Sign Petition to Request Full Congressional Investigation of Attack on USS Liberty

USS Liberty Organization ^ | 4/14/2002 | Uss Liberty Org Staff

[ex-Texan]

Sign Petition to Request Full Congressional Investigation of Attack on USS Liberty

To: US Citizens

View Current Signatures - Sign the Petition

Whereas, on June 8, 1967, the U.S.S. Liberty - while operating in international waters in the Eastern Mediterranean - was the target of an attack by Israel's war planes and torpedo boats; and

Whereas, this attack killed 34 members of the Liberty's crew and wounded 172 others, in addition to causing extensive damage to the ship; and

Whereas, the Congress of the United States has investigated every other incident of this kind; and

Whereas, the Congress of the United States has never conducted an investigation into the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty; now therefore be it

Resolved, That the Congress of the United States should immediately undertake and conduct a complete and comprehensive public Congressional investigation of the June 8, 1967 attack on the U.S.S. Liberty.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

Click Here to sign petition:

_____________

Posted in Memory of my High School Friend Phil Tiedke who was a Navy Seal Team Member when he was killed:

CT3 Philippe Charles Tiedtke, USN, 914 32 84
Born 17 October 1944, Santa Cruz, California
Active duty since 2 September 1964
Parents: Mr. & Mrs. Arthur L. Tiedtke, Modesto, CA
Died in Research Section

[montag813]

Would 35 mean you wouldn't care if your father was one of the peope killed? How can you be so cold and callous?

Your timing with this petition is inappropriate at best and sinister at worst. What are you up to?

[justshutupandtakeit]

This has been investigated sufficiently and can only serve the purpose of undermining the war against terrorists which the U.S. and Israel are involved in.

Why don't we investigate all the "friendly fire" deaths that have ever occurred within the U.S. armed forces it would be as useful though not to our enemies.

[US admirer]

The point is: we don't know if it was "friendly" fire.

[justshutupandtakeit]

This appears to be floated in an attempt to undermine the war on terror Israel and the U.S. are engaged in. Sinister is the least of the implications here appears to be more in the line of "aid and comfort...."

[hangin' chad]

The Liberty was a mistake, an innocent but tragic mistake. Only an anti-semite would refuse to acknowledge that fact.

Only a moron would make such a statement. I suppose the Israeli planes thought the Liberty, clearly marked as a U.S. ship, was part of the Palestinian navy at the time. LOL

[hangin' chad]

bump!

[justshutupandtakeit]

Larry, you Lied. There is no seminar, no need. All who can do a half-way decent job of thinking can see we are in a war with Mad Mo's Murdering Minions who will not stop until Islam has murdered its way to victory and Israel destroyed as a first step. Naturally this leaves out most Patsies and Liberts.

Israel and the U.S. may be all that stands between civilization and the reign of a new dark age of poverty and ignorance.

With almost the whole world alligned with the Moslemanics we have to deal with traitors within, useful idiots or conscious enemies of American even on conservative boards.

[leprechaun9]

"Even the people who, like you, want to reopen old wounds wouldn't dare.

If you read my post carefully, I am not trying to reopen anything. I have pursued (as I stated in my post)this issue since 1967 and not received a single response. I also repeat that there has been a conspicuous absence of any hearings in the Congress, or discussion in the media.

Again I ask if you have any factual information (with references), then post them so that this forum can benefit from your intuitive wisdom!

[LarryLied]

With almost the whole world alligned with the Moslemanics we have to deal with traitors within, useful idiots or conscious enemies of American even on conservative boards.

We also have to deal with people who pretend to be conservatives but aren't. People who never post on conservative threads but use Israel threads to bash Bush, Powell, Cheney, Rice and others. People who demonize anyone who doesn't follow their script.

[LarryLied]

You don't want the United States brought down by a defense of Israel. I'm not real sure what else, at this point, the United States can do. The Palestinians are on the side of al-Qaeda and Hamas and Hezbollah.

I wanted the USA to chose the time and the place to fight. The terrorists wanted us side tracked by the West Bank and Israel was not reluctant to have us engage there either. That I want Israel to use her forces to fight those attacking her and I do not want any more American fingerprints on what the IDF does than needed does not mean I think we should cut Israel off. That is unthinkable. A disaster. We must be consistent in our foreign policy and Israel is under attack. But she sure has the power to take care of business.

I do believe Sharon is trying to use the USA for cover. That is why I oppose public rallies for Israel in the US. It feeds into Arab propaganda. They will show video of IDF actions followed by American crowds waving Israeli flags and cheering the IDF on. That is not in our interest. fifty years down the line we do not want Arabs to view this action as an American action. It is an Israeli action.

When we take out Saddam and a few other tyrants, the mideast might come over to our side. But they won't if we are seen as responsible for Jenin and other battles in the West Bank.

Israel will do just fine without wrapping herself in the American flag. We have enough problem dealing with the media when it comes to the actions of our troops. We don't need to be held accountable for the actions of the IDF.

My position is not that out of the mainstream anywhere but on this forum. Here I'm called a Nazi for not following exactly the plan Israel has in mind. That is not good. There should be debate. Heck, we debate what we should do all the time. Why not debate what we should do regarding Israel?

[dalebert]

We don't want troops in Israel at all, ever. Terrorists are just looking for a US kill.

[AGAviator]

Prior to September 11, exactly the same attacks, by the same people, were made on people calling for investigation of this incident. All that has happened since that day is now both sides have attacked us with the second being far more devastating than the first.

However two wrongs don't make anbody right.

The "Arab spy ship" blood libel, however, has been voluminously debunked by the surviving crew, who noted among other facts there were no Hebrew linguists on board, which would make the transmission of real-time Israeli battlefield communications quite impossible.

All the charges, and all their refutations, including "are the crew anti-Semites," are all on the LibertyWebsite for anyone interested.

[LarryLied]

As someone pointed out this is old news and should not be reported. However AP ran this story tonight:

Pope's Role Amid Holocaust Debated

Not much of a debate as far as I can see. The verdict had already been given. The hits never stop.

[AGAviator]

Yes, how about that. Slamming the Catholics especially when they seem critical of Israeli domestic policies, and blame for the Holocaust have no time limits, unlike "naval incidents."

[PA Engineer]

What do you know. The Liberty Choir is posting again this month. This was my response to the Einsatzgruppen last month.

Your can find my original post with links here:

A dead horse beaten to a bloody fetid pulp

To: jmp702

Why now? And why by our resident Einsatzgruppen Amen Choir? For anyone who wants to know the truth, the following link is to a 3meg pdf lecture by Jay Cristol at Harvard. He has also published a recent book that is making the Einsatzgruppen foam at the mouth. Sorry, I don’t have that link handy. The link to his lecture is at (beware this is 3megs and aprx. 26 pages):

What Really Happened

For those who want to know something about our extreme leftest friend "Bamford" please read the following.

Return of the USS Liberty

Return of the USS Liberty by HonestReporting.com

Courtesy of HonestReporting.com

April 30, 2001

Major newspapers and media outlets are reporting on the release of a new book, "Body of Secrets" by James Bamford. The book contains a number of unfounded and far-fetched accusations against Israel. In media interviews, Bamford has at times gone beyond the charges in his book. Let's put these accusations to rest.

In June 1967, an American ship manned by U.S. sailors and National Security Agency (NSA) personnel ventured close to the shores of the Sinai Peninsula. Too close. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations declared that no American ships were within 400 miles of the conflict. The NSA issued orders to pull the ship away from the shore, but because of communications snafus, the orders arrived days later. Too late for the USS Liberty.

On June 8, Israeli planes and torpedo boats attacked the ship, leaving 34 crewmen dead and 177 wounded. The Liberty limped into port in Malta, and the controversy began almost immediately: Did Israel deliberately attack the USS Liberty?

Ten official U.S. inquiries and three Israeli inquiries concluded that the attack was a tragic case of mistaken identity. No American ships were supposed to be there. Egyptian warships were believed to be in the area. Large explosions were taking place along the Sinai shore, and Israeli troops believed they were under naval bombardment. Israeli pilots and sailors, in the midst of the '67 war swirling on three fronts, raced to attack what they believed to be an Egyptian ship.

For 25 years Israel's detractors have attempted to use the tragic incident as a wedge between the United States and Israel. Other than some of the embittered Liberty crew and die-hard conspiracy theorists, the charge that Israel deliberately attacked a ship of its most important ally found few takers. Now with the release of "Body of Secrets," author James Bamford reveals secrets about the National Security Agency -- and in doing so charges that Israel deliberately attacked the USS Liberty.

Why would Israel do such a thing?

Bramford claims that on the day prior to the Liberty incident, Israeli troops were massacring hundreds of Egyptian POWs and civilians in El Arish. Bamford concludes: "Israel's commanders would not have wanted tape recordings of evidence of the slaughters to wind up on desks at the White House, the UN or the Washington Post." Since the book's release last week, Bamford has been interviewed by National Public Radio, Salon.com, CNN and others.

The New York Times review found the section on the USS Liberty the "weakest" part of the book. "It hardly seems plausible," writes reviewer Joseph Finder, "that Israel would deliberately attack an American ship, killing dozens of sailors, risking a confrontation with a superpower and its only ally -- in short, perpetrating one massacre in order to cover up another. Perhaps Bamford's analysis has been skewed by his palpable distaste for the Israeli state."

Bamford's anti-Israel attitude goes well beyond the USS Liberty attack. He charges Israel with decades of human rights violations and war crimes. Of the 1967 war, he writes, "The extensive war crimes were just one of the deep secrets Israel had sought to conceal since the start of the conflict... to hide much of the war behind a carefully constructed curtain of lies. Lies about the Egyptian threat, lies about who started the war, lies to the American president, lies to the UN Security Council, lies to the press, lies to the public... Into this sea of lies, deception, and slaughter sailed the USS Liberty." (page 203)

Incredibly, while accusing Israel of all those lies, Bamford ignores the calls for Israel's eradication issued by Arab leaders, Egyptian President Nasser's precipitous expulsion of UN peacekeepers along the border, and the closing of the Straits of Tiran which was a clear casus belli. In the words of President Johnson, "If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other, it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Strait of Tiran would be closed."

Bamford's charge of Israeli atrocities is actually a recap of an article written by a USS Liberty officer in a 1996 edition of the virulently anti-Israel "Washington Report on Middle East Affairs."

In an interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" program, Bamford related that at the moment of the alleged massacre, "the Liberty, which was an enormous United States eavesdropping factory, was sitting only about 13 miles off the coast, fully capable of eavesdropping on what was going on on the shore." And on page 236, Bamford writes that "on the morning of June 7, the Israeli military command received a report" that the Liberty was "secretly listening" while the war crime was taking place.

According to USS Liberty logs, however, as of midnight between June 7 and June 8, the ship was still 150 miles from the nearest coastal point of Israel and 50 miles north of the coast of Egypt. It did not reach its "Point Alpha" (18 miles east of the Sinai town of El Arish) until 8:38 a.m. on June 8.

Another gross inconsistency is Bamford's claim that National Security Agency officials provided him with secret documents which concur that the attack was deliberate. As reported on CNN, Bamford says that a secret NSA plane was overhead listening to Israel's attack on the Liberty, confirming the attack was deliberate.

No such fact has ever been published. No alleged transcript has ever been produced. Indeed, if an official U.S. aircraft was overhead, why didn't Israeli radars looking for enemy aircraft pick it up? Moreover, wouldn't an American NSA aircraft witnessing an attack on one of its ships attempt to seek assistance? No such distress calls were noted in any of the official inquiries.

According to a Baltimore Sun review of the book, an NSA spokesman uncharacteristically spoke out against Branford's slander. "We do not comment on operational matters, alleged or otherwise; however, Mr. Bamford's claim that the NSA leadership was 'virtually unanimous in their belief that the attack was deliberate' is simply not true," the spokesperson said.

In fact, contrary to Bamford's sensationalistic work, a variety of exhaustive research concludes that Israel made a mistake that was by no means deliberate.

One important top-secret NSA document in the U.S. National Archives is entitled "Attack on the USS Liberty" (SRH-256). The 77-page brief, declassified in 1983, concludes: "Reexamination of Israel's explanation of why its air and naval forces attacked the Liberty reveals egregious errors in both command judgments and operational procedures."

Egregious errors, yes. Deliberate murder, no!

This document is the subject of a doctoral thesis by A. Jay Cristol, who happens to be Chief Judge of the U.S. federal bankruptcy court in Florida. A former U.S. Navy flyer in the wars in Korea and Viet Nam, he knows ships and planes inside and out. Plus, as a former navy lawyer who served in the Pentagon, he is well-versed in the ways and command structure of the U.S. Navy. He served a total of 38 years in the U.S. Navy and Naval Reserve. Cristol reviews the gamut of conspiracy theories, and after exhaustive research, including more than 220 interviews, concludes: "This research project supports the validity of the conclusions of the official investigations, that the incident was the result of a series of tragic mistakes."

More important information on the Liberty appears in this month's edition of "Azure." The article, "USS Liberty: Case Closed" by Michael B. Oren, is online at: http://www.shalem.org.il/azure/9-Oren.htm Bamford's interviews and reviews can be found at:

NPR

CNN

The New York Times

Salon.com

The Baltimore Sun

Join the fight against media bias.

HonestReporting.com

86 posted on 3/14/02 11:44 PM Eastern by PA Engineer
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[monkeyshine]

It has been thorougly vetted by 5 congressional investigations and 5 other administration investigations. There was a court of inquiry which interviewed 19 witnesses and 14 sailors on the Liberty.

This is like trying to solve the JFK "conspiracy". It doesn't serve any purpose any more. They say it was an accident. The apologized. They paid reparations. The administration accepted the story. 5 Congressional hearings concurred with the administration.

So, the biggest piece of evidence is that the sailors swear the US flag was too big to be missed. That doesn't prove that it wasn't missed. It doesn't prove that the Israelis didn't think it was a ruse even if they did see it. This was a war zone, the USA said only days earlier at the UN general assembly that no American ships were within 100's of miles of the area, the commander spoke of smoke and fire obscuring the signals. There's enough reasonable doubt right there to make this go away.

There is likely an agenda behind some of those pushing this now. They simply refuse to accept all the evidence. I can only guess as to what those agendas are.

[monkeyshine]

The Americans claimed that there were no ships in the area. Assuming that the IDF did see the US markings, which is a big assumption, how were they supposed to reconcile those markings with the knowledge that the USA claimed no ships were in the area? The obvious conclusion would be that this was a ruse.

[monkeyshine]

I also repeat that there has been a conspicuous absence of any hearings in the Congress

This isn't true. There have been 5 Congressional hearings, 5 other administrative hearings, and a court of inquiry on the subject.

The Navy's court of inquiry stated that the flag was likely "drooped", thus obscuring the identity of the ship, and Commander William McGonagle testified that the flag was knocked down after the first or second assault.

The Israelis did not launch torpedos until after the Liberty fired back, lending credence to the Israeli conclusion that the ship was Egyptian.

Where do you get your facts? They are severely lacking.