State Dept. Blocked from Issuing Statement Condemning Russia Airliner shootdown
Meanwhile the State Department was also muzzled in its reaction to the anniversary of Russia’s downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine. According to Foreign Policy’s Robbie Gramer and Amy Mackinnon:
Officials there prepared a draft statement that was sharply critical of Russia for its alleged role in the attack. But for reasons the State Department has not explained, it was never issued. …
The State Department draft was set to go out as early as Monday but was quashed at the last minute. Officials were told to “stand down” on releasing it because Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “did not approve” the language, according to one official familiar with the deliberations.
The statement said the evidence “conclusively proves” the missile came from a specific Russian military brigade, “was brought into sovereign Ukrainian territory from Russia, was fired from Russia-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine, and was then returned to Russian territory.”
Meanwhile, as my Post colleagues are reporting, senior U.S. national security officials are “scrambling” to determine what verbal agreements were reached between Trump and Putin in their two-hour, no-note-takers-allowed meeting in Helsinki. Forty-eight hours after the summit concluded, “[Pentagon] press officers remained unable to answer media questions about how the summit might impact the military, the paucity of information exposed an awkward gap in internal administration communications.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/19/if-this-is-not-treason-then-what-is-it/
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