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U.S. Government Lied to Pretend that Accidental Russian Shootdown of Commercial Plane Was Intentional … Three Decades Ago
We noted yesterday that Ukraine, Russia, the U.S., Israel and China have all accidentally shot down commercial airplanes.
Ray McGovern – a 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their vice presidents, secretaries of state, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials – provides vital details on an accidental shootdown by Russia – and America’s disinformation campaign to make it look intentional – 3 decades ago:
The U.S. press might pause to recall how it’s been manipulated by the U.S. government in the past, including three decades ago by the Reagan administration twisting the facts of the KAL-007 tragedy.
In that case, a Soviet fighter jet shot down a Korean Air Line plane on Sept. 1, 1983, after it strayed hundreds of miles off course and penetrated some of the Soviet Union’s most sensitive airspace over military facilities in Kamchatka and Sakhalin Island.
Over Sakhalin, KAL-007 was finally intercepted by a Soviet Sukhoi-15 fighter. The Soviet pilot tried to signal the plane to land, but the KAL pilots did not respond to the repeated warnings. Amid confusion about the plane’s identity — a U.S. spy plane had been in the vicinity hours earlier — Soviet ground control ordered the pilot to fire. He did, blasting the plane out of the sky and killing all 269 people on board.
The Soviets soon realized they had made a horrendous mistake. U.S. intelligence also knew from sensitive intercepts that the tragedy had resulted from a blunder, not from a willful act of murder ….
But a Soviet admission of a tragic blunder regarding KAL-007 wasn’t good enough for the Reagan administration, which saw the incident as a propaganda windfall. At the time, the felt imperative in Washington was to blacken the Soviet Union in the cause of Cold War propaganda and to escalate tensions with Moscow.
Falsifying the Case
To make the very blackest case against Moscow, the Reagan administration suppressed the exculpatory evidence from the U.S. electronic intercepts. The U.S. mantra became “the deliberate downing of a civilian passenger plane.” Newsweek ran a cover emblazoned with the headline “Murder in the Sky.”
“The Reagan administration’s spin machine began cranking up,” wrote Alvin A. Snyder, then-director of the U.S. Information Agency’s television and film division, in his 1995 book, Warriors of Disinformation.
USIA Director Charles Z. Wick “ordered his top agency aides to form a special task force to devise ways of playing the story overseas. The objective, quite simply, was to heap as much abuse on the Soviet Union as possible,” Snyder recalled.
Snyder noted that “the American media swallowed the U.S. government line without reservation. Said the venerable Ted Koppel on the ABC News ‘Nightline’ program: ‘This has been one of those occasions when there is very little difference between what is churned out by the U.S. government propaganda organs and by the commercial broadcasting networks.’”
On Sept. 6, 1983, the Reagan administration went so far as to present a doctored transcript of the intercepts to the United Nations Security Council (a prelude to a similar false presentation two decades later by Secretary of State Colin Powell on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction).
“The tape was supposed to run 50 minutes,” Snyder said about recorded Soviet intercepts. “But the tape segment we [at USIA] had ran only eight minutes and 32 seconds. … ‘Do I detect the fine hand of [Richard Nixon's secretary] Rosemary Woods here?’ I asked sarcastically.’”
But Snyder had a job to do: producing the video that his superiors wanted. “The perception we wanted to convey was that the Soviet Union had cold-bloodedly carried out a barbaric act,” Snyder wrote.
Only a decade later, when Snyder saw the complete transcripts — including the portions that the Reagan administration had hidden — would he fully realize how many of the central elements of the U.S. presentation were false.
The Soviet fighter pilot apparently did believe he was pursuing a U.S. spy plane, according to the intercepts, and he was having trouble in the dark identifying the plane. At the instructions of Soviet ground controllers, the pilot had circled the KAL airliner and tilted his wings to force the aircraft down. The pilot said he fired warning shots, too. “This comment was also not on the tape we were provided,” Snyder wrote.
It was clear to Snyder that in the pursuit of its Cold War aims, the Reagan administration had presented false accusations to the United Nations, as well as to the people of the United States and the world. To these Republicans, the ends of smearing the Soviets had justified the means of falsifying the historical record.
In his book, Snyder acknowledged his role in the deception and drew an ironic lesson from the incident. The senior USIA official wrote, “The moral of the story is that all governments, including our own, lie when it suits their purposes. The key is to lie first.”
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Now. With a straight face tll me that Americans don't have fanatics in the Army. The testosterone, steroids etc. Read the News......The Various Police forces Many have been so PUMPED UP that I have trouble seeing human traits in some. It is your opinion....as I have mine. You can push your B.S. as much as you want.............anyone with Half a Brain can see propoganda is Full of Opportunities to fabricate or imbelish the truth as they can by miss information and by Holding Facts Back. War Criminals.....How fair is the Worlds Court system in The USA.....The leadership sends all nsa's infor unedited directly to Israel......Taxes go to Israel while the population at Home ..........well you have to know that story.......To me . There is just too many things wrong with this Picture.
Hi Lite, so it sounds like you agree that Girkin is a gay military fanatic who should not necessarily be entrusted with things that make big explosions.
Yes the world is an unfair place, that still doesn't change the facts around this particular situation of Russia's proxy war in Ukraine, and their gay looking front-line puppet, fake "rebel", russian-intelligence officer Girkin.
Yup. That was yesterday though. Clearly he flunked out of medical school... unless the bodies were Chinese that is. Better take a good look at the serial numbers on those engines in any event.
Nice passports too.....
Zer0head - Your openning comment, very well said.
Agreed - and I note a TROLL army has launched itself against ZH on this thread along with the all the viewing problems of the last few days
Yeah, noticed that. Guess the DOS attack (which I'm somewhat more convinced of now) wasn't too effective , so it's fake accounts and propaganda time! This should be fun.
"The key is to lie first.”
Yup... he who lies first lies best. Plus if you plan and execute the "false flag" you can be prepared to handle most of what follows while your adversary still doesn't have a clue as to what just happened.
And remember to make sure that the tragic emotional stories from the victims themselves (like babies thrown out of incubators) are well produced and ready to go for maximum impact. Once an angry emotional state can be induced in the people and directed at the enemy they will cease to be able to incorporate any new contradictory information into their already compromised thought processes and you win.
So who shot down MH17?
I couldn't really tell you with 100% certainty yet... but I sure as hell have my suspicions. It could only have been an unintentional accidental shootdown by the 'rebels' or an intentional Ukrainian "False flag". But the MSM media already knows with absolute certainty and they inform me that it has been an enorous loss for all of humanity since there could have been a cure for HIV on it.
So... has the Ukrainian SUB released those air traffic recordings they seized within the hour of the shootdown yet? Been what... 3 days now?
I wonder what's keeping them so long... after all they were so fast with the other stuff they posted. Anyway I'm sure whatever they come up with will be worth the wait because if there was nothing we would have heard about it by now... right?
"The U.S. press might pause to recall how it’s been manipulated by the U.S. government in the past, including three decades ago by the Reagan administration twisting the facts of the KAL-007 tragedy. ... Over Sakhalin, KAL-007 was finally intercepted by a Soviet Sukhoi-15 fighter. The Soviet pilot tried to signal the plane to land, but the KAL pilots did not respond to the repeated warnings."
Whi is this fucking idiot? And what does it have to pay each month to rewrite history?
mjcOH1 "Whi is this fucking idiot?......" read the fucking article you total fuck-tart moron!
"Ray McGovern – a 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush..."
And then after that fuck off from ZH and have a nice life :)
Have you not noticed how one-sided the U.S. media coverage of this has been?
None of the U.S. outlets that I watched mentioned the other side - or doubt - only that Russia and the Seperatists denied shooting down the plane.
Never a mention of Ukraine having the hardware to do it, or of the control tower tapes and records confiscated by Kiev shortly after the tragedy.
And I guarantee that if in 1987 an airliner had flown into restricted air space close to Miramar or the Naval Base in San Diego - suspected to be a Russian spy plane - and not responded to a fighter it would have been shot down.
The Guardian is just crazy propaganda on this topic. They risk blowing their cover as a righteous news source. Biggest question mark about Snowden is why he chose The Guardian.
Exactly, and why would the guardian break the story and not snuff it. Very strange give the fact that they fall in line with the rest of the MSM on other issues.
I disagree. The Guardian is not like most MSM . It is not great, but I would say its one of the better MSM papers.
Spin is spin. Lies are lies. All you are explaining with your comment is that they have a sharper hook, a finer net, to catch the little fishies who would otherwise swim away. Look up LEFT GATEKEEPER PROBLEM - Guardian to a 'T'.
I went to the pub today, for a spot of lunch and a pint. Though I rarely do, I thought, 'I'll buy a newspaper'. I walked into the shop, looked across ALL of the front pages, and what did I see? You can probably guess: 'MH-17! It Was Russia What Done It (probably)'
My favourite was 'BRIT STUDENT IS TOP PUTIN REBEL' (thanks, The Mirror).
I was hoping to read some stuff about Gaza, but only the Independent had managed to find a bit of space to announce Israel's bloodthirsty invasion. I left empty handed, although I was tempted to do my bit for freedom and set fire to the paper stand. I hope they all shrivel and die from loss of readership. Lying twats.
I do miss the afternoon pub session discussions, arguments and information shared, with maybe a newsy paper to riff on, but always steering towards wider truths.
mine's a Boddingtons, pulled.
cheers.
Guinness for me.
The coincidence of the timings MH17/Gaza are rather unsettling. I am still hoping that it was the rebels that shot down MH!7 accidentally.
The alternative is simply too frightening to contemplate.
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players;
Mark Twain — 'A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.'
For all we know, a shoe-bomber who was walked around security at Schiphol was what took this down. It would be nice to see some real evidence.
True. How do we know it was a missle?
I call bullshit on you George Washington, Russia has shot down not just one, but two Korean jetliners. But you keep believing otherwise, you fucking idiot!
& I call horseshit on Abi Normal! You really did pick that avatar and name well you shill moron.....
Guess who just happened to be running a "drill" in the area of Donetsk when the flight went down...3,2,1 yup you guessed it the good old USofA had AWACS aircraft involved in a drill called "Breeze 2014" which finished just after the plane went down....hmmm???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KezfJV8ghc
Well then,... NAME the other one!
- unless this is sarcasm