In the midst of public outcry over the decision by Scottish authorities to free Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, convicted in 1991 for his involvement in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103   over Lockerbie, Scotland, the anniversary of an older case of state-sponsored terrorism, the shooting down by KAL 007 by Soviet jet fighters in 1983, is almost forgotten by the media and public.

When a bomb planted by Libyan terrorists tore Pan Am flight 103 from the sky on December 21, 1988, 270 people — 259 of them on the plane and 11 more on the ground — were killed. When a Soviet MiG-23 fired two air-to-air missiles at Korean Air Lines flight 007 on September 1, 1983, 269 people were onboard. Because the bomb aboard the Pan Am flight detonated earlier than planned, it was possible for investigators to painstaking reconstruct the plane as part of the investigation to determine the perpetrators of the heinous crime. The Soviets, however, hampered the investigation of their own crime, with the result that substantial questions remain unanswered a generation later.

After KAL 007, President Reagan addressed the nation, referring to the incident as a “crime against humanity which must never be forgotten.”



However, within a year, Reagan’s administration was working to restore normal relations with the Soviet Union.

Among the passengers of KAL 007 was Rep. Larry McDonald (D-GA), who was both a member of the House of Representatives and chairman of the John Birch Society, but the “collateral damage” from the Soviet attack included another member of Congress: Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA), whose last public appearance was at a press conference denouncing the Soviet Union. Sen. Jackson died of an aortic aneurysm on September 1, 1983.

In a Foreword to Jeffrey St. John’s 1984 book on the KAL 007 attack, Day of the Cobra, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) recounted meeting the family of Neil Grenfell from flight 007 while his own plane, KAL 015, was on the ground at the Anchorage airport at the same time as KAL 007, and his immediate emotional connection with the two Grenfell daughters: “In the quiet of the night, I can still hear those precious children laughing. I can feel their little arms around my neck. I can see them waving good-bye and blowing kisses to me as they departed. I simply cannot accept their deaths. My mind rejects any notion that a civilized country could wantonly, intentionally, premeditatedly shoot down an unarmed plane loaded with innocent men, women, and children.”

With time, Sen. Helms continued to make inquiry of Soviet, and later Russian, rulers seeking to determine what actually happened to the passengers of KAL 007. As was recounted for The New American last year,

In 1991, Senator Helms, as Minority Leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a report that noted: “KAL 007 probably ditched successfully, there may have been survivors, the Soviets have been lying massively, and diplomatic efforts need to be made to return the possible survivors.”

On December 10, 1991, just five days after Senator Helms had written to President Boris Yeltsin of the newly established Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic concerning the whereabouts of U.S. servicemen who were POWs or MIAs, he sent a second letter to Yeltsin concerning KAL 007. Helms wrote: “One of the greatest tragedies of the Cold War was the shoot-down of the Korean Airlines flight KAL-007 by the Armed Forces of what was then the Soviet Union on September 1, 1983.... The KAL-007 tragedy was one of the most tense incidences of the entire Cold War. However, now that relations between our two nations have improved substantially, I believe that it is time to resolve the mysteries surrounding this event.”

Nearly two decades later, those mysteries remain unresolved. In 2001, the International Committee for the Rescue of KAL 007 Survivors, Inc. was formed “to uncover and disseminate the truth about the KAL 007 incident and to effect the rescue and return home of its survivors.” The committee maintains, “Japanese radar trackings, Soviet ground-to-ground and ground-to-air communications, KAL 007's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, the debris (and lack thereof), eye-witness testimonies.... All these and more, when pieced together, tell of a plane which was, indeed, damaged, but which managed to land safely, and of passengers who survived and were rescued by the Russians — only to be imprisoned to this day.” Although such a possibility stretches the limits of the imagination, the evidence which allows for the possibility of a controlled ‘ditching’ of the plane cannot be discounted.

Incidents of mass murder such as Pan Am 103 and KAL 007 may seem troublesome to the international agendas of the political elites, but for the families, and for those who remember the shock and horror which such acts of terrorism evoked in 1983 and 1988, the victims must never be forgotten, and the perpetrators of the crime forever held responsible— at least in the court of public opinion, if not before the bar of the justice of nations.

Photo: AP Images

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Bonnie said:

Good read If you are looking for more information on the subject, a good place to start is to find a copy of "Day of the Cobra" by Jeffrey St.John.

September 01, 2009

still free said:

Excellent article. Thank you for reminding us about this atrocity. And let us pray for these souls and for their families.

September 01, 2009

Bert Schlossberg said:

Director, International Committee for the Rescue of KAL 007 Survivors There has been enough evidence that has both surfaced and dug up to indicate that Coongressman Larry McDonald had survived the shootdown and may still be alive. The same for one of the Grenfell girls, Noelle aged 5 at the time. See http://www.rescue007.org/faq.htm#10 and http://www.rescue007.org/grenfells.htm

September 01, 2009 | url

Bert Schlossberg said:

... Time obliterates memory or at least pushes the thoughts and the feelings we had down into the recesses of the subconscious. We wish not to be disturbed at what might be, what has already happened to those whom we have been close, have loved. The vitality of new relations take the ascendency helping us to forget. But this doesn't change a thing. God is with them and has not forgotten. Have we?

September 01, 2009 | url

Thomas Paine said:

Lets not forget the CFR L. Fletcher Prouty, highly respected military insider and author, wrote in his book on the CIA, that most likely KAL 007 was set up by secret elements in the CIA to get shot down by the Russians, so the neocons could get a large military bill passed. How coincidental that Larry McDonald was on that flight just months after he proposed a full congressional investigation into the possible treasonous acts of the CFR. (Kill two birds with one stone) This possibility of NWO involvement makes a lot of sense in light of the strange lack of information and investigation on the whole subject. Don't count on any survivors. God bless you Larry McDonald, you and your uncle General Patton were true American Hero's. Your patriotic bravery is unsurpassed.

September 02, 2009

Bert Schlossberg said:

... There was a real lack of investigation.the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was legally required to investigate. On the morning of September 1, the NTSB chief in Alaska, James Michelangelo, received an order from the NTSB in Washington at the behest of the State Department requiring all documents relating to the NTSB investigation to be sent to Washington, and notifying him that the State Department would now conduct the investigation. The US State Department, after closing the NTSB investigation on the grounds that it was not an accident, pursued an ICAO investigation instead. Unlike the NTSB, ICAO can subpoena neither persons nor documents and is dependent on the governments involved—in this incident, the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and South Korea—to supply evidence voluntarily. The ICAO investigation did not have the authority to compel the states involved to hand over evidence, instead having to rely on what they voluntarily submitted.Consequently, the investigation did not have access to sensitive evidence such as radar data, intercepts, ATC tapes, or the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) (whose discovery the U.S.S.R. had kept secret).

September 02, 2009 | url

Bonnie said:

Wrangel Island It is believed that some of the passengers and crew may have been sent to Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean. What is really ironic is that Wrangel is American territory occupied by the Soviets in 1924. For more, see: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/State+gives+away+the+store+again.+(Wrangel+Island,+Alaska)-a04036179

September 03, 2009

Bert Schlossberg said:

... Yes Wrangel Isalnd is legally U.S. territory. For it to legally be ceded to Russia, there would first have to be the consent of Alaska. This has not happened,. But that may not stop the U.S. Government. Likewise Sakhalin Island had been occupied by the Soviets just in the North. Two weeks before the end of World War ll, the Soviets routed Japan from the South. U.S. State department maps had always had a line (50 degrees)of demarcation between North and South - until KAL 007. Then no more. Why? From State Daeartment Watch - "For decades through the mid-1980s the State Department always marked maps of Sakhalin Island with a dividing line at 50 degrees north noting that the Soviet Union occupied it but was not sovereign. In September 1983, when the Soviets shot down the Korean airliner KAL007 over southern Sakhalin Island, the State Department removed the dividing line and notation on the map, lending legitimacy to the Soviet excuse of shooting down a civilian airplane in its "sovereign" airspace"

September 03, 2009 | url

Stephen (Sky) King said:

... In the early 80s in a meeting with Congressman Mark Siljander, I asked if he was aware of the attempt by Secretary of State George Shultz to hand over Wrangle Island to the Soviets. He was not aware of this but said he would look into it. About a month later, I received a letter from him stating that he had introduced a bill in the House to nix this. He included a copy of the one page bill (today such a bill would be 500 pages)stating that all US held lands or territories must meet with Congressional approval before it could be given away. It passed. He was the Congessman who took David Stockman's place when he became Reagan's budget director who was nick named 'boy wonder'. In that meeting I commended Congressman Siljander on his consistant 100% voting record on JBS' Conservative Index. He is sorely missed. Oh for 534 like Mark Siljander in Congress today and one Ron Paul. Also in 1983, I recorded a CNN Crossfire program where Larry McDonald took on Pat Buchannan and Tom Braden after having just been elevated to Chairman of the John Birch Society. The NWO that he was exposing on the program is the very, in Congressman McDonald's own word, "Conspiracy", that did him in a few months later. You can view this video at: http://www.texasteaparty.org

September 12, 2009 | url

Bert Schlossberg said:

... It is very difficult to understand policy decicions of the U.S. Instead of pursuing to the hilt the U.S. clains to its own islands, especially in the light of Soviet gulags on them - specifically Wrangle, it tries to give thenm away to Russia. Instead of decrying the Soviert claim to the right of shooting down KAl 007 over its "Sovereign" territory, contrary to its stance of many decades, the U.S. State Depaartment affirms southern Sakhalin to be sovereign Russian terrirory by deletion of the demarcation and the note on its maps - and this in the same month as the shootdown. The oil rich deposits in the Sakhalin area do not legally belong to Shell BP and others, as well as not to the Russian concerns but belong rather to the 41 countries who signed the Treaty of San Francisico (awaiting these countries' dispositon and determination) ending the state of war with Japan, so I understand.

September 13, 2009 | url