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Peter Norton's avatar

@jeffwise : In S1E14 you say you spent a long time trying to establish when the Putin-Obama phone call took place and what the timing says about foreknowledge.

Here is a detailed timeline: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/malaysia-airlines-mh17-crash-what-happened-to-the-plane-a-timeline-0

MAS tweeted about the crash approximately 15 minutes after the crash.

Another 10 minutes later:

« Moscow based news agency Interfax says Malaysian passenger airliner was shot down at altitude of 10km above eastern Ukraine. They confirmed the location of a burning Malaysian plane in eastern Ukraine. »

The Obama-Putin phone call took place about an hour later.

So what does this tell you ?

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Jeff Wise's avatar

I was never able to nail down was when exactly the Putin-Obama call started. Do you have a source on that?

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Peter Norton's avatar

@jeffwise : Have you looked into the link article? According to The Straits Times, the Putin-Obama call began at around 12.30am Singapore time on Friday, July 18, 2014.

This corresponds to:

4:30 pm UTC | Thursday, July 17, 2014

Why does the exact time matter, if the phone call started more than 1 hour after MAS had already tweeted about the crash and 50 minutes after « Moscow based news agency Interfax says Malaysian passenger airliner was shot down at altitude of 10km above eastern Ukraine. They confirmed the location of a burning Malaysian plane in eastern Ukraine. »

?

According to this, Putin must have known about the crash long before the phone call.

Why does the timing matter ?

From what I remember from your podcast episode, I think your argument is that it would be revealing if Putin hat broken the news to Obama on the phone before ATC could have relayed the information to him. But this timeframe would be so narrow, just a matter of a few minutes possibly. How do you want to ascertain when the phone call occurred with such precision ?

According to the newspaper, the phone call took place long after the crash was public knowledge.

This might also be of interest to you:

https://www.businessinsider.com/mh17-plane-crash-white-house-wont-clarify-how-obama-learned-2014-7

It doesn't provide an exact timeline but gives additional information about the White House communication.

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Jeff Wise's avatar

Peter, Sorry, I didn't scroll down far enough in the story. My short response is that I think the Straits Times' timeline is a mess. I just went back to look at my own notes that I made when trying to piece together an accurate timeline together and found big discrepancies between mine and the Straits Times. This is not something I can sort out easily but maybe I can do an episode about it and try to really nail down a well-sourced timeline.

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Peter Norton's avatar

I edited a few errors in my posting above.

If you are able to find contradictions in the official timeline or indications about foreknowledge, I would love to hear about them.

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Jeff Wise's avatar

I'll add it to my list. Just glancing back at the Straits Times' story, one thing that caught my eye: "Igor Strelkov, military commander of pro-Russia separatists, posted on social media shortly before MH17's crash that rebel forces had brought down an Antonov An-26, an aircraft commonly used by Ukrainian forces, in the same area." Obviously that doesn't make any sense.

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Peter Norton's avatar

You mean it doesn't make sense that Strelkov posted *before* MH17's crash ?

It's probably a typo for "shortly after".

I believe timelines such as these always have to be taken with a grain of salt. During the first couple of days, news reports about MH370 were peppered with "facts" that later turned out to be inaccurate, including the timeline. Therefore I am afraid that whatever inconsistencies you found about the MH17 timeline will be attributable to the Chinese whisperers effect.

But I am highly interested in your findings nevertheless.

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