Wait, you don't seriously think that Russia disappeared a Malaysian airliner (and hundreds of international citizens) to distract the world (?) from Crimea. That's just fucking absurd.
It's pretty unlikely, though, given that it was loaded with Chinese nationals, and if they got rumbled... that'd be some fallout, hopefully just diplomatic.
That's a rather controversial claim. You could probably make the case that, instead, the Clinton Administration exploited the Right's obsession with the Lewinsky affair to drown out any serious domestic criticsm of its policy in Yugoslavia.