Amid the jubilee celebrations for the Six-Day War, the tragic story of the American spy ship USS Liberty – which was bombed by an Israeli fighter jet and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967 in the eastern Mediterranean – was somewhat overlooked. Thirty-four American sailors were killed in the Israeli attack and many others were wounded.
The technical research ship USS Liberty arrives at Valletta, Malta, having been attacked by Israeli aircraft and torpedo vessels in the Mediterranean, 8th June 1967. Credit: Getty Images
Israel apologized[cm_simple_footnote id=2] and paid compensation to the victims’ families.[cm_simple_footnote id=3] Israeli and American commissions of inquiry found that the attack was a mistake.[cm_simple_footnote id=4] But naturally, as often happens in such events, to this day there are some who believe Israel attacked the ship with malicious intent.[cm_simple_footnote id=5]
A conspiracy? Healthy suspicion? Call it what you will. A new book published in May in the United States (its authors include several survivors of the attack) promises that “the truth is being told as never before and the real story revealed.” The 302 pages of “Remember the Liberty!: Almost Sunk by Treason on the High Seas”[cm_simple_footnote id=6] include quite a number of documents, testimonies, arguments and information that were gathered in the subsequent 50 years.
Historian and Kulanu MK Michael Oren: “Attempts to explain why Israel was interested in attacking the Liberty have failed thus far.”[cm_simple_footnote id=7] Credit: Ofer Vaknin
The authors’ bottom line is that then-U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson was behind the attack, in an attempt to blame then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser – an excuse that would then enable the United States to join the Six-Day War.
The book includes, among other things, a CIA document from November 1967 that is still partially censored. In the document, which is also on the official CIA website, an anonymous source is quoted as saying: “They said that [then-Israeli Defense Minister Moshe] Dayan personally ordered the attack on the ship, and that one of his generals adamantly opposed the action and said, ‘This is pure murder.’” There is no dispute about the authenticity of the document, but clearly not every sentence written in an intelligence document is the unvarnished truth.
On the other hand, the new book quotes a story reported by former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight Porter, who recounted a conversation between an Israeli pilot and the Israel Air Force war room, which was allegedly picked up by an NSA aircraft and inadvertently cabled to CIA offices around the world:
The CIA document. Still partly censored, 50 years on. Credit: CIA
Israeli pilot to IDF war room: This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?
IDF war room to Israeli pilot: Yes, follow orders.
Israeli pilot to IDF war room: But sir, it’s an American ship – I can see the flag!
IDF war room to Israeli pilot: Never mind; hit it.
Both the CIA document and the quote have already been published in the past. The book revives them as part of its attempt to prove its thesis.[cm_simple_footnote id=8]
Historian (and current Kulanu lawmaker) Dr. Michael Oren, who researched the affair in depth, rejects out of hand attempts to claim Israel attacked the USS Liberty deliberately.
Haaretz asked Oren last week if he has any doubts about his assertion that Israel didn’t deliberately attack the spy ship.
“There is no doubt,” he says. “Not even the smallest percentage. I’ve taken part in wars. I know what ‘friendly fire’ is. There’s a lot of chaos. It was a classic screw up.
A classic screw up, especially in wartime, has more than one reason. It’s a sequence, a chain of screw ups.”
Oren adds: “I’m a historian. I have to stick with the facts.[cm_simple_footnote id=9] I can’t get into conspiracies and theories. A historian must proceed on the basis of the data before him. Today, almost all the papers have been publicized, including the texts of the recordings of the U.S. spy plane and spy submarine.[cm_simple_footnote id=10]
“Attempts to explain why Israel was interested in attacking the Liberty have failed thus far,” he continues. “They’re trying to answer the question ‘Why?’ and they’re having difficulty. It began with the claim that the Liberty discovered the Israel Defense Forces’ intentions or preparations to occupy the Golan Heights. And then they said it had homed in on some preparations in Dimona [the site of Israel’s nuclear reactor]. And finally, that it had listened in on the slaughter of Egyptian prisoners of war – I don’t know how slaughter sounds on the communications network. All kinds of bizarre theories.
“If we start with the assumption that the attack was deliberate and planned in advance, the question is why. And nobody answers this question. The answer is that it wasn’t planned.
“What continues to fuel these conspiracy theories?” Oren asks. “The subject is revived every few years. It is part of a ‘theory’ that Israel, together with Russia and China, spies on the United States. As Israel’s ambassador to the United States I saw this undercurrent, which is also sometimes anti-Semitic.”
No smoking gun
In response to a recent request by historian Adam Raz (“The Battle Over the Bomb,” 2015, Hebrew), the Israel State Archives posted hundreds of documents on its website related to the USS Liberty affair.
Raz perused the material and pulled out several fascinating documents that are likely to add more questions to those already in existence – or, if you will, provide some convincing material for conspiracy theorists.
Raz, who wrote a fascinating article about Israel’s nuclear secrets in last week’s Hebrew Haaretz supplement, doesn’t like the C-word: “conspiracy.” He stresses that, as a historian, he finds the word unacceptable. “Was the so-called ‘rotten business’ [a failed Israeli sabotage operation in Egypt in 1954] also a conspiracy? So what’s a conspiracy?” he wonders.
He believes the documents arouse enough questions to ensure historians won’t be filing the affair away in the archives. He’s fully aware of the fact that the “smoking gun” won’t be found in the papers in the State Archives, because if Israel really had intended to hit the ship, that would have been known only to a handful of people. But he refuses to accept the assertion that the claims Israel hit the ship deliberately are a conspiracy.
One of the documents Raz found among the hundreds of papers published by the State Archives is the Israeli Foreign Ministry correspondence that was sent from New York to Jerusalem.
“Menashe informed us we had better be very careful. He doesn’t have complete information but he knows that Issaschar is very angry about our letter. The reason is apparently that the Americans have findings that show our pilots were in fact aware the ship was American,” according to the document.
And later: “Menashe believes there is a recording on the ship of the conversations between the ship and our pilots, in which the ship’s crew said the ship is American. Menashe says that, in his opinion, our only chance of getting out of the crisis is to punish someone for negligence.”
In another document, which is also now posted online by the State Archives, the Israeli Embassy in Washington writes to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem under the heading “Urgent.”
“We must change the abovementioned letter, because we certainly won’t be able to say there is no basis for the accusation that the identity of the ship was determined by Israeli planes prior to the attack,” it declares.
In other documents, which are fascinating in themselves, there is documentation of Israeli preparations for the U.S. investigation and the demands for compensation that were to follow.
“The issue has turned into a malignant wound, which involves serious dangers for all of our relationships on all levels here, whose friendship was ours until now and which are crucial to our status in the United States. In other words, the president, the Pentagon, public opinion and the intelligence community. Do you realize that the president is also the supreme commander of the U.S. armed forces?” wonders the Israeli Embassy in Washington, in a telegram to the Foreign Ministry.
“In the grave situation that has been created, the only way to soften the result is for us to be able to announce to the U.S. government already today that we intend to prosecute people for this disaster. We have to publicize that in Israel already tonight,” according to a Foreign Ministry letter. “This activity is the only way to create the impression, both to the U.S. government and the public here, that the attack on the ship was not the result of malicious intent by the Israeli government – I repeat, the Israeli government – or authorized groups in the IDF. For obvious reasons, it is crucial that our announcement about prosecuting those who are to blame be publicized before – I repeat, before – the publication of the American report here.”
The papers also contain several “amusing” anecdotes, such as the description of a U.S. Independence Day party that was held at the U.S. Embassy in Israel after the disaster.
“I was presented to the commander of the USS Liberty, which is here for repairs. He spoke freely about what happened and expressed his full confidence that it was a tragic mistake,” according to one of the Foreign Ministry documents. “When asked in my presence, how long the ship’s trip to the United States would take, he replied with a smile, ‘About two weeks – unless we encounter Israeli planes again.’”[cm_simple_footnote id=11]
Much ink has been spilled in the past 50 years about the Liberty. In 2015, Amir Oren wrote a fascinating Haaretz Hebrew article that tried to eliminate all the conspiracy theories. “Senior American officials bequeathed a large number of incriminating quotes, but the plain and consensual truth is that a series of mistakes and screw ups caused the IDF to land a lethal blow against a vessel belonging to Israel’s most important ally,” he wrote.
Tom Segev, in an equally interesting 2012 article, also came out against the various theories. “None of the four people who could have ordered an attack on an American ship – Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Mossad chief Meir Amit, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin – was daring and crazy to that extent,” he wrote.
However, he concludes with a slight note of doubt: “Over the years, various pieces of evidence have emerged that seem to support Israel’s claim that the ship was fired on by mistake.[cm_simple_footnote id=12] However, a number of questions still hover over the affair, and these nourish the conspiracy theories.”
The June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was a deliberate, premeditated, well planned and almost perfectly executed attack by the Israeli military on a lone, freshly painted, well-marked, correctly identified, non-combatant US Navy ship by the most powerful military in the Middle East allied with the President of the United States in violation of international law and US Statutes.
Of a crew of 294 officers and men (including three civilians), the ship suffered thirty-four (34) killed in action and one hundred seventy-four (174) wounded in action. The ship itself, a Forty Million ($40,000,000) Dollar state-of-the-art signals intelligence (SIGINT) platform, was so badly damaged that it never sailed on an operational mission again and was sold in 1970 for $101,666.66 as scrap.
The attack included the jamming of our radios on both US Navy tactical and international maritime distress frequencies, the use of unmarked aircraft by the forces attacking the USS Liberty, and the deliberate machine gunning of life rafts we had dropped over the side in anticipation of abandoning ship.
The White House ordered the recall of rescue aircraft that had been launched from Sixth Fleet aircraft carriers while we were still under attack and calling for help. That order cost the lives of 25 of our shipmates killed by the torpedo.
After those flights were recalled, Sixth Fleet personnel listened to our calls for help as the attack continued, knowing they were forbidden to come to our assistance.
For over 54 years USS Liberty survivors have tried to tell our story to the American people. For over 54 years our effort didn’t get any traction.
Now that has changed.
One of the most famous and well-respected former US Navy SEALs in America, Jocko Willink, interviewed USS Liberty survivors for almost 2-½ hours for his podcast.
USS Liberty Survivors Joe Meadors, Phil Tourney and Larry Bowen with Jocko Willink Shortly After Their Interview for Jocko’s Podcast.
“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” — Golda Meir((My Lifeby Golda Meir; Published by G.P. Putnam and Sons, 1973))
[Updated Article First Appearing in USS Liberty Inquiry Website.]
Why put together a Court of Inquiry into something that happened more than fifty four years ago? Why try to reopen something that was settled by the government more than five and a half decades ago? Isn’t this just ancient history?
In fact, there have been no inquiries into the culpability for the Israeli attack. This isn’t a matter of conducting another inquiry, but rather conducting what would be the first inquiry ever made into the question of who was responsible for the attack on USS Liberty, and why?
There are many practical reasons for undertaking a complete examination of the Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, but there is one reason that stands out above all: Justice.
Under our system of government, as individual citizens, we have foresworn our individual right to vengeance in return for society’s promise to act on our behalf when a crime is committed against us as individuals. If society fails to act, if society does not live up to its obligation to act on behalf of wronged individuals, then the social contract is broken. Justice is central to our social system. If we cannot depend on society to deliver justice, there is no incentive for individuals to refrain from extracting their own vengeance.
It is to be remembered that one of the primary reasons for the law’s existence, indeed the state’s existence, is that people are to be relieved of their need to strike out against those who have wronged them. Not to argue the rights or wrongs of it; it is entirely natural for an individual, when injured or harmed by another or others, to seek revenge and retribution. It is potentially harmful to the state if the state does not satisfy these needs, these urges. If the people are not satisfied, as history clearly shows, then the people take the law into their own hands; and, they will do so, quick enough, if they see that the law does not suit their purposes. To punish the criminal, in order to satisfy the urges of the victim for revenge and retribution is an expression of a very old law, which still finds expression in our existing law, lex talionis. The Mosaic Code of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” lurks behind most legal punishments.
On June 8, 1967, aircraft and ships of the Israel Defense Forces attacked a United States Navy ship, USS Liberty. The Israeli attack killed 34 Americans and wounded 174 more. While the human damage was by far the worst, the ship also suffered more than Twenty Million Dollars in damages.
It is undisputed that Liberty was in international waters at all times. It is undisputed that she was an American ship. It is undisputed that she offered no overt or covert military threat to anyone. It is undisputed that the attack was undertaken by the Israelis. It is undisputed that the Israelis never positively identified the Liberty as a ship belonging to a belligerent nation.
Contrary to these undisputed facts, the United States publicly accepted the Israeli claim that the attack was an accident and closed the matter without undertaking any sort of detailed inquiry. Claims have been made that there have been nine, or eleven, or thirteen “complete investigations” of the attack((The Liberty Incident Revealedby A.J. Cristol; Published by US Navy Institute Press)). In point of fact, there has never been even a single complete investigation of what happened.
Standing alone, the undisputed facts make a strong and persuasive case for murder. At a minimum, the United States owes the survivors of the attack and the families of the deceased an explanation as to why the Israeli claim that the attack was an accident, when the undisputed evidence clearly suggests otherwise, was accepted without an investigation.
That the United States government has classified the most critical and dispositive evidence, without explanation, speaks volumes as to their belief as to what really happened. If this were truly an accident, why would it be necessary to classify materials that would otherwise have been released to the public many years ago? If this were truly an accident, why has Congress refused to investigate, as they have done in all other attacks on U.S. ships in peacetime that resulted in significant loss of life?
Every member of the United States military must swear to the following Code of Conduct((Executive Order 10631–Code of Conduct for members of the Armed Forces of the United States)):
I am an American fighting in the forces that guard my country and our way of life, I am prepared to give my life in their defense.
I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.
If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.
If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.
Should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies.
I will never forget that I am an American fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.
While divine judgment is beyond the scope of this inquiry, we can and do charge the United States government with willfully refusing to honor its obligation to the survivors and the families of the dead.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. We have hundreds of photos of the damage done by the attack. How many words do our pictures tell about the USS Liberty?
by Joe Meadors
Yes, Virginia. There was an attack on the USS Liberty. That may seem to be a novel way to begin a blog post by a USS Liberty survivor. It’s liberally based on a September 21, 1897 editorial in the New York’s Sun written by Francis Pharcellus Church in response to 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon’s question to the editor, “Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?”
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Francis Pharcellus Church, Sept. 21, 1897 Editorial in the New York’s Sun
The first paragraph of Mr. Church’s editorial can be modified only slightly to address the skepticism some feel about the facts about the attack on our ship.
To address that skepticism and hoping they will believe what they see, let me provide some photos taken following the attack:
This is an antenna mount that received a direct hit
This is an antenna mount that received multiple direct hits.
Multiple hits on antenna mount.
Before this blood was dry Senator Jacob Javits was on the Senate floor claiming the attack was an accident.
There were USS Liberty crewmen in this guntub when the rockets hit.
There were USS Liberty crewmen in this guntub when the rockets hit.
I’ll never forget the blood in the forward 50 cal. gun tub sloshing back and forth as the ship rolled. Wish I had a camera that day.
Wayne Stiles, co-pilot on the first helicopter to reach the USS Liberty following the Israeli attack
Hundreds more photos of the damage inflicted upon the USS Liberty during the attack can be found in the Photos section of our official Facebook Page.
If the physical damage to the ship does not support our effort to ensure the US government finally investigates the attack, consider those killed during the attack.
In the 54+ years since the attack, not a single Member of Congress has attended a Memorial Service honoring those fallen during the attack. There was a time when we held an annual Memorial Service at the site of the mass grave in Arlington National Cemetery, Mass Grave #1817, Section 34 on the anniversary of the attack. That Memorial Service was moved to the Navy Memorial in Washington, DC when it became difficult for some of our supporters to make the walk to the mass grave.
Not a single Member of Congress ever attended or sent an official delegation to attend any of those annual Memorial Services.
Here are those Killed in Action during the attack on the USS Liberty that Members of Congress have deemed to be unworthy of publicly displaying their honor, support and compassion.
Members of Congress live for the opportunity of expressing public affirmations of honor, support and compassion for those lost on the USS Pueblo, USS Stark and USS Cole and the 1983 bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut.
Members of Congress never miss the opportunity of attending a Memorial Service for those lost in those attacks.
But not for the USS Liberty.
Why is it ok to refuse to attend a Memorial Service for those lost on the USS Liberty?
Where is the outrage?
What did we do that resulted in our being a pariah in the Halls of Congress?
If your son, daughter, father or mother were killed in action and their deaths were treated so disrespectfully by Members of Congress would you sit idly by and allow it to happen?
