Move Along, Nothing to see Here

TASS, the Soviet - er - Russian news agency has reassured us that there are NO signs of terrorism in yesterday's twin plane crash.

No evidence pointing to terrorism as the cause of the Tupolev-134 and Tupolev-154 plane crashes near Tula and Rostov on Tuesday evening has been found yet, the chief of the federal security service FSB public relations department, Sergei Ignatchenko has said.

"As follows from preliminary conclusions by the teams of investigators studying both crash sites, no traces of terrorist attacks or explosions were found. Examination of wreckage fragments identified no traces or terrorism explosives."

According to the official the investigators are considering several versions of the disasters, however, the main one is "illegal interference in the operation of civil aviation or abuse of aircraft operation rules."

The FSB official said all cockpit voice and flight data recorders have been found and brought to Moscow and specialists have begun retrieving information already.

Interestingly, the TASS news agency's tagline proudly proclaims "100 Years of Real Time News". What it should say is "100 years of Bolshevik-Government Controlled, Filtered and Distributed Slightly-Delayed Propaganda". It certainly seems that the same staff that was in place to inform the world about Chernobyl is still hard at work polishing Russian events for public consumption.

UPDATE: Jeff Quinton over at Backcountry Conservative has an outstanding run-down of events related to this possible terrorist incident. Discovered via Say Anything.