EX-CIA AGENT SAYS FLIGHT 007 WAS SPY PLANE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201180056-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 19, 2010
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: October 7, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-0
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
7 October 1983
OGDEN, UTAH
Eli-CIS. AGENT SAYS FLIGHT 007 WAS SPY PLANE
The commercial jetliner shot down by the Soviets was loadL, ~~ ?
equipment and purposely flew over Soviet airspace when the Russians were
plannino an ICBM launch, a 25-year CIA veteran said.
Ralph W. McGehee, a retired CIA agent who spent 14 years in overseas
assignments, told students at Weber State College Thursday the United States
government worked with the Korean government to orchestrate espionage with the
use Of a commercial airliner.
''The evidence is overwhelming that this was a planned event by the United
Staes to send a commercial airliner equipped with spy equipment into the Soviet
Union, thinking they would not shoot it down."
He said he does not think the Soviets realized the Korean Air Lines Boeino
747 jet was a commercial airliner and mistook it for a nearby circling RC-135
spy plane. -
'I I don't think the Soviets knew it was a commercial airliner, " he said.
McGehee, who joined the CIA in 1952, said he is followed by the
intelligence agency, which he also said taps his telephone. He said the agency
is not being totally honest with the information released on the incident.
He said the day of the KAL 007 flight the Soviets planned an ICBM test launch
anc the airliner with 269 people aboard ' 'wandered' directly over that area as
wail as over several major Soviet military installations.
in aodition to the presence of the airliner and the sophisticated RC-135 spy
plane, he said, an American relay satellite passed directly over the commercial
airliner, both as it flew above the ICBM test site and again as it passed over
the military installations.
'In 1978 the United States did a similar thinc and the Soviets forced the
plane to lane, " he Said.
'With Flight 007 the United States had no intention for the plane to be shot
down and thought they were getting the best of both worlds. The United States
would get the information and Russia would get a black eye.
He said the intrusion of the airliner was a ploy to simulate an invasion
military pilots during the past two decades have been ordered to penetrate
Soviet airspace to test their defense radar.
He said the Soviets, unlike the United States, do not keep their radar
defense operating continually. That, he said, makes it impossible for the U.S.
intelligence to understand the system and build defenses to it.
" Only when the radar is activated can we monitor their system," McGehee
said, adding that the RC-135 has equipment designed to do just that.
COY T VIT-D
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201180056-8