The Soviets denied it, until their fighter pilot's transmissions were played for the UN.

The Russian ambassador looked like a guy caught with his stash of kiddie porn.

There was a really embarrassing situation earlier with a KAL airliner landing some 1000 miles in the Soviet Union. This one had flown over the submarine pens and the sortie that put it down was the 2nd. The first never got within range. The one that did never got near enough to ID the plane and had already dropped his wing tanks which meant shoot and return or return and let it go.

If this had happened in US territory during the cold war the plane would've be bracketed by fighters and escorted to land and if it did not obey it would be shot down. But then Sept 11, 2001 proved that our air defense is as poor as the Soviets, maybe worse as in non-existent. It is strange though that Payne Stewart's plane was intercepted and followed until in ran out of fuel and crashed. This was in October 25, 1999. How could our air defense have fallen so low in 23 months that the plane that hit the Pentagon and the one that crashed in Pennsylvania were not intercepted?

Yuri Andropov was already on what would prove to be his deathbed, while Konstantin Chernenko, his eventual "successor," was not far behind. The fact of the matter is that, at that time, Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, a man in vastly more robust health than either Andropov or Chernenko, was ascendant in the Politburo. Thus, it is not really surprising that the fighter pilot, whose name escapes me, was ordered to shoot the plane down.

These circumstances render even more remarkable the actions--or, rather, the INACTIONS--of Stanislav Petrov less than four weeks later!

but I do know what the U.S. protocol was. An example of this happened in the Philippines. An Aeroflot airliner drifted over Subic Bay Naval station. A fighter pilot friend of mine was ordered with 3 other fighters to intercept the plane. Their standing order was to make contact and to guide the airliner to land and be searched. If the airliner did not comply they were to shoot it down. He told me that he was ready to fire his missile into the port engine and parents were holding their babies to the window to wave to the nice American pilot. Fortunately the airliner complied. He said it would've been the worst thing to do in his life but he would've done his duty.

So my question is still, Why did the Soviets deny the shoot down, unless it's because the plane was over international waters by the time it was shot?

I remember reading the transcript of the pilot that shot down the KAL plane and my thought was that he did it the same as we would only the reaction of the Soviet air defense was woefully slow.

"This has been blown out of all proportion, completely," SAS spokesman Knut Morten Johansen said. "It wasn't even an incident." He said there was no breach "because the safety distance between aircraft hadn't been exceeded."

But then they are neck deep in the torture and rendition mess, so I expect they are being blackmailed.

I think they are also very afraid of Russia given all the aggressiveness toward other nations.

They aren't even in NATO.

But you're right. This one is blown out of proportion. The Russian jet probably never got closer than a half mile. That is still an attempt at intimidation, but it's hardly a near collision.