James Scott did contact two Americans who were on the ground in Israel on June 8, 1967. The first was then Capt. Ernest Castle, the U.S. naval attaché at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv. Castle was advised of the attack on the Liberty by the Israel military liaison officer, Lt. Col. Michael Bloch. Castle sent at 1414Z a message to the White House and the Sixth Fleet informing them of Israel’s report of the attack. He was the first U.S. Navy person to reach the Liberty after the attack. He coordinated the transmission of questions and information back and forth to the U.S. Navy court of inquiry and the Chief of Naval Operations.
James Scott does mention Castle seven times in his book but never mentions Castle’s conclusions about the attack. Initially Castle had been furious, “mad as hell,” about the attack, but as the investigation developed he concluded it was not premeditated. Ernest Castle and this author went to Israel together on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Liberty tragedy. This author flew Captain Castle out to the exact spot, by GPS, where Castle had flown over the Liberty on June 8, 1967. We dropped thirty-four flowers in a circle around the spot to commemorate the U.S. naval men who died.26 Here, again, are a few lines of what Captain Castle told Thames TV on camera in 1982:
Let us presume that the Israeli High Command was so fearful that the United States would learn of what was an evident Israeli plan to take the Golan or any other plan on the part of the Israelis, when they say, “My golly, that will irritate the United States, our great friend, we better not do that or let that happen so let’s sink their ship instead.”
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, and captured all the Egyptian armor in the Sinai, if they had decided they had to sink the United States ship, I believe they would have done so.27
The other American whom James Scott contacted was John Hadden, the CIA chief of station in Tel Aviv. After his assignment in Israel, Hadden returned to CIA headquarters, where he ran the Israel desk and then the Middle East desk. Hadden was deeply involved in the CIA investigation of the Liberty incident. He had many contacts in Israel; he and Castle are probably the two most knowledgeable Americans about the Liberty, having been on the ground in Israel in June 1967. Hadden told this author that he had told James Scott that the evidence established that the attack was a tragic mistake. Yet neither Hadden’s name nor Hadden’s conclusions are mentioned anywhere in the Scott book. Prior to Scott’s visit to Israel he was provided by Hadden with names of persons in Israel who might assist him in his research. There is no indication in the Scott book of any contact with those sources.28
Another example of Scott’s technique of selective omission is on page 236 of his book, where he quotes a passage from a highly respected syndicated columnist, James J. Kilpatrick, published on August 1, 1967: “Syndicated columnist James Kilpatrick urged reporters to ‘keep digging’” (emphasis added).29 Apparently Kilpatrick did keep digging and on September 5, 1967, he published an article in the National Review that summed up his conclusions from his digging to date:
Press service interviews with survivors of the attack have turned up a uniform conviction that the attack was deliberate [emphasis added]. Sailors point to the morning-long aerial surveillance; the presence of the flag; the known configuration of the Liberty; her name in English on the stern (Egyptian naval ships carry their names in the cursive Arabic script); her slow progression in international waters. All of these factors support the crew’s conclusion that the assault was no accident.
Opposed to this argument is the line of reasoning which holds that the Israeli government was heavily dependent upon the goodwill of the United States; that it would have been utterly irrational for the Israeli navy knowingly to have launched an attack on a U.S. ship; and that the only reasonable explanation is that the incident was a mistake arising from the natural tensions and fallible judgments of a hot war [emphasis added].30
On page 141 of his book James Scott claims that President Johnson believed that the attack was deliberate: “The president handed a great scoop to the magazine reporter, but with conditions. Attribution had to be indirect with references only to senior or high-ranking administration officials. The president told Charles Roberts of Newsweek that the United States had accepted Israel’s apology, but had rejected its explanation of how the attack occurred. Israel’s assault on the Liberty, he told the reporter, was deliberate. The Jewish state’s motive was to prevent the American ship from eavesdropping on Israeli transmissions during the war.” His only support for this claim is a cable sent by the then-spokesman at the Israeli embassy in Washington, Dan Pattir, to the Israel Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, and it directly contradicts President Johnson’s own written statement, “At eleven o’clock we learned that the ship had been attacked in error.”31
Presumably, Scott’s source for his claim was page 568 of Tom Segev’s book 1967: Israel, the War and the Year That Transformed the Middle East,32 because Segev’s English translator misspells Pattir’s name as “Patir” and so does Scott. Dan Pattir has advised this author that Scott never spoke to him. This author spoke to Dan Pattir several times in September, October, and November 2009.
Pattir’s cable was in Hebrew, except for two English words. An English translation of the full text is:
No. 155
To: The Ministry Jerusalem
[illegible word] 111220
June 67
From: Mem Israel [Embassy] Washington
Typed: 120330
Top Urgent—Handle
[word illegible Maybe: Foreign Ministry/U.S. Department? abbreviated] SECRET.
Very reliable press source told me last night:
1.Briefing by the President and his press secretary George Christian given separately on Thursday and Friday to representatives of “Newsweek” and “Time” which included references intended for indirect publication on the subject of the ship incident.
2.Following these conversations, a news report will be published tomorrow to be attributed to top Administration sources that the U.S. accepted the apology from the Israeli government on the incident, but rejected its explanations. The news report will say that according to the Administration sources the Israelis perpetrated(?) A DELIBERATE ATTACK because the Liberty was intentionally involved in electronic spying on Israeli and Egyptian transmitters close to the area of the land and aerial battles.
3.“Newsweek” adds that this claim from the top Administration derives from a clear intention to free the President from being tied by pro-Israeli moves and public opinion that is so all encompassing and energetic all over the U.S., and will enable him [to take] more convenient steps in renewed conversation with Arab countries.
Pattir
[TO] Foreign Minister [abbreviated]; Prime Minister [abbreviated]; [Moshe]
Dayan; Director General 2 [abbreviated]; Vice Director General [abbreviated]; Foreign
Ministry-U.S. Department [abbreviated]; or [rosh Mossad?]
Yod yod/yod bet yod.33
While James Scott relies on this cable, it is in fact double hearsay. “Charles Roberts had said that President Johnson had said.” Both President Johnson and Charles Roberts are deceased (Johnson died on January 22, 1973, and Roberts on January 15, 1992), and no written document is known to exist anywhere to confirm that President Johnson believed the attack was premeditated. In fact, the third paragraph of the above cable states that the news leak about the Liberty was motivated by the political consideration of giving the U.S. president more flexibility in establishing renewed conversations with Arab countries, many of which had broken diplomatic relations with the United States as the war started.
It is true that President Johnson gave interviews to two journalists on the late evening of June 9, 1967.34 The interview with Charles Roberts is mentioned in the White House log without any notation regarding the substance of the interview. We do not know whether Johnson
told Roberts that he believed the attack was deliberate, or that the attack might have been deliberate, or that some persons believed the attack was deliberate. What is interesting is that the second interview of President Johnson that evening, with Hugh Sidy of Life magazine, which is noted in detail in the White House log, does not mention or even suggest that Johnson believed the attack was deliberate.35 When this author interviewed him, on April 18, 1994, Sidy had no recollection of Johnson telling him the attack was deliberate. Rather, he recalled Johnson handing him a document about the Liberty incident and watching him read it and asking him what he thought.
Johnson’s memoir, The Vantage Point,36 infuriated some Liberty survivors by stating that the death toll was ten, with one hundred wounded. These numbers were from the first reports received about the attack and do not accurately reflect the final official numbers: thirty-four dead and 171 wounded.37 President Johnson also stated in his memoir that “the ship had been attacked in error”;38 he later referred to “the tragic accident involving the Liberty.”39 It is conceivable that Johnson, like others, may have suspected that the attack was deliberate thirty-six hours after first word of the incident reached Washington. But his final opinion, after multiple investigations, was clear. His own investigation was conducted by Clark Clifford, chair of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, who, as we have seen, researched the incident and reported on July 18, 1967 (five weeks and four days after the attack) to Johnson that “the information thus far available does not reflect that the Israeli high command made a premeditated attack on a ship known to be American” and that “the weight of the evidence is that the Israeli attacking force originally believed their target was Egyptian.”40
The Scott book quotes a cadre of U.S. government officials as believing the attack was premeditated but fails to provide any evidentiary basis for those opinions. Scott also quotes a book that Richard Helms, the CIA director, published in 2003,41 where Helms states that the attack was premeditated but at the same time concedes that he “had no role in the Board of Inquiry that followed [the attack].” Nor does Scott mention the official public position of the CIA that “the Israelis were apparently not aware that they were attacking the Liberty. The attack was not made in malice toward the U.S. and was by mistake.”42
The Scott book may be an appropriate tribute from a son to a father, but it does not substantiate the theory that the attack on the Liberty was anything but the outcome of a set of tragic mistakes by the United States and Israel.
Chapter 20
CONFIRMATION
NSA 1995 Historian’s Analysis
Dr. Thomas R. Johnson served for many years as historian for the National Security Agency. He came to the agency in 1964. In 1992 he was tasked with writing a history of it. He completed the work in 1998 and retired in 1999.1 Johnson authored a six-document series for the NSA titled “American Cryptology during the Cold War 1945–1989.”2 The history has been criticized for telling only the agency’s failures and not its many successes.3
The history consists of a series of six documents:
Document 1: American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945–1960, pp. 1–155
Document 2: American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945–1989, pp. 157–287
Document 3: American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1960–1972, pp. 289–494
Document 4: American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945–1989, pp. 495–652
Document 5: American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945–1989, pp. 1–116
Document 6: American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945–1989, pp. 117–262.
In response to a request by Matthew M. Aid of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the first three documents were released on July 9, 2007. Matthew Aid posted them on the Internet on November 14, 2008. The posted material may be viewed at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB78/docs.htm.4
Of interest regarding the Liberty incident are 8 pages (432 through 439) of Document 3, captioned “The Attack on the USS Liberty,” which include the following statements:
The Johnson administration was properly outraged. The State Department, in a scathing statement highly unusual for diplomats, called the attack “quite literally incomprehensible. As a minimum, the attack must be condemned as an act of military recklessness reflecting wanton disregard for human life.” But Clark Clifford, who was appointed by the president to render a final judgment, called it an identification error. Clifford relied heavily on COMINT reports showing Israeli confusion about the identification; these would have been difficult to fake. Going into it with a preconceived notion that the Israelis must have known [that they were attacking an American ship], he concluded that what was involved was “a flagrant act of gross negligence . . .” rather than a deliberate act. . . .
The attack on the Liberty should not be viewed as a bizarre, or even an especially unusual, identification error. Even in peacetime such errors are made all too frequently—the Soviet shootdown of Korean Airlines Flight 007 and the American shootdown of an Iranian Airlines Flight IR 655 on July 3, 1988 are good examples. When a country is at war, the possibility of error is compounded by haste and fear. Losses to friendly fire always represent a substantial percentage of the casualties. And the Israeli agreement to compensate should not be taken as proof of guilty knowledge, but rather as an attempt to retain the friendship of a benefactor wronged. (Page 438)
The entire text of Dr. Johnson’s segment on the Liberty follows. (Several comments by this author on minor points are inserted in square brackets in Johnson’s text. For instance, he mentions the launch of A-4 Skyhawks but fails to mention that A-1 Skyraiders and F-4 Phantoms were also launched. He also states that two torpedoes were launched against the Liberty, when in fact five were launched.)
The Liberty, NSA’s choice as the TRS (Technical Research Ship) deployment to the Middle East, was a reconditioned World War II Victory ship, converted to an AGTR (Auxiliary Technical Research Ship) in 1964. The vessel already had five cruises under its belt. It had 20 intercept positions, 6 officers, a SIGINT crew of 125 and an overall complement of 172 men. With TRSSCOM, ship-to-shore radiotelephone circuits, and two receive terminals for fleet broadcasts, the Liberty was one of the best equipped ships in the TRS inventory. The Navy approved NSA’s request, and the Liberty, off the west coast of Africa, steamed for Rota, where it took aboard an additional 9 linguists, including 3 NSA civilians, and more keying material for its communications circuits. On the second of June, it set off for the eastern Mediterranean.
The Liberty’s sailing order specified that it was to stay at least 12.5 miles off the coast of the UAR [United Arab Republic, i.e., Egypt] and 6.5 miles from Israel. When war broke out on 5 June, the Sixth Fleet, to which the Liberty had been temporarily attached, was directed to remain at least 100 miles off the coasts of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and the UAR, but the Liberty’s instructions were not changed. When it arrived in its operating area late on 7 June, Captain McGonagle, the vessel’s commander, still had written instructions that brought the Liberty close into the coast.
Nasser’s charge on 6 June that the U.S. and Britain were providing air cover for the Israelis, and the possibility that the Soviets might intervene, brought new orders to the Sixth Fleet to stand off at least 200 miles from the eastern Mediterranean littoral. The next day the JCS [U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff] decided to pull the Liberty, the only U.S. naval vessel still in the far eastern Mediterranean, back to at least 20 nautical miles from the UAR and 15 from Israel. Later that day JCS changed again, this time to 100 nautical miles from both countries.
The first JCS message never reached the Liberty—an Army communications center misrouted it to a naval communications station in the Pacific. When, an hour later, the Joint Reconnaissance Center of the JCS decided to pull the Liberty back to 100 nautical miles, a series of communications fiascos occurred which stretched on into the night. Message misroutings, delays occasioned by the press of other business, refusals by the Navy to
transmit based on a verbal order, all combined to delay the message receipt until after the attack. It was a repeat of the warning message to Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, and there was blame aplenty.
The Liberty was reconnoitered by several unidentified aircraft during the morning hours of 8 June. That afternoon it was about twenty-five nautical miles north of the Egyptian city of Al Arish when, at about 1400 local, two French-built Israeli Dassault fighters veered toward the ship and began strafing it with cannon and rockets. The attack put some 821 rounds into the hull and superstructure, wounded McGonagle, and killed 8 crewmembers. The Liberty managed to get off a desperate message to Sixth Fleet before the power to the radio equipment went out, and Admiral Martin, the Sixth Fleet commander, launched 4 armed A-4 Skyhawks for air cover. [NOTE: 4 armed A-1 Skyraiders and 4 F-4 Phantoms were also launched. Estimated time of arrival over Liberty was 1715 Sinai.] Since his flagship was 450 nautical miles away from the Liberty, however, the aircraft did not arrive before 3 Israeli torpedo boats launched 2 torpedoes [NOTE: Actually, five torpedoes were launched. One hit the Liberty.] at about 1430. The torpedoes tore through the SIGINT spaces, killing 25 men and putting a hole in the hull 39 feet across. As the crew of the Liberty scrambled to keep the vessel afloat, one more crewmember was killed by machine-gun fire from 1 of the torpedo boats.
The Liberty Incident Revealed Page 30