The film's production was delayed due to controversies surrounding the KAL007 incident. NBC subjected the film to various cuts and rewrites. Producer Leonard Hill said that NBC's censors "played the role of grand inquisitor. It was quite a relentless interrogation and it turned into a war of attrition." The network deleted dialogue that criticized the U.S. government for using the incident for its own political purposes, and specific criticisms of the Reagan administration were likewise repressed. Consequently, the film made no mention of the U.S. Air Force destroying all radar tapes after the incident, nor that the Korea pilot Captain Chun took out a grand sum of insurance the night before the flight. The network also insisted that Seymour Hersh's view that the aeroplane had simply drifted into Soviet airspace be inserted into the film.[1]
