U.S. agency confirms sinking of USS Liberty was accident

WASHINGTON - New documents released this week by America's National Security Agency support Israel's version of a long-festering controversy between the two countries: Israel's sinking of an American spy ship, the USS Liberty, off the coast of Gaza during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Israel has always said it had no idea the ship was American, but conspiracy theorists and anti-Israel propagandists still claim Israel sank the ship in the full knowledge that it was American.

The documents, originally defined as top secret, were made public by Florida Judge Jay Cristol, who

has been investigating the Liberty incident for years and published a book on the subject last year. On Monday, the NSA gave him a transcript of conversations held by two Israeli Air Force helicopter pilots who were hovering over the Liberty as it was sinking, and these tapes confirm Israel's claim that the sinking of the ship, which killed 34 American servicemen and wounded 171, was a tragic error.

After the Liberty was bombed by both the Israel Air Force and the Israel Navy, the two helicopter pilots were summoned from their base to assess the damage and evaluate the possibility of rescuing the surviving crew members. An American spy plane, which had been sent to the area as soon as the NSA learned of the attack, recorded their conversations, which took place between 2:30 and 3:37 P.M. on June 8, the third day of the war.

The spy plane also recorded the orders radioed to the pilots by their supervisor at Hatzor Base, which instructed them to search for Egyptian survivors from the "Egyptian warship" that had just been bombed - thus supporting Israel's claim that it had believed the ship was Egyptian when it ordered it attacked. "Pay attention. The ship is now identified as Egyptian," the pilots were told.

Nine minutes later, Hatzor informed the pilots that it was not an Egyptian warship, but an Egyptian cargo ship. Only at 3:07 were the pilots first informed that the ship might not have been Egyptian at all: Hatzor told them that if they found Arabic-speaking survivors, they should be taken to El-Arish, but if they found English-speaking survivors, they should be taken to Lod. "Clarify by the first man that you bring up, what nationality he is, and report to me immediately," the supervisor instructed, according to the transcript. "It's important to know."

Then, at 3:12, one of the pilots informed Hatzor that he saw an American flag flying over the wounded ship. He was asked to investigate and determine whether it was really an American ship.

This is not the first time such transcripts have been made public: Israel gave its own recordings of the pilots' conversations to the British television station Thames in 1987. But conspiracy theorists charged that Israel had doctored the tapes before handing them over to the station in order to hide the fact that it sank the Liberty intentionally. No such imputation can be made about these new transcripts, as they were never in Israeli hands.

Israel has always said it attacked the Liberty, which America sent to the region to gather intelligence on the progress of the war, because it believed it was an Egyptian supply ship ferrying supplies to the Egyptian troops that Israel was then fighting. When it discovered the error, it immediately informed the Americans, apologized and paid compensation to the victims' families.

The incident was investigated by inquiry commissions in both Israel and the United States, and both concluded that it had, indeed, been a tragic error. Nevertheless, the controversy never died. In 1979, one of the survivors, James Ennes, published a book accusing Israel of bombing the American ship deliberately. Ennes claimed an Israeli spy plane had hovered over the ship all morning and had surely identified it as American, since the American flag was clearly visible.

A later book, written by James Bamford, charged that Israel sank the ship in order to keep America from learning of its plans to attack Syria, and further claimed that the NSA had tapes of conversations among Israeli pilots that not only confirmed this, but also proved that the tapes released by Israel had been doctored.

Another claim that appears frequently on the dozens of Internet sites devoted to the affair is that Israel sank the ship to conceal a mass murder of Egyptian soldiers on the Sinai peninsula.

In its letter to Cristol, the NSA stressed that, contrary to the claims that often appear in such books and Web sites - that the agency has tapes from both the Liberty and from a nearby American submarine that confirm Israel's guilt - the only tapes that exist were those made by the spy plane and given to Cristol this week.

"It's the last piece of intelligence that remained classified, and every rational person that will read it will understand that there is no truth in these conspiracy theories against Israel," Cristol said Tuesday. But he added: "Those who hate Israel, who hate Jews, and those who believe in conspiracy will not be convinced by anything."

Cristol, a former U.S. navy pilot and legal officer, began investigating the Liberty incident 14 years ago. Since publishing his book, which vindicates Israel, he has received threats and been accused of being an Israeli agent. "I take this lightly, but I am saddened to learn that there is this kind of hate toward Israel," he said.

The question is not whether the Liberty was attacked. The question is whether it was an accident. The now released audio tapes prove that it was an accident committed by Israel.

It was not intentional.

Some Facts:

1. Israel was at a state of war with Egypt and had no reason to believe there was an American ship less then 200 miles from the coast of Israel (and even the US stated that at the UN).

2. Israeli planes used NAPALM not IRON BOMBS to attack the liberty because they were scrambled from operations in northern Israel. This was no plan to attack the liberty.

3. IDF troops were being shelled on the coast.

4. 5 Congressional investigations stated that it was an accident

5. Those survivors leading this conspiracy have an anti-Israel agenda. They even founded the Council for the National Interest, which is a national organization against Israel.

Sorry - I personally remember the incident, and the reports. The US was 'neutral' during that war, it was a 'spy' ship for collecting war information, sailing in sort of circles to monitor the war. It was plainly a US Navy ship, and was plainly flying the US ensign, in broad daylight, in the early afternoon around 1-2 PM local if I remember correctly, on a clear day. The Israeli's were advised of it's location and what it was doing, requested it to be withdrawn and the US refused.

Notice the verbage of the communication -

"They had no idea what they were trying to sink:"
"Pay attention. The ship is now identified as Egyptian," the pilots were told."

Pilots in VFR conditions are trained to identify ships and ship shilouhettes, and to identify friend from foe. In addition, there were numbers of overflights over a period of hours before the attack. However, in this case the ensign could be clearly seen - and 'the pilots were told' - the pilots on the scene looking at the obviously American Navy ship, 'were told' it was Egyptian.

This was a typical government coverup, in which both the Israeli and the US governments were involved in covering it up.

NSA Releases 1967 helicopter intercept transcripts Haaretz claims they prove the attack was an accident They prove no such thing The NSA intercepts prove only that the helicopter pilots were not aware of the ship's identity until they arrived. Intercept of the attack itself, not released and said not to exist but which has been seen by senior NSA sources we have identified, show that in fact they did know they were attacking an American ship. The plain truth is that, despite the arguments sent by spokesmen for Israel, most people who look carefully at this attack agree that it was deliberate. Moreover, the top minds in the American intelligence community agree that solid evidence is overwhelming that it was deliberate! Supporters.txt lists some of those names. One really must look carefully when such leading lights as Dean Rusk, Marshall Carter, Richard Helms, Lou Tordella, Tom Moorer, Rufus Taylor, William Odom, Bobby Ray Inman, John Morrison, George Ball, Clark Clifford, Lucius Battle, William Odom, Merlin Staring and others including even LBJs own press secretary George Christian all say almost with one voice that it was deliberate and that the evidence says so. Four former NSA directors agree that deliberateness of the attack was not a debatable issue; it was agreed fact. None of these men are the sort to adopt wild or irresponsible positions. We survivors say the attack was deliberate because what we saw argues that it was: Prolonged, low-level pre-attack reconnaissance in which the recon pilots were heard telling their HQ that we were American; an extended close air attack with large colors flying throughout; selective jamming of the very frequencies we needed to call for help; torpedo boats that examined the ship and flag from 50 feet away and CONTINUED to fire from close range for another 40 minutes; machinegunning of our liferafts in the water. Then they lied about everything and claimed that they recognized us as American even while the torpedoes were in the water and never fired again. Nonsense. They claim falsely that the boats called in the air attack because they miscalculated our speed from 32 miles away when in fact their maximum radar range was 16 miles and that they judged our speed at 30 knots when we were moving five knots. Nonsense. They claim we flew no flag. Nonsense. If it was a mistake, at least they could tell the truth. If they didn't know we were American, why did they jam American radio frequencies? Yet the evidence goes far beyond those things; it is virtually absolute. Recently I called Oliver Kirby, a former NSA Ops boss who was called back to NSA in 1967 to look into the circumstances of the attack. He has never before discussed this with anyone outside the confines of the NSA complex, but the first words out of his mouth were, "I can tell you for an absolute certainty that they knew they were attacking an American ship." How did he know? He saw transcripts of Israeli communications during the attack. There was a Navy EC121 overhead (reported recently by Jim Bamford) and an Air Force C130 a few miles away. Both were recording communications. The Navy intake was merely recorded; the Air Force product was sent securely in real time via the CRITICOMM system to Air Force intelligence centers worldwide where it was seen by hundreds of people. Now many of those people are coming forward to describe what they saw. These are the same intercepts that were seen by Oliver Kirby and other top analysts and officials at the National Security Agency. These transcripts are the reason so many top intelligence officials are certain that this attack was no accident. NSA now denies there were airplanes overhead during the attack or that the attack was intercepted or recorded. Those denials are contradicted by very credible people who were there, including the navigator of the EC121 who is talking to us. NSA can deny that such intercepts exist because shortly after the attack all such evidence of a deliberate attack was ordered destroyed. But fortunately for the historical record a great many people saw those things before they went into the burn bag, and many of those people are now speaking out. People are just learning that the Court of Inquiry was falsified. The Court's own legal counsel, Captain Ward Boston, now says publicly in Navy Times and elsewhere that the court actually believed that the attack was deliberate but reported otherwise falsely because it was so ordered by Washington. Why would Israel bite the American hand? We may never know. As Dean Rusk once said, it must have been ordered by someone fairly high up to be able to coordinate all the different forces involved. Richard Helms and Admiral Moorer have supposed that it was done to delay American knowledge of the pending Golan invasion. General Morrison agrees that it could have been to assure that we didn't learn of the executing of POWs then underway at El Arish. We may never know the real reason, but anyone who wonders about this should look carefully at the circumstances before allowing the improbability of such an attack to weigh against the very solid evidence that the attack was deliberate. A recent article in Naval Institute Proceedings discusses these things in some depth. You will find this at http://www.usni.org/proceedings/Articles03/PROwalsh06.htm. This conservative and trusted publication, known as the voice of the US Navy officer corps, does not bite carelessly on weak positions. Return to the USS Liberty

I'll take the word of my fellow Americans who survived this assault rather than Israeli propaganda.

http://www.nsa.gov/docs/efoia/released/liberty.html

Thanks for the link. I downloaded and read all the NSA material. Contrary to the statement that is being trumpeted that this proves that the attack was a mistake, the tapes clearly prove somewhat less than that.

The tapes indicate that the pilots in the "rescue" helicopters indeed probably had no initial knowledge that the ship was American. The controller at Hatzor appears to have had some initial suspicion that the ship was American because he repeatedly stresses the need to discover the nationality of the survivors and offers the possibility that they may speak English.

The tapes offer us absolutely no information about what the attackers or their commanders believed concerning the nationality of the ship.

The helicopters witnessed deflated lifeboats in the water near the ship. This either corroborates the survivors accounts saying that the lifeboats were machine-gunned or it means that the lifeboats were tossed overboard without being inflated. Someone here with Navy experience probably knows the SOP for lifeboats.

I'll refrain from quoting your statement that implies I am guilty of anti-Semitism. I think these type of statements also detract from Cristol's arguments. Some of the survivors were Jewish. It would be interesting to know what they think about this incident.

Sorry for the late reply. I've been bagging on that treacherous little jitbag every time he comes up, and while many people defend him -- thanks to the BS he and the Israeli government put out -- nobody has ever pulled a post, or a thread, or said "Boo" to me.

Now, it is possible that someone might make a post against Pollard that is also anti-Semitic. That would definitely get yanked, as FR has zero tolerance for racism, anti-Semitism, or people that foment hate. (A policy that I fully agree with, or I'd be off on one of the crank sites, and not here, on the mainstream conservative site).

I always argue the Pollard case from the point of his damage to national security. It doesn't matter that he transferred the information to a nation that is one of our most reliable & faithful allies. I would want him in the clink (well, really, I would like to see him hang, but the law unfortunately specifies improsonment) even if he gave that sort of stuff to another American, who was not cleared to have it. NSA is a military organisation and individual members do not make policy, they follow it.

Of course, it's kind of damaging to Pollard's image as the Great Jewish Martyr that he offered the stuff to the Soviets and two other nations first. He went to Israel after his first choices turned him down (they thought he was a provocateur). He was also paid handsomely for his crime. (Well, not if you weigh it against his time in jail, but the deal looked good to him at the time). If he was doing it our of love for Israel, why be so greedy?

If you ever read Dante's Inferno, the great Italian placed traitors at the deepest pit of Hades. Pelton, Pollard, Walker (in the order of the damage they did) have got reserved seating. And if there is any justice this side of those gates, they will all be going there direct from prison.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

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