U.S. SAW KOREAN JET STRAY, SUIT SAYS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807510002-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: September 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807510002-2
ARTICLE APPEARED NEW YORK TIMES
ON PAGE ...3.~~.. 1 September 1985
U.S. Saw Korean Jet Stray, Suit Says
lty h icl u WITKi 1
l~ ldince introduced in lawsuits filed
lit with the Soviet downing
of Korean Air Leas Flight 007 suggests
that American radar operators knew
hours beforehand that the jetliner was
(f coyrgs and.heading into Soviet air-
space.
Tbq wor, "We should warn him "
prleumaWp r+eferring to the plane's
pilot,,were beard at tbs Government's
civil air-traffic control station in
Alaska"g the Boeing 747 strayed off
course tankard Its fatal encounter with
a Soviet fighter plane two years ago to-
day, according, to the documents.
The documents were submitted Fri-
day as evidence in damage suits filed
against the United States Government
by relatives of the 26 people who died
in the incident.
The official United States position
has been that no one knew the Korean
airliner was veering hundred of miles
from its prescribed route and that
therefore.po warning could have been
considered.
The contention about the warning is
in an affidavit by-a veteran former air
controller who listened to a copy of a
recording of ground-to-air contacts
made several hours before the Korean
plane was shot down over Sakhalin Is-
and in the Soviet Union.
sot Flied in Washington
The affidavit was submitted by attor-
neys for families of the victims in Fed-
eral District Court in the District of Co-
lumbia.
Those who have questioned the
United States role in the tragedy have
insisted that American radar operators
must have known the Korean flight was
headed for Soviet air space and should
have warned the crew.
Officials in Washington have con-
tended from the beginning that civilian
radar in Alaska did not reveal any sig-
nificant deviation from course and that
military air-defense posts were pri-
marily concerned with unidentified
planes approaching this country, not
outbound planes.
Mark Dombroff, who left a post in the
Justice Department earlier this sum..
mer and but has been serving as a Gov-
ernment consultant on the case, said in
regard to the "we should warn him"
assertion:
"No controller had any reason at any
time to believe that anything was other
than what it was supposed to be. That is
true no matter what the plaintiffs may
fancifully assert was on that tape."
Judge Will Deride
"The judge will listen to it," Mr.
Dombroff said, "said decide whether
there is anything there. In my opinion,
there is nothing: "
In a reply, Milton Sinooff, c o-chair-
man of the committee of plaintiffs' law-
yers asserted, "The Government
,knows the identity of the person who
said those words and is concealing it."
Mr. Sincoff added: "The record on
file in court demonstrates that the Gov-
ernment destroyed the automatic
recordings of what was observed on the
radar scopes that night. The conceal-
ment of the identity of the person who
spoke those words and the destruction
of the recordings indicate the obvious."
The Government has said that tapes
that record radar trackings are rou-
tinely recycled after 30 hours and that
no one had anticipated those from the
night of the incident would be needed
later.
The Government says the Korean
crew simply made an error in inserting
data into their plane's navigation com-
puters.
The new documents leave open the
source of the words heard in the back-
ground of the recording. Mr. Sincoff
raised three possibilities.
One was that they were spoken by an
Air Force radar operator at nearby El-
mendorf Air Force Base and came
over a loudspeaker in the Federal Avia-
tion Administration's air-traffic con-
trol center at Anchorage. A second pos-
sible source was an F.A.A. supervisor
who had been alerted by the Air Force.
A third was that they came from an
F.A.A. supervisor or controller who
had seen the errant plane on a radar
display sent remotely to the civilian
center from an Air Force radar site.
According to the documents, the
warning statement was made after
flight 007 had passed beyond civilian
radar coverage on its Anchorage-to--
Seoul flight and was being handled by
voice only. he controller responsible
for the plane did have a screen near
him that showed that at least one Air
Force radar was displaying the plane
but that radar had not been commis-
sioned for civilian use. The Air Force
radar blip would not normally have had
an attached data block identifying the
craft as Korean flight 007, as civilian
radar does.
Effort to Contact Plans
The F.A.A.'s official transcript of the
radio exchanges between the flight and
the civilian controller do not include
any words about a warning. However,
about the time those who filed the suit
contend the background words were
heard, the controller was trying unsuc-
cessfully to contact the errant plane.
He was trying to reach the jumbo jet
because the crew was late in making a
routine position report. Indirect con-
tact, including the relaying of the posi-
tion report, was made through the crew
of another Korean 747 that had taken
off a few minutes behind flight 007
along the same route to Japan and
Korea that skirts Soviet airspace.
The position report from Korean
flight 007 was obviously wroup, as
subsequent events proved. T'he Soviet
Government has insisted that the plane
was deliberating flying off course on a
spy mission, which the United States
and Korea have firmly denied.
STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807510002-2