Twenty-five
years have gone by with little thought for Congressman Larry McDonald, 22
children under the age of 12 years, and the rest of the 269 passengers and crew
of Boeing 747 Korean Airlines Flight 007. This is the aircraft shot down by the
Soviets just west of Sakhalin
Island in the
international waters of the Tatar Straits on September 1, 1983. 

A first in the
documented history of air flight occurred. This became a designated crash site
at sea with a declaration of “no survivors,” but also with no bodies, body
parts or tissues, and no luggage on the surface of the sea, and none of the
above under the sea. This according to both the Soviet civilian divers in their
Izvestia interviews of 1991, and the Commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet Search operation
Admiral Walter Piotti.

Captain Mikhail
Igorevich Girs, Commander of Soviet submersible Tinro ll, declared,
“Submergence 10 October. Aircraft pieces, wing spars, pieces of aircraft skin,
wiring, and clothing. But—no people. The impression is that all of this has
been dragged here by a trawl rather than falling down from the sky…”

Diver Viyacheslav
Popov said, “I will confess that we felt great relief when we found out that
there were no bodies at the bottom. Not only no bodies; there were also no
suitcases or large bags.”

Where had all the
people gone? Where had all the luggage gone?

An explanation soon
came but with it a deepening mystery with every new facet of what turned out to
be a Soviet deception of such magnitude that even now it is hard to fathom.
With the opening of Russia’s doors in the early 90’s, former Soviet military
men, some of them stationed on the Siberian coast opposite Sakhalin, one of
them becoming a citizen of Israel, told the story of having tracked KAL 007 on
radar to a safe water landing.

Others, remaining in
the Soviet Union, added to it. Russian
boats had come alongside the jumbo jet, disembarked the passengers and taken
them to the coast. KAL 007 was pulled a short distance, sunk or allowed to
sink, and then exploded under water.

Later, stories
began to emerge from informants and from the Soviet civilian divers themselves.
Trawlers had come, and with the help of military divers, preceding the civilian
divers, the wreckage was moved and scattered to simulate a plane having come
down from above.

All this occurred while the Soviet Fleet, under the command of Admiral
Siderov, pretended to be searching for KAL 007 and its Black Box. The pretense
was successful. In the effort to convince the combined U.S., Japanese,
and South Korean search effort that they had not located and gutted the plane,
and taken the occupants of KAL 007, the Soviets confronted the allied vessels
in dangerous ways, as if the search for KAL 007 and the much vaunted Black Box
really mattered to them. For example, the Petro-pavlovsk guided missile cruiser
and a destroyer radar locked on to our vessels.

The Cover-Up

In addition, a nuclear-armed Soviet Backfire bomber circled overhead,
while the Soviets attempted to send an armed boarding party onto a Japanese
auxiliary vessel and tried to ram brave South Korean Sailors who refused to
abandon their search station. The Soviets also set false “pingers” in various
locations in order to lead the U.S.
naval vessels on a wild goose chase. The Russian ruse worked but it all began
to unravel starting at the beginning of the 1990s.

Senator Jesse
Helms, then the ranking member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, requested
the CIA to verify the reports about the Soviet attack on KAL 007 coming from Israel. These
reports were mostly verified and a draft Republican Staff Study of 1991
concluded, “KAL 007 PROB-ABLY DITCHED SUCCESS-FULLY, THERE MAY HAVE BEEN
SURVIVORS, THE SOVIETS HAVE BEEN LYING MASSIVELY, AND DIPLO-MATIC EFFORTS NEED
TO BE MADE TO RETURN THE POSSIBLE SURVIVORS.”

According to Rear Admiral Bud Nance, director under Helms for the
Minority Staff of the Committee, the CIA verified information coming from Israel that was
the basis for Senator Helms writing to Boris Yeltsin on December 10, 1991
requesting information about the location of camps of survivors. Helms
specifically requested information on the fate of Rep. Larry McDonald, all
Soviet military communications related to the shoot-down itself, radar
trackings, etc. Documents were supplied by Yeltsin but there was not a word
about survivors! Still, the Soviet deception continued to unravel.

Truth Trickles Out

On March 24, 1992,
Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov admitted on Russian television that he
had ordered an all-out effort to retrieve the black boxes in order to “prevent
the United States from
finding them and to save the Soviet Union from
a flurry of international accusations for destroying a civilian airliner.”

In June, 1992, Yeltsin
revealed the existence of a KGB memo reporting the existence of documents
related to KAL 007.

On October 16, 1992,
Yeltsin released and Izvestia published October 1983 Top Secret Memos from KGB
head Victor Chebrikov and Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov to General Secretary
of the Soviet Union Yuri Andropov informing him that the Black Boxes were now
in their possession and recommended that they not be released because they
could not confirm the Soviet propaganda claim that KAL 007 was on an
intelligence mission for the U.S. They also said that the Soviet fleet was
simulating a search for KAL 007 to confuse and disinform the U.S. and
allies.

In November, 1992,
Yeltsin handed over the two Black Box containers to Korean President TohTae-Woo
but not the tapes themselves.

On January 8, 1993, the tapes, which Russia had all these years denied
having retrieved, were finally handed to the International Civil Aviation
Organization of the U.N.

On September 1, 2003, Mikhail Prozumentshchikov, the Deputy Director of
the State Archives of Recent History of the Russian Federation, acknowledged
that the Soviets had searched for KAL 007 and the Black Box with the
Allied search vessels while they knew where it was all along.

The tapes that were
handed over by the Russians reveal the following astonishing facts: Not only
did KAL 007 not fall, plunge, or cartwheel out of control to its destruction in
the waters below, but it attained its pre- missile attack altitude, began a
gradual descent, and then maintained a level flight at 16,424 feet altitude for
almost five minutes until it reached the only land mass in the whole Tatar
Staits—tiny Moneron Island off Sakhalin Island—and then began a slow spiral
descent. It finally got low enough (1,000 ft.) to move off the radar screens because
of the curvature of the earth, and not because it had been destroyed in an
explosion.

The military
communications handed over by Yeltsin per the request of Helms tell the rest:
within a few minutes, missions involving rescue helicopters from Sakhalin, KGB
patrol boats and other vessels, and the civilian trawlers then in the vicinity
were ordered to the last location on Soviet radar for KAL 007—tiny Moneron
Island—within the Soviet territorial waters and precisely the area denied by
the Russians to Commander Walter Piotti in the combined allied search for the
jumbo jet.

Where Are They?

But what of the passengers and crew of KAL 007? There have been no
confirmed deaths of any of them, and to our sorrow, later reports, which cry
for evaluation and action by our government, caused grave concerns and
heartache for any who have known and loved them.

It was reported
that Larry McDonald was taken to Lubyanka Central KGB prison for interrogation,
then to Leforto prison, also in Moscow, then to Suchanova “dacha” where he was
interrogated under the influence of drugs, then to Karaganda transit prison in
Kazakhstan, and then to Temir Tau prison, also in Kazakhstan. There is some
evidence that Noelle Ann Grenfell (age 5 at the time of the shootdown) was placed
in a medical technical secondary school in Khabarovsk at the age of 12 after
being separated from her younger sister Stacy. And there are other disturbing
reports.

Where is the brave senator or congressman who will fight for these
people, because of their plight, or for Larry McDonald, because he is a
colleague? Why is there no outrage over the fact that the U.S. was so
tricked, despised and mocked?

Where are the
citizens of America
demanding that the U.S.
Government bring home these unfortunate people to a land once theirs?
 

*Mr.
Schlossberg is the director of the International Committee for the Rescue of
KAL 007 Survivors, Inc. http://www.rescue007.org. His wife’s father and cousin were
passengers aboard KAL 007.

 

 

THE SCANDAL
THE MEDIA WON’T TOUCH

By Cliff Kincaid

Last summer
Accuracy in Media published two blockbuster stories about the much-publicized
case of Major Jill Metzger, who claimed she was abducted and brutalized but
somehow escaped from her captors while on a deployment to a U.S. military base in Kyrgyzstan in September of 2006.
Metzger was an attractive blonde, 34-year-old newlywed and two-time Air Force
Marathon winner. But no hard evidence of her sensational claims ever turned up
and other local sources suggested the abduction story was designed to conceal
the procurement of an abortion.

The major, sometimes
described as “the Air Force’s top female athlete in marathon running,” was on
the fast-track to more promotions and glory in the military before she went
“missing” and put her career in jeopardy.

Meanwhile, she returned to
the U.S. and spent a year “on ice” at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia, where
Metzger did little work and was insulated from contact with other service
members by the top brass. “We were ordered not to talk to her,” one
sergeant told the website http://www.militarycorruption.com. She was then “retired”
and now draws the equivalent of a military pension worth nearly $3,000 tax-free
per month.

It is
widely believed that Metzger, a feminist icon, received preferential treatment.
Her father is a retired Air Force colonel and her young husband, a captain, is
a member of the dreaded OSI (Office of Special Investigations).

Air Force Scandal

Retired U.S. Army
Major Glenn MacDonald, editor-in-chief of http://www.militarycorruption.com,
commented, “She had only 12 years of active duty service and was no way near
eligible for a retirement pension. Now she gets the equivalent of one because
the top brass seem to be protecting her. Why? What does she know that
could compromise some top generals?”

Now that the Air Force’s top two officials have resigned in a case
involving the handling of nuclear weapons and material, there may be an
opportunity for Defense Secretary Robert Gates to get to the bottom of the
Metzger scandal. The two Air Force officials forced to resign were Air Force
Secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley. But other
top officials may go as well, and one or more may be involved in possible
wrongdoing in the Metzger case.

Setting the record straight and providing the complete
truth are not for the purpose of making Metzger’s life any more miserable than
it already is. Whatever happened, she went through personal trauma. The issue
is why she was protected and then retired on a “disability” pension, supposedly
because of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), when veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have suffered
terrible life-threatening injuries have to fight the system for even a small
percentage of the benefits to which they are entitled.

By many accounts, the handling of the case has hurt morale in the Armed
Forces.

The Background

The story of Metzger’s
disappearance was widely covered in the media, with CBS News reporting that the
Kyrgyzstan Interior Ministry said Metzger and another U.S.
servicewoman were recorded on a security camera entering the TsUM department
store in central Bishkek. The cameras, however, showed Metzger leaving her
companion just three minutes later.

Three days later, media outlets reported a remarkable tale of a heroic
escape by Metzger from her captors. Metzger told the Kyrgyz police she had been
abducted by three young men and a woman in a minibus and held in a rural area
30 miles from Bishkek. Metzger told Kyrgyz police chief Kemilbek Kiyazov that
someone put a hard object and a note in her back pocket, saying it was an
explosive. The note also included detailed instructions about where to go and
what to do.

The Real Story

Kiyazov said the major reported that she was met by three men and a
woman who put her into a vehicle, took her to a house and placed her in a dark
room. Metzger reportedly said that she managed to escape after an abductor
brought her food and she struck him.

However, local media reported that Metzger was
actually seeking an abortion. A television station provided details, even
naming the medical facility that performs the procedure. According to this
version of the story, Metzger had an extramarital affair and planned to have
the abortion and return to the base the same day. But the abortion went badly
and she had to stay at the medical facility for an extended length of time.
That’s when she realized that she had to come up with a cover story explaining
where she was.

If it were true that
Metzger made up the abduction story and in fact had an abortion, she could have
violated the following regulations: disobeying an order because she didn’t stay
with her group in the store, knowing it was forbidden to wander off; making a
false official statement; conduct unbecoming an officer; adultery; and
fraternization.

Instead, she was
retired on July 2, 2007, on a “disability” pension.

“It is
outrageous that we have wounded and genuinely disabled veterans coming
home from the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan
who don’t begin to get a 100 percent ‘disability’ pension for PTSD that Jill Metzger
received after just 12 years of service,” MacDonald said.

He added, “We can’t
prove she lied and that her so-called condition is just a way for her to be
paid off and taken care of, but we do know that if the top brass participated
in a cover-up which included pension fraud, then courts-martial should be
convened and the truth finally told.”

MacDonald told us at the
time that the favorable treatment accorded Metzger was an outrage that reflects
political correctness and fear of feminism in the highest reaches of the
Pentagon. But Defense Secretary Gates can now begin to correct this problem.

Media Protect Feminist

“We have heard from
hundreds of Air Force personnel who are disgusted by the failure of their
military leaders to tell them what really happened in the Metzger case,”
MacDonald added. “They feel a double-standard is in effect and that Metzger is
the last person to deserve a lucrative ‘disability’ pension. Morale has
been adversely affected by this suspicious silence, and only now, with the
firing of the much-disliked Gen. Moseley, is there any hope that things will
get better soon.”

As Accuracy in Media
has documented, however, the major media have shied away from the case,
apparently because it involved a feminist military officer and top Air Force
officials had discouraged the media from probing deeper.

“Despite the failure of the mainstream media to follow up on this
story, and the ‘hear-no-evil, see-no-evil’ stance of establishment publications
like Air Force Times, we promise you MilitaryCorruption.com will stay with this
case until we obtain information that proves the ‘abduction’ story is either
true or a despicable deception and lie. That is why we have offered
$100,000 to obtain the proof in the form of documents needed to settle this
case once and for all. It is very unfortunate that we have to go to that
length to get to the bottom of this case,” MacDonald said.

“One would hope that
some senator or congressman would dare to initiate an investigation and demand
the truth. But even the appearance of offending the feminists and females
in the military scares most politicians into silence. We will not be
intimidated,” MacDonald vowed.

If the story about
escaping her abductors is true, MacDonald notes, the Air Force should award her
a high decoration. After all, she claims to have escaped and run barefoot for
30 miles to freedom. But there has been no medal and no official
statement. Silence and stonewall have greeted requests for the results of
official investigations.

Searching For Justice

And if she were
abducted, MacDonald and others asked, why did she eventually surface with her
hair cut short and dyed black? What’s more, she “escaped” wearing her wedding
ring on her finger after three days of abduction when real thugs would have
been expected to have taken it off.

MacDonald, whose
popular site gets over two million hits a month worldwide, says the recent
firings of top Air Force leaders may inadvertently serve as a means to undo the
“cover-up” the major feels has been in place to protect a pampered female
officer who many suspect was less than truthful about her so-called
“abduction.”

He said it is time the
Air Force came clean: “We hope this isn’t a case of pension fraud and
favoritism facilitated by top generals. However, if military regulations
were violated and crimes committed here, those responsible should be
court-martialed no matter what their rank or who they are.”

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