The Reagan administration is running into an unex-
pected snag in its efforts to portray the KAL 007 tragedy
as “‘an act of unmitigated brutality’’ on the part of the
Soviet Union: the persistence of nagging, probing,
searching questions about the incident coming from
some sections of the mass media.

A good example of this sharply critical view can be
found in an analytical article about the disaster published
in the most recent edition of the prestigious, Far Eastern
Economic Review (Sept. 22, 1983). The Review points
out a startling fact that few other commentators have
noted. Although flight 007 was said to have “‘strayed”’ off
course in a random accident, it was actually following
the ‘‘great circle’’ route which would have taken it di-
rectly to its destination, Seoul. The chances of this
happening in error are, as the Review notes, vanish-
ingly small.

‘‘How did 007 get to its rendezvous with disaster? An
error in the INS (Inertial Navigation System) which
would have taken it exactly where it was going — a
million to one chance — has to be added to another
million to one chance: that the two pilots on the flight
deck never once noticed Kamchatka’s coastline appear-
ing on their weather radar — which has a range of about
200 miles — or even looked out of the cockpit window to
see that they were flying over land where there should
have been sea. And this in an area where their maps are
Studded with warnings to pilots to stay on course ...

‘These coincidences strain credulity and force an
€xamination of a simpler explanation: that the aircraft
‘Was for some reason deliberately flown on the course
that it took.”’

Further questions about the strange mission of KAL
007 have come from two American intelligence experts,
Edward Eskelson and Tom Bernard (Toronto Star, Sept.
17), who served as pilots on U.S. Airforce RC-135 spy
planes.

Eskelson and Bernard state bluntly that ‘‘the official
U.S. version of events is incomplete and misleading.
There are serious questions in our minds over the precise
role of the RC-135 in the tragedy and why the plane’s
Capabilities were never used to. head off the KAL
airliner.

‘‘We believe that through these planes, U.S. intel-
ligence meticulously monitored and analyzed the entire
Sweep of events, from the time the Soviets first began
tracking flight 007, to ‘confusing’ it with the U.S. spy
Plane, to the moment Soviet warplanes were ordered to
80 from ‘standby’ to ‘alert’ because an ‘intruder aircraft
Was in its airspace, to the time of shootdown.

eet

SIGHTING
THE DIFFERENCE

BOEING 747-200
231 feet 4 inches

BOEING RC-135
136 feet 3 inches

Above: U.S. diagram indicates size and shape difference
between 747 and RC-135. It was used to “prove” that
Soviet fighter pilots knew they were dealing with a civilian
aircraft. The diagram also indicates that size is relative.
Flying at supersonic-speeds in a night sky, what were the
pilots to compare the 747 to — the clouds? Below: Soviet
Su-15 could only have seen the plane’s silhouette.

~~

‘‘The United States could have warned KAL 007 at
any time that it was off course and prevented the tragic
loss of 269 lives.”

Were the Soviet pilots aware that they were intercept-
ing a civilian aircraft? The Far Eastern Economic Re-
view points out that the only type of aircraft which is
mentioned in the transcripts of Soviet pilots’ commu-
nications with ground control is ‘““RC-135’’. The RC-135,
notes the Review, ‘‘is smaller than a (Boeing) 747, but

007 on ‘great circle’ route to Seoul

News analysis

By Fred Weir

has a similar configuration. The main distinguishing fea-
tures — apart from size — are the 747’s bigger engine
casings and its protruding upper flight and cabin.

“‘Just as the mystery of 007’s course starts with the
presumption that no pilot would knowingly fly it, the
world-wide indictment of the Soviets starts with the
matching assertion that Soviet pilots must have recog-
nized it as a civil airliner. But the circumstances leave
this in doubt. At high subsonic speeds, one aircraft inter-
cepts another from astern and usually from underneath:
a head-to-head or head-to-side pass would give only a
second or so of useful visual range, especially at night.
Only the silhouette of the aircraft is seen from below and
astern.

“Normally, the cabin lights of a passenger jet would

_ be dimmed on the night run between Anchorage and

Seoul so that the passengers could get some sleep, and
the tail and wing markings of an aircraft cannot be seen
from astern. Airliners in flight show navigation lights and
flashing anti-collision lights, but military aircraft also are»
fitted with such lights, and illuminate them in routine
peacetime operations — and could do so as a ruse when
confronted by enemy fighters ... Only daylight or a
powerful searchlight would make the identification of an
airliner certain, if a pilot believed he was looking at a
military aircraft. And fighters carry no searchlights.

““Reagan’s claim that ‘with a half moon on a clear
night, they (the Soviets) must have seen that this was a
civil airliner’ would have come with more authority from
someone who had actually tried to identify an aircraft
from a fighter by waning moonlight.”

One final nagging question, concludes the Review, ‘“‘is
why at least eight Soviet fighters scrambled on that fate-
ful night followed their target over Kamchatka and then
on to the very edge of the prohibited zone over Sakhalin
before firing. Some commentators have blamed the
delay.on slow Soviet communications, but it is just as
likely that they waited until the last possible moment,
when it seemed the aircraft was staying on course for the
major population centre of Vladivostok, before acting,”’

eateesiecnceaniene nsession -soseratiai

(eee

32 civil planes downed pilot reveals

_BERLIN — Farflung fleets of U.S. es-
Plonage planes are constantly on the
Move round the globe, making sallies at

he territories of the Soviet Union and
Other countries. In an even more danger-

_ Us conspiracy, the USA has deliber-

ately been using the passenger planes of
Other countries to plot terrain and photo-
&taph military installations.

These are the accusations made
against Washington by one of the leading
€xperts on the world’s aviation and flying
Toutes. He is Rudolf Braunberg, the
former chief pilot of West Germany’s in-
ternational airline, Lufthansa. For more
than 20 years he flew West German
Planes all over the world. Now he has
told of his personal experiences with
J.S. aerial espionage in an article pub-
lished in the West German weekly news-
Paper, Deutsches Allgemeines
Sonntagsblatt.

To show the conscious lying from

ashington to. Bonn on the South Ko-
Tean plane incident, Braunberg reveals
that since 1947 more than 30 passenger
Planes were shot down over various
Countries and in various areas, including
One destroyed by NATO forces.

“Tf [have correctly assessed the statis-

tics, since 1947,"’ he writes, ‘32 civil
;

Soviet territory while en route to Mos-

From Berlin cow, at the bidding of the CIA. The
Soviet press has in the past week pub-
Fils Delisle lished precise information on the agree-

planes have been shot down for
violating foreign airspace. This is where
the true scandal begins.

“Pilots who have for decades pro-
tested against such happenings would
have been happy to see their govern-
ments shed even a fraction of the tears in
previous cases that they are now shedd-
ing when, after 32 previous cases, itis the
Soviet Union that is involved.

‘Some cases were bad enough. The
Israelis alone shot down two passneger
planes with hundreds of dead; a civil ma-
chine of the Italian airline Alitalia, over
the Sinai, and a Libyan civil machine.

“Only recently a civilian Viscount was
shot down over southeast Africa. Last
year, a French passenger plane was hit
over the Mediterranean by a NATO
rocket.” a
French Flights Used

Braunberg’s charges of airline spying
are backed by the French newspaper
Liberation. Former French intelligence
agents and writers have revealed that
French’ passenger planes made

“hundreds” of espionage flights over —
MAC ATE

ment between the dictatorship of South
Korea and the USA for South Korean
passenger planes to secretly photograph
Soviet military installations while on
flights over Soviet territory. Ten years
ago a South Korean passenger plane was
forced to land by Soviet pursuit planes
while it was on such a flight over the
Soviet north. :

Investigations of the CIA by a special
U.S. Congress committee also produced
the information that the CIA used south
Korean civilian planes for espionage
over Soviet territory. These findings of
the U.S. Congress itself were revealed
this past week by U.S. congressman
George W. Crockett, who said the civi-
lian planes of other countries were also
used for the same purposes.

“CIA Airlines”

A disproportionate number of captains
of Western airline flights to the far east,
Braunberg revelas, ‘‘are military pilots”’.
‘‘A number of airlines are referred to as
‘CIA airlines’ by the pilots among them-
selves. It is an open secret, which can be

easily checked, that there is a lively traf-

BIT DU aa Ee

fic of agents and diplomats between the
USA and the Far East ... what goes on
behind the scenes of so-called world poli-
tics defies the imagination of even a sci-
ence fiction writer.”

Braunberg writes: ‘“Whoever has
knocked about the airways of the wide
world for more than 20 years is re-
peatedly impressed by the presence of
American military machines which op-
erate in civilian air corridors as if they are
passenger planes ... for example, the
Near East between Istanbul and Teheran
was the most thickly flown area of its
kind. South of the Soviet border (before
the overthrow of the Shah — F.D.) milit-
ary planes stood row upon row on air-
fields.”” Such U.S. military planes flew
thickly between the passenger planes.
The same was true of the north Pacific
routes all the way to the east-west Pacific
routes. They crossed borders busily and
were visible high in the sky to civilian
pilots, “‘sometimes ground observers

were deliberately led to confuse civil and ~

military planes.”’

The former chief pilot declares that —
whoever rouses such hysteria over the |

South Korean plane incident must face
the accusation that their grief is being

marketed, in order to undermine the ©

peace movement.

SM

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 5, 1983—Page 5

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