LETTER TO LEE H. HAMILTON FROM J. EDWARD FOX

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90B01390R000200270009-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 17
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 3, 2010
• Sequence Number: 9
• Content Type: LETTER

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United States Department of State
Washington. D.C. 20520
In response to the letter of July 17 from Mr. Berry of
your staff, I am rorwarding a copy of a review which
Mr. Maertens of the State Department has done of Shootdown,
by R.W. Johnson, on KAL 007. The review will appear
shortly in the International Journal of Intelligence and
Counterintelligence.
As the review points out, the allegations of US
involvement in the shootdown or of negligence in failing to
warn the aircraft are in error. It is unfortunate that a
handful of uninformed individuals continue to put forward
such assertions which inevitably raise doubts in the minds
of family members about how the aircraft deviated so far
off course. Since the answer to that question can never be
known with any assurance, some will find persuasive the
suggestion that intelligence activity on behalf of the US
Government was the cause. As your Committee has itself
determined, the US Government had no role whatever in the
tragedy of KAL 007, passive or active.
The Administration had hoped that an international
investigation by the International Civil Aviation
Organization (ICAO), a technical body of the UN, would
receive the cooperation of the Soviet Government. It was
for that reason that we supported an inquiry by ICAO rather
than the US Government. The ICAO investigation offers the
best explanation to date as to why the aircraft went off
course. ICAO concluded that the deviation was probably the
result of flight crew error, but the errors were not of a
kind unknown in civil aviation. Given the fact that the
"black box" was never located and the flight crew perished,
we doubt that any other organization would be able to
determine with any more certainty why the aircraft went off
course.
For that reason, statements by US Government officials
on the subject of KAL 007, while they represent informed
views, are not necessarily official, since they are not
repeating the conclusions of an official investigation by
The Honorable
Lee H. Hamilton,
House of Representatives.
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the Administration. with those comments in mind, I gm sure
that you will find Mr. Maertens' review on the subject of
KAL 007 to be interesting and useful to members receiving
inquiries on this subject.
If we can be of assistance to you with this or any other
matter, please do not hesitate to contact us.
With best wishes,
Sincerely,
/s/
J. Edward Fox
Assistant Secretary
Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs
Enclosures:
Correspondence returned.
KAL Article.
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 LE: H HAMII'ON INnIANA COAIRMAN ROOM H-405 U S CA.I OL
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LOUIS STOKES. OHIt
DAVE MCCUROY.OKLAHOMA ruo u U U J _ V I N N
ANTHONY C SEILENSON. CALIFORNIA
ROBERT W KASTENMEIER WISCONSIN
DAN DANIEL VIRGINIA U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ROBERT A ROE. NEW JERSEY
GEORGE E BROWN. JR. CALIFORNIA PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE
MATTHEW F MCHUGH, NEW YORK ON INTELLIGENCE
BERNARD J DWYER. NEW JERSEY
ON STUMP, ARIZONA
ANDY IRELAND. FLORIDA
NINNY J HYDE. ILLINOIS
DICK CHENEY. WYOMING
ROE LIVINGSTON. LOUISIANA
DOS McEWEN. OHIO
yri
ACTION
is assigned to
THOMAS K LATIMER. STAFF DIRECTOR
MICHAEL J ONEIL CHIEF COUNSEL
STEVEN K BERRY. ASSOCIATE COUNSEL
Mr. Thomas R. Maertens
Department of State
2201 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D. C. 20520
July 17, 1986
I am writing to follow up on our conversation of several days ago
concerning the KAL 007. As we discussed, several Members of the Intelligence
Committee have received correspondence from immediate family members or
relatives of those passengers aboard the KAL 007 flight that was shot down by
the Soviets on September 1, 1983. The correspondence received by Members
expressed the cammon frustration over a complete and satisfactory explanation
as to exactly why the KAL 007 aircraft was so far off its original intended
course. However, the more disturbing issue common to the correspondence being
received is that many believe that the official government statements of
denial of any complicity in the KAL 007 incident are untrue.
As you aware, the Committee reviewed the information surrounding this
incident with great care and has found that the U.S. Government statements
denying complicity in this incident are accurate and leave out no relevant
details.
I do not know if the most recent correspondence has been spurred by the
renewed attention focused on the new book entitled Shootdown on the KAL 007
flight or the various magazine and newspaper articles which appear from time
to time. However, I am enclosing a representative sample of the
correspondence received by Members of the Committee and request your review.
I know the Members would greatly appreciate receiving your response to the
allegations that the United States Government has been uncooperative.
Furthermore, I would appreciate receiving any additional information that you
wish to share with the Members of the Committee. I look forward to your early
response.
With every good wish, I am
wo
0
It
Enclosures
Sincerely yours,
Steven K. Berry
Associate Counsel
r-
b
w
a
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STAT
STAT
Congressman Dick Cheney
Permanent Select Co'-:-,ittee on Intelligence
Pui 1dirlg
.ashinVton, DC 2C515
Der Cononess n~ n Cheney ,
Jun_ 25,1986
STAT
''y wife of nine Iwas a passenger aboard tI-._ dc:'
S; ^J7 flight that was shot down by the Soviets on September 1, 1,33. I consider the
shootdoi.m of a civilian airliner an abominable and unpardonable act of agressio:, t t e
ovict Union. i;y L:ifo's tragic death continues to be emotionally distressing to -._ -an
-:.y family not to mention mother, father and sister in Japan. In addition, I
feel that 0 death precipitated my mother's death on what would have been cur
first wedding anniversary on January 1, 1984.
The facts are quite clear that the Soviets did indeed shoot the aircraft after
it flew over Russian airspace; however, there has never, as far as I am concerned, been
a satisfactory explanation as to exactly why the aircraft was so far off course to begin
with. Indeed, the more I look into the situation, the offical account of the incident
becomes less and less believeable and more and more contradictory. STAT
As a next of kin and as an American citizen, I have the right to a forthright
exposition of the known facts. I am convinced that the only way to get at the known
facts at this point is through a thorough congressional investigation. I am aware that
information stem--.irg from private investigations of the KAL007 shootdoi:^n has been sent
to Since our government has provided so few facts and has cooperated so
little, it only causes me to speculate whether the life of my wife 0 was
needlessly and perhaps criminally endangered. STAT
Being an American citizen, I expect my government to be open and accountable for
any action it takes. It is my patriotic duty to bring the truth in this matter to light.
I know that it would take great political courage to challenge the Executive of
our government in this matter; however, the function of Congress is to keep the
Executive branch of the government in check and to represent citizens like myself wh o
have legitimate grievances.
In conclusion, I request that the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
conduct a complete, in depth investigation. I would like a reply to my request and
sincerely hope that you will indeed initiate a complete investigation of the fad s.
request, thou , difficult, is a vitally important exercise in our democratic
I ar to -_ir:g fcre?:ard to hearing from you soon.
and Transportation Cc-mitt-_e and the Pers. `
'n House of ~e resentati
STAT
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June 18, 1986
The Honorable Dick Cheney
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
H-405 Capitol Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Congressman Cheney:
We are the daughters of IMPW who, with
our step-mother, , was aboard Korean Airlines
Flight 007, shot down by a Russian fighter pilot on
September 1st, 1983. Almost three years have passed since
then, yet we have never received a satisfactory explanation
.for what happened.
The United States Government's official account of the
incident asserts that the plane strayed off curse into
Soviet territory unintentionally. However, the large amount
of information amassed since the tragedy casts doubt upon
this scenario and raises serious questions as to our
Government's role in this affair.
As next-of-kin, we have a right to a more credible
explanation as to how the plane that carried our father and
step-mother to their deaths came to be in Soviet airspace.
The shocking nature of their deaths, the suddenness of the
loss, and the grief and pain are with us still, but the
mounting evidence as to the possible complicity of our own
Government has fueled the anger that compels us to speak out
now. We are aware that much of this evidence has been sent
to Chairman Hamilton.
If, as the evidence suggests, our relatives, civilian
air passengers, were forced to become unsuspecting
participants in a dangerous espionage mission, then we must
conclude that their most fundamental civil rights were
monstrously violated.
The essence of American democracy is the upholding of
the constitutional rights of the individual, and one of its
most basic precepts is to assure that those we elect to
office be held accountable for their actions.
Justice must be served. It is the duty of Congress to
conduct a thorough investigation of the KAL incident. Armed
with its subpoena power, and the right to examine classified
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material, Congress can uncover the truth and force those
involved to answer for their actions.
We are personally calling upon you to defend the
democrat=, ideals that this nation was built upon and in
which we .,ave always believed. We are asking you to
familiarize yourself with the material submitted to the
Committee by Investigator for the Fund for STAT
Constitutional Government, as it contains facts which have
disturbing implications. We have written to the other
members of the Committee and we hope that action will be
taken soon.
We look forward to hearing from you regarding this
matter.
STAT
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Shootdown by R.W. Johnson
reviewed by Thomas R. Maertens
On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down a Korean
airliner, Flight 007, over the Sea of Japan, killing 269
passengers and crew. The International Civil Aviation
Organization (ICAO), a technical body of the United Nations,
investigated the circumstances of the aircraft's deviation from
course and into Soviet airspace. It concluded that the crew of
007 was not aware of the flight's deviation nor of Soviet
efforts to intercept it. Because the crew members died in the
shootdown and the flight recorders were never recovered, the
investigation was unable to determine the reason for the
deviation. It nonetheless postulated that navigational errors
by the crew were responsible and offered a number of hypotheses
to account for the error.
The Air Navigation Commission (ANC), a technical subgroup
of ICAO, reviewed the ICAO report and confirmed that there was
no evidence that the flight crew was aware it was off course,
but it found flaws in all of the scenarios postulated to
account for the deviation. It offered the opinion, however,
that an extensive evaluation of inertial navigation system
(INS) equipment malfunctions should be pursued since this had
accounted for significant track deviations in the past.
Following these two reports, the ICAO Council voted
overwhelmingly in March 1984, the Soviet Union and
Czechoslovakia opposing, to condemn the use of force against
the airliner. The Council resolution also deeply deplored the
Soviet failure to cooperate in the international search and
rescue effort and its failure to cooperate with the ICAO
investigation team.
R.W.Johnson, a fellow in politics at Oxford, will have none
of this. As implied in the subtitle of his book, Flight 007
and the American Connection, Johnson thinks the aircraft was on
an intelligence mission for the US Government. While rather
circumspect in stating this conclusion, there is no doubt that
this is his view.
The mission, Johnson believes, was to test the Soviet radar
network. This would permit the US to determine whether the new
Soviet radar under construction near Krasnoyarsk was intended
to fill any gaps in their early warning system. "007's flight,
path would have been perfectly on track" to reveal such a gap,
says Johnson. To illustrate this assertion he uses a map by
Philip Klass from Aviation Week and Space Technology dated
August 22, 1983. Klass has stated publicly that he obtained
the information on that map, including the gaps shown in the
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Soviet radar network, from a high US intelligence official
three weeks before the shootdown. Johnson, nonetheless, claims
that such gaps were only noted after the event.
This
is
only the beginning of problems with Johnson's
theory.
The
Krasnoyarsk radar is located in Central Asia,
thousands
of
miles from the Soviet coast and even farther from
the point
of
closest approach of 007. There is no radar of any
kind, Soviet or American, which can track an aircraft at that
range. The very fact that the radar was situated thousands of
miles inland (putting a US radar in Kansas would be roughly
comparable) should have struck Johnson as inconsistent with an
aircraft early warning mission.
Johnson clearly believes, moreover, that a radar is only
"triggered" by the approach of an aircraft, which is why he
thinks such a mission would have been necessary. This is
simply wrong. Inherent in the very mission of early warning
radars, detecting approaching aircraft, is that they operate at
all times. He apparently believes as well that the Korean
airliner must have triggered a number of military radars which
the Soviets were attempting to keep secret from US
intelligence. He never attempts to explain why the Soviets
would need to use special military radars to track a 747, with
its immense radar cross section, rather than conventional air
traffic radars, however. Moreover, a military aircraft or an
unmanned drone could have performed such a mission without the
risks to human life and the hazards of potential exposure
entailed in Johnson's scheme. I can state from first hand
experience that such drones were used in Southeast Asia. Once
used successfully, such practices are long remembered in the
intelligence and military communities.
Equally implausible, the Korean airliner flew inside Soviet
airspace for two and a half hours. Even a brief intrusion into
Soviet airspace would seemingly have accomplished Johnson's
mission; two and a half hours would be simply suicidal. Such a
suicide mission, on the other hand, would not be inconsistent
with the planned atrocity theory postulated in Johnson's
December 1983 article in the Guardian. It contained the
startling revelation that Koreans are such fanatical
anti-communists that no sacrifice, including their own lives,
would be too great for the cause.
Finally, Johnson is apparently unaware that it is not
necessary to intercept a radar's transmissions to determine its
coverage. Knowing its type, location and orientation are
sufficient. As Philip Klass attests, the US had such
information on the Krasnoyarsk radar before the KAL flight,
though the radar still is not operational in 1986. So the
intelligence mission which Johnson alleges for 007's flight
turns out for various reasons to be technically impossible,
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implausible and unnecessary.
Johnson is determined not to let facts or logic get in the
way of his theory, however. It seems self apparent that if
there were some reason to use a civilian airliner for an
intelligence mission, it would require that the airliner be
identified and treated as such: forced down for inspection,
such as the Seaboard World airliner in 1968, rather than shot
down. To ensure that result, the pilot would do nothing
aggressive or unusual and would strictly comply with normal
aviation practices and Soviet interception signals. Yet
Johnson apparently believes the Korean airliner turned off his
lights; changed altitude and speed unpredictably; transmitted
deceptive radio messages; ignored interception signals and took
evasive maneuvers to escape the interceptor. By this account,
which is essentially the Soviet spy plane story, 007 was trying
to arouse Russian suspicions. (All of the foregoing are
refuted in one way or another by the ICAO and ANC reports. See
also my article "Tragedy of Errors" in the September 1985
Foreign Service Journal.)
Even more unlikely, Johnson alleges that 007 was shadowed
by "a whole fleet of [electronic warfare and intelligence]
platforms," one of whose jobs was to jam coastal radars.
According to Johnson's earlier article, jamming would cause an
aircraft to "blip on and off" Soviet radar screens. In
reality, of course, jamming would cause the Soviet radar
screens to go white, immediate proof that 007 had some sinister
purpose. This misunderstanding makes the espionage scenario he
paints in Shootdown appear ludicrous. Johnson thinks that
jamming would have made UU7 invisible to the Soviets' coastal
radars and so they would have "steel[ed] themselves to switch
on hitherto secret radars." Presto, the Krasnoyarsk gap.
Johnson never explains why jamming would not also affect the
secret radars, or how the Soviets would even know when to turn
them on, but then little else about his story is internally
consistent either.
In addition to the fleet of EW/ELINT "planes, ships,
satellite, and perhaps even the shuttle," which he asserts were
part of the mission, Johnson has written that 007, upon leaving
Soviet airspace, "no doubt, [would] be greeted by protective
swarms of US fighters." What Johnson has really described is a
major military mission using a civilian airliner. What such
activity really would do is to tip the Soviets off that this
was a spy mission without being able to protect the airliner
when it was really in danger--over Soviet territory. Knowledge
of the above activity, Johnson thinks, would have been
extremely tightly held to "maybe a hundred" people, including
the six "deadheading" (non-working) crewmen whom Johnson hints
were aboard 007 for contingency purposes. A major operation
involving three countries (the Japanese and Koreans would have
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to have been in on it) large fleets of planes and ships,
several intelligence organizations, the White House, State and
the Pentagon, and Johnson thinks that "maybe a hundred" people
were involved.
Equally silly is Johnson's allegation that the airliner
took evasive action. According to Captain Harold Ewing, a 747
pilot, the very concept of a 747 evading a supersonic
interceptor for all but the briefest moment is absurd. An
Su-15, the aircraft which shot 007 down, can fly more than
twice the speed of sound. Without even considering the
interceptor's advantages in turn radius, rate of climb and
other performance characteristics, the speed difference alone
would make escape impossible. Whatever maneuver a subsonic 747
attempted, the interceptor could simply circle around for
another attack in a matter of seconds. The Korean pilot, a
former fighter pilot himself, would know this beyond the shadow
of a doubt. Johnson, nonetheless, asserts (p. 26) that 007
attempted evasive maneuvers, "the standard fighter tactic in
aerial combat of feinting a climb and diving instead."
Johnson even goes so far as to claim that the airliner left
1800 pounds of paying cargo behind in Anchorage and implies
that this was so the aircraft would be lighter and more
maneuverable, the better to escape interceptors. The absurdity
of this statement can hardly be surpassed. Full or empty, a
747 will begin coming apart before it passes Mach 1.
His facts about the "cargo" are wrong as well. The Flight
Release Sheet for the aircraft does indeed show 1200 (not 1800)
pounds of Payload crossed out, but the same figure is then
entered four lines down. Next to it is the notation "2/4 DH"
which corresponds neatly to the six "deadheading" crewmen on
the plane at 200 pounds apiece, possibly two assigned to
jumpseats in the cockpit and four in the passenger
compartment.
It is instructive also to note Johnson's example of an
evasive maneuver. He claims the 747 made a 3,000 foot descent
over a three minute period, a thousand feet per minute in other
words, which he labels a "dive." The normal idle-power descent
rate of a 747 from such altitude, according to FAA technicians,
is three or four times faster than that, and can be as high as
six thousand feet per minute. It is hard to believe that any
interceptor pilot would be fooled by such an "evasive maneuver."
It seems very unlikely, moreover, that the descent even
took place. The sequence of events is this: 007 requested
clearance to climb to 35,000 feet at 1815:10; Tokyo approved
the request exactly five minutes later; 007 reported he was
beginning to climb at 1820:20; the Su-15 fired cannons 29
seconds later, and reported at 1822:02 that "the target is
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- S -
decreasing speed." There is no assertion by the interceptor
that the decrease in speed was rapid or marked. The most
likely explanation, therefore, is that the decrease in speed
was caused by the climb.
What makes the evasive descent even more implausible is the
fact that the interceptor was actually some six thousand feet
below the 747 at this point. Far from evading it, the 747
would have been dropping down into the interceptor's sights.
Japanese radar at one point does snow the airliner 4,000
feet below the altitude he reported, but this could be
accounted for by the general inaccuracy of height-finding
radars at the extreme ranges in question. The error could be
plus or minus 6,000 feet or more, too great to place much
reliance on the data.
The problem here is that the blind are leading the blind.
Johnson derives the evasive maneuver story (and much else in
this book) from David Pearson, a graduate student in sociology
who has written two articles on 007 for The Nation, assisted by
John Keppel. Johnson, like Pearson and Keppel, had no previous
experience in writing on aviation matters before he became
interested ("obsessed," he has said) in the KAL-007 case.
Under those circumstances, common sense dictates that someone
with technical expertise be asked to review one's writings. It
is clear Johnson did not--or else ignored the advice.
In consequence, Johnson's writing, like Pearson's, is a
technical hash. This judgment is not based solely on my own
expertise; I also received technical comments from three
experts in the field. They are Philip J. Klass, an
editor/writer for Aviation Week and Space Technology for more
than thirty years; Captain Harold Ewing, a 747 pilot who
regularly flies the North Pacific, and has studied the KAL
shootdown extensively; and James Oberg, a space flight engineer
and science writer. Klass and Oberg are both cited in
Johnson's book. It was Ewing who persuaded ICAO to check into
the allegation that 007 loaded 10,000 pounds of "extra fuel."
(By adding 007's fuel remainder to the actual fuel loaded in
Anchorage, as evidenced by the fuel tickets, it was determined
that no extra fuel was loaded, which Johnson mistakenly thinks
would "allow the plane to use every ounce of speed in the later
stages of the flight.")
Tabulating their comments with mine, I counted 105 factual
or technical errors, and almost as many unsupported assertionsi'
JUST IN THE FIRST CHAPTER--and there are twelve more chapters.
It is my estimate, and the others agree, that Shootdown
contains hundreds and hundreds of factual errors. Nor do the
errors appear to be random, some tending to support and some to
dispute Johnson's thesis: they are all in one direction, all
tending to make the ordinary appear sinister. Johnson claims,
for example, that the Anchorage radio beacon was shut down just
an hour before 007 took off.
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The ICAO report clearly states that the beacon was down from
August 23 to September 2 and a Notice to Airmen was issued. He
misrepresents the Air Navigation Commission report to suit his
purposes as well, claiming the ANC report had suggested that
the question of whether the deviation might have been
deliberate should be pursued. What the report really suggested
was that INS malfunctions should be investigated, as I
mentioned in paragraph 2, above. It is for reasons like these
that James Oberg has termed Johnson's book the greatest
literary fraud since the "Hitler Diaries."
According to Johnson, the KAL shootdown was the result of a
new Cold War which he attributes to the Reagan Administration's
militaristic policies toward the Soviet Union. He points to US
military exercises and installations in the Pacific and Indian
oceans, including Diego Garcia, which "ring" (sic) the Soviet
Far East, and claims, for example, that US Navy exercises in
the North Pacific that summer were "dress rehearsals in force
for a major strike and invasion of the Soviet Far East." This
was the cause of the tension in the area, which in turn lead to
the shootdown, he says. If Johnson believes that the US is
making contingency plans to invade Kamchatka, then there are
obviously very few limits on what he won't believe about Ronald
Reagan.
Absent from Johnson's calculations is the effect of the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ("incursion" Johnson calls it),
and the Soviet role in the imposition of marital law in
Poland. But then Johnson attributes the worsened relations
after the shootdown to Reagan, too. "There was no doubt that
the Reagan Administration's handling of the (007) crisis had
created a new low in Soviet-American relations." So it was not
the shootdown but the reaction that was to blame. This is true
only in the same limited sense that it is true there would be
no fighting in Afghanistan but for the Mujahiddin's reaction to
the Soviet invasion. The Soviet military wants after all not
to fight but to control the country.
An essential part of all the conspiracy theorists' stories
about 007 is one or more "fallback" positions. If the US did
not actively promote the intrusion by 007, at a minimum, it
observed the incursion and failed to warn the aircraft, Johnson
claims, in order to observe Soviet reactions. To support this
claim, the conspiracy school has developed a standard litany of
real and imagined intelligence assets which it asserts were
watching and relaying the information about this one stray
aircraft immediately to Ronald Reagan. Johnson repeats the
story in toto.
Included among these assets, says Johnson, is the Cobra
Talon radar, which he places on Shemya Island in the Aleutians,
"a powerful Over-the Horizon (0TH) Backscatter radar....In the
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case of 007, there is no doubt that Cobra Talon would have been
able to follow the plane almost throughout its whole flight and
certainly at the time of the shoot-down." (p. 81)
It is typical of Johnson's book that he introduces
egregious nonsense with the assertion "there is no doubt,"
concludes with a "certainly" and fails to provide a footnote.
Cobra Talon is indeed the code name of a radar, but it was
previously located in Southeast Asia, never in Alaska; it was
dismantled several years before the KAL shootdown and remains
in storage today; and it was not an 0TH radar, a category of
radars usually given magical properties by conspiracy buffs.
(The only US 0TH radar is in Moscow, Maine. No 0TH radar could
have followed 007 "almost throughout its whole flight" even
were there such a radar in the vicinity. The minimum range of
an 0TH radar is about 500 miles and its maximum is about 1800
miles, a tracking envelope of some 1300 miles; 007's projected
flight path was in excess of 3,500 miles. Furthermore, Shemya
Island could not hold an OTH radar, since it has neither the
geographical barrier nor the needed size, several dozen miles,
to prevent leakage directly from the transmit into the receive
antennas.
Most of the other claims Johnson makes about US radars are
wrong as well. He overstates the real range of air defense
radars in Alaska and at Misawa, Japan, by a factor of two to
three; asserts that Cobra Dane and Cobra Judy (phased array
radars) must have tracked 007, when in fact they do not track
aircraft at all; and claims there were US military radars at
St. Paul's Island and at Wakkanai, Japan, and "several giant US
radars in Japan," none of which exist.
Most of this is simply repeated from other conspiracy buffs
without attribution. It seems to be a central tenet of that
group that no assertion which fits a sinister reading of US
actions or intentions need be verified. An example is
Johnson's assertion that US law requires that the National
Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigate the shootdown.
He claims the NTSB did open such an investigation but was
summarily and illegally ordered to stop by the State Department
which "confiscated" all its documentation.
Philip Klass inquired of the NTSB whether such allegations
were true. He received a letter from the Acting Chairman,
Patricia Goldman, stating the US had a right as the State of
Manufacture of the aircraft to name a representative to the
investigation, and did so. At no time was the NTSB ordered or
advised not to participate in the investigation, she wrote.
Once it was determined that the airplane's loss was due to
hostile action, however, which is not within the Safety Board's
mandate, the investigation was taken over by ICAO, and US
interests were represented by the FAA.
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This and a number of his other assertions could have been
easily verified with a phone call or a letter. That Johnson
did not do so points up that this book is essentially a
repetition of assertions made elsewhere, not an investigation.
If he had checked out too many facts, of course, his spy plane
story would have completely evaporated since it is based on
misinformation and unsupported assertion. The irony of
Johnson's assertions about the NTSB is that, had the Board
conducted the investigation, Johnson would very likely have
dismissed the results as part of a cover-up. It was just to
avoid such a possibility that the US originally decided to seek
an international investigation. It was thought, moreover, that
the Soviet Union might be more cooperative with such an
investigation than with a US inquiry. As the ICAO Council
Resolution demonstrates, they were not, however.
On the question of an investigation, Johnson makes the
observation that "most of the governments concerned have failed
to institute a thorough, convincing and detailed inquiry into
the tragedy. To date, only the USSR has carried out an
investigation on its own: the US, the South Koreans and the
Japanese have not." In the first place, the South Korean
investigation report was appended to the ICAO, just as was the
Soviet one, and it was more detailed. To imply that a 17-page
report attempting to justify Soviet actions was "thorough,
convincing and detailed," while at the same time faulting the
ICAO report demonstrates persuasively Johnson's ideological
biases. Can Johnson seriously believe there is some
independent body in the USSR which could issue an investigation
report inimical to State interests? He demonstrates this bias
further by his reference to the Soviet September 9 spy plane
story, for example, as a "mature" assessment, despite all the
changes and contradictions which preceded and followed it, and
he practically apologizes for the obvious technical errors
which Soviet Marshall Kirsanov made three weeks after the
event. At several points in the book, Johnson claims that the
Soviets have no reason to lie about this or that point. The
outcry following the shootdown gave them every reason to shift
the blame however they could.
Johnson's account of the search for the black box is also
misleading. He implies, through 20 pages of speculation and
innuendo, that the US secretly found the box. What he fails to
note, though it was stated in the ICAO report, is that an ICAO
observer was present with the search party to take charge of
the black box. More important, the black box is apparently in
Soviet territorial waters. The US twice requested permission
to search there and was turned down by the Soviet Union. As to
the conflicting reports on the location of the black box at the
time, the search and recovery group suspected, but could not
prove, that the Soviet Union had put a false pinger into the
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water to mislead them. Neither it nor the black box was ever
recovered, however. What is certain is that the Soviet Union
made a serious effort to impede US and Japanese recovery of the
black box, which Johnson attributes to "sheer frustration."
Those efforts included cutting mooring cables, pointing guns at
Japanese fishermen and dredging the sea bottom.
Even where Johnson gives a footnote or reference, his use
of sources simply cannot be trusted. On page 17, he refers to
two interviews the Soviet interceptor pilot gave. In the
first, on Soviet television September 10, the pilot claimed
that he made several attempts to signal 007, all with no
response, says Johnson. What the pilot really said was: "But
he continued to fly on the same course and at the same
height." Three days later, the same pilot asserted in Red Star
that 007 attempted to take evasive action: "He began wildly
varying his course, altitude and speed." The first statement
obviously contradicts Johnson's evasive maneuver story.
Johnson's solution was to mischaracterize the first statement,
and quote only the second.
Johnson uses this type of misleading pseudo-scholarship
literally dozens of times in his book, along with an incessant
and annoying innuendo. The Korean pilots do not give "wrong"
or "mistaken" position reports, as a lost aircraft might do;
they give "false" ones. A common variation on this is to
preface an assertion with a misleading adverb, such as "oddly,
..." when Johnson is about to misrepresent some aspect of the
shootdown. Such misuse of language is consistent with his
earlier allegation that an editor of Defense Science magazine
had "admitted" that Korean airliners regularly overfly Soviet
airspace. Now a journalist can claim, allege, state, assert,
and so forth with respect to the actions of a third party. He
can only "admit" with respect to his own actions. Second, the
individual was later determined to be not an editor of Defense
Science, but a writer for Penthouse magazine. Third, the ICAO
found no evidence that KAL had routinely taken short cuts
across Soviet territory. Had they done so, both the Soviets
and Japanese would have seen them on radar and taken measures,
of one kind or another, to stop them.
Johnson's footnoting, though extensive, is misleading in
other ways as well. He uses the New York Times as a reference
185 times, and the Washington Post 123 times. Presumably,
then, the Times and the Post subscribe to his spy plane story.
An October 28, 1984, story by Philip Taubman in the New York
Times quotes Bill Kovach, the Washington editor of the Times as
saying that he assigned six reporters to the story when it
broke and two to review the evidence when the Nation published
its charges. They found no evidence to support any of those
assertions, Kovach said. Post managing editor Leonard Downie
is quoted in the same story as saying that the Post
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investigated the 007 story "to within an inch of its life," and
the spy plane stories didn't check out.
The above article was, inexplicably, not among Johnson's
185 references to the New York Times. Missing among Johnson's
123 references to the Washington Post is an October 27, 1983,
account by Fred Hiatt of Soviet efforts to interfere in the
black box recovery.
Even when Johnson's account of a newspaper article is more
or less accurate, his quotes are very selective. In citing a
September 26, 1983, New York Times article to support one of
his contentions, Johnson fails to mention that the author also
reported that a consensus of current and former intelligence
officials was that the aircraft was not on an intelligence
mission; that (contrary to Johnson's theory) such a flight
could add little or nothing to our knowledge of Soviet radars;
and, that congressional committees had begun full-scale
inquiries.
Among the congressional committees were the intelligence
committees of both the House and the Senate. The Senate
intelligence committee concluded there was "no direct or
indirect involvement by the U.S. Intelligence Community. The
House intelligence committee determined that "U.S. Intelligence
did not promote or even passively subscribe to an overflight."
It also refuted in detail David Pearson's story in the Nation,
the basis for much of Johnson's speculation.
Subsequent to Johnson's book, a U.S. federal judge, in
dismissing a negligence suit against the US Government, wrote
that "The record is clear that the government breached no duty
to the passengers of KAL 007." Adding to this the conclusion
by ICAO--that it found no evidence of any deliberateness in the
airliner's deviation--makes a rather persuasive case that Mr.
Johnson doesn't begin to refute.
The central point that most adherents to the spy plane
theory cite is their belief that a civil airliner cannot go off
course 300 miles by accident. Most people who make such
assertions are laymen such as Johnson who think this has never
happened in the past, except for the "other" KAL plane in 1978,
which went off course almost a thousand miles. They frequently
cite US domestic statistics as evidence, and then attempt to
extrapolate probability for the 007 case from those. But there
is a vast difference between the North Pacific routes, which
had some 2200 miles without radar coverage, and US domestic
airspace with its virtually continuous coverage by radar and
navigational aids.
If the long odds which Johnson and others cite had any
basis in fact, then it is highly improbable that any other
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aircraft could have gone off course as far 007 either before or
since. There are at least two other aircraft which have gone
off course even farther in recent times, one a 707 which went
600-700 miles off course over the North Atlantic in the middle
'70s, and another which went off course 500 miles in September
1984. Following the second incident, an official of the
International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations noted
that 55 aircraft had gone off course over the North Atlantic in
just the previous year. No statistics are even available for
the North Pacific because of the lack of radar coverage, but
knowledgable officials assume that at least as many occur
deviations there. This demonstrates the fallacy of asserting
that an aircraft deviation (or a Three Mile Island accident)
cannot occur because of some probability analysis; it is simply
not possible to assess the probability of such one-time events
occurring.
It is this erroneous reasoning, nonetheless, which is the
basis for Johnson's conclusion that 007's deviation must have
been intentional: error that grievous cannot be accidental.
Applying this same criterion to Johnson's book one must ask
whether such an incredible tangle of misleading assertions,
internal contradictions, and downright untruths could have been
written "accidentally." Only Johnson knows for sure. What
there can be no doubt about, however, is that Johnson has
manipulated and distorted the evidence beyond recognition in
support of his anti-Reagan screed.
Thomas R. Maertens is a Foreign Service Officer presently
working in Soviet affairs, where he handles aviation matters.
He has previously worked as a current intelligence analyst, a
Soviet military/scientific analyst, and a strategic programs
analyst. Prior to that, he served as a 'naval officer aboard a
guided missile cruiser. The views expressed in this review are
the author's and not necessarily those of the US Government.
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