Cover-Up Alleged in Probe of USS Liberty

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Wed Oct 22, 8:47 PM ET Add U.S. Government - AP to My Yahoo!

By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A former Navy attorney who helped lead the military investigation of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 American servicemen says former President Lyndon Johnson and his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, ordered that the inquiry conclude the incident was an accident.

In a signed affidavit released at a Capitol Hill news conference, retired Capt. Ward Boston said Johnson and McNamara told those heading the Navy’s inquiry to “conclude that the attack was a case of ‘mistaken identity’ despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

Boston was senior legal counsel to the Navy’s original 1967 review of the attack. He said in the sworn statement that he stayed silent for years because he’s a military man, and “when orders come … I follow them.”

He said he felt compelled to “share the truth” following the publication of a recent book, “The Liberty Incident,” which concluded the attack was unintentional.

The USS Liberty was an electronic intelligence-gathering ship that was cruising international waters off the Egyptian coast on June 8, 1967. Israeli planes and torpedo boats opened fire on the Liberty at what became known as the outbreak of the Israeli-Egyptian Six-Day War.

In addition to the 34 Americans killed, more than 170 were wounded.

Israel has long maintained that the attack was a case of mistaken identity, an explanation that the Johnson administration did not formally challenge. Israel claimed its forces thought the ship was an Egyptian vessel and apologized to the United States.

After the attack, a Navy court of inquiry concluded there was insufficient information to make a judgment about why Israel attacked the ship, stopping short of assigning blame or determining whether it was an accident.

It was “one of the classic all-American cover-ups,” said Ret. Adm. Thomas Moorer, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who spent a year investigating the attack as part of an independent panel he formed with other former military officials. The panel also included a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Akins.

“Why would our government put Israel’s interests ahead of our own?” Moorer asked from his wheelchair at the news conference. He was chief of naval operations at the time of the attack.

Moorer, who has long held that the attack was a deliberate act, wants Congress to investigate.

Israeli Embassy spokesman Mark Regev disputed any notion that Israel knowingly went after American sailors.

“I can say unequivocally that the Liberty tragedy was a terrible accident, that the Israeli pilots involved believed they were attacking an enemy ship,” Regev said. “This was in the middle of a war. This is something that we are not proud of.”

Calls to the Navy seeking comment were not immediately returned.

In Boston’s statement, he does not say why Johnson would have ordered a cover-up. Attempts were made to reach Boston at his home in Coronado, Calif., but he did not return calls seeking comment.

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Moorer’s panel suggested several possible reasons Israel might have wanted to attack a U.S. ship. Among them: Israel intended to sink the ship and blame Egypt because it might have brought the United States into the 1967 war. **

very interesting. despite knowing the truth, the then american president decided to put israels’s interested ahead of its own people. 30+ ppl got killed and no one ever got blamed or charged or put on trial. if this guy indeed is telling the truth then what will happen now?

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Hopefully a congressional investigation but don’t hold your breath.

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So the US army covers up certain action what a surprise for the American patriots on this forum, who think that such a thing is only done in the 3rd world. I wonder when the truth of what happened on 9/11 will come out maybe in 20 years time or maybe never, time will tell. The US government does not care about the lives of its own people they only care about intrests and relationships with other countries who aiding them to dominate the world and middle east in particular.

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Here is some more info from various American sites.

"On that June day in 1967, the weather was beautiful… Clear and sunny, visibility unlimited… the LIBERTY, an elaborate state-of-the art intelligence gathering platform, was in international waters off the Gaza strip and was flying the Stars and Stripes. Israeli reconnaissance planes flew overhead for hours. Pilots and ship’s crew waved to each other. Then, inexplicably, unmarked Israeli aircraft began attacking the ship.

The defenseless LIBERTY radioed for help. Two aircraft carriers in the Med responded by launching fighter aircraft. Unbelievably, they were recalled by the White House. RADM Geis, then commanding the carriers in the Sixth Fleet, called Washington personally to confirm the order. SecDef McNamara came on the line, then President Johnson. Johnson indicated to Geis that the aircraft were to be returned, that he would not have his allies embarrassed, and that he didn’t care who was killed or what was done to the ship. Geis, like any good sailor, recalled the aircraft…
President Johnson went on television and announced to the American people that TEN sailors were killed in the “six minute accidental” attack. Sailors were ordered not to discuss the incident with ANYONE under threat of court-martial. We waited for the investigation… and for the explanations and the answers. Why did Israel attack the ship? Why did the U. S. Government turn its back on the crew members? The answers never came.

There has NEVER been a congressional investigation…"

http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/

http://ussliberty.org/gifs.htm

http://ussliberty.org/chapter6.htm

http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=399

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Well here’s another viewpoint on Cristol’s claims.
The article is long but worth reading, irrespective of one’s own understanding of the events.

" Lifting the ‘fog of war’
By David C. Walsh
…
Occasionally, as now, the action is in synch. In one “corner” are a retired Navy JAG captain-cum-judge and the government of Israel; in the other, Liberty survivors, former leaders of the highly secret National Security Agency and other spooky types.
The judge, A. Jay Cristol, has written a controversial book, “The Liberty Incident.” It alleges that the furious attack on the U.S. Navy ship (tasked by the NSA and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff) was what Israel since 1967 has claimed: a
“friendly-fire” accident, the sort that bedevils every war.

For their part, Liberty supporters assert that the ex-Navy lawyer is merely the latest, albeit most effective, in a long
series of apologists for Israel. He is helping Israel engage in a decades-long campaign of disinformation and deceit, they
maintain. Some harbor their own “conspiratorial” suspicions, i.e., that Israel paid for the many research trips Cristol made to the Jewish state over many years. Regardless, they say the present round of rhetorical combat has exposed their nemesis as highly selective in the use of records, disingenuous and desperate. “He’s on the ropes!” exclaims one. Perhaps. But with skeins of the story ever spreading, knotty issues left to be untied and core truths waiting to be teased out, neither side
can declare “case closed.”

The sad slugfest continues.
…
In total, they pointed the way toward an unsettling conclusion:
The Cristol/Israeli explanation of “accidental attack in the fog of war” may have grown so threadbare as to be virtually unsustainable.
…
Two former NSA directors – Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, Gen. William Odom – and two ex-deputy directors – Gen. John Morrison and Oliver Kirby – told me that there has never been any question at the agency but that Israel’s attack on the Liberty was
deliberate.
…
Here it’s worth reiterating something key to this dimension of the accidentalists vs. deliberates contest. The intercepts
referenced by Odom, Helms, Kirby et al (whose existence the NSA officially denies) were real-time intelligence gleaned as the
attack commenced. By contrast, the NSA-held material Cristol succeeded in declassifying, which he insists validates his view, appear limited to after-action reports by Israeli helicopter pilots. They’d arrived to survey the damage from the attack and
played no role in it.

In any case, the disparity between these intelligence officials’ revelations and the official, steadfast American government
position – “no evidence of deliberateness” – is as enormous as it is remarkable. Obviously, people like Helms (who as director coordinated the entire United States intelligence community)
Inman, Morrison, et al were among the world’s most knowledgeable. Thus, it seems difficult to understand why during
so many years spent probing the Liberty, Cristol apparently caged only one of like rank for book jacket blurbs. And even
this source – ex-Naval Intelligence director Rear Admiral Thomas A. Brooks – now contradicts the judge. He observes in the
open-source intelligence journal he edits that the case is not closed.

In any event, why the dearth of American intelligence professionals among sources cited by Cristol? Are they to be lumped in with the “conspiracists,” pro-Arabs, etc.?

Cristol does not say. (Various questions to him during the preparation of my Proceedings piece went unanswered, on the grounds, he wrote me, that I was biased.)
…
Why did Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Chief of Naval
Operations Adm. David McDonald shout orders to the two carrier commanders to recall jets sent to help the Liberty, which was then still under deadly attack? (This, according to Liberty’s deck officer James Ennes, quoting an electronic technician
aboard the Liberty who had “patched” McNamara and Martin together with the carrier skippers through the Naval
Communications Station at Port Laerty, Morocco).

Was the recall on orders from President Lyndon Johnson? Did LBJ fear political retaliation at home if he punished Israel? I
don’t know. I can say that McNamara once told me, as he has others in virtually identical language, that “I have no
recollection of the Liberty, and therefore can be of no assistance to you.” This is a dumbfounding remark, given the
former defense chief’s ability to recount decades-old conversations verbatim.
…
This failure by any administration to probe the motive for the tragedy is wrenching for all who experienced the horror of the
attack, cryptologic technicians and seamen alike. As Dr. Richard Kiepfer, the ship’s overwhelmed physician, has written, “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.”
A harsh judgment.
Kiepfer was referring to a perfunctory hearing convened barely a week following the attack, memorable to survivors mainly for its frequent rejection of testimony and evidence that tended to implicate Israel in a deliberate attack. Shockingly, the court’s
chief legal counsel, Capt. Ward Boston, in 2002 told Navy Times the naval court was, in fact, a politicized sham. Its conclusions, he declared, had been preordained to exonerate Israel.
…"

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This failure by any administration to probe the motive for the tragedy is wrenching for all who experienced the horror of the attack, cryptologic technicians and seamen alike. As Dr. Richard Kiepfer, the ship's overwhelmed physician, has written, "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."

The attackers were the Israeli military, and they can get away with anything, even blowing up a US Navy ship and killing dozens of US soldiers.

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you wouldn't believe

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by showkot: *
So the US army covers up certain action what a surprise for the American patriots on this forum, who think that such a thing is only done in the 3rd world. I wonder when the truth of what happened on 9/11 will come out maybe in 20 years time or maybe never, time will tell. The US government does not care about the lives of its own people they only care about intrests and relationships with other countries who aiding them to dominate the world and middle east in particular.
[/QUOTE]

exactly.

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Oh please.

Do you not think for a minute that if indeed there were some "scandal", that someone like Richard Clark would not appear, write a book and get rich from exposing the scandal? Ameicans love a good scandal.

This whole episode is a pretty apparent attempt by some of you to bash Jews. In essence you are taking one incident and saying, "See, the Jews even kill your soldiers, see how evil they are?"

Here is the real question. For the most part Americans either have forgotten the incident, accepted it as a risk the military takes in a war zone, or accepted the incident as a scattered occurance. So what makes you, mostly people who are not American citizens, so hot and bothered to fire up an investigation?