Fallout from Flight 007

Conspiracy theories persist about the downed Korean airliner

It has been exactly a year since a Soviet Su-15 jet fighter blasted Korean Air Lines Flight 007 out of the sky over Sakhalin Island, hurling 269 civilians to their deaths in the Sea of Japan. On the anniversary, the inevitable conspiracy theories are attracting worldwide, and often uncritical, attention, perhaps more than at any other time since the incident. Some of the allegations, contends Roy Godson, a U.S. intelligence expert at Washington's Georgetown University, are a result of "a massive, overt disinformation campaign" by the Soviet Union.

The theories vary and sometimes conflict, but...