K.A.L. 007: U.S. silence says it all

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international union affiliates); Suzanne Kelly, staff representative of the Virginia Education Association/NEA; Ed Mann, retired president of USWA Local 1462, and others joined in the workshop and floor debates with peace, religious, and antinuclear activists.

"A terroristic act of utter barbarity.

That is how the U.S. government and the big-business media described the shooting down by Soviet aircraft of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 on Aug. 31, 1983.

The incident, which occurred over the Soviet Union, took the lives of 269 people. The first anniversary of this tragic event has been cause for more excoriations of the "evil empire" to the East. But there is another story, one certain to raise the wrath of the Pentagon brass, that is beginning to see the light.

David Pearson, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University who is doing a dissertation on the Defense Department's World Wide Military Command and Control System, has spent the last year researching the available technical literature on K.A.L. 007's ill-fated journey. Pearson presents his research in a remarkable article in the Aug. 18-25 issue of The Nation entitled "K.A.L. 007, What the U.S. Knew And When We Knew It."

His conclusion? There was nothing "accidental" about K.A.L. 007's intrusion into Soviet airspace. Rather, the airliner made a "deliberate, carefully planned intrusion into Soviet territory with the knowledge of U.S. military and intelligence agencies."

It is likely, Pearson concludes, that "a conscious policy decision was made by the U.S. government—at what level it is not clear-to risk the lives of 269 innocent people on the assumption that an extraordinary opportunity for gleaning intelligence information should not be missed...."

Pearson says it is likely that U.S. intelligence did not expect the Soviets to

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