The Attack on the Liberty

by James Scott

  Reilly’s letter triggered stern warnings to the crew, some of whom wrote to family members and begged them not to release personal letters. “That sort of thing is really bad because we aren’t to say a damn word about the attack until the Board of Inquiry comes out with a formal statement,” Dave Lucas wrote to his parents. “All of my comments have been off the record, as I’m sure you are well aware.” Lucas also warned his wife. “Everything I’ve said to you is for your info only, as you know,” he wrote. “I won’t be able to talk to any reporters or anyone outside the family for a long, long time.”

  A court of inquiry began in the Liberty’s wardroom at 7:55 A.M. on June 14, less than two hours after the spy ship tied up in port. The Navy convened these fact-finding panels to investigate catastrophes, from collisions at sea and fires to the loss of ships in battle or storms. Previous inquiries focused on the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in 1898, the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the torpedoing of the U.S.S. Indianapolis by a Japanese submarine in 1945. The court functions much like a grand jury. Witnesses give sworn testimony. Exhibits are marked and entered into the record. A president oversees the inquiry, similar to a judge in a civilian court. At the end, court members compile a report of findings and offer recommendations that can include disciplinary action, from a letter of reprimand to court martial.

  Admiral John McCain, Jr., the commander of the Navy’s European and Middle East forces, convened the inquiry soon after the attack on the Liberty. McCain symbolized the Navy’s aristocracy. His father had served as a vice admiral during World War II, commanding one of the most powerful aircraft carrier task forces. The elder McCain’s bombers and fighters sank forty-one Japanese ships and damaged twenty-eight others in a single day in an incredible battle near the end of the war. When the senior McCain died suddenly of a heart attack days after the Japanese surrender ceremony on the deck of the battleship U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, the New York Times lauded him in an editorial. “He combined the hot fighting tradition of John Paul Jones with the cold, scientific precision that wins modern battles,” the paper observed. “Small, wiry and tense, he looked like a hawk and struck like a hawk.”

  The younger McCain possessed the drive and ambition of his father. A Naval Academy graduate, McCain was stubby—only five feet six inches tall—and smoked big cigars that he often threw when angry. He routinely barked at his underlings and used foul language, though never around women. His favorite expression was “God bless you, goddammit.” Many of McCain’s peers viewed the feisty admiral as politically motivated, or as one former aide remarked, “always on his way up.” McCain turned his deft political radar not just to the Navy, but also to Congress. During a previous assignment at the United Nations, he had befriended American ambassador Arthur Goldberg, a personal adviser to President Johnson and the Israeli Embassy. The admiral depended on this network of advisers. One of his aides later recalled that McCain “never did anything without checking with ten people all over the world.”

  Some of McCain’s staff blamed his incessant politicking in part for the attack on the Liberty, a fact that would neither be included in the Navy’s court of inquiry nor ever made public. When the conflict in the Middle East started, McCain’s staff had ordered a covert submarine operating in the eastern Mediterranean to pull farther back from shore. McCain’s aides requested that the admiral also move the spy ship. Unlike the submarine, which fell solely under Navy jurisdiction, the Liberty operated at the request of the National Security Agency, its orders routed through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If he moved the Liberty, McCain risked a clash with the Joint Chiefs or the NSA. He hesitated. “Our staff begged McCain to pull Liberty,” recalled Rear Admiral Joseph Wylie, Jr., McCain’s deputy in London. “He claimed he didn’t have the authority. Enough said? He should have. And she was plugged.”

  McCain understood the geopolitical challenge of the Liberty mess. This was no typical collision at sea or ship fire the Navy could handle internally. The attack involved an American ally, one that commanded significant support from American Jews. A court of inquiry report critical of Israel would trigger diplomatic ramifications for the State Department and create domestic political trouble for the beleaguered White House, which now wanted to deemphasize the attack. “It was a little bigger than just a Navy problem,” recalled one senior officer. “It was a national problem.” Faced with political pressure to conclude the episode as soon as possible, McCain had set strict parameters on his investigators, including barring travel to Israel to interview the attackers. The admiral also allowed his team only one week to investigate, though the court’s lawyer would later admit that a proper investigation would have required six months.

  McCain appointed Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd, Jr., president. Like McCain, Kidd came from a storied Navy family. His father died on the U.S.S. Arizona when the Japanese sank the battleship during the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The blast vaporized Kidd’s body. Salvage divers later found his Naval Academy class ring fused to the ship’s conning tower. The rear admiral was the highest-ranking officer killed that infamous December day and the Navy posthumously awarded him the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for heroism.

  The younger Kidd strode across stage at the Naval Academy’s graduation ceremony less than two weeks after his father’s death. The sudden war had prompted the academy to graduate its class six months early. Kidd greeted Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox with a salute as he received his commission as an ensign. “The U.S. Naval Academy and its guests broke into a thunderous cheer,” reported Time magazine, “an unprecedented demonstration in honor of Ensign Kidd and his father.” During the Allied landings in Italy and Sicily, Kidd served as a gunnery officer on a destroyer. He later commanded a destroyer and served as commodore of a guided-missile destroyer division. The forty-seven-year-old Kidd, now heavyset, spoke with a slow drawl and often called younger sailors “son.”

  Kidd picked Captain Ward Boston, Jr., as the court’s attorney. Nearly four years his junior, Boston had flown fighters off aircraft carriers in World War II and later served as an agent with the FBI. Boston and Kidd had met about a year earlier at a dinner party. The feisty son of a locomotive engineer, Boston once challenged Kidd after the admiral had reprimanded a young ensign over a trivial matter. Boston thought the punishment too severe. Boston’s sense of fairness stuck with Kidd. At the time Kidd summoned him to help with the Liberty inquiry, Boston worked in Naples as a Navy lawyer. Captain Bert Atkinson, Jr., Captain Bernard Lauff, Lieutenant Commander Allen Feingersch, and a court reporter rounded out the court.

  Two days after the attack, the court had briefly convened in London. Kidd and Boston flew to Crete and traveled out to the Liberty on the destroyer U.S.S. Fred T. Berry, arriving on board the injured ship at 6:15 A.M., four days after the attack. The other court members awaited the Liberty’s arrival Wednesday morning in Malta. The court’s presence, along with other senior military commanders, impressed the Liberty’s crew. “Talk about brass!” Dave Lucas wrote to his wife. “Two admirals, seven captains, and yesterday a general from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The wardroom hat rack has more scrambled eggs than a short order kitchen at breakfast time.”

  The wardroom still bore the scars from the attack, including jagged shell holes in the wood-paneled walls. The examining officers sat around the same table where Seaman Gary Blanchard had died. The foot-powered suction pump that helped clear the postal clerk’s lungs as he took his final breaths now supported a microphone. Lucas testified first so he could go ashore and have shrapnel in his head examined. To help the twenty-five-year-old officer relax, Kidd poured him a cup of coffee and a glass of water. Feel free to smoke, the admiral told him. Lucas had remained on the bridge with McGonagle during much of the attack and served as a key witness.

  Lucas testified for most of the morning, describing shells flying through the bridge, the torpedo blast rolling the ship, and spotting the hull number on one of the Israeli torpedo boats. He recounted using his belt
as a tourniquet on McGonagle’s wounded leg and seeing the American flag flying from the Liberty’s mast during the attack. The court showed Lucas the quartermaster’s notebook—a primary source for the ship’s deck log—and asked him if the splatters on page 102 were blood. Lucas, who had maintained the log during the latter portion of the attack, confirmed. Court members also asked Lucas to read an entry in the log that described one of the gunboats, then showed him a photo of an Israeli torpedo boat. Did the picture match the torpedo boats he saw? Lucas again confirmed.

  The court pressed Lucas for details of his skipper’s performance. Was McGonagle on the bridge throughout the attack? Did you see him get injured? How did he react to his injuries? Did he stop for medical care? Did the doctor at any point order him to leave the bridge to seek care? Lucas defended his captain. “It would have taken ten people the doctor’s size to even begin to get him off the bridge,” he told the court. “He was giving orders to us in the pilothouse, he was taking photographs of the aircraft, the patrol craft, attempting to identify them with his binoculars, giving orders to the gun mounts when they were still manned, was directing the fire-fighting parties, seemed like he was everywhere at one time.”

  The court recessed from 10:45 A.M. until early afternoon, when it summoned the skipper. McGonagle had started the cruise worrying—and blasting junior officers—over mundane matters, such as reviewing routine messages and drill performance. Those early concerns must have seemed trivial now, considering that two-thirds of his men were dead or injured. The spy ship no one was supposed to know existed had appeared in front-page articles in the nation’s top newspapers, on the evening news broadcasts, and was discussed and debated among senior leaders of the Pentagon, State Department, and even the White House.

  In the hours after the attack, McGonagle’s officers had reported him aloof and pensive, likely replaying the assault in his mind. He said little that first night as he sipped black coffee, sighted the North Star, and ordered turns of the rudder. Days later, alone in his stateroom, he nursed Spanish brandy the ship’s doctor gave him and prepared for the court of inquiry. Lieutenant Commander William Pettyjohn, who came aboard for the voyage to Malta, had checked on McGonagle periodically, finding the skipper stretched out in his bunk, writing and editing his notes. Unlike Kidd, McGonagle had no family legacy or contacts to protect him. He knew his career was at risk, that commanding officers rarely emerged from inquiries unscathed, much less lauded.

  The court began by acknowledging McGonagle’s injuries. “Let the record show that although the witness is experiencing considerable pain from shrapnel wounds in his leg, that he willingly appeared at this hearing.” McGonagle then recounted details as he remembered them. He discussed the precautions he took entering the war zone, including stationing sailors at the Liberty’s machine guns. The skipper described reconnaissance planes he saw buzz the Liberty that morning and how he watched through binoculars as the first wave of fighter jets rolled in for the attack. “It seemed to me that the attacks were made in a crisscross fashion over the ship, with each attack coming at approximately forty-five seconds to one minute intervals,” he testified. “It is estimated that the total air attack was completed in approximately five to six minutes.”

  The skipper also downplayed his shrapnel injuries. “I was not knocked off my feet, I was only shaken up and it made me dance around a little bit, but my injuries did not appear to me to be of any consequence,” he said. “Since I could walk and there was no apparent pain, I gave no further consideration to these minor injuries.” When the torpedo boats were about fifteen miles away, he noticed the American flag had been shot down so he ordered a new one hoisted. McGonagle told the court that he spotted the Israeli flag on the torpedo boats about the time one appeared to signal the Liberty. He ordered the Liberty’s machine gunners to hold fire, but the gunners failed to hear him and fired anyway. To McGonagle, the machine gun fire appeared “extremely effective.” “As far as the torpedo boats are concerned,” he said, “I am sure that they felt that they were under fire.”

  Moments later a torpedo passed the stern of the ship, missing the Liberty by only twenty-five yards. McGonagle told the court that a minute later a second torpedo ripped open the ship’s starboard side. The Liberty immediately rolled nine degrees and the skipper watched oil and debris wash out of the hole. The Liberty lost power and steering. The torpedo, he testified, had left the spy ship “dead in the water.” “Immediately, I determined that the ship was in no danger of sinking and did not order the destruction of classified material and did not order any preparations to be made to abandon ship,” the skipper testified. “It was my intention to ground the ship on shoal areas to the left of the ship’s track to prevent its sinking, if necessary.”

  Though he downplayed his injuries earlier in his testimony, McGonagle later described how he felt he might black out from blood loss, but still remained on the bridge through the night, only breaking long enough to use the restroom. Despite the confusion and chaos of the attack, the skipper could find no fault in the performance of his officers and crew. He congratulated his men for saving the ship and told the court that he intended to commend Lucas, Scott, and Golden, among others. “I have no complaint to lodge against any officer or man on board U.S.S. Liberty for any acts of commission or omission during the attack and post attack phase,” McGonagle told the court. “I have nothing but the greatest admiration for their courage, their devotion to duty, and their efforts to save the ship.”

  Throughout Wednesday and Thursday, a dozen more officers and crewmembers testified. These witnesses represented a fraction of the ship’s crew of nearly three hundred. Many of the best witnesses—those topside during the attack—had been injured and evacuated to the aircraft carrier America. The Navy had since relocated many to hospitals around the Mediterranean. Lieutenant Jim Ennes, Jr., perched on the flying bridge at the start of the attack, would have testified that the fighters made no effort to identify the Liberty but immediately opened fire. Seaman Larry Weaver, who had his colon blown out on deck, would have told the court that the fighters executed far more than the half dozen strafing runs claimed. Lieutenant Jim O’Connor, also on the flying bridge, had a clear view of the flag at the start of the attack. None of these men or dozens of others would ever testify.

  The few sailors who did testify painted a gruesome picture. Lucas recounted the death of Francis Brown, who had stepped back from the helm as the Israelis shelled the bridge. “He still had his hand, one hand on the wheel. I was two paces to his left, and two paces behind him,” Lucas said. “A fragment hit him, I think from behind. It must have come through the bulkhead in the chart-room. He let out a gasp, fell backwards into the chart-room, and within, say a minute, was dead.” Chief Petty Officer Carl Lamkin told the court that the rocketed remains of the ship’s navigator sickened him. On another occasion, Lamkin recounted slapping a crying sailor, who was paralyzed by fear. “I remember seeing one boy throwing up,” Lamkin added. “He had evidently seen one of the bodies that they had brought down.”

  Lieutenant Lloyd Painter recalled the deaths of the machine gunners stationed on the bow at the start of the attack as he frantically tried to warn them of the approaching fighters over the sound-powered phone. “I still had the phone in my hand,” Painter told the court. “I was looking through the porthole when I was trying to contact these two kids, and I saw them both; well, I didn’t exactly see them as such. They were blown apart, but I saw the whole area go up in smoke and scattered metal.” McGonagle described blood streams on the deck and spotting the body of one of the gunners with “his head nearly completely shot away.” Ensign Scott reported that the attack injured so many that the ship ran out of stretchers, forcing men to use blankets and mattresses to haul the injured below.

  Dr. Kiepfer described the twenty-eight hours he cared for the wounded while humbly excluding the fact that shrapnel had lacerated his stomach when a rocket hit the sick bay. He recalled his insertion of a chest tube in
one sailor with a collapsed lung and explained how he slipped his finger inside another sailor’s chest wall to drain the blood. He also told of diluting penicillin with sterile water to make sure the ship’s meager supply lasted. The doctor described in detail his surgery on Gary Blanchard, aided by Tom Van Cleave and others.

  Testimony revealed the crippling damage to the Liberty. Rockets and cannons shredded interior staterooms. Firefighting water flooded others. Rounds sliced through every uniform hanging in George Golden’s closet and even blasted his shoes stored in a drawer while saltwater ruined his $219 tape recorder. The torpedo not only split open the side of the Liberty, but also destroyed the ship’s steering system, blew open the safe in Damage Control Central, and even froze clocks. A tally of the shell holes, included as exhibit 33, revealed 821 blast holes, including 164 in the bridge and smokestack. Damage control crews didn’t bother to count machine gun and shrapnel holes, which were “innumerable.” So extensive was the damage that repairs to the ship and order and replacement of equipment could take a year and cost up to $12 million, enough money to operate, feed, and staff the spy ship for nearly five years.

  The court members questioned whether any of the men in the torpedoed spaces might have drowned. Those who helped recover the bodies testified to finding such horrific injuries that it was doubtful. Kidd, fearing that families might question whether loved ones drowned, inserted the grisly detail into the record. “Wholesale dismemberment resulting in many remains virtually being blown to bits made the recovery particularly difficult and identification even more complicated,” Kidd stated. “The degree of dismemberment was so extreme as to be typified by the fact that the last few cases we packed in the small hours this morning contained, for example, a head and an arm in one and similar partial bodies.”