Korean Air Lines Flight 007 alternate theories

Korean Air Lines Flight 007 alternative theories concerns the various theories put forward regarding the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. The aircraft was en route from New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

via Anchorage

Anchorage, Alaska

Anchorage is a unified home rule municipality in the southcentral part of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is the northernmost major city in the United States...

to Seoul

Seoul

Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...

when it strayed into prohibited Soviet airspace

Prohibited airspace

Prohibited airspace refers to an area of airspace within which flight of aircraft is not allowed, usually due to security concerns. It is one of many types of special use airspace designations and is depicted on aeronautical charts with the letter "P" followed by a serial number...

and was shot down by Soviet jet fighters.

Flight 007 has been the subject of ongoing controversy and has spawned a number of conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theory

A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...

. Many of these are based on the suppression of evidence such as the flight data recorder

Flight data recorder

A flight data recorder is an electronic device employed to record any instructions sent to any electronic systems on an aircraft. It is a device used to record specific aircraft performance parameters...

s, unexplained details such as the role of a USAF RC-135 surveillance aircraft, or merely Cold War disinformation

Disinformation

Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...

and propaganda. The various theories that have been put forward generally reflect their authors' political orientations: Right-wing theories mirror the US government position in 1983, while left-wing theories reflect the Soviet position at the time. Some commentators also felt that the International Civil Aviation Organization

International Civil Aviation Organization

The International Civil Aviation Organization , pronounced , , is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It codifies the principles and techniques of international air navigation and fosters the planning and development of international air transport to ensure safe and orderly growth...

(ICAO) report into the incident failed to address key points adequately, such as the reason for the aircraft's deviation. The release of flight data recorder evidence by the Soviet Union in 1993, ten years after the event, seriously challenged many of these theories. Some alternative interpretations focus on evidential questions largely independent of political considerations.

One of the first theories was that Space Shuttle Challenger

Space Shuttle Challenger

Space Shuttle Challenger was NASA's second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service, Columbia having been the first. The shuttle was built by Rockwell International's Space Transportation Systems Division in Downey, California...

and a satellite

Spy satellite

A spy satellite is an Earth observation satellite or communications satellite deployed for military or intelligence applications....

were monitoring the airliner's progress over Soviet territory. Defence Attaché, which printed this claim, was sued by Korean Air Lines and forced to pay damages and print an apology.

Flight crew awareness of deviation

The reasons put forward for the aircraft's deviation range from a lack of situational awareness by the pilots (ICAO), to a planned and intentional deviation (Pearson), to an Inertial Navigation system (INS) programming error by 10 degrees of longitude during the inputing of the ramp starting position by the crew (Hersh pp. 199–213, the "Harold Ewing (H/E) scenario," which ICAO studied in great detail). All accounts note that the pilots had several sources of information that could have alerted them to their increasing deviation from their planned route. The H/E scenario additionally suggests the flight's first officer did know they were flying away from the planned course, but the airline's culture discouraged anyone from questioning the captain's conduct of the flight, so he remained silent.

The horizontal situation indicator

Horizontal Situation Indicator

The horizontal situation indicator is an aircraft instrument normally mounted below the artificial horizon in place of a conventional heading indicator. It combines a heading indicator with a VOR/ILS display, reducing pilot workload by lessening the number of elements in the pilot's instrument...

(HSI): Pearson contends that the HSI’s needle could have alerted the pilots of their course deviation. He postulates that the needle of each pilot's HSI, capable of showing deviation only up to 8 nautical miles (14.8 km), should have been “pegged” all the way to the side. The pilots, thus, could in theory have known that they were at least 8 nautical miles (14.8 km) off course.

Despite this, at 1349 UTC, the pilots were reporting that they were on course ("007, Bethel at forty niner.") Fifty minutes after takeoff, military radar at King Salmon, Alaska acquired KAL 007 at more than 12.6 nautical miles (23.3 km) off course. The deviation exceeded the expected accuracy of the INS (2 nautical miles (3.7 km) an hour) by a factor of six.

Difficulties in making required reports: Pilot and copilot could also have been aware of the aircraft’s serious deviation because now, much more than 12 nautical miles (22.2 km) off course, KAL 007 was too far off course for the pilots to make their required Very High Frequency (VHF) radio reports, and had to relay these reports via KAL Flight 015, just minutes behind and on course (KAL 007, increasingly off course, relied on KAL 015 three times to relay its reports to Anchorage Air Traffic Control). By being forced to rely on KAL 015 to relay messages, KAL 007 should have (by definition) understood that they were well off course.

At one point in this section of its flight, (1443 UTC) KAL 007 put a call through a navigational "hookup", the International Flight Service Station on HF. Flight 007, now too distant to speak directly with Anchorage controller through VHF, was transmitting its message using HF. At another point of this section of the flight, at waypoint NABIE, KAL 007 was too far north to make radio contact with the VHF air traffic control relay station on St. Paul Island. KAL 015 relayed for KAL 007. The message was a change in the estimated time of arrival (ETA) for the next waypoint called NEEVA, delaying by four minutes the ETA that KAL 015 had previously relayed on behalf of KAL 007. Since a revised ETA could only be calculated by means of readout information presented by KAL 007’s Inertial Navigation Systems Control Display unit, Pearson asserts that pilot and copilot were once again presented with the opportunity of verifying their position and becoming aware of their enormous deviation.

Contrary wind conditions of KAL 007 and KAL 015:
KAL 015 had departed about 15 minutes behind KAL 007. About 23 minutes before the tragedy, the two aircraft compared the times that they expected to reach waypoint NOKKA, at which point it became apparent that KAL 015 would reach it only four minutes behind KAL 007. KAL 015 reported experiencing strong tailwinds, while KAL 007 was experiencing a headwind. The paradox of the different flying conditions experienced by two aircraft supposedly flying so close together was discussed in the cabin of KAL 007, but the crew failed to draw any conclusions from it.

Weather radar: There was one last aid to warn the crew. Displayed in consoles at the knees of both pilot and copilot, the plane’s weather radar

Weather radar

Weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, estimate its type . Modern weather radars are mostly pulse-Doppler radars, capable of detecting the motion of rain droplets in addition to the...

KAL 007’s two Bendix RDR-IF radars had a maximum range of 200 nautical miles (370.4 km) with a 180° scan capability. ICAO 1983, p. 14, section 1.6.4.1 could have alerted them, both over Kamchatka and later over Sakhalin, to the fact that they were no longer flying over water, as they should have been. Weather radar has two modes—ground mapping (when it would be possible to look down and see water or land masses as well as the contours of the coast lines) and weather surveillance mode for thunderstorm detection. In ground mapping mode, KAL 007 had only to make sure that the land mass of Kamchatka and the island string of the Kurile chain would remain to the right. That night, KAL 007’s weather radar was probably not in land mapping mode, for the weather was inclement.
The ICAO's meteorological analysis concluded that "there was extensive coverage of low, medium, and high level clouds over southern Kamchatka associated with an active cold front".” ICAO’s analysis of KAL 007’s weather radar functioning would state, "it was concluded that the radar was not functioning properly or that the ground mapping capability was not used".”

According to the ICAO, an indicator of pilot unawareness of the deviation from route of their flight was the bantering and casual cockpit conversation at the times that awareness of deviation into hostile airspace would have increased tension and have precluded this. (See Korean Air Lines Flight 007 transcripts.)

Planned spy mission theory

In 1994, Robert W Allardyce and James Gollin wrote Desired Track: The Tragic Flight of KAL Flight 007, supporting the spy mission theory. In 2007, they reiterated their position in a series of articles in Airways Magazine
Airways Magazine
Airways, styled 'a Global Review of Commercial Flight', is a magazine published in the United States by Airways International, Inc. since 1994....

, arguing that the investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization was a cover-up of a "carefully planned ferret mission". Furthermore they suggested that the NSA had implemented Electronic Counter Measures to cover for the mission and that the flight recorder

Flight recorder

A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of an aircraft accident or incident. For this reason, flight recorders are required to be capable of surviving the conditions likely to be encountered in a severe aircraft...

tapes had been planted for the Soviet recovery effort to find.

Planned spy mission theories point out incongruence of a civilian passenger liner going accidentally astray and unnoticed precisely in one of the most militarily sensitive and well observed areas of the Cold War. They point out the following: there were powerful land and sea radar arrays that could well have tracked KAL 007 as it crossed through NORAD prohibited-to-civilian flight zone and approached and entered Soviet territory. These were Cobra Judy aboard the U.S.S. Observation Island, then off the coast of Kamchatka; Shemya Island’s Cobra Dane line of sight radar with the capability of tracking an airplane at 30 thousand feet altitude through an area covering 400 miles (the curvature of the earth being its limiting factor); and Shemya Island’s Cobra Talon, an over the horizon (OTH) “backscatter” radar array with a range from 575 miles (925.4 km) to 2070 miles (3,331.3 km). Cobra Talon operated by bouncing its emissions off the ionosphere (deflection) to the other side of the line of sight horizon, thus acquiring its targets. These radar arrays had capability for both surveillance and tracking. Whether this capability was actualized in the case of Flight 007 is currently unknown. In addition, the United States Air Force radar stations at Cape Newenham and Cape Romanzoff, two of twelve comprising the United States Alaskan Distant Early Warning/Aircraft Control and Warning (DEW/ACW) System, had the capability to track all aircraft heading toward the Russian Buffer Zone. Well within range of these radar sites, KAL 007 had veered directly toward Kamchatka.

Theory of intentional deviation by pilots

This theory, promoted by David Pearson in his book KAL 007: the Cover-up postulates that the pilots made "a deliberate, carefully planned intrusion into Soviet territory with the knowledge of US military and intelligence agencies." He argues that it was impossible for the pilots not to know that they were off course. Various mechanisms, such as the Horizonal Situation Indicator

Horizontal Situation Indicator

, should, assuming that the aircraft's navigation systems were functional and correctly programmed, have alerted the pilots of their course deviation. In addition, VHF transmissions to Anchorage had to be relayed via flight KAL 015 (which should have been a few minutes behind KAL 007, had it been on course), because the plane had travelled too far off course.

Pearson has also questioned why, if the pilots had unintentionally strayed off course, a US RC-135 reconnaissance plane in the area did not see the jumbo jet (or pick up the Soviet radio chatter regarding it) and warn it of its danger, as well as informing its own command and civilian air traffic controllers.

The theory of intentional deviation suffered a blow in 1992 with the handover by the Russian Federation of the Cockpit Voice Recorder tape. This showed that at the times of most danger during the flight, the flight crew was relaxed speaking about currency exchange at Kimpo airport, or bored, or even bantering with each other, indicating to ICAO analysts that the crew of KAL 007 were unaware of the danger they were then exposed to.

Murray Sayle

Murray Sayle

Murray William Sayle OAM was an Australian journalist, novelist and adventurer.A native of Sydney, Sayle moved to London in 1952. He was a foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s...

described an earlier version of Pearson's theory published in The Nation

The Nation

The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...

as containing "schoolboy howlers, or, better, graduate-student howlers" regarding the operation of cockpit positioning monitors, and Pearson's approach in general as lacking objectivity, and the work of a conspiracy theorist.

Air battle cover-up theory

Another theory was suggested by Michael Brun in his book Incident at Sakhalin: The True Mission of KAL Flight 007. According to this book, KAL007 was involved in a spy mission intended to trigger Soviet air defences and to cover the missions of several USAF spy airplanes

Surveillance aircraft

A surveillance aircraft is an aircraft used for surveillance — collecting information over time. They are operated by military forces and other government agencies in roles such as intelligence gathering, battlefield surveillance, airspace surveillance, observation , border patrol and fishery...

. The Korean aircraft was communicating with Tokyo-Narita controllers around half an hour after the official time of the shootdown. A large air battle allegedly occurred between Soviet Air Force and USAF, during which the Soviets shot down several American aircraft, including an RC-135, an EF-111

EF-111A Raven

The General Dynamics/Grumman EF-111A Raven was an electronic warfare aircraft designed to replace the B-66 Destroyer in the United States Air Force...

and probably even an SR-71

SR-71 Blackbird

The Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" was an advanced, long-range, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft. It was developed as a black project from the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft in the 1960s by the Lockheed Skunk Works. Clarence "Kelly" Johnson was responsible for many of the...

. The SU-15 pilot, Major Osipovich, flew two sorties and shot down two targets (contradicted by the 1991 interview with Osipovich). According to the theory, the whereabouts of the KAL-007 wreckage is not known to anyone, but is probably 500 kilometres (310.7 mi) away from Moneron Island

Moneron Island

Moneron Island, is a Russian possession located off Sakhalin Island.-Description:Moneron has an area of about and a highest point of . It is approximately long by wide, and is located from Sakhalin's port of Nevelsk and about directly southwest of Sakhalin Island itself at the northeastern...

down the coast of Japan. The theory postulates further that the real cause of the destruction is not known, but could have been a surface-to-air missile

Surface-to-air missile

A surface-to-air missile or ground-to-air missile is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles...

fired from (similar case with shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655

Iran Air Flight 655

Iran Air Flight 655 was a civilian jet airliner shot down by U.S. missiles on 3 July 1988, over the Strait of Hormuz, toward the end of the Iran–Iraq War...

) or from Japanese forces, who could not identify the airliner which was keeping radio silence. The lack of bodies, body parts, and wreckage of KAL 007 around Sakhalin and Moneron Islands is an indication to Brun that KAL 007 did not come down in those locales. Sparse remains showing up on the beaches of Hokkaido, south of Moneron and Sakhalin, are evidence to Brun that KAL 007 was downed further south and these remains brought northward by the north running current of the Tsushima along the west Japanese coast. This opposes the commonly held understanding that the remains were brought down from Sakhalin and Moneron waters to the beaches of Hokkaido by the 1 miles per hour (1.6 km/h) southerly-flowing West Sakhalin current in between Moneron and Sakhalin islands and, near the tip of Sakhalin, 35 naut. miles away from Moneron, moved by the swifter (6 or 7 naut. miles an hour) West Sakhalin convergent current on into the Soya Strait and then onto the beaches of Hokkaido.

Brun's theory attempts to account for the only eyewitness report of an explosion near Moneron Island which is considered to be that of KAL 007 on its way to the water. A Japanese fisherman aboard the 58th Chidori Maru had reported to the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency (and this report cited by ICAO analysis) of hearing a plane at low altitude but did not see it. Then he heard "a loud sound followed by a bright flash of light on the horizon, then another dull sound and a less intense flash of light on the horizon" as well as smelling aviation fuel. Michel Brun maintains that the fisherman account of the destruction of KAL 007 is not sustainable because if the aircraft exploded while low on the horizon, the sound of the explosion could not have, as reported by the fishermen, reached the ear before the flash of the explosion reached the eye, as light travels faster than sound. Brun further maintains, in accordance with his theory of an aerial combat between Russian and U.S. aircraft, that the "loud sound" heard prior to the "flash of light on the horizon" could have been the sound of a missile fired by a military jet flying above or near the Chidori Maru 58, at an opposing military jet, the explosion of which was seen by the fisherman, and wrongly attributed by ICAO analysts to KAL 007, which Brun believes went down in Japanese waters much further south of Moneron.

Theories about the lack of bodies, body parts and tissues, and luggage at determined impact site of KAL 007

These theories attempt to contend with the fact that there were no surface finds at the place posited for the KAL 007's impact with the water. There were no bodies, body parts, or body tissues, and there was no luggage. Further, on the sea bottom there was only one partial torso and 10 body parts or tissues, possibly from the same individual, noted by Soviet civilian divers who had commenced diving to the wreckage purported to be of KAL 007 just two weeks after the shootdown. Further, for all of the 269 occupants, divers reported with surprise either no luggage or, in one diver's report, there were only a few pieces of luggage at the bottom.

KAL 007 was spy plane with only military complement

The earliest such theory was that no bodies were found because KAL 007 had but a small complement of military personnel and no civilian passengers. This first version of the spy plane theory was by and large discarded by September 9, 1983, when Marshal Nicolay Ogarkov, U.S.S.R. Chief of General Staff and First Deputy Defense Minister, conceded that there had been civilian passengers aboard KAL 007. In his press conference of September 9, 1983, as quoted by Moscow Radio of the same date, Ogarkov stated, “It has been proved irrefutably that the intrusion of the plane of the South Korean Airlines into Soviet airspace was a deliberately, thoroughly planned intelligence operation. It was directed from certain centers in the territory of the United States and Japan. A civilian plane was chosen for its deliberately, disregarding or, possibly, counting on loss of human life.”

Crab theory

The second theory for the virtual disappearance of 269 people from the site of the crash is suggested by Soviet correspondent Andrey Illesh in his book, The Mystery of Korean Boeing 747. This theory proposes that the bodies were eaten by giant crabs

Japanese spider crab

The , Macrocheira kaempferi, is a species of marine crab that lives in the waters around Japan. It has the largest leg span of any arthropod, reaching up to and weighing up to . It is the subject of small-scale fishery.-Description:...

. There is even a picture of one of those crabs that supposedly populate the sea bottom where KAL 007 finally came to rest. The crab theory has been persistent and been echoed by the Soviet interceptor pilot Gennadie Osipovich himself (though evidently not with full conviction).

“…I heard that they had found the ‘Boeing’ when I was still on Sakhalin. And even investigated it. But no one saw people there. I, however, explain that by the fact that there are crabs in the sea off Sakhalin that immediately devour everything… I did hear that they found only a hand in a black glove. Perhaps it was the hand of the pilot of the aircraft that I shot down. You know, even now I cannot really believe that there were passengers on board. You cannot write off everyone to the crabs… Surely something would be left?… Nevertheless, I am a supporter of the old version: It was a spy plane. In any event, it was not happenstance that it flew towards us.”

Professor William Newman, marine biologist, explains why the crab (or any other sea creature) theory is untenable: “Even if we proceed from the supposition that crustaceans, or sharks, or something else fell upon the flesh, the skeletons should have remained. In many cases, skeletons were found on the sea or ocean floor, which had sat there for many years and, even decades. In addition, the crustaceans would not have touched bones.” In addition, the crab theory could not account for the lack of luggage.

Decompression theory

The third explanation is provided by Izvestiya

Izvestia

Izvestia is a long-running high-circulation daily newspaper in Russia. The word "izvestiya" in Russian means "delivered messages", derived from the verb izveshchat . In the context of newspapers it is usually translated as "news" or "reports".-Origin:The newspaper began as the News of the...

correspondents Shalnev's and Illesh's interview of Mikhail Igorevich Girs, Captain of the Tinro 2 submersible which made most of the dives. In the May 31, 1991 edition Izvestia, Capt. Girs provides this fourth explanation—the passengers were sucked out of the aircraft, leaving their clothes behind

“Something else was inexplicable to us—zipped up clothes. For instance, a coat, slacks, shorts, a sweater with zippers—the items were different, but, zipped up. And nothing inside. We came to this conclusion then: Most likely, the passengers had been pulled out of the plane by decompression, and they fell in a completely different place from where we found the debris. They had been spread out over a much larger area. The current also did its work.”

"Windtunnel" theory

The latest reference to the decompression theory of the missing bodies is mentioned by Lieutenant General Valeri Kamenski, most recently Chief of Staff and Deputy Commander of the Ukrainian Air Force and formerly Chief of Staff of the Soviet Far East Military District Air Defense Force in an article dated March 15, 2001, in the Ukrainian weekly, “Facti I Kommentari”, General Kamenski spoke about the mystery. “It is still a mystery what happened to the bodies of the crew and passengers on the plane. According to one theory, right after the rocket’s detonation, the nose and tail section of the jumbo fell off and the mid fuselage became a sort of wind tunnel so the people were swept through it and scattered over the surface of the ocean. Yet in this case, some of the bodies were to have been found during the search operations in the area. The question of what actually happened to the people has not been given a distinct answer.”

Soviet naval diver removal of passengers theory

This theory rests on the fact that when the Soviet civilian divers first went down to the wreck just 2 weeks after the shootdown, the finds they encountered were contrary to an aircraft having fallen from the sky, and corresponded more to "secondary placement" of the wreckage, and removal of the occupants of KAL 007, both passengers and aircrew, by the Soviet navy who they claim had been at work prior to them, both as divers, and in the use of trawlers.

“The first submergence was on 15 September, two weeks after the aircraft had been shot down. As we learned then, before us the trawlers had done some ‘work’ in the designated quadrant. It is hard to understand what sense the military saw in the trawling operation. First drag everything haphazardly around the bottom by the trawls, and then send in the submersibles?...It is clear that things should have been done in the reverse order.”

Captain Mikhail Igorevich Girs: "Submergence 10 October. Aircraft pieces, wing spars, pieces of aircraft skin, wiring, and clothing. But—no people. The impression is that all of this has been dragged here by a trawl rather than falling down from the sky…"

This was one of the theories expressed in the original izvestia series of 1990,91, and the later interview of Civilian diver Vadim Kondrabaev (later reprinted in English by Roy's Russian Aircraft Review). Russian deep sea diver Vadim Kondrabaev, one of the civilian divers brought to explore the wreckage of KAL 007 in 1983 gave an interview to the Russian magazine Itogi published on October 1, 2000. He points out that after he and the other civilian divers were brought to Sakhalin on September 10, 1983, they were kept there until "the end of September." "...They literally forgot about us for several days." When they did get to the wreckage, they were surprised to find neither bodies nor luggage. "...of the people who supposedly were on board, something should have remained. We worked beneath the water almost a month for 5 hours a day and didn't find one suitcase, not even a handle from them. After all there is baggage on any air trip. We either were able to work on the remains, which already had been filtered by the special services, or, what I also do not discount, there were no passengers at all on the airplane, and they stuffed the cabin with rubbish. ...It is quite possible that several mini submarines with military divers went down to the Boeing even before us and collected everything, and scattered the remaining parts of the destroyed liner about or left them there where they were needed, and afterwards called us as a smoke screen."

Abduction and Retention of Passengers and Crew theory

The abduction theory proposes that KAL 007, having been missed by one of the missiles, landed or successfully ditched with passengers and crew surviving; they were then abducted and put into prison camps by the Soviet authorities. Among its advocates are the Israeli-American Bert Schlossberg, a son-in-law of one of the crash victims (and through his organisation, the International Committee for the Rescue of KAL 007 Survivors), and Avraham Shifrin, a Soviet emigre to Israel in the 1970s and former Soviet prison camp inmate. It has received some coverage in the conservative news agency Accuracy in Media

Accuracy in Media

Accuracy In Media is an American, non-profit news media watchdog founded in 1969 by economist Reed Irvine. AIM describes itself as "a non-profit, grassroots citizens watchdog of the news media that critiques botched and bungled news stories and sets the record straight on important issues that...

and also the magazine of the John Birch Society

John Birch Society

The John Birch Society is an American political advocacy group that supports anti-communism, limited government, a Constitutional Republic and personal freedom. It has been described as radical right-wing....

, whose second President, Democratic Representative from Georgia Larry McDonald

Larry McDonald

Lawrence Patton McDonald, M.D. was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the seventh congressional district of Georgia as a Democrat...

was a passenger on the flight. Schlossberg, as a new citizen of Israel, met Shifrin in 1989, and through Shifrin, met and questioned one of his sources, and came to question the accepted belief that the people of KAL 007 had perished. Through his own investigation and research of newly released documents, Schlossberg became convinced that the passengers and crew of KAL 007 had been recovered by the Russians and then imprisoned. In a self-published book and on the Committee website, Schlossberg corroborates this theory with claims that Soviet military communication and Black Box transcripts show a post missile detonation flightpath at altitude 5,000 meters for almost 5 minutes until over the only land mass in the Tatar straits and within Soviet territorial waters, where it began a slow spiral descent. He claims this indicates both, the aircraft's capability of extended flight and pilots' intention to water land near the only point where rescue would be feasible; he claims a lack of bodies, body parts and tissues, and luggage, both on the surface of the sea and at the bottom; the Soviet obstruction of U.S., Korean, and Japanese search vessels trying to enter into Soviet territorial waters around Moneron Island, near which KAL 007 was last tracked spiraling downward; Russian Federation released previously unknown Soviet transcripts of mission orders within one half hour of the shootdown, sending helicopters, KGB patrol boats, and civilian trawlers to Moneron Island

Moneron Island

; and the Russian Federation acknowledgement of Soviet deception in its part of the search for KAL 007, all indicate a Soviet recovery of passengers and crew from the damaged and downed passenger jet. Schlossberg has also claimed that a letter sent in 1991 by senator Jesse Helms

Jesse Helms

Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...

, while he was ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, to Russian President Boris Yeltsin

Boris Yeltsin

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...

requesting information about the fate of KAL 007, including, in a list of questions, a request to know the whereabouts of any survivors and their camp locations, and requesting also to know of the fate of Larry McDonald, indicates that Helms took the abduction theory seriously. Schlossberg's work has not gained mainstream media attention; in a review of the circumstances of the death of Larry McDonald, University of Georgia

University of Georgia

The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...

Law Professor Donald E. Wilkes considered the theory as "even more preposterous" than Michael Brun's theory of a Japanese locale for the shootdown and an air battle having taken place between Soviet and American aircraft. Avraham Shifrin, a self-declared KGB expert, claimed that according to the investigation of his research centre, KAL 007 landed on water north of Moneron, and the passengers successfully disembarked on emergency floats. The Soviets collected them and subsequently sent them to camps (with the children "separated from their parents and safely hidden in the orphan houses of one of the Soviet Middle Asian republics"). McDonald in particular was supposed to have gone through a number of prisons in Moscow, among them the Central Lubyanka, and Lefortovo

Lefortovo prison

Lefortovo prison is a prison in Moscow, Russia, which, since 2005, has been under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. It was built in 1881...

. The aeronautics journalist James Oberg

James Oberg

James Edward Oberg is an American space journalist and historian, regarded as an expert on the Russian space program.-Biography:...

, while acknowledging Shifrin's expertise on Soviet prison camps, has stated that Shifrin "got real confused" about the fate of KAL 007. Hans Ephraimson, a relative of one of the passengers, has called Shifrin a "con man who has no idea how much grief he has caused to families," having been frustrated in his attempts to meet Shifrin's sources.

Meaconing of KAL 007 and the attempt of assassination theory

Meaconing

Meaconing is the interception and rebroadcast of navigation signals. These signals are rebroadcast on the received frequency to confuse enemy navigation. Consequently, aircraft or ground stations are given inaccurate bearings. Meaconing is more of a concern to personnel in navigation ratings than...

is the term to describe the interception and the rebroadcasting of navigational signals

Radio navigation

Radio navigation or radionavigation is the application of radio frequencies to determine a position on the Earth. Like radiolocation, it is a type of radiodetermination.The basic principles are measurements from/to electric beacons, especially...

in order to confuse the sending aircraft as to its true location. (There is an assumption that the target does not have secondary navigational aids such as INS

Inertial navigation system

An inertial navigation system is a navigation aid that uses a computer, motion sensors and rotation sensors to continuously calculate via dead reckoning the position, orientation, and velocity of a moving object without the need for external references...

or radar

Radar navigation

Marine and aviation radar systems can provide very useful navigation information in a variety of situations. When a vessel is within radar range of land or special radar aids to navigation, the navigator can take distances and angular bearings to charted objects and use these to establish arcs of...

). This is a prelude to the deviation such as experienced KAL 007 in its intended course from Anchorage Alaska to Seoul Korea. Meaconing had been used frequently during the Cold War. This theory often entails the following points which are shown to be true from the transcripts or assumed to be true by the holders of this theory:

The pilots of KAL 007 clearly believed that they were on another course than that they were actually flying; Democratic Congressman Larry McDonald

Larry McDonald

Lawrence Patton McDonald, M.D. was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the seventh congressional district of Georgia as a Democrat...

was known to be aboard KAL 007 and he was considered the chief anti-Communist in Congress as well as the second head of the John Birch Society

John Birch Society

; other anti-communist lawmakers were understood to have been with Larry McDonald aboard KAL 007 and were not known to have opted for another flight, KAL 015; These congressmen were North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms

Jesse Helms

Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...

, Idaho Sen. Steven Symms, and Kentucky Rep. Carroll J. Hubbard Jr. The intended destination and purpose of all these
congressman was ostensibly the Seoul celebration for the 30 year anniversary of the U.S. Korea Mutual Defense Treaty, but in actuality, the main purpose was for furthering the anti-Communist coalition, and activity. It is sometimes intimated that the Soviet meaconing of KAL 007 was with the tacit approval or with the active participation and planning of leftist and socialistic power centers of the U.S. Government; and finally, in support of the meacon theory, this information that surfaced during the ICAO investigation and is considered indicative of purposful intent to cause KAL 007 to go astray: At 28 minutes after takeoff, civilian radar at Kenai, on the eastern shore of Cook Inlet and 53 nautical miles (98.2 km) southwest of Anchorage, with a radar coverage of 175 miles (281.6 km) west of Anchorage, tracked KAL 007 more than six miles (10 km) north of where it should have been. Where it should have been was a location “fixed” by the nondirectional radio beacon (NDB) of Cairne Mountain. The NDB navigational aid operates by transmitting a continuous three-letter identification code which is picked up by the airborne receiver, the Automatic Direction Finder (ADF). Flights emanating from Anchorage, Alaska, traveling along route J501 had to pass Cairne Mt. Cairne Mountain was KAL 007’s first assigned navigational aid out of Anchorage Airport. Something was going wrong. That night, Douglas L. Porter was the controller at Air Route Traffic Control Center at Anchorage, assigned to monitor all flights in that section, recording their observed position in relation to the fix provided by the Cairne Mountain nondirectional beacon. Porter later testified that all had seemed normal to him. Yet he apparently failed to record, as required, the position of two flights that night—and only two: KAL 007, carrying Democratic Congressman McDonald and 268 others, and KAL 015, carrying Republican Senators Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Steven Symms of Idaho, Congressman Carroll J. Hubbard Jr. of Kentucky, and others, which followed KAL 007 by several minutes. If he had recorded them, the possibility of warning KAL 007 of its deviation would have resulted in the necessary correction for the rest of the flight. To holders of the meaconing theory, the above seem both curious and ominous and ancillary to their theory.

U.S. Government Cover-up Theory

Holders of this theory point to two sets of facts indicating that the US government had covered up the incident and had skewed the investigation for political ends. The first set of facts relate to US capability and actuality of tracking KAL 007 in its deviated flight, thus presenting the possibility of warning the air craft in time to avert its entrance into harms way.

The Cape Newenham and Cape Romanzoff radars monitored at the NORAD Regional Operations Command Center were but two of twelve comprising the United States Alaskan Distant Early Warning/Aircraft Control and Warning (DEW/ACW) System. These United States Air Force radar stations at Cape Newenham and Cape Romanzoff in Alaska had the capability to track all aircraft heading toward the Russian Buffer Zone, though it is not known if the radar results of such "outgoing" tracking would have been monitored in "real-time" at the facility at Elmendorf Air Force base. These tapes remain unavailable to the public for national security reasons. But there was another location at which KAL 007 could well have been tracked in its deviation. This was at the installation at King Salmon, Alaska. It is customary for the Air Force to impound radar trackings involving possible litigation in cases of aviation accidents. In the civil litigation for damages, the United States Department of Justice

United States Department of Justice

The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...

explained that the tapes from the Air Force radar installation at King Salmon, Alaska pertinent to KAL 007's flight in the Bethel area had been destroyed and could therefore not be supplied to the plaintiffs. At first, Justice Department lawyer Jan Van Flatern stated that they were destroyed 15 days after the shootdown. Later, he said he had "misspoken" and changed the time of destruction to 30 hours after the event. A Pentagon

The Pentagon

The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...

spokesman concurred, saying that the tapes are re-cycled for reuse from 24–30 hours afterwards, however the fate of KAL 007 was known inside this timeframe. Well within the 30 hours, it was known that something disastrous had happened to KAL 007. Why were not these tapes impounded, as the practice was, preventing them from being destroyed?

The second set of facts relate to a series of moves taking the investigation out of the hands of the hands of the National Transportation Safety Board and in the hands of the International Civil Aviation Organization. Normally, when an airliner crashes, responsibility for the inquiry falls to the NTSB, which has the technical expertise to assess what happened. Although the downing of the Flight 007 cannot be classified as a routine aviation disaster, the NTSB office in Anchorage was notified that the plane was missing just three hours after it had come down in the Sea of Japan

Sea of Japan

The Sea of Japan is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean, between the Asian mainland, the Japanese archipelago and Sakhalin. It is bordered by Japan, North Korea, Russia and South Korea. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it has almost no tides due to its nearly complete enclosure from the Pacific...

(East Sea) and immediately began to look into the matter. Shortly, after that, it was told to cease its investigation and forward to its headquarters in Washington all the material - originals and copies - it had gathered. From there, the information was sent to the State Department. James Michelangelo, chief of the NTSB's Anchorage office, was told by headquarters that the Board was off the case and that the State Department would handle the investigation. Eighteen months after the airliner was shot down, when asked if the State Department had ever conducted such an enquiry, a high-level State Department official, Lynn Pascoe, replied, "How is the State Department going to investigate?"

Holders of this theory ask why was the effective investigation in progress - conducted by the NTSB - Anchorage station chief, James Michelangelo - preempted (the very first occurrence) by the Washington based NTSB home office under orders from the State Department, which itself did not, as originally announced, investigate the disaster, but rather referred the investigation to the political and investigatively ineffective United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization? The ICAO has no subpoena powers and, according to its mandate, can analyse only material presented to it by its constituent interested members. ICAO's final reports, it is maintained, are reflections of the politically expedient rather than of an independent investigative determination. The only other air disaster ICAO had ever investigated was the Israeli shootdown of Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114

Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114

Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 was a regularly scheduled flight from Tripoli to Cairo via Benghazi shot down by Israeli fighter jets in 1973....

over the Sinai.

In January 1996, Hans Ephraimson, chairman of the "American Association for Families of KAL 007 Victims", claimed that South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan

Chun Doo-hwan

Chun Doo-hwan was a ROK Army general and the President of South Korea from 1980 to 1988. Chun was sentenced to death in 1996 for his heavy-handed response to the Gwangju Democratization Movement, but later pardoned by President Kim Young-sam with the advice of then President-elect Kim Dae-jung,...

accepted $4 million from Korean Air in order to gain "government protection" during the investigation of the shootdown.

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