KAL 007 SPY STORY REFUTED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403060011-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: April 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403060011-0
KAL 007'
story
refyut
ARTS^l E AF"'~ARED
e-! E'",: .2 ' e _ WASHINGTON TIMES
REED IRVINE 9 Devereaux 1 1x
I capacity Mr. Devereaux assumes.
M Ob also demonstrates that
er
he British magazine that)
made the widely publicized
charge that KAL 007 was on
a spy mission for the United)
States when tT~e Soviets shot it down
has published an apology and a ref-t
utation of the charge in its latest,
the spy charge made a year ago.'
They have so far ignored the apology,
and refutation.
Our media gave wide publicity tol
lions.
Defence Attache magazine made
headlines around the world in June.
1984 with an article charging that,
the Korean airliner had been flown
over Soviet airspace deliberately to.
"turn on,' Soviet electronic air
defense systems that were then*
monitored by the space shuttle and.
a U.S. s satellite. "P.Q. Mann" was.
a pseudonym for the writer, whose
true identity was not disclosed by'
the magazine for "professional rea-
sons." The media jumped to the con-
clusion that he was an' expert. in
space matters because he appeared
to have access to previously
unpublished technical data. He was
subsequently identified as an
employee named Devereaux of a
London advertising agency, who
appears to have drawn upon material
that had appeared in Soviet publica-
Attache for libel, saying that there
was "no foundation whatsoever for,
the suggestions made in the offend-
ing article:' Attorneys for the mag-
azine acknowledged this in court
last November. The magazine paid
"substantial" damages to Korean
Air Lines and agreed to publish an
article refuting the charges and an
apology.!
The apology and the rebutting
article appeared in the latest issue of
Defence Attache. The article by U.S.
space expert James Oberg points
out that the alleged spy satellite that.
Mr. Devereaux said waa I eeally sit
uated to monitor the Soviet elec-
tronic defenses triggered by the
overflight of KAL 007, was actually
a weather satellite which did not.
have the electronic. monitoring
Korean Air Lines sued Defence
g
r.
the role allegedly played by the
space shuttle in this episode was a
physical impossibility. He calculates
that the shuttle was never closer to
KAL 007 than 300 kilometers. He
says that the space shuttle could
communicate only by line-of-sight
communications, since it was above
the ionosphere. (Shortwave commu-
nications which are not line-of-sight
have to be bounced off the ion-
osphere to make their way around
the world.) Mr. Oberg calculates that
the space shuttle's line-of-sight com-
munication capability would have
fallen about 1,000 kilometers short
of KAL 007 because the earth would
have gotten in the way at that dis-
tance. .
Mr. Oberg says: "The unavoidable
conclusion is that the second part of
the Mann spy scenario utterly col-
lapses due not merely to policy but
to the basic laws of nature:' More-
over, Mr. Oberg buttresses this ref-
utation by pointing out that the
activities of the astronauts on the
space shuttle and their conversa-
tions with Houston are public'
knowledge. There is not the slightest
indication in the record that they
were engaging in spying activities.
Mr. Oberg says that at the time Mr.
Devereaux imagined their disap-
pointment to find that KAL 007 had
vanished, the astronauts were actu-.
ally all asleep.
Mr. Oberg also discusses and
demolishes other well-publicized
claims that KAL 007 was spying,
especially the much ballyhooed arti-
cle by Yale graduate student David
Pearson published in The Nation
magazine last August. Mr. Pearson,
had charged that the United States
had the technical capability of
tracking KAL 007 all the way from
Alaska to Sakhalin. He said the fail-
ure to detect its deviation from
course "would have been a scandal
and a failure of a high order.".
Mr. Pearson said that the Cobra
Dane radar in the Western Aleutians'
had the ability and duty to track KAL?
?007. Mr. Oberg points out that Cobra-
Dane is a missile-tracking radar:
operating line-of-sight. KAL 007?
would have been out of its range at
about 450 kilometers. Moreover, it is,
designed to reject aircraft returns, .
to avoid overloading and confusing.
its tracking function.
Reed Irvine is chairman of Accu
,racy in Media.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403060011-0