The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Korean Plane Downed

[Tease]

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: What could be said about Soviet credibility when they so flagrantly lie about such a heinous act?

ROBERT MacNEIL [voice-over]: As outrage mounts over the downed Korean airliner, Moscow claims it was a spy plane.

[Titles]

MacNEIL: Good evening. The Soviet Union said today that its fighter planes had fired warning shots at the Korean airliner in which 269 people died yesterday over the Sea of Japan. A Tass statement said the Soviet leadership regretted the loss of life, but claimed that the intruder was on a pre-planned intelligence mission using civilian cover. The Soviet statement did not mention the direct charge by the United States that a Soviet fighter pilot shot down the jumbo jet with a missile. The Tass statement merely said this: over Sakhalin Island a Soviet aircraft fired warning shots with tracer shells along the flying route of the plane; soon after this, the intruder plane left the limits of Soviet airspace and continued its flight toward the Sea of Japan. Later,Secretary of State George Shultz said Moscow still had not told the truth. About the time the Tass statement was being issued in Moscow, President Reagan was breaking off his California vacation three days early to return to Washington to confer on the crisis. At Point Mugu airfield near Santa Barbara, President Reagan made this statement.

Pres. REAGAN: In the wake of the barbaric act committed yesterday by the Soviet regime against a commercial jetliner, the United States and many other countries of the world made clear and compelling statements that expressed not only our outrage, but also our demand for a truthful accounting of the facts. Our first emotions are anger, disbelief and profound sadness. While events in Afghanistan and elsewhere have left few illusions about the willingness of the Soviet Union to advance its interests through violence and intimidation, all of us had hoped that certain irreducible standards of civilized behavior nonetheless obtained. But this event shocks the sensibilities of people everywhere. The tradition in the civilized world has always been to offer help to mariners and pilots who are lost or in distress on the sea or in the air. Where human life is valued, extraordinary efforts are extended to preserve and protect it, and it's essential that as civilized societies we ask searching questions about the nature of regimes where such standards do not apply. Beyond these emotions, the world notes the stark contrast that exists between Soviet words and deeds. What can we think of a regime that so broadly trumpets its vision of peace and global disarmament and yet so callously and quickly commits a terrorist act to sacrifice the lives of innocent human beings? What can be said about Soviet credibility when they so flagrantly lie about such a heinous act? What can be the scope of legitimate mutual discourse with a state whose values permit such atrocities? And what are we to make of a regime which establishes one set of standards for itself and another for the rest of humankind?

MacNEIL: The President was speaking with the knowledge that the number of Americans who died now stands at 47. Tonight, we look further at this extraordinary cold war incident and ask why is the Soviet Union behaving like this? Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the unilateral anger of the United States over the airplane incident was internationalized formally today as the U.S. and South Korea went before the United Nations Security Council to demand answers from the Soviet Union while anti-Soviet demonstrators delivered similar messages more informally outside the U.N. building in New York. Inside, the ambassador from South Korea, Kyung-Won Kim, bitterly criticized the Soviet Union.

KYUNG-WON KIM, South Korea Ambassador to the U.N.: I cannot stress too much the seriousness of the tragic incident which has just been caused by the barbarous action of Soviet military authorities. By shooting down a Korean civilian airplane it is clear that the Soviet Union has posed a threat to the safety of all civil airliners of all nations. The very future of international civil aviation is now at stake. If this sort of international outlaw behavior is allowed to proceed unpunished, nobody can by sure where it is going to stop. Whose planes, we must ask, will ultimately be safe?

CHARLES LICHENSTEIN, U.S. Spokesman: On no conceivable such assumption could the Soviet reaction be characterized as other than incommensurate, as outrageously excessive; to say it again, Mr. President, as wantonly irresponsible. Let us call the crime for what clearly it is -- wanton, calculated, deliberate murder.

LEHRER: The Soviet deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Richard Ovinnikov, was quick to reject the criticism from the Korean and American diplomats.

RICHARD OVINNIKOV, Soviet Deputy Permanent Representative to the U.N. [through interpreter]: The intrusion into the airspace of this plane cannot be regarded as anything other than a pre-planned act, and what was counted on was that under the guise of a civil plane it might be possible without hindrance to carry out a special intelligence mission. Furthermore, there are grounds to state that those who organized this provocation deliberately tried to further exacerbate the international situation, trying to besmirch the Soviet Union and to sow feelings of enmity towards it and to cast a shadow on Soviet peace-loving policy.

LEHRER: It's not only the United States and South Korea that are speaking out against the Soviet Union; in country after country Soviet ambassadors have been summoned to foreign ministries to hear varying levels of condemnation and demands for explanations. It happened today or yesterday in France, Great Britain, Japan and West Germany, among many others, and countries as diverse as China, Greece, Portugal and Italy have issued public statements. The question is how the words are being heard and reacted to by the top Soviet leadership in Moscow, and that means primarily three people: party chief Andropov; Defense Minister Ustinov, the man most directly reponsible for Soviet military actions; and Foreign Minister Gromyko, whose job it will be to handle the diplomatic side of this. It's safe to say they and their top aides have been engaged in hot and heavy contemplation since that Korean plane went down yesterday, but all anybody can do is speculate on the nature of that dialogue, and no one in this country is in a better position to do so than Arkady Shevchenko, who in 1978 became the highest Soviet official ever to defect to this country. He was an undersecretary general of the United Nations at the time; he held the highest rank in the Soviet foreign service, and earlier had served as a personal adviser to Mr. Gromyko. My question first. The Soviet Union, up to this point, has not admitted it shot down that airplane. Does that surprise you?

ARKADY SHEVCHENKO: No, it doesn't surprise me at all. It reminded me of October, 1962, when the Soviets had been lying during the Cuban crisis until the very last moment. It was not the first time, even in '62, and there was a lot of lies afterwards. I can produce myself an evidence that Soviets are using chemical weapons, which they deny publicly, and there is plenty of other examples. So it's nothing surprising for me. It's -- if I would be surprised at something, that some other people surprised that the Soviets are lying and about their behavior.

LEHRER: I see. Is it possible that they will never admit it and just hope that this thing will blow over on its own?

Mr. SHEVCHENKO: Of course they will never admit it.

LEHRER: Never?

Mr. SHEVCHENKO: No. They will never admit it. It's a usual Soviet policy. And they went too far now. There is no way back for them; they already --

LEHRER: They're stuck with this story?

Mr. SHEVCHENKO: They're stuck with the story of how they can now change the whole story. They can change history; they often did, many years afterward. But this -- that they will try to that it will be forgotten rather soon, and they try what to do what the Russians call vyitii suchsim uz vody, which means get out of the water dry. And they many times recently and before it happened in many parts of the world, everybody knows. And they hope that also in a few weeks, in a few months, everybody will just forget about it.

LEHRER: Well, what about this storm of international outrage that is building? What effect, if any, would that have on the leaders in the Kremlin now -- specifically Andropov, Ustinov and Gromyko?

Mr. SHEVCHENKO: I don't think it will have any direct effect on them.

LEHRER: Just doesn't matter to them?

Mr. SHEVCHENKO: No, it does matter for them very much, but it will not affect their status or their position or their prestige inside the Soviet leadership. It will not undermine their position.

LEHRER: Why not?

Mr. SHEVCHENKO: Because the story which they are producing for the whole world would be produced for the Soviets -- for the Soviet people and including even for the Soviet apparatus and the party, and they have no means to verify that. I can assure you that the level of the -- the middle level of the party apparatus or government and everywhere, they would believe what is printed in Pravda and what they would be said by the government. And of course it will be quite a discussion among this trio or troika, which you mentioned, or in the Politburo. I'm sure today it was quite a heated meeting of the Politburo after what happened, after the -- and now they're of course assessing the situation. They understand what kind of damage been done and how the Soviet prestige was undermined and eroded. In recent months they try so carefully and so persistently to build up an image of the Soviet Union as a peace-loving nation playing with the peaceful movement, etc. Now you see what kind of peace-loving nation who don't hesitate to shoot the civilian aircraft. Human life is nothing for them. It's the last thing about which the Soviet leadership is thinking -- either Soviets or foreigners.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Now an insight into Soviet activity at a different level. With us is Yitzhak Tarasulo, who was a radar specialist in Far East stations of the Soviet Union during his military service from '58 to '62. He came to this country in 1975 as a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, and is now working on a book about the Soviet military. Mr. Tarasulo, in your days of manning radar stations, what were the standard procedures when planes intruded your airspace?

YITZHAK TARASULO: Robert, first I will report to the commander of my unit, and he'll immediately notify first of all the jet fighters because they need several minutes to get ready. And afterwards, in the chain of command the most important point would be the command of the air defense army in Khabarovsk. It's the biggest city in the Soviet Far East. And they would have to ask Moscow what to do.

MacNEIL: In the case of shooting down a plane, it would go to Moscow for permission and approval to shoot it down?

Mr. TARASULO: Robert, there is no doubt in my mind. There is no lower field commander would ever take decision on his own, and I don't think that even the chief -- the chief of staff of the air defense forces of the Soviet Union would take responsibility on himself. The lowest rank who would take that decision would be, in my view, Marshal Ogarkov, chief of general staff of the Soviet army. And I disagree with Arkady Shevchenko that party leaders were involved in this decision.

MacNEIL: You do not think party leaders --

Mr. TARASULO: I do not think so. In my view it's purely military decision.

MacNEIL: Are you suggesting it's a military decision deliberately kept from the civilian or party leaders with some motive of embarrassing them or strengthening the military, or for what reason?

Mr. TARASULO: We should remember that such incidents do not happen every day.It might be there simply doesn't exist any procedure what to do in such cases. And decisions are taken -- are just arbitrarily, not following any customary procedure.

MacNEIL: When you were there, obviously as a fairly low-ranking radar officer, how often were planes shot down?

Mr. TARASULO: Not that very often, Robert, but what we should remember that, according to the Russian -- Soviet idea, any airplane which does not respond to the signals from the ground is immediately considered a target. It might be a Soviet airplane.

MacNEIL: Have they shot down Soviet airplanes?

Mr. TARASULO: Yeah, yeah. There are cases that Soviet airplanes were shot down. The airplanes whose system, "I am your plane," get are out of order. One of the most famous cases took place in 1960 when Powers was shot down near Sverdlovsk --

MacNEIL: Francis Gary Powers in the U-2 spy plane.

Mr. TARASULO: Yeah. According to the Soviet unofficial information, first was shot down Soviet interceptor whose system all of a sudden -- system "I am your plane" got out of order, and he was shot down by the first missile. And by the second missile was shot down Francis Powers.

MacNEIL: Why in this case would you think they waited so long to shoot, until this plane was almost out of Soviet airspace again and heading towards the Sea of Japan?

Mr. TARASULO: In my view this plane represented a flying duck. There is no way anyone can confuse this huge flying building with a spy plane. First of all, it was a commercial airplane on regular schedule. I myself, when I was a radar operator in the Soviet army, I knew the schedules of all commercial airplanes. It was just very convenient. And I was able to track them down by heart even without looking at the screen of the radar. So it is impossible --

MacNEIL: For them not to have known what --

Mr. TARASULO: -- not to have known. And then it had a very low altitude for a spy plane. Spy planes -- American spy planes always try to be as high as possible, at least 60,000 feet.This airplane was -- had a steady altitude all the time, 33,000 feet all characteristics of the commercial airliner.

MacNEIL: Of course they are saying now that it was on an intelligence mission just using the commercial airliner as a disguise or as a cover.

Mr. TARASULO: The size of the airplane -- there are no spy planes of that size. I remember myself, if I would see that airplane on the screen of the radar, it would occupy almost half of the screen. Even the blind can see that this airplane is a huge jumbo jet.

MacNEIL: Okay. We'll come back; thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: A third perspective from an American who specializes in Soviet affairs. He's William Hyland, a Soviet specialist for the CIA for 14 years, then with the National Security Council under Henry Kissinger; later, also under Kissinger, he was director of intelligence at the state department and deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs. He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, and was recently chosen to become the new editor of Foreign Affairs magazine. Mr. Hyland, first, what about this question of whether or not this was a military decision versus a civilian decision -- to shoot the plane down in the first place?

WILLIAM HYLAND: I think it was probably both. We have one instance that might be a precedent. That was the U-2 incident in 1960 where Marshal Malenkov actually called Khrushchev to say "A U-2 is again flying over the Soviet Union, we intend to shoot it down," and Khrushchev in his memoirs said, "Go ahead." I would have guessed that the Soviet military would try to involve the civilians if they could, if there was enough time. And in this case two hours certainly is enough time to get to someone, perhaps not Andropov, but certainly Marshall Ustinov, who is the minister of defense, to advise them that they have an intruder aircraft and they intend to take action.

LEHRER: Why would the military want to do that? Just to protect themselves?

Mr. HYLAND: I think to protect themselves and also to establish a record in case something goes wrong. It could have been that the aircraft might have escaped, in which case there would have certainly been another investigation.

LEHRER: Sure. Now, you heard what Mr. Shevchenko has said. Many have suggested, Mr. Hyland, that all the Soviet Union would have to do if they wanted this thing to blow over is to admit that they shot the plane down, explain it fully, and apologize. Do you think that's ever going to happen?

Mr. HYLAND: I doubt that will ever happen. It would be a sign of incredible weakness; it would be a humiliation. At this point in time it would be a repudiation of what the government has already said. So I think they will simply tough it out with the line that they're taking in the U.N. and in the Tass statements, which is that it was an intruder plane that somehow mysteriously crashed.

LEHRER: Is that going to wash?

Mr. HYLAND: No, I think it's totally implausible. But that's not the real test for the Soviets. The test for the Soviets is to find some line they can stick with through thick or thin that has some plausibility -- a spy plane, for example -- and see if they can brazen it through.

LEHRER: Well, Mr. Hyland, it's very clear, from what the United States has said and others have said, that they must have some tapes of radio communications between the Soviet pilots and ground controllers. And the Secretary of State, George Shultz, in fact said yesterday that the pilot said this and that. Somewhere down the line those tapes could come out and be played for the whole world to hear. The Soviets must know that.

Mr. HYLAND: I think they do, and they will simply denounce them. Remember Zorin --

LEHRER: Say they're phony or something?

Mr. HYLAND: -- in 1962, if you'll remember Zorin at the U.N. denied there were missiles in Cuba. He denied the photography. He was terribly embarrassed when it turned out to be untrue, but I think they will go through it to the bitter end.

LEHRER: Do you think that the leadership itself -- meaning Andropov and those folks -- are in any kind of crisis, jeopardy, as a result of this, or do you agree with Mr. Shevchenko, nobody's going to know about it?

Mr. HYLAND: I think there is no crisis as far as their personal position is concerned. The crisis might have come had that aircraft entered Soviet airspace for two hours and left without any action.

LEHRER: You think that would have been a more serious problem?

Mr. HYLAND: Oh, I think so. I think it would have been very difficult for someone in Andropov's position to say, "Let this aircraft go. We can't afford to shoot it down."

LEHRER: Knowing that it was a Korean Air Line civilian plane?

Mr. HYLAND: I think that's not critical. I think what is critical for the Russians is not how theworld reacts but their own system, how they relate to their own system: who is tough, who isn't tough. After all, this is --

LEHRER: And tough is in right now?

Mr. HYLAND: This is the country that invaded Afghanistan four or five years ago, saw a grain embargo put on, taken off. I think from the Soviet perspective this is not a major incident, though it probably will become one internationally.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Mr. Shevchenko, in the Kremlin discussions that must be going on, following up on what Mr. Hyland just said, are they saying to themselves, "This was a real mistake," or are they saying, "We did the right thing"?

Mr. SHEVCHENKO: I would say that they have second thoughts now. I would say that most likely the whole Soviet leadership hardly had enough time to really seriously consider all the repercussions, all the ramifications of this action. What might happen, most likely, of course from the ground control, military reported from Moscow, it's for sure. I have no doubt about that. And clearly, they maybe went up as Defense Minister Ustinov. And I don't exclude that it could be a conversation with Andropov also. But I do agree with Mr. Hyland totally, that for Andropov would be really difficult to say no, let this plane go. It's virtually impossible.

MacNEIL: How paranoid were you trained to be in that part of the country about intruders into the airspace? Was that more important than anything else?

Mr. SHEVCHENKO: Oh, very paranoid.

MacNEIL: I'm sorry; I'm just asking Mr. Tarasulo here.

Mr. TARASULO: Robert, we were very paranoid. We were constantly reminded to be ready. We were constantly reminded that on March 3rd, 1957, the American airplane penetrated the Soviet borders in the area where our station had been, and we were always reminded that we have to be very vigilant. And in view of this incident we should remember and remind ourselves that the Russians have that concept of sacredness of the national borders. This is a traditional Russian and Soviet belief, and they might act out of that belief.

MacNEIL: Let me go back to Mr. Shevchenko. Mr. Shevchenko, what would it take -- I know both of you said they're going to tough it out and they're not going to admit it. Suppose the tapes were produced at the United Nations, as Cabot Lodge did the microphone and the great seal, as Adlai Stevenson did with the photographs during the Cuban missile crisis. Would that make any difference, or would they just brazen that out?

Mr. SHEVCHENKO: I think it will make no difference, and they can tell that these tapes are faked and so on. During the Cuban missile crisis it was a little bit different situation. There was not only photo but really it was evidence on the ships and work on the ground and on Cuba it could be proven, they know. But tape is something, you know, that they always -- it's a very tricky business, tape. So that they always can deny that this tape existed or just wished it or somehow -- and already they call it a provocation, already started all this campaign offensive in the United Nations and in the whole world that it's a provocation against them.

MacNEIL: Mr. Hyland, is there anything President Reagan could do to force a confession and an apology from the Soviet Union that would be worth the ticket?

Mr. HYLAND: I doubt there's anything he can do to force an apology. I think that there are many things he might do in order to react to this situation. He could boycott or propose an international boycott of all Soviet air travel into and out of the SovietUnion from the major countries. I think that might be effective and might carry a message. But I don't think that the United States can force the Soviet Union to admit to something that cannot be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

MacNEIL: Do you want to add to that? Is there anything the United States could or should do that would produce the result that it's looking for in this -- a confession or an admission or some reparation -- or do we have to resign ourselves to none of that?

Mr. TARASULO: I do disagree that the Russians would completely deny. I do see already some softening in the Russian position. It might be that they would try to explain to the Americans informally what happened, and maybe they would try to put the blame on the military. They might do that in order to improve their relations with the United States.

MacNEIL: We have to leave it there. Mr. Hyland, Mr. Shevchenko, in Washington, thank you for joining us; Mr. Tarasulo, here. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That's all for tonight.Just before we go, we'd like to note that when we return on Monday night, it will be in our new format, expanded from the present half-hour to a comprehensive one-hour program of news and analysis. It is called the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour.We hope you'll join us. Good night, and have a good weekend.