KOREAN AIRLINE SHOT DOWN BY RUSSIANS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000201310002-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 16
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 14, 2008
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: July 26, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
PROGRAM The Joel Spivak Show
sTAnoN WRC Radio
DATE July 26, 1984 9:10 A.M. CITY Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT Korean Airline Shot Down By Russians
JOEL SPIVAK: Well, even now there are questions that
people have in their minds about what really happened out there
when that Korean Airline 747 was shot down by the Russians. And
sitting here with me this morning is retired Major General
Richard Romer, who was with the Canadian Air Force for many
years. He was a combat pilot in World War II and rose to the
rank of Major General.
Now, General, do you remember where you were when you
first heard about this thing?
MAJOR GENERAL RICHARD ROMER: I can't say that I do
remember exactly where I was. But I do remember that the first
reports that I recall were to the effect that the aircraft, the
747, was overdue. Then the next one was that it was on an
island, an island called Sakhalin Island. And, of course, that
report was very quickly converted into something else when...
SPIVAK: Excuse me, General. You mean you heard it was
forced down on Sakhalin.
GENERAL ROMER: On Sakhalin Island. That was the first
report that had come out. And I don't know what the source of
that report was to this day, and I don't think it's particularly
important. Because on September the 1st, in the morning here,
Secretary Shultz gave his famous press conference where he
startled everybody by reciting times, the whole incident, and
establishing for the world that the aircraft had been shot down.
And, of course, he had at that point the tapes that the Japanese
maritime agency had produced of the Soviet fighter pilot talking
to the ground and taking his instructions and advising them as to
what he was doing.
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So, from that point on, we knew that the aircraft had
not landed on the Soviet island of Sakhalin, to the northwest of
Hokkaido, the Japanese island, but it had in fact been shot down.
SPIVAK: Okay. Now, let's deal with some of the wild
stuff first here, General. There are a lot of people who
honestly and truly believe that the Korean Airlines 007 747 --and
keep in mind -- I'm sure you all know it, but I'll just say it
anyway. There were 269 people were killed on that thing.
There are people, General, listening right now who
honestly and truly believe that that plane was on a spy mission.
What do you think?
GENERAL ROMER: Well, I know that there are a lot of
people who think that because there are a lot of people who
listened to the Russian side, the Russian defense of what they
had done. The Russians, immediately the word was out from Shultz
that they had shot it down, refused for a while even to admit
that. But what they did was to start to fire back, because
Secretary Shultz's language was very strong, the President's
language which followed shortly thereafter was very strong. So
the Soviets started to fire back through Tass. And right from
the beginning their position was that this aircraft was on a spy
mission for the CIA, for the American government, and therefore
the American government was responsible for the 269 people being
killed.
Now, that's been the Soviet line right the way through.
And they mounted this counterpropaganda war immediately after the
event. It really reached its peak when the Soviet Union produced
their chief of staff, the top military man -- his name is Marshal
Ogarkov -- at a press conference, which was unprecedented, on
September the 9th, only nine days after the event. And for the
first time in living memory, they produced a man of great
substance and stature in the Soviet Union. And he was at one
time responsible for Soviet military disinformation, one of the
world's most professional liars.
SPIVAK: [Laughter]
GENERAL ROMER: And Ogarkov made a dramatic presentation
which reached every television set in the United States almost
instantly. And what he did was to produce a case whereby he
substantiated the fact that this aircraft was on a spy mission
for the United States. And, of course, what he was saying was
totally false. But he had two things going for him. First of
all, his great stature and-weight and his prestige as the top
soldier in the Soviet Union, a very cool man in control of the
situation. And he had in front of him television cameras from
the great television networks in the Western World. And behind
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him at this press conference was a great wallboard and it had two
drawings on it. One was a drawing which he pointed out and he
followed on this drawing the track that he claimed was the track
followed, the course followed by this 747 as it approached
Sakhalin Island. And he showed a hook, a turn to the right, or
west, that this aircraft had made so it could go over a military
base on Sakhalin Island, and he followed this with a pointer.
And his allegation was that this aircraft was obviously on a spy
mission because it turned here to go over this particular place.
The next thing he had, off to the side, looked like a
racetrack. And it, it turned out, was what he represented to be
the tracks followed by the 747 just before it entered Soviet
airspace as it rendezvoused with an American Air Force RC-135
electronic intelligence airplane. That was also false.
The first was false for the reason that if you follow
the tapes of the Soviet fighter pilot who was following the 747
as it approached Sakhalin Island and he was getting ready to
shoot it down, he kept telling his ground control, deputat, that
the aircraft was following a course of 240, and it never changed.
There's no turn at all.
The other one, the claim by Ogarkov of a rendezvous,
came from an announcement by the President, President Reagan, on
Sunday, September the 4th that there had been a 747 -- or there
had been an RC-135 from Shemia (?) Island in the vicinity of the
747, the Koran 747, before it passed into Soviet airspace. And
the President said it came no closer than 75 miles, it passed in
front of the 747.
Now, the Soviets, up until that announcement by him,
didn't know that the RC-135 was even in the area at all.
SPIVAK: What makes you so sure they didn't know?
GENERAL ROMER: Well, it's very simple. From September
the 1st through to September the 4th, in the vitriolic propaganda
battle that had started, the Soviets threw everything they could,
every brick at the United States.
SPIVAK: But they never mentioned that airplane.
GENERAL ROMER: Never mentioned that airplane at all.
Not even a hint. And if they had known it was there, they would
have. They would have said so.
SPIVAK: Well, it's hard to believe they didn't know it
was there. I mean their radar is pretty sophisticated. They-
must have been...
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GENERAL ROMER: But sometimes it doesn't go out that
far. And on top of that, there's so much traffic out there, at a
good distance away from their shorelines, that they would not
record it or pay much attention to it. In any event, they would
have used it if they had known.
The President, on this Sunday morning, had announced to
the public at the same time as he was briefing the congressional
leaders as to what was happening. And, of course, it came out.
And then what Ogarkov and his team did was to seize on that
information and within the five days produce this racetrack and
the proposition that there had been a rendezvous.
SPIVAK: Well, look, you're an ex-fighter pilot your-
self, General. And at the time, we had some people who are
currently fighter pilots call up here -- I don't know where they
were from, Andrews or someplace, and they were telling me that
there's just no way that the Russian pilots that scrambled that
day could possibly have mistaken, even in the middle of the
night, the silhouette of that 747 for anything than what it was.
They said tha was just a physical impossibility. They told me
that, if necessary, they could have flown right down on top of
that thing and turned on their landing lights and taken a look to
see what it was. So there's just no way that they could have
mistaken it for anything else but a passenger plane.
GENERAL ROMER: There's no question about that.
Let me just finish the other point. I do not, under any
circumstances, believe that this aircraft was on a spy mission at
all, period. It's a fabrication of the Soviet Union. The Soviet
Union got this message across to the American people. And that's
why so many people in the United States believe that there was a
CIA or government involvement.
Now, on the other point, I could not agree more. As I
read the situation -- and being an old fighter pilot doesn't mean
that I've lost all of my backward-looking concepts of how these
things work. In my opinion, what happened was very simple. This
had been going on before. This had happened before that these
Korean aircraft, from time to time, had cut the corner. They had
taken the Great Circle route from Anchorage to Seoul, and had
gotten away with it -- and I think that this will be substanti-
ated later on when they have to explain, Korean Airlines has to
explain why they grounded 14 of their senior captains as a result
of the investigation that followed this.
SPIVAK: Yeah, they did do that. I read that story in
the New York Times.
GENERAL ROMER: So, what I believe happened was this:
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It was a sensitive night for the Russians. They were testing one
of their new intercontinental ballistic missile rockets. They're
going to mount 150 of them in the Kamchatka Peninsula targeted
against Washington and other good places. They saw this aircraft
coming. It came up on their radar screen at Kamchatka and
immediately went on the operations board at Kalinin, which is
just outside of Moscow. So the decision-making process was
immediately there. They knew that the aircraft was a South
Korean machine. They knew that it was a passenger civilian
airliner. And as it went through Soviet airspace, they failed to
catch it with their fighters dispatched out of Kamchatka. As it
got down to Sakhalin Island, somebody -- and I think I know who
it is. It's only deduction -- in Moscow made the decision that
they would terminate this flight to teach South Korea a lesson.
They had had enough of this. And so the decision was made to
shoot the thing down.
Cannon was used first of all to attempt to hit it. The
Russians later claimed that this was a warning, which is bull-
roar. And then the pilot said, "No. I will try rockets."
Now, the key to this is that the Soviet pilot 805 did
not report to the ground what it was he was seeing. And I agree
with your young fighter pilots that in those circumstances, the
pilot 805 could see the airplane quite clearly. He could have
flown formation with it within 15 feet. He could have flashed
his lights. He could have done all kinds of things. Instead of
that, he did not identify to the ground, which indicates quite
clearly that the decision was made before he took off, shoot it
down.
The cardinal factor is that they knew that this was not
an American-flag airplane. If had been an American-flag air-
plane, such as Pan Am, or, for that matter, even an RC-135, they
wouldn't have shot it down. They would have escorted it out and
had screamed to high heaven thereafter.
SPIVAK: Well, there were at least two of our flag
carriers who fly that same route. Pam Am does and I think
Northwest Orient does. And does Air Canada fly that?
GENERAL ROMER: No. No, they don't. But they flew me
in their simulator over this route.
SPIVAK: Who, Air Canada flew you?
GENERAL ROMER: Yes.
SPIVAK: Oh, you took the route yourself just to see?
GENERAL ROMER: In their simulator. As you know, the
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747 simulators and the other simulators are superb flying
machines. Even though they're tied to the ground, you do
everything in them. And they flew me on the route from Anchorage
to Seoul, both on the Air 20 route and the other one.
SPIVAK: All right.
We're visiting here with retired Major General Richard
Romer. Incidentally, I was derelict -- this isn't the first
time, General -- but I was derelict in not telling you that
General Romer's findings are contained in a book which is
published by a publisher I never heard of before.
Is this a Canadian publisher?
GENERAL ROMER: A Canadian publisher, distributing in
the United States.
SPIVAK: Okay. It's called Massacre: 747, written by
retired Major General Richard Romer of the Canadian Air Force.
And we'll continue here with General Romer in just a moment.
And incidentally, you know, you know how these talk
radio programs work, General. If there are people listening now
who are still naysayers and think that we somehow provoked the
Russians into shooting that plane down, why don't you have at it
with General Romer here? You know, I'm tired of people coming
after me on this issue. If you really honestly and truly believe
that we set this thing up, go ahead and tell General Romer why
you think so and see what he says.
SPIVAK: We're visiting with retired Major General
Richard Romer of the Canadian Air Force. General Romer has
written other books, but this one is called Massacre: 747. And
I guess, like everybody else, General Romer was dumb ounded when
he first heard about this.
Now look, General, even now, thinking about this, it's
just hard for me to imagine that the Russians are venal enough to
shoot down an unarmed commercial airliner. I mean what in the
world could possibly have motivated them to do this?
GENERAL ROMER: Well, first of all, I'll put on my
lawyer's hat because I'm an attorney.
SPIVAK: Oh, I forgot about that.
GENERAL ROMER: Well, just to bring you up to speed, as
they say in the Air Force. You have to look at the evidence.
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The fact is, they did shoot it down. They shot it down knowing
what it was.
You have to look at the mind-set of the Soviet Union.
And the mind-set of the people of the Soviet Union -- I'll put it
on a corporate basis -- is quite different than ours in the
United States and in my country. They have been inculcated for
decades now with propaganda from their own controlled press that
the United States, the American eagle is going to attack them at
any time. They've been inculcated with the concept that they
must defend the motherland at all costs.
And in addition to that -- and they believe this. This
is a mind-set that we don't understand, but they believe this.
And this, of course, is taken all the way back to Stalingrad and
the great sacrifices that were made there by the Soviet people,
three million-plus destroyed in World War II. And this is what
is kept alive in the Soviet consciousness by their rulers. And
so it's a defense-of-the-motherland situation.
The next item, of course, is that this is an enormously
sensitive area for the Soviets. They have their Pacific fleet
based at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsular, over which
this aircraft flew on this particular night. And they have a
place where they're going to and they are installing 150 new
intercontinental ballistic missiles, the new P breed of those in
that same area.
SPIVAK: And don't they have some sort of a big secret
radar installation out there too at Sakhalin?
GENERAL ROMER: Yes. Well, when you get down to
Sakhalin, yes, they have. They have all manner of equipment and
installations and infrastructure. They're all designed for the
intercontinental aspect. They've got submarines in the Sea of
Okhotsk, which lies between Kamchatka Peninsular and Sakhalin,
where Sakhalin is located, which have submarine-launched ballis-
tic missiles targeted on the United States. It's a very sensi-
tive area.
But in addition to that, from the legal point of view,
there was a law passed by the Politburo, the Soviet government,
in '82 after Andropov took power which requires the air defense
force of the Soviet Union to use weapons against any aircraft
which intrudes their airspace which will not respond to signals
and which is not doing what they require. So that that overrides
any international protcols which the Soviets might have signed.
Now, they are dedicated to a bloody-minded approach to
the defense of their territory. This is what this incident
demonstrates quite clearly. They're totally ruthless. And they
used this particular incident, in my opinion, to demonstrate to
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the Western World that to toy with the Russian bear in its own
lair is something that they will simply not tolerate. And this
was a very good way of demonstrating that they will not tolerate
such an action. And they have said on many occasions since
September the 1st last year, after this incident, that they would
do it again. And I believe it. I think we all should believe
And, of course, the counterpropaganda exercise that they
went through in trying to put the blame over on the United States
Government, which was largely successful, although it was totally
false, is one of the best games that they play. They are masters
at this business of propaganda and counterpropaganda.
So, here we are almost a year later, and I'm telling you
they weill do it again. And we've got to understand that they
are bloody-minded about their own country, and they'll take the
consequences of any kind of act. But they would not shoot down
an American aircraft under these circumstances.
SPIVAK: Or a Canadian one either, I would think.
GENERAL ROMER: Oh, I don't know. Canada may be in the
same size scale and the same weight scale that they would apply
to South Korea. I don't know, and I hope I never find out.
SPIVAK: I hope you never do, either.
Don't they overfly your airspace every now and then?
GENERAL ROMER: Oh, sure, they intrude our airspace.
We're part of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense System,
and they intrude with their Bear reconnaissance airplanes, and we
rush ours up to intercept them, and then we play games with them
and wave at them, and off they go.
SPIVAK: You know, just excuse me. I don't mean to
belabor this point, but I keep hearing -- some guy I met a couple
of years ago was telling me stories -- it has nothing to do with
airplanes, but this guy was serving on a submarine. And he was
saying, you know, out at sea the Russians and our people play
these chicken games under the water with these nuclear sub-
marines. I guess it happens in the air too.
GENERAL ROMER: Oh, sure. It's the chicken game. And
also the game of intruding into the other side's airspace to get
them all dashing to get in their airplanes and getting into the
air to intercept.
And the Russians complained about this after this event.
They claimed that the RC-135s out of Shemia, the ones ahead of
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this, had been sending up all kinds of people to intrude, get the
alarm bells going; and then when the aircraft came up to inter-
cept them, they'd leave Soviet airspace and sort of wave goodbye.
SPIVAK: All right. We're visiting with retired Major
General Richard Romer of the Canadian Air Force, who has done
some work here and written a little book. It's a paperback book
called Massacre: 747, which has to do with his analysis of what
happened out there when the Russians shot down that Korean
airliner, 269 people on board, all of them dead.
SPIVAK: Our guest is retired Major General Richard
Romer of the Canadian Air Force, a former combat fighter pilot in
World War II, also a lawyer, he told me. And General Romer, like
everybody else, was pretty upset about what the Russians did. So
he went and did some work on this and wrote a book called Massa-
cre: 747, in which he tells you what he thinks happened up
there.
By the way, General, before we take a phone call here,
did you make any attempt to communicate directly with the
Russians before this book came out?
GENERAL ROMER: Oh, yes. I went through our own
intelligence people and started out with whom I should speak at
the Russian Embassy in Ottawa, made contact with that person and
put in a bid to go to the Soviet Union and Sakhalin Island to
talk to the pilot and any other person I could lay hands on. I
have not yet had a nyet. I know that the communication went
across to Moscow. But at the same time, I have had no positive
response. And if I do go, that will probably mean another book,
because it will be very interesting to do.
I was interested in the aircraft being forced down in
Yemen because it has the same sort of ring to the incident
because it -- remember the 747 incident started with a report
that the Russians had br.ought the airplane down, forced it down
on Sakhalin Island. Here we have an incident where an aircraft
was reported to be down in Yemen. There are two Yemens. One is
South Yemen, which I expect this is where the aircraft was
brought down. It's near the mouth of the Strait -- it's near the
Strait of Hormuz, which is just outside the Persian Gulf, which
is a highly sensitive area. But South Yemen, of course, is
oriented to the Soviet Union. And it will be very interesting to
see what develops from that particular incident.
SPIVAK: I read the story this morning. It was in the
paper. The way it was described, the Yemeni controllers ordered
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the plane to take a route which took it right over their air-
space, and then they forced it down.
GENERAL ROMER: That's a very interesting way to
approach things. But that's a story that, apparently so far, is
going to have a pleasant result, if what we're reading and
hearing is correct.
SPIVAK: Well, they're out of there now. They blew a
tire on the runway, I read this morning, but they let them go.
We're going to take some phone calls, I promise you.
And if you've got a question you want to ask General Romer about
what happened out there when the Russians shot that plane, the
Korean plane down and killed all those people, or if you're one
of these people that really honestly and truly believe that it
was a setup, that CIA put that plane in there to take pictures --
you know, General, there are people who believe it. You know
there are. And the most common story that I hear is that they
had a camera in the nose of the 747, or in the baggage compart-
ment, or something like that, which was taking pictures at high
altitude of that secret radar installation there in Sakhalin, or
whatever it was.
That's theoretically possible, is it not?
GENERAL ROMER: Oh, surely. It's always theoretically
possible to stick a camera in the belly of any airplane. That's
easy. But when you look at the situation, the United States, if
it wanted to gather information of this kind, has all of the
publicly known methods of doing this through its satellites and
other means without utilizing some South Korean airplane for this
purpose. The United States has all manner of opportunities to
get the same information without using a Korean 747.
SPIVAK: Well, our intelligence is so good, evidently,
that the National Security Agency was monitoring the Russian
transmissions and they knew when the Russians scrambled their
airplanes. I mean we were watching that thing happen.
Which brings up another question, General. Excuse me.
Because there are some people still wondering, if we knew what
was going on, why didn't we do something about it?
GENERAL ROMER: Well, I find in my search of the
information that, sure, there was an RC-135 on station. There
always is off Kamchatka. But in terms of monitoring and listen-
ing to, with live ears and bodies, what was going on on this
frequency, there's no indication at this time that the United
States had any kind of intelligence, electronic intelligence
equipment doing that; that this airplane, once it got to the
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position it was over Soviet airspace, was not within the ambit of
any kind of warning system or detection system that the United
States had in place.
Sure, you can speculate that this was the case. But as
far as I could determine, it was well beyond any kind of surveil-
lance that the United States could mount.
SPIVAK: Well, there's some dispute about that.
SPIVAK: To be fair about it. Because at the time, I
remember, we had a fellow who wrote the first definitive work
about what goes on at NSA out here in Maryland -- that's about
the most supersecret agency in this country -- and he certainly
led us to believe that they were looking right over the Russians'
shoulders, that they were monitoring the transmissions, that they
knew when they scrambled their pilots, and everything else.
And if that were true, then, you know, the question came
up: Okay. If they knew that the Russians were on their way up
there, why didn't they try to get in touch with that pilot?
GENERAL ROMER: The Kamchatka Peninsular, there would be
a monitoring opportunity via the RC-135. But if he told you
that, he also should have told you that the people who are on
board the RC-135s are there to keep the equipment going, and the
equipment monitors and records; that the exercise is not to have
people speaking Russian on the aircraft trying to interpret what
is going on. This is done subsequently in the intelligence-
gathering system.
I'm sorry, I just do not believe...
SPIVAK: You're not buying it.
GENERAL ROMER: I'm not buying that at all.
SPIVAK: Bullroar.
GENERAL ROMER: Bullroar is garbage. That is garbage.
SPIVAK: General Romer's favorite word, I think,
GENERAL ROMER: Sometimes it is. Garbage. Garbage is
another good word.
SPIVAK: Okay. Garbage is fine. Frankly, I like
bullroar better than garbage.
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GENERAL ROMER: Oh, that's fine. It might suit you.
. SPIVAK: Yeah, it does. It does. You've listened to
this program, I see.
Major General Richard Romer, retired from the Canadian
Air Force, is visiting with us this morning. And now, in just a
moment, we're going to take some phone calls at 966-TALK. And if
you want to ask General Romer a question about what he thinks
happened up there, or if you're one of these people who really
believes that we set the whole thing up, why don't you run it by
General Romer and see what he says?
SPIVAK: You're on WRC.
MAN: Finally, Mr. Spivak, you've got someone on there
who kind of shares my views on some things about the Russians.
I want to run something else by the General there.
SPIVAK: Yeah, go ahead. Run it by.
MAN: Not from that one point of view that you were
talking about; from the other end, sort of.
There is a school of thought, as you like to put it,
that thinks that there was a conspiracy to shoot down that plane
pur -- well, not purposely. But there was, do you remember, a
representative, a U.S. representative, the late Larry McDonald of
Georgia, who was on that plane, and one of the few conservatives
in the Congress.
SPIVAK: Okay. We know who Larry McDonald was. Do you
want to know whether General Romer thinks that the Russians were
on the lookout for Larry McDonald?
MAN: Yeah. Also, by coincidence, former President
Richard Nixon was supposed to be on that same plane, but changed
his mind at the last minute.
SPIVAK: All right. Let me get a comment on that from
General Romer.
You know about Larry...
GENERAL ROMER: Well, I'm going to qualify it in the
word you like. That's a bullroar conspiracy theory.
First of all, there was a rumor that former President
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had been booked on the airplane and the CIA had tipped him off.
Rumor only. The former President, to the best of his ability,
has denied that this was true. And for once, I accept -- I would
accept what he's saying.
SPIVAK: [Laughter]
GENERAL ROMER: The other aspect is that Dr. McDonald,
the President of the right-wing Birch Society, was indeed on that
airplane. But it's doubtful that the Russians even had a clue
that he was on that one. He was supposed to be on one going out
on the Sunday night before and missed it because of bad weather
connections, missed another one, according to my information, and
finally got on this one. And even though the KGB has tentacles
-- and I have to be careful of that word -- everywhere, I doubt
very much whether they had a handle on the fact that the was on
the airplane.
On top of that, it is very hard to believe that the
Soviets had assigned that importance to one individual in the
United States, no matter what his apparent notoriety, as far as
they were concerned, or his anti-communist stance, which was very
strong, that they would give him the opportunity to die in the
cause of democracy in this kind of form. In other words, I
really can't believe that this is what motivated the Soviets.
I think what motivated them was what I have already
said, and that was that they considered this an opportunity to
teach the Koreans a lesson once and for all and to demonstrate to
the Western World that they're tough people.
MAN: Got two questions here. One relates to the
motivation of these 15 Korean Airline pilots who occasionally
overflew Russian territory, even though their employers did not
want them to. The reason I bring this up is that it has been
alleged that although the flight 007 may not have been engaged in
spying, somebody may have paid the captain to overfly Russian
territory so as to stimulate their defenses, so that our aircraft
and other facilities could make observations.
SPIVAK: All right. Good. I'm glad you brought that
What do you think about that, General?
GENERAL ROMER: It goes this way. You have to look at
payment to pilots. Korean Air Lines in 1980-81 lost $47.8
million in their operations in those two years. Now, I have the
annual reports for the period and I analyzed very carefully what
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chairman of the company was saying in terms of policy. And what
he did was to cut costs everywhere he possibly could. That was
prudent business practice. And, of course, when you're running
an airline, the first place you look is your air operation.
That's where it costs you money. And there is all manner of
evidence that Korean Airline pilots, even in this country, were
jumping the line, among other things -- in other words, to cut
costs, when they're coming into Kennedy or wherever, they would
from time to time say that they were 20 miles out, but just
beyond radar coverage, when in fact they might be 100 miles out.
In other words, to get a location, a number in the lineup, a
priority that would allow them to come straight in. This kind of
thing.
Now, there's nothing wrong with a policy whereby an
airline will encourage its pilots to save flying time. It's very
valuable. And to give them bonuses per minute if they will save
and can save flying time, as a matter of practice. And I think
that what we're talking about here is the matter of the Korean
pilots, on any route in the world, attempting to cut their flying
time by cutting corners.
SPIVAK: Wait a minute, General. To be absolutely fair
-- far be it for me to get into a squabble with a retired major
general. But what George wants to know is, did somebody slip the
pilot a few bucks to stray off course on purpose in order to
provoke the Russians into scrambling their fighter planes, or
some other defensive maneuver, in order to take a look and see
how they did it?
GENERAL ROMER: No. In my opinion, the aircraft -- the
pilot knew where he was, but he was not there for the purpose of
getting anybody scrambled. He was, in my opinion -- and it's
only a judgment. He was there because he was cutting a corner
across the Kamchatka Peninsular. He was on the Great Circle
route. if you take a string and a globe and run the string on
the globe from Anchorage to Seoul, that's the Great Circle route.
And you will find that the aircraft was directly on that route at
the time it was shot down.
What I am in effect saying is that there is every
evidence that this shortcutting to save fuel -- he would save 20
minutes flying time -- had been going on. Other pilots had done
it. And I think that we will ultimately find that this is the
reason that Korean Air Lines, in their investigation after this
event, grounded 14 of their senior pilots. Because they went
back and discovered that this had been going on.
SPIVAK: What's your other question?
MAN: Well, my other question had to do with the
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notably in the New York Times, that the preponderance of U.S.
intelligence opinion held that the Koreans did know what they
were shooting -- I mean the Russians did not know what they were
shooting at. I've always believed that they did know. And I
find it surprising if the preponderance of U.S. intelligence
opinion holds that the Russians did not know what they were
shooting at.
Do you have any comment on that, General?
SPIVAK: We talked about that before. But go ahead.
GENERAL ROMER: Well, the preponderance of U.S. intelli-
gence. I can only do what my own preponderance of where I think
it went. I am convinced that the Soviet Union knew, the Soviet
commanders knew that this was a Korean aircraft. They had
tracked it all the way through. They knew it was not an American
aircraft. They decided that they were going to shoot it down.
The pilot could see it, the Soviet pilot. And I am of the
opinion that the Soviets -- there was no question at all,
regardless of what the intelligence community thinks.
SPIVAK: That's your answer.
One more thing. Have you noticed or been able to -- I
don't know. You're one human being. But have you noticed
anywhere in any official Soviet source there is the slightest bit
of contrition about what they did?
GENERAL ROMER: Well, absolutely not.
GENERAL ROMER: There's been a total refusal to be
contrite or to be apologetic or in any way acknowledge the
enormity of the act that they perpetrated. What they have simply
continued is to attempt to shift and keep shifted the blame for
this incident onto the American government. And even now,
stories that are coming, for example, out of the United Kingdom
-- and the American press believe anything that comes out of the
U.K. because it's British, you see. And the most recent one was
a report in a defense journal in the United Kingdom written by
somebody by the name of P.Q. Mann, which is an anonymous name
which is not his. He refuses to disclose his identity.
SPIVAK: His nom de plume.
GENERAL ROMER: Nom de plume. And he alleges, of
course, and quotes Russian sources with great credibility, and
claims that the United States Government was involved because the
shuttle was involved in this thing, the American shuttle went up
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36 hours in advance. The shuttle, at the time this occurred, was
2000 miles away and over the horizon. He claims there was a time
that the American ferret satellite and the RC-135 -- pure ongoing
KGB disinformation. But the American press picked this up and
believe it and feed it out to the people, and this whole thing is
perpetrated -- perpetuated. And the KGB and the Russians just
continue to do their masterful propaganda job.
SPIVAK: All right.
Well, if you're still interested in this subject, and I
would suppose that people are, you can read General Romer's
conclusionsin this book which is being sold in this country now.
It's published in Canada. It's called Massacre: 747, written by
retired Major General Richard Romer.
And, General, it's nice to see you.
SPIVAK: You know, I'm so happy you came in to debunk
the bullroar here this morning, because we've had a fair amount
of that. Thank you for coming.
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