THE FINAL WORD?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807400012-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: September 6, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified
in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807400012-3
ARTICLE APP E NEW YORK TIMES
ON PAGE _ 6 September 1985
IN THE NATION I Tom Wicker
The Final Word?
I n the two years since Korean Air
Lines Flight 007 was shot down
over Sakhalin Island on Sept. 1,
1963, with the loss of all 20 persons
aboard, the Reagan Administration
has steadfastly maintained that no
one in the U.S. Government knew that
the airliner was in danger until after
it had been destroyed by a Soviet
fighter plane. Therefore, officials in-
sist, they could not have warned
Flight 007 that it was off course and
headed for sensitive Soviet territory.
On Sept. 2, 1983, Charles Lichten-
stein, the deputy U.S. representative
to the United Nations, was asked by a
Soviet delegate if the U.S. had
trucked the flight of the airliaec.
"No," Mr. Lichtenstein replied, "I
would assure the representative of
the Soviet Union: We followed you fol-
lowing the flight."
It's bard to understand bow U.S.
monitors could have tracked Soviet
monitors as the latter tracked Flight
007, while the American monitors had
no knowledge that Flight 007 was off
course and in trouble; but the Adminis-
tration has not explained Mr. Lichten-
stein's statement. A U.S. official, for
example. was quoted ' as o lows in The
Washington Post on Feb. 24,1985: "We
have never explained that because it
gets into intelligence information."
If Mr. Lichtenstein's remark was a
security breach that can't be further
discussed, what about President Rea-
gan's assertion in a radio address on
Sept. 5, 1983, that "the Soviets
tracked this plane for two and a half
hours ..."? And if the U.S. knew so
much about what the Russians were
doing, how could it have known noth-
ing of what Flight 007 - the object of
the Soviet activity - was doing?
As summed up by Sugwon Kang of
Hartwick College in the Bulletin of
Concerned Asian Scholars for April-
June 1985:
"In a-position to monitor some
phases of the flight were at least one
P3 Orion Navy - reconnaissance
plane, several RC-135s, the frigate
USS Badger, the reconnaissance ship
USS Observation Island with its
radar, 'Cobra Judy,' and, of course,
the land-based facilities in Alaska, on
Shemya Island ('Cobra Dane' and
'Cobra Talon'), in Hokkaido (the
phased-array radar at Wakkanai)
and main-island Japan (the mighty
NSA listening post at the U.S. Air
Base at Misawa, near the northern tip
of Honshu, the largest American lis-
tening post in Asia)."
That Flight 007 was not warned can
be explained only by insisting that de.
spite this array of electronic senti-
nels, no American knew the airliner
was in trouble at any time during its
S-hour, 26-minute journey from An-
chorage to disaster over Sakbolin.
That insistence already has been
broken by Government admission, in
a civil suit brought against the U.S.
and K.A.L. by survivors of those who
died aboard Flight 007, that Air Bpre
tape recordings of part of the plane's
flight track were "routhWll de-
stroyed after it was shot down.- '
To support its version of events; the
Administration often cites a report of
the International Civil Avlati" ? Or-
gsnization, which it calls "the mat
authoritative account" of the Flight
007 incident. As pointed out in ' the
Aug. 17-24 issue of The Nation; the
I.C.A.O. report relied without dial-
lenge on the information the Gowern-
ments involved chose to provide ? it.
Thus, it did not consider whether the
U.S. had been able to monitor - qnd
therefore to warn - Flight 007 an its
The entire investigation on wbtt'h'the
report rests - only the second disaster
inquiry in I.C.A.O. history - was car-
ried out by five full-time and four part-
time investigators in just 60 days. In
sharp contrast, the National Tragspor-
tation Safety Board - which did not.in-
quire into the 007 disaster - used more
than 100 people for seven months to
compile its report on the DC-10 crash at
O'Hare Airport in 1979.
Yet the I.C.A.O. report is "the most
authoritative" official study of therde-
struction of Flight 007. The recent
crash of an Air India jet off Ireland,
for example, is undergoing more ex-
tensive official analysis. The "black
box" recorder from that planer was
recovered in a few days; the 007 re-
corder never has been reported
found.
Nor has the I.C.A.O. report been ac-
cepted without dispute, outside the
Reagan Administration. The organi-
zation's own Air Navigation Commis-
sion of 15 experts, reviewing the re-
port, declared that "the magnitude of
the diversion" of Flight 007 from its
planned course "cannot be explained"
by the kind of crew error suggested by
the study. But this important dissent
has received little notice in the U.S.,
and is never cited by the Reagan Ad-
ministration in its continuing insist-
ence that the I.C.A.0. spot is the
final word an Flight 007. 1 0
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807400012-3