Hersh’s Book on Downing of Jet Called Off Course

Investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh--no stranger to controversy--says he’s been feeling better the last few days.

The reason: His latest book, “The Target Is Destroyed: What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew About It,” finally got a bad review.

After a month of unanimous praise from critics in the national press--including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post--the New Republic, the small but influential Washington magazine of politics and the arts, dispelled Hersh’s unease in its issue dated Oct. 13.

Took Hersh to Task

The review by Edward Luttwak, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a private defense consultant, took Hersh to task for publishing “the leftovers of a failed investigation” into the destruction of an off-course Korean airliner by a Soviet warplane three years ago. All 269 aboard the commercial flight were killed in the incident, which sparked an international crisis.

“It was going too well,” Hersh joked during a telephone interview last week. “I’m glad I finally got a bad one.” Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner perhaps best known for exposing the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, was widely criticized for his previous book-length venture--a thick volume on the White House years of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger--which some said was a largely one-sided, negative view of the diplomat.

However, reviewer Luttwak wasn’t laughing over his critical flight into the wind of conventional wisdom concerning “The Target Is Destroyed” (Random House: $17.95). Luttwak, also interviewed by telephone, said he was still “angry” about the book, which he claimed applied a more lenient standard to Soviet military behavior than to that of the United States.

In the book, Hersh asserts that Soviet radar operators “undoubtedly” mistook the Korean airliner for a U.S. reconnaissance plane that flew a similar route earlier that day. At any rate, Hersh writes, the Soviets--mainly officers and men far down the chain of command--acted in an atmosphere of confusion and stress and did not know the plane was a civilian airliner.

Even though he doubts that was the case, Luttwak said that such an assertion implies a morally dubious attitude.

“That whole line of argument in Hersh is based on the assumption the Soviets are allowed to shoot down a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft,” Luttwak said, noting that in his opinion a diplomatic protest of an overflight is the only legitimate response--at least to a first intrusion. His criticisms differ vastly from other reviewers who generally have pronounced Hersh’s work a revealing and evenhanded treatment of a subject that has prompted at least five books and become a fertile topic for conspiracy buffs. In fact, “Target” has been praised for debunking conspiracy theories involving U.S. intelligence and the doomed airliner.

In particular, “Target” has been praised for its account of how U.S. officials used--or misused--the intelligence about the downing of the plane.

Hersh, citing numerous interviews with members of the U.S. electronic intelligence network, contends that U.S. officials ignored or distorted evidence that the shoot-down was a case of mistaken identity in order to score points in a propaganda battle with the Soviet Union.

Hersh’s editor at Random House, Robert Loomis, said Luttwak’s review apparently is the only unfavorable comment to emerge so far about the widely publicized book.

Loomis, who said the review had been read to him over the telephone, said: “It’s a pure political review as far as I can see.” He added, however, that an error cited in “Target” should be corrected “if it is an error.”

The mistake noted by Luttwak is on Page 100. There, Hersh writes that Fritz Ermath was the Central Intelligence Agency’s national intelligence officer for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe when the Korean airliner was shot down on the night of Aug. 31-Sept. 1, 1983. By Hersh’s account, Ermath was a major adviser to CIA director William J. Casey during the crisis and “found more than enough evidence to conclude that the Soviet interceptor pilot had identified the aircraft as civilian before shooting it down.”

Not at the CIA

In fact, Luttwak wrote, Ermath was not then at the CIA, a point confirmed by agency spokesperson Kathi Pherson. However, Ermath now holds the position he supposedly held in September, 1983, Pherson added, explaining that Ermath is a Soviet specialist who has shifted frequently between jobs in government and at private think tanks, including the Rand Corp.

Luttwak said he mentioned the error, which is described as a “howler” in the review, because Ermath, a personal acquaintance, pointed it out to him.

Hersh, who makes extensive use of unidentified sources in the book, responded to Luttwak’s charge by saying, “I was told that (about Ermath) by people who know what’s going on.” He added, “Casey doesn’t talk to me. I wish he would.”

(Before the book’s publication, CIA director Casey, who had not read the manuscript, called Hersh and his publisher, warning them that Hersh’s book could violate national security law. While in Los Angeles recently on a tour promoting the book, Hersh said Casey’s call was “an incredible intrusion.” He added that he has no idea whether the CIA might yet take some legal action over the book.)

Hersh, who said his book does not condone Soviet actions and that Luttwak’s review reflects a difference in viewpoint, conceded that Ermath may not have held a position at the CIA at the time of the shoot-down, but added that Ermath might have been “in transition” from another job to the agency.

The error apparently is the first to be noted in the book, according to both Loomis and Hersh.

Luttwak’s opinion that the book is morally flawed was challenged by one of the principal individuals in the book, a retired Air Force major general who put together an early, objective intelligence briefing on the shoot-down. In that briefing, James C. Pfautz, then commander of Air Force Intelligence, told senior Pentagon officers that the Soviets could have committed a “bona fide error” by mistakenly considering the Korean Boeing 747 to be an American reconnaissance plane, Pfautz said in a telephone interview from his Alexandria, Va., home.

Working on ‘Studies’

Pfautz, who said he had not previously discussed his role in Hersh’s book with the press, said, “People I’ve talked to in Washington have generally been satisfied with the Hersh account.” Pfautz, who retired after the Korean airliner crisis, said he has since returned to work for the government to do “studies,” declining to be more specific.

The book, he said, performs a service in that it discounts theories the Korean airliner was on a spy mission for the United States and had flown into Soviet airspace as part of that mission. “That offended me and other people in the (intelligence) community because we would not put the aircraft and the passengers at risk,” he said, noting that “I did not discuss hard-core intelligence data with Sy Hersh.”

Pfautz thinks that Hersh should have more strongly emphasized the dangerous nature of the U.S.-Soviet confrontation during the crisis over the shoot-down.

Pfautz said he was especially worried by the chances for a military clash in the days following the shoot-down. During that time, American and Soviet ships were searching for the “black box” flight recording equipment of the downed airliner in the waters off Sakhalin Island, which is Soviet territory. The recorders were never found, but the ships of both countries were in a tense face-off that could have resulted in an accidental war, Pfautz said.

“It’s my personal conviction that neither side wants to engage in nuclear warfare,” Pfautz told The Times. “Therefore the thing we have to fear most is an accidental engagement of forces.”

Hersh’s approach to Pfautz indicates the methods he used in putting together the many strands of information that were twined into the book’s narrative. Interviewed in Los Angeles, Hersh recalled that he paid Pfautz an unannounced visit at his home toward the end of his research for the book. According to Hersh, Pfautz invited him into his home and discussed unclassified aspects of the airliner controversy.

Despite his image as a critic of the military, Hersh said: “I learned a long time ago that one of the interesting things about Washington is that the military is a terrific source of information and conservatives are a terrific source of information. . . . What you learn right away is you can’t judge people by labels . . . it comes back to their personal integrity.”

Often, however, sources in the intelligence community were more wary than Pfautz, Hersh conceded. “I didn’t just call people up and they said, ‘Sure, come on over,’ he explained. “They said, ‘Well, let me call you back in two days,’ and they’d check me out.”

Uses Candor

Relentless candor also is a useful tool, Hersh said. “If I’m going to write a story that’s very critical of you and you’re in the government or in the service, I let you know,” he said. “ . . . I have found that if you call up the assistant secretary of so and so and say, ‘Look, you’re not going to like my story. I want to tell you right now I disagree with you, I think you’re nuts. . . . I just want to tell you that.’ He’s mad at me, but he’s much less mad. It’s one of those no-lose phone calls.”

In the case of “Target,” the trail of sources that Hersh followed led him to write a different book than he intended.

“A lot of people find it very interesting that I obviously began thinking this was going to be a story about something dastardly our government may have done, or acquiesced in (regarding a possible spy mission by the Korean plane). And I ended up writing a book that seems to a lot of people to be pro-government. It’s ironic. Here I am with a book that part of me is worrying whether they’re going to throw me in the hoosegow, and I’m accused of being in the tank on it.”

And Hersh has mixed feelings about what he wants his work to accomplish, he said.

“I say to keep on doing what I do, I have to believe that my profession can make a difference, that writing books and articles and newspaper stories can make a difference in the process (of government),” Hersh said. “ . . . On the one hand I say that, but on the other hand I say that my job really is to just go do it. My job is to get this story, tell as much as I can and throw it out there, and if people don’t want to listen to it, tough.”