Word: ogarkov
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...name not given, who had shot down KAL 007; he insisted he had tried to warn it to land. He followed by a day a news conference in Moscow for both Soviet and foreign reporters that was televised live by satellite around the world. The main speaker: Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, Soviet Chief of Staff and as such the top professional soldier in the U.S.S.R...
Natty in olive-green uniform with row upon row of military decorations, Ogarkov traced the path of Flight 007 with a long metal pointer on a huge colored map before an overflow audience, which spilled out of the second-floor auditorium of the Novosti building and down the stairs to the mezzanine. As no other Soviet official had done, he admitted in so many words that Soviet fighters had shot down the Korean jet and confirmed Western reports that two air-to-air missiles had done the deed. But his explanation was confusing. He suggested that Soviet ground controllers...
...point, Ogarkov's presentation confirmed the speculations of Western Kremlinologists: the order to shoot down the plane was a military decision, not checked with Andropov, who was reported to have been on vacation in the Caucasus, or other Politburo members. The order was given, Ogarkov said, by a commander in the Soviet Far East. Without exactly saying so, Ogarkov indicated that he had been informed only after the Korean liner had been destroyed. That raises a terrifying question: Are Soviet military forces under firm enough control by the Kremlin civilian leadership to prevent their obvious hair-trigger mentality from creating...
Could the Soviets have mistaken their target for a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance plane that had been on a mission in the region near where the Korean jet went off course? Marshal Ogarkov reiterated the Soviet claim that the KAL plane was on a spy mission and flew in tandem with the RC-135 for ten minutes so that the blips of the two planes merged on Soviet radar screens. When they separated, he implied, the Soviets could not tell which was which. U.S. officials dismiss this scenario as ludicrous. The two planes, they say, passed each other 86 miles...
...tough talk, the Soviets were careful to hold out a tattered olive branch. Ogarkov's public comments stopped well short of more serious threats that Soviet officials have made previously through diplomatic channels. Arbatov also noted that any change in Washington's attitude "will, of course, be noticed in Moscow." TIME has learned that President Reagan recently invited Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin for a private chat and assured the veteran diplomat that he is personally committed to peace. It was a tiny step in easing tensions...