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Polish Public broadcaster TVP revealed successive fragments of a recording of a conversation from a night meeting between the former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and some officials and politicians, thirteen days after the Smolensk air disaster.
The recordings published by TVP journalists are the official record of a confidential meeting that took place at night at the Prime Minister's Chancellery with the participation of former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Edmund Klich - accredited by the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) and several officials and politicians.
"If a bilateral agreement was signed quickly or the STANAG procedure was adopted, some things could have been handled differently. If we are acting in line with Annex 13 (to the Convention on International Civil Aviation) then everything is specified and we can not propose this procedure now. I just hoped that someone in Poland would judge it all well and propose an alternative solution to the Russians," Edmund Klich said during the meeting.
On the recording one can also hear how Donald Tusk refrains from taking any decisions that could lead the Smoleńsk investigation to the assassination hypothesis.
"The more puzzles or hidden matters, the more nourishment for the most idiotic and dangerous speculations about, for example, an attack by the Russian side," the then Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on the recording.
His recorded words contradict the statements of experts who say that the assassination hypothesis should have been immediately included in the proceedings.
TVP1 also featured the statement of the then head of the Ministry of Interior and Administration, Jerzy Miller, who on April 28, 2010, after Edmund Klich, took over as chairman of the State Commission on Aircraft Accidents Investigation investigating the causes of the disaster. According to journalists, this statement comes from a secret meeting of the committee on April 28, 2010.
"If these two reports are different, then there will be a whole conspiracy theory built in society... We have four entities here that will publish something - the Russian commission, the Russian prosecutor, the Polish commission, the Polish prosecutor. We will either ensure a unified message... which is not conducive to building myths and suspicions, or we will suffer the consequences,” reportedly said Miller.
On April 10, 2010, the Polish presidential plane crashed in Smolensk, Russia, killing everyone on board, including President Lech Kaczyński, the First Lady Maria Kaczyńska, and top officials.
Although TU-154m was part of 36th Special Aviation Regiment of the Polish Air Force and on the day of the crash carried on board, among others, the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces (President Lech Kaczyński) and other top military officials, on April 13, 2010 the then Polish government led by PM Donald Tusk agreed not to investigate the crash under the 1993 Polish-Russian agreement on military aviation in the airspace of both contracting states, in reality handing over the whole investigation to the IAC, a Russian affiliate of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Thereupon it was decided to consider the Polish Air Force's presidential plane as a civilian aircraft thus allowing the investigation to be conducted in compliance with Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, the so-called "Chicago Convention", whose stipulations according to reports were also violated. The obligation to "use every means to facilitate the investigation" was not fulfilled by the “State of Occurrence”. Instances of tampering with evidence and its destruction already at the scene of the catastrophe were also reported.