Eight years after the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 by the Soviets on September 1, 1983, the most important questions about the incident remain unanswered. The most widely accepted view is that the airliner was indeed blown up, after which it plummeted into the Sea of Japan, killing all 269 persons (including 61 Americans) on board. But the main wreckage was not found, and no bodies positively identified as having been aboard Flight 007 were ever recovered.
In January and February of this year, a widely-publicized series of articles in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia (published by the presidium of the Supreme Soviet legislature), disclosed that the Soviets had lied about KAL 007 in 1983. According to this series, the Soviets did not mistake the passenger airliner for a spy plane as they had claimed, and the pilot did not fire warning tracer bullets before shooting it down. But the most explosive Izvestia claim was that the Soviets had within a few weeks located the wreckage and retrieved debris, which, if true, would "confirm" that the plane did indeed smash into the Sea of Japan with no survivors.
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