Originally Posted by
SLFplatine
one might consider that the expertise to conduct a highly technical removal of data from an FDR could be resident in Moscow (or elsewhere in Russia) No?
Isn't it far more likely that expert advice from Russia was either:
a) how to wipe the data entirely (then can blame MH pilot for turning stuff off, with handy recent example of MH370).
or (even more likely)
b) that the data will tell no one anything about _who_ fired whatever took the plane down, so just hand the things over and make yourselves look good for once.