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THIRTY FOUR AMERICAN SAILORS. By James M. Ennes, Jr., Deck Officer of the USS Liberty Fourteen years ago, one of the most serious peacetime American naval disasters occurred, and perhaps the most serious since the sinking of the battleship Maine in 1898. But while every bright schoolchild remembers some details of the explosion that led to the Spanish-American War, hardly anyone can recall the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, which cost the lives of 34 Americans, wounded 171 others, and brought a premature end to the Navy's program of dedicated electronic intelligence collection ships. The attack on the USS Liberty by Israeli forces on the forth day of the Arab-Israeli Six Day War is not widely known because the facts are politically and diplomatically awkward. The truth about the attack includes evidence that this was a planned, carefully coordinated and deliberate attack by a friendly power upon a known American naval vessel, and a botched exercise of Command, Control and Communications. But such knowledge is politically unwelcome in the United States, so the facts about the attack were withheld from the American people. In 1967, the US Navy operated a worldwide collection of ships under tasking from the Department of Defense. These ships consisted of United States Ships Oxford, Georgetown, and Jamestown, which operated on converted Liberty hulls; Belmont and Liberty, on Victory hulls; Banner, Pueblo, and Palm Beach, on converted 180-foot AKL hulls; and civilian-manned United States Naval Ships Private Jose E. Valdez and Sergeant Joseph P. Muller, on converted 338-foot T-AG hulls. In May 1967, as tension built rapidly toward what would soon become the "Six Day War," USS Liberty was diverted from her usual patrol area on the west coast of Africa to patrol a section of the Gaza Strip in the Eastern Mediterranean. The trip required 16 days of hard steaming, and when Liberty arrived at her assigned station, the war was four days old and almost over. I was Liberty's electronic materials officer. A 34-year-old former enlisted man, I took special pride in my Navy commission, my lieutenant's rank, and my specialty in cryptology. I was soon to be assigned officer of the deck for a special sea detail and general quarters. And as the ship arrived on station 13 miles from the Israeli and Egyptian coasts, I was to be officer of the deck for the forenoon watch. The ship had been reconnoitered throughout the night by Israeli military aircraft. Well before midnight, Liberty's cryptologic operators had detected fire control radar directed steadily against the ship by orbiting Israeli aircraft. But the supervisor on duty refused to believe the Israeli forces would direct fire control radar at an American ship, and so he insisted that the operators must have misunderstood the signal. The signal went unreported. At about 0700, as I relieved the watch on the bridge, I was told that a "flying boxcar," later identified as an Israeli Nord 2501 Noratlas reconnaissance aircraft, had circled the ship from a distance at sunrise. I checked our colors, found them dirty and ragged after several days of high-speed steaming and ordered them replaced. Two extra lookouts were stationed above the bridge, and I ordered them to keep an eye on the flag to assure that it never fouled. At 0900, the ship reached point "alfa," the northernmost point of our assigned patrol track. I turned south and slowed down to five knots, and at that moment we were reconnoitered by a single jet aircraft. I immediately checked our flag and saw it clearly displayed in a good breeze. We were headed almost directly into a four-knot wind, giving us nine knots over the decks, which was more than enough to hold the flag aloft. For the next several hours, the wind increased steadily, reaching 12 knots over the deck before the ship came under attack. At about 1000, the ship was circled three times at low level by two armed Israeli Mirage jets, each carrying 18 rockets under each wing. One of the pilots was heard reporting by radio to Israeli headquarters that we were flying an American flag, but this was no news to the Israeli war room. Duty officers in the war room had identified the ship long before and had plotted her track on a large wall chart, along with her name, her top speed, and a reference to her intelligence mission. And according to several reports, Israelis immediate reaction to the ship's presence was to complain bitterly to the United States via the Central Intelligence Agency, demanding that the ship be moved. The United States made several serious, almost frantic attempts to move the ship. As Liberty approached Gaza, the Joint Chiefs of Staff first sent a priority message ordering that the ship move 20 miles from the coast; the message was swamped by higher precedence traffic and was not processed until long after the crisis had ended. Hours later, a JCS duty officer phoned naval headquarters in London to relay an urgent JCS order to move the ship 100 miles from the coast; the telephone call was ignored, and Liberty's copy of a confirming message was misrouted to the Philippines before being returned to the Pentagon, where it was again misrouted, this time to Fort Meade in Maryland, where it was lost. Eventually, at least six critical messages were lost, delayed, or otherwise mishandled. Any one of those messages might have saved Liberty. None reached the ship. During the next four hours, the ship was visited five more times by Israeli reconnaissance aircraft, usually flying at very low level, and always close enough that I could readily see the pilot. On one occasion, the captain was on the bridge when the Noratlas approached at masthead level, causing him to warn me of a possible bombing run; the aircraft passed overhead at such low level that the deck plating shuddered. The continued close surveillance was reassuring. Israel was an ally and, although several Arab states were then hostile toward the United States, Israel clearly dominated the sky, and were comforted to be watched so closely, as this seemed to assure that there could be no mistakes. After being relieved of the watch at noon, I spent most of the noon hour on the bridge preparing for a general quarters drill scheduled for 1300. Finally, at 1400, all drills and bridge duties were completed, and I was preparing to go below after nearly seven hours on the bridge when three aircraft and three high-speed surface craft were simultaneously picked up on radar, all approaching the ship from the starboard quarter. Moments later, the ship came under severe and continuous attack, first by Israeli Mirage jets that momentarily knocked out our puny 50-caliber machine guns and disabled all radio antennas, then by slower Israeli Mystere jets, which plastered the stack, gun mounts, open bridge, and superstructure with an inferno of napalm. When technicians jury-rigged an antenna in order to call for help, radiomen found the frequencies blocked by buzz saw signals from the jets. Radiomen worked on their hands and knees and held microphones close to the deck to escape smoke and heat from fires nearby, and in less than nine minutes, they broke through the jamming. The carrier Saratoga, operating about 500 miles away with the Sixth Fleet near Crete, was first to answer. On the bridge of the Saratoga, Captain Joseph Tully promptly turned his ship into the wind and relayed Liberty's message to the Sixth Fleet commander, Vice Admiral William Martin, who was on the bridge of his flagship conducting maneuvering exercises. Because of the emergency, Captain Tully addressed the message directly to Admiral Martin with his personal callsign on the Primary Tactical Maneuvering Circuit (PRI-TAC) and then he duplicated the transmission by teletype and flashing light with information copies to naval headquarters in Washington and London. Admiral Martin immediately directed carriers Saratoga and America to launch aircraft to defend Liberty, but when the launch orders were executed, only Saratoga launched. Except for some F-4 Phantoms that were eventually sent up to defend the fleet, America did not respond. She had, according to some reports, been authorized to relax from an alert position that was imposed on much of the rest of the fleet. (The aircraft America did launch for air defense were thought by some to have been armed with nuclear weapons, since it was widely known that nuclear-armed weapons were in alert status, but it is now clear no such aircraft were launched.) Captain Tully sent a flashing light query to Captain Donald Engen on the America, and got no reply. Moments later Saratoga's aircraft were recalled without explanation by Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis, who commanded the carrier task force. America, which had no appropriate conventional armament in position, started bringing up weapons from below decks, while Saratoga, which _was_ prepared to defend the Liberty, was required to wait - apparently for White House permission. Meanwhile, unobstructed by Sixth Fleet air power, the three Israeli torpedo boats arrived on schedule to finish the job. The target was already in flames after 25 to 30 minutes of aerial strafing and napalm bombardment by perhaps a dozen aircraft. The boats approached at high speed and fired torpedos from 2,000 yards but, owing to a near collision between two boats at the moment of firing, the first shots went wild. One torpedo passed safely astern, where it missed by a bare 25 yards. Another passed so close ahead of the ship that it vanished under the point on the bow. "sounding like a motorboat" to Petty Officer Rick Aimetti, who stood, astonished, on the forecastle. And one torpedo made a direct hit on the ship's cryptologic spaces, where it killed 25 men and momentarily trapped at least 50 more in the flooded compartment. When Liberty miraculously remained afloat with a 40-foot hole in her belly, the torpedomen methodically machine-gunned exposed fire fighters and medical personnel for much of the next 40 minutes while watching the ship sink lower in the water. Finally, at 1515, after word came from the bridge to prepare to abandon ship, Liberty crewmen launched three rubber rafts and tied them astern. The torpedomen machine-gunned the empty rafts, plucked one out of the water, and set a course for their base at Ashdod. Liberty was alone, in flames, dead in the water, and sinking. Her radios were dead. Thirty-four men were dead or dying and 171 more were wounded. There was no sign of the Sixth Fleet, which only three days before had refused the ship's request for a destroyer escort and had promised to have air support overhead within ten minutes of any emergency. At 1545, the Sixth Fleet, having received Liberty's call for help 96 minutes earlier, finally launched White House-authorized aircraft in Liberty's defense, advised pilots of their authority to use lethal force, and filled the airwaves with plain language traffic supporting and describing the mission. Almost instantly, the Israeli government summoned the U.S. Naval Attache to the foreign liaison office to report that Israeli forces had "erroneously attacked a U.S. ship" and to offer "abject apologies." At 1632, the torpedo boats returned to Liberty to ask: "Do you need help?" The reply from the bridge was obscene. The attack, after more than two-and-one-half hours, was over. The coverup began a few hours later. First, the Secretary of Defense directed that only his office could release information about the attack. The order was repeated, paraphrased, and reinforced throughout the chain of command. Soon, Liberty sailors were reminded daily that they could say nothing about the attack, not even to members of their own families. A court of inquiry was to be held, the men were told, and nothing could be said until the court had completed its work. The court held hearings aboard the ship during emergency repair work at Malta, but the hearings were limited and some of the most important witnesses were not called at all. Lookouts who might have described pre-attack reconnaissance were not asked to testify. My own sworn statement as officer-of-the-deck was read in court, but inexplicably failed to find its way into the transcript. Deck logs for my watch were rewritten in my absence and without my knowledge, and without reference to the reconnaissance noted during my watch. Quartermaster's Notebook entries during the reconnaissance period were not filed with the record of the court. Photographs of reconnaissance aircraft and the ship's freely flying flag were presented to the court but not filed in the record of the court. Despite the oversights, however, an abundance of evidence did find its way into the record, although the record is such a jumble that expert knowledge and deep study is needed to make sense out of it. The record reflects reports from several officers and senior crewmen who told the court of extensive, low-level reconnaissance and described the ship's flag flying freely in a good breeze in plain sight of low-flying aircraft; the record includes descriptions of an extended, carefully coordinated attack that can only have been planned in advance; it includes reports of sophisticated jamming, which was limited to the frequencies needed to summon help. The record also includes a report of an Israeli excuse for the attack, which is so unlikely as to discredit even further any claim that the attack was a mistake. Unfortunately, none of that evidence found its way to the American public; it was classified Top Secret and locked away from the prying eye of the press. Instead, almost the only material declassified and released was that which supported the official claim that the attack was a mistake - the rest remained locked up in the top secret vault of the Navy Judge Advocate General. Meanwhile, our government complained bitterly, but privately, to Israel that Liberty _was_ identified before the attack, and characterized the affair officially as a "quite literally incomprehensible attack [which] must be condemned as an act of military recklessness reflecting the wanton disregard of human life." Such candor, however, was only for diplomatic channels. Publicly, the Johnson administration supported the premise that the attack was brief, spontaneous, casual and erroneous. Instead of describing repeated reconnaissance flights as low as 200 feet directly overhead, the U.S. government reported publicly that the attack was an understandable case of mistaken identity, which was preceded by only three very distant and rather casual reconnaissance flights. The Johnson administration ignored the ship's logs and testimony of ship's officers and reported that the faulty identification was understandable because the flag hung limp at the mast on a windless day, despite evidence of a 12-knot wind. Instead of describing a prolonged and carefully coordinated attack in which the ship was under heavy fire for 75 minutes and calling desperately for help for another 75 minutes, the U.S. government reported that the air attack lasted only six minutes and that all firing ended when the torpedo boats drew close enough to see our flag. Our government repeated Israel's claim that the ship was mistaken for the Egyptian freighter El Quseir, but failed to note that El Quseir was a 40-year old cattle boat, then moored at Alexandria, in poor shape, soon to be sold for scrap, probably incapable of leaving her pier, and a most improbable candidate for a Liberty-look-alike. The Liberty crew had been told early in the coverup that they would be free to talk to the press once the court of inquiry report was declassified and released. But it was not to be. The long-awaited freedom to speak was fraught with so many restrictions as to be no freedom at all. Men were told that they could say _only_ what had been said by the court of inquiry and that they must use exactly the same words that the court has used. "Therefore," men were told in the ship's Plan-of-the-Day and in warnings read to them at morning quarters, "there is nothing new that we would be able to tell them in an interview." The fact that the radios were jammed, that napalm was used, that life rafts were shot up in the water, that American forces failed to arrive during a 2 and 1/2 hour ordeal, or that most of the crew considered the attack deliberate, were all among details omitted from our government's published version of the court of inquiry report, so those matters were not discussed. Such orders, I believe, were an overreaction to any legitimate concern for security, and perhaps they were not even legal orders, but they served to intimidate the crew, keeping the story under wraps for many years. What has been the cost of the Liberty coverup? One obvious cost has been a deeply shaken faith among the many who know the truth. Some Liberty survivors have told me that they abandoned a Navy career because of their dismay over the attack; a Liberty officer told me that he would not want his son to serve in the military because he no longer feels confident that our country will support its forces in combat. But more important are the lessons that have not been learned. Seven months after the Liberty attack, Commander Llyod Bucher sailed the USS Pueblo from Japan toward North Korea on an intelligence mission quite similar to Liberty's. Commander Bucher was refused gunfire training for his gun crews, he was limited to 100 rounds of ammunition for each of his puny deck-mounted machine guns, was he was required by his seniors to wrap his guns in canvas "so as not to appear hostile." Like Liberty, he was assured that "in the unlikely event" he got in trouble, friendly aircraft would be overhead in minutes. When he did get into trouble, the fighter cover failed to arrive - just as with Liberty. Commander Bucher now believes that, had the full story of the Liberty attack been known to the planners and commanders involved with the Pueblo, the Pueblo tragedy might have ended quite differently. Instead, the Pueblo was attacked and captured under circumstances very similar to those seen so recently in the Liberty attack, and the American military response was the same: no visible reaction at all. Even before the Pueblo capture, the government took some behind-the-scene steps to protect the intelligence ships: those operating in particularly dangerous waters such as USNS Sergeant Muller near Cuba, were given destroyer escorts. Some consideration was given to flying oversize flags or painting the American flag on the ships' decks. When it became clear that adequate protection would add tremendously to an already expensive operation, the ships were removed from service and the technical research ship program was dismantled. Loss of this nation's fleet of dedicated intelligence collecting ships was deeply felt in the intelligence community. No other platform can quite do the same job. Clearly, other sensors are available, but no other platform can put 300 or more men within a few miles of an emitter for days or even weeks at a time, complete with many thousands of pounds of support equipment, and all with limitless technical resources instantly available by radio from home. So when the ships were lost, with them went much of their unique intelligence- gathering capability. Important among the abilities lost - beyond direct support to local commanders and SIGINT support to national authorities - was the ships' capacity to locate, collect and report sophisticated foreign electromagnetic signals for addition to the national data base of known characteristics of electronic emitters, where the knowledge could aid in the development of electronic warfare countermeasures. While other platforms can do much of this work, probably no other vehicle can do it as well, certainly no other sensor can cover a target as thoroughly. The extent of the loss may not be known until some distant commander is suddenly faced by a new and unknown electronic threat for which he has no effective defense. Military Review, in a recent review of Assault on the Liberty, aptly noted that "in its vital national interest, a state must, on occasion, be brutal..." Perhaps that, too, is a lesson to be learned from the Liberty affair: the lesson that a state, no matter how seemingly friendly toward the United States, is, above all, a sovereign, independent, self-interested nation and will put its own national interests first if forced to make a choice; that we cannot depend on the forbearance of a friendly state when that state perceives that we are doing something unfriendly, such as observing its secret war preparations from a neutral position; and that, if we do, we should be prepared to defend the observers. But because the friendly nation in this case is Israel, and because the nation of Israel is widely, passionately, and expensively supported in the United States, and perhaps also because a proper inquiry would reveal a humiliating failure of Command, Control and Communications, an adequate investigation of the attack on the USS Liberty has yet to become politically palatable. And so the lessons of warfare, diplomacy, politics, and history remain unlearned. Still Covered Up After 26 Years. By James M. Ennes, Jr., Deck Officer of the USS Liberty http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0693/9306019.htm Twenty-six years have passed since that clear day on June 8, 1967 when Israel attacked the USS Liberty with aircraft and torpedo boats, killing 34 young men and wounding 171. The attack in international waters followed over nine hours of close surveillance. Israeli pilots circled the ship at low level 13 times on eight different occasions before attacking. Radio operators in Spain, Lebanon, Germany and aboard the ship itself all heard the pilots reporting to their headquarters that this was an American ship. They attacked anyway. And when the ship failed to sink, the Israeli government concocted an elaborate story to cover the crime. There is no question that this attack on a U.S. Navy ship was deliberate. This was a coordinated effort involving air, sea, headquarters and commando forces attacking over a long period. It was not the "few rounds of misdirected fire" that Israel would have the world believe. Worse, the Israeli excuse is a gross and detailed fabrication that disagrees entirely with the eyewitness recollections of survivors. Key American leaders call the attack deliberate. More important, eyewitness participants from the Israeli side have told survivors that they knew they were attacking an American ship. 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. Key members of the Lyndon Johnson administration have long agreed that this attack was no accident. Perhaps most outspoken is former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer. "I can never accept the claim that this was a mistaken attack, " he insists. Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk is equally outspoken, calling the attack deliberate in press and radio interviews. Similarly strong language comes from top leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency (some of whose personnel were among the victims), National Security Council, and from presidential advisers such as Clark Clifford, Joseph Califano and Lucius Battle. A top-secret analysis of Israel's excuse conducted by the Department of State found Israel's story to be untrue. Yet Israel and its defenders continue to stand by their claim that the attack was a "tragic accident" in which Israel mistook the most modern electronic surveillance vessel in the world for a rusted-out 40-year-old Egyptian horse transport. Despite the evidence, no U.S. administration has never found the courage to defy the Israeli lobby by publicly demanding a proper accounting from Israel. ExAdmiral Questions Facts of Liberty Raid. WASHINGTON (AP) Retired Admiral Thomas Moorer accused the U.S. and Israeli governments yesterday of covering up evidence surrounding the 1967 Israeli attack on the American intelligence ship USS Liberty. Thirty four American crewmen were killed and 171 wounded in the combined air and sea attack June 8, 1967, against the reconnaissance ship, cruising in international waters 15 miles off the Sinai Peninsula during the SixDay War. Israel maintains its fighter pilots, who buzzed the ship for eight hours before the attack, and torpedo boat crews, mistook the Liberty for an Egyptian ship. "The Israelis maintain this was simply a case of mistaken identity, but this clearly does not hold water," said Moorer, who was chief of naval operations at the time of the attack. "In clear visibility, this unique ship was very easy to identify." "The Israeli forces circled the ship and then proceeded to attack over an extended period of time. There is simply no way the fighter pilots and torpedo boat crews could have come to such a conclusion," he said. Moorer, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined a dozen surviving crew members of the USS Liberty at a seminar during the annual convention of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington. He suggested the incident was a deliberate attack to prevent the Liberty from picking up signals that could have forewarned the United States of an Israeli military push into Syria the next day. "Based on the way this tragedy was handled, both in the United States and Israel, one must conclude there is much information that has not been made available to the public," Moorer said. The U.S. 6th Fleet, positioned nearby, received a distress call from the Liberty, and one carrier dispatched a squadron to search for the disabled ship. Before the ship was found, the fleet received orders from Washington ordering the planes back. Moorer called on Congress to, once and for all clear up the uncertainties, speculation and unanswered questions surrounding this tragedy, which is still thought by many to be a deliberate coverup on the part of the government of Israel as well as the government of the United States. By Reverdy S. Fishel. The following appeared in the Fall, 1995 (Vol 8, No 3) Issue of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence Although David Rodman's review of The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People, by John Loftus and Mark Aarons, notes some of the serious flaws in that work, his critique contains its own serious flaw that should gall anyone who knows a few basic, uncomplicated facts about Israel's 8 June 1967 attack on the electronic intelligence ship U.S.S. Liberty. All serious scholarship on the subject accepts Israel's assault as having been perpetrated quite deliberately, but Rodman says that the "most credible" explanation of the attack is that it was an "accident." To see so flagrant a misstatement in IJIC, considering its standards of factuality, is startling. Assault on the Liberty (1980), by James Ennes, a lieutenant who was on the bridge during the attack, was a very big seller; so the facts of the case need not be out of anyone's reach. In fact, Israel's attack on the Liberty was as accidental as Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. Government had posted the Liberty off the coast of Gaza, in international waters, to monitor developments in the region during the Six Day War. (The Liberty's mission will be discussed in detail below.) At dawn 8 June, Israeli aircraft began reconnoitering the ship, some flying so close that the pilots could clearly be seen, and as low as masthead height, obviously photographing it. This extensive observation lasted seven hours and involved eight separate observations, at about 0600, 0900, 1000, 1030, 1100, and 1130, 1200 and 1215 p.m. U.S. intercept stations twice overheard Israeli pilots reporting that the ship was American. The visibility conditions were perfect; the ship's American flag was flying free and clear in a good breeze. At 1400 a well coordinated attack by jet aircraft and torpedo boats began. Jets hammered the virtually unarmed ship with cannon and rockets, and napalmed it. Its forward machineguns were wiped out in the first firing pass, and whatever transmitting antennas survived that pass were disabled by the second. Nine minutes into the attack, crewmen jury-rigged a transmitter to an antenna. But the radiomen discovered that four out of five of the ship's radio frequencies, including the international distress frequency, were being jammed. Ironically, the only time Liberty could transmit was while the jets were firing their missiles. A frantic cry for help was sent to the Sixth Fleet, only 400 miles away and off Crete; despite the Israeli jamming, the Liberty's plea for assistance was received. The patchwork transmitting arrangement ceased functioning soon afterward. Torpedo boats soon arrived and continued the attack, firing five torpedoes, with one hitting and killing 25 men. They then leisurely circled the defenseless ship for 40 minutes, pumping hundreds of 40mm, 20mm, and 50cal. rounds at wounded men on deck, stretcher bearers and fire fighters. Thinking the ship was about to sink, the crew threw life rafts over the side; the attackers machinegunned those too. With increased radio activity from the U.S. Sixth Fleet indicating an impending U.S. response (many of the Fleet's messages bore "Flash" precedence), the Israelis suddenly contacted the U.S. embassy and informed it of this "accident." It was probably the longest "accidental" attack in the history of naval warfare, an hour and 15 minutes. Two separate flights of jets from the carriers America and Saratoga were recalled by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the first flight probably because Washington was not absolutely certain of the attackers' identity and was leery of starting a war with the Russians if they were the guilty party. The second flight was recalled after receipt of the Israeli explanation. In addition to the abovementioned circumstances which show that Israel's attack was deliberate the lengthy and careful surveillance, the radio jamming, etc. numerous other details belie Israel's professed innocence. They include: * The Israelis initially claimed they had "mistaken" the Liberty for the Egyptian ship El Quseir. But the El Quseir was only 40 percent the size of Liberty (4000 vs. 10,400 tons). The El Quseir was an old, rusted-out horse transport that bore about as much resemblance to the Liberty as a rusty VW does to a new Cadillac. The Liberty was arrayed with numerous specialized antennas, and an ultramodern (for 1967) 16-foot microwave dish, a device possessed by no other ship in the world except her sister ship Belmont. She bore standard U.S. Navy markings, which included a freshly painted 10-foot high hull number, and Liberty on the stern. * The radio jamming is by itself damning evidence that the assailants knew exactly whom they were attacking. Such jamming requires intimate advance knowledge of the target being jammed, obtained by extended monitoring of its signals. And this was selective jamming; it struck Liberty's frequencies and no others. Afterward, in one of their ever changing explanations, the Israelis claimed to have learned the ship's identity when they heard its distress signals. But the attack continued for sixty six minutes after the first distress signal, which the Israelis had jammed, was sent. Had this particular Israeli claim been true, they would have recalled the torpedo boats before they even reached the ship. * The Israelis claimed that the ship's U.S. flag hung limp because there was no wind. Later, when presented with the fact that the flag had been perfectly visible, they claimed that they thought that the ship was an enemy vessel flying false colors. The extended radio monitoring, exposing considerable advance investigation of Liberty's communication facilities, refutes this claim. * The Israelis claimed that the torpedo boats, after first sighting the ship, had called in the aircraft to attack after the ship refused to identify itself. This is an obvious lie, because the attack was clearly a preplanned and well coordinated one-two punch employing different branches of the Israeli Defense Forces. The jets were already intent on attacking the ship before the Liberty came into the torpedo boats' radar range. Directly contradicting themselves, the Israelis later claimed that their aircraft had called in the torpedo boats. * The Israelis eventually admitted that before the attack, their commanders had compared reconnaissance photos of the Liberty with Jane's Fighting Ships. But they claimed that before the attack they twice telephoned the U.S. naval attache in Tel Aviv inquiring whether the Liberty was a U.S. ship and were told that there were no U.S. Navy ships in the area. They claimed that having received a negative reply, they decided that the ship had to be the El Quseir. However, the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, and later the naval attache, emphatically stated that no such inquiries were made. The Israelis not only knew the ship's nationality and that she was an "ELINT" ship; they also knew she was the Liberty herself. * Immediately preceding the attack, an Israeli pilot recognized Liberty as a U.S. ship and radioed this information to IDF headquarters. He was instructed to attack anyway. This dialogue was intercepted at the U.S. embassy in Beirut. Former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight Porter revealed the existence of this intercept in 1991. * Finally, there is evidence, circumstantial but clear, of a relationship between the attack on the Liberty and a postponement of Israel's planned attack on the Golan Heights. The Golan attack was scheduled for 11:30 a.m. on 8 June; the Liberty was spotted by 6 a.m. or earlier; last minute orders delayed the Golan attack; the Liberty was put out of commission; and the Golan attack occurred shortly thereafter. The vaunted IDF made very few mistakes in that war. After the attack Secretary of State Dean Rusk recommended a strong response, and Presidential Counselor Clark Clifford advised President Johnson to treat Israel in the same manner as the U.S. would treat the Soviets or the Arabs if they had committed the atrocity. The U.S. would certainly not have taken this insult in silence had the offender been any country but Israel. But President Johnson stoically accepted Israel's explanation. The Navy conducted a Court of Inquiry, which ignored and even suppressed testimony that the attack had been deliberate; it dealt only with the actions and performance of the Liberty crew. State Department legal advisor Carl Salans performed an assessment of Israel's official explanation; with only the Navy's highly incomplete and erroneous preliminary investigation to go on, he thoroughly discredited the Israeli Government's claims of innocent error. The logical next step was to confront the Israelis with his findings, but that was not done. The U.S. Government's inaction was completely out of keeping with the outrageousness of the attack. What was Israel's motive for this act? The scheduling of the Israeli assault on the Golan Heights for 8 June was a move to defeat an intense effort in the United Nations to halt the war, a ceasefire having been scheduled for 9 June. Such pressure was also being applied by the U.S. Government. The IDF leaders were under pressure to acquire the Golan before the ceasefire was imposed, preferably without being labeled the aggressor (as in 1956 when Israel had colluded with Britain and France to attack Egypt). But with all the pressure to attack Syria, and after all the preparations to do so, the Golan attack was suddenly called off within hours of its scheduled commencement. Why? Obviously, someone in the IDF leadership feared the Liberty might intercept some of the many signals then filling the air that would expose Israel's preparations for invasion. They might then be forced into a ceasefire before they conquered the coveted territory. Loftus and Aarons's book, the subject of Rodman's critique, is a collection of preposterous and demonstrably false theories and allegations. With regard to the Liberty attack, the only significant detail they get right is that it was deliberate, but they actually make the ludicrous statement that Israel's attack was justified because "the Liberty was gathering electronic information on Israeli troop movements and sending it to British intelligence, which in turn relayed it to the Arabs." Not only does this statement lack any genuine authentication, it also betrays a conspiracy mindedness that makes all their other concoctions suspicious. Another claim born of this same free-ranging inventiveness is that "U.S. intelligence attempted to curry favor with the Arab oil producers by giving the precise details of Israel's order of battle to the Arabs during the war." Other ridiculous claims: * "Civilian `spies' of the National Security Agency (NSA)" had wrested control of i.e. hijacked the Liberty from the U.S. military and the Joint Chiefs of Staff; "Commander McGonagle [Liberty's skipper] did not know it at the time, but the real masters of his ship were the civilian spies of the NSA." That U.S. ELINT ships' collection assignments were drawn up at NSA is well known; it is not the big secret that the authors make it. They state that only an individual known as an NSA "Major" and two others "had access to the supersensitive communications areas" on the ship, where in reality well over 100 men worked. The individual they refer to was Allan Blue, a 23 year old Arabic linguist, who was killed. Blue was a GS7 a relatively low level civilian NSA employee, not a "major"; and NSA certainly does not confer military rank. * "The Israelis tried to jam the ship's frequencies, to no effect. The Liberty's equipment was much too sophisticated to be stopped in that fashion." Anyone who wants to believe this statement should ask the American radiomen who were desperately trying to find an open frequency with which to alert their potential rescuers, while their comrades were falling dead around them. * Liberty "was there to spy on the Jews. That was its only mission." Had this been the case, Hebrew linguists would have been aboard; there were none. There were at least four Russian and three Arabic linguists aboard, however; that indicates the ship's intelligence targeting. Additionally, Ennes has recently disclosed that a special tasking of the ship, apart from gathering all the information on every party it could, was to determine if TU95 "BEAR" Bombers of the Egyptian Air Force were controlled and flown by Soviets. Ennes also says that "at least two men recall that their orders were to concentrate on Soviet intercepts and to ignore any Israeli signals they happened to hear. The order was `Note the signal and, if it is Israeli, drop it.'" Loftus and Aarons's other falsities concerning the Liberty incident let alone those included in the rest of their work are far too numerous to mention here. They continually cite unidentified sources "confidential interviews" of "former CIA officer[s]" and "former NSA employee[s]," etc; thus they are free to invent whatever suits them. Yet Rodman says this work "deserves to be taken seriously." They allege "a massive espionage campaign against Jewry and Israel by western intelligence agencies," and claim that these agencies "aided Arab armies during the many ArabIsraeli wars." Rodman terms this work "an important subject that has thus far not received its due." Rodman's treatment of the Liberty attack resembles the accounts put forth by the Israeli Government. He repeats Israel's obviously false initial explanation of mistaken identity, stating that the Liberty was "roughly the same size and shape" as the El Quseir. He admits to some knowledge of the arguments regarding the deliberateness of the attack mentioned above; therefore he cannot claim innocence, but he states that those who maintain that the attack was deliberate "are unable to present incontrovertible evidence" of their claim. He would have us believe that "Until proved otherwise, the official explanation remains the most credible." The only official explanations, apart from the ever changing ones presented by Israel, are the seriously incomplete Navy inquiry and the Salans report, which fails to address much of the evidence described above. These lack authority because of those flaws. But while the U.S. Government has never officially examined most of the above circumstances or admitted that Israel's attack was deliberate, it also has never accepted the Israeli claim that the attack was in error. Liberty survivors have presented voluminous evidence of Israel's guilt to the U.S. Congress and have requested an investigation, but without success. As to the motivation for the attack, Rodman omits the oft-mentioned theory concerning the Golan invasion presented above, which is plausible, probable, and damning. However, he states that "many unofficial accounts of the incident assert that the attack was deliberate, part of a devious Israeli plot." The many "unofficial" accounts that assert Israel's guilt have been provided by persons of such stature and reputation as Dr. Louis Tordella, NSA's Deputy Director in 1967, who termed one of Israel's explanations "a nice whitewash"; a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer; former Secretary of State Dean Rusk; and Liberty survivors. One of Rodman's errors is of a different nature: he frequently misuses the term antisemitic. Semites are descendants of Shem Jews and Arabs. Rodman even applies the term antisemite to Saudi King Ibn Saud, himself a semite. Liberty survivors, some of them Jewish, have been given this label simply for calling attention to Israel's attack, as are many other people who criticize the Israeli Government. Rodman states that the Liberty attack caused "some" loss of life. Thirty four Americans killed, 171 wounded 205 purple hearts out of a crew of 293. Some casualties indeed. Ennes's Assault on the Liberty, is out of print, but autographed copies with updating enclosures are available through Terry's Book Store, P.O. Box 789, Woodinville, WA, 98072, for $20. A more recent study, also definitive, is John Borne's book, The USS Liberty: Dissenting History vs. Official History. Borne's work is especially valuable for findings that have turned up in the years since Ennes's book came out. It is available by writing to AET, PO Box 53062, Washington, D.C., 20009, for $13.95. Numerous survivors' accounts and official documents are in the author's possession, such as the "Israeli Preliminary Inquiry 1/67," otherwise known as the "Yerushalami Report,"; the State Department's "Salans Report;" the report of the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry, and State Department telegrams. The Liberty literature also includes numerous articles in such periodicals as the Naval Law Review and Middle East Policy. Two other books are devoted to the attack: Conspiracy of Silence and Pearl Harbour II; both contain many serious factual errors and outlandish claims, the latter being the source of the "NSA Major" myth that is repeated by Loftus and Aarons. Warriors For Jerusalem by Donald Neff, provides a good account of the UN proceedings dealing with the Six Day War and of the Israeli Syrian conflict during that period. We had been surveilled all morning and part of the afternoon by Israeli forces. They knew who we were. We heard them reporting over radio who we were and how we were sailing and where we were sailing. They saw the flag and everything else. We were in international waters. At 2:00 the action started when we had just completed a general quarters drill. I had just come out or the engine room to get some fresh air when the firing started. That's when I took my shrapnel hit, nothing fantastic but pieces of shrapnel. I went back to the boiler room and prepared to start lighting off number one boiler to get steam to get out of there. This persisted for probably 25 or 35 minutes with the aircraft rocketing us and hitting us with everything they had, napalm and cannon fire and after that there was a comparatively small lull. We heard that they were getting hit all over the place and we could see the torpedo boats moving in and firing torpedoes at us, and then one hit and put a 40 foot hole in the side of the ship and knocked all power off. By that time the ship's interior was blackened, you couldn't see anything except with battle lanterns. We were still in the process of lighting off the boiler and trying to head the ship out to see. The ship was listing and we got the word to prepare to abandon ship. We were ordered by Lieutenant Golden who was in charge in the engine room to exit, and the last one out of there was myself, and I had to cut off the boilers' fuel supply. I was the last one. We got outside at the main battle dressing station where a lot of injuries were. We were just about to go topside when we heard a lot of shots and canon fire and machine gun fire. Evidently they were trying to pick off people who were fighting fires and trying to put life rafts in the water. They were picking these people off with machine guns. We were told, I didn't see them, but we were told that they were shooting up the life rafts that were in the water, so needless to say they weren't going to take survivors at all. And so we headed back to our spaces and did not abandon ship. We stayed with it. And it continued probably for another 40 minutes with them shooting and finally after seeing that the ship was not going to sink they grabbed one of the life rafts and they exited the scene. And through that, the helicopters had come over loaded with Israeli troops. This lasted almost two hours and finally we got the ship turned around and boilers lit off and headed out to sea. We also heard that nine minutes into the attack we had reached a message to the Sixth Fleet and they were on their way with aircraft to help us. Little did we know until afterwards that three sets of aircraft were turned back. To be lied to is the supreme insult, it carries the implication that you are stupid enough to be misled and manipulated, thereby affirming the liars own superiority. To be successfully lied to confirms it. http://www.ussliberty.org/lentini2.txt Liberty survivor Joe Lentini replies to a critic whose email is appended below:: Dear Mr. Brown: I was on board the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, and I can tell you without any doubt, the recount of the attack in the Ennes book is accurate and that there is much more to this issue than you are obviously aware. First, let me thank you for caring enough to even look into it. So many Americans know nothing about the attack because of the politics involved, and so many others have a dual allegiance to the US and Israel and, when it comes to any problems between the two countries, they always lean towards Israel and so cannot see what happened in 1967 or, for that matter, in more recent history (e.g., Pollard spy case and the slaughter of Palestinians). There is an enormous amount of material which is considered documented and accurate by both this country and Israel which clearly brings into question the accidental attack claim by the State of Israel. There have been discoveries over the last 35 years that have revealed attacking Israeli pilots identifying our ship and being told to attack anyway, identified US military intelligence personnel who were privy to various messages and transcripts clearly indicating the attack was a coordinated effort, and the sworn testimony of the survivors who, after all, were there. You may locate much of this material, and see the documentation for yourself, by simply doing a search on the Internet for "USS Liberty" and following all links. You will see many sites with accurate information, and some with not so accurate information, and many with a clear bias towards protecting Israel's reputation. As for Jay Cristol's book - have not read it totally yet, but I can tell you without any doubt that much of his information and argument for the attack being an accident is based on half truths and highly questionable Israeli reports. Let me give you something to think about, I hope, and something that will encourage you to look deeper into this historical moment. 1. The ships logs clearly indicate tracking first the torpedo boats and then the high-speed aircraft passing over them, both on a direct line to the USS Liberty. 2. The planes did not circle the ship trying to identify the ship, but, instead, approached the ship bow-on and came in shooting. 3. The planes were flying well below their top speed and many survivors who were fighting fires from the napalm and otherwise were topside performing assigned damage control noted that these planes were unmarked - this at a time when Israel was in control of the skies and had no reason to paint out the Star of David and other clearly Israeli markings. 4. A high ranking Israeli officer was interviewed several years later and clearly states that Israel had identified the USS Liberty by June 7, 1967. This is consistent with the several documented overflights by Israeli slow-flying aircraft on the day prior to the attack which were clearly taking our picture for identification purposes. 5. Our flag was flying until the jets shot it away. We then hoisted another, and that was also shot away. Finally, we ran up the huge holiday flag - one of these shot-up flags is on display at the museum at the NSA Cryptologic Museum at Ft. Meade, Maryland. We were slowly sailing into the wind so the flag was standing out at all times and, while the pilots might not have seen it in a bow-on or stern-on attack posture, they certainly saw it as they crisscrossed the ship, attacking from both port and starboard. Please note that these pilots saw well enough to hit the four 50 cal machine gun mounts with at least two rockets each, put at least one rocket through all topside hatches/doorways, hit all antenna pods with two or more rockets, blew up the two small boats on board, and hit the only gasoline drum on board. Again, their speed allowed this degree of accuracy and they obviously had knowledge of our strategic targets. 6. One of the Israeli torpedo boat captains was also interviewed several years later and he said that, after one of the five torpedoes had hit the ship, he saw the colors of our flag and thought he had hit a Russian ship. Kind of puts a kink in the Israeli claim of June 1967 that we had no flag, doesn't it. 7. Cristol and Israel both give credibility to the Israeli claim of 1967 that the torpedo boats misread their radar to the point that they thought the "unknown" ship off the Sinai Peninsula was traveling in excess of 20 knots and that local Israeli field commanders reported shelling of their position from that area of the Med. Possible? Sure! But take the time to look a little deeper please - The torpedo boats identified us as the El Quseir, an Egyptian troop and animal carrier
8. There are documents available from the LBJ Library that clearly indicate that LBJ wanted to seek reelection, did not want to offend this country's Jewish lobby, and had specific recommendations from his political advisors to stay at arm's length from anything having to do with the USS Liberty. 9. There are a number of plausible reasons for the attack, and
Oh yes, there are many men present that day who saw for themselves the Israeli torpedo boats deliberately machine gun the life rafts and we have pictures taken just after the attack ended (about the same time as it became known we got word out to the fleet about the attack) which clearly show all life raft positions empty or with destroyed rafts clearly visible. One other fact you might find interesting which relates back to the jets - their speed that day allowed them to target fire hoses in use by damage control personnel, and the men using them, during the attack. Again, multiple eyewitness accounts are documented concerning this and the use of "burning jelly" canisters dropped on our decks. If you truly care about the truth, take the time to look into this more deeply. Consider the growing number of senior military and political people who publicly denounce this attack as deliberate. Consider the documented facts, many of which are agreed to by both sides. Consider the contradictions in the "official" story over these many years, and consider Israel's history, short though it may be, which is full of examples of drastic military actions against friend and foe alike, military and civilian, in the name of Israel's security. Finally, although it has nothing to do directly with the attack on the USS Liberty, I mention the Pollard case. Strange that you seem to be defending him when it is documented fact that Israel paid him to spy against his country. Let me put it another way, Israel, our "friend," paid him to spy against their claimed ally, the US. Is it really so hard to believe that this same "ally" found it to be in their best interests to attempt to sink a US intelligence ship with all hands back in 1967? Cristol's book, and several others by Israeli writers or friends of Israel, reaches the wrong conclusions. It does not take much more that a quick look at the documented facts of this case to realize that the Israeli claim of an "accident" fails to hold up. I hope you will take the time to dig deeper and, keeping an open mind about this subject, consider all possibilities. Again, thank you for your interest in this historical event. Joseph C. Lentini, CTOC USN-ret., USS Liberty Survivor. From: Maxwell Brown I have just completed reading the book by A. Jay Cristol, The Liberty Incident and I have to frankly say he beyond any doubt shows the attack on the Liberty to be mistaken identity. He also shows how Jim Ennes's book was based on hearsay. Mr. Ennes has made some wild claims and outright lies. One lis is how the Israeli motor torpedo boats did not have any identification. However William McGonagle testified he ordered the gunners not to fire on the boat as he saw the Israeli flag. Also he says the attack jets were flying so fast it would have been impossible to detect any markings on it, such as the Star of David. He also shows how to see the American flag, you have to have been within a certain distance and not flying past a certain speed. yet you continue to claim that they "Must" have seen the flag. Also Ennes claims that then US Senator William Fullbright said that Lyndon Johnson ordered him to cover up the attack. One problem. Fullbright denies this and Ennes hears it 3rd party. Ennes was injured at the beginning of the attack, thus relies on full hearsay. Your theories on why the ship was attacked are nonexistent. The theory that Israel didn't want the US to know about their imminent invasion of Syria is dead and confirmed by John Borne, as proof is shown that Israel told the US they were invading Syria hours before the Liberty was attacked. The NEW theory, and their appears to be a new one every week is the alleged Israeli massacre of Egyptian POW's. Considering that Egypt NEVER accused Israeli of this and has had the Sinai for 20 years and yet has found no mass graves, makes that theory useless. Also it was said that the Liberty intercepted messages of Israeli killing those POW's. One problem, the claim of a POW massacre was that it took place on June 7, one day BEFORE the Liberty reached Alpha Point. Do you have any other theories to propagate? Lastly, Mr. Ennes is now in full anti-Jewish conspiracy mode. He said he has friends in Teheran, Iran. What a shock. Iran, a nation that hates Jews, a nations that blew up the Israeli embassy in Argentina and has executed Jews on alleged spying charges, is pro-Liberty. Also have we forgotten on how Iran financed the attack of the US Marines in Lebanon in 1983? Also the interviewer mentions how Pollard gave away the identity of US agents in Eastern Europe. This is a lie. It never happened. Ennes will associate with anyone who hates Israel. Anyone. I am still waiting for your "dissection" of the Cristol book. One has to wonder what excuse you'll use this time. Max Brown ............ The U.S.S Liberty was truly blessed with a lot of very fine young men and officers and such a needless death. "ACCIDENT-my Ass". The men in my division stayed in the fireroom knowing death was on the way and we were only doing our job but I feel the BT's should of at least been considered for a Bronze Star. Mr. Golden had sent all the young men of the machinist mate spaces, but Chief Brooks and Fireman Benjamin Ashe and himself to safety some decks above. This isn't sour grapes-just a passing thought............. Immediately following the attack I was threatened with court-martial if I discussed the incident with the press or anyone else. One of the warnings was also not to discuss the attack even with my immediate family or friends. In my case these warnings were repeated upon my transfer from each duty station I left along with the standard security clearance de-briefing. I was also periodically taken aside and reminded of the original threat even when not being transferred. Though never told the reason for these one on one "advisory" sessions, I personnaly believe they were the result of some action that raised the possibility of further publicity that our government wanted to surpress. I want no personal recognition, but I will not rest until the 34 brave men that sacrificed their lives are finally given the long overdue honor they so justly deserve. Hopefully with the help of all concerned this long denied justice will be forthcoming in the not so distant future. Ken Ecker USS Liberty For more on this outrageous attack by our so called "friend" see http://ussliberty.org |