ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (08/04/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Monday, August 4, 1986 9:08AM
Volume 6, Issue 133
Today's Topics:
KAL007 and the muddied sky
KAL007
News Media & Arms Race (very long posting)
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Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1986 07:59 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: KAL007 and the muddied sky
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ at Forsythe.Stanford.Edu>
... whether anybody
(1) disagrees that the intentionality of KAL007's route is an open
question?
Since probably only the pilots of KAL007 know what the route was
supposed to be (and you can imagine circumstances in which even they
could be fooled), and they are dead, I guess it is an open question.
On the basis of the evidence I have read about (not a whole lot), and
my judgments about the credibility of the various sources involved, I
don't think it is really an open question. I favor the mistaken entry
of data theory.
(2) disgarees that this fact could be revealed by a public
congressional inquiry?
I have no confidence at all that the intentionality of KAL007's route
could be revealed by Congressional inquiry, given the fact that the
pilots are dead.
In legal terms, the crucial issue is, did KAL007 take
evasive action which gave cause for the shootdown?
If I were an off-course 747 pilot, and I saw two fighters chasing me,
I sure would be tempted to take evasive action, whether or not I was
flying a secret mission. I would prefer to wait for contact with the
fighters, and would do what they told me to do, but if I hadn't heard
anything, and I saw that they were proceeding as though they thought I
was disobeying their orders, I would take evasive action without qualms.
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Date: Sun, 3 Aug 86 13:33:43 PDT
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ@Forsythe.Stanford.Edu>
Subject: KAL007
> Since probably only the pilots of KAL007 know what the route was
> supposed to be (and you can imagine circumstances in which even they
> could be fooled), and they are dead, I guess [the intentionality
> of KAL007's route] is an open question.
Do you think the pilots, if they were paid extra to fly over Soviet
territory, would be given leave to decide their route? This is
most improbable. Plans would exist, and records of them. What of
KAL015, which almost caught up with KAL007 and then "relayed"
KAL007's consecutive false positions, despite orders from ground
control that KAL007 was to respond directly? Captain Park was
KAL015's pilot, and he was called as a witness in this country in
his capacity as a KAL employee - he "resigned" the week before he
was to testify, and this excused KAL007 from producing him. He
could not be compelled to testify as an individual.
(Shootdown p.291.)
> On the basis of the evidence I have read about (not a whole lot), and
> my judgments about the credibility of the various sources involved, I
> don't think it is really an open question. I favor the mistaken entry
> of data theory.
To make the mistaken data entry theory credible, one must construct
one or more hypothetical errors that could have resulted in the
flight path (which is now quite accurately known). *Exactly which
mistaken data entry theory* do you think could account for the
actual course? All the ones I've read, on examination fall
hopeslessly short of accounting for the various changes. See
Shootdown p.180-182, 230-236, 243-251. Note that your opinion is at
variance with the report of the ICAO Air Navigation Committee,
which, extraordinarily filed to rebut the main ICAO report, noted
that no hypothesis (included bad data entry) had been found that
could explain the course: "The magnitude of the diversion cannot be
explained." An top ICAO inquisitor later admitted, regarding KAL007's
late turn north over Sakhalin "we had no real explanation for any
turn or any information on that turn." In sum, the bad data entry
theories dropped dead when the Japanese radar tapes revealed the
character of the final turns, descent, and ascent. Even before
this final evidence, every bad data entry theory had been rebutted.
If you favor the bad data entry theory, please tell me which theory
and if it can fit I'll admit its acceptability as a theory or show
you why it doesn't fit.
> I have no confidence at all that the intentionality of KAL007's route
> could be revealed by Congressional inquiry, given the fact that the
> pilots are dead.
KAL015's pilot isn't dead. The RC-135's pilot isn't dead.
Preplanning the operation would leave a slew of witnesses who have
never been interrogated. Ground-to-air tapes exist, and other radar
tapes that have never been released. Remember - my proposition is
that if the flight were a preplanned probe, it would have left
enough evidence for Congress to crack it, if Congress wanted to.
The above suggestions point to only a fraction of the undug
evidence. Note that this is the first major air disaster involving a
US plane never to have investigated in America. Not only were the
ICAO people hopelessly uninformed, but their inquiry was conducted
by a mere 5 full-time and four part-time investigators with 60 days
to do the job. Contrast this with the staff of more than a hundred
that worked for seven months on the US NTSB inquiring into the DC-10
crash at O'Hare in 1979. Has Boeing (or whoever) made efforts to
redesign their error-prone navigation systems? No, for their is
no satisfactory theory showing that error accounted for the route.
> In legal terms, the crucial issue is, did KAL007 take
> evasive action which gave cause for the shootdown?
>
> If I were an off-course 747 pilot, and I saw two fighters chasing me,
> I sure would be tempted to take evasive action, whether or not I was
> flying a secret mission.
It seems clear to me that if you were in international air space,
you'd just keep on, annoyed at the harassment, which you would
immediately report to ground control. If you knew you were in
Russia, you'd know you were in trouble, but wouldn't evade because
you would know it was futile - unless freedom was a minute away.
What if you are KAL007's top pilot, an aerobatic ace, and a couple
of minutes from safety after two and a half hours unimpeded flight
over Russia? I agree that Chun may well have been acting on his
own initiative when he was caught, because the contingency plan
would have been to obey the Soviets if he'd been caught earlier, I
assume. It so happened that due to Soviet incompetence (and US
jamming?), KAL007 was a moment from international air space when the
Soviets finally got sight of him.
And - if you weren't on an espionage mission, would it occur to you
IMMEDIATELY BEFORE DESCENDING TO CALMLY RADIO TOKYO FOR PERMISSION
TO ASCEND, THEN TO DESCEND AND ACCELERATE, THEN TO ASCEND AND
DECELERATE, AND THEN TO CALMLY RADIO BACK TO TOKYO ANOTHER FALSE
ALTITUDE? Hardly; but these antics are proven by the tapes.
To: ARMS-D@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
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Date: Mon 28 Jul 86 17:43:17-EDT
From: D. M. Rosenblum <DR01@CARNEGIE.Mailnet>
Subject: News Media & Arms Race I
New York University has set up a Center for War, Peace, and the News
Media, which publishes a bi-monthly (every other month) journal called
Deadline: The Press and The Arms Race. I just got the first issue of
Deadline, dated March/April 1986. The people who make the Center and
Deadline go are:
Editor, Richard Pollak;
Director of the Center, David M. Rubin;
Associate Director, Robert Karl Manoff;
Senior Staff Associate, Tony Kaye.
Center Associates: Pamela Abrams, Ann Marie Cunningham, William Dorman,
Ronnie Dugger, Todd Gitlin, Jonathan Halperin, Michael Kirkhorn, Tom
Powers, Jay Rosen, Jacqueline Simon.
Researchers: Steven Bram, Catherine Harding, Sylvia Steinert, Pamela
Supplee, Karen Wishod.
Design: Michael Freeman.
Board of Advisors: Richard J. Barnet, Hans A. Bethe, McGeorge Bundy,
Stephen F. Cohen, Dennis Flanagan, Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, Robert
Jervis, George W. Rathjens, Jane M. Sharp, Dimitri K. Simes, John
Steinbruner, Kosta Tsipis.
Address: 1021 Main Building, New York University, New York, N.Y.
10003. Membership is $25 for individuals and $50 for institutions.
The first issue of Deadline had the following lead article, that I think
may be of some interest to some of us who have been debating the
worthiness of the American news media. I have borrowed the Scribe
command for italics (@i{italicized text}) to indicate italics in the
original.
========================================================================
`A Range of Opinion As Narrow As Scarlett O'Hara's Waist'
Copyright ((C) 1986 New York University)
Questions--dozens of them--were the logical response to Mikhail
Gorbachev's surprise offer last January to commence reducing by half the
number of nuclear weapons capable of reaching the other superpower's
territory; eliminate intermediate-range weapons in Europe; extend the
Soviet test ban; and eventually destroy all nuclear weapons by the year
2000.
Might he be serious? Why would he make such an offer? What does it
tell us about the new Soviet leader and his arms control agenda? Should
both sides even risk the complete elimination of nuclear weapons? Is
there a way the U.S. might respond to test the Soviet strategy? Is it
worth negotiating S.D.I. to pursue the plan? Should the U.S. join the
Soviet moratorium on testing? What might be gained, or lost? And why
did the offer take the Reagan administration so much by surprise?
Journalists might have chewed over these questions for weeks, seeking
out the views of the arms control community (both left and right), the
allies, the grass roots peace movement, scientists, and Soviet scholars,
as well as the administration. What we were fed, however, was the
administration's view. The range of opinion in the press was as narrow
as Scarlett O'Hara's waist. It started with the president's "We're very
grateful" for the offer, and moved to tougher assessments that it was
utopian, or cynical, or just more propaganda to befuddle the West.
The plan was first reported by television on Wednesday, Jan. 15.
What analysis there was appeared on the 15th, 16th and 17th. The
Soviets stretched the story through another news cycle on the 18th with
a rare Saturday press conference in Moscow. And by the 19th it was
gone; the waters of the arms control debate barely rippled. The
collective response of the press, with a couple of notable exceptions,
was a yawn. The administration's view, including its continuing refusal
to join in the test ban, was accepted without debate, let alone
challenge. Most of the intriguing questions were never asked.
Below is a brief rundown of how some key newspapers, magazines, and
television programs reported the proposal between the 15th and the 19th
of January:
CBS aired the views of Senator Richard Lugar and Soviet specialist
Dimitri Simes, both opponents of the offer. David Martin, the network's
highly-regarded Pentagon and arms control correspondent, thought so
little of the proposal that he continued to work on a Weinberger profile
rather than cover it the day it was announced.
ABC presented only Senator John Warner, who said it was really the
@i{president's} goal to eliminate nuclear weapons.
NBC restricted its coverage to the views of the Reagan inner circle;
other views were filtered through White House correspondent Chris
Wallace.
@i{The New York Times} relied on a battery of often unnamed sources
to present the administration view that the offer's only potential value
was in on-site verification procedures and reducing the numbers of
European-based missiles. In keeping with its editorial position, the
paper paid little attention to the test ban question. In the past three
years the @i{Times} has completely reversed itself on the value of such
a ban, now adopting the Reagan administration position that a test ban
treaty can only come in the context of a much broader arms control
agreement. The @i{Times} did contribute one noteworthy addition to the
debate in the last two paragraphs of a Jan. 17 article by Leslie Gelb,
headlined: "Weighing the Soviet Plan." Gelb pointed out that the
elimination of nuclear weapons would force American strategic planners
to determine how to protect Europe with conventional forces, rather than
with nuclear deterrence. Gelb quoted an unnamed administration official
as saying that this "forces us to make hard choices that we haven't been
willing to make so far."
@i{Washington Post} coverage was not much different from the
@i{Times}, the exception being a valuable piece by Walter Pincus on the
problems of reducing the long-range nuclear arsenals of the superpowers
so as not to leave one of them at a strategic disadvantage. Pincus also
gave voice to outsider William Colby, who endorsed the Gorbachev
proposal as a serious step. He was one of the very few Americans
outside the Reagan inner circle to be quoted with anything good to say
about the proposal.
@i{Newsweek} did not even lead its "International" section with the
offer, tilting instead to the Philippines.
@i{U.S. News & World Report} gave it only three columns. On the
administration's unwillingness to join the moratorium, the magazine
quoted Weinberger as saying that the U.S. will have to keep testing
"because unfortunately there are nuclear weapons in the world"; this is
a state of affairs that would seem to apply to the Soviets, too,
rendering the secretary's logic impenetrable, but @i{U.S. News} editors
let the remark stand unchallenged.
@i{Time} at least took the proposal seriously. The editors presented
an excellent graphic that explained the offer and set forth the problems
it poses for the American side. @i{Time} also published a useful box on
previous diplomatic efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Like
its brethren, however, the magazine did not quote a single American who
questioned the Reagan response.
"Nightline," which pounces on every major story as if it were a
hostage crisis, ignored this one entirely. Of greater urgency were
shows on premature infants and a boy and his gorilla. Similarly, all
three Sunday morning network news interview shows on the 19th found
other subjects more worthy.
"The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" provided somewhat more breadth in
presenting interviews with Soviet expert Marshall Shulman of the
Harriman Institute at Columbia University and David Aaron, former deputy
national security advisor.
@i{The Boston Globe} was the most open to debate. Reporter Richard
Higgins presented the views of Dr. Bernard Lown, a co-founder of
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, winner of
the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. Lown urged that the proposal not be written
off as propaganda, particularly the test ban moratorium. Reporter Fred
Kaplan provided a blunt analysis of why the U.S. has refused to join in
the test ban moratorium. "[T]he Reagan administration wants to develop
a new generation of nuclear weapons," Kaplan wrote. He then attacked
the administration's stated reasons for rejecting the moratorium and
described the specific weapons the U.S. is testing.
The Gorbachev proposal is now, presumably, being discussed in Geneva,
beyond the reach of public debate. Doubtless the administration will
eventually call in the press to tell us what we need to know when we
need to know it.
--@i{David M. Rubin}
---- Posting 2:
At the end of an article by Tony Kaye entitled "Playing Musical Chairs
on the Network News Interview Shows," about the lack of breadth in
these shows, appeared the following paragraph:
During the Carter era, when the administration was under attack
from both the left and right, a broad range of views--from
opponents of the MX to advocates of American nuclear superiority--
participated vocally in the nuclear debate. And they found a
place on the news interview shows. During the Reagan era,
however, the whole spectrum has moved so far to the right that
Robert McNamara now represents the left wing of the nuclear debate
in official circles and on the news talk shows. To be sure,
McNamara is extremely articulate and knowledgeable, but he's also
the man who brought flexible response to American nuclear policy.
---- Posting 4
From: Vol. I, No. 2, May/June 1986 of Deadline: A Bulletin From the
Center for War, Peace, and the News Media (based at NYU), enclosed in
another free issue of @i{Nuclear Times}.
All of the articles in this issue were interesting. Here are five of
them, dealing respectively with: public ignorance of the arms race (and
the media's failure to report on this problem); @i{The New York Times's}
anti-test ban position and how it has affected its reporting; the U.S.
media's creation and destruction of a favorable image of Gorbachev in
accordance with the need to adhere to anti-communism; the American
media's failure to report on failures of cruise missile tests in Canada
that could have endangered Canadian civilians; and the press's failure
to ask Reagan challenging questions on the arms race after a recent
speech he gave. I have omitted two long articles, one a textual
analysis of how Rocky IV, Rambo, and Dan Rather communicate a particular
view of the Soviet Union that affects viewers' subsequent perceptions of
news, and the other an analysis of the American media's coverage of the
27th Soviet Party Congress.
--- What We Know About Arms Race Is More Than a Matter of Opinion
Half the American public does not know that the United States is the
only nation to have used a nuclear weapon in war, according to a poll
conducted jointly by the Center for War, Peace, and the News Media and
the Roper Organization. The results of the poll raise a number of
questions about how much the public really knows about war and peace
issues -- questions that should interest news organizations far more
than they do.
To test public knowledge, the Center designed two questions that
Roper included in a recent 42-item opinion survey. In the first,
Roper's 1,993 respondents were given four statements about the use of
nuclear weapons and asked to choose the correct one. Forty-nine percent
knew that the U.S. "is the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons
against another nation in time of war." Eleven percent believed we
never dropped the bomb, 10 percent thought the U.S. and the Soviets both
had used nuclear weapons, and another 13 percent said that other nations
had employed nuclear weapons during a war. Seventeen percent said they
didn't know.
The second question tested familiarity with the "nuclear triad."
Sixty percent knew the correct answer, that the U.S. has some missiles
based on land, on submarines and other ships, and on planes. The
relatively high percentage of correct responses here may come from a
flaw in the question's design. The correct choice was the fourth one
read to the respondents and it contained in its wording the first three
choices, in effect offering "all of the above" as an answer. It
therefore became the "safest" choice for people who knew little or
nothing about the nuclear triad because it was the most different from
the other three.
People who are better educated and earn more money were more often
correct. Seventy-one percent of those earning over $35,000 knew that
the U.S. is the only nation to have dropped the bomb, compared to 47
percent of those earning under $15,000. On that same question, 68
percent of those with some college education and 61 percent of high
school graduates had the correct answer, compared to 44 percent of those
without a high school diploma. On both questions men were more likely
to be correct than women and Republicans more likely than Democrats.
The Midwest and West were better informed than the Northeast and
especially the South. Union members and those judged by Roper to be
"politically active" were better informed than average. Blacks and
working women were more likely to be wrong in their answers.
Testing for knowledge raises a number of questions about the much
more common practice of surveying public opinion. What people know may
be an important clue to what they believe. For example, are those who
mistakenly believe that the Soviets have dropped the bomb more likely to
call the Soviet government belligerent and untrustworthy? The Roper
Report suggests that the same groups that tend to answer incorrectly on
the knowledge questions are also those who say that the U.S. nuclear
arsenal should be "stronger" than Russia's. Blacks favor "stronger"
over "just as strong" by 43 to 36 percent, while the population as a
whole feels differently, favoring "just as strong" (41 percent) over
"stronger" (38 percent.) Employed females (which includes part-time
workers) score lower than women as a whole and the rest of the public on
the two knowledge questions, and, like blacks, favor "stronger" over
"just as strong" (40 to 35 percent). The same pattern holds for
geographic regions. The Midwest does the best on the knowledge
questions and is the least likely (27 percent) to believe that stronger
is better. The South, by contrast, performs the poorest on the
knowledge questions and is the most likely (45 percent) to want greater
rather than equal strength.
These are only correlations, of course, which do not necessarily
prove anything. But they at least suggest a different way of
deciphering trends in public opinion. In writing about the results of
polls the press often links opinions to other opinions as a way of
explaining why certain groups believe what they do. David Shipler of
@i{The New York Times}, in reporting the results of a pre-summit poll by
the @i{Times} and CBS News last November, asked whether those who felt
more positively about Gorbachev were also more likely to anticipate
progress at Geneva (they were). Shipler's reasoning is familiar:
certain beliefs (Gorbachev is different from other Soviet leaders) may
be the logical basis for other beliefs (therefore something may come out
of Geneva).
But it might be more defensible to argue that knowledge or lack of
knowledge is a sounder explanation for how people arrive at their
opinions. A November 1985 @i{Newsweek} poll showed that people in the
South are the most likely to view the Soviet Union as an "evil empire"
(67 percent compared to 53 percen
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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