Stuart:
One of the more controversial events of the 1960s was the israeli attack on the US Intelligence ship USS Liberty that was conducting intelligence operations off the Sinai coast when she was attacked by Israeli forces. Some of the controversy comes from allegations that the attack was deliberate and that the US colluded in it. In recent years, some of the signals pertaining to this tragedy have been released from the National Archives. This includes the Liberty's track chart and some intercepted Israeli messages. (ref-a)
The story of the attack on the USS Liberty started on June 2, 1967, when she left Rota in Spain for the Middle East. There, in addition to supplies, she had taken on three Marine Corps Arabic translators, augmenting the three NSA Russian-language experts already on board. At the time, she was operating under orders from the US Sixth Fleet to stay "outside an arc whose radius is 240 miles from [the Egyptian city of] Port Said." This is where the first error of judgement took place. Her handlers in the National Security Agency ignored the order and directed the ship to a point just outside Egypt's territorial waters, a mere 12.5 miles from Port Said. These orders were recently released by the National Archives and were apparently the result of a perceived need to intercept communications that were uninterceptable from the specified distance. The most significant of these were tactical dialogues between Egyptian officers and their Soviet advisers. At the time it was regarded as being essential to determine the depth of Soviet involvement in the Egyptian military operations (hence the embarkation of the additional translators).
On hearing of the decision by the NSA handlers, the US Navy sent a total of five subsequent cables from their European headquarters, instructing the USS Liberty to pull back to at least 100 miles. This is where the second glitch came in. Those messages (also released from the National Archives) were misrouted via the Philippines, and none reached the ship in time. In fact, the JCS' orders would not be received by the Liberty until June 9, by which time they would no longer be relevant. Whether the misrouting was an accident or an NSA effort to keep the ship on the close-in station longer remains unknown but there is strong circumstantial reason to believe that NSA had much to gain by such misrouting. The fact that the signals went via the Philippines is unchallenged; the interesting question is why and how.
Approaching the Sinai coast at dawn on June 6, the Liberty's skipper, Commander William L. McGonagle, was deeply concerned by the risk to his ship and requested a destroyer escort, only to be reminded by the commander of the Sixth Fleet that the "Liberty is a clearly marked United States ship in international waters ... and not a reasonable subject for attack by any nation." (National Archives) That's glitch number three. It should be noted that the naval war was not going well for Israel at this point. The failure of the Israeli navy's attacks on Egyptian and Syrian ports early in the war did little to assuage Israel's fears. There was a very real fear inthe Israeli command that Arab naval units (that outnumbered the Israeli fleet by 5:1) would launch attacks on the Israeli coast. Consequently, the IDF Chief of Staff, Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, informed the U.S. Naval Attach in Tel Aviv, Cmdr. Ernest Carl Castle, that Israel would defend its coast with every means at its disposal. Unidentified vessels would be sunk, Rabin advised; the United States should advise the Israelies of any ships operating in the area. The information provided by the US did not include the Liberty. While this was happening, Israel renewed its request that the United States assign a naval liaison officer to facilitate its communications with the US Navy. Previous to the outbreak of fighting, Israeli Ambassador Avraham Harman had warned the White House that "if war breaks out, we would have no telephone number to call, no code for plane recognition, and no way to get in touch with the U.S. Sixth Fleet." The United States never approved the appointment of a liaison officer, nor did it inform Israel of the Liberty's arrival in the area. Thats glitch number four.
By June 8 the Liberty was patrolling between Port Said and Gaza, in a lane rarely used by commercial freighters and declared by Egypt as off-limits to neutral shipping. The track chart has also been released from the National Archives. It shows the Liberty starting from a position very close to the Egyptian coast and moving out to take up a racetrack pattern track off the Sinai coast. On June 8, just before six o'clock in the morning, an Israeli pilot reported finding a naval craft ("gray, bulky, with its bridge amidships") 70 miles west of Gaza. Note that Israeli pilots were not trained for maritime attack or recon and, like most pilots, a ship was a ship was a ship. Nevertheless although he did not report seeing a flag, he did make out the hull marking "GTR-5," which was enough for Israeli commanders to identify the ship as the USS Liberty and to mark it as a neutral vessel on their control board. Its worth noting that this was a manual plot, not a computerized system as we would use today for the same job. Manual control boards quickly become overloaded with data and have to be cleaned of old information regularly. (Ref b)
At eleven o'clock in the morning, the watch at Israeli naval headquarters changed. The new officers, following procedures for removing old information and assuming the Liberty had sailed away, cleaned the board. For Israeli forces, the Liberty had ceased to exist. Glitch number five and a biggie. This is the one that was the proximate cause of the disaster. The Israeli officers here were culpably negligent in that they should have made sure a known US warship was out of the conflict area, not just assumed it was so. Unfortunately, the Israelis back then made a big thing out of their contempt for the routines, practices and doctrines employed by more established armed forces. In fact, they derided such practices as being typical of hidebound reactionaries; the Israeli Military Forces didn't need all that nonsense about correct procedure. That attitude doomed Liberty.
Now the situation began to escalate very quickly. Less than a half-hour later, Israeli soldiers in the Sinai coastal town of El Arish heard a violent explosion. The cause was probably either a detonation in an ammunition dump or an expended munition cooking off. However, these were rear echelon soldiers, freshly recalled reservists and were on edge - which is a polite way of saying panicky. They assumed it was enemy action, artillery fire, and reported it as such. Glitch number six. Now we have the old wildfire scenario. Because the explosion was reported as artillery fire, people began to look for the source - which was unlikely to be on land due to the tactical circumstances. If you look for something hard enough, you'll find it even if it isn't there. So, when the Israelis saw a ship off the coast, they assumed it was the source of the artillery fire - a warship doing shore bombardment. Just to make life complex, both Egyptian and Israeli sources had reported shelling of the area by Egyptian warships the previous day. A check with the situation board showed no friendly units or neutral ships in the area so it had to be hostile. Glitch number seven. Again, sloppy, poorly-disciplined officers making assumptions they shouldn't. Another grievious fault for which they should be hung, drawn and quartered.
Rabin was seriously concerned that the shelling was a prelude to an amphibious landing that could outflank advancing Israeli troops. Since no fighter planes were available, the navy was asked to intercede, with the assumption that air cover would be provided later. More than half an hour passed without any response from naval headquarters in Haifa. The General Staff finally issued a rebuke: "The coast is being shelled and you - the navy - have done nothing." Capt. Izzy Rahav in the operations room, needed no more prodding. He dispatched three torpedo boats of the 914th squadron, code-named "Pagoda," to find the enemy vessel responsible for the bombardment and destroy it. The 914th consisted of three torpedo boats, the Peress, the Tahmass and the Yasoor. These were 60 ton craft built by France in the early 1950s (the last had entered service in 1956). They were armed with two 17.7 inch torpedo tubes, one 40 millimeter gun and four 20 millimeter weapons. They were powered by two Napier deltic diesels for a designed top speed of around 42 knots. By 1967, they were aging and had lost the top edge of their performance; their maximum speed was down to 36 knots in smooth water.
The commander of those craft, Commander Udi Erell, had rules of engagement that precluded him from engaging any ship doing less than 20 knots - which, in 1967 meant pretty well every merchant ship in the world. However, now we have the mentality of FAC guys coming in. They tend to be young, enthusiastic - and reckless. This commander interpreted "don't shoot at ships doing less than 20 knots" as "fire on any vessel going faster than 20 knots". Glitch 8 quickly followed by Glitch 9. FAC skippers don't really understand how much they get slowed down by even moderate seas when bigger ships don't. He was doing 35 knots but was only catching the target slowly. Ensign Aharon Yifrah, combat information officer aboard the flagship of these torpedo boats miscalculated their target's speed as 30 knots, not realizing sea conditions had slowed his real speed to around 25. Again we have the sloppy attitude of the Israeli Armed Forces entering the picture. A properly-kept track chart on the lead FAC would have shown something was not right with the picture. But keeping such charts is part of the administrivia that the Israelis affected to despise. Again, we also have to add in the attitude of the FAC commander. He WANTED that ship to be a legitimate target; the Israeli Navy was being overshadowed by the Army and Air Force and he wanted a victory. So he jumped to a wrong conclusion because that was a conclusion he wanted to jump to. Based on this false presumption, they prepared to attack. Ref - D
Now we have horrible coincidences joining errors of judgement and technical glitches. The Liberty reached the end of her patrol racetrack and turned onto bearing 238 - putting her course back toward Egypt. The FAC skippers saw this and assumed their target was running for home. Worried they would lose their prey, they reported to the sitrep room that their target was now fleeing for home.
Israeli naval commanders called up the air force and asked for help from whatever was available. What was available were two Mirages returning from a bombing strike, they were armed only with 30 millimeter cannons and air-to-air missiles and were very short on fuel. Had this been a deliberate attack they would have carried a warload better suited for attacking a ship. Making two passes at 3,000 feet, the formation commander reckoned that the ship was a "Z" or Hunt-class destroyer without the deck markings (a white cross on a red background) of the Israeli navy (which also operated both classes). The command pilot then spoke with air force commander Gen. Motti Hod, who asked him repeatedly whether he could see a flag. They failed to see either flags or markings on the ship. Not surprising, again these were pilots who were not trained for maritime operations and didn't have any knowledge of naval operations or ship recognition. History is replete with examples of such pilots grotesquely misidentifying ships; although this was an error, it cannot be held against the pilots.
After two low sweeps by the lead plane, at 1:58 p.m., the Mirages were cleared to attack. For want of anything more potent, they strafed the ship they saw. (by the way, its pure luck - good or ill - that they didn't shoot up the Israeli FAC - they just hit the first ship they saw). The first salvos caught the Liberty's crew in "stand-down" mode; several officers were sunning themselves on the deck, unaware of the Israeli jets bearing down on them. Before they could take shelter, rockets and 30-mm cannon shells stitched the ship from bow to stern, severing the antennas and setting oil drums on fire. Nine men were killed in the initial assault, and several times that number wounded, among them McGonagle.
Minutes later came a second group of planes, Super-Mysteres, equally ill-suited for a naval engagement. They had been diverted from a strike against Egyptian infantry positions and carried napalm (but had been diverted going out, not coming back so had a decent fuel reserve). They dropped their canisters and one set fire to the deck, enshrouding the ship in smoke. The air attacks lasted 14 minutes; by 2:20 the aircraft had finished with their assault.
It was at this junction that one Israeli pilot finally recognized Latin, not Arabic, letters on the hull. He made a desperate emergency call to the Israeli air controllers causing them to call off the action immediately. Now we have glitch ten. The Israeli communications system in 1967 was basically WW2 equipment that had been overhauled and modernized. It was already overloaded with running a fast-moving mobile war and , thanks to a breakdown in that communications system, the message to the Navy was caught in a backlog of calls waiting to go out. Classic case of too much flow down too small a pipeline. As a result, the order was very long delayed in reaching the navy; it finally made it to the FACs just after 4:00 pm. ref e
It is at this point that we have a minor mystery. One of the major claims is that the Israelies were jamming US radio frequencies in order to prevent calls from help getting out. If true, this would be powerful evidence to suggest that the attackw as deliberate. There are, however, serious problems with this assertion. Firstly, the Liberty was a specialist electronic warfare ship and carried advanced ECCM equipment; it is hard to see how she could have been closed down so comprehensively. Secondly, the Israeli capability in EW at this time was virtually non-existant; neither aircraft nor the torpedo boats carried any ECM equipment. Thirdly, the communications equipment on the Liberty was such that jamming equipment would have to be placed within a series of carefully-defined positions relative to the ship and fourthly, any jamming capable of taking down US Navy communications so comprehensively would have affected a wide area. No such jamming was reported anywhere else by anybody. This leaves only three possible explanations for the alleged jamming (1) The crewmen on Liberty who reported such jamming are lying, (2) the reports that crewmen made such claims are fabricated or (3) whatever happened wasn't jamming. If we discount (1) we are left with either fabrication or something else. The accusations made against the Israelies feature extensive fabrication so (2) is certainly possible but the most likely explanation is that the Liberty had already been strafed and napalmed with over 800 holes in her. The entire superstructure of the ship, from the main deck to the bridge, was aflame.The "jamming" was probably simply battle damage that had knocked out the ships wave guides and antennas.
There now followed a lull in the action that lasted for 24 minutes while the Israeli torpedo boats caught up with the Liberty. Think about the geometry of this. They are sailing out to attack a ship offshore that has just turned away from them. That means they are in a tail chase. Now the Liberty was rated at 17.7 knots - lets say she had cranked up her engines and was doing 16. The Israeli FAC are rated at 40 knots - meaning at best the closing speed is 24 knots. However, in any sort of rough sea its unlikely they were doing more than 30 knots and possibly were down to 25. So that gives us a closing speed of (at best) 16 knots and possibly as little as 8. However, at those speeds, the FAC are bouncing all over the place and are throwing up large clouds of spray. The vibration is intense and the noise is deafening. Incidently, these are not the modern 200 - 400 ton, 56-meter missile craft, they are 70 foot MTBs, 10 feet shorter than a US WW2 PT boat (albeit somewhat heavier that the 35 - 45 ton PT boats). Ref f
Now its reasonable to assume the Liberty had her stern to the FAC. Think about this. The Flag is at the stern, the ship is heading away from the FAC that are chasing her from astern. That means they are seeing the Flag (if they see it at all) edge-on from the rear. Their only hope of recognizing it is if it flutters from side to side. So to state the Israelies must have seen the Flag, we have to ask the two guys on the bridge to recognize a fluttering flag edge-on from a range of 4 to 8 miles from a 60 ton speedboat bouncing around in a cloud of spray while being shaken to pieces by two 4,000 shaft horsepower diesels running flat out. Now add in that the Liberty had been hit by a tank of napalm and was burning - in other words there were clouds of black smoke around her making visibility intermittant. Suddenly, it doesn't seem so easy does it? ref g
At this point the Israeli flagship signaled "AA" - "identify yourself." Due to damaged equipment, McGonagle could only reply in kind, AA, with a hand-held Aldis lamp. Now we have a weird coincidence - Udi Erell's father had been in command of a 1956 operation where the Israeli Navy had captured the Egyptian destroyer Ibrahim al-Awwal. This ship had tried to pose as a neutral ship when the israeli force closed in and had also replied to the interrogatory AA by responding with a repeat AA. There is little doubt Udi Erell was familiar with that story as family history and was sure that he now faced an enemy ship.
Now we have another glitch, number 11. One of the American sailors on board, disregarded Captain McGonagle's order not to fire on the approaching craft, and opened up with a deck gun. (ref h) Another machinegun opened fire by itself when fired cooked off its ready-use ammunition. Erell repeatedly requested permission from naval headquarters to return fire. Rahav finally approved.
The Israeli FAC skipper also jumped to the assumption that the ship in front of him was Egyptian (Glitch 12), consulted his intelligence manual, identified it as the Egyptian naval freighter El Quseir, This identification has been criticised on grounds that the El Quseir was smaller than the Liberty and lacked her distinctive antennas. In reality, the El Quseir was laid up in Alexandria and its asserted (without proof) that "the Israelies must have known that". Its also pointed out (quite correctly) that the Israeli FAC had a copy of JFS on board. Consulting a copy of the relevent edition of that publication, it does indeed list both Liberty and El Quseir - but includes photographs of neither. Rather pathetically, those who dispute the identification point out that the El Quseir was painted silver rather than the Liberty's Haze Gray. In reality, under the circumstances prevailing, telling the difference between dirty silver and shiny gray is very hard - especially since both would have taken on a blue tinge by reflection from the surrounding sea and sky. However, all thats irrelevent since we now have Glitch 13 - he wasn't trying to find out "which ship is this" he was looking for "which Egyptian Ship looks most like the one in front of me"
The FAC commander elected to fire torpedoes. Now lets look at those torpedoes. They are not modern 21 inch jobs. The FAC in question were armed with World War Two ex-Italian 17.7 inch torpedoes. These had a 440 pound warhead and had a speed of 30 knots to 8,000 meters (ref i) . Distinctly lacking in range speed and striking power. Also unguided; there is no way a torpedo like that is aimed at any specific part of the ship. At 2:45 the Israeli FAC fired five torpedoes at a range of 6,000 meters for a single hit at around 2:50. This killed 25 men almost all of them from the intelligence section.
The torpedo boats then closed in and from 3:00 onwards circled the ship, from the stern spraying it with 20 millimeter and 40 millimeter gunfire. When they reached the bows, the captain of one boat saw "GTR-5" on the hull. He immediately halted fire, extended help to the Liberty, and called for rescue helicopters. For the first time in the whole stupid story somebody did something right. Two Israeli Helicopters reached the Liberty and offered assistance. Erell, shouting through a bullhorn, also tried to communicate with the ship but Captain McGonagle refused to respond. Realizing, finally, that his assailants had been Israeli, he flagged the torpedo boats away and made a gesture that the Israelies describe as "obscene, but under the circumstances, understandable". By 5:05 p.m., the Israelis had broken off contact, and the Liberty, navigating virtually without systems, with 34 dead and 171 wounded aboard, staggered out to sea.
I must make it quite clear that I do not condone the Israeli conduct in this affair; their performance was lacking even the earliest signs of competance and their professional negligence was profoundly culpable. They screwed up royally and deserve all the blame that can be ladled over their brainless heads. But they didn't do it deliberately. 13 bad mistakes, errors of judgement and horrible coincidences. Its right to be enraged with the Israelis for their sloppy staffwork, lax procedures and inattention to detail caused them to launch an attack against a neutral ship. It is indeed with them that the ultimate blame lies for it is the Israeli disregard for careful procedure and their deliberate neglect of proper administration that caused the disaster. Their arrogant assumption that they alone had the secret of how to run a modern war and nobody else knew any part of it was largely to blame for the tragedy. Martin Van Creveld describes the Israeli attitude to proper procedure and to administrative advice as being arrogant bordering on boorish and frequently deliberately bullying, rude and offensive. (ref j) The US Navy also has some share of the blame for there should have been a liaison officer to provide a direct point of contact. Even after she was hit, the Americans had difficulty locating the Liberty, the JCS placing it at "60-100 miles north of Egypt." If neither the US Navy nor even the President of the United States could know where the Liberty was, it seems unreasonable to expect that the Israelis, in the thick of battle, should have been able to locate it. The NSA must carry its share for keeping the ship dangerously close to the enemy coast and ignoring navy advice.
Was there a conspiracy? There was certainly a cover-up but it was of incompetence and misjudgement rather than collusion. If the NSA had a hand in misrouting the movement orders, that also was covered up. The gaping hole in the whole Israeli deliberate attack/US cover-up hypothesis reamins unaddressed. Why? Attempts to provide a rationale behind any such deliberate attack have all been easily and comprehensively discredited. But, in truth, the Israeli culpability is so great that it doesn't need a far-fetched conspiracy to increase it further. The incredibly amateurish behavior of their command structure (and their arrogant refusal to accept that they had things to learn) is explanation enough and damning enough. In a weird way, the Israelies could be considered less culpable if they had performed a deliberate attack; then, at least, they would have been acting in the interests of their state rather than through sheer blundering ineptitude.
A year later the destroyer Eilat was sunk by the same combination of blundering incompetence, stupidity and arrogance (three Egyptian missiles had something to do with it as well). (ref k) . Indeed, for those investigating the attack on Liberty, the command disasters involved in the sinking of the Eilat should be required reading. The same factors of boorish arrogance, incompetence, inadequate command control, defective equipment and long-delayed communications make their miserable appearnace.
Six years after the Liberty incident, another Israeli Navy warship, the Miznak went into action. She was on her way to assist Hanit that had run aground on a sandbar off the Sinai coast. The captain (Captain Barkai) gave orders for the Miznak to keep out of a 45 kilometer circle around Port Said due to the danger of missile attack. He then went to his cabin and slept. The second in command (Udi Erell) was duty officer in the CIC. He was dozing in the CIC Ops Chair when he was struck by the silence in room. The Ops crew were asleep. Worse, the Miznak was heading on a straight line for Port said and was already well within the 45 kilometer danger zone. EW was off, the radar watch was asleep, helm was asleep. And the instruments were telling the crew that Egyptian missile craft were coming out of port. Commander Erell literally kicked the CIC crew into wakefulness as Captain Moshe Tabak, the group commander sent an in-clear radio warning of an impending attack (in clear because Miznak had not responded to coded radio signals - cypher room was asleep as well). Udi Erell slammed the throttles forward personally and swung the boat through 180 degrees. As he did so he saw the launch signature of P-15 missiles on the horizon. Four P-15s had been fired by two Project 183R (Komar) FAC-M and were already on their way. One went into the sea when its gyros tumbled, a second went into the sea far astern, the third overshot and landed in the sea three miles ahead of Miznak and the fourth exploded in the sea 100 meters aft of Miznak. (ref l)
Why is this incident so significant? Note the name of the operations officer on Mizhak - Udi Erell. In 1967 he had commanded a squadron of three FAC. Six years later, in 1973, he had been demoted to the ops officer of one such craft. Yet Udi Erell is the son of Shlomo Erell, the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Navy. Despite being VIP's son, the Israeli Navy really busted Udi Erell's chops. If it was a conspiracy they'd have found somebody else less well-connected to be the scapegoat.
References:
Ref a - Documents relating to the Liberty incident - papers released from the National Archives. This includes the Liberty track chart, transcripts of the Liberty signal log, intercepts of Israeli signals and statements by crew and captain. In short, the bulk of the declassified US official documentation.
Ref b The Sword and the Olive by Martin van Creveld. This places great stress on the total obsolescence of the Israeli C3I system and the very poor command structure of the Israeli armed forces.
Ref c Information from the Israeli side taken from evidence given at enquiries on the Liberty attack.
Ref d Boats of Cherbourg by Abraham Rabinovitch details the Israeli Navy;s appalling discipline and sloppy incompetance. The comments are all the more devastating because the author doesn't realize the impact of the matters he's relating.
ref f Again, The Sword and The Olive details the hopelessly bad command structure of the Israeli Armed Forces.
Ref f Janes Fighting Ships 1966 - 67. 3 of Israel's FAC were old RN boats built in 1942, six were French built in 1950 and the most modern were three built in Italy in 1956
ref g This is a point anybody with a speedboat can check for themselves.
ref h Captain McGonagle's statement to the Liberty Enquiry. National Archives.
ref i Bagnasco Submarines of WW2 for details of these torpedoes.
Ref j The Sword and the Olive by Martin van Creveld. It should be noted that four of Van Creveld's sons have served in the IDF.
ref k Boats of Cherbourg by Abraham Rabinovitch The sheer incompetence surrounding the sinking of the Eilat is breathtaking - but another story. I believe that a US or UK skipper losing his ship in such a manner would be charged with manslaughter.
Ref l Boats of Cherbourg by Abraham Rabinovitch (again). The Miznak story defies belief. Its impossible to conceive of any professional navy (or most amateur ones) behaving in such a manner. The story is given veracity by Rabinovitchs treatment of the events - his cast being it showed how hard the Israeli Navy was fighting. Van Creveld shows in The Sword and the Olive that even by 1973, the basic problems with the IDF command structure had not been fixed.
Cogito wrote:Excellent article. I've read a few things about this incident, including some tales by the survivors. It's very depressing, and confusing. I get pretty frustrated by the conspiracy nuts... This not only agreed with what I thought was the general turn of events, but it also a very factual, and reasonable explanation of it all. Good stuff.
Scott Brim wrote:The June [2003] issue of USNI Proceedings has an article concerning the Liberty incident
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"Friendless Fire?" By David C. Walsh. Copyright USNI June 2003: Fair use only.
On 8 June 1967 the electronic intelligence ship USS Liberty (AGTR-5) was on station in international waters 13 miles off the Sinai Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean. The Arab-Israeli War had wound down, the air was clear, and the seas were light. What happened early that Thursday afternoon is well known. Without warning, a furious attack on the ship commenced from Israeli Mirage and Mystere jets, followed by Ayah-class motor torpedo boats (MTBs). Employed were rockets, napalm, quick-firing 30-mm and 40-mm cannon, .50-caliber machine guns, and torpedoes. Four unshielded .50-caliber machine guns were the Liberty's only defense. The one Israeli torpedo hit of five launched left a yawning 40-foot hole in the hull, devastating the cryptological spaces below decks and killing 25 U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) technicians instantly.
Later, 821 shell holes were counted in the ship's superstructure and hull. A total of 34 men died, with another 172 wounded, many disfigured for life, among the highest peacetime tolls for any noncombatant U.S. Navy vessel and by far the worst single loss to the U.S. intelligence community. It seems a miracle the ship did not go down.1
Revisiting the Incident
In December 2002, the Naval Historical Center hosted a presentation on the still deeply controversial attack by Federal Judge and retired U.S. Naval Reserve Captain A. Jay Cristol, on a promotional tour for his recent book, The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship. Based on Judge Cristol's doctoral thesis, the book relies heavily on newly declassified (or newly interpreted) documents and more than 500 interviews with U.S. and Israeli political and military leaders involved in the incident, including former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, Admiral Isaac Kidd, and Yitzhak Rabin, who was the Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff at the time. Only seven of the interviewees, however, were on board the Liberty during the attack.2
At the Washington Navy Yard's Education Center, Judge Cristol addressed a full house that included active-duty U.S. Navy personnel and surviving Liberty crew members. He argued that the evidence "in totality" validated Israel's long-standing position: namely, the catastrophe was the bitter fruit of mistaken identity and communications gaffes by both sides.3 The U.S. government quickly accepted Israel's apology 36 years ago, if not its explanation.4 Israel also settled death and injury claims, albeit reluctantly. And in 1980, the United States received $6 million in compensation for the $40-million intelligence ship.
The Liberty Incident contains considerable, largely Israeli-sourced detail. It also includes a chapter called "Television's Perspective," in which the author surmises that most survivorssome of whom openly criticize Israel's domestic policies and its formidable Washington lobbyhave a political ax to grind.
Judge Cristol, with 38 years' naval service, mourns the mens' deaths and injuries, and his book honors their courage. But like the Israeli government, the judge is dubious of the nay sayers. They rely on "conjecture, hearsay and plain wishful thinking," flawed or traumatized memories, and "various conspiracy theories," he says.5
No Bigots
Such characterizations, along with the linking of Liberty veterans with Arab extremists and racist groups, sit poorly with the ship's crew. Indeed, the Internet Web site of the Liberty Veterans' Association (LVA) makes clear that all bigots' support is unwelcome.6 The suggestion of prejudice especially upsets Jewish survivors, such as the senior engineering officer, George Golden, who received the Silver Star for directing heroic efforts to keep the ship afloat. And James Ennes Jr., the LVA historian and spokesman accused in Judge Cristol's book of taking "an irrationally harsh line against Israel," refers to such assertions as "just silly."7
Ennes, a retired Navy lieutenant commander, was officer of the deck before being badly wounded early in the attack. He devoted 13 years' research toward his own book, Assault on the Liberty. Some half-dozen majorand many minordisagreements mark the dispute's two main schools: Judge Cristol's "mistaken identity" and Ennes's, the crew's, and several U.S. intelligence professionals' "deliberate attack."
Disputed Timelines and Communications
Although Liberty crew members insist the attack lasted about an hour and a quarter, Judge Cristol's book asserts that the Israeli jets and MTBs finished their grisly business in only 22 to 25 minutes.11
Ennes recalls being unsettled by the numerous flights over the Liberty by Israeli reconnaissance planes, starting the previous night and continuing for a six-hour period preceding the assault. Trained U.S. Navy observers counted a dozen overflights. Some were made by a lumbering, Star-of-David-marked Nord Noratlas "flying boxcar," which pulled several times to within mast-clipping rangelow enough for any Israeli pilot to see a vessel incapable of harming his country.
Melvin Smith, senior enlisted intercept chief, reassured Ennes when he overheard the pilots several times identify the flag as U.S. and the ship for what she was.12 At that time, of course, Israel was a friend. Later, despite jamming of the ship's distress frequencies, and before all her transmitters were shot away, the Liberty's radio operators managed again to hear the attackers make a positive identification in the clear.13 Judge Cristol, conceding his newly released Israeli transcripts reveal one correct identification, states that they are confusing and mutually contradictorytypical of the "fog of war."14 Further, citing Ennes, he states that no Hebrew linguists were on board the spy ship, and that Israeli pilots would not have made unencrypted transmissions.15
Ennes acknowledges that no "official" Hebrew linguists were on board, but he points out that at least one of the doomed NSA men, Russian/Arabic linguist Allen Blue, understood Hebrew.16 As for the jamming, Ennes, quoting Chief Radioman Wayne Smith and an article in Proceedings, also notes that the ship could not have been misidentified, because the frequencies jammed were peculiar to the U.S. Navy. Liberty Radioman Richard "Rocky" Sturman also recalls that he and other technicians heard the radio jamming.17 Judge Cristol rejects such accounts as "myth."18
The Flag Issue
Again echoing Israel and citing its reports, Judge Cristol declares that no U.S. flag was visible. He points to film footage of the intact Liberty, taken at an unknown time from a slow-flying helicopter, which reveals no flag. He refers also to gun-camera stills from one of the attacking Israeli jets. These grainy images show billowing smoke "going straight up," indicating the flag was limp.19 To Judge Cristol, it is therefore unrealistic to think young, inexperienced pilots could have seen any flag, especially at 600 miles per hour.20
Ennes, who maintained logs about such details, disagrees. He says that even at the Liberty's slowest steaming speed of 5 knots, the wind put 12 knots across Old Glory and kept it waving.21 Since the ship was near a combat zone, the crew also was ordered to keep "head's-up" by then-Commander William McGonagle, the ship's captain. Ensuring unfurled colors was a given. And after the normal flag was shot down early on, McGonagle ordered signalmen to hoist the bright new holiday ensign, measuring 7-by-13 feet.
In a January 2003 radio interview, Signalman Joe Meadors described the flag as fluttering each of several times he observed it during the attack.22 No survivor who glanced toward either flag at this time remembers it otherwise. Regardless, Judge Cristolwhose book offers "pilots' eye view" drawingsinsists that even this gaudy parade standard would have appeared "tiny" to high-speed jet pilots.
Retired Navy Commander Tom Schaaf is a combat-tested jet aviator. He attended the Navy Yard lecture, and afterward queried Judge Cristol. Schaaf disbelieves the claimed 600 mile-per-hour speed for the attacking aircraft, adding in a written critique that pilots would have viewed a lot more detail than disclosed in film clips. Post-lecture answers suggest Judge Cristol flew the Navy's slowest propeller aircraft and has not seen combat. "He has no competence to analyze or discuss jet attack tactics," Schaaf concluded.23
The El Quseir
Since 1967, Israeli spoksmen have insisted the Israeli pilots had confused the Liberty with the El Quseir, a 1920s-vintage Egyptian horse cavalry transport said to have been in the area.24 Judge Cristol accepts this. Those same inexperienced airmen unable to notice the ship's flag and unique hull markings, he maintains, easily could have mistaken the Liberty for the Egyptian transport. Indeed, before the attack, Israeli headquarters had wrongly reported that some "enemy vessel" was shelling the coast from near the Liberty's position.25 To illustrate a resemblance, Cristol pairs the ships in silhouette drawings. He shows them, however, as the same size. (In fact, the El Quesir's length was 275 feet to the Liberty's 455.)26 Judge Cristol's text notes the actual difference, but opines that in the heat of battle such mistakes are plausible.
The Liberty's crewmen deem insulting the notion that arguably the world's most electronically advanced ship could be confused with one of its most pedestrian vessels. In this, they join Dean Rusk, Clark Clifford, and other senior U.S. officials, as well as author and historian James Bamford, whose NSA history, Body of Secrets, devotes a chapter to the Liberty.27
Principally, the El Quseir lacked the U.S. ship's unique add-ons, which included, both topside, an 18-foot-wide satellite dish nearly as tall as the smokestack and a wading pool-sized microwave dish. The ship bristled, as well, with video capture antennae and other exotica found on no other vessel in the world, much less decrepit Arab transport ships.28 Ancillary reasons the "deliberate school" rejects Judge Cristol's El Quseir defense are as follows: The Egyptian craft
-Flew colors markedly dissimilar to the U.S. flag
-Was one-quarter of the Liberty's tonnage and just nearly half her length
-Had been out of service for many months
-Was waiting to be scrapped in Alexandria
-Was illustrated along with the Liberty in Jane's Fighting Ships, to which Israel had access29
In addition, the Egyptian Naval Attache's office in Washington says El Quseir was painted silver, not the Liberty's battleship grey.30 It is highly unlikely, NSA officials on board and off explain, that Israel's hypervigilant spy agencies would be unacquainted with these facts.31 This suggests a question: why assault so concertedly an unthreatening old Egyptian transport (not to say an unarmed U.S. Navy ship) when she could be escorted to Haifa as a war prize (and the U.S. ship signaled to quit the area)?
Attack on the Life Rafts
After the attack, Commander McGonagle, his leg shredded and bleeding, yet still at the conn, gave the "prepare to abandon ship" order. (For his actions that day, he received the Medal of Honor. The award certificate does not mention Israel.) Concurrently, the MTBs circled to within 40 or 50 feet. Then, over a 40-minute span, according to U.S. Navy eyewitnesses, the boats' gunners loosed heavy automatic weapons at stretcher bearers, fire-control teams, and other men still upright on the decks.
The Liberty's motor whale boat had been destroyed, and few life rafts survived. But Lieutenant Lloyd Painter (Ennes's relief as officer of the deck) organized three undamaged ones and kicked them over the gunwales. Two were shot to pieces immediately in the water, the third hauled aboard one of the torpedo boats.32 At this distance, Ennes emphasizes, the large bow and stern marks on the freshly painted ship were unmistakable. The designator number "5" was 6 1/2 feet high and "GTR," four feet. Her name was in 18-inch lettering, in English.33
Judge Cristol quotes Lieutenant Painter's testimony to the naval hearing only on the rafts' casting away.34 He ignores what came next. This act alone, the U.S. sailors charge, proves deliberate intent to destroy a U.S. ship and leave no witnesses.35 (In 1986, Navy legal expert Lieutenant Commander Walter Jacobsen agreed, arguing in The Naval Law Review that it was also a war crime.36) Notwithstanding the gravity of these accusations, Judge Cristol leaves aside both the life raft matter and the attack's international legal ramifications. Israel insists that all shooting ceased immediately after the torpedo attack.37
Explaining how either ship could have lobbed naval artillery shells 13-plus miles onto the war-wracked Sinai coast, Judge Cristol and the Israeli government again cite "fog of war." They declare that Israeli commanders had confused an exploding ammunition dump near Sharm el Sheikh with a coastal bombardment.38
Judge Cristol points out other areas of confusion. For example, the Liberty was identified correctly early in the morning, but then the error cycle kicked in anew when the marker was moved from a plotting table in Tel Aviv. Liberty spokesmen bristle at such "excuses." Moved markers or no, Israeli intelligence would have charted every ship then in the eastern Mediterranean: Arab, Russian, and U.S. The Liberty was the region's only blue-water U.S. Navy vessel.
Weeks after the attack, this "mistaken identity" featurealong with a half-dozen other disparities between the crewmens' and Israel's positionswas outlined for the Legal Advisor's Office by State Department lawyer Carl Salans.39 As Judge Cristol points out, the Top Secret report (released in 1983) drew no conclusions per se.40 But Liberty survivors see its stark comparisons as a refutation of Israel's position. Ennes terms the report "devastating."41
Perhaps the widest chasm separating the "mistakens" from the "deliberates" is the Naval Court of Inquiry. Ordered convened a week after the event by Commander-in-Chief Naval Forces Europe, Admiral John McCain, and headed by Rear Admiral Kidd, the hearing is dubbed "remarkably competent (and) thorough" by Judge Cristol, "a doctored sham" by the veterans.42 The judge stresses that 14 seamen spoke at the hearing. But ship's officers Ennes, Painter, Golden, and others charge that in dozens of cases, sworn testimony damaging to Israel's case was not allowed or, if allowed, not entered into evidence or made part of the transcript. Thus, Ennes and the LVA charge, the court's Findings of Fact often were unsupported by the evidence, contravening Navy rules of procedure.43
Charles Rowley, electronic intelligence specialist and ship's photographer, states that a photo he had made during the attack was seized by the naval court without explanation and marked "Top Secret." It showed the U.S. flag extended.44 Ennes avers not only that his testimony went unentered but also that deck and weather log entries in his hand were altered. Written observations had correctly mirrored others' to the time he was shot, he recounts, namely: multiple, close preattack overflights by Israeli reconnaissance planes, the attack by unmarked jets, and the U.S. flag standing out continually.45 Rather than adduce and document facts, former cryptologic technician Joe Lentini stated recently, the naval hearing helped Israel "get away with murder."46
Joe Meadors, Liberty signalman, observed at the Navy Yard gathering: "The Navy cannot investigate itself." Meanwhile, survivors contest Judge Cristol's statement that "some" had changed their minds after the inquiry, noting that he fails to identify them or crew members he claims agree the attack was an accident. Others also have changed their minds, including Captain Ward Boston, the senior Navy lawyer under pressure to give a peremptory evaluation of the Navy Board of Inquiry. In 2002, Boston dropped a bombshell on Judge Cristol's thesis. He informed Navy Times that Israel had knowingly assaulted the Liberty and has worked ever since to "try to get out of it." As surprising, he said, was that the court's president, Rear Admiral Kidd, shared this view, but owing to political pressure from Washington announced the opposite conclusion to the media. "Officers," Boston remarked, "obey orders." Boston explained in the interview that he was speaking now in part because "everyone else is shooting his mouth off."47
Judge Cristol could not explain what might have inspired such candor, although he writes that the late Admiral Kidd had told him that the attack was in error. That is the opposite of what Ennes maintains concerning his "many talks" with Admiral Kidd. Ennes also says that Admiral Kidd urged him and his group to keep pressing for an open congressional probe. Meanwhile, Judge Cristol has Boston recanting his Navy Times statements. In reality, Boston stands firmly behind them.48
Presidential Recall
When the Liberty's technicians finally found an unjammed frequency, they sent a last desperate message to the Sixth Fleet: "Flash Flash Flash. I pass in the blind." Jet fighters launched from the carriers USS America (CVA-66) and Saratoga (CVA-60). It was too late. Here, a dispute hinges on several related, much-argued elements: how many launches, from which aircraft carrier, and when? But most important, why did the President issue an order recalling the aircraft? Whether some planes had nuclear bombs is hotly debated, too.
Survivors speak of the turn-around orders being radio-telephoned direct from the White House and Defense Secretary McNamara to the carrier group in the Mediterranean Sea. Judge Cristol answers that such "secure" communications were impossible in 1967. This is misleading, the head of the Liberty's 94-man NSA contingent says. Clear not securevoice transmissions were used in the recall order, patched through the Naval Security Group relay station in Morocco.49
Otherwise, speculation is rife in this area. Some say President Johnson recalled the planes out of fear the attackers were Russian and a military response could trigger World War III. Others say the President, who at one stage believed Egypt had attacked the Liberty, was prepared to "nuke" Cairo. Still others believe LBJ, on learning the culprits were Israeli, would not retaliate for political reasons.
A final aspect of the Judge Cristol treatise, although not part of the point/counterpoint, has engendered the survivors' special disdain. The judge all but ignores them. Of 500-plus interviews conducted over more than a decade, only seven were with crewmen.50 "If he spoke to us," says Ennes, "it would blow his thesis out of the wateras the Israelis tried to do with our ship." He adds, "Not a single one of us agrees with Cristol."51 Judge Cristol replies that survivor/witnesses are not objective. And, unlike Ennes, he "writes history, not memoirs."
None of this may matter, because official support for the crew remains nonexistent. But growing numbers of former senior government and military officials have begun speaking out. Among those in support of the ship's 200-plus survivors, in addition to those mentioned previously and in the accompanying sidebar, are: former Chief of Naval Operations and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Thomas Moorer, then CIA Director Richard Helms, then-NSA Director Marshall Carter, Carter's Deputy Louis Tordella (who wrote on the Israeli Navy's report, "A nice whitewash!"), NSA "Liberty incident" analyst Walter Deeley, and Hayden Peake, professor of intelligence history at the Joint Military Intelligence College and retired CIA officer.52
Why, Judge Cristol was asked at the Navy Yard, did his conclusions run so afoul of such seniors? He answered that although they were respectable men, their contradictions baffled him. In general, he suggests that because theirs are not firsthand knowledge, contrarian officials' statements may, like the survivors', be dismissed.53
Judge Cristol is not without his admirers. He counts (besides numerous Israeli officials, Israeli Defense Force officers, and other partisans) former CIA Director Admiral Stansfied Turner and the carrier America's captain, late Vice Admiral Donald Engen.54 But the supernova in this galaxy is Secretary McNamara. Quoted by Judge Cristol as seeing only "tragic error," McNamara's stock answer when queried by other Liberty researchers is, "I remember nothing about the incident."
Will the Liberty remain a sort of "Flying Dutchman," sailing forever around her poor men's souls? Until survivors get what they call "justice"that elusive open forumit seems her restless ghost will do just that.
TEXT BOX: Former NSA Officials Agree
David C. Walsh
The jamming of unique U.S. frequencies during the Liberty incident seems to establish deliberate intent. And in exclusive interviews with this author, several former high-level National Security Agency (NSA) officials agree.
On 14 February 2003, the "godfather" of the NSA's Auxiliary General Technical Research program, Oliver Kirby, noted that the Liberty was "my baby." Within weeks of the calamity, Kirby, deputy director for operations/production, read U.S. signals intelligence (SigInt)-generated transcripts and "staff reports" at NSA's Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters. They were of Israeli pilots' conversations, recorded during the attack. The intercepts made it "absolutely certain" they knew it was a U.S. ship, he said. Kirby's is the first public disclosure by a top-level NSA senior of deliberate intent based on personal analyses of SigInt material.
In an interview on 24 February 2003, retired Air Force Major General John Morrison, the agency's then-second-in-command (and Kirby's successor), said he had been informed at the time of Kirby's findings and endorsed them. Former NSA Director retired Army Lieutenant General William Odom said on 3 March 2003 said that, on the strength of such data, the attack's deliberateness "just wasn't a disputed issue" within the agency. On 5 March 2003, retired Navy Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, NSA director from 1977-1981, said he "flatly rejected" the Cristol/Israeli thesis. "It is just exceedingly difficult to believe that [the Liberty] was not correctly identified." He said this was based on his talks with NSA seniors at the time having direct knowledge. All four were unaware of any agency official at that time or later who dissented from the "deliberate" conclusion.
Stuart wrote:To say this articleis appalling is something of an understatment; its a mish-mash of innuendo, half-truths, outright fabrications and distortions. The fact that it was published in US Naval Institute Proceedings has gravely - and probably irreperably - damaged that publication's credibility. To pick some obvious holes in the article.
Today, top former U.S. intelligence officials are saying "Yes."
No. The author is claiming that he has been told that certain top officals believe that to be the case.
The judge is dubious of the nay sayers. They rely on "conjecture, hearsay and plain wishful thinking," flawed or traumatized memories, and "various conspiracy theories," he says.Such characterizations, along with the linking of Liberty veterans with Arab extremists and racist groups, sit poorly with the ship's crew.
If such statements sit poorly with the ship's survivors, then they had better clean up their act. It is an unfortunate fact that the Liberty survivors website is linked with neo-nazi, anti-semetic and pro-terrorist websites. The liberty website is frequently quoted by such groups in their attacks on Israel in particular and Jews in general. Now, I have no doubt that the Liberty survivors do not intend that use and would be appalled to realize how their site is being used by such unsavory elements. However, that doesn't change the fact that it is being so used. Also, it illustrates another common trend in this article. Time after time, arguments are dismissed on grounds that "they make Liberty survivors angry". Thats irrelevent but is used to bully those who disagree with the dismissal into silence.
Later, despite jamming of the ship's distress frequencies, and before all her transmitters were shot away, the Liberty's radio operators managed again to hear the attackers make a positive identification in the clear.Judge Cristol, conceding his newly released Israeli transcripts reveal one correct identification, states that they are confusing and mutually contradictorytypical of the "fog of war."Further, citing Ennes, he states that no Hebrew linguists were on board the spy ship, and that Israeli pilots would not have made unencrypted transmissions. Ennes acknowledges that no "official" Hebrew linguists were on board, but he points out that at least one of the doomed NSA men, Russian/Arabic linguist Allen Blue, understood Hebrew. As for the jamming, Ennes, quoting Chief Radioman Wayne Smith and an article in Proceedings, also notes that the ship could not have been misidentified, because the frequencies jammed were peculiar to the U.S. Navy. Liberty Radioman Richard "Rocky" Sturman also recalls that he and other technicians heard the radio jamming.
This is very typical of the whole "deliberate attack" position. Its assumed that the statements of the survivors are correct without ever pondering the implications of their statements. Here, that trend is reinforced by deliberate distortion. As we have already seen, there was indeed one correct identification of the Liberty by a maritime patrol plane - however Walsh words his comment to make it sound as if thatID was during the attack. The idea that the Liberty's radio systems were jammed into oblivion is totally absurd - the Israelies simply did not have that capability. Even if they had, their efforts would have caused electronic problems all over the Eastern Mediterranean - somebody would have noticed. The truth is there was no jamming and claims that there were seriously impeach the credibility of accounts that claim otherwise.
Was illustrated along with the Liberty in Jane's Fighting Ships, to which Israel had access
This is a deliberate lie. I have the edition of Jane's Fighting Ships in question. Althoigh both ships are listed, neither is illustrated (there is a picture of another US AGI of a different class). Walsh appears to be unaware of the extent to which erroneous identifications of ships are made under combat conditions.
Within weeks of the calamity, Kirby, deputy director for operations/production, read U.S. signals intelligence (SigInt)-generated transcripts and "staff reports" at NSA's Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters. They were of Israeli pilots' conversations, recorded during the attack. The intercepts made it "absolutely certain" they knew it was a U.S. ship, he said. Kirby's is the first public disclosure by a top-level NSA senior of deliberate intent based on personal analyses of SigInt material.
The problem here is that there is not one shred of corroboration for the existance of any of this material. The alleged tape has never been heard or scene, the transcripts have neever been seen. All we have is third and fourth hand accounts of how damning the contents are. In other words "gee a friend of a friend of a friend heard the tape and its really convincing". Thats the stuff of urban legends not of the real world. The opinions of the people quoted are just that opinions - if that. Its quite possible that their opinions are being quoted out of context or fabricated In short, all of this section is of no value whatsoever.
In total this article proves exactly nothing - other than that the author is determined to make political points without regard for facts, reason or common sense. There is only one real theme to this article and that can be summarized as "The Liberty survivors claim they were subjected to a deliberate attack and their opinion is unchallengable". The flaws in the statements (jamming where such EW activity is impossible, the content of Jane's Fighting Ships), naive statements and foolish generalities all combine to discredit that testimony. This shouldn't be surprising; given the stress and intensity of the events errors and mistakes are only human. Eye-witness reports are always suspect and always need corroboration. The whole thrust of Walsh's article is not only that such testimony doesn't need corroboration, its that it should override all other evidence and considerations.