A Page from the old Soviet Playbook

I suppose it's time for me to confess that a sick part of me adored the old Soviet Union and when I hear Russian prosecutors echoing my old friends, I get all sentimental.  Although the Scotland Yard detectives just arrived and its the beginning of the investigation, The Russian prosecutor in the Litvinenko case stated today in a press conference that the Polonium-210 could not have come from Russia.  Period.

That was simple.  The Brits could've just called--no need to travel all the way to Moscow for that.

The prosecutor has also stated that the suspects will not be extradited to Moscow because of Russian law, which is somewhat understandable.  However, it seems the Russian hosts are being so kind to their British guests, Scotland Yard will not have to interview Andrei Lugovoi, a key suspect, but rather the Russian authorities will do it for them. 

The spokesman added something about KAL 007 flying without lights on that night of the full moon, so the fighter pilot couldn't tell the Boeing 747 apart from a fighter aircraft, but assured the world they would conduct a full investigation...

You've gotta love these guys.

Comments

[Ralph Hitchens]

Yes, you gotta love these guys. Actually, the Russian fighter pilot was unable to differentiate the KAL 747 from a USAF Boeing 707 (RC-135) electronic surveillance aircraft, although I feel his pain: he never got closer than 1.3 miles, & was flying on instruments since you can't see much outside the cockpit at night. We'd been running RC-135 recon missions offshore for a while, & the Russians were desperate to shoot one down if our boys would only stray into their territory. Wrong time for the Korean airline pilots to make a navigational error.

[Naomi]

Where's a Mikhail Gorbachev when you need one...

Glasnost? WTF is that?

Naomi

[R J Hillhouse]

Ralph,

Wouldn't it be possible to differentiate the silhouette since it was a full moon?

I have no doubt it was mistaken identity. KAL and its successor are famous for shot downissues and they'd wandered into Soviet airspace and had been shot down before.

It was stupid to have a regular civilian air route flying less than 20 miles from Soviet airspace. I have a friend who also wandered into their airspace from the route, but fortunately the scrambled interceptors didn't find him. (He was ferrying a plane, not flying passengers.)

I flew to China a few weeks ago from Japan on Northwest. If the monitor was accurate, we were a little too close to North Korean airspace for comfort--as in about the same margin. Maybe someone here can explain why different routes aren't being used farther away from North Korea for American carriers in times of tension.

[copydude]

The Brits have refused to extradite Russia's most-wanted, Berezovsky and Zakayev for some time now. There's an element of tit-for-tat here.

Note that the Russian Prosecutor said Nyet even before he was asked. That is Russian negotiating style. If Russia could trade for Berezovsky and Zakayev, they would. Except it won't seem like that when it happens.

[Ralph Hitchens]

It's possible to get a positive ID on a 747 a moonlit night if you get close enough, I suppose, but a Soviet-era pilot in a high-performance fighter who gets maybe 90 hours of flying time per year, a quarter of it at night, is most likely doing what he does best, i.e., keeping his eyes glued to the instruments and listening to his GCI controller. Occasional glances at a target more than a mile away probably wouldn't yield much apart from the fact that it was a pretty large airplane. And if you expect to see an RC-135, that's what you'll most likely see. In the KAL cockpit on a long, nighttime transoceanic flight, I'd be surprised if more than one guy was more than marginally awake, and obviously no one was making an effort to crosscheck their navigation. Tragic in so many ways.