by James Scott
President Johnson crawled into his four-poster bed around 11:45 P.M. on the evening of June 4. The commander in chief had weathered an intense couple of weeks as he strove to balance the demands of the Vietnam War with the Middle East crisis. America had set another tragic record in Southeast Asia in late May, with 2,929 American casualties in a single week, including 313 killed. Those numbers fueled the domestic hostility that greeted Johnson the previous night when he flew to New York to give a speech at a state Democratic Committee fund-raiser, accompanied by his wife and elder daughter. As the president arrived at the Americana Hotel, more than 1,400 antiwar demonstrators crowded the streets waving posters that depicted Johnson dressed as Adolf Hitler and saluting like a Nazi soldier beneath slogans that read “Wanted for Murder.”
The scene could have been much worse. News reports had predicted as many as five thousand protesters might march outside the hotel near Times Square. Many Jewish organizations at the forefront of the antiwar movement opted not to protest, hoping to reduce pressure on the president as Israel sought America’s support in its standoff with Egypt. The diminished pressure on the street did little to compensate for the stifling tension he found inside at the hundred-dollar-a-plate fund-raiser. Many of the 1,650 tuxedoed diners represented New York’s influential Jewish community, all anxious to hear Johnson’s views on the crisis on a night when he had planned a speech warning about the uncertain future of his welfare programs. The president, described by one aide as “part Jewish” because of his close ties with that community, found that his years of support did little to shield him from the demands to intervene in the Middle East.
Israel enjoyed its strongest relationship with the United States under Johnson. American presidents—both Republican and Democrat—historically had been cool toward the Jewish state. David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel’s first leader after it declared independence, waited in a Washington hotel for ten weeks in 1941–42 for a meeting with President Franklin Roosevelt that never materialized. President Harry Truman officially recognized Israel after its independence in 1948 but refused to sell the Jewish state weapons. After Israel seized the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip in 1956 in response to Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal, President Dwight Eisenhower threatened to halt all foreign aid and eliminate private tax-deductible donations to Israel if it did not withdraw. President John Kennedy, one of the first presidents to grasp Israel’s influence on domestic politics, strengthened relations and sold sophisticated surface-to-air missile batteries to Israel.
Johnson went further. Soon after Kennedy’s assassination, he signaled his intentions. “You have lost a very great friend,” Johnson confided to an Israeli diplomat, “but you have found a better one.” The president’s support stemmed from his religious upbringing in the dusty hill country of Texas. Family elders had preached that the destruction of Israel would trigger the apocalypse. “Take care of the Jews, God’s chosen people,” Johnson’s grandfather scrawled in a family album. “Consider them your friends and help them any way you can.” The president never forgot those teachings, as illustrated by a speech he gave to members of B’nai B’rith, a national Jewish organization. “Most, if not all of you, have very deep ties with the land and with the people of Israel, as I do, for my Christian faith sprang from yours,” Johnson said. “The Bible stories are woven into my childhood memories as the gallant struggle of modern Jews to be free of persecution is also woven into our souls.”
The president’s fondness for Israel had as much to do with politics as biblical stories. The nation’s six million Jews in 1967 accounted for only a fraction of the 200 million Americans, but Jews commanded a larger role in political life than the population figures might otherwise have indicated. Many American Jews monitored the issues, voted, and involved themselves in business organizations, labor unions, and civic groups. Others occupied important leadership roles in newspapers and in the television and motion picture industry. Jews donated and raised millions for political candidates, mostly Democrats. Many also lived in major cities in crucial political states, including New York, Newark, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Candidates recognized that these large populations could determine the outcome of states that accounted for 169 of the 270 electoral votes required to win the White House.
Johnson surrounded himself in office with Jewish and pro-Israel advisers. The shrewd politician picked brothers Walt and Eugene Rostow to serve as his national security adviser and undersecretary of state for political affairs, respectively. The president chose Supreme Court justice Arthur Goldberg as ambassador to the United Nations, replacing him on the bench with Abe Fortas, another Israel supporter. John Roche, a former dean at Brandeis University, wrote many of Johnson’s speeches. The president also relied on close Jewish friends for advice, including high-profile lawyers Ed Weisl and David Ginsburg, who often represented the Israeli Embassy. Johnson never missed a call from Democratic fund-raiser Abe Feinberg, because, as one senior aide noted, “it might mean another million dollars.” United Artists Chairman Arthur Krim and his wife, Mathilde, a former gunrunner for early Zionist guerrillas, spent so many nights in the White House that Room 303 became the couple’s regular quarters.
The United States under Johnson increased aid to the Jewish state. “No one who has an insider’s view,” noted Robert Komer of the National Security Council, “could contest the proposition that the US is 100% behind the security and wellbeing of Israel. We are Israel’s chief supporters, bankers, direct and indirect arms purveyors, and ultimate guarantors.” Israel’s leaders welcomed the attention, believing that for years the State Department had favored the Arabs. The administration tallied that support in a report that revealed that America gave Israel $134 million in economic aid between 1964 and 1966. America also sold tanks and combat aircraft on liberal credit terms, provided grants and loans, and funded another $8 million annually in scientific research, 25 percent of all money Israel spent each year on nonmilitary research. “Perhaps the best way to characterize US-Israeli relations in this period is to say that they are closer today than ever,” the report concluded. “The breadth and depth of US help for Israel, even more than aid levels themselves, are impressive.”
Despite Johnson’s lavish support of Israel, many American Jews refused to back the Vietnam War, a source of frustration inside the administration as antiwar rallies increased and the president’s popularity plummeted. Jews had become so prominent in the antiwar movement that it sparked a protest button: “You don’t have to be Jewish to be against the war in Vietnam.” Johnson, who viewed Vietnam and Israel as small countries threatened by Soviet-backed adversaries, struggled to understand that discontent. Jewish frustration over Vietnam served as a focus of a report for the president that analyzed public opinion. The report, which noted that many Jews worked as writers, teachers, and political and civil rights activists, discussed the possible threat to the president’s 1968 reelection. “Viet Nam is a serious problem area,” the report concluded. “If Viet Nam is favorably resolved before the elections, defections among Jews will be minimal; if Viet Nam persists, a special effort to hold the Jewish vote will be necessary.”
Many Jews who protested the war in Southeast Asia now urged the president to use force if necessary to help Israel in its standoff with Egypt. Letters, telegrams, and petitions inundated government mail-rooms. The State Department processed 17,440 letters during the four days between May 29 and June 1 in what analysts recognized was part of an organized campaign. The analysis showed that 95 percent of the writers supported Israel, 4.5 percent opposed American intervention, and only a half percent favored the Arabs. Pro-Israel demonstrators crowded the streets. An estimated 125,000 men, women, and children, including several concentration camp survivors, had rallied days earlier in New York City’s Riverside Park, singing Israel’s national anthem and demanding the United States intervene.
The president had worked to calm Israeli fears since Egypt closed the Strait of Tiran and
mobilized its forces in the Sinai. Johnson assured Israeli diplomats that he would gather a multinational naval force to break the blockade. Progress had proven slow and Johnson feared the Jewish state would launch a preemptive strike, even though he and defense secretary Robert McNamara had informed Israel’s foreign minister that American intelligence showed Egypt did not plan to attack. The president knew Israel had mobilized for war. Its military had called up thousands of reservists and requisitioned hundreds of buses, vans, and delivery trucks at an estimated cost of five hundred thousand dollars a day. Workers piled sandbags in window frames in Jerusalem as residents strung blackout curtains, stockpiled candles, and filled bathtubs with water. Trenches zigzagged across city parks and squares in the city of Elat on the Gulf of Aqaba. Medics converted hotel lobbies into hospitals in Tel Aviv as undertakers transformed movie theaters into makeshift morgues.
Despite Israel’s preparations, Johnson still hoped to avert a war. The president diverged from his prepared remarks on welfare in his speech in New York to reiterate his commitment to peace in the Middle East, comments that drew loud applause. Abe Feinberg whispered to Johnson over dinner that Israel would hold back no longer. The Jewish state planned a preemptive strike. Johnson’s efforts had apparently failed; now he waited. He tried to relax Sunday afternoon on the presidential yacht followed by a quiet dinner at the home of Justice Fortas. The president returned to the White House and retired for the evening at 11:45 P.M. The call came at 4:30 A.M. Johnson listened in silence to his national security adviser and asked few questions. He hung up at the end of the seven-minute conversation. Lady Bird asked what was the matter as he dropped back on his pillow. “We have a war on our hands.”
At the National Security Agency’s eighty-two-acre campus in Washington’s Maryland suburbs, senior leaders worried over the outbreak of the war and what it might mean for the Liberty. Analysts at the clandestine agency had worked nonstop in recent days. With more than fourteen thousand employees and an estimated billion-dollar annual budget the NSA was designed for just such a crisis. The secretive nature of the organization—employees joked its initials stood for “No Such Agency”—camouflaged an operation that resembled a small city. The agency boasted a cafeteria that could feed more than a thousand, plus eight snack bars. An infirmary complete with operating rooms, x-ray equipment, and dental chairs could accommodate minor emergencies while employees enjoyed an on-site post office, barbershop, dry cleaner, and shoe repair. Workers could even cash checks and make deposits at a branch of the State Bank of Laurel, all without ever leaving the Marine-guarded gates.
The Liberty’s mission required it to steam as close as twelve and a half miles off Egypt and six and a half miles from Israel, a mission planned days before the war started, when America had a reasonable expectation of the ship’s safety. NSA officials watched on the first day of the war as the Israeli pilots obliterated Egypt’s air force. Israeli ground forces soon moved into the Sinai Peninsula. Intelligence leaders feared the Liberty’s proximity to the conflict might endanger it. The spy ship, which passed just sixteen miles off the Sicilian island of Pantelleria only hours before the war began, steamed east at full speed and expected to arrive off the coast of Egypt in as little as three days. Though the NSA recommended the Liberty’s missions, the agency had no authority to move the ship. The Navy assumed responsibility for its safety, and any orders from the NSA had to go through the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
America had faced a similar problem five years earlier during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The spy ship Oxford had trolled for months off Havana as it eavesdropped on the Soviet buildup. The mission proved vital. The Oxford sniffed out surface-to-air missile sites and sophisticated Soviet radars used to track and target airplanes. The Soviets had used such radars to shoot down an American spy plane over Siberia in May 1960. Tensions soon arose. Cuba deduced the Oxford’s mission from its elaborate antennae and harassed the spy ship with gunboats. Spooks down below listened as the Cuban military trained its fire-control radar on the Oxford. The United States feared the spy ship, which patrolled so close to shore that its sailors could see Havana’s famed Morro Castle, might create a flashpoint for a larger conflict. Despite the intelligence boon the Oxford provided, authorities ordered the ship farther back into the Straits of Florida.
Richard Harvey and Eugene Sheck, who assigned and scheduled the NSA’s spy ships and planes, remembered that decision from five years earlier. The same considerations now applied to the Liberty. No nation had ever attacked a spy ship, so the worries were not overt, particularly because the Liberty sailed in international waters. If the war in the Middle East warranted an order to the Liberty to pull back, the NSA would need to readjust the mission. The men phoned John Connell, the agency’s liaison at the Joint Reconnaissance Center. Located in a secure area deep in the Pentagon, the center scheduled and managed military spy missions. Connell agreed with his colleagues. Hundreds of miles separated the Liberty from the rest of the Sixth Fleet. Connell conferred with his counterparts in the Pentagon only to discover that no one had any plan to move the Liberty.
The Liberty approached the Middle East as the rest of the Navy pulled back. Before the Liberty had reached Rota, Spain, the Navy ordered the Mediterranean-based Sixth Fleet to restrict air operations to at least one hundred miles from Egypt. Concerns increased when the war began and twenty Soviet warships and support vessels, joined by another eight to nine submarines, steamed in the eastern Mediterranean. The Navy ordered aircraft carriers to operate no closer than one hundred miles from Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. Vice Admiral Martin warned the Liberty to remain alert, given Egypt’s “unpredictability.” The message, broadcast over a teletype circuit the Liberty no longer monitored, never reached the spy ship. Events would soon overshadow the Sixth Fleet’s effort to determine why the Liberty failed to respond. “Maintain a high state of vigilance against attack or threat of attack,” read the admiral’s message, sent the second day of the war. “Report by flash precedence any threatening or suspicious actions directed against you or any diversion from schedule necessitated by external threat.”
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral David McDonald reviewed his operational briefing notes on the morning of June 7, the third day of the war. The four-star admiral, the Navy’s most senior officer, seized on the two-sentence reference at the bottom of the page to the Liberty’s mission a dozen miles off Egypt. McDonald scrawled his concern in the margin beneath it with a red pencil: “I don’t know why we do something like this now?” He ordered his subordinates to remedy it and brief him on his return to the Pentagon from Annapolis no later than 2:30 P.M. Based on McDonald’s concern, the Navy recommended that the Joint Chiefs of Staff order the Liberty to approach no closer than twenty miles from Egypt and fifteen miles from Israel. The memo that detailed the recommended change arrived in McDonald’s office at 2:37 P.M., but the admiral did not read it until 6 P.M.
The minor adjustment failed to satisfy McDonald. The veteran admiral with a reputation for bluntness jotted a one-sentence response in the memo’s bottom margin: “I wouldn’t even let her go down that way now!” In a conversation with his executive assistant shortly before he left at 6:20 P.M., McDonald barked that the change was not enough. The admiral saw no reason for the Liberty to operate so close to a war zone. The potential risks outweighed the intelligence the United States might gain. Beyond the danger, McDonald worried about political fallout. Israel’s success in the first few days of the war had prompted Egypt to accuse the United States of helping the Jewish state. The U.S. refuted Egypt’s allegations before the United Nations when U.N. ambassador Arthur Goldberg assured the Security Council that no Navy ships sailed within “several hundred miles” of the conflict. The Liberty’s presence would make him a liar. McDonald demanded the spy ship steam no closer than one hundred miles from shore.
A senior officer in the Joint Reconnaissance Center phoned the Navy’s London headquarters of its European and Middle East command with the new or
ders at 7:50 P.M. Later investigations by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee would chronicle the incredible communications breakdown that evening that rendered this and other efforts to reach the ship futile. Bureaucratic bungling, delays, and misrouted messages—some sent all the way to the Philippines—meant the Liberty would not receive its new orders in time to change its location. Nearly six thousand miles away, the spy ship steamed through the darkness. The officer in the Joint Reconnaissance Center, with the phone pressed tight against his ear, relayed the desperate need to reach the Liberty before it sailed too close: “Time is getting short to where she will be in those limits.” The lieutenant on the other end of the phone in London only confirmed the Pentagon’s fears: “Looks to me like she’s almost there.”
CHAPTER 3
While we are not responsible for the safety of the vessel, we cannot absolve ourselves totally from the considerations of safety.
—SECRET NSA MEMO
Shortly before 4 A.M. on Thursday, June 8, Ensign John Scott assumed deck watch on the Liberty’s bridge. Located in front of the smokestack, and rising several stories above the main deck, the bridge on the twenty-two-year-old ship was austere. A radarscope, plotting board, and writing desk lined the forward bulkhead, beneath five portholes that offered a view of the ship’s bow and the sea ahead. The navigator’s chart table sat against the portside bulkhead; directly opposite it on the starboard side was the quartermaster’s desk. There sailors kept a running log of the ship’s course, speed, and sightings of other vessels in a notebook that ultimately became the ship’s log. In the center of the bridge stood the Liberty’s gyrocompass, engine order telegraph, and the helm. Two doors on either side led out to wings—each with signal lights and a compass—that provided an unobstructed view of the bow and stern. In a throwback to the Liberty’s World War II origins, the bridge and starboard wing offered voice tubes that allowed the deck officer to shout orders through a network of pipes to the engine room.