Queries over Katz

Queries over Katz
Sep 1, 2007 22:26 | Updated Sep 1, 2007 22:26

Last week, after he had commuted the life sentences of five Israeli Arabs who were twice convicted for the 1983 murder of 14-year-old Danny Katz, President Shimon Peres issued an official statement expressing "understanding for the family's pain" but stressing that his decision was mandated by the recommendations of a statutory committee reviewing life sentences and by the justice minister.

Three of the convicts had their sentences cut to 30 years and two to 45 years. The latter two are also serving life-terms for the rape and homicide of soldier Daphna Carmon. She was 19 at the time.

The double-murderers could be out in some five years. Their three co-conspirators could be released in the coming months, with a third of their sentence slashed for "good behavior."

Katz's disappearance from his Haifa neighborhood on the afternoon of December 12, 1983, and the discovery three days later of his stripped, battered, molested and hideously mutilated body in a cave outside the Galilee village of Sakhnin, evoked emotional aftershocks throughout the country. The malice unleashed on the child suggested to investigators murder of a nationalist/terrorist nature. The assumption was that Danny had been randomly chosen as a victim because he was Jewish.

The arrests were made several months later and the convictions centered on confessions. Several appeals followed the Haifa District Court trial, and the case was reviewed by then-Supreme Court president Meir Shamgar. Critics from the Israeli Arab community, nevertheless, insisted the five had been framed and their admissions forcibly extracted. Then-justice minister David Liba'i ordered another prosecutorial review.

Eventually, Shamgar's successor, Aharon Barak, granted a retrial, during which three of the convicts were released on bail. In a meticulous 400-page verdict, the Tel Aviv District Court again convicted all five. Again they resorted to all appeal procedures and ultimately won another Supreme Court hearing. Their conviction was again upheld two years ago, when Justice Ayala Procaccia wrote: "The judicial system made extreme attempts to remove the least cloud from this episode. No effort was spared to respect the defendants' civil rights and to determine the truth."

How, then, could the sentences be commuted so soon thereafter? Peres has cited "classified information."

But if exculpatory evidence had surfaced, why not make it public? And if such evidence was so acutely sensitive, why not at least inform the affected victims' families, who only heard about the commuting of the sentences from the media.

It wouldn't be the first time convictions were exposed as flawed - from Amos Baranes's conviction for Rachel Heller's 1974 murder to the arrests of several Kafr Manda residents for the 2003 abduction/murder of soldier Oleg Shaikhet of Upper Nazareth. (The capture of the real murderers, also from Kafr Manda, let the initial suspects off the hook.)

Furthermore, excessive reliance on confessions and reenactments has repeatedly generated misgivings about the quality of police investigations. In the Ma'atz arson case of the 1970s, apologies and restitutions were made to the wrongly incarcerated.

Yet here all legal process had failed to persuade many different judges to overthrow the original conviction. Reducing the sentences of convicts in so heinous a crime - especially of two recidivists who had murdered and savagely violated another victim - seems to remove any modicum of deterrent.

The handling of the matter also makes a mockery of recent moves to confer legal standing on victims and their families. Is the anguish of the Katzes and Carmons of no consequence? In other democracies, victims are heard at all phases of sentencing and/or parole deliberations.

Finally, the dependence on "undisclosed evidence" is particularly problematic. It can be countenanced in the framework of the war on terror and the need to safeguard intelligence sources, but civilian courts must operate transparently. Whispers behind closed doors are as potentially detrimental to the rights of defendants as of victims.

So experienced a public figure as Peres should be cognizant of all the above. Moreover, he is entitled by rank to question, delve deeper and evince extra sensitivity. No one can force him to sign on the dotted line until he is satisfied. If only because of the absent sensitivity to the victims' families in this case, he should not have been.

Critique of the Author, A. Jay Cristol

Published Commentary: The Liberty Incident
Critique of the Author, A. Jay Cristol
See also: The Liberty Incident's Analysis and Criticism and Summary of Position.

charlatan. n.

...A person who makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble claims to skill or knowledge; a quack or fraud...

The Liberty Incident is faithful to the "Big Lie Theory" of propaganda: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

Attributed to Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), Minister of Propaganda under Adolf Hitler

Background

A. Jay Cristol is a master of the art of lying through misdirection. His book is a perfect example of this talent. Without directly lying, he arranges facts (and omits others) in such a way as to lead a reader to a completely false conclusion. If challenged, he can reply that he didn't really lie, the error of fact only exists in the reader's mind. In addition to the articles in this critique which deal with the application of Cristol's special talent to the telling of the story of the Israeli attack on USS Liberty, it is instructive to see how he has done the same thing to give a false impression as to his own background. Since there is no evidence that he has ever sought to correct these factual mistakes, one can only assume that they were the intended result of his design.

Cristol presently works as a United States Bankruptcy Judge in Miami, Florida. Though he styles himself as "a federal judge," this description is a bit misleading. He works for the federal government and is given the title of judge, but he is not a United States District Judge or Circuit Judge. These positions require Presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. Mr. Cristol, an appointee of circuit judges, has never had his name placed before nor confirmed by the Senate.

Mr. Cristol writes of himself on his web site:

"In November 1951, during the Korean conflict, A. Jay Cristol joined the US Navy as an aviation cadet, earning his Navy Wings of Gold in April 1953. He deployed with VS-37, a Navy anti-submarine squadron aboard the aircraft carrier Princeton (CV-37) to the Western Pacific and the Sea of Japan. He was also part of TG70.4 during February 1955, in support of evacuating Nationalist Chinese from the Tachen Islands near the Communist China mainland in the South China Sea. He flew day and night missions as both a hunter pilot flying the Grumann AF-2W and a killer pilot flying the Grumann AF-2S. He was subsequently attached to the Fleet All Weather Training Unit, Pacific at San Diego, California as an instrument flight instructor and taught maneuvers for the delivery of nuclear weapons. Upon returning to civilian life, Cristol joined the Naval Air Reserve where he qualified as a four-engine Navy transport plane commander. In the 1960s, he flew operational flights during the Cuban Missile Crises and volunteer airlift missions to Vietnam.

After 18 years as a Naval aviator, Cristol joined the Judge Advocate General's Corps. He graduated with distinction from Naval Justice School. He served as a lawyer for another twenty years. His duties included teaching law of war and serving as the administrative officer for the summer Naval Reserve law courses. In 1983, he was made an honorary professor by the Naval Justice School. He has performed special active duty in the office of the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations. In the 1980s, the Department of Defense sent him to the International Institute of Humanitarian Law at San Remo, Italy to lecture on Law of Naval warfare to senior foreign military officers. Captain Cristol retired in 1988. He wears more than a dozen military decorations including the Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal, and the Navy Achievement Medal.

In civilian life, Cristol became a lawyer and practiced civil law. He served as Special Assistant Attorney General of Florida during the 1959, 1961, 1963, and 1965 sessions of the Florida Legislature. In 1985, after 25 years of law practice, he left his position as senior partner in a firm he founded to accept an appointment to the federal bench. He continues to serve as Chief Judge Emeritus in the Southern District of Florida. He is also an adjunct professor, teaching at the University of Miami School of Law.

An interest in international terrorism led him to enroll in the Graduate School of International Studies of the University of Miami where he researched and wrote on terrorism. Because of his background as a navy pilot, a navy lawyer (JAG), a lecturer in law of naval warfare, a civil lawyer, and a federal judge, members of the faculty encouraged him to research and write about the Liberty incident. He spent ten years researching the subject and was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Miami Graduate School of International Studies. His collection of research material on this subject is considered to be the largest and most complete of any collection on the subject in the entire world. After completing his dissertation, he obtained declassification of additional heretofore secret documents through many Freedom of Information Act requests and appeals. His book, The Liberty Incident, was written to update and complete the historical record. He has written numerous articles on law, aviation, history, and other subjects.

Judge Cristol remains an avid aviator. He made his first flight in a Piper J-3 Cub on Biscayne Bay in 1945. He has personally piloted a Ford Tri-Motor, the Goodyear Blimp, a Soviet MiG-15, and many other unique, antique, or historic aircraft. In 1998, he became one of the few persons to have an airplane named after him when Pan Am named one of their 727 aircraft the Clipper A. Jay Cristol. He is a founding member of the National Museum of Naval Aviation at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida and a founding member of the Wings Over Miami Military and Classic Aircraft Museum in Miami, Florida."

This autobiographic description gives the strong impression that Cristol was a combat pilot during the Korean War, though it does not say so explicitly. In fact, he graduated from flight school less than 90 days before the Armistice was signed. He never flew from an aircraft carrier anywhere within striking distance of Korea. His carrier pilot career was limited to training missions in the South China Sea during peacetime. Cristol has done nothing to correct the misimpression created by his self styled description of his war career.

This misdirection through a careful choice of words has achieved his desired goal. Here are some quotes off Internet sites that write admiringly of Cristol, incorrect statements that he has never seen fit to correct:

He says ''virulently anti-Semitic organizations'' like the Liberty Lobby continue to ''fan the fires'' about the Liberty to smear Israel, when similar friendly-fire disasters have been all but forgotten, including the 1968 Pueblo, 1975 Mayag�ez and 1987 Stark incidents.

He speaks of his favorite aircraft, the Grumman Avenger -- which former President George Bush flew in World War II -- in rhapsodic terms.

``Some enchanted evening, you look across the room and fall in love.''

Cristol left Miami Beach High School to become a Naval aviation cadet during the Korean War and qualified to fly off aircraft carriers. He flew combat missions in the Far East and participated in an airlift evacuation of nearly 80,000 Chinese nationals from the Tachen Islands to what was then Formosa (Taiwan) in 1955.

He became a military flight instructor before returning to South Florida, where he flew briefly for Eastern Airlines, then earned undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Miami.

ACTIVATED TWICE

A Naval reservist, Cristol was activated during the Bay of Pigs crisis and the Vietnam War, during which he flew airlifts. He taught summers at the Naval Justice School in Newport, R.I., and practiced law until he was appointed to the bench in 1984. [Emphasis added]

Notice that those who do not accept his version of events are not just "anti-Semitic," but rather ''virulently anti-Semitic.'' As with many of the claims he makes for himself, there is absolutely no evidence to support this characterization of those who do not agree with him. The Miami Herald did take the bait he had put out and wrote "He flew combat missions in the Far East," something that never happened. If Cristol ever wrote to the newspaper to correct their error, there is no evidence of it.

In another glowing review, this time by the American Israel Political Action Committee, he is described as a "combat pilot." Again, this is a patently false description. If Cristol ever saw combat, that fact has become a closely guarded secret.

Thirty-five years after that awful event, the anti-Israel slander has at last been debunked. A. Jay Cristol - a former U.S. Navy combat pilot and lawyer now serving as a federal judge in Florida - has just published his groundbreaking book The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship (Brassey's, 2002), which proves conclusively that the Israeli attack was indeed a tragic mistake. [Emphasis added]

AIPAC's comment shows that they know as little about Cristol as they know about the Israeli attack on USS Liberty - and their characterizations of both are equally false.

Another pro-Israeli organization describes him as a former "fighter pilot":

"Judge A. Jay Cristol, Ph.D., was a Navy fighter pilot who served for 18 years as a Naval aviator,"

Note that this description also speaks of Cristol's "18 years as a Naval aviator," which for a reservist (as Cristol was) equals about nine months of active duty time.

This next description is a classic. This comment relates to meetings of the Association of Former Intelligence Professionals.

"For AFIO, he brings in speakers like federal judge and ex-naval intelligence officer A. Jay Cristol, and Rear Adm. James "Jay" Carmichael, commander of the local Coast Guard district. Besides being a great place to pick up the latest spy spin and conspiracy tales, the AFIO lunches aim to bring together the somewhat amorphous local intelligence community. "We're generally speaking to the choir and they know it," Spencer admits. "It's primarily a networking thing." Spencer says he's got aspirations to start scholarships for local students who want to enter an intelligence field, and fund intelligence programs at a local university."

Cristol's background has now morphed from that of a simple reservist into that of a Korean war combat fighter pilot who also happened to be a former Naval Intelligence office. This is not the first time that someone has bestowed this title on him. At a Coral Gables book signing event, the Mayor introduced him as a "former Naval Intelligence officer" and he simply stood there beaming. He made no effort whatsoever to correct the Mayor's mistake.

Analysis

As with everything else written by Cristol, you must read and parse his claims about himself very carefully. He never says that he was a Korean War combat fighter pilot; he only implies that he was. Though his use of terms like "Korean conflict" (which he defines as running a year longer than the actual war), he implies that he flew during the actual war. He speaks of flying "hunter" and "killer" missions off the USS Princeton. Again, this implies combat. In fact, he flew ASW training flights. He speaks of flying missions off an aircraft carrier "during the Korean conflict", yet he never came any closer to Korea than flying training missions thousands of miles away in the South China Sea - well after the Armistice had been signed.

This is important because it illustrates how he deliberately omits key facts in order to create a false impression in the mind of the reader. If criticized later, he can claim that he did not explicitly misstate anything and if there is confusion, it is entirely in the mind of the reader. This is a tactic that he uses on almost every page of The Liberty Incident.

For example, on page 43 of The Liberty Incident he tells another whopper in an attempt to explain and excuse the failure of the IDF pilots to identify Liberty while attacking:

"...Because very little time remains after firing ceases until the aircraft will fly into or strike a surface target, fighter and attack pilots are told repeatedly to fire and pull up. Most pilots including this author will confess that they have in fact delayed pull-up to observe their hits. .."

Again, through the skillful use of tense and phrasing, he implies, without actually saying so, that he is an experienced combat pilot who had extensive experience strafing targets. If challenged, again he can respond that he did not say that explicitly and it is the reader's mistake if he or she concluded otherwise.

He also fabricates things. Cristol claims to have conducted interviews with people who deny that they were ever interviewed by him, including several Liberty survivors. Cristol�s interaction with Captain Ward Boston provides an excellent example of this sort of claim.

Captain Boston said that Cristol telephoned him several years ago to discuss the Liberty court of inquiry. Boston told Cristol that he wouldn�t talk about anything having to do with Liberty that wasn�t already public record. This included his personal thoughts and opinions as well as his private conversations with Admiral Kidd and the other members of the court. Cristol persisted. He asked Boston about his background and a variety of other matters, which Boston did answer, but Boston consistently refused to discuss anything about Liberty that wasn�t in the public record.

A few years later, Cristol wrote to Boston to tell him that he was going to visit Coronado (where Boston lives) and wanted to arrange to visit Boston. In the letter, Cristol recited a number of things that Boston purportedly told him in their earlier conversation. Boston said that he had told Cristol nothing of the sort. Cristol called Boston to confirm their meeting. Boston told Cristol that Cristol�s understanding of the earlier conversation was completely wrong and that he did not say any of the things that Cristol had attributed to him. He also told Cristol that he would be out of town and couldn�t meet with him.

Notwithstanding any of this, Cristol still claims that he interviewed Boston twice and implies that they discussed the court of inquiry and other issues Boston had previously refused to discuss with anyone else. That is patently untrue.

When Boston spoke with Cristol the first time, he suggested that if Cristol had questions about the court of inquiry, he should talk with Admiral Kidd. Cristol then called Kidd and spoke with him. About an hour after Boston spoke with Cristol, Kidd called Boston. They discussed Cristol and their mutual dislike for him. Kidd concluded by opining that he thought Cristol was an Israeli agent. This is memorialized in a sworn statement written and signed by Captain Boston.

Cristol claims to have made 15 trips to Israel while doing his research. He does not say whether he paid for these trips or someone else paid for them. While Cristol made an effort to talk to every Israeli who even remotely had anything to do with the attack on Liberty, he spoke with very few crewmembers.

Cristol�s book contains what purports to be a transcript of the air to ground communications between the Israeli pilots, MTBs, and controllers. Another Israeli, Ahron Bregman, has criticized the honestly of Cristol�s translation. The following is from a fax sent by Bregman to the Liberty Veterans Association:

"I understand from your letter (31 Jan 2003) that according to Dr, Jay Cristol the only difference between my and his interpretation of the conversations of the pilots before and during the attack on USS Liberty is the "tone" of those conversations. Yes, the tone seems to be one issue on which we disagree, but then the tone is very important for in these tapes the tone sometimes makes the music. It is sufficient to listen to the tone of Robert (here I am using the names used by Cristol in his book) at 1353 where he says: "What do you say?" to realize that, in fact, he refers to the previous suggestion of L.K. that it might well be that the ship is American. It seems that when it suits him Cristol himself refers to the tone of conversations. At 1412, according to Cristol, Kislev says: "Leave her!" and Cristol then adds in brackets: "There is a dramatic change in the tone of Kislev's voice". So here we are. The tone is indeed a matter that should be taken into consideration when analyzing the tapes.

But it seems that Cristol and me differ on substance as well. You see, Cristol is not a plumber, or a mechanic but rather a Judge - a Federal Judge - and as such his is the world of words and he fully understands - I am pretty sure - the meaning of words and the need to be accurate when using them. But when it comes to the audiotapes it seems as if Cristol no longer understands the importance of words and in his text there are omissions and the text itself is sometimes heavily edited. Here is an example (and for the sake of accuracy I am not even quoting from "A History of Israel" but rather straight from the tapes):

Cristol's version:

13:54

LK: What is that? Americans?

Shimon: What Americans?

Kislev: Robert, what did you say? [No one answers.] [This a bracketed comment in Cristol's transcripts.]

Bregman's version:

13:53

LK: What is it? American?

Shimon: How do you mean, American?

Kislev: Robert, what do you say? [namely: what's your opinion and clearly a reference to the query just raised regarding the ship's identity - AB] [The bracketed text is a comment of Bregman.]

Robert: I didn't say [the tone: I don't want to know - AB] [The bracketed text is a comment of Bregman.]

Why did Cristol edit the text by saying that "no one answers" where in fact Robert does answer by saying "I didn't say" in a tone which suggests "1 don't want to know" or "no comment"?"

Another critical moment in the audiotapes comes a bit later:

Cristol's version:

14:13

Menachem: Kislev, what country? [Menachem has become concerned.]

Kislev: Possibly American.

Bregman's version:

14:14

Menachem: Kislev, what state?

Kislev: Probably American

Menachem: What?

Kislev: Probably American.

Why did Cristol shorten this passage?? In order that the word "American" will not ring in our ears for too long? True, this latter passage is far from being a "Smoking gun", but why to edit such a critical moment in the event??"

Time Machine

Among the endorsements shown on the back cover of The Liberty Incident is one from Vice Admiral Donald Engen:

"The name I want you to remember is Jay Cristol. . . . He knows more about the Liberty than anybody else in the world. . . . He's got the most balanced view of anybody I've ever known."

What is the purpose of a book jacket quotation? Presumably, it is to advise prospective readers of the opinions of knowledgeable experts who have read the book and recommend it.

The Liberty Incident was copyrighted by its publisher, Brassey's, in 2002 - the year of the book's publication. Notice the date of death in the photo below.

Arlington National Cemetery

Cristol cannot be trusted with respect to any fact he reports. He has a timeline on his web site that he uses as a supplement to his book. On that timeline, among the other errors, he showed sunrise for June 8, 1967 as occurring at Liberty's reported position at 0515. [He has since corrected his error, but only after the accuracy of his entire timeline became an issue in dispute.] The Naval Observatory on line computer service shows sunrise as occurring at 0442. Cristol can't even be trusted to be accurate with something as simple as the time of sunrise.

Readers should assume that ALL of his facts are incorrect. Check each and every one of them. Do not take on faith anything Cristol writes - ever.

Report: High Court permits torture of Palestinians

Report: High Court permits torture of Palestinians

Public Committee Against Torture in Israel says there is ‘no effective barrier – not legal and certainly not ethical – that stands in the way of using torture’; Shin Bet in response: Interrogations help prevent thwart terror attacks

Aviram Zino

Published:

05.30.07, 12:06 / Israel News

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) on Wednesday slammed thee High Court's approval of the use of controversial methods to interrogate Palestinians deemed as “ticking bombs,” saying the ruling was interpreted by the Shin Bet as a green light to torture almost every Palestinian detainee

A report released by the PCATI showcases detailed accounts of nine Palestinian detainees it claims were tortured by physicians and medical staff members in hospitals, Shin Bet interrogators, military judges and advocates, prison wardens, police officers and even senior Justice Ministry officials.

According to the report, the idea of a "ticking bomb" was first coined as a literary concept by French author and journalist Jean Lartéguy in his book "Les Centurions," 1961, which relates to the French occupation of Algeria,

“which was no less brutal than the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories.”

“It is entirely possible that the practice of torture is an effective measure for obtaining information that may save human life (the Public Committee Against Torture opposes torture absolutely, regardless of such claims), but the testimonies of the nine terror victims exemplify the extent to which the torture mechanism is rooted in the treatment of Palestinian detainees, and the exceedingly bureaucratic way in which torture is carried out, in an organized, almost blasé manner,” the report said.

“We have no way of knowing what information was in the possession of the Israeli security apparatuses that led to the use of such sadistic torture, but it is doubtful that any of the victims fits the very terrible scenario of a ‘ticking bomb’.”

'Ethical boundary is blurred'

PCATI said in the report that it is no longer possible to limit the practice of torture to exceptional cases.

“Today in Israel, there is no effective barrier – not legal and certainly not ethical – that stands in the way of using torture. A secret service organization such as the GSS (Shin Bet) decides independently to use torture and, afterwards, investigates itself as to whether the use of interrogation was justified.

“The Justice Ministry – from the Attorney General through the State Attorney's Office and the nameless GSS Ombudsman of Interogees' Complaints – gives systematic and blind backing to the interrogation methods of the GSS. The legal system tends to avoid torture victims' complaints,” the report said.

PCATI director Hannah Friedman said in the report’s closing paragraph that

“when the nations of the world decided in the wake of the world wars of the last century to prohibit the use of torture absolutely and with no reservations, this was an attempt to denote an ethical boundary between the nations of the world and the old, cruel, racist, un-discriminatingly murderous world – to declare that there are deeds that democracies and decent people do not commit.

“Torture victims, in their painful testimonies, serve to warn us that this ethical boundary is blurred in our society. A state that views itself as a democracy committed to the protection of human rights cannot allow torture that is derived from the darkness of the Middle Ages,” she said.

The Shin Bet security agency said in response that its interrogations were

"conducted according to the law. All detainees have the right to file a complaint with the courts or the Red Cross and these will be examined by the Ombudsman of Interogees' Complaints.”

“It must be stressed that the information derived from these interrogations helped prevent and thwart acts of terror against Israeli citizens.”

For full report click here

Remember the Liberty!

Remember the Liberty!
When Israel attacks, the Pentagon retreats
May 30, 2007

It was 40 years ago this June 8 that the USS Liberty – a large, armorless, refitted freighter that was gathering intelligence in the Mediterranean at the outset of the Six Day War – was attacked by Israeli fighter jets and torpedoes. Thirty-four U.S. sailors were killed, and 172 were wounded. The Liberty limped back to Malta. A U.S. Navy court of inquiry was on board investigating the damage, but – for some reason – the investigators were not allowed to proceed to Israel to find out what really went on. Orders from the top echelons of the Pentagon nixed the inquiry, and today, the families of the fallen still haven't gotten any answers as to why Israel was allowed to get away with it without even so much as a slap on the wrist – nor even any public acknowledgment that it was a deliberate attack.

Far from apologizing, the Israelis have to this day denied that they attacked the Liberty on purpose, and – incredibly – they stoutly maintain that the whole thing was an "accident." This in spite of the fact that the Liberty was proudly flying a U.S. flag and was easily identifiable as an American vessel. The Israel Lobby has even gone so far as to publish a book, The Liberty Incident, by Jay Cristol, that makes the case for the "accidental" scenario, but the survivors' families – and a number of credible commentators – aren't buying it. One of those commentators is a former captain in the Judge Advocate General Corps assigned to the Liberty investigation, Ward Boston, who has signed an affidavit stating unequivocally:

"The evidence was clear. Both Admiral [Isaac C.] Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack … was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. It was our shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and testimony we received firsthand, that the Israeli attack was planned and deliberate."

Capt. Boston says that Adm. Kidd, who was in charge of the subsequent inquiry, frequently referred to the Israelis as "murderous bastards," and a number of intelligence experts and U.S. officials seem to concur, albeit not in precisely those terms. Says former CIA director Richard Helms: "The board of inquiry [concluded] that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing in attacking the Liberty." Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk says:

"I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation. … Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept their explanations. I didn't believe them then, and I don't believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous."

Even more outrageous was the cover-up by the Pentagon – and the White House of Lyndon "Hey Hey LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?" Johnson. According to officer David Lewis, who was below deck at the time of the attack:

"[6th Rear Fleet Adm. Lawrence Geis] told me that since I was the senior Liberty survivor on board he wanted to tell me in confidence what had actually transpired. He told me that upon receipt of our SOS, aircraft were launched to come to our assistance, and then Washington was notified. He said that [Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara] had ordered that the aircraft be returned to the carrier, which was done. RADM Geis then said that he speculated that Washington may have suspected that the aircraft carried nuclear weapons so he put together another flight of conventional aircraft that had no capability of carrying nuclear weapons. These he launched to assist us and again notified Washington of his actions. Again McNamara ordered the aircraft recalled. He requested confirmation of the order being unable to believe that Washington would let us sink. This time President Johnson ordered the recall with the comment that he did not care if every man drowned and the ship sank, but that he would not embarrass his allies."

Rather than embarrass his "allies," the president of the United States caved in to the Lobbyput it in The Age: and buried the truth about the death of American servicemen under a mountain of obfuscation and official silence. As Tim Fischer, a former deputy prime minister of Australia and a former army officer,

"If Israel did deliberately attack the most powerful nation on Earth, it knows it can do so and get away with murder. Worse still, U.S. military personnel now know that if the truth is politically inconvenient, they and their legacy are expendable."

When it comes to the calculations of the Lobby, we are all expendable – that is the bitter lesson we are learning as a futile war in the Middle East not only rages on but threatens to expand beyond the borders of Iraq. Our "ally" Israel is an albatross hung 'round our necks, and it is slowly strangling America's chances of defeating Islamic extremism in the battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide. Will no one rid us of this troublesome "ally"?

I'm afraid they won't. The power of the Lobby, as explicated by scholars John J. MearsheimerStephen Walt, is as formidable as ever, if not more so. They ensure that there is no real debate over our Middle Eastern policy, either in Congress or in the councils of government policymakers. Their spies are allowed to get away with all sorts of activities that any other foreign power would soon feel Washington's wrath over. Their demands are considered the starting point for all policy decisions, and they are rewarded for their lack of loyalty to their main benefactor by being showered with all manner of gifts: "foreign aid," loan guarantees, and technology transfers that have enabled them to build up a military capacity – including nuclear weapons – that knows no rival in the region. and

The attack on the Liberty and the subsequent whitewash of the Israelis is proof – if any more were needed – that Israel enjoys a position of preeminence within the councils of state that belies its small size and relative weakness as a settler colony totally dependent on outside infusions of support.

Critics may aver that this is all ancient history, that there is no reason to bring up the attack on the Liberty, and even if it wasn't an accident, it's time to let bygones be bygones. The Lobby constantly asserts that anyone who even mentions this "incident" is nothing but an anti-Semite, because, after all, why talk about it now? The reason is that it underscores the utter falsity of the argument that Israeli and American interests are uniquely and perpetually in perfect alignment. The Israelis attacked the Liberty, according to several books and a BBC documentary on the subject, in order to prevent the U.S. government from learning of Israeli plans to occupy the Golan Heights – a sliver of land that rightfully belongs to Syria, and which is still causing a great many problems for U.S. interests in the region. The stunning fact of the American government's complicity in hiding the truth about an attack on its own soldiers is all we need to know about what's wrong with American foreign policy – and what is the exact source of the problem.

40 Years Ago - Israel's Attempt To Sink The USS Liberty

40 Years Ago - Israel's Attempt To Sink The USS Liberty
Time For The Truth About The USS Liberty
The San Diego Union-Tribune
By Ward Boston, Jr.
6-9-7

"Those God-Damned Murdering Bastards Intended To Kill Everyone On Board."

-- Ward Boston, Captain, USN retired. Chief legal officer investigating the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty.

Forty years ago to this day, thirty four American Sailors were murdered on the high seas. There crime goes unanswered. They will not be forgotten. It's time to clear the air. This is not going to go away.

As senior legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry, it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding Israel's June 8, 1967, bombing of the Navy intelligence ship Liberty.

Forty years ago this week, I was asked to investigate the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II. As senior legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry, it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding Israel's June 8, 1967, bombing of the Navy intelligence ship Liberty.

On that sunny, clear day 40 years ago, Israel's combined air and naval forces attacked the Liberty for two hours, inflicting 70 percent casualties. Thirty-four American sailors died, and 172 were injured. The Liberty remained afloat only by the crew's heroic efforts.

Israel claimed it was an accident. Yet I know from personal conversations with the late Adm. Isaac C. Kidd - president of the Court of Inquiry - that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of "mistaken identity."

The ensuing cover-up has haunted us for 40 years. What does it imply for our national security, not to mention our ability to honestly broker peace in the Middle East, when we cannot question Israel's actions - even when they kill Americans?

Today, survivors of Israel's cruel attack will gather in Washington, D.C., to honor their dead shipmates as well as the mothers, sisters, widows and children they left behind. They will continue to ask for a fair and impartial congressional inquiry that, for the first time, would allow the survivors themselves to testify publicly.

For decades, I have remained silent. I am a military man, and when orders come in from the secretary of defense and president of the United States, I follow them. However, attempts to rewrite history and concern for my country compel me to share the truth.

Adm. Kidd and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy's official investigation, though we both estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry would take at least six months.

We boarded the crippled ship at sea and interviewed survivors. The evidence was clear. We both believed with certainty that this attack was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.

I am certain the Israeli pilots and commanders who had ordered the attack knew the ship was American. I saw the bullet-riddled American flag that had been raised by the crew after their first flag had been shot down completely. I heard testimony that made it clear the Israelis intended there be no survivors. Not only did they attack with napalm, gunfire and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned at close range three life rafts that had been launched in an attempt to save the most seriously wounded.

I am outraged at the efforts of Israel's apologists to claim this attack was a case of "mistaken identity."

Adm. Kidd told me that after receiving the president's cover-up orders, he was instructed to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Department of Defense and rewrite portions of the court's findings. He said, "Ward, they're not interested in the facts. It's a political matter, and we cannot talk about it." We were to "put a lid on it" and caution everyone involved never to speak of it again.

I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent to Washington. I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand-correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. In addition, the testimony of Lt. Lloyd Painter concerning the deliberate machine-gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given at the Court of Inquiry and including in the original transcript, is now missing.

I join the survivors in their call for an honest inquiry. Why is there no room to question Israel - even when it kills Americans - in the halls of Congress?

Let the survivors testify. Let me testify. Let former intelligence officers testify that they received real-time Hebrew translations of Israeli commanders instructing their pilots to sink "the American ship."

Surely uncovering the truth about what happened to American servicemen in a bloody attack is more important than protecting Israel. And surely 40 years is long enough to wait.

Ward Boston Jr.

Boston served as chief counsel to the Navy's Court of Inquiry into the attack on the U.S. Navy intelligence ship Liberty. He also served as a naval aviator in World War II on the carrier Yorktown and as an FBI agent prior to his assignment to the Navy's Judge Advocates General Corps. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary School of Law and a resident of Coronado.

USS Liberty: Memories That Won’t Die

USS Liberty: Memories That Won’t Die
06/03/07
Mark Glenn

Ensign Richard Taylor, foreground, and Lieut. James O'Connor await
medical help after the brutal attack on their ship. O'Connor was sent to
Germany for emergency surgery to remove a shrapnel-riddled kidney.

A First Hand Account to the Israeli Murder of 34 American Servicemen on the USS Liberty

‘When the first missile hit, I thought one of the main lines from the boiler had blown. The whole ship shook so hard it felt like an earthquake. About 15 seconds later when I smelled what seemed like burned gunpowder and heard the Captain order everyone to General Quarters on the ship, I knew it wasn’t no blown pipe, but that the ship was under attack. Everything that took place afterwards moved in slow motion’.

So says ‘John Doe’, a survivor of the attack on the USS Liberty who spoke with American Free Press on condition that his name and rank remain anonymous. Lest anyone think that he is being dramatic or overly-paranoid when it comes to what might happen to him as a result of exercising his right of free speech in the land of the free and home of the brave, the truth is that he has good reason for being concerned. 40 years ago he was told in no uncertain terms by 2 Navy lawyers that he was not to divulge what he personally saw and heard on June 8, 1967 when the state of Israel attacked an unarmed naval vessel of the United States and murdered 34 American servicemen in cold blood. In the 40 years since that time, he has watched as those with the blood of his fellow shipmates on their hands have gotten away with murder and has no illusions about their willingness to do the same to him, a theme that has been made explicitly clear to him on many occasions through threatening phone calls and harassing emails.

‘We had no idea who was attacking us until it was all over…It seemed like it would never end, and the only reason I think it stopped was that they ran out of ammo. Had that not happened, I have no doubt that they would have finished us off for sure. They were out to sink us that day, plain and simple.’

He is surprisingly calm when he speaks about what he witnessed that day. At least by superficial appearances he does not wear any of the typical psychological scars commonplace with men who have seen battle up close and personal. For him, the scars he does wear are those of outrage–outrage that 34 Americans lost their lives in a Pearl Harbor-type sneak attack and that the government for which he worked bent over backwards to cover it up. Rather than swallowing the anger and allowing it to destroy him though (as it has done to so many others) he projects it outwardly, as evidenced by his comments –

‘Those SOB’s oughtta get on their knees and thank God everyday that I have a wife and kids, because if I were a single man with nothing to lose I would’ve tracked them down a long time ago and dealt them a dose of justice they would never forget.’

He–like the rest of the crew of the Liberty that day–was taken completely by surprise when the attack began, just as Israel had planned. John Doe had started off the day executing his duties in the engineering plant, the heart of the ship that provided the lifeblood for all its vital functions. He–like the rest of the crew–knew that hostilities were taking place in nearby Sinai, but went about his duties confident that he was safe, as the Liberty was in international waters, and–as Americans are never permitted to forget–Israel was America’s ‘greatest ally’.

Besides this, the Liberty was not a vessel of war. In fact she was the most advanced intelligence gathering ship in the world, with no heavy guns, 45 antennae on top and flying a flag a blind man could see from a mile away. Looking back, the only thing that caused him to sense that strange events were afoot was the fact that there were over-flights taking place every 30-45 minutes by low-flying Israeli reconnaissance aircraft in the 6 hour period immediately preceding the attack and that Capt. McGonagle called the Duty Photographic Teams to the deck to document them. Other than that, everything was just another normal peaceful day–until the first missile struck.

‘When the skipper called for Battle Stations, we grabbed our life jackets and helmets…My job was to go and secure all the hatches in deck 01 to ensure watertight integrity for the ship, and it was at this point,’ he tells AFP, that ‘things begin to blank out.’

‘As I said, everything kind of moved in slow motion. We did what we spent months training to do and did so without thinking much about it.’ But there are some things that he will never forget and which wake him at night sometimes.

‘I’ll never forget that first guy I saw, running down the hall towards me, covered in blood, screaming for someone to help him, or that other guy with a hole in his neck and blood gushing out of him. I’m ashamed to say I don’t even remember who they were, even though they were my own crewman.’

He continues–

‘Around midnight I came up to the mess hall and saw that it had been turned into a make-shift triage room. The blood was everywhere…on the floor…on the walls…you could smell it and tried not to slip on it.’

One of the things John remembers best is what he calls the ‘incoherent murmur’–the sounds of men, lying on the floor fighting to survive as the ship’s one doctor – Lt. Kiefer – and 2 navy corpsmen tried desperately to save them. ‘Unless you honed in on one of the men and concentrated, it all just sounded like noise, but then once you did, you could hear what was going on. Some prayed out loud, begging God to let them live. Some called out for their moms. We ran out of medical supplies pretty quick and so the men had to lie there until help came 18 hours later, groaning in agony. We later found out that Doc Keifer had taken several pieces of shrapnel in the gut that none of us knew about and didn’t even tend to himself until he did what he could for the rest of the men.’

Going up top to survey the damage, he saw that it was just as bad there as it was below.

‘The deck was usually clean as a whistle, but now it was covered with blood and littered with pieces of flesh, shards of bone and various other body parts of the fellas who had been up there when Israel unleashed hell on us. Bullet holes everywhere you looked. Seemed like there was a million of them.’

He related to AFP some of the other scenes visible on the deck that day–A shipmate lying near the main gun whose body was gone from the waist down…What looked like 5 gallons of blood that pooled in a low spot as it sloshed back and forth with the rocking of the ship…Another crewman whose foot was caught in a cable as he hung upside down, suspended a few feet above the deck, and a few feet from him, one spent casing from the gun. The gunner only managed to fire off one round in the attack before the lower half of his body was blown off.

In John’s opinion, the fact that only one round had been fired was just more proof as to how effective Israel had been in getting the Americans to lower their guard before they were sucker-punched with the sneak attack. John told AFP that Capt. McGonagle, the ship’s skipper, himself covered with blood from shrapnel he caught in his arm and leg, limped out on to the deck and ordered the bigger pieces of flesh and bone be collected and the smaller ones washed off the deck with the firehose. The larger remains were later buried in a singular grave at Arlington National Cemetery.

John Doe could go on all day if pressed to do so, but out of consideration for him the interview is cut short. He had a few parting words though about the matter–

‘Those SOB’s murdered 34 Americans and for the last 40 years our government has covered it up and protected those who did it. It started with one Texas clown named Johnson and continues to this day with another Texas clown named Bush. Had the Liberty attack been dealt with as it would have were it any other country, we wouldn’t find ourselves in this mess today. That region is not worth one drop of American blood, and the thought of them getting away with this is what p* me off more than anything else.

John was told 4 decades ago by the US Government that he would get his chance to speak one day.

‘Well, it’s been 40 years and they haven’t contacted me yet, although I did manage to get $200.00 after the State Department filed a claim against the state of Israel for what took place that day. I was lucky, some of the other guys only received $56.00 for what they went through.’

‘Forty years ago they told us that speaking about it would be doing a ‘disservice’ to the dead. Hell, I can’t think of a bigger disservice than what’s been done to the fellas than the 40 years of silence they’ve gotten on this issue from their own government. We are tired of the silence, tired of the lies. We have been fighting the devil and his advocate for 40 years now, in this case, Israel being the devil and the US government being his advocate.’

For more on what took place that day, readers of AFP are encouraged to go to the website dedicated to the memory of the men of the USS Liberty found at www.ussliberty.org. Those interested in watching the video documentary on what took place entitled ‘Dead in the Water’ can write to the USS Liberty Veterans Association, c/o Moe Shafer/4994 Lower Roswell Rd, Suite 33/ Marietta Georgia 30068. The cost of the video is $25.00 and all proceeds go to the LVA for purposes of keeping the Liberty story alive.

USS Liberty Veterans Association
www.ussliberty.org.

BBC: 1967 Middle East War

1967 Middle East War

Introduction:

Tensions rise in May as UN troops withdraw and Egypt deploys troops in the Sinai and Gaza

The 1967 Middle East War, also known as the Six Day War, was the third conflict between Israel and neighbouring Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The first, in 1948, left East Jerusalem and the River Jordan's West Bank under Jordanian control and the coastal Gaza Strip under Egyptian control. In 1956, Israel invaded the Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai peninsula. Israel was forced to leave the Sinai the following year and a United Nations Emergency Force (Unef) was deployed. Tensions continued to rise and newly-formed Palestinian militant groups began cross-border raids with Arab support. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was keen to unite the Arab world and spoke of "the destruction of Israel", while Israel feared it could be wiped out. In May 1967, President Nasser demanded the removal of Unef troops from the Sinai, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and signed a defence pact with Jordan. Some historians question whether Nasser planned to go to war, but all three factors, and Egyptian troop deployment in the Sinai, led to a pre-emptive strike by Israel.

Pre-emptive strike: Israel launches air attacks against Egyptian air bases ahead of a ground offensive

Israeli troops continue their advance into the Sinai and in Jerusalem they take a key position after heavy fighting

Israeli forces capture the Old City in East Jerusalem, Sharm el-Sheikh in the Sinai and towns in the West Bank

Israeli forces take control of the Sinai and reach Suez Canal. IAF jets attack the US Navy's USS Liberty

With the Sinai taken, Israel turns its attention to the Syrian front, and launches attacks on the Golan Heights

Syrian forces in the Golan Heights are defeated and a ceasefire is agreed

Why did Israel attack USS Liberty?

Why did Israel attack USS Liberty?
Friday, 8 June 2007
By Raffi Berg
BBC News

For former US seaman Gary Brummett, the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Middle East war has stirred painful memories.

As a 21-year-old third class petty officer, Mr Brummett was serving on board the USS Liberty off the coast of Egypt on 8 June, when, without warning, the vessel came under fire, first from fighter planes, then torpedo boats.

Israel says its forces did not identify the ship as a US vessel

The attack, which lasted at least 40 minutes, resulted in the deaths of 34 of Mr Brummett's fellow crewmen, at least 170 injured and catastrophic damage to the ship.

Alarmingly, the assault had been carried out not by enemy forces, but by the US' closest regional ally, Israel.

Israel insists it mistook the Liberty for a hostile Egyptian ship, the El Quseir, and numerous US and Israeli inquiries have concluded the attack was accidental.

But for Mr Brummett and a growing body of conspiracy theorists, the authorities are guilty of a cover-up.

"I have more trouble with it today than when it happened because I know more of the facts about what was going on," said Mr Brummett.

"There's been an egregious wrong done here, there's been an extreme number of lies told to the American people and the American people do not know the truth about what happened."

'Sitting duck'

The attack on the Liberty - the gravest incident in the history of US-Israeli relations - has been a source of controversy for the past four decades.

Claim and counter-claim as to what happened have been fought out in every corner of the media, with the advent of the internet helping to reinvigorate the debate.

In pictures: Liberty attacked

Israel's supporters say the incident is merely being used as a tool by critics to malign the Jewish state, while accusers say the attack was a war crime which has never come to light.

According to Israel, the incident was a tragic case of friendly fire occurring in the fog of war.

It says it believed the ship had been bombarding Israeli forces fighting in the Sinai, and that its pilots did not see any US flags (survivors say there were three) on the vessel before they opened fire.

Sceptics however claim the attack was premeditated and that the truth has been suppressed. The assertion of a cover-up was lent weight by a 2003 independent commission of inquiry which reported that the attack on the Liberty "remains the only serious naval incident that has never been thoroughly investigated by Congress".

Among the most popular theories as to why Israel would take such drastic action against its superpower ally is that the Liberty, a $40m state-of-the-art surveillance ship, was eavesdropping on an Israeli massacre of Egyptian prisoners of war.

Israel strongly denies its troops executed Egyptian POWs, saying those who died in an incident at that time were 250 armed Palestinian fighters killed in action.

Another is that the ship had learnt of secret Israeli plans to invade Syria's Golan Heights two days later and had to be destroyed.

'US collusion' theory

Perhaps the most sinister motive is that put forward by journalist Peter Hounam in his 2003 book "Operation Cyanide".

Mr Hounam claims secret elements within the US and Israeli governments colluded to bomb the ship and blame the attack on Egypt and their superpower ally, the Soviet Union, triggering massive retaliation which would ensure Israeli victory.

"The attack on the Liberty was pre-planned, perhaps from at least a year beforehand," Mr Hounam says.

"The Liberty was sent into a very dangerous situation, where it was, in my view, placed in a position to be attacked."

Mr Hounam says the intention was to sink the ship and kill everyone on board, but as the Liberty remained afloat the plan was aborted and has been hushed up ever since.

'Presidential order'

Successive US and Israeli inquiries, and the declassification of thousands of pieces of information, have done little to dampen suspicions.

One of the most powerful claims of a cover-up has come from retired US Navy lawyer Capt Ward Boston, counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry into the incident conducted just days after the event.

Survivors want a Congressional investigation into the attack

Capt Boston says the court's original findings, which he signed, were changed afterwards by government lawyers.

He also claims the president of the court, Rear Adm Isaac Kidd, told him he was ordered by US President Lyndon Johnson and Defence Secretary Robert McNamara to conclude the attack was a case of mistaken identity.

However, Capt Boston's version of events - and the notion that what happened was anything more than a tragic accident - are disputed by numerous academics and authors who have investigated the incident.

"It was a series of blunders by both the United States and Israel that resulted in a terrible tragedy and nothing more,"

says Jay Cristol, a federal judge and author of the book The Liberty Incident.

"All the official reports came to the same conclusion.

"Unfortunately there are a number of people who are on the other side of the Arab-Israeli conflict who think this is a way to attack the otherwise very strong relationship between the US and Israel, and they keep stirring the pot.

'No evidence'

It is a view with which historian Michael B Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem academic research institute, concurs.

"Many thousands of documents related to the Liberty have been declassified and in none of these documents will you find a scintilla of evidence to suggest any of these conspiracy theories are true," he says.

"The Golan one is the easiest to disprove because of where the Liberty was, not off the coast of Israel, but Egypt. Its listening devices weren't that powerful that they could listen in on communications in Tel Aviv.

"Moreover the Israelis were very upfront in telling the US that they planned to capture the Golan Heights and the Americans agreed to it.

"Regarding a massacre of Egyptian POWs, there's no evidence of that. And why would the Israelis try to cover up one atrocity by committing another?

He says the attack has remained a source of controversy because

"it has all the ingredients of a good spy scandal. It involves espionage and it involves the Israelis, who are forever a focus of conspiracy theories.

"If I could prove the Liberty was attacked in a premeditated fashion, I would write it - it would be a great historical scoop - but the truth is far more mundane."

Israel's Attack on the USS Liberty, Revisited

Israel's Attack on the USS Liberty, Revisited
Rockets, Napalm, Torpedoes & Lie
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
June 8, 2007

In early June of 1967, at the onset of the Six Day War, the Pentagon sent the USS Liberty from Spain into international waters off the coast of Gaza to monitor the progress of Israel's attack on the Arab states. The Liberty was a lightly armed surveillance ship.

Only hours after the Liberty arrived it was spotted by the Israeli military. The IDF sent out reconnaissance planes to identify the ship. They made eight trips over a period of three hours. The Liberty was flying a large US flag and was easily recognizable as an American vessel.

A few hours later more planes came. These were Israeli Mirage III fighters, armed with rockets and machine guns. As off-duty officers sunbathed on the deck, the fighters opened fire on the defenseless ship with rockets and machine guns.

A few minutes later a second wave of planes streaked overhead, French-built Mystere jets, which not only pelted the ship with gunfire but also with napalm bomblets, coating the deck with the flaming jelly. By now, the Liberty was on fire and dozens were wounded and killed, excluding several of the ship's top officers.

The Liberty's radio team tried to issue a distress call, but discovered the frequencies had been jammed by the Israeli planes with what one communications specialist called "a buzzsaw sound". Finally, an open channel was found and the Liberty got out a message to the USS America, the Sixth Fleet's large aircraft carrier, that it was under attack

Two F-4s left the carrier to come to the Liberty's aid. Apparently, the jets were armed only with nuclear weapons. When word reached the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara became irate and ordered the jets to return. "Tell the Sixth Fleet to get those aircraft back immediately," he barked. McNamara's injunction was reiterated in saltier terms by Admiral David L. McDonald, the chief of Naval Operations: "You get those fucking airplanes back on deck, and you get them back down." The planes turned around. And the attack on the Liberty continued.

After the Israeli fighter jets had emptied their arsenal of rockets, three Israeli attack boats approached the Liberty. Two torpedoes were launched at the crippled ship, one tore a 40-foot wide hole in the hull, flooding the lower compartments, and killing more than a dozen American sailors.

As the Liberty listed in the choppy seas, its deck aflame, crew members dropped life rafts into the water and prepared to scuttle the ship. Given the number of wounded, this was going to be a dangerous operation. But it soon proved impossible, as the Israeli attack boats strafed the rafts with machine gun fire. No body was going to get out alive that way.

After more than two hours of unremitting assault, the Israelis finally halted their attack. One of the torpedo boats approached the Liberty. An officer asked in English over a bullhorn: "Do you need any help?"

The wounded commander of the Liberty, Lt. William McGonagle, instructed the quartermaster to respond emphatically: "Fuck you."

The Israeli boat turned and left.

A Soviet destroyer responded before the US Navy, even though a US submarine, on a covert mission, was apparently in the area and had monitored the attack. The Soviet ship reached the Liberty six hours before the USS Davis. The captain of the Soviet ship offered his aid, but the Liberty's commanding officer refused.

Finally, 16 hours after the attack two US destroyers reached the Liberty. By that time, 34 US sailors were dead and 174 injured, many seriously. As the wounded were being evacuated, an officer with the Office of Naval Intelligence instructed the men not to talk to the press about their ordeal.

The following morning Israel launched a surprise invasion of Syria, breaching the new cease-fire agreement and seizing control of the Golan Heights.

Within three weeks, the Navy put out a 700-page report, exonerating the Israelis, claiming the attack had been accidental and that the Israelis had pulled back as soon as they realized their mistake. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara suggested the whole affair should be forgotten. "These errors do occur," McNamara concluded.

***

In Assault on the Liberty, a first-hand account by James Ennes Jr., McNamara's version of events is proven to be as big a sham as his concurrent lies about Vietnam. Ennes's book created a media storm when it was first published by Random House in 1980, including (predictably) charges that Ennes was a liar and an anti-Semite. Still, the book sold more than 40,000 copies, but was eventually allowed to go out of print. Now Ennes has published an updated version, which incorporates much new evidence that the Israeli attack was deliberate and that the US government went to extraordinary lengths to disguise the truth.

It's a story of Israel aggression, Pentagon incompetence, official lies, and a cover-up that persists to this day. The book gains much of its power from the immediacy of Ennes's first-hand account of the attack and the lies that followed.

Now, 35 years later, Ennes warns that the bloodbath on board the Liberty and its aftermath should serve as a tragic cautionary tale about the continuing ties between the US government and the government of Israel.

The Attack on the Liberty is the kind of book that makes your blood seethe. Ennes skillfully documents the life of the average sailor on one of the more peculiar vessels in the US Navy, with an attention for detail that reminds one of Dana or O'Brien. After all, the year was 1967 and most of the men on the Liberty were certainly glad to be on a non-combat ship in the middle of the Mediterranean, rather than in the Gulf of Tonkin or Mekong Delta.

But this isn't Two Years Before the Mast. In fact, Ennes's tour on the Liberty last only a few short weeks. He had scarcely settled into a routine before his new ship was shattered before his eyes.

Ennes joined the Liberty in May of 1967, as an Electronics Material Officer. Serving on a "spook ship", as the Liberty was known to Navy wives, was supposed to be a sure path to career enhancement. The Liberty's normal routine was to ply the African coast, tuning in its eavesdropping equipment on the electronic traffic in the region.

The Liberty had barely reached Africa when it received a flash message from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to sail from the Ivory Coast to the Mediterranean, where it was to re-deploy off the coast of the Sinai to monitor the Israeli attack on Egypt and the allied Arab nations.

As the war intensified, the Liberty sent a request to the fleet headquarters requesting an escort. Requesrt denied, by Admiral William Martin. The Liberty moved alone to a position in international waters about 13 miles from the shore at El Arish, then under furious siege by the IDF.

On June 6, the Joint Chiefs sent Admiral McCain, father of the senator from Arizona, an urgent message instructing him to move the Liberty out of the war zone to a position at least 100 miles off the Gaza Coast. McCain never forwarded the message to the ship.

A little after seven in the morning on June 8, Ennes entered the bridge of the Liberty to take the morning watch. Ennes was told that an hour earlier a "flying boxcar" (later identified as a twin-engine Nord 2501 Noratlas) had flown over the ship at a low level.

Ennes says he noticed that the ship's American flag had become stained with soot and ordered a new flag run up the mast. The morning was clear and calm, with a light breeze.

At 9 am, Ennes spotted another reconnaissance plane, which circled the Liberty. An hour later two Israeli fighter jets buzzed the ship. Over the next four hours, Israeli planes flew over the Liberty five more times.

When the first fighter jet struck, a little before two in the afternoon, Ennes was scanning the skies from the starboard side of the bridge, binoculars in his hands. A rocket hit the ship just below where Ennes was standing, the fragments shredded the men closest to him.

After the explosion, Ennes noticed that he was the only man left standing. But he also had been hit by more than 20 shards of shrapnel and the force of the blast had shattered his left leg. As he crawled into the pilothouse, a second fighter jet streaked above them and unleashed its payload on the hobbled Liberty.

At that point, Ennes says the crew of the Liberty had no idea who was attacking them or why. For a few moments, they suspected it might be the Soviets, after an officer mistakenly identified the fighters as MIG-15s. They knew that the Egyptian air force already had been decimated by the Israelis. The idea that the Israelis might be attacking them didn't occur to them until one of the crew spotted a Star of David on the wing of one of the French-built Mystere jets.

Ennes was finally taken below deck to a makeshift dressing station, with other wounded men. It was hardly a safe harbor. As Ennes worried that his fractured leg might slice through his femoral artery leaving him to bleed to death, the Liberty was pummeled by rockets, machine-gun fire and an Italian-made torpedo packed with 1,000-pounds of explosive.

After the attack ended, Ennes was approached by his friend Pat O'Malley, a junior officer, who had just sent a list of killed and wounded to the Bureau of Naval Personnel. He got an immediate message back. "They said, 'Wounded in what action? Killed in what action?'," O'Malley told Ennes. "They said it wasn't an 'action,' it was an accident. I'd like for them to come out here and see the difference between an action and an accident. Stupid bastards."

The cover-up had begun.

***

The Pentagon lied to the public about the attack on the Liberty from the very beginning. In a decision personally approved by the loathsome McNamara, the Pentagon denied to the press that the Liberty was an intelligence ship, referring to it instead as a Technical Research ship, as if it were little more than a military version of Jacques Cousteau's Calypso.

The military press corps on the USS America, where most of the wounded sailors had been taken, were placed under extreme restrictions. All of the stories filed from the carrier were first routed through the Pentagon for security clearance, objectionable material was removed with barely a bleat of protest from the reporters or their publications.

Predictably, Israel's first response was to blame the victim, a tactic that has served them so well in the Palestinian situation. First, the IDF alleged that it had asked the State Department and the Pentagon to identify any US ships in the area and was told that there were none. Then the Israeli government charged that the Liberty failed to fly its flag and didn't respond to calls for it to identify itself. The Israelis contended that they assumed the Liberty was an Egyptian supply ship called El Quseir which, even though it was a rusting transport ship then docked in Alexandria, the IDF claimed was suspected of shelling Israeli troops from the sea. Under these circumstances, the Israelis said they were justified in opening fire on the Liberty. The Israelis said that they halted the attack almost immediately, when they realized their mistake.

"The Liberty contributed decisively toward its identification as an enemy ship," the IDF report concluded. This was entirely false, since the Israelis had identified the Liberty at least six hours prior to the attack on the ship.

Even though the Pentagon knew better, it gave credence to the Israeli account by saying that perhaps the Liberty's flag had lain limp on the flagpole in a windless sea. The Pentagon also suggested that the attack might have lasted less than 20 minutes.

After the initial battery of misinformation, the Pentagon imposed a news blackout on the Liberty disaster until after the completion of a Court of Inquiry investigation.

The inquiry was headed by Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd. Kidd didn't have a free hand. He'd been instructed by Vice-Admiral McCain to limit the damage to the Pentagon and to protect the reputation of Israel.

Kidd interviewed the crew on June 14 and 15. The questioning was extremely circumscribed. According to Ennes, the investigators "asked nothing that might be embarrassing to Israel and testimony that tended to embarrass Israel was covered with a 'Top Secret' label, if it was accepted at all."

Ennes notes that even testimony by the Liberty's communications officers about the jamming of the ship's radios was classified as "Top Secret". The reason? It proved that Israel knew it was attacking an American ship. "Here was strong evidence that the attack was planned in advance and that our ship's identity was known to the attackers (for it its practically impossible to jam the radio of a stranger), but this information was hushed up and no conclusions were drawn from it," Ennes writes.

Similarly, the Court of Inquiry deep-sixed testimony and affidavits regarding the flag. Ennes, remember, had ordered a crisp new one deployed early on the morning of the attack. The investigators buried intercepts of conversations between IDF pilots identifying the ship as flying an American flag.

It also refused to accept evidence about the IDF's use of napalm during the attacks and choose not to hear testimony regarding the duration of the attacks and the fact that the US Navy failed to send planes to defend the ship.

"No one came to help us," said Dr. Richard F. Kiepfer, the Liberty's physician. "We were promised help, but no help came. The Russians arrived before our own ships did. We asked for an escort before we ever came to the war zone and we were turned down."

None of this made its way into the 700-page Court of Inquiry report, which was completed within a couple of weeks and sent to Admiral McCain in London for review.

McCain approved the report over the objections of Captain Merlin Staring, the Navy legal officer assigned to the inquiry, who found the report to be flawed, incomplete and contrary to the evidence.

Staring sent a letter to the Judge Advocate General of the Navy disavowing the report. The JAG seemed to take Staring's objections to heart. He prepared a summary for the Chief of Naval Operations that almost completely ignored the Kidd/McCain report. Instead, it concluded:

"that the Liberty was easily recognizable as an American naval vessel; that its flag was fully deployed and flying in a moderate breeze; that Israeli planes made at least eight reconnaissance flights at close range; the ship came under a prolonged attack from Israeli fighter jets and torpedo boats."

This succinct and largely accurate report was stamped Top Secret by Navy brass and stayed locked up for many years. But it was seen by many in the Pentagon and some in the Oval Office. But there was enough grumbling about the way the Liberty incident had been handled that LBJ summoned that old Washington fixer Clark Clifford to do damage control. It didn't take Clifford long to come up with the official line: the Israelis simply had made a tragic mistake.

It turns out that Admiral Kidd and Captain Ward Boston, the two investigating officers who prepared the original report for Admiral McCain, both believed that the Israeli attack was intentional and sustained. In other words, the IDF knew that they were striking an American spy ship and they wanted to sink it and kill as many sailors as possible. Why then did the Navy investigators produce a sham report that concluded it was an accident?

Twenty-five years later we've finally found out. In June of 2002, Captain Boston told the Navy Times: "Officers follow orders."

It gets worse. There's plenty of evidence that US intelligence agencies learned on June 7 that Israel intended to attack the Liberty on the following day and that the strike had been personally ordered by Moshe Dayan.

As the attacks were going on, conversations between Israeli pilots were overheard by US Air Force officers in an EC121 surveillance plane overhead. The spy plane was spotted by Israeli jets, which were given orders to shoot it down. The American plane narrowly avoided the IDF missiles.

Initial reports on the incident prepared by the CIA, Office of Naval Intelligence and the National Security Agency all reached similar conclusions.

A particularly damning report compiled by a CIA informant suggests that Israeli Defense minister Moshe Dayan personally ordered the attack and wanted it to proceed until the Liberty was sunk and all on board killed. A heavily redacted version of the report was released in 1977. It reads in part:

"[The source] said that Dayan personally ordered the attack on the ship and that one of his generals adamantly opposed the action and said, 'This is pure murder.' One of the admirals who was present also disapproved of the action, and it was he who ordered it stopped and not Dayan."

This amazing document generated little attention from the press and Dayan was never publicly questioned about his role in the attack.

The analyses by the intelligence agencies are collected in a 1967 investigation by the Defense Subcommittee on Appropriations. Two and half decades later that report remains classified. Why? A former committee staffer said: "So as not to embarrass Israel."

More proof has recently come to light from the Israeli side. A few years after Attack on the Liberty was originally published, Ennes got a call from Evan Toni, an Israeli pilot. Toni told Ennes that he had just read his book and wanted to tell him his story. Toni said that he was the pilot in the first Israeli Mirage fighter to reach the Liberty. He immediately recognized the ship to be a US Navy vessel. He radioed Israeli air command with this information and asked for instructions. Toni said he was ordered to "attack". He refused and flew back to the air base at Ashdod. When he arrived he was summarily arrested for disobeying orders.

***

How tightly does the Israeli lobby control the Hill? For the first time in history, an attack on an America ship was not subjected to a public investigation by Congress. In 1980, Adlai Stevenson and Barry Goldwater planned to open a senate hearing into the Liberty affair. Then Jimmy Carter intervened by brokering a deal with Menachem Begin, where Israel agreed to pony up $6 million to pay for damages to the ship. A State Department press release announcing the payment said, "The book is now closed on the USS Liberty."

It certainly was the last chapter for Adlai Stevenson. He ran for governor of Illinois the following year, where his less than perfect record on Israel, and his unsettling questions about the Liberty affair, became an issue in the campaign. Big money flowed into the coffers of his Republican opponent, Big Jim Thompson, and Stevenson went down to a narrow defeat.

But the book wasn't closed for the sailors either, of course. After a Newsweek story exposed the gist of what really happened on that day in the Mediterranean, an enraged Admiral McCain placed all the sailors under a gag order. When one sailor told an officer that he was having problems living with the cover-up, he was told: "Forget about it, that's an order."

The Navy went to bizarre lengths to keep the crew of the Liberty from telling what they knew. When gag orders didn't work, they threatened sanctions. Ennes tells of the confinement and interrogation of two Liberty sailors that sounds like something straight from the CIA's MK-Ultra program.

"In an incredible abuse of authority, military officers held two young Liberty sailors against their will in a locked and heavily guarded psychiatric ward of the base hospital," Ennes writes. "For days these men were drugged and questioned about their recollections of the attack by a 'therapist' who admitted to being untrained in either psychiatry or psychology. At one point, they avoided electroshock only by bolting from the room and demanding to see the commanding officer."

Since coming home, the veterans who have tried to tell of their ordeal have been harassed relentlessly. They've been branded as drunks, bigots, liars and frauds. Often, it turns out, these slurs have been leaked by the Pentagon. And, oh yeah, they've also been painted as anti-Semites.

In a recent column, Charley Reese describes just how mean-spirited and petty this campaign became. "When a small town in Wisconsin decided to name its library in honor of the USS Liberty crewmen, a campaign claiming it was anti-Semitic was launched," writes Reese. "And when the town went ahead, the U.S. government ordered no Navy personnel to attend, and sent no messages. This little library was the first, and at the time the only, memorial to the men who died on the Liberty."

***

So why then did the Israelis attack the Liberty?

A few days before the Six Days War, Israel's Foreign Minister Abba Eban visited Washington to inform LBJ about the forthcoming invasion. Johnson cautioned Eban that the US could not support such an attack.

It's possible, then, that the IDF assumed that the Liberty was spying on the Israeli war plans. Possible, but not likely. Despite the official denials, as Andrew and Leslie Cockburn demonstrate in Dangerous Liaison, at the time of the Six Days War the US and Israel had developed a warm covert relationship. So closely were the two sides working that US intelligence aid certainly helped secure Israel's swift victory. In fact, it's possible that the Liberty had been sent to the region to spy for the IDF.

A somewhat more likely scenario holds that Moshe Dayan wanted to keep the lid on Israel's plan to breach the new cease-fire and invade into Syria to seize the Golan.

It has also been suggested that Dayan ordered the attack on the Liberty with the intent of pinning the blame on the Egyptians and thus swinging public and political opinion in the United States solidly behind the Israelis. Of course, for this plan to work, the Liberty had to be destroyed and its crew killed.

There's another factor. The Liberty was positioned just off the coast from the town of El Arish. In fact, Ennes and others had used the town's mosque tower to fix the location of the ship along the otherwise featureless desert shoreline. The IDF had seized El Arish and had used the airport there as a prisoner of war camp. On the very day the Liberty was attacked, the IDF was in the process of executing as many as 1,000 Palestinian and Egyptian POWs, a war crime that they surely wanted to conceal from prying eyes. According to Gabriel Bron, now an Israeli reporter, who witnessed part of the massacre as a soldier: "The Egyptian prisoners of war were ordered to dig pits and then army police shot them to death."

The bigger question is why the US government would participate so enthusiastically in the cover-up of a war crime against its own sailors. Well, the Pentagon has never been slow to hide its own incompetence. And there's plenty of that in the Liberty affair: bungled communications, refusal to provide an escort, situating the defenseless Liberty too close to a raging battle, the inability to intervene in the attack and the inexcusably long time it took to reach the battered ship and its wounded.

That's par for the course. But something else was going on that would only come to light later. Through most of the 1960s, the US congress had imposed a ban on the sale of arms to both Israel and Jordan. But at the time of the Liberty attack, the Pentagon (and its allies in the White House and on the Hill) was seeking to have this proscription overturned. The top brass certainly knew that any evidence of a deliberate attack on a US Navy ship by the IDF would scuttle their plans. So they hushed it up.

In January 1968, the arms embargo on Israel was lifted and the sale of American weapons began to flow. By 1971, Israel was buying $600 million of American-made weapons a year. Two years later the purchases topped $3 billion. Almost overnight, Israel had become the largest buyer of US-made arms and aircraft.

Perversely, then, the IDF's strike on the Liberty served to weld the US and Israel together, in a kind of political and military embrace. Now, every time the IDF attacks defenceless villages in Gaza and the West Bank with F-16s and Apache helicopters, the Palestinians quite rightly see the bloody assaults as a joint operation, with the Pentagon as a hidden partner.

Thus, does the legacy of Liberty live on, one raid after another.

This is essay appears in The Politics of Anti-Semitism edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book is End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate, co-written with Alexander Cockburn.

He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net