''I saw two rows of windows and knew that this was a Boeing,'' he said. ''I knew this was a civilian plane. But for me this meant nothing. It is easy to turn a civilian type of plane into one for military use.''
-Lt. Col., later Major Gennadi Osipovich the Soviet fighter pilot who shot down Korean Air Lines flight 007 on September 1, 1983, killing 269, in an interview with the New York Times in 1996.http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/09/world/ex-soviet-pilot-still-insists-kal-007-was-spying.html
...
"The Soviet Union initially denied knowledge of the incident, but later admitted the shootdown, claiming that the aircraft was on a spy mission. The Politburo said it was a deliberate provocation by the United States to test the Soviet Union's military preparedness, or even to provoke a war. The White House accused the Soviet Union of obstructing search and rescue operations. The Soviet military suppressed evidence sought by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) investigation, notably the flight data recorders, which were eventually released eight years later after the collapse of the Soviet Union." (emphasis added)
...
"The Soviet Union initially denied knowledge of the incident, but later admitted the shootdown, claiming that the aircraft was on a spy mission. The Politburo said it was a deliberate provocation by the United States to test the Soviet Union's military preparedness, or even to provoke a war. The White House accused the Soviet Union of obstructing search and rescue operations. The Soviet military suppressed evidence sought by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) investigation, notably the flight data recorders, which were eventually released eight years later after the collapse of the Soviet Union." (emphasis added)
-Wikipedia, KAL007.
