Who is Jim Ennes and why is he saying these awful things about Israel?

Jim Ennes, one of the creators of this Home Page, is an American citizen
and a retired career US Naval Officer who was born in New Jersey in 1933
and was raised in New York, Texas, Illinois, Washington State and
California.

He attended high school in Alameda, California, and Irving, Texas, where
he left during his senior year year during the Korean War to enlist in
the US Navy.  He subsequently served in naval communications in
Yokosuka, Japan, and later as Navy Mail Clerk aboard the USS General
George M. Randall, a troop transport ship.

Following his enlisted tour, he worked as an investigator for Retail
Credit Company (now known as Accufax Corporation) while attending San
Francisco State College at night.  Upon receiving his degree in business
administration he applied for Navy Officer Candidate School and was
commissioned an ensign in 1962.

During his commissioned service, Ennes first served aboard the USS
Westchester County, an LST permanently stationed in Yokosuka.  He then
applied to the Naval Security Group for duty and subsequently served
tours in the Pentagon, aboard the heavy cruiser USS Newport News, a
brief tour aboard the USS Liberty as the ship's electronic material
officer, a three year assignment in Bremerhaven, Germany, and three
tours at Naval Security Group Headquarters in Washington, DC.

Ennes has long been a champion of free speech, civil liberties, and
ethnic understanding.  During his last Navy assignment in Washington,
DC, he volunteered as a collateral duty to direct the new human rights
and race relations education program for the large naval station
employing several thousand people.  The program he designed and managed
was recognized by Navy Inspector General as "unexcelled anywhere in the
Navy," an accomplishment for which he was awarded the "Navy Achievement
Medal" for sustained exceptional performance.

He researched and wrote the book "Assault on the Liberty" during the
period between the attack in 1967 and his retirement from the Navy as a
lieutenant commander in 1978.  The book was accepted for publication by
Random House in 1978, and was released for sale in February, 1980, after
very extensive legal and factual review and verification.  "Assault on
the Liberty" eventually sold more than 100,000 copies in six hardcover
printings, one paperback edition by Ballantine Books, and an overseas
Arabic language edition by the Language Institute in Cyprus.  Many
people in the industry believe that sales were severely restricted
because of sabotage in the distribution pipeline which caused delays and
blockages in production and distribution.

"Assault on the Liberty" went out of print early in 1993 and is now
available only through some of the remainders that were salvaged from
the publisher at that time.

Since 1978 Ennes has devoted himself primarily to writing about a
variety of subjects, although understandably most requests are for him
to write about the USS Liberty experience.  He has contributed to
Writer's Digest, The Washington Post, The San Diego Union, The Retired
Officer Magazine, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and
other publications.  He has served as a researcher and consultant for
60 Minutes and Readers Digest, and has routinely helped numerous
authors, students, reporters and scholars probing the Liberty story.
With Master Chief Petty Officer Stan White, he helped organize the
original USS Liberty Veterans Association.  For seven years he was the
editor of The USS Liberty Newsletter.

While promoting "Assault on the Liberty," Ennes participated in over 300
radio talkshows including a two hour radio interview with Larry King,
dozens of television interviews, college and luncheon talks, newspaper
interviews with such popular writers as James Kilpatrick, Georgie Anne
Geyer, Norman Kempster, David Smyth, Philip Geyelin, Brad Knickerbocker,
Alexander Cockburn, Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, and many others.  He
made three major coast-to-coast talkshow book promotion tours.  He was a
consultant for the misbegoten Thames video documentary on the USS
Liberty and also for the unfortunate report on the attack by NBC's "The
Story Behind the Story".  He assisted Sligo Productions in the creation
of the "USS Liberty Survivors: Our Story" video that is marketed by
Fusion Video and sometimes seen on cable television.  He assisted John
Borne and Walter Jacobsen in the research for their doctoral level
theses on the USS Liberty.

Ennes was married for 42 years to the former Teresa Latshaw, who
died of breast cancer in 1997.  They have three grown children
and four grandchildren.

He is frankly weary of the USS Liberty story and prefers that it should
go away.  However, as long as Israel's supporters claim that it was a
tragic accident and that we survivors are lying about what happened,
Ennes feels that he must help his shipmates to tell the truth about what
happened to the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967.  Even then, he might let
this story rest, but the constant complaints that survivors are bigots
and liars inspired by ethnic bias and anti-Semitism strike him as so
hollow and viciously wrong that he continues to tell his story whenever
he can.

June 14, 1995