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From: lkk@mit-eddie.UUCP (Larry Kolodney)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.rumor
Subject: A new theory about flight 007
Message-ID: <2177@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Jun-84 17:55:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.2177
Posted: Mon Jun 18 17:55:49 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jun-84 09:26:10 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 37

From THE ECONOMIST June, 16, 1984:

An analysis published this week makes the strongest case yet that Korean
Air Lines flight 007 was involved in an intelligence-collection mission
at the time it was shot down over hte Soviet Union last September.  Most
of the early accounts, and some more detailed studies in the press
during the past few weeks, have concluded that the airliner had strayed
into Soviet air space by accident: the pilot had somehow set his
navigational system incorrectly.  Other commentators have advanced the
theory taht 007 was engaged in electronic intelligence, but assumed that
the airliner itself would have done the collecting (whereas it is
virtually certain that it did not carry equipment for this purpose).
	The new assessment, published by the British magazine, Defence
Attache', contends that the Korean airliner was cooperating with
American intelligence collection operationsz controlled by the space
shuttle.  The aircraft purposely flew over Soviet territory, the
argument runs, in order to "turn on" the Russian air defence system so
that the ensuing electronic emmissions - radars, radios and the rest of
it - could be recorded by the Americans.
	Previous efforts by America to collect such information have
made use of a combination of aircraft and satellite, the article says.
The author makes a minute examination of the movements of both the space
shuttle and the American air force's RC-135 electronic surveillance
aircraft taht passed near flight 007 on the night the latter was shot
down.  The conclusion is that all were ideally placed for a co-ordinated
collection effort.  The RC-135, claims the article, revealed itself to
the Russians as a military aircraft, then passed close by 007 just
before the airliner turned in towards Kamchatka to try to spoof the
Soviet radars into believing that the aircraft approaching its air space
was military, when in fact it was not.  The shuttle then did the
electronic monitoring.
	Such near-perfect positioning, it will be argued, could hardly
have happened by chance.  Not necessarily so; accident and coincidence
play a large part in military happenings.  The magazine does not
identify the article's authro.  But whoever he is, he appears to have
had access to high-level intelligence sources in the past, and has
raised some disturbing new questions.