The Attack on the Liberty

by James Scott

  “Can you say anything more?”

  “No, I cannot.”

  A reporter questioned whether the meeting involved the afternoon session of the United Nations Security Council. Christian again cut off the reporter. “I can’t say any more,” he answered. “The Secretary of State has been over here frequently in the past few days.”

  “Are you aware of any emergency?” one of the reporters asked.

  “I am not going to comment on it.”

  The press returned to Rusk’s sudden departure from Capitol Hill moments later. “This is the first time that the Secretary of State has broken off an engagement on the Hill to come down here,” a reporter asked. “You can’t give us any help on this situation?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think you might be able to later?”

  “We will have to see how things progress during the day.”

  The reporters continued to press for answers. Would Christian release the president’s morning schedule? Was Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara also with the president? Was the meeting in the Situation Room? Would Rusk field questions with reporters before returning to Capitol Hill?

  Christian blocked or deferred the questions throughout the seventeen-minute briefing. The transcript shows the mounting frustration of the reporters, who asked probing questions with the hope of exposing any weakness in Christian’s stoic defense. The reporters soon grew exasperated. “Are there any new developments in the Middle East you can tell us about at this time?”

  “No.”

  “Can we look for any news developments here today?”

  “There is always a possibility,” Christian replied.

  Across the river at the Pentagon, senior officers from the Navy and Joint Chiefs of Staff filed into Secretary McNamara’s third-floor office soon after reports arrived of the attack on the Liberty. Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance, McNamara’s top aide, and Pentagon chief spokesman Phil Goulding joined the meeting. The defense secretary normally perched behind his massive desk, which had once belonged to General John Pershing. Four different colored telephones lined the desk behind him—the white phone a direct link to the president—and a walk-in vault in the office’s south end allowed McNamara to easily store classified documents.

  Since he learned of the attack, the defense secretary had spent much of his time on the phone with NSA director Lieutenant General Marshall Carter and senior officers at the Naval Security Group. McNamara demanded to know the Liberty’s mission, the breakdown of its crew, and how many civilians it carried. Gathered with his advisers, McNamara understood enough to recognize the challenge the Pentagon now faced. An American spy ship had been torpedoed on a covert mission in the eastern Mediterranean. It would be a matter of hours—maybe less—before news leaked to the press either in the United States or overseas. The Pentagon had to determine how to tell the American people what its ship was doing and why so many of its sailors had been killed and injured.

  Goulding argued that the United States should tell the truth. The Pentagon did not have to discuss the ship’s capabilities, but it at least should acknowledge that the Liberty was an intelligence ship. It was hardly more than an official secret, anyway. Besides, the ship’s mission no doubt would leak to the press soon enough. By admitting it up front, the Pentagon could derail future accusations of a cover-up. “We should take the public affairs initiative, leveling with our people from the beginning,” Goulding urged. “The government need not permit the press to force it into a classified point-by-point discussion of the operations of the ship. We will merely identify it as an intelligence collector and insist that all details of its functions are classified.”

  Others gathered this morning argued the opposite. Labeling it an intelligence ship meant the press would brandish it a “spy ship.” Israel and Egypt would be angered to learn that the United States had been eavesdropping on radio communications during the war even though the Liberty had sailed in international waters. The admission that the Liberty and others like her were spy ships also would endanger the entire seaborne intelligence program. Leaders of foreign countries that normally allowed these ships in port for supplies and fuel might now face domestic political opposition and pressure from rival communist countries to refuse them.

  McNamara listened to the opposing opinions of his senior aides before bowing to security and diplomacy concerns. The Pentagon would describe the Liberty simply as a technical research ship, its official cover story. To explain its presence in the Middle East, defense officials developed a hasty story: the Liberty’s mission was to relay communications stemming from the evacuation of Americans from the region. Goulding scrawled two short paragraphs describing the Liberty and its cover story. A preliminary casualty report soon arrived in the Pentagon along with Israel’s apology. Goulding added two more brief paragraphs. The White House and State Department approved the release shortly before noon.

  Even as the Pentagon prepared to alert the American public of the attack, its senior leaders moved to shut down the flow of news. With dozens of reporters aboard ships in the Mediterranean to cover the Middle East war, Pentagon leaders did not want to risk the possibility that a field commander might puncture the Liberty’s carefully crafted cover story. Deputy Secretary Vance called the commander of the Navy’s European and Middle Eastern forces and issued a strict order that was broadcast to the Sixth Fleet: “Vance states that all news releases on Liberty affair will be made repeat will be made at Washington level. No releases to be made on ships.”

  Shortly before noon, Goulding walked down to the Pentagon’s second-floor pressroom, clutching the six-sentence release. Like his White House counterpart, Goulding was a former journalist, having served nearly two decades as a Washington and Pentagon correspondent for the Plain Dealer of Cleveland. He understood the frenetic pace reporters worked at when on a story. Rather than call them into the Pentagon’s press studio, he took the news to the pressroom, where reporters sat hunched over typewriters. Inside the cluttered room, Goulding told the reporters he had an announcement. The first official word about the Liberty was about to break. He read the release.

  “A U.S. Navy technical research ship, the USS Liberty (AGTR-5), was attacked about 9 A.M. (EDT) today approximately 15 miles north of the Sinai Peninsula in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The Liberty departed Rota, Spain, June 2nd and arrived at her position this morning to assure communications between U.S. Government posts in the Middle East and to assist in relaying information concerning the evacuation of American dependents and other American citizens from the countries of the Middle East,” Goulding read. “The United States Government has been informed by the Israeli government that the attack was made in error by Israeli forces, and an apology has been received from Tel Aviv. Initial reports of casualties are 4 dead and 53 wounded. The Liberty is steaming north from the area at a speed of 8 knots to meet U.S. forces moving to her aid. It is reported she is in no danger of sinking.”

  Reporters rallied with questions, many banging out responses on typewriters. “What attacked it?” one asked.

  “It was attacked by motor torpedo boat or boats, and aircraft,” replied Goulding.

  “Was it hit by torpedoes?”

  “The report we have indicates at least one torpedo hit.”

  “Did she fire back?” a reporter pressed.

  “She is armed only with four .50-caliber machine guns,” Goulding answered. “I don’t have information on whether she fired back.”

  “Were her colors up?” someone asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  CHAPTER 7

  You can come out of your hole now. Israel has saved you from decisive action.

  —CONSTITUENT TELEGRAM TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON

  Dean Rusk fumed over the attack on the Liberty as he departed the Situation Room and returned to his office at the State Department. Rusk found it inconceivable that Israeli forces had attacked in error. The assault occurred on a clear afternoon and
involved fighters and torpedo boats in what appeared to be a well-coordinated strike. How could trained military forces fail to recognize the Liberty as an American ship during such a sustained attack?

  Beyond the death and injuries of American sailors, the veteran statesman recognized that the United States had barely defused a potentially explosive scenario. What if the Israelis had attacked a Soviet ship? The communist power had watched for days as the Israelis clobbered the Arab states it backed and eradicated Soviet influence in the Middle East. The U.S.S.R. might have used an attack as a reason to enter the war and accomplish what the Arabs had failed. The United States, bogged down in Vietnam, would have had no option but to intervene.

  Arriving at the State Department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters, Rusk summoned Israeli ambassador Avraham Harman to his seventh-floor office. A Norman Rockwell watercolor painting of Lyndon Johnson adorned the wall behind the secretary’s desk, inscribed by the president: “To Dean Rusk, my wise counselor.”

  The Israeli ambassador appeared in Rusk’s office at 11:55 A.M. Like Rusk, Harman was a career statesman. Born in London to a rabbi and a Hebrew language teacher, Harman believed deeply in Zionism. He had earned a law degree from Oxford and worked for Zionist causes in London before immigrating to Palestine in his early twenties. Soon after Israel’s independence, Harman entered the fledgling nation’s foreign service. He served as Israel’s first consul general in Montreal in 1949 and then joined Israel’s delegation to the United Nations the following year. During the mid-1950s, he served as Israel’s consul general in New York. After a brief assignment in Jerusalem, Harman returned to Washington as ambassador in 1959.

  Rusk told Harman that afternoon that he had just spoken to the president, who had ordered him to “express in very strong terms” the American government’s shock over the attack. Four American sailors had been killed and another fifty-three injured, according to the latest reports. The Liberty also was badly listing. Rusk wanted Harman to convey to Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol America’s anger and disbelief that Israel’s military made such a mistake. “We consider it amazing that GOI [Government of Israel] motor torpedo commander could be unable to identify a U.S. naval vessel,” Rusk barked. “We want GOI to issue very explicit instructions in this regard to Israeli naval commanders for we cannot accept attacks on our vessels on high seas.”

  “Well, there must be some mistake,” Harman protested. “We would never—”

  Rusk refused to let up. The United States appreciated Israel’s prompt notification of the attack, which the secretary of state noted “may have avoided very serious consequences in many respects.” Rusk reemphasized the American government’s disbelief and frustration over the attack.

  Harman told Rusk he didn’t know anything about the attack other than the few details shared with him by one of the undersecretaries of state shortly before the meeting. But he assured the secretary of state that he would inform the Israeli government immediately of American concerns and expressed his sorrow for the attack and fatalities. “The implication was clear,” Harman later telegrammed to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. “Had the United States Government been uncertain as to the source of the attack, the situation would have been far worse.”

  Moments after Harman left, Rusk phoned the president. He then called Arthur Goldberg, America’s ambassador to the United Nations. Rusk instructed Goldberg to confront Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban in New York. “Hit him hard on this attack,” Rusk ordered during the 12:51 P.M. phone call. “If Israeli torpedo boats are attacking international shipping in international waters that is very dangerous business; if they were to hit a Soviet vessel that is extremely explosive.”

  Rusk’s disbelief that Israeli forces attacked in error contrasted sharply with the first public statements of some members of Congress, many of whom appeared quick to forgive the Jewish state as the first bulletins appeared on the radio and in the afternoon newspapers. At about the same time Rusk met with the Israeli ambassador, Senator Jacob Javits took the Senate floor and asked his colleagues not to hastily judge Israel. The New York Republican had long served as a staunch supporter of Israel. The son of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and Palestine, and raised in the Lower East Side’s tight-knit Jewish community, Javits viewed Israel as an “anchor and bastion” of democracy in the Middle East. Javits had taken his son to Israel nearly five years earlier to celebrate his bar mitzvah there.

  Javits told his fellow senators that the “tragic error” saddened him. The attack no doubt resulted from the stress under which Israeli pilots and Navy commanders had fought in recent days, though the senator conceded that fact alone did not excuse the near-sinking of an American ship. “The Government of Israel has already stated that this was an erroneous attack by Israel forces. The Government of Israel has apologized. I am sure that it will do everything that one would expect by way of compensation and other appropriate measures,” Javits said. “The incident is one of those tragic fallouts of the dreadful situation in the Middle East, and the terrible pressure placed on pilots and naval people in that area.”

  On the opposite side of Capitol Hill, Representative Roman Pucinski echoed Javits’s views. Soon after the House met at noon, the Illinois Democrat from Chicago’s Polish community—and known to friends simply as “Pooch”—cautioned his colleagues not to rush judgment and jeopardize America’s close relationship with Israel. “It was with heavy heart that we learned a little while ago of the tragic mistake which occurred in the Mediterranean when an Israeli ship mistakenly attacked an American ship and killed four boys and injured and wounded 53 others,” Pucinski said. “These are the tragic consequences of armed conflict. Such mistakes happen frequently in Vietnam. It would be my hope that this tragic mistake will not obscure the traditional friendship we in the United States have with the people of Israel.”

  The lawmakers’ speeches set the tone for the rest of Congress. No one publicly demanded answers, questioned how Israeli pilots and torpedo boat skippers could have made such an incredible blunder, or called for an investigation or public hearings. The Congressional Record shows that only three other lawmakers mentioned the Liberty during the four hours and nine minutes the Senate met that afternoon. In each case, the senators referenced the attack only as a brief afterthought buried in longer speeches dedicated to the Middle East crisis. None of them challenged Israel’s assertion that its forces attacked in error. The Liberty was not mentioned again during the six hours and twenty-five minutes that the House met.

  Lawmakers failed to appreciate the gravity of the attack. But even in the coming days, as casualty figures climbed and the curious circumstances surrounding the assault emerged, the record shows that most elected leaders remained largely quiet. Those lawmakers who challenged Israel’s explanation for the attack did so behind the closed doors of committee meetings and in hushed tones in the cloakrooms and dining rooms of Capitol Hill. The torpedoing of the Liberty did little to dampen the pro-Israel fervor that pervaded Congress.

  More than two dozen lawmakers in both the Senate and House—many from states with large Jewish populations, such as New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut—took the floor the day of the attack to applaud Israel for its stunning war effort. Others rallied for emergency economic aid, urged America to reinforce its commitment to the Jewish state, and argued that Israel should be allowed to keep the territories it captured in recent days. One senator even inserted Abba Eban’s June 6 speech before the U.N. Security Council into the Congressional Record. But the laudatory speeches came even as American sailors aboard the Liberty struggled to put out fires, stop bleeding, and prevent the ship from sinking.

  The president and his advisers anxiously awaited the start of an afternoon rally by American Jews in Lafayette Park—directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House—to urge increased American support for Israel. Many Jews had grown frustrated with the administration’s handling of the war. A State Department spokesman the day the fighting began claime
d in a press briefing that the United States was “neutral in thought, word, and deed.” Many had interpreted that to mean that the United States had abandoned Israel just as the war began. In a stinging editorial, the New York Times blasted the comment as “grotesque.”

  John Roche, often called Johnson’s “intellectual-in-residence,” had questioned whether the president had control of his own State Department following the blunder. He urged the president to not even bother trying to appease Arab countries, but to focus on maintaining domestic Jewish support. “I was appalled to realize that there is real underground sentiment for kissing some Arab backsides. This is, in my judgment, worse than unprincipled—it is stupid,” Roche wrote in an eyes-only memo to the president. “The net consequence of trying to ‘sweet-talk’ the Arabs is that they have contempt for us—and we alienate Jewish support in the United States.”

  Despite a desperate effort by the White House to assuage Jewish concerns, the political damage had been done. Aides worried that the afternoon rally would evolve into a political fiasco. Mathilde Krim, a loyal supporter of Israel and frequent White House guest, captured that fear in a desperate warning relayed to National Security Adviser Walt Rostow the day before. “There are reports of very strong anti-American feelings in Israel—that the Israelis feel they have won the war not with the U.S., but despite the U.S.,” Krim reported. “There is great danger that the Jewish rally, to be held tomorrow in Lafayette Square here, will be an anti-Johnson, rather than a pro-Israel, demonstration.”

  The president, already under fire from American Jews for his Vietnam policies, did not need the image of thousands of protesters camped out across the street from the White House beamed into the homes of Americans nationwide on the evening news. Aides scrambled to prevent such a controversy. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover cabled a report to the Situation Room two days earlier that various New Jersey synagogues had chartered an unknown number of buses to depart New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal for Washington at 8 A.M. Closer to the rally, the White House received news that more than four hundred buses had been chartered from the New York area alone with more planned to depart New Jersey, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.