Book Review: The Attack on The Liberty

Bryant Jordan - Military.com

Jun 24, 2009

Shot up at Sea, Sold Down the River

She is a ghost ship that haunts American domestic politics and foreign policy, with a crew -- some long dead and silent, others still living but long pained -- still waiting for a thorough investigation into the attack that nearly sent their ship to the bottom, killed 34 shipmates and wounded 173 more.

She is the USS Liberty, a spy ship attacked in international waters on June 8, 1967, by Israeli air and naval forces, then on the fourth day of the Six Day War. Strafed, napalmed and torpedoed, the barely armed ship and her crew refused to go down. She limped further into the Mediterranean, hydraulics shot to hell, communications non-existent -- deaf, dumb and blind -- alone from the daylight hour of the attack and all though the night, about 17 hours, searching for help and a safe port guided only by the North Star.

By all accounts, the commander, officers and crew of the Liberty behaved heroically to save their ship and each other. But the same cannot be said of the U.S. government, including the Navy, which had sent the men into harm's way, stood back while the blood was still flowing, and then almost immediately went into damage control mode: That is, keep relations with Israel from being damaged. And so it has remained for 42 years now, with a succession of congresses and administrations refusing to hear the eyewitness testimonies of American Sailors, Marines and intelligence agents because their version of events runs contrary to the official version -- that Israel mistook the American ship for an Egyptian troop ship.

Their story is that Israel knew exactly who and what it was attacking that day. And though testimony of crewmen actually interviewed by a Navy Court of Inquiry -- done in just one week -- pointed to that, the official conclusion said otherwise.

With "The Attack on The Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship," (Simon & Shuster, 368 pages), author James Scott places those men back at the center of the story. Through their recollections and even letters the men wrote in the days after the attack, he brings us on and below the decks in a way that has not been done since James Ennes, a Liberty survivor, penned the first book on the incident "The Assault on the Liberty," in 1979. The death and maiming described in Scott's book is not sugarcoated; in very quick order the Liberty is turned from clean-scrubbed order to bloody chaos as men are cut in half, flesh burned away and ripped corpses turn bloated in the oily water below decks.

Scott also has a personal connection to the Liberty; his father, Navy Ensign John Scott, survived the attack on the ship. Doubtless Scott's book will be dismissed by some because of his connection to the Liberty, as was Ennes' book." But Scott is also a journalist with a solid track record. He is a former investigative reporter for The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C. He has had assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan, covered Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and previous to that reported on the 2004 tsunami devastation in Indonesia. He won the McClatchy Company's President's Award in 2001, as well as a number of South Carolina journalism awards, including 2003 Journalist of the Year. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 2006-2007.

Scott has used his reporting skills to flesh out what is probably the most important part of his book -- the move by President Johnson, his advisors, and senior Navy leaders to bury what they knew to be the truth: that the attack on the Liberty was deliberate and calculated. While there is nothing new to the claim, Scott chronicles the maneuvering better than previous writers. He shows Johnson was of two minds -- wanting to give the Israelis an out, but making sure they knew he was not buying the accident story. It was Johnson, Scott writes, who was the anonymous source telling Newsweek that Israel wanted to sink Liberty because it feared it had intercepted messages proving it had begun the war, not the Arabs. And when White House aides suggested to Johnson that he deliver a public message during an afternoon rally in support of Israel, Johnson exploded at one of the men.

"You Zionist Dupe! Why can't you see I'm doing all I can for Israel?" (page 106)

For Johnson, more important than what happened to the Liberty was the war in Vietnam. Influential American Jews already were opposing the war there, and the last thing Johnson needed, Scott argues, was to incur further opposition from Jews by having a rupture with Israel.

Scott relates a message sent to Johnson from a die-hard Israeli supporter, pointing out that many in Israel felt they had to win the war not with U.S. help, "but despite the U.S. (page 104)

"There is a great danger that the Jewish rally, to be held tomorrow [in front of the white House] will be an anti-Johnson, rather than a pro-Israel, demonstration." (page 104)

Johnson didn't want to be on the wrong side of Israel's supporters, says Scott. (page 105) To ensure that Israel didn't suffer any unnecessary bad press, according to an official with the Joint Reconnaissance Center at the Pentagon, some Washington leaders considered sinking the vessel rather than let her be seen and photographed with her burn scars, 841 shell holes and gaping torpedo hole. (page 93-94) That did not happen, but what did happen was a rapid repair and repainting of the ship, which was sold for scrap three years later.

"However outrageous the attack on the Liberty was," wrote Dean Rusk, Secretary of State under Johnson, "there remains the policy question as to whether that episode should have been blown into a major confrontation between Israel and the United States. Those who carry the ultimate responsibility, however, know that there are times when one has to pick up the pieces and not let everything fall apart because of an occurrence of this sort." (page 165)

At the State Department, sources were providing the Israeli embassy with inside information on what the U.S. knew about the attack, including that the U.S. had picked up transmissions showing Israeli pilots identified the ship as American but attacked anyway, soon followed by the torpedo assault. (page 197)

And on Capital Hill, the Liberty attack barely got a mention in public.

"No one publicly demanded answers, questioned how Israeli pilots and torpedo boat skippers could have made such an incredible blunder, or called for an investigation or public hearings," Scott writes. (page 103) Liberty was mentioned by just three lawmakers, says Scott, who poured through the Congressional Record looking for the mentions. And when the Liberty attack was referenced, he found, it was only as "an afterthought," buried in long speeches about the Middle East. The few representatives that did have misgivings about the Israeli explanation for the attack spoke only "behind closed doors of committee meetings and in hushed tons in the cloakrooms and dining rooms of Capitol Hill," Scott writes. (page 103)

On the House and Senate floors, he said, the speeches were all congratulatory of Israel, many of these coming from lawmakers in states with large Jewish communities, he writes. (page 103)

Scott doubtless will get more than his share of critical letters and email for making the case that justice for Liberty and her crew was sacrificed for political expediency and fear for what has come to be known as "the Israel lobby." Ennes and others pushing for a new and thorough investigation of the attack have been hearing this kind of criticism for many years. Those who promote or believe in the mistaken identity claim routinely dismiss Liberty survivors and their advocates as conspiracy theorists or anti-Semites or both.

The question is, will Scott's book on the Liberty make any difference? After all, there certainly has been enough evidence out there all along to make an argument for a new and thorough investigation. But lawmakers are not more likely push for this today than their predecessors were in 1968. Doing or saying anything that might be seen as critical of Israel is still the third rail of politics. And that is why the Liberty story, though 42 years old, will never be an old story, because few lawmakers who have raised their hand to take the oath of their office since 1967 have even tried to lift a finger to get a fair hearing for the Liberty and her crew. That means every lawmaker, right down to those now occupying their seats, are culpable in continuing to go along with the losing bargain Johnson made over Liberty.

In the end, Johnson lost so much public support from all constituencies that he abandoned a reelection bid in 1968. For its part, Israel got to keep and even build on its "special relationship" with the U.S., so that American foreign policy in the Middle East is largely viewed as lopsided and not always in America's best interests.

As for the Liberty, the stone marking the lot in which some crewmen's remains were buried at Arlington National Cemetery does not even identify who attacked the ship. The ship's commander, William McGonagle, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his fight to save his ship and men; but the award was not given by Johnson at the White House, but by the secretary of the Navy in the Washington Navy Yard. And not even his Medal of Honor citation identifies Israel as the attacker.

Up to today the Liberty came out of the bargain a political Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship that will always make lawmakers afraid. The sides are so polarized on the Liberty it's not likely Scott's book will change hearts or minds, but it may give lawmakers -- or any others who would deny a full inquiry into the attack -- more reason to be embarrassed.

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Bryant Jordan is an Associate Editor for Military.com. In a 2002 interview with retired Navy Capt. Ward Boston, the legal advisor to the 1967 Court of Inquiry investigation into the attack on the Liberty, Boston revealed for the first time that the court was used to cover up the attack and absolve Israel of any blame. Five years later Jordan found in the National Archives original copies of casualty notification telegrams to Liberty family members informing them that the deaths were the result of Israel accidentally attacking the ship. The telegrams were dated prior to the Court of Inquiry convening.

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