Remembering the Men of the USS Liberty
Never investigated: Some of the 34 officers and crew members of the USS Liberty, murdered in an Israeli attack in international waters on June 8, 1967, are removed from the ship in metal coffins. (USS Liberty)
The USS Liberty was an American intelligence gathering ship. On June 8, 1967, during the fourth day of the third Arab-Israeli War, the Liberty was steaming in international waters in the Mediterranean, 60 miles off the coast of Egypt. It flew the American flag. It had clear, English markings on its hull (GTR-5). It was a bright, sunny day that posed no visibility problems.
At 2 p.m., the ship is attacked by air and sea. Out of a crew of 294 officers and men, 34 are killed, 73 are wounded, and the ship sustains $40 million in damages. The ship never sailed again. It was sold as scrap in 1970 for $102,000.
Israel claimed it made a mistake. The Johnson administration officially took Israel at its words, although Dean Rusk, secretary of state at the time, said the attack was “quite literally incomprehensible” given repeated Israeli reconnaissance flights before the attack and said that “at a minimum, the attack must be condemned as an act of military recklessness reflecting wanton disregard for human life.” Rusk’s words were unheeded, and the USS Liberty’s surviving crew members forbidden from discussing the attack publicly.
Subsequent research undermines Israeli claims that the attack was an accident.
A reconnaissance flights by the Israeli air force at 6 a.m. that morning reported seeing “a US Navy cargo type ship” outside Israeli radar range. “Throughout the remainder of the day prior to the attack,” a detailed, well-documented 2005 report to the Secretary of the U.S. Army by Report is filed by the USS Liberty Veterans Association noted, “Israeli reconnaissance aircraft regularly flew out to USS Liberty’s position and orbited the ship before returning to their bases in Israel. A total of no fewer than eight such flights were made.”
See Also:
- USS Liberty Memorial
- 2005 Report to the Secretary of the Army on USS Liberty Attack
- When Israel Lied to Lyndon Johnson About Not Introducing Nukes in the Middle East
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Text of fax broadcast:
USS LIBERTY INCIDENT: THE MISSING PIECE OF THE MIDDLE EAST PEACE PUZZLE
8 June 2009
June 8th 2009 marks forty-two years since the deliberate and unprovoked Israeli attack on the USS Liberty during the 1967 Six Day War. Congressman Devin Nunes recently presented the Silver Star to USS Liberty survivor Terry Halbardier for his exceptional gallantry under fire, and this magnificent — albeit belated — gesture has only renewed the resolve of the USS Liberty Veterans Association (LVA) to establish and preserve historical truth and to pursue justice.
June 8th also marks four years since the LVA formally submitted its report, War Crimes Committed Against U. S. Military Personnel, June 8, 1967, to the Secretary of the Army in his capacity as Executive Agent for the Secretary of Defense. (See http://www.gtr5.com/evidence/warcrimes.pdf) Thus far there has been no reply to this administrative gambit, which is a violation of rules and procedures and simple norms of human conduct. In the final analysis, the US Congress has the clearly enumerated mandate “To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations” according to Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the USA.
Contrary to rampant Zionist propaganda, there has never been a full, fair and impartial investigation into the attack on the USS Liberty. The hasty US Navy Court of Inquiry had been “an entirely shipboard investigation” according to its president, the late Admiral Isaac Kidd. The Liberty’s doctor, Captain Richard Kiepfer, said of this ex-parte investigation, “Never before in the history of the United States Navy has a Navy Board of Inquiry ignored the testimony of American military eye-witnesses and taken, on faith, the word of their attackers.”
When US Bankruptcy Court Judge A. Jay Cristol’s 2002 book The Liberty Incident denigrated the Liberty survivors and their petitions for redress of their grievances, the legal counsel of the Court of Inquiry felt compelled to break his decades-long silence and formally repudiated the court’s falsified findings as well as the judge and his book. (See http://www.gtr5.com/Witnesses/boston.pdf) Captain Ward Boston also alleged that President Johnson ordered the cover-up, and that this immoral command was carried out by Admiral John McCain, the father of the senator from Arizona. Senator McCain endorsed the judge’s deceitful book.
The USS Liberty incident and cover-up constitute a hot political potato especially for AIPAC driven politicians who shun constituent requests to take up the cause of the USS Liberty survivors. One wonders how any member of Congress could give a cold shoulder to the Liberty crew and still be fit for the duty of care of our twenty year olds in far-flung places like Iraq and the Persian Gulf. After all, Zionist Neoconservatives maintain that aircraft carriers are old fashioned and expendable and a costly drag in their quest for world domination. Is this why carriers have been placed within range of Iran’s supersonic anti-ship missiles? Is this how warmongers break eggs for their omelets?
The old paradigm of public relations trumping truth and justice prevents the asking of many questions from which vitally important lessons can be learned. For example, why the distribution problems with the 1980 book Assault on the Liberty, written by survivor Lieutenant Commander James M. Ennes, Jr.? Or, why did Menachem Begin call the Six Day War a “war of choice” and not of necessity? Or, why did the CIA predict a “turkey shoot”? Or, why did former President Carter point to the “peculiar confluence of Syrian and Israeli interests”? Or, the ultimate question, why would Israel find it necessary to attack a ship of an important ally? The short answer is: water, and the land on top of it.
The USS Liberty was a state-of-the-art electromagnetic surveillance (”spy”) ship that could not only overhear all electronic signals in the airwaves but also record them and transmit them almost in real time back to the National Security Agency, thus bypassing the traditional raw data collection process and the attendant risks of filtered data for political motives. The attack occurred on the fourth day of the war, when the only remaining objective point of the IDF was Syria’s Golan Heights. Unlike the current crisis in the Persian Gulf region, Israel felt no need for formal help from the USA.
Some have speculated that Liberty’s eavesdropping capability would have tipped off Washington about an impending attack on the Golan, which would have been problematic for the Israelis in view of the great pressure to call a cease fire; but there were many other indicators of Israel’s intent. It was already plainly obvious to many international observers that the IDF was shifting troops to the northern front.
Others say the attack was a false flag operation to put the blame on Egypt and draw the USA into the war; but Moshe Dayan had already declared air supremacy on the morning of the first day of the war. So an air attack by Egypt would have lacked plausibility, and any such ruse would have been abandoned under the circumstances that obtained. One simply cannot say Egypt no longer has an air force and then three days later say Egypt conducted an air attack on the USS Liberty!
Still others say the Israelis wanted to hide ongoing atrocities against Egyptian prisoners of war just over Liberty’s immediate horizon; but bad publicity rarely prevents the Israelis from doing what they do. The USS Liberty crew was not engaged in journalism and their data collections were kept secret as a matter of policy. Releasing such putative information would have been impossible because of the pressures of the Zionist lobby.
On the other hand, three egregious improbabilities best explain why the Zionists’ need for secrecy required such bold action to put out the USS Liberty’s “Big Ear.”
First, the IDF overran the “Little Maginot Line” atop the Golan Heights — with rows upon rows of concrete reinforced bunkers — in less than twenty-four hours, a highly improbable feat which the western press quickly dubbed a “miracle.” But had the USS Liberty been able to proceed unmolested on its NSA mission, a more mundane explanation for the taking of the Golan 1 2 3 would have been found; namely, highly irregular command, control and communications from a compromised Syrian High Command. Khalil Mustafa, now either a political prisoner in Syria or a “disappeared” person, arrived at this same conclusion in his 1980 book Suqut ul Julan (The Fall of the Golan). In fact, the only miracle to occur during the Six Day War was the USS Liberty’s staying afloat after a torpedo hit; even then it was clear the Israelis wanted no survivors as they machine-gunned the life rafts while waiting in vain for the listing ship to sink. But their high priority work had already been done when the first jet sorties put rockets at the bases of all of Liberty’s antennae. Only then was the Golan operation good to go.
Second, the Syrian Defense Minister at the time of the Six Day War, Hafez al Asad, later became the only man in world history to attain leadership of his nation after losing a significant portion of its sovereign territory! Asad rose from humble circumstances to start a dynasty and on the road to success he crossed paths with Mafioso regime-change specialist Sam Giancana, a lieutenant of David Ben Gurion’s friend Meyer Lansky and a frequent flyer to Beirut during the Johnson administration. Besides recruiting fresh talent, Sam pursued his avid interest in the botany of the Beqaa valley. He instinctively knew the importance of a diversified portfolio! The USA’s King of Syria-in-waiting in France, Abdel Halim Khaddam, was right in the middle of all this; whereas the current President of Syria, Bashar al Asad, an ophthalmologist turned president only by the accidental death of his brother Basil, was and is out of the loop. Khaddam, the governor of the largest city on the Golan during the Six Day War and later President Hafez al Asad’s right hand man for three decades, is now a multi-billionaire residing in a palace in France under the Zionist Neoconservative-friendly regime of Nicolas Sarkozy. As Sam would have put it, “Analyze that!”
Third, the Asad Dynasty is of the Alawite faith, an offshoot sect of the Shiite faith. The Alawites of Syria are a very small minority ruling a mostly Sunni nation, a circumstance that is best explained by the quiet meddling of a foreign power in the internal affairs of Syria. Now that Blair and Bush have put such emphasis on the difference between Sunni and Shiite, wouldn’t it be wise to pay more respect to the President of Syria? Syrians once again found the formal practice of balloting inadequate and in May 2007 filled the streets of major cities with an outpouring of acclaim for their leader, a show of respect unknown in the USA since the funeral of JFK!
Syrians know their leader Bashar al Asad cannot be bought. And Hafez al Asad knew that by dancing with the devil he would make the Zionists bite off more than they can chew, let alone digest. It only remains for Americans to know that the USS Liberty incident is all about the Golan Heights and corruption leading to collusion between certain elements within the governments of Israel and Syria. Their hidden agenda leaves the United Nations bereft of its true purpose, and shamefully undermines the integrity of the USA, whose treaty obligations are the “supreme Law of the Land” and require implementation of Security Council Resolution 242.
As Liberty survivor John Hrankowski said, “The story behind the story of the USS Liberty is the missing piece of the Middle East peace puzzle.” He did not flee from his station at a boiler that penetrating rockets threatened to explode. Won’t Congress lend him an ear?
The USS Liberty Incident: The Missing Piece of the Middle East Peace Puzzle
http://www.show-the-house.com/id5.html
Stephen M. St. John
Post Office Box 449
New York, New York 10185
Actually, this isn’t completely fair. It WAS investigated quite thoroughly–my father was a career Navy officer and close to people who handled the investigation. Also the pilots’ tapes have been released. It’s pretty clear it was an accident.
Wake up Trish. Or are you really just another Zionista provacateur cowardly using a girls name?
The “Pilot” tapes you mention are of helicopters flying in the area long after the attack and have been assessed by the intelligence community as “scripted”, meaning they were broadcast to deceive. The attacking aircraft tapes and camera footage were ordered to be destroyed (why destroy them if they were innocent?)
All facts show this attack to be deliberate. No investigation was conducted by the US Gov except on the conduct of the crew.
Please stay out of the conversation until you take ten minutes to do your homework. You embarras yourself and disgrace the lives of those who were murdered that day providing you the freedoms you obviously take for granted.
Trish is right about the transcripts, not so right about their interpretation, and wrong about the case ever being investigated. As Patrick Tyler writes in A World of Trouble, his new book on US-Mideast relations since Truman, “the transcripts also established Israeli negligence, even incompetence, in failing to confirm the identity of the vessel before the attack began, and this failure persisted during repeated bombing and strafing runs in which the Israeli crews threw torpedoes, napalm, and machine gun fire against a noncombatant vessel that was not returning fire.”