• The Group of Bloggers Unearthing MH17 Intel Quicker Than U.S. Spies
    http://mashable.com/2014/07/23/citizen-journalists-mh17-spies

    Higgins, with the help of some of his Twitter followers, was able to pinpoint the location of a Buk launcher while it was being transported through Snizhne, a pro-Russian rebel-held town in Ukraine near the Russian border, based on a video circulating on YouTube.
    (…)
    The next day, Aric Toler, a longtime follower of Higgins, identified the exact location of a photograph of the Buk launcher in Torez, another town in Eastern Ukraine, using only open source information like the name of a store shown in the picture, and other unrelated YouTube videos filmed in the area.

    Toler and Higgins were able to establish that the photograph was shot around 11:40 a.m. local time, using an online tool called Suncalc, which lets you calculate the position of the sun based of the time of day and location. That would prove that the launcher was in the area before the MH17 crash. (Higgins told Mashable that he checked the tool’s accuracy by taking pictures of his garden at different times of the day to see if the shadows matched the ones on the site.)

    Another crowdsourced analysis that Higgins assembled on Tuesday offers strong proof that a video published by the Ukrainian government shows the Buk launcher being moved from Ukraine to Russia through rebel-held towns. In the video, the launcher seems to be missing a missile.

    The Russian government rebuffed the video, claiming it had actually been filmed in the town of Krasnoarmeisk, which under the control of the Ukrainian military. However, thanks to other open source intelligence analysis, it turns out the town is not actually Krasnoarmeisk but the rebel-held Luhansk, just 30 miles from the Russian border.

    “The Russians lied,” Higgins wrote in his post on Bellingcat, his new website to promote the work of other investigative citizen journalists and to teach others about the tools they use. The site is currently raising money on Kickstarter.

    These findings certainly don’t prove that Russia was responsible for the downing of MH17, as Higgins himself admits, but rather provide strong evidence that pro-Russian rebels possess (or possessed, until very recently) a Buk missile launcher, and that it was close to the crash site before and after the plane was shot down.
    (…)
    For Higgins, this work is simple intelligence-gathering, which can help those on the ground investigate further. After he and Toler established the location and time of the picture of the Buk in Torez, journalists traveled to the spot and found witnesses that confirmed the analysis, Higgins said.

    That would suggest Higgins and the dozen or so people who have helped him over the past few days know just as much as professional American spies.

    “[The Americans] clearly only rely on open source information, or mostly on open source, yet they are not releasing what they’re relying on," Higgins said. “It’s like they’re ashamed.”

  • U.S. Officials : Russia Not Directly Involved in Downing MH17
    http://mashable.com/2014/07/22/us-russia-link-to-mh17-plane

    Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Russia is responsible for “creating the conditions” that led to the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, but there’s no evidence that the Russian government was directly involved in the shooting.

    The unnamed intelligence officials said Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine likely shot down the plane with an SA-11 surface-to-air missile. While they confirmed that Russia has been arming the separatists for months, the officials didn’t provide proof that the missile used to shoot down the Boeing 777 actually came from Russia.

    The most likely explanation, according to a senior official, is that the plane was shot down by mistake. The most likely explanation, according to a senior official, is that the plane was shot down by mistake.

    According to the Associated Press, the officials briefed reporters on Tuesday with the stipulation that their names not be used in discussing intelligence related to MH17. They said they didn’t know if any Russians were present at the missile launch, and they wouldn’t say that the missile crew was trained in Russia.

    The Obama administration, however, has been pointing the finger at Russia for backing the separatists, who have been fighting with Ukrainian forces for months. On Monday, President Obama said Russia had gone beyond just arming the separatists — it had trained them to use the heavy-duty artillery.

    Russia has extraordinary influence over these separatists. No one denies that. Russia has urged them on. Russia has trained them,” Obama said. “We know that Russia has armed them with military equipment and weapons, including anti-aircraft weapons. Key separatist leaders are Russian citizens.

    The intelligence officials who spoke with reporters on Monday were tight-lipped in terms of who fired the missile.

    We don’t know a name, we don’t know a rank and we’re not even 100% sure of a nationality,” one official said, adding at another point, “There is not going to be a Perry Mason moment here.

    Ce qui n’empêche pas les politiques de reprendre la position ukrainienne…

    Meanwhile, Russia presented its own evidence on Monday, reiterating that it wasn’t involved in the shooting down of MH17 and focused on reasons why the world should be looking into the Ukrainian government instead. Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko called the accusation an irresponsible and false statement.

    The White House on Monday said Russia’s counter-narrative was an attempt to thwart attention away from the nation’s involvement.

    What’s clear is that there is a picture that’s coming into focus,” said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. “Russian claims to the contrary are getting both more desperate and much harder to believe.

    … puisqu’on vous dit que c’est pas vrai !