Posted on 01/13/2004 6:29:49 AM PST by veronica
New documents released by the State Department relating to the period of the 1967 Six Day War include CIA memos that say Israel did not know it was striking an American vessel when it attacked the USS Liberty off the coast of the Gaza Strip on June 8, 1967, killing 34 American sailors and injuring 172. The memos say the attack was carried out "by mistake, representing gross negligence."
Along with the release of the documents, the historian for the top-secret National Security Agency said Monday he believed available evidence "strongly suggested" Israel did not know it was bombarding an American ship.
On Monday, the State Department hosted a conference on the 1967 war, including the Liberty incident, to mark the release of a new volume of historical papers from the Johnson Administration. The 542 declassified documents, roughly 1100 pages in length, were culled from the archives of the White House, State Department, Pentagon and various intelligence agencies. They cover May through November 1967.
Historians said the new documentation included little new on the Liberty incident itself. It is still not known, for example, why the USS Liberty, an intelligence-gathering ship, was allowed to linger so close to the war zone, or why Israel was not informed of its presence in the area. Analysts said however that while its original mission remains murky, it was now evident that the ship was not sent to spy on Israel since the bulk of linguists on board spoke Arabic or Russian and the ship had no Hebrew translators to monitor Israeli communications in real time.
The most significant documents, transcripts of tapes of communications between an Israeli air controller and helicopter pilots sent to rescue the wounded from the attack, were released last July.
Those intercepts showed that the Israeli rescue pilots first identified the ship as Egyptian and gradually realized, after spotting a US flag, that the ship was American.
"A CIA memo of June 13 reported they had no intercepts from the attacking planes and torpedo boats, but that the helicopter pilots' communication left little doubt that the Israelis had failed to identify the Liberty as a US ship," said Harriet Schwar, editor of the newly released volume.
"A follow-up CIA memo on June 21st noted that the Liberty had been identified prior to the attacks but concluded that the Israelis were not aware at the time of the attack that they were attacking a US ship. It concluded that the attack was not made in malice, but was by mistake, representing gross negligence. The Defense Intelligence Agency reached a similar conclusion," Schwar added.
David Hatch, the National Security Agency Historian, said of the intercepted communications of the rescue pilots: "While falling short of proof, the intercepts to me suggest strongly the Israeli attackers did not know they were aiming deadly fire at a vessel belonging to the United States. The intercepted communications between the air controller at Hatzor and helicopters dispatched in the wake of the attack show a progressive reversal of perception on their part."
Included on the panel was James Bamford, an investigative journalist, who has written that Israel deliberately attacked the USS Liberty spy ship. Jay Cristol, a Miami-based judge who has written a book arguing that the attack was a mistake was also present, as was Michel Oren, author of a book on the Six Day War.
Bamford stood by his assertion that Israel had deliberately attacked the ship and that the US and Israel had orchestrated a "big cover up."
He read from a recent declaration by Ward Boston, who served as senior legal counsel for the Navy's Court of Inquiry into the Liberty attack. That Court concluded there was insufficient information to make a judgment about why Israel attacked the ship.
In his affidavit, Boston says, he and the Court were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy's investigation, and that both he and the Court's president, Admiral Isaac Kidd, "believed with certainty that this attack...was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew."
"I am outraged at the efforts of the apologists for Israel in this country to claim that this attack was a case of mistaken identity. In particular the recent publication of Jay Cristol's book, "The Liberty Incident," twists the facts and misrepresents the views of those of us who investigated the attack," Boston says.
Cristol's presentation for the Liberty panel was prepared in conjunction with Ernest Castle, the United States Naval Attache' at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in June 1967, who received the first report of the attack from Israel and advised the US, and John Hadden who was then the CIA Chief of Station in Tel Aviv. Both Castle and Hadden agree that the attack on the Liberty was a mistake.
Michael Oren, in his presentation, reviewed some of the mistakes Israel had made during the Liberty attack.
Earlier in the morning of June 8, the Israelis had surveyed and identified a ship in the area as the USS Liberty. A neutral green marker was placed on a model to represent the Liberty's position. Two hours later, the marker was removed since the ship's position would have changed by then and a new senior Israeli official came on duty who was not informed of the Liberty's presence in the area, Oren explained.
The removal of the marker, a miscalculation of the speed at which the Liberty was traveling that would have indicated it was not a warship, and a breakdown in communication between the Israeli Navy and Army were all Israeli errors that contributed to orders to attack the ship.
The former Naval attach , Castle, said after the panel that he knew personally the Israeli official who had removed the marker and that it had "ruined him" professionally and personally. The Israelis had no motive to attack the ship, he added.
The panel, which was open to the public, became raucous at times when survivors of the Liberty attack and a relative of a sailor killed in the incident yelled out to protest that the panel included two people who represented Israel's position, while survivors were not invited to participate.
One petty officer from the Liberty attempted to question Oren's credentials, saying someone who would have been "in diapers" at the time of the attack could not effectively analyze the incident. Others slammed Oren for being Israeli and suggested he could therefore not be impartial.
The panel, which was open to the public, became raucous at times when survivors of the Liberty attack and a relative of a sailor killed in the incident yelled out to protest that the panel included two people who represented Israel's position, while survivors were not invited to participate.
Don't allow survivors to participate and you can get any report you want.
Scan the whole page for good reading!
Conservative Debate Handbook
Have you read on this subject? I have done quite a bit.
I don't remember all of the particulars of this attack but, as I recall, it went on for an hour or so. The length of the attack alone makes it difficult to swallow these excuses.
I would like to believe that the Israelis are our friends and always have been but I find the Liberty incident very disturbing. I've never heard a rational and believable explanation of this occurrence.
We also know from now declassified traffic that the US Sixth Fleet launched aircraft to support the USS Liberty which were CALLED BACK. Presumably the recall order came from the DC area not the area commander. Once again the message traffic would be useful.
We neet to see the actual message traffic to know. There is a good chance that the NSA may have copies, but try to pry it out of them.
Flags don't droop at 30 knots!
Fix your hair real nice, walk for a hour in a 32 mph wind and see if it still looks nice and undisturbed. Honey, you'll look like you just came out of the dryer.
My previous post with the link came from the JEWISH VIRTUAL LIBRARY not an entertainment newspaper.
Now the current State Dept. and CIA agree with the other investigations, and yet, the usual suspects are still going on. Not exactly a surprise.
They may be good and, given the threat they face and the training they undergo, they may even be the best...but they aren't perfect. Anyone can make a mistake, especially in the fog of war. There have now been many reports by our own government that have concluded that this was a mistake - will anything convince you?
One qualification for a pilot is exceptional eyesight.
True enough. However, omnipotence is not on the qualification list. Remember, we are dealing with human beings. These particular human beings had been fighting a war for several days, after several weeks of extremely high tensions, a war for the very survival of their nation. Don't you think it possible that they might have been tired? Ask our pilots from the latest conflict if they were tired after a few days of multiple sorties, in between which they were debriefed about the old mission and had to prepare for the new one - and being under incredible stress the entire time. The Israelis in '67 had it even worse - remember, this was a war after several weeks of extremely high tensions, during which time the Israeli AF had no choice but to keep large numbers of fighters in the air at all times.
Another non-argument. And a colosally STUPID non-argument as well.
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