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The Soviet shootdown of Korean Air Lines flight 007 in September 1983 raised many disturbing questions. Many theories were developed to explain what happened and why. The book Shootdown by R.W. Johnson proposed that the airliner was part of a US sponsored intelligence operation. This study evaluates Johnsons thesis and logic and compares it to other investigations. The study concludes that flight 007 was not part of a US intelligence gathering mission and that it strayed off course as a result of a human error in navigation.

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The Shootdown of KAL (Korean Air Lines) 007: Accident or Conspiracy?

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THEORIES AND CONSPIRACY THEORIES (Published 1985)

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On September 1, 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 en route on its second leg from Anchorage, Alaska to Seoul, South Korea was shot down by a Soviet interceptor aircraft into the Sea of Japan when it deviated from its intended route into Soviet territory.

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On September 1, 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 en route on its second leg from Anchorage, Alaska to Seoul, South Korea was shot down by a Soviet interceptor aircraft into the Sea of Japan when it deviated from its intended route into Soviet territory. The total death toll of 269 passengers included the U.S. Congressman from Georgia, Lawrence McDonald. This act only further heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Leaving 15 minutes after KAL 007, the 'sister flight' KAL 015 carrying North Carolina Senator, Jesse Helms, Idaho Senator Steven Symms, and Kentucky Representative, Carroll J. Hubbard, arrived in Seoul without incident. As the Political Counselor in Seoul from 1983 to 1987, Thomas P.H. Dunlop discusses finding out about the downed plane and the reaction of Senator Jesse Helms; he was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy beginning in July 1996. Senator Helms, described by Dunlop as the 'Cold War Senator', thought that the downed plane was actually a targeted assassination attempt against him and demanded to leave the country on an Air Force flight immediately.

You can read the other perspective on KAL 007 and about other experiences with Congressional delegations (or CODEL s).

"I stayed on to meet Congressman Larry McDonald in Flight 007 which, of course, never arrived"

DUNLOP: KAL Flight 007 took off from Anchorage, bound for Seoul, on September 1, 1983. I had only been at the Embassy in Seoul for a couple of months. One of the passengers was Congressman Larry McDonald. KAL Flight 015, which took off from Anchorage only 15 minutes ahead of Flight 007, was carrying Senator Jesse Helms [Republican, North Carolina], his wife, and a member of the Senator's staff. I'm not sure why KAL scheduled two flights along the same route that were to arrive in Seoul at about the same time. They probably started from different places.

In any event, since there was a Congressman on Flight 007 and a Senator on Flight 015. Ambassador "Dixie" Walker and I went to the Seoul airport, each to meet a different flight. We drove out to the airport together, but there was another car that was to take me home if Flight 007, which I was to meet, was delayed. This flight was due 15 minutes after Senator Helms and his party arrived on Flight 015.

As we know, Flight 015 landed on time, the Senator and his party were greeted by Ambassador Walker, who then took them into Seoul to the Hilton Hotel, where a large, security-oriented international conference was being held. Senator Helms was to be one of the key speakers at that conference to represent the tough Cold-War warrior face he assumed. He was going to be in Seoul for two nights and the better part of three days.

I stayed on to meet Congressman Larry McDonald on Flight 007 which, of course, never arrived at Kimpo Airport in Seoul. I knew the South Korean officials in the little protocol office there who could give me flight information, because I had been out there to meet people at various times. They were able to tell me pretty quickly that there was almost no likelihood of Flight 007 arriving at Kimpo Airport. Either this flight had "diverted" somewhere, had crashed, or something like that. So I left the airport and went back to the Embassy, which was a good 45-minute drive from the airport in normal traffic....

I called Ambassador Walker at the Hilton Hotel and told him what was happening. I also told him that there were beginning to be reports, both on the radio and directly to the Embassy, indicating that that airplane may have crashed. Of course, that later turned out to be true. It was certainly intercepted by a Soviet fighter aircraft, as it was way off course.

We learned this information in bits and pieces, of course. We were being kept as well informed as anybody could have been. It was several hours after Flight 007 was due in Seoul before the information was enough to report to the South Koreans and then to the public that the plane had not only been intercepted over Soviet airspace but shot down.

This has now been published. It was obtained from the radio intercept stations which we maintain by remote control, interestingly enough, on Hokkaido Island, the northernmost of the main islands of Japan.

""The target is destroyed"
Q: The radio intercept station was at Wakkanai [air station in Hokkaido].
DUNLOP: These radio intercept station were targeted on Soviet air activity, including both air defense as well as commercial air activity. What was being said over the air was being tape recorded. However, it was not immediately listened to. There was no live person listening to the Soviet transmissions. It was not clear and never, perhaps, has never been made sufficiently clear to the public, who always like to suspect some kind of "complicity" or something of that kind involved in these things. However, there was no live Japanese, Korean, or American person listening to these tapes.

However, once we realized that something bad had happened in the area, the tapes were recovered, played back, interpreted, and made available to the senior people in the governments concerned. What was on those tapes has now been totally released to the public. In fact, a little bit later they were played up at the UN. They were the normal kind of traffic conversation that you would hear between a fighter pilot sent up to intercept an aircraft and his ground "controller."

It ends with those famous words, "The target is destroyed."

We didn't know all of that at this time. It was a very confusing time. Since so much of the information was extremely sensitive and classified, I became the courier going back and forth to the Hilton Hotel where the Ambassador and Senator Helms were with these bits and pieces of information. It became very clear that the plane had been destroyed and that there were probably no survivors.

For a while we hoped that KAL Flight 007 had been forced down and that it landed safely in Soviet territory. We hoped that the Soviets were not saying so because they couldn't figure out what to say. In fact, that was not the case. The plane was shot down, and everyone aboard was killed.

There was some interesting fallout to this. Of course, this incident tremendously concerned the Korean public, which is very nervous, living so close to North Korea. There was concern that this was a sign of a deliberate escalation of tensions with the communists in northeast Asia. For that matter, it also concerned us, although I think that we were far more prepared to accept that this was just a case of Soviet stupidity and brutality, rather than anything part of some larger malevolent scheme.

"Senator Helms was totally convinced that he was the Soviets' target"

Particularly interesting to me was the reaction of our "Cold War" Senator, Senator Jesse Helms. I got over to the Hilton Hotel on one of my courier runs at about 6:00 p.m. I was waiting to go in to talk to Ambassador Walker (at right, with his wife at the Ambassador's Residence in 1982). He was in the room with Senator Helms. They were having a talk while I was waiting out in the hall.

His staff aide came up to me and said rather brusquely, "Well, what have you done about the Senator's flight?" I thought that he was talking about the Senator's reservation for his ongoing travel two days hence. We had taken his tickets and confirmed his reservations on an ongoing flight. I hadn't done that personally, but I started by being reassuring and said to the young staffer, "We have a very efficient, Korean national employee at the Embassy who always takes care of these things. I always check on it."

The Senator's staffer said, "No, you don't understand. The Senator is leaving South Korea tonight. This was an assassination attempt directed at him! He's leaving in an Air Force airplane with a fighter escort at midnight."

I was floored. I didn't know anything about this. Senator Helms was totally convinced that he was the Soviets' target and they had just shot down the wrong airplane.

Well, this generated a lot of confusion and a lot of problems because, while Ambassador Walker was trying very hard to persuade Senator Helms to change his mind, he also told me to get Lt. Gen. John Pickett, the Commanding General of the 7th Air Force, tell him the situation, and ask him to "lay on" this extraordinary request. I went back home because the telephone situation was better from my home in reaching the command post where I thought that I could find Gen. Pickett. And the telephone situation WAS much better...

"The Air Force should have sent Senator Helms a bill for the travel of one airplane to Seoul to pick up the Senator"

At about 7:00 p.m. I got General John Pickett on the phone. We were on a first-name basis. He is a wonderful and very capable man. I said, "John, this is the one call that you did not want to receive at 7:00 p.m. tonight. I've got to tell you that we've got Senator Helms who is insisting that this tragedy involving the KAL flight was personally directed at him. He thinks that his life is in danger, and he is insisting that the U.S. Air Force, and that is you, John, fly him out of here tonight with a fighter escort."

A long silence ensued.

I felt so embarrassed for myself as an American and as an Embassy officer to have to convey this message. I was also embarrassed for General Pickett, because it might be enormously difficult to lay on something like this with only five or six hours' warning.

Finally, I broke this long silence and said, "John, look, I'm not asking you to tell me that you can or can't do this. What I want you to authorize me to do is to go back to Ambassador Walker and Senator Helms and say, 'The United States Air Force will do everything in its power to accomplish this rather difficult task.' That's all I need from you now."

He said, "Sure, Harry, go ahead." So that's what I did, while Gen. Pickett was scrambling around to find aircraft, including fighters and everything else late in the evening.

I went back over to the Hilton Hotel and duly reported that the Air Force would do everything that it possibly could. Ambassador "Dixie" Walker tried to be a soothing and calming voice. He was also pointing out to the Senator how this would be received by the South Korean Government and public.

One of those little "light bulbs" went on in my mind. I guess that's what Political Officers are supposed to do.

I began to think about the press. I went over to this not very pleasant staffer of Senator Helms and said, "Incidentally, while we're thinking about all of these other things, I'd like some instructions on what to tell the press."

I don't remember what I was thinking. However, I saw what looked like a startled look on this guy's face.

He said, "Well, we don't have to talk to the press."

I pointed out to him that this was "the most important story in the world at the moment." Newsmen were flying in to Kimpo Airport in Seoul. We already had about eight requests for interviews with Senator Helms. I said that he didn't have to say anything but I wondered whether the Senator would want to ignore the press. Those who were unfriendly to him who might put a bad spin on this story. He looked sort of thunderstruck.

It had not occurred to this guy.

Anyway, there were some huddles, consultations, and so forth.

I don't know what t his aspect played in the Senator's decision not to leave Seoul that night. He changed his mind. So then I was able to phone Gen. John Pickett and say, "This is the best call that you could expect to receive this evening. Senator Helms has decided to stay in Seoul tonight."

By God, Gen. Pickett had made the arrangements! He had earmarked a T-37 [small, twin-engined passenger jet] flown in from someplace like Kadena Airport in Okinawa. He already had the fighters there and he was going to ensure that the fighters would be visible to the Senator.
Q: Fly under one wing of the T-37, then fly under the other wing. [Laughter].
DUNLOP: But it turned out that we didn't have to put the Air Force through that, other than what we'd already put them through. The T-37 had already flown in from Okinawa. The Air Force should have sent Senator Helms a bill for the travel of one airplane to Seoul to pick up the Senator. That would be about $1 million or $550,000, or something like that.

Anyway, that was one aspect of the story of KAL Flight 007....Every time a crisis happened involving the communists in North Korea we in the Embassy and the U.S. Government had a lot of hand-holding to do with the South Korean authorities. We did not have a relationship with the South Koreans that made us totally confident that they wouldn't do something not only weird but, perhaps, dangerous, if they felt themselves under threat. We were not totally confident that they would consult with us and would take our advice which, I am sure, was given to them many times, to act in a "restrained" way, to think twice, and to avoid doing anything which could make a bad situation worse.

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On September 1, 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 en route on its second leg from Anchorage, Alaska to Seoul, South Korea was shot down by a Soviet interceptor aircraft into the Sea of Japan when it deviated from its intended route into Soviet territory. The total death toll of 269 passengers included the U.S.

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The idea that Soviet fighter jets would shoot down a Boeing 747 airliner seems shockingly unbelievable. Two-hundred sixty-nine innocent people died in a largely forgotten Cold War attack.

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Story highlights

The idea that Soviet fighter jets would shoot down a Boeing 747 airliner seems shockingly unbelievable. Two-hundred sixty-nine innocent people died in a largely forgotten Cold War attack that took place exactly 30 years ago this weekend.

On a sultry August night in 1983 at New York's JFK airport, Alice Ephraimson-Abt, a brilliant, 23-year-old blue-eyed blonde, was about to board Korean Air Lines Flight 007 for Seoul, South Korea, halfway around the world. For one last time, she held her father, New Jersey businessman Hans Ephraimson-Abt, before saying goodbye. "There were hugs and I-love-yous," her father, now 91, told CNN.

Alice - who was excited about heading Beijing to teach English and study - could have been a diplomat, a contributor to peace, her father said. "Her death was a great loss to her generation."

The ramifications of the shoot-down of Flight 007 reverberated far beyond the lives lost. It sparked global outrage, conspiracy theories and an activist movement that continues today. It also joined a list of disturbing developments that made 1983 one of the scariest years of the Cold War. Not since 1962's Cuban Missile Crisis had the world teetered so close to the unthinkable, according to declassified documents released in May.

It seemed like each month brought with it new and troubling headlines.

President Ronald Reagan, in March, said the Soviet Union amounted to an "evil empire." A few weeks later, Washington announced that it was working on a new space-based weapon. The press dubbed it "Star Wars."

That October, on the Caribbean island of Grenada, a coup and the deployment of pro-Soviet Cuban forces prompted the Pentagon to invade with thousands of troops. The following month, the United States and NATO staged war games that depicted a nuclear attack scenario.

Fear seeped into TV, movies and music. In November, more than 100 million viewers tuned into ABC's nuclear attack drama "The Day After." The following month, film crews began shooting "Red Dawn," about a Soviet invasion of America. Playlists on radio and MTV included "99 Luftballoons," a Cold War protest song.

But it was the downing of KAL 007 that opened many eyes to the Cold War's widening wave of darkness, its increasing uncertainty and its growing threat to peace.

Alice Ephraimson-Abt's flight made a refueling stop in Anchorage, Alaska, and - following the tradition of the well-traveled family - she phoned her father. She told him about a U.S. congressman, Rep. Larry McDonald, who also was aboard. One of 61 Americans on the plane, McDonald was a conservative Georgia Democrat and outspoken anti-communist.

What we know about the next five hours aboard Flight 007 comes from CNN interviews with ex-Soviet officials, the cockpit voice transcript and a 1993 report from the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization.

After the 747 took off for Seoul at 4 a.m. local time, the crew set their autopilot. What they apparently didn't know was, it was set to fail.

The plane began drifting off its intended course and heading toward Soviet territory.

Hours later, passengers heard the familiar crew announcement, "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing at Seoul Gimpo International Airport in about three hours. Local time in Seoul right now is 3 a.m. Before landing, we will be serving beverages and breakfast, thank you."

But sadly, there would be no landing.

Twenty-six minutes later, the captain was announcing an emergency descent and ordering crew to put on oxygen masks.

Fighter pilot:'I had a job to do'

As it neared Soviet airspace, Flight 007 was being tracked at military installations. Soviet fighter pilots and their commanders knew they were being watched, too. U.S. spy planes patrolling the region created a constant state of tension, they said later.

American surveillance aircraft included Boeing RC-135s, the military version of a Boeing 707, which looked very much like a civilian airliner.

Packed with electronic surveillance gear, RC-135s often flew figure-eight patterns near passenger routes.

By this time, Flight 007 had deviated more than 200 miles from its planned route.

I wondered what kind of plane it was but I had no time to think. I had a job to do.

Col. Gennadi Osipovitch, ex-Soviet fighter pilot

Commanders at Dolinsk-Sokol airbase scrambled two Sukhoi Su-15 fighter jets and ordered them to intercept the airliner.

"I could see two rows of windows, which were lit up," Soviet pilot Col. Gennadi Osipovitch told CNN in 1998, describing the 747's t elltale double-deck configuration. "I wondered if it was a civilian aircraft. Military cargo planes don't have such windows."

"I wondered what kind of plane it was, but I had no time to think," Osipovitch recalled. "I had a job to do. I started to signal to (the pilot) in international code. I informed him that he had violated our airspace. He did not respond."

The Soviets fired warning shots with brightly lit tracers, said Soviet Lt. Gen. Valentin Varennikov.

Inside KAL 007's cockpit, the flight crew appeared to be unaware of the Soviet fighters flying alongside. The pilot failed to react, the general said, and continued on course.

No attempt was made to contact the airliner via radio. The Soviet pilots failed to follow "ICAO standards and recommended practices related to the interception of civil aircraft," the International Civil Aviation Organization report said.

Soviet command gave Osipovitch his instructions. "My orders were to destroy the intruder," Osipovitch remembered. "I fulfilled my mission."

When news of the shoot-down reached Washington and Moscow, both reacted with outrage.

Reagan called the attack a "massacre" and a "crime against humanity" with "absolutely no justification, legal or moral."

Soviet leader Yuri Andropov accused Washington of a despicable setup: a "sophisticated provocation masterminded by the U.S. special services with the use of a South Korean plane."

Over the following months, Moscow cast a shroud of secrecy over the crash site off Sakahlin Island, never revealing whether it had found the plane's wreckage, flight data recorders, survivors or bodies. Victims' families were forced to grieve without burying their loved ones.

Unwilling to surrender, a handful of family members formed an advocacy group, the first of its kind. Alice Ephraimson-Abt's father was among them.

As a kind of living memorial to Flight 007, Hans Ephraimson-Abt and his colleagues formed the American Association for Families of KAL 007 Victims, which pushed and worked with government bureaucrats around the world to learn all the details surrounding the disaster - with limited success.

Then, something amazing happened: The Cold War ended.

Somehow, the world had made it through.

The breakup of the Soviet Union opened doors to KAL 007's data.

In 1992, during a top-level meeting in Moscow, Russia finally released the cockpit voice recorder transcript. It was 10 p.m. in a dimly lit meeting room of the Presidential Hotel when an interpreter for the U.S. ambassador translated the Russian transcript into English for Ephraimson-Abt and other delegates.

For the first time, Alice's father would know how his daughter and the 268 others had perished.

Slowly - word by word - he learned a terrible truth: The plane wasn't destroyed in the air.

Missile fragments "hit the back of the plane, destroying three of its four hydraulic systems, severing some cables" and punching holes in the aircraft's walls, said Ephraimson-Apt, citing a Boeing report to the International Civil Aviation Organization. "No perceptible cabin pressure was lost, and all four engines continued to operate."

The damaged plane continued flying for 12 minutes, spiraling toward the ocean below, until it "crashed into the sea, with most passengers smashed into pieces or drowning," Ephraimson-Apt said.

"That was, emotionally, a rather hard thing to take."

Questions breed suspicion

Thirty years later, almost all the important questions surrounding the crash have been answered, said Ephraimson-Abt. "What is not resolved is what happened to the bodies of our loved ones. The Russians to this day claim they haven't recovered any bodies."

So what happened to the bodies?

That simple question triggers intense debate among Flight 007 conspiracy theorists. Some believe the lack of bodies indicates that the Soviets somehow rescued Rep. McDonald and other passengers - and then imprisoned them for years. That's the theory explored in the 2001 book "Rescue 007," by Bert Schlossberg, a son-in-law of one of the victims. The book cites witnesses who reported seeing passengers housed in Siberian prisons.

"A lot of people wanted to believe that, for their loved ones, but I don't think there's any veracity to it," said attorney Juanita Madole, who represented 100 Flight 007 victims and their families for decades.

Another theory said the Soviets intentionally destroyed any bodies they found because they wanted to hide evidence of the incident. "That's just speculation," Madole said. "People like to speculate. It makes it more intriguing."

The whereabouts of the bodies of Flight 007 stands as a Cold War mystery that may never be entirely solved.

Pilot error

Overall, the International Civil Aviation Organization said pilot error contributed to the disaster, despite the fact that the crew brought respectable experience to the flight.KAL 007 pilot Chun Byung In reportedly had logged 11 years operating civilian airliners. Before that, he'd reportedly served as a stunt pilot in South Korea's air force.

Author Asaf Degani, a former NASA expert on cockpit information systems, says KAL 007's autopilot was probably in "heading" mode. That setting tells the plane to follow a course according to the magnetic compass, which can vary in accuracy up to 15 degrees at high latitudes.

It was this autopilot mode that is believed to have put the plane into Soviet airspace. If the autopilot had been flying under the plane's highly accurate, computerized "INS" (inertial navigation system) setting, the 747 would have flown a different path, keeping it very close to - but still out of - Soviet airspace. The pilots, Degani suspects, may have mistakenly thought they were flying in INS mode.

"Chances are much less that this kind of confusion would happen now," Degani said, "because, by the turn of the century, most commercial airliners flying intercontinental routes had display systems that show which autopilot mode - 'heading' or 'INS' - is actually flying the airplane.

Unfortunately, these [autopilot] changes came too late to help the crew and passengers of Flight 007.

Asaf Degani, ex-NASA cockpit systems expert

"Unfortunately," said Degani, "These design changes came too late to help the crew and passengers of Flight 007."

International military tensions have continued to rise and fall since 1983, putting civilian airline passengers at various levels of risk.

In the volatile Persian Gulf, just five years after Flight 007, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iran Air Airbus A300 flying from Teheran to Dubai. The Navy mistakenly ID'd the airliner as an attacking fighter jet and fired on it, killing all 290 passengers and crew.

And although the Cold War is long over, tiffs between Washington and Moscow continue, even in 2013. "I think there's always been some tension in the U.S.-Russian relationship after the fall of the Soviet Union," Obama said August 9. "There's been cooperation in some areas; there's been competition in others."

Obama hits pause button with Russia

As for Hans Ephraimson-Abt, he and fellow family members have helped other families, nations and airlines form advocacy and support organizations after some of the worst plane crashes of the past 30 years.In 2000, many of these organizations around the world united under the international Air Crash Victims Families Group, which enjoys invited "observer" status at the International Civil Aviation Organization and stakeholder status at the European Union. And it all began as a handful of family members supporting each other during one of the scariest periods of the Nuclear Age.

Permanent memorials for KAL 007 include a small cemetery marker on Russia's Sakahlin Island and a 90-foot tower in Wakkanai, Japan, where some remains and personal effects that washed ashore in 1983 are kept. The tower consists of 269 white stones and two black marble slabs inscribed with the names of passengers and crew.

Memorial services at Wakkanai will mark this weekend's anniversary. But Ephraimson-Abt won't be there.

Instead, he expects to remain at home in Ridgewood, chatting by phone with fellow KAL 007 family members who've supported each other through the years.

"We all know what we remember, so not many words have to be said," he acknowledged. "We're beyond consoling each other. But we never forget that each year there is a date when we particularly remember our loved ones."

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The downing of Flight 007: 30 years later, a Cold War tragedy still seems surreal | CNN

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Accident? Intentional? Conspiracy? What really happened 30 years ago when Soviet fighter jets shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, killing 269 people.

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On September 2, 1983, the world was stunned by the

news that during the previous day the Soviet Union had

shot down a South Korean jetliner over the Sea of Japan,

killing all 269 passengers aboard. The airliner, which was on

a scheduled flight between New York and Seoul, had appar-

ently strayed off course into Soviet airspace when it was de-

stroyed by Russian jet fighter planes.

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The CIA released that the flight had disappeared from Japanese radars at 6:38 am and everyone on board seemed to vanish. It is assumed that Soviet military forces shot the plane down but the plane had to have landed somewhere. It circled to conserve fuel before trying to land as safe as possible but everyone on board was gone.