Posted on 10/30/2002 3:37:06 PM PST by yonif
The Truth about the USS Liberty By Yoni Freeman
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.
In short, the documentary (wrmea.com/archives/march2002/0203104.html),
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 ships 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: Israels 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 didnt 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. Whats next? A National Alliance meeting?
That kind of interdepartmental working group is going to provide the Egyptians with real-time intel of tactical value? By the way, what mode of transmission are you envisioning?
If you could provide a page reference to something, it would not only make it a lot easier for me to evaluate your claim, it would make what you're saying an awful lot more believable to other people reading this thread.
No, it's a case where someone from Department A approaches someone from Department B in April 1967 and says, "Hey, if this Israeli-Egyptian tiff manages to blow up into war, we might get a few brownie points with the Saudis if we can discreetly feed the Egyptians some intel." Guy from Department B then goes back to his office, makes a couple phone calls, the people called make a few more phone calls and write a few memos, and the next thing you know you have a US Navy ship carefully detached from its chain of command and steaming around right next to a war zone, despite COMSIXTHFLEET's best efforts to get them out of there.
Either you can simply heap all of the blame on the Israelis, or you can look at the evidence on the ground and conclude that something was rotten in the state of Denmark.
By the way, what mode of transmission are you envisioning?
Assets in-theater at that time included the British SIGINT facility on Cyprus, the US base at Souda Bay, Crete, and various other platforms. Transmission via RF. BTW, in anything involving the NSA, you must factor in the British--the GCHQ and NSA have this wonderfully incestuous relationship that basically allows both sides to violate their respective national laws with impunity.
Anyway, as I said, you're just speculating. You assume that, because it would have been wrong for Israel to attack the Liberty without having a good reason, therefore it had a good reason. That's a logical fallacy called petitio principii, i.e., begging the question.
I shall await your evidence.
Uh, believe it or not, they could have--all they would've needed was some KEYMAT from the Egyptians, and that would've been easy enough with the Hagelin crypto they used. The NSA kept a few zillion of each Hagelin box for training,
My signals intel outfit in Berlin could not have done it if somebody wanted to do it there -- the means did not exist.
You need a transmitter and crypto. Since the Egyptians tended to use COTS (before it was even called "COTS"), the crypto side is easy, you just buy the damn thing. As for the transmitter--you're going to tell me your unit did not have access to a radio transmitter?
Sure, leaks can happen, there can be spies, or the intel could have been handed over in Washington, London, or wherever. But that would take time, and we're talking about real-time intel. How does this intel get from the Liberty to the staffs of the Egyptian armies in the field in time to be of any tactical use? It sounds impossible to me.
Good grief, man! Egypt was a former protectorate of the British Empire only 15 years earlier, and the British still had useful commercial and political ties to Nasser, even AFTER the damn Suez mess--Nasser was not a man to hold a decade-old grudge if it kept him from getting benefits today.
Anyway, as I said, you're just speculating. You assume that, because it would have been wrong for Israel to attack the Liberty without having a good reason, therefore it had a good reason. That's a logical fallacy called petitio principii, i.e., begging the question.
OK, then kindly explain YOUR theory. And please note that you are falling all over yourself to defend the NSA.
I shall await your evidence.
Wow. You have no evidence to speak of, I did a lot of legwork TEN YEARS AGO, thankyouverymuch, and you're sitting there "awaiting" my detailed evidence, Mr. NSA Spook.
Spooky, go do your own legwork, unless you care to pay my consultation fees (which are confiscatory).
The evidence on hand WRT to YOU, good sir, points to absurd levels of effort to defend some probably rogue element within the NSA, which implies that you damn well know what I'm talking about, Spooky. Hell, you probably wrote the mission tasking. How much did ARAMCO pay you, Spooky?
Yup, my country right or wrong, pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain, ignore the bulls**t cover story. Gosh, aren't you EMBARRASSED that the USSR collapsed and took your cock-and-bull story with it? Hope the ARAMCO cash spent well enough to be worth the lives of 34 sailors.
I'm not in the NSA. I was once in two military branches associated with NSA, the Air Force Security Service and the Naval Security Group. I am not currently a member of either. But, even if I were in the NSA, why would that matter? Is there some reason you have such a low opinion of the NSA, and seem to think charging that someone is in it discredits him?
You know, if you don't, people might think you were making it up.
You know, I was not on the Liberty. But I notice that the survivors who were on the Liberty are not blaming the NSA.
I'm not in the NSA.
Forgive me for not exactly being mollified by the denial.
Is there some reason you have such a low opinion of the NSA, and seem to think charging that someone is in it discredits him?
Only having had to deal with them. I've actually been notified that (a) a proposed application the Navy was developing had a security flaw that rendered it completely nonsecure for operational use and (b) that the NSA was not going to disclose the nature of the problem to the Navy due to "security reasons." This system was vitally needed by the folks out on the sharp end of the spear. The NSA deliberately kept the Navy from identifying the problem--the Navy finally wound up having to go to an expensive security firm to get the information they'd already MIPR'd money to the NSA for. This sort of behavior is very much the norm. It's gotten to the point where some services and agencies are doing completely inhouse reviews of their systems, because the NSA is simply using their position to shut down anything they don't like. Nobody knows their agenda or their objectives. They use their power in an arbitrary, capricious, and abjectly irresponsible fashion. The more I know about them, the less I like them.
Of course not! Hell, Ennes even carried the NSA's water for them in their book, using a completely BS cover story that they concocted!
ALL LIES SPREAD BY THE J-E-W-S!!!
Isn't that inconsistent with your theory that the Liberty could have communicated with the Egyptians?
Isn't that inconsistent with your theory that the Liberty could have communicated with the Egyptians?
No.
The Fleet Broadcast was pumped out by the two main US Navy communications stations in the theater--NAVCAMS (Naval Communications Area Master Station) MED in Naples, and also put out by Naval Radio Station Souda Bay, Greece. These were US Navy HF radio broadcasts, covered on Navy crypto. However, the NSA required the Liberty to disregard all orders given over the Fleet Broadcast from COMSIXTHFLT; if the NSA wanted them to obey those orders, they would relay it over their own specialized circuits (which usually worked amazingly well, unless the content of a particular order from COMXISXTHFLT displeased the NSA, whereupon "technical problems" and "snafus" would cause the order to be conveniently lost).
Please quit distorting what I said about the comms setup, BTW. I didn't say that the Liberty was communicating directly with the Egyptians--only that the take was getting to the Egyptians quickly. That effort could have gone from the GCHQ facility on Cyprus, your NAVSECGRU buddies at Souda Bay, or another at-sea platform that was "deniable." All that was required was that the Liberty transmit its take offboard, and that someone on the same crypto net receive and rebroadcast it to the Egyptians. It's not hard to do, even with 1967-vintage technology.
Additionally, the Liberty could have been used to launder an intel-gathering effort conducted by other systems--i.e., providing a convenient means of determining if the Israelis were wise to the effort (bombs fall on ship, the cat's out of the bag).
No...Lyndon Johnson [Another Democrat President] and his cheesball Liberal cabinet was.
The Israelis were indeed moving to take all of the heights...the Liberty was listening to Israeli comm...I do think the Israelis attacked it deliberately...I also think the Israelis wouldnt have attacked it if it didnt have a reason. Just listening alone [and not communicating with someone else] isnt a good enough reason to attack it.
I dont know what Johnson and his coterie of utopianists were up to but it was enough to motivate Israel to attack that ship.
If everyone within the US Government agreed it was a deliberate attack then why no military response?
"Because the evil J-E-W-S control everything, including the US Government".
Get real.
There wasnt a response militarily because a response would've created more snooping around by the world community...apparently there was a motive or action that the Liberals didnt want anyone else [or probably more to the point...fellow Americans] finding out about.
These are the kind of things you get when Democrats control the White House.
Semper Fi
I dont know what Johnson and his coterie of utopianists were up to but it was enough to motivate Israel to attack that ship.
That would mean it was a deliberate attack and that Israel had good motivation (self-defense).
It still leaves the question of what was in their interest defensively to attack it. But at least if it was deliberate it would explain more plausibly than other motivations attributed to Israel.
The quandry really is how to explain what seems by much evidence to be deliberate. The other hard part for me is explaining the "ten official US investigations (including five congressional investigations) " I certainly can believe a whitewash or a coverup, but this many is more difficult.
Anyway, I think the answer is as likely found in the direction you point as it is toward the combination of mistakes offered in the other.
Thanks again for your time and knowledge
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