Soviets Took Korea Jet for U.S. Plane, Magazine Says

The National Security Agency overheard the senior Soviet air defense officer in the Far East asking Moscow for instructions on dealing with what he clearly believed was a U.S. military aircraft shortly before a Soviet interceptor plane shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 on Sept. 1, 1983, according to the September issue of Atlantic magazine.

But the article by Seymour M. Hersh said the intercepted radio messages were not analyzed until more than four hours after the civilian airliner had been shot out of the sky, killing all 269 people aboard. The delay in deciphering the information made it impossible to warn the pilot of the South Korean Boeing 747 jetliner.

The Atlantic article, excerpted from Hersh’s forthcoming book, “The Target is Destroyed,” supports the Reagan Administration’s explanation that Flight 007 was off course because of navigational error and was not on a spy mission for the United States, as the Soviet Union charged immediately after the incident.

U.S. Knew Soviet Belief

But Hersh’s research indicates that Washington was disingenuous in insisting that the Soviets knew the plane was a civilian one. All of the information cited in the magazine indicates that the Soviets believed the plane was a U.S. military craft and that U.S. intelligence agencies knew that almost from the first.

Hersh said that two U.S. military flights were operating in the area at the time, although neither of them crossed into Soviet airspace. He said Soviet air defense units were familiar with the usual flight plans of U.S. spy planes and were astonished when the aircraft they had misidentified as a U.S. plane did not turn back to avoid penetrating Soviet air space.

Hersh quoted a National Security Agency intelligence analyst as saying the Soviet officer on the spot obviously “wasn’t going to shoot down an American aircraft without getting some authorization from higher headquarters.” So he sent a coded message to the Soviet general staff seeking instructions.