U.S. agency confirms sinking of USS Liberty was accident

Haaretz ^ | 9/7/2003 | Nathan Guttman

[E Rocc]

And if there is anyone to blame, it would be the US, for telling Israel it had no ship in that radius.

A US Navy ship.

Flying the US flag.

In international waters.

Gets attacked by foreign military forces.

It's our fault?

No clintoning way.

-Eric

[clockwork]

Of course, had the US lived up to its statement that all ships had been pulled west of Cyprus and/or accepted Israel's request to trade Naval Liasons, none of this would happen. Istead, we secretly put a spy ship into a war zone.

You probably blame the victims in rape cases for dressing too provacatively....

[yonif]

The question is not whether the Liberty was attacked. The question is whether it was an accident. The now released audio tapes prove that it was an accident committed by Israel.

It was not intentional.

Some Facts:

1. Israel was at a state of war with Egypt and had no reason to believe there was an American ship less then 200 miles from the coast of Israel (and even the US stated that at the UN).

2. Israeli planes used NAPALM not IRON BOMBS to attack the liberty because they were scrambled from operations in northern Israel. This was no plan to attack the liberty.

3. IDF troops were being shelled on the coast.

4. 5 Congressional investigations stated that it was an accident

5. Those survivors leading this conspiracy have an anti-Israel agenda. They even founded the Council for the National Interest, which is a national organization against Israel.

[Paul Ross]

I frankly am a friend of Israel, but have never bought the cover story of the attack on the Liberty. And if you believe that all, or even a fraction of the REAL NSA information is or has been released relevant to determining what happened that fateful day then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. The goods are still classified. The fix is in. And the NSA was ORDERED to cull and select information that would support the cover story. This was because a number of NSA officers FROM THE TIME PERIOD, have been talking. And saying flat out, to a man: "Israel's forces knew she was a US Navy Ship."

[rmlew]

You probably blame the victims in rape cases for dressing too provacatively....

It I walk into the midle of a known firefight, it is my fault if I'm shot.

[Thumper1960]

You insinuate that I am "anti-semitic" by stating doubt without asking. For the record, I am not anti-semitic. I converted to Judiaism in 1981. Although I don't follow the tenets and religious practices as I once did, once you convert you are for all time. I believe I can question the actions of Israel, yet support and defend Israel against those who wish her harm and her destruction and also fully back her right to exist. Questioning Israel's attack on the Liberty is hardly anti-semitic. It is a quest for the truth.

[rmlew]

I insinuated no such thing at any point.
I made the observation that from what you had already written I had nothing to gage anti-Semitism on. The reason is that one can disapprove of many Israeli action or even its existance and still not be an anti-Semite.

[clockwork]

It I walk into the midle of a known firefight, it is my fault if I'm shot.

And to you it doesn't matter if its an Israeli or an American. My loyalties are with the the 34 Americans who died on the USS Liberty at the hands on the Israelis...

[rmlew]

I was horrified when I learnt of the USS Liberty attack. It was a horrible accident.
The anger of the survivors and of the family and friends is understandable, as the horror fealt by all Americans.
None of this means that there was no culpability on our part.
Can you explain to me why the US lied about the locations of our ships, failed to inform Israel that intelligence ships would be in the area, refused a request for a Naval liason, and put a ship into a war zone?
There is a lot of guilt to go around here.

[XBob]

Sorry - I personally remember the incident, and the reports. The US was 'neutral' during that war, it was a 'spy' ship for collecting war information, sailing in sort of circles to monitor the war. It was plainly a US Navy ship, and was plainly flying the US ensign, in broad daylight, in the early afternoon around 1-2 PM local if I remember correctly, on a clear day. The Israeli's were advised of it's location and what it was doing, requested it to be withdrawn and the US refused.

Notice the verbage of the communication -

"They had no idea what they were trying to sink:"
"Pay attention. The ship is now identified as Egyptian," the pilots were told."

Pilots in VFR conditions are trained to identify ships and ship shilouhettes, and to identify friend from foe. In addition, there were numbers of overflights over a period of hours before the attack. However, in this case the ensign could be clearly seen - and 'the pilots were told' - the pilots on the scene looking at the obviously American Navy ship, 'were told' it was Egyptian.

This was a typical government coverup, in which both the Israeli and the US governments were involved in covering it up.

[XBob]

66 - best coverage of the incident I have ever seen, period.

[XBob]

83 - "Well, I am pro-Israel, but I think it was attacked on purpose. I'm not excusing it, but the reason for attacking it was that Lyndon Johnson was about to interfere, yet again, against Israel at a critical moment, and the Israelis attacked the ship in order to cut off Johnson's ears, as it were, and give themselves a little more time to achieve their military objectives. "

I have been reviewing the posts and references and comparing to my personal memory, I was in the Air Force at the time, and accessed classified information.

It has been a long time, but I am missing one thing in all the references, versus my memory - the Israeli's asked us to get out and let them do their thing (my memory). The didn't want us to interfere like the Brits did in the 1956 war, when the brits and the french forced them back from the Suez canal. And Johnson had just really started intervening in Vietnam. I am sure the attack was 'intentional', and designed to warn/tell the US - hands off - let us do our job defending our country, and we kept our hands off, and they promptly won in 6 days.

[clockwork]

NSA Releases 1967 helicopter intercept transcripts Haaretz claims they prove the attack was an accident They prove no such thing The NSA intercepts prove only that the helicopter pilots were not aware of the ship's identity until they arrived. Intercept of the attack itself, not released and said not to exist but which has been seen by senior NSA sources we have identified, show that in fact they did know they were attacking an American ship. The plain truth is that, despite the arguments sent by spokesmen for Israel, most people who look carefully at this attack agree that it was deliberate. Moreover, the top minds in the American intelligence community agree that solid evidence is overwhelming that it was deliberate! Supporters.txt lists some of those names. One really must look carefully when such leading lights as Dean Rusk, Marshall Carter, Richard Helms, Lou Tordella, Tom Moorer, Rufus Taylor, William Odom, Bobby Ray Inman, John Morrison, George Ball, Clark Clifford, Lucius Battle, William Odom, Merlin Staring and others including even LBJs own press secretary George Christian all say almost with one voice that it was deliberate and that the evidence says so. Four former NSA directors agree that deliberateness of the attack was not a debatable issue; it was agreed fact. None of these men are the sort to adopt wild or irresponsible positions. We survivors say the attack was deliberate because what we saw argues that it was: Prolonged, low-level pre-attack reconnaissance in which the recon pilots were heard telling their HQ that we were American; an extended close air attack with large colors flying throughout; selective jamming of the very frequencies we needed to call for help; torpedo boats that examined the ship and flag from 50 feet away and CONTINUED to fire from close range for another 40 minutes; machinegunning of our liferafts in the water. Then they lied about everything and claimed that they recognized us as American even while the torpedoes were in the water and never fired again. Nonsense. They claim falsely that the boats called in the air attack because they miscalculated our speed from 32 miles away when in fact their maximum radar range was 16 miles and that they judged our speed at 30 knots when we were moving five knots. Nonsense. They claim we flew no flag. Nonsense. If it was a mistake, at least they could tell the truth. If they didn't know we were American, why did they jam American radio frequencies? Yet the evidence goes far beyond those things; it is virtually absolute. Recently I called Oliver Kirby, a former NSA Ops boss who was called back to NSA in 1967 to look into the circumstances of the attack. He has never before discussed this with anyone outside the confines of the NSA complex, but the first words out of his mouth were, "I can tell you for an absolute certainty that they knew they were attacking an American ship." How did he know? He saw transcripts of Israeli communications during the attack. There was a Navy EC121 overhead (reported recently by Jim Bamford) and an Air Force C130 a few miles away. Both were recording communications. The Navy intake was merely recorded; the Air Force product was sent securely in real time via the CRITICOMM system to Air Force intelligence centers worldwide where it was seen by hundreds of people. Now many of those people are coming forward to describe what they saw. These are the same intercepts that were seen by Oliver Kirby and other top analysts and officials at the National Security Agency. These transcripts are the reason so many top intelligence officials are certain that this attack was no accident. NSA now denies there were airplanes overhead during the attack or that the attack was intercepted or recorded. Those denials are contradicted by very credible people who were there, including the navigator of the EC121 who is talking to us. NSA can deny that such intercepts exist because shortly after the attack all such evidence of a deliberate attack was ordered destroyed. But fortunately for the historical record a great many people saw those things before they went into the burn bag, and many of those people are now speaking out. People are just learning that the Court of Inquiry was falsified. The Court's own legal counsel, Captain Ward Boston, now says publicly in Navy Times and elsewhere that the court actually believed that the attack was deliberate but reported otherwise falsely because it was so ordered by Washington. Why would Israel bite the American hand? We may never know. As Dean Rusk once said, it must have been ordered by someone fairly high up to be able to coordinate all the different forces involved. Richard Helms and Admiral Moorer have supposed that it was done to delay American knowledge of the pending Golan invasion. General Morrison agrees that it could have been to assure that we didn't learn of the executing of POWs then underway at El Arish. We may never know the real reason, but anyone who wonders about this should look carefully at the circumstances before allowing the improbability of such an attack to weigh against the very solid evidence that the attack was deliberate. A recent article in Naval Institute Proceedings discusses these things in some depth. You will find this at http://www.usni.org/proceedings/Articles03/PROwalsh06.htm. This conservative and trusted publication, known as the voice of the US Navy officer corps, does not bite carelessly on weak positions. Return to the USS Liberty

I'll take the word of my fellow Americans who survived this assault rather than Israeli propaganda.

[rmlew]

Nice list.
However, my questions are facts, as opposed to the opinions you listed.

Can you explain to me why the US lied about the locations of our ships, failed to inform Israel that intelligence ships would be in the area, refused a request for a Naval liason, and put a ship into a war zone?

The Israelis made a mistake. Everyone knows that. My question is did the NSA send a bunch of Americans into a dangerious situation, made more so by the US lyng to Israel?

[clockwork]

The Israelis made a mistake.

I can only assume that you didn't read the first hand account of one of the survivors....an American sailor...this was no mistake. You can belive the propaganda of a foreign government (maybe not foreign to you) or believe an American sailor who was there. I know who I will believe.

[wideminded]

http://www.nsa.gov/docs/efoia/released/liberty.html

Thanks for the link. I downloaded and read all the NSA material. Contrary to the statement that is being trumpeted that this proves that the attack was a mistake, the tapes clearly prove somewhat less than that.

The tapes indicate that the pilots in the "rescue" helicopters indeed probably had no initial knowledge that the ship was American. The controller at Hatzor appears to have had some initial suspicion that the ship was American because he repeatedly stresses the need to discover the nationality of the survivors and offers the possibility that they may speak English.

The tapes offer us absolutely no information about what the attackers or their commanders believed concerning the nationality of the ship.

The helicopters witnessed deflated lifeboats in the water near the ship. This either corroborates the survivors accounts saying that the lifeboats were machine-gunned or it means that the lifeboats were tossed overboard without being inflated. Someone here with Navy experience probably knows the SOP for lifeboats.

I'll refrain from quoting your statement that implies I am guilty of anti-Semitism. I think these type of statements also detract from Cristol's arguments. Some of the survivors were Jewish. It would be interesting to know what they think about this incident.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Sorry for the late reply. I've been bagging on that treacherous little jitbag every time he comes up, and while many people defend him -- thanks to the BS he and the Israeli government put out -- nobody has ever pulled a post, or a thread, or said "Boo" to me.

Now, it is possible that someone might make a post against Pollard that is also anti-Semitic. That would definitely get yanked, as FR has zero tolerance for racism, anti-Semitism, or people that foment hate. (A policy that I fully agree with, or I'd be off on one of the crank sites, and not here, on the mainstream conservative site).

I always argue the Pollard case from the point of his damage to national security. It doesn't matter that he transferred the information to a nation that is one of our most reliable & faithful allies. I would want him in the clink (well, really, I would like to see him hang, but the law unfortunately specifies improsonment) even if he gave that sort of stuff to another American, who was not cleared to have it. NSA is a military organisation and individual members do not make policy, they follow it.

Of course, it's kind of damaging to Pollard's image as the Great Jewish Martyr that he offered the stuff to the Soviets and two other nations first. He went to Israel after his first choices turned him down (they thought he was a provocateur). He was also paid handsomely for his crime. (Well, not if you weigh it against his time in jail, but the deal looked good to him at the time). If he was doing it our of love for Israel, why be so greedy?

If you ever read Dante's Inferno, the great Italian placed traitors at the deepest pit of Hades. Pelton, Pollard, Walker (in the order of the damage they did) have got reserved seating. And if there is any justice this side of those gates, they will all be going there direct from prison.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F