Exclusive: Liberty attack tapes revealed

Jerusalem Post Online ^ | ARIEH O'SULLIVAN

[rrrod]

Of course you are correct..I was stating "accounts I had read"...I cant imagine why this has gone on so long with out some sort of closure.

[Poohbah]

The Liberty was attacked out at sea, and there were no arab planes in the area to shoot back. Taking a pass to identify the ship wasn't too much to ask for, IMO.

Fighter pilots are notoriously blind to events on the planet's surface. Then again, YOU try IDing a ship in a 10-mile-per-minute pass, and tell me how you do.

[freefly]

Well ashamed is a bit strong, but I'll certainly admit that it's a poor source...however, it's 1 of the the only 2 indications that SOME Israelis wouldn't fire on an ally in spite of orders...the other being that 4 out of 5 torpedoes are supposed to have missed. Pretty poor shooting considering the circumstances (even if the helmsman of the Liberty WAS highly motivated).

Other than this obscure source, all the picture shows is Brig.-Gen. Yiftach Spector who -instead of having his career ended, was promoted to the very highest level after scoring an "own goal", and, of course, his government's assurances that it was all just a simple mistake -complete with transcripts that "prove" their innocence. Not pretty...and not particularly convincing.

No, what I WOULD be ashamed of is blindly taking the word of the Israeli government over that of the American sailors that were on the dirty end of this incident (not to mention men such as Capt. Ward Boston (Navy attorney involved in the Liberty investigation) and Admiral Moorer (former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and chief of Naval ops at the time of the incident). In fact, I'd be ashamed of taking my OWN government's word over their's -given the regular diet of lies that we've been fed over the decades- and surely nobody would try to claim that the Israeli gov is any less duplicitous than our own?

What's missing from this picture is the OTHER sources of information that would confirm or disprove the gov's claims. If all we have to go by is these transcripts, then we sure weren't getting the intel that we paid for...or what those men on the Liberty died trying to get.

I might be a bit embarrassed by an obscure link (although embarrassing truth is often found in the strangest places) but you can rest assured that I have no reason to be ashamed of being a gov dupe...for any government. It would be a far worse mistake.

[Bulwark]

Okay... let's ask the RN pilots who successfully identified Argentine ships during the Falkland Islands war. They certainly could identify a ship and shoot later.

There was NO justification for attacking without taking a identification pass, period.

[Poohbah]

Okay... let's ask the RN pilots who successfully identified Argentine ships during the Falkland Islands war.

That population is equal to zero. The only time any Argentine ships were engaged was when the General Belgrano was torpedoed by the submarine HMS Conqueror.

Target ID was much simpler for the Argentine Air Force: if it's near the Malvinas, it's British.

The British announced a maritime exclusion zone around the Falklands. The only ships present were

There was NO justification for attacking without taking a identification pass, period.

Actually, there is: there was a shooting war underway, and the US naval attache in Tel Aviv had said, "we've got nothing in the area."

By the way...

Are you holding that the same is true for the USS Vincennes, when she shot down the Iran Air Airbus in 1988? Are you saying that there was no excuse for failing to identify the target prior to engagement?

[Poohbah]

The big issue I have with the crew of the Liberty is that they are repeating the National Security Agency's cover story, despite the fact that it's been proven false. They've given me cause to question their veracity in one area. That leads me to question it in others.

[freefly]

"They've given me cause to question their veracity in one area. That leads me to question it in others."

No argument from me there. But I have to apply the same standards to the others in this mess....and I tend to give the benefit of doubt to those who have little to gain from a coverup as opposed to those who have a LOT to gain (or avoid) which is the majority of the politicians on all sides. I'd have to say that the reason that we don't know what actually happened is because some people don't want us to know what happened...doubtless for "good" reason...as usual. Too many questions unanswered, too many people in high places who would be "embarrassed", and too many honorable men claiming coverup for this to be passed over and forgotten.

[Poohbah]

What reliable information we have from the Israelis (and not from agenda-driven neo-Nazi cranks who want a Judenrein world) indicates that this was a screwup, prompted by bad data and the usual screwups you can expect in any military establishment bigger than Andorra's.

Unfortunately, we have no reliable information from the primary actor on the American side: the National Security Agency.

What information we do have from the NSA consists of two parts:

1. The Liberty was monitoring the flight operations of Badger bombers based in Cairo to determine if they were flown by Arab or Soviet crews; and
2. That the attack was deliberate.

The problem is that the NSA story about the mission is a lie; the story includes a great little bit of fiction about how we found out that the planes were being flown by Commie Russians just before the attack, as we monitored the radio signals between the airborne Badgers and their Cairo military airfield.

There's only one problem: the aircraft had bugged out for Alexandria on Day One of the war and did not fly at all for the duration of the conflict.

If the one part is a lie, the odds that the second part is a lie increase tremendously.

[Boot Hill]

I suspected that it was not an oversight on your part, when you failed to provide a link or URL to the source of the news report you posted in #50. But based on your reply and your characterization of those neo-Nazi, skin-heads as merely being "a poor source" and a "obscure source", it is now clear to me that you were fully aware of their vile nature when you posted that crap.

If neo-Nazi Willis Carto, in any of his incarnations as Spotlight Magazine, American Free Press or their dim-witted stooge, Christopher Bollyn, says something happened, you can pretty much take it to the bank that just the opposite is the truth.

Maybe you'd feel more at home over at LibertyForum, where neo-Nazis skinheads are revered and respected. Or maybe you'd find a receptive audience over at LibertyPost, where Neil is too busy pushing Kotmair's tax scams, and Goldi is still suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, to notice what just crawled out from under a rock. But FR, thankfully, is a conservative site that refuses to be a forum or host for those kind of scum or their hate-filled dribble.

Have a nice day.

--Boot Hill

[rmlew]

Go look up the sinking of the Bismarck. Look up the Swordfish flight from the HMS Victorious. The pilots were looking for 40,000 ton battleship and were to be directed by a British cruiser, the HMS Sheffield. These "stringbags" flew at 100 knots. Instead of taking directions from the Sheffield whose radio frequency they followed, the Swordfish attacked their own cruiser.

Mistakes happen in war.

[Little Ray]

Actually the USS Vicinnes shot down an Iranian airliner and we've pretty much forgotten 'bout it.
But I doubt the officer commanding the Vicinnes at that time is ever going to make flag rank, unlike Gen. Spector.

[hchutch]

Misidentification of the target. Same thing that happened in July, 1988. The USS Vincennes thought that they were dealing with an F-14 making a kamikaze attack while a bunch of Boghammers had come along, looking for a fight - and proceeded to get one.

Turned out to be a climbing Airbus instead.

[hershey]

Sorry for the delay in replying to your post. I apologize for not being fully cognizent about the Liberty's attack. Supposedly the Israeli pilots thought it was an Egyptian ship? That seems evident from the transcript. Maybe they were trigger happy. Spector(sp.?) the pilot who's gone out of the way to defend his actions in an insulting manner -- usually people do that when they don't have a leg to stand on, which he doesn't, of course. This entire incident smells to high heaven. I think about Jonathon Pollard's treachery, Israel's selling of some of our tech. military stuff to China --- then I think about our bombing of the Chinese embassy, which I hope to God we did on purpose. Complicated business, real politik.

[SJackson]

You might find Spector’s first interview interview on the incident. He’s certainly a jerk. His actions should be viewed in the context of Israel’s rules of engagement at the rather perilous time. Given the fact that it was a war zone, and that no friendly ships we in the area, the pilot was to ascertain if it was an Israeli vessel (blue cross painted on deck visible from air), otherwise assume it’s hostile and attack.

I did not fire on the Liberty as a human target. I was sent to attack a sailing vessel. This ship was on an escape route from the El Arish area, which at that same moment had heavy smoke rising from it,

I can't identify it but in any case it's a military ship."

I circled it twice and it did not fire on me. My assumption was that it was likely to open fire at me and nevertheless I slowed down and I looked and there was positively no flag. Just to make sure I photographed it

I was told on the radio that it was an Egyptian ship off the Gaza coast. Hit it. The luck of the ship was that I was armed only with light ammunition [30mm] against aircraft. If I had had a bomb it would be sitting on the bottom today like the Titanic. I promise you

Every order is given by commanders and the last one to receive it has to decide whether he will pull the trigger or not. In this instance I was the fighter. I checked what I had to check [i.e. that it was a military ship and not one of ours] and pulled the trigger

[Bulwark]

THat population is certainly higher than Zero. I can name the Narwhal, for one, as a ship which was positively ID'ed as hostile before engaged.

Please do research before responding to me, I do mine before I post.

[freefly]

Good summary...

Definitely SOMEONE is lying...and very probably more than one someone. The big question is why...and there isn't enough evidence available to US to come to a definite conclusion at this point -although some very highly-placed Americans who were/are in a position to have inside info HAVE come to some definite conclusions on this -conclusions at odds with the official story. Without them, it would be just one more conspiracy theory.

The devil(s) would be found in the details, but -once again- too many people on top have no interest in those details coming into the light. All the more reason to keep digging.

[Poohbah]

THat population is certainly higher than Zero. I can name the Narwhal, for one, as a ship which was positively ID'ed as hostile before engaged.

BZZZT!

Narwhal was a SUBMARINE, and was engaged by helicopters, not by fast-movers. And it was known that ANY submarine operating in the immediate vicinity of the British task force was hostile (that maritime exclusion zone thingie again).

[Poohbah]

The big question is why...and there isn't enough evidence available to US to come to a definite conclusion at this point -although some very highly-placed Americans who were/are in a position to have inside info HAVE come to some definite conclusions on this -conclusions at odds with the official story. Without them, it would be just one more conspiracy theory.

They come to conclusions at variance with the official story...while knowingly LYING about the ship's mission.

Until they come clean, as far as I'm concerned, their objections are duly noted and equally duly ignored.

[leprechaun9]

"There was a mistake. Mistakes happen. As far as I know, the mistake was of the USS Liberty being there in the first place," said Spector, who at the time was deputy squadron commander of the 101st and used the code name "Kursa" during the attack.

The brilliant Isreal Air Force that did not fire one shot at any of the dummy Egyptian targets during the 6 day war, made this very time consuming "mistake?"

Perhaps Spector is correct, the mistake was being there in the first place. Let's pack up and get the hell out of there lock, stock and barrel!

[Poohbah]

The brilliant Isreal Air Force that did not fire one shot at any of the dummy Egyptian targets during the 6 day war, made this very time consuming "mistake?"

Actually, they fired at a BUNCH of dummy targets during the Six-Day War. They just made sure they hit the REAL ones, too.