USS Liberty incident

The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a U.S. Navy intelligence ship, USS Liberty (AGTR-5), in international waters near the Sinai Peninsula, north of El Arish, by Israeli fighter planes and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab States. The attack killed 34 U.S. servicemen and wounded 173.

Ongoing controversy

This incident stands as the only peacetime attack on a U.S. naval vessel not investigated by Congress. The survivors want a full Congressional hearing; they hold that a proper investigation has never taken place and that all previous reports are incomplete, mention the incident in passing, and either that they are intended to exonerate Israel or that they do not even question the culpability of the attack (instead, they hold, it focuses on other topics, such as American communication problems).

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Israel denied all accusations that the attack was deliberate using the following arguments:

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• The incident took place during the Six Day War when Israel was engaged in battles with three Arab countries, creating an environment where mistakes and confusion were prevalent. For example, at 11:45, a few hours before the attack, there was a large explosion on the shores of El-Arish followed by black smoke, probably caused by the destruction of an ammunition dump by retreating Egyptian forces. The Israeli army thought the area was being bombarded, and that an unidentified ship offshore was responsible. (According to U.S. sources, the USS Liberty was 14 miles (23 km) from those shores at the time of the attack.)
• The attacking aircraft used napalm and machine guns, rather ineffective armament for attacking a ship.
• Liberty opened fire first on the gunboats (though after the aerial attacks).
• No adequate benefit has been put forward that the Israelis would derive from the attack on an American ship, especially considering the high cost of the predictable complications that must inevitably follow such an attack on a powerful ally, and the fact that Israel immediately notified the American embassy after the attack.

Virtually all of the survivors of Liberty, some U.S. government officials and some U.S. military officers have asserted that the attack was premeditated. Jim Ennes, a junior officer (and off-going Officer of the Deck) on Libertys bridge at the time of the attack, has published a book titled Assault on the Liberty. Like virtually all accounts of the "Liberty" incident, it has come under heavy criticism by those disagreeing with its point of view.

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Ennes and Joe Meadors, another survivor of the attack, run a web site that was built "with support and encouragement from the USS Liberty Veterans Association." Meadors states that the classification of the attack as deliberate is the official policy of the association, to which all known survivors belong. Other survivors run several additional websites.

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Several books and a BBC documentary tried to prove USS Liberty was attacked on purpose. They are backed in this position by some representatives of the U.S. intelligence community. Critics claim many of them include incorrect assumptions and use fuzzy reasoning. For example, they claim the ship was attacked to prevent the U.S. from knowing about the forthcoming attack in the Golan Heights, although materials declassified in 1997 stated Israel had already notified the U.S. of the attack in advance.

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James Bamford, a former ABC News producer, in his book Body of Secrets, proposes a different possible motive for a deliberate attack: "to cover up a massacre of 1,000 Egyptian prisoners of war" that was supposedly taking place at the same time in the nearby town of El-Arish. Bamford has no concrete evidence to back this accusation, except a confirmation by a single anonymous Egyptian. He cites a supporting Israeli source that "150 prisoners were executed," but this source, Gabi Bron, an Israeli reporter, claims Bamford misrepresented his report by using only partial sentences from it, which in fact wholly referred to the execution of 5 Palestinian guerillas, and other than that, he saw no mass murders. Further adding evidence against this claim was that Egypt has ruled El-Arish and the whole of the Sinai peninsula for over 20 years since Israel returned it in the early 1980s, yet no mass graves have been found, nor has Egypt reported such an incident occurring. In any event, the possibility of a ship at sea discovering such a crime on land, at or beyond the limit of its visual range, is unlikely (according to U.S. accounts, the ship was 14 miles (23 km) from shore at the time of the attack, and did not get much closer to it previously).

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In 2003 journalist Peter Hounam wrote Operation Cyanide: How the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III, which proposes a completely different theory regarding the incident. In an attempt to explain why there was no support by U.S. forces as backup, Hounam claims that Israel and U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson had secretly agreed on day four of the Six Day War that the USS Liberty would be sunk with complete loss of life. The attack would be blamed on Egypt, allowing the U.S. in turn to attack Egypt, thus helping out Israel. However, according to Hounam's theory, because the Liberty did not sink after two hours, the plan was quickly reversed, Israel apologized for the case of mistaken identity, and a cover-up put into place.

Related Topics:
2003 - Peter Hounam - Lyndon B. Johnson - Six Day War

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Nevertheless, it must also be noted that from the early 1950s up to shortly before the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel's primary military ally was France. The United States, with a few exceptions, consistently refused requests for sales of offensive weapons to Israel until 1968. The height of French-Israeli cooperation was in the 1956 Suez war, when France, Israel and the United Kingdom participated in a combined ground, sea and air offensive against Egypt, despite stringent opposition (and even threats) by the United States and the Soviet Union.

Related Topics:
1967 - Six-Day War - France - United States - Suez war - Israel - United Kingdom - Egypt - Soviet Union

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Israeli officials and Jewish organizations worldwide have asserted that materials claiming the Liberty incident was deliberate are often used as a pretext for anti-Semitic declarations and acts. They claim these reviews often do not give Israel the benefit of the doubt, turning the incident into an obsessive circus for Israel bashing, especially in comparison to the treatment of other incidents involving foreign attacks on U.S. vessels. Meadors and Ennes have denied an anti-Semitic pretext in their work, and have repeatedly expressed sharp disapproval at the use of the USS Liberty incident in anti-Semitic contexts, and have pointed out that some of the ship's company was Jewish.

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On July 2, 2003, as a result of Florida Judge Jay Cristol's (retired Naval carrier pilot) lawsuit using the Freedom of Information Act, the National Security Agency made two significant admissions: there had been no radio intercepts made by USS Liberty, and there had been no radio intercepts made by the U.S. submarine Amberjack. The National Security Agency released copies of the recordings it made from an EC-121 aircraft in the vicinity of the attacks from 2:30 p.m. to 3:27 p.m. Sinai time, and the resultant translations and summaries. The tapes show that the helicopters were first dispatched to rescue Egyptians, and then demonstrate the confusion as to the identification of the target ship. Cristol adds: "The tapes confirm that the helicopter pilot observed the flag at 3:12 p.m." which would coincide with the audio tapes the Israel Air Force released to Judge Cristol of the radio transmissions before, during and after the attack. The English translations of the Israeli Air Force tapes are published in Appendix 2 of Judge Cristol's book The Liberty Incident.

Related Topics:
July 2 - 2003 - ''Amberjack'' - EC-121 - Israel Air Force

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On October 10, 2003, the Jerusalem Post ran an interview with Yiftah Spector, one of the pilots who participated in the attack http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1065773796483, and thought to be the lead pilot of the first wave of planes. Spector stated in the interview that the ship was assumed to be Egyptian at the time of the attack; the transcripts of the Israeli communications about the Liberty are also in interview.

Related Topics:
October 10 - 2003

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As of 2005, the National Security Agency (NSA) has yet to declassify "boxes and boxes" of Liberty documents. Numerous requests under both declassification directives and the Freedom of Information Act are pending in various agencies including the NSA, Central Intelligence Agency, and Defense Intelligence Agency.

Related Topics:
As of 2005 - National Security Agency - Central Intelligence Agency - Defense Intelligence Agency

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