In 1983, the Soviet Union mistook an off-course South Korean 747 for an American spy plane and shot it down over their air space killing 280 people including about 60 American citizens. Air Force intelligence had reliable data that marked the incident as a mistake, but the rest of the US intelligence apparatus painted it as a deliberate attack. That's pretty much the entire story that this HBO film takes an hour and a half to tell mostly by having men in offices stand around and talk.