KAL CONSPIRACY THEORISTS DISTORT FACTS, EXPERTS SAY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403090005-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 17, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: October 14, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403090005-4
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LOS ANGELES TIMES
October 14 1985
KU Conspiracy Theorists
Distort Facts, Experts Sad
By MICHAEL WINES and SAM JAMESON, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON-Two years af-
ter a Soviet fighter downed a
Korean Air Lines jumbo jet in
Soviet air pace and plunged 269
people to their deaths in the Sea of
Japa% a handful of skeptics claim
to have unearthed tantalizing new
evidence that the airliner's fatal
course, far from accidental mean-
dering, had a far more sinister
purpose-spying.
'heir startling assertions, out-
lined in articles and letters, include
Japanese radar data suggesting
that the jet misled Tokyo air con-
trollers about its altitude and
course, as well as maps portraying
KAL Flight 007 as veering over
Soviet East Asian military bases.
There is even a recording of an
American controller supposedly
saying, "We should warn them,"
seconds after the doomed jet left
U.S. airspace near Alaska.
It is damning stuff indeed, except
for one problem: On closer scruti-
ny, U.S. officials and other experts
say, none of it appears to be true.
The revelations that are not false
on their face are distortions of
innocuous facts, they argue.
"It's a great story," said Thomas
R. Maertens, a former State De-
partment intelligence analyst now
with the department's Soviet af-
fairs office. "But it doesn't hold
together."
"Once you get into the technical-
ities of it, the conspiracy theories
fade away," agrees Murray Sayle, a
Tokyo-based journalist and former
Newsweek magazine reporter who
has studied the KAL disaster al-
most since it occurred Sept. 1, 1983.
"Where's their evidence?" he said.
Yet, troubles with the facts have
not prevented sly buffs and dedi-
cated researchers alike from ele-
vating the KAL 007 disaster to a
stellar level-a level once reserved
fqt the likes of the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy, the
;Rosenberg spy trial of the early
'1950s and the Lindbergh kidnap-
ing.
Although congressional intelli-
gence experts have derisively re-
jected any hint of a secret U.S. link
tq-the tragedy, a House transports-
thin subcommittee this fall began
cdllecting data on the disaster after
a?usatory articles in The Nation
magazine and reports by New York
Tines columnist Tom Wicker ex-
pc wing skepticism about official
accounts.
In Japan, backbench leglalators
and grieving families of crash vic-
tims still hope to pry loose govern-
ment secrets they believe will
prove that the South Korean jet
was spying for the United States. In
IC6rea, where the topic remains
udItificially taboo, many citizens
a 'general belief' that the
ed jet deliberately flew over
Union to save fuel.
2 But nothing has emerged to
lee the conclusion of major avia-
tffn bodies, including the U.S. Air
LAhe Pilots Assn. and the Interna.
tional Civil Aviation Organization,
dept the KAL disaster probably
at2mmed from pilot error, mechan-
ical failure or both. The explanation
is bolstered by sobering data that
sibw that pilots in general stray
f*n their assigned flight paths
re often than has been assumed
till, no one has yet offered an
clad explanation of how an
dor could have carried the Kore-
ao jet on the exact course that it
td k over the Soviet Union's mili-
t sensitive Kamchatka Penin-
sula and Sakhalin Island. The only
sources of the most definitive an-
swers to that question-the "black
boxes" that recorded KAL 007's
flight path and cabin conversa-
tions-lie under water in the Sea of
Japan.
The refusal of U.S., Japanese and
Korean officials to release more of
their own files on the downing-
and their occasional denials that
more exist-only deepen the suspi-
cions of conspiracy advocates.
"The government apparently,
has a very, very strong inter In
keeping this case closed," said
David Pearson, a Yale University
aselology student who has written
tit often-quoted articles on the
shooting for The Nation magazine
and who now plans a book.
Pearson and John Kappel, a
retired U.S. Foreign Service aft
who is also investigating the KAL
affair, are the leading American
skeptics. Last month. they con-
cluded in The Nation that the
airliner "could not have acciden-
tally or unknowingly flown its
4REemm came" over the Soviet
Utgn and that the Reagan Admin-
istration probably "haa covered up
vital evidence about the downing."
Normal Repssls
Korean A* Lines Flight 007 left
Anchorage. Alaska. on a nonstop
flight to Seoul at 3 a.m. (local time)
and was shot down by one or two
Soviet air-to-air missiles 5 hags,
39 minutes later as it left Soviet
airspace over Sakhalin Island.
Between the jet's takeoff and its
12-minute spiral into the Sea of
Japan, the 747's three-man cockpit
crew reported a normal flight to
pound controllers, radioing their
position as they passed computer-
set "way pants" along their North
Pacific route and receiving permis-
sion to ascend from 33,000 to 35.000
feet only minutes before being shot
down.
Despite the routine reports, the
jet actually had strayed from its
assigned path only 10 minutes after
takeoff and was more than 300
miles off course by the time it was
shot down-so far that it some-
times was out of radio range and
had to relay its position reports to
the ground via a second KAL jet
flying nearby.
All experts agree that an alert
crew should have discovered such
a Gargantuan misstep, either
through ordinary double-checking
of data in flight or by sighting
unexpected land masses on the jet's
weather radar. The International
Civil Aviation Organization con-
cluded in its analysis of the disaster
that the sort of inattention required
to fly in the wrong direction for
more than five hours is rare, "but
not to a degree unknown in civil
aviation."
One Senate staff expert, who was
briefed by the CIA in September,
1984, after the first round of accu-
sations surfaced that Flight 007
was on a spying mission, said he has
"zero reason to believe that the
Korean Air Lanes tragedy was the
result of anything but a terrible
pilot error."
Continued
I
STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403090005-4