers do not like to pay when they can get it
free. They gave no prior notice or chance for me to defend against their
charges. I replied, “Please explain what you refer to.” Reply was the same
vague nonsense, again unsigned. I wrote again asking how we could clear this as
soon as possible. Finally, after the book had been delisted for a week, they
wrote “congratulations,” that I could reproof and upload it again. Since then
sales have dropped dramatically despite favorable reviews. It is impossible to
prove that Amazon’s company censored my book just when a burst of sales would
be expected, but the case shows how vulnerable free speech has become and how
real internet censorship is becoming.
I mention this incident to underscore how
important it is to support independent critical voices especially now, and to
ask you to consider buying the book if you have not done so, or making a
support donation on my website, www.williamengdahl.com. I want to continue providing my
work free of charge and not behind a paywall. To do that I need your support.
Thank you,
William Engdahl
Click HERE to buy the book on amazon:
Ukraine
MH-17 is CIA False Flag and It Ain’t Flying
By F. William
Engdahl
26 July, 2014
The
world has seen all this theatre before. We saw it with the false flag Gulf of
Tonkin incident during the Vietnam War. We saw it with the CIA-Saudi faked
Sarin gas episode in 2013 that brought the world to the brink of a world war.
We saw it in the fake Niger uranium yellowcake episode that was used to bully a
US Congress into war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003—the so-called
Weapons of Mass Destruction that never were found. Now the world is seeing it
again in the frantic efforts of the US State Department and elements of the CIA
to try to blame Putin’s Russia for allegedly giving the East Ukraine separatist
rebels highly sophisticated Russian anti-aircraft weapons allegedly used to
shoot down the Malaysian Airlines.
Putin, so charges
Secretary of State John Kerry on five (!) US talk shows on July 20, is de facto
guilty for not controlling the east Ukraine rebels. The proof of it all?
“Social media,” according to the State Department official press
spokesperson.
The good news for
those sober souls who are not eager to see a World War III pitting China-Russia
and the BRICS against a US-led NATO and turning Westzern Europe into a
devastated Trümmerfeld for the third time in a century, is
that this attempt to blame Putin’s Russia is backfiring even as this is being
written.
Unanswered
questions
One of the most
shocking features of western mainstream media coverage of the MH17 event is the
utter lack of serious, cautious investigative journalism of the variety which
used to exist only a few years ago. Rather than err on the side of caution
before rushing to judgment in a situation that could easily trigger a new Cold
War or worse, CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, and most EU media
including German simply quote Kiev government officials, even neo-nazi ones, as
if they were credible. Real inquiry must look at the unanswered questions.
First we should
begin with several very vital unanswered questions before making judgment what
happened to MH17 Boeing 777 aircraft on July 17.
Number one is why
Kiev Air Traffic Control, a part of the Ukraine Ministry of Aviation, ordered
the KH17 to deviate from its scheduled route that avoided the war zone in
eastern Ukraine? According to the initial reports of FlightAware.com which
tracks all civilian aircraft online, on Thursday, July 17 Malaysian Airways Boeing
777 Flight MH17 from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport to Kuala Lampur Malaysia,
deviated significantly in altitude and trajectory route from all other
commercial flights which since outbreak of the civil war in eastern Ukraine in
April have flown south of the conflict region. The key questions before giving
blame to anyone, which have been completely ignored by the Ukrainian government
in Kiev, by the Obama Administration in Washington, by most Western media are
why did the pilot divert from his usual flight plan? Why did he fly above
restricted airspace? And just what, if any instructions, did Kiev air control
give the pilot in the minutes before the tragic explosion? [1]
Source:
screenshot images from FlightAware.com compiled by from Vagelis Karmiros who
collated all the recent MH-17 flight paths as tracked by FlightAware and shows
that while all ten most recent paths pass safely well south of the Donetsk
region, and cross the zone above the Sea of Azov, it was only July 17 MH17
tragic flight that passed straight overhead Donetsk.
Curiously, after the
FlightAware data was initially published, the site changed its version of the
trajectory of MH17. Were they pressured to do so? If so, by whom? By NATO? By
Washington? It’s implausible to imagine it could have been pressure from an isolated
Russia.
Kiev’s
fake ‘Smoking Gun’ Video
Most of Obama
Administration arguments about who is responsible for MH17 rely on citing Kiev
government officials as if they were credible. Yet they have lied repeatedly
since their US-backed coup d’etat on February 22, 2014 brought them illegally
into power at the barrel of a gun. Just hours after the news of the downing of
the plane, Ukrainian Secret Intelligence released what it claimed was “proof”
that MH17 was shot down by Russian-trained separatists under direct orders from
Russia. The 2:23 minute YouTube purported to prove that "militants of
"Bes" group using a Russian anti-aircraft missile shot down a
Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 passenger jet heading from Amsterdam to Kuala
Lumpur.
Ukrainian intelligence
presented what it alleged were recorded conversations, first of all between a
pro-Russian separatist and his coordinator Vasyl Geranin, said to be a colonel
of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed
Forces. They talk about the “downing of a jet.” There is no distinction whether
this is a civilian or a military jet, and may well refer to a shot down
Ukrainian Su-25 which was shot down some hours earlier in the civil war fight.
In the You Tube there is no way to prove the audio was not simply two actors in
a studio reading a script given them by Kiev or CIA handlecredibility of Kiev
officials who have lied about almost everything since day one. rs. The entire
Kiev “smoking gun” You Tube vanished from the media when diligent IT
researchers discovered the time/date stamp to the YouTube showing that the
video was put online on 2014-07-16 at 19:10 pm Kiev time, a full day BEFORE the
downing of MH17. Ooops! Back to the Langley drawing board, boys.
So much for
the credibility of the Kiev government, which has lied about pretty much
everything since day one in office.
US NATO
Maneuvers simultaneous
Now we come to a
highly interesting coincidence. Just as was the case during the World Trade
Center attacks of September, 2001 and the so-called Boston Bombers attack and
numerous other terror incidences, there were relevant NATO-Ukraine maneuvers
taking place just on the days before and right after the MH17 event.
According to
Washington NSA “whistleblower” Wayne Madsen, NATO and the Ukraine military were
making ten days of joint military “exercises,” code-named Sea Breeze,” that
included the use of electronic warfare and electronic intelligence aircraft
such as the Boeing EA-18G Growler and the Boeing E3 Sentry Airborne Warning and
Control System (AWACS). SEA BREEZE, according to Madsen, included the
AEGIS-class guided missile cruiser USS Vela Gulf. From the Black Sea, “the Vela Gulf was able to track
Malaysian Airlines MH 17 over the Black Sea as well as any missiles fired at
the plane.” As well, US AWACS electronic intelligence (ELINT) aircraft were
also flying over the Black Sea region at the time of the MH-17 fly-over of
Ukraine. Growler aircraft have the capability to jam radar systems in all
surface-to-air threats. [2]
The NATO exercise
coincided with the July 17 MH17 downing only 40 miles from Russia’s border.
“NATO ships and aircraft had the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under total radar
and electronic surveillance.”[3]
(One very curious
footnote is the recurring central role of Vice President Joe Biden in the
Ukraine events. Biden has been personally involved since the beginning of the
protests. And unusually, it was not NATO but the website operated by Vice
President Joe Biden's office that first announced US SEA BREEZE and RAPID
TRIDENT II military maneuvers on May 21, 2014. As well, in a brazen
conflict-of-interest, Biden's son, Hunter Biden, is a newly-named director of
the Ukrainian natural gas and oil company Burisma Holdings, Ltd., owned by
IhorKolomoisky, the Ukrainian-Israeli mafia oligarch, whose is known as the
«Chameleon»). [4]
The burning question
is why has the US Government not released the exact tracking images for the
flight MH-17 on July 17 to show precisely when it flew and from precisely where
it was hit? Could it be they are afraid to reveal what they have for fear it
would boomerang on Washington’s warhawks?
Not only do the US
agencies have satellite data on the MH17 flight, they also have precise images
of the likely rocket missile battery that fired the missile that destroyed
MH17. And the images clearly show soldiers wearing….Ukrainian uniforms.
According to
award-winning former Newsweek journalist Robert Parry, one reliable
whistleblower source told Parry that, “US intelligence agencies do have
detailed satellite images of the likely missile battery that launched the
fateful missile, but the battery appears to have been under the control of
Ukrainian government troops dressed in what look like Ukrainian uniforms.”[5]
Could this be the
reason why even until today, the Obama Administration has not released detailed
evidence to prove their assertions that Ukrainian “rebels backed by Moscow”
fired the deadly rocket? It would show in fact the opposite, that it was
Kiev-tied forces.
US State
Department changes story
The official
propaganda war against Russia on the MH17 downing is being run, just as was the
Maidan Square coup, by a cabal of neoconservatives in the US State Department
around neoconservative Assistant Secretary Victoria “F**k the EU”
Nuland, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and former US Ambassador to
NATO, whose neo-conservative husband Robert Kagan was one of the founders of
the Bush-era war document, Project for a New American Century, that
set out the plan for US war on Iraq in September 2000, a full year before
September 11, 2001. [6]
Nuland’s Deputy
Press Spokesperson, a former CIA press spokesperson, Marie Harf, in a July 21
Washington press briefing, faced unusually persistent and critical questions
from several journalists. They asked why, if Secretary John Kerry and the US
Government possessed “irrefutable” evidence of Russian and rebel involvement in
MH17, did they refuse to make it public as they did in earlier instances such
as the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis. Defensive and irritated by the
questions, Harf retorted, referring to July 20 statements by Kerry, she
declared, “our assessment that this was an SA-11 fired from Russian-backed, separatist-controlled
territory.” But, incredibly, what was the proof the journalists were demanding?
Harf replied, “that we know – we saw in social media afterwards, we saw videos,
we saw photos of the pro-Russian separatists bragging about shooting down an
aircraft…” [7] Excuse me,
ladies and gentlemen for gasping. “We saw it in social media afterwards…we saw
photos of pro-Russian separatists bragging…” Has the CIA developed talking
photographs too?
Apparently feeling
mounting pressure to produce some shred of evidence, a day later on July 22,
CNN, a loyal mouthpiece for the US State Department, announced that the US
Government had published satellite evidence. Finally! What was it? This drawing
below, which any photo-paint novice could have made, showing nothing real or
provable at all in any independent UN or other independent evidential inquiry:
CNN
photo claiming to be US Government satellite image of how and where “pro-Russia
rebels” in Ukraine hit MH17
As pressure built by
the hour for the US Administration to release its reconnaissance photos as
well, it began to look more and more that the “evidence” held by CIA satellite
images indeed showed not pro-Russia rebels manning the BUK anti-aircraft in
East Ukraine, but rather Ukrainian uniformed soldiers as Perry’s intelligence
source maintained. Not good for the warhawk faction in Washington.
With Russian
government and military intelligence releasing more of its own evidence, the
Obama Administration has gone into a frantic “damage control” mode. At 5:57 pm
Washington time on July 22, they decided to organize an anonymous press
briefing by “unnamed senior officials.” “Unnamed senior officials” usually
refers to very high level cabinet or assistant secretary level officials.
Several “unnamed
senior US officials” held a press briefing in Washington. The US intelligence
officials stated that while the Russians have been arming separatists in
eastern Ukraine, “the US had no direct evidence that the missile used to shoot
down the passenger jet came from Russia.” [8] This was new
from Washington.
The US intelligence
officials went on to say they didn’t know who fired the missile or whether any
Russian operatives were present at the missile launch. They were “not certain”
that the missile crew was trained in Russia…In terms of who fired the missile,
they stated, "We don't know a name, we don't know a rank and we're not
even 100 percent sure of a nationality…" [9]
Looking like goofy
characters in a bad remake of a Hollywood Laurel & Hardy film, the “senior”
US intelligence officials, when asked for details on their evidence, repeated
the State Department mantra of Marie Harf. The intelligence “seniors” had
the chutzpah to state that they were, “relying in part on
social media postings and videos made public in recent days by the Ukrainian
government,” even though they openly admitted that they have not been able to
authenticate all of it. For example, they cited a video of a missile launcher
said to have been crossing the Russian border after the launch, appearing to be
missing a missile. But later, under questioning, the officials acknowledged
they had not yet verified that the video was exactly what it purported to
be. [10]
That last bit of the
press briefing is astonishing because it meant that some briefing officer,
perhaps CIA or State Department, briefed the President of the United States
(who presumably has little time to do his own investigations…) who then went on
nationwide TV on July 21 to charge that the Malaysia Airlines plane, "was
shot down over territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists in
Ukraine." He also said Russia has both trained the separatists and
"armed them with military equipment and weapons, including anti-aircraft
weapons." That speech brought the entire world one giant step closer to an
open Cold War with Russia that easily could become a hot war. A day later,
somebody very senior inside the US Administration apparently decided to
deescalate the confrontation massively.
Kolomoisky’s
Private Army: Who did down MH17?
That begs the
question of who did then down the MH17. Here the waters get very rough and very
ugly. The specific area where the fatal missile was fired at MH17 is in fact
not under control of the “pro-Russia rebels,” but under control of a neo-nazi
private mercenary army, organized and armed by Ukrainian billionaire Ukrainian
oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky.
Kolomoisky stinks of
being an asset of at least US and Israeli intelligence services. He holds both
Ukraine and Israeli passports and operates his business empire from
Switzerland, not Kiev. In the past months, Kolomoisky has raised his own
mercenary army, complete with the BUK missiles allegedly used in the shootdown
of MH-17. Kolomoisky, the Governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast in eastern Ukraine,
has threatened terrorist attacks against Russian-speaking officials in eastern
Ukraine, including assassinations.
Kolomoisky, estimated
to be the second-richest person in Ukraine, also has strong connections inside
Kiev's Borispol International Airport, where it has been reported that
Ukrainian Interior Ministry troops stormed the air traffic control tower
shortly before MH-17 was shot down.[11]
Was that storming of
the Kiev Air Traffic Control Tower just before the MH17 strike done by Interior
Ministry troops commanded and ordered by new Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen
Avakov—a man earlier wanted by Interpol for fraud and a staunch ally of former
Prime Minister and Russia-hater, Yulia Tymoshenko and of Ihor Kolomoisky?
Avakov first designated the east Ukraine rebels as “terrorists,” a label that
ostensibly allows committing of any atrocity against innocent civilians very
much as Israel in Gaza today. [12]
In a personal
interview, Veterans Today Tbilisi Georgia bureau chief Jeffrey Silverman
pointed to the possible complicity of the company Inmarsat in the MH17 case.
Inmarsat, which lists the Pentagon and US Government as major clients, today
has most international air traffic control communications systems under their
purview. In the earlier disappearance of Malaysian MH-370, according to
Silverman, the flight was "lost" due to Inmarsat turning off their
signals and refusing until today to release their data. [13]
In an interview just
after the downing of MH-17, a Spanish national identified only as “Carlos” told
ETN, an online news service, that his private evaluation, and basing it on
military sources in Kiev, was that the Ukrainian military was behind this shoot
down. He said that Kiev radar records were immediately confiscated after it
became clear a passenger jet was shot down and all foreign employees in the Traffic
Control in Kiev were released immediately. Carlos also reported that the very
same MH-17 plane was escorted by two Ukrainian fighter jets until 3 minutes
before it disappeared from radar. [14]
We may never hear
more details from Carlos as just after his report was posted in the internet,
he disappeared, his social media accounts wiped and no one seems to know his
whereabouts.
There are
speculations rampant inside Ukraine that there is a deep split between the
bitter and electorally defeated Tymoshenko and Chocolate King billionaire
President Petyr Poroschenko, whose business empire depends to a large extent on
economic ties with Russia.
Kolomoisky,
nominally Jewish and ostensibly sympathetic to Israel or at least holding that
passport, supports tactics of neo-nazis more reminiscent of Himmler’s SS or the
Nazi Gestapo. Kolomoisky's forces are armed with advanced weaponry, obtained
both from Ukrainian weapons inventories and from purchases on the black market.
They reportedly possess the BUK surface-to-air missile system said to have shot
down the MH-17.
Kolomoisky's forces
comprise Ukrainian regular military personnel; neo-Nazi units from west
Ukraine; foreign mercenaries, including Georgians, Romanians, and white
supremacists from Sweden and Germany; ex-Israel Defense Force Blue Helmet
commandos. They are organized into four battalions: the Azov Battalion; the
Aidar Battalion, the Donbass Battalion; and the 2,000-strong Dniepr-1 (or
Dnipro-1) Battalion, which was responsible for the deadly May 1 fire-bombing of
the trade union building in Odessa and the burning alive of people trapped
inside the Mariupol Police Station on May 9. Dnipro-1 also maintains a
20,000-member reserve force.
At the heart of
Kolomoisky's Army is a Nazi «Brownshirt»-style force of ardent Kolomoisky
loyalists who have used guns, iron bars, and batons to seize control of
factories and offices in Ukraine that Kolomoisky has expropriated from
so-called «separatist» sympathizers.[15]
Georgian mercenaries
in Kolomoisky's Army have reportedly been trained in the use of BUK missile
systems that an earlier Ukraine government of Viktor Yushchenko sold to
then-Georgia Predisent, US-backed Mikheil Saakashvili. Kolomoisky has now used
ex-President Saakashvili's «consulting services» in Dnipropetrovsk in the
military and political campaign against the breakaway people’s republics of
Donetsk and Luhansk, according to Madsen.[16]
If the gang behind
Kolomoisky was in fact behind the MH-17 disaster, it would explain why the
neoconservatives and Israel lobby in Washington and around the world,
especially in the media has so vehemently pointed the finger away from
Kolmoisky and to Russia’s Putin. Kolomoisky apparently has indirect access to
the highest levels of power within the Department of Defense, NATO, and the US
Intelligence Community.
A serious
truth-seeking investigation ought to start with Kolomoisky and his
international network. But at this point it is clear the attempt to pin MH-17 on
Putin’s Russia, a classic CIA “false flag” operation, an attempt to try to
blame the enemy for what you have actually done, has badly backfired. This is
however far from the last of it, it’s very clear to this writer.
[1] Marc
Koutzarov, Why did it deviate the route which both KLM and MA where
flying all week? Successive screen shots with time and dates from
FlightAware.com, posted Friday, July 18, 2014, 9:06 am, accessed in http://discussions.flightaware.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=18919.;
also Tyler Durden, Was Flight MH17 Diverted Over Restricted Airspace?,
ZeroHedge.com, 07/17/2014 23:55 -0400, accessed in http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2014/07/restricted%20air%20space.png.
[2] Wayne
Madsen, MH17 Beware of the “Chameleon”, Wayne Madsen Report,
21.07.2014, accessed in http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/categories/20140512.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Robert
Parry, What Did US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine?, July 20, 2014,
accessed in http://consortiumnews.com/2014/07/20/what-did-us-spy-satellites-see-in-ukraine/.
[6] Wikipedia, Victoria
Nuland, accessed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland.
[7] US
State Department, Marie Harf, Deputy Spokesperson, Daily Press Briefing,
July 21, 2014, accessed in
[8] AP, US:
No link to Russian government in Flight MH17 downing, July 22 2014, 5:57
pm,
[9] Ibid.
[10] Wayne
Madsen, op. cit.
[11] Ibid.
[12]
Wikipedia, Arsen Avakov, accessed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsen_Avakov_%28politician%29
[13] Personal
email exchange with the author and Jeffrey Silverman, July 18, 2014. For
information on Inmarsat, see the official company website at http://www.inmarsat.com/about-us/
[14] ETN, Ukraine
air traffic controller suggests Kiev military shot down passenger plane,
July 17, 2014, accessed in http://www.eturbonews.com/48079/ukraine-air-traffic-controller-suggests-kiev-military-shot-down-
[15] Wayne
Madsen, op. cit.
[16] Ibid.
/https://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/content/dam/thestar/news/canada/2021/09/25/huawei-executive-meng-wanzhou-receives-warm-welcome-upon-return-to-china/_1_meng_wanzhou_2.jpg)
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