007: Accident or Conspiracy? - The Black Vault

Chapter Three
AUTHOR'S BACKGROUND AND REVIEWS OF BOOK
This chapter will attempt to establish Johnson's background
expertise, political bias (if any), methods of reseach and logic.
This will be done by first examining what Johnson says of
himself and his efforts in his book. Next, reviews of the book
will be studied to obtain the same information, but from the view
point of others. This information will serve as the starting
point for the analysis
Johnson's-Background
The first step in analyzing the KAL 007 tragedy as Johnson
sees it is to try and learn something about the author himself.
How he uses information and reports it, an well as his logic, may
have as much importance as what he says in his book. To do this,
one must look at what Johnson says of himself as he sets about
his task of investigating the event. In addition, one must
examine the critiques of Johnson's book from several of the
reviews that came out on the work. From these, a rough picture
of Johnson and his effort begins to emerge.
Shootdown is an in-depth work. Johnson has done an
exhaustive amount of research, looking at almost every piece of
evidence available in the public record (9t473). Other
information comes from "unnamed and unidentified Intelligence
sources." (7:111) The factual data and second-hand information
through which Johnson must work have both technical and political
Implications and have led most investigators, including Johnson,
to either an accidental theory or a conspiratorial theory
(9:472). Johnson's book looks at both types and results in the
examination ,if four hypotheses (10:67). Before exploring these
hypotheses, he first task is to determine Johnson's area of
expertise in order to gain an insight as to where his personal
strength lies to deal with this mass of data.
All that can be discerned about Johnson comes from the
biographical information provided by the book jacket and from his
reviewers. Quoting directly fzom the book jacket, "R. W. Johnson
is a Fellow in Politics at Oxford University, in England. He is a
frequent contributor to such topical publications asTh
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