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Death and Destruction
Why the Story of the USS Liberty has been Suppressed

By Sandra L. Sullivan

George Washington, in his Farewell Address of 1796, warned the American people
against diplomatic relationships that might lead to the betrayal and sacrifice
of the interests of one's own country. The relationship between the United
States and the state of Israel his historically been one in which America
provides Israel with virtually unlimited economic, diplomatic, military, and
psychological support. This relationship has frequently caused the United
States to sacrifice its own principles in favor of Israel's interests. One of
the most dramatic illustrations of the danger of such a relationship is the
tragic story of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, and the reaction of the
United States government to that attack.

It cannot be denied that the attack of June 8th, 1967, was calculated and
deliberate. Thirty-four American men died, and 171 others were wounded.
Despite the glaring evidence of recently declassified documents and eye-
witness testimony, the American and Israeli governments still stubbornly cling
to the official excuse that the attack was an accident. In 1967, the U.S.
Government classified all evidence that disagreed with the Israeli version of
the story as "Top Secret," and then proceeded to inform the American people
that the attack was a "miscalculation that could take place any place in the
world." Such a miscalculation--one that results in an afternoon of cannon and
rocket fire, napalm, and torpedoes directed against the virtually unarmed
vessel of a close ally--is inconceivable. The reaction of the U.S. government
to this "miscalculation"--a reaction that is the invariable result of the
United States' unhealthy relationship with Israel--is unjustifiable. In the
words of James M. Ennes, Jr., an officer aboard the Liberty who survived the
attack and has written a book exposing the cover-up,
"it's one thing to be attacked by another nation, but to have your own
government smile at it and say oh well, it's really an understandable error of
war . . . that's very difficult to accept."

The USS Liberty was a World War II victory ship that was converted, in 1963,
to a "Technical Research Ship." The in-house Pentagon mission statement says
specifically that the Liberty's purpose was to "provide shipborne COMINT
(communications intelligence) and ELINT (electronic intelligence) platforms to
intercept and exploit foreign electromagnetic radiations in those areas of the
world where suitable shore based intercept stations do not exist.

James Ennes, in his book Assault on the Liberty, colorfully describes the
vessel as a "spook ship." Israel was quite aware of the "spook" capabilities
of the U.S. Navy's electronic intelligence ships, for Israeli military
intelligence had a close working relationship with the C.I.A. and Defense
Department. Despite America's supportive posture toward Israel during the Six
Day War it is understandable, in light of Lyndon Johnson's policy statement of
late May, 1967, that Israel might not have wanted the United States to
intercept its military communications.

In said statement, Johnson insisted that the United States was "committed to
the support of the political independence and territorial integrity of all the
nations in the area." In other words, the United States evidently would refuse
to help or defense Israel if she were an aggressor. After war broke out,
Israel claimed that she was simply waiting for the Arabs to stop fighting
first. However, when Jordan accepted the U.N. cease-fire on June 7th Israel
continued her assault. On June 8th the entire United Arab Republic, badly
defeated, accepted the cease-fire. Syria accepted it that night, and it went
into effect at 5:20 a.m. on June 9th. Israel, flagrantly violating the cease-
fire, invaded Syria at 11:30 that morning.
The National Security Agency in Washington had the technology to insure clear
information regarding who might be planning to violate a U.N. cease-fire; the
present cornerstone of its complex communication interception network was none
other than the USS Liberty. It is only logical that Israel would want to
prevent U.S. detection of her plans to invade the Golan Heights. Indeed, in
the late afternoon or early evening of June 7th, Israel warned the Pentagon,
via the U.S. Defense Attach'e in Tel Aviv, that was planning to attack the
Liberty if the ship's course was not changed. The Defense Department ordered
the Liberty to move 100 miles off the coast, but this command, like numerous
other communications, got tangled in red tape and never reached the ship.

James Ennes, who was in charge of the ship's division of electronic
maintenance technicians, was Officer of the Deck on the morning of June 8th.
He witnesses almost seven hours of reconnaissance by Israeli aircraft. The
surveillance was so low that the Liberty sailors and the Israeli pilots waved
to one another. It was a beautiful, clear, morning, and the ship was in
international waters, and a new, unsoiled flag stood out in eight knots of
relative wind. At 2:00 p.m., the attack began: mirage jets bombarded the deck
with rockets, and ten to fifteen minutes later slower myst'ere jets began
dropping canisters of napalm. After a half-hour of this activity, torpedo
boats arrived and fired five torpedoes, one of which blew a forty foot hole in
the Liberty's side and killed twenty-five men. Ten minutes after the air
attack began the Liberty has been promised help by Sixth Fleet aircraft
carriers, but at the Pentagon's precise instructions the rescue effort was
recalled. The torpedo boats circled the Liberty at 3:15, firing on anything
that moved, including empty life-rafts. At this time Israel stopped the attack
and the Israeli government apologized; the second rescue effort had been
launched, but then was recalled as "unnecessary." At 4:30 p.m. the torpedo
boats returned and, incredibly enough, offered assistance. Their offer was
rather firmly rejected. The Liberty waited--alone, burning, sinking, with men
wounded and dying--until help finally arrived on the morning of June 9th.

The following statement appeared in the New York Times on June 10th:
Dear Mr. President:
I was deeply grieved by the tragic loss of life in the United States naval
ship Liberty. Please accept my deep condolences, and convey my sympathy to all
the bereaved families.
May all bloodshed come to an end, and may our God grant us peace evermore.

So apologized Israeli Premier Levi Eshkol to President Johnson. The White
House usually does not make public communications between heads of state, let
alone messages from other governments. But in this case, the American
government was quick to publicly back the Israeli claims of "accident."
Privately, however, the initial U.S. reaction was quite different. Secretary
of State Dean Rusk hotly responded to a similar statement of apology from the
Israeli ambassador with the assertion that Israeli had every chance to
identify the ship, and thus "(At) a minimum, the attack must be condemned as
an act of military recklessness reflecting a wanton disregard for human life."
Yet when the Naval Court of Inquiry into the attack was convened in Malta on
June 14th, any accounts that conflicted with Captain William McGonagle's
report were dismissed, ignored, or classified "Top Secret" (notably, the
evidence of napalm use). McGonagle, who earned the Medal of Honor for his
valor during the attack, had been losing consciousness at the time he dictated
his first report of the incident for Washington; his report was highly
inaccurate, simplifying and downplaying the whole event. Ennes notes that
McGonagle was apparently worried that he was somehow responsible for the
suffering, a concern which may have been what caused him to adhere so firmly
to his initial version of the story, despite other officers' attempts to
remind him of what really happened. The official American press release of the
attack supported the Israeli claim that Israel mistook the Liberty for an
Egyptian freighter, that the U.S. flag was not visible (this assertion
regardless of McGonagle's testimony that it was very visible), that the air
attack lasted a mere five to six minutes, and that as soon as the torpedo hit
the ship Israel realized her mistake and apologized.

Even the most skeptical reporters had no solid evidence to support their
speculations that the attack was not an accident after all. The U.S.
government ordered a news black-out until after the Court made its report. The
Liberty crew members were reminded daily to
"Refer all questions to the commanding officer or executive officer or Admiral
Kidd. Answer no questions. If somehow you are backed into a corner you may say
that it was an accident and Israel has apologized. You may say nothing else."

In Assault on the Liberty, James Ennes discusses the recently declassified
Court of Inquiry documents and testimonies, and demonstrates repeatedly the
literal and technical impossibilities, contradictions, and omissions that led
to the official "conclusions." As Ennes stated in a radio interview in 1982,
the Court obviously had other influences upon it, and thus reached a
conclusion totally contrary to the evidence. Thus, the attack was excused as
brief and accidental. Yet for some reason, when the news black-out was
officially lifted, the Liberty crew members' freedom of speech was defined in
the following terms:

"Interviews and statements to news media . . . are not to be given by
individuals . . . . The only information that ship's company is allowed to
discuss is that already made available to the press. Therefore, there is
nothing new that we would be able to tell them in an interview."

The crew was thoroughly intimidated, for as Ennes recalls, it was made clear
that "you won't even tell hour mother what happened--if you ever talk to the
press or anyone else you will be tracked down and punished, and don't think
the time limit will ever run out because it will never run out.

The "time limit," however, at last appears to be running out. Under the U.S.
Freedom of Information Act, documents have been made available that prove that
the U.S. administration's official story was not the true story. Many of the
people involved in the affair, from crewmen to government officials, are
coming forward with their testimonials. Liberty Lieutenant Maury Bennett, who
had been sworn to secrecy in 1967, informed Ennes in 1974 that he was told
point-blank by Senator William Fulbright that Johnson "had ordered a cover-up
to protect Israel and to avoid causing a ruckus." Others who have given their
candid accounts of, and reactions to, the incident include Dean Rusk, former
Secretary of State, Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, Richard Helms, former C.I.A. director, and Philip Goulding, former
assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. Yet the American government
continues to this day to protect Israel, and the American Zionist community
tries desperately to prevent the public lfrom learning the truth. As Adlai
Stevenson told James Ennes and the press,

"The attack was clearly deliberate, (but) it was not investigated in Congress
because of the heavy pressure from the Israeli lobby, the American-Israeli
Public Affairs Committee, which intimidates the American Congress."

Paul Findley, a former U.S. Congressman and senior member of the House Middle
East Committee, includes in his book They Dare to Speak Out a chapter on the
Liberty. This chapter is entitled "The Assault on 'Assault'," which is an
accurate description of the public and political reaction to James Ennes'
book. The book received high praise in reviews, but book orders regularly got
lost, and wholesale listing disappeared. Retail bookstores were told by Random
House that the book did not exist, had not been published, or was out of
print. The Israeli Foreign Office charged that Ennes "allows his very evident
rancor and subjectivity to override objective analysis," and that "his
conclusions fly in the face of logic and military facts." Such criticism
seemed to be coordinated on a national, perhaps international, scale, for many
public rebuttals were almost identical with the document issued by the Israeli
Foreign Office in Jerusalem. When Ennes was interviewed on San Francisco radio
station KGO in 1980, public response was overwhelming--including two phone
calls threatening the talk-show host's life. Although the public reaction when
Ennes lectured at universities in 1981 and 1982 was generally positive,
hecklers accused him of being a liar and an anti-Semite. Flyers protesting
Ennes' speeches used wording identical to that used by the Israeli Foreign
Office and by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.

If a book that appears twelve years after the fact causes such panic,
violence, and accusations, it is almost understandable why the Johnson
administration chose to cover up the truth. Despite the insupportability and,
in Dean Rusk's later words to Ennes, the "genuine outrage" of Israel's attack,
America's deep alliance with that country caused U.S. government officials to
first tolerate the murder of their fellow citizens, and then to justify such
tolerance by lying to the American people. The U.S. government still refuses
to ventilate the incident, for it knows that an objective inquiry would enrage
the powerful Israeli lobby and injure diplomatic relations by exploding the
myth that American and Israeli national interests are always and everywhere
the same. Thus even today, a strong current in both American public opinion
and government policy wants to deny all evidence that might lead to the
"wrong" conclusion, and therefore dismiss the many disturbing facts and
questions that have been brought to light in the quest for truth. George
Washington knew well enough the dangers of such a national disposition, and
the betrayals and sacrifices that result from such an alliance between
nations:

". . . such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and
independent Patriot, How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with
domestic factions, to practise the arts of seduction, to mislead public
opinion, to influence or awe the Public Councils!