The program provides a comment by Ennes regarding offers of help from the Israeli torpedo boats: “They claim that they came alongside and immediately offered help. Well, that is the purest of baloney.” Neither the producers, the narrator, nor Ennes explain how Ennes knew anything about offers or lack of offers of help from the torpedo boats. When Commander McGonagle was recalled a second time to testify before the court of inquiry on June 14, 1967, less than a week after the event, he read into the record a chronology of events that the court, during his initial testimony the day before, had instructed him to prepare in consultation with his crew. The chronology entry for June 8, 1967, at 1503 was: “One MTB returned to ship and signaled [“Do you need help?” in English] C.O. signaled ‘Negative.’”20 The Liberty deck log for 1503 on Thursday, June 8, 1967 reflects, “One MTB returned to ship and signalled ‘Do you need help?’ Commanding Officer directed that, ‘Negative’ be sent in reply.”
Obviously, the Ennes account of this event, which he did not personally observe but presented thirty-four years later on the History Channel, and the account given by his commanding officer in sworn recorded testimony six days after the event (and corroborated by the Liberty’s log made at the time of the event) are not in agreement on this point. It is one of many times that Ennes has disagreed with the memory or actions of his commanding officer as well as the written official records created within a few days of the event. What kind of research did the producers do on this issue?
Another gross misrepresentation involves Liberty crewman Joe Meadors, who states that he signaled the torpedo boats and that he raised a flag after the first flag had been shot away. The sworn testimony at the U.S. Navy court of inquiry given a few days after the event by Ens. David G. Lucas and by Chief Petty Officer Harold Jessie Thompson indicates that Signalman Russell O. David did the signaling to the torpedo boats and that it was also Signalman David who raised the flag after it had been shot down.21 In a letter dated September 4, 2001, Russell O. David authorized this author to quote him as follows: “I am, indeed, the one that did the signaling to the boats and I am the one who put up the sailing ensign after it was shot down! At that time I was one of only two people, on the ship, who could send and receive light transmissions, and I am the one who received the Bronze Star with Combat V for the actions of that day.”
The producers apparently never checked the court of inquiry testimony or the Navy records regarding Signalman David’s medal, or if they did, they presented Meadors’ tale without disclosing that there was substantial evidence that his claim was false. In regard to why Meadors claimed he did the signaling and hoisting, Signalman David wrote, “I can only surmise that Mr. Meadors didn’t want to be left out, for whatever reason.”
There are many other significant incorrect statements of fact. There are also just plain misrepresentations, such as showing footage of a destroyer steaming and leading the viewer to believe the destroyer is the Liberty. There was other footage of a ship being strafed by a plane and a ship with a plume of smoke drifting off to the side, which was contrary to the actual wind conditions at the time of the air attack. No voice-over or subtitle on the screen discloses that this footage is not of the Liberty; the narrative in fact was presented in a manner to mislead the viewer into believing the footage in fact is of the Liberty.22 These deficiencies all lead to the conclusion that the program was produced without adequate research, fact-checking, or attention to detail, which in the past had been the hallmark of programs presented on the History Channel.
A private video was also produced by Sligo Productions, USS Liberty Survivors: Our Story.23 The script was written and the taping directed by Patrick King. The credits list James Ennes Jr. as responsible for research. Rather than a story, it is a series of interviews with the Liberty crew members and others who support the intentional-attack conspiracy theory. While it contains some footage of the Liberty and some pictures relating to the incident, it does not present, or even refer to, the mistake theory or the many official investigations that concluded that the attack was a tragic mistake. It tells its story from the point of view that the attacks were intentional attacks on a U.S. ship.
Tito “De Nagy” Howard, a self-proclaimed man “at war with the Israelis,” had a relationship with the Liberty Veterans Association (LVA) going back many years.24 According to Joe Lentini, the LVA gave Howard “$20,000.00 or $25,000” in order to make a movie about the Liberty incident, but for a long period of time the movie was not made, and the money paid was not publicly disclosed or accounted for.25 In 1983 Howard produced a videotape. The USS Liberty newsletter in January 1984 commented on a one-hour tape produced by Tito Howard titled “Massacre and Masquerade.”: “We found that only six minutes pertain to the Liberty. Most of the rest consists of brief interviews with leading anti-Zionist leaders, all airing their views about Israel.”26
In 2002 Howard produced a video documentary titled “Loss of Liberty,” which was presented at Connecticut College on Tuesday, October 29, 2002. The program was sponsored by the Connecticut Chapter of the Council for the National Interest.27 When Howard finally produced “Loss of Liberty,” Joe Lentini was asked by Howard to comment on it. He offered what he believed to be constructive criticism. Lentini was then called by Phil Tourney, then Liberty Veterans Association president, who said to him, “It was too bad that he wasn’t killed by the torpedo with the rest of his buddies.”28
“’Loss of Liberty” is a poor-quality production, poorly researched, poorly produced, and saturated with factual errors. For example, the video is critical of Adm. Isaac C. Kidd Jr., the officer designated by Adm. John McCain to serve as president of the U.S. Navy court of inquiry that investigated the Liberty incident. It is amusing that the video shows a portrait of Admiral Isaac C. Kidd Sr., the father of Isaac Kidd Jr.—and represents him as “Isaac, Jr.” Howard uses a cut of Cdr. Ramy Lunz from the Thames TV production and identifies him as Lt. Cdr. Pincus Pinchasy.29 Enlisted Liberty crew member James Smith is described as a lieutenant commander. Enlisted crew member Glenn Olipant is described as a “radio man” when in fact he was an ETR, a rate that repaired radios (as well as radars), not operated them.
Howard claims the Navy F-14 Tomcat was named in honor of Adm. Thomas Moorer. In fact the Tomcat was named in honor of Vice Adm. Thomas F. Connolly, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air).30 Howard claims the Washington-Moscow hotline was used for the first time specifically for the Liberty incident. The hotline was used for serious communication between Washington and Moscow for the first time during the 1967 war. Twenty messages were exchanged. There were three messages on June 5, four messages on June 6, two messages on June 7. On June 8 five messages were exchanged, of which three (the eleventh, thirteenth, and fourteenth) related to the Liberty incident.31
In the video, Phil Tourney tells of Admiral Kidd removing his stars (marks of rank) and then replacing them on “his lapel.” Marks of rank are not worn on lapels. The rolling credits mention the “United States Navel” archives—that is right, Navel. This production does not confuse apples and oranges but rather navel oranges and belly buttons. Finally, although all records confirm that the launch of aircraft from the carriers America and Saratoga to defend the Liberty occurred between 3:50 and 4:00 p.m., Howard claims Secretary McNamara recalled the aircraft at 2:35 p.m., about an hour and twenty minutes before they took off.
On July 30, 2008, Military.com carried a story titled “SS Liberty sails to Challenge Israel.” On August 1, 2008, James Ennes posted the following comment on the Military.com website:32
Aug 1, 2008 4:44:16 PM
One of the links above recommended a Liberty film. We appreciate the support for our story, but must tell you that most survivors do not recommend this film.
As a survivor of the attack, I have seen all the films, participated in most of them, read all the books, most of the articles and many of the forums and have participated in literally hundreds of radio, television and film interviews in the past thirty years.
The Howard production has never been aired on network television. It is sold through Howard’s organization, “The Liberty Alliance,” and also offered for sale by Noontide Press. What else can you buy from Noontide Press? They sell “audio and video tapes from the 14th IHR conference.” IHR is the Institute for Historical Review, one of the two major Holocaust-denial organizations in the United States. The same 2002 circular offering sale of “Loss of Liberty” also offers the remarks of Phillip Tourney, at the time president of the LVA, which he made at the fourteenth Holocaust-denial conference.
On February 2, 2002, John Hadden, CIA Chief of Station, Tel Aviv, on June 1967, was visited by a “TV crew” consisting of Peter Hounam and Chris Mitchel, who claimed to be from a British TV production company working on a production about the Six Day War.33 They described documents to Hadden, allegedly CIA documents of which he has no memory and that Hadden said he doubts exist. They told him that A Jay Cristol was an Israeli agent and that the book The Liberty Incident was “a brief for the prosecution.”34 They told Hadden they had spent the previous night at Colebrook, Vermont, interviewing “a crew member.”35 They stressed that the Israeli motive in attacking the Liberty was to keep the United States from learning of the Israeli plan to attack Syria. They ignored Hadden’s response that Israel had kept the United States fully informed about the impending attack on Syria.
John Hadden was convinced that the “program” about the Six Day War was a cover story, because Hounam and Mitchell remained focused on attacking A Jay Cristol and his The Liberty Incident and were displeased when he rejected their allegations as untrue. The tapes of Hadden’s denials did not appear in the video. Passage of time confirmed Hadden’s intuition. Hounam did not produce a video on the Six Day War. He produced a book, Operation Cyanide: Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III, together with a video documentary, “Dead in the Water,” aired on BBC Four, Sunday August 21, 2004.36 “Dead in the Water” has not aired on U.S. TV but is available on DVD.
“Dead in the Water” was reviewed with the following comments:
The worst type of story telling
This production, the foundation for Peter Hounam’s book titled “Operation Cyanide,” is a prime example of myth creation disguised as “investigative journalism.”
What is most remarkable about the production’s theses is that—if it were accurate—then in fact the U.S. was not a non-belligerent in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war as claimed by outspoken former Liberty crewmembers and others, but actually a co-belligerent, and thus the USS Liberty was not entitled to the rights of a neutral as a non-belligerent third party.37
One needs go no farther than the cover of Peter Hounam’s Operation Cyanide, on which his video production is based, to be aware of the superficiality of his research on the attack on the Liberty. His subtitle is “Why the Bombing [emphasis added] of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III.” The Liberty was not bombed but rather strafed and torpedoed. The flawed research and presentations of false information permeate the book and the entire production.
The video is not only a dishonest presentation of fact but presents a thesis so absurd that it is not worthy of serious consideration. The thesis is that the Six Day War was in fact a joint U.S.-Israeli military operation designed to destroy Egypt and that the attack on the USS Liberty was simply a pretext for a U.S. aerial strike on Cairo—using nuclear weapons, no less. The attack on the Liberty occurred on the fourth day of the Six Day War. By the fourth day Israel had destroyed the Arab air forces, swept through the Sinai and captured the Suez Canal, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. Only a one-day operation against Syria remained unfinished. Under these circumstances, why would Israel or the United States make a nuclear attack on Cairo? What would such an attack accomplish?
The same week in Vietnam, the U.S. lost 187 military personnel, and no one in the U.S. government or military was contemplating a nuclear attack on Hanoi. But Hounam argues that the loss of thirty-four lives on the Liberty would support nuking Cairo. Absurd!!
The video is factually inaccurate in many ways. It presents remarks by the Liberty’s commanding officer edited out of context. This can be confirmed by viewing and comparing the actual speech quoted by the Associated Press.38 The video reports the story, first written about by Stephen Green,39 of one Greg Reight claiming that U.S. Air Force RF-4C aircraft flew reconnaissance for Israel before and during the war, without mention that Reight was completely discredited by U.S. ambassador Richard Parker in an article published in 1997.40 Reight is also filmed saying Israel had no reconnaissance aircraft in 1967. A widely published picture taken by an Israeli Mirage IIIC clearly showing the shadow on the ground of the aircraft itself as it approaches three destroyed MiGs on the tarmac was edited to eliminate the shadow and attributed by Reight to a USAF RF-4C.41
Ambassador Parker’s research elicited denials of a U.S. Air Force RF-4C operation during the Six Day War from the commanding officer of the 38th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, a unit in Germany that operated the aircraft; from Col. Thomas Whitlock and the next commander up the echelon; and from Col. Earl A. Butts of the 26th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing (TRW). Colonel Whitlock had a “compelling conviction” that no such operation took place, and Colonels Whitlock and Butts both refuted technical details of the story.
Parker commented further at page 71:
There is also no knowledge of this operation among officials who were at the working level in the State Department, CIA, and the White House at the time. Alfred Atherton (then director of Arab-Israel affairs), Donald Bergus (director of Egypt affairs), Harold Saunders (Walt Rostow’s deputy for the Near East at the National Security Council), and James Critchfield (director of the CIA’s Near East division) all say they saw no sign of such an operation. Saunders said that Rostow denied any knowledge of it. Critchfield commented that he was running an ad hoc control group during the 1967 crisis and saw “everything.” He saw nothing that would support Green’s story and did not know why Green continued to pursue that “dead dog.” I have also talked with the man who was the CIA station chief in Tel Aviv in 1967. He had never heard the story and commented that he could not imagine the Israelis letting any foreigners that close to their military operations.
All told, these statements make a convincing set of denials. Supported by the technical problems raised by Colonels Butts and Whitlock, they were enough to persuade me that the story was not true and that Green had been the victim of an intelligence fabricator, perhaps of a Soviet disinformation effort, because I could not conceive of anyone else who might have a motive for planting the story.
Parker received further refutations from personal inquiry to Secretary Robert McNamara, as well as two Israeli generals in positions to know—Maj. Gen. Shlomo Gazit, head of Israel military intelligence research, and Maj. Gen. “Motti” Hod, chief of the Israel Air Force in 1967.
The narrator in the video talks of Operation Cyanide, the title of the Hounam book, an “operation” that has never been documented anywhere except in Hounam’s imagination, while the screen displays a memo clearly marked “FRONTLET 615,” which is a memo regarding approval of a U.S. covert operation in April 1967, months before the beginning of the Six Day War, and the USS Liberty receiving orders diverting her from her African mission and directing her to the eastern Mediterranean.
The program includes Cdr. David Lewis telling his hearsay story about Rear Admiral Geis launching and calling back Sixth Fleet aircraft without men
tioning that all records show that the aircraft were launched and recalled upon order of the Sixth Fleet’s commander, Vice Admiral Martin. On the issue of the recall of aircraft, the narrator muffles the question to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara so that one must replay the tape several times to hear and understand it. This appears to be a premeditated action, designed to obfuscate McNamara’s very strong, positive denial. The failure to check facts and the omission of facts demonstrate Hounam’s anti-Israel bias, which can be independently verified by examining Hounam’s history and other writings.
It is reported that in 1981ABC News prepared a program for Nightline. There was much excitement among some of the Liberty crew members when they were told that their version of the story was going to be told by Ted Koppel on Nightline. The USS “Liberty” Newsletter, under the caption “USS Liberty in the News,” carried an article in 1981 that read, “ABC Nightline, the national late-evening news show from ABC studios in New York, has offered to release Ennes’s Defense Electronics story about the attack on the Liberty to coincide with the release of the magazine. That broadcast, barring possible schedule changes, should be aired Wednesday, October 7 [1981]. This will be the first mention on national television of any crew member’s version of the attack.”42
The story did not appear on Nightline, and in 1982 the USS “Liberty” Newsletter carried the following:
Ted Koppel’s Nightline
Thursday afternoon a call came from a producer for Ted Koppel’s nationally broadcast late night television news program, ABC Nightline. Nightline had heard about the reunion and wanted to do a story. Could four of us come to the ABC Studio at 7:00 p.m.? So that evening Jim Ennes, Don Blalock, Joe Meadors and Mike Schaley spent three hours under television lights answering questions about the attack, the heroism and the cover-up, while ABC collected eleven reels of tape. But that wasn’t enough. To round it out they spent the next three days attending reunion activities, interviewing other men at the hotel, tracking down archive films of the ship’s battered arrival in Malta, and editing it all into a logical story sequence. It was to be a 30 minute segment which would occupy the entire Nightline broadcast on June 7. The schedule was considered firm, but it was not to be.43
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