Subscribe to Workers Vanguard

View archives

	Workers Vanguard No. 905	4 January 2008

Article Confirms: WV Told the Truth About KAL 007

(Editorial Note)

In the early morning of 1 September 1983, an unidentified aircraft entered the airspace of the Soviet Union, flying over sensitive military installations on Kamchatka Peninsula and the island of Sakhalin near Japan. This was not by error. Korean Air Lines (KAL) Flight 007, which was bound for Seoul, deviated from its assigned flight path after having refueled in Anchorage, Alaska. The aircraft flew without its navigational lights, refused to respond to repeated Soviet attempts to contact it and took evasive actions. Soviet fighter jet pilots sent to intercept the 747 believed it was a military aircraft (for example an E4B, a converted 747). After two and a half hours in Soviet airspace, the aircraft was shot down. All 269 passengers and crew died. In the midst of the U.S. Cold War II drive against the Soviet degenerated workers state, President Ronald Reagan seized upon the downing of the flight to whip up anti-Communist hysteria, decrying the “act of barbarism” supposedly committed by the Soviets in shooting down a civilian plane that had supposedly strayed off course. We immediately responded with an article headlined “Reagan’s Story Stinks!” (WV No. 337, 9 September 1983).

As more facts became known, we described how Flight 007 was in fact a spy operation designed to trigger and then monitor Soviet air defenses, and its passengers were victims of the anti-Soviet war drive (see our October 1983 pamphlet, KAL 007: U.S. War Provocation and WV articles in subsequent years). Now, almost 25 years later, the aviation journal Airways (August, September and October 2007) has published a three-part article titled “Flight KAL007: The Anatomy of a Cover-up.” Authors Robert Allardyce and James Gollin meticulously analyze the evidence to show how the official investigation of KAL 007 by the International Civil Aviation Organization in 1983 “appeared to have labored in their determination not to explain how and why the 747 became so far off course.” They conclude that the flight path of KAL 007 under South Korean captain Chun Byung-in was deliberate:

“We must thrust aside all pretenses that Chun and his crew were innocently lost…. It is quite obvious that Chun had embarked upon a ‘ferret’ mission carefully designed to bring the Soviet defenses to the highest possible state of military alert.”

In the aftermath, Allardyce and Gollin write, “the world teetered on the brink of a nuclear holocaust.” At the time, we declared in “Reagan’s 007 War Fever” (WV No. 338, 23 September 1983) that, with much of the fake left capitulating to Reagan’s counterrevolutionary crusade, “we stand at our posts, defending the homeland of the October Revolution.” The Spartacist League/International Communist League fought to the end in defense of the Soviet Union against imperialism and capitalist counterrevolution. WV told the truth: KAL 007 was an anti-Soviet war provocation.