by James Scott
—EPHRAIM EVRON, MINISTER OF THE ISRAELI EMBASSY IN A LETTER TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON
Dean Rusk hustled over to Capitol Hill on the morning of June 9 to privately brief the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—the secretary of state’s third visit this week—on the latest developments in the Middle East war. The affable Georgia native had just sat down with the committee at about 10:35 A.M. the day before when the White House abruptly summoned him to the Situation Room for the emergency meeting on the Liberty. By the time Rusk had returned to Capitol Hill later in the day, committee members already had adjourned.
The frustration Rusk felt over the attack—and his disbelief in Israel’s assertion that it was an accident—had not been reflected in the newspaper reports now on doorsteps nationwide. Many of the critical questions concerning the Liberty focused on America’s role in the attack. Newspapers already doubted the Pentagon’s cover story and hinted that the ship likely was eavesdropping on the war at the time of the assault. Other stories questioned whether America had informed Israel of the ship’s presence. Few if any articles challenged Israel’s assertion that its forces had attacked in error.
Some lawmakers quoted in the morning newspapers appeared to endorse Israel’s claim. “With Israel we know it was a mistake,” Senator Jacob Javits told reporters. “A miscalculation that could take place any place in the world,” added Senator Robert Kennedy. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield told reporters he doubted the attack would spark any lasting complications between the allies. “It certainly wasn’t deliberate,” declared the Montana Democrat. “It could have happened on either side.”
The printed comments of some elected leaders stood in sharp contrast with the hostile mood Rusk encountered when he sat down at 10:05 A.M. in Room S-116, the committee’s cavernous hearing room. The contents of this closed-door discussion would remain classified for the next forty years. Soon after Chairman J. W. Fulbright gaveled the meeting to order, the thirteen senators demanded answers.
The secretary of state could offer little more than the basic facts of the attack. Outside the admission that its pilots and torpedo boat skippers had targeted the Liberty, Israel had yet to explain the assault in any detail. Absent more information, Rusk shared his opinion: “The incident was extremely distressing, not only because of the dead and the wounded which were involved, but because it was a very reckless act.”
Senator Bourke Hickenlooper interrupted. The Iowa Republican had developed a reputation among his colleagues as the “consummate skeptic.” The conservative lawmaker previously had demonstrated that he was not afraid of confronting Israel, once accusing its leaders of lying like “horse thieves” over the country’s secret nuclear program. The attack on the Liberty outraged him. “It seems to me it was completely inexcusable.”
“I called in the Israeli ambassador and protested in the strongest possible terms,” Rusk told the committee. “He had no explanation. We have had nothing but an apology from the Israeli Government. But there it is.”
Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas told fellow committee members that he had a constituent on the Liberty. Others probably did as well. The families demanded more than Israeli remorse. “They are not happy with just an apology. They are really complaining. Is there anything more that can be done on this?” asked the Republican. “I cannot understand it.”
Hickenlooper interrupted again, blasting Israel for what he perceived as its “cavalier attitude.” The United States needed to hold the Jewish state accountable. “We should file for reparations. We should press for them, for the families, the people that were killed,” he urged. “Has the Israeli Government indicated any real sorrow about this thing, or is it a perfunctory apology?”
“Oh, yes,” Rusk replied. “They have been profuse.”
“Have they said whether any disciplinary action will be taken against the stupidity of this crew or—”
“I asked for that yesterday,” Rusk said.
“Or the commanding officers of the area or anything?” Hickenlooper pressed.
“We have not heard any more except what I have told you.”
The committee turned to the renewed fighting in the Middle East. Despite the Egyptian cease-fire, which had brought cheers from thousands of American Jews in Lafayette Park the day before, the latest reports revealed the war still raged. Israel had opened a new front in the north against Syria in an effort to seize the Golan Heights. Other questions also arose, including the settlement of thousands of refugees and the future of Israel’s seized territories. The frustrated lawmakers complained that America appeared to have little influence over Israel, prompting Hickenlooper to suggest the United States consider revoking tax-exempt donations for Israel.
Later in the two-hour briefing, Senator Karl Mundt, a South Dakota Republican, returned to the Liberty. “What is the position of the United States when somebody shoots one of these ships down on the high seas?” Mundt asked. “Do we just say, ‘Well, you are sorry, it’s all right with us,’ or is there some indemnification?”
Rusk assured the committee that the United States would make Israel pay for the losses. “We do not have a report of the condition of the ship itself or the damage, but we have laid the basis for a very strong protest for going back to them on that kind of thing,” he said. “They, too, I am sure, are investigating, but the only thing we have had from them is a flash report that it occurred.”
Carlson interjected moments later, noting the challenging questions lawmakers would soon face about the attack. “Most every member of the Senate and many of Congress are going to have families involved as a result of the deaths and the casualties in this unfortunate situation about this ship. We are going to have to answer some questions,” he said. “Was it there on the orders of the Defense Department?”
Rusk confirmed that it was. When pressed to explain the Liberty’s location, the secretary of state fell back on the Defense Department’s lie that it was there to help relay messages. “This was a communication ship,” he said. “During the period in which our embassies and consulates were being closed down and we were having to resort to all sorts of improvised communications, it was there to help in the relay process of messages that our people wanted to go back and forth.”
The senators didn’t appear to believe him. “Were we intercepting or receiving messages for Israel on this ship?” Carlson asked. “These are questions that have come to me from families—”
“I would think pretty soon somebody had better talk about what type and character of ship this was,” interrupted Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri. “I think this is a rather important situation as far as—”
“It has the capacity to listen,” replied Rusk, cutting him off. “But we were not involved in transmitting messages from one side to the other, if that is what you have in mind.”
Carlson urged the United States to come up with some answers soon. “The people out in the country are asking questions, and we are going to have to answer whether—this can all be off the record as far as I am concerned now—but we are going to have to have answers to those questions from the parents of those boys.”
Rusk emphasized that the Liberty’s mission had no bearing on whether the ship had a legal right to be in international waters. “You should understand on the question of what it was doing there, it was there under proper orders, on behalf of the United States Government, in the high seas,” Rusk said. “And therefore, from our point of view, was not subject to attack by anybody.”
At the Pentagon, chief spokesman Phil Goulding reviewed the latest reports on the attack and prepared to brief the defense reporters camped out in the second-floor pressroom at 10:30 A.M. Much of Goulding’s information remained circumstantial. He relayed the Liberty’s coordinates and the speed of the ship, and informed reporters of the arrival of the destroyers Davis and Massey. Helicopters from the aircraft carrier America so far had evacuated fifteen of the Liberty’s most seriously wounded. The Pentagon expected to airlift another t
hirty-five injured plus the remains of the deceased.
“The latest recent casualty report from the Liberty is as follows: nine dead and twenty-two missing, and seventy-five wounded. At least fifteen of the seventy-five are seriously wounded,” Goulding told the reporters. “I do not have any firm information of the twenty-two who are missing. The commanding officer of the Liberty has reported that he believes that some of the missing are in flooded compartments in the forward part of the ship. Next of kin are being notified as rapidly as possible. Names will be released once next-of-kin notification has been completed.”
Reporters returned to the question of whether the United States had informed Israel and Egypt about the Liberty’s presence prior to the attack, given that the ship’s mission allegedly was to serve as a benign communications relay. The question had stumped Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and his deputy, Cyrus Vance, during the afternoon press briefing the day before and exposed a major weakness in the hastily concocted cover story. Early news reports emphasized the Pentagon’s failure to answer what many perceived as a simple question.
The United States had not notified either country because the Liberty was a spy ship tasked to eavesdrop on foreign nations, a mission that would be compromised if target countries knew about the ship’s mission. Government lawyers determined that the Liberty had done nothing wrong. The spy ship sailed in international waters at the time of the attack, where it had a legal right to be. The United States had no obligation under international law to inform Israel or Egypt of the Liberty’s presence. International law also did not require neutral ships to exit war zones or even adjacent areas. In fact, international law mandated that neutral nations retained neutral status even in war zones.
Furthermore, if the government conceded that it should have informed Israel of the Liberty’s presence, then America risked other nations’ demanding it alert them when U.S. ships sailed nearby. That would undermine the entire seaborne intelligence program. Hostile countries might seize on any failure to give notice as an excuse to attack an American ship in international waters, then hide behind the Liberty precedent.
The Pentagon had its answer. “No countries were informed of the presence of the U.S.S. Liberty in the eastern Mediterranean,” Goulding told reporters. “The ship was in international waters at all times. It is a noncombatant converted merchant ship armed only with four .50-caliber machine guns. There was no requirement whatever to notify any other nations of the presence of an American noncombatant ship in international waters.”
Defense leaders, who sensed the media shifting blame for the attack from Israel to the United States, grew frustrated. “The main issue was not whether we had notified Israel of our intent to be there,” Goulding later wrote in a memoir. “The real issue could not have been simpler: A United States ship was operating in international waters; it was identified, as are United States ships anywhere in the world, with the American flag, distinguishing letters and number, and name; it was attacked without provocation.”
George Christian greeted reporters at 11:25 A.M. for his morning White House news briefing in the West Lobby. He began with the announcement of the president’s 1 P.M. swearing-in ceremony in the East Room of a new member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
When Christian opened up the briefing for questions moments later, reporters seized on the Vietnam War. Did the president plan to continue pressure on the North Vietnamese until the bombing stopped? Would Moscow help negotiate a peace deal? Did the administration see a decrease in fighting in recent days as a possible sign of deescalation? What other reason could the administration cite for the sudden combat lull?
Questions shifted to the war in the Middle East. Reporters asked about resumption of fighting. What was the president’s reaction? Where did the administration stand on the question of seized territories? Who was Johnson talking to about the war? Did the United States know who fired the first shot and did the administration plan to condemn the aggressor?
The morning before, the attack on the Liberty had dominated the press briefing as reporters doggedly tried to ferret out information about the emergency meeting under way between the president and his advisers in the Situation Room. Just twenty-four hours later, interest in the Liberty had almost vanished, even as the casualty figures soared.
After more than two dozen questions of the twenty-eight-minute briefing, a reporter asked the press secretary if he had any reaction from the president to the attack. The casualty numbers had jumped as it became increasingly apparent that those sailors initially listed as missing were in fact deceased. “The President is deeply grieved at the fact that, at last report, a possible thirty-one deaths were caused by the attack,” replied Christian. “As you know, the United States Government has delivered a strong protest on the matter.”
The press secretary read a three-sentence letter received at 5:35 A.M. that morning from Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol, apologizing for the attack. “I was deeply grieved by the tragic loss of life on the U.S. naval ship Liberty. Please accept my deep condolences and convey my sympathy to all the bereaved families,” he read. “May all bloodshed come to an end, and may our God grant us peace evermore.”
“Did the Israeli Government explain to the American Government why they attacked an American ship?” asked a reporter a moment later. “The reason?”
“The explanation, as given publicly yesterday by the Israeli Government—was that it was a mistake,” Christian replied.
“Does the U.S. accept this explanation?”
“As I said, the United States has made a formal protest to the Israeli government and that is the way it stands.”
“Then we expect a further explanation of why this mistake was made?”
“We will just have to see what comes about later.”
President Johnson’s advisers on the Special Committee of the National Security Council gathered at 6:30 P.M. in the Cabinet Room on the first floor of the White House. Built-in bookcases lined the room’s western wall. A portrait of Thomas Jefferson hung above the fireplace on the room’s northern end and a bronze bust of John F. Kennedy, assassinated three and a half years earlier in Dallas, stood in a nearby corner. A series of French doors with arched transoms on the room’s eastern side led out to a colonnade overlooking the Rose Garden on this warm June evening.
In the leather chairs surrounding the elongated conference table sat thirteen of the president’s senior advisers. Those present included Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, CIA director Richard Helms, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Earle Wheeler, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Lucius Battle, President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Chairman Clark Clifford, National Security Adviser Walt Rostow, and his older brother Eugene, a senior official at the State Department. National Security Council staff member Harold Saunders recorded the meeting minutes on a legal pad.
The president’s diary shows that Johnson popped in and out of the meeting several times, accompanied by Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Democratic senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania. The last time the president left—for just four minutes at 7:34 P.M.—he asked McNamara to join him in the nearby office of his personal secretary. There the president presented his defense secretary with a letter, an inscribed portrait of himself by popular illustrator and artist James Bama, and an Accutron wristwatch in honor of McNamara’s fifty-first birthday. “My goodness, Mr. President,” the startled McNamara replied. “Thank you, thank you!”
After brief comments on the latest developments in the war in the Middle East—Egypt’s President Nasser had announced his resignation earlier in the day—Johnson’s advisers turned to the attack on the Liberty. Casualty numbers had continued to climb. Only hours earlier, American Naval Attaché Commander Ernest Castle had cabled Israel’s first explanation for the attack to the White House, State Department, and Pentagon, among others. The government of Israel reiterated its e
xplanation that its forces had attacked in error, and now blamed the Liberty for contributing to that mistake.
Israel claimed that its military had received reports of a shore bombardment near the Egyptian town of El Arish. Soon afterward its forces detected an unidentified naval vessel thirteen miles offshore. The mysterious ship sailed outside normal shipping lanes and in an area Egypt had declared closed to neutrals. When spotted, Israel claimed the ship appeared to escape at a high speed toward Egypt, flew no flag, and resembled the Egyptian ship El Quseir, a thirty-seven-year-old cargo ship designed to haul 400 men and forty horses.
In his telegram, Castle criticized Israel’s explanation. How could trained naval officers be so inept as to make such a blunder? The Liberty bore only a “highly superficial resemblance” to the El Quseir. “Certainly IDF Navy must be well drilled in identification of Egyptian ships,” the attaché wrote. “El Quseir is less than half the size; is many years older, and lacks the elaborate antenna array and hull markings of Liberty.” Castle attributed the attack to “trigger happy eagerness to glean some portion of the great victory being shared by IDF Army and Air Force and in which Navy was not sharing.”
Israel’s explanation did little to defuse the anger of the advisers or assuage the growing belief that the attack was more than a trigger-happy error. Rusk began the discussion by recounting the hostility he encountered in his closed-door meeting earlier in the day with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The secretary of state relayed the committee members’ insistence that Israel pay reparations. “Senators outraged,” the minutes record the secretary of state telling his colleagues. “Put in a bill for damages.”
McGeorge Bundy took a more tempered view. The former national security adviser, he had returned as a special consultant to the president after the war started days earlier to solve the administration’s perception problem. Johnson had too heavy a roster of Jewish and pro-Israel advisers. Bundy offered a different face for the administration. A pragmatist, Bundy urged the United States to wait for Israel to make an offer, then respond.