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pie of the United States” would know. The Russian people were not told for days that an airplane had even gone down. When their government finally broke the silence, they heard only the official party line.
By contrast, remember the flow of information to the American people. We heard that same party line from the Soviet’s new agency. We heard our government’s explanation. We heard reports from the Japanese and the Koreans. We heard charges that the shooting down of the airliner wras an assassination attempt aimed at the conservative congressman, president of the John Birch Society, who was a passenger on the plane. We heard suppositions from our own countrymen that the Koreans may have had spy equipment on the airliner or that the CIA may have been involved. We heard arguments from Russian analysts in and out of our government that “yes, it had to have been an accident” and “no, it couldn’t possibly have been.”
In short, we had a steady stream of information that hasn’t ended yet, information that will enable us to make up our own minds about what happened and what those events signify for the future. The Constitution drafted almost 200 years ago protects and rests on that right to be informed. But the right to be informed is also a responsibility. During Constitution Week and throughout the rest of the year, we should remember that.
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