4.Interview of Ambassador Richard B. Parker by this author on March 17, 1997, in Washington, D.C., and telephone interviews and exchanges of correspondence. Parker was a political counselor assigned to the U.S. embassy in Cairo in June 1967.
5.Interview of the CIA station chief assigned to Tel Aviv during 1967 by this author, conducted in the United States in 1988. Confirmed by interview of Ephraim Evron, Israel’s deputy chief of mission in Washington during 1967, on June 7, 1988, in Tel Aviv. See also Silverberg, If I Forget Thee, 574–99.
6.In 1967 the U.S. satellite program was known as “Corona”; it had an imaging capability but no listening capability and no real-time capability. Likewise, the U-2, which was operating in the area, had certain imaging capability but no listening capability, and it too was not real-time. The SR-71, which first flew in 1964 and which observed the first detonation of a hydrogen bomb by the People’s Republic of China in June 1967, was not yet operating in the Middle East in 1967, and it too was not a real-time electromagnetic-spectrum listener. There is no record of the United States operating RC-135 aircraft in the Middle East at that time. There is new evidence that NSA was also operating EC-121intelligence-gathering aircraft in the area during the 1967 war.
7.James M. Ennes Jr., Assault on the “Liberty” (New York: Random House, 1979), 20 n. l.
8.Ibid., 8.
9.Department of the Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, Law of Naval Warfare, NWIP 10–2 (Washington, D.C., 1955).
10.Ibid., see para. 430, 4–6: “430 The Areas of Naval Warfare: a. The General Area of Naval Warfare. The general area within which the naval forces of a belligerent are permitted to conduct operations includes: the high seas, the territorial sea and internal waters of belligerents. b. The Immediate Area of Naval Operations. Within the immediate area or vicinity of naval operations, a belligerent may establish special restrictions (see, for example, paragraph 520a) upon the activities of neutral vessels and aircraft and may prohibit altogether such vessels and aircraft from entering the area. Neutral vessels which fail to comply with a belligerent’s orders expose themselves to the risk of being fired upon.”
There is doubt as to whether Israel declared the area off El Arish an “immediate area of naval operations.” President Nasser declared, “I am going back to the pre-1956 rules governing the Gulf of Aqaba,” in a speech on May 21, 1967, which was published in Al Ahram on May 22, 1967. In a letter to this author dated November 27, 1994, this declaration has been interpreted by Abdel Monem Said Aly, director of the Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, Cairo, Egypt, as a “declaration of Egypt on the waters off the Sinai as a war zone.” A translation of the declaration from Arabic (supplied by a professor of Arabic at the University of Miami, Abla Kahlil) does not seem to relate to the waters off the Sinai. Nevertheless, the area was in fact a war zone, and thus any neutral vessel entering the area exposed itself to the risk of being fired upon under U.S. Navy doctrine in effect at the time, as well as under the international law of naval warfare.
11.NWIP 10–2of 1955, para. 501 (p. 5–3) provides that even “neutral merchant vessels acquire enemy character and are liable to the same treatment as enemy warships and military aircraft (see paragraph 503a) when . . . taking a direct part in the hostilities on the side of the enemy [or] acting in any capacity as a naval or military auxiliary to an enemy’s armed forces.” Para. 503 (p. 5–5) provides that “enemy warships and military aircraft (including naval and military auxiliaries) may be attacked and destroyed outside neutral jurisdiction.”
12.Even following the Liberty incident, the listening potential of the type of equipment the Liberty carried was almost unknown outside of U.S. intelligence circles. Not until the United States had a sky full of satellites was it deemed prudent to relax the classification of the capabilities of technical research ships, and even then some classification was deemed prudent.
13.In some circumstances VHF/UHF radio waves bounce off the ionosphere or channel and can be heard beyond the horizon. See Joseph F. Bouchard, Command in Crises (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 141 n. 10. See also R. C. Shearer and Jay Rosenthal, “Don’t Fall in the Radar Hole,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (December 1973), 55.
14.The range is extended if the transmitter or receiver is elevated. Under normal conditions aircraft can receive VHF and UHF transmissions over greater distances while flying at high altitudes. The extension of reception is directly related to increased altitude of the aircraft or the elevation of the transmitting antenna. Under certain conditions on clear, dry days, a phenomenon called “channeling” occurs that allows the straight-line radio waves to be received at a longer distance.
15.Bruce Edwards, “When Friends Look Like Foes,” Rutland Herald, Vermont Sunday Magazine, March 11, 2001, 3–11.
The NSA operation on board Liberty has been generally referred to as a “department,” which would indicate it was within the structure of the ship’s command. It is likely that it was in fact a “cryptologic detachment,” which would explain the ability of Commander Lewis to originate messages to the detachment’s command at NSA without going through the ship’s commanding officer, although not directly to any U.S. naval authority. (This distinction will become important later in the story.)
16.Francis A. “Frank” Raven, the former chief of GENS (General Soviet), had been responsible for analyzing and deciphering the medium-level cipher systems and reading the unencrypted traffic of the Soviet Union at NSA. In June 1967, Raven was chief of G Group, the former ALLO, or “ALL Others,” and was responsible for electronic intelligence (ELINT) intercepts of more than a hundred nations. He held this position until 1975. See James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America’s Most Secret Intelligence Organization (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1983), 125, 269, and 273. “‘Now frankly,’ recalled Raven, ‘we didn’t think at that point that it was highly desirable to have a ship right in the Middle East; it would be too explosive a situation’”(Bamford, p. 280). According to the original NSA plan, the Liberty was scheduled to depart that same day and steam for the eastern end of the Island of Crete, where she would remain “parked” (p. 281).
17.Ennes, Assault on the “Liberty,” 13.
18.Message from COMSERVRON EIGHT to Liberty, date/time group 240020Z May 1967 (May 24, 1967, at twenty minutes past midnight GMT. This was 7:20 p.m. EST and 8:20 p.m. EDT.) See the Russ Report.
19.Message from COMSIXTHFLT to Liberty, 062349Z June 1967. See the Russ Report.
20.See the Russ Report, tab 24, annex C: “10. (C) The COMSIXTHFLT message on June 1967, [062349Z] instructed USS Liberty to change operational control to COMSIXTHFLT and provided instructions regarding threats of attack, logistical requirements, contact reports with unidentified or hostile ships/aircraft and emergency action procedures. Specific instructions regarding communications procedures were also given. This message was probably undelivered to the USS Liberty since she shifted to the Asmara broadcast on 7 June 1967 as originally scheduled by her 2 June 1967 movement order.”
See also U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry, Liberty Incident, Record of Proceedings, app. 1, which shows that the message was transmitted on fleet broadcast from Asmara at approximately 070532Z, and, for some unknown reason, not recorded in Liberty’s radio logs as having been received.
21.E-mail message from Maurice Bennett to this author, March 14, 2001, 11:10:47 a.m. EST.
22.House Committee on Armed Services, Armed Services Investigating Subcommittee, Review of Department of Defense Worldwide Communications, Phase 1, 92d Cong., 1st sess., May 10, 1971, 9 n. 3.
23.House Armed Services Committee, Worldwide Communications. See also the Russ Report.
24.There is substantial evidence of back-channel communication between CINCUSNAVEUR and the Sixth Fleet.
25.Phil G. Goulding, Confirm or Deny: Informing the People on National Security (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 100.
26.Ibid., 102.
27.Ibid.
28.
Ibid., 93.
29.Ibid., 102; Department of Defense news release no. 542–67.
30.The document remains partially classified and may be obtained only in “sanitized” form. The parentheses indicate the text obliterated on the sanitized document. It still bears the legend “Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals” and the notation “Contents of this publication should not be reproduced, or further disseminated outside the U.S. Intelligence Community, without permission of the Director.”
31.National Security Agency, Central Security Service, “Attack on [deleted] the USS Liberty (S)-[deleted],” 1981, vii.
32.Webster’s New World Dictionary and New Webster’s Dictionary, s.v. “cover-up.”
33.Goulding, Confirm or Deny, 137.
34.Telephone interview of Dr. Harold Saunders, the incumbent of the Near East Desk on the National Security Council in June 1967, by this author on March 28, 1991. When the question of the false press release was put to Dr. Saunders, he replied, “For every covert operation there has to be a cover story. That’s our story.”
35.Dean Rusk was interviewed by Thames TV for its documentary Attack on the “Liberty.” The program aired on British television on Tuesday, January 27, 1987; script, 55, items 255 and 256. Dean Rusk died on December 20, 1994.
Chapter 4. The Liberty Targeted
1.The Liberty deck log indicates that the ship arrived at Point Alpha at 0849. The findings of the U.S. Navy court of inquiry concur with the deck log. The Liberty combat information center (CIC) log indicates 0835, and other sources cite other times. The Israel Defense Forces, History Department, Research and Instruction Branch, report The Attack on the “Liberty” Incident, June 1982, states 0843 [hereafter cited as IDF History]. These discrepancies are not significant for this study.
2.Message from USDAO Tel Aviv Israel to DIA, 082100Z June 67. Paragraph 4 refers to DAO 0812 reporting, “Egyptian shelling attack from sea in Gaza area reported by IDF yesterday.”
3.The Liberty deck log of June 8, 1967, reports the explosions. Also, Commander McGonagle testified about the explosions before the naval court of inquiry, 33–34.
4.James M. Ennes Jr., Assault on the “Liberty” (New York: Random House, 1979), 56.
5.Whether the report of shelling from the sea on June 7, 1967, was the result of the sapper activity is not known.
6.Following the 1967 war, the IDF recognized this weak link in its command-and-control system and moved navy headquarters to the Kirya. One can only speculate on whether or not an earlier consolidation of navy command and control with the existing headquarters at the Kirya would have prevented the Liberty tragedy.
7.Interviews of Cdr. Moshe Oren, the MTB division commander; Ahron Yurach, the CIC officer on boat 204; Gil Keren, the commanding officer of boat 204; Uri “Chera” Tsur, a junior officer in training on board boat 206; and the commanding officers of boats 203 and 206 (who requested not to be identified), between January 11 and 18, 1990, in Tel Aviv and Ashkelon, Israel.
8.Israel naval headquarters war log, June 8, 1967, 081205 entry. See also war log of Division 914: “DIV 914 sailed out of Ashdod.” June 8, 1967, 1120, entry.
9.Although Jane’s Fighting Ships rated these motor torpedo boats at forty-two knots, interviews with the officers in command of the boats on June 8, 1967, and other Israeli naval officers familiar with the boats established that the boat engines were “high time”—that is, almost at the end of their useful lives and in need of overhaul. The boats’ bottoms were encrusted, and thirty-six to thirty-eight knots was the best they could do on that day. The boat most recently out of overhaul was 203. It was the fastest of the three.
10.Israel naval headquarters war log 081330 entry.
11.MTB Division 914, war log, 081341. There is a slight discrepancy between the Israel naval headquarters war log, which reflects contact at 1343, and the air traffic controllers’ audiotape, which reflects the vector to the target at 1345. Radars are “line of sight.” Therefore, exactly on the surface of the earth or the sea they can “see” a target on the earth’s surface at a range of nineteen statute, or 16.5 nautical, miles, because of the curvature of the earth. The radar antennas on the MTBs were mounted on their masts, about eighteen feet above the surface of the sea. In addition, the Liberty’s hull, superstructure, and masts projected about seventy feet above the surface of the sea. These minor elevations would have slightly increased the reception range of the radar. Whether the MTBs’ radar could “paint,” or see, a reflected radar image at twenty-two miles or whether the Liberty and the MTBs were actually closer together is unknown. According to the positions reported by the Liberty’s commanding officer, the motor torpedo boats were about twenty miles away from the ship at the time of contact. If they were farther apart than normal radar range, then the ability of the radar to see over the horizon may be explained by channeling. It is known that the destroyers Davis and Massey reported radar contact with the Liberty the following morning at substantially more than twenty miles. See R. C. Shearer and Jay Rosenthal, “Don’t Fall in the Radar Hole,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (December 1973).
12.“Gulli” is the nickname for Gullivir. He was either nineteen or twenty years of age at the time and was a regular navy sailor, with the rank of samal, which is equal to sergeant in the U.S. Army or third-class petty officer in the U.S. Navy.
13.Rounded to twenty-four miles.
14.For example, the Decca Bridgemaster radar now available for commercial ship navigation. The radar is integrated with GPS and gives a constant digital readout of the ship’s latitude and longitude as well as course over the ground (COG) and speed over the ground (SOG). Placing the cursor on a target will give the target an automatic identification number and provide a digital readout of the target’s course, speed, position, and distance. It will also instantly calculate and display the target’s true bearing and relative bearing, as well as its closest point of approach.
15.Osa or Komar missile boats could have conducted shore bombardment with Soviet Styx SSM missiles. This type of shore bombardment did not occur during the 1967 war, and the full capability of these Soviet missile boats did not become known to the Israel Navy until many months after the war.
16.See Shearer and Rosenthal, “Radar Hole,” 55.
17.The same procedure is followed today between the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy. This was confirmed to this author by U.S. Air Force officers at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, on April 5, 1995, and can be independently confirmed by merely consulting an experienced U.S. Air Force communications officer.
18.The 1300 position interpolated from the 1200 position in the Liberty deck log, 31-22.2 N, 33-41.1 E, moved forward on the course line five nautical miles, is 31-22.2 N, 33-36.1 E. This position for the Liberty is shown on the map in the IDF History. According to the Liberty’s commanding officer, the ship’s position at 1300 was 31-25 N, 33-38 E. The positions do not agree. They are about five miles apart. That is why the term “approximate” is used. The five-mile difference is not significant. However, the IDF History indicates that the Liberty turned to the north when the air attacks began and continued due north until the torpedo attack was over. While it appears the initial turn to the north took place, Commander McGonagle testified that he held 283 degrees during the torpedo attack, though he conceded that he may have zigzagged.
19.Israel naval headquarters war log 081347 entry.
20.When the Thames TV producer was interviewing Rear Admiral Erell, Erell made several references to “the plot.” Erell was referring to the plotting board, but the Thames TV producer thought that Erell was referring to “a plot.” After several minutes, they got on the same wavelength, but for a short time Thames TV thought that Erell was making a confession.
21.The same procedure is followed in U.S. Navy court of inquiry procedures.
22.This author first heard this story during an interview of Rear Adm. Shlomo Erell in Israel on August 16, 1989. The general outline of this incident is mentioned by
Randolph S. Churchill and Winston S. Churchill in their book The Six Day War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), 100. See also Shearer and Rosenthal, “Radar Hole,” 56. A similar false-image problem occurred on the night of August 4, 1964, in the Gulf of Tonkin, when radar operators on board the USS Maddox (DD 731) and Turner Joy (DD 951) saw echoes they evaluated as attacking boats. There were no attacking boats. The “ghosts” were very likely caused by anomalous propagation of radar energy resulting from unusual atmospheric conditions.
23.Interview of Pinchas Pinchasy by this author on January 12, 1990, at Technion University, Haifa.
24.Menorah (Hebrew for “lamp”), which was the call sign for a flight of Mirage IIICJ aircraft during the 1967 war.
25.Point Boaz was a geographic point in the Mediterranean at 31°36.5 N, 33°15 E, that the IAF designated as a point of entry and departure for Israel Air Force planes going into and out of the Suez and Egypt. The points on the Liberty’s patrol pattern were: Point Alpha, 31-27.2 N, 34-00 E; Point Bravo, 31-22.3 N, 33-42 E; and Point Charlie, 31-31 N, 33-00 E. Point Bravo is less than fifteen miles south and twenty-seven miles east of Point Boaz, a direct line distance of less than thirty-one nautical miles.
Point Charlie is less than six miles south and fifteen miles west of Point Boaz, a direct line distance of less than sixteen nautical miles.
26.Israel Air Force transcript of communications between air force headquarters and Kursa Flight, time 1351.
27.Interview of Kursa Flight leader by this author on June 10, 1990, at Tel Aviv; and interview of the Kursa wingman by author on June 17, 1990, at Tel Aviv. Corroborated by Israel Air Force audiotape of conversations between Kursa Flight and air control. (Names not released, by request.)
28.“Blue Max” was the nickname, or code name, that the Israelis used for the mark they put on their ships and armor to identify them as Israeli. In 1967 the Blue Max was a red background with a white cross on it, resembling the Swiss flag. This mark was used until well after 1973.
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