Oh my. New mood on campus. Sunday's Washington Post runs a review of The Attack on the Liberty, a new book by James Scott, the son of a survivor of the Israeli attack on a Navy ship during the Six day War in '67 that killed 34 Americans and that has never been adequately explained. Pro-Israel types always say, It's an accident, then a conspiracy theory. Not reviewer John Lancaster:
Scott cites transcripts of conversations between the Israeli pilots and
air controllers in Tel Aviv to show that at least some Israeli
commanders were aware of the Liberty's identity before the attack. He
also shows that many U.S. officials — including then-CIA director
Richard Helms — were privately scornful of Israel's explanation. Some
believed the attack may have been ordered by a battlefield commander
who feared that Israel's combat orders, if detected by the Liberty,
might somehow leak to the Arabs.
Scott clearly has his own suspicions, though he produces no
smoking-gun evidence to support the charge of a deliberate attack,
perhaps because none exists. In that sense, his book is likely to
disappoint the conspiracy theorists as much as it angers proponents of
the "fog of war" defense offered by Israel. But Scott is wise to leave
the speculating to others. The story is shocking enough as it is.
