USS Liberty
                      Questions linger as time passes

                              Phoenix Gazette
                                7 June 1995

                              by Mark Genrich
                   Deputy editor of the editorial pages


Twenty eight years.  Tomorrow will mark another anniversary.  On June 8,
1967, Israeli air and naval forces attacked the USS Liberty, a technical
research ship, that was sailing in international waters off the Sinai
Peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea.

     The day will be noted on the calendars in the homes of only a few
Americans -- survivors of the attack, friends and relatives of the 34
Americans killed and the 171 Americans wounded -- and, perhaps, people
like me, those who want a full accounting of the facts and a full
measure of sanctions applied to those culpable, U.S. and Israeli
officials alike.

     Americans familiar with the incident divide into two groups --
those who believe the attack was deliberate and those who believe the
attack was an unfortunate accident with the U.S. sharing a major portion
of the blame for sending an unarmed ship into a hot spot of Mideast
conflict.

     The latter view is the Israeli perspective, held to this day by
some Americans who believe further inquiry into the attack would serve
no useful purpose.  But the view that the attack was deliberate has
always been the most compelling, supported by an overwhelming amount of
factual data and eyewitness testimony.

     The Israelis eventually paid reparations (though the final
installment was not made until 1980) and the U.S. secretary of defense
when the raid took place, Robert McNamara, said the attack was not
intentional.

     Mr. McNamara's veracity, of course, is now in great doubt given the
fact that during the Vietnam War he admittedly persisted in a policy he
knew was costing American lives, even as he continued to mislead
Congress about the progress of the war.

     Further, his conclusions are overwhelmed by others with a far
firmer reputation for integrity.  In 1967, Secretary of State Dean Rusk
asked his legal adviser, Carl Salans, to analyze Israel's official
explanation of the attack.  That analysis details a litany of Israeli
misstatements.

     In one cable, Mr. Rusk told the Israelis: "There is every reason to
believe that the USS Liberty was identified, or at least her nationality
determined, by Israeli aircraft approximately one hour before the
attack.  In these circumstances, the later military attack by Israeli
aircraft on the USS Liberty is quite incomprehensible."

     Clark Clifford, then chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board, told President Lyndon Johnson in a National Security Council
meeting that the attack was deliberate.  Richard Helms, then chief of
the Central Intelligence Agency, Paul Warnke, then senior national
security adviser to the secretary of defense, and Admiral Thomas Moorer,
former Joint Chiefs chairman, insist that the attack could not possibly
have been a mistake.

     But, mistake or not, there is no dispute that the Israeli forces
assaulted the Liberty, which, at the time, was flying the U.S. flag and
clearly marked with her name and identification numbers.  The ship was
attacked with strafing machine-gun fire, rockets and napalm, followed by
a torpedo attack from Israeli surface boats.

     The Israelis jammed the Liberty's international maritime distress
frequency, machine-gunned her life rafts, and refused help to the
surviving crew once the firing ceased.

     Shouldn't those responsible for these acts at least be identified?
Don't the victims deserve that, no matter the passage of time, no matter
the closeness of the U.S.-Israeli relationship?

     Incredibly, rescue aircraft from the Sixth Fleet's USS Saratoga
were recalled before being able to reach the Liberty or punish her
attackers.  The man who ordered the two flights back to the carrier was
none other than Robert McNamara.  Why did he recall the planes?  If one
discards as too biased the testimony of the victims of the attack or
even the Israelis who participated in it, then turn to the most recent
unbiased research into the assault by Dr. John Edgar Borne at New York
University, whose 1993 detailed analysis concludes that "the account of
the attack given by the Liberty men is the correct and truthful one" and
that the attack "was deliberate and all available evidence points to
that conclusion."

     The aging survivors of the USS Liberty have no constituency to
pursue their case, and there is little likelihood of a congressional
investigation that might grant them the truth to which they are
entitled.  Absent that full accounting, tomorrow will be just another
anniversary, just another mark on the calendar.

--------
Mark Genrich can be reached at
271-8472 in Phoenix, Arizona

email:  MLGedit@aol.com