Dear Gene-Thomas,

The Liberty survivors have been fighting the two-government cover-up about the attack for 39 years now but it is still in place. Most people never heard of the attack and it is a shame. Our foreign policy might have been a lot different had the truth been known…

John Gidusko
LT, USN, (Ret) Former Liberty crewman (not a survivor)

Dear John,

In light of the current fighting taking place today in the Middle East, can you imagine how angry the American people would become if they learned the truth about the attack on USS LIBERTY? While this tragic incident covered–up by the US and Israeli governments occurred 39 years ago, it took the US and Russian governments 50 years to admit to the truth about the Katyn Wood massacre. The question is, “How long will the US and Israel continue to perpetuate this lie?” How long will the Secretary of Defense and Congress ignore appeals from leaders like Rear Admirals Merlin H. Starling and Clarence A. Hill who continue to appeal for truth and justice on behalf of the Liberty crew?

In 1943, German soldiers discovered a mass grave in the Katyn forest near Smolensk in western Russia. The grave held the bodies of some 4,500 Polish army officers who were gagged, bound, shot once in the head and buried on the spot in the spring of 1940. The Germans publicized the grave and accused the Soviets of the massacre. Moscow denied the charge and claimed the Germans were attempting to cover up their own atrocity.

Despite evidence that the Kremlin was indeed behind the massacre, the United States chose to look the other way. President Roosevelt opposed a call by the Polish government-in-exile for an investigation by the International Red Cross into the incident. Following the war, at the Nuremberg war crime tribunals, the issue of Katyn was originally included on the list of crimes attributed to the Nazis. But it was later dropped, apparently out of concern that any revelations about the massacre would “embarrass” the Soviets.

It wasn't until 1990 that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev admitted Soviet involvement in the Katyn forest massacre. Two years later, the Russian government handed over to Polish President Lech Walesa previously secret documents showing that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had directly ordered the killing of the Polish army officers. 

Just as Presidents Roosevelt and Truman did not want to embarrass the Russians who were our allies during World War II, so too did President Lyndon Johnson respond to the Israeli attack on the Liberty by saying, “We will not embarrass an ally.” 

When I was growing up in the 50s, I was taught to pity the Russian people for being deprived of the truth by their media even though one of their major publications was “Pravda” (the Russian word for “truth”). Do our governmental officials always tell the truth even under oath at the risk of committing perjury? Do our own US newspapers and websites always publicize the truth about various news events? One of the Liberty survivors sent me a video about the attack and subsequent cover-up entitled, “Dead in the Water.” While the video has been broadcast in over 50 countries and four languages (English, French, Russian and German), why is it that not one US network or cable outlet has allowed it to be aired?

While Liberty survivors wrote letters this past week to the Fleet Reserve Association (FRA) and other organizations, websites and newspapers thanking them for publishing last week’s article (“Liberty Betrayed”), they would be very saddened to learn how many US media sources chose not to run it. Those who fought and died for our country from Revolutionary War times to the present have so done so with the belief that they were defending a free and just society “with liberty and justice for all.” The ongoing media blackout and the governmental cover-up of the truth involving the Liberty betrays those “who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life.”

Gene-Thomas Gomulka
Author of The Survival Guide for Marriage in the Military available at www.plaintec.net
Have a question? Write Gene-Thomas at letters@plaintec.net