U.S. agency confirms sinking of USS Liberty was accident

WASHINGTON - New documents released this week by America's National Security Agency support Israel's version of a long-festering controversy between the two countries: Israel's sinking of an American spy ship, the USS Liberty, off the coast of Gaza during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Israel has always said it had no idea the ship was American, but conspiracy theorists and anti-Israel propagandists still claim Israel sank the ship in the full knowledge that it was American.

The documents, originally defined as top secret, were made public by Florida Judge Jay Cristol, who

has been investigating the Liberty incident for years and published a book on the subject last year. On Monday, the NSA gave him a transcript of conversations held by two Israeli Air Force helicopter pilots who were hovering over the Liberty as it was sinking, and these tapes confirm Israel's claim that the sinking of the ship, which killed 34 American servicemen and wounded 171, was a tragic error.

After the Liberty was bombed by both the Israel Air Force and the Israel Navy, the two helicopter pilots were summoned from their base to assess the damage and evaluate the possibility of rescuing the surviving crew members. An American spy plane, which had been sent to the area as soon as the NSA learned of the attack, recorded their conversations, which took place between 2:30 and 3:37 P.M. on June 8, the third day of the war.

The spy plane also recorded the orders radioed to the pilots by their supervisor at Hatzor Base, which instructed them to search for Egyptian survivors from the "Egyptian warship" that had just been bombed - thus supporting Israel's claim that it had believed the ship was Egyptian when it ordered it attacked. "Pay attention. The ship is now identified as Egyptian," the pilots were told.

Nine minutes later, Hatzor informed the pilots that it was not an Egyptian warship, but an Egyptian cargo ship. Only at 3:07 were the pilots first informed that the ship might not have been Egyptian at all: Hatzor told them that if they found Arabic-speaking survivors, they should be taken to El-Arish, but if they found English-speaking survivors, they should be taken to Lod. "Clarify by the first man that you bring up, what nationality he is, and report to me immediately," the supervisor instructed, according to the transcript. "It's important to know."

Then, at 3:12, one of the pilots informed Hatzor that he saw an American flag flying over the wounded ship. He was asked to investigate and determine whether it was really an American ship.

This is not the first time such transcripts have been made public: Israel gave its own recordings of the pilots' conversations to the British television station Thames in 1987. But conspiracy theorists charged that Israel had doctored the tapes before handing them over to the station in order to hide the fact that it sank the Liberty intentionally. No such imputation can be made about these new transcripts, as they were never in Israeli hands.

Israel has always said it attacked the Liberty, which America sent to the region to gather intelligence on the progress of the war, because it believed it was an Egyptian supply ship ferrying supplies to the Egyptian troops that Israel was then fighting. When it discovered the error, it immediately informed the Americans, apologized and paid compensation to the victims' families.

The incident was investigated by inquiry commissions in both Israel and the United States, and both concluded that it had, indeed, been a tragic error. Nevertheless, the controversy never died. In 1979, one of the survivors, James Ennes, published a book accusing Israel of bombing the American ship deliberately. Ennes claimed an Israeli spy plane had hovered over the ship all morning and had surely identified it as American, since the American flag was clearly visible.

A later book, written by James Bamford, charged that Israel sank the ship in order to keep America from learning of its plans to attack Syria, and further claimed that the NSA had tapes of conversations among Israeli pilots that not only confirmed this, but also proved that the tapes released by Israel had been doctored.

Another claim that appears frequently on the dozens of Internet sites devoted to the affair is that Israel sank the ship to conceal a mass murder of Egyptian soldiers on the Sinai peninsula.

In its letter to Cristol, the NSA stressed that, contrary to the claims that often appear in such books and Web sites - that the agency has tapes from both the Liberty and from a nearby American submarine that confirm Israel's guilt - the only tapes that exist were those made by the spy plane and given to Cristol this week.

"It's the last piece of intelligence that remained classified, and every rational person that will read it will understand that there is no truth in these conspiracy theories against Israel," Cristol said Tuesday. But he added: "Those who hate Israel, who hate Jews, and those who believe in conspiracy will not be convinced by anything."

Cristol, a former U.S. navy pilot and legal officer, began investigating the Liberty incident 14 years ago. Since publishing his book, which vindicates Israel, he has received threats and been accused of being an Israeli agent. "I take this lightly, but I am saddened to learn that there is this kind of hate toward Israel," he said.

Labeling anyone who believes that the ship was sunk on purpose by certain individual rogue officers within the IDF as "anti-semites" is a tad paranoid and "conspiracy-theorist" in and of itself.

With exception of the fact that the Liberty didn't "sink" I agree.

I think I will believe the people who were there and saw what transpired as opposed to those who called off air support and tried to bury the whole event in the first place.

NOW THAT was "paranoid" in my book.

I am willing to believe there was a fog of war component to this somewhere, it wouldn't make sense any other way.. But not that everyone on board is a huge anti-semite and that our guy's are in effect just lying for the hell of it.

Why would they do that? I suppose they are ALL "anti-semites" and Jew haters?

The following sixteen facts, prepared and presented by an
experienced prosecuting attorney, are undisputed:

1. At all times on June 8, 1967, during the fourth day of the
Arab-Israeli "Six Day War," USS Liberty, a neutral ship, remained in
international waters.

2. USS Liberty carried no offensive armament and only four .50 cal.
machine guns as a defense against boarders.

3. On the morning of June 8, 1967 USS Liberty was over flown by
Israeli reconnaissance aircraft, and POSITIVELY identified by an
Israeli pilot not just as a U.S. Navy ship, but as USS Liberty
specifically.

4. The Hague Convention on Naval Warfare prohibits attacks on
neutral ships on the high seas.

5. The government of Israel stated that they ordered ships and
aircraft to the location of USS Liberty because they had received
reports that IDF forces on the shore were being shelled from the sea.

6. The Israeli motor torpedo boats (MTBs) claimed to have detected
USS Liberty on their radar initially at a distance of approximately
28 miles. The maximum range of the MTB radar units was just 16 miles.

7. The MTBs calculated the speed of USS Liberty initially at 30
knots and then a few minutes later at 28 knots. The maximum speed of
USS Liberty was 20 knots, and the ship was at that time barely making
way at five knots.

8. The Israeli aircraft, which should have been looking for a ship
with offensive armament with sufficient range to bombard the shore 15
miles away and traveling at high speed, instead found a converted
cargo ship, with no offensive armament, and moving at approximately
five knots.

9. USS Liberty presented no obvious offensive threat, nor was she
attempting to flee the scene. Indeed, US sailors were sunbathing on
the deck.

10. Prior to the start of the attack (1358 local time), USS Liberty -
still in international waters - was never positively identified as a
hostile ship.

11. Rather than wait for the MTBs to arrive and positively ID the
ship, the aircraft launched an attack on USS Liberty.

12. The pilots of the attacking aircraft claimed that they were
unable to see the 5' by 8' red, white, and blue US flag flying
approximately 100 feet above the bridge of the ship, yet one of the
pilots stated that he saw a .50 cal machine gun, painted gray, on the
deck.

13. The Israelis claim that the aircraft finally saw a U.S. flag on
Liberty at approximately 1422 and they called off the attack.

14. At 1436, the MTBs launched a torpedo attack on USS Liberty,
launching five torpedoes, one of which hit USS Liberty amidships,
killing 25 men.

15. The MTBs continued to circle USS Liberty, firing on the ship
until at least 1510, when they claim that they saw Liberty's US flag
for the first time.

16. The Israeli attack was broken off almost immediately following
an unencrypted broadcast by USS Saratoga that she had launched
aircraft to come to the aid of Liberty.

The Israeli government has never explained why it was necessary to
attack an unthreatening ship on the high seas without waiting a few
more minutes until their surface ships arrived to positively identify
it. This was a gross violation of the laws of war. There is simply no
rational explanation for the attack having been anything other than
planned and deliberate.

Reference was made to Mr. Cristol's website www.libertyincident.com.
When visiting this site, please keep in mind that while Mr. Cristol
traveled to Israel 15 times to interview IDF personnel, he had only
brief conversations with a few USS Liberty survivors. He has claimed
to have interviewed quite a few individuals who dispute that they
were ever interviewed by Cristol. The facts alleged on Cristol's
website are often contradictory.

One of the individuals who disputes ever having been interviewed by
Cristol about the attack on USS Liberty, is Captain Ward Boston, the
JAG officer for the court of inquiry. He has recently broken his
silence on this subject. In a recent published interview, Captain
Boston contradicted Cristol's claims of comments attributed to
Admiral Isaac Kidd and stated that Kidd has opined to him that he
thought that Cristol was "an Israeli agent."

Also bear in mind Cristol's somewhat misleading biography, which
suggests that he was a combat pilot during the Korean war (he
wasn't).

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