The Liberty attack

The expanded re-issue of James Ennes Jr.'s book The Assault on the Liberty has re-focused public attention on Israel's attack on an American spy ship in June of 1967, at the very beginning of the Six Day War. Forty years ago.

Although the event received scant mention in the press at the time, it is now being discussed in a number of recent articles: See here, here and here. Jeffrey St. Clair's piece provides a good introduction, although your best first step would be to watch the remarkable BBC documentary Dead in the Water, available here.

Contrary to the Israeli story, the ship flew an American flag that was clearly visible the Israeli reconnaissance pilots who overflew the Liberty hours before the attack.

The Liberty's radio team tried to issue a distress call, but discovered the frequencies had been jammed by the Israeli planes with what one communications specialist called "a buzzsaw sound". Finally, an open channel was found and the Liberty got out a message to the USS America, the Sixth Fleet's large aircraft carrier, that it was under attack

(Note: That "buzzsaw" reference reminds me of a strange signal that one could hear on a number of shortwave radio stations back in the 1980s. At the time, the phenomenon gave rise to much wild speculation.)

Attack boats launched torpedoes and strafed the ship with machine gun fire, killing 34 sailors and injuring 172. Johnson deliberately recalled an attempt to mount a rescue by air. U.S destroyers did not arrive to aid the Liberty until 16 hours after the attack. The Navy eventually coughed up a 700 page report which pronounced the Israelis guiltless. The attack, we were told, was a matter of mistaken identity.

However, Ward Boston, senior legal counsel to the Naval Board of Inquiry, admits -- in a piece published today -- that this report was a lie.

Israel claimed it was an accident. Yet I know from personal conversations with the late Admiral Isaac C. Kidd -- president of the Court of Inquiry -- that President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity”.

Admiral Kidd and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy’s official investigation, though we both estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry would take at least six months.

We boarded the crippled ship at sea and interviewed survivors. The evidence was clear. We both believed with certainty that this attack was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.

I am certain the Israeli pilots and commanders who had ordered the attack knew the ship was American. I saw the bullet-riddled American flag that had been raised by the crew after their first flag had been shot down completely. I heard testimony that made it clear the Israelis intended there be no survivors. Not only did they attack with napalm, gunfire, and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned at close range three life rafts that had been launched in an attempt to save the most seriously wounded.

Why didn't the United States tell the truth? Was the U.S. complicit in the attack? Consider the following, from the St. Clair piece:

The Liberty had barely reached Africa when it received a flash message from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to sail from the Ivory Coast to the Mediterranean, where it was to re-deploy off the coast of the Sinai to monitor the Israeli attack on Egypt and the allied Arab nations.

As the war intensified, the Liberty sent a request to the fleet headquarters requesting an escort. Request denied, by Admiral William Martin. The Liberty moved alone to a position in international waters about 13 miles from the shore at El Arish, then under furious siege by the IDF.

And here is a small detail that links matters to the present day:

On June 6, the Joint Chiefs sent Admiral McCain, father of the senator from Arizona, an urgent message instructing him to move the Liberty out of the war zone to a position at least 100 miles off the Gaza Coast. McCain never forwarded the message to the ship.

Senator McCain's father is responsible for the deaths of 34 American sailors. McCain later signed off on the deceptive court of inquiry report.

Ennes notes that even testimony by the Liberty's communications officers about the jamming of the ship's radios was classified as "Top Secret". The reason? It proved that Israel knew it was attacking an American ship. "Here was strong evidence that the attack was planned in advance and that our ship's identity was known to the attackers (for it its practically impossible to jam the radio of a stranger), but this information was hushed up and no conclusions were drawn from it," Ennes writes.

The most common theory regarding motive is summarized by this piece:

On two separate occasions, the White House recalled aircraft rescue missions for the Liberty. On the last attempt, President Lyndon B. Johnson told Rear-Admiral Lawrence Geis of the Sixth Fleet, “I WILL NOT EMBARRASS OUR ALLY.” The Liberty was then left “dead in the water,” without any assistance for over 16 hours. [3] At pp. 267-268, Hounam said: “Sinking the Liberty and blaming Egypt and the Soviets would have freed Johnson’s hand to do almost anything--even to drop an atomic bomb on Cairo. Trouble only arose when the Israel operation failed and the...ship stayed afloat.”

If this scenario seems familiar, you may be thinking of the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. One factor which has received insufficient attention was the concurrent attack on an American spy plane:

As the attacks were going on, conversations between Israeli pilots were overheard by US Air Force officers in an EC121 surveillance plane overhead. The spy plane was spotted by Israeli jets, which were given orders to shoot it down. The American plane narrowly avoided the IDF missiles.

This unforeseen eavesdropping may have caused the Israelis to call off the assault before all the men were killed.

A new theory holds that the Israelis did it because the Americans had betrayed them.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

John Loftus...

No. Wait. Before proceeding, I might as well just say what I have long believed. John Loftus is obviously a close associate of the Israeli intelligence services. In private, I have called him the world's first Irish sayan.

Some writers, especially ideologues with a conspiratorial turn of mind, make such accusations routinely. I do not. Long-time readers will recognize that it is quite unusual for me to make claims of bad faith or hidden agendas on the part of well-known authors.

I do recommend Loftus' books and website materials, but read with caution. When confronted with a book like Unholy Trinity, check footnotes: As a general rule, you can trust the assertions backed by documentation, and you can toss out all claims that go to unnamed sources.

John Loftus has proposed a "blame the Arabs" theory of the Liberty incident, a theory he derives, in large part, from unnamed sources. He calls his informants the "old spies":

The U.S. and British governments, while pretending to be on Israel’s side, were giving all of Israel’s secrets to the Arabs. In many ways, it was the Western spies who indirectly started the war. In this chapter we examine the following allegations: Western intelligence informed the Arabs that Israel would not have a nuclear defense shield finished in 1967, thus leaving a window of opportunity for attack; Realizing the danger of a massed Arab attack, the Israelis informed the United States of their intention to launch a preemptive strike, which the CIA promptly betrayed to the Arabs; 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; Israeli intelligence discovered the American betrayal and attacked the U.S. ship, the Liberty, which was gathering electronic information on Israeli troop movements and sending it to British intelligence, which in turn relayed it to the Arabs; Both the American and Israeli governments agreed to suppress the truth about the Liberty incident from the public.

In other words, the Israelis had to attack the ship because "The primary mission of the Liberty was to communicate Israel’s battlefield secrets to the Egyptians."

What laughable poppycock!

This latest cover story ignores the role played by Walt Rostow, who was nothing if not pro-Zionist. It ignores the overwhelming evidence that the American establishment was fervently anti-Nasser. The assertion that the "State Department’s Middle Eastern policies had a pronounced anti-Semitic tilt" is silly; one could, with as much evidence, call Ronald Reagan a Communist. The Loftus theory ignores the fact that the spy ship was sent into a danger zone without the requested escort, and that aircraft which might have rescued the Liberty were recalled. If Johnson wanted to curry favor with the oil producers, he would not have countenanced a cover-up.

The claim that the U.S. and Britain had backstabbed Israel has one named (or pseudonymed) source: British author "Richard Deacon" -- whose real name was Donald McCormick. He was an intelligence officer who worked with Ian Fleming, and he went on to write about many controversial subjects.

I first encountered the man's work as a youth, when I read his Identity of Jack the Ripper -- a book which I later discovered to be filled with lies. Not just errors: Deliberate, knowing lies. Oddly enough, he wrote the thing under his real name. (See here and here.)

Since that time, I've kept an eye on other Deacon/McCormick offerings. This Wikipedia assessment mirrors my own:

McCormick's reliance on an informal network of oral informants, and his eye for a good story, means that it is often difficult to judge the reliability of his more controversial claims.

Melvin Harris, a prickly but honest author, notes:

McCormick used very similar techniques in his other books. For example, his work on Maundy Gregory contains many faked events and conversations. While his "History of the British Secret Service" has too many inventions to list. And Professor Bernard Wasserstein has said this about McCormick's writings on Trebitsch Lincoln "These absurd statements belong to the realm of fiction."

In 1977, McCormick wrote a fawning history titled The Israeli Secret Service. I think one need say no more.