Kal 007 Mystery

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 16, 2001 | by Timothy W. Maier

Intelligence evidence suggests that the Soviets never told the truth about the downing of KAL 007, but the U.S. government suppressed its own investigation.

Hans Ephraimson of Ridgewood, N.J., brushed aside the New York Times story about Korean Air Lines Flight 007 being forced to land on the island of Sakhalin after straying into Soviet airspace on Sept. 1, 1983. The Times said another Korean jet had been sent to pick up the passengers. Suddenly it hit him: His 23-year-old daughter, Alice, was aboard KAL 007. "I got to my office thinking the Soviets probably would not release the luggage but they likely would honor her reservation in Hong Kong" he tells Insight.

Ephraimson phoned the general manager of a Hong Kong hotel to let him know that his daughter would be arriving late and that she might need extra clothes. "Charge it to my account" he recalls saying. "That won't be necessary," the general manager replied. Then, after a long pause, the manager put it as gently as he could: "I regret to inform you, sir, that the plane didn't land. There were no survivors"

A stunned Ephraimson immediately called Korean Air Lines demanding an explanation. "How could this be?" he wondered. The national media had reported that the Japanese Civil Aviation Bureau "confirmed that the Hokkaido radar followed Air Korea to a landing in Soviet territory on the island of Sakhalin" where all 269 passengers and crew were safe. Korean Air Lines promised it would get back to him. But it didn't.

An exasperated Ephraimson telephoned the State Department to clear up the confusion. "Sorry" he was told, they were busy preparing for press conferences just now but someone would call him back. Like Korean Air Lines, they never did.

With nowhere else to turn, Ephraimson called the office of Rep. Lawrence P. McDonald, D-Ga., who was being reported to have been on the flight. McDonald, a staunch anticommunist who was the new president of the John Birch Society, was traveling to Seoul to help memorialize the 30th anniversary of the official U.S. entry into the Korean War. He was to meet a congressional delegation there led by Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., who along with Sen. Steve Symms, R-Idaho, decided at the last minute to take another flight. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, arrived on a flight from China.

"McDonald's staffer assured me everything was well and my daughter would be released," recalls Ephraimson, holding back tears. "I told them I think they have wrong information. He said he would check and call me back. Fifteen minutes later he called to tell me my information was right"

By the next day it was being reported around the world that KAL 007 had been blown out of the sky. The Russians claimed it was a spy plane flying over the highly restricted Kamchatka peninsula, site of the Petropavlovsk naval port, where 90 nuclear submarines were based along with 30 land-based ballistic missiles aimed at the United States. The area was so sensitive that the Soviets claimed six colonels had been executed for failing to destroy U.S. planes crossing the region.

The downing of KAL 007 triggered protests worldwide with charges that the Soviets had murdered 269 innocent civilians. This hottest flare-up of the Cold War since the Cuban missile crisis came at the very height of the biggest Soviet disarmament campaign ever, badly shaking Moscow's credibility. In the Soviet Union, itself, people gathered around TV sets, doubting their leaders, who were appearing with charts and graphs to promote the spy propaganda.

There would be no military response, but in Europe one debate was ended. U.S. cruise missiles now would be deployed on the continent. President Ronald Reagan recognized it as the turning point in the Cold War. He broke off arms-treaty negotiations and used the display of Soviet ruthlessness to promote peace through strength with a rapid military buildup that the Communists could not match. When the Soviets ratcheted military spending up to 20 percent of their gross domestic product, the effort crippled their economy and ended the Cold War.

But in that late summer of 1983 the world was holding its breath. Soviet air defenses had been ordered to a much higher state of combat readiness, allegedly in response to incursions by U.S. Navy fighters into Soviet airspace over the Kurile Islands during a battle-group exercise in April. Except for the retaliatory power of the U.S. submarine forces, the United States was believed to be vulnerable to a Soviet first strike.

Meanwhile, Insight has learned, the Soviets had scheduled a secret test of an SS-25 intercontinental ballistic missile on the night of the shootdown, a direct violation of the SALT II arms treaty. The Soviets had deployed a special electronic-warfare aircraft to jam U.S. tracking of this missile test -- something that U.S. insiders say may have affected the Soviet tracking of KAL 007.

The warhead of the test missile was scheduled to land on the Kamchatka peninsula over which KAL 007 strayed. A U.S. RC-135 spy plane, code-named Cobra Eye, was flying in the area to monitor the missile test but exhausted its fuel and returned to its base near Alaska prior to the attack on the civil ian jetliner. It was on the ground when the presence of KAL 007 in the area apparently forced the Soviets to abort the test and Col. Gen. Ivan M. Tretyak, commander of the Far Eastern Military District, ordered Soviet attack planes to "kill the intruder."