The second set of facts relate to a series of moves taking the investigation out of the hands of the National Transportation Safety Board and in the hands of the International Civil Aviation Organization . Normally , when an airliner crashes , responsibility for the inquiry falls to the NTSB , which has the technical expertise to assess what happened . Although the downing of the Flight 007 can not be classified as a routine aviation disaster , the NTSB office in Anchorage was notified that the plane was missing just three hours after it had come down in the Sea of Japan ( East Sea ) and immediately began to look into the matter . Shortly , after that , it was told to cease its investigation and forward to its headquarters in Washington all the material — originals and copies — it had gathered . From there , the information was sent to the State Department . James Michelangelo , chief of the NTSB 's Anchorage office , was told by headquarters that the Board was off the case and that the State Department would handle the investigation . Eighteen months after the airliner was shot down , when asked if the State Department had ever conducted such an enquiry , a high-level State Department official , Lynn Pascoe , replied , " How is the State Department going to investigate ? " Holders of this theory ask why the effective investigation in progress , conducted by NTSB — Anchorage station chief James Michelangelo , was preempted ( the very first occurrence ) by the Washington-based NTSB home office under orders from the State Department , which itself did not , as originally announced , investigate the disaster , but rather referred the investigation to the political and investigatively ineffective United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization . The ICAO has no subpoena powers and , according to its mandate , can analyse only material presented to it by its constituent interested members . ICAO 's final reports , it is maintained , are reflections of the politically expedient rather than of an independent investigative determination . The only other air disaster ICAO had ever investigated was the Israeli shootdown of Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 over the Sinai
Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114
Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 alternative theories