The Attack on the Liberty

by James Scott

  Lucius Battle took Bundy’s suggestion further. The soft-spoken southerner had recently served as America’s ambassador to Egypt before returning to Foggy Bottom in his current position. Battle described the Liberty attack as “incomprehensible” and urged the United States to take “action.” Rather than wait for an offer, he advocated that the administration push the Jewish state to publicly show remorse. “Israel make offer of damages public,” Battle urged, according to the minutes. “Then we’ll take posture of responding and figure out bill.”

  Clifford then spoke up. One of the president’s most pro-Israel advisers, the former lawyer had been instrumental in President Harry Truman’s decision to recognize Israel when it declared independence nineteen years earlier. Clifford demanded America hold Israel accountable. “My concern is that we’re not tough enough. Handle as if Arabs or USSR had done it,” the minutes show he argued. “Manner egregious. Inconceivable that it was accident. 3 strafing passes, 3 torpedo boats. Set forth facts. Punish Israelis responsible.”

  Clifford’s strong views offended Eugene Rostow. The third-ranking official at the State Department and a Jew, Rostow was shocked that Clifford dare compare Israel, an ally, to its neighboring Arab countries. Clifford’s views may have angered Rostow, but the meeting minutes reveal that his impassioned argument swayed Johnson. Saunders penned a note next to Clifford’s comments in the margins of his legal pad that read: “President subscribed 100%.”

  Rusk outlined a plan. The United States would treat this as it did any other assault: demand reparations, punish the attackers, and guarantee it never happened again. The committee agreed that the State Department would take a “strong and firm line.” The secretary of state dashed off a 9:32 P.M. telegram to the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, relaying the outrage and ordering the ambassador to press Israel’s foreign minister. “There is very strong feeling here about the incomprehensible attack on the USS Liberty,” he cabled. “We shall be in touch with his government by means of a note on this subject later.”

  Minutes show that Johnson sat mostly silent through the portions of the meeting he attended, doodling various geometric shapes on White House stationery. The president’s few comments revealed his frustration with Israel and America’s lack of influence on the Jewish state, the same gripe the senators made earlier in the day to Rusk on Capitol Hill. At one point, the president complained of his failed efforts to restrain Prime Minister Eshkol. “I had a firm commitment from Eshkol & he blew it,” reads a note scribbled at the top of one page. “That old coot isn’t going to pay any attention to any imperialist pressures.”

  The president left the cabinet room at 7:53 P.M. and headed to the Oval Office. Even though it was Friday night, Johnson had two more appointments. Two minutes later, the president met in his private lounge with Newsweek’s Charles Roberts. The small lounge, just steps from the Oval Office, provided the men an informal place to chat for the seventy-one-minute interview. Christian joined the men.

  The president handed a great scoop to the magazine reporter, but with conditions. Attribution had to be indirect with references only to senior or high-ranking administration officials. The president told Roberts that the United States had accepted Israel’s apology, but had rejected its explanation for how the attack occurred. Israel’s assault on the Liberty, he told the reporter, was deliberate. The Jewish state’s motive was to prevent the American ship from eavesdropping on Israeli transmissions during the war.

  Six minutes after his meeting with Newsweek ended, the president sat down with Hugh Sidey of Time magazine for an off-the-record interview. During this meeting, the president read a memo from his national security adviser, outlining Eshkol’s offer to pay retribution to the families of the men killed on the Liberty. The president handed the memo to Sidey. “Imagine what would happen,” Johnson quipped, “if we had bombed an Israeli ship by mistake?”

  “Well imagine what would’ve happened if the Soviets had bombed it?” replied Sidey. The men laughed.

  CHAPTER 10

  I think you know about as much about it as we do.

  —PRESIDENT JOHNSON, COMMENTING ON U.S.S. LIBERTY AT A NEWS CONFERENCE

  Medical teams on the aircraft carrier America hustled nonstop since the first helicopters ferried over the wounded Friday morning. The one-day lead time between the attack and the arrival of the injured gave medical staff a chance to prepare. Corpsmen retrieved sterile dressings normally stored in battle stations around the 1,048-foot carrier. Technicians inspected all the sterilized gear in the operating room and the anesthesiologist prepared for up to thirty surgeries. Other techs readied portable and regular x-ray units, gathered extra film and cassettes, and mixed fresh developing solution. The ship’s laboratory converted a physical therapy room into a blood donation center. That night, as the carrier steamed toward the Liberty, corpsmen drew ten units of O-negative blood from donors, a relatively rare and special blood type found in only 7 percent of the population that can be given safely to anyone. The medical staff put thirty more sailors with O-negative blood on standby.

  The medical department needed more than supplies to handle the expected high volume of casualties. Senior officers suspended all routine medical care, reassigned administrative personnel, and requested volunteers from the ship’s crew of approximately five thousand to help. The crew converted the second ward into an intensive care unit, and dental technicians now served as hospital corpsmen. The supply department took over feeding the wounded from the ward’s galley, a move that allowed corpsmen there to work full-time caring for the injured. The ship’s weapons department assumed trash detail and the carrier’s Marines and masters-at-arms sealed off the sick bay, blocking reporters and curious sailors from straying too close. Crewmembers from other departments served as stretcher bearers. Hours before the first wounded arrived, medical personnel screened the remaining patients in sick bay and discharged as many patients as possible to free up the necessary seventy-five beds.

  By the time the first helicopters lifted off that morning, the carrier was ready. Inbound helicopters radioed the numbers and types of casualties to the flight deck, where controllers relayed the details over a special independently powered phone line that ran directly to the medical department. When the helicopters landed on the four-and-a-half-acre flight deck, stretcher bearers raced the litters to a forward bomb elevator and through a prearranged and sealed-off route that allowed fast access to the carrier’s medical complex five decks below. The walking wounded followed the same path. Medical teams examined each incoming patient in the sick bay, diagnosed major ailments, and determined the necessary x-rays and lab work, jotting details in the medical charts. Dental officers escorted the wounded into the wards, grouping similar injuries together, such as fractures and abdominal wounds, to maximize efficiency. Technicians transfused blood and inserted chest tubes to help drain fluids and air. Others inserted nasogastric tubes to feed and medicate the injured. The ship’s surgeon and senior medical officers roamed the wards, examining the patients.

  Surgery began immediately on the first of Liberty’s four gravely wounded sailors. Doctors paused long enough to cross-match the patient’s blood type before rolling him into the carrier’s operating room at 1:20 P.M. Doctors performed an exploratory surgery of the sailor’s abdomen and removed part of his small intestine. A second surgery followed at 6:30 P.M. and the third at 9:10 P.M., which involved a loop colostomy. Doctors rolled the fourth patient into the operating room at 3:20 A.M. Saturday. The only rest came during the one-hour turnover between surgeries, time used to clean the operating room, resterilize the equipment, and swap out the patients. The gravity of the sailors’ injuries—and the fact the men had lived through the exhausting night on the Liberty—stunned the doctors. “As is expected from shrapnel injuries, there were often multiple serious injuries,” the medical report later stated. “To have survived so long before definitive care could be initiated was miraculous indeed.”

  The flow of injured slowed af
ter twenty-four hours and the most serious patients—including the four gravely injured—soon stabilized. The doctors focused on setting compound fractures, digging out shrapnel, and removing dead and damaged tissue from wounds. The shrapnel injuries proved challenging because many of the shards were aluminum, a light metal difficult to spot on the ship’s x-ray equipment. The medical department’s final report shows the tremendous work of the carrier’s staff. Teams took 311 x-rays, including sixty-three skull and jaw x-rays and ninety-six chest and abdomen x-rays. Technicians performed another 313 lab tests, ranging from urinalyses and liver batteries to one hundred complete blood counts. Doctors transfused twenty-two pints of blood with no reactions. Many of the wounded had arrived depressed. Doctors noted that morale improved when it became clear all of the injured would survive. To bolster spirits, the supply department plied the wounded with hot food. The staff also provided sailors with toiletries, uniforms, and stationery to write letters home. For those too injured to write, volunteers sat bedside and took dictation.

  Two days after the attack, the America hosted a 1 P.M. memorial service on the carrier’s flight deck to honor the thirty-four officers and crew of the Liberty who were killed in the attack. About forty of the injured limped out onto the flight deck that sunny afternoon, many depending on crutches. Photographs of the ceremony show the bandaged sailors, seated in metal chairs alongside a small stage, still dressed in hospital gowns, blue robes, and slippers. Crew from the America lined the rails of the decks above. Captain Engen officiated at the memorial service along with the carrier’s chaplain. During the ceremony, the chaplain read aloud the names of the men known killed as the Liberty survivors seated nearby bowed their heads. Sailors from the America fired ceremonial guns and the men saluted the flag as taps played. The sailors sang the Navy Hymn, the familiar chorus rolling across the flight deck. “Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril on the sea.”

  Vice Admiral William Martin hosted a news conference on the America Saturday to brief as many as thirty embedded reporters on the latest details about the Liberty. Martin served as the commander of the Sixth Fleet and the highest-ranking officer on scene. The Missouri native and Naval Academy graduate had earned a reputation as a daring pilot during World War II, flying a record of 440 night landings on aircraft carriers in the Pacific. Even after Martin ascended the Navy’s bureaucracy, the admiral and former test pilot refused to give up flying. In one nighttime training flight over Alexandria, Virginia, he ditched his fighter in the Potomac after it developed engine trouble, forcing him to swim to shore despite injuries to his arms and legs.

  The day after the attack Martin had flown out to the Liberty in a helicopter, where crews lowered him to the deck in a sling. Ensign Lucas had greeted the three-star admiral upon arrival and escorted him to Commander McGonagle’s cabin. Martin and his aides observed that McGonagle, confined to bed, still had dried blood on his leg. The violence of the attack bothered the veteran officer, who years later summed up his visit in a personal letter to a friend with two words: “Unbelievable carnage!!” Later that day, the admiral met with eight of the Liberty’s injured in the sick bay of the cruiser U.S.S. Little Rock, his flagship, which sailed with the Sixth Fleet.

  Though moved by the violence of the attack, Martin remained a Pentagon loyalist. At fifty-seven, his career continued to rise. He had landed the prestigious job as the commander of the Sixth Fleet only two months earlier. In his press conference this morning—recorded and sent back to Washington—the admiral refused to stray from the Pentagon’s previous talking points. Though he briefed reporters on the ship’s damage, details of the attack, and McGonagle’s condition, it soon became clear that the admiral intended his press conference to counter growing media speculation that the Liberty was a spy ship. Martin had even prepared a speech addressing that issue.

  “That ship was under my operational command. She was told to remain in international waters in a position which she could carry out her primary mission, which was communications,” the admiral told reporters. “Her communications mission was to be available for an evacuation operation if it should be ordered. Her position makes complete logic to me. In a position where she could be contacted by any embassy or consulate involved. This contact might be a very low powered transmitter and some communications as you know that is limited to line of sight. For she’s the only ship of her kind engaged in that type of communications in that area.”

  Unconvinced by the admiral’s response, a reporter pressed him again, this time more bluntly. “You emphatically deny that she was functioning as a spy?”

  The admiral didn’t hesitate to deceive. “I emphatically deny it,” he declared. “I emphatically tell you that she was there to be a communications guard in case we had to mass evacuate.”

  Another reporter asked the same question that had dogged the Pentagon’s senior leaders two days earlier during the background briefing in Robert McNamara’s private dining room. If the Liberty served as a communications relay, did the United States inform Israel and Egypt of its presence? Martin handled this question better than his superiors, stating that he saw no reason for the government to alert either country since the Liberty sailed in international waters.

  “When you spoke of low-powered transmitters,” a reporter asked, “do you mean the emergency transmitters that these ships have?”

  Martin answered that he didn’t know what communications the Liberty had and instead emphasized the dangers facing American foreign-service workers stranded in the Middle East. “We do all know that these embassies and consulates have been ransacked and have been under attack and that they would communicate with whatever they have,” he replied. “They might even try to communicate with an amateur set.”

  Later in the briefing, a reporter asked the admiral where the Liberty had sailed from prior to the attack. Rather than just note that the ship had visited Africa and Spain, Martin used the question as another opportunity to reinforce the Liberty’s cover story. “She was sent into that area as a communications guard. Pure and simple,” he declared. “It is so essential to get a communications guard close enough that our embassies can get in touch with some help.”

  When a reporter asked moments later if the United States knew Israel had attacked at the time it launched fighters, Martin spotted a chance to derail speculation that the Liberty was a spy ship. “I would like to dispel any ideas that you have that this ship was in there for any other purpose except for an evacuation operation,” he told reporters. “It was fortunate to have ships that are good communicators.”

  The admiral’s efforts to kill speculation about the Liberty’s mission appeared to grow more desperate as the news conference unfolded and he grasped at any opportunity to reiterate the Pentagon’s cover story. As a result, his answers often had little connection to the questions the reporters asked. At times, the admiral confused the spy ship’s cover stories, mixing the Pentagon’s hastily concocted explanation as to why the ship sailed so close to the war zone with the Liberty’s official cover story as a research ship tasked to conduct scientific studies. That became clear when a reporter asked what job the Liberty’s civilians performed.

  Martin flubbed. Rather than simply decline to answer, he offered a rambling and even comical response. “I would imagine them to be the people that know something about our efforts to improve the satellite communications and bouncing these things off the moon and the electromagnetic areas. There are many areas right here in the Mediterranean where communications are not good and we don’t know exactly why, and this is why this ship was going—to try to find out where these areas are,” he babbled. “I frequently move the flagship from an area where I am not getting communications into another and I improve communications. There may be a pattern to this and I hope that ships like the Liberty can find out where these patterns are, and I hope that one of them with poor communications is not my homeport.”

  The admiral appeared to sense that he had strayed and soon wrapped u
p the news conference. He told reporters that the United States operation had been as “clean as a hound’s tooth.” “I have tried to be just as open and frank with you as I know how to be,” the admiral concluded. “I would hope and expect that any interpretations that you try to make out of it would be in the line of the facts that you have been given and to avoid speculations that might be misinterpreted. I see no occasion for speculation other than the facts that you have been given.”

  A sense of routine returned to the Liberty by the weekend as the ship steamed west at about ten knots toward Malta. The destroyer Davis escorted the crippled spy ship and the fleet tug Papago trailed behind, scanning the water for bodies and classified records that might have drifted from the torpedo hole. Officers periodically mustered the crew for head counts while others once again assumed deck watch. Crews continued the cleanup of the ship, including a saltwater wash-down of the forecastle and forward deck. Deck hands tossed ruined fire hoses, bloodied mattresses, desks, and four boxes of .50-caliber machine gun rounds damaged by shrapnel overboard. Others carefully sanitized the personal belongings of the men killed, including destroying one officer’s letters that showed he was having an affair. The Liberty’s deck log shows that navigational glitches still plagued the ship. The gyrocompass broke at 6 P.M. Friday. Two and a half hours later, just as teams restored the compass, the navigation lights failed. The mast lights went out at 12:49 A.M. Saturday and engineers discovered a steam leak at 2:33 P.M. that afternoon. At 10:26 P.M. Sunday night, the gyrocompass broke again.

  The ship’s damage control teams worked nonstop. The day after the attack, crews from the destroyer Davis joined the effort. To the men on the Davis, the Liberty’s competent sailors appeared fatigued, some shell-shocked. Adding to the strain, many of the Liberty’s electricians, engineers, and senior officers had been killed or injured. The well-rested sailors from the Davis infused energy and brought needed tools. Major concern centered on the flooded forward compartment. The bulkhead that held back the swirling seawater sprouted cracks and leaks. Ensign Scott immediately assembled sailors to use plywood, four-by-fours, and jacks to stabilize the bulkhead with shoring. With the bulkhead secure—and a sailor posted at all times to monitor it—damage control crews focused on other priorities. Teams repaired the ship’s ventilation system to pump out oily fumes that might spark a fire, rewired damaged circuits, and pumped water from the ship’s fuel tanks. The Liberty’s crew had resisted leveling the ship for fear that classified materials and bodies would wash out to sea. Now with the tug in its wake, crews transferred fuel from the starboard to port tanks to balance out the weight of the flooded compartment and right the ship.