Holes in Reagan's

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Two auestions for Reagan: whi was the airliner off course and whi AT FIRST the USSR simply REAGAN has made the most of the USSR's shooting-down of a Korean airliner and subsequent bland 'explanations'.

But was the US such an innocent by-stander as Reagan says? Martin Thomas reports.

warning shots, then on September 12 - conceded that it did. Washington asserted initially that it had irrefutable' evidence that the Russian fighters knew it was a civilian airliner, then withdrew this claim.

And the US has steadfastly refused to publish the whole of the tapes it has.

All this sheds doubt on the official US answer to two big questions: why was the airliner off course, and why was it not warned?

Warning

The official US/Japanese explanation for not warning the airliner is that they did not know what was happening until after it had happened. The Japanese civilian air authorities could only go by the airliner's own reports of its position (which was way out); the blip seen on Japanese military radar in Wakkanai could only be identified with hindsight; and the Russian pilots' radio conversations were being recorded on tape rather than listened to live' But that excuse is spoiled somewhat by the fact that the US also offers another one which contradicts it. 'The danger became apparent only in the final moments of Flight 007 - since other commercial planes have scrambled Soviet defence systems and flown on safely... (Newsweek, September 12).

This second excuse suggests that US authorities were aware that the airliner had 'scrambled Soviet defence systems' and consciously allowed it to proceed on the calculation that the USSR would not dare to shoot it down.

The airliner = according to the US's own account had stirred the Russian defence system into action for some 2½ hours. Is it likely that the US, which has major surveillance facilities in the area, would have remained unaware didn't the US and Japanese warn it? the disaster, it was able to give the precise time when Russian radar first located the airliner. The US monitoring facilities certainly picked up that contact.

Did the record really remain unexamined for 2½ hours? Does the US really install elaborate, expensive surveillance equipment, in an area whre it, too, has important military bases — only to leave the information gathered by that equipment to gather dust?

The fact suggest that the Us, at the very least, consciously allowed the airliner to continue off course. But there seems to be more to the off-course route than just a navigation error.

It took the USA a full week to come up with the claim that part of the navigation system had malfunctioned and been replaced at Anchorage. _ Apparently the airliner had a system which would inform the pilot of its position on the basis of measuring the distance travelled from its starting point. If the starting point was put into the system wrong; then the system would give the pilot wrong positions all along.

But Korean Airlines insist that the system was programmed correctly. In any case, if the starting point had been put in wrong, then the plane would have gone off course right from the start - which it didn't.

Activate

Duncan Campbell (New Statesman, September 9) suggests the airliner could have been consciously sent into USSR air space in order to activate the defences and thus provide information for the US monitoring facilities on how those defences work. The Morning Star (September 5, September 7) states that the pilots on the airliner were military personnel, and that past Korean Airlines passengers have told Canadian papers that KAL planes often fly without lights.

Why didn't the KAL pilot respond to the Russian fighters' warning shots and signals? The US says that radio contact was impossible between the airliner and the fighters (the Russians deny this), but the Korean pilot did not even scene to respond. The most Ii! response reported from i we i decreasing speed =Eir= sbox down, fear, wret according to the Russian fighter pilots' radio reports as published by the US.

It looks like the KAL pilot may consciously have decided to go off course and risk the consequences.

The Daily Express - no apologist for the Kremlin -asks whether in fact the plane was equipped for spying:

'Some diplomats claim that the Americans - like the Soviets - have for years been using some civil airlines for photographic missions over sensitive territory.

'The US is believed not to use its own airlines or those of major Western nations.

'Usually a country which is economically or politically dependent on Washington is selected to "volunteer" for overflying particularly sensitive areas.

'South Korea would be a natural candidate.

'Why did Korean Captain Chun Byong-In, a veteran with 10,000 hours flying, make such a sustained navigational error on a route he must have known by heart?

'Why did he fail to respond to apparently repeated attempts by Soviet fighters to force him to land?

'Why was no alert raised when US officers collecting taped evidence of operations by the Soviet fighters must have known that a passenger plane was blundering into appalling danger?

'Had the Korean pilot known that his plane was equipped for spying he would probably have been under secret orders on no account to put down in Soviet territory if intercepted. He would have had to fly on' I'he Sunday Times summarises: There is now growing conviction in the west that the South Korean airliner flew deliberately into Soviet airspace... ' (September 11).

If so, that doesn't absolve the Russian bureaucrats from answering the questions about what they did. It doesn't justify them. But it does show the US up to be hypocrites twice over.

Hypocrites because the US ruling • class which claims to stand for civilisation and humanity is helping to massacre thousands in Central America at the same time. And hypocrites because there is evidence that the US consciously planned or permitted the KAL fight - in full knowledge of the likely consequences - for its own military/intelligence purposes.