The Truth about the USS Liberty

In response to the presentation on Tuesday October 30th 2002 of the documentary “The Loss of Liberty” by the Council for the National Interest Connecticut, it is my duty to present the real facts concerning the Liberty incident.

The first question one should ask is who exactly are these documentary sponsors? Well after researching the organization on their website (http://www.cnionline.org/) I concluded that the Council for the National Interest is nothing more than an anti-Israeli organization which also shows tendencies of being anti-Semitic. Here are some excerpts from different Middle East articles, written by them, on their website:

1) "The State of Israel was founded 54 years ago to provide a "home" for a people who had been rejected, uprooted, tortured, maimed and expelled by Europe. Did any of us living then think that the Jews would do the same to their hosts in the "homeland," and reject, uproot, torture, maim and expel their Palestinian neighbors? Whole Palestinian villages have been destroyed without a trace -- so that those villagers who left them in 1948 would never have a village to return to at a later date. Why does this sound familiar? Victims have become victimizers?" http://rescuemideastpolicy.com/ads/ad_1.html

2) "ISRAEL AND PALESTINE: WHOSE EXISTENCE IS REALLY IN DANGER?" http://rescuemideastpolicy.com/ads/ad_2.html

3) "The State of Israel was founded 54 years ago to provide a “home” for a people who had been rejected, uprooted, tortured, maimed and expelled by Europe. Did anyone think that Jews would do the same to the Palestinian people who were already living there?" "From 1947-1949, Israel rejected, uprooted, tortured, maimed and expelled the Palestinian population. Israel destroyed over 415 Palestinian villages, along with their churches and mosques, so that the Palestinian villagers could not return. Once Jews were victims of these atrocities, but it is clear that the Jewish victims in Israel have become victimizers of the Palestinians." "In 1967, Israel invaded the rest of historical Palestine: the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. The UN has repeatedly voted that Israel leave the Palestinian land and let the Palestinian people be free. Israel has refused, constantly violating international" "Discrimination and apartheid in Israel are striking. Christians and Muslims are not allowed to rent, buy or lease in 92% of Israel. Israel prohibits Palestinian Christians and Muslims from living in Jewish-only colonies." http://rescuemideastpolicy.com/ads/ad_3.html

4) "We the people of the United States challenge our Congress to confront Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his apartheid policy in the occupied Palestinian territories" http://rescuemideastpolicy.com/ads/ad_4.html Everyone already knows my views concerning Israel so there is really no need for me to bring up counter-points to combat these lies above.

But wait a minute, their website states that their organization is “striving for a balanced Middle East Policy.” Do the excerpts above show this?

As you can see, a biased and anti-Israeli organization presented this video. It was no surprise that an anti-Israeli documentary regarding the USS Liberty was aired, subsequently.

…dramatically proves, beyond any doubt, that the attack by Israel on June 8, 1967 against the U.S. naval intelligence gathering ship USS Liberty, in which 34 Americans were killed and 171 wounded, was deliberate…

… “Loss of Liberty” makes clear that then-President Lyndon Johnson conspired with Israel and its Israel-First supporters inside the U.S. government to support the “tragic accident” scheme.

In order to understand this issue one must understand the background information regarding this incident. In June 1967, a United States Ship, the Liberty, came too close to the coast of Israel. During those days Israel was in a state of war, warding off attacks of surrounding Arab states who were trying to destroy it. The US ambassador declared in the United Nations that no American ships were in the range of 400 miles from Israel. The National Security Agency, part of the ship’s command, was supposed to give timely orders to the USS Liberty to leave, however, these orders arrived days after the attack.

Eight days later, Israeli Air Force planes and boats attacked the ship, killing 34 and wounding 177. The ship did not sink, and slowly moved crippled to a nearby port. After the incident voices were heard: “Did Israel deliberately attack the USS Liberty?”

Here are the facts: Israel’s understanding was that there were no American ships less than 400 miles off its coast, and as she was at war with Egypt, enemy warships were the only ones thought to be off the coast of Israel. At the time the USS Liberty was bombed, there were explosions on the coast and Israeli command thought it was a naval bombardment from Egypt. It was then that Israel moved to attack what they believed to be an Egyptian ship.

In a bid to attack the ship, Israeli jets were scrambled to the area. The Israeli jets that attacked the Liberty were diverted from other targets, and consequently were armed with napalm rather than iron bombs. In a premeditated and deliberate attack meant to sink a ship, no aviator in the world would choose napalm over iron bombs. In the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, for example, iron bombs sunk US battleships in minutes, and the Liberty, a converted freighter, was no battleship.

There were ten official US investigations (including five congressional investigations) that concluded there was never any evidence that the attack was made with knowledge that the target was a US ship. Furthermore they concluded that there was substantial evidence the attack was a tragic mistake caused by blunders of both the US and Israel. Seven US presidents, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, have each accepted the conclusion that the attack was a tragic case of mistaken identity. Since the incident the haters of Israel have tried to use this event to try to pull America and Israel apart. This is nonetheless what this Council for the National Interest has tried to do with this presentation. Fortunately this conspiracy theory that this documentary presented on Tuesday at Cummings Center had few takers.

As you can see this documentary didn’t bring forward (1) the fact Israel mistakenly saw this ship as enemy, due to the state of war it was in and bombs shot out from the same area, (2) the US, days earlier, stated there were no ships within 400-miles radius which the Liberty was in, (3) the type of weapon Israel used to attack the ship was napalm, the wrong kind of weapon to use if one wanted to sink the ship(4) there were 10, including 5 congressional investigations, into the incident all concluding that the attack on the USS Liberty by Israel was a tragic mistake.

This incident should serve as a lesson to the Connecticut College administration and related offices in that it should be more vigilant in who it allows to rent its rooms. Making money is ok, but making money off these kinds of organizations is wrong. What’s next? A National Alliance meeting?

the Israeli government had asked that the US keep ship out of the area

They did? Can you direct me to the US document that supports that position?

The issue has been investigated 4 times.

It has? Can you direct me to those investigations?

attacking Israel

Who's attacking Israel? I'm only telling what happened.

As far as I know only Mr. Ennes has made the claim.

Ennes gets blamed for everything.

Would you believe that some claim he is the source that presented the theories that we were attacked to hide plans of the Israelis to attack the Golan Heights and to cover-up the killing of Egyptian POW's in the Sinai.

Testimony about the jamming of our radios was included in the USNavy Court of Inquiry Report. Liberty radioman Rocky Sturman witnessed the jamming.

anti-Zionist groups

With apologies (and I hope you don't take this wrong, but) I am not about to accept such a characterization from an anonymous poster in a little-used conference who is a total stranger to me.

By the same token, I do not expect you or anyone else to accept anything I have written to be gospel. If something strikes your fancy do some research yourself and make your own determination as to the veracity of what I have posted.

The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Spy Ship

by Jay Cristol

Dulles, Va.: Brassey's, 2002. 294 pp. $27.50

Middle East Quarterly Summer 2002 Reviewed by Daniel Pipes

Rarely, if ever, has a single incident of war received the scrutiny given to Israel's attack in the midst of the June 1967 War on the U.S.S. Liberty. This episode, which occurred on June 8, left 34 Americans dead and 171 wounded, was immediately acknowledged by Israeli authorities as a ghastly mistake; a multitude of Israeli and American inquiries then confirmed that an error lay at the heart of the tragedy. But conspiracy theories pointing to a purposeful Israeli attack arose quickly and have persisted through the years, promoted in part by members of the Liberty's crew.

Cristol—a former U.S. naval aviator himself and presently a federal judge in Florida—has devoted fourteen years to ascertain what actually happened in the Mediterranean Sea off the Egyptian coast that day. His research is stunningly complete, tracking down what appears to be every available document and living participant in the drama, plus providing a great deal of contextual information. He reviews the issue in such great detail that it takes seven pages just to deal with the question of the U.S. flag flying on the Liberty (could the pilots have seen it? given the day's winds, how visible was it? what about the possibility of it being a false flag?).

Cristol finds fault on both the Israeli and American sides (the latter, for example, failed to inform the Israelis of the ship's presence) but comes to an unambiguous conclusion: the attack was indeed a mistake. After showing the impossibility of an intentional Israeli bombing, he then proceeds to show the absurdity of the conspiracy theories. (My favorite of them, from an Egyptian ambassador named Mahmud Qasim: the Israelis spliced the voice of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser to have him convince Jordan's King Husayn into going to war against Israel – then tried to cover up this trick by attacking the Liberty, a spy ship capable of figuring out the deception.) After demolishing these false notions, Cristol offers a generous interpretation to his vanquished opponents: "The Liberty incident is a classic illustration of the terrible results that can occur when friendly forces fail to keep their friends informed of their movements."

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/488/

see:
http://www.thelibertyincident.com

I heard Cristol interviewed on the radio this past week.
If I understand correctly, this book is from his dissertation work; and the
materials he gathered/reviewed have been deposited at the Hoover Institute at
Stanford U.

In his interview, he did say that he and the captain of the Liberty were planning to
go to Israel to do a bit more "digging", but the captain got ill (cancer?) and
passed away before the trip could be made.

I've never been in the military, so I am just at the mercy of all the various
parties as to how to truly assess WHY the Liberty was attacked.

While I believe the accounts of the Liberty Crew members as to what actually happened there, I do not necessarily think that the U.S.-Israel relationship was what led to the degraded quality of the investigations. The LAST thing that anybody in the U.S. defense establishment at that time wanted was to draw any more attention to the NSA. They just wanted this thing SHUT DOWN no matter what. Any deeper investigations would only keep the inquiry alive and bring still more attention on the folks at Fort Meade. Horrors!

One interesting point here is that the NSA was in the habit of effectively isolating US Navy ships and US Air Force aircraft from their respective chains of command by only allowing certain communications channels to be used, without actually assuming formal responsibility for the ships or aircraft in question. The Liberty should have copied (and, IIRC, did copy) the fleet broadcast message warning all US Navy ships to stay west of Cyprus for the duration, but under their mission orders, they could only act on the message if it came through certain NSA-approved (and, not coincidentally, NSA-operated) channels. The NSA just never sent the message, despite having been told repeatedly to get the Liberty out of there.

Also, the stated reason by the SIGINT folks for the Liberty's presence of Sinai--to determine if long-range bombers being flown out of Cairo were manned by Egyptian or Soviet crews--is completely bogus on two counts:

The bombers had left Cairo on Day One of the war for Alexandria, and were not airborne for the duration of the war; and
Even if the aircraft were airborne, the Liberty was massively out of position to intercept line-of-sight communications near Alexandria.

In short, the NSA is lying through their teeth. Until we actually get some truth out of them, we're never going to get any truth about this mess.

I heard Cristol interviewed on the radio this past week.

Do you know if that interview is available on the internet?

deposited at the Hoover Institute at Stanford U

I know the efforts of Liberty survivors are in the Hoover Institute.

I've emailed the gentleman who until recently was the archivist for that collection to see if he can confirm that Capt. Cristol's papers are as well.

After they finished their torpedo attack the MTB's did slowly circle the Liberty while MTB personnel fired with machine guns from close range at liberty crewmen who ventured topside to help their wounded shipmates.

Joe, were there any bodies of Liberty casualties in the water? I know that's a hard question for you, but I've not seen an authoritative published reference that spelled it out either way. In any event, I remain uncertain as to which of the available weapons the Israeli gunners used on the two life rafts they shot up, rifle caliber machineguns, .50-calibers or 20mm auto-cannon fire.

...define..."a complete and comprehensive public Congressional investigation of the attack on the USS Liberty."

Simply the same level and depth of Congressional scrutiny that was accorded the attacks on the USS Pueblo, USS Stark, USS Vincennes, USS Cole, Bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, etc.

Joe, you left out the U.S.S. Iowa, though of course the attack on members of the Iowa's crew came after they were dead, and from their own Navy. But the falsified evidence from NIS and FBI failed to get the job done once a few journalists and the sister of the slandered sailor the Navy tried to blame for the blast in the turret put the story together.

Speaking of which, do you or Jim happen to know Kathy Kubicina, sister of GMG2 Clay Hartwig, and/or Charlie thompson, formerly a producer with TV's 60 minutes, and now the author of When Hell was in season about the Iowa tragedy and attempted frame-up, and writer for WorldNetDaily? I would be very pleased to put you in touch, and I believe Kathy would like to know you guys.

FReepmail me for an e-mail address....

-archy-/-

In short, the NSA is lying through their teeth. Until we actually get some truth out of them, we're never going to get any truth about this mess.

Depends. The right DIRNSA might release USS Liberty-related material if he finds it'd prevent a full-blown oversight investigation into NSA of the sort that Senator Frank Church held regarding CIA misconduct and involvement in the removal of foreign heads of state. Alternately, the release of USS Liberty related material might be viewed as less damaging than the release of ALL information regarding * and FRONTLET 615.

And, of course, the Israelis may wish to consider whether the US, after it finishes with such outlaw nations as Afghanistan and Iraq, may then eventually have to turn our attention to Israel. After all, Iraq at least has not threatened to *pull down the pillars of the temple of humanity* with a *Samson Option* if invaded, as Israel has, and I suspect the United States and Russia together could remove that threat to global survival, then to place the territory under a fair and impartial organization like, oh, for instance, the United Nations....

-archy-/-

were there any bodies of Liberty casualties in the water

Not to my knowledge.

If there were they floated out of the "Research Spaces" where the torpedo hit immediately after the attack or as the ship made its way to Malta.

uncertain as to which of the available weapons the Israeli gunners used on the two life rafts they shot up

Don't know that either.

(Sarcastic mode on)

That information should be readily available to those who claim the attack has already been investigated by the US government since the capability and configuration of the attacking forces would have been one of the issues covered in such an investigation.

Why don't you pose the question to one of them?

(Sarcastic Mode Off)

Why don't you pose the question to one of them

Because they've been caught incorrect in factual details, in error at best, and just as possibly deliberately lying, and they weren't first-hand accounts. You were there; the propagandists were not.

It's interesting that the Israeli MTB crews and aviators reported seening the US flag and radioed back for verification of their instructions- Look, you sure you want us to shoot up the American ship? as monitored by both the Hebrew-speaking intercept operaton aboard the Liberty and by the EC-141 overflight. They, at least, did their best to be sure that what they were doing was not done from incompetence or *a simple, stupid mistake.*

Indeed, they were *Just following orders....*

-archy-/-

So, should I put you down as a blue-helmet-loving traitor to America?

Gee, I hope not. That might make me cry, to think you'd have such an ill opinion of me.

Though the US might indeed use or have used nukes in a couple of situations [Fulda Gap, Korea] I'm not aware of a plan to send humanity on a trip of global suicide should we lose such a conflict- the Mutual Assured Destruction nuclear policy was the closest we ever got to that, but the destruction of the world's innocents was *collateral damage* as we repaid our national murderer in full. Granted, the distinction may have been lost on innocent bystanders in Monaco, Paraguay and elsewhere.

It was literally illegal to consider any nuclear warfighting plan in which surrender was an option. I'm aware of at least one instance in which the relevant statutes were quoted to a political appointee who asked why that option wasn't considered during one FEMA course on such things.

But my oaths of allegiance were and are not *to America.* Nor to it's political leaders, or their parties, nor to the American people, nor to the flag. It is to the US Constitution, which the UN has stated its intention to overthrow by such means as necessary. Perhaps their intention can be deflected and the organization reformed; that's above my pay grade. But if not, and such a decision comes my way, no problem.

It's interesting that the Israeli MTB crews and aviators reported seening the US flag and radioed back for verification of their instructions- Look, you sure you want us to shoot up the American ship? as monitored by both the Hebrew-speaking intercept operaton aboard the Liberty and by the EC-141 overflight.

One thing Ennes and company have claimed from the get-go is that the Liberty did not have any Hebrew speakers aboard, and thus could not have been participating in monitoring Israeli communications.

Someone is spreading BS here. Is it Ennes, or is it your source claiming that the US had multiple intercept platforms running ops on the Israelis?

BTW, no "EC-141" was in service in 1967, as the Starlizard was too busy hauling supplies to 'Nam. (I don't thing they ever did do a raven mod to the 141--those things are in short supply compared to how much cargo needs to be moved around.) Methinks you were referring to another fine Lockheed product, the EC-121 "Warning Star," a converted Constellation transport.

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