39.Thames TV documentary Attack on the “Liberty,” script VTR/THS/37733, prod. no. N. 1005, transmission, Tuesday, January 23, 1987; script ref 245, and script ref 251, 52.
40.Ennes, Assault on the “Liberty,” 164.
41.Ibid., 77.
42.James M. Ennes Jr., Prodigy, account DRNV11F, July 22, 1992. This was before the Internet as it exists today. In 1992 Prodigy was operated by Sears and was an interactive computer service forum. It was available to computer owners for a monthly charge. The Ennes postings were in an area called “Art Club-Books-Non-Fiction-Assault on the Liberty.” The Liberty Veterans Association reported “Liberty On-Line with Prodigy.”
43.Letter dated September 28, 1989 to the Keene (N.H.) Sentinel, signed by James M. Ennes Jr. and republished in the “Liberty” Newsletter, September/December 1989, 20.
44.Colebrook (N.H.) News and Sentinel, January 27, 1988. The article cites: “Reprinted from ‘Christian News.’ Dale Crowley Jr. is a Christian evangelist with his own radio program, The King’s Business.
45.Telephone interview of Mrs. Lawrence Geis by this author on March 14, 1994. Mrs. Geis was in Jacksonville, Florida.
46.Interview with Capt. Joseph M. Tully Jr., USN (Ret.), June 8, 1991, Liberty Veterans Association annual meeting, Washington, D.C.
47.Ibid.
48.Telephone interview of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara by this author, December 17, 1993. McNamara was in Washington, D.C.
49.Yoichi Okamoto was the official White House photographer in 1967. Pictures from the rolls of film shot by Okamoto on June 8, 1967, are available through the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.
50.McNamara interview.
51.Secret message from Vice Admiral Martin to Admiral McCain on the subject “Press Briefing Covering Damage to USS Liberty and Heroic Actions of Crew.” Paragraph 5 of that message states: “In general questioning, I acknowledge that I had ordered aircraft airborne quote to protect, and only to protect USS Liberty as soon as I was convinced that a U.S. ship was really under attack, and called back the aircraft when I became aware that they were not required unquote. The press was also informed that senior commanders had been fully informed of my actions and received copies of all my messages” [emphasis added].
Five days later a twenty-one-page message was sent from USS America to CINCUSNAVEUR (Admiral McCain in London) transmitting the transcript of COMSIXTHFLT’s (Admiral Martin’s) meeting with the press. The message stated that “A tape of the interview has been air mailed to CHINFO [Chief of Naval Information].” On pp. 19 and 20 the following colloquy was reported (emphasis added):
Q.After you found out the Liberty was under attack, did you inform Washington?
A.About the very first thing I did was to get the aircraft moving to protect that ship. That’s the first thing to do, is to protect the ship.
Q.And then having done that.
A.And the steps that I took to do that were sent to my superiors. Immediately, they were information [i.e., included as information addressees] on every message in connection with this that I sent to the task force commander.
Q.Sir, were you on the phone to the White House today?
A.No.
Q.Were you talking to the Joint Chiefs in Washington on the phone?
A.No.
Q.This was all radioteletype messages that you used. Did you get any instructions from them in Washington at any time?
A.No.
Q.Did you know who was? Did you have any idea at the time who was attacking that ship when you did get the word and you sent out?
A.None whatsoever.
52.Letter from USS Liberty Veterans Association to Cong. Nicholas Mavroules: “Neither Capt. Joseph Tully, Commanding Officer of the USS Saratoga nor his Executive Officer, Max Morris [sic; Morris was the navigator, not executive officer] have ever been contacted by the U.S. Navy to provide testimony concerning their launch of two flights of rescue aircraft. Indeed, the U.S. Navy denies two flights were launched” [emphasis added].
53.See column by John Omicinski, national defense correspondent of Gannett News Service, USA Today, June 7, 2001. Omicinski, relying upon the allegations of James Bamford, suggested that the supposed recall of the first flight of aircraft was grounds to impeach President Johnson.
54.John Borne, USS “Liberty” (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Reconsideration Press, 1995), 41, 42 fn.
55.Patrick King, producer, U.S.S. “Liberty” Survivors: Our Story (Los Angeles: Sligo Productions, 1991). No known TV airing.
56.NBC Television, aired January 27, 1992. Producer Christopher Carlson.
57.E-mails from Cdr. Maurice H. Bennett to this author, March 14, 2001.
58.Interview of Joseph Lentini by this author.
Chapter 9. Conspiracy Theories
1.Interview of McGeorge Bundy by this author on April 19, 1993, New York City.
2.Ye. Primakov, “How Israel Began the Aggression,” Pravda, July 27, 1967, 4. Translated from the Russian by Gregory Koldys.
3.I. Belyayev, T. Kolesnichenko, and Ye. Primakov, The “Dove” Has Been Released (Soviet Review of the Israeli-Arab June 1967 Conflict) [“Golub” Spushchen] (Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya Publishing House, 1968). An English translation was published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Joint Publications Research Service, Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific & Technical Information, Springfield, Va., JPRS 45466, May 23, 1968.
4.Belyayev, Kolesnichenko, and Primakov, The “Dove,” 50.
5.Ye. Primakov and I. Belyayev, “Lessons of the 1967 Middle East Crises,” International Affairs (Moscow) 3 (March 1968), 41.
6.Ibid., 41.
7.This author was invited by the Egyptian armed forces to visit the National Center for Middle East Studies in Cairo. The visit occurred on October 18, 1994, and he conferred with Maj. Gen. Ahmed Fakhr, the director of the center; Dr. Ali Sadek, the deputy director of the center; Maj. Gen. Ahmed M. Abdel Halim, the head of the military unit of the center; Ambassador Mahmoud Kassem, a retired Egyptian ambassador; and Amin Huwaydi, the director of Egyptian intelligence during the 1967 war and minister of war after the death of Field Marshal Abdul al-Hakim Amer. An entire day was spent discussing the Liberty incident. At the meeting this author learned that he is not strong enough to drink Egyptian coffee.
8.Chapter 3 of unpublished manuscript by Ambassador Mahmoud Kassem.
9.Interview of Ambassador Mahmoud Kassem on October 18, 1994, at the National Center for Middle East Studies, Cairo.
10.Anthony Pearson, Conspiracy of Silence (London: Quartet, 1978), 319.
11.Anthony Pearson, “The Attack on the USS Liberty: Mayday! Mayday!” Penthouse, May 1976, 54–58, 137–47; Pearson, “Conspiracy of Silence,” Penthouse, June 1976, 60–64, 147–51.
12.Pearson, Conspiracy of Silence, 30; see also 88.
13.Ibid., 30.
14.Report of Armed Services Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, 92d Cong., 1st sess., Under authority of H. Res. 201. May 10, 1971 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971).
15.Pearson, “Conspiracy,” 62.
16.Randolph S. Churchill and Winston S. Churchill, The Six Day War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), 161.
17.Various reports fix the Liberty’s arrival at Point Alpha between 0832 and 0849. The exact time of arrival within sixteen minutes is not significant.
18.Pearson, Conspiracy of Silence, 33.
19.Ibid., 1.
20.Ibid., 75, 76.
21.Richard K. Smith, “The Violation of the Liberty,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (June 1978), 62–70.
22.Ibid., 64.
23.On December 12, 1937, Japanese naval aircraft bombed and strafed the USS Panay, a river gunboat engaged in evacuating American civilians from Nanking during the Japanese invasion of China. In the attack three Americans were killed and forty-eight wounded.
24.Smith, “Violation of the Liberty,” 70.
25.Secret message from American Embassy, Tel Av
iv, to Secretary of State, number 4014, 081510Z June 67.
26.Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, June 28, 1967; Subject: Attack on the U.S.S. Liberty; Participants: H. E. Avraham Harman, Ambassador of Israel, Mr. Ephraim Evron, Minister, Embassy of Israel, Acting Secretary Katzenbach, Donald R. Morris, and James K. Matter.
27.Alfred Friendly, comment on “The Violation of the Liberty,” by Robert K. Smith, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (January 1979), 88.
28.Wilbur Crane Eveland, Ropes of Sand: America’s Failure in the Middle East (London: W. W. Norton, 1980), 325.
29.Prior to the 1967 war the United States had never provided Israel with any offensive weapons, except for a few M-48 tanks. Israel had no ballistic missiles in 1967.
30.Eveland, Ropes of Sand, 325.
31.Richard B. Parker, The Six Day War (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), 257.
32.Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Remembering the Liberty,” Washington Post, November 6, 1991.
33.“The use of VHF/UHF radio waves is limited by the position of the receiver in relation to the transmitter. . . . When using airborne VHF/UHF equipment, it is of the utmost importance that this limitation be understood. The range of VHF/UHF transmission increases with altitude, and may be approximately determined by the following simple method: Multiply the square root of the aircraft altitude in feet by 1.23 to find the VHF/UHF transmission range in nautical miles.” See U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Instrument Flying Handbook, AC 61–27C (Washington, D.C.: Superintendent of Documents, 1980), 112–113.
34.See ibid.
35.Telephone interview of Ambassador Dwight Porter by this author on November 20, 1991. Ambassador Porter was at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland. The tape is in this author’s possession.
36.Letter from Ambassador Dwight Porter to this author dated December 14, 1991. The letter is handwritten and confirms that it responds to this author’s letter dated December 6, 1991, which the ambassador received on December 13, 1991.
37.The State Department document (Incoming Telegram Department of State Z 061021Z June 67, FM AMEMBASSY BEIRUT TO RUEMC/SECSTATE WASHDC FLASH) established that the mob gathering outside and threatening the U.S. embassy in Beirut occurred on June 6, 1967, two days before the attack on the Liberty. See also Hirsh Goodman, “Messrs. Errors and No Facts,” Jerusalem Report, November 21, 1991, 42.
38.Stephen Green, Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel (New York: William Morrow, 1984).
39.In 1992, an Israeli writer repeated Stephen Green’s tale about the U.S. Air Force assisting Israel against the Arabs while Israel prepared for the 1967 war. Apparently Katz did no independent research and relies solely on Green as the source for the story. It is careless research like this that nurtures and perpetuates conspiracy theories. Samuel M. Katz, Soldier Spies: Israeli Military Intelligence (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1992).
40.Ambassador Richard B. Parker served after 1967 as U.S. ambassador to Algeria, Lebanon, and Morocco. He retired from the Foreign Service in 1980. He edited the Middle East Journal from 1981 to 1987 and served as scholar in residence at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C.
41.Richard B. Parker, “USAF in the Sinai in the 1967 War: Fact or Fiction?,” Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 1 (Autumn 1997), 67–75.
42.Parker, The Six Day War, 239.
43.John E. Borne, The USS “Liberty”: Dissenting History vs. Official History (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Reconsideration Press, 1995), 55.
44.This is clearly reflected in the White House Diary of June 8, 1967, at 0838 a.m. It is further corroborated by Harold Saunders in the “Middle East Crisis Chronological Guide, May 12–June 20,” National Security Council Document file at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas, 27.
45.Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1985). Findley was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1960 and lost his seat in the election of 1982.
46.Ibid., 167.
47.Ibid., 168.
48.Ibid., 167.
49.Interview of Adm. Donald D. Engen by this author on May 3, 1990, in Washington, D.C.
50.“Several authors have written about the attack on the Liberty. One or two have been highly emotional and have written less than factual books that failed to understand the why or to explore factually the actions of the Sixth Fleet and its aircraft carriers. For those interested in the full story, the most scholarly and factual treatise is the doctoral thesis of A. Jay Cristol.” Donald D. Engen, Wings and Warriors: My Life as a Naval Aviator (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 322.
51.Findley, They Dare to Speak Out, 168.
52.Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East (New York: Amana Books, 1981).
53.Donald Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days That Changed the Middle East (New York: Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1984).
54.Ibid., 220. It is claimed that this message was sent on Tuesday, June 6, 1967.
55.James Ennes, Assault on the “Liberty:” The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship (New York: Random House, 1979), 38–39. The Neff quotation is exactly the same as the Ennes quotation. In footnote 3 Ennes admits: “The message exchange comes from the recollections of the author and several ship’s officers. Like so many others, the messages can not be found in the message files preserved by the Court of Inquiry or by various Washington agencies” [emphasis added].
56.Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem, 391. The note relating to page 209 of his book reads, “209 The crew of: Ennes, Assault on the ‘Liberty.’ Also Ennes to author, letter.”
57.Modern military jet engines can generate substantial increased power and therefore substantial additional speed through the use of a system called an “afterburner.” In this mode of operation, fuel is consumed at an enormous rate. Military jets use afterburner only for takeoff and when engaged in combat. Such use is limited to minutes, since more than that will exhaust the jet’s fuel supply.
58.Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem, 259–60.
59.Ibid., 263.
60.Ibid., 266.
61.Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, 8 June 1967, Intelligence Memorandum, Arab-Israeli Situation Report, As of 9:00 a.m. EDT. Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, declassified February 26, 1990.
62.John Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People (New York: St. Martins, 1994).
63.Ibid., 268.
64.Ibid., 259–86.
65.Although the Liberty “chopped”—that is, was assigned to the Sixth Fleet—after her entry into the Mediterranean, she in fact was tasked by NSA and operated independently under orders issued by NSA. Effectively, she was not being controlled by the Sixth Fleet in the same manner as other Sixth Fleet ships.
66.James Taylor, Pearl Harbor II: The True Story of The Sneak Attack by Israel upon the U.S.S. ‘”Liberty,’” June 8, 1967 (Washington, D.C.: Mideast Publishing, 1980).
67.Adm. Thomas Hinman Moorer was born February 9, 1912, in Mount Willing, Alabama. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and was commissioned ensign on June 1, 1933. He served as Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet, from 1965 until August 1, 1967. On June 3, 1967, he was named by President Johnson as Chief of Naval Operations. He became the eighteenth CNO on August 1, 1967. He was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Nixon, effective July 1, 1970. He served in that capacity until July 1974. Admiral Moorer was interviewed by this author on February 10, 1989, and on May 3, 1990, in Washington, D.C. He told this author he had no personal knowledge regarding the attack on the Liberty.
68.Under U.S. law, only the president may order a nuclear attack. Adm. Jerome L. “Jerry” Johnson was interviewed by this author on April 19, 1991, at his office in the Pentagon. In 1967 Johnson was strike operations officer on
board the Saratoga. He directed the arming and fueling of the attack aircraft launched from the Saratoga. He said there were no nuclear weapons on the aircraft. Rear Adm. (retired) Max Morris, who was navigator of the Saratoga at that time, confirms the armament was not nuclear. This author also interviewed two of the A-4 pilots launched from the America—K. C. Spayde, August 7, 1991, and James E. Kneale, August 8, 1991—who both confirmed they carried only Bullpup missiles, not nuclear weapons.
In addition, the oral history of Vice Adm. Don Engen, the commanding officer of the America on June 8, 1967, confirms that the aircraft launched from America were not nuclear armed and further that the F-4B Phantom aircraft on America were not even wired to carry nuclear weapons. The oral history is on file with the U.S. Naval Institute.
69.Admiral Moorer had extensive experience during World War II as a Navy patrol bomber pilot. He flew many combat missions in PBY Catalinas.
70.Intelligence Memorandum, Central Intelligence Agency, June 13, 1967, 4.
71.The last U.S. Navy ship visit to Israel prior to the 1967 war occurred in November 1963.
72.Interview of Admiral Moorer by this author on February 10, 1989, in Washington, D.C. at the Center for Strategic Studies. The admiral told this author that as CNO he moved then in much lower circles and it was only in later years when he became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) that he talked directly to the president or to the secretaries of state or defense on a one-on-one basis. This author interviewed Admiral Moorer a second time on May 3, 1990, at the Army-Navy Club in Washington, D.C.
73.Interview of Dan Schueftan by this author on June 20, 2001, in Jerusalem. The comment was thereafter confirmed by facsimile on July 25, 2001. Dr. Schueftan is a senior research fellow at the National Security Studies Centre at Haifa University and a senior fellow at Shalem Centre in Jerusalem. He specializes in the study of the Arab-Israeli conflict and has published extensively on the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, as well as A Jordanian Option: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians (Tel Aviv: Ha’kibbutz Ha’meuchad, 1986), in Hebrew; Attrition: Egypt’s Post War Political Strategy 1967–1970 (Tel Aviv: Ma’arachot, 1989), in Hebrew; and Disengagement: Israel and the Palestinian Entity (Tel Aviv: Haifa University Press & Zemora-Bitan, 1999), in Hebrew.
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