| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2004 8:47 pm Post subject: Letter to SD Union Trib: Ward Boston is Right about Liberty |
| http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/fri/opinion/news_mz1e20lets1.html
Ward Boston is right about Liberty attack
Regarding "Ex-officer alleges cover-up in probe of spy ship attack,"
News, Feb. 17:
You can call it an "allegation" if you want, but it certainly happened exactly as retired Navy Capt. Ward Boston said it did.I can assure you that Israel not only attacked the U.S. Naval Security Group ship and killed American sailors, but attacked again and again and again in a failed effort to sink the vessel, which was clearly flying the American flag. Why? To cover up an ongoing massacre of Egyptian soldiers upon which the ship was eavesdropping.It was a futile effort and useless slaughter of American lives on the Israelis' part because everything was also being recorded by a U.S. Air Force spy plane flying above. Commander William L. McGonagle, the ship's captain, was later awarded the Medal of Honor, the only recipient in history to receive it in a private, secret ceremony.To play the apologist and claim that it was a "mistake," as Judge Jay Cristol does in "The Liberty Incident," is a disgrace to the memory of the many American sailors who died that day. As usual, given enough time, the truth will normally out.
HAROLD TRUMAN
Pacific Beach | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2004 6:29 am Post subject: EX-OFFICER ALLEGES COVER-UP IN PROBE OF SPY SHIP ATTACK |
| From the web site at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20040217-9999-1n17liberty.html
-------------------------------------------------------
EX-OFFICER ALLEGES COVER-UP IN PROBE OF SPY SHIP ATTACK
By James W. Crawley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
February 17, 2004
Ward Boston is an unassuming octogenarian who resides in a gated
community on Coronado's Silver Strand.
A retired Navy captain, he hardly attracts attention in a town
full of active-duty and retired sailors.
Yet Boston is in the maelstrom of a nearly 37-year-old
controversy surrounding Israel's deadly attack on the Navy's spy
ship Liberty during the Six-Day War with Egypt, Syria and
Jordan. The June 1967 attack killed 34 Americans and wounded
171.
Last October, Boston broke decades of silence and declared that
the Navy admiral who investigated the incident had been ordered
by President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara to conclude it was a case of mistaken identity, despite
evidence to the contrary.
As the chief counsel for the Navy's court of inquiry, Boston had
an insider's view.
"I didn't speak up earlier because I was told not to," Boston
said in an interview.
His revelation, repeated last month before a State Department
conference about the Six-Day War, has rekindled a smoldering
debate over how it happened and whether the United States and
Israel covered up the truth.
Anti-Israel factions portray Boston's words – true to his legal
background, memorialized in two affidavits but rarely spoken to
an audience larger than one person – as proof of Israel's guilt.
Israel's supporters, including a federal bankruptcy judge who
researched the attack and wrote a book on it, say Boston is
lying. Some pin an anti-Semitic badge on his lapel.
On Web pages and through e-mail, an electronic brawl is raging
over Boston's disclosures among his admirers and detractors.
But, for the men who survived the attack, Boston's comments
endorse views smelted in cordite, blood and smoke.
"We feel we've been vindicated," said James Ennes, the Liberty's
officer of the deck the day of the attack, which left him
severely wounded.
"We've been saying for 37 years that the court of inquiry was a
fraud, that it was corrupted, that it ignored evidence and made
findings not supported by the evidence," said Ennes, whose book
about the incident claims it was a deliberate Israeli attack.
Boston's cover-up allegation is "enormously significant," said
author James Bamford, who has written several books about the
super-secret National Security Agency, which analyzed radio
intercepts from Liberty and other U.S. surveillance ships.
"It's equivalent to former Supreme Court (Chief) Justice Earl
Warren coming out and saying 'the Warren Commission report on
(the) Kennedy (assassination) – everything we said was not what
we believed, but we were pressured to say it,' " Bamford said.
"It puts an enormous shadow over everything that was in the
(Navy) report," he said.
Even with Boston's affidavits and some newly released documents
presented at the State Department conference, no consensus was
reached on whether the attack was deliberate, accidental or the
result of negligence.
---
The Liberty was a Navy spy ship, plain and simple.
Like its ill-fated sister vessel Pueblo, which was captured by
North Korea six months later, the Liberty was festooned with
antennas and its cargo holds were converted into top-secret
locked compartments lined with receivers where petty officers
eavesdropped on other nations' militaries.
During the Six-Day War, the Liberty loitered off the Sinai
Peninsula, listening to Israel's lightning victory over Egypt.
On the afternoon of June 8, 1967, Israeli jets strafed the ship.
Hours later, Israeli torpedo boats attacked. By the evening, 34
U.S. sailors were dead and 171 injured.
Israel said the attack was a terrible mistake caused by the
misidentification of the Liberty as an Egyptian vessel.
Investigations followed, including the Navy's court of inquiry.
That's when Ward Boston's involvement began.
---
If Hollywood had discovered Boston, he could have been the
real-life prototype for Cmdr. Harmon Rabb, one of the leads on
the television show "JAG."
In the Pacific during World War II, Boston flew harrowing
photo-reconnaissance missions over Tokyo and Iwo Jima in Navy
Hellcat fighters, sometimes making three passes over a single
target – once to take pre-bombing pictures, then joining other
planes in attacking the target and, finally, a post-attack pass
to photograph the damage.
After the war, Boston went to law school, passed the bar and
entered private practice. Meanwhile, he continued to fly Navy
fighters as a reservist, including its first jet, the FH-1
Phantom.
In the late 1940s, he joined the FBI and was assigned to field
offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. During the Korean War,
he rejoined the Navy, this time as a JAG officer.
By June 1967, Boston was legal officer for then-Rear Adm. Isaac
Kidd Jr. when the flag officer was assigned to head the hastily
convened inquiry into the Liberty attack.
Unable to interview hospitalized sailors and Israeli military
and civilian officials, the investigative panel was given just a
week to examine the battered ship, interview survivors and
collect radio intercepts and other information.
Boston said it was obvious then who was responsible.
"There's no way in the world that it was an accident," Boston
said.
In his affidavits and a recent interview, Boston recounted how
he and Kidd discussed their conclusions about the survivors'
testimony.
"(Kidd) referred to the Israelis as 'murderous bastards,' "
Boston said.
After Kidd delivered the panel's report to Washington officials,
Boston said the admiral told him, "they aren't interested in the
facts or what happened. It's a political issue. They want to
cover it up." Then Kidd admonished Boston to keep silent.
Boston said Kidd told him privately that orders came from
Johnson and McNamara to find the incident was a mistake and not
a deliberate act.
There is no documentation to support Boston's account.
Kidd died in 1999 at 79 after a career topped by command of the
Atlantic Fleet. He never spoke of a cover-up.
The late '60s was the height of the Cold War between the United
States and the Soviet Union. The Soviets were backing the Arab
nations; the United States was allied with Israel. U.S. troops
were fully engaged in Vietnam and the United States was fearful
of growing Soviet influence, especially in the oil-rich Mideast.
Those who claim the attack was no accident argue that Israel
wanted to stop the Liberty from snooping on its military during
the war.
Boston kept quiet too, until the 2002 publication of "The
Liberty Incident," by Judge Jay Cristol, provoked him.
Cristol's book, based on more than 10 years of research and
hundreds of interviews and the collection of thousands of
documents, argued that Israeli pilots, sailors and top military
officials, in the heat of combat and the fog of war, were
unaware the Liberty was a U.S. ship, mistaking it for an
Egyptian vessel.
The two men spoke twice during the 1990s while Cristol
researched his book, but Boston said recently that he only
discussed his career and did not reveal details of the inquiry.
"It is Cristol's insidious attempt to whitewash the facts that
has pushed me to speak out," Boston said in a Jan. 8 affidavit,
read by Bamford at the State Department conference last month.
Boston did not attend the conference.
Boston's affidavit was passed to Bamford by a friend who
believes that Israel is responsible for the attack on the
Liberty.
The judge, during a recent telephone interview, discounted
Boston's contention that Johnson and McNamara covered up Israel
complicity.
"I think those (accusations) are kind of nonsense," Cristol
said.
Cristol – also a former Navy pilot and JAG officer – said
Boston's comments show that he either lied in 1967 by knowingly
filing a false report or that his memory has changed with age.
Referring to Cristol, Boston said, "I'm not going to get into a
spitting contest with a skunk."
He also rejected suggestions that he is anti-Semitic, while
acknowledging some sympathy for the plight of Palestinian
refugees.
As he splits his day between local organizations and daily
visits to the gym to loosen up arthritic joints, Boston remains
largely oblivious to the electronic cacophony of e-mail and
Internet chat that makes him out to be either a patriot or a
patsy for anti-Israel factions.
That's because Boston doesn't have a computer. Friends print out
and pass along Internet postings mentioning him or his
statements.
"I'm a dinosaur," he said. "I use a pencil with an eraser and a
typewriter."
----------------------------------------------------------------
James W. Crawley: (619) 542-4559; jim.crawley@uniontrib.com
_______________________________________________________________
o__ I'll tell you the truth about the USS LIBERTY, visit
_.>/)_
(_) \(_) http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/
_____________________(updated frequently)______________________ | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 8:42 am Post subject: [Fwd: LIBERTY SURVIVORS POST $10,000 REWARD!!!] |
| Subj: [Fwd: LIBERTY SURVIVORS POST $10,000 REWARD!!!]
Date: 3/2/04 10:44:59 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: jblankfort@earthlink.net
On June 8, 1967, the Israeli air force and navy attacked the lightly armed USS
Liberty, an intelligence gathering ship, sitting off the Sinai coast, killing
34 US sailors and wounding 171. Beginning with Sec of State Robert MacNamara's
(the "hero" of the Fog of War) decision to call back the US jets that were
sent to defend the Liberty, the US government, lock, stock and barrel, has
suppressed this story and has never held a full investigation of the attack.
That attack, in which Israel was able to get clean away with killing and
wounding American servicemen without so much as a slap on the wrist, is
probably the defining event in US-Israel relations. In the past year, several
Israel apologists have tried to paint a picture far from the truth on the
incident in response to the increased activity among Liberty veterans in
getting their story out and an investigation launched. One such apologist is
AJ Cristol which explains the offer below sent by James Ennes, a former
officer and survivor of the Liberty attack.
Jeff B
"Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2004 10:33:53 -0800
> From: Jim Ennes <jim@ennes.com>
> Subject: [LVA-Private] challenge
> To: ANYBODY!!!
>
> Challenge issued:
>
> www.ussliberty.org/challenge.htm
>
> The Liberty Veterans Association offers a $10,000 reward for
> anyone who can establish the truth of A. Jay Cristol's claim:
>
> "After ten official US investigations (including five con-
> gressional investigations), there was never any evidence that
> the attack was made with knowledge that the target was a US
> ship."
>
> The LVA has disputed the truth of this statement for years.
> After giving the matter some consideration, the LVA has con-
> cluded that the offer of a reward to anyone who can establish
> this statement as true (including Mr. Cristol), is the best
> means of proving that it is false.
>
> Today is day one of the challenge. We will continue the count,
> day by day.
>
> _______________________________________________________________
>
> o__ I'll tell you the truth about the USS LIBERTY, visit
> _.>/)_
> (_) \(_) http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/ | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2004 9:15 pm Post subject: Another SD Union article on USS Liberty - |
| Subj: SD Union article on USS Liberty -
Date: 3/30/04 11:35:48 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: JGidusko@cfl.rr.com
From the website at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040328/news_mz1e29libert.html
---------------------
ATTACK ON THE LIBERTY
Lifting the 'fog of war'
By David C. Walsh
The damaged U.S. intelligence ship Liberty arrived in Malta. An
Israeli torpedo blew a 40-foot hole in the Liberty's hull. U.S.
Navy Naval Historical Center photo collection
March 28, 2004
The bare bones are these: The intelligence ship Liberty, AGTR-5,
on June 8, 1967 was describing a slow, dogleg pattern a little
less than 13 miles off the Egyptian coast in the Eastern
Mediterranean. Without warning, rocket-firing Israel jets,
followed after an interval by torpedo boats, pummeled her to
near-death; 821 separate holes would later be counted in the
scorched superstructure.
An Israeli torpedo blew a 40-foot hole in the Liberty's hull,
devastating the cryptological spaces below decks and killing 25
U.S. National Security Agency technicians. The spy ship's
defensive armament comprised a mere four machine-guns. These had
been judged adequate, insofar as she was a noncombatant in
international waters. The Israeli attack continued for an hour
and a quarter. When the smoke cleared, 34 Americans were dead,
another 172 lay wounded.
The story of the intelligence ship in a sense resembles the
Liberty herself: both refuse to go down. The heartbreaking saga
is kept afloat by mutually antagonistic partisans – I dub them
the "deliberates" and the "accidentalists."
Periodically, the dispute flares anew, each side throwing punch
and counterpunch. Some strikes are errant, or glancing, or below
the belt; others, solid hammer blows the recovery from which
seems impossible.
Occasionally, as now, the action is in synch. In one "corner"
are a retired Navy JAG captain-cum-judge and the government of
Israel; in the other, Liberty survivors, former leaders of the
highly secret National Security Agency and other spooky types.
The judge, A. Jay Cristol, has written a controversial book,
"The Liberty Incident." It alleges that the furious attack on
the U.S. Navy ship (tasked by the NSA and the Pentagon's Joint
Chiefs of Staff) was what Israel since 1967 has claimed: a
"friendly-fire" accident, the sort that bedevils every war.
For their part, Liberty supporters assert that the ex-Navy
lawyer is merely the latest, albeit most effective, in a long
series of apologists for Israel. He is helping Israel engage in
a decades-long campaign of disinformation and deceit, they
maintain. Some harbor their own "conspiratorial" suspicions,
i.e., that Israel paid for the many research trips Cristol made
to the Jewish state over many years. Regardless, they say the
present round of rhetorical combat has exposed their nemesis as
highly selective in the use of records, disingenuous and
desperate. "He's on the ropes!" exclaims one. Perhaps. But with
skeins of the story ever spreading, knotty issues left to be
untied and core truths waiting to be teased out, neither side
can declare "case closed."
The sad slugfest continues.
In June 2003, I published an investigative article in the United
States Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine; one that drew on
some unusually well-informed people. These weren't Israelis
(Judge Cristol supplies those), but American intelligence
leaders. They were addressing the tragedy for the first time;
partly, some said, because of the Cristol book. Also included
were interviews and conversations with the Liberty's surviving
cryptanalysts and other specialists.
In total, they pointed the way toward an unsettling conclusion:
The Cristol/Israeli explanation of "accidental attack in the fog
of war" may have grown so threadbare as to be virtually
unsustainable.
PROOF
Two former NSA directors – Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, Gen. William
Odom – and two ex-deputy directors – Gen. John Morrison and
Oliver Kirby – told me that there has never been any question at
the agency but that Israel's attack on the Liberty was
deliberate.
Kirby, for example, is "absolutely certain" about this. A
storied career NSA official, Kirby had founded the ELINT program
under which the Liberty and her several sister ships operated.
"It was my baby," he said in an interview last year.
Pressed about what made him sure the Israelis wanted to destroy
the Liberty, Kirby said it was because he'd personally analyzed
the SIGINT intercepts of their communications gleaned from
various American intelligence sources. These disclosed: 1) that
the on-scene attackers that June 8 correctly identified the
ship, and 2) that regardless, Israeli commanders at an
as-yet-unknown level instructed them to annihilate the Liberty.
Why had Kirby not gone public with this astonishing disclosure?
"No one had asked me the right questions before," he told me.
In an interview Feb. 24, 2003, retired Air Force Major General
John Morrison, the agency's then second in command (and Kirby's
successor), said he had been informed at the time of Kirby's
findings and endorsed them. William Odom, former NSA Director
and retired Army lieutenant general, said on March 3, 2003 that
on the strength of such data, the attack's deliberateness "just
wasn't a disputed issue" within the agency.
On March 5, 2003, retired Navy Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, NSA
director from 1977-81, said he "flatly rejected" the
Cristol/Israeli thesis. "It is just exceedingly difficult to
believe that [the Liberty] was not correctly identified." Inman
said his conclusions were based on his talks with NSA senior
officials who had direct knowledge at the time. All four
officials said they were unaware of any agency official at any
time who dissented from the "deliberate," conclusion, based on
the intelligence. These men's comments undergird those recorded
by other writers over at least two decades.
In fact, the number of intelligence professionals who rejects
the accidental, or related "mistaken identity" explanation is
growing. In 2002, the late Richard Helms, then director of
Central Intelligence, finally added his authoritative voice to
the "deliberates," telling the Navy Times the attack was "no
mistake." Previously, the then NSA director, Gen. Marshall
Carter, and his deputy, Louis Tordella, said likewise.
USS Liberty Veterans Association historian James Ennes (author
of the 1980 book "Assault on the Liberty," now updated) says
more apostates to the official Israeli – and United States –
position are being heard from in sworn affidavits. For example,
two ex-USAF Intelligence personnel state that the damning
electronic signals they monitored had been captured by an
NSA-operated EC-130 flying near the attack, translated and
disseminated worldwide. Hundreds of technicians and intelligence
specialists around the world had access to these intercepts. At
least a few are now coming forward to discuss what they saw.
Here it's worth reiterating something key to this dimension of
the accidentalists vs. deliberates contest. The intercepts
referenced by Odom, Helms, Kirby et al (whose existence the NSA
officially denies) were real-time intelligence gleaned as the
attack commenced. By contrast, the NSA-held material Cristol
succeeded in declassifying, which he insists validates his view,
appear limited to after-action reports by Israeli helicopter
pilots. They'd arrived to survey the damage from the attack and
played no role in it.
In any case, the disparity between these intelligence officials'
revelations and the official, steadfast American government
position – "no evidence of deliberateness" – is as enormous as
it is remarkable. Obviously, people like Helms (who as director
coordinated the entire United States intelligence community)
Inman, Morrison, et al were among the world's most
knowledgeable. Thus, it seems difficult to understand why during
so many years spent probing the Liberty, Cristol apparently
caged only one of like rank for book jacket blurbs. And even
this source – ex-Naval Intelligence director Rear Admiral Thomas
A. Brooks – now contradicts the judge. He observes in the
open-source intelligence journal he edits that the case is not
closed.
In any event, why the dearth of American intelligence
professionals among sources cited by Cristol? Are they to be
lumped in with the "conspiracists," pro-Arabs, etc.?
Cristol does not say. (Various questions to him during the
preparation of my Proceedings piece went unanswered, on the
grounds, he wrote me, that I was biased.)
The explanation is simple, Liberty men believe. They were
steered clear of because their judgments would have collided
with the "accidentalist" thesis.
WHY?
The Liberty story entails an important ancillary question. How
did this catastrophe occur and why would Israel – in 1967 much
less tightly tethered to the American lifeline than now – commit
such an outrage?
Those I interviewed are like others who have spoken to the
disaster for the past 36 years: They profess not to know about
motive. Speculation here is as rife as it is, at times,
sensational.
Was the coordinated attack to prevent Washington from learning
of an Israeli massacre of Egyptian prisoners of war on the Sinai
coast nearby? (The killings were belatedly reported in 1995).
Or, more plausibly, did the Israelis put the eavesdropping
Liberty out of commission to conceal Israel's impending attack
on Syria to seize the strategic Golan Heights?
Why did Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Chief of Naval
Operations Adm. David McDonald shout orders to the two carrier
commanders to recall jets sent to help the Liberty, which was
then still under deadly attack? (This, according to Liberty's
deck officer James Ennes, quoting an electronic technician
aboard the Liberty who had "patched" McNamara and Martin
together with the carrier skippers through the Naval
Communications Station at Port Laerty, Morocco).
Was the recall on orders from President Lyndon Johnson? Did LBJ
fear political retaliation at home if he punished Israel? I
don't know. I can say that McNamara once told me, as he has
others in virtually identical language, that "I have no
recollection of the Liberty, and therefore can be of no
assistance to you." This is a dumbfounding remark, given the
former defense chief's ability to recount decades-old
conversations verbatim.
Such tangential questions, interesting and provocative as they
are, remain for the future to answer. But they pale before the
issue of responsibility, what United States intelligence experts
at the highest levels say they knew – and now publicly maintain
about the attack. The curtain of official silence long
enshrouding the Liberty seems to be slowly rising, and the fog
of war lifting. This can only be to the good for all concerned;
and for history.
HUMAN COSTS
Never before or since, according to survivors, has a Navy vessel
come under such concerted "friendless" fire, with officialdom's
reaction being anything less than outrage. Calls for punishment
in like circumstances do seem invariably quick and clarion.
Witness for example Japan's 1937 attack on the United States
gunboat Panay, North Korea's seizure of the Navy intelligence
ship Pueblo in 1968 and the terrorist attack on the Navy
destroyer Cole in 2000.
This failure by any administration to probe the motive for the
tragedy is wrenching for all who experienced the horror of the
attack, cryptologic technicians and seamen alike. As Dr. Richard
Kiepfer, the ship's overwhelmed physician, has written, "Never
before in the history of the United States Navy has a Navy Board
of Inquiry ignored the testimony of American military
eyewitnesses and taken, on faith, the word of their attackers."
A harsh judgment.
Kiepfer was referring to a perfunctory hearing convened barely a
week following the attack, memorable to survivors mainly for its
frequent rejection of testimony and evidence that tended to
implicate Israel in a deliberate attack. Shockingly, the court's
chief legal counsel, Capt. Ward Boston, in 2002 told Navy Times
the naval court was, in fact, a politicized sham. Its
conclusions, he declared, had been preordained to exonerate
Israel.
Last month, Boston expanded upon those views in an interview
with the Union-Tribune. He told Union-Tribune reporter James
Crawley that a judgment of "no evidence of deliberate intent"
was ordered from Washington to spare Israel embarrassment.
Formerly, Cristol had supposed Boston would support him.
The debate on such things rages still. But the aggrieved
victims, their families and next of kin aren't really interested
in legal minutiae, foreign lobbies or the intrigues of power
politics or geo-strategies. They seek what they've always been,
and likely always will be, denied: a public forum with official
sponsorship but without back-room meddling; the opportunity to
express grievances before fellow citizens, and to demand answers
to volatile questions left too long unanswered.
The questions are fundamental. To their own government: Why did
you abandon us during the attack and ignore us until now? And to
Israel: Why did you kill our friends?
HISTORY'S JUDGMENT
Would it serve for the United States to call Israel to book at
this late date, to insist the attackers be surrendered for
questioning along with relevant paperwork and evidence; say, the
orange life raft an Israeli torpedo boat seized after allegedly
machine-gunning it and two others in the water?
At least one senior Navy lawyer has said, yes. In 1986, Lt.
Cmdr. Walter Jacobsen, writing in the Naval Law Review, argued
the case for reopening the Liberty matter. Jacobsen based his
argument partly on his belief that the attack violated
international law and that the machine-gunning of life rafts
released from the Liberty constituted a war crime. No statute of
limitations exists for murder or war crimes.
One probe might examine what the men saw and heard and wrote
down in deck and radio intercept logs during and after the
attack. That would reveal, they insist, the miscarriage of
justice of the hastily convened naval court of inquiry.
The second might go to motive: why Israel attacked this
virtually unarmed, clearly unthreatening vessel on the high
seas, and, per the Watergate process, ask "what the Johnson
administration knew and when it knew it."
This is, few would disagree, a calamity – a major historic
controversy with possible toxic ramifications to this day. Does
this country owe anything to the surviving crew, their next
of kin and the public? Certainly not a public reading of every
encrypted message. But also, not the boilerplate and obfuscation
that have been trotted out for the past 36 years and that smack
so transparently of cover-up. At a time when enormous amounts of
intelligence and other government records dating to the 1960s
have been declassified and released, Washington ought to come
clean about the Liberty, no matter how embarrassing that might
prove.
Until that happens, the ghosts of the Liberty's dead will find
no peace.
---
Walsh is a journalist based in Washington, D.C. Last June he
published "Friendless Fire?" in the U.S. Naval Institute's
Proceedings magazine.
_______________________________________________________________
o__ I'll tell you the truth about the USS LIBERTY, visit
_.>/)_
(_) \(_) http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/
_____________________(updated frequently)______________________ | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:06 pm Post subject: Re: Another SD Union article on USS Liberty - |
| | Alpha wrote: | Subj: SD Union article on USS Liberty -
Date: 3/30/04 11:35:48 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: JGidusko@cfl.rr.com
From the website at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040328/news_mz1e29libert.html
---------------------
ATTACK ON THE LIBERTY
Lifting the 'fog of war'
By David C. Walsh
The damaged U.S. intelligence ship Liberty arrived in Malta. An
Israeli torpedo blew a 40-foot hole in the Liberty's hull. U.S.
Navy Naval Historical Center photo collection
March 28, 2004
The bare bones are these: The intelligence ship Liberty, AGTR-5,
on June 8, 1967 was describing a slow, dogleg pattern a little
less than 13 miles off the Egyptian coast in the Eastern
Mediterranean. Without warning, rocket-firing Israel jets,
followed after an interval by torpedo boats, pummeled her to
near-death; 821 separate holes would later be counted in the
scorched superstructure.
An Israeli torpedo blew a 40-foot hole in the Liberty's hull,
devastating the cryptological spaces below decks and killing 25
U.S. National Security Agency technicians. The spy ship's
defensive armament comprised a mere four machine-guns. These had
been judged adequate, insofar as she was a noncombatant in
international waters. The Israeli attack continued for an hour
and a quarter. When the smoke cleared, 34 Americans were dead,
another 172 lay wounded.
The story of the intelligence ship in a sense resembles the
Liberty herself: both refuse to go down. The heartbreaking saga
is kept afloat by mutually antagonistic partisans – I dub them
the "deliberates" and the "accidentalists."
Periodically, the dispute flares anew, each side throwing punch
and counterpunch. Some strikes are errant, or glancing, or below
the belt; others, solid hammer blows the recovery from which
seems impossible.
Occasionally, as now, the action is in synch. In one "corner"
are a retired Navy JAG captain-cum-judge and the government of
Israel; in the other, Liberty survivors, former leaders of the
highly secret National Security Agency and other spooky types.
The judge, A. Jay Cristol, has written a controversial book,
"The Liberty Incident." It alleges that the furious attack on
the U.S. Navy ship (tasked by the NSA and the Pentagon's Joint
Chiefs of Staff) was what Israel since 1967 has claimed: a
"friendly-fire" accident, the sort that bedevils every war.
For their part, Liberty supporters assert that the ex-Navy
lawyer is merely the latest, albeit most effective, in a long
series of apologists for Israel. He is helping Israel engage in
a decades-long campaign of disinformation and deceit, they
maintain. Some harbor their own "conspiratorial" suspicions,
i.e., that Israel paid for the many research trips Cristol made
to the Jewish state over many years. Regardless, they say the
present round of rhetorical combat has exposed their nemesis as
highly selective in the use of records, disingenuous and
desperate. "He's on the ropes!" exclaims one. Perhaps. But with
skeins of the story ever spreading, knotty issues left to be
untied and core truths waiting to be teased out, neither side
can declare "case closed."
The sad slugfest continues.
In June 2003, I published an investigative article in the United
States Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine; one that drew on
some unusually well-informed people. These weren't Israelis
(Judge Cristol supplies those), but American intelligence
leaders. They were addressing the tragedy for the first time;
partly, some said, because of the Cristol book. Also included
were interviews and conversations with the Liberty's surviving
cryptanalysts and other specialists.
In total, they pointed the way toward an unsettling conclusion:
The Cristol/Israeli explanation of "accidental attack in the fog
of war" may have grown so threadbare as to be virtually
unsustainable.
PROOF
Two former NSA directors – Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, Gen. William
Odom – and two ex-deputy directors – Gen. John Morrison and
Oliver Kirby – told me that there has never been any question at
the agency but that Israel's attack on the Liberty was
deliberate.
Kirby, for example, is "absolutely certain" about this. A
storied career NSA official, Kirby had founded the ELINT program
under which the Liberty and her several sister ships operated.
"It was my baby," he said in an interview last year.
Pressed about what made him sure the Israelis wanted to destroy
the Liberty, Kirby said it was because he'd personally analyzed
the SIGINT intercepts of their communications gleaned from
various American intelligence sources. These disclosed: 1) that
the on-scene attackers that June 8 correctly identified the
ship, and 2) that regardless, Israeli commanders at an
as-yet-unknown level instructed them to annihilate the Liberty.
Why had Kirby not gone public with this astonishing disclosure?
"No one had asked me the right questions before," he told me.
In an interview Feb. 24, 2003, retired Air Force Major General
John Morrison, the agency's then second in command (and Kirby's
successor), said he had been informed at the time of Kirby's
findings and endorsed them. William Odom, former NSA Director
and retired Army lieutenant general, said on March 3, 2003 that
on the strength of such data, the attack's deliberateness "just
wasn't a disputed issue" within the agency.
On March 5, 2003, retired Navy Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, NSA
director from 1977-81, said he "flatly rejected" the
Cristol/Israeli thesis. "It is just exceedingly difficult to
believe that [the Liberty] was not correctly identified." Inman
said his conclusions were based on his talks with NSA senior
officials who had direct knowledge at the time. All four
officials said they were unaware of any agency official at any
time who dissented from the "deliberate," conclusion, based on
the intelligence. These men's comments undergird those recorded
by other writers over at least two decades.
In fact, the number of intelligence professionals who rejects
the accidental, or related "mistaken identity" explanation is
growing. In 2002, the late Richard Helms, then director of
Central Intelligence, finally added his authoritative voice to
the "deliberates," telling the Navy Times the attack was "no
mistake." Previously, the then NSA director, Gen. Marshall
Carter, and his deputy, Louis Tordella, said likewise.
USS Liberty Veterans Association historian James Ennes (author
of the 1980 book "Assault on the Liberty," now updated) says
more apostates to the official Israeli – and United States –
position are being heard from in sworn affidavits. For example,
two ex-USAF Intelligence personnel state that the damning
electronic signals they monitored had been captured by an
NSA-operated EC-130 flying near the attack, translated and
disseminated worldwide. Hundreds of technicians and intelligence
specialists around the world had access to these intercepts. At
least a few are now coming forward to discuss what they saw.
Here it's worth reiterating something key to this dimension of
the accidentalists vs. deliberates contest. The intercepts
referenced by Odom, Helms, Kirby et al (whose existence the NSA
officially denies) were real-time intelligence gleaned as the
attack commenced. By contrast, the NSA-held material Cristol
succeeded in declassifying, which he insists validates his view,
appear limited to after-action reports by Israeli helicopter
pilots. They'd arrived to survey the damage from the attack and
played no role in it.
In any case, the disparity between these intelligence officials'
revelations and the official, steadfast American government
position – "no evidence of deliberateness" – is as enormous as
it is remarkable. Obviously, people like Helms (who as director
coordinated the entire United States intelligence community)
Inman, Morrison, et al were among the world's most
knowledgeable. Thus, it seems difficult to understand why during
so many years spent probing the Liberty, Cristol apparently
caged only one of like rank for book jacket blurbs. And even
this source – ex-Naval Intelligence director Rear Admiral Thomas
A. Brooks – now contradicts the judge. He observes in the
open-source intelligence journal he edits that the case is not
closed.
In any event, why the dearth of American intelligence
professionals among sources cited by Cristol? Are they to be
lumped in with the "conspiracists," pro-Arabs, etc.?
Cristol does not say. (Various questions to him during the
preparation of my Proceedings piece went unanswered, on the
grounds, he wrote me, that I was biased.)
The explanation is simple, Liberty men believe. They were
steered clear of because their judgments would have collided
with the "accidentalist" thesis.
WHY?
The Liberty story entails an important ancillary question. How
did this catastrophe occur and why would Israel – in 1967 much
less tightly tethered to the American lifeline than now – commit
such an outrage?
Those I interviewed are like others who have spoken to the
disaster for the past 36 years: They profess not to know about
motive. Speculation here is as rife as it is, at times,
sensational.
Was the coordinated attack to prevent Washington from learning
of an Israeli massacre of Egyptian prisoners of war on the Sinai
coast nearby? (The killings were belatedly reported in 1995).
Or, more plausibly, did the Israelis put the eavesdropping
Liberty out of commission to conceal Israel's impending attack
on Syria to seize the strategic Golan Heights?
Why did Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Chief of Naval
Operations Adm. David McDonald shout orders to the two carrier
commanders to recall jets sent to help the Liberty, which was
then still under deadly attack? (This, according to Liberty's
deck officer James Ennes, quoting an electronic technician
aboard the Liberty who had "patched" McNamara and Martin
together with the carrier skippers through the Naval
Communications Station at Port Laerty, Morocco).
Was the recall on orders from President Lyndon Johnson? Did LBJ
fear political retaliation at home if he punished Israel? I
don't know. I can say that McNamara once told me, as he has
others in virtually identical language, that "I have no
recollection of the Liberty, and therefore can be of no
assistance to you." This is a dumbfounding remark, given the
former defense chief's ability to recount decades-old
conversations verbatim.
Such tangential questions, interesting and provocative as they
are, remain for the future to answer. But they pale before the
issue of responsibility, what United States intelligence experts
at the highest levels say they knew – and now publicly maintain
about the attack. The curtain of official silence long
enshrouding the Liberty seems to be slowly rising, and the fog
of war lifting. This can only be to the good for all concerned;
and for history.
HUMAN COSTS
Never before or since, according to survivors, has a Navy vessel
come under such concerted "friendless" fire, with officialdom's
reaction being anything less than outrage. Calls for punishment
in like circumstances do seem invariably quick and clarion.
Witness for example Japan's 1937 attack on the United States
gunboat Panay, North Korea's seizure of the Navy intelligence
ship Pueblo in 1968 and the terrorist attack on the Navy
destroyer Cole in 2000.
This failure by any administration to probe the motive for the
tragedy is wrenching for all who experienced the horror of the
attack, cryptologic technicians and seamen alike. As Dr. Richard
Kiepfer, the ship's overwhelmed physician, has written, "Never
before in the history of the United States Navy has a Navy Board
of Inquiry ignored the testimony of American military
eyewitnesses and taken, on faith, the word of their attackers."
A harsh judgment.
Kiepfer was referring to a perfunctory hearing convened barely a
week following the attack, memorable to survivors mainly for its
frequent rejection of testimony and evidence that tended to
implicate Israel in a deliberate attack. Shockingly, the court's
chief legal counsel, Capt. Ward Boston, in 2002 told Navy Times
the naval court was, in fact, a politicized sham. Its
conclusions, he declared, had been preordained to exonerate
Israel.
Last month, Boston expanded upon those views in an interview
with the Union-Tribune. He told Union-Tribune reporter James
Crawley that a judgment of "no evidence of deliberate intent"
was ordered from Washington to spare Israel embarrassment.
Formerly, Cristol had supposed Boston would support him.
The debate on such things rages still. But the aggrieved
victims, their families and next of kin aren't really interested
in legal minutiae, foreign lobbies or the intrigues of power
politics or geo-strategies. They seek what they've always been,
and likely always will be, denied: a public forum with official
sponsorship but without back-room meddling; the opportunity to
express grievances before fellow citizens, and to demand answers
to volatile questions left too long unanswered.
The questions are fundamental. To their own government: Why did
you abandon us during the attack and ignore us until now? And to
Israel: Why did you kill our friends?
HISTORY'S JUDGMENT
Would it serve for the United States to call Israel to book at
this late date, to insist the attackers be surrendered for
questioning along with relevant paperwork and evidence; say, the
orange life raft an Israeli torpedo boat seized after allegedly
machine-gunning it and two others in the water?
At least one senior Navy lawyer has said, yes. In 1986, Lt.
Cmdr. Walter Jacobsen, writing in the Naval Law Review, argued
the case for reopening the Liberty matter. Jacobsen based his
argument partly on his belief that the attack violated
international law and that the machine-gunning of life rafts
released from the Liberty constituted a war crime. No statute of
limitations exists for murder or war crimes.
One probe might examine what the men saw and heard and wrote
down in deck and radio intercept logs during and after the
attack. That would reveal, they insist, the miscarriage of
justice of the hastily convened naval court of inquiry.
The second might go to motive: why Israel attacked this
virtually unarmed, clearly unthreatening vessel on the high
seas, and, per the Watergate process, ask "what the Johnson
administration knew and when it knew it."
This is, few would disagree, a calamity – a major historic
controversy with possible toxic ramifications to this day. Does
this country owe anything to the surviving crew, their next
of kin and the public? Certainly not a public reading of every
encrypted message. But also, not the boilerplate and obfuscation
that have been trotted out for the past 36 years and that smack
so transparently of cover-up. At a time when enormous amounts of
intelligence and other government records dating to the 1960s
have been declassified and released, Washington ought to come
clean about the Liberty, no matter how embarrassing that might
prove.
Until that happens, the ghosts of the Liberty's dead will find
no peace.
---
Walsh is a journalist based in Washington, D.C. Last June he
published "Friendless Fire?" in the U.S. Naval Institute's
Proceedings magazine.
_______________________________________________________________
o__ I'll tell you the truth about the USS LIBERTY, visit
_.>/)_
(_) \(_) http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/
_____________________(updated frequently)______________________ |
Friendless Fire' (by David Walsh who wrote the above article for the San Diego Union Tribune newspaper):
http://www.usni.org/proceedings/Articles03/PROwalsh06.htm
Article about Captain Ward Boston which appeared on the front page of the San Diego Union Tribune last month (on February 17th, 2004):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/02/21/letter-to-sd-union-trib-ward-boston-is-right-about-liberty.php
The Attack on the USS Liberty (you can scroll down to the Navy Times article about Captain Boston which is mentioned in the above article by David Walsh):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uss-liberty/2003/02/01/the-attack-on-the-uss-liberty.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2004 5:38 pm Post subject: EVIDENCE JUSTIFIES REOPENING USS LIBERTY CASE |
| THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Union-Tribune editorial
UNDOING A COVER-UP
EVIDENCE JUSTIFIES REOPENING USS LIBERTY CASE
April 1, 2004
The bitter debate over Israel's attack on the U.S. Navy
intelligence ship Liberty on June 8, 1967, seems no closer to
resolution today than it was 36 years ago. Surely it's time, a
generation and a half later, for the U.S. government to release
everything it knows about an attack that killed 34 American
sailors and intelligence analysts, wounded 171 others and has
never been satisfactorily explained.
The Liberty's survivors, the families of those killed and
wounded, the American people and history deserve better than a
permanently unresolved controversy of this magnitude.
Israel insists that the deadly attack, which occured in
international waters off the Sinai coast while the Liberty
eavesdropped on combatants' communications during the
Arab-Israeli Six Day War, was a tragic case of mistaken
identity. Surviving members of the Liberty's crew, which
suffered 70 percent casualties, are convinced that the prolonged
air and sea attack was deliberate. The U.S. government, in what
many charged was a transparent cover-up, officially accepted
Israel's explanation of mistaken identity.
Yet, the acrimonious controversy lived on, waxing and waning
through the years as each side put forth new information and
conflicting interpretations.
Over the past year, those who believe that Israel's assault on
the Liberty was deliberate have collected important
corroborating evidence. As noted in David Walsh's essay in
Sunday's Insight section, several former U.S. intelligence
officials and analysts, breaking their long silence, say that
electronic intercepts of the attacking pilots' radio
communications that day prove that the Israelis knew they were
attacking an American ship.
Oliver Kirby, a former operations director for the super-secret
National Security Agency (for which the Liberty was collecting
intelligence), was assigned by NSA in 1967 to review classified
information on the attack. In a recent telephone interview with
Jim Ennes, a retired naval officer and Liberty survivor, Kirby's
first words were, "I can tell you for an absolute certainty that
they (the Israelis) knew they were attacking an American ship."
Ward Boston, a retired Navy captain who served as chief legal
officer to a Navy court of inquiry on the Liberty attack, says
the court's finding of "mistaken identity" was dictated by
then-President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara. Boston cites "overwhelming evidence" to the contrary
that the naval court was ordered to ignore.
These recent revelations, among others, argue persuasively for
reopening the Liberty case if the truth is ever to be
discovered. Clearly, the U.S. government, not to mention
Israel's government, continues to conceal vital information
about the Liberty attack. Claims to the contrary
notwithstanding, Israel's attack on the Liberty has never been
properly investigated.
Almost 37 years after the fact, it's time it was.
_______________________________________________________________
o__ I'll tell you the truth about the USS LIBERTY, visit
_.>/)_
(_) \(_) http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/
_____________________(updated frequently)______________________
Iraq War to Protect Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/03/29/iraq-war-launched-to-protect-israel.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2004 11:38 pm Post subject: Why Americans are Sending Billions to Israel |
| Subject: Why Americans are sending billions to Israel? - By Paul J. Balles
Why Americans are sending billions to Israel
By Paul J. Balles
Al-Jazeerah, March 30, 2004
Redress, 29 March 2004
You asked why the US gives billions of dollars to Israel, despite the fact that the Israelis attacked the USS Liberty. You apparently learned only recently of how the Israelis got away with that attack. You seem completely unaware of how Israel and its American Zionists control America.
You should know that Zionists control the US government and the media. If you have a significant position in the government or are a significant voice in public, the Zionists will destroy you! If you object to blind support of Israel, they will label you anti-Semitic and threaten you and cost you your job.
Do you know that if you complain about Zionist influence, you will receive hate mail and threats of violence? If you object to the billions of dollars of your taxpayer money going to Israel, the Zionists will label you a Jew-hating Aryan, and they will pretend that you don't care that "6 million Jews were exterminated in the holocaust".
They will use that "history" to play on yours and everyone else's collective guilt. They will also use it to distract attention from slaughterers like Sharon who kill and maim and destroy everything Palestinian.
Zionist Israel and its American supporters will continue the blatant murders of Palestinians - old men, women, children and cripples - until the Zionist genocide of Palestinians is complete. They truly learned much from the Nazis!
And, yes, America and Americans' billions supports it all - the killing, the maiming, the destruction of property, the deprivation, the imposed poverty, the theft of water rights, the Bantustans, the Apartheid Wall and the suicide bombers.
Do you wonder how America supports the suicide bombers? When an entire people are overpowered, tortured, repressed, subjugated and subdued beyond hope, with America standing on the sidelines applauding and paying for it while Europe turns its head away, what do you expect the people to do?
They can't cry. They have no tears left. They can't fight tanks and Apache helicopters and F-16s with stones! If they fire a rocket that hits no one, the source of the rocket will be destroyed anyway. Firing rockets against Israelis with the latest American military detection equipment amounts to suicide with no results.
The suicide bombers who sacrifice themselves in a weak attempt at resistance are actually creations of Israel and America. Thanks again to the billions of dollars Americans cough up each year for their endowment.
Don't ever again ask why. Ask fellow Americans when you're going to put a stop to the long distance support for a Mafioso of Zionist hit men.
When are you going to insist that the president and his men - Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Wurmser, Feith, Cohen - all closer to Israel than they are to America - get prosecuted as members of an organized crime syndicate? Make no mistake: Zionism in America is organized crime!
When will you stop electing Senators and Representatives to Congress who can't resist the lure of Zionist support? They're nothing more than legislators who embrace the same organized crime syndicate.
When will you stop reading the crap written and published by the New York Times, the Washington Post and US News? When will you stop being influenced by the broadcasts of the Murdoch empire and Fox News?
When will you stop supporting organized Zionist crime and take America back from Israel for Americans?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Paul Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for 34 years. For more information, see http://www.writerfreelance.com and http://www.pballes.com. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 6:09 am Post subject: 39th anniversary of Israel's bloody attack on USS Liberty |
| http://www.ussliberty.org
http://rense.com/Datapages/usslib.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Kristoffer Larsson"
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 01:06:07 +0200
Subject: This is the 39th anniversary of Israel's bloody attack on the USS Liberty
From Jeff Blankfort:
This was forwarded to me today as a reminder that this the 39th anniversary of the nearly two-hour deliberate attack by the Israeli Navy and Air Force on the USS LIberty, a lightly armed US intelligence gathering ship that was stationed in international waters during the Six-Day war, in which 34 US sailors were killed and 171 wounded. Under threat of court-martial, the survivors were told they could not talk about the attack while they remained in the service. Israel's Defense Minister reportedly had told the US to move the ship away from the area (!) but the order was never transmitted to the ship. Apparently, Israel didn't want the US to hear its radio traffic which, according to James Bamford, in his Body of Secrets (taken from NSA annals) reported a major massacre of Egyptian troops by Israel. This was arguably the defining act in the US-Israel relationship. Not only was Israel was allowed to get away with the murder and wounding of US servicemen, but when France ended its military support for Israel for having attacked against DeGaulle's wishes, the US adopted Israel and has been its client ever since. What is disgraceful is that everyone from the biggest US flag-wavers in Congress and the major veterans organizations--the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars--on the right to the left, such as it is, including the Palestine solidarity movement, have maintained their silence about it. Such is the power of the Israel lobby over America.
LOVEARTH ® NETWORK
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USS Liberty
Viciously And Repeatedly
Attacked By Israel On June 8, 1967
USS Liberty
http://www.ussliberty.org
Navy Captain, Other Officials Call For Investigation
Of Israel's Attack On USS Liberty
by Delinda C. Hanley
http://unitedstatesgovernment.net/israelsattackonussliberty.htm
The Loss of Liberty
Why Did the U.S. Allow Israel To Attack Its Largest Spyship
Killing 34 Americans and Wounding Over 170 Others?
http://unitedstatesgovernment.net/ussliberty.htm
The Real Cost Of US Support For Israel
http://www.lovearth.net/therealcostofussupportforisrael.htm
Cover-Up Alleged In Probe Of USS Liberty
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ussliberty.html
War Crimes Committed Against U.S. Military Personnel, June 8, 1967
http://www.ussliberty.org/report/report.htm
The Assault On The USS Liberty Still Covered Up After 39 Years
by James M. Ennes Jr.
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0693/9306019.htm
The Attack On The USS Liberty
http://logogo.net/liberty.htm
USS Liberty
http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty
'The USS Liberty': America's Most Shameful Secret
by Eric S. Margolis
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/margolis12.html
The Violation Of The Liberty
by Richard K. Smith
http://www.heretical.com/miscella/liberty.html
USS Liberty (AGTR-5) --
Attack By Israeli Forces, 8 June 1967
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-l/agtr5-k.htm
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