“I will never quit. My nation expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies. If knocked down I will get back up, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my shipmates and to accomplish our mission. I am never out of the fight.”

USS Liberty Survivors’ Creed

June 8 2017 — The attack on the U.S.S. Liberty by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats on June 8 1967, has almost faded from memory, with a younger generation completely unaware that a United States naval vessel was once deliberately targeted and nearly sunk by America’s “greatest friend and ally” Israel.   I take this opportunity to remind you that a USS Liberty survivor is asking for your help in locating a document. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

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“There has been a lot of media coverage mostly written by Israelis or American Jews regarding Israel’s ‘victory’ fifty years ago during the so-called Six Days War directed against its Arab neighbors but I have yet to see an account that mentions the fate of the U.S.S. Liberty. Nevertheless, the Liberty is not forgotten.”

Former CIA Analyst Philip Giraldi (June 8 2017)

 

June 8 2017 — Most media have decided to ignore the 50th anniversary of the USS Liberty tragedy. The Intercept, Consortium News, CounterPunch and Global Research are among the few exceptions.

The Intercept

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assault on the USS Liberty, and though it was among the worst attacks in history against a noncombatant U.S. naval vessel, the tragedy remains shrouded in secrecy. The question of if and when Israeli forces became aware they were killing Americans has proved a point of particular contention in the on-again, off-again public debate that has simmered over the last half a century.

The Navy Court of Inquiry’s investigation proceedings following the incident were held in closed sessions, and the survivors who had been on board received gag orders forbidding them to ever talk about what they endured that day. [Fifty Years Later, NSA Keeps Details of Israel’s USS Liberty Attack Secret]

CounterPunch

In Assault on the Liberty, a harrowing first-hand account by James Ennes Jr., McNamara’s version of events is proven to be as big a sham as his concurrent lies about Vietnam. Ennes’s book created a media storm when it was first published by Random House in 1980, including (predictably) charges that Ennes was a liar and an anti-Semite.

Still, the book sold more than 40,000 copies, but was eventually allowed to go out of print. Now Ennes has published an updated version, which incorporates much new evidence that the Israeli attack was deliberate and that the US government went to extraordinary lengths to disguise the truth. [Infamy at Sea: Israel’s Attack on the USS Liberty 50 Years Later]

Former CIA analyst Phil Giraldi

The attack was followed by a cover-up that demonstrated clearly that at least one president of the United States even back nearly fifty years ago valued his relationship with the state of Israel above his loyalty to his own country.

Government willingness at all levels to protect Israel even when it is killing Americans is remarkable, but it is symptom of the deep corruption that has generated a tendency to go to bat for Israel reflexively, even when it is damaging to U.S. interests and to the rights that American citizens are supposed to enjoy. I note particularly legislation currently working its way through Congress and numerous statehouses make it illegal for any federal or state funding to go to any entity that supports the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement, better known as BDS. BDS is a way to put pressure on the Israeli government over its human rights abuses that is both non-violent and potentially effective. Israel’s supporters have labeled BDS as anti-Semitic and have had some success in making any criticism of Israel labeled a “hate crime.”

So the treatment of the U.S.S. Liberty should surprise no one in a country whose governing class has been for decades doing the bidding of the powerful lobby of a tiny client state that has been nothing but trouble and expense for the United States of America. Will it ever end? As the Israel Lobby currently controls the relevant parts of the federal government and much of the media, change is not likely to happen overnight, but there are some positive signs.

The BDS movement is growing in spite of the pressure it is experiencing and will not go away. And opinion polls suggest that the American people are finally waking up to realize that they are sick and tired of the entire farce playing out in the Middle East under Israeli direction. Israel, which aggressively spies on us, kills our citizens and takes billions of dollars of our tax money which could be better spent here, is no friend of the United States and never has been. Just ask anyone who served on the U.S.S. Liberty. [Global Research — Phil Giraldi]

About Phil Giraldi

Philip Giraldi is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a columnist and television commentator who is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a group that advocates for more even-handed policies by the U.S. government in the Middle East. [WIKIPEDIA]

RELATED POST: Former CIA Analyst Philip Giraldi: “Morell’s bluster deserves a bit of a fact check”

UPDATE — Haaretz  (July 11 2017) — “The Americans have findings that show our pilots were aware the ship was American,” a newly published document by the State Archives says.

The book includes, among other things, a CIA document from November 1967 that is still partially censored. In the document, which is also on the official CIA website, an anonymous source is quoted as saying: “They said that [then-Israeli Defense Minister Moshe] Dayan personally ordered the attack on the ship, and that one of his generals adamantly opposed the action and said, ‘This is pure murder.’”

There is no dispute about the authenticity of the document, but clearly not every sentence written in an intelligence document is the unvarnished truth.

The new book quotes a story reported by former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight Porter, who recounted a conversation between an Israeli pilot and the Israel Air Force war room, which was allegedly picked up by an NSA aircraft and inadvertently cabled to CIA offices around the world:

“Israeli pilot to IDF war room: This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?

IDF war room to Israeli pilot: Yes, follow orders.

Israeli pilot to IDF war room: But sir, it’s an American ship – I can see the flag!

IDF war room to Israeli pilot: Never mind; hit it.”

Both the CIA document and the quote have already been published in the past.

Former DIA Pat Lang posted a very interesting story about this NSA intercept.

This conversation was intercepted by NSA assets with the 6th Fleet during the event.  USS Liberty was a SIGINT collector engaged in monitoring Egyptian communications during the 6 day War.  She was off the Egyptian coast when attacked repeatedly by Israeli aircraft and patrol boats.  She was a converted freighter and virtually defenseless.  The USS America aircraft carrier battle group was in the general area and launched a strike against the Israelis but on the order of the WH the aircraft were recalled.  That is a puzzling thing.  LBJ quickly had the matter buried under the snowdrift of a suppressed naval investigation.

In the course of my duties at the time I read the NSA transcripts quoted above.

Six months after the attack I was a student as a captain in the Military Intelligence Advanced Course at Ft. Holabird, Maryland. This was a year-long course for mid-career intelligence officers. We had a separate building for a classroom. The whole building was a SCIF. An MP checked you in and out of the building. All the students and instructors had TS/SCI clearances at the COMINT category III level. During the course I was required to take several electives off a menu, like a Chinese restaurant. One that I took was a survey course for senior officers in cryptology. This course was normally taught to colonels and generals at the NSA school at nearby Ft. Meade. There were several sub-courses; cryptanalysis, traffic analysis, direction finding and voice intercept operations. In the last of these, the instructor was a retired army cryptologic warrant officer. He brought his teaching materials from FT. Meade. Among them was a booklet illustrating voice intercept operations.

Among the examples contained therein was the English translation transcript of the chatter between the Israeli air strike crews and their higher command. The quotation from this transcript as quoted in the Haaretz story is correct.

New subject: to what extent was LBJ guilty in any way in the matter of these sailors deaths and wounding? pl

Telegram from the Israeli Embassy in Washington to the Foreign Ministry

Do you realize that the president is also the supreme commander of the U.S. armed forces?”

“In the grave situation that has been created, the only way to soften the result is for us to be able to announce to the U.S. government already today that we intend to prosecute people for this disaster. We have to publicize that in Israel already tonight,” according to a Foreign Ministry letter.

“This activity is the only way to create the impression, both to the U.S. government and the public here, that the attack on the ship was not the result of malicious intent by the Israeli government – I repeat, the Israeli government – or authorized groups in the IDF. For obvious reasons, it is crucial that our announcement about prosecuting those who are to blame be publicized before – I repeat, before – the publication of the American report here.”

U.S. Independence Day party held at the U.S. Embassy in Israel after the disaster

“When asked in my presence, how long the ship’s trip to the United States would take, the commander of the USS Liberty  replied with a smile, ‘About two weeks – unless we encounter Israeli planes again.’”

Tom Segev, in a 2012 article, came out against the various “conspiracy”theories.

“None of the four people who could have ordered an attack on an American ship – Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Mossad chief Meir Amit, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin – was daring and crazy to that extent,” he wrote.

However, Segev concluded with a slight note of doubt.

“Over the years, various pieces of evidence have emerged that seem to support Israel’s claim that the ship was fired on by mistake. However, a number of questions still hover over the affair, and these nourish the conspiracy theories.”

UPDATE (June 8 2018) — A new book will argue that then-President Lyndon Johnson ordered the Israeli Defense Forces to attack and sink, with no survivors, the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967 in an effort to promote regime change in Egypt.

“Blood in the Water: How the US and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty” by Joan Mellen, a professor of English and creative writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, explores this tragic episode of an attack by one of America’s allies that resulted in dozen of American deaths and nearly 200 injuries.

Deep in the midst of the Cold War, the NSA wanted to hear everything that the then-Soviet Union and its allies or proxies were saying anywhere in the world. The 456-foot Liberty — whose specialty was gathering electronic communications — was accordingly sent around the world.

On June 5, 1967, when Israel launched a strike against Egypt, Jordan and Syria — the so-called Six-Day War — she was ordered to proceed “at best speed” to the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

While Cmdr. William McGonagle, the ship’s captain, and his crew of 99 sailors directed the Liberty toward the Sinai Peninsula, inside the vessel, then-Lt. Cmdr. David Edwin Lewis, the Liberty’s chief intelligence officer and a 1949 graduate of Colebrook Academy, received a terse order for himself and the 194 other communications gatherers under his command: “Find out who’s doing what to whom.”

“But Israel,” said Lewis, during an interview last Wednesday at his Colebrook home, “didn’t want that” and on June 8, 1967, its military attacked the Liberty with the intent of sending her to the bottom with all hands. (…)

While recovering aboard the carrier USS America, Lewis said he had a conversation with Adm. Lawrence R. Geis, the Sixth Fleet’s carrier division commander, who “swore me to secrecy for his lifetime” and then shared that the Fleet had twice launched relief aircraft to the Liberty and that each time they had been recalled by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

When Geis challenged the second recall, Johnson came on the phone himself, the admiral told Lewis, who remembered Geis quoting the President saying that “I don’t give a damn if the ship sinks and all the Americans are killed. I will not embarrass my ally.”

In 2003, an independent commission released the Moorer Report that took a hard look at the incident.

The commission wrote that on June 8, 1967, the Israelis had aerially surveilled the Liberty for eight hours before launching an attack that lasted about 25 minutes “during which time unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on USS Liberty’s bridge, and fired 30mm cannons and rockets into our ship, causing 821 holes, more than 100 of which were rocket-size; survivors estimate 30 or more sorties were flown over the ship by a minimum of 12 attacking Israeli planes, which were jamming all five American emergency radio channels.”

Now 87 and the oldest survivor of the Liberty, Lewis keeps trying to understand why Israel did what it did 51 years ago Friday and he comes to some of the same conclusions that others, including Mellen, have reached: that the U.S. and Johnson had decided to destabilize Egyptian President Gamal Abel Nasser by blaming his country for the attack.
Asked what he hopes will happen when “Blood in the Water” is released, Lewis replied that he’d be happy if the book educated more people about what happened to the USS Liberty and why.

“It’s frustrating that the American people know nothing about this and that the U.S. perpetrated it,” he said.

UPDATE (June 8 2019) — Joan Mellen’s book “Blood in the Water” argues that the US itself was complicit in Israel’s attack on the American ship the USS Liberty in June 1967.

The author on the basis of meticulous research probes every detail to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sinking of USS Liberty in the midst of the 1967 War is the greatest moral and political scandal in all of American history. In what was long described as a ‘mistake’ or ‘accident’ Israeli planes and submarines attacked the Liberty, killing 34, wounding 174 American naval personnel.

Subsequent critical writing had established convincingly that the United States Government refused to authorize an inquiry that would have established that Israel deliberately attacked the ship of its ally. Those who took the trouble to read the critical literature or were among the surviving crew members were shocked by a coverup that was willing to overlook what amounts to the murder of American servicemen.

Mellen addresses these allegations in a definitive manner that includes evidence that Lyndon Johnson, as president, called off a rescue operation, which seems confirmed, and if properly pursued would seem to indicate an offense both impeachable and indictable as treason.

(…)

What happened in 1967 could easily occur in 2019. None of the pieces have been removed from the great geopolitical board game of the deep state. What Mellen demonstrates so clearly is that democratic elections and public trust are cast aside to satisfy the demonic greed of those within the government bureaucracy who are in the secretive business of slaying monsters in distant settings while pacifying their own citizens with lies and evasions.

We need to read and upon reflect upon Blood in the Water, asking ourselves two familiar political question: ‘what needs to be done? How can it be done?” It is little wonder that although published in 2018 this crucial book has so far flown far under mainstream radars. [Foreign Policy Journal]

UPDATE (June 8 2020) — All the officers and sailors of the USS Liberty and their families deserve to have their story told. So, why is there no interest from Hollywood?

Today, someone suggested an answer.

“And wouldn’t it be an homage to valor and justice if Steven Spielberg produces a documentary or movie to inform the world about this shamefully brazen act of terror?

Even if he dared go against tribal rules by producing such an overdue recording of history, not a single outlet would have the moral fortitude to air it.

Spielberg would be accused of being a self-hating Jew, and the spurious charge of Anti-Semitism, the sword and shield Israel employs to silence its critics, would thunder from the White House and through the halls of Congress.

This is the Albatross of Shame that will forever hang on the collective conscience of an America where truth and justice are disposed into the trash bin of amnesiac memory.”

[Israel Continues to be Rewarded for Killing American Sailors: Remembering the USS Liberty]

PS — A decade ago, there were serious rumors that Spielberg was about to direct a movie about Lockerbie. And then, for ‘mysterious reasons’, the project was cancelled. I wonder why? Considering that so many people in her extended family have researched the Pan Am 103 story, I wonder if Olivia Wilde (Olivia Jane Cockburn) could be interested is such a worthy cause? Just dreaming…

END of UPDATE

“USS Liberty: Dead In The Water” (BBC Documentary 2002)

On June 8th 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israel attacked and nearly sank the USS Liberty belonging to its closest ally, the USA. Thirty-four American servicemen were killed and over 170 wounded in the two-hour assault by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats.

Israel claimed that the whole affair had been a tragic accident based on mistaken identification of the ship. The American government accepted the explanation. For more than 30 years many people have disbelieved the official explanation but have been unable to rebut it convincingly.

Now, “Dead in the Water” uses startling new evidence to reveal the truth behind the seemingly inexplicable attack. The film combines dramatic reconstruction of the events, with new access to former officers in the US and Israeli armed forces and intelligence services who have decided to give their own version of events.

Interviews include President Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, former head of the Israeli navy, Admiral Shlomo Errell, and members of the USS Liberty crew.

REFERENCES

The 50 year cover-up of a mass murder of U.S. servicemen orchestrated by Israel and its friends — Global Research

Fifty Years Later, NSA Keeps Details of Israel’s USS Liberty Attack Secret — The Intercept

Infamy at Sea: Israel’s Attack on the USS Liberty 50 Years Later — Counter Punch

Update

‘But Sir, It’s an American Ship.’ ‘Never Mind, Hit Her!’ When Israel Attacked USS Liberty — Haaretz

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Remembering the U.S.S. Liberty — June 8 1967 [UPDATE: NSA Transcript]

Remembering the U.S.S. Liberty — June 8 1967 [2018]

Remembering the U.S.S. Liberty — June 8 1967 [2019]

Remembering the U.S.S. Liberty — June 8 1967 [2020]

Remembering the U.S.S. Liberty — June 8 1967 [2021]