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 article is still a “live” resource on the Internet, which someone may read 5 years from now, and draw the wrong conclusions. Setting the record straight remains important in my view.
Jon, there is at least 14 different versions of what happened regarding the USS Liberty. If you wish to believe version #6, version #11 or a combination of all of them, it makes no difference to me whatsoever.
You apparently have forgotten what forums are used for and why they exist. For different people to discuss their point of view with others and to debate those varying viewpoints.
Calling me names as if I wrote the articles doesn’t raise my blood pressure nor get met excited, so have at it.
Oh, Happy Fathers Day
Goodnight and Goodbye
Well,if the State Department says it....
None of us on this thread know what happened. However, that Captain did not disobey an order to leave the area. If he had done so, he would have been court martialed and this would have been the end of the controversy.
You should get out from your yacht club into the real world every now and then. THE NAME IS NOT PAINTED ON THE SIDE OF WARSHPS. Furthermore, do ou not understand the concept of warships FAKING their identity in the middle of a war?
First, I stand corrected on the painted name of USS Liberty, it was GTR-5.
Second, no need to yell. I was cordial to you.
Third, I am a United States citizen and I put my military ahead of other foreign militaries.
Fourth, I am not a member of a yacht club nor was in in the Navy. I presume you are and are more aware of tactics. So be it.
Fifth, I am standing with my US government officials and Naval officers vs a foreign power.
I am going to believe Dean Rusk, Admiral Kidd and our CIA and NSA who were all skeptical about the Israeli story.
God bless the 34 dead and 171 wounded.
I don’t claim to be an expert on this incident, but the “flying an American flag” argument for why the Israeli pilots should have held their fire always strikes me as nonsense. If the ship had been Egyptian and spying on Israel in support of the Egyptian side in the war, flying an American flag (”false flag”) would have been an obvious tactic. From the Israeli pilot’s point of view, it was a warship in position to have been a hazard to Israel (i.e. could have been spying), in the middle of a war against Israel. In many such cases things are spelled out in terms of geographic zones. Like, any ship in such and such a sector is considered hostile. Obviously it was a mistake and a tragedy for them to have attacked it. But it’s not impossible to understand, nor does it require a belief in a bad motive to understand. It was a warship, in a combat zone, during a war. Given how easy it would be for a spy ship to buy and fly an American flag, it’s hard to understand the perspective that the American flag should have been some kind of magic shield preventing any and all attacks. If a flag did confer that kind of total immunity, every pirate, spy, and terrorist in the world would just fly one.
>>Bull<<
You think that Israel deliberately attacked the United States when they were already at war with several larger nations?
That does not, on the surface, make any sense.
I believe Israeli pilots know exactly who they are attacking before engaging a warswhip of any nationality.
I believe they did not trust the government of the United States at the time to keep the intellligence gathered to themselves.
I also believe they calculatd the response would be exactly as it turned out with the administration at the time reluctant to reveal the truth.
Interesting. Thank you for the clarification.
1. Was their anything that The Liberty could discover that would make Israel take the action it did? There have been theories on this most were not plausible some were.
2. It was a massive screw up by Israel and the United States.
3. Why in the hell were the fighters from the US fleet called back? Although they did not have cannons on the fighters they did have air to air missiles? Something stinks here on the USA side. We had instant communication with Israel. If the fighters were dispatched and recalled we knew we were being attacked by Israel. This defies all logic.
4. If this were just a massive screw up why were the details of this keep secret for so many many many years?
5. We were supporting Israel in this war. Any Intel this shipped gathered would be shared with Israel. Israel would or should have known where this ship was. Much has been made of the fact that this ship was very close to Israeli waters. This is perfectly logical. If it were gathering Intel for Israel by being close to Israel it would be under the protective air cover of the Israeli Air Force and not in as much risk if closer to the Egyptian forces and air power, what was left of it.
6. I do not think either side is telling the complete story of this incident.
Re#113 I’d like an answer to number.
Your comments in no way diminish or negate my contentions. Signal monitoring was exactly what the Liberty's mission was. Those signals would have proved that US intelligence had been compromised by Israeli agents or sympathizers and would have lead to their arrest and subsequent cessation of classified and secret information. Israel has a long history of such activities (reference Jonathan Pollard).
Lastly, use your common sense. Why, in the midst of a fight for its very existence against overwhelming odds, would Israel commit the number of assets against what they thought was a "freighter"?
Why don’t you tell us the real truth, if it’s Bull?
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