And yet the investigation into the violent death of a United States Congressman is, in the words of the State Department, "closed."

Who was Larry McDonald--this "unstoppable man on a mission," in the words of officials at John Birch Society's Appleton, WI, headquarters? It is a question that has haunted writers critical of government secrecy--of the Left and Right--for a quarter century.

JBS officials at the National Council-level, speaking recently on condition of anonymity, offered to this writer: "Larry McDonald was a medical doctor of urology, who joined the John Birch Society in the mid-60s and was determined to play a leadership role in American in the fight against communism. He started by leading an exemplary life as a JBSer and while as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives was chosen by founder Robert Welch and by members of the Executive Council to be the Society's Chairman in 1982." (The JBS maintains that Western Goals Foundation "was McDonald's baby from start to finish; Robert Welch was concerned that Larry might have too many irons in the fire, but there was no stopping him.")

Kathryn McDonald, his widow, would offer only: "He was my knight, my gladiator."

Approached on questions of Larry McDonald and Western Goals Foundation, Congressman Bob Stump (R-AZ), an ally of McDonald and from 1981-1987 a ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, responded irritably: "I don't understand why in the hell somebody would go back 10 or 12 or 14 years ago" (Silverman, "The Stealth Congressman," Phoenix New Times, 10/13/93).

A rare breed of Democrat (more properly, Dixiecrat), Dr. McDonald, in his five-terms in the U.S. House, garnered the highest lifetime rating ever bestowed by the influential American Conservative Union (ACU), a Washington think-tank run since the 1960s by David Keene. As such, he had earned his stripes and the accolades or epithets, depending on ones ideological bent, which many newspapers bestowed upon him. Larry McDonald was, indeed, "the darling of the Right in America."

Mae Brussell, the late conspiracy theorist from Monterey, California, heiress to the I. Magnin department store empire, and who wrote of McDonald for Hustler ("Who Killed Congressman Larry McDonald," February 1984) rightly posed this question:

"Why would the Soviet Union wish to make a martyr of Larry McDonald? If the Russians are the experts at terrorism that they're supposed to be, it would seem obvious that they could find an easier way to get rid of the congressman than chasing his airplane over Soviet territory for 2 1/2 hours. They could have easily blown him away anywhere in the world."

Ms. Brussell's conclusion, like that of this writer, is that the Soviets did not intend to make a martyr of McDonald--were probably not even aware that he was aboard the aircraft. The U.S.S.R. suffered serious setbacks in the eyes of the so-called World Community for their blunder, following the incident, with the U.S. Senate voting to approve the deployment of the MX-missile and to allow use of binary nerve-gas in warfare. But that 2 1/2 hours which KAL 007 spent over Soviet territory is a critical piece of the puzzle. As is the nearly 2 1/2 hours that the plane's flight crew spent in total absence of communication, with each other or with air-traffic-control at FAA (U.S.) or with its Korean counterpart. For 2 1/2 hours, from the time that the craft strayed off-course and into recognized Soviet airspace, and until the very last moments of the flight, when the pilots were tracked, chased and shot at by Soviet SU-15s, the flight crew said not one word to each other. (ICAO report)

Mae Brussell, in the Hustler article, attributes this bizarre behavior to "mind-control"; that the flight crew was part of a CIA reconnaissance mission, and that they were under the spell of their spymasters.

It is an interesting theory, but officials at the John Birch Society offer a simpler explanation: "The only way those pilots flew off-course into enemy airspace for nearly three hours, in total absence of communication, is with guns to their heads."

For the record, the John Birch Society has stated recently: "Our belief all along is that the plane was hijacked in Anchorage, upon refueling."

But if hijacked, by whom? And toward what end? Why would hijackers force pilots of a passenger jetliner into Soviet airspace, subjecting even themselves (the hijackers) to obliteration by air-to-air missiles?

Unless it wasn't a passenger airliner--and which could explain why Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and then-Senator Steve Symms (R-ID) chose to be aboard the other, sister, aircraft, toward the same destination, Seoul, South Korea, where the three were slated to establish a South Korean branch office of McDonald's private Western Goals Foundation--just one facet of an Intelligence network McDonald was constructing toward his "ultimate goal of the White House" (confidential sources, JBS' Appleton, WI, headquarters) and, in the words of McDonald's most-trusted Intelligence advisor Hilaire duBerrier, for "to compete with the CIA--and he was succeeding." (duBerrier, personal interviews, Clarendon Towers, Phoenix, AZ, May 1985)

Despite the presence of a United States Congressman aboard the craft, no formal report on KAL 007 was ever issued by the executive branch (White House/State Department) or either branch of Congress. The only official report released by any agency--domestic or international--was that of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)--an agency of the United Nations, of which McDonald was its most vehement critic in Congress. The State Department wrapped up its investigation after only ten weeks--in contrast to the investigations of the airline bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland and the more-recent TWA-800 crash which would proceed for years.

Again, who was Larry McDonald? What was Western Goals Foundation? Why did McDonald, as a U.S. Congressman, persist in reading into the Congressional Record on the floor of the House of Representatives the various failings of the State Department in combatting the then-Soviet threat, and who took it upon himself to expose the private Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission and the various Bretton-Woods-founded institutions as being harbingers of One-World Government ideology? And why are both friends and foes so reluctant to talk about any of this today?

That is what you are about to find out.

[. . . Breaking continuing, dispatches from South Korea by Todd Brendan Fahey.