Did Putin Blow Up the Whole Polish Government in 2010? A Second Look.

[DonViejo]

Will Cathcart

A plane crash at Smolensk in Russia four years ago wiped out the Warsaw leadership. It used to be seen as an accident. Now, after Putin’s games in Ukraine, people aren’t so sure.

Four years ago this week, Polish President Lech Kaczynski was killed in a plane crash near the Katyn Forest in Russia where he was flying to honor the 22,000 Polish officers, lawyers, priests and professors slaughtered there by the Soviets 70 years before. Ninety-five other military, political and public figures including his wife died on that plane. One of the more heartbreaking details to emerge was that First Lady Maria Kaczynska’s body could be identified only by her nail polish and the inscription inside her wedding ring.

Less than two years before the crash the late president had given a speech warning that if Russian aggression was not stopped in Georgia, which Russia had invaded, it would extend to Ukraine, the Baltics, and possibly Poland as well. “We are here to take up the fight,” he said. And many Poles still believe that their president died in the cause of that effort. Physicist Kazimierz Nowaczyk is one of them.

On April 10, 2010 at 10:41 a.m. Polish Air Force Flight 101 crashed several hundred meters short of the Smolensk runway in dense fog. Within hours the Russian government issued a statement citing the incident on pilot error. Russia’s final report on the incident blamed the late President Kaczyński and his “inebriated” air force commander-in-chief for using “psychological pressure” to force the Polish pilots to land in a low-visibility environment.

The plane’s black boxes, laptops, sensitive documents, mobile phones, address books, telephone numbers, correspondence, and the top-secret military, NATO and diplomatic codes on board were salvaged from crash site immediately by the Kremlin’s operatives in what was a “coup for Russia’s intelligence service” according to retired CIA analyst Gene Poteat. What Nowaczyk calls “years worth of work for security services” was completed in a single day by Russia’s OMON Special Purpose Police, which were immediately deployed to the site.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/11/did-putin-blow-up-the-whole-polish-government-in-2010-a-second-look.html

[The Magistrate]

1. The Suspicions Are Not Wholly Unwarranted, Sir

It is far from certain the crash was contrived, but not unreasonable to suspect it might have been.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. We're incredibly fortunate to live in a country where that sort of thing can't happen.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/29/8_years_later_fbi_documents_raise

Minnesota Public Radio has obtained the FBI record of the late Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, who died in a plane crash eight years ago this week. The records show the FBI first tracked Wellstone in 1970 after he was arrested at an anti-Vietnam War protest. The records might also raise new questions about the plane crash that killed Wellstone, his wife, his daughter and three staffers. The National Transportation Safety Board determined the crash was caused by pilot error, but the FBI documents reveal for the first time that specific criminal leads were pursued by investigators.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/22/republican_it_specialist_dies_in_plane

A top Republican internet strategist who was set to testify in a case alleging election tampering in 2004 in Ohio has died in a plane crash. Michael Connell was the chief IT consultant to Karl Rove and created websites for the Bush and McCain electoral campaigns. Michael Connell was deposed one day before the election this year by attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis about his actions during the 2004 vote count in Ohio and his access to Karl Rove’s email files and how they went missing.