Additionally, this author learned from Nowicki that the other Hebrew linguist in the EC-121 aircraft, who was with him at the time and who also heard the original transmissions and listened to them again with Nowicki on the ground at Athens Airport shortly after the EC-121 landed, agreed with him that the transmissions established an attack in error.
The name of this U.S. Navy Hebrew (Special Arabic) linguist was known to Nowicki, this author, James Bamford, and the NSA. He had requested that his name not be made public but on June 26, 2008, he agreed to come out. He is Michael Prostinak. He did advise Nowicki that Bamford contacted him after Nowicki’s letter was published in the Wall Street Journal and urged him to support Bamford’s assertion that the NSA tapes show that the attack was intentional. He refused and advised Nowicki that he agreed with Nowicki’s assessment that the transmissions and the tapes showed the attack to be a mistake.
In a conversation with Nowicki on Friday, July 27, 2001, this author inquired about opening communication with a third NSA Hebrew linguist, whose name had been withheld upon request but who has come out. He is Richard Hickman. Hickman spent a great deal of time listening to the EC-121 tapes at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, and he briefed the then director of NSA, Marshal Carter, on the contents of the tapes. Nowicki previously told this author that this third Hebrew linguist agreed with Nowicki that the tapes showed the attack was a mistake on the part of the Israelis. On that Friday afternoon Nowicki commented that Hickman mentioned to him something about the tapes that Nowicki had forgotten and that Hickman found quite persuasive. It was the clear confusion of the Israelis during conversations about whether the personnel on the ship for which rescue operations were being initiated were Egyptian or American and where to take the persons rescued, depending on which nationality they were. A very important aspect of this bit of information is that it corroborates that the NSA tapes coincide or at least agree with the Israel Air Force tape transcripts and translations that were released to Thames TV in 1987 and released by the Israel Air Force to this author in September 2001. An annotated translation of relevant excerpts of the Israel Air Force tapes and the NSA tapes is provided in appendix 2.
This author received an e-mail from Richard Hickman dated October 11, 2001, that stated in part:
Al Blue [the NSA Arabic linguist] was a friend of mine. We were both on the [U.S. Navy destroyer escort] Valdez during February–April of ’67, having picked up the ship in Massaua, Ethiopia and rode it up the canal into the Mediterranean and out to Barcelona. When we returned “they” told us that we had to go right back out to get on the Liberty. I told them that I was due to be discharged from the Navy in June of ’67 and it was unlikely the Navy would let me go, with so little time left. So, they agreed that I couldn’t go, which resulted in “no” Hebrew linguist aboard the Liberty. But, they said that Al (Blue) had to go.
So, because of the fact that I lost a good friend in Al and of course NAVSECGRU shipmates and other wounded civilians—I was ready to blame the Israelis, along with everyone else who was angry. But, based on what I heard, both from eyewitnesses and the tapes, my conclusion has always been that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Clark Clifford, former chairman of President Johnson’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, told this author that he had considered “certain electronically gathered evidence” that convinced him that the attack was a mistake.40 At that time this author was not aware of recordings made by an EC-121 aircraft in the possession of NSA and assumed that Clifford was referring to the Israel Air Force tapes. Now it appears more likely that he was referring to the NSA tapes.
Allegations abound in the conspiracy camp that a tape existed that proved that the attack was intentional. This author interviewed George Golden,41 the engineering officer on the Liberty, who said, “Some of that could have counted also for the fact that Lieutenant Bennett brought some information and gave it to me. He said they had taped it, concerning the planning of the attack and I gave that to a member of Admiral Martin’s staff the next morning and nothing came of that. I wish I was in a position to make a copy of it myself.”42
The House of Representatives Armed Services Subcommittee on Investigations conducted an investigation at the request of the Liberty Veterans Association from about July 1991 through about April 1992. Roy Kirk of the General Accounting Office was the chief investigator. Kirk told this author that he was told by various Liberty crew members about a tape (sometimes an audiotape, sometimes a videotape) and that he spoke to the person who was supposed to have had the tape and was told, “There are no such tapes. Those guys who claim the tapes exist are crazy.”43 In a March 2001 interview, Cdr. Maurice H. Bennett elaborated:
This story arose—and spread—from a remark I made shortly after the attack. I do not remember to whom I spoke or who was present.
The gist of my remark was that surely/probably somewhere in the morass of tapes made before and during the attack there should be/probably was/might be some intercept relating to the attack. I have/had no knowledge of such information in a definitive sense, it was speculative not definitive. As stories get retold, they get embellished/distorted and that is obviously what happened in this case.
The tapes which were on board Liberty were I think shipped back to NSA and it was always my understanding that no information relating to the attack, before or during, was found on them. NSA will have to provide a definitive answer.44
There is no tape in the exhibits to the record of the U.S. Navy court of inquiry. Admiral Kidd told this author that he did not receive such a tape.
Another report of a tape surfaced in 1998 when a Liberty Veterans Association member put the following message on the Internet:
Subj: [LIB] Taped interviews from Israel—voice
Date: 98–02–13 16:23:59 EST
From: [email protected] (Phillip F. Tourney)
Flash! Flash! Flash!
It has come to my attention that valuable taped information from the players, our attackers, is in the hands of a very reliable and competent source. The tape reveals the debriefing of the Israeli torpedo crew as to their statements to anyone concerning the attack on the Liberty. They were told, as they have stood by in the public’s eye, mistaken identity. This tape proves not so from their very own lips. Their mission was to destroy our ship and pay no attention to its nationality. The orders were to destroy the ship and crew. The tape also reveals the bewilderment of our attackers that the ship did not sink after all the air attack and torpedo attacks. These players have names that we are all familiar with and they are: Moshe Oren, former Lead Commander, Torpedo boats; Pinchas Pinchasy, former Naval Liaison Officer with the Israeli Air Force; Avraham Lunz, Former Duty Officer [sic; Command Duty Officer] in War Room to name a few. The unnamed source at this point will send the tapes to the proper authorities. After this is completed, copies will be made available, I am told.
At this point, I don’t know when the tape was recorded or who recorded it, but it does exist. With this type of evidence maybe once and for all our nay-sayers and non-believers will join us in bringing this cover-up out into the open.
Phil Tourney
Until now Tourney’s unnamed source has not made these alleged tapes available, as Tourney stated he was told would happen.
Why did NSA not disclose the existence of the EC-121 flight and its tapes? It should be remembered that in the 1960s NSA was publicly known facetiously as “No Such Agency” and as a matter of policy disclosed literally nothing about its activities. Assuming the tapes were made available to Clark Clifford and all the U.S. and Israeli governmental investigations officially concluded that the attack was a mistake, that there was no pressing need to make such disclosures. In addition, there was a valid political reason not to disclose the fact that a U.S. military aircraft was at a place at a time in which the United States had told the world in general and the Soviets and Arabs in particular that there were no U.S. military aircraft. Such a disclosure in 1967 would have reinforc
ed the Egyptian and Jordanian claims about U.S. aircraft in the combat zone supporting Israel against the Arabs, a claim that the United States was actively denying at the time. As the NSA and its operations became better known and the agency became more relaxed, no doubt the NSA felt there was no need to know on the part of the public and there remained a continued valid operational reason not to disclose the capability of the technology on the EC-121. Who would have imagined the United States had such fabulous surveillance capability in 1967, or for that matter in 2002?
This author filed a Freedom of Information Act request with NSA on April 27, 2001, requesting the release of the EC-121 tapes, transcripts of tapes, and translations thereof. On June 14, 2001, in FOIA Case: 40039, NSA denied this author’s FOIA request for any Liberty recordings and the EC-121 tapes. The NSA responded that “NSA can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any specific collection that may have occurred on that date by the Liberty. In addition, we have determined that the fact of the existence or non-existence of the other materials [the EC-121 tapes] you request is a currently and properly classified matter.” This author appealed that denial on July 6, 2001, and requested declassification. The appeal was denied. When this book was originally published in 2002, this author concluded this chapter with the comment, “Now is the time for the NSA to grant this author’s Freedom of Information Act appeal and release the tapes, their transcripts and translations. The data on those tapes would provide valuable evidence relating to many of the conspiracy claims.” Thereafter this author sued the NSA for release of the tapes under the Freedom of Information Act; NSA capitulated and released not only the tapes but other significant material as well on July 2, 2003. The tapes and translation thereof may be heard and seen on the NSA website, www.nsa.gov, as well as this author’s website, www.thelibertyincident.com. Translation of the tapes is provided in appendix 2. A detailed analysis of the intercepts is included in chapter 16.
Chapter 11
DID DAYAN ORDER IT?
Some conspiracy theorists claim that the attacks on the Liberty were made on the direct order of Israel’s minister of defense, Moshe Dayan. The most prominent claimant that Dayan did it was Norman F. Dacey, national chairman of the American Palestine Committee.
In September 1977 Dayan, who was then foreign minister, traveled to the United States on an official visit for talks with President Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. On September 19, 1977, the New York Times carried on page 26 an advertisement paid for by Dacey. The ad began with a large-type headline, “Are We Welcoming the Murderer of Our Sons?”
Beneath the headline was a picture of Moshe Dayan. The ad told of the June 8, 1967, attack on the Liberty and claimed that “this Committee” had obtained three (unevaluated) intelligence documents from the Central Intelligence Agency under the Freedom of Information Act. Excerpts from three documents were presented in the ad. The release of these documents was highly unusual. This author has never been able to obtain the release of a CIA unevaluated intelligence document or any further information on the facts and circumstances surrounding this particular release for the New York Times ad. Each of the documents has certain portions blacked out or redacted; not all the original information is readable. The first document referred to the opinion of the Turkish General Staff (TGS) and stated: “2. The TGS is convinced that the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty on June 8, 1967 was deliberate. It was done because the Liberty’s CCNMO actively was having the effect of jamming Israeli Military communications.”
Neither the name of the informant nor the exact place from which the information was obtained is readable. The second unevaluated intelligence document stated that “Israeli forces did not make mistakes.” Like the first document, both the name of the informant and the source of the information were redacted. The third unevaluated intelligence document was dated November 9, 1967, and was entitled “Attack on USS Liberty Ordered by Dayan.” The advertisement included paragraph 2 of the redacted document. “[Deleted] commented on the sinking [sic] of the U.S. communications ship Liberty. They said that Dayan personally ordered the attack on the ship and that one of his generals adamantly opposed the action, saying, ‘This is pure murder!’ One of the admirals who was present also disapproved the action and it was he who ordered it stopped. [Deletion] believe that the attack against the U.S. vessel is [deletion] detrimental to any political ambitions Dayan may have.”
The advertisement then asks a series of questions, concluding with, “If for ten years you have had information disclosing the identity of the individual who deliberately ordered the attack which killed or maimed so many of our sons, why have you never demanded that he be brought to justice? While you have been deporting persons suspected of war crimes against Europeans 35 years ago, why have you done nothing about the perpetrator of this heinous war crime against American servicemen ten years ago?”
The advertisement ends with the statement, “It is time for the U.S. Government to end its silence on the Liberty tragedy. It is time the American people were given the truth!” A separate news article in the same issue of the New York Times, on page 7, described the American Palestine Committee as “a nationwide committee of Americans trying to help the Palestinians to get back into their homeland.”1 The story of this ad was picked up by the Associated Press and United Press International, and articles about it appeared in the Washington Post and other Washington, D.C., newspapers.2
On the day the advertisement appeared in the New York Times, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Adm. Stansfield Turner, appeared on the ABC television program Good Morning America, hosted by Steve Bell. It is rather sad that it was only on January 28, 1985, that the CIA approved for release a transcript of that portion of the Good Morning America show, more than seven years after it had been heard and seen by tens of millions of TV viewers! The transcript is enlightening (emphasis added below):3
Transcript—Good Morning America September 19, 1977
Steve Bell: There is a particular incident that has just come into the papers this morning; namely, that a group of Palestinian supporters in the U.S. has taken out an advertisement in The New York Times which uses raw CIA data gained from the Freedom of Information Act. The accusation is made that Moshe Dayan specifically ordered the attack on the USS Liberty in the 1967 Middle East War. Can you give us any enlightenment on that?
Admiral Turner: I certainly can and I am glad Steve that you emphasized the word raw intelligence data. We are required under the Freedom of Information Act to produce to those who ask for it intelligence documents which can be unclassified. In those which we released there were several which indicated a possibility that the Israeli government knew about the USS Liberty before the attack. Also, we released an evaluated over-all document which said very clearly that it was our considered opinion that the Israeli government had no such knowledge at that time.
Approved For Release
Date 28 Jan 1985.
It is interesting to evaluate the unevaluated intelligence document that accuses Dayan. The informant and the place from which the paper originated are redacted or sanitized, so neither of these items is of any help.
•The document states: “—— commented on the sinking of the U.S. communications ship, Liberty.”
•This author’s comment: The ship was not sunk.
•Document: “They said that Dayan personally ordered the attack on the ship.”
•This author’s comment: The issue is what weight should be given to the assertion that Dayan personally ordered the attack on the ship.
•Document: “One of the admirals who was present also disapproved of the action.”
•This author’s comment: The source suggests that the navy had more than one admiral; however, in 1967, the Israel Navy had only one admiral, Shlomo Erell. Erell was in Haifa on June 8, 1967, and Dayan was en route to Hebron. There was no admiral present with Dayan at the Kirya in Tel Aviv.
•Document: “It was he [the admiral] who ordered it
[the attack] stopped and not Dayan.”
•This author’s comment: From what is known about Dayan’s temper and style of command, it is most difficult to imagine a subordinate countermanding his order in his presence. (In fact there were two attacks: the first by aircraft, which was halted by order of the chief air controller at Air Force Headquarters in the “pit” in Tel Aviv; the second was the attack by the motor torpedo boats, which was halted not from the navy headquarters in Haifa but by the motor torpedo boat division commander after the torpedo attack had been completed.)
•Document: “—— believe that the attack against the U.S. vessel is also detrimental to any political ambition Dayan may have.”
•This author’s comment: Wrong again. Dayan came out of the war a hero and remained the minister of defense and number-two person in the Israel government until after the 1973 war.
This author’s conclusion: The unidentified informant was wrong, or inaccurate, about every other assertion made. This suggests that the assertion that Dayan personally ordered the attack suffers from lack of credibility. It appears that the unidentified informant was uninformed or spread misinformation about every single detail in the document, and his evaluation of Dayan’s political future was far off the mark. How much weight, then, should be attached to the source’s reported comment that “Dayan personally ordered the attack on the ship”? None.
Dayan’s autobiography, Story of My Life, published in 1976, says that on June 8, he learned that Hebron had been captured and that he promptly set off for Hebron: “Shortly before noon on Thursday, Central Command reported to General Headquarters that its Jerusalem Brigade had linked up with Southern Command, having advanced South from Jerusalem and seized Bethlehem, Hebron, and Dahariah. I promptly set off for Hebron, meeting Uzi Narkiss [the general in charge of the Central Command] in Jerusalem and driving South with him.”4 Dayan’s book makes no mention of the Liberty incident.
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