by James Scott
The colonel reserved his harshest criticism for the United States, accusing the Liberty of inviting the attack. He blasted the American government for failing to alert Israel to the ship’s presence and criticized the Liberty for steaming near a war zone and outside normal shipping routes. Ron even accused the Liberty of hiding its identity by “flying a small flag” and trying to escape once Israeli forces attacked. In the end, Ron exonerated the attackers. “It is concluded clearly and unimpeachably from the evidence and from comparison of war diaries that the attack on USS Liberty was not in malice,” Ron determined. “There was no criminal negligence and the attack was made by innocent mistake.”
Israel’s report stunned Castle. Thirty-four Americans had been killed and nearly two hundred others injured. An American ship had been strafed, torpedoed, and almost sunk in an attack that raged for approximately an hour. Israel’s investigation had now exonerated all those involved of criminal negligence. The attack, in Ron’s words, was merely an “innocent mistake.” Castle wrote to his superiors the next day that Efrat must have noted his “appearance of surprise and incredulity” as he read off the report’s findings. Efrat asked for Castle’s “off the record” opinion when he finished. The attaché pretended not to hear the question and thanked the colonel for his time. Castle wrote that “the burden of diplomacy bore heavily” on him.
Castle challenged Israel’s findings in a report to the White House, Pentagon, and State Department, among others. He called Israel’s standing order to attack ships sailing more than twenty knots “incomprehensible” and described its justifications for the assault as “mutually contradictory.” If the thirty-knot speed of the unidentified ship ruled out the Liberty, it also eliminated El Quseir since its maximum speed was only fourteen knots, four less than the Liberty. Castle also questioned how “a professional Naval officer of the rank of commander could look at Liberty and think her a 30 knot ship.” Castle also criticized Israel’s excuse that thick smoke made it difficult to identify the Liberty, since the smoke had resulted from the attack.
Military and civilian leaders in Washington slammed Ron’s report soon after Castle’s synopsis rattled off the teletype. Walt Rostow complained to a senior diplomat at the Israeli Embassy that the report made “no goddamn sense at all.” Captain Mayo Hadden, Jr., in the Navy’s Politico-Military Policy Division, prepared a two-page secret analysis. Hadden based his review on his decades of experience in the Navy. The veteran officer, who ultimately would achieve the rank of rear admiral, had served as a fighter pilot during World War II, where he earned three Distinguished Flying Crosses and had eight confirmed shoot-downs of Japanese planes. Hadden later served as a navigator on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Yorktown and shortly before landing at the Pentagon, the two-time Silver Star recipient had commanded the carrier U.S.S. Hornet. Ron’s report struck Hadden as a cover-up. The senior officer wrote that the “report blandly glosses over” critical areas that he hoped the United States would refute.
The Israeli explanation for the attack conflicted with the fundamentals of Navy logic. Like Castle, Hadden seized on Israel’s claim that its forces had determined the Liberty sailed at thirty knots. “How could a ship clearly identifiable as a cargo vessel be credited with a speed of 28–30 knots either visually or by Radar?” he questioned. “Why did Israelis, knowing Liberty capable of only 18 knots and El Quseir capable of only 14 knots, attribute either ship with the 28–30 knot capability?” Hadden also puzzled over how trained Israeli commanders failed to recognize that the spy ship was unarmed. Likewise, he noted El Quseir had only two small cannons largely used for self-defense. Israeli naval officers should have recognized that neither ship could have shelled El Arish. Lastly, Hadden challenged Israel’s assertion that the Liberty behaved suspiciously. “How?” he asked. Hadden’s conclusion: “the Israelis apparently are attempting to whitewash the incident.”
Meanwhile, diplomats from the Israeli Embassy pressured the United States for an advance copy of the report of the Navy’s court of inquiry, even before American leaders had completed a review of Israel’s findings. Ephraim Evron told one senior Pentagon official that Israel wanted to swap reports prior to publication so the two governments could avoid a “public clash” over the facts. Evron noted that the American naval attaché in Tel Aviv already had been given the synopsis of Israel’s report. The United States should reciprocate. Evron added that Eugene Rostow had already agreed to such a swap in a recent talk with Harman.
Israel’s military attaché simultaneously pressured his contacts. Brigadier General Joseph Geva met with Hadden the same day the captain drafted his secret analysis of Israel’s report. Hadden reluctantly agreed to listen to Geva but as a precaution arranged for two officers to witness the meeting. Geva stated that the attackers “had made grievous errors and mistakes.” He felt certain Ron’s report contained many flaws. To guarantee its accuracy, he asked the United States to share its findings with Israel before making them public. Hadden recorded the fourteen-minute conversation in a confidential memo. “In short, there was no reason for both Courts to go parallel and never meet, when by coordinating they could travel along the same track and using some of the same facts, they could arrive at similar conclusions,” the memo shows Geva suggested. “The whole thing could be done covertly.”
The Navy balked. Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Horacio Rivero, Jr., ordered the Israeli attaché to direct his request to the State Department. A secret memo to Chief of Naval Operations Admiral David McDonald—labeled “Private for the CNO” and “Original and Only Copy”—outlined Rivero’s concerns. Swapping reports before publication offered no advantage to the U.S., but carried considerable risk if news of the exchange leaked. “Such benefit to the United States is not apparent at this moment,” the memo stated. “To the contrary, it is clear that exchange prior to publication would have the appearance of US/Israel cooperation to the point of collusion, at least as it might be viewed by, for example, such persons as relatives of Liberty crewmen killed and their Congressmen.”
Ambassador Harman anxiously awaited the results of Ron’s investigation in his office at the Israeli Embassy. Press criticism had intensified and the ambassador feared officials in Jerusalem did not take the attack seriously enough. Hours before Ron’s report arrived in Washington, the ambassador outlined his frustrations in a telegram. “The American press has already interviewed injured from the Liberty, and these days 34 Americans are being brought for burial in various cities in the United States, and this reaches national and local newspapers, with the public getting the impression that the Israeli attack may have been deliberate since this was an electronic intelligence ship,” Harman wrote. “Each of the family and friends has representatives in the Congress, and there’s no doubt that the Congress is under great pressure on this subject, including, in the past few days, pressure to initiate a congressional inquiry into the circumstances of this incident.”
Harman’s concerns spread beyond the press. Reports from some of President Johnson’s closest advisers—Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, and Abe Feinberg—suggested America had proof Israel intentionally targeted the Liberty. The United States also knew no ships had shelled the coast, Israel’s alleged catalyst for the attack. The Pentagon expected to release the report of the Navy’s court of inquiry soon. Harman worried the report would prove damning for Israel. “There is no doubt now that these findings will give basis to the assumption that our people had identified or could have identified the ship long before the attack,” the ambassador wrote to Jerusalem. “In addition, as far as we know these findings could give basis to the assumption (very possibly, based on recorded conversations) that although our pilots had doubted the identity of the ship in the midst of the operation, they were still ordered to continue the attack that was later followed also by a torpedo attack.”
Ron’s report failed to satisfy Harman when it arrived. Unlike his American counterparts, who received only the brief synopsis dictated to the American n
aval attaché, Harman reviewed the full six-page analysis. Even before delving into its findings, the ambassador homed in on what he considered a fatal flaw: How could Israel settle for a one-man inquiry to investigate such a serious attack? He knew Washington would never accept such a report. Harman took the drastic step of cabling his reactions to Jerusalem with the demand that his memo be handed immediately to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. “I have no doubt that this treatment is inappropriate for a case in which 34 citizens of a friendly country were killed and 75 more were injured. Treatment of the matter at this level itself could anger the US Government and the delegations,” he wrote. “Such a grave matter requires an inquiry committee comprising several commanders, as well as a legal expert who is proficient in inquiries.”
The ambassador observed that Ron, a former military attaché, lacked the proper credentials to investigate such a severe attack. “We should also take into consideration that Ram Ron is well known in Washington. It is known that he is not an expert on the Air Force and the Navy,” he wrote. “There is no chance that the President, the People and the parents will perceive the fact that we have drawn conclusions based on the inquiry of one person, as appropriate response on our behalf to the severity of the matter.” Harman singled out other errors. Ron’s report failed to include details from the Liberty’s logs that the State Department provided Israel. Harman questioned some of the times listed in the report and why Ron neglected to call expert witnesses. More importantly, Ron interviewed only twelve witnesses—none of them the attacking pilots. Harman’s conclusion: “Ron’s investigation does not withstand the test of analysis and does not envelop all facts.”
The ambassador’s opinion would prove incredibly astute. Ron’s report did not accurately reflect the record in many important respects. For example, Israel told American reporters that the Liberty was unmarked and flew no flag. Not until after the jet fighter and torpedo boat attacks ended, Israel maintained, did its forces identify the spy ship. Evidence gathered for Ron’s report contradicted these claims. Israel in fact discovered the Liberty almost nine hours before the attack when a reconnaissance plane circled the ship at sunrise. An Israeli naval observer on board the flight spotted the Liberty’s distinct hull number: GTR-5. The crew radioed the information to ground control. The naval observer reported the same identification in a debriefing soon after landing. Officers looked up the ship’s identity. Hours before the attack, Israel knew not only that an American ship sailed nearby, but that it was the spy ship Liberty.
The transcript of radio communication between the pilots and air controllers—a copy of which was included as an exhibit in Ron’s report—also revealed that moments before the attack began, Israeli forces questioned whether the ship might be American. Approximately two minutes before the pilots first strafed the Liberty, a weapons system officer in general headquarters blurted out: “What is it? Americans?”
“Where are Americans?” one of the air controllers asked.
The officer didn’t answer. Lieutenant Colonel Shmuel Kislev, the chief air controller at general headquarters in Tel Aviv, queried his counterpart at Air Control Central. “What are you saying?”
“I didn’t say,” the other replied, his tone implying that he didn’t want to know.
Despite the doubts about the ship’s identification, Kislev—seated just a few feet away from the commander of the Israeli Air Force—neither halted the impending assault nor ordered his fighters to inspect the ship for identifying markings or a flag as the planes zeroed in on the Liberty. His only concern seemed to be whether any antiaircraft fire targeted his fighters.
“Does he have authorization to attack?” one of the controllers asked.
“He does,” Kislev snapped.
The pilots blasted the Liberty’s bridge, machine guns, and antennae, killing and injuring dozens of stunned sailors, firefighters, and stretcher bearers. Fires erupted on deck and blood soaked the bridge. Kislev ordered a pair of Super Mystère fighters to join the attack with napalm, which he deemed “more efficient.”
One of the pilots then instructed another. “We’ll come in from the rear. Watch out for the masts,” the pilot warned. “I’ll come in from her left, you come behind me.”
“Authorized to sink her?” asked one of the controllers.
“You can sink her,” Kislev ordered, asking a minute later for a report on the pilot’s progress in the attack. “Is he screwing her?”
“He’s going down on her with napalm all the time,” replied another controller.
A pilot joked during the strafing runs that hitting the defenseless ship was easier than shooting down MiGs, a reference to Soviet jet-fighters often used by Arab militaries. Another quipped that to sink the Liberty before the torpedo boats arrived would be a “mitzvah.” “Oil is spilling out into the water,” one pilot exclaimed. “Great! Wonderful! She’s burning! She’s burning!”
One of the air controllers parroted the pilot. “She’s burning!” the controller cried out. “The warship is burning!”
Shortly before planes exhausted all their ammunition, Kislev finally asked the pilots to look for a flag. He then ordered a third pair of fighters to join the attack. One of the pilots buzzed the ship moments later and spotted the Liberty’s hull number. He radioed it to ground control, albeit one letter off. The air controller ordered him to disengage.
“What country?” asked one of the air controllers.
“Probably American,” replied Kislev.
“What?”
“Probably American.”
More than twenty minutes before the fatal torpedo strike that killed twenty-five sailors, Israel’s chief air controller conclusively identified the Liberty as an American ship. Years later Kislev confessed that when the pilot radioed in the Liberty’s hull number, any doubt about the ship’s identity vanished. “At that point in time, in my mind, it was an American ship,” he admitted in a British television documentary. “I was sure it was an American ship.”
Pilots and air controllers were not the only Israelis aware of the Liberty’s identity. Ron’s report revealed that two naval officers—one in the Navy war room in Haifa, the other a senior liaison in the air force command center in Tel Aviv—testified that before the torpedo attack, both suspected the target was the Liberty. Neither officer intervened to halt the attack. Ron’s report also revealed that Captain Yitzhak Rahav, the Israeli navy’s second in command, dismissed the pilot’s report of the Liberty’s hull number, even though Egyptian ships are marked with Arabic script, not Roman letters. Rahav’s testimony reflected his belief that the Liberty’s hull number “was camouflage writing in order to allow an Egyptian ship to enter the area.”
The Israeli ambassador in Washington felt the only solution was for someone to go to jail. Despite Ron’s exoneration of the attackers, Harman wrote to Jerusalem that the report showed that several parties were guilty of negligence. The ambassador questioned why the identification of the Liberty as an American ship that morning was not communicated to the navy’s top leadership. He also challenged Ron’s attempt to justify the torpedo boat attack by blaming the Liberty. What conclusion will the Americans draw from the conversations between the pilots and air controllers? Harman asked. More importantly, he questioned how Ron ruled the attack reasonable “when he determined that two of the officers testified that after the aircraft attack and before the attack of the torpedo ships they feared that the ship being attacked was the Liberty…. The question is, was what had happened reasonable in accordance with existing IDF procedures,” Harman asked. “I doubt this is for us to claim.”
The ambassador knew that the Liberty attack could have dire implications for U.S.-Israeli relations. Ron’s report did not help matters. The ambassador suggested in a telegram to the prime minister and other recipients that the only way Israel might resolve the issue without jeopardizing ties between the countries was to tell the United States that the “military prosecutor insisted on continuing the investigation and deepening i
t.” Harman demanded his government appoint more investigators and legal counsel. The ambassador urged the investigators immediately to begin interviews with the pilots and torpedo boat skippers. “This matter has turned into an open wound that has inherent in it severe dangers to our relations on all levels the friendship of which we’d had until now, friendship that is essential for our status in the US, that is: the President, the Pentagon, public opinion and the intelligence community. Do you understand that the President is also the Supreme Commander of the US forces?” Harman wrote. “Only a thorough handling of the problem and our coming to clear-cut and serious conclusions could make our situation better.”
The ambassador reiterated his message the following day in an urgent telegram, again to the prime minister and other senior leaders. “It is difficult to overstate the explosive potential of this issue,” Harman wrote. “Even a superficial analysis of Ron’s findings provides basis to the assumption that there was negligence and rash action on the part of several parties.” Harman repeated his fears that the American naval court of inquiry would show that Israeli forces had identified the Liberty hours before the attack. To defuse the situation, Harman again urged Israel to indict the attackers. “In the severe situation created, the only way to soften the results is if we could let the US Government know already today that we intend to prosecute people in connection with this disaster,” the ambassador wrote. “This action is the only way to impress both on the US Government and on the public here, that the attack on the ship was not the result of malicious intent of the Israeli Government or authorized IDF parties.”