Atrocity In the Skies

By William R. Doerner, Ed Magnuson.

The Soviets shoot down a civilian airliner

The electronic bleeps and snatches of recorded radio communications told a story that technicians and intelligence officers, working in Tokyo, at first could not believe. But as they sifted and sorted through the millions of bits of data that are automatically collected and stored by computers, the chilling conclusion became more and more inescapable, and they notified Washington. Finally, at 7:10 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese put in an urgent call to Ronald Reagan, who was vacationing at his ranch in the hills near Santa Barbara, Calif. The mystery of a missing South Korean jetliner that had strayed over Soviet territory, said Meese, had been solved: 17 hours earlier Korean Air Lines Flight 007 had been cold-bloodedly blasted out of the skies by a missile-firing Soviet interceptor, with an all but certain loss of 269 lives.

Thus began one of the strangest and least expected confrontations between the superpowers in the annals of U.S. postwar diplomacy. Though the aircraft so wantonly destroyed near the Soviet island of Sakhalin was not American, the distinction scarcely mattered: Flight 007 had left from U.S. territory and carried at least 61 American passengers, including a U.S. Congressman. The incident, moreover, seemed to be a crime against all humanity, a violation of the most fundamental rules of the air on which all the nations of the world, including the Soviet Union, depend in the busy, crowded skies of the jet age. "Attacking an unarmed civilian plane," said Republican Congressman Thomas F. Hartnett of South Carolina, "is like attacking a school bus."

Stunned by both the senselessness of the attack and the Soviets' blatant lack of repentance, Reagan loosed a withering diplomatic barrage in Moscow's direction. First he directed Secretary of State George Shultz to go on television with a documentary account of the last hours and minutes of Flight 007. Then in the space of a few hours he announced not once but twice that he was cutting short his California holiday--first by two days, then by three--as his determination to confer personally with the National Security Council in Washington grew more urgent. Just before boarding Air Force One for the trip back to Washington, a grim Reagan mounted an outdoor podium and read an extraordinary statement. Calling the Soviet attack a "barbaric act," the President implied that it reflected baser motives than even the 1979 U.S.S.R. invasion of Afghanistan. "While events in Afghanistan and elsewhere have left few illusions about the willingness of the Soviet Union to advance its interests through violence and intimidation, all of us had hoped that certain irreducible standards of civilized behavior nonetheless obtained," he declared. "But this event shocks the sensibilities of people everywhere."

Noting that "where human life is valued, extraordinary efforts are extended to preserve and protect it," Reagan declared that every civilized society must "ask searching questions about the nature of regimes where such standards do not apply." He asked pointedly of the Soviet Union: "What can we think of a regime that so broadly trumpets its vision of peace and global disarmament and yet so callously and quickly commits a terrorist act to sacrifice the lives of innocent human beings?"

His anger and the world's outrage were augmented beyond the deed itself by Moscow's sullen and specious responses to the unequivocal evidence of what had happened. After remaining virtually silent on the matter for almost two days, the Soviet Union finally issued a labored account of an "unidentified plane" that had "rudely violated the state border and intruded deep into the Soviet Union's airspace." TASS admitted that Soviet interceptors had "fired warning shots and tracer shells along the flying route of the plane," but refused to acknowledge shooting it down.

TASS implied that the U.S. had planned the course deviations that took Alight 007 into Soviet territory, since "relevant U.S. services followed the flight throughout its duration in the most attentive manner." Hinting that the jetliner was on a spy mission, it added, "So one may ask that if it were an ordinary flight of a civil aircraft. . . then why were there not taken any steps from the American side to end the gross violation of the airspace of the U.S.S.R.?" TASS said that 'leading circles" in the Soviet Union express "regret" over the loss of life, but the news agency dismissed the worldwide uproar over the attack as mere "hullabaloo."

Shultz's reply was quick, angry and scornful: "No coverup, however brazen or elaborate, can ... absolve the Soviet Union of its responsibility to explain its behavior."

He was echoed a few hours later at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council by Charles Lichenstein, the U.S. acting permanent representative. "Let us call the crime for what it is, wanton, calculated, deliberate murder," he said. While the Soviet delegate, Richard S. Ovinnikov stared icily into space, Lichenstein spelled out what "we might expect a normal, civilized government" to do in the event of a tragedy like that of Flight 007, including the admission of responsibility and the undertaking of steps to ensure that it never happens again. For its part, the Soviet Union is simply "lying--openly, brazenly and knowingly. It is the face of a ruthless totalitarian state." Ovinnikov, declaring the session "unjustifiable," proceeded to read the TASS account of the episode to delegates.

Overseas, the reaction was no less emphatic. At least four West European governments summoned Soviet diplomats and delivered sternly worded protests about the shooting down of Flight 007. Italy's huge Communist Party fired off a demand to Moscow for an explanation of "this crime"; Japan's Communist Party did likewise. In Seoul, where South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan called the attack a "barbarous act," tens of thousands of South Koreans joined protest demonstrations. Similar marches were staged in Korean-American communities across the U.S. Editorial reaction in the U.S. and abroad was uniformly unforgiving. Britain's Sun posed a question that was at the heart of Western shock over the peacetime incident: "Would Washington or our government ever dream of launching killer missiles? Never in a million years."

For the Reagan Administration, the crisis over Flight 007 was an especially complex and complicated matter. Despite the many unanswered questions that continued to surround the incident, it was clear that the Soviets had committed a brutally provocative act, one that demanded an unambiguous U.S. response. The President rarely has much trouble expressing such sentiments on a visceral level, as a senior White House aide pointed out shortly after the attack. "It is further evidence that the President was right," reminded the aide, "when he said the Soviet Union is a country that is essentially evil."

Yet in recent weeks, for the first time in his Administration, Reagan had been signaling a relaxation of tensions on the American side. Two weeks ago, the U.S. signed a new multiyear grain agreement in Moscow, ending a three-year impasse over U.S. grain sales to the Soviet Union. Washington also backed away from previous objections to the sale of pipeline equipment by U.S. firms to the Soviets. Shultz was scheduled to meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Madrid this week, and the two countries were slated to resume two sets of arms negotiations within a month. There was even talk of moving--slowly, of course--toward a summit.

As the President flew back to Washington, a high-level task force assembled at the State Department to ponder appropriate U.S. countermeasures. There was general agreement that the Administration should not do yet another about-face on the grain deal, since Reagan had criticized President Jimmy Carter's embargo and a second one would virtually eliminate the U.S. as a credible trading partner. The various courses of action considered ranged from U.S. support of expected retaliation by airline pilots all the way up to a postponement of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) talks, scheduled to resume this week in Geneva. Above all else, State Department officials urged a retaliation that would be joined by other nations.

No final decisions were made at Friday night's two-hour NSC session, but the President appeared to be leaning toward finding ways of punishing the Soviets in the field in which they transgressed--civil aviation. Among those who attended the meeting, in addition to Reagan's usual foreign policy advisers, were Acting Transportation Secretary James Burnley and Federal Aviation Administration Chief J. Lynn Helms. The U.S. was already conferring with allies over possible joint moves at a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization to be held later this month in Montreal. Said one State Department official, referring to the Soviet national airline: "We want to do something that will affect the relations of Aeroflot to the rest of the world." One possibility: ground crews at international airports could refuse to clean Aeroflot cabins, stock its planes or refuel its empty tanks, effectively grounding the carrier outside of the Soviet Union.

The prospects for a more radical move, like pulling out of the INF negotiations, seemed never to have been seriously considered. "I would not look for us to discontinue our discussions because the stakes are too high," said a senior Administration official. "We would not be serving our own country or the world at large should we stop our efforts to achieve arms reductions." Such an approach would be in keeping with the Administration's "two track" policy toward the Soviets, challenging them when U.S. interests require it, seeking agreements when mutual interests are served.

The journey that was to end in death and crisis began unportentously at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport. The gleaming white Boeing 747-200B jumbo jet, trimmed in red and blue and bearing Korean Air Lines' sleek symbolic bird on its towering 63-ft.-high tail, lumbered routinely away from Gate 15. Due to leave at 11:50 p.m. E.D.T. on Tuesday, Flight 007 was 35 minutes late taking off.

Even before the huge aircraft, 232 ft. long and 196 ft. between wing tips, rose into the cloudless sky, the 14 women and four men flight attendants began making their 244 passengers comfortable. Still in their standard blue uniforms, the attendants served champagne to the twelve first-class passengers, who had paid $3,588 (round trip) to enjoy the roomy luxury of the top-deck lounge behind the cockpit cabin. Down on the main deck, nearly all of the 24 seats in the business-class section, where tickets cost $2,380, were occupied. Toward the rear, where passengers could fly for as little as $1,200, nearly 80 seats were empty. Flight 007 was bound for Seoul, but 130 of the travelers planned to go on to more exotic Far East destinations such as Hong Kong, Tokyo, Taiwan. They were flying KAL because it offered some of the lowest fares to Asia.

None of the passengers could be looking forward to the flight. They would spend seven hours on the nightlong 3,400 mile leg to Anchorage. Then, still mainly in darkness as they headed away from sunrise in the east, they would face an additional 7 1/2 dreary hours before reaching Seoul's Kimpo Airport in what KAL brochures call "the land of morning calm."

After reaching cruising altitude (35,000 ft.), many passengers took off their shoes, loosened neckties, reached for pillows and stretched out to sleep. Some watched the in-flight movie, Man, Woman and Child, a tearjerker about a married man suddenly discovering that he had fathered a son during an earlier affair. When not serving middle-of-the-night snacks and cocktails, the attendants kept the cabin lights low. The trip to Anchorage was uneventful. Flight 007 touched down at 7:30 a.m. E.D.T. Wednesday (2:30 a.m. in Anchorage).

Most of the bleary-eyed passengers walked off the plane to stretch their legs and sip coffee in a holding area at the terminal. As they milled about, service crews vacuumed the 747's rugs, emptied ashtrays, placed clean linen on the backrests. Ground personnel pumped 37,750 gal. of Aiel into the plane's tanks, enough for its normal cruising range of about 6,000 miles. A fresh crew, led by Captain Chun Byung In, a veteran of 10,547 flying hours, took over in the cockpit. One fortunate family left Flight 007 in Anchorage. Robert Sears, a freight handler for Alaska International Air, had been vacationing in New York with his wife and two children.

Within minutes, an identical 747, KAL's flight 015 from Los Angeles, descended out of the darkness and taxied up to its sister jet. Also bound for Seoul, it would follow Flight 007 by about 20 minutes. Many of its passengers joined those from Flight 007 in waiting out the 90-min. rest stop. There was no hurry, since Kimpo would not open until 5 p.m. (6 a.m. in Korea).

North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms stepped off Flight 015. He was part of an official six-man congressional delegation representing the U.S. at a conference in Seoul to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the mutual defense treaty between South Korea and the U.S. Helms stopped to chat with a young Australian couple and their two daughters from Flight 007. "She was reading to those beautiful little girls," he recalled later, through tears. "It was the most marvelous thing you could have seen." With Helms was Idaho Senator Steve Symms. They looked for Georgia Congressman Lawrence P. McDonald, who was scheduled to be one of the main conference speakers. They knew he had taken the other flight. "Larry had no trouble sleeping on planes," Symms said later. "So he stayed on board during the stopover, and we never saw him." Added Helms: "Maybe if we had, we would have persuaded him to join us--or he might have got us to join him."

Kentucky Congressman Carroll Hubbard also got off Flight 015. He had expected to join McDonald on Flight 007, but had canceled his reservation at the last minute in order to accept a speaking engagement in Kentucky. McDonald had originally been booked on Sunday's Flight 007, but had missed it when his connecting plane from Atlanta was diverted because of thunderstorms in New York City. He had time to catch a Pan Am flight to Seoul but preferred the lower fare he had arranged with KAL.

The first blush of the approaching dawn was barely visible as Captain Chun nosed his craft back into the Alaskan sky at 10 a.m. (4 a.m. in Anchorage). He set off on "Jet Route 501," a southwesterly course along the Aleutian Islands and one of five commonly traveled flight paths at the start of the 3,800-mile run to Seoul. A checkpoint Bethel, about 340 miles wes of Anchorage, he would switch to what pilots call "Red Route 20," the most northerly and direct of the internationally recognized courses to Tokyo and Seoul. It would take him off the Soviet Union's Kamchatka Peninsula, about 30 miles from the Kuril Islands, which are claimed and occupied by the Soviets, then over the main Japanese island of Honshu, and finally westward to Seoul.

The Soviet zones were well marked on Chun's maps. One blue-bordered warning declared: "Aircraft infringing upon non-free flying territory may be fired on without warning." Read another: "Unlisted radio emissions from this area may constitute a navigational hazard or result in border overflight unless unusual precaution is exercised." Still, Red Route 20 was routine to the hundreds of commercial airliners that follow it each month.

Back in the passenger cabins, by KAL's usual procedures the women flight attendants would now switch to native Korean dress. The bright and multicolored costumes include long skirts (chima) and short, flared blouses (chogori). They had orange juice and sandwich wedges on hand for the tourist passengers, fancy snacks of chicken florentine, zucchini au gratin, rice and cheddar croquettes, and soba, a Japanese broth, for the first-class travelers. Everything presumably would have seemed normal as the passengers munched and dozed their way toward Seoul.

As Captain Chun and his craft bucked the prevailing headwinds, which normally reduce the plane's speed from 540 m.p.h. to about 460 m.p.h., he advised air controllers in Anchorage, who supervised the first 1,800 miles of his trip, that he had passed the mandatory navigational checkpoints, such as "Nabie" and "Neeva."

The KAL pilot had no way of knowing that other electronic eyes were watching Flight 007 from far ahead of him, although he would assume the Soviets would be monitoring the aircraft. Soviet radar had locked on to the 747 at about noon (E.D.T.) that day, when Flight 007 was cruising southwestward over the Bering Sea, and would follow the plane for the next 2 1/2 fateful hours. As always, U.S. and Japanese intelligence stations were in effect watching the Soviets as they watched the jumbo jet. The stations did so by recording the radio communications between the Soviet radar operators, probably located in northern Kamchatka, and their superiors along the military chain of command. It would be many hours later before those tapes would be examined and their significance determined.

Whether he knew it or not, Captain Chun and the other 268 innocent travelers on his airliner soon were in trouble. Somehow, Flight 007 had passed those lines, invisible in the sky but so clearly etched on maps, that mark forbidden airspace. The Soviets scrambled MiG-23s, their widely deployed supersonic jet fighter, and Sukhoi-15s, a slightly older but nonetheless lethal interceptor, to follow the 747. Japanese and American intelligence sources later figured that at least eight of the single-seat fighters pursued the relatively slow-moving airliner.

According to the account of Secretary Shultz, Flight 007 first crossed the Kamchatka Peninsula, then the Sea of Okhotsk and the island of Sakhalin. Unless it changed course, the airliner apparently would have approached the area around Vladivostok on the Soviet mainland. This cold and bleak region is ordinarily off limits to foreigners.

The Soviets have military reasons for their sensitivity. Kamchatka is the site of Soviet missile-testing facilities and early-warning radar systems. The port of Petropavlovsk is home base for some 90 nuclear-powered submarines. The Soviets hope to turn the Sea of Okhotsk, between the peninsula and the mainland, into a private sheltered lake for submarines armed with missiles that could strike the continental U.S. The southern half of Sakhalin bristles with at least six Soviet airfields and is merely 27 miles across the Strait of Soya from Japan's Hokkaido Island. The strait is a choke point for Soviet naval vessels moving from the Sea of Japan into the North Pacific. Vladivostok and Sovetskaya-Gavan are the main bases for the 820 ships of the Soviet Pacific fleet.

The Soviets had every right of international law to send fighters up to inspect the intruder. Common sense, however, suggests that even the most expert observer flying some six miles high in the dim predawn light is not likely to see anything that U.S. surveillance satellites have not repeatedly scrutinized and photographed in far greater detail.

But rationality did not prevail. At 2:12 p.m. (3:12 in the morning in Japan), a Soviet pilot told his ground station that he was close enough to see the Korean airliner. Three minutes later, Captain Chun, apparently unaware of his hostile company, routinely asked air controllers in Tokyo, who had taken over supervision of the flight from Anchorage, for permission to climb to 35,000 ft. Permission was given.

Six minutes later, a Soviet flyer radioed that the 747 was just short of that altitude, at 10,000 meters (33,300 ft.). About the same time, Japanese radar operators in Hokkaido noted that, although Flight 007 had ust reported its position as 115 miles south of Hokkaido, they found no corresponding radar blip there. They did spot one 115 miles north of the island.

Was Captain Chun aware that he was off course? Apparently not. Had he seen the interceptors trailing him? Unlikely, since he almost certainly would have informed the Tokyo controllers of his unwelcome escort. Not once did he indicate that he was in an unusual situation. If all was considered normal aboard the 747, the attendants would now be serving breakfast to the awakening passengers. There would be grapefruit and beef brochette for the high-fare travelers, a croissant and Spanish omelet for the others.

But in the reddening skies over the southern coast of Sakhalin, a chain of events began unfolding that was far from normal. Japanese radar operators saw the blip of an unidentified plane close in rapidly on another blip they now knew represented the Korean airliner. The two symbols merged. The time was 2:25 p.m.

Then, at 2:26 p.m., the whirling tape recorders, probably at the Japanese Defense Agency's massive radar installation in the otherwise sleepy town of Wakkanai on Hokkaido's northern tip, caught the incriminating conversations between a single Soviet fighter pilot and his unemotional commander on the ground. As reported in the Japanese press, the key transmissions included:

Commander: Take aim at the target.

Pilot: Aim taken.

Commander: Fire.

Pilot: Fired.

Later, there were more Soviet transmissions:

Unidentified questioner: Where did it go?

The reply: We shot it down. Shultz curtly paraphrased these exchanges at his initial Washington press conference. Said he: "The Soviet pilot reported that he fired a missile and the target was destroyed."

Indeed it was. But Flight 007, in what must have been an interminable and terrifying descent for its travelers, seemed to die slowly. At 2:27 the crew tried, finally, to signal its distress. "Korean Air 007," began the voice. But only an unintelligible garble of sounds followed.

Three minutes later, radar showed that the airliner had fallen to 5,000 meters (16,400 ft.), halfway to the sea. Within another two minutes, a second Soviet plane showed up at the same site on radar screens. At 2:38 p.m., twelve minutes after being hit, Flight 007 dropped off the screens.

Near the island of Moneron, 30 miles off the Sakhalin coast, Japanese fishermen heard at least two thunderous noise from the sky above them. They reported seeing a fiery flash denoting what one called "some awful explosion." It was an explosion that would soon echo, in disbelieving protest, around the world.

At Kimpo Airport in Seoul, friends and families awaiting Flight 007 endured a roller-coaster of worry, falsely raised joy and final sorrow. They waited for five agonizing hours for some word of the missing plane's fate. Rumors filled the vacuum. The 747 had been hijacked. No, it had been forced to land on Soviet soil. Then official confirmation. A KAL spokesman said on the p.a. system that the airliner was safely down on Sakhalin. Everyone should leave telephone numbers and await word on the reunion. Cheers filled the terminal. Another 13 hours passed before the reality came from distant Washington. Shultz, his voice quavering as he fought to control his anger, revealed the worst.

In Atlanta, Kathryn McDonald stoically faced TV cameras to declare that her husband Lawrence, a staunchly conservative Democratic Congressman and national chairman of the ultraright John Birch Society, had been the victim of "an act of deliberate assassination." She charged that it was no accident that "the leading anti-Communist in the American Government" had been on a plane that was "forced into Soviet territory" and shot down. She linked her husband's "murder" with the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II, blaming both on the Soviets.

Rebecca Scruton, 28, a Meriden, Conn., mother of two young children, had become a widow in December, when her husband Dale, 30, died of cancer. She was on Flight 007 only because she had a passport problem when she went to board an earlier flight; her children were not with her. There were 269 such stories of personal poignancy.

The death toll was the fifth highest in aviation history. For Americans, the loss of 61 U.S. civilians in a military attack may have been the greatest since the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor.

In the waters of the Sea of Japan, Soviet ships and aircraft warned outsiders away from their search of the area where the plane went down. The U.S. moved five F-15 jet fighters from Okinawa to northern Japan, but did not send them into the area. The U.S. Air Force also dispatched at least one AW ACS surveillance plane to Hokkaido. In the tense situation, both superpowers raised their alert status in the region, but no one wanted to provoke yet another air tragedy.

One question vital to Soviet intentions about the tragedy is who authorized the order to fire. The hours of radar tracking and even the period of scrambling after Flight 007 entered Soviet airspace would allow ample time for the matter to be passed all the way back to Moscow. Lynn Hansen, of the Center for Strategic Technology at Texas A & M, doubts that anyone below a three-star colonel-general, such as a Far East-theater air-defense deputy commander, "could make that weighty a decision; they're all scared of that responsibility." Georgia Tech Sovietologist Daniel Papp warns that "if we assume it went all the way to Moscow, then there are very grave questions as to Soviet intent. If it was a general who decided it was time to show that they meant business, that is far less serious in its policy implications."

Retired Admiral Bobby Inman, former deputy director of the CIA, speculates that the Soviet Union was so stung by its inept handling of a similar, 1978 Korean airliner intrusion over their territory that individual air-defense units now have standing orders to direct any interlopers to land and to shoot them down if they do not. "Their priorities are different from ours," Inman says. "They place highest priority not on human lives but on preventing penetration of their airspace." The Kremlin had time last week to learn what was happening at the lower command levels, Inman suggests, but did not intervene to stop it.

Did the Soviet interceptors signal the airliner to change course or to land, and if so, did the Korean crew ignore the signals? The Soviets, of course, insist that both answers are yes. But so far the tapes of their air-to-ground reports have not borne out the claim. Moreover, the KAL crew would have made its own radio report of such action, if it had been able.

Why were there no radio communications between Soviet military officials and the airliner? Soviet ground stations should have been aware of the frequencies the airliner would be using and could have given instructions to the plane. That in turn would have alerted air controllers in Japan to what was happening. Early American analysis of the tapes provided no evidence of any such calls.

Did the 747 sustain some kind of massive electrical problem that knocked out its navigational systems, lights and some of its radios? It is virtually inconceivable. There are three independently powered inertial navigational systems on the Boeing aircraft. There are four electrical generators, one for each engine, and each can also be used for such low-power tasks as lighting. As for the radios, there are at least five separate transmitters on board. It is possible that the crew was having difficulty on short-range channels with other aircraft, yet it was never out of touch with ground stations.

Why then did the airliner stray so far off course? That remains a major mystery. The inertial-guidance systems have to be programmed by the crew before takeoff and after various checkpoints along the route are passed. Human error in programming, followed by inattention to course while flying on automatic pilot, is a conceivable possibility. The full explanation almost surely will never be known.

Whatever the answers to these questions, the Soviets clearly violated international law and custom by using excessive force on an unarmed civilian aircraft. "Of course they'll claim they warned the plane--who'll ever prove otherwise?" notes former CIA Official George Carver, now a fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But let's not be diverted by fine legal minutiae. They had absolutely no right to commit murder." Experts in international law say the families and countries of victims may have valid claims for damages, but no one expects the Soviets to ever pay restitution.

In the U.S., the Soviets' rash act certainly strengthens military hard-liners and gives Reagan an even better chance to win final congressional approval for deploying the MX missile while limiting U.S. concessions in arms-control talks. Jesse Helms made the point well in discussing the Soviets with conservative colleagues in Seoul last week. Said he: "This is the best chance we ever had to paint these bastards into a corner."

Actually, the painting has already been done. It is a nasty self-portrait that shatters the reasonable image that the Soviets have been trying to project as part of their peace offensive to block deployment of U.S. cruise and Pershing II missiles in Europe. For a nation so profoundly insecure as the Soviet Union, the public relations debacle resulting from someone's decision to shoot to kill was a terrible setback. But that was no consolation for all those families, from 13 nations, whose loved ones vanished on Flight 007. --By William R. Doerner and Ed Magnuson. Reported by Jerry Hannifin and Strobe Talbott/Washington and Joseph J. Kane/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jerry Hannifin, Strobe Talbott, Joseph J. Kane This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.