FTR#572—The Liberty Incident—(Two 30-minute segments) (Sources are noted in
parentheses.) (Recorded on 10/8/2006.)
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LECTURES PRESENTING MR. EMORY’S VIEWS OF WHAT WE CAN EXPECT IN THE FUTURE ARE
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NEW!! A number of
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Martin Bormann: Nazi in
Exile by Paul Manning; The Nazis Go Underground
by Curt Reiss; and All Honorable Men (parts 1 and 2) by James
Stewart Martin. Taken together, these books will provide a significant
understanding of the concept and reality of The Underground Reich, and they can
be downloaded with a modem Internet connection. They are available at: Spitfirelist.com/Books. In addition, we have added Cairo to Damascus by John Roy Carlson [1951], Germany Plots with the Kremlin by T.H. Tetens [1953], and Armies of Spies by Joseph Golomb [1939].
Yet another recent addition is Germany’s
Master Plan by Joseph Borkin and Charles Welsh. (Borkin is the author of
the 1979 classic The Crime and Punishment
of I.G. Farben.) Another anti-fascist classic about I.G. Farben supplements
the Borkin and Welsh text—Treason’s Peace
by Howard Watson Ambruster. Two more recently-posted gems are The Thousand-Year Conspiracy by Paul
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both published in 1943. The Winkler text documents the evolution of militant
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The website containing the documents is www.debatecomics.org/BushFamilyFortune/.
Summary of FTR#572—(Note: The massive
volume of ‘For The Record’ programs about 9/11 and related topics is summarized
and analyzed in the periodically-updated description for FTR#391.
FTR#’s 454,
455, 456 are compilations of
much of the key documentation culled from Mr. Emory’s investigation into 9/11.
Along with FTR#391, they should give
listeners/readers a substantive grasp of this momentous event. It is recommended
that listeners use this description and e-mail it to others.) In recent programs, Mr. Emory has
highlighted resurgence in anti-Semitism, particularly in the wake of the 2006
Lebanon War. A frequently discussed topic in that context is the Israeli air
and naval attack on a U.S. electronic spy ship, the U.S.S. Liberty during the
1967 Six Day War. This broadcast presents the most credible account to date of
that incident. Misreported as “an accident” (the attack was deliberate) or a
stratagem to draw the United States into the war, the attack on the Liberty was
an outgrowth of clandestine U.S. policy in the Middle East. Officially an ally
of Israel, the U.S. has long played on “both sides of the street”—secretly
supporting the Arabs to a large extent, due to the influence of the petroleum
industry on American politics and the Arab control over much of the world’s
oil. Because of this janus-faced policy, the American intelligence
establishment bowed to oil industry pressure to curry favor with the Arab
nations during the overwhelming 1967 victory of the Israeli forces. Stationed
off the Sinai coast, the U.S.S. Liberty utilized sophisticated NSA electronics
to monitor and map Israeli military activity, creating a detailed “Order of
Battle” or OB report. An agreement was reached by the Texas-based,
petroleum-associated American President (Lyndon Baines Johnson) to give this OB
report to the Egyptian armed forces, imperiling Israeli units deployed in the
Sinai. Learning of this gambit, the Israelis planned an attack by combined sea
and airborne units that was designed to disable the Liberty’s electronic
surveillance capability, while minimizing the loss of life among the crew. Both
the Israeli and American accounts of the incident are false, by agreement. In
exchange for silence about U.S. spying on Israel, the Israelis have perpetuated
the official lie that the attack was an accident.
Program Highlights Include: U.S. intelligence betrayal of Israel’s nuclear secrets to the Arabs; the
role of that betrayal in causing the Six Day War; the Liberty’s betrayal of
Israeli electronic signals deception against Jordan during the war; detailed
analysis of the attack itself, including the unusual choice of weaponry and
sequencing of the deployment against the Liberty; the role of British
intelligence in betraying Israeli secrets to the Arabs; analysis of the
behavior during the Liberty incident of U.S. ambassador to Israel Wally Barbour
(a right wing Democrat, oil politician and father of G.O.P. governor of
Mississippi Haley Barbour.)
1.
Beginning with the historical event within
which the Liberty incident
occurred, the program presents an overview of aspects of that conflict that
have not received much (if any) attention. According to Loftus’ and Aarons’
sources, petroleum-related interests in the U.S. and Britain played a double
game: pretending to be on Israel’s side while secretly currying favor with the
Arabs. Learning that Israel would not have a nuclear weapon perfected before
the end of 1967, the U.S. and Britain betrayed this information to the Arabs,
enabling them to plan an attack with conventional weapons before Israel could
“go nuclear.” When Israel informed the U.S. of a plan to launch a preemptive
attack, the U.S. and Britain promptly betrayed that information to the Arabs.
During the conflict, U.S. and British intelligence monitored Israeli
communications (using the NSA equipment on the U.S.S. Liberty)
and gave this information to the Arabs, enabling them to construct an “OB”
(“Order of Battle”) report on Israeli military units in the Sinai. It was this
betrayal (eventually discovered by the Israelis) that led to the attack on the Liberty. That precisely choreographed strike
neutralized the Liberty’s electronics,
preserving the secrecy and integrity of Israeli military operations. “ . . . . For the first time in two thousand years, Jews
around the world swelled their chests with pride [after the Six Day War]. When
an American ship, the USS Liberty, was accidentally damaged in the conflict, President Johnson graciously
accepted the immediate apology of the government of Israel. Despite some
American casualties, the United States and Israel remained firm friends. Our
sources say that there is more to the story than that, much more. The U.S. and
British governments, while pretending to be on Israel’s side, were giving all
of Israel’s secrets to the Arabs. In many ways, it was the Western spies who
indirectly started the war. In this chapter we examine the following
allegations: Western intelligence informed the Arabs that Israel would not have
a nuclear defense shield finished in 1967, thus leaving a window of opportunity
for attack; Realizing the danger of a massed Arab attack, the Israelis informed
the United States of their intention to launch a preemptive strike, which the
CIA promptly betrayed to the Arabs; U.S. intelligence attempted to curry favor
with the Arab oil producers by giving the precise details of Israel’s order of
battle to the Arabs during the war; Israeli intelligence discovered the
American betrayal and attacked the U.S. ship, the Liberty, which was
gathering electronic information on Israeli troop movements and sending it to
British intelligence, which in turn relayed it to the Arabs; Both the American
and Israeli governments agreed to suppress the truth about the Liberty incident from
the public.” (The Secret War
Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People;
John Loftus and Mark Aarons; Copyright 1994 [SC]; St. Martin’s Press; ISBN
0-312-15648-0; p. 259.)
2.
An interesting sidelight to the discussion
concerns Israel’s affinity for President Kennedy. In The Guns of November,
AFA#’s 11, 12, 13, 15, 37—available
from Spitfire--as well as FTR#’s
120, 188, Mr. Emory set forth
the numerous and profound Nazi connections to the assassination of President
Kennedy. Under the circumstances, one wonders if Kennedy’s support for Israel
might have influenced the actions of the conspirators. “Israel mourned the loss of President Kennedy deeply. Before
he died, Kennedy had blunted Nasser’s missile threat, made the first arms
shipment from the U.S. government, and backed Israel repeatedly in the United
Nations. The Israelis did not know what to make of his successor, Lyndon Baines
Johnson. In public, Johnson had been an ardent supporter of Israel. In private,
however, they feared that he was, and would always remain, an oil man. In fact,
the Israelis did not trust Johnson at all. After the Suez debacle, they would
never trust any American with the lives of their citizens. They launched a
crash program to complete their first atomic warhead.” (Ibid.; p.
260.)
3.
Next, the program highlights some features
of the development of the Israeli bomb. “During
the early 1960’s, the Kennedy administration watched the construction of the
Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona with some concern and increased the number of
American spies in Israel. Kennedy offered Israel a deal. If it would stop its
nuclear project, the United States would provide $600 million for a
nuclear-powered water desalinization plant. The Israelis refused. They knew
that sooner or later, one of the Arab states would start manufacturing poison
gas and germ warfare weapons. The threat of a nuclear weapon would be the only
thing that could deter the Arabs from starting another holocaust. After Kennedy
died, Johnson watched the reactor at Dimona go into full production with French
assistance. The Jews had atomic energy, but they did not yet have an atomic
bomb. Although Seymour Hersh’s excellent book [The Sampson Option]
covers this subject in some detail, there are a few key details he missed. As
will be seen in the next chapter, the Israelis had used their window inside
West German intelligence during the 1960’s to obtain Argentine uranium and
South African testing facilities. The Israelis were using both the German and
the French A-bomb programs to further their own purposes.” (Idem.)
4.
In 1967, Israel was at least a year away
from developing a functional nuclear device, a fact that elements of U.S. and
British intelligence betrayed to the British. “What
Hersh also did not know is that the CIA had several agents working in Israel
under various cover assignments. One of them confirmed to us that in the spring
of 1967, the Israelis had the potential to make a nuclear warhead but had not
succeeded yet. They were at least a year away from making a working prototype.
During that time the Jews still would be vulnerable to surprise attack. Somehow
this information found its way from the CIA to the Arabs. Some of our sources
among the ‘old spies’ say that it was Miles Copeland’s handiwork; others say that
it was the long arm of British intelligence, aided by NSA technology. As we
shall see, the NSA routinely shared Israel’s secrets with the British, who just
as frequently passed them on to the Arabs.” (Idem.)
5.
After the betrayal of the status of Israel’s
nuclear development, the Arabs, acting on that intelligence, planned an
annihilating attack on Israel. “Whoever was
responsible, the leak of the Israeli atomic schedule set off a race against
time. The Arabs had one last period of opportunity to smash the Jewish state
with conventional weapons. The Israelis had less than a year to try to finish
one weapon before the united Arab armies launched their attack. In fact, it
would take Israeli scientists much longer than they had estimated to get the
A-bomb. The American intelligence reports that Israel could not prepare a
nuclear defense shield in 1967 gave the Arabs some breathing room to plan their
next battle against the Jews. In the spring of that year, Nasser was
temporarily occupied fighting a war in Yemen, where he was testing chemical and
biological weapons in preparation for his final solution of the Jewish
problem.” (Ibid.; pp. 260-261.)
6.
“According to Nasser’s original
timetable, he would launch the final attack on Israel in late 1967. The cooler
fall weather would greatly facilitate an armored invasion. The Soviet tanks had
no air conditioning and were ovens in the summer. A fall attack also would give
him the time to pull his 50,000 men and their heavy armor out of Yemen and move
them into the Sinai. Israel would be crushed long before its first warhead was
completed. As the summer of 1967 approached, it was clear that war was coming
again to the Middle East. The tiny nation of Israel was not even twenty years
old but appeared headed for extinction by its powerful neighbors, which
surrounded it on nearly all fronts. President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the radical
nationalist who ruled Egypt, had begun with massive radio propaganda campaign
calling on the Arab nations to unite in the destruction of the Jews. The
powerful Egyptian army, massively equipped by the Soviet Union, had begun its
slow, ponderous movement over the Sinai Desert toward Israel. Israeli
intelligence suspected that Syria and Jordan were preparing to launch
simultaneous sneak attacks from the north and east, as soon as the Egyptians
had everything in place in the south. Egyptian artillery moved to close the Red
Sea to sink any vessel flying the Israeli flag and blockaded the Israeli port
of Eilat. This was a clear violation of international law, but the UN did
nothing, except accede to Nasser’s request and order its Emergency Force out of
harm’s way in preparation for the assault.” (Ibid.; p. 261.)
7.
Note that the United States, while
recognizing that Egypt’s blockade was an act of war, refused to assist Israel.
Neither did the United Nations. Israel launched a preemptive attack that
smashed the Egyptian armies and drove them back across the Sinai. “The Americans agreed that Egyptian interference with
Israeli shipping on international waters was an official act of war. Even
Nasser had acknowledged as much back in 1956 as a condition for Israel’s
withdrawal after the Suez campaign; in 1967 the United States offered its
sympathy but refused to provide any military assistance whatsoever. President
Johnson turned his back. The Israelis told their American ally that if it would
not help, it should keep its planes and ships away from the combat area, and
Israel would fight by itself. One of the most widely reported, but least
understood, battles in the secret war against the Jews was about to begin: one
of the few espionage battles in the war to be fought entirely at sea. By early
June 1967, the Israelis knew that Nasser’s invasion could come at any time. On
June 5, Israel launched a preemptive attack before the Egyptian army could
finish its buildup and reach its borders. The first three days of tank battles
saw the tiny Israeli army pushing the Egyptians back across the Sinai, away
from Israel, and the destruction of the Arab air forces. It was a heroic achievement
that was marred by one unfortunate mistake, or so the Israeli government says.
The ‘unfortunate mistake’ was the attack on the USS Liberty stationed off
the Sinai Coast. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 261-262.)
8.
Stationed off the Sinai coast, the Liberty had already penetrated an Israeli
electronic warfare deception that had lured Jordan into the conflict. At this
point in the war, the Israelis realized that something had to be done about the
Liberty. “. . . The Israelis had broken the Arabs’ ciphers and
codes, enabling them to feed false messages to the enemy. The phony messages
led the Jordanians to believe that the war was going well for Nasser, when, in
fact, the Egyptians already had been effectively knocked out of the battle.
Such signals deception was bound to make King Hussein think about joining in on
the victorious side. It was then, [British military author] Deacon asserts,
that things started to badly wrong for the Israelis: ‘ . . . On the night of
June 7, the Mossad . . . knew that their deception plan had been spotted by the
Americans. The Israeli attack must be halted forthwith as a cease-fire was to
be ordered by the United Nations. . . . When the Ambassador protested, he was
informed in diplomatic language, that the United States knew that Jordan had
been lured into fighting by signal deception. It was obvious that, if Liberty continued
with her transmissions, it could be disastrous for Israel as they would be able
to reveal that the Israelis were in violation of a UN cease-fire order.’
According to Deacon, the Israelis ordered that the ship, which was a threat to
the Jews’ plans, must be put out of action, ‘whatever flag it was flying.’ The
Israelis feared ‘there could be leakages from the State Department to the
United Nations and, even worse, the latter, whose administrators were already
biased against Israel, could pass on information to the Egyptians.’ The
Israelis were not stupid. They knew that the State Department’s Middle Eastern
policies had a pronounced anti-Semitic tilt.” (Ibid.;
pp. 266-267.)
9.
The primary mission of the Liberty was to communicate Israel’s battlefield
secrets to the Egyptians. “Further, it was not idle
speculation that Israel’s secrets might end up in Egyptian hands. According to our sources in the American
intelligence community who talked to us about the Liberty incident,
passing Israeli secrets to the Egyptians was the whole idea of stationing the
ship off the Sinai coast. They believe that all the published versions of the Liberty incident—the
crew’s, the Israelis’, the U.S. government’s, [“ex”-CIA officer] Eveland’s and
Deacon’s—are wrong. When the authors described what we already knew from
Eastern sources, several Israelis reluctantly provided corroboration of the
best-kept secret of the Six Day War. Contrary to the Israeli government’s
categorical denials, the assault on the Liberty had been deliberate, but was an act of self-defense.” (Ibid.;
p. 267.)
10.
Not even the surviving members of the Liberty’s crew were “in” on the gambit. This is
important to remember, because surviving members of the crew have been doing
media appearances in which they (sadly) parade their ignorance of the reality
of the incident. “The ‘old spies’ are adamant that
the Liberty crew only knows the what, not the why, of what happened. Similarly, although Eveland and Deacon exposed the
fact that the Israelis knew what they were doing when they attacked the ship,
they did not know the real reason. Even U.S. Naval Intelligence did not piece
together what had happened until years later, and they had to get most of the
answers from the British, who got them from the NSA. This is the real version
of the Liberty incident, as told by our sources among the former intelligence
officers who were there on both sides of the battle. In the weeks preceding the
1967 war, the Israeli embassy in Washington fully briefed the CIA and the White
House on its strategy to preempt the Arab invasion. Once before the Israelis
had launched a preemptive strike in the Sinai without Washington’s explicit
approval. The 1956 Suez debacle still rankled in everyone’s memory. This time
the Israelis wanted to make sure that they had not crossed wires with their
most important, perhaps only, ally in the world. Every major facet of the
impending campaign was discussed in advance, including the strike against Syria.” (Idem.)
11.
“Our sources insist that the
U.S. government knew that the Israelis were going to attack the Golan Heights
weeks before it happened and gave them the green light. Syria was in the Soviet
camp and no particular friend of the United States. Jordan was another matter.
According to the ‘old spies’ we interviewed on this point, a CIA agent in
Amman, Jordan, leaked word to Jordan’s King Hussein about the secret Israeli
briefing. Everyone likes to tell good news: the Israelis would counterattack
only in the north and south against Egypt and Syria. Under American pressure,
the Israelis had agreed not to send troops into the West Bank. As long as
Jordan did not attack Israel from the east, King Hussein could stay out of the
war and keep the provinces of Judea, Samaria, and the old city of Jerusalem,
which the Jordanian army had stolen from Palestine back in 1948.” (Ibid.;
pp. 267-268.)
12.
Jordan was planning to attack Israel from
Syrian territory. Note that Israel was planning to attack the Golan Heights
(held by Syria). It was the Israeli plan to withdraw units from the Sinai for
the Golan offensive that was imperiled by the Liberty’s
electronic eavesdropping. “It was a good deal for
Jordan, but not good enough. King Hussein was under pressure from the Arab
world to join in the attack against Israel. It would be a little embarrassing
for him to sit back and do nothing while the Egyptian and Syrian armies came
hundreds of miles to fight the Jews. From one point in Jordanian territory in the
West Bank, it was less than a ten-mile drive across Israel to the ocean. A
Jordanian armored column could cut the country in half. The king had to do
something to appease his Arab brothers, so he sent Jordanian troops to attack from Syria,
while promising the CIA that not a single Jordanian soldier would attack Israel
from the West Bank. Hussein slyly omitted his plan to place Jordanian troops
under Nasser’s control. The CIA passed the word on Israel not to worry about an
attack on its highly vulnerable eastern flank.”
(Ibid.; p. 268.)
13.
In addition to the Jordanian deal, the U.S.
was planning to betray the Israeli withdrawal of selected units from the Sinai
to the Egyptians. This gambit was executed by LBJ, in cooperation with the oil
industry that was, and is, pro-Arab. “Through one
of their spies, the Israelis quickly found out about the CIA deal with King
Hussein, and they were furious. It may not have made a lot of difference to the
CIA if Jordanian troops were fighting on the northern front, but it made a lot
of difference to the Jews. But this was nothing compared to what the Jews found
out next. When the Israelis discovered that the Americans also had made a deal
with the Egyptians, they became even more furious at the CIA. To be fair, our
sources in the intelligence community acknowledge that, by and large, the CIA
was a just a messenger boy. The real decisions were being made in the White
House. Aramco and the other big players in the oil business were extremely
concerned that American aid to Israel would alienate the Arab oil producers. It
was not enough to withhold military assistance in the coming war. Everyone in
the Moslem world knew that the United States was still neutral in favor of
Israel. The oil men wanted some under-the-table help for the Arabs.” (Idem.)
14.
“President Lyndon John son had
been in the ‘erl bidness’ himself down in Texas and knew how the game was
played. The oil producers got to LBJ or someone very close to him in the White
House. Our sources were never able to find our who. The oil men asked if the
president could throw the Arabs a bone, some sort of secret assistance that the
public would never find out about but would make the Arab leadership grateful.
The point was to keep the oil flowing no matter had happened in the 1967 war.
The White House approved a contingency plan to send the Arabs a little
intelligence about the Israeli Defense Forces, not too much, nothing that would
tip the balance of war. Just a little something to let the Arab leaders think
the Americans were secretly on their side, no matter what was said about
Israeli in public. Unfortunately, the small-scale contingency plan escalated.
No one planned it that way. Only a handful of staffers in the White House, the
National Security Agency, and the CIA knew what had happened, and they all
pointed the finger at each other. . . .” (Ibid.; pp.
268-269.)
15.
In order to please the Arabs and betray
Israel, the Liberty
was gathering vast amounts of raw electronic intelligence about Israel’s armed
forces. “ . . . The Egyptian generals were
considerably easier to get along with. They desperately needed intelligence now
and begged the CIA for its promised assistance. It was not long in coming. On
June 8, the morning of the fourth day of the Six Day War, the USS Liberty arrived off
the Sinai coast. Although its crew did not know it, it was the only hope the
Egyptian army had of retrieving anything from one of the quickest and most
decisive military victories in history. The Liberty was more than a floating radio set. It was a giant for electronic
intelligence and could do much more than simply eavesdrop on radio
communications. Anyone could do that. The nation of Israel is so tiny that the
U.S. embassy in Beirut could monitor all the radio traffic in the entire
country. The embassy even taped the Israeli pilots talking back and forth when
they hit the Liberty.” (Ibid.; p. 270.)
16.
Using the raw electronic intelligence
gathered by the Liberty,
a British listening station in Cyprus was helping to develop a detailed
battlefield map of Israeli forces in the Sinai. “So
what was the Liberty doing there? Our sources among the ‘old spies’ have an interesting
explanation. They believe the Liberty was making a war map. Every time an Israeli soldier squawked on his
walkie-talkie, the ship recorded his voice and indexed it with the direction
and the strength of the signal. The same thing happened with tank radios,
headquarters’ telephones, even coded cable traffic. The ship swept up
everything in the airwaves while noting the location of every speck of
electronic dust in Israel. This is called a raw intelligence take. The Liberty was one of
the most sophisticated spy ships in the world at that time. Even so, it was not
big enough to process all the electronic garbage it collected. Processing
intelligence requires banks of computers and teams of analysts. All the ship
did was record the garbage, compress it electronically, and transmit it to a
land station. What happened next was none of its concern. The crewmembers did
not know it, but the land station was located on the island of Cyprus. That was
the clever part. The navy’s paper trail would show that no American computer
had even begun to process the Liberty’s troop movement data at the time of the attack. If asked under oath, the
few officers involved in the scheme could swear that the ship never gave any
Israeli secrets to the Arabs. They would be telling the truth, as far as it
went. The British secret service has one of the largest electronic listening
posts in the world on the island of Cyprus. It had little difficulty in
downloading the transmissions from the Liberty. All of Israel’s electronic garbage was sifted by an enormous computer
that began to decode Irael’s cable traffic. Another went to work on plotting
the military radio transmissions, while still another began to sort the
telephone calls intercepted from microwave relay towers across Israel.” (Ibid.;
pp. 270-271.)
17.
Note that the British were actively
collaborating with the Arabs as well. During the 2006 Lebanon War, the BBC
(which is inextricably linked with British intelligence) performed an analogous
function on behalf of the Arabs, shamelessly presenting a fundamentally
distorted picture of the war. “First, the
frequencies and locations of major Israeli headquarters were identified, then
the smaller regiments and battalions, then the individual units. A great deal
of preparatory work had been done before the war began. Spectrographic analysis
of known voiceprints enabled the computer to identify each Israeli commander as
soon as he spoke on the radio or telephone. The voice was matched to a name and
unit number and then the unit’s location was placed on an electronic war map
that was updated constantly in Cyprus from the Liberty’s input. The
British were about to make good on the promise they had made to the Arabs after
the Suez debacle in 1956, when they had abandoned their Israeli ally and told
the Saudis that they would support the Arab case on Palestine. In 1967, the
plan was for the British to hand the final product of the Liberty’s intelligence
haul to the Egyptians. The finished war map was a detailed order of battle
intelligence report, or OB. It is the most useful information generals can have
in time of war. Using such a map, they can send their troops wherever the enemy
is weakest and exploit an undefended region with an attack that penetrates the
enemy’s rear areas and cuts off its supply lifeline.” (Ibid.;
p. 271.)
18.
“Our sources insist that, with
the Liberty’s assistance, the Arabs might have been able to turn the war around to some
extent or at least force an honorable stalemate. For the first time they would
know as much as or more than the Israeli generals did themselves about the
movements of the Israeli army. The Arab generals would have details of every
Israeli counterstrategy from the moment it began. They would have every Israeli
battle order in close to real time. Just as the Israelis were beginning to pull
some of their mobile reserves out of the Sinai for the Golan assault in the
north, the Liberty was letting the Egyptians know the location of each hole in the
southern front. As soon as the Israeli army turned its attention to the north,
the Egyptians could launch low-level, but irritating, attacks on Israeli
settlements and military formations in the south. ‘You have to understand what
this means,’ said one of our sources. ‘The Government of Israel was already
pissed off about the CIA leaks to lung cancer. As long as the Liberty was
transmitting, every Israeli troop movement would be known to the Arabs within
an hour, maybe within minutes, It meant that Israel could lose the war.’ . . .
” (Ibid.; pp. 271-272.)
19.
In light of the situation, the Israeli
political leadership concluded that disabling the ship was the only practical
solution under the circumstances. Utilizing a copy of the ship’s building
plans, an attack was planned to disable the ship with a minimum of loss of
life. “. . . It came down to a choice between
25,000 of their own dead or attacking one American ship. One fighter-bomber
loaded with high-explosive ordinance could blow the Liberty to
splinters. Cabinet members asked if there was any option other than drowning
nearly 300 American sailors, for no matter what the American politicians had
done to them, Israel had always been friends with the American people. A plan
to put the ship out of commission with a minimum loss of life was requested.
Somehow, the Israelis had obtained a copy of the ship’s building plans, and the
Liberty’s fireproof and waterproof compartments gave the IDF an idea. The general
staff reported their minimum-damage plan to the cabinet. During the first run,
the aircraft would fire only light rockets at the antenna masts and strafe the
deck. That would send the crew scurrying safely belowdecks to their battle
stations. As soon as they were buttoned up, the second run would drop napalm to
burn off the antennas and communications gear without breaching the structural
integrity of the fireproof hull where the crew was hiding.” (Ibid.;
p. 275.)
20.
“The one problem was the
electronic intelligence center below decks in hold number 3. One carefully
aimed torpedo could take that out without sinking the ship, but whoever was in
that compartment would die. The Israeli military staff estimated that American
casualties could be kept to a few dozen. Most of the crew, maybe 80 to 90
percent, would survive. It was the best they could do. The cabinet members gave
the order to disable the Liberty with minimum loss of American life. Because they could no longer trust
their own telephones, they sent a courier to the nearest Israeli air squadron
to ask for volunteers. Half the squadron refused to fly, because they had
friends or relatives in the United States. ‘They just could not bring
themselves to shoot at the American flag,’ said one of our Israeli sources. The
ones who did fly were heartsick. Two of the pilots later had nervous
breakdowns. The Americans on the ship were not the only victims of the Liberty incident.
Two American-born Israelis volunteered to fly in the squadron.” (Ibid.;
pp. 275-276.)
21.
“The air crews needed only a
little while to unload the heavy-explosive ordinance and replace it with napalm
canisters. It took longer to get the torpedo boats briefed and under way.
Everything had to be coordinated for 2:00 p.m. so that the planes and torpedo
boats arrived at exactly the right times, one after the other, like a ballet
sequence. If the napalm was dropped too early, crewmembers might still be on
deck. The Israeli torpedo could not be fired until the Liberty’s crew had
sufficient time to close all the watertight doors. In the meantime, a
reconnaissance plane would make one last pass over the Liberty to confirm
its identity and position. Only then would headquarters give the attack order
to launch the fighter squadron. The reconnaissance pilots made their report in
code, using a scrambling device. Tel Aviv used the same precautions when giving
the attack order, as it knew U.S. intelligence was listening. The lead pilot on
the strafing run would not break radio silence until he had made visual
contact. He was to announce, en clair, when the ship was in sight. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 276.)
22.
“ . . . All morning there had
been overflights by Israeli reconnaissance, nine passes in all. One of them
flew less than two hundred feet from the ship, so close you could see the pilots
and give them a friendly wave. No one could mistake the Liberty for an enemy
ship with its American flag flying and its U.S. Navy identifiers gleaming in
large white numbers on the hull. The number of fly-bys was unusual, but the
crew thought that the Israelis were just keeping a constant eye on their
position to make sure than a friendly ship did not sail into harm’s way. There
was a war on, after all, but the Liberty was minding its own business. It was really nothing more than a
floating radio set, very lightly armed, and a threat to no one.”
(Ibid.; p. 263.)
23.
“At 2:00p.m. another flight of
Israeli Mirage jets appeared on the radar screen. A few people on the bridge
watched their approach with idle curiosity. Suddenly the Israeli aircraft
opened fire and strafed the deck of the Liberty with machine-gun fire and rockets. People were screaming, running for
cover. The Israelis left as quickly as they had come. They must have realized
their mistake and broken off the attack. For a few seconds there was silence
and then the sound of wounded men calling for help. The rockets and gun rounds
had chewed up the deck and everyone on it. Some of the radio antennas had been
badly damaged, but the Liberty still managed to get an emergency message to the Sixth Fleet that it
was under attack and needed immediate air cover. While they waited for the U.S.
planes, another huge American flag was hung on the Liberty to prevent
any further possibility of misidentification. Instead of the promised American
fighter support, however, Israeli Mystere jets were spotted on the horizon.
Everyone took cover. The Israeli planes fired rockets at the Liberty and dropped
napalm, which is a kind of jellied gasoline that burns everything it touches.
Some components of the Liberty’s radar dishes and antennas were made from aluminum. The only problem is
that aluminum does not melt, it burns when it is hit with napalm.” (Ibid.;
pp. 263-264.)
24.
“Walls of flames rolled over
the Liberty. As soon as the jets left, the crew rushed out to try to control the
fires. Where was the American fighter support? They should have been over the Liberty minutes
ago. What else could go wrong? That was when they saw the three speedboats
approaching from the Israeli coast. They were not rescue craft, they were
torpedo boats. One torpedo struck the starboard side of the Liberty, and the
stricken vessel tilted ten degrees over, its steering gone, portions of the
deck still burning. Luckily, the watertight compartments below decks had
contained the torpedo damage. The ship would not sink, but that was the least
of the problems.” (Ibid.; p. 264.)
25.
“The captain of the Liberty realized that
something had gone terribly wrong, and the ship was alone. There was no
American air cap to protect it, and it had become a floating target for the
Israelis. Although the upper structures of the ship had been badly hit, almost
90 percent of the crew had been belowdecks and were still alive. After the
Israeli torpedo boats picked up his crew and realized they were Americans, his
ship finally would be safe. The problem was that the Israeli boats were slowly
circling the Liberty, firing at anyone who stuck his head out of a hatch. The three rubber
rafts they did manage to toss over the side were ripped to shreds almost before
they hit the water. Finally the Israelis left for good. Out of the 293 crewmen
aboard the Liberty, only thirty-four had died. The crew thought it was a miracle that so
many had survived.” (Idem.)
26.
“Of course, few of the crew
believed the Israeli government’s apology that it was all a case of mistaken
identification. Nor did they believe the American government was telling the
whole story. When the crew of the Liberty were finally rescued, they found that their fighter cover had been
ordered out and then canceled by ‘higher authority.’ Incredible as it may seem,
the U.S. government had deliberately left one of its own ships defenseless
while knowing it was under attack. Several of the officers and crew were
interviewed by Navy admirals and then sworn to secrecy about the entire Liberty incident, in
the interests of ‘national security.’ The crew described the report of the
navy’s official Board of Inquiry as a farce. . . .” (Idem.)
27.
After being informed by the Israelis about
the attack, the CIA prevailed on the Navy to cancel the air cover for the Liberty. “ . . . As
soon as the attack was under way, a senior official of Israeli intelligence
paid a surprise call on his CIA counterpart. He told him what they were doing
to the Liberty at that moment, and why. Before the second Israeli run even arrived
over the ship, the CIA had told the navy to call off air support for the Liberty. Although
upon hearing news of the attack, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff at first wanted
to launch a ‘quick, retaliatory air strike on the Israeli naval base which
launched the attack,’ this idea was quickly rejected. There would be no
retaliation of any kind. Why were the U.S. fighter planes, which had taken off
while the debate was still under way, ordered back to the carrier and the
retaliation strike abandoned? The Israelis had proof that the U.S. government
had committed an act of war against Israel by betraying its military secrets to
the enemy in the middle of a war in which Israel’s very survival was at stake.
The Israelis had sources in the Arab world that the CIA didn’t even know about.
The CIA’s low-risk strategy had blown up in its face, along with any hope of
plausible deniability.” (Ibid.; pp. 276-277.)
28.
“The White House certainly was
not happy, but it did not take long to work up a cover story. The American
intelligence officers begged the Israelis to pretend that the attack on the Liberty was a
mistake. To make it look good, Israel would be quietly reimbursed for whatever
compensation it paid to the surviving crewmembers and the families of the dead.
By 4:00p.m. that afternoon, the deal was cut. According to our sources in the
intelligence community, the governments of Israel and the United States have
spent the next twenty-seven years lying about the Liberty incident.
There is a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence to show that this
version of the affair is correct. There is, moreover, convincing and direct
evidence to demonstrate that the official versions told by both governments are
false. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 277.)
29.
The U.S. ambassador to Israel at the time of
the incident was Wally Barbour, a right-wing Democrat and member of the
petroleum= political lobby. His son is the G.O.P. governor of Mississippi Haley
Barbour. Haley Barbour’s New Bridge Strategies is subcontracting with an Al
Taqwa-related company in Iraq. (For more about this, see FTR#433.) As will be seen
in FTR#573,
Barbour’s PR firm represents the Alfa consortium in the United States. Alfa is
part of the international criminal milieu that intersects with the perpetrators
of the 9/11 attacks. “ . . . As a result of the Liberty incident, the
White House gave Wally Barbour, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, a new set of
marching orders. No further intelligence was to be gathered on the Dimona
nuclear reactor, nor were joint anti-Israeli operations to be run with the
British and Canadian secret services. Israel was to be the main ally of the
United States in the Middle East and was now more important than Arab oil. . .
.” (Ibid.; p. 285.)