New revelations in attack on American spy ship
Veterans, documents suggest U.S., Israel didn't tell full story of deadly '67 incident
By John Crewdson
Bryce Lockwood, Marine staff sergeant, Russian-language expert, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism, ordained Baptist minister, is shouting into the phone.
"I'm angry! I'm seething with anger! Forty years, and I'm seething with anger!"
Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.
For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy's most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they're also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation.
"They tried to lie their way out of it!" Lockwood shouts. "I don't believe that for a minute! You just don't shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!"
Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.
Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots -- communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.
The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel's reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.
In declassifying the most recent and largest batch of materials last June 8, the 40th anniversary of the attack, the NSA, this country's chief U.S. electronic-intelligence-gatherer and code-breaker, acknowledged that the attack had "become the center of considerable controversy and debate." It was not the agency's intention, it said, "to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material," available at http://www.nsa.gov/liberty .
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, called the attack on the Liberty "a tragic and terrible accident, a case of mistaken identity, for which Israel has officially apologized." Israel also paid reparations of $6.7 million to the injured survivors and the families of those killed in the attack, and another $6 million for the loss of the Liberty itself.
But for those who lost their sons and husbands, neither the Israelis' apology nor the passing of time has lessened their grief.
One is Pat Blue, who still remembers having her lunch in Washington's Farragut Square park on "a beautiful June afternoon" when she was a 22-year-old secretary for a law firm.
Blue heard somebody's portable radio saying a U.S. Navy ship had been torpedoed in the eastern Mediterranean. A few weeks before, Blue's husband of two years, an Arab-language expert with the NSA, had been hurriedly dispatched overseas.
As she listened to the news report, "it just all came together." Soon afterward, the NSA confirmed that Allen Blue was among the missing.
"I never felt young again," she said.
Aircraft on the horizon
Beginning before dawn on June 8, Israeli aircraft regularly appeared on the horizon and circled the Liberty.
The Israeli Air Force had gained control of the skies on the first day of the war by destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground. America was Israel's ally, and the Israelis knew the Americans were there. The ship's mission was to monitor the communications of Israel's Arab enemies and their Soviet advisers, but not Israeli communications. The Liberty felt safe.
Then the jets started shooting at the officers and enlisted men stretched out on the deck for a lunch-hour sun bath. Theodore Arfsten, a quartermaster, remembered watching a Jewish officer cry when he saw the blue Star of David on the planes' fuselages. At first, crew members below decks had no idea whose planes were shooting at their ship.
Thirty-four died that day, including Blue, the only civilian casualty. An additional 171 were wounded in the air and sea assault by Israel, which was about to celebrate an overwhelming victory over the combined armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and several other Arab states.
For most of those who survived the attack, the Six-Day War has become the defining moment of their lives.
Some mustered out of the Navy as soon as their enlistments were up. Others stayed in long enough to retire. Several went on to successful business careers. One became a Secret Service agent, another a Baltimore policeman.
Several are being treated with therapy and drugs for what has since been recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder. One has undergone more than 30 major operations. Another suffers seizures caused by a piece of shrapnel still lodged in his brain.
After Bryce Lockwood left the Marines, he worked construction, then tried selling insurance. "I'd get a job and get fired," he said. "I had a hell of a time getting my feet on the ground."
With his linguistic background, Lockwood could have had a career with the NSA, the CIA, or the FBI. But he was too angry at the U.S. government to work for it. "Don't talk to me about government!" he shouts.
U.S. Navy jets were called back
An Israeli military court of inquiry later acknowledged that their naval headquarters knew at least three hours before the attack that the odd-looking ship 13 miles off the Sinai Peninsula, sprouting more than 40 antennas capable of receiving every kind of radio transmission, was "an electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy," a floating electronic vacuum cleaner.
The Israeli inquiry later concluded that that information had simply gotten lost, never passed along to the ground controllers who directed the air attack nor to the crews of the three Israeli torpedo boats who picked up where the air force left off, strafing the Liberty's decks with their machine guns and launching a torpedo that blew a 39-foot hole in its starboard side.
To a man, the survivors interviewed by the Tribune rejected Israel's explanation.
Nor, the survivors said, did they understand why the American 6th Fleet, which included the aircraft carriers America and Saratoga, patrolling 400 miles west of the Liberty, launched and then recalled at least two squadrons of Navy fighter-bombers that might have arrived in time to prevent the torpedo attack -- and save 26 American lives.
J.Q. "Tony" Hart, then a chief petty officer assigned to a U.S. Navy relay station in Morocco that handled communications between Washington and the 6th Fleet, remembered listening as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, in Washington, ordered Rear Adm. Lawrence Geis, commander of the America's carrier battle group, to bring the jets home.
When Geis protested that the Liberty was under attack and needed help, Hart said, McNamara retorted that "President [Lyndon] Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors."
McNamara, who is now 91, told the Tribune he has "absolutely no recollection of what I did that day," except that "I have a memory that I didn't know at the time what was going on."
The Johnson administration did not publicly dispute Israel's claim that the attack had been nothing more than a disastrous mistake. But internal White House documents obtained from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library show that the Israelis' explanation of how the mistake had occurred was not believed.
Except for McNamara, most senior administration officials from Secretary of State Dean Rusk on down privately agreed with Johnson's intelligence adviser, Clark Clifford, who was quoted in minutes of a National Security Council staff meeting as saying it was "inconceivable" that the attack had been a case of mistaken identity.
The attack "couldn't be anything else but deliberate," the NSA's director, Lt. Gen. Marshall Carter, later told Congress.
"I don't think you'll find many people at NSA who believe it was accidental," Benson Buffham, a former deputy NSA director, said in an interview.
"I just always assumed that the Israeli pilots knew what they were doing," said Harold Saunders, then a member of the National Security Council staff and later assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs.
"So for me, the question really is who issued the order to do that and why? That's the really interesting thing."
The answer, if there is one, will probably never be known. Gen. Moshe Dayan, then the country's minister of defense; Levi Eshkol, the Israeli prime minister; and Golda Meir, his successor, are all dead.
Many of those who believe the Liberty was purposely attacked have suggested that the Israelis feared the ship might intercept communications revealing its plans to widen the war, which the U.S. opposed. But no one has ever produced any solid evidence to support that theory, and the Israelis dismiss it. The NSA's deputy director, Louis Tordella, speculated in a recently declassified memo that the attack "might have been ordered by some senior commander on the Sinai Peninsula who wrongly suspected that the LIBERTY was monitoring his activities."
Was the U.S. flag visible?
Though the attack on the Liberty has faded from public memory, Michael Oren, a historian and senior fellow at The Shalem Center in Jerusalem, conceded that "the case of the assault on the Liberty has never been closed."
If anything, Oren said, "the accusations leveled against Israel have grown sharper with time." Oren said in an interview that he believed a formal investigation by the U.S., even 40 years later, would be useful if only because it would finally establish Israel's innocence.
Questions about what happened to the Liberty have been kept alive by survivors' groups and their Web sites, a half-dozen books, magazine articles and television documentaries, scholarly papers published in academic journals, and Internet chat groups where amateur sleuths debate arcane points of photo interpretation and torpedo running depth.
Meantime, the Liberty's survivors and their supporters, including a distinguished constellation of retired admirals and generals, have persisted in asking Congress for a full-scale formal investigation.
"We deserve to have the truth," Pat Blue said.
For all its apparent complexity, the attack on the Liberty can be reduced to a single question: Was the ship flying the American flag at the time of the attack, and was that flag visible from the air?
The survivors interviewed by the Tribune uniformly agree that the Liberty was flying the Stars and Stripes before, during and after the attack, except for a brief period in which one flag that had been shot down was replaced with another, larger flag -- the ship's "holiday colors" -- that measured 13 feet long.
Concludes one of the declassified NSA documents: "Every official interview of numerous Liberty crewmen gave consistent evidence that indeed the Liberty was flying an American flag -- and, further, the weather conditions were ideal to ensure its easy observance and identification."
The Israeli court of inquiry that examined the attack, and absolved the Israeli military of criminal culpability, came to precisely the opposite conclusion.
"Throughout the contact," it declared, "no American or any other flag appeared on the ship."
The attack, the court said, had been prompted by a report, which later proved erroneous, that a ship was shelling Israeli-held positions in the Sinai Peninsula. The Liberty had no guns capable of shelling the shore, but the court concluded that the U.S. ship had been mistakenly identified as the source of the shelling.
Yiftah Spector, the first Israeli pilot to attack the ship, told the Jerusalem Post in 2003 that when he first spotted the Liberty, "I circled it twice and it did not fire on me. My assumption was that it was likely to open fire at me and nevertheless I slowed down and I looked and there was positively no flag."
But the Liberty crewmen interviewed by the Tribune said the Israeli jets simply appeared and began shooting. They also said the Liberty did not open fire on the planes because it was armed only with four .50-caliber machine guns intended to repel boarders.
"I can't identify it, but in any case it's a military ship," Spector radioed his ground controller, according to a transcript of the Israeli air-to-ground communications published by the Jerusalem Post in 2004.
That transcript, made by a Post reporter who was allowed to listen to what the Israeli Air Force said were tapes of the attacking pilots' communications, contained only two references to "American" or "Americans," one at the beginning and the other at the end of the attack.
The first reference occurred at 1:54 p.m. local time, two minutes before the Israeli jets began their first strafing run.
In the Post transcript, a weapons system officer on the ground suddenly blurted out, "What is this? Americans?"
"Where are Americans?" replied one of the air controllers.
The question went unanswered, and it was not asked again.
Twenty minutes later, after the Liberty had been hit repeatedly by machine guns, 30 mm cannon and napalm from the Israelis' French-built Mirage and Mystere fighter-bombers, the controller directing the attack asked his chief in Tel Aviv to which country the target vessel belonged.
"Apparently American," the chief controller replied.
Fourteen minutes later the Liberty was struck amidships by a torpedo from an Israeli boat, killing 26 of the 100 or so NSA technicians and specialists in Russian and Arabic who were working in restricted compartments below the ship's waterline.
Analyst: Israelis wanted it sunk
The transcript published by the Jerusalem Post bore scant resemblance to the one that in 1967 rolled off the teletype machine behind the sealed vault door at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, where Steve Forslund worked as an intelligence analyst for the 544th Air Reconnaissance Technical Wing, then the highest-level strategic planning office in the Air Force.
"The ground control station stated that the target was American and for the aircraft to confirm it," Forslund recalled. "The aircraft did confirm the identity of the target as American, by the American flag.
"The ground control station ordered the aircraft to attack and sink the target and ensure they left no survivors."
Forslund said he clearly recalled "the obvious frustration of the controller over the inability of the pilots to sink the target quickly and completely."
"He kept insisting the mission had to sink the target, and was frustrated with the pilots' responses that it didn't sink."
Nor, Forslund said, was he the only member of his unit to have read the transcripts. "Everybody saw these," said Forslund, now retired after 26 years in the military.
Forslund's recollections are supported by those of two other Air Force intelligence specialists, working in widely separate locations, who say they also saw the transcripts of the attacking Israeli pilots' communications.
One is James Gotcher, now an attorney in California, who was then serving with the Air Force Security Service's 6924th Security Squadron, an adjunct of the NSA, at Son Tra, Vietnam.
"It was clear that the Israeli aircraft were being vectored directly at USS Liberty," Gotcher recalled in an e-mail. "Later, around the time Liberty got off a distress call, the controllers seemed to panic and urged the aircraft to 'complete the job' and get out of there."
Six thousand miles from Omaha, on the Mediterranean island of Crete, Air Force Capt. Richard Block was commanding an intelligence wing of more than 100 analysts and cryptologists monitoring Middle Eastern communications.
The transcripts Block remembered seeing "were teletypes, way beyond Top Secret. Some of the pilots did not want to attack," Block said. "The pilots said, 'This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?'
"And ground control came back and said, 'Yes, follow orders.'"
Gotcher and Forslund agreed with Block that the Jerusalem Post transcript was not at all like what they remember reading.
"There is simply no way that [the Post transcript is] the same as what I saw," Gotcher said. "More to the point, for anyone familiar with air-to-ground [communications] procedures, that simply isn't the way pilots and controllers communicate."
Block, now a child protection caseworker in Florida, observed that "the fact that the Israeli pilots clearly identified the ship as American and asked for further instructions from ground control appears to be a missing part of that Jerusalem Post article."
Arieh O'Sullivan, the Post reporter who made the newspaper's transcript, said the Israeli Air Force tapes he listened to contained blank spaces. He said he assumed those blank spaces occurred while Israeli pilots were conducting their strafing runs and had nothing to communicate.
'But sir, it's an American ship!'
Forslund, Gotcher and Block are not alone in claiming to have read transcripts of the attack that they said left no doubt the Israelis knew they were attempting to sink a U.S. Navy ship.
Many ears were tuned to the battles being fought in and around the Sinai during the Six-Day War, including those belonging to other Arab nations with a keen interest in the outcome.
"I had a Libyan naval captain who was listening in that day," said a retired CIA officer, who spoke on condition that he not be named discussing a clandestine informant.
"He thought history would change its course," the CIA officer recalled. "Israel attacking the U.S. He was certain, listening in to the Israeli and American comms [communications], that it was deliberate."
The late Dwight Porter, the American ambassador to Lebanon during the Six-Day War, told friends and family members that he had been shown English-language transcripts of Israeli pilots talking to their controllers.
A close friend, William Chandler, the former head of the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line Co., said Porter recalled one of the pilots protesting, "But sir, it's an American ship -- I can see the flag!' To which the ground control responded, 'Never mind; hit it!'"
Porter, who asked that his recollections not be made public while he was alive because they involved classified information, also discussed the transcripts during a lunch in 2000 at the Cosmos Club in Washington with another retired American diplomat, Andrew Kilgore, the former U.S. ambassador to Qatar.
Kilgore recalled Porter saying that he "saw the telex, read it, and passed it right back" to the embassy official who had shown it to him. He quoted Porter as recalling that the transcript showed "Israel was attacking, and they know it's an American ship."
Haviland Smith, a young CIA officer stationed in Beirut during the Six-Day War, said that although he never saw the transcript, he had "heard on a number of occasions exactly the story that you just told me about what that transcript contained."
He had later been told, Smith recalled, "that ultimately all of the transcripts were deep-sixed. I was told that they were deep-sixed because the administration did not wish to embarrass the Israelis."
Perhaps the most persuasive suggestion that such transcripts existed comes >from the Israelis themselves, in a pair of diplomatic cables sent by the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Avraham Harman, to Foreign Minister Abba Eban in Tel Aviv.
Five days after the Liberty attack, Harman cabled Eban that a source the Israelis code-named "Hamlet" was reporting that the Americans had "clear proof that from a certain stage the pilot discovered the identity of the ship and continued the attack anyway."
Harman repeated the warning three days later, advising Eban, who is now dead, that the White House was "very angry," and that "the reason for this is that the Americans probably have findings showing that our pilots indeed knew that the ship was American."
According to a memoir by then-CIA director Richard Helms, President Johnson's personal anger was manifest when he discovered the story of the Liberty attack on an inside page of the next day's New York Times. Johnson barked that "it should have been on the front page!"
Israeli historian Tom Segev, who mentioned the cables in his recent book "1967," said other cables showed that Harman's source for the second cable was Arthur Goldberg, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
The cables, which have been declassified by the Israelis, were obtained from the Israeli State Archive and translated from Hebrew by the Tribune.
Oliver Kirby, the NSA's deputy director for operations at the time of the Liberty attack, confirmed the existence of NSA transcripts.
Asked whether he had personally read such transcripts, Kirby replied, "I sure did. I certainly did."
"They said, 'We've got him in the zero,'" Kirby recalled, "whatever that meant -- I guess the sights or something. And then one of them said, 'Can you see the flag?' They said 'Yes, it's U.S, it's U.S.' They said it several times, so there wasn't any doubt in anybody's mind that they knew it."
Kirby, now 86 and retired in Texas, said the transcripts were "something that's bothered me all my life. I'm willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that we knew they knew."
One set of transcripts apparently survived in the archives of the U.S. Army's intelligence school, then located at Ft. Holabird in Maryland.
W. Patrick Lang, a retired Army colonel who spent eight years as chief of Middle East intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the transcripts were used as "course material" in an advanced class for intelligence officers on the clandestine interception of voice transmissions.
"The flight leader spoke to his base to report that he had the ship in view, that it was the same ship that he had been briefed on and that it was clearly marked with the U.S. flag," Lang recalled in an e-mail.
"The flight commander was reluctant," Lang said in a subsequent interview. "That was very clear. He didn't want to do this. He asked them a couple of times, 'Do you really want me to do this?' I've remembered it ever since. It was very striking. I've been harboring this memory for all these years."
Key NSA tapes said missing
Asked whether the NSA had in fact intercepted the communications of the Israeli pilots who were attacking the Liberty, Kirby, the retired senior NSA official, replied, "We sure did."
On its Web site, the NSA has posted three recordings of Israeli communications made on June 8, 1967. But none of the recordings is of the attack itself.
Indeed, the declassified documents state that no recordings of the "actual attack" exist, raising questions about the source of the transcripts recalled by Forslund, Gotcher, Block, Porter, Lang and Kirby.
The three recordings reflect what the NSA describes as "the aftermath" of the attack -- Israeli communications with two Israeli helicopters dispatched to rescue any survivors who may have jumped into the water.
Two of the recordings were made by Michael Prostinak, a Hebrew linguist aboard a U.S. Navy EC-121, a lumbering propeller-driven aircraft specially equipped to gather electronic intelligence.
But Prostinak said he was certain that more than three recordings were made that day.
"I can tell you there were more tapes than just the three on the Internet," he said. "No doubt in my mind, more than three tapes."
At least one of the missing tapes, Prostinak said, captured Israeli communications "in which people were not just tranquil or taking care of business as normal. We knew that something was being attacked," Prostinak said. "Everyone we were listening to was excited. You know, it was an actual attack. And during the attack was when mention of the American flag was made."
Prostinak acknowledged that his Hebrew was not good enough to understand every word being said, but that after the mention of the American flag "the attack did continue. We copied [recorded] it until we got completely out of range. We got a great deal of it."
Charles Tiffany, the plane's navigator, remembers hearing Prostinak on the plane's intercom system, shouting, "I got something crazy on UHF," the radio frequency band used by the Israeli Air Force.
"I'll never forget it to this day," said Tiffany, now a retired Florida lawyer. He also remembers hearing the plane's pilot ordering the NSA linguists to "start taping everything."
Prostinak said he and the others aboard the plane had been unaware of the Liberty's presence 15,000 feet below, but had concluded that the Israelis' target must be an American ship. "We knew that something was being attacked," Prostinak said.
After listening to the three recordings released by the NSA, Prostinak said it was clear from the sequence in which they were numbered that at least two tapes that had once existed were not there.
One tape, designated A1104/A-02, begins at 2:29 p.m. local time, just after the Liberty was hit by the torpedo. Prostinak said there was a preceding tape, A1104/A-01.
That tape likely would have recorded much of the attack, which began with the air assault at 1:56 p.m. Prostinak said a second tape, which preceded one beginning at 3:07 p.m., made by another linguist aboard the same plane, also appeared to be missing.
As soon as the EC-121 landed at its base in Athens, Prostinak said, all the tapes were rushed to an NSA facility at the Athens airport where Hebrew translators were standing by.
"We told them what we had, and they immediately took the tapes and went to work," recalled Prostinak, who after leaving the Navy became chief of police and then town administrator for the village of Lake Waccamaw, N.C.
Another linguist aboard the EC-121, who spoke on condition that he not be named, said he believed there had been as many as "five or six" tapes recording the attack on the Liberty or its aftermath.
Andrea Martino, the NSA's senior media adviser, did not respond to a question about the apparent conflict between the agency's assertion that there were no recordings of the Israeli attack and the recollections of those interviewed for this article.
U.S. inquiry widely criticized
Rather than investigating how and why a U.S. Navy vessel had been attacked by an ally, the Navy seemed interested in asking as few questions as possible and answering them in record time.
Even while the Liberty was still limping toward a dry dock in Malta, the Navy convened a formal Court of Inquiry. Adm. John McCain Jr., the commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe and father of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chose Adm. Isaac Kidd Jr. to preside.
The court's charge was narrow: to determine whether any shortcomings on the part of the Liberty's crew had contributed to the injuries and deaths that resulted from the attack. McCain gave Kidd's investigators a week to complete the job.
"That was a shock," recalled retired Navy Capt. Ward Boston, the inquiry's counsel, who said he and Kidd had estimated that a thorough inquiry would take six months.
"Everyone was kind of stunned that it was handled so quickly and without much hullabaloo," said G. Patrick March, then a member of McCain's staff in London.
Largely because of time constraints, Boston said, the investigators were unable to question many of the survivors, or to visit Israel and interview any Israelis involved in the attack.
Rear Adm. Merlin Staring, the Navy's former judge advocate general, was asked to assess the American inquiry's report before it was sent to Washington. But Staring said it was taken from him when he began to question some aspects of the report. He describes it now as "a hasty, superficial, incomplete and totally inadequate inquiry."
Staring, who is among those calling for a full congressional investigation on behalf of the Liberty's survivors, observed in an interview that the inquiry report contained several "findings of fact" unsupported by testimony or evidence.
One such finding ignored the testimony of several inquiry witnesses that the American flag was flying during the attack, and held that the "available evidence combines to indicate the attack on LIBERTY on 8 June was in fact a case of mistaken identity."
There are also apparent omissions in the inquiry's report. It does not include, for example, the testimony of a young lieutenant, Lloyd Painter, who was serving as officer of the deck when the attack began. Painter said he testified that an Israeli torpedo boat "methodically machine-gunned one of our life rafts" that had been put over the side by crewmen preparing to abandon ship.
Painter, who spent 32 years as a Secret Service agent after leaving the Navy, charged that his testimony about the life rafts was purposely omitted.
Ward Boston recalled that, after McCain's one-week deadline expired, Kidd took the record compiled by the inquiry "and flew back to Washington, and I went back to Naples," the headquarters of the 6th Fleet.
"Two weeks later, he comes back to Naples and calls me from his office," Boston recalled in an interview. "In that deep voice, he said, 'Ward, they aren't interested in the facts. It's a political issue and we have to put a lid on it. We've been ordered to shut up.'
"It's time for the truth to come out," declared Boston, who is now 84. "There have been so many cover-ups."
"Someday the truth of this will come out," said Dennis Eikleberry, a NSA technician aboard the Liberty. "Someday it will, but we'll all be gone."
James Ennes, now 74, who was officer of the deck just before the attack began, and later spent two months in a body cast, is one of the more vocal survivors. Like the others, Ennes is tired of waiting.
"We want both sides to stop lying," he said.
Videos 1967: Zionists Attack USS Liberty & Massacre surrendering Egyptian soldiers led by Ben Eliezer who told them to lie on ground, then drove the tanks over them and more untold massacres
Here
"Israeli hands are drenched in the blood of Egyptian soldiers" And of the dead crew members of the USS Liberty.
Link to BBC documentary entitled "USS Liberty: Dead in the Water" [Produced in 2002] (1 hr 9 mins) Click Here
LIBERTY ATTACK PART OF GRAND SCHEME Newly Uncovered Evidence Indicates Assault May Have Been Pre-Planned 'Useful Disaster' By Mark Glenn
This June 8, 2007, marks the 40-year anniversary of Israel's bloody attack on the USS Liberty, a lightly armed U.S. Navy ship sailing off the coast of Egypt at the time.
Over the years, there have been numerous reports indicating that the unprovoked assault caught the White House and the military by surprise.
New information, however, reveals that officials in various agencies in the U.S. government played a key role in setting up the Liberty for the purpose of drawing the Soviet Union into a fight in the Middle East and ultimately igniting World War III.
For those who follow the intrigues and explosive events surrounding the relationship between America and Israel over the last four decades it is easy to "get into a rut" so to speak and blame every single catastrophic event solely on the treachery of Israel. The tragedy though (and certainly the hardest part to swallow by patriotic Americans who would sooner take their own lives than betray their fellow countrymen) is that there have been and are players on the American side of the equation whose hands are just as dirty as those of their Israeli counterparts.
Whether it was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassination of JFK, the bombing of the twin towers in 1993, the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in 1995 or the events taking place on 9-11, the only way these could have taken place is if elements within the U.S. government cooperated with the planning, execution and subsequent dissemination of propaganda in the aftermath of these operations.
Now, a new and terrible tale has surfaced indicating yet again that elements of the U.S. government were involved at the highest level in even more criminal acts against the very same American people whom it is charged with protecting. The case in question involves the June 8, 1967, attack on the USS Liberty by the air and naval forces of the state of Israel during the height of the Arab-Israeli war that led to the deaths of 34 American servicemen.
Long believed that players within the Johnson administration simply assisted in the cover-up of the attack so as "not to embarrass" America's greatest ally, Israel, it now it appears that American political, intelligence and military persons played a key role in setting up the Liberty for the purpose of igniting WW III in what was code-named "Operation Cyanide."
It was a heady time, to be sure. The United States and the Soviet Union were neck-deep in the Cold War, and by all appearances it seemed that a shooting match between the two superpowers was inevitable.
The incident in question took place only a few short years after the Cuban Missile Crisis and at a time when America seemed unable to stop the spread of communism in Asia and other parts of the world.
In the Middle East, states such as Egypt, with dynamic, fiery and recalcitrant leaders such as President Gamal Abdel Nasser, were forming strong bonds with the Soviets for military and economic aid. Using the same rationale that led to America inserting itself militarily into Korea and Vietnam, it was believed that, if not stopped, the Soviets would entrench themselves in the Middle East to the point that America's access to the oil of that region would be directly jeopardized and that, just as the communists had predicted decades before, the West would be conquered "without a shot being fired."
It has long been assumed that Israel's deliberate attack on the USS Liberty was just another of Israel's made-to-order false flag operations done simply for the purpose of dragging an unwilling America into a Middle East war on the side of the Jewish state. However, new information uncovered by former BBC investigative journalist Peter Hounam reveals that the U.S. government—and more specifically the administration of Lyndon Johnson—was not as much the unsuspecting victim in all of this that Israel has claimed these last 40 years.
Based on relatively new evidence, the attack on the Liberty was actually part of a much larger plan. The Liberty incident was just one domino in a series that had as the ultimate goal a real live shooting war between the United States and the Soviets. Had the Liberty been sunk with no witnesses as planned, the world would be a much different place as a result—and certainly not for the better.
The plan for that awful day in American history was to sink the defenseless, unarmed American ship sailing in international waters off the coast of Egypt. The Soviets and their Arab allies (in particular Egypt) would then be blamed for the event.
As with the sinking of the USS Maine nearly 70 years earlier, the cry would be "Remember the USS Liberty" and America's "justifiable" response to such a horrendous act would be the launching of nuclear weapons against Egypt, an ally of the Soviet Union. Working in tandem with the United States would be allies such as Israel, Great Britain and, interestingly, Australia.
The end result would be a Middle East free of any Soviet presence, leaving America and her ally Israel in possession of Arab oil for the foreseeable future and in a better position to dictate terms to the communists. In the minds of powerful men such as these—men who sit in comfortable offices and expensive chairs and who do not have to answer to anyone for their actions, the rationale for such an act was simple: It is better for 300 U.S. sailors to die in the service of their country than have the "free world" fall into the clutches of Soviet communism.
What prevented all of this from taking place was that—simply by the grace of God—the Liberty did not sink, and the world was spared. Of course, there is no official confirmation of Operation Cyanide. In fact there is no mention of it at all. In various interviews that have been conducted over the years, individuals from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to Dean Rusk to Richard Helms to Mossad spy chief Rafael Eitan have demonstrated great intellectual and verbal dexterity for men their age when discussing various items. However, they clam up instantaneously when Operation Cyanide is mentioned as if they were witnesses to an organized crime hit and they feared for their lives.
However, the smaller players involved at the time have a different tale to tell. Piecing together all the small parts that they individually bring to the table fleshes out a picture that, although not crystal clear, is clear enough to suggest that America was involved in the murder of 34 young men on that day in a much deeper fashion than previously thought.
For the sake of those men who died then, and for those who survived the attack and who have endured the assault of lies that has been waged against them these last 40 years, the truth concerning what took place must be told.
In the opinion of many, exposure of the Liberty incident may very well hold the key to freeing America from the bondage it suffers under men such as those who have murdered not only American citizens, but our traditional political system as well.
Subject:
Fw: Israeli 'massacre'
The movie was shown on Israeli TV. I could not find it on youtube, but found this other video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo0yuWsF-vs
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/898
POW mass graves by israeli military on 1967: Credits: - An interview by Daryl Bradford Smith with former US Officer James Ennes of USS Liberty, 1967 - Historian Gabby Bron wrote in the Yediot Ahronot - Reuters, AFP, AP
Here is a video on the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. The Liberty was filming the massacres being committed by the Zionist forces against Palestinians and Egyptians.
Click Here
'Loss of Liberty' dramatically proves, beyond any doubt, that the attack by Israel on June 8, 1967 against the US naval intelligence ... all » gathering ship USS Liberty, in which 34 Americans were killed and 171 wounded, was deliberate. The video first lets Israeli officers make their totally unconvincing case that the attack was a 'tragic accident' when the Israelis mistook the much larger and differently configured USS Liberty for the totally unlike Egyptian ship El Quseir. This filmed testimony by dozens of USS Liberty survivors demolishes Israel's 'tragic accident' claim. Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer are representative of the honored high-ranking Americans supporting the condemnation of deliberate aggression against the United States by 'ally' Israel. 'Loss of Liberty' makes clear that then-President Lyndon Johnson conspired with Israel and its Israel-First supporters inside the US government to support the 'tragic accident' scheme. Johnson was bogged down at the time in the Vietnam war, and thought he needed Israel Lobby support. Still, Johnson's behaviour is as unforgivable now as it was then.
March 13, 2007
UN to open permanent probe on Israel Click here
The United Nation's Human Rights Council is expected to place Israel under permanent investigation for its "violations" of international law in the territories - until such time as it withdraws to the pre-1967 border - according to Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
Since its inception, the 47-member body - which includes Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China - has continued to single out the Jewish State. It has issued eight anti-Israel resolutions, and none against any other nation. It has also held three special sessions on Israel.
Israel has been "singled out" is based on what it has done - and is doing - in the Palestinian territories.
Egypt http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6443669.stm shows 1967 'killings' films
Egypt wants Israel to investigate whether its troops killed 250 Egyptian POWs taken in fighting in Sinai.
Democrats http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtwD12ZV5wQ Risk War with Iran to Serve Israel's Agenda
Note the obvious pro-Israel shill in the comments section. - M. R.
March 12, 2007
Naked, http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2032492,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12 drunk, surrounded by sex toys - it's the Israeli ambassador
Where are the Paparazzi when you REALLY need them? - M. R.
Israel <http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/review/article_full_story.asp?service_ID=12950 > massacred 250 helpless Egyptians
A few days ago, Egypt summoned Israel's envoy to Cairo following the release of a shocking documentary that was aired on Israel's TV Channel one, showing that an elite unit of the Israeli army, commanded by Benjamin Ben Eliezer, who denied the accusations three years ago, executed 250 unarmed Egyptian soldiers after they surrendered to the Israeli army at the end of the 1967 Six-Day War, which began on June 5, 1967, following three weeks of tension which began on May 15, and reached its peak of continued deterioration in the relations between Israel and its neighbors.
Egypt <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6419471.stm> anger over 1967 'massacre'
Claims that Israeli troops massacred about 1,000 Egyptian POWs in several incidents in Sinai were first raised in 1995 by Israeli military researcher Aryeh Yitzhaki.
This coincides with the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. As a side note, the story of the USS Liberty will be the subject of the what really happened radio show on March 17th. We will have a member of the actual crew from USS Liberty as the on-air guest. TELL YOUR FRIENDS! - M. R.
BBC <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6421597.stm> poll - Israel the most negative country
The poll asked 28,000 people in 27 countries to rate a dozen countries plus the EU in terms of whether they have a positive or negative influence. Israel comes out on top of the negative list...... - M. R.
March 05, 2007
"Israeli <http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=12950> hands are drenched in the blood of Egyptian soldiers"
From comments: " I participated in the 1967 war as a member of a paratrooper division on the Israeli side, under the command of General Raphael ("Raful") Eitan. To the best of my knowledge, after a relative of Raful died in that war, an order was given not to take live prisoners".
Buried <http://mwcnews.net/content/view/12968/42/> Alive
"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity." (George Bernard Shaw, The Devil's Disciple, ACT II)
Film claims 1967 Israeli 'massacre'
By
Amr El-Kahky in Egypt
The issue has outraged the Egyptian parliament�
A diplomatic row is threatening to damage relations between Egypt and Israel after a documentary alleged that Israel massacred [about 250] Egyptian soldiers after they surrendered in the 1967 Middle East war.
�
The Israeli film also claims that the unit responsible was led by Ben Eliezer, now an Israeli government minister.
Eliezer has denied the�allegation and�the Israeli government has always maintained that Israeli soldiers never killed Egyptian prisoners.
�
But the issue has already outraged the Egyptian parliament.
Some representatives called for economic ties with Israel to be cut, and some even for re-thinking of the Camp David peace accord.
�
The Egyptian foreign ministry issued a statement on Wednesday saying that this would leave a scar on�relations between Israel and Egypt.
Mostafa Bakri, a member of the Egyptian parliament, said:�"We reacted to the summary in the Israeli media about the film. The summary said Israeli soldiers confessed to killing Egyptian prisoners of war.
"The Egyptian government has failed so far in demanding to bring those responsible, including Ben Eliezer, to international justice or to extradite the Israeli ambassador from the country."
Untold stories
Al Jazeera spoke to some of the survivors of the 1967 war, who said there were many untold stories�despite the conflict lasting�just seven days.
"The Egyptians surrendered and the Israelis told them to lie on the ground before driving the tanks over the soldiers"
Moussa al-Roweshid
1967 war survivor
Moussa al Roweshid, who�was 15 years old when the war started, is from�North Sinai,�scene of some of the worst fighting.
He said he believed�the claims made in�the Israeli documentary about the prisoners' massacre because he�witnessed some of the atrocities.
"The Egyptians ran out of ammunition after the Israelis cut off the supply roads. The Egyptians surrendered and the Israelis told them to lie on the ground before driving the tanks over the soldiers.�
"There are other incidents near Abu Ejerem and Abu Hani wells on the sea coast. Just dig those places to find out the truth," he said.
Documentary as evidence
Standing next to a cemetery, Rashid Khalil, now 75, said he remembered how Egyptian soldiers�surrendered to the Israelis there.�
"The Israelis got the soldiers to queue up and took their belongings. They told some to go to Nasser and the rest were shot dead. They forced Bedouins to bury the dead."
Mahmoud Lotfi is a lawyer representing�23 Egyptian families still fighting to learn what happened to their relatives�who went missing during�the war.�
He sees the issues raised in the documentary as a glimmer of hope for his clients.
Their case against Ariel Sharon, the�former Israeli prime minister, was dismissed�because of�a lack of evidence. He now hopes to re-open the case using�this documentary as evidence.
"We were patient and Israel has now given us the required evidence. These confessions in the film are our evidence."
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Israeli war criminal
Well, last week Israel's TV1 was showing a documentary movie about Ruach HaShakid (Spirit of the Shakid), the Israeli army unit lead by Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the current minister of infrastructure during the six days war in 1967 that resulted in Israeli invasion of Sinai (Egypt), Golan Heights (Syria) and West Bank and East Jerusalem (Jordan). The documentary showed interviews with some people who served in that unit, and they were saying that they feel guilt for killing 250 unarmed Egyptian soldiers who were surrendering and having their arms up high in the air, when they got an order from their commander at that time, Ben-Eliezer, to open fire against the Geneva's claimed to be POWs, waiving against all Human Rights and international treaties. Some of those ex-soldiers admitted that they feel sorry for doing such thing, as by that time they were still young dudes, driven by youth-spirit and if time goes back they will never do such thing again. Despite that the soldiers who committed that crime themselves were interviewed in this movie and they were talking about it, but the minister guy was "defending" himself by saying that those soldiers were not actually Egyptians, but they were Palestinians.......as if that would make it ok for them to be massacred???? Sickening Zionist minister!
While showing <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6419471.stm> this documentary sparked anger in Egypt that led to canceling the Ben guy's visit to Egypt that was supposed to take place today, fearing that he may get arrested by Egyptian police for allegations as a war criminal. The sarcastic thing that yesterday's Egyptian people assembly's meeting has witnessed the first incident that the majority of PMs agreeing on something from NDP (the ruling party), opposition and MBs, which is starting international accusation of Israel in this case. At the same time, for people who would not know about the reality in Egypt, they might think that Egyptians were surprised from such incident as if it is not an Israeli habit, or as if it was the only incident, but actually people have forgotten about Madraset Bahr ElBakar massacre when during the six days war, the Israeli air forces bombed a primary school in Delta killing hundreds of children, and a lot of other similar incidents.
BBC's <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6421597.stm> poll survey just showed today that a majority of people around the world see Israel as on the top of the list of having negative influence on the world followed by Iran and the US. First of all, according to the report by Israel's Human Rights institution, they can not charge anybody from that Shakid's unit, as they already have a long list of people to be charged for war crimes starting from the top of the country's government till soldiers. The other thing is that, unsurprisingly, Israel is not part of the Hague's International Justice Court!! which means that whatever war crimes are committed in this country, it will always stay as an internal issue.
http://commonsense.jasegraves.com/2007/03/05/israeli-movie-admits-to-1967-massacre.aspx
Israeli movie admits to 1967 massacre
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This entry was posted on 3/5/2007 9:57 PM and is filed under pow <http://commonsense.jasegraves.com/categories/pow.aspx > ,Binyamin <http://commonsense.jasegraves.com/categories/Binyamin%20Ben%20Eliezer.aspx >
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<http://commonsense.jasegraves.com/categories/Binyamin%20Ben%20Eliezer.aspx > Ben Eliezer,Sinai,Egypt,Israel,War
<http://commonsense.jasegraves.com/categories/Binyamin%20Ben%20Eliezer.aspx > Crimes
<http://commonsense.jasegraves.com/categories/Binyamin%20Ben%20Eliezer.aspx > ,1967.
<http://commonsense.jasegraves.com/categories/War%20Crimes.aspx> A movie aired on Israeli TV last week has stirred up a storm of controversy. The movie claims an elite Israeli unit massacred hundreds of Egyptian POWs by rolling tanks over their bound bodies - while they were alive. Israeli minister Binyamin Ben- Eliezer was advised to postpone his trip to Ehypt for fear he would be arrested. It was his unit.
The Daily Star
<http://commonsense.jasegraves.com/categories/War%20Crimes.aspx> CAIRO: The new documentary "Shakid Soul," which aired on Israel's Channel One last week and showed the massacre of 250 Egyptian prisoners of war in Sinai in 1967, drove Egyptian MPs to consider filing charges against the Israeli officials responsible, said MP Mohamed Khalil Kwaitah.
<http://commonsense.jasegraves.com/categories/War%20Crimes.aspx> A group of parliamentarians formed a committee to examine the possibility of filing these charges, after an Israeli documentary claimed that one of their military units called Shakid, was accountable for the death of 250 POWs.
<http://commonsense.jasegraves.com/categories/1967.aspx> "I filed a request to investigate this crime in 1995, but it received no attention until now when this movie was shown," Kwaitah said.
<http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5950>
The Middle East Times
he Shaked Spirit documentary broadcast a week ago claimed that the commando unit led by Ben-Eliezer during the June 1967 Six-Day War had killed 250 Egyptian PoWs in the Arish area of the Sinai Peninsula.
On Sunday Ben-Eliezer - a Labor party minister, reserve general, and former defense minister - denied the charges, saying that his unit had killed Palestinian fighters in combat, not PoWs.
"In fact, in one clash during this war, soldiers of a battalion of Palestinian Fedayeen operating from the Gaza Strip against Israel, particularly against the unit I commanded, were killed," Ben-Eliezer said in a statement. "These soldiers were not executed as it was said, they were killed in combat.
"Maybe the confusion is due to the fact that two days before this incident, the Shaked commando came across an Egyptian battalion that had stopped fighting, and men from the unit helped them by providing food and water," his statement said.
But Ben-Eliezer's denial has done little to ease Egyptian rage. On Sunday the foreign ministry in Cairo summoned Israeli Ambassador Shalom Cohen to protest, and called for "clarification" about the reported events.
Egypt asked Cohen to convey its concerns to Israel of the "consequences in neglecting this event, the need to investigate the matter in the light of new information and witness statements that were exposed during the documentary, and presenting the accused before the courts."
Egyptian lawmakers Sunday demanded Cohen's expulsion and the freezing of the Camp David accord that paved the way for the 1979 peace treaty, as well as other deals with Israel.
During the stormy parliamentary session, foreign affairs committee chairman Mustafa Al Fekki called for a trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague over the "Israeli crimes."
The PoW claims were first raised in 1995 by Israeli military researcher Aryeh Yitzhaki, who said that up to 300 Egyptian and Palestinian soldiers were killed by Ben-Eliezer's unit after laying down their arms.
At the time Ben-Eliezer said that he was not aware of any PoW killings by his troops, saying "the enemy suffered very severe losses during fighting with a Palestinian battalion near Arish airport."
Yitzhaki said that up to 900 Egyptian PoWs were killed after surrendering during the 1956 and 1967 wars between Israel and Egypt, revelations that soured relations between the two countries for months.
<http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5950>
"The interests behind the Bush Administration, such as the CFR, The Trilateral Commission - founded by Brzezinski for David Rockefeller - and the Bilderberger Group, have prepared for and are now moving to implement open world dictatorship within the next five years. They are not fighting against terrorists. They are fighting against citizens." -- Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, Ph.D., former German defense ministry official and advisor to former NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner
"The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the Americans freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of his plight." -- JFK
<http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5950> Kissinger quote: "Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy."
<http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5950> "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." --- George W. Bush ..."Sarah, if the American people had ever known the truth about what we Bushs have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched." George Bush Sr. 1992
<http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070305-043112-2174r > It is in everybody's interest to seek those [actions] that lead to happiness and avoid those which lead to suffering. And because our interests are inextricably linked, we are compelled to accept ethics as the indispensable interface between my desire to be happy and yours.- Dalai Lama
<http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070305-043112-2174r >
<http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070305-043112-2174r > I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do ~~ Edward Everett Hale
<http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070305-043112-2174r >
<http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070305-043112-2174r > Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's Rape Of Iraq - At Least 655,000 + +
http://tinyurl.com/usq4x
Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America's Rape Of Iraq 3,017
http://icasualties.org/oif/
The Rape of Iraq Costs and America lost its soul too besides going bankrupt, financially and morally! !
$357,490,957,418
See the cost in your community http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182
End the Occupation of Palestine & AMERICA by Israel & America's occupation of Iraq NOW!
<http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070305-043112-2174r >
I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of Zionism and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under Olmert, undefeatable, with misery, murder and injustice for all, except for Zionists, whether American or Israeli, who are part of pure evil, Satan worshipping NWO, along with Bilderberg group, Skull & Bones, Trilaterial Commission, 33 degree Freemasons, Council on Foreign Relations, to name a few!
NO MORE WARS FOR ZIONIST ISRAEL, David Rothchild, or New World Order!
"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." AND HAS!
New World Order quotes:"The interests behind the Bush Administration, such as the CFR, The Trilateral Commission - founded by Brzezinski for David Rockefeller - and the Bilderberger Group, have prepared for and are now moving to implement open world dictatorship within the next five years. They are not fighting against terrorists. They are fighting against citizens."
-- Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, Ph.D., former German defense ministry official and advisor to former NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner
"The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the Americans freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of his plight."
-- JFK, speaking before his assassination, killed by Freemason's, Illumanti/NWO/CIA, Bush Sr. and Johnson, too!
Kissinger quote: "Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy."
UR tax dollars @work! no 729!
End the Occupation of Palestine & AMERICA by Israel & America's occupation of Iraq NOW!
<http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070305-043112-2174r > "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." --- George W. Bush ..."Sarah, if the American people had ever known the truth about what we Bushs have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched." George Bush Sr. 1992
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