KAL 007.

This is coolbert:

Every now and then, when listening to commentary on the TV, you hear someone blurt something out that makes you sit up and take notice. You say to yourself, "did I hear what I just heard?".

What I have in mind is something that someone said regarding the shootdown of the KAL 007 commercial airliner by the Soviet Union air defenses in 1982. Resulted in a 747 aircraft being shot out of the sky, with the death of all passengers.

And at the time, all sorts of apologists gave reasons for the Soviet reaction. Now, the aircraft had strayed into Soviet territory. Was off course for whatever reason. And the apologists reasoning went something like this:

"Well, the Soviets may have thought they were under attack. They thought this was a spy aircraft and reacted to what they thought was an attack. They are just as afraid of us [U.S.] as we are afraid of them. Put yourself in their shoes. What would we have done if an aircraft had violated our airspace? We might have done the same!"

Etc.

Now what was this blurb that catches your attention?

And does this blurb relate to the shootdown of the KAL 007 aircraft?

Well, this "expert" is talking on TV about the old Soviet Union [this is in the mid-90's by now], and this man says, "well, during the days of the old Soviet Union, the Soviet air defenses shot down forty [40] of their own aircraft.

How this guy came by this information was not mentioned.

Perhaps he had access to U.S. Intelligence,

I just don't know?.

These guys in the Soviet air defenses were so trigger happy that they had shot down, over a period of say forty years, one of their own aircraft at the rate of one per year, and again, did so over a period of forty years or so.

Presumably Soviet radars had "lost" or gotten "confused" over an aircraft, and the order was given to shoot the plane down. Well, this would mean that on forty or so occasions, the Soviets must have felt they were under "attack" and responded.

Well, you would have to ask yourself this.

After shooting down say a dozen of their own aircraft, wouldn't you think they would have asked themselves, "maybe we are just a bit too trigger happy here?" But of course they did not. This would tell me that on all occasion they did not think they were under attack. The Soviet was just trigger happy. All these apologists were wrong from the start.

And in addition, there is another one of these apocrypha stories floating around concerning the shootdown of KAL 007.

The rumor is that Boris Yeltsin and his cabinet, shortly after coming to power in the new Russia [after the dissolution of the old Soviet Union], were interested to understand the full story of what happened with the shootdown.

It seems that there is a thirty minute tape that exists that has the conversations occurring at the time between the air defense commander in the Soviet Far East and his headquarters in Moscow.

Yeltsin and his cabinet wanted to hear this tape. And hear it they did. And the rumor goes that after listening to about half of the thirty minute tape, they became so disgusted and embarrassed at what they heard, that the listening session was abruptly ended.

Evidently the tapes revealed a cavalier attitude and jocular mood present when the decision was made to shoot the airliner down. Not what Boris wanted to hear.

In addition, when the airliner had been shot down, a recovery effort was made by U.S. and Korean authorities.

And what happened? Rather than admit error and assist the effort, the Soviets with intention impeded the recovery mission in a big way. Further evidence of their degree of don't-care-about-what-we-did attitude. Of course this interference is against all regulations, protocols, and international treaties regarding airline crashes. Que sera, sera.

coolbert.