| Author | Message | | hateliars | | Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2003 5:43 am Post subject: The Attack on the USS Liberty |
| washingtonpost.com
The Attack On Liberty
In 1967, Israeli Forces Bombarded a U.S. Intelligence Ship, Killing 34 Americans and Leaving a Legacy of Suspicion
By Ken Ringle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 1, 2003; Page C01
On June 8, 1967, in one of the periodic explosions of violence we've learned to expect in the Middle East, an American intelligence ship named the USS Liberty was attacked with rockets, cannon fire and torpedoes while in international waters off the town of El Arish in the Sinai desert.
Thirty-four Americans were killed and 171 injured in what would remain the largest post-World War II loss of U.S. lives in the Middle East until the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983.
But unlike that latter attack, or the 1983 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut or the suicide bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Aden, Yemen, which killed 17 less than three years ago, the attack on the Liberty was not made by terrorist bombs but by the jet fighters and torpedo boats of the nation of Israel.
The attack on the Liberty has never been fully explained. Official reports by both the Israelis and the U.S. Navy declared it accidental: "a case of mistaken identity" during the Six-Day War.
But today, dozens of Web sites still argue one side or another, and they're multiplying. Pro- and anti-Israeli authors, journalists and activists have sought to spin the Liberty story for their own purposes over the years. The controversy keeps growing, much as Middle East conflicts have grown to become the largest foreign policy and defense issue occupying the U.S. government.
For the Israelis, compared with the Americans, there has been less reason for resentment, blame and further investigation -- their people weren't killed, and after their government admitted its mistake, they did not have victims making charges of coverups. Not that they have ignored it: In 2000, for instance, Israeli historian Michael B. Oren wrote an article titled "The U.S.S. Liberty: Case Closed" -- a position he also took in the New Republic in 2001.
The attack on the Liberty, and the Six-Day War that surrounded it, introduced us to a fog of war that gets ever thicker. The same sort of bewilderment, suspicions and anger aroused by the Liberty incident continue to bedevil governments as U.S. troops mass on the borders of Iraq, war protesters parade and intellectuals debate.
The Six-Day War was "a turning point in our relationship with Israel," says former ambassador Richard Parker, political counselor of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo in 1967. The war did more than double the size of Israel with captured lands still the focal point of Israeli-Arab turmoil: "Up to that point we had avoided being a major arms supplier to Israel. And afterward, the security of Israel became one of our strategic objectives, which it had never been . . ."
The attack on the Liberty was not simply a case of a single bomb going astray. According to those who survived, it continued for nearly two hours. It involved rocket and napalm attacks by multiple flights of Israeli jet fighters, a simultaneous torpedo attack by three vessels of the Israeli navy and the machine-gunning of lifeboats tossed overboard as the Liberty survivors prepared to abandon their wounded ship.
Last month, during a program on the Liberty at the Middle East Institute here, Parker said those on record as believing that the Israeli attack was deliberate include former secretary of state Dean Rusk, former CIA chief Richard Helms, Adm. Thomas Moorer (a former chief of naval operations) and a host of former directors of the National Security Agency, as well as then-President Lyndon B. Johnson. Parker said he believes that the attack was accidental. But he also believes that a congressional investigation into the Liberty incident, even at this late date, "would be very useful."
In the past year alone, a Front Royal, Va., filmmaker has produced a video calling for a congressional investigation of the Liberty incident, and a Miami bankruptcy judge has published a book and set up an associated Web site endorsing the "mistaken identity" thesis and attempting to lay the incident to rest. Meanwhile a BBC documentary last June presented documents purporting to link the attack and its subsequent coverup to a mysterious covert operation the United States and Israel planned against Egypt, complete with nuclear weapons.
As the United States prepares for war in Iraq, the attack on the Liberty looms like a specter. Whether accidental or deliberate, the incident is full of examples of bungled orders, missed communications, operational stupidity and interservice rivalry on both sides -- the sort of foul-ups that dog every country's military in every conflict.
A Phantom Investigation?
"They tried to kill all the witnesses," Phil Tourney, president of the Liberty Veterans Association, said recently. "They didn't want any one of us left alive."
The official reports have been repeatedly rejected as insufficient by Liberty survivors and a sizable group of historians and scholars, who contend that the Israeli attack was deliberate. It was intended, many say, to erase the Liberty before its electronic eavesdropping could discover events Israel was anxious the world not know.
They say as well that a coverup (if not a conspiracy) has kept the truth about the incident from the American public for more than 35 years. They point to crucial NSA intercepts of Israeli radio signals known to have been made during the attack -- intercepts that remain classified by the U.S. government in the name of national security. That restriction has already lasted more than a decade longer than the one that cloaked "Ultra" -- the most crucial and tightly held code-breaking operation of World War II.
"There has never been a real investigation," says James Bamford, author of "Body of Secrets," a critically praised 2001 investigative history of the NSA that includes perhaps the most concise documented account of the attack on the Liberty. Disinformation was a major strategy employed by the Israelis in the Six-Day War from the beginning, he says, and the U.S. government, preoccupied at the time with the Vietnam War and the Cold War, chose to avoid looking closely at what happened to the Liberty.
"An investigation is what we did after the Cole bombing when we sent agents to Aden, or after the bombings at the embassies in Africa, when we sent agents there to find who was responsible," Bamford says. "Nobody was ever sent to Israel to ask questions about the Liberty. We just took the Israelis' word for what happened."
A Navy court of inquiry, Bamford says, "concerned itself with the ship's response to the attack. They never even questioned most of the survivors about why all those Americans died. And neither has Congress to this day."
And unlike the two U.S. pilots who face possible court-martial for the "friendly fire" bombing of Canadian troops last year in Afghanistan, no Israeli has ever been tried or reprimanded for the 205 U.S. casualties on the Liberty. Wrote the colonel who headed Israel's official investigation into the attack: "I have not discovered any deviation from the standard of reasonable conduct which would justify a court-martial."
In Harm's Way
To seek out the truth of what happened to the Liberty is to immerse oneself in a maelstrom of conflicting testimony, disputed accounts and questioned motives, not excluding suspicions of anti-Semitism. It is possible, however, to arrive at a basic outline of events using mainly agreed-upon facts.
The Liberty (GTR-5) was what was then known as a General Technological Research Vessel -- a converted 455-foot former World War II Liberty ship purportedly investigating science but actually an offshore electronic eavesdropper.
Its real mission was highly secret not only because spy ships might not be welcomed into every port but also because reading another nation's mail by intercepting radio signals (SIGINT) was seriously forbidden at that time. Despite its thousands of employees, the SIGINT-handling NSA was so secret in 1967 that officially it didn't exist. In the intelligence community, its initials were said to stand for No Such Agency.
Though it was technically a Navy ship and most of its 295 crewmen were Navy personnel, the Liberty generally reported directly to the NSA. In May 1967 it had been sailing slowly up and down the west coast of Africa, listening in on the messy wars in the Congo and other newly independent colonies.
On May 23, however, with war clouds gathering over Israel and Egypt, the ship was ordered to the eastern Mediterranean. Egypt was a major client state of the Soviet Union, and any Egyptian attack on America's ally Israel held the danger of dragging the United States into a nuclear war. The NSA had a need to know.
While the Liberty was still steaming eastward, however, Israel on June 5 launched its air force against Egyptian airfields, destroying almost all of that nation's air power in about 80 minutes.
Informed that war had broken out, the U.S. Navy ordered all its vessels to keep at least 100 miles from the war zone. The NSA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff followed that up with at least five similar orders directed specifically to the Liberty, according to Navy radio transcripts since made public. But the Liberty never received them. A series of bureaucratic bungles that defy logic or explanation delayed the messages for 16 hours and then routed them via Hawaii into some communications twilight zone.
The Liberty took station just outside Egypt's 12-mile territorial limit off the Gaza Strip at dawn on June 8. Though they knew they were in a war zone and kept careful watch, crew members were relaxed enough to sunbathe when off duty. Israeli planes circled the ship several times at close range. Crewmen waved at the pilots.
Then, shortly before 2 p.m., a flight of delta-wing Mirage jets approached the ship in what Capt. William McGonagle recognized as an attack pattern. He shouted a warning, but before he could sound the ship's general alarm the planes raked the ship from bow to stern with rockets and cannon fire, killing several sailors, along with the executive officer.
The attack shattered virtually all of the ship's 45 communications antennae. It took technicians more than 10 minutes to jury-rig enough wire to send an SOS to the 6th Fleet, 500 miles to the north. A radio operator on the USS Saratoga heard the message that the Liberty was under attack but demanded an authentication code that had been blown away by the first shots.
"Listen to the goddamn rockets, you son of a bitch!" Liberty's radio operator screamed into the microphone, according to one survivor's account.
Drawing a Bead
Crew members on the Liberty had seen explosions on the beach earlier. The Israelis would later discover that the blasts were caused by Egyptian stragglers blowing up ammunition dumps. But at the time, the Israelis say, they received reports that an unidentified ship was shelling El Arish and sent three high-speed torpedo boats to investigate.
The Liberty was armed with only four 50-caliber machine guns with an effective range of less than two miles. It was cruising at about 5 knots. The Israelis say a plotting error aboard the torpedo boats convinced them that the Liberty was traveling at 30 knots -- the rate of a serious warship and more than 10 knots beyond the Liberty's highest attainable speed. The Israeli navy then summoned the air force to intercept the mysterious vessel.
The Israelis concede that they had investigated the Liberty earlier and had identified it as a U.S. ship. But they say that when a new shift of officers came on duty that information was somehow not passed along, even though the Liberty was the only such vessel within probably 50 miles and the Egyptian navy was effectively nonexistent.
Partial transcripts of Israeli air force communications from the fighters sent to investigate, recently declassified by Israel, reflect more than a little uncertainty about the identity of the Liberty and include at least one suggestion it might be American. But they reflect a greater concern that the jets sink the ship before the navy could share the glory: "Before the navy arrives, it will be a mitzvah [good deed]," says one of the pilots.
The torpedo boats did arrive, however. Uncertain about the identity of their target, they attempted to communicate with signal lights. By this time, however, the Liberty had eight men dead and 75 injured from rockets, cannon fire and napalm. Seeing three torpedo boats approaching in attack formation, the crew assumed the worst and one seaman opened fire before McGonagle could stop him.
The torpedo boats, assuming only an enemy would fire at them, launched their attack and loosed five torpedoes. McGonagle managed to avoid four of them. The fifth, however, blew a 40-foot hole in the Liberty's starboard side, shattering the ship's cryptographic compartment and killing most of the men in it. Only heroic damage-control measures by the survivors in the following hours kept the Liberty from sinking before it limped into Malta days later. Shipyard workers there counted more than 800 holes in its superstructure.
Digging for Information
Those are the basic facts of the incident, together with the Israeli explanation for why it happened. There is, of course, far more to the story, including much debate about whether the Liberty's American flag was visible, whether the Israeli jets were unmarked, whether the Liberty's lifeboats were targeted by the Israelis. There is debate over whether the Israelis could, as claimed, have mistaken the Liberty for the El Quseir, a decrepit, unarmed 38-year-old Egyptian coastal transport half the size of the Liberty and markedly different in profile.
Such debates are not helped by the narrow focus of the debaters, which tends to exclude the context of the Cold War, including Soviet vessels in the eastern Mediterranean, and an increasingly divisive Vietnam War.
The debates will probably never be resolved. But far more intriguing is the evidence that suggests a U.S. government coverup, past and present, of much surrounding the Liberty incident. The ship's casualties were vastly underreported initially. Survivors were threatened with court-martial, prison or worse if they talked about the incident. The Pentagon clamped a lid on discussion even as the Liberty was sold for scrap and the shattered pieces of those who died were buried in a common grave in Arlington National Cemetery. Israel eventually paid $6 million in restitution to the survivors of those killed and, in 1980, another $6 million to the U.S. government to end litigation. That $12 million was less than half the cost of the ship's SIGINT equipment alone.
James M. Ennes Jr., a Liberty survivor whose 1979 book, "Assault on the Liberty," was the first comprehensive effort to tell the crew's story, has since found a document in the Liberty's file at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin referring to a meeting of the White House "303 Committee" in April 1967, a few months before the outbreak of the Six-Day War. It concerns something called Operation Cyanide, which apparently involved a U.S.-Israeli covert operation that would have stationed a submarine in Egyptian waters.
Asked on camera by the BBC about Operation Cyanide, Rafi Eitan, who was with the Israeli secret service in 1967, smiled cryptically and said: "I know what I am able to tell you and where I have to stop. And here I stop."
When the same interviewers questioned former CIA chief Helms on camera, he confirmed the covert function of the 303 Committee but said, "You'll have to ask McNamara" about Operation Cyanide. When Robert McNamara, secretary of defense in 1967, was asked on camera about Operation Cyanide, he replied, "I won't say a word about the Liberty." Why?
When the U.S. Navy finally heard the Liberty was under attack, it was assumed the attackers were Egyptian. Strike aircraft were launched from the carrier Saratoga and elsewhere and Parker, the former ambassador, says he was warned in Cairo that they were en route to the Egyptian capital. But when Israel was identified as the attacker, they were recalled -- on direct orders from McNamara, according to several Navy sources. Other third-hand reports cited by Ennes and other authors claim the president himself, despite his belief that the attack was deliberate, ordered the Navy to send no planes to the aid of the Liberty.
Those speculating on reasons for Israel's attack on the Liberty have asserted it was to prevent Washington from learning of Israel's coming seizure of the Golan Heights from Syria, or to prevent disclosure of war crimes against Egyptian prisoners of war.
Bamford uncovered a July 27, 1967, CIA report quoting an Israeli official to the effect that Israel knew who the Liberty was and what she was doing, but was unsure who besides the United States might have access to the ship's intercepts, so it put the Liberty out of commission just to be sure.
There may indeed have been a conspiracy surrounding the Liberty. But Miami Judge A. Jay Cristol, in his 2002 book, "The Liberty Incident," discounts that possibility, quoting an old Marine proverb: "Never attribute to malice what can be blamed on stupidity."
Will we ever learn everything surrounding the attack on the Liberty? Probably not without intense pressure on the government from the public and the media, both of which have been fitful at best in their concern with the 205 U.S. casualties at the hands of a U.S. ally 35 years ago.
Bamford, who clearly won the cooperation of many at the NSA in writing "Body of Secrets," points out that a special public law exempts the NSA from the Freedom of Information Act so that only Congress or the White House has access to what's classified there.
At the Johnson library, tape recordings of LBJ's phone calls and office meetings are slowly being declassified, but it will be more than a year before archivists deal with those of June 1967. There is no certainty even then that anything dealing with the Liberty will come to light.
But as debate continues about the U.S. role in the Middle East, a growing chorus of voices is asking why an incident as central to our current involvement in the region as the attack on the Liberty continues to be shrouded for "national security" after so many years.
? 2003 The Washington Post Company | |  | | Guest-c651 | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2003 8:25 am Post subject: The Liberty Incident - multiple errors |
| On the fourth day of the Six Day War (8 Jun 1967), at about 2 PM Sinai time (then, GMT+2), Israeli defense forces attacked the USS Liberty about 14 miles off the coast of the Sinai peninsula, near El Arish.
After ten official US investigations (including five congressional investigations), there was never any evidence that the attack was made with knowledge that the target was a US ship and that there is substantial evidence the attack was a tragic mistake caused by blunders of both the US and Israel. Eight US presidents, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush (41), Clinton, and Bush (43), have each accepted the conclusion that the attack was a tragic case of mistaken identity.
Nevertheless, conspiracy theorists continue to claim the Israelis knowingly attacked a US ship. By some estimates, there are more conspiracy theories about the Liberty incident than about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
http://libertyincident.com/ | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2003 8:45 am Post subject: NSA won't Release Material for Liberty but Will for Iraq |
| Isn't it incredible how the Bush regime/NSA won't release documents from the intentional and brutal Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 but is willing to release "new" material when it comes to putting forth "evidence" for its coming war on Islam (beginning with the Zionist and oil driven invasion of Iraq):
http://www.msnbc.com/news/867105.asp?0cv=KA01
Caught on Tape
EXCLUSIVE: Bush administration to release tapes that could incriminate Iraq. Hold onto your hat,’ says one U.S. intelligence official, ‘we’ve got it.’
By Michael Isikoff and Michael Hirsh
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Jan. 31 — The Bush administration is preparing to release supersensitive electronic intercepts obtained by the National Security Agency that officials say prove that Iraq has repeatedly lied to United Nations inspectors, plotted among themselves about how to conceal weapons material and even appeared to boast afterward at their success in doing so, NEWSWEEK has learned. | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2003 9:03 am Post subject: US (UN) double standard for Israel is nothing new... |
| | Guest-c651 wrote: | Isn't it incredible how the Bush regime/NSA won't release documents from the intentional and brutal Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 but is willing to release "new" material when it comes to putting forth "evidence" for its coming war on Islam (beginning with the Zionist and oil driven invasion of Iraq):
http://www.msnbc.com/news/867105.asp?0cv=KA01
Caught on Tape
EXCLUSIVE: Bush administration to release tapes that could incriminate Iraq. Hold onto your hat,’ says one U.S. intelligence official, ‘we’ve got it.’
By Michael Isikoff and Michael Hirsh
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Jan. 31 — The Bush administration is preparing to release supersensitive electronic intercepts obtained by the National Security Agency that officials say prove that Iraq has repeatedly lied to United Nations inspectors, plotted among themselves about how to conceal weapons material and even appeared to boast afterward at their success in doing so, NEWSWEEK has learned. |
The US (UN) double standard for Israel is nothing new and is completely unjust (especially when it comes to Israeli weapons of mass destruction):
Iraq Turns Spotlight on Israel at U.N. Arms Body:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/31/iraq-turns-spotlight-on-israel-at-u-n-arms-body.php | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2003 9:19 am Post subject: USS LIBERTY ATTACK: ISRAEL'S DIRECT ATTACK ON AMERICA |
| | Guest-c651 wrote: | On the fourth day of the Six Day War (8 Jun 1967), at about 2 PM Sinai time (then, GMT+2), Israeli defense forces attacked the USS Liberty about 14 miles off the coast of the Sinai peninsula, near El Arish.
After ten official US investigations (including five congressional investigations), there was never any evidence that the attack was made with knowledge that the target was a US ship and that there is substantial evidence the attack was a tragic mistake caused by blunders of both the US and Israel. Eight US presidents, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush (41), Clinton, and Bush (43), have each accepted the conclusion that the attack was a tragic case of mistaken identity.
Nevertheless, conspiracy theorists continue to claim the Israelis knowingly attacked a US ship. By some estimates, there are more conspiracy theories about the Liberty incident than about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
http://libertyincident.com/ |
That "Liberty Incident" (www.libertyincident.com) book is pro-Israel spin and truth distortion by a known Israeli shill (Jay A. Cristol) who is a Zionist Jew with more apparent allegiance to covering Israeli treachery against America than to seeking justice for murdered Americans. It is interesting to also note that the US Naval Court of Inquiry (which is the foundation of Cristol's book and the supposed later "investigations" which never addressed whether the attack was deliberate) was a sham and a fraud as conveyed by legal council Captain Ward Boston in the Navy Times article (which appeared in the Marine Times as well) last summer which Cristol and his Zionist cronies (one of whom is Mike Weeks who is an amateur historian and helped with Cristol's "research") like to conveniently ignore (this Navy Times/Marine Times article is included below):
Forwarded:
From the December 30, 2002 edition of American Free Press:
---------------------------------------------------------
NEW BOOK CONTINUES LIBERTY COVER UP
Despite convincing, overwhelming evidence that the 1967
Israeli attack on the intelligence gathering vessel USS
LIBERTY was deliberate, there is a new effort to sell the
"mistaken identity" nonsense.
-------------
Exclusive to American Free Press
by Fred Lingel
-------------
There is a new but futile attempt to sell the idea of
"mistaken identity" in the Israeli attack on the USS LIBERTY
in 1967. Fortunately it's a flop. The mountain of evidence
that the attack, which killed 32 Americans and injured 172,
was a deliberate attempt to sink the ship and kill everybody
aboard has been covered up by the mainstream media for 35
years.
A. Jay Cristol, a former Navy aviator and federal judge
in Southern Florida, is trying to pedal his book THE LIBERTY
INCIDENT, which tries to argue "mistaken identity" but nobody's
buying. No major publication has reviewed his book since it
was published six weeks ago. His lectures are met with ques-
tions, especially among military personnel, who doubt the
"mistaken identity" argument.
Cristol spent 18 years as an aviator and 20 in the Navy's
Judge Advocate General Corps. He retired as a captain in the
U.S. Navy Reserve.
Cristol argues that Israel thought the LIBERTY was an
Egyption freighter about one-fifth its size, based on silhou-
ettes.
Tito Howard, who produced a documentary, THE LIBERTY
ALLIANCE, got an angry reaction from Cristol when he pointed
out that the attack came on a clear day and silhouettes are
used only at night for identifying ships. (Intercepted Israeli
communications also corroborate the fact that Israel knew who
they were attacking that day.)
"You may know a lot about television but you no know nothing
about ships," Cristol said in avoiding a response.
"The Israeli lobby is scared to death about the LIBERTY
affair," Howard said. He pointed out when Cristol lectured on
his book at the Navy Yard in Washington on Dec. 17, six
officials from the Israeli embassy were there to suppport him.
Yet at least half the questions were from those who doubt
the "mistaken identity" theory and he was forced to acknow-
ledge the views of Adm. Thomas Moorer and other ranking mili-
tary officers.
Cristol had a similar experience the following day when he
took his show to the Mideast Institute in Washington.
The Israeli lobby fears that if Americans become aware
that the attack was deliberate and officials covered it up
they would be so enraged that blank-check aid to Israel would
end.
Such aid amounts to at least $10 billion a year, although
the mainstream media sets the figure at $5.5 billion.
---------------
For the truth on the USS Liberty, please access the following:
http://www.ussliberty.org
REMEMBER THE USS LIBERTY
This is in rememberance to our valiant American naval men who lost their precious lives in a brutal attack on the USS Liberty June 8,1967. Also, to the brave men who were wounded and kept the Liberty from sinking. Israel didn't expect such a formidable effort as our naval men showed them that day.
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.
http://members.aol.com/w4lmk/sdari/
http://www.ussliberty.org
Body of Secrets
provides new Liberty revelations
http://www.ussliberty.org/margolis.txt
A report based on eyewitness accounts from the Israeli press
http://www.ussliberty.org/washrp96.txt
Liberty web sites by other USS Liberty crewmen
http://www.ussliberty.org/crewsite.htm
Memorials to our lost shipmates
http://www.ussliberty.org/memorial.txt
Awards and Medals
http://www.ussliberty.org/awards.htm
Annual Ceremony by No Greater Love
http://www.ussliberty.org/greater.htm
Did Israel commit one war crime to after another?
http://www.ussliberty.org/washrp96.txt
Statement by JCS Chairman Admiral Thomas H. Moorer
http://www.ussliberty.org/moorer3.txt
Charley Reese reviews new book about USS Liberty
http://www.ussliberty.org/reese.htm
New evidence on USS Liberty:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/10/31/new-evidence-on-uss-liberty.php
sc&start=20
US/UN Double Standard When It Comes to Israel
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/09/15/us-un-double-standard-when-it-comes-to-israel.php
War Without End :: View topic - VFW RESOLUTION DEMANDING ISRAELI USS LIBERTY INVESTIGATION:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/09/20/vfw-resolution-demanding-israeli-uss-liberty-investigation.php
AGTR-5
Sham Naval Court of Inquiry (into the USS Liberty Attack)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+_+_+
The Naval Court of Inquiry was a major event in 1967. And
Ward Boston was a major player in the Court. And now we find
out that the survivors were right, the court was a fraud and
a sham, with the outcome directed by the U.S. government.
I am puzzled why the media does not treat Ward Boston's words
for what they are worth! This is a huge story and should be
in every paper in the country. The USS Liberty attack was
covered up by the U.S. Government!
This is exactly how I feel as well.. Believe me as there definitely is some kind of conspiracy going on in the US media/press regarding the Liberty attack and ongoing cover-up because I contacted all the major press/media establishments (Washington Post, Fox News Channel, Associated Press, CNN, etc.) about that above referenced Navy Times article (with Captain Boston's comments conveying the cover-up), and not one has covered it to my info. We are talking about a 35 year cover-up and documents still clasified at the NSA which could potentially further reveal prrof of such... Look at what James Bamford (with his "Body of Secrets" book has already revealed by getting access to those NSA documents that he was able to get access to as there are others that are still classified (some 35 years later, but why as what are the Israeli and American governments stilling wanting to keep from getting out so many years later?).
AP Review of Cristol's Bogus Book ("The Liberty Incident"):
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A scorching review of A. Jay Cristol's "The Liberty Incident" was on the
Associated Press news wire August 2, 2002.
The review is reproduced below, but we do not know what newspapers actually printed it.
=======================================================
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
VFW RESOLUTION DEMANDING ISRAELI USS LIBERTY
INVESTIGATION:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/09/20/vfw-resolution-demanding-israeli-uss-liberty-investigation.php
US/UN Double Standard When It Comes to Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/09/15/us-un-double-standard-when-it-comes-to-israel.php
Price of Support for Israel
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/17/the-price-of-israel.php
Passionate Attachment for Israel
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/24/passionate-attachment-to-israel.php
Coming War has Been Planned Years in Advance
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