Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site tty3b.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ltuxa!tty3b!mjk From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: The Return of KAL 007 Message-ID: <383@tty3b.UUCP> Date: Mon, 18-Jun-84 14:14:12 EDT Article-I.D.: tty3b.383 Posted: Mon Jun 18 14:14:12 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jun-84 07:16:22 EDT Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill Lines: 65 LONDON [Reuters] June 17 - The South Korean passenger jet shot down over the Soviet Union last year may have been used to trigger Soviet radar and electronic defense signals so U.S. spy satellites could monitor them, according to an article in a British defense magazine. The article, published by the jornal Defense Attache under the pseudonym P.Q. Mann, said one of the two satellites involved was the U.S. space shuttle Challenger. It also speculated that in the resultant diplomatic confrontation Moscow may have extracted a secret accord from Washington to demilitarize the shuttle. Defense Attache, a twice-monthly journal widely read in the British defense industry, said it did not necessarily agree with all the views in the article but published it to inspire further investigation. The editor said the author had to remain anonymous for professional reasons but was someone well-known to him. The article linked the incident last September to separate incursions into Soviet bloc airspace by two U.S. military planes in 1964, shortly after the first of the U.S. Ferret electronic surveillance satellites went into orbit. The incursions by the U.S. planes, both of which were shot down, coincided with Ferret surveillance of the area, it said. [In Washington, the White House denied the report. "There's nothing to that story," White House spokesman Peter Roussel said.] All 269 people aboard Korean Air Lines Flight 007 died in the crash. Washington said all along that the Korean plane, a Boeing 747, was not engaged in intelligence work. But the article recalled that a U.S. military jet, an RC-135, with a similar profile to that of the Korean plane flew within range of Soviet radar shortly before the airliner entered Soviet airspace. It described this as a dummy-selling tactic to put Soviet defense systems on guard. The writer said Moscow itself initially drew attention to apparent coordination between the Korean plane's movemnt and repeated passes by a Ferret satellite. It also noted that the shuttle was launched 36 hours before the incident "eastwards at the unusual local time of 0232, the first nighttime launch." "It is possible that, in its orbital passes to the south of the Soviet Union, it would have been advantageously placed to eavesdrop on emergency communications streaming east to west across the USSR between the Far Eastern command and the center of political control in Moscow," it said. The most commonly advanced explanation of why the Korean jet crossed into Soviet airspace is navigational failure, though the manufacturers of the navigational equipment have been unwilling to believe that all three systems failed at once. The article speculated that Moscow may have extracted a pledge from Washington to demilitarize the shuttle as the price for not publicly damaging U.S. credibility on the issue. It said Moscow may have let Washington know that it knew that space intelligence-gathering was the real reason why the Korean airliner entered Soviet airspace and threatened to pursue the evidence publicly. It pointed to "an astonishing pall of U.S. and Soviet government silence which rapidly fell over the event." -------------------------------------- The above wire service report appeared in the June 18 Chicago Tribune. Mike Kelly