No, the Russians did not fly over Trump’s golf course in 2017, no matter who said so.
Let’s review why that fact matters, and why it’s a huge Open Skies Treaty story.
Facts are facts; opinions are subjective. There is no such thing as an “alternative fact”. There are sixty minutes in an hour; that’s a fact. Let me make up a less clear example for illustrative purposes; Donald Trump had oatmeal for breakfast, or maybe he had apple pie. An “anonymous senior official” said he didn’t. Who are you going to believe? Presuming he ate something, what he ate is a fact. You may not have access to the evidence yet, but it’s still a fact. It happened. It’s an absolute truth. What people feel about his food is an opinion. Isn’t there some way to know if he had oatmeal for breakfast, to prove what he ate? Of course there is. Someone in the kitchen at the White House made him that oatmeal, someone ordered the oatmeal, there was likely a digital receipt of some sort, a “paper trail” that could be collected, via a FOIA request, or just asking the right people. If we were exceptionally lucky, someone got a picture of him eating breakfast, but that would be too much to ask. For argument’s sake let’s just say we know he *did* eat something, but what he ate is contentious until we have proof. That is my point; facts can often be proven or confirmed using evidence. If someone writes an article about Trump’s breakfast, they might get the story right, or wrong, but the facts remain the same; the evidence exists, regardless if the writer took it into consideration, or correctly determined what he ate.
How can I draw a parallel between Trump’s breakfast, and the allegations that the Russian Open Skies Treaty overflight on August 9th 2017 went over the Trump golf course in Bedminster? Facts. A flight took place; that happened, it’s a fact. There were USAF officials aboard to ensure the flight didn’t stray from their approved flight plan, approved hours before, negotiated earlier that same week, which is completely normal and done for every flight. Let me elaborate again, representatives from the United States government, after being presented with a proposed flight plan by the Russian observer team, earlier that week, accepted, or negotiated changes then accepted, the final flight plan with the Russians, then sent a notice to all bases and partners who might be overflown, and the FAA were notified of the flight, so they could coordinate with ATC to clear the air in front of them; they have priority, per the treaty. Also, NORAD would have been notified. The flight would have taken place toward the end of the week, and on Friday the Russian team may have provided to the American team a signed template-based document with the flight path, and exactly where the pictures had been taken, as well as copies of the imagery on a proprietary tamper-proof memory stick. The agreed upon flight plan, and where they flew, are facts. The data exists at the finger tips of the United States government, and 34 other countries too; all signatories of the treaty know the flight path of the plane. All treaty signatories are provided with that information at the end of the mission.
Everyone, that is, except the public.
Headlines about the flight, flying over the golf course in Bedminster NJ, were published widely by many publications, and officials provided testimony before Congress and into the record backing that claim up. The United States Government, who are prone to misleading the media with regularity, may not have anticipated that anyone could, or would, question their assertions, and fact-check them by tracking the Russian airplane’s transponder. That’s right, the plane’s transponder was broadcasting, and being tracked by at least eight amateur-run ground stations within line of sight of the plane for much of their treaty-allowed observation flight.
The official details can be discovered by old fashioned journalism; asking human sources, or FOIA. The USAF, DTRA, and State Department all have those flight plans on hand, in a digital format, and they can be retrieved via FOIA.
If a Russian Open Skies Treaty-certified plane flew over Bedminster NJ, how would we know, since we weren’t there? Officials before congress said there was, the most senior White House officials said so, even Senators said so. But, none of those statements are proof, they’re hearsay. DTRA, the State Department, the United States Air Force, NORAD, the FAA, and many other agencies all knew where the plane flew on August 9th 2017, they have ready access to the data. All signatories to the Open Skies Treaty were also sent a copy of the flight plan, digitally; the “paperwork” that is part of the flight which took place the week of August 7th 2017 over the United States is disseminated to all of them. So, dozens of governments of different countries, and multiple departments in the United States government, all know where the Russian Tu-154M flew on August 9th, 2017, because they have access to the facts, the evidence, the data. Many American officials said the flight was conducted *over* the Trump golf course, they even said it was one of the reasons Trump thought withdrawing from the Open Skies Treaty was a good idea.
So what’s the problem?
There was no Russian Air Force plane that flew over Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster NJ on August 9th, 2017. What officials have been saying is a lie, but worse, they know better. Officials from all the signatories of the Open Skies Treaty know better. Everyone has the same information, it’s part of the information sharing included in the treaty. Everyone knows where the Russians flew, including the American officials lying to and misleading the press.
The Russian Air Force didn’t fly over the golf course, and that’s a fact, not an opinion. It’s also a fact that’s been kept from the public, seemingly by the same officials and politicians who are trying to kill the Open Skies Treaty. They know very well that the flight didn’t happen over the golf course, but are playing it up for politics. They’re trying, and succeeding, in killing the Open Skies Treaty, and lying all the way to the end. None of the people in the American government departments who know it’s a lie, who have access to the data, will call out the Trump administration’s lies. No other countries are going to publicly embarrass the American government about lying to their people about basic facts either, that’s diplomacy.
The media got it wrong? How can that be?
✔️ “(they flew) past Bedminster, N.J., where the president is vacationing at one of his golf clubs”
Politico, “Russian spy plane trolls Trump with flight over D.C., New Jersey” by Kathryn A Wolfe and Bryan Bender, August 9th, 2017
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/09/russia-military-spy-plane-dc-241455
This quote is not untrue, it’s accurate, but unfortunately not detailed, and someone looking for confirmation of the plane flying *over* the golf course might think this is that confirmation. This was written immediately after the overflight.
⚠️ Fox News can be considered one of the guilty parties, as the title of their article was “Russian spy plane flies over Trump’s New Jersey golf club, DC area” but if anyone read the article, they walk it back — “…flew near the golf resort at 4,000 feet (..) two U.S. defense officials told Fox News.”; the title of the article doesn’t reflect the truth, or even the body of the article. The plane passed at it’s closest point about 10km away, and their cameras point straight down; the golf course was nowhere near the plane in that context. The resulting imagery from these flights is of objects below the plane, which the golf course was not.
-Fox News, August 9th, 2017 (updated September 26th, 2017)
https://www.foxnews.com/us/russian-spy-plane-flies-over-trumps-new-jersey-golf-club-dc-area
⚠️ “…is expected to be followed by another one Wednesday evening that flies over President Donald Trump’s property in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he is vacationing.” -Washington Post, “Russian surveillance plane soars over the Pentagon, Capitol and other Washington sites” by Dan Lamothe, August 9, 2017 5:53 p.m.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/08/09/russian-surveillance-plane-soars-over-the-pentagon-capitol-and-other-washington-sights/
This statement is false. The flight was never going to be over the Trump golf course in Bedminster, NJ on any day. The Washington Post is thought to be a reputable publication. This is disinformation that they have fallen prey to, and are now complicit in spreading themselves. Laundering a lie doesn’t make it true.
⚠️ This elegant spin seems to me to be deliberately ambiguous and misleading; “Russia flew (..) over parts of Washington, D.C., and Bedminster, N.J., where President Trump was vacationing at his Trump National Golf Course. According to one U.S. official, the spy plane flew through the temporary flight-restriction (TFR) airspace that was established around the president’s golf club.” Putting it this way muddies the waters and leaves room for interpretation; the fact is, the plane was ~10km away at it’s closest point, and the flight restriction didn’t apply to them, they were flying with the USAF aboard, on an approved flight plan.
-National Review, October 29, 2019 “The U.S. Should Withdraw from the Treaty on Open Skies” by Rebeccah Heinrichs (Hudson Institute)
https://www.hudson.org/research/15441-the-u-s-should-withdraw-from-the-treaty-on-open-skies
⚠️ RFERL published this extremely well produced video explainer that is full of trump administration disinformation, and they refuse to remove it or correct it. I don’t need to give you a time-code for when the falsehoods start, because they kick off with the lie that the plane flew over Trump’s golf course. *Also, it’s not a “spy plane”, per the treaty, no “spy planes” are allowed. The term is another talking point used by a faction of Republicans to discredit the treaty.
“Why Are Russian Spy Planes In The Sky Over Washington?”
by Ivan Gutterman <guttermani@rferl.org>, Carlos Coelho <@graficn>, and Grant Podelco <PodelcoG@rferl.org> for RFERL
December 10, 2019 13:35 GMT
https://www.rferl.org/a/open-skies-treary-explainer/30318086.html
⚠️ VOA was informed they were making false statements (you’re welcome) and made the following change to correct the inaccurate statement they were spreading; see if you can spot the edit “…one flight even overflew a Trump-owned golf course at Bedminster, New Jersey. The latter claim has been challenged.”
VOA felt the best way to properly inform the public of their mistake and of the falsehood was to call it “challenged”. That seems to be as accurate as they wanted to make it. It didn’t happen, that’s a fact, not a challenge, but VOA refused to make the necessary correction to make the sentence accurate and fully truthful. 🤷 It is no more reasonable to say something like “the moon is made of blue cheese. That claim is challenged.”
Shouldn’t you ask why VOA won’t publish the facts?
-VOA “US to Fix, Not Scrap Open Skies Treaty”, by Oksana Bedratenko January 23, 2020 (already heavily edited)
https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-fix-not-scrap-open-skies-treaty
⚠️ “American officials also note that Mr. Trump was angered by a Russian flight directly over his Bedminster, N.J., golf estate in 2017.”
-David Sanger, New York Times, May 21st, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/politics/trump-open-skies-treaty-arms-control.html
American officials made an untrue statement to David Sanger of the New York Times. They lied to him. Otherwise, they have just admitted to misinforming the President of what the Russians overflew on that day. Does Trump really believe a plane flew *OVER* his golf course? Maybe he does because Fox News told him so? Are his advisors deliberately misleading him, and isn’t that a whole other, much more serious, issue?
⚠️ “(Russia) in 2017, irritated Donald Trump by flying over his golf course in New Jersey, according to the New York Times.”
-The Economist, May 21st, 2020
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/05/21/donald-trump-abandons-the-open-skies-treaty
The Economist refers to their source to absolve themselves of the stain, but I don’t think the inaccurate statement should remain in its published form, because it’s a inaccurate statement, a lie, and we have evidence that proves it, regardless if the NYT is to blame for it.
⚠️ “…it flew over a golf course in New Jersey where the President was staying — close to an open threat.”
Jewish Policy Center (Think Tank), “Open Skies: The Cassette Deck of Treaties” by Shoshana Bryen (May 27, 2020)
https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2020/05/27/open-skies-the-cassette-deck-of-treaties/
This is simply false, but is absolutely what the Republicans who are trying to kill the treaty want you to hear.
So where are these facts you speak of?
Right here, thanks to FlightRadar24:
Here is their link to the KML file with the data from August 9th, 2017 (link)
Here is a screenshot of the rudimentary Google Map I made from it; you will notice the plane was ~9–10km or ~6mi from the golf course. By the altitude they were flying, and the publicly known specifications of the treaty-compliant digital electro-optical sensor they were using, we know how wide a picture they could have taken as they were flying; their total imagery swath at that altitude would be ~2.7km/1.678mi, half that to either side of the flight path, so less than a 1.35km or 0.84mi to either side of the flight path. Meaning, no, the plane did not fly over the golf course in Bedminster, nor could it have taken any pictures of the golf course as it flew ~9-10km away from the golf course. The golf course was neither overflown, or anywhere near being in frame of the pictures, if any pictures were taken, and they were not simply flying to the next area they wanted to photograph. They don’t take pictures of everything in their path, they only take pictures of sites of interest.
What if the data was wrong? MLAT isn’t precise.
Excellent point, that’s why I confirmed with a second data source, ADSBexchange, which was drawing from a different set of plane transponder receivers, and they too confirm the FlightRadar24 data is accurate. Red dots are ADSBexchange data, blue dots are FlightRadar24 data.
In conclusion…
The RuAF Open Skies Treaty plane did not fly over Trump’s golf course in 2017, or in any year; it didn’t happen, and that’s a fact. All of the reports that it did are evidence of a very successful disinformation campaign by officials, I believe acting on behalf of the Trump administration and Senate Republicans, to slander the treaty and misinform the public on purpose; disinformation; that’s information warfare, targeting their own citizens. I believe it’s also proof that journalism needs to pay much better attention to the lies “anonymous officials” are asking they publish. The Trump administration doesn’t care what they need to say to influence the public, they’re more than happy to lie to the American people, John Bolton even said so himself. Some people believe certain news media sources are reputable, like The Washington Post, or The New York Times; I’ve just proven they’re not, and done so with irrefutable facts and evidence. Anyone who did publish articles containing this disinformation should retract it, and it might be a good idea to write an explanation of how this happened. I believe you will find the trail leads to the White House and the Republican Senators who have been campaigning to kill the treaty for at least five years. I believe many journalists are guilty of spreading the disinformation readily for the insiders they are dependant on for access.
This is only one of the lies that are told in the media by the complicit, and the ignorant. I’ve been working on debunking these sorts of lies about the Open Skies Treaty for years, and this is one of the best black-and-white examples of a lie, which is easily proven with data, that has been readily spread by the American news media. If they lied to you about that, what other Open Skies Treaty facts are they lying about? It turns out, lots.
For starters, here is a complete take-down of the Senate resolution by Cotton and Cruz that is equally full of disinformation, explained to you point by point:
Inside the U.S. Senate resolution to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty.
It’s a Gong Show.
medium.com
Keep following my updates on #OpenSkiesTreaty disinformation on Twitter, if you’re interested in that kind of thing.
