The Attack on the Liberty

by James Scott

  Former secretary of state Rusk challenged the idea that the issue was dead in a 1981 letter to one of the Liberty’s officers. Rusk wrote that he believed the attack “was and remains a genuine outrage.” Despite the years of negotiations, he added that he felt Israel did not pay enough to the families of the men killed or the survivors. Rusk was pragmatic. The bill for the ship was the least important: “It was not a major point because, in light of our aid programs for Israel, we would, in effect, be paying ourselves.”

  Captain William McGonagle sipped coffee with Secretary of the Navy Paul Ignatius and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Thomas Moorer at the Washington Navy Yard on the morning of June 11, 1968. The Navy had chosen to honor McGonagle with the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for heroism, on this day. The skipper dressed for the occasion in his formal whites. The government offered to pay the transportation and hotel costs for McGonagle’s siblings to attend the 11:30 A.M. ceremony in the sail loft. McGonagle’s wife, three children, and mother-in-law also came, as did some of the Liberty’s remaining officers and crewmembers who lived in the Washington area.

  The forty-two-year-old skipper, recently promoted to the rank of captain, had relinquished responsibility for the Liberty eight months earlier. McGonagle now commanded the U.S.S. Kilauea, a new twenty-knot ammunition ship built by General Dynamics in a Massachusetts shipyard. A little more than a year earlier, as the Liberty trolled the west coast of Africa, McGonagle had feared his career was over. Now it had soared. The Los Angeles Times noted his heightened status in a story on his promotion: “Command of a new ship is considered a career plum in the Navy.” But the Navy readied its greatest plum for McGonagle this morning.

  The Medal of Honor often is awarded posthumously because of the extraordinary criteria required to earn it. Those service members fortunate enough to survive combat traditionally are invited to the White House, where the president presents the medal. President Johnson often performed the ceremony, personally placing the medal around the neck of each recipient. Johnson presented at least nine Medals of Honor during the first half of 1968. He had dined with the parents of a deceased recipient in March. Less than a month before McGonagle’s ceremony, the president presented medals to four servicemen simultaneously—one from each branch of the military—at the dedication of the Pentagon’s new Hall of Heroes.

  McGonagle would not be so fortunate. The Liberty remained too politically sensitive for the administration even a year later and after Johnson’s announcement that he would not run for reelection. James Cross, the president’s senior military aide, delivered McGonagle’s citation and a Presidential Unit Citation for the rest of the crew to the president for his signature on May 15. Cross urged Johnson not to present either award in person. The president signed both citations that afternoon, then followed Cross’s advice. “Due to the nature and sensitivity of these awards, Defense and State officials recommend that both be returned to Defense for presentation, and that no press release regarding them be made by the White House.”

  The president instead visited former president Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, and Senator Richard Russell at the Walter Reed Army Hospital the morning of McGonagle’s ceremony. During his ten-minute visit with Russell, Johnson presented the Georgia Democrat with a signed copy of his speeches, To Heal and to Build, scribbling inside: “To my friend Dick Russell with appreciation.” The president returned to the White House afterward, less than four miles from the Washington Navy Yard, where he presided over the graduation ceremony of the Capitol Page School in the East Room. Too concerned about domestic politics to present the nation’s highest award for heroism, the commander in chief instead handed out diplomas to high school students.

  Admiral Moorer, who would go on to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, years later wrote that he had attended numerous Medal of Honor ceremonies at the White House. The four-star admiral, who was often outspoken in his belief that the Israelis deliberately targeted the Liberty, described the president’s refusal to present McGonagle his award as a “back-handed slap.” “They had been trying to hush it up all the way through,” Moorer said of McGonagle’s award. “The way they did things I’m surprised they didn’t just hand it to him under the 14th Street Bridge.”

  McGonagle never publicly questioned why the president did not present him his medal. He remained a loyal officer, reluctant to challenge his superiors. He refused efforts years later by some of his crew to have his medal represented at the White House. “I do not feel that I ‘earned’ or ‘won’ the Medal that was bestowed on me,” he wrote to one of his crewmembers. “As far as I am concerned, I did no more than fulfill my duties and responsibilities as Commanding Officer, as set forth in U.S. Navy Regulations.”

  The skipper’s reserved demeanor masked his private feelings. Handwritten notes in his personal files show that McGonagle later researched how other service members were awarded their medals. He appeared to locate only two others during that era who, like him, failed to receive medals in person from the president. On a single sheet of unlined paper, McGonagle listed their names: Captain Harvey Barnum, Jr., followed by 1st Lieutenant Walter Marm, Jr. Beneath them, he simply wrote: “ME.”

  McGonagle kept any concerns he had to himself on this June morning in the Washington Navy Yard. As the men sipped coffee the secretary of the Navy commended McGonagle for saving the Liberty. The skipper, as he always did, demurred. The honor belonged to his men. Secretary of the Navy Ignatius disagreed. “When you and Admiral Moorer have finished your coffee,” Ignatius ordered, “we’re going to go right out there and we’re going to have this ceremony.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” McGonagle replied.

  McGonagle, surrounded by friends, family, and Liberty crewmembers, listened as the National Anthem played. Moorer then read the medal citation, recounting how the skipper, despite his injuries, had remained at the helm of his battered ship until help arrived nearly seventeen hours later. Like the vaguely worded tombstone in Arlington that marked the mass grave of Liberty sailors, McGonagle’s citation never mentioned Israel, nor was the Jewish state identified as the attacker in the ceremony, a fact the Chicago Tribune noted in an article the next day.

  “Despite continuous exposure to fire, he maneuvered his ship, directed its defense, supervised the control of flooding and fire, and saw to the care of the casualties,” Moorer read. “Captain McGonagle’s extraordinary valor under these conditions inspired the surviving members of the Liberty’s crew, many of them seriously wounded, to heroic efforts to overcome the battle damage and keep the ship afloat.”

  Ignatius turned to McGonagle afterward. The secretary of the Navy, against a backdrop of whirring cameras, placed the Medal of Honor around the skipper’s neck. The five-pointed gold star, suspended from a blue ribbon, rested just beneath McGonagle’s chin. The son of a sharecropper-turned-janitor, the man who had guided his ship to safety by the North Star, lowered his head and wept.

  The Liberty’s voyage home from Malta proved its last. The spy ship languished alongside a Virginia pier throughout 1967 and the first half of 1968. The $162,608 the Navy spent to patch the torpedo and shell holes in Malta—the minimum required to allow the Liberty to steam home—was a fraction of the estimated $7.6 million needed to fix its battered hull and restore its electrical and mechanical systems. Those extra millions the United States sought from Israel seemed less likely to materialize each day as Israel haggled with the United States over the bill.

  Ensign Dave Lucas’s journal reveals the routine life of the men still on board the Liberty as the summer gave way to fall, then winter. Some sailors left to attend Navy training programs while others studied for promotions and high school equivalency exams. The remaining sailors swabbed decks, chipped paint, and cleaned filters. Others inventoried the narcotics locker, audited the ship’s post office, and stood watch. Days off were plentiful.

  The Navy continued to reassign officers and crewmembers as it becam
e increasingly clear the Liberty would not sail again. Dr. Kiepfer departed for a hospital residency in Boston. The Navy dispatched Painter to Germany. Golden and Watson soon departed. Scott shipped off to Vietnam along with many other Liberty crewmembers. The wardroom, where men had traded stories over coffee and cigarettes, soon hosted many of the farewell dinners.

  McGonagle returned to the Liberty one morning in June 1968 to award medals to some of his remaining men. The Medal of Honor presented to him only days earlier dangled from his neck as McGonagle once again climbed the spy ship’s gangway. The morning breeze blew the smell of creosote across the Liberty’s port quarter as the former skipper walked down the line, pinning medals on the uniforms of his men. Family members trailed behind, snapping photos.

  The Navy awarded more than two hundred Purple Hearts to the Liberty’s injured and to the families of the deceased, a staggering figure considering that the ship’s crew totaled less than three hundred. The Navy also awarded more than forty medals for heroism and exemplary service, including the Navy Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star, and the Navy Commendation Medal. Some of the medals were posthumous, including Navy Crosses, an award second only to the Medal of Honor, for Francis Brown and Philip Armstrong, Jr.

  McGonagle presented the Silver Star—the nation’s third-highest award for heroism—to Lucas, Golden, and Richard Brooks. Ten other Liberty officers and crewmembers also were awarded medals. In small ceremonies elsewhere reassigned crewmembers Kiepfer, Scott, Larkins, and Lockwood, among others, received Silver Stars.

  For the collective effort to save the ship the Navy honored the entire crew with the Presidential Unit Citation, the nation’s highest award for a military unit. The Virginian-Pilot noted in a story about the June ceremony that the scars from the assault a year earlier largely were gone. “The ship looked good, dressed for the occasion, with the only hint of the attack in the many patches of new paint,” the paper wrote. “But it was really a day for the men.”

  The sailors sipped punch, ate cookies, and posed for pictures with McGonagle after the awards ceremony. Shortly before the skipper left, someone asked him to share his thoughts on the attack. He declined: “What I have to say, I’ve already said.” McGonagle refused to speak of the attack again, other than to congratulate the efforts of his crew, until he returned to Arlington twenty-nine years later to meet with his men one last time shortly before his death.

  Many Liberty crewmembers correctly speculated that the Navy would mothball the spy ship. The men prepared final reports, collected charts, publications, and clocks and audited the cash in the ship’s post office. The Liberty’s engineers opened the valves and removed the nuts, bolts, and gaskets, sealing each inside bags and wiring them in place in case the Navy reactivated the ship. Crews opened the inside hatches to dehumidify the ship and coated the gears with Cosmoline to prevent rust.

  The echo of voices down the narrow passageways soon fell silent. The smell of eggs, fried one hundred at a time, no longer flooded the mess deck each morning. Gone was the hum of the engines that had lulled many men to sleep as the ship steamed the oceans. The Liberty would never sail again. The Pentagon dismantled the spy ship program the following year. In December 1970, the Navy removed the Liberty from its registry. It was then sold to the Boston Metals Company in Baltimore for $101,667. Metal cutters later broke it down for scrap.

  Sailors scavenged for souvenirs long before the Liberty reached the scrap yard. Men cut up the African mahogany rails, handcrafted by the Liberty’s first skipper and still burned and peppered with shrapnel, into two-inch blocks. Other sailors collected tattered flags that once flew from the ship’s mast along with Zippo lighters adorned with the ship’s insignia of an eagle clutching the Liberty bell in its talons. Many sailors clung to bits of twisted shrapnel and machine gun bullets from the attack. Mac Watson took the bloodstained log.

  The few remaining officers and crewmembers gathered a final time on board the deck of the Liberty to decommission it at 11 A.M. on June 28, 1968. The spy ship was tied up alongside Pier Bravo in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. During a quiet ceremony on a hot summer morning, the Liberty’s executive officer read the ship’s history, from its naming in honor of ten American cities and towns to the final attack that killed thirty-four men and injured nearly two hundred others. Some of the families of the deceased listened in the audience. Another officer read the decommissioning order. The skipper lowered the Liberty’s flag and a chaplain offered a final prayer.

  The sailors shook hands afterward and said good-byes before filing down the gangway. Brooks departed last, pausing at the top. He stared up at the bridge where McGonagle had fought to steer the ship that awful day. He observed the guntubs where the men had died desperately trying to protect the Liberty. He looked down at the patch that covered the torpedo hole. This aged cargo ship that had plowed the seas through the final days of World War II and Korea miraculously had survived a torpedo blast and 821 rocket and cannon hits. Brooks felt sad. He knew that a part of him would forever remain on board. He raised his right hand and saluted the Liberty.

  EPILOGUE

  More than four decades have passed since the attack on the Liberty, but it remains a vivid part of the daily lives of many of the men who served. Some of the sailors still wrestle with disabilities, while others battle post-traumatic stress disorder that led some to alcoholism and others to divorce court. Many families seemed to unravel in the wake of the tragic and unexpected deaths. Bitterness is common. Sailors and family members I interviewed dealt with the repercussions of the attack differently. One of the officers critically injured in the attack used his settlement money to buy a sports car. Years later the son of one crewmember who was killed named his own daughter Liberty. When I called to interview one sailor, his wife had to prep me. Brain damage caused him to stutter, she warned me, and I would have to repeat questions and be patient.

  My father, I realized, was one of the lucky ones. Though he rarely spoke of the Liberty when I was growing up, the attack left its mark on him, as evident by the scores of letters he wrote during that era, now brittle and yellowed after spending years in a trunk in my grandmother’s attic. The tone of his letters prior to the attack reflected the excitement of a young man eager to see the world. He described the wildlife he saw in Africa, the mechanics of his job on the ship, and the distant ports he visited. That youthful tone vanished in the letters he wrote after the attack. Soon after the Liberty returned to Virginia, he left for Vietnam, where he was later injured and medically retired from the Navy.

  The Liberty attack had other effects, in part because the government’s effort to deemphasize the attack meant vital lessons went unheeded. Seven months later, communist North Korea seized the spy ship U.S.S. Pueblo in international waters, killing one crewmember and holding eighty-two others hostage for almost a year. The men were beaten and starved. The congressional committee that investigated the Pueblo described the loss to American prestige and intelligence as “incalculable.” In the more than 500 pages of published testimony on the Pueblo, the Liberty is barely mentioned. But a passing exchange between Admiral Thomas Moorer, who was then chief of naval operations, and Democratic Representative Otis Pike of New York proved revealing. Pike asked the question that should have been on the minds of everyone: What did the Liberty teach us?

  Moorer seemed to fumble. He replied that the Navy had provided some extra guns to repel boarders, changed some communication procedures, and told people to remain sharp, all alleged improvements that failed to protect the crew of the Pueblo. Under questioning, Moorer admitted that the intelligence missions were riskier than the Navy initially believed. “If the lessons of the Liberty had been known to planners and commanders involved with the USS Pueblo, the sorry tragedy of that ship would never have happened as it did,” Commander Lloyd Bucher, the skipper of the Pueblo, later wrote. “The similarities are a terrible confusion in command and control, a lack of response to desperate calls for assistance during attack, and a cover-up for i
ncompetency at the top.”

  Whether the Liberty belonged on the geopolitical stage—as some of President Johnson’s advisers questioned—is debatable. Soon after the attack, the president ordered Nicholas Katzenbach to press Israel to pay reparations to the injured and the families of the men killed and make sure payments were generous. With those conditions met, the president was willing to drop the matter. When I interviewed Katzenbach for this book, I asked if he had ever demanded to know why Israel attacked. “No,” he said. “What good would it do? What would it tell you?” From a policy perspective, Katzenbach said, Israel’s motivation didn’t matter. “I don’t think it would do any good to know,” he said. “I don’t like to work at things that don’t do any good.”

  Faced with incredible pressure in Vietnam and with his domestic approval numbers plummeting, Johnson likely felt he had found a compromise that would make sure families were generously compensated and not spark a confrontation with Israel’s supporters. But the American government owed the men who served on the Liberty an explanation. Johnson downplayed the attack for the wrong reasons: to protect his failed policies in Southeast Asia and his personal political ambitions. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield told a reporter hours after the attack that he doubted the Liberty incident would spark any lasting complications in U.S.-Israel relations. If Navy investigators had spent more than eight days probing the attack, if Congress had played a more public and aggressive oversight role, and if Israel had followed Ambassador Harman’s advice and prosecuted those responsible, the attack wouldn’t have harmed long-term U.S.-Israeli relations.

  Some of President Johnson’s advisers later regretted the handling of the attack. “We failed to let it all come out publicly at the time,” said Lucius Battle, the assistant secretary of state for near eastern and south Asian affairs. “We really ignored it for all practical purposes, and we shouldn’t have.” George Ball, the former undersecretary of state prior to Katzenbach, wrote that the Liberty ultimately had a greater effect on policy in Israel than in the United States. “Israel’s leaders concluded that nothing they might do would offend the Americans to the point of reprisal,” Ball wrote. “If America’s leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of American citizens, it seemed clear that their American friends would let them get away with almost anything.” Rear Admiral Thomas Brooks, a former director of naval intelligence, described the treatment of the Liberty’s crew as a “national disgrace.” “The Navy was ordered to hush this up, say nothing, allow the sailors to say nothing,” Brooks said. “The Navy rolled over and played dead.”