Salina Journal, The (Newspaper) - July 11, 1988, Salina, Kansas Salina T 1 1 he Journal 115th 193 Kansas MONDAY July 25 Cents Speculation surrounds downing of Iranian jet By STEPHEN ENGELBERG The New York Times WASHINGTON When dawn broke in the Persian Gulf on July commanders there were armed with a valuable piece of secret United States military officials say in experts had broken the coded elec tronic signals that Iranian planes re cently had been using to identify That intelligence breakthrough had en abled warships to identify fighters from miles military officials And on July Will Rogers III of the Navy ship Vincennes had every reason to believe that system was working As the Iranian Airbus took off July it was spotted by the radar operators aboard the Vincennes as an unidentified target leaving an airfield used jointly by military and civil ian officials Within the ships system for breaking the identifying code had received two One signal was appropriate to both civilian and military The second signal could only have been sent by a military transmitter and appeared to have come from an While Rogers knew what had appar ently been transmitted by the plane on coded military he was not aware that the aircraft had been exchanging routine flight instructions with the civilian control tower that were broadcast on open radio officials The lack of information about the control tower is important because the Vincennes shot down the civilian Airbus on the mistaken belief that the coded signals were and that the target was an Iranian Iran said this weekend that the planes conversations with the tower began 17 min utes before take off and continued throughout the Had these been provided to they would have prompted doubts about his con he was firing on a fighter Determining the quality and accuracy the welter of electronic information available to Rogers is at the heart of the efforts to explain how an advanced Navy warship shot down a civilian killing all 290 people New information revealed While many questions a recon struction of events leading up to the downing of Iran Air Flight based on interviews with military officers and administration discloses new information that supports conflicting explanations of the in The new information includes these de tails The Vincennes used its system to read airplane identification codes at three points in the flight of the a circumstance that some technical experts insist makes it unlikely that the Vincennes picked up a signal from a faroff plane and erroneously attri buted it to the On the other the listening post in Oman thinks it detected an Iranian taking off from Bandar Abbas shortly after the a official The presence of this aircraft would lend some credence to the theory that the military code came from another The Pentagon insists this is highly unlikely since the Vin cennes did not detect a separate In a mock attack on the fleet in a 1978 while Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was still in the Iranian air force executed a maneuver in which three fighter planes were hidden beneath the radar image of a Boeing 707 The planes flew just a few feet from the See Page 7 Mexicans upset over 4day delay in election results Ken director of the aeronautical technology division of Kansas College of has accumulated 30 Program marked by fleet growth Tom Little do they but when state dig are flown around Salina in the white airplane from Kansas College of Tech nology they are in a plane that once made illegal drug runs into the Just how the 1959 Cessna 310 came to Kansas Tech is a typical story for the 30 airplanes owned by the schools aeronautical technology Not that all of the planes have hidden but it took some wheeling and dealing to get Theres a story behind every one of division head Ken Barnard The small was recovered in Dade Florida Miami Vice territory after a smuggler the plane in a The pilot abandoned the stolen and it became county Barnard Dade County down there has airplanes com ing but of the ceiling with so many he So it sells the confiscated planes to help fund A surplus airplane dealer bought the plane and sold it to one which traded it to Kansas Tech along with five turbine engines for another Barnards students restored the plane by re pairing the saltwater corrosion on its rebuilding the nose and rewiring and then repainting The work took four The students do all the Barnard Thats what I feel is unique about this pro When Barnard took over the aeronautical division in the school had four airplanes that werent airworthy and just its aviation maintenance He convinced the school and then the Legislature to add the professional pilots program a lengthy It took me five years just to get approval to buy aviation he 16 of the schools 30 planes and heli copters are but only nine are insured for Two helicopters are but the insurance is so expensive they arent My philosophy is if you have airworthy then students will be more diligent making he Besides a growing fleet of the divi sion is attracting more and more In the division had 25 students but enroll ment is expected to double this Our flight training program is the most rapidly growing program at Kansas said Kent Kansas Tech vice president of There appears to be a tremen dous need for We didnt realize it would take off like it In the early Barnard and his students would rebuild a plane and trade it for more planes or engines and other Through the Barnard has built valuable contacts among other aeronautical surplus See Page 7 By The New York Times MEXICO CITY Thousands of Mexicans gathered at centers Sunday to protest the delay in announcing official results from Wednesdays presidential The protesters also contested the victory claimed by the ruling In Revolutionary Followers of Cuauhtemoc Car the candidate of the center National Democratic joined supporters of Manuel Clouth the standardbearer of the right National Action at many of the 300 district off ices where results still were being tabulated four days after the The Federal Election which originally promised to an complete returns Wednesday continued meeting in Mexico City and released results from some scattered congressional But there was no indication when totals from the presidential vote might be Opposition members of the com mission charged that the delays were part of an effort by the government to gain time to alter the results in favor of Carlos Salinas de a can for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary They argued that as time drags it grows likely that the real vote may never be In one of the two first districts announced Sunday the op A representative from the National Action Party complains Sunday to the Federal Election position described as implausible the fact that more votes were counted in the proportional repre sentation than had been cast in the direct popular In the northern border state of a stronghold in recent years of the National Action protesters formed an automobile barricade that shut down the Pan American Highway near the state In Ciudad a center of polit ical ferment on the Texas one of three bridges to the United States was blocked by National Action Party BlB bombers may fall short of mission Inside DARAN wins the Salina City Medal Golf Tournament Critics had said couldnt win the big but he silenced them with his 54hole See Page TRIBUTES ARE paid to victims and survivors of the recent oil rig fire off Scotland and store collapse in Texas during ceremonies See Page Living On the Weather KANSAS Partly cloudy today with highs in the east to the Partly cloudy with a chance of thun lows in the Partly cloudy highs in the Missouri man wins domino title AP Travis Newsome has been coming to the World Championship Domino Tournament since His diligence finally paid off Kansas beat Edwards of 21 in an match to capture the singles Newsome won and Edwards got for his At the start of the tournament who attended with three predicted he would finally capture the world This will be the first he Were going to win this Newsome said he would use his prize money to defray some of the expenses he has incurred coming to the south Alabama town of which has played host to the tournament since About 500 people from as far away as California competed for some in Charles cochairman of the said he sent letters to George Bush and Michael Dukakis asking the two likely presidential nominees to play each other in this years I never got a he We probably could have really packed them in if those two WASHINGTON AP Recent Air Force tests indicate BlB bombers may not be able to fulfill their mis sion of penetrating Soviet air de fenses in the officials said The stumbling block is in BlBs Electronic Countermeasures sys or which is designed to help the airplane foil enemy The systems deficiencies were pointed out last week in a memo sent to members of the House Armed Services Committee by Les the committees Air Force officials Sunday con firmed the information in Aspins Plans to build the BlB were shelved during the Carter adminis tration but revived under President Reagan persuaded Congress that a penetrating bomber was needed to bridge the gap between the aging fleet of and the B2 or stealth bomber expected to become opera tional in the The BlB became operational in although they still are under going tests and Aspin said in his memo randum said that ECM has been the chief question mark in the BlBs future as a penetrating It looks like we have our the memo The Air Force is now admitting because of a design it will never work as The memo quoted a letter from Air Force officials to the committee late last month saying that there are limitations within the current system Aspin said in his memo that the Air Force acknowledged that those limitations will prevent the BlB ECM from ever achieving full ope rational Unsolicited advice not altering Dukakis By The New York Times WASHINGTON Just two months Vice President George Bush was getting a lot of advice from wellwishers and Republican strategists on how to put some life into a flagging presidential after the polls have tightened Michael Dukakis is getting his turn to hear from the backseat The thrust of much of the unsolicited advice to the man whom the Democrats are virtually cer tain to nominate for president in little more than a week is that he is being too vague and unspecific and that it is time for him to offer a clear vision and He isnt taking the In in his Western campaign swing last Dukakis showed an extraordinary ability to stick to the Im running to create jobs in Middle he said last Thats what this campaign is The he declared at another is the single most important institution we have in this When he went on the it was to criticize corruption in the Reagan or the attorney Edwin or failure of the war against Is Dukakis stubbornly ignoring good advice Not at say his He is running exactly the kind of campaign he has run all the cam he thinks will What is striking in talking to Bushs who also disregarded most outside advice to be more is that both share a similar analysis of how the 1988 campaign will be Advisers to Bush and Dukakis say that if the election comes to turn around whether the Mas governor is too the vice president will But Dukakis and his aides think there is another kind of campaign that he can and Bushs aides are worried they might be As seen by the Dukakis their candidates main asset in the competition with Bush is certainly not the qualities Dukakis aides emphasize these days are cool ness and The George Bush they want to run against is not the conservative heir to Ronald they but the man who tangled with Dan Rather on the CBS Evening photo Michael Dukakis is not changing his campaigns
