It is a story that no one wants to talk about anymore--not ideological colleagues Congressman Bob Stump (R-AZ) and former Senator Steve Symms (R-ID), nor from any quarter of the State Department: the assassination on September 1, 1983, of a United States Congressman aboard a passenger airliner at the hands of Soviet fighter jets. A southern Democrat lawmaker, who was also jointly Chairman of the John Birch Society and President of Western Goals Foundation, both famously anti-Globalist/anti-communist organizations, and who had announced to his advisors in the weeks prior to his death that he would be seeking the Presidency of the United States--as a conservative Democrat--in 1988. A cousin of WWII hero General George S. Patton, and who had inherited Patton's mountain of anti-Soviet Intelligence records; who had organized a private Intelligence network which threatened to rival that of the CIA--at once commanding, polished on-the-stump and movie-star handsome: The kind of man who could seriously derail the Presidential aspirations of George Herbert Walker Bush, the elder.

Such is the story of the late-Congressman Lawrence Patton "Larry" McDonald--former U.S. Naval Reserves flight-surgeon-turned-lawmaker-turned Presidential hopeful. In death, even, for the Establishment's purposes, the most dangerous man in America.

Like so many stories approved by "our government," the "official version" does not jibe with the facts.

George P. Schultz, then-U.S. Secretary of State, ended the probe of the downed Korean Airlines flight 007 in December 1983, barely three months after the event, explaining that the Boeing 747 aboard which was Larry McDonald flew off its scheduled course, strayed into then-Soviet airspace, and that Soviet pilot Major Gennadiy Nikolayevich Osipovich, at the helm of a Soviet Su-15 fighter jet and upon the orders of Col. Gen. Ivan M. Tretyak, commander of the Far Eastern Military District, obliterate the craft in mid-air with two air-to-air missiles and that its passengers and crew were destroyed along with it (ICAO Report, December 1983, Appendix D, page D-3) (Istvestia articles, 1991).

Dan Rather, at CBS, and other Talking Heads, nodded with relief at this explanation, and then-President Ronald Reagan contented himself with the Senate's non-binding "condemnation" of the U.S.S.R., which was Senate Joint Resolution H.J. Res. 353, in proceedings chaired by then-Senator John Tower (R-TX) (who would, himself, perish in an airline crash in 1991).

But that is not what happened.

In fact, the evidence of a successful landing of KAL 007 on Sakhalin Island or an at-sea ditching, with surviving passengers, Congressman McDonald among them, is so massive--from signed FAA logs, to official statements from Japanese Civil Aviation Bureau, to testimony from Korean lawmakers and Korean CIA (KCIA)--that the only rightful conclusion is one of cover-up.

Evidence of a Landing at Sakhalin Island

Signed logs of Duty Officer Orville Brockman at Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) headquarters in Washington, DC., of FAA representative Mr. Dennis Wilhelm, Tokyo, and reports from a "Mr. Takano" at the Japanese Civil Aviation Bureau headquarters, Air Traffic Division, all show that KAL 007 was not destroyed, and was, in fact, guided down to Sakhalin Island--a disputed territory held jointly by the former U.S.S.R. and Japan.

Of the many sightings or confirmations of the Sakhalin Island landing, the most salient and verifiable are these:

· C. K. Suh, Manager of the American Regional Office of Korean Air Lines in Los Angeles, contacted by telephone Congressman McDonald's press aide Tommy Toles, stated that he had "just called Korean Air Lines in Seoul" and that "the information I [Suh] got from them is that [the] U.S. Embassy in Korea informed the Korean Government, Minister of Foreign Affairs . . . that the plane has landed in Sakhalin."

· From FAA directly, Mr. Toles received a phone call from one of its officers, who stated:

"This is Duty Officer Orville Brockman at FAA headquarters in Washington, DC. We have just received information from our FAA representative, Mr. Dennis Wilhelm in Tokyo, as follows: He has been advised by the Japanese Civil Aviation Bureau headquarters, Air Traffic Division, Mr. Takano -- T-a-k-a-n-o -- who is his counterpart in Japanese aviation, as follows: Japanese self-defense force confirms that the Hokkaido radar followed Air Korea to a landing in Soviet territory on the island of Sakhalinska -- S-a-k-h-a-l-i-n-s-k-a -- and it is confirmed by the manifest that Congressman McDonald is on board."

· A month after the incident, South Korean lawmaker Son Se-il, of the opposition Democratic Party, reported having received a classified CIA report which indicated that at least some KAL 007 passengers and crew may have survived. The 57-year-old lawmaker told reporters that he had received the document, marked "Top Secret/codeword," but would not disclose his source. (Yonhap News Agency)

Reuters news service verifies that it obtained a copy of the 17-page report, some of which was published on October 26, 1983. The Reuters report states that this document indicates the Boeing 747: ". . . probably successfully ditched, there probably were survivors, the Soviets lied massively and diplomatic efforts need to be made to return the survivors."

· Columnist Jack Anderson (Deseret News, 04/03/84) confirms that a news associate, Dale Van Atta, visited Tokyo in early 1984, and confirmed "from Japanese Intelligence sources and documents stamped 'secret' in red Japanese characters" key aspects of the KAL 007 incident, amongst which:

At 3:38 AM on September 1, 1983, "The Japanese radar station at Wakkanai, Hokkaido, which had been tracking the unidentified aircraft's progress, saw the blip disappear from the screen less than 50 miles away. The trackers thought it was probably a Soviet plane that had gone down." (Anderson column, Deseret News, 04/03/84)

Robert W. Lee, writing for the John Birch Society's New American magazine, finds, of Van Atta's discovery:

"Since Wakkanai is itself only about 40 miles from Sakhalin's southern tip, KAL 007 would have had to have been very close to the island if it was `less than 50 miles away' from Wakkanai when it disappeared from radar. Since it had been airborne for 12 minutes at that point, there is no way that it could have been tracked that close to the island unless it had changed direction. And if it changed direction, it was under the control of the crew. (That trackers thought it was a Soviet plane also implies that it was heading toward the Soviet military stronghold, as a Soviet plane would be expected to do. Had it been moving away from the island, there would have been less reason to conclude that it was a Soviet aircraft.)" (Lee, "What Happened to Flight 007?", The New American, 08/29/88)