Washington Post June, 1992 Twenty-five years of cover-up by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak A retired Israeli officer who now denies confirming our report last week that Israel attacked the USS Liberty 24 years ago knowing it was an American spy ship told an Israeli newspaper that he might be in danger. His fear could explain why the former major, an American named Seth Mintz, was quoted by New York Times columnist A. M. Rosenthal as saying that he was "misquoted, quoted out of context, used, abused and screwed" by us. That charge, together with Mintz's letter to The Post published Saturday saying we "seriously misrepresent{ed}" him, requires an answer, including further elaboration of what Mintz told us Oct. 22. His memory is critical to getting to the heart of one of the most disgraceful episodes in American naval history. As expressed to us, Mintz's story fits what Dwight Porter, former U.S. ambassador in Beirut, revealed to this column in breaking his long public silence: Embassy radio intercepts showed that the Israelis attacked the Liberty on June 8, 1967, with the knowledge that it was a U.S. ship. Last June 7, at a Washington reunion, Mintz told former crew member Bob Casale in a videotaped conversation, the transcript of which we have read: "They {the Israelis} knew ... even when it was happening. Pilots in the Mirage attack were saying that it was an American ship. You could read the numbers on the side of the ship. There was no big secret." Mintz was present in the Israeli war room in Tel Aviv in the hours leading up to the attack. On Nov. 6, the day our column was published quoting him as saying that Israel "was convinced" the Liberty was an American spy ship, he was interviewed by the prominent Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz. In a Washington dispatch published in Ha'aretz Nov. 7, Mintz expressed "grave anxiety over the media interest in him" with regard to the Liberty affair. He told Ha'aretz: "Everyone is after me now, and that is what I'm afraid of. I don't need the Mossad and Shin Bet knocking on my door." Mossad is the Israeli secret intelligence service with a much-feared worldwide network of agents. Shin Bet performs the same task for the military. Both are politically influential instruments of high-level Israeli policy on all national security matters. Mintz may believe himself in danger for telling us the truth. What he heard and saw during several hours while top Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers studied photographs of the Liberty, taken by Israeli aircraft and rushed to the war room, reveals vital new information and helps tear apart a great mystery. There was no appearance of any restraint by Mintz when he answered our telephone call in his Houlton, Maine, home and spoke to us for more than 15 minutes -- enough for two legal-pad pages' worth of notes. Mintz is a U.S. citizen who went to Israel to become a member of kibbutz Nirum in 1962. He joined the Israeli army in 1965 and happened to be present in the IDF war room on June 8, 1967, the second day of the Six-day War. In his discussion at the Liberty reunion in June, Mintz said: "I was in the Israeli military, but I'm born in this country." In our conversation, he did not put a single word off the record. Now Mintz finds himself caught up in a web of poisonous international intrigue that both Israel and the United States have spent 24 years trying to prevent unraveling. Mintz's candid words to us were no more ambiguous than the Liberty's harsh statistics: 34 U.S. Navy men killed, 171 wounded. "Barbour {Walworth Barbour, then U.S. ambassador to Israel} said it was not an American ship," Mintz told us. "The ship had been marked and tracked {in the war room} on a chart board. Everyone in the room felt it was an American ship, and that it was the Liberty ... it matched Jane's Fighting Ships. The consensus in the room was that it was not the El Quseir." Israel's preliminary report to the United States after the attack stated: "Liberty resembles the Egyptian supply ship El Quseir." The El Quseir spent the entire S ix-Day War in port at Alexandria, a fact Israel must have known. Moreover, it was less than half the Liberty's size, had none of its high-tech antenna array, did not fly a large American flag and had no hull markings similar to the Liberty's. The war room did not make that mistake. "So if it was not a U.S. or an Egyptian ship," Mintz told us, "it could be Soviet, but everyone felt positive it was American. In the early afternoon, the order came from outside the war room to attack the ship. I cannot think anyone would dare to attack what they knew -- or thought -- was an American ship. The Israelis are guilty of an outrage." Mintz then told us of a second "outrage": the U.S. Embassy refusal to acknowledge the truth about the spy ship, thus giving Israel a pretext. In fact, however, spy ships are seldom acknowledged by their owners. He said that Israel "intended to sink the ship." Almost certainly this was to prevent its interception of top-secret orders to Israeli forces massing in t he north to attack Syria. Mintz deserves from the U.S. government whatever security protection he needs if his concerns about the Mossad and Shin Bet are real. Despite the close bonds between Israel and the United States, the remnant of the Liberty's crew and the American people also deserve something: at last a true and official accounting of what lies behind Mintz's riveting testimony.