'But Sir, It’s an American Ship.' - Haaretz

 

"Israeli pilot to IDF war room: This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?

IDF war room to Israeli pilot: Yes, follow orders.

Israeli pilot to IDF war room: But sir, it’s an American ship - I can see the flag!

IDF war room to Israeli pilot: Never mind; hit it.

Both the CIA document and the quote have already been published in the past. The book revives them as part of its attempt to prove its thesis."  Haaretz

-------------

This conversation was intercepted by NSA assets with the 6th Fleet during the event.  USS Liberty was a SIGINT collector engaged in monitoring Egyptian communications during the 6 day War.  She was off the Egyptian coast when attacked repeatedly by Israeli aircraft and patrol boats.  She was a converted freighter and virtually defenseless.  The USS America aircraft carrier battle group was in the general area and launched a strike against the Israelis but on the order of the WH the aircraft were recalled.  That is a puzzling thing.  LBJ quickly had the matter buried under the snowdrift of a suppressed naval investigation. 

In the course of my duties at the time I read the NSA transcripts quoted above.

Six months after the attack I was a student as a captain in the Military Intelligence Advanced Couse at Ft. Holabird, Maryland. This was a year long course for mid-career intelligence officers. We had a separate building for a classroom. The whole building was a SCIF. An MP checked you in and out of the building. All the students and instructors had TS/SCI clearances at the COMINT category III level. During the course I was required to take several electives off a menu, like a Chinese restaurant. One that I took was a survey course for senior officers in cryptology. This course was normally taught to colonels and generals at the NSA school at nearby Ft. Meade. There were several sub-courses; cryptanalysis, traffic analysis, direction finding and voice intercept operations. In the last of these, the instructor was a retired army cryptologic warrant officer. He brought his teaching materials from FT. Meade. Among them was a booklet illustrating voice intercept operations. Among the examples contained therein was the English translation transcript of the chatter between the Israeli air strike crews and their higher command. The quotation from this transcript as quoted in the Haaretz story is correct. New subject: to what extant was LBJ guilty in any way in the matter of these sailors deaths and wounding? pl

http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.800584

 

Comments

[Peter Reichard]

Israel had no RF-4 photo recon aircraft yet somehow timely, accurate, close up bomb damage assessment photos appeared and have since been widely published. Perhaps they had some other post strike photo recon capability but Stephen Green's theory on this has always seemed to me to be highly plausible.

[turcopolier]

Peter Reichard

I handled a FOIA action on the Liberty case in '82 and in the course of that reviewed all the available photography. It is nearly all US taken by 6th Fleet or USDAO Tel Aviv. pl

[Ken Halliwell]

If the intercepts truly existed, then NSA earns an A+ for thoroughly eradiating/hiding any trace of their existence in any form.

[turcopolier]

Ken Halliwell

Thank you for calling me a liar. You will not ne published here again. pl

[Keith Harbaugh]

Some articles on the 50th anniversary of the attack, with some excerpts:

Ray McGovern:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/21/not-remembering-the-uss-liberty/

Chief Petty Officer J.Q. “Tony” Hart, who monitored conversations between then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Sixth Fleet Carrier Division Commander Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis,
reported McNamara’s instructive reply to Geis,
who had protested the order to recall the U.S. warplanes on their way to engage those attacking the Liberty. McNamara:
“President Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally (sic) over a few sailors.”

The late Adm. Thomas Moorer after interviewing the commanders of the U.S. aircraft carriers America and Saratoga confirmed that McNamara ordered the aircraft back to their carriers.
Moorer called it “the most disgraceful act I witnessed in my entire military career.”

Philip Giraldi:
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/remembering-the-u-s-s-liberty-2/

The faux court of inquiry and the medals awarded in secret were only the first steps in the cover-up, which has persisted to this day, orchestrated by politicians and a media that seem to place Israel’s interests ahead of those of the United States.
Liberty survivors have been finding it difficult even to make their case in public.
In April 2016 a billboard that read “Help the USS Liberty Survivors – Attacked by Israel” was taken down in New Bedford Massachusetts.
The billboard had been placed by the Honor Liberty Vets Organization and, as is normal practice, was paid for through a contractual arrangement that would require the billboard company to post the image for a fixed length of time.
It was one of a number of billboards placed in different states.
Inevitably, Israel’s well connected friends began to complain.
One Jewish businessman threatened to take his business elsewhere, so the advertising company obligingly removed the billboard two weeks early.

Philip Weiss:
http://mondoweiss.net/2017/07/israeli-investigates-letters/

Google news results for the USS Liberty today, and it’s fascinating. Our leading journals have nothing to say about the 50th anniversary of the Liberty. Besides the Haaretz story, all the leading results are for letters to the editor from people who can’t forget the Liberty.

James M. Scott, son of John Scott, damage control officer on the Liberty:
https://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2017-06/spy-ship-left-out-cold

[Peter Reichard]

Green's book alleges that US RF-4 aircraft flown by US pilots conducted the post strike photo recon of Egyptian air bases following the initial Israeli attacks in the Six Day War. It was photos of destroyed Migs that I referred to not those of the Liberty. Like Outrage Beyond I have seen no other reference to this apparent US participation in the Israeli surprise attack. If true it has serious implications of US collusion with Israel in starting the war.

[DH]

Fascinating info on Johnson's Jewish heritage and his importation of Jews during the war.

Re USS Liberty, I agree with FourthAndLong that it was a false flag attempt. IIRC I read in Wiki that Johnson had begged other nations to intervene by sending ships to the Gulf of Aqaba, but he had no takers. Can't find it now, but this is the whitewash from history.state.org:

"[...] In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had promised that the United States would treat the closure of the Straits as an act of war. Johnson now had three unwelcome options: to renege on Eisenhower’s promise, acquiesce in an Israeli attack on Egypt, or order U.S. forces to reopen the waterway.

Instead, the President played for time. He sought international and Congressional support for Operation Red Sea Regatta, which called for a coalition of maritime nations to send a “probing force” through the Straits if Egypt refused to grant all nations free passage through them. Simultaneously, Johnson implored the Soviets to intercede with Nasser and urged Israeli restraint. “Israel,” Johnson told Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban on May 26, “will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone.” Yet over the following week, the administration failed to gain domestic or foreign backing for “Regatta.” Meanwhile, Jordan joined the Arab coalition, heightening the pressure for an Israeli strike. Though Johnson continued to caution Israel against preemption, a number of the President’s advisors had concluded that U.S. interests would be best served by Israel “going it alone” by the time the Israelis actually did so."

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/arab-israeli-war-1967

Until we blew our blood and treasure on the 2003 Iraq War we could, and did, anything we liked.

[Kalin]

@Anna,

One of the most concise and accurate observations ever stated.

[Stonevendor]

Here is an observation from a friend who was flying over the Mediterranean at the time.

"If this story is true, the “NSA asset” referred to was probably the “Willie Victor” (WV-2 or, in the “new” nomenclature, EC-121) from VQ-2 based in Rota, Spain. The Willie Victor was loitering around at 12,000’ in the Eastern Med when the Liberty was attacked. The transmissions between the Israeli aircraft and their controllers on the ground would have been UHF, thus strictly line-of-sight. The Willie Victor would have been the only NSA asset in a position to intercept these transmissions - other than the Liberty itself.

Contrary to what the article says, I don’t believe that the transmissions quoted “have already been published in the past”. The UHF intercepts that have been published (to my knowledge) begin at a point in time after the jets and torpedo boats had completed their attacks. They reveal conversations between the Israeli helicopters that came to the scene after the attacks, and the helicopters’ controllers. These intercepts aren’t very informative - certainly not as inflammatory as the UHF exchanges quoted in the article.

Mind you, I’m not saying that the article is incorrect. I believe the VQ-2 Willie Victor was recording all of the UHF transmissions before, during, and after the attack. But as far as I know the before-and-during transcripts haven’t been released publicly. If the quote in the article is genuine, it’s a big fucking deal.

A sidelight to this story - the Israelis had to know that the Willie Victor was present. If the Liberty was attacked deliberately (which I believe), and the reason was to prevent the USA from learning about some ultra-sensitive Israeli goings-on (which is widely believed but which I have no opinion about), why didn’t the Israelis just shoot down the Willie Victor in addition to attacking the Liberty??? At a minimum, they would have known that the Willie Victor was intercepting their UHF communications, and had the goods on them re. the Liberty attack.

Anybody else have any thoughts?

[turcopolier]

stonevender

"Contrary to what the article says, I don’t believe that the transmissions quoted “have already been published in the past”" Wrong! I read them in the winter of '67-'68. pl