von cecenmaoel tT | LILIA VTA bP | ATAU | FTE pt SEATURE ; mes year, to mark the third anniversary of the KAL Wagedy, the U.S. establishment rolled out one of its Bet cannons, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist ee wour Hersh, to explain that the whole thing was a Yo table accident. Not a spy flight, nothing like that. dig Villains, just a touch of human error and unpre- table technology helped along by panic-stricken, in- ent Soviet air defence controllers. A comforting »Pothesis for those who three years ago exploited the dent for all it was worth, squeezing every drop of tof ar advantage from it, but who would now prefer orget the troubling questions it left behind. Writing in the Atlantic Monthly (Sept. °86), Hersh ae an almost pathetic exercise in wish-fulfillment. . Scenario’”’ of how KAL 007 came to be over Soviet lory requires an incredible sequence of errors, the the axe of the airliner’ s captain from the controls during and Dire flight, no attentiveness on the part of the crew She... Since even then the hypothesis doesn’t work — Tinvention, a fiction so unpalatable that even Hersh Its that it ‘‘calls for a leap of faith” to be believed. bth an almost audible sigh of relief, the big media has ton Onto Hersh’s theory that the KAL airliner’s T™mous course deviation began with a simple pro- Syst Ming error made in the airliner’s Inertial Navigation ee (INS) while it was taking-off from Anchorage, «84, at the outset of its ill-fated journey. (The INS is a Ple secure’’ system, which means the mistake had to ee three times in succession. Hersh deals with this Mitch by suggesting that the flight engineer simply q a €d off the alarm warning him of an error — hard to ©W unless you really want to). Cannot be Explained his Is not entirely new. Hersh’s theory is an updated pee of one put forward by the U.S.-controlled Inter- 10nal Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), back in ember 1983. The ICAO proposed that a pro- ‘}) clus Ming error might have been to blame — a con- tine that was loudly trumpeted by the Reagan ad- ‘stration — but the ICAO’s own Air Navigation MMission, a crucial panel of experts, rejected its pa- pe °rganization’s report, saying that it was “unable to ablish the exact cause for the significant deviation eo track. The magnitude of the diversion cannot be Plained |» “jghtetsh has a more difficult job since it is now estab- q ed —Just as Soviet authorities have maintained from adi ginning — that KAL 007 did not fly on a single Co aoa from take-off to shoot-down, but it changed “its *e Significantly at least twice during its flight, and during Cha! minutes, while being pursued by Soviet fighters, it ite °4 Speed and altitude in a manner that is highly sugges- 2 evasive action. All of this is now confirmed by ; Eaese radar records of the incident which were be- “tly released last year. j fees therefore proposes that further programming ¢ Ts Involving the INS account for the plane’s course “haycSes during flight, and he admits that the crew must ‘the, Ceen very, very, very careless to have allowed all Te Ngee Oem ht lee, Backgrounder a a aaa Fred Weir another recent book, Shootdown, by R.W. Johnson (re- viewed in last week’s Trib) which explores all of the possibilities much more thoroughly. Similarly, they have given virtually no coverage to the families of KAL 007’s victims, who are definitely not satisfied by official bromides and anti-Soviet rhetoric, and are suing the U.S. government, South Korea, Korean Airlines and the plane’s various manufacturers for billions of dollars. Vital Questions Let us then reiterate some of the major questions about KAL 007 which are still outstanding and must be answered before the matter can be finally laid to rest: e Why did KAL 007 load four extra tons of fuel at Anchorage, and why did pilot Chun Byung-in falsify his official record on this point? Why was KAL 007 delayed 40 minutes at Anchorage? The Soviets have argued that the extra fuel gave the airliner the ability to accelerate and hold higher-than-usual speeds while over Soviet territory, and that the delay enabled KAL 007 to syn- chronize with the orbit of a U.S. Ferret-D surveillance satellite. No satisfactory alternative explanations have been offered. e Why did another Korean airliner, KAL 015, which was flying the same route just behind KAL 007 that night, illegally relay false position reports for KAL 007 to ground controllers? And why did the pilot of KAL 015 suddenly become ‘“‘unavailable’’ to testify under oath when subpoenaed by attorneys for the bereaved families? e Why did the United States Air Force erase vital radar tapes showing the early hours of KAL 007’s flight, and why did it wait until February 1985, when it was ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Aubrey Robinson to turn over such tapes to the attorneys of the bereaved families, to disclose the fact that it had destroyed them? e Why was the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, whichis legally charged with investigating any air disaster involving Americans that originates in an American airport, ordered to halt its inquiry into the KAL 007 case and to turn over all relevant docu- mentation to the U.S. State Department? e Why has the Reagan administration issued gag or- ders to prevent government employees from talking about the incident? Why were two former RC-135 pilots ordered by the FBI to stop discussing the possible role of the U.S. Airforce RC-135 in the tragedy, or risk arrest under the Espionage Act? As spokespeople for the be- reaved American families have put it: ‘We feel betrayed by our Government whose silence, rationalized by the questionable claim of national security concerns, is be- ginning to resemble a deliberate cover-up”. e Why has the U.S. consistently refused to release the tapes of Soviet ground controllers communicating with their fighter aircraft, even though there is ample evi- dence that such tapes exist? Is it because these records will show that Soviet defence forces tried repeatedly and fruitlessly to contact KAL 007, just as Soviet authorities have maintained? e Why has the Reagan administration totally misled the American public about the capabilities of its intel- ligence-gathering apparatus in the Pacific area? The claim — supported by Seymour Hersh — that U.S. surveillance equipment passively recorded what was happening to KAL 007, but the information was not analysed until much later, is almost too incredible for words. This is tantamount to saying that the USSR could launch a Cruise missile at the U.S. some night and Presi- dent Reagan wouldn’t find out about it until the next morning after breakfast. e Why has no media attention been paid to the widows of KAL 007’s pilot and co-pilot, who say their husbands were paid large sums of money to fly over Soviet territory? e Why has there been virtually no scrutiny of Korean Airlines itself? KAL, which has changed its name to Korean Air, is the only airline in the world whose planes have gone ‘‘astray”’ in such a manner, on one occasion penetrating 1,000 kilometres into Soviet territory. There is adequate documentation to show that KAL has oper- ated as a front for the Korean CIA since its inception, and has frequently been involved in dangerous intel- ligence missions. (See, for example, The Nation, June 14, 1986). A Large Rat e Finally, why has the whole question of how KAL 007 came to be over Soviet territory on that night three years ago never been openly and systematically investi- gated by any official body? The almost endless series of coincidences, contradictions and mysterious cir- ~ cumstances cries out for careful examination. If anyone doubts this, let him/her read R.W. Johnson’s thorough book, Shootdown, and still try to claim that all can be explained by a simple INS programming error. It cannot. There is a very large rat in there, and after three years its smell has become overpowering. Photo shows KAL 007’s pilot, Captain Chun Byung-in, lower left, standing beside Korean Airlines President Cho Choong-Hoon. Captain Chun, a former fighter pilot, was one of KAL’s most experienced airmen. He reputedly had extensive contacts in government and intelligence cir- cles. ¢ || © happen. In the final analysis, Hersh’s thesis rests f On e an untenable web of supposition and suggestion. J ‘ batt ignorance is added to faith does it have a chance HT not Ing believed. Hersh’s certainty that KAL 007 was , Biya art of any espionage operation, for example, de- Ht in th from his having been told so by un-named sources ligg © National Security Agency and other U.S. intel- a0 a Services Pron? Surprisingly, the big media has found Hersh’s “ex lation of events to be “‘authoritative’’ and Ali the Temely convincing’’. To judge by all of the attention é Worth ave given it, they consider it to be very ( With Y of public consumption. This contrasts sharply f i the manner in which they have studiously ignored Y Y {- ae iy 0 d ] i GANCTIONS! SANCTIONS! ce PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 10, 1986 e 5 ~*~ Ten questions about KAL 007 -