Letter to editor by survivor Harold "Gene" Six
Riverside, California, Press-Enterprise, March 1, 1996

                           AN EARLIER ATTACK

        President Clifton and other elected officials have come out and
condemned Castro and Cuba for shooting down two aircraft flown by Cuban
revolutionaries that may or may not have violated Cuban airspace.  Yet
on June 8, 1967, When the Israeli defense forces attacked an American
naval vessel --USS Liberty AGTR-5 --that was and always had been in
international waters, nothing was said or don by the US government.

        This attack resulted in the deaths of 34 American sailors and
the wounding of 171 others.  Yet even today the survivors of the attack
cannot get their elected officials to investigate the attack.  An attack
that was deliberate.  An attack that violated international law.  An
attack that violated provisions of the Geneva Convention, in other words
war crimes.  An attack where provisions of the Uniform Code of Military
Justice were violated when American naval aircraft sent to the aid of
the USS Liberty were called back not once but twice by someone at the
White House.

        Do American lives mean so little to our elected officials that
they will use the dead bodies of 18-year old American sailors as
stepping stones on their way to office?

                      Harold "Gene" Six, USS LIberty Survivor