The Attack on the Liberty

by James Scott

  Limor’s story, described by a Liberty officer in a letter as the product of a “wild imagination,” infuriated the Liberty’s men. Fighters did not circle the ship prior to the attack and the torpedo boats were too far away to have witnessed the air assault. The American flag was shot down, but replaced by a larger flag long before the Israeli Navy arrived. None of the torpedo boats fired across the bow, circled the ship, or radioed the Liberty. The only markings Limor reportedly saw were the Liberty’s hull numbers, which he claimed meant nothing to him. That alone was a shocking statement. How could a naval officer not understand the significance of a ship’s hull number? Even Israeli torpedo boats carried similar markings. The Israeli officers should have at a minimum noted the Liberty’s markings were not in Arabic, as Egyptian ships are identified. But these gripes were trivial compared to Limor’s largest blunder: he attributed the torpedo strike to the wrong side of the ship.

  Liberty sailors anxious to challenge Limor’s story were barred from talking to reporters. That left many Americans to assume his story was accurate. The Pentagon ended the news blackout after the release of the summary of the court of inquiry, but limited the Liberty’s crew—still in Malta awaiting the completion of repairs—from discussing anything outside the summary’s contents. Restrictions on crewmember interviews, published in the Liberty’s Plan of the Day, soon evolved into a ban on all press contacts. The one-page memo was read aloud at morning quarters and posted throughout the ship for the crew to read. “Interviews and statements to news media concerning the attack on Liberty 08 June are not to be given by individuals. If you are approached by someone wanting an interview or statement inform them that they must contact the Public Affairs Officer,” the memo read. “The only information that ships company is allowed to discuss is that already made available to the press. Therefore, there is nothing new that we would be able to tell them in an interview.”

  Maltese workers flooded the Liberty’s drydock on the afternoon of July 14 in preparation for the return home. The Liberty had arrived in Valletta at dawn exactly one month earlier, greeted by reporters on a hillside who marveled at the scorched spy ship. Shipfitters had worked daily to patch the hundreds of shell blasts and the torpedo hole that warped interior decks. Fresh paint masked the smell of the dead. The repairs served as a temporary remedy so the Liberty could cross the Atlantic. The Navy would decide later whether to overhaul the ship’s mechanical and electrical systems and fix its battered hull. “After getting to Norfolk, what happens to the ship and the crew is still anybody’s guess,” one officer wrote in a letter. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Sailors fanned out across the ship’s lower compartments to monitor the outward bulkheads as the water rose. McGonagle ordered crews to report problems immediately to Damage Control Central. The skipper refused to allow the ship to leave drydock until each team confirmed the absence of leaks. Four hours after workers began to flood the drydock—and with the ship now afloat—the Liberty eased out of its dock and tied up alongside a Valletta pier. After a month of depending on shore power, the ship’s engineering plant now hummed. The crew could finally use the Liberty’s toilets rather than the foul outhouse perched on the end of the pier.

  The Liberty completed its dock trials at 9:45 A.M. the next morning. Engineers ran the propeller up to five knots forward and five knots in reverse to test the ship’s main propulsion plant. Men also checked the ship’s generators, evaporators, and the main feed water pump to guarantee the Liberty’s steam-powered system still functioned after a month of no use. Crews swabbed the decks with fresh water and removed the extra mooring lines. Many of the sailors dashed off letters, alerting loved ones of the Liberty’s expected homecoming in two weeks. “Everybody on board is eagerly awaiting our arrival in Norfolk,” Ensign Scott wrote to his parents in North Carolina. “Malta has been very good to us but it will be good to be back in the States.”

  The Liberty sailed for home at 7 A.M. on July 16, once again passing the Ricasoli lighthouse at the entrance of Valletta’s Grand Harbor. The tugboat Papago, which had trailed the Liberty on its voyage to Malta, again fell in line. Sailors lined the decks and watched as the ancient maritime crossroad that had served as the Liberty’s home port for the past month faded on the horizon. Vice Admiral Martin congratulated the crew on the eve of the ship’s departure. “USS Liberty has become a legend in her own time,” he wrote. “We have shared your grief for those who lost their lives, we remind ourselves that you were classic examples of unswerving devotion to duty.”

  Malta had provided the officers and crew a relaxing place to decompress, reflect, and grieve. An early morning fire in a storeroom that produced a lot of smoke but few flames had served as the month’s most exciting event. The ship’s new executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Donald Burson, who reported aboard shortly before departure, brought with him a familiar rigidity that had once been routine on the Liberty. He ordered one officer to get a haircut and barked at the enlisted men over minor infractions. “The new XO is beginning to get rather picky on some things,” an officer griped in a letter. “I realize that we have been rather lax in some areas, but then again, everything has been so jumbled up since the 8th of June, I don’t know what he expects.”

  The task of sorting the jumbled recollections fell to the officers, who gathered in the wardroom after the court of inquiry to discuss medals. Reports of heroic actions surfaced. Men on the forward machine guns had died protecting the ship. Damage control teams had fought fires and kept the Liberty afloat. The doctor and his corpsmen had performed surgeries while others rescued men from flooded spaces and the main decks as the fighters attacked. Officers investigated each case. The men learned that not everyone had acted heroically. Stories arose of sailors found hiding. Fear paralyzed others and some cried. One officer claimed to have rescued a blinded colleague in the torpedoed compartments when the investigation revealed an enlisted man made the rescue.

  Purple Hearts presented a dilemma for the Pentagon. The medal’s criteria required that recipients be killed or injured fighting opposing armed forces. Israel was an ally, so the Liberty’s crewmen weren’t eligible. Admiral McCain’s office intervened. Liberty men no doubt believed the attackers represented a hostile force. “Suggest that failure to award Purple Hearts could later become known to press and could generate unwelcome public discussion of procedures which could be interpreted as discriminating not only against the dead and wounded but against cases of unquestioned heroism in action which are only now beginning to become known.”

  The Pentagon acquiesced, but soon discovered that combat pay posed a similar challenge. Troops in war zones received roughly an extra fifty dollars a month. The Pentagon didn’t recognize the eastern Mediterranean as a war zone. McCain’s office again advocated for the crew: “A favorable determination would be of financial benefit, a boost to their morale and tangible recognition of the heroic deeds and sacrifices of the officers and men of the USS Liberty.” This time the Pentagon compromised. Rather than pay the entire crew—a minimal expense given the Navy’s $21 billion budget that year—Pentagon penny-pinchers decided that only the injured men and the families of those killed were entitled to combat pay. The uninjured got only regular pay.

  Lost in the Pentagon’s arithmetic was the incalculable toll the attack took on the sailors and their families. Many of the families still grieved and sought answers to explain how loved ones had been killed. Others wanted guarantees that Israel would be held accountable. William Allenbaugh, whose son died in the torpedoed research spaces, expressed that in a letter to President Johnson. He asked what action, if any, the government planned to take against the Israeli government. “This was a dastardly deed,” Allenbaugh wrote. “We feel that something should be done to correct the loss we have all felt so keenly. Please advise, if possible, what course we can take in regards to this matter.”

  Soon after her husband’s burial in Arlington, Weetie Armstrong wrote a letter to the crew. “You lost your
XO and I lost my husband but we were fortunate to have been a part of his life. I know all of you prayed and did what you could for him in his last hours and for this I thank you. I don’t understand why God chose to take Philip but I accept God’s will. This was His plan for Philip. My children and I are fine. Of course our future looks a bit dim but God will give us the strength to take life a day at a time,” she wrote. “I’m not going to make any definite plans until I have some time to think. In any case please feel free to call on me and my children when you are home again. May God bless and keep all of you safe. My prayers are with you.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Almost as shocking as the attack itself has been the manner in which Washington—especially the Defense Department—has seemed to try to absolve Israel from any guilt right from the start. Some of these efforts would be laughable but for the terrible tragedy involved.

  —SHREVEPORT TIMES

  Clark Clifford ranked near the top of President Johnson’s roster of pro-Israel advisers. Chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the sixty-year-old Clifford recognized the significant role Jews played in American politics, particularly for Democrats. But Clifford’s views were based on more than votes. Though he was Episcopalian, Clifford had regarded the creation of a Jewish state as a moral necessity following the Holocaust. His support for Israel had become a defining moment early in his political career when he served as an aide to President Harry Truman.

  On the eve of Israel’s independence in 1948, Clifford had urged Truman to recognize the Jewish state. Truman sympathized with the Zionists, but faced pressure from Secretary of State George Marshall not to grant recognition. Most of Truman’s senior advisers sided with Marshall. To settle the issue, Truman asked Clifford and Marshall to debate during an afternoon meeting in the Oval Office. The president perched behind his desk, adorned with his famous plaque: THE BUCK STOPS HERE! Marshall sat to his left, Clifford his right. Aides crowded around.

  Marshall and his deputies took a pragmatic view. Arabs vastly outnumbered Jews, by some estimates as much as 30 million to just 600,000. Arab nations sat on the Middle East’s massive oil reserves. Marshall also warned the president that if Zionists declared independence, neighboring Arab nations would invade. The five-star general, whose economic recovery plan for Europe after World War II would earn him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953, did not want the United States to be forced to intervene. The best solution was to let the United Nations take over.

  Clifford countered that the United Nations’ proposed plan for the region called for a single state, an unrealistic solution given that Arabs and Jews already lived separately. A former St. Louis trial lawyer with sixteen years of experience, Clifford argued that the United States had a moral responsibility to support the fledgling state and create a secure homeland for Jews. “Here is an opportunity to try to bring these ancient injustices to an end,” he argued. “Perhaps these steps would help atone, in some small way, for the atrocities, so vast as to stupefy the human mind, that occurred during the Holocaust.”

  The afternoon debate intensified. Clifford watched as the general’s face reddened. When Clifford finished, Marshall exploded. The general accused Clifford of cashing in America’s foreign policy for a few votes. He then threatened the president: “If you follow Clifford’s advice and if I were to vote in the election, I would vote against you.” Everyone in the Oval Office froze. If Marshall’s threat became public, it would prove politically disastrous for Truman. The president, up for reelection that fall and facing abysmal approval ratings, knew Americans adored Marshall.

  Eleven minutes after Israel declared its independence at midnight on May 14, 1948, Truman officially recognized the Jewish state. Clifford had won.

  In the two decades since that afternoon, Clifford had remained an advocate for Israel. Still, the attack on the Liberty troubled him. Among the president’s senior advisers, he had emerged as one of the strongest proponents of forceful action. He described the attack as “egregious” and told colleagues it was “inconceivable” that it could have been an accident. “My concern is that we’re not tough enough. Handle as if Arabs or USSR had done it,” Clifford had argued in a meeting of the Special Committee of the National Security Council. “Punish Israelis responsible.”

  Johnson asked Clifford to prepare a report on the attack but barred him from conducting an independent probe, a handicap he complained about in his memoir: “Because of this limitation, I was never fully satisfied with the results of my report.” Clifford gathered records from the Pentagon, including the Navy’s court of inquiry and the synopsis of Colonel Ram Ron’s report, though Israel had yet to conclude its expanded probe. The veteran statesman also reviewed transcripts of the NSA’s radio intercepts of Israeli helicopters. Keeping with the president’s wishes, Clifford neither interviewed Liberty survivors nor took testimony from Navy, White House, or Pentagon officials. He also did not visit Israel, interview the attackers, or review the Jewish state’s war logs, diaries, or radio communications.

  Clifford submitted his five-page report to National Security Adviser Walt Rostow two days after the Liberty departed Malta for its voyage home. Rostow delivered the top-secret report to the president, describing it in a memo as a “brief but definitive analysis.” Clifford’s report served as a stinging rebuttal of many of Israel’s explanations. He denounced the assertion that Israel had queried the American Embassy in Tel Aviv about the presence of any American ships days before the attack. He also refuted the accusation that the Liberty tried to hide itself by flying a small flag. Israel’s claim that the Liberty refused to identity itself when confronted by torpedo boats, Clifford labeled “demonstrably false.”

  Clifford’s sharpest rebuke centered on Israel’s assertion that its forces confused the Liberty for an aging Egyptian horse and troop transport. A former Navy captain, Clifford understood ship recognition. He wrote that the Liberty’s name was painted in English clearly across the stern with its hull numbers on the bow, a big difference from Egyptian ships marked in Arabic. The American flag flew from the mast. Visibility was excellent. With a gentleman’s touch that endeared him to so many presidents, Clifford deemed Israel’s excuse a fiction. He supported his position with the trial lawyer’s vigor that had made him the first Washington attorney to earn a million dollars a year.

  “That the Liberty could have been mistaken for the Egyptian supply ship El Quseir is unbelievable. El Quseir has one-fourth the displacement of the Liberty, roughly half the beam, is 180 feet shorter, and is very differently configured. The Liberty’s unusual antenna array and hull markings should have been visible to low-flying aircraft and torpedo boats,” Clifford wrote. “In the heat of battle the Liberty was able to identify one of the attacking torpedo boats as Israeli and to ascertain its hull number. In the same circumstances, trained Israeli naval personnel should have been able easily to see and identify the larger hull markings on the Liberty.”

  Despite his effort to discredit Israel’s explanations, Clifford hedged on the central question of whether its forces deliberately strafed and torpedoed an American ship. He padded his final assessment with qualifiers, though he concluded that Israel’s high command and senior government leaders likely did not order the attack. “The evidence at hand does not support the theory that the highest echelons of the Israeli Government were aware of the Liberty’s true identity or of the fact that an attack on her was taking place,” he wrote. “To disprove such a theory would necessitate a degree of access to Israeli personnel and information which in all likelihood can never be achieved.”

  Clifford attributed the assault to negligence. He concluded that there was no justification for Israel’s otherwise outstanding military to have failed to alert its forces that an American ship sailed nearby. Clifford advocated that the United States demand punishment. “The best interpretation from available facts is that there were gross and inexcusable failures in the command and control of subordinate Israeli naval and air element
s,” he concluded. “The unprovoked attack on the Liberty constitutes a flagrant act of gross negligence for which the Israeli Government should be held completely responsible, and the Israeli military personnel involved should be punished.”

  President Johnson had confided in a Newsweek reporter the day after the attack that he believed Israel had intentionally tried to sink the Liberty because it was a spy ship. Press Secretary George Christian, though personally convinced “an accident of this magnitude was too much to swallow,” later wrote that Clifford’s report swayed the president otherwise. Johnson, who said little publicly about the attack in 1967, dedicated barely a paragraph to it years later in his memoir. He described the Liberty simply as a “heartbreaking episode” and a “tragic accident.” The president also erred in his memoir in stating that the attack had killed only ten men.

  Clifford’s report suffered a critical weakness: How could he rule the attack an accident if he didn’t believe Israel’s explanation? That conundrum plagued the Navy’s investigation and embodied American officials’ larger struggle to determine precisely how and why the attack occurred. Many recognized that Israel had much to lose by torpedoing the Liberty, but simultaneously found its explanations lacked credibility. To resolve that central question required that the United States put the pilots, torpedo boat skippers, and commanding officers under oath—as the Navy did with McGonagle and his crew—and demand answers. It also required investigators to review Israel’s radio communications and war logs. Absent Washington’s political resolve to pressure Israel, investigators could offer little more than circumstantial guesswork.