| Author | Message | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2002 9:20 am Post subject: CNN: Israel's 1967 attack on U.S. Liberty deliberate |
| Israel's 1967 attack on U.S. ship deliberate, book says
USS Liberty
April 23, 2001
Web posted at: 11:43 a.m. EDT (1543 GMT)
From David Ensor
CNN National Security Correspondent
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A new book quotes U.S. officials around during the 1967 Israeli attack on a U.S. surveillance ship as saying the attack was not an accident -- as Israel has always claimed -- but deliberate.
The attack, in which 34 American sailors died, was carried out to prevent the United States from eavesdropping on Israeli military activities, author James Bamford writes.
The USS Liberty was attacked during the Six Day War on June 8 by air and sea forces off the Sinai coast. Israel said the ship was mistaken for an Egyptian one and U.S. President Lyndon Johnson then accepted the explanation.
Israel later paid modest reparations to the families of the 34 Americans killed, and to the 171 others who were injured.
What the Israelis did not know, according to "Body of Secrets" -- published by Doubleday and scheduled for release Tuesday -- is that the U.S. National Security Agency had a surveillance plane flying above the Liberty.
The book quotes by name a Hebrew-English translator on that U.S. plane as saying the Israeli pilots talked about completing an attack. He said "they mentioned an American flag" -- suggesting the Israelis knew they were attacking a U.S. ship.
Bamford's other named sources include a former top N.S.A. official who conducted a review of the attack and an Air Force major general.
Israeli officials have not responded to CNN calls seeking comment.
Bamford writes that National Security Agency intercepts of the Israeli pilots and sailors remain secret to this day, although his sources say the communications would clearly show the Israelis attacked the U.S. ship deliberately.
As for motive, Bamford speculates in the book that the Israelis may not have wanted the United States to know that "at that same moment, a scant dozen or so miles away, Israeli soldiers were butchering civilians and bound prisoners by the hundreds, a fact that the entire Israeli army leadership knew about and condoned, according to the army's own historian."
Survivors of the attack on the USS Liberty have long argued that the Israelis had to know they were attacking an American ship, since the ship was circled repeatedly at a low altitude by Israeli aircraft before the attack and the ship was flying U.S. flags.
Bamford is an intelligence specialist and the author of a previous best-selling book about the NSA called "The Puzzle Palace." | |  | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2002 9:34 am Post subject: Israel Attack On USS Liberty 'No Accident' Says Helms |
| Israel Attack On USS Liberty
'No Accident' Says Helms
By Bryant Jordan Staff Writer
Marine Corps Times
From Navy Times
7-7-2
Thirty-five years after Israeli air and naval forces attacked a lightly armed U.S. Navy spy ship during the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, the CIA director at the time and the legal counsel to the Navy's court of inquiry say the attack was deliberate. "It was no accident," former CIA director Richard Helms said May 29, bucking that agency's June 13, 1967, report that indicated the incident could have been a mistake. Retired Navy legal counsel Capt. Ward Boston says he and the court's president, the late Rear Adm. Isaac "Ike" Kidd, always believed Israeli forces knowingly attacked the Liberty. "I feel the Israelis knew what they were doing. They knew they were shooting at a U.S. Navy ship," said Boston, who lives in Coronado, Calif. "That's the bottom line. I don't care how they tried to get out of it." The attack killed 34 men and wounded 172 others, and sparked a long-running controversy: Did Israel knowingly try to sink the American ship or did it believe the ship was an Egyptian vessel? Officially, the Navy exonerated Israel on June 18, 1967 - 10 days after the attack - when the Navy court of inquiry found that available evidence indicated the attack was a case of mistaken identity. THE COURT OF INQUIRY Boston said Kidd told him he believed the attack was deliberate and that the Israelis knew the ship was American. That flies in the face of the findings of Kidd's court, and also what the author of a new book on the Liberty says Kidd told him in interviews in the early 1990s. A. Jay Cristol, a federal judge in Florida and retired Navy aviator who also served in the service's Judge Advocate General's Corps, is the author of the upcoming "The Liberty Incident." "Kidd told me an entirely different story," said Cristol, whose new book is dedicated to Kidd, who died in 1999. Cristol said that during one interview with Kidd in December 1990, Kidd related that when he brought the court's report to then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. David Lamar McDonald, the CNO asked him, "Ike, was it intentional?" "Ike said, 'No, Admiral,'" Cristol recalled. But Boston remembers that when Kidd returned from Washington, he said officials were not interested in hearing the truth. "In military life, you accept the fact that if you're told to shut up, you shut up. We did what we were told," Boston said. He explained that he is willing to talk now because "everyone else is shooting their mouth off." Boston said he does not know whether his beliefs were shared by the other members of the court, Capts. Bert M. Atkinson Jr. and Bernard J. Lauff. Lauff could not be located for comment. Atkinson died in 1999. But Boston's statements do put him now in the camp of retired Adm. Merlin Staring, who as a captain and staff legal officer in London was initially told to review the court's report. Staring said June 3 that the report was taken from him before he finished his review, but based on what he had seen, the evidence did not support the contention that the attack was an accident. Staring concedes he still has not read the entire report. Staring, who went on to become the Navy's top JAG officer, is now part of a newly formed Liberty Alliance, which includes former CNO and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Thomas Moorer and two Marine Medal of Honor recipients, Gen. Ray Davis and Col. Mitchell Paige. The group wants a full congressional investigation into the attack and is lobbying military organizations, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion, hoping to garner support among their members, said Tito Howard, the group's executive director. SURVIVORS ALLEGE CONSPIRACY Many Liberty survivors and their supporters long have maintained that the attack was deliberate and that the Kidd report excluded testimony from crew members that would have shown that. Boston recalled that testimony was taken from crew members who said the Israelis fired on life rafts when they were put into the water. The court's report includes testimony indicating the shooting of the life rafts was incidental, occurring when the ship was strafed by Israeli jets. Some allege Israel wanted the spy ship sunk to ensure it did not pick up communications showing Israel was planning to seize the Golan Heights from Syria. Others say it was to prevent Liberty from intercepting communications dealing with an alleged Israeli massacre of Egyptian POWs in the Sinai. Some Liberty survivors and supporters claim the U.S. government covered up the incident to avoid a conflict with Israel that could have cost the Johnson administration support among Jewish voters and supporters. Subsequent administrations and Congresses have avoided a thorough airing of the incident for the same reasons, they say. But Cristol says there have been 10 U.S. investigations, ranging from the court of inquiry and the CIA's report to several conducted by House and Senate committees. Five drew no conclusions regarding Israel, according to a list compiled by Cristol, while others accepted that it was an accident. The most recent official look at the incident was in 1991, when the House Armed Services subcommittee on investigations found no evidence to support the Liberty survivors' claim that Israel attacked the ship deliberately. REPORTS AND RECOLLECTIONS The CIA's report, the earliest of those assembled, held open the possibility that the attack was a case of mistaken identity - the finding that the Kidd court went on to make five days later - though it did not present that as a conclusion. In the June 13, 1967, report, the CIA stated that "an overzealous pilot" could have mistaken the Liberty for an Egyptian ship, the El Quesir. Helms, the former CIA director, declined to discuss the incident at length. "I've done all I can. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in court" testifying about the incident, he said. Mike Weeks, a naval aviation writer and amateur historian who studied the official Navy communications that occurred during and after the attack and believes it was an accident, said there is more information on the Liberty still classified and believes the government should release all of it. "Just put it out there and see how it flows," he said. "The bottom line, all this stuff ought to be let loose, for heaven's sake." ___ Bryant Jordan is a staff writer for Marine Corps Times. Should Congress reopen the investigation into the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty? The Israelis claim the attack was a mistake; some veterans contend it was deliberate. As of 8:40 PDT Sunday, 67% say YES. Go to: www.navytimes.com and scroll to the bottom right side of the page to register your vote.
http://www.ussliberty.org/margolis.txt
A scorching review of A. Jay Cristol's "The Liberty Incident" was on the
Associated Press news wire August 2, 2002.
=======================================================
Friday, August 2, 2002
`Liberty' attack still a mystery
By DAVID SMYTH
Associated Press
On June 8, 1967, Israeli warplanes and gunboats almost destroyed but did
not sink the USS Liberty.
Even after 35 years, it seems nothing can douse the smoldering dispute
about that attack on the nearly defenseless U.S. intelligence-gathering
vessel. In fact, The Liberty Incident, by A. Jay Cristol, will probably fan
the flames of controversy.
Thirty-four Americans were killed and 172 wounded in the attack. At 69
percent of the crew, it was one of the highest casualty rates ever suffered
by a U.S. Navy vessel.
The focus of the dispute is: Was the attack accidental or intentional?
Israel claimed its forces had mistaken the Liberty for an Egyptian
horse-transport a few miles off the Egyptian coast during the 1967
Arab-Israeli war, and apologized. The Johnson administration accepted the
apology and did not formally challenge the explanation.
However, knowledgeable contemporaries have long claimed the attack was
deliberate. They include, among others, former Secretary of State Dean
Rusk; former CIA Director Richard Helms; former National Security
Administration Director Marshall Carter; one-time presidential advisers
George Ball and Lucius Battle; the Liberty's captain, Cmdr. William
McGonagle; and surviving crew members.
More recently, Capt. Ward Boston, legal counsel to the 1967 naval court of
inquiry presided over by Rear Adm. Isaac Kidd, has spoken up. On June 26,
Boston told a Navy Times reporter he and Kidd believed the Israelis knew
they were attacking an American ship. The court itself, an internal naval
review, did not address the matter of Israeli responsibility.
Curiously, Cristol, whose book is devoted wholeheartedly to the "clear
conclusion" the attack was accidental, there being "no competent evidence
to the contrary," has dedicated his work to Kidd. And he says Kidd told him
he always believed the Israeli attack was accidental. Kidd died in 1999, so
the discrepancy with Boston's statement remains unresolved.
Lt. Cmdr. James Ennes, the Liberty's deck officer during the attack and
author of the book Assault on the Liberty, says Kidd repeatedly encouraged
him to challenge claims of an accident. Cristol apparently interviewed very
few Liberty crew members. He cites no interviews with a dozen who say the
Liberty's life rafts were machine-gunned by the Israeli gunboats, nor with
others who say the Liberty was overflown by an Israeli helicopter filled
with armed men.
Cristol says he was given liberal access to Israeli officials and records,
thanks to Israeli navy friends. He reports an Israeli reconnaissance plane
identified the Liberty as an American ship eight hours before the attack
and Lt. Cmdr. Uri Meretz then specifically identified it as the Liberty. A
marker representing the ship was placed on the plotting table in the war room.
Five hours later - three hours before the attack - the marker was removed,
and this, it is alleged, led to the mistaken assault.
Cristol dismisses various possible motives for an intentional Israeli
attack. One was Israel's need to prevent American foreknowledge of its
impending invasion of Syria's Golan Heights, a move opposed by U.S. policy.
Another was the desire to cover up a massacre of Egyptian prisoners at El
Arish, a few miles from the Liberty.
Members of the Liberty Veterans Association have long complained none of
the U.S. investigations was ever convened to discover whether the attack
was deliberate. They note that even the initial Navy Court of Inquiry took
no testimony from the crew about possible Israeli culpability, leaving that
issue to Congress and the State Department, which ignored the question.
John Borne, in an academic study of the Liberty incident, points out that
this is the only peacetime attack on a U.S. Navy vessel that did not have a
formal congressional investigation.
According to the Navy Times, a number of U.S. naval officers are requesting
a congressional inquiry. Until this demand is met, and until all secret
U.S. government files are released, the Liberty question will probably
remain unanswered.
John Borne's Excellent Web Site (about USS Liberty)
http://www.logogo.net/00liberty.htm | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
