Max Kolonko: The Mystery of Poland's Presidential Plane Crash Deepens
New York television producer, director, author and former U.S. television correspondent
Posted: April 26, 2010 04:49 PM
According to an anonymous source, the investigation into the causes of the Polish presidential plane crash may be subjected to political pressure which could hinder the ongoing investigation. This, claims the source, is due to the political aspect of the accident: the tragic death of the president on the territory of a foreign country.
The Polish presidential jet was not insured, which could mean that the party at fault in the tragedy may be subject to a multimillion dollar civil litigation suit by families of the victims.
This situation additionally complicates the fact that the Polish president was headed to Russia to commemorate a mass murder of Polish officers during World War II by the Soviets in Katyn, "a cursed place" as the former President of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski has described it. Some even compare the Polish presidential jet crash, in which Poland lost its President and dozens of political, military and religious leaders, to Katyn No 2.
If the cause of the crash is determined to be a flight controller's mistake or a malfunction of the navigation equipment at the Russian airport, it could harm Polish-Russian relations, which for years have been far from satisfactory, the source says.
Questions
A picture of Russian airport personnel changing light bulbs in the approach lights to Smolensk airport under the supervision of a uniformed Russian military officer has been circulated in the Polish media. This prompted the Polish prosecutor in charge of the investigation to ask his Russian counterpart for an explanation.
"The question should be: was it something that was planned earlier or was it a decision that was taken in the aftermath of the crash," says G
reg Phillips, a former NTSB crash investigator.
Four days before the crash, jets of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk safely landed on the same tarmac in Smolensk.