The editor-in-chief of the right-wing newspaper that carried the story about the traces of explosive has resigned "in order to preserve the good name of the newspaper." Even two days ago, he admitted that the "evidence" is inconclusive and noted in a video that Poland has been distracted for far too long by various "absurd" Smolensk crash theories that have diverted energy from more pressing problems (
video at the bottom of the story).
Resignation statement at the top of the Rzezcpospolita main page (accessed 0010 Z Nov. 1, 2012)
Story in another paper about the resignation and various reactions to the "explosives traces" issue by Polish investigative officials.
Esteemed Pprune posters often provide first-hand knowledge about accident investigation, and I wonder if any of them would confirm that a bomb explosion on board an aircraft typically leaves evidence that can practically be seen with the naked eye, such as "severe pitting, cratering, petalling, or hot gas washing" (p. 258 of the
NTSB report on TWA Flight 800), along with the presence of soot. Richard Clarke, former US National Coordinator for Security and Anti-Terrorism under Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II, recounts in a recent book how he accompanied an NTSB official to look at the wreckage of TWA 800 and could immediately see the signs of an internal explosion. Similarly, didn't investigators into Pan Am 103 manage almost immediately to pinpoint the location of the explosive device on the basis of visible damage to the aircraft skin?
It is striking that Polish experts who have come forward over the last few months with "scientific proof" of the near simultaneous explosion of two different bombs on board the presidential Tupolev in a precisely timed sequence that would make it look as if the pilots had flown the airplane into the ground seem to base their hypotheses on self-developed computer simulations that work backwards from the scattering of the wreckage.
If bombs did go off on the Tu-154 that so tragically crashed at Smolensk, wouldn't there have been the kind of gross, visible signs noted in the wreckage of aircraft involved in analogous cases?
P.S. for the combination of structural damage and the discovery of traces of explosives including TNT and some others, pp. 257-259 of the NTSB report on TWA Flight 800 are quite interesting.