The Liberty Incident Revealed

by A. Jay Cristol

  In June 1967, as Lieutenant Ennes and his wounded shipmates lay in their hospital beds in the sick bay of the carrier America and ashore, they began to contemplate the events of the previous few days. Some soon concluded that the Israeli attacks had been part of a planned and carefully executed plot. Twelve years later Ennes, in his Assault on the “Liberty,” traced back his views to those hospital days: “The hospital executive officer brought me a message from the Department of State. Israel’s ambassador to Italy wanted to talk to me. Would I consent to see him? . . . Anyway, I was convinced that the attack was deliberate, premeditated murder. . . . No, I said.”19 Thus, within a week after the attack, without recourse to research or access to additional firsthand information, Ennes had already reached his own conclusion. He then did some research and wrote Assault on the “Liberty,” but as the following examples demonstrate, statements he presents as facts are not always accurate.

  In the hardcover edition, Ennes alleges in a parenthetical comment that President Johnson knew the Israeli attack on the Liberty had been made with knowledge that it was a U.S. ship: “(According to Liberty’s Lieut. Bennett [a cryptology officer in the NSA detachment], he [President Johnson] did know. After years of silence on this subject, Bennett told me that in 1967 Senator William Fulbright informed Captain McGonagle and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. David L. McDonald in Bennett’s presence that the President knew the attack was deliberate and had ordered the information covered up for political reasons.)”20

  Ennes elaborates in the footnotes:

  On January 21, 1974, while buying coffee from a machine in a Navy building in Washington, D.C., Bennett ended almost seven years of silence on this subject to tell me: “The government knows the truth. Knew it all the time. Senator Fulbright told us that Johnson ordered a cover-up to protect Israel and to avoid causing a ruckus.” Bennett remained fairly close-mouthed about the Pentagon meeting, however, and when witnesses were near he sometimes denied there was a cover-up at all (he was still on active duty and could have been hurt by excessive candor). During the following four years, however, he repeatedly confirmed with gist of the Pentagon discussion: The President knew the attack was deliberate and ordered it covered up for political reasons.21

  This is triple hearsay. Ennes states that Bennett said that Fulbright said that President Johnson said. None of President Johnson’s writings or papers support Ennes’s claim. Admiral McDonald told this author that he had no recollection of Senator Fulbright making such a statement.22 Senator Fulbright denied to this author that he made such a statement. Furthermore, he explained that the claim was not plausible. Senator Fulbright had been chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 1958. When Lyndon Johnson became president in 1964, Fulbright, who yearned to be secretary of state, expected his former U.S. Senate “buddy” Lyndon Johnson to appoint him to that office. Johnson did not. Consequently, their friendship cooled, and so, as Fulbright pointed out, in 1967 they were not even speaking to each other, much less sharing secrets.23

  Interestingly, the paperback edition of the Ennes book published in 1986, a few years after publication of the hardcover edition, omits, on page 250, both the above-quoted text and footnote 5. This author interviewed Cdr. Maurice Bennett, USN (Ret.), in an effort to learn more about the disappearing quote from the Ennes book. Commander Bennett said that Senator Fulbright was a friend of one of Bennett’s mother’s brothers from Fayetteville, Arkansas. Bennett’s parents had made an unannounced impromptu stop at Senator Fulbright’s office during a visit to Washington to request tickets for a White House tour. While they were in the office, Senator Fulbright happened to come out of his office to the reception area, and the senator and Bennett’s parents had a brief, informal conversation. In the course of that conversation, Bennett’s mother told the senator that her son had been on the Liberty. According to Bennett’s recollection of his mother’s account of the visit, “at no time did Fulbright make a definitive official statement that he knew or had information about the attack.” Bennett further states, “I do not recall a conversation with Ennes at a coffee machine. I also do not recall participation in a meeting with Admiral McDonald.”24 Most important, Bennett confirms that he was never in the presence of Senator Fulbright.

  Other statements Ennes asserts as facts are also not accurate. For instance, Ennes reports that the USNS Private Jose F. Valdez (T-AG 69), proceeding from the eastern Mediterranean toward Norfolk, Virginia, passed the Liberty during the night of June 4 and morning of June 5, the day the war began.25 An examination of the deck log of the Liberty reflects her position at 0800 on June 5, 1967, as 36-32.7 N, 13-58.2 E—that is, in the Mediterranean approaching Sicily. The Jose F. Valdez deck log reflects her position at exactly the same time on that same day as 36-34 N, 52-15 W—that is, in the mid-Atlantic on course toward New York, almost three thousand miles to the west of where Ennes reports her.

  Another illustrative example is an Ennes report of seeing three (not two) Mirage aircraft approach the Liberty from the northeast. “The airplanes were fully loaded with eighteen large rockets visible under each wing.”26 According to Bill Gunston’s Illustrated Guide to the Israeli Air Force, the Israeli Mirage IIICJs were wired for two or three air-to-air missiles but they never carried rockets.27 They usually carried fuel tanks on the inboard hard points and air-to-air ordinance on the outboard hard points.28 All Mirage IIICJ aircraft had only five hard points; therefore, even if the Mirage Israeli IIICJs were wired for rockets, they could not carry more than five each. Other Israeli jet aircraft were wired for rockets in 1967, but they carried them in pods that looked somewhat like fuel tanks. Since the rockets were stored internally, they could not be seen from the outside.

  In the same volume, the winter 1985–86 issue of American-Arab Affairs,29 in which the Ennes article was published, included under the heading “Documentation” an item listed in the table of contents as The USS “Liberty”: Discrepancies between Israeli Inquiry and U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry, September 21, 1967. The preparer of the document, Carl F. Salans, was incorrectly described as “the legal adviser of the State Department.” The legal adviser of the State Department at that time was Leonard Meeker; Salans was one of about fifty young attorneys who worked for Meeker. Ennes claimed in the article mentioned above that the document was prepared for Under Secretary of State Eugene V. Rostow.30 In an interview by this author, Rostow stated that he never saw the document and pointed out that the address on the document was to code “U,” which was the code for the number-two person in the State Department, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach, not Rostow.31

  Ennes described the document as “devastating” to the Israeli position but concedes that “The Salans report does not contain an overall conclusion as to whether the attack was deliberate.”32 This author corresponded with and interviewed Carl F. Salans in 1993. At that time Salans was practicing law in Paris with Salans, Herzfeld & Heilbronn, an international law firm with offices in London, Paris, Moscow, and New York. In a letter to this author dated March 17, 1993, Salans confirmed that he had “very little memory of my memorandum or its preparation.” He did recall that he had not spoken to Clark Clifford but believed that he had seen the “Clifford Report.”

  The Salans document does nothing more than compare the reports of Clark Clifford, the U.S. Navy court of inquiry, and the Israeli examining judge for consistency, without comment. All three concluded that the attack was a case of mistaken identity. To the question put by this author to Salans during an interview on March 29, 1993, “Some people argue that your memo proves the attack was deliberate. Is that your interpretation?” Salans replied: “The Under Secretary asked me for an analysis, not an effort to draw any conclusion or place any blame.” Furthermore, Ennes comments that “a report prepared for President Johnson by presidential advisor Clark Clifford has since vanished from government files.”33 This author located the Clifford Report, classified secret, and prevailed on an appeal of classification. The report was declassified
on October 27, 1995.

  The linchpin of the motive argument in the Ennes book is that Israel was trying to keep the United States from learning of its plan to attack Syria on June 9, 1967. This theory has a number of weaknesses, many the same as those of the arguments of Richard K. Smith. First, when the Liberty set sail for its patrol area off the Sinai, prior to the commencement of hostilities on June 5, 1967, the Gaza Strip was controlled by Egypt. The Liberty’s basic capability for listening extended only to the horizon (about twenty to twenty-five miles). A projection of the listening range from the Liberty’s patrol area out to a maximum twenty-five miles does not place the Liberty’s “ears” over any Israeli territory. Rather, it overlays the coastal road from Port Said, Egypt, to the Gaza Strip (see page 26). Any Israeli radio communications about Syria would have come from IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv, approximately sixty miles from the northernmost listening point of Liberty’s twenty-five-mile “collection zone.” If by some chance the Liberty could have listened all the way to Tel Aviv, sixty miles to the north, or north of Tel Aviv, the question remains: Who would have done the real-time eavesdropping? The Liberty’s linguists were primarily Russian speakers. At Rota, Spain, the Liberty took on board Arabic and Russian linguists, including Marine staff sergeant Bryce F. Lockwood, but there were no Hebrew linguists on board the ship.34

  But assuming that somehow the Liberty could or even did overhear Israeli plans to attack Syria, how big a secret was it on June 8? Israeli tanks were being withdrawn from the Sinai and transported north toward Syria on roads through Tel Aviv, within a few blocks of the American embassy. This movement had already been observed by the CIA station chief and reported to Washington.35 Secretary of State Dean Rusk confirmed the receipt of this information to this author.36 In his television series Israel: A Nation Is Born, former foreign minister Abba Eban comments on a call he received from McGeorge Bundy: “I received a call from a high U.S. official. He hinted that it would be illogical if the war were to end with the Syrians suffering no penalty for having provoked it.”37

  Another puncture to the “hide plans for the attack on Syria” theory seems to be provided by the Times of London of June 8, 1967. On its front page is the headline “Blow at Syria Now.” The article, written by Charles Douglas-Home, told of the forthcoming attack on Syria, with a dateline of Tel Aviv, June 7, 1967, the day before the Liberty was attacked by Israel. Of course it might not have been convenient for the president of the United States to read about the “Syrian blow” secret in the London Times. It is perhaps for that reason the chief of intelligence of the Israel Defense Forces, Gen. Aharon Yariv, briefed Harry McPherson, President Johnson’s special representative, in the presence of U.S. ambassador Walworth “Wally” Barbour hours before the attack on the Liberty and told them, “There still remained the Syrian problem and perhaps it would be necessary to give Syria a blow.” Yariv went on to say, “There were no ground operations in Syria yet, unfortunately” (emphasis added).38 It is difficult to understand why, hours before their attack on the Liberty, the Israelis would tell the representative of the president of the United States and the U.S. ambassador to Israel about the impending attack on Syria the following morning and then attack the USS Liberty just a short time later in the afternoon to prevent the United States from learning about the same impending attack.

  The U.S. naval attaché in the embassy in Tel Aviv in June 1967, (then) Cdr. Ernest Castle, commented on this theory in the Thames TV documentary: “Let us presume the Israeli high command was so fearful that the United States would learn of what was an evident Israeli plan to take the Golan [Heights from Syria], or any other plan on the part of the Israelis, when they say, that will irritate the United States—our great friend—we’d better not do that, or let that happen, so let’s sink their ship instead? That’s how I address anyone who thinks the Israelis purposely sank [sic] that ship to keep us from knowing something.”39

  On the same video he said further:

  Let us presume it was a premeditated plan—for whatever reason—to get rid of a United States ship that was a threat to Israel. Then the nation that had just, in 22 minutes, destroyed an entire Egyptian air force—had captured all of the Egyptian armor in the Sinai—if they had decided they had to sink a United States ship, I believe they would have done so. And I think it would have been done with ruse de guerre, and done during the night, so that there was never any real evidence of who had done it—if the Israelis had really wanted to sink a United States ship.

  In his book Ennes concedes, in regard to the official investigations of the Liberty incident, “Each of the reports either concluded that the attack was probably conducted in error, or avoided making conclusions by lamely reporting that it could find no evidence that the attack was deliberate.”40 Lack of evidence is not considered a lame excuse but rather a valid reason for not finding guilt.

  Furthermore, Ennes’s lack of knowledge regarding naval matters and weapons makes his allegations highly questionable. In Attack on the “Liberty,” while discussing the reaction by the U.S. Sixth Fleet to news of the attack, he writes: “Two nuclear armed [emphasis added] F-4 Phantom jets left America’s catapults and headed almost straight up, afterburners roaring. Then two more became airborne to rendezvous with the first two, and together the four powerful jets turned towards Liberty, making a noise like thunder.”41

  Unfortunately for the credibility of his story, no F-4 Phantoms operated by the U.S. Navy or Marine Corps (the latter also flying from aircraft carriers) in 1967 were fitted with or wired to carry nuclear weapons. Further, a carrier commander could not launch nuclear-armed aircraft without explicit direction from the highest authority, the president, and in some special instances a theater commander, and there is no evidence that such direction was given or that any other American planes were loaded with nuclear weapons that day. The Ennes book is flawed by so many other errors of simple fact, major and minor, that it is more a product of imagination than documented research. Even statements that rely on his own firsthand experience and recollection cannot be accepted as “nothing but the truth.”

  Causing further harm to his credibility, in the years since the Liberty attack, Ennes has taken an irrationally harsh line against Israel. He has made statements such as, “The fact is Israel would have no enemies if they did not constantly raid their neighbors, steal their land, take their water and kill their children.”42 He also stated in a letter, “It is Israel that daily maims and murders an unarmed population in Palestine. It is Israel that daily bulldozes homes of suspected adolescent rock-throwers”43

  The following is another example of how multiple contradictory stories can be created with only a slight basis in the same reality. In 1988 a U.S. naval officer assigned to the National Security Agency detachment on board the Liberty, Lt. Cdr. David E. Lewis, told an incredible story in a private interview with an American reporter, Dale Crowley Jr.44 According to Lewis, Rear Adm. Lawrence Geis, the commander of the U.S. carrier task force in the Mediterranean, had told him that as soon as the Liberty’s calls for help were received (approximately 1410 Sinai time, 0810 Washington time EDT), Geis launched fighter-bombers to defend the Liberty and radioed the Pentagon of the action. Apparently, Geis chose to bypass his immediate superior, COMSIXTHLFLT, as well as CINCUSNAVEUR and USCINCEUR in the chain of command and call the Pentagon directly. Lewis then quotes Geis as saying, “A few minutes later I received a call from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordering me to recall the planes because they were carrying nuclear arms.” It remains unexplained why the Secretary of Defense, like Rear Admiral Geis, bypassed the chain of command and gave direct orders to a two-star rear admiral at sea.

  Lewis goes on to say that Geis told him that after the recall of the first aircraft launched, he “immediately rearmed another squadron with conventional weapons, deployed it and reported to the Pentagon.” Again, Admiral Geis is reported to have bypassed his chain of command and dealt directly with the Pentagon. Lewis quotes Rear Admiral Geis fu
rther as saying: “A few minutes later I got another call from McNamara ordering me to recall these planes too. I was angry and mystified and exercised my prerogative to go the next higher level of authority to have McNamara’s order reversed. Seconds later President Lyndon Johnson was on the radio telephone, and I made my case to him.”

  Again it is hard to imagine a two-star rear admiral going over the head of Commander Sixth Fleet, Commander in Chief U.S. Naval Forces, Europe, Commander in Chief European Command, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to deal directly with the secretary of defense on this issue, and then even going over the head of the secretary of defense, demanding to speak to the U.S. president and actually speaking to him on radio telephone. If Admiral Geis had been willing to tell his story to Commander Lewis, a subordinate and a total stranger, one might infer that he would also at least have told his wife about such an important conversation with the president. On the contrary, his widow has no recollection of ever being told by her husband of such a conversation.45

  What also remains unexplained is the nature of these radio telephone calls between Admiral Geis in the Mediterranean and Secretary McNamara and President Johnson in Washington. In 1967, the United States did not have the ability to make a secure telephone link between Washington and a ship in the Mediterranean.

  Capt. Joseph M. Tully Jr., USN (Ret.), who was commanding officer of the Saratoga on June 8, 1967, told this author that he was on the bridge of the Saratoga that day when he received word of the attack on the Liberty, at 1432 Sinai time. He said he tried to reach the commander of Task Force 60—that is, Rear Adm. Lawrence Geis—on board the America. Unable to do that, he said, he announced over voice radio that he was turning into the wind and launching his “ready group”; then between 1440 and 1450 he launched four F-4Bs, four A-4s, four A-1s, and four A-4 tankers (sixteen aircraft in ten minutes on eight minutes’ notice). Captain Tully then went on to tell this author how the aircraft were immediately recalled by Admiral Geis.46