WHY DID POLISH PILOTS IGNORE REPEATED SMOLENSK ORDERS TO DIVERT?

Polish bloggers tonight suggested that the country’s security services were suspicious of the almost indecent haste with which the Smolensk air crash scene was being picked over and cleared by Russian investigators. Two outstanding questions were also puzzling Warsaw commentators as the initial shock of the crash receded. These were first, why did the pilots ignore persistent advice from Smolensk ground control to divert to Minsk? And second, why were that many senior strategic Poles in the army, diplomatic corps and Government all flying on a 42-year-old airliner type that the Russians themselves decommissioned last year?

The crash seems almost tailor-made to entice conspiracy theorists. During the Ossetia invasion, President Kaszynski gave huge internet support to South Ossetians. He was Moscow’s strongest opponent in Eastern Europe. The plane’s occupants were to attend a memorial for the Polish officers massacred at Katyn – a massacre that for decades the KGB erroneously blamed on the Nazis. And perhaps most telling of all, the Moscow elite knew well in advance who would be on the plane, and where it was due to land.

Polish websites made great play with the fact that President Medvedev had appointed Vladimir Putin to ‘investigate’ the crash. This would be akin to Richard Nixon placing himself in charge of the JFK assassination.

But there are certain things conspirators can’t organise…and wouldn’t want to happen. These include:

1. Heavy fog.
2. Polish pilots who ignore advice to divert to Minsk.
3. Killing half the Polish elite on their way to a highly embarrassing incident in Russian history.
4. The plane clipping treetops and thus falling short of the Smolensk runway.

People will have to make their own minds up as the evidence is sifted by all the authorities with a say in this tragedy.