Maybe some of you didn't see it, but a Sibir Airlines Tu154 went down over the Black Sea.
http://aviation-safety.net/database/2001/011004-0.htm .
US officials have leaked (and pretty willfully, since yer Joe Reporter in Washington isn't gonna go asking satellite boys about shootdowns of Russian airliners when he can ask about the brand name of a tent spotted somewhere in Afghanistan) spotting a plume from a Ukrainian SAM on a satellite shot around the time of the explosion and crash.
One of the major theories is that someone got in the cockpit and did something nasty. This is from CNN:
As part of the recovery effort, Russian officials on
Saturday displayed some of the debris from the crash, including a metal fragment
with holes in it. A ship's captain taking part in the recovery mission said pieces of
the pilot's cabin appeared to have three bullet holes in them.
Perforated metal like that doesn't to me indicate the use of handguns, but rather a bomb inside the plane, or the scoring of the fuselage consistent with a SAM warhead exploding nearby.
Anyway, if the US has this information, I wonder how diplomatic it is to leak it to the public without first contacting the Ukrainian, Russian and Israeli governments.
Russia is now asking the US for any satellite photos they might have showing the SAM launch. What do you folks think will happen? Will the US officially deny having such photographs? Will they refuse to show them because of the possibility they might compromise security? Or will we see this tragedy resolved in a hurry?
