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.
Actually, I am not up the subject, so I'll take what you say about it as probable.
Scan the whole page for good reading!
Conservative Debate Handbook
Ah. Get studied up and tell me if you think that the US Navy blasted an Airbus out of the sky for nefarious reasons.
BTW, there were some Jewish American heroes serving on the USS Liberty.
Why the recall of the US fighters? One poster mentioned it was because they had nukes. Come on, as if this is all they were armed with? What about cannon?
And veronica, this "usual suspects" refrain is not a rational argument. Those of us who believe it was deliberate, are mostly trying real hard to be objective.
Here is an Israeli reconnaissance airplane that circled the ship about an hour before the attack. The pilot was heard reporting to HQ that he saw an American flag and men sunning themselves on deck.
Israeli torpedo boat circling the ship 
This is what Israel says they thought they were attacking)
USS Liberty
This is the flag that Israel claims its pilots and torpedomen could not see. While the attack was underway, an even larger flag was hoisted.
PHOTO LINKS
They were F-4B Phantom IIs. No cannon--the Department of Defense had believed all the hype about "push-button beyond-visual-range air combat."
And in those days, once the carrier got east of Malta, it was a SIOP asset, and the alert birds were nuclear-armed.
This is new info for me, thanks.
That Robert "whiz kid" McNamara was a world class screw up and liar who cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers. He finally admitted he was wrong on Vietnam. But he was also deliberately and cold bloodly deceitful.
And the sad and frustrating part of people like him, they usually live to a ripe old age and die peacefully and have a comfortable life. (most probably due to the absence of any moral compass whatsoever)
This makes the 12th or 13th investigation/hearing that comes to the same conclusion. Will the usual suspects let it go? Nah.
So many genuine atrocities committed against American soldiers and citizens in war and peace by so many countries, yet this one, single, fully-investigated incident continues to draw the focus of certain groups and individuals.
There's only one explanation for it. And it's obvious.
So does that mean some kinda missiles? If so, then they should have been able to hit within visual range also, no?
I just find it hard to believe that all they had was nukes. How would they defend themselves against air attack?
Nope. Sparrow was an unmitigated piece of crap. The rules of engagement required visual identification of the target, which was frequently inside the Sparrow's minimum range.
IF they were carrying air-to-air loads, they may have had a few Sidewinders.
I just find it hard to believe that all they had was nukes. How would they defend themselves against air attack?
First line of defense: the Turkish Air Force, and US Air Force units stationed in Turkey.
Second line of defense: guided-missile cruisers stationed out on the probable threat axis.
US Navy doctrine at the time called for stationing the guided-missile cruisers a long distance (175+ miles) out along the probable threat axis (which would've faced roughly toward the Crimean Peninsula). They would wait, radar-silent. They didn't need to radiate--they got their data from the AWACS planes on the carriers, and would simply wait until told to light off their radars and engage bandits.
1960s US Navy doctrine didn't view "defense of the carrier" as the critical mission: they viewed offensive operations against the Warsaw Pact's southern flank as the critical mission, and it was accepted that if the balloon ever went up in Europe, it would be a nuclear war from the outset--NATO didn't see themselves as having a prayer of stopping the "Rompin' Stompin' Red Army" without using nuclear wepaons.
That's a cheap shot, In_25_, IMO.
In_25_, this is from my soul, the true gen as I see it:
Most of us here love America. America was, is, and always will be (unless the demonrats take over permanently) a true and steadfast friend of Israel. In fact, the American and Israeli classic defining respective characters are alike.
BTW, I personally seem to get along best with sabras; had a next door neighbor who was a former captain in the IAF. Not too much across the fence small talk BS there.
Now, it is precisely because these countries are true friends, that a very rare exception like the Liberty hurts and saddens one so much.
That's a cheap shot, In_25_, IMO.
In_25_, this is from my soul, the true gen as I see it:
Most of us here love America. America was, is, and always will be (unless the demonrats take over permanently) a true and steadfast friend of Israel. In fact, the American and Israeli classic defining respective characters are alike.
BTW, I personally seem to get along best with sabras; had a next door neighbor who was a former captain in the IAF. Not too much across the fence small talk BS there.
Now, it is precisely because these countries are true friends, that a very rare exception like the Liberty hurts and saddens one so much.
Many of the survivors recognize and attempt to dissociate themselves for the use of the incident made by Jewhaters and jihadists.
Even here on FR. The attack on the USS Stark by Iraq (our friend at the time) appears to be represented on FR by one thread of 35 posts, actually dealing with the ships retirement, with little questioning of the accidental nature of the attack.
The USS Liberty has been the topic of 13 threads in the last six months, another another 20 or so in the archives, many multi hundred posts. And that’s not including the many threads that have been deleted.
That’s no reflection on either your concern or motivation, but the intent of less savory elements is undeniable.
the intent of less savory elements is undeniable.
This is true, and I have personally witnessed many such exploitations of other past events. And these people usually come in some collectivist flavor. Naturally, for these people, anti-Americanism, anti-semitism, and anti-capitalism is the holy trinity.
My context was the majority of people on this site. I'm sure there are some Jewhaters and jihadists trolling on this site, but they are in the tiny minority. That's what moderators are for.
the intent of less savory elements is undeniableIndeed.
Bingo.
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