Governor Perry,
I am one of the Americans waiting in Athens for the Freedom Flotilla
to get underway in our effort to deliver humanitarian supplies to the
people of Gaza. I was also on the Flotilla last year and was aboard
the USS Liberty when the ship was attacked by Israel on June 8, 1967.
A few years ago at my request you issued a proclamation honoring the
crew of the USS Liberty.
When I submitted the request I ensured you were aware of the
atrocities that were committed against us. I made sure you were
aware that we were attacked by unmarked aircraft; that our radios were
jammed on both US Navy tactical and international maritime distress
frequencies; that our life rafts were deliberately machine gunned in
the water by the attacking Israeli torpedo boats; that when they
ceased their attack the Israeli torpedo boats departed the scene for
over an hour leaving the crew of a torpedoed and sinking ship with no
chance of survival had our ship gone down.
I also ensured you were aware that two flights of rescue aircraft that
had been launched from nearby Sixth Fleet aircraft carriers were
recalled while we were still under attack and calling for help which
allowed the Israelis to continue their attack unhampered by the threat
of Sixth Fleet intervention.
I understand that you have urged U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to
take legal steps to stop the Americans from taking part in the Freedom
Flotilla or to prosecute us if we make the attempt.
When you issued the USS Liberty proclamation you expressed absolutely
no concern that we were attacked by unmarked aircraft; that our radios
were jammed on both US Navy tactical and international maritime
distress frequencies; that our life rafts were deliberately machine
gunned in the water; and, that we were ordered to be abandoned by the
US Sixth Fleet while we were still under attack and calling for help.
When you issued the USS Liberty proclamation you didn't follow it with
any press release condemning the barbaric acts that were committed
against us.
Governor Perry, why are you recommending prosecution of the Americans
trying to deliver humanitarian supplies but not of those who machine
gunned our life rafts in the water or ordered us to be abandoned while
we were under fire?
Governor Perry, why does the attempted delivery of humanitarian
supplies to Gaza elicit your condemnation but the deliberate machine
gunning of American life rafts in the water doesn't elicit even a
modicum of concern?
Joe Meadors is a veteran and survivor of the USS Liberty attack in 1967. He plans to participate in Free Palestine Movement's delegation of US citizens as part of the Freedom Flotilla II, set to depart to Gaza in coming days.
Thank you for this–excellent letter.
Second that.
“Governor Perry, why does the attempted delivery of humanitarian
supplies to Gaza elicit your condemnation but the deliberate machine
gunning of American life rafts in the water doesn’t elicit even a
modicum of concern?”
Maybe because a dozen investigations have found that it wasn’t deliberate. Cue Mondoweisser whining.
hophmi repeats his Zionist propaganda as if the issue of Israel deliberately attacking the USS Liberty & the subsequent cover up of it by Johnson (attempt to wean away loud Jewish American voices against J’s Nam war) has not been discussed at great length on this site repeatedlly. The latest report on the subject, supported by the latest unclassified documents, clearly show
Israel was at the very least guilty of gross negligence (for which none of its agents have been held to account), and as likely, intentional mass murder & maiming of the USS Liberty crew. If you are just a passer-by, or new lurker on this web site, we urge you to check out the excellent demolition of hophmi’s Israeli propaganda via the search engine here; otherwise just to go the web site the survivors of the USS Liberty attack have.
Here comes the whining. Not one investigation supports you, and no serious scholarship does either. No matter how much you cynically use the survivors, they cannot get answer the question of intent, and you know it. Oh so sad for you and your stupid campaign to prove that Israel somehow hates America and the Palestinians, who celebrated in the streets after 9/11, are America’s friends.
hophmi, quit lying for Israel and campaigning to continue to keep the truth from the American people, and suck on this:
Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on USS Liberty, the Recall of Military Rescue Support Aircraft while the Ship was Under Attack, and the Subsequent Cover-up by the United States Government: link to usslibertyinquiry.com
15 years after the attack an Israeli senior lead pilot confirmed it was a deliberate attack, all the pilots knew the ship was American, and all in the Israeli war room knew this too: link to rense.com
June 2007 revisit of the attack: link to counterpunch.org
Oct 2007: Chicago Tribune: Veterans, documents suggest U.S., Israel didn’t tell full story of deadly ’67 incident
link to chicagotribune.com
June 2009 update of attack on USS Liberty: link to seattletimes.nwsource.com
Lack of proper investigation of the attack and continued cover up is a national disgrace: link to turcopolier.typepad.com
New book: Ship Without A Country: link to shop.americanfreepress.net
2009 book shows Israelis knew they were attacking an American ship & so did Johnson conclude, but he covered it up: link to jamesmscott.com
Americans, June 8 should be declared USS Liberty Day.
Citizen, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ♫ ♫ ♫
Here is another link to send around to your friends today.
There is no better July 4th video to watch
link to freedomboxfndn.mirocommunity.org
Maybe because a dozen investigations have found that it wasn’t deliberate.
There may have been a dozen investigations but the number of investigations that involved anything but the most superficial questioning of the Liberty survivors was zero. The Israeli investigation found exactly what those of us in the US Navy knew it would–not only didn’t Israel commit any crimes when you consider the fog of war it didn’t even do anything wrong.
As the US Navy investigation, we now know that Navy investigators were told before they started what their conclusions would be.
The other thing that has always distressed me was the unwillingness of the US Congress to investigate the incident. If someone uses a racial epithet in Harlem there’s a congressional investigation the next day but here is over 40 years after the torpedoing of the Liberty and machine-gunning of its life rafts and a congressional hearing has yet to happen. At the very least someone could try and find out what Lyndon Johnson was thinking when he said, “I don’t care if the ship sinks, I’m not going to embarrass an ally.”
Well I for one sure care if a US ship sinks. And I don’t much worry about embarrassing any ally who kills 34 Americans.
LBJ reportedly said about the liberty that he want that ship put on the bottom.
I don’t understand. Why did LBJ want the Liberty put on the bottom? What purpose would that serve? You mean to hide what the Israelis had done to the ship?
But Johnson still had the problem of the survivors. What did he intend to do with them?
Duscany,
Said you:
“There may have been a dozen investigations but the number of investigations that involved anything but the most superficial questioning of the Liberty survivors was zero. The Israeli investigation found exactly what those of us in the US Navy knew it would–not only didn’t Israel commit any crimes when you consider the fog of war it didn’t even do anything wrong.”
The three Israeli inquiries (two in 1967, one in 1982) were conducted independently of the US investigations.
The U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry headed by Admiral Kidd in June 1967 took the testimony of 19 witnesses, 14 of whom were crewmen of the Liberty. The investigation was hardly a cursory one: A record of the investigation runs to some 700 pages, including 158 pages of testimony, 49 exhibits, and concludes with 52 findings, endorsed by Admiral McCain with the following conclusion: “The foregoing comments by the convening authority lead to an overall conclusion that the attack was in fact a mistake.”
Here are the subsequent investigations that followed the Naval Court of Inquiry:
–CIA Report, June 13, 1967 (“It remains our best judgment that the attack on the Liberty was not made in malice toward the US and was a mistake”)
–Joint Chiefs of Staff (Russ Report) June 9, 1967 (Compiled all message traffic and found no evidence that the attack was not a mistake)
–Clifford Report, July 18, 1967 (Attack was a mistake)
–Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, June 12, July 14, July 26, 1967 (“The attack was not intentional”)
–House Appropriations Committee, April and May 1968 (“The use and operational capabilities of the Defense Communications system is nothing less than pathetic, and the management of the system needs to be completely overhauled”)
–House Armed Services Committee Investigation, May 10, 1971 (“The Navy remains in the Dark Ages insofar as routine communications with its deployed ships”)
–Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 1979/1981 (USS Liberty mistaken for Egyptian ship as a result of miscalculations and egregious errors)
–House Armed Services Committee 1991/1992 (No support for theory of intentional attack)
All Israeli and American official investigations, which were conducted independently of one another, have reached the same conclusions and share the same verdict: the attack was an accident.
Said you: “At the very least someone could try and find out what Lyndon Johnson was thinking when he said, “I don’t care if the ship sinks, I’m not going to embarrass an ally.” Why did LBJ want the Liberty put on the bottom? What purpose would that serve? You mean to hide what the Israelis had done to the ship?
There is not a shred of evidence that Johnson ever said any such thing!
Also, there is no evidence that Johnson or Defense Secretary McNamara ever believed the attack on the Liberty was anything but an accident, thus negating any motive to cover up anything in the first place. The notion that Johnson “knew” of a deliberate attack on the Liberty, and covered it up, thus betraying those killed and wounded in the attack to further his reelection prospects with the Jewish vote, as others have asserted, is equally baseless.
There is absolutely not a shred of evidence that the Israelis knowingly and deliberately attacked the USS Liberty during the Six-Day War of 1967. And not only that, no one has ever supplied a remotely plausible motive for the Israelis to knowingly and deliberately attack a ship belonging to their strongest ally. Why would they do it?
RW: “And not only that, no one has ever supplied a remotely plausible motive for the Israelis to knowingly and deliberately attack a ship belonging to their strongest ally. Why would they do it?”
Robert, have you ever heard of Jonathan Pollard? What makes you think Israel regards anyone as an ally? Besides which, back in 1967 the US was not such the dominant supporter of Israel as it is today. For instance, the key IAF fighter then was the French Mirage.
A quick Google search shows you be someone who swallows hook, line, and sinker whatever the powers that be dangle in front of you, be it the “Domino Theory” in S.E. Asia, WMD in Iraq, the Chilcot Iraq inquiry report, or in this case the USS Liberty.
However well read you are, you seem to have an intrinsic naivete coupled with a craven attitude towards those with power that makes you a poor independent judge of history. Perhaps it explains why an otherwise patriotic American acts as an Israeli apologist for their attack on the USS Liberty. Though I can’t say it looks good, especially on Independence Day.
“There is absolutely not a shred of evidence that the Israelis knowingly and deliberately attacked the USS Liberty during the Six-Day War of 1967. And not only that, no one has ever supplied a remotely plausible motive for the Israelis to knowingly and deliberately attack a ship belonging to their strongest ally. Why would they do it?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Israel’s goal/motive was to kill every American on the USS Liberty Ship and let it sink to the bottom of the sea.Once this goal is completed, then they would blame Egypt for the act of war…so Egypt would have to deal with the whole incident.
If Egypt can be blamed…then America would most likely have attacked Egypt. 34 American Dead Sailors & 171 wounded & somehow the rest of the US crew survived the Israeli onslaught/assault & just think what would have happened if the rest of the USS Liberty crew did not survive…What would have happened to Egypt?
And you must know Israel’s Mossad motto…“By Way Of Deception, Thou Shall Do War”.
I believe our American Navy Sailors/Personnel who on the USS Liberty on June 8th, 1967.
Read below regarding Israeli pilots who recognized the USS Liberty as an American ship…for the rest of the facts & sources:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
BBC Documentary on the USS Liberty:
“Dead in the Water”
“Fifteen years after the attack, an Israeli pilot approached Liberty survivors and then held extensive interviews with former Congressman Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey about his role. According to this senior Israeli lead pilot, he recognized the Liberty as American immediately, so informed his headquarters, and was told to ignore the American flag and continue his attack. He refused to do so and returned to base, where he was arrested.
Later, a dual-citizen Israeli major told survivors that he was in an Israeli war room where he heard that pilot’s radio report. The attacking pilots and everyone in the Israeli war room knew that they were attacking an American ship, the major said. He recanted the statement only after he received threatening phone calls from Israel.
The pilot’s protests also were heard by radio monitors in the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon. Then-U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight Porter has confirmed this. Porter told his story to syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak and offered to submit to further questioning by authorities. Unfortunately, no one in the U.S. government has any interest in hearing these first-person accounts of Israeli treachery. [Washington Report]”
@@@@@
Click on link for the rest of the facts/details…video & photos:
link to whatreallyhappened.com
And not only that, no one has ever supplied a remotely plausible motive for the Israelis to knowingly and deliberately attack a ship belonging to their strongest ally. Why would they do it?
Israel has never had a shortage of motives: (1) to prevent the disclosure of a planned attack on the Golan Heights, (2) to cover up the murder of Egyptian POWs, (3) to stage a false flag operation which would bring the US into the war on Israel’s side, (4) to keep the US from re-transmitting intercepted Israeli messages.
Personally I have always favored yet another explanation, this time offered by former assistant secretary of defense John Stenbit during remarks at Harvard–that during the ’67 war that Israel threatened to sink the Liberty unless we got it out of the area in 24 hours. The messages by US commanders ordering the ship to leave the area went astray (one ended up in the Philippines), whereupon Israel did (or at least tried to do) exactly what it promised, which was to sink the Liberty.
You may argue that an ally would never, could never, do anything like this but that presumes Israel is actually an ally of the US either in law or in practice. I’m not sure how much evidence there is for either one. (As far as I know the United States has never signed a mutual aid pact with Israel, as it has for instance with its Nato allies.)
More importantly perhaps Israel’s alleged special relationship with the US, at least in my opinion leaves a lot to be desired. True allies don’t steal hundreds of pounds of uranium from a fuel rod processing plant in Pennsylvania, they don’t brick over the staircase to their atomic bomb lab at Dimona so President Kennedy’s representatives won’t find out about it, they don’t facilitate the theft by Americans with dual loyalty issues of 360 cubit feet of top secret files as Jonathan Pollard did, they don’t refuse to return the stolen files when the US asks for them back and they don’t stage a continuing spy operation against the US bigger than that of any other country..
More recently when the US gets attacked by terrorists they don’t say as Benjamin Netanyahu did to a reporter for the New York Times that the attack was “good” for Israel. Citizens of true allies don’t jump and cheer and high-five each other when terrorists fly airliners into the World Trade center, nor to do they post smug messages on Internet news groups saying that “Now American knows what Israel goes thorough every day.”
gulf of tonkin. a pretext for war for getting involved on Israel’s behalf.
true. the Liberty was flying her ensign. and the US naval ensign by the sole nature of its red, white, blue colors would have been enough to to show the liberty as a non enemy ship even in a dead calm with the liberty a stand still.
Your right Duscany LBJ never said that. though he did( reportedly) say and I quote ” I want that god damn ship on the bottom”
these must be the Israeli ones because no official american investigation has ever taken place.
“Cue Mondoweiss whining..”
Is the miserable attitude necessary?
Yes, some American investigations found it “wasn’t deliberate”, but there has been some excellent investigations since then and without the political expendiency that was adopted then and by some now.
The fact is that it is widely noted now, thanks to this excellent work of many of the survivors and their supporters, that it is certain that it was a deliberate attack and that various U.S administrations have tried to cover that fact up; with, of course, the aid of the Israel Lobby.
I hope to meet you some day, Joe Meadors. Thanks for honoring these men the ways you have and are.
Related matter:
Big Foot aka “The Golem,” aka seen on the US country cable channel: link to t.co
The attack on the USS Liberty was an accident. Not everything under the sun is a Jewish conspiracy. What a joke.
How was Israel attacking the USS Liberty, and Israeli torpedo boats strafing U.S. sailors in lifeboats and as they struggled to stay afloat in the water, an “accident?”
It wasn’t. “…the board of inquiry (concluded) that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing in attacking the Liberty.”
– CIA Director Richard Helms
How was the White House ordering the US 6th Fleet to stand down both times it tried to send help to the USS Liberty an “accident?”
It wasn’t: “… fighters were put in the air not once, but twice. They were ordered to stand down by Secretary of Defense McNamara and President Johnson for reasons the American public deserves to know.” –Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, who was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the attack.
You can inform yourself about Israel’s vicious attack on the USS Liberty, which was carried out with the consent of LBJ’s White House on a clear, sunny, calm day in 1967, here: link to gtr5.com
, the website of the families and survivors of the USS Liberty. They are still waiting for Israel to be held accountable, all these decades later.
Kris,
Said you: “How was the White House ordering the US 6th Fleet to stand down both times it tried to send help to the USS Liberty an “accident?”
The WH did not order Sixth Fleet to stand down. As I point out down below, the Command history of the US Sixth Fleet records that the first launch of aircraft occurred at at 1450 (2:50pm)–three minutes after the Israeli MTB’s (Motor Torpedo Boats) broke off the attack. It also shows that the aircraft were recalled at 1640 (4:40pm)–nearly two hours after the attack after Vice Admiral Martin, Commander of the Sixth Fleet, received a message from Commander Castle, the American naval attaché to Tel Aviv, informing him that the Israelis had attacked the Liberty by mistake. Martin received the message long before the White House even learned about the attack. Martin
ordered the launch and the recall on his own initiative, and there is no evidence that Martin had any communication whatsoever with McNamara or the President concerning the launch and recall. McNamara did, however, issue an order for the recall at 1725 (5:25pm)–45 minutes after Martin had already done so.
As for “Israel’s vicious attack on the USS Liberty, which was carried out with the consent of LBJ’s White House on a clear, sunny, calm day in 1967,” this is a baseless slander.
The attack was an accident, and there was no cover-up.
How odd that Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, who was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the attack, didn’t agree with you.
Please see Duscany’s comments, above. Please see also the website of the families and survivors of the USS Liberty: link to gtr5.com
And see this article by Ray McGovern at link to uss-liberty.com
:
“….Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who 15 years later admitted publicly:
“In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
“Three days into the war, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats turned their firepower on the intelligence collection ship USS Liberty in international waters after the Israelis had identified it as a U.S. Navy ship.
“The Israelis later insisted they had lost track of the ship and that the strafing was an accident in the fog of war. However, U.S. intelligence intercepted Israeli conversations at the time, indicating that the Israeli mission was to sink the ship and leave no survivors.
“Israeli commandos clad in black were about to land from helicopters and finish off what remained of the Liberty crew when Seaman Terry Halbardier (later awarded the Silver Star) slid over the Liberty’s napalm-laden deck to jury-rig an antenna and get an SOS off to the Sixth Fleet.
“Israeli forces intercepted the SOS and quickly broke off the attack. But 34 of the Liberty crew were killed and over 170 wounded.
“To avoid exacerbating bilateral tensions, the U.S. Navy was ordered to cover up the deliberate nature of the attack, and the surviving crew was threatened with imprisonment, if they so much as told their wives. When some of the crew later called for an independent investigation, they were hit with charges of anti-Semitism….”
Kris,
Said you: “How odd that Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, who was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the attack, didn’t agree with you.”
General Earle Wheeler was Chairman of the JCS at the time of the attack. Admiral Moorer was out of the loop at the time of the attack. He was appointed Chief of Naval Operations in August 1967, and served as Chairman of the JCS from July 1970 to 1974.
Admiral Moorer was brave man and a decorated combat naval aviator, who had a very distinguished service record. Why he chose to embrace these loony conspiracy theories about the Liberty that have been discredited by a wide array of evidence and testimony, is a mystery. Unfortunately, Moorer, like all of his co-conspiracy advocates, has made a number of statements that have been flatly contradicted by the evidence.
The following assertions by Ray McGovern that you quote are without foundation.
““Three days into the war, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats turned their firepower on the intelligence collection ship USS Liberty in international waters after the Israelis had identified it as a U.S. Navy ship.”
False. Israeli aircraft spotted the vessel twice (once at 5:55am and again at 9:00am) on the morning of June 8. The pilots could not make out the flag, but spotted a hull marking that read “GTR-5″ and the headquarters identified the ship as the USS Liberty. However, with the change in watch in the Israeli HQ at 11:00am, the officer on duty at Israel’s naval headquarters, Capt. Avraham Lunz, concluded his shift, and, in accordance with procedures, removed the Liberty’s green marker from the control board on the grounds that it was already five hours old and no longer accurate. The officers on the new watch thus erroneously assumed that the Liberty had left the area. For all intents and purposes to the Israelis, the Liberty had ceased to exist. When an explosion rocked an Israeli arms depot at El Arish at 11:24am, the Israelis, later spotting a vessel they incorrectly assumed was an Egyptian warship bombarding them, sent three torpedo boats to engage it.
“The Israelis later insisted they had lost track of the ship and that the strafing was an accident in the fog of war. However, U.S. intelligence intercepted Israeli conversations at the time, indicating that the Israeli mission was to sink the ship and leave no survivors.”
The Israelis did lose track of the ship with the change in watch at Naval HQ, and there exists no “intercepted conversations at the time, indicating that the Israeli mission was to sink the ship and leave no survivors.” This is a complete fabrication.
“Israeli commandos clad in black were about to land from helicopters and finish off what remained of the Liberty crew when Seaman Terry Halbardier (later awarded the Silver Star) slid over the Liberty’s napalm-laden deck to jury-rig an antenna and get an SOS off to the Sixth Fleet.”
This simply did not happen. It is a complete fabrication.
“Israeli forces intercepted the SOS and quickly broke off the attack. But 34 of the Liberty crew were killed and over 170 wounded.”
Also did not happen. Complete fabrication.
“To avoid exacerbating bilateral tensions, the U.S. Navy was ordered to cover up the deliberate nature of the attack, and the surviving crew was threatened with imprisonment, if they so much as told their wives.”
There is not a shred of evidence that any threats or coercion were directed at any crewmember of the Liberty, and there is no record of any crewmember of the Liberty being disciplined for “speaking out” their beliefs.
And what of this supposedly great silencing operation? Did it prevent numerous survivors of the Liberty from speaking out and giving numerous interviews over the years? Did it prevent James Ennes Jr. from publishing a book accusing Israel of deliberately attacking the Liberty and the US government of covering it up? Where was the long, spidery arm of the all-powerful Israel Lobby to prevent this, and punish the perpetrators? Please.
This subject of the attack on the USS Liberty has been a much debated subject on this blog. I am still waiting for someone here to give me a plausible motive for the Israelis to have knowingly and deliberately attack a ship belonging to their strongest ally. Can you?
Just over ten years prior to the Israeli attack on USS Liberty the IDF recruited Egyptian jews to commit false flag terrorist attacks against Egyptian, British and US government facilities, the Lavon Affair.
It’s reasonable to suppose the attack on the Liberty was another false flag attack designed to appear as if Egypt had attacked and sunk an American naval ship, thereby drawing the US into the 1967 war.
Oh, and from the second paragraph of the wiki article on the Lavon Affair:
After being denied for 51 years, the surviving agents were in 2005 officially honored with a certificate of appreciation by the Israeli President Moshe Katzav.
So much for being a strong ally of the US; bomb a US government building and receive a certificate of appreciation from the Israeli government. It’s outrageous. Just like Netanyahu attending 60th anniversary celebrations of the zionist terrorist attack on the King David Hotel in 2006.
No it wasn’t only fanatics for Israel, the ignorant, and morons believe that. really we are supposed to believe it was an accident when the ensign ( a flag flown on a ship for the sole purposes of signifying the country of origin or ownership) was shot down TWICE>
Nobody said it was a Jewish conspiracy. The Israel Lobby has worked very hard within the mainstream media to nulify the evidence of a deliberate attack. You should really investigate further before you close your mind as such.
An excellent book to understand how Israel and the U.S have worked to cover up a deliberate attack is “The Attack on the Liberty”, by James Scott – whose father, John also survived the attack. Highly recommended..
Joe Meadors,
You are making a number of assertions here that have been flatly contradicted by numerous investigations and available evidence.
For example, you said that “when they ceased their attack the Israeli torpedo boats departed the scene for over an hour leaving the crew of a torpedoed and sinking ship with no chance of survival had our ship gone down.”
The naval attack on the Liberty did not last more than 10-15 minutes, if that. At 2:47 the Israeli MTB captain cut off the attack. At 2:51 the IDF Navy log reads “May be Russian nationality, based on writing on aft”; the Israelis thought they might be attacking a Russian vessel. When the Israeli boat captain got close enough to identify the hull markings of the Liberty, now listing badly, he recognized the Latin markings on the hull, and offered help and medical attention to the survivors at 3:03pm.
Your account is not only contradicted by the IDF Navy logs, but also by Commander McGonagle, skipper of the Liberty. In his testimony before the 1967 Court of Inquiry, McGonagle cited the ship’s deck log for 1503 (3:03pm) on Thursday, June 8, 1967, which states “One MTB returned to ship and signaled ‘Do you need help?’ Commanding Officer directed that ‘Negative’ be sent in reply.”
You also asserted that “two flights of rescue aircraft that
had been launched from nearby Sixth Fleet aircraft carriers were
recalled while we were still under attack and calling for help which
allowed the Israelis to continue their attack unhampered by the threat
of Sixth Fleet intervention.”
This too is inaccurate. The Command history of the US Sixth Fleet records that the first launch of aircraft occurred at at 1450 (2:50pm)–three minutes after the Israeli MTB’s broke off the attack. It also shows that the aircraft were recalled at 1640 (4:40pm)–nearly two hours after the attack. Vice Admiral Martin, Commander of the Sixth Fleet, ordered the launch and the recall on his own initiative, and there is no evidence that Martin had any communication whatsoever with McNamara or the President concerning the launch and recall. McNamara did, however, issue an order for the recall at 1725–45 minutes after Martin had already done so.
I cannot even begin to imagine what it was like to be on the Liberty that fateful day. All of you are fully deserving of our admiration for the remarkable heroism you showed, and sympathy for the loss and the tragedy that you have suffered. That you and the other survivors of the Liberty have suffered none of us can ever dispute or question. That you and other survivors felt betrayed and deceived by their government and grew to believe that there was a cover up is understandable. But all of the facts regarding the attack are now a matter of public record. There is little basis on which to continue to assert that the attack was deliberate; all of the evidence indicates otherwise. I think Governor Perry realizes this as well.
Herr Werdine you are very selectively pulling facts from the record. Your sympathy rings as false Witty’s pleas for Palestinian compassion for the Israeli plight.
Alec,
I have, and always will have, sympathy and admiration for all of our servicemen who put themselves in harms way on our behalf. Just because the attack on the Liberty was an accident doesn’t diminish the heroism shown by the crew and the sacrifice of those who were killed.
I am more than happy to address any facts that I have been supposedly been “selectively” pulling from the record. But I doubt there are any.
if you cared about US service men you wouldn’t be repeating a lie that the attack was an accident. you would stand up for the US navy and not repeat a foreign governments lies. to any intelligent person looking at thge facts the attack was delibrate, their was an attempt to cover up said fact, and Israel was lied through and through about it. the fact you take Israel government documents as worth more than the US service man their tells us everything we need to know about what you truly care about.
Good job Robert. Now contact to USS Liberty servicemen and tell them your valuable information that they dont know. Contact link you can find from this page, if you are clever enough.
link to ussliberty.org
Keep us informed how things progress….
Werdine, if you had a shred of empathy or sympathy or respect for the surviving crew of the USS Liberty, or anyone on this site, you wouldn’t dismiss the attack on the Liberty as “an accident,” as if there is not much credible evidence indicating it was sheer murder and even with your rose colored glasses on, it’s insulting to all of us you don’t at least characterize the attack as gross negligence by Israel, and never punished by Israel.
Since this is Independence Day I am positively livid. But, before I start I want to commend you and your shipmates, Signalman Meadors, for your service to your country both in the past and continuing, protecting her against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Here’s Medal of Honor winner, Captain McGonagle’s own description of the attack in a letter to then President Clinton concerning Jonathan Pollard which I excerpt from his Arlington National Cemetery web page, emphasis mine.
link to arlingtoncemetery.net
Also on the Arlington Cemetery site is a tribute by the crew of the Liberty to their Commander:
As for the “negative” reply to the call for help, the actual words used by Captain McGonagle not only gives a much less sanitized version of the events than those who put the interests of a foreign country against their own it also expresses my attitude toward the phony patriots commenting on this web site.
Here’s Third Class Petty Officer Brummett’s recollection of the events:
You are obviously a Zionist apologist “Robert”.
Been there, done that. Yawn….
Richb,
“But Liberty survivors, and some former U.S. officials, believe the attack was deliberate, staged to conceal Israel’s pending seizure of the Golan Heights, which occurred shortly thereafter.”
It is indeed true that many believe this, but there is no truth in it. The notion that Israel struck the Liberty to hide its seizure of the Golan Heights from Syria from the US is contradicted by diplomatic cables showing that Israel informed Washington of its intention to do so before the Liberty attack, and that Washington had not objected. Israel may have attacked Egypt on June 5, but Jordan and Syria were the first to attack Israel. The White House was well aware of this.
On June 8, the American consulate in Jerusalem reported that Israel was retaliating for Syria’s bombardment of Israeli villages “in an apparent prelude to large-scale attack in effort to seize Heights overlooking border kibbutzim.” That same day, U.S. Ambassador Walworth Barbour in Tel Aviv reported that “I would not, repeat not, be surprised if the reported Israeli attack [on the Golan] does take place or has already done so,” and IDF Intelligence Chief Aharon Yariv told Harry McPherson, a senior White House aide who was visiting Israel at the time, that “there still remained the Syria problem and perhaps it would be necessary to give Syria a blow.”
Israel’s intention to attack Syria was, in short, about the worst kept secret in Israeli and American diplomatic circles at the time.
“After more than two hours of unremitting assault, the Israelis finally halted their attack. One of the torpedo boats approached the Liberty.”
The assault did not last two hours. The Israelis, who were pursuing what they thought was an Egyptian warship heading home, called in for air support, and two Mirage fighters, closing in on the Liberty from the west at 1:57pm, raked her with 30mm cannon fire in three strafing runs until their ammo was spent. The first air attack had lasted three and a half minutes.
By this time Commander McGonagle, the Liberty skipper, though seriously wounded, ordered the ship to turn full right 360 degrees to the north. The second air attack, at 2:06pm, was by a squadron of three Mysteres fighters returning from bombing Egyptian infantry. Hastily recalled from this ground support mission, they raked the Liberty with bombs, napalm, and cannon fire—hardly appropriate ordinance for attacking a naval vessel.
At 2:11pm transcripts of communications between the Israeli pilots and HQ show that after the second strafing run an Israeli pilot recognized the Latin markings on the hull of the ship: “Ship’s marking is Charlie Tango Romeo 5” (i.e., CTR 5—the Israeli pilot in fact misidentified the hull markings; they were GTR-5). When this was reported to HQ they immediately ordered him and his wingmen to disengage. This second air attack had lasted about five minutes.
There was also a breakdown in communications between the three torpedo boats and the IAF HQ—another common occurrence in the heat of battle. The Israeli MTB skipper, Commander Oren, arriving at the scene at 2:24pm, consulted his intelligence manual and, viewing the silhouette of a smoke-engulfed ship some six thousand yards distant and directed westward toward the sun at an elevation of 50 degrees and azimuth 88 degrees, concluded that the ship was the Egyptian freighter El Quseir, and the skippers on the other two torpedo boats reached the same conclusion themselves. Oren attempted to signal the ship, asking for identity; getting no response, he ordered the MTBs into battle formation. At 2:37pm Naval HQ gave the go ahead to attack.
The Israeli MTB’s caught up with the Liberty as a sailor on board her opened up fire on them with .50 caliber machine guns, not receiving McGonagle’s order not to fire on the approaching craft; the MTBs then returned fire with 20mm and 40mm cannon, and at 2:43pm fired back torpedoes. Four missed but one hit the Liberty’s starboard side midship, killing 25 sailors.
At 2:47 the MTB captain cut off the attack. At 2:51 the IDF Navy log reads “May be Russian nationality, based on writing on aft”; the Israelis thought they might be attacking a Russian vessel. When the Israeli boat captain got close enough to identify the hull markings of the Liberty, now listing badly, he recognized the Latin markings on the hull, and offered help and medical attention to the survivors at 3:03pm.
The attacks thus did not occur for “over two hours”; the combined air attacks lasted all of about eight and a half minutes, and the following naval attack about ten minutes.
Here’s what the Chicago Tribune reported in 2007:
The transcript published by the Jerusalem Post bore scant resemblance to the one that in 1967 rolled off the teletype machine behind the sealed vault door at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, where Steve Forslund worked as an intelligence analyst for the 544th Air Reconnaissance Technical Wing, then the highest-level strategic planning office in the Air Force.
“The ground control station stated that the target was American and for the aircraft to confirm it,” Forslund recalled. “The aircraft did confirm the identity of the target as American, by the American flag.
“The ground control station ordered the aircraft to attack and sink the target and ensure they left no survivors.”
Forslund said he clearly recalled “the obvious frustration of the controller over the inability of the pilots to sink the target quickly and completely.”
“He kept insisting the mission had to sink the target, and was frustrated with the pilots’ responses that it didn’t sink.”
Nor, Forslund said, was he the only member of his unit to have read the transcripts. “Everybody saw these,” said Forslund, now retired after 26 years in the military.
Forslund’s recollections are supported by those of two other Air Force intelligence specialists, working in widely separate locations, who say they also saw the transcripts of the attacking Israeli pilots’ communications.
One is James Gotcher, now an attorney in California, who was then serving with the Air Force Security Service’s 6924th Security Squadron, an adjunct of the NSA, at Son Tra, Vietnam.
“It was clear that the Israeli aircraft were being vectored directly at USS Liberty,” Gotcher recalled in an e-mail. “Later, around the time Liberty got off a distress call, the controllers seemed to panic and urged the aircraft to ‘complete the job’ and get out of there.”
Six thousand miles from Omaha, on the Mediterranean island of Crete, Air Force Capt. Richard Block was commanding an intelligence wing of more than 100 analysts and cryptologists monitoring Middle Eastern communications.
The transcripts Block remembered seeing “were teletypes, way beyond Top Secret. Some of the pilots did not want to attack,” Block said. “The pilots said, ‘This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?’
“And ground control came back and said, ‘Yes, follow orders.’”
Gotcher and Forslund agreed with Block that the Jerusalem Post transcript was not at all like what they remember reading.
“There is simply no way that [the Post transcript is] the same as what I saw,” Gotcher said. “More to the point, for anyone familiar with air-to-ground [communications] procedures, that simply isn’t the way pilots and controllers communicate.”
Block, now a child protection caseworker in Florida, observed that “the fact that the Israeli pilots clearly identified the ship as American and asked for further instructions from ground control appears to be a missing part of that Jerusalem Post article.”
Arieh O’Sullivan, the Post reporter who made the newspaper’s transcript, said the Israeli Air Force tapes he listened to contained blank spaces. He said he assumed those blank spaces occurred while Israeli pilots were conducting their strafing runs and had nothing to communicate.
‘But sir, it’s an American ship!’
Forslund, Gotcher and Block are not alone in claiming to have read transcripts of the attack that they said left no doubt the Israelis knew they were attempting to sink a U.S. Navy ship.
Many ears were tuned to the battles being fought in and around the Sinai during the Six-Day War, including those belonging to other Arab nations with a keen interest in the outcome.
“I had a Libyan naval captain who was listening in that day,” said a retired CIA officer, who spoke on condition that he not be named discussing a clandestine informant.
“He thought history would change its course,” the CIA officer recalled. “Israel attacking the U.S. He was certain, listening in to the Israeli and American comms [communications], that it was deliberate.”
The late Dwight Porter, the American ambassador to Lebanon during the Six-Day War, told friends and family members that he had been shown English-language transcripts of Israeli pilots talking to their controllers.
A close friend, William Chandler, the former head of the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line Co., said Porter recalled one of the pilots protesting, “But sir, it’s an American ship — I can see the flag!’ To which the ground control responded, ‘Never mind; hit it!’”
Porter, who asked that his recollections not be made public while he was alive because they involved classified information, also discussed the transcripts during a lunch in 2000 at the Cosmos Club in Washington with another retired American diplomat, Andrew Kilgore, the former U.S. ambassador to Qatar.
Kilgore recalled Porter saying that he “saw the telex, read it, and passed it right back” to the embassy official who had shown it to him. He quoted Porter as recalling that the transcript showed “Israel was attacking, and they know it’s an American ship.”
Haviland Smith, a young CIA officer stationed in Beirut during the Six-Day War, said that although he never saw the transcript, he had “heard on a number of occasions exactly the story that you just told me about what that transcript contained.”
He had later been told, Smith recalled, “that ultimately all of the transcripts were deep-sixed. I was told that they were deep-sixed because the administration did not wish to embarrass the Israelis.”
So you who claims to be a proud of our american servicemen continual is willing to call them liars and support the propaganda of a the foriegn state that brutally attacked them?
I’ve been noticing that Zionists and anti-Zionists on MW both agree on using the title ‘Herr’ and ‘Frau’ for people/opinions with which they disagree. I personally find it offensive.
Greetings from Berlin
Frau Antidote
“… but I’ll openly call you liars nonetheless because covering Israel’s ass is more important than you.”
I can’t believe that you think quoting the IDF on this incident has any credibility at all….
thank goodness there are actual survivors from that attack still alive today to speak up about it … but israel’s record is clear: they will ruin, abuse, maim, or kill any American they choose -anywhere- if they want to, and essentially have been given license to do so for decades … they are resisting mightily now that the equation has changed … look for them to do more horrible things before we finally get control of that monster
There is little basis on which to continue to assert that the attack was deliberate; all of the evidence indicates otherwise. I think Governor Perry realizes this as well.
I think Governor Perry realizes he has no chance to be president if he even hints that Israel was in any responsible for the deaths of 34 servicemen.
That is also bye bye to Governor seat….
Deflect, deny, ignore and lie. These are the standard tactics of the Hasbarat. Werdine and his acquaintances, (they don’t have friends) ignore any evidence that contradicts their own as if it hasn’t been presented. Deflecting from the issue is the first thing they try, nitpicking and splitting hairs as they go. Then come the denials, the ignoring of opposing arguments and the lies. We should expect this in every instance from the hasbarats.
Lack of candor regarding the USS Liberty incident is mirrored by the lack of candor so prominent in analysis of the neocons, who’ve been so influential in providing a political philosophy for American foreign policy in the ME.
“Stephen Sniegoski, author of The Transparent Cabal focuses on Danny Cooper’s book “Neoconservatism and American Foreign Policy”, to illustrate the lengths that recent mainstream books on neoconservatives go to in order to avoid pointing out the obvious connection between neocon Middle East policy and the interests of Israel, which as a self-proclaimed Jewish state the neocons support for ethnic reasons.” link to mycatbirdseat.com
First I want to publicly THANK Joe Meadors for his latest participation as a member of this year’s Flotilla to Gaza; for Stepping forward once again– in the same area that your ship, USS Liberty, was so brutally & intentionally targeted in a sustained, hours long, daytime attack by an “ally”, Israel.
I would venture to say that Joe, just as the other surviving “band of brothers’ from that brutal attack will live the rest of their lives with the memories of it etched in their brains. Those memories/details will ALWAYS outweigh the intensely politicized handwringing faux “investigations” which served only to hide / cover up the Truth as all know, including the HasbaRATS who continually serve their ‘Ministry of Truth where as Orwell wrote: ‘ignorance is strength’.
The details of that attack will also be remembered by the participating pilots, machine-gunners, napalm droppers, & torpedo-ists of the israeli war machine, especially including the lone pilot who refused to follow his illegal order to attack a clearly identified ally (US) who instead returned to base where he was arrested.
As a previous poster noted Rick Perry will never miss a beat praising the Israeli military, despite these survivors. He is just one more failed pol in a failed state in a failing national govt –especially when it comes to dealing with the Truth about the zionist state.
My heartfelt SALUTE to you Joe Meadors & the crew of the USS Liberty for your many sacrifices.
/just another US Vet.
You have the planes flying from the 6th fleet for almost 2 hours without reaching the USS Liberty before being recalled. This is from a speech by Capt. Tully, Commander of the Saratoga:
“A check with the navigation officer (now Rear Admiral Max K. Morris, USN,retired), revealed that we were only 15 to 20 minutes flight time distance
from USS Liberty and could be of immediate assistance.”
Where do you get your facts? IDF?
“Where do you get your facts? IDF?”
Not in this instance; the command history of the Sixth Fleet, and the deck logs of the USS Saratoga work just fine for me, thank you very much.
The deck log of the Saratoga states that the first aircraft launched to defend the Liberty was at 1602 (4:02pm)–an hour and fifteen minutes after the the naval attack on the Liberty had ceased.
The Command history of the US Sixth Fleet does not indicate when launches occurred from which carriers, but it records that the first launch of aircraft occurred at at 1450 (2:50pm)–three minutes after the Israeli MTB’s broke off the attack. It also shows that the aircraft were recalled at 1640 (4:40pm)–nearly two hours after the attack. Vice Admiral Martin, Commander of the Sixth Fleet, ordered the launch and the recall on his own initiative, and there is no evidence that Martin had any communication whatsoever with McNamara or the President concerning the launch and recall. McNamara did, however, issue an order for the recall at 1725–45 minutes after Martin had already done so.
Mind providing a link? I’m pretty sure you’re making shit up. Again.
Robert Werdine,
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer’s investigation and report unearthed the cover-up information you say you are accepting as fact here at July 4, 2011 at 3:23 pm.
Admiral Moorer wrote, “Those men were then betrayed and left to die by our own government.”
The Command history you cite has been discredited and proof of a coverup by the US government proven by these men:
Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, United States Navy, (Ret.) Former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
General Raymond G. Davis, United States Marine Corps, (MOH)* Former Assistant Commandant of The Marine Corps
Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, United States Navy, (Ret.) Former Judge Advocate General Of The Navy
Ambassador James Akins, (Ret.) Former United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
The Moorer Report
link to en.wikisource.org
The sources used are easy to find on the Internet.
link to thelibertyincident.com
Note the dissonances with timelines constructed from first-hand witnesses.
link to ifamericansknew.org
The following happened after the Israelis supposedly offered help by what I will show to be a doctored timeline above at 1503:
Doctored timeline:
First hand timeline:
According to the timeline constructed from first-hand witnesses the offer of help happened immediately after Washington was informed of the “accident” by the Israelis. This was not at 1503 but at 1630.
The doctored timeline cites mostly the 1967 Board of Inquiry and the IDF logs which the Chicago Tribune story I cited above refutes as lies. As for the 1967 Board of Inquiry the JAG, Captain Boston, that prepared it said the following as noted in the Moorer Report:
Both major sources used for the facts have been discredited while the Israeli apologists continue slandering first-hand witnesses. The true character of Israel’s online defenders has been revealed.
true. and it should be noted that the “official” court of inquiry findings that he loves to quote have never been accepted by the US navy.
Richb,
On June 8, 1967, on the fourth day of the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arabs, the USS Liberty, an American intelligence gathering vessel, was strafed and bombed by Israeli Warplanes and then converged upon by torpedo boats in an obvious effort to sink her. After a brief exchange of fire and a torpedo that slammed into the Liberty’s starboard side, the Israeli vessels abruptly ceased attacking, and extended help and immediate medical attention to the Liberty’s crew. 34 Americans died and 171 were wounded in the attack. The Israelis, who said they had mistaken the Liberty for the Egyptian warship El Quseir, immediately apologized to the US for the attack, and assumed full responsibility. They would eventually pay some $12 million in compensation to the victims and their families, to survivors, and to the US government.
A slew of American and Israeli inquiries, including a 1967 navy court of inquiry convened in Malta by Rear Adm. Isaac C. Kidd Jr., generally substantiated the Israelis’ explanation that the attack was an accident. But the inquiries also raised more questions than they answered, and these questions were by no means limited to those hostile to Israel; they were also harbored by some of Israel’s strongest supporters in the Johnson Administration. Why did the Israelis attack a neutral ship without provocation? How had they failed to see the Liberty’s flag or the painted markings on her hull after several overflights by their aircraft? How could they confuse the Liberty with the El Quseir, a smaller and slower ship?
For the next three decades the absence of satisfactory answers to these questions would help spawn a cottage industry of books and conspiracy theories asserting that Israel had deliberately attacked the Liberty and that the US government had covered it up. And Israel’s motive? It was asserted that the Israelis had done so to prevent the Liberty from revealing their impending seizure of Syria’s Golan Heights, a move that Washington was said to have opposed. It was also asserted that the Israelis may have done so in an attempt to blame the Egyptians and thus draw America into the conflict. Another theory, posited by author James Bamford, asserted that the Israelis attacked the Liberty to conceal a massacre of 1000 Egyptian prisoners in the Sinai. The Israelis, all had argued, had thus killed 34 Americans in cold blood and the American government had covered it up, influenced, aided and abetted by the all-powerful pro-Israel lobby, at whose pleasure they so cravenly serve.
In 1997, the Americans and the Israelis released a bushel of top-secret documents and other evidence in observance of the 30-year declassification rule on the Liberty attack, and these cleared up many of the mysteries that had long dogged the incident. It was shown that despite a warning from the White House to the American Sixth Fleet to keep its ships within a 250 mile arc from the Egyptian coast, the Liberty’s handlers in the NSA disregarded the order and put the Liberty within 12.5 miles of the coast to eavesdrop on Egyptian military communications with the Soviet Union. Five communications were sent by the Navy’s European headquarters to the Liberty for her to pull back at least 100 miles. However, due to the Six Fleet’s bulky communications apparatus, the messages got diverted to the Philippines and did not reach the Liberty until the day after she was attacked. Furthermore, the request of the Liberty’s skipper for a destroyer escort was denied by the Sixth Fleet CIC on the grounds that “the Liberty is a clearly marked US ship in international waters…and not a reasonable subject for attack.” A request by the Israeli ambassador at the outset of the conflict that the US provide a naval liaison to coordinate communications between the two countries was refused by the US, and thus no one informed Israel of the Liberty’s presence in the area.
The release of the material also went a long way toward discrediting Israel’s supposed motives for the attack. That Israel struck the Liberty to hide its seizure of the Golan Heights from Syria from the US is contradicted by diplomatic cables and other Israeli-American communications showing that Israel informed Washington of its intention to do so before the Liberty attack, and that Washington had not objected. The theory that Israel attacked the ship in order to blame the Egyptians and thus pull America into the war is belied by the fact that the Israelis were winning the war and, most importantly, that they made no effort to blame anyone and took responsibility for the incident moments after the attack. James Bamford’s assertion that the Israelis attacked the Liberty to conceal a massacre of 1000 Egyptian prisoners in the Sinai is unsubstantiated by any evidence whatsoever. Journalist Gabi Bron and IDF historian Aryeh Yitzhaki, the two sources Bamford cites to prove this “massacre” contradict him completely, and have both stated that no such massacre ever took place. Bamford’s third source, Marvin Norwicki, who was then a chief petty officer aboard an NSA aircraft spying on Israel, wrote Bamford a letter in which he stated in no uncertain terms his belief that the attack on the Liberty was a mistake. Said Norwicki to Bamford: “Our intercepts showed the attack to be an accident on the part of the Israelis.” Bamford thus knowingly and deliberately misrepresented the three sources he cited to “prove” his conspiracy theory. The powerful Jewish organizations who, according to Bamford, have supposedly have been working overtime to strong-arm and intimidate any attempts to investigate the Liberty attack were apparently not powerful enough to silence James Bamford.
The Chicago Tribune article you reference contains a number of inaccuracies.
Said the Article:
“J.Q. “Tony” Hart, then a chief petty officer assigned to a U.S. Navy relay station in Morocco that handled communications between Washington and the 6th Fleet, remembered listening as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, in Washington, ordered Rear Adm. Lawrence Geis, commander of the America’s carrier battle group, to bring the jets home. When Geis protested that the Liberty was under attack and needed help, Hart said, McNamara retorted that
“President [Lyndon] Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.” McNamara, who is now 91, told the Tribune he has “absolutely no recollection of what I did that day,” except that “I have a memory that I didn’t know at the time what was going on.”
It is fitting that McNamara should not have remembered a conversation between Admiral Geis and himself because no such conversation ever took place. There is no record of any communication between McNamara and Sixth Fleet at all on the day the Liberty was attacked except for a recall order issued at 5:25pm Suez time—two and a half hours after the attack had ceased. Vice Admiral Martin, Commander of the Sixth Fleet, ordered the launch and the recall on his own initiative and his alone, and there is no evidence that Martin had any communication whatsoever with McNamara or the President concerning the launch and recall. McNamara did, however, issue an order for the recall 45 minutes after Martin had already done so.
Said the article:
“Many of those who believe the Liberty was purposely attacked have suggested that the Israelis feared the ship might intercept communications revealing its plans to widen the war, which the U.S. opposed. But no one has ever produced any solid evidence to support that theory, and the Israelis dismiss it. The NSA’s deputy director, Louis Tordella, speculated in a recently declassified memo that the attack “might have been ordered by some senior commander on the Sinai Peninsula who wrongly suspected that the LIBERTY was monitoring his activities.”
This is indeed speculation, and it is dead wrong. There is no evidence that the Israelis positively identified the Liberty when it was “painted” (i.e., targeted), that they knew it was an intelligence gathering vessel, or that they intercepted any communications the Liberty was engaged in. And even if the Israelis were listening in, what could they have heard that supposedly pissed them off? Absolutely nothing. They could not have thought that the Liberty was monitoring their communications because they weren’t; the Liberty had no Hebrew linguists, only Arab and Russian.
There is no evidence that the IAF transcripts were doctored or inauthentic, and the notion that there is a “transcript” that existed showing a deliberate attack belongs in an Oliver Stone screenplay. It is a complete, total fabrication.
Said you: “According to the timeline constructed from first-hand witnesses the offer of help happened immediately after Washington was informed of the “accident” by the Israelis. This was not at 1503 but at 1630.”
Wrong. The original timeline comes from the June 1967 Court of Inquiry which was drawn from the deck log of the Liberty and corroborated by the testimony of 19 Liberty crewmembers days after the attack. It is also corroborated by IDF Navy logs. The timeline cited in the Tribune article comes from crewmembers reconstructing 40 years after the event. In any case, it is inaccurate.
The independent inquiry referenced by you in 2003 was conducted by Admiral Thomas Moorer and Ward Boston, a former JAG lawyer who handled the naval inquiry of 1967 headed by Adm. Kidd. The inquiry was animated by an affidavit by Ward Boston that asserted that the Johnson Administration had ordered Kidd to conclude that the attack was an accident “despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” Ward not only failed to produce a shred of evidence to prove this, but was contradicted by judge and former naval aviator A.J. Cristol, a long time friend of Kidd’s (who died in 1999) who produced a letter from Kidd to him in 1991 expressing his belief that the attack was a mistake. No credible evidence to this day has emerged to indicate that Admiral Kidd believed the attack was anything other than a mistake.
The investigation was largely ignored by the press; it merely re-hashed the arguments presented in the old conspiracy theories and ignored the new evidence contained in the declassified documents released in 1997. The credibility of the inquiry was further undermined by the militantly anti-Israel (indeed, anti-Jewish) tone of the statements contained in the reports’ conclusions. It asserted, without evidence, that there had been a cover-up “due to the continuing pressure of the pro-Israel lobby,” that “due to the influence of Israel’s powerful supporters in the US, the White House had deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people,” and that “a danger to our national security exists whenever our elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation.” Again, the inquiry presented nothing new, rehashed what was old, ignored the newly released evidence that undermined their conclusions, and made paranoid, unsubstantiated assertions about Jewish “power” that betrayed the blatantly anti-Israel bias of it’s panel members.
On balance, the evidence indicating a deliberate Israeli attack is not only conjectural, but luridly conspiratorial, and is bereft of any plausible, discernable motivation, and the evidence in all of the declassified material overwhelmingly exonerates Israel of the charge of having knowingly and deliberately attacked the Liberty, and further exonerates our government and military of having covered up any evidence to the contrary.
Audio tapes transcripts indicate that the Israelis did not know they were attacking an American ship in both air attacks and, five minutes into the second air attack, immediately disengaged when they did. All available evidence, including IDF Navy logs, indicate that the Israeli boat captain misidentified the ship, then engulfed with smoke, at 6000 yards distance at about 2:30 pm, incurred fire from the Liberty as they approached her, returned it, cut off the attack at 2:47pm pending further ID, got close enough to identify the Latin hull markings of the Liberty, and offered help and medical attention to the survivors at 3:03pm.
Those are the facts. The air attacks occurred in minutes, not hours, of intense combat at high subsonic speeds and long distances, rendering positive ID difficult to say the least, and the naval attacks lasted about ten minutes from distances of thousands of yards while being fired on, making positive ID also difficult. The only logical inference that can be drawn from them is that the attack was a case of mistaken identity. There is, in all the hundreds of pages of declassified material from both countries, not a shred of evidence to support the contention that Israel deliberately sought to attack and sink the USS Liberty. None whatsoever.
The attack on the Liberty was a classic case of friendly fire. After winning the battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, Stonewall Jackson was accidentally killed by his own Confederate troops. On February 22, 1940 a German bomber sank two German destroyers in the North Sea, killing 578 German sailors. During the 1956 War the Israelis attacked a British destroyer, the HMS Crane, that it had mistaken for an Egyptian Z-class destroyer. The largest tank battle of the 1956 War occurred at Abu Ageila where two Israeli tank units fought each other. On June 5, 1967 The IAF bombed a column of IDF Sherman tanks in the battle for Jerusalem, and did so again on June 8, just a few hours before the attack on the Liberty. Many, many more instances could be cited.
There was no cover-up, and no evidence of one. There is no evidence that Johnson or McNamara ever believed the attack on the Liberty was anything but an accident, thus negating any motive to cover up anything in the first place. The notion that Johnson “knew” of a deliberate attack on the Liberty, and covered it up, thus betraying those killed and wounded in the attack to further his reelection prospects with the Jewish vote, is equally baseless. Any conspiracy to cover this up would have involved not only Johnson and McNamara, but Chief of Naval operations David McDonald, US Naval CIC John McCain, Sixth Fleet Commander William Martin, and president of the US Navy Court of Inquiry, Admiral Isaac Kidd. All would be guilty of treason, and nothing less. To sully and defame the honor of these officers with such a heinous, unsubstantiated slander, is a calumny.
The notion that the United States government and military would, over the course of 44 years and 9 administrations all cover up what they knew to be a deliberate attack killing 34 American sailors and wounding 171 by any nation is preposterous. What sinister, far-reaching power was forcing their hand? The Jewish vote? Johnson’s reelection? Please.
GF:
Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on USS Liberty, the Recall of Military Rescue Support Aircraft while the Ship was Under Attack, and the Subsequent Cover-up by the United States Government: link to usslibertyinquiry.com
15 years after the attack an Israeli senior lead pilot confirmed it was a deliberate attack, all the pilots knew the ship was American, and all in the Israeli war room knew this too: link to rense.com
June 2007 revisit of the attack: link to counterpunch.org
Oct 2007: Chicago Tribune: Veterans, documents suggest U.S., Israel didn’t tell full story of deadly ’67 incident
link to chicagotribune.com
June 2009 update of attack on USS Liberty: link to seattletimes.nwsource.com
Lack of proper investigation of the attack and continued cover up is a national disgrace: link to turcopolier.typepad.com
New book: Ship Without A Country: link to shop.americanfreepress.net
2009 book shows Israelis knew they were attacking an American ship & so did Johnson conclude, but he covered it up: link to jamesmscott.com
Unless you were either on The Liberty yourself, or you have access to the same confidential military records that the Moorer Report investigators did, your copying of the coverup info (internet) designed to absolve Israel is a farce.
Saratogos launch and recovery was from 1602 to 1613. No American fighters were in the air for 2 hours. They weren’t that far away. Be more specific which carrier launched at 1405. Recovery time is important.
Col. Lang and others who read the original transcripts of Israeli fighters that attacked Liberty confirm that after the lead pilot identified the Liberty as US ship, he was told to proceed with mission.
The US wasn’t Irael’s ally. We didn’t fight for you but were neutral. In fact, we aren’t an ally today; we have no treaty with Israel that I know of that says an attack on Israel is an attack on the US.
US is NOT an Israel ally and vice versa. They have “special relationship”.
I should add those transcripts were US intercept and not the official IDF version.
The USS Liberty Timeline
Americans for Middle East Understanding
“June 8, 1967, Israeli forces attack the USS Liberty. They kill 34 American servicemen, wounding 171 others. It will be the highest casualty rate ever inflicted on a U.S. naval vessel, with 7 out of every 10 crew members killed or injured. It will also be the only peacetime attack on a U.S. naval vessel that, to this day, the Congress of the United States of America formally refuses to investigate. The facts, as known, are as follow:”
~~~~~
Click on link for the USS Liberty Ship timeline:
link to ifamericansknew.org
USS Liberty
Four Decades of Twisting Facts About Israel’s Attack on the USS Liberty
{James Ennes was a lieutenant on the bridge of the USS Liberty when the Israeli attack started and retired from the Navy after 27 years’ service. He is author of Assault on the Liberty.}
James Ennes
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
May-June 2007
“Since June 8, 1967, when Israeli air and naval forces deliberately attacked the American intelligence ship USS Liberty, Israel and its American supporters have lied about what happened.
The facts are simple and straightforward. Israeli forces reconnoitered the ship for hours in daylight with unlimited visibility, correctly reported the ship’s identity to their headquarters, then attacked the clearly marked and defenseless American ship by air and sea for more than 75 minutes, killing 34 men and wounding more than two-thirds of the 297-man crew.
After disabling the ship with a 40-foot torpedo hole and hundreds of canon and missile hits, Israeli torpedo men continued to fire from as little as 50 feet away. They ignored the oversize American flag that flew in plain sight from the mast while firing on medical personnel and firefighters nearby. Finally, as preparations were being made to abandon ship, they machinegunned the ship’s empty life rafts which had been lowered into the water awaiting survivors—a clear violation of Geneva conventions.
The lies started almost immediately. Even before crewmen could give their eyewitness accounts, the Israeli government concocted a preposterous “tragic accident” story, claiming that the Liberty had been mistaken for an out-of-service Egyptian horse carrier designed to carry 40 horses and their riders for the Egyptian cavalry of the 1920s. According to this story, the Liberty was recognized as American only after torpedoes were launched. Since torpedoes can’t be recalled or redirected, however, Americans died. According to the Israeli story, the attackers immediately ceased fire and apologized for their “mistake.””
~~~~~
Click on link for the rest/details:
link to ifamericansknew.org
I’ve been studying and analyzing direct evidence related to the USS Liberty attack for over five years. There is abundant direct evidence to prove the attackers were, at least, grossly negligent and used deadly force that grossly exceeded military necessity. Beyond this, there is abundant circumstantial evidence and signed affidavits, by people who say they once had access to direct evidence, that indicates the attacker’s knew their target.
One may read some of my essays and findings here: link to ussliberty-inquiry.us
(The “Gun Camera Photo Fraud” essay series may be of special interest.)
Regarding the air support matter: I agree with those who argue that the timeline for launch and recall of air support does not agree with Mr. Meadows complaint. The carriers (Saratoga and America) were over 400 Nautical Miles (460 Statute miles) from Liberty. The only available fighter aircraft that could have flown fast enough to provide timely defensive assistance (assuming immediate launch after Liberty’s distress message was received) were F4-Phantoms, but upon arrival they would have been out-of-gas after flying at near mach 2 speed. Instead, significantly slower, but longer-range, A4-Skyhawk and A1-Skyraider aircraft were finally launched — and later recalled after the GOI informed the USG that the IDF performed the attack.
Another available supersonic aircraft was the RA-5C Vigilante. It had abundant fuel capacity and speed to arrive at the attack site, in a timely manner, without being out-of-gas; but the RA-5C was configured for recon missions, not defensive air support. Nonetheless, its presence (especially flying fast and low) would have made an “impression” on the MTB captains.
Bottom-line: typical command decision delay, standard aircraft carrier operations delay, and physics rule out the possibility of any aircraft from the Sixth Fleet arriving in time to be helpful during the attack.
James Ennes of the USS Liberty says that IDF forces had identified the ship as US yet attacked the defenceless ship for over 75 minutes. In Robert Werdines version the IDF navy claim that the Liberty fired on them and that Israeli naval response lasted about 10 minutes. How do we reconcile that? On another tack, the fact that James Bamford’s three Jewish witnesses to the event recanted is not really unusual is it? It appears to prove the power of the Jewish lobby rather than refuting Bamford.