Dear Gene-Thomas,

According to a United Nations report,“UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon contacted Israeli troops 10 times before an Israeli bomb killed four of them.”  The attack on the UN observers reminded me of your recent articles about the 1967 attack on the USS LIBERTY….

George

Dear George,

Countries like China, Austria, Canada and Finland that had citizens killed by the Israelis while serving as UN observers can learn much from the attack on the LIBERTY. Similar to the killing of the UN observers that was preceded by 10 contacts, so too was the 2:00 p.m. assault on the LIBERTY preceded by eight different close flyovers by Israeli aircraft between 6:00 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. Our government accepted the Israeli excuse that the 1967 attack was an accident despite overwhelming evidence that it was quite deliberate.

The reason the White House ordered that the Court of Inquiry into the attack on the LIBERTY be completed within a week was to preclude the inclusion of testimony and evidence that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the attack was no accident. Excluded from the original investigation was not only very damaging eye-witness testimony from several LIBERTY officers and crew members, but also evidence from a Navy EC-121 intelligence-gathering aircraft that was overhead during the attack and recorded Israeli communications. In his book, Body of Secrets (2001), James Bamford quotes a crew member from that aircraft who reported, "Although the attackers never gave a name or hull number, the ship was identified as flying an American flag." Having intercepted the Israeli communications, the crew member remarked, "We logically concluded that the ship was the USS LIBERTY."

Statements issued by the Johnson White House that the attack was a “tragic accident” are contradicted by officials from the National Security Agency (NSA) interviewed by Bamford. Walter Deely, a senior NSA official at the time who was ordered to conduct a classified investigation into the attack, told Bamford that his report concluded "there is no way they didn't know that the LIBERTY was American."

Some of the most damaging pieces of evidence against Israel’s claim that their attack was an accident have come from Israelis themselves. In an article published in “Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,” James Ennes, Jr. documented how an Israeli pilot spoke with LIBERTY survivors and former Congressman Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey (R-CA) about his role in the attack. According to Ennes, even though the pilot said he informed his command that the ship was American, he was ordered to continue with the attack nonetheless. Because he refused to carry out the order, he was arrested upon his return to base.

Voice communications from the Israeli pilots who identified the ship as American were also heard by radio monitors in the US Embassy in Lebanon. The Honorable Dwight Porter, US Ambassador at the time to Lebanon, later confirmed this in a 1991 interview with syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak.

In the 2003 British Broadcasting Company (BBC) production, “Dead in the Water,” Richard Block, a US Air Force radio intercept officer, recounted how he heard Israeli pilots twice inform their base that the ship they were ordered to attack was American. Former US Air Force intelligence analysts Ron Gotcher and Steve Forslund have also since come forward to report how they saw real-time transcripts of intercepted Israeli communications that confirm they were aware they were attacking an American ship.

A delegation from the USS LIBERTY Alliance scheduled a July 27 appointment with Senator John Warner in his capacity as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Prior to that meeting, Rear Admirals Clarence A. Hill, Jr. and Merlin Staring, Chairman and Treasurer, respectively, of the Liberty Alliance, sent Warner a letter dated 22 July 2006 requesting, “We turn to you…to take action that is needed to set the record straight. A full and proper review by the Congress…could open the eyes of our nation to an incident that is as worthy an example of courage, for today’s sailors, as it was for those who first heard the word’s ‘Don’t give up the ship’ from the lips of the brave Captain James Lawrence himself.” When the meeting was held, it was conducted by Sam Zega, a member of Warner’s staff, who questioned why the group wanted the Senator to address an incident that took place almost 40 years ago. While the Alliance has yet to receive a response to their request from Warner personally, some members left the meeting with an impression from Zega that the Senator was not willing to defy the Israeli lobby by fighting for the brave crew of the LIBERTY that gave their lives and shed their blood rather than “give up the ship.”

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