The Target is Destroyed

ISBN: 0394755278

Author: Vintage

s/t: What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew about It
The Soviet destruction in September 1983 of 269 people aboard Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was one of the most upsetting crises of the Cold War era. The U.S. and Soviet regimes immediately blamed one another for the disaster; but, as Hersh powerfully argues, responsibility went far beyond ordinary governmental decision making and into the murky sphere of superpower intelligence calculations and confusion. He asserts that the catastrophe followed more from Soviet ignorance than viciousness, and that the whole episode demonstrates how the superpowers are more interested in gaining political advantage than the truest understanding of events. Hersh cannot provide a final recounting of this complex crisis. But he does show how one critical thinker can provide a more believable reconstruction of events than can any self-interested governmental regime. (Library Journal)