Doomed Journey

"Your assignment is to find that it was an intruder," a Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister told Seymour Hersh when he arrived in Moscow in 1984. The dogged reporter was beginning his investigation into Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which the Soviets shot down in their airspace on its way from Anchorage to Seoul, killing all 269 aboard. Had Hersh indeed uncovered proof that the plane was on a spy mission, he would have scored one of the scoops of the century. Instead he has done something no less impressive: followed where the facts led him and produced a gripping account undistorted...