Salvaging the Remains

By WALTER ISAACSON

Washington and Moscow preserve arms talks despite the airliner tragedy

They stop in clusters of two and three, their eyes widening in astonishment as they stare at the 5-ft.-long model of the Boeing 747 with its hundreds of miniature seats. Details about the disaster have seeped slowly into the Soviet Union, and the pedestrians passing in front of the Japan Air Lines office in downtown Moscow pause to ponder the tragedy of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. "Oh, is that the plane?" asks a wide-eyed schoolgirl. "It's so big." Murmurs her friend: "All those people." The exact death toll of 269 has not been made public to the Soviet people. "More than 200, I heard," offers a young man wearing an imitation-leather jacket. But even as he shakes his head, he echoes the brazen attitude that has been the official response of his country: "Such a plane should not have broken through our borders."

Try as they may, leaders in Washington and other Western capitals last week could not extract much more from Moscow than the qualified expressions of regret that were heard on the streets. Instead, Soviet leaders responded with volley after volley of recriminations, continuing the defiant war of words with Washington that threatens to deepen the damage caused by the air tragedy.

The week began with a theatrical standoff. The State Department brusquely summoned Oleg Sokolov, the deputy chief of mission at the Soviet embassy. Standing face to face with Sokolov, John Kelly, Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, read a terse letter that "demanded ... prompt, adequate and effective compensation" for the death of the 61 Americans aboard Flight 007. When Kelly attempted to hand Sokolov the note, the Soviet diplomat refused to accept it. Kelly then declared that the U.S. refused to accept Sokolov's refusal. The routine was repeated at week's end when Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt called Sokolov back to the State Department and tried to give him a note protesting the Soviet refusal to accept the compensation demand. That too was refused. The somber Alphonse-and-Gaston routine left the U.S. looking for a way to deliver the compensation demand, which is not formally in effect until accepted by the Soviets.

The U.S. was more successful at making its point in the United Nations, but lining up the nine votes necessary to pass a resolution "deeply deploring" the U.S.S.R. in the 15-nation Security Council was surprisingly difficult. China, considered a sure yes vote, decided that its antipathy toward South Korea outweighed its desire to humiliate the Soviet Union. It announced that it would abstain. Other Third World nations, including Zimbabwe and Guyana, argued that disputes over the facts of the incident made it impossible to single out the Soviets for blame. Applying strong pressure, U.S. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick was able to win the reluctant support of Jordan and Malta, thus corralling enough votes to force the Soviet Union to use its veto.

In Congress, the Administration's greatest struggle was to rein in conservative members who wanted to punish Moscow more harshly. House leaders imposed a rule forbidding any amendments to a bipartisan resolution that condemned the Soviets but did not call for sanctions other than those already imposed by the President: the closing of Aeroflot offices in New York City and Washington, D.C., suspension of talks for a new consular agreement, postponement of expanded scientific, educational and cultural exchanges. The resolution passed 416 to 0, but left some on the right unsated. In the Senate, a series of amendments proposed by Republican Jesse Helms of North Carolina--which would have recalled the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, linked future arms control talks to Soviet conduct, and required a full reappraisal of all Soviet-American relations--were defeated by relatively wide margins before the resolution was passed unanimously.

Many Americans seemed anxious to register their own protests. In at least a dozen states there were organized boycotts of Russian vodka, and in Boston demonstrators staged an updated Tea Party by pouring vodka over the side of the Beaver, a replica of the original Tea Party ship. In New York City and New Jersey, the Port Authority, which runs the major airports, said that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko would not be allowed to land at the area's international airports on his scheduled visit to the U.N. General Assembly next week. The State Department said that Gromyko could land at a military airport, but the Soviet news agency TASS announced that he will not come at all; the General Assembly session will be the first he has missed since 1957. The reason, huffed TASS, is that "U.S. authorities do not give guarantees that the safety of [Gromyko] will be ensured."

At a 33-nation council meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Montreal, the Administration sought an independent investigation of the downing of Flight 007. The ICAO, which is also considering ways to coordinate military and civilian radar tracking of passenger planes, passed a resolution repeating the U.N. language "deeply deploring" the Soviet action and setting up the investigation. TASS branded the inquiry "illegal" and said the Soviet Union would conduct one of its own.

One of the few tangible sanctions placed thus far on the Soviets has been a ban on flights to and from the U.S.S.R. imposed by governments, airline pilots' associations, or both, in 14 countries, including most members of NATO plus Japan and neutral Sweden and Switzerland. Though many of the government boycotts are for two weeks, the pilots' actions are for 60 days. Fourteen countries (twelve NATO members plus Ireland and Switzerland) will not allow the Soviet airline Aeroflot even to fly over their territory. These moves have cut in half the air traffic between the Soviet Union and the West.

Western criticism only served to make the Kremlin more defiant. Soviet newspapers have run cartoons depicting Reagan as a blind cowboy and a bloody-fanged gorilla. Vitali Kobysh, a Kremlin information official, gave a five-minute TV commentary in which he said: "It is likely that no one will ever know details of the assassination of President John Kennedy or black civil rights fighter Martin Luther King, but everything is already known about the [airliner]." The outrageous implication was that U.S. secret services had staged all three tragedies and covered their tracks successfully in the Kennedy and King deaths, but had been caught sending KAL 007 on a spy flight.

The Soviets also expelled an American consular official in Leningrad, Lon David Augustenborg, and his wife, alleging that they attempted to pick up classified documents. Soviet officials sought to portray the case as part of a widespread espionage effort by the U.S. The State Department protested that the Augustenborgs had been physically mistreated during their arrest, and one report said that they had been stripped at the scene.

Continuing the diplomatic tit-for-tat, the State Department announced that the U.S. last month had expelled two Soviet diplomats posted in Washington. Assistant Air Attache Yuri Leonov was caught with a briefcase that included a classified document. Trade Attache Anatoly Skripko was arrested in the act of handing over money for classified documents. Their expulsions were not publicized at the time because the U.S. was then hoping to nurture warming relations with the U.S.S.R.

National Security Adviser William Clark, in a speech to the Air Force Association, sought to ridicule the Soviet assertions that the Korean passenger plane was on a spy mission. "The Soviet strategy in the aftermath of the incident was, and is, gross intimidation and falsehood," he said. In fact, a commercial 747, if fitted out with special cameras and electronic equipment, would be highly conspicuous as a spy plane and certainly of no use to U.S. intelligence agencies. American satellites can take startlingly detailed photographs of any Soviet installation.

Clark predicted that the Soviets would blame the incident on the high level of tension that has existed between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. and call for a summit "to reach a greater understanding." White House aides say that there is nothing that would justify a meeting between Reagan and Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov in the foreseeable future.

Along the northern coast of Japan, investigators continued to collect the debris from Flight 007. A five-ship U.S. task force searched international waters for the "black boxes" from the airliner that contain vital flight information. Near by, a Soviet fleet was doing the same thing. At times, ships from the two fleets came within 500 yds. of each other, engaging in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation.

Despite the wealth of transcripts released by Japan and the U.S., there were still doubts expressed about the U.S. version of the incident, even among Americans. In a New York Times/'CBS News poll taken last week, 61% thought the Government was "holding back information that the people ought to know." Nevertheless, 56% said that Reagan's actions so far have been "not tough enough."

The U.S. added to the confusion by revising its transcript of the radio transmissions of the Soviet pilots who pursued Flight 007. The amended version was the result of an electronic enhancement of the tapes, which is standard procedure in such a case. It was immediately publicized by the State Department even though it somewhat undercut the American position. A remark by the pilot of the Su-15 that shot down the airliner, originally said to be unintelligible, was revised to read, "I am firing cannon bursts." This seemed to buttress the Soviet claim that its pilot had fired tracer shots to warn the Korean jetliner away from Soviet airspace.

There was no indication, however, that the cannon shots in question were indeed warning tracers rather than part of an actual attack. The cannons carried by Soviet interceptor jets do not normally carry tracer ammunition. In any case, the Korean pilot apparently did not see the bursts, because even after they were fired he made no mention of anything unusual when he contacted controllers in Tokyo. The scrambling Soviet fighters generally stayed to the rear of the passenger plane and made no apparent attempt to get close enough to signal their presence. Indeed, one of the other revisions in the transcripts reveals the Su-15 pilot saying, "He still can't see me." Unfortunately, this created another ambiguity: Did the Soviet pilot mean that he had succeeded in avoiding detection, or that his efforts to signal the KAL 747 had been unavailing?

The Japanese also released a set of enhanced tapes and revised transcripts recording the horrific final seconds of those aboard Flight 007. "All engine!" the Korean pilot said to controllers shortly after being hit, signaling that all four of his engines were gone. "Rapid decompression," he added. This indicated that the plane, which had been flying at over 30,000 ft., was losing pressure rapidly. One U.S. Air Force expert described the likely scene: "As the fuselage opens and windows blow out, everything in the cabin, including passengers, even passengers in their seat belts, can be sucked out through the fuselage holes and the windows. Then comes the cold, say about --50DEG, instant extreme frostbite for anyone left alive."

One of the major lessons that Western analysts have gleaned from the Korean jet incident is that the Soviet air defense force is apparently far less competent than thought. The first group of interceptors that scrambled over the Kamchatka Peninsula never could find Flight 007. Military officials attending the International Institute for Strategic Studies meeting in Ottawa last week commented on the "juvenile" level of radio chatter by the Soviet pilots and their apparent confusion about what they should do. "The question arises," said Stephen Larrabee, a member of the Institute for East-West Security Studies, "whether the finger on the nuclear trigger is equally uncertain."

The White House has been pleased with the international chorus of condemnations directed at the Soviet Union. "Perhaps if any good has come of this tragedy," Reagan said last week, "it is that the Western democracies better appreciate that peace will take more than gestures of good will and sincerity." At home, Reagan's moderate response served to counter critics who fear he is too trigger-happy in dealing with the Soviets, while lending support to his view of them as part of an "evil empire." This is likely to translate into less opposition to his plans to build the MX missile and increase military spending. An indication of the changing congressional mood came last week when the House reversed itself and voted to end a 15-year moratorium on the production of chemical weapons.

For all the outrage in the U.S., the Korean jet tragedy does not significantly change the Reagan Administration's already jaundiced view of the Soviet Union. Yet there does appear to be an important, albeit subtle, shift in the way the U.S. deals with the U.S.S.R. Oddly enough, this change, though prompted hi part by the KAL outrage, could promote greater continuity in long-term U.S.-Soviet relations. Reagan came into office strongly advocating "linkage," the concept that talks on arms control and other important issues should be tied to Soviet conduct across the board. But the Administration insisted last week that the uproar over the Korean jet will not necessarily prevent continued negotiations in Geneva on Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) or Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). West European leaders were particularly anxious that the INF talks not be broken off just as the highly controversial deployment of NATO missiles is about to begin. Reagan heeded their urgings. Said he: "We must and will continue to reach out for arms-reduction agreements to reduce the nuclear and conventional arms that threaten humankind."

Unfortunately, an agreement in the INF talks before December, when NATO is scheduled to deploy American Pershing II and cruise missiles, seems very unlikely. Last week Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Kornienko and Deputy Chief of Staff Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev had a press conference in Moscow to put down reports emanating from West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher that the U.S.S.R. might become more flexible in its INF stance. "Such conclusions are wishful thinking," said Kornienko. Nor does there seem much hope of progress on limiting the number of intercontinental missiles at the START negotiations.

In fact, now that there is less political pressure on the President to be accommodating toward the Soviets, it is unlikely that, at least until next year's election, there will be any breakthroughs between Washington and Moscow. Nevertheless, Reagan's handling of the tragedy shows how difficult it is for a President to break off all dealings, or impose a significant punishment, on the planet's other superpower. "We've learned," says Marshall Goldman of Harvard's Russian Research Center, "not to burn all our bridges." --By Walter Isaacson. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow and Johanna McGeary/Washington with other bureaus

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof, Johanna McGeary This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.