US Intelligence: No Evidence Russia Did It — Paul Craig Roberts

July 23, 2014 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |  Print This Article

US Intelligence: Russia Didn’t Do It

Paul Craig Roberts

After days of placing hostile blame for the downing of the Malaysian airliner on Russia, the White House permitted US intelligence officials to tell reporters that there is no evidence of the Russian government’s involvement.

Obviously, the US satellite photos do not support the Obama regime’s lies. If the White House had any evidence of Russian complicity, it would have released it to great fanfare days ago.

We are fortunate that the analytical side of the CIA, in contrast with the black ops side, retains analysts with integrity even after the purge of the agency ordered by Dick Cheney. Incensed that the CIA did not immediately fall in line with all of the Bush regime’s war lies, Cheney had the agency purged. The black ops side of the agency is a different story. Many believe that it should be defunded and abolished as this part of the CIA operates in violation of statutory US law.

Don’t hold your breath until Washington abolishes black-ops operations or the Obama regime apologizes to the Russian government for the unfounded accusations and insinuations leveled by the White House at Russia.

Despite this admission by US intelligence officials, the propaganda ministry is already at work to undermine the admission. The intelligence officials themselves claim that Russia is, perhaps, indirectly responsible, because Russia “created the conditions” that caused Kiev to attack the separatists.

In other words, Washington’s coup overseen by US State Department official Victoria Nuland, which overthrew an elected democratic Ukrainian government and brought extreme Russophobes into power in Kiev who attacked dissenting former Russian territories that were attached to Ukraine by Soviet communist party leaders when Russia and Ukraine were part of the same country, has no responsibility for the result.

Washington is innocent. Russia is guilty. End of story.

The day previously, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, one of the Obama regime’s brainless warmonger women, angrily turned on reporters who asked about the Russian government’s official denial of responsibility. Don’t you understand, she demanded, that what the US government says is credible and what the Russian government says is not credible!

Rest assured that the owners of the media and the editors of the reporters received calls and threats. I wouldn’t be surprised if the reporters have lost their jobs for doing their jobs.

There you have it. America’s free press. The American press is free to lie for the government, but mustn’t dare exercise any other freedom.

Washington will never permit official clarification of MH-17. Today (July 23) the BBC (the British Brainwashing Corporation) declared: “Whitehall sources say information has emerged that MH17 crash evidence was deliberated tampered with, as the plane’s black boxes arrive in the UK.”

After making this claim of tampered with black boxes, the BBC contradicted itself: “The Dutch Safety Board, which is leading the investigation, said ‘valid data’ had been downloaded from MH17’s cockpit voice recorder (CVR) which will be ‘further analyzed’. The board said: ‘The CVR was damaged but the memory module was intact. Furthermore no evidence or indications of manipulation of the CVR was found.’”

The BBC does not tell us how the black boxes are simultaneously in British and Dutch hands, or how they got into British and Dutch hands when the separatists gave the black boxes to the Malaysians with the guarantee that the black boxes would be turned over to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for expert and non-politicized examination.

So where are the black boxes? If the Malaysians gave them to the British, Whitehall will tell whatever lie Washington demands. If Washington’s British puppet actually has the black boxes, we will never know the truth. Judging from the hostile and unsupported accusations against Russia from the bought-and-paid-for Netherlands prime minister, we can expect the Dutch also to lie for Washington. Apparently, Washington has succeeded in removing the “investigation” from the ICAO’s hands and placing the investigation in the hands of its puppets.

The problem with writing columns based on Western news reports is that you have no idea of the veracity of the news reports.

From all appearances, the Obama regime intends to turn the “international investigation” into an indictment of Russia, and the Dutch seem to be lined up behind this corrupt use of the investigation. As the Washington Post story makes clear, there is no room in the investigation for any suspicion that Kiev and Washington might be responsible. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/malaysia-flight-17-prosecution-faces-major-evidentiary-and-legal-obstacles/2014/07/22/a8c7ebe4-11db-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9_story.html

By continuing to trust a corrupt West that is devoid of integrity and of good will toward Russia, the separatists and the Russian government have again set themselves up for vilification. Will they never learn?

As I write, more confusion is added to the story. It has just come across my screen that Reuters reports that Alexander Khodakovsky, “a powerful Ukrainian rebel leader has confirmed that pro-Russian separatists had an anti-aircraft missile of the type Washington says was used to shoot down the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 and it could have originated in Russia.” Reuters says that this separatist commander (or perhaps former commander as later in its report Reuters describes Khodakovsky as “a former head of the ‘Alpha’ anti-terrorism unit of the security service in Donetsk”) is in dispute with other commanders about the conduct of the war.

Khodakovsky makes clear that he doesn’t know which unit might have had the missile or from where it was fired. He makes it clear that he has no precise or real information. His theory is that the Ukrainian government tricked the separatists into firing the missile by launching airstrikes in the area over which the airliner was flying and by sending military jets to the vicinity of the airliner to create the appearance of military aircraft. Reuters quotes Khodakovsky, “”Even if there was a BUK, and even if the BUK was used, Ukraine did everything to ensure that a civilian aircraft was shot down”

Not knowing the nature of Khodakovsky’s dispute with other commanders or his motivation, it is difficult to assess the validity of his story, but his tale does explain why Ukrainian air control would route the Malaysian airliner over the combat area, a hitherto unexplained decision.

After the sensational part of its story, Reuters seems to back away a bit. Reuters quotes Khodakovsky saying that the separatist movement has different leaders and “our cooperation is somewhat conditional.” Khodakovsky then becomes uncertain as to whether the separatists did or did not have operational BUK missiles. According to Reuters, Khodakovsky “said none of the BUKs captured from Ukrainian forces were operational.” This implies that Russia provided the working missile to the separatists if such a missile existed.

I find the separatists’ reply convincing. If we have these missiles why to the fools in Kiev send aircraft to bomb us, and why is their bombing so successful? The separatists do have shoulder fired ground to air missiles of the kind that the US supplied to Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. These missiles are only capable for low flying aircraft. They cannot reach 33,000 feet.

According to Reuters, the reporting of its story was by one person, the writing by a second, and the editing by a third. From my experience in journalism, this means that we don’t know whose story it is, how the story was changed, or what its reliability might be.

We can safely conclude that the obfuscations are just beginning, and like 9 /11 and John F. Kennedy’s assassination, there will be no alternative to individuals forming their own opinion from researching the evidence. The United States government will never come clean, and the British government and presstitute media will never stop telling lies for Washington.

Washington’s bribes and threats can produce whatever story Washington wants. Keep in mind that a totally corrupt White House, over the objections of its own intelligence agencies, sent the Secretary of State to the United Nations to lie to the world about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that the White House knew did not exist. The consequences are that millions were killed, maimed, and displaced for no other reason than Washington’s lie and rising instability in the Middle East.

The Obama regime lied on the basis of concocted “evidence” that Assad had used chemical weapons against the Syrian people, thus crossing the “red line” that the White House had drawn, justifying a US military attack on the Syrian people. The Russian government exposed the fake evidence, and the British Parliament voted down any UK participation in the Obama regime’s attack on Syria. Left isolated, the Obama regime dared not assume the obvious role of war criminal.

Blocked in this way, the Obama regime financed and supplied outside jihadist militants to attack Syria, with the consequence that a radial ISIL is in the process of carving out a new Caliphate from parts of Iraq and Syria.

Keep in mind that both the George W. Bush and Obama regimes have also lied through their teeth about “Iranian nukes.”

The only possible conclusion is that a government that consistently lies is not believable.

Since the corrupt Clinton regime, American journalists have been forced by their bosses to lie for Washington. It is a hopeful sign that in their confrontation with Marie Harf some journalists found a bit of courage. Let’s hope it takes root and grows.

I do not think that the United States can recover from the damage inflicted by the neoconservatives who determined the policies of the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama governments, but whenever we see signs of opposition to the massive lies and deceptions that define the US government in the 21st century, we should cheer and support those who confront the lies.

Our future, and that of the world, depend on it.

 

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.