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The USS Liberty Affair
Seventeen years ago, in one of the worst peacetime naval disasters in American history, Israeli air and naval forces attacked the U.S. Navy intelligence ship Liberty on the high seas. Even before the story appeared in the American press, U.S. Government public affairs officers went to work promoting a version of the story that was satisfactory to Israel, while representatives of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee descended on the press and Congress to help keep the story under control. Almost immediately, Jacob Javits in the Senate and Roman Pucinski in the House of Representatives took to the floor of Congress to lament the “tragic mistake” that had directed “friendly fire” toward an American ship. The campaign was so effective that most American newspapers and all commercial television networks dropped the story almost overnight before most of the facts were known. No American newsman probed for the inside story of the USS Liberty affair. No member of Congress called publicly for the facts. No crewmen were interviewed on the evening news. Even today, few people anywhere have ever heard of the USS Liberty. One who tried to reverse the trend was Liberty’s Engineer Officer, Lieutenant George Golden. A Jew and former enlisted man, Golden was disturbed about the Government’s seeming unconcern for the truth. So he sought out Associated Press reporter Colin Frost in a Maltese bar while the Navy Court of Inquiry into the incident was still in session and told him why he thought the attack was deliberate. The resulting story appeared in newspapers around the world,1 but it failed to excite the press as Golden had hoped. Instead, it brought further pressure for crewmen to keep quiet. Yet, despite the paucity of news and the fact that the Israeli Government promptly apologized and called the attack an accident, insiders knew that “America’s closest ally in the Middle East” had done its best to sink a ship that it knew to be American. One unsatisfied official was Secretary of State Dean Rusk who complained bitterly and officially to the Israeli Government. But the complaining voices were never heard by the American public and the official protests were classified top secret to avoid embarrassing the attacking nation. Publicly the Lyndon Johnson Administration considered the attack on the USS Liberty an understandable error in the heat of war. As officer-of-the-deck aboard the Liberty that day, I had a ringside seat. I personally observed the close range reconnaissance that preceded the attack. I saw the Israeli reconnaissance pilots wave to our crewmen. I talked to my shipmate, Chief Petty Officer Melvin Smith, moments after he intercepted Israeli radio messages in which Israeli pilots informed their headquarters that we were an American ship. I spent a year in military hospitals recovering from injuries received in the attack that followed. And for the next 12 years I probed Government files and interviewed everyone who would agree to talk about what happened to our ship and why our Government looked the other way. Worldwide Fleet of Spy Ships In 1967, Liberty was the newest and most elaborate of nearly a dozen intelligence-collection ships operated by the American Navy. Newsmen like to call them “spy ships.” Akin to the Soviet intelligence trawlers that haunt the Western world, the American counterparts were fewer, but larger and better manned. At least six were at sea at any one time, and, whenever tension developed anywhere in the world, the closest ship would be sent to the area.2 Thus 13 days before the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli Six Day War in 1967, middle-of-the-night orders from Washington moved the Liberty from her usual patrol area on the west coast of Africa to a new position near the scene of the expected fighting in order to report the war’s progress. Unfortunately the decision-makers in Washington failed to consider that the Israeli Government rarely tolerates “observers,” particularly during wartime. This time, Israeli officials were even more sensitive because, among other things, they planned to capture the Golan Heights from Syria despite heavy White House opposition. If the Golan grab was to succeed, it had to be done quickly and in secret before the Americans could interfere. When war broke out between Israel and the Arab states on June 5, 1967, General David Elazar assembled his troops near Lake Tiberias in preparation for an assault on the Syrian (Golan) Heights, set to begin at 1130, June 8. One obstacle remained. Israeli leaders had learned, probably through observers in Spain, that the USS Liberty had stopped overnight at the U.S. Naval Base in Rota en route to the Gaza Strip. If the ship arrived on schedule, Liberty would be within easy radio range of the invasion site hours before the invasion of Syria was to start.
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