Posted by Alan Hart

Wounded Liberty crew...

The lesson of the cold-blooded attack on the USS Liberty was that there is nothing the Zionist state might not do, to its friends as well as its enemies, in order to get its own way.

by Alan Hart

On Thursday 8 June 1967, Israeli air and naval forces attacked America’s most advanced spy ship, the U.S.S. Liberty, killing 34 of its crew and wounding 174.

Forty five years on, thanks to the complicity of the mainstream media, the cover up ordered by President Johnson is still in place.

Two years ago, on New York’s Long Island, I had the pleasure and privilege of being the keynote speaker at the annual dinner of the Liberty Survivors Association. I told them I was aware that if the attack had gone completely according to the plan of the man who ordered it, Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan, none of them would have survived.

I also told them that although I am an Englishman who had not served in any of his country’s armed services (because conscription was abolished by the time I was old enough to have served), we did have something in common – OUTRAGE that could not be expressed adequately in polite words at the continued suppression in America of the truth about Israel’s attack on the Liberty.

On the 45^th anniversary of that attack, this post is providing the complete text of Chapter Two of the three-volume American edition of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. The chapter is titled The Liberty Affair – “Pure Murder” on a “Great Day”.

My American publisher expressed to me the view that it is “the most revealing, the most riveting and the most important chapter in the whole book.”  My own view is that it assists real understanding of what the Zionist state of Israel is – a monster beyond control.

Here is the chapter, complete with source notes.

Moshe Dayan -- why they whacked the Liberty...

Israel insisted (as it still does) that its attack on the Liberty was an unfortunate “accident”, a case of “mistaken identity”.

The attack ought to have been a sensational, headline-grabbing news story, but beyond the fact that an accident had happened and that Israel had apologised, it did not get reported by America’s news organisations. It was too hot an issue for them to handle and pursue. If it had been an Arab attack on an American vessel it would have been an entirely different matter, of course. In that event there would have been saturation coverage with demands for retaliation, with Zionist and other pro-Israeli columnists and commentators setting the pace and tone.

About the attack and its aftermath – the Johnson administration’s cover-up led by the President himself – retired American Admiral Thomas L. Moorer, who was appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) a month after the incident, was subsequently to say to former U.S.

Congressman Paul Findley, “If it was written as fiction nobody would believe it.”[i]

The attack itself, Admiral Moorer said to Findley, was “absolutely deliberate.” And the cover-up? “The clampdown was not actually for security reasons but for domestic political reasons. I don’t think there is any question about it. What other reasons could there have been? President Johnson was worried about the reaction of Jewish voters.” (For which read, I add, the awesome power of the Zionist lobby and its many stooges in Congress). The former Chairman of the JCS added: “The American people would be god damn mad if they knew what goes on.”[ii]

As it happened, the institutions of government in America did not succeed in keeping the truth covered up because there were eye-witnesses who would not be silenced. They were the survivors of the Liberty’s crew. The first prime source of the detailed information about the actual attack is the book Assault on the Liberty.[iii] It was written by Lieutenant James M. Ennes. He was the Officer of the Deck on the Liberty throughout the attack.

On 5 June 1982 there was a reunion of Liberty survivors in the Hotel Washington in Washington D.C. The guest speaker was retired Admiral Moorer. He told the survivors that he had “never been willing to accept the Israeli explanation that it was a case of mistaken identity.” He could not accept that Israeli pilots “don’t know how to identify ships.” It followed, he said, that there “must have been some other motive”, which he was confident “some day will be made public.”[iv]

Retired Admiral Moorer’s confidence has not yet been justified. Some of the official documents have been de-classified with the most sensitive (for which read most embarrassing) passages blacked out, but other official documents and reports remain classified, TOP SECRET, and are likely to remain so for as long as America’s pork-barrel politicians are frightened of offending Zionism.

The “motive” for the attack has to be deduced from what happened in the context of the whole war of June 1967 and Dayan’s determination to stop at nothing to create the Greater Israel of gut-Zionism’s mad dream. And the key to complete understanding is knowledge of the Liberty’s capabilities and what its mission was.

A question readers might like to keep in mind is this: When Dayan ordered the attack – he wanted the Liberty to be completely destroyed with the loss of all hands on board – who was the Israeli general who protested and said, “This is pure murder”?

The Liberty’s naval designation was AGTR-5, meaning that it was the fifth ship in a series undertaking “Auxiliary General Technical Research.” It was, in fact, a converted World War II Victory ship – the former Simmons Victory. It had been refitted by the NSA (National Security Agency) for use as a signals intelligence (SIGINT) “platform” – a floating listening post.

It had a very sophisticated system of radio antennae including a “Big Ear” sonar-radio listening device with a clear capability range of over 500 miles. Up to that distance the Liberty could intercept virtually any form of wireless communication, including military and diplomatic traffic, telemetry data, rocket guidance and satellite control, among others. It could then decode and process the intercepted messages and relay them back to the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland, via short-wave radio or through a very special communications system called TRSSCOM, using a 10,000-watt microwave signal bounced off the surface of the moon. The U.S.S. Liberty was America’s most advanced spy ship.

Below decks the communications areas – which housed the computers, listening and decoding devices manned by linguistic experts and other personnel who were changed according to the ship’s mission – were off-limits to the crew, including Captain William I. McGonagle. The communication areas were under the direct control of an NSA technician (managing spook). The on-board NSA controller for the Liberty’s June ’67 mission was known to the crew as “the Major.” With two other civilians he joined the Liberty at Rota in Spain shortly before the spy ship sailed from there for the Middle East on 2 June. The day after Dayan became minister of defence. (A coincidence?)

The Liberty’s movements were controlled by the JCS and the NSA in Washington. With a top speed of 18 knots it was faster than most ships of its kind. On both the forecastle and deckhouse aft of the bridge there were two pedestal-mounted 0.50-calibre Browning machine guns. These four guns, on open mounts without shrapnel shields, were the spy ship’s only defences. Strictly speaking the Liberty was not an unarmed vessel but for all practical purposes it was. Another sitting duck if attacked.

The Liberty’s mission was TOP SECRET and has not been acknowledged to this day.

It was on patrol, listening, because some in the Johnson administration at executive level – perhaps Defence Secretary McNamara especially – did not trust the Israelis to keep their word with regard to the scope of the war.

The Johnson administration had given the green light for Israel to attack Egypt and only Egypt. It was understood that the IDF would have to respond to Jordanian intervention – if it happened, but on no account was Israel to seek to widen the war for the purpose of taking Jordanian or Syrian territory. Apart from President Johnson’s public statement that he was as firmly committed as his predecessors had been to the “political independence and territorial integrity of all the nations in that area”, Washington’s fear was what could happen if the Israelis occupied Syrian territory. If they did there was a possibility of Soviet intervention (for face-saving reasons). Soviet leaders could just about live with the Egyptians being smashed by the IDF but not the Syrians too. Through the CIA the Johnson administration was aware of the IDF’s secret agreement with the Syrian regime. (As revealed in the previous chapter of my book, Syria, in the countdown to war, agreed to put on only a token show of fighting when Israel attacked Egypt). So it, the Johnson administration, was reasonably confident that the Syrians would not seek to widen the war by engaging the Israelis in any serious way. 

The name of the U.S. counter-intelligence game was therefore preventing Israel from attacking Syria. That was the Liberty’s mission.

When the Liberty was ordered to the Middle East, everybody who needed to know did know that the Israelis would have only a few days in which to smash the Egyptians – because the Security Council would demand a quick end to the fighting and Israel would have to stop when it was shown the international red card. Which meant that when Israel went to war with Egypt, it would be assigning the bulk of its armour to the Egyptian front. The point? If Israel then decided to attack Syria, it would have to re-deploy armour, very quickly, from the Egyptian front to the Syrian front. The orders for any such redeployment would be given by wireless – from Dayan’s Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv to the commanders in the field and they, naturally, would talk to each other. If there was such radio chatter, the Liberty would pick it up and pass it urgently to the NSA in Washington. President Johnson would then demand that the Israelis abort their intended attack on Syria. So long as the Liberty was on station and functioning, the U.S. would have some control of Israel.

In short the Liberty was the Johnson administration’s insurance policy. It was there to prevent Israel’s hawks going over the top and, on a worst-case scenario, provoking Soviet intervention and possibly World War III. (One could have said then, and one could say with even more point today, that with the Zionist state as its friend the U.S. does not need enemies.)

From Dayan’s perspective… Before he could order an invasion of Syria for the purpose of grabbing the Golan Heights for keeps, the Liberty had to be put out of business.

In what follows it is important to keep two things in mind.

First: It was impossible for the attacking Israelis not to know the identity of their target. From the masthead on the ensign staff the Liberty was proudly flying the standard American flag -five feet by eight feet. The ship’s US Navy markings, GTR-5, were on both sides of its bows in white letters and a figure ten feet high. And the ship’s name was clearly visible on its stern. Not to mention the sophisticated system of radio antennae.

Second: As Stephen Green noted, “The IDF command did not have to consult Jane’s Fighting Ships to learn about the eavesdropping capabilities of the Liberty.”[v] Israeli military intelligence had a very close working relationship with both the CIA and the U.S. Defence Department and knew well that the Liberty could listen to the movement orders for IDF units – movement orders that, on the evening–morning of 7-8 June, would be concerned with rushing units from Sinai to the northern Galilee border with Syria, in preparation for an invasion.

Shortly after 2030 hours local time on the evening of Wednesday 7 June, Israeli aerial reconnaissance reported to IDF Central Coastal Command in Tel Aviv a change in the Liberty’s course. The spy ship was now steaming toward a point on the Israeli coast midway between Tel Aviv and the naval base at Ashdod. The change of course was noted on the Israeli control table. The Liberty was represented by a green symbol indicating a neutral craft – neither foe nor friend.

It may or may not have been a coincidence (I think not) that the Liberty’s course change came shortly after the Johnson administration had withdrawn its opposition in the Security Council to a resolution demanding a cease-fire. (The demand meaning that Israel was expected by the U.S. to comply).

At about 2200 hours the Liberty’s sophisticated radar-sensing equipment detected Israeli jets circling the ship. That was not surprising given where the vessel was. The surprise was that fire-control radar was being directed at it. The Israeli jets were homing their rockets as though for an attack.

The small group gathered around the Liberty’s radar screen playfully employed the ship’s electronic countermeasure (ECM) to “spoof” the Israeli pilots. The Liberty’s ECM equipment was of the latest and most sophisticated type and enabled the ship to distort its radar image and send it back to the Israeli planes – making the Liberty appear to be much smaller and then much bigger than it was. First Class Petty Officer Charles Rowley was subsequently to recall that no one took the contact seriously. The Israelis, it was assumed, were only playing games.

They were not; and there was a link between the directing of fire-control radar at the Liberty and what had happened an hour or so earlier. The Office of the U.S. Defence Attaché in Tel Aviv had sent a startling message to the U.S. Army Communications Centre in Washington. By telegram in code the message was that the IDF was planning to attack the Liberty if the ship continued to move closer to the Israeli coast!

MORE HERE:  http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/06/07/alan-hart-israels-attack-on...