JULY 2018 MUSINGS

Erasing the Liberty (Book Review)

by Pat Shannan

I have just completed what should be the “Book of the Year.”  It is certainly the most disturbing book I have ever read. “Everything they ever told me was a lie” has a new assignment and application now: that to the Israeli Air Force, the United States Navy brass, “Lyin’ Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert Strange (you bet) McNamara and various chicken-hearted U. S. Congressmen.

On the morning of June 8, 1967, Israeli planes began multiple surveillance flyovers of the virtually unarmed and unarmored U. S. surveillance ship Liberty, lawfully cruising at around five knots in an oval some 13 miles out in the international waters off the northern coast of Egypt. The Liberty was blatantly displaying its oversized red, white & blue stars and stripes for identification. The surveillance continued for around six hours—from 0600-1200 hours—and was constantly observed by the sailors onboard. Then more planes came. These were unmarked French Mirage III fighters, armed with rockets and machine guns. As off-duty servicemembers sunbathed on the deck, the fighters opened fire on the defenseless ship with their rockets and machine guns.

Soon after, 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, Liberty was on fire, and dozens were wounded and killed, including several of the ship’s top officers.

Liberty’s radio team tried to issue a distress call but discovered the frequencies had been jammed by the planes with what one sailor called “a buzzsaw sound.” As the story goes, a sailor was able to get operational the last remaining antenna (out of 45 antennae) not hit by the jets, and Liberty got out a message it was under attack to the Sixth Fleet, where the aircraft carriers USS Saratoga and America, were conducting war games off the coast of Crete.

Two sorties of planes were launched with F-4 Phantoms (top speed: 1,473 mph) from the carriers to come to the Liberty’s aid. Saratoga’s were recalled and then America’s. 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 @!#$% airplanes back on deck, and you get them back down.” When McNamara’s order was challenged by a rear admiral, the next voice heard was LBJ’s.

From Erasing:

. . . Admiral Geis took the microphone . . . and told McNamara, “Sonny, you’re neither big enough nor bad enough to have me recall aircraft going to help a Navy ship with sailors in peril.” And . . . the next voice he heard, the next voice everybody in that space heard, was Lyndon Baines Johnson saying, “Get those g–damn planes back or you’ll be pushing pencils the next day. I will not embarrass an ally over one ship and a few men.” And the admiral recalled the aircraft.

The attack on the Liberty continued with the men on board still unaware of who it was that might be attacking them.

After the jets had emptied their arsenals, three Israeli motor torpedo boats—one with the Star of David proudly flying—approached Liberty in attack formation. Five torpedoes were launched at the crippled ship, one blasting a 40-foot wide hole in the starboard side, flooding the lower compartments, and killing 25 American sailors, Marines and one civilian.

As Liberty listed in the choppy seas, its deck aflame, crewmembers 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 motor torpedo boats strafed the rafts with machine gun fire. Nobody was going to get out alive that way.

Finally, 16 hours after the terror attack, two U.S. destroyers reached Liberty. By that time, 34 men were dead and at least 174 injured, many seriously. As the wounded were being evacuated to America, an official with the Office of Naval Intelligence scolded the men—some severely wounded—not to talk about their ordeal with the press.

It took 12 years for the first book to finally appear on the market. In Assault on the Liberty, a harrowing 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 published by Random House in 1979, including charges that Ennes was a liar and an anti-Semite (of course). Still, the book sold more than 40,000 copies but was eventually allowed to go out of print.

There was but one obvious answer to the “Why?” of this attack, and months later it was confirmed (by CIA) with the discovery of some typed orders from Moshe Dayan, NOMFIC of the Israeli military. The day before, at the height of the Six-Day War, Gen. Dayan had ordered the sinking of the American ship with the express intent of blaming the attack through controlled news reports on Egypt in order to get the American military to saddle up and ride into Cairo with the Israelis. One report by former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight Porter recounted a conversation between an Israeli pilot and the Israel Air Force war room, which was allegedly picked up by an NSA aircraft and inadvertently cabled to CIA offices around the world:

Israeli pilot to IDF war room: This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?

IDF war room to Israeli pilot: Yes, follow orders.

Israeli pilot to IDF war room: But sir, it’s an American ship – I can see the flag!

IDF war room to Israeli pilot: Never mind; hit it.

It appeared but was not confirmed at the time that both Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson back in Washington D.C. were made aware of the coming attack before it happened. This, of course, is speculation because neither ever admitted to foreknowledge.

Then, the impending cover-up launched the multiple treasonous acts of some of the highest-ranking members of American officialdom, but even 51 years later, the news suppression has rendered probably 99% of the American populace completely unaware that it ever even happened.

One despicable scene in Erasing the Liberty took place four days after the attack and portrayed a most despicable character with more outrageous behavior.

June 8th was on a Thursday, and the following Monday, while limping to Malta for repairs, the surviving Liberty crewmen were paid a visit by Admiral Isaac Campbell Kidd, who immediately told them to not fear him, he just wanted all the details as each remembered them. He then took off his stars and tossed them on a table, suggesting that their chat would be with a friend and not an officer. This occurred several times with small groups of a half dozen or so over most of the afternoon.

Each told the same story with only varying details, explaining the total impossibility of the Israeli attack to have been “accidental” or one of “mistaken identity.” From the several recon flights overhead to the strafing, bombing, submarine-launched torpedoes and even the launching of the lifeboats that were destroyed before they could be occupied, all spoke to the obvious: Liberty was supposed to sink with nobody left alive.

At the end of each session, Kidd asked if anyone had anything else to say, and when they didn’t, he picked up his Admiral’s stars, pinned them back on his collars and said, “Gentlemen, now I’m an Admiral again and you need to understand something.”

The dirty dog then proceeded to say that the “something” was about “national security” and that they were never to utter a word about this anyone—ever!

“You are never to repeat what you just told me to ANYONE—not your mother, your father, your wife, not anyone, including your shipmates; or you will end up in my little prison or worse.”

(They give a Medal of Honor posthumously to unrecognized heroes of wartime.  How about we instigate a “Medal of Dishonor” for the traitors of history, beginning with this filthy turncoat?)

This is why it took so long for the truth to leak out, but after about 30 years, the surviving sailors formed an association, began to meet and correspond with one another and grow angry again.

Phil Tourney did go public in 1985 at a Spotlight conference in Washington, D.C., which might have inspired the other survivors to slowly congregate, but another two decades would pass before he would follow with his first book, What I Saw That Day. Now with the benefit of dozens of related anecdotes from many of his surviving shipmates, Erasing the Liberty tells much fuller the gruesome story of one of history’s dirtiest deeds and its cover-up.

Indeed, the memory of the USS Liberty has been almost completely erased. It must be revived.

We do not sell Erasing the Liberty at INI but urge you to order it from Rockstar Publishing, 6256 Bullet Drive, Crestview, Florida 32536. 432 pages with over a hundred photographs. $30, S&H included.