The attack on the USS Liberty - Friendly Fire/Fog of War or Something Else?

[Bob Hubbard]

The US has no qualms about dangling it's personnel out where they can be harmed and used as an excuse to get involved.

How could it have happened?
- Friendly Fire
- Deliberate Attack

Why?
- Excuse to draw US into a war.
- Excuse to allow US involvement

Why would US go along with it?
- Politics. One can't really spank ones only ally in a hot region and expect continued warm relations

Why would Israel do it deliberately?
- Draw the US in
- Might have had the OK from certain US factions
- Might have been ordered by certain Israeli factions
- They are cocky, stupid, arrogant, etc

Why would they do it accidentally?
- Fog of war
- equipment malfunction
- the US flag looks too much like the Egyptian flag
- All boats look alike

That's the bullet points I can think of. Other than that, I'm bowing back out.

 

[elder999]

The point of posting on here I assumed was so we could discuss it not just post up reams of citations from other sources, how it could have happened, why it could have happened, why would America go along with it if it wasn't accidental, why would Israel do it if it was deliberate, what were the conditions like, why one side said something, why one side said nothing, why would people lie or keep quiet, who had reason to tell the truth or lie, what were the inconsistancies etc. I assumed it would be a proper in depth discussion discussion not a rehash of what has already been said, I thought we'd have original thoughts on this, I was wrong.

Nope. Not even going to begin to go there. Won't do it. Can o' worms.I have nothing further to add.

 

[Sukerkin]

Not wanting to stick my oar in here but I would surely hope that people making comment on such a topic would be drawing from reliable sources?

I would then think that it is then up to the reader to decide which sources they consider most weighty?

I would further hope that people can discuss this volatile issue without overly investing their words with national, racial or religious baggage.

It is true tho' that a simple table of links and citations, without any accompanying thesis to bind them into a cogent statement of opinion, is not really very helpful in advancing the discussion (altho' they may indeed be elaborative of an already established position).

 

[Tez3]

Nope. Not even going to begin to go there. Won't do it. Can o' worms.I have nothing further to add.

Fair one, you didn't start the thread. I had thought it was started as an academic discussion as it's in the War College. If it's to be an emotive discussion I'd have thought it would be in the Study.

 

[Makalakumu]

It makes no sense for Israel to attack the Liberty deliberately on their own volition. The US was their only ally in the region, if we pulled our support, the little country would get crushed.

Yet, the evidence mounts that the attack really may have been deliberate. Some posters here are struggling with the motivations behind this attack

So, lets look at some key peices of evidence that have been posted in this thread already.

1. Communications between the Liberty and other ships in the region was monitored and these other ships were told NOT to aid the Liberty in any way.

2. The admiral of the carrier group in the area was specifically told by President Johnson to not aid the boat. According to this person, he was told by the President that, "he wanted the Liberty on the bottom."

3. The Captain was given a Medal of Honor in secret and told to keep quiet.

4. The crew was threatened with Court Martial and in some cases, death, if they revealed anything about the incident.

5. The US already laid plans to attack its own warships and blame it on someone else as a pretext for starting a larger war.

It doesn't take that big of a jump in assumption to begin to see this as a botched attempt at getting the US into the war. Any other scenario in which Israel attacks one of our ships deliberately doesn't doesn't make sense. Thus, I would say that if you conclude that the Liberty was attacked deliberately, then you must also conclude that it was attacked as part of a greater plot to draw the US into war in the Middle East. I beleive the Liberty incident was part of a greater conspiracy between Israel and the US to expand the war.

 

[Tez3]

If it were a deliberate attempt by Israel and America to sink this ship for political reasons, do you think the Israelis pilots or sailors would have been told the truth? If the theory is correct and it was deliberate, how would they have felt after finding out they'd attacked an ally, not in a friendly fire incident but in a planned attack?
One thing is that there is no doubt it was a deliberate attack on the ship, it's the reason behind the attack that's being debated. The Israelis would certainly have gone all out to attack it if they believed it was an enemy ship which would give legitimate grounds for belief by the American sailors that it was directed against them as it indeed was.
If it was a planned attack to sink the ship why was the raid called off before it went down? What if the Liberty was where it shouldn't have been and was collecting information it shouldn't have been which is why they were told not to aid it? There's lots of questions that we could ask but never get the answers to. Lots of what ifs and maybes.

I've seen many military cock ups being described as conspiracies before, often the sheer incompetancy of military leaders is to blame. Much of the damage comes afterwards when the senior officers start thinking they'll be blamed ( rightly usually) and start concocting stories and blaming others. Reports go missing, suggestions are made, blackmail employed, hell has no fury like a military leader anxious not to be seen as an inept, bungling, murdering buffoon. G-d knows over the centuries britains had enough of them, you should have seen the panics that went on in MOD during the Falklands war when the military commanders didn't know where their ships were, who was supposed to do what and where, the troops didn't know whether they were coming or going literally so I for one find it very easy to believe that the military made an almighty cock up rather than anything was planned to destroy this ship. We lost a lot of good people in the Falklands that we didn't have needed to, including one senior officer that was shot by his own men, deliberately, because he was getting his men killed. Not for nothing was SNAFU invented.

 

[Makalakumu]

Well, to answer one of your questions, the attack finally stopped when Russian ships in the area appeared and began to investigate. As soon as there were witnesses, Israel withdrew.

Again, I think it points to some sort of conspiracy between Israel and the US.

It just doesn't make any sense for Israel to attack its only major ally for any other reason. Also, it doesn't make any sense for the US to try and cover it up. There has to be more too it.

 

[elder999]

It doesn't take that big of a jump in assumption to begin to see this as a botched attempt at getting the US into the war. Any other scenario in which Israel attacks one of our ships deliberately doesn't doesn't make sense. Thus, I would say that if you conclude that the Liberty was attacked deliberately, then you must also conclude that it was attacked as part of a greater plot to draw the US into war in the Middle East. I beleive the Liberty incident was part of a greater conspiracy between Israel and the US to expand the war.

Well, maybe. I should note that I'm strictly offering speculation here-a direction that some questions haven't gone in.

1) What was the Liberty's task?

2) What might the Liberty have done within its mission in the region that incited the Israelis to attack it?

3) What might the Liberty have accomplished within its mission that it was not in the best interests of the U.S. to pursue or make public?

4) Why were there modern Hebrew dictionaries on the Liberty, when there were, in fact, no Hebrew translators assigned to her?

5) Is it possible that other Naval or Marine personnel had incidental knowledge of Hebrew, and were capable of translating Israeli communications?

 

[Sukerkin]

I'm having a little difficulty concocting a plausible map of what would be gained, by either side, in a 'staged' attack on an American ship by Israeli forces.

A false flag attack by 'Arab' forces in the same circumstances, or an Israeli attack on a Russian ship, yes I can see the Machiavellian logic to that.

What am I missing that would make some sort of sense (even twisted, political, sense) out of this? Of course, if it was a deliberate attack because the Liberty was up to something the Israeli's didn't want, then that too would make sense.

 

[elder999]

I'm having a little difficulty concocting a plausible map of what would be gained, by either side, in a 'staged' attack on an American ship by Israeli forces.

Given that the U.S. didn't join in the battle, I'd say that that particular scenario is one of the least plausible.

What am I missing that would make some sort of sense (even twisted, political, sense) out of this? Of course, if it was a deliberate attack because the Liberty was up to something the Israeli's didn't want, then that too would make sense.

Again, I'm just stating known facts, and asking questions.

1) The Liberty was basically unarmed-four empty .50 cal machinegun mounts, and that's it.

2) Even a layman couldn't confuse the Liberty with the Egyptian "horse-carrier" that Israel allegedly confused the Liberty with.Even from the air....especially after the IDF had already made a total of eight reconnaisance flights over the Liberty, identifying her as a U.S. vessel, and especially since the Egyptian ship in question was known to be in port. The Egyptian air force, BTW, had already been decimated at this point.

3) What was the Liberty's mission in the region?

4) What, within the scope of her mission, might the Liberty have accomplished, that would incite Israel to stage a prolonged, deliberate attack on her-one that apparently lasted over 2 hrs.

5)Why were the U.S.S. Liberty's communications jammed?

6) What was the current state of the Israeli campaign in what came to be called the "Six Days War" while the attack on the Liberty was taking place?

7) What, in the aftermath of all of this-the Liberty accomplishes something, the Israelis try to destroy her, the Liberty manages to survive-would the U.S. be interested in covering up, or at least maintaining as secret?

I'm just asking. I'd also suggest that anyone interested in this matter do a thorough examination of the NSA documents-some of which are interviews with U.S.S. Liberty personnel. Some of them are.......interesting.

 

[Makalakumu]

Good questions, Elder999. I'm not sure what the answers are, but in regards to Sukerkin's query, there was a plan called Operation Northwoods that specifically detailed that American warships could be attacked and sunk, then blamed on an another country, in order to create a pretext for a larger war.

I have no idea if this was the case or not, I suspect that it was. And it makes sense if you consider that this scenario was toyed with in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. This created the pretext that allowed our country to ramp up its involvement in Vietnam.

My guess is that if the USS Liberty had gone to the bottom without witnesses and every hand lost, the attack would have been blamed on Egypt. You'd see American forces coming and performing a "regime change" and the bulk of the American bases in the Middle East would be in Egypt.

I do realize that this is all speculation. Again, Elder999's advice of checking the NSA's documents is very sagely.

 

[Sukerkin]

Aye, I am familiar with such pretexts altho' I still wonder how it would have been possible to blame the attack on Egypt even if the Israeli forces had not been spotted by the Russians.

 

[Ninjamom]

I'll throw out some thoughts on why I do not believe this was a 'false flag' operation. Starting from some of MK's points:

1. Communications between the Liberty and other ships in the region was monitored and these other ships were told NOT to aid the Liberty in any way.

As best as I have been able to reconstruct from the declassified communiques, messages, transcripts, and the testimony of those who had access to other (non-extant) message traffic, only ONE US ship was told not to assist the Liberty. That one ship was an aircraft carrier with 'ready aircraft' (i.e., aircraft loaded with nuclear missiles). It seems a 'no-brainer' to me for the Pentagon to recall nuclear missiles from being employed in the defense of a single surface ship, especially when the combatants involved were not yet known/identified (at the time, it was possible it was Egypt, or the Soviet Union, who had naval vessels patrolling in the same region, or any of a number of allies (including Israel) that could have been involved in a true 'friendly fire' incident). The decision to go to nuclear war was a decision that, rightly, was kept to the highest levels, and only after all facts could be weighed and options evaluated.

On orders from the President of the United States, the 'ready craft' were returned to deck of the A/C carrier. The carrier captain then sought permission to re-arm them with conventionl (non-nuclear) munitions and send them back to assist the Liberty. Permision was denied. This is one of those few cases where, if I were in such a position of command, I would have to weigh everything very carefully, with the possibility of throwing away my military career, going to jail for the erst of my life, and ignoring a direct Presidential order to obey the dictates of my conscience and help my fellow-service members in peril. I am sure such thoughts were weighed in the mind of the carrier captain. However, to remove the nuclear missiles (which were there as part of a deterrent force for the Soviets in a tense time at the height of the Cold War) and re-arm the planes with conventional munitions would have given the Soviets (who had an intelligence trawler of their own in the near vicinity) exact data on the time such change-outs take under operational conditions. A split-second decision was made, weighing the impact to the effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent capability against the lives of the sailors aboard the Liberty.

There is a possibility that another vessel nearby *might* have received orders not to aid the Liberty. There are persistent rumours that a US submarine was patroling nearby. The presence of the submarine (whether it was really there or not), its armaments (conventional or nuclear), and any/all message traffic to/from it will probably still be classified long after we're all gone, and for much the same reason.

I alluded to this fact before, but it bears restating: you will not understand US history, politics, or foreign policy of this era if you ignore or forget that everything happening at the time was viewed through the lens of the Cold War and the overarching threat of the Soviet Union and nuclear war.

2. The admiral of the carrier group in the area was specifically told by President Johnson to not aid the boat. According to this person, he was told by the President that, "he wanted the Liberty on the bottom."

Not the exact quote, and it was made by (US Sec of Defense) Robert Macnamara, not President Johnson. The exact quote was more along the lines that he would rather every one of those sailors go to the bottom then to embarrass one of our key allies. The quote is often cut, edited, ammended, and attributed to different people, depending on if the quoter is trying to prove a case for conspiracy or not

Was this an accurate quote? I can say that the original person reporting it was knowledgeable and reliable enough to have heard it said first-hand and to report it accurately. Would President LBJ have said such a thing? No way in a million years!! (He was, after all, from Texas!). Could Macnamara have said such a thing? You betcha! He was one of the original Kennedy 'Whiz kids', held over into the Johnson years, in an era when military affairs were micromanaged horribly and the opinions of well-educated 'think-tankers' was valued enormously above the opinions and concerns of operational comanders and experienced military members. Such a quote is typical of the view of the military as an expendable commodity for political ends.

3. The Captain was given a Medal of Honor in secret and told to keep quiet.

It was not in secret - it was a public ceremony, and the award is part of the captain's permanent (unclassified) military record. The ceremony was greatly downplayed - it was the only MoH ceremony since WWI to have been anywhere other than the White House, persented by anyone other then the president of the US. This is what you would expect for an incident that caused embarrassment, not for an incident that you wanted to deny ever happened.

4. The crew was threatened with Court Martial and in some cases, death, if they revealed anything about the incident.

This is almost SOP (sorry - that's 'standard operating procedure'). For any event about which the press asks questions, military members are supposed to refer all askers to a central office (usually the designated Public Affairs officer). A lot of the information (about Liberty's location, configuration, mission, capabilities, etc) were still classified. There was an on-going investigation while the sailors were at port in Malta (where the original preliminary repairs were performed). Even LTCDR Ennes says that a lot of the concern about 'silence' was largely due to miscommunication and a misunderstanding of what could and could not be discussed.

5. The US already laid plans to attack its own warships and blame it on someone else as a pretext for starting a larger war.

One memo does not a 'plan' make. Options of every concievable kind are often explored. There is a reason why most of them are discarded.

Other factors to consider:
1. The 'numerical' factor. Basically, the larger a conspiracy, the harder to keep it secret. In order for this to have been a 'false flag' operation, the US could have (and should have) made sure there were no EC-121 planes in the area, made sure it happened when the Soviet EC trawlers weren't near by, and either made sure the carreir group wasn't nearby OR made sure the carrier group was ready with conventionally-armed munitions and immediately got the go-ahead to send them to attack Egypt.

2. The plausibility factor. If this were a 'false flag' operation, then there must have been some way to push the 'blame' in the desired direction afterwards. However, all of the operational 'chatter' picked up from the Liberty, the EC aircraft, and other listening assets was in Hebrew, not in Egyptian. Additionaly, there was never any denial by the Israelis that they had aircraft and warships patroling the area. In fact, by this time, the Israelis had already established complete tactical air superiority (meaning that any successful aerial attack in the vicinity could not reasonably be ascribed to Egypt or the Arab coalition).

3. Other actions: The Liberty was sent message traffic at least thirteen hours before the attack to remove from the vicinity. Due to a series of command, control, and communications (C3) issues, the message never reached the Liberty in time. However, due to the nature of the C3 system at the time, there is no way the message senders could have known that would happen. The timing indicates the message was sent because HQ wanted the Liberty out of harms way, not smack in the middle of it.

 

[Ninjamom]

I don't know about all the points you raise, but for these:

4) Why were there modern Hebrew dictionaries on the Liberty, when there were, in fact, no Hebrew translators assigned to her?

5) Is it possible that other Naval or Marine personnel had incidental knowledge of Hebrew, and were capable of translating Israeli communications?

I don't know if it was ever denied there were Hebrew translators aboard, but I don't think it was acknowledged, either. Officially, the USS Liberty was a 'research vessel', not a 'spy ship'. I don't think the language specialties of any of the personnel were ever 'officially' given.

From Liberty crew testimony (see the interviews on the page of declassified NSA documents regarding this incident) there were at least three Hebrew language specialists aboard. Additionally, the EC aircraft had Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian language specialists aboard. Also, depending on the volume of traffic and its priority, raw data was often collected, then evaluated later, at a different location.

I do not know what specifics were in the Liberty's mission, but I can make some educated guesses. Since Egypt was the recipient of a good deal of Russian military hardware and 'advisors', it was a good bet we were very interested in collecting everything we could about their hardware capabilities, order of deployment, C3, and tactics on the battlefield. That seems to me to be obvious.

Russian equipment and advisors on the ground, American Russian-language experts listening in from the air, and Cold War politics flavoring everything add up, in my opinion, to the conclusion that Liberty's primary interest wasn't in either the Israelis or the Egyptians.

 

[elder999]

I don't know about all the points you raise, but for these:

I don't know if it was ever denied there were Hebrew translators aboard, but I don't think it was acknowledged, either. Officially, the USS Liberty was a 'research vessel', not a 'spy ship'. I don't think the language specialties of any of the personnel were ever 'officially' given.

From Liberty crew testimony (see the interviews on the page of declassified NSA documents regarding this incident) there were at least three Hebrew language specialists aboard. Additionally, the EC aircraft had Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian language specialists aboard. Also, depending on the volume of traffic and its priority, raw data was often collected, then evaluated later, at a different location.

I do not know what specifics were in the Liberty's mission, but I can make some educated guesses. Since Egypt was the recipient of a good deal of Russian military hardware and 'advisors', it was a good bet we were very interested in collecting everything we could about their hardware capabilities, order of deployment, C3, and tactics on the battlefield. That seems to me to be obvious (what we in the States call a 'no-brainer').

Russian equipment and advisors on the ground, American Russian-language experts listening in from the air, and Cold War politics flavoring everything add up, in my opinion, to the conclusion that Liberty's primary interest wasn't in either the Israelis or the Egyptians.

Given their possible mission, how likely is it that they heard and translated something Israel did not want known?


Put another way, what legitimate military reason did Israel have for attacking a U.S. vessel, and how much more likely is this than any other scenario offered, given the circumstances?

And, just to muddy the waters a bit, what possible role did the Soviet Union have in this matter?

Mind you, I'm just asking questions.

 

[Ninjamom]

My best guess would be that the Israeli's couldn't know what we did or didn't 'hear' real-time, unless we told them. Any data we collected and/or analyzed onsite would not be re-transmitted 'in the clear'. The Israelis might guess what data we collected - if something was going on that was sensitive enough, concern about its compromise might supply motive for an attack.

Then again, if someone from the US Administration called the Israeli ambassador to task to explain something we heard, that might give incentive to make sure we didn't 'hear' more. I do find it interesting that the carrier captain was in direct communications with the President of the United States in real-time to this incident.

 

[Makalakumu]

Good post, Ninjamom. There are a lot of ways to take the information, obviously. It still sounds fishy to me, though. In the end, it will probably come down to our own particular bias. Mine is pretty easy to guess. :angel:

We will never KNOW for sure what happened.

 

[Makalakumu]

My best guess would be that the Israeli's couldn't know what we did or didn't 'hear' real-time, unless we told them. Any data we collected and/or analyzed onsite would not be re-transmitted 'in the clear'. The Israelis might guess what data we collected - if something was going on that was sensitive enough, concern about its compromise might supply motive for an attack.

That's also a plausible explanation, though it means that Israel took a humongous risk in the middle of a war. The kind of risk that, if it went bad, could very well mean the end of Israel. That, IMO, reduces its plausibility for me.

I do find it interesting that the carrier captain was in direct communications with the President of the United States in real-time to this incident.

This, IMO, borders on treason. An American vessel is being attacked and our servicemen are dying. The one person who has the power to send in forces to help, doesn't do so. I think there is a lot more to this story and to the secret ways our government operates then most people realize. This seems to defy logic, but yet it really did occur.

 

[Ninjamom]

Given their possible mission, how likely is it that they heard and translated something Israel did not want known?

Well, that would be a given. 100%. The USS Liberty was an electronic 'vacuum cleaner'. If it was transmitted Liberty would have recorded it. This would include everything from radar frequencies to tactical communications to telephone chatter to the local radio stations. But the question remains, "What would be of such a high value to maintain as a secret that the Israelis would attack a US vessel to keep us from knowing it?" And assuming that anything that important would not be transmitted in the open, how would they know with reasonable certainty that we captured it?

I always assumed the intelligence captured by the Liberty would have been centered on the Egyptian troop and equipment movements in the Sinai and near Gaza (this was the area of shoreline along Liberty's path), but the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona (where the Israelis were developing their nuclear capability at almost exactly this same time) was directly inland from this path as well.

 

[Ninjamom]

If it were a deliberate attempt by Israel and America to sink this ship for political reasons, do you think the Israelis pilots or sailors would have been told the truth? If the theory is correct and it was deliberate, how would they have felt after finding out they'd attacked an ally, not in a friendly fire incident but in a planned attack?

This is something I have often wondered about. Just recently, I was able to catch a possible glimpse into an answer.

The Israeli pilot who first fired on the USS Liberty in 1967 was a young junior officer named Yiftah Spector. After the Six Days War, Spector enjoyed a stellar military career. A triple-ace (15 confirmed enemy killed), he lead a squadron in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, lead the Israeli attack on Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor in 1981, integrated the first F-16s into the Israeli inventory as a Base commander, rose to the rank of Brigadier General, and headed Israeli AF Operations Division. After retirement from active military duty, he continued to serve as the military instructor who trained the next generation of Israeli fighter pilots.

Until 2003.

In 2003, Israel was fighting Hamas in Gaza by engaging in targeted extrajudicial killings. Active Hamas members known to be involved in terrorism were considered legitimate targets, and so were attacked by any means available. In one noteable case, a high-ranking Hamas official was killed by the IAF when a 1/2-ton bomb was dropped on the apartment building which he was visiting. 14 civilians, including 9 children, were killed, along with the intended target. The event became a watershed event for Spector, who began campaigning against the bombings in populated areas as a means of attacking point targets.

Spector became the informal leader of a group of 27 Israeli military pilots and pilot instructors who sent an open letter condemning the IAF policy and stating that the signers would refuse to carry out what they considered immoral and unlawful orders to bomb civilian areas of the occupied territories.

The man considered to be a hero by generations of Israeli Air Force pilots lost his flight status and his position teaching pilots and pilot candidates as a result of this stand.

Transcripts of a radio interview with BG Spector provide more details.

Perhaps he was influenced by orders he had been given earlier in his career that he came to beleive were immoral and unlawful.