Posted on 03/06/2006 7:13:02 AM PST by CarrotAndStick
Not so hard when you learn that none of the crew members or those involved could go public without being court martialed. However many public officials have spoken out since and so have the crew members, one of whom wrote a book. Check out these links to learn more:
The Attack on the USS Liberty and its Cover-up
Finally, the most damning of all, the sworn statement of Ward Boston, Jr.,Captain, JAGC, USN (Ret.) Counsel to the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry’s investigation into the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty Some excerpts:
For more than 30 years, I have remained silent on the topic of USS Liberty. I am a military man and when orders come in from the Secretary of Defense and President of the United States, I follow them. However, recent attempts to rewrite history compel me to share the truth.
In June of 1967, while serving as a Captain in the Judge Advocate General Corps, Department of the Navy, I was assigned as senior legal counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the brutal attack on USS Liberty, which had occurred on June 8th.
The late Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, president of the Court, and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy’s official investigation into the attack, despite the fact that we both had estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry into an attack of this magnitude would take at least six months to conduct.
Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., then Commander-in-chief, Naval Forces Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR), at his headquarters in London, had charged Admiral Kidd (in a letter dated June 10, 1967) to “inquire into all the pertinent facts and circumstances leading to and connected with the armed attack; damage resulting therefrom; and deaths of and injuries to Naval personnel.”
Despite the short amount of time we were given, we gathered a vast amount of evidence, including hours of heartbreaking testimony from the young survivors.
The evidence was clear. Both Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack, which killed 34 American sailors and injured 172 others, was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. Each evening, after hearing testimony all day, we often spoke our private thoughts concerning what we had seen and heard. I recall Admiral Kidd repeatedly referring to the Israeli forces responsible for the attack as “murderous bastards.” It was our shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and testimony we received first hand, that the Israeli attack was planned and deliberate, and could not possibly have been an accident.
I am certain that the Israeli pilots that undertook the attack, as well as their superiors, who had ordered the attack, were well aware that the ship was American.
I saw the flag, which had visibly identified the ship as American, riddled with bullet holes, and heard testimony that made it clear that the Israelis intended there be no survivors. 10. Not only did the Israelis attack the ship with napalm, gunfire, and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned three lifeboats that had been launched in an attempt by the crew to save the most seriously wounded — a war crime.
I know from personal conversations I had with Admiral Kidd that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Admiral Kidd told me, after returning from Washington, D.C. that he had been ordered to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Defense Department, and rewrite portions of the court’s findings.
Admiral Kidd also told me that he had been ordered to “put the lid” on everything having to do with the attack on USS Liberty. We were never to speak of it and we were to caution everyone else involved that they could never speak of it again.
I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of that statement as I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent off to Washington.
I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and I did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. Finally, the testimony of Lt. Painter concerning the deliberate machine gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given at the Court of Inquiry and included in the original transcript, is now missing and has been excised.
Following the conclusion of the Court of Inquiry, Admiral Kidd and I remained in contact. Though we never spoke of the attack in public, we did discuss it between ourselves, on occasion. Every time we discussed the attack, Admiral Kidd was adamant that it was a deliberate, planned attack on an American ship.
If this crime had been committed, the U.S. gov't's duty was to prosecute it to the highest level. Israel's duty as an ally would be the same. If what you say is true, then our gov't is seriously wanting.
I couldn't agree more, which is why the USS Liberty survivors have been calling for a public Congressional investigation for decades. In June 2005, they sent a A Report: War Crimes Committed Against U.S. Military Personnel, June 8, 1967--Submitted to the Secretary of the Army in his capacity as Executive Agent for the Secretary of Defense, June 8, 2005.
It wasn't until 1990 that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev admitted Soviet involvement in the Katyn forest massacre. The Japanese-Americans interred in prison camps didn't get justice until decades later. Eventually, the full truth will come out. FYI: Israel didn't even issue a reprimand to any of their personnel involved in the attack.
Thank you for coming forth. I support your efforts and will contact you privately.
If this crime had been committed, the U.S. gov't's duty was to prosecute it to the highest level. Israel's duty as an ally would be the same. If what you say is true, then our gov't is seriously wanting. I can't believe it is true, considering how many other "secrets" leak out.
Body of Secrets Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, James Bamford, Random House, New York, 2002:
As the Israelis continued their slaughter, neither they not the Liberty crew had any idea that witnesses were present high above. Until now. According to information, interviews, and documents obtained for Body of Secrets, for nearly thirty-five years NSA had hidden the fact that one of its planes was overhead at the time of the incident, eavesdropping on what was going on below. The intercepts from that plane, which answer some of the key questions about the attack, are among NSA's deepest secrets.
The Israelis mentioned an American flag over one radio net. They had clearly identified the Liberty from at least 13 surveillance flights, several only feet above the ship.
The Israeli naval observer on the airborne reconnaissance mission that had earlier observed the Liberty passed on the information to Commander Pinchas Pinchasy, the naval liaison officer at Israeli air force headquarters. "I reported this detection to Naval Headquarters," said Pinchasy, "and I imagine that Naval Headquarters recedived this report from the other channel, from the Air Force ground control as well." Pinchasy had pulled out a copy of the reference book Jane's Fighting Ships and looked up the "GTR-5" designation. He then sent a report to the acting chief of naval operations at Israeli navy headquarters in Haifa. The report said that the ship cruising slowly off El Arish was "an electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy, named Liberty, whose marking was GTR-5".
The time for secrecy has long passed on the USS Liberty incident, in both Israel and the United States. Based on the above evidence, [pp 187-239] there is certainly more than enough probable cause to conduct a serious investigation into what really happened--and why.
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