USS Liberty Incident 40th Anniversary

Posted by daniel j on June 08, 2007, 03:39 PM | #

Don’t forget about AIPAC Spies or the always classic Jonathon Pollard…

Posted by anon on June 09, 2007, 11:12 PM | #

James,

I know the site you linked had a lot of info on it but I haven’t time to wade through it all right now. Can you comment briefly on why Israel attacked this US ship?

Were they spying on Israel?  Sounds unusual for the US, no?

Posted by A Casual Observer on June 10, 2007, 12:08 PM | #

I assume next May you’re going to post on the anniversary of the attack on the USS Stark, as well?

Can you comment briefly on why Israel attacked this US ship?

It was attacked in the middle of the Six Day War and some Israeli pilots misidentified the Liberty, thinking it was an Egyptian ship: the El Quseir. Pilots visually misidentifying targets is not without precedent; look at the 1994 Black Hawk incident where American F-15s visually misidentified two American UH-60s flying in northern Iraq, which the pilots thought were Iraqi Mi-24s.

Were they spying on Israel?

They were collecting electronic intelligence on all of the actors involved in the Six Day War.

Sounds unusual for the US, no?

Allies spy on each other all the time.

Posted by James Bowery on June 10, 2007, 12:41 PM | #

A Casual Observer repeats the official (Israeli) version of history.

There are other views, as documented by the linked site:

    “I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation. . . . Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept their explanations. I didn’t believe them then, and I don’t believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous “
      —US Secretary of State Dean Rusk
     

      “...the board of inquiry (concluded) that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing in attacking the Liberty.”
      —CIA Director Richard Helms
     

      “I can tell you for an absolute certainty (from intercepted communications) that the Israelis knew they were attacking an American ship.”
      —NSA Deputy Director Oliver Kirby
     

      “That the Liberty could have been mistaken for the Egyptian supply ship El Quseir is unbelievable”
      —Special Assistant to the President Clark Clifford, in his report to President Lyndon Johnson
     

      “The highest officials of the [Johnson] administration, including the President, believed it ‘inconceivable’ that Israel’s ‘skilled’ defense forces could have committed such a gross error.”
    —Lyndon Johnson’s biographer Robert Dallek in Flawed Giant, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 430-31)
     

      “A nice whitewash for a group of ignorant, stupid and inept [expletive deleted].”
      —Handwritten note of August 26, 1967, by NSA Deputy Director Louis W. Tordella reacting to the Israeli court decision exonerating Israelis of blame for the Liberty attack.
     

      “Never before in the history of the United States Navy has a Navy Board of Inquiry ignored the testimony of American military eyewitnesses and taken, on faith, the word of their attackers.
      —Captain Richard F. Kiepfer, Medical Corps, US Navy (retired), USS Liberty Survivor
     

      “The evidence was clear. Both Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack…was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew…. It was our shared belief. . .that the attack. . .could not possibly have been an accident…. I am certain that the Israeli pilots [and] their superiors. . .were well aware that the ship was American.”
      —Captain Ward Boston, JAGC, US Navy (retired), senior legal counsel to the US Navy Court of Inquiry
     

      That the attack was deliberate “just wasn’t a disputed issue” within the National Security Agency
      —Former NSA Director retired Army Lieutenant General William Odom on 3 March 2003 in an interview for Naval Institute Proceedings
     

      Former NSA/CIA Director Admiral Bobby Inman “flatly rejected” the Cristol/Israeli claims that the attack was an accident
      —5 March 2003 interview for Naval Institute Proceedings
     

      Of four former NSA/CIA seniors with inside knowledge, none was aware of any agency official who dissented from the position that the attack was deliberate
      —David Walsh, writing in Naval Institute Proceedings
     

      “It appears to me that it was not a pure case of mistaken identity.”
    —Captain William L. McGonagle, Commanding Officer, USS Liberty, speaking at Arlington National Cemetery, June 8, 1997
     

      “To suggest that they [the IDF] couldn’t identify the ship is ... ridiculous. ... Anybody who could not identify the Liberty could not tell the difference between the White House and the Washington Monument.”
      —Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations and later Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, quoted in The Washington Post, June 15, 1991, p. 14

Posted by Englander on June 10, 2007, 01:20 PM | #

Accepting the Israeli claim of mistaken identity should be seen as a clear sign of dishonesty. There can be no doubt that it was intentional. I see that the BBC again aired their honest documentary on the subject the other night.

Posted by anon on June 10, 2007, 10:51 PM | #

I was not doubting they did it intentionally, the Israelis are too smart to make that kind of mistake, the two ships look nothing like each other.

I was just wondering what the motivation might be? seems like a big risk to take against the country who protects their existance with massive military subsidies.

Posted by daniel j on June 12, 2007, 08:29 PM | #

false-flag precursor…

blame it on the Egyptians and get Americans worked up into a fever pitch and on the side of the Israelis in a conflict we should have no real interest in getting involved in…

Posted by E T Gomulka, CAPT, CHC, USN (Ret) on June 13, 2007, 10:33 PM | #

It took the Russians 50 years before Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev admitted to the 1940 Katyn Woods massacre of some 4,500 Polish officers.  It may take another 10 years before the U.S. and Israeli governments admit that the 8 June 1967 Israeli attack on USS Liberty was not accidental.  The evidence is so overwhelming that the Israelis, recipients of billions and billions of dollars in US aid, intentionally attempted to sink AGTR-5 and kill all onbaord.  The failure to investigate this attack represents the greatest betrayal of US military personnel by Congressional leaders in the history of our country.

Posted by Liberty Bell on October 02, 2007, 10:01 PM | #

V. Rare: a major American newspaper allows that Isarel might have been guilty.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-liberty_tuesoct02,0,66005.story?page=1&coll=chi_tab01_layout

Comment is allowed - and happily it’s been robust!