A. Jay Cristol - The Liberty Incident Revealed: The Definitive Account of the 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship

THE

LIBERTY INCIDENT

REVEALED

A JAY CRISTOL

THE

LIBERTY INCIDENT

REVEALED

THE DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT

OF THE 1967 ISRAELI ATTACK ON THE U.S. NAVY SPY SHIP

Naval Institute Press

Annapolis, Maryland

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

2013 by A Jay Cristol

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cristol, A. Jay

[Liberty incident.]

The Liberty incident revealed : the definitive account of the 1967 Israeli attack on the U.S. Navy spy ship / A. Jay Cristol.[Revised and expanded edition]

pages cm

Previously published: The Liberty incident : the 1967 Israeli attack on the U.S. Navy spy ship / A. Jay Cristol. Washington, D.C. : Brasseys, 2002.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61251-387-4 (ebook) 1. Israel-Arab War, 1967Naval operations. 2. Liberty (Ship) I. Cristol, A. Jay, date II. Title.

DS127.6.N3C74 2013

956.046dc23

2013016521

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992

(Permanence of Paper).

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First printing

To the memory of Adm. Isaac C. Kidd Jr., U.S. Navy, and Vice Adm. Donald D. Engen, U.S. Navygiants in the history of the U.S. Navy

W hen I began this research project some twenty-seven years ago I thought, perhaps naively, that by collecting hard original evidence, analyzing it, and publishing it I would answer the question of whether or not the attack on the USS Liberty was a premeditated act by Israel against a U.S. warship or a tragic case of mistaken identity and friendly fire. Sadly, I have learned over the years that there are many persons and entities who, pursuing their own agendas, are not even remotely interested in facts or truth and are concerned only with using this sad story as a means to attack and try to undermine the outstanding special relationship between the United States and Israel.

When the first edition of The Liberty Incident was published in 2002, there remained unanswered questions about audiotapes intercepted by the National Security Agency (NSA) that were alleged by some to contain absolute proof that the Israeli attack had been premeditated. My subsequent Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the National Security Agency resulted in the release of those tapes. They are now available on the NSA website (www.nsa.gov), and one may listen to the tapes in the original Hebrew or review their preliminary and final translations. The NSA tapes and the Israel Air Force tapes may be compared in appendix 2 of this book.

Although the tapes clearly establish that the Israeli armed forces believed they were attacking a hostile ship, anti-Israel sources now insist that the NSA tapes are fraudulent and are part of a conspiracy between the National Security Agency and this author to deceive the American public!

In 2004, less than a year after I obtained the release of the above tapes, the U.S. Department of State held in Washington, D.C., a conference in connection with the release of Foreign Relations, 19641968, Volume XIX, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967. I was invited to deliver a lecture at that conference, which was moderated by Dr. Marc Susser, the historian of the Department of State. Dr. David Robarge, of the Central Intelligence Agency history staff; Dr. David Hatch, a historian for the National Security Agency; Dr. Michael Oren, then a scholar at Shalem Institute in Jerusalem and now Israels ambassador to the United States; author James Bamford; and Dr. Charles Smith of the University of Arizona, as commentator, were on the panel with me.

As indicated below, in , the U.S. State Department in its summary of the USS Liberty incident unequivocally concluded that the attack was a tragic mistake. Since then, it has been claimed that the State Department is a coconspirator with the National Security Agency and this author!

Thereafter, in October 2009, I was invited to appear on a panel at the National Security Agency and present a paper on the Liberty incident. My paper urged the National Security Agency to make an affirmative statement that the attack was a case of mistaken identity, but the National Security Agency, for reasons that remain known only to it, continues to decline to state publicly a position on the issue. This is rather strange, in view of the NSAs own conclusions in its 1981 document Attack on a SIGINT Collector the U.S.S. Liberty that the knowledge that the tragedy resulted not only from Israeli miscalculation but also from faulty U.S. communications practices was even more difficult to accept and while these reports revealed some confusion on the part of the pilots concerning the nationality of the ship, they tended to rule out any thesis that the Israeli Navy and Air Force deliberately attacked a ship they knew to be American.

Furthermore, the historian for the National Security Agency, Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, in his history of the agency, clearly states that the attack was a tragic mistake. I have been unable to find or obtain any internal NSA document suggesting that the attack was a premeditated one against an American warship. The strongest negative statement on the issue within the NSA was made by Louis W. Tordello, who served as deputy director from 1956 to 1974. On July 5, 1967, in an interim decision, Judge Yeshayahu Yerushalmi, a judge on the Military Court of Appeals, in his capacity as examining judge under section 283 of the Israel Military Justice Law of 1955, ruled, It appears to me, prima facie, that offenses of negligence may have been committed. The hearing was adjourned and reconvened, and it concluded on July 21, 1967, after testimony of thirty-four witnesses and receipt in evidence of fourteen documents. A final decision was rendered on July 21, 1967. Page 41 of the 1981 NSA report states, When NSAs Deputy Director read the decision of the Israeli Defense Forces preliminary inquiry, he summed up his personal feelings [emphasis added] on the subject by calling it a nice whitewash. He was displeased with the Israel examining judges ruling: I hold that there is no sufficient amount of prima facie evidence justifying committing anyone for trial. However, Tordello never provided any evidence in contradiction of the tragic mistake theory.