In the very long list of shocking and abominable atrocities committed by the US, there is one that stands out as especially obscene for the appalling and hypocritical inhumanity of US Government leaders. This was “Project 100,000”, a US military program enacted by then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to recruit 100,000 new soldiers per year during a time of great public opposition to the Vietnam war, and which was promoted as part of President Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’. In McNamara’s own words, it was “a program to salvage the poverty-scarred youth of our society”, to give them two years of military service, then insert them into “a lifetime of productive activity in American civilian society”.
He further stated,
“Poverty in America pockmarks its victims inwardly. If unchecked and unreversed, that inner ghetto of the poverty-scarred personality of these men can fester into explosive frustrations of bitterness and violence. Chronic failures in school throughout their childhood, they are destined to a downward spiral of defeat and decay … If nothing were done to give them a strong sense of their own worth and potential, they, their wives and their children would almost inevitably be the unproductive recipients of some form of the dole ten years from now. Hundreds of thousands of men can be salvaged from the blight of poverty, and the Defense Department – with no detriment whatever to its primary role – is particularly well equipped to salvage them.” (1) (2)
That sounds good, except that this program was initiated during a time when the US was realising extremely high casualties in Vietnam, had already admitted the war was “unwinnable”, with most suitable recruits either taking student deferments or evading the draft by fleeing to Canada. McNamara’s solution was to run a sieve through the ghettos of America, an ingenious and diabolical solution to “rid the nation” of its surplus black and poor, in a program he may have hatched with the advice of Margaret Sanger, she of Planned Parenthood. In executing this program, McNamara lowered the standards to the point where these recruits were in the bottom quartile of intelligence and ability, a great many of them with an IQ of 60 or 65, and none above 80.
These new “soldiers” were functionally illiterate, able to read only at a Grade 3 level or lower. They were so severely (educationally) deficient that the military had to create little comic books to replace the training manuals, and many had to be taught even how to tie the laces on their boots. As other authors have noted, these men often failed their much-simplified basic training several times, with most being repeatedly “recycled” until they finally reached a deplorable minimum standard of readiness. None had the mental ability to appreciate what was happening to them.
The program ran for five years and recruited in total about 500,000 mentally retarded young men and gave them a one-way ticket to Vietnam, these helpless young men dying at many times the rate of regular soldiers. Many researchers have claimed that an overwhelming majority of these men, especially blacks, received combat assignments, and “comprised an overwhelming majority of … battle deaths”, and were also generally posted to “what were considered dangerous military occupations”. These men were provided with special ‘dog tags’ that began with “US67…” so they could be quickly identified by other soldiers. By all accounts, the regular troops did not want to be associated with these men, certainly not in a battle situation, believing their lack of intelligence and training simply jeopardised the lives of all around them. Many have reported that when battlefield decisions were being made, given that these men were unable to learn anything much more complicated than pulling a trigger, they were just sent to their deaths, “ending up on the Vietnam Memorial Wall at an alarming rate much higher than the average”. One young Vietnam veteran reported that a common order issued to these young men ‘salvaged from the blight of poverty’ was to “Go over there and see if there’s a sniper in that tree”.
US casualty figures mushroomed after the introduction of this program, the victims of which were simply cannon-fodder and, for this and other reasons, I remain convinced there is a high probability American deaths in Vietnam were grossly under-reported and that a great many of these nearly 500,000 simply never returned and whose records no longer exist. It is not only possible, but probable, that American deaths in Vietnam were in fact ten times the stated 50,000. Several organisations in the US have attempted to produce accurate Vietnam casualty statistics, but with little apparent success.
As one such organisation states,
“The Vietnam War presents multiple challenges to historians due to official discrepancies with draft numbers, contention over official number of soldiers deployed, and a general lack of transparency from the US government during the war leading to possible misinformation in historical records.”
In other words, the official sources of basic statistics as to the actual number of men recruited, the number sent to Vietnam and the number who died there, are often missing, sometimes contradictory, and sometimes wildly inaccurate, and the US military exercises only obstruction to those interested in remedying the situation. Moreover, without an Internet or mobile phones, and no social networking capability, the parents of these men would have no way of knowing the huge number of casualties from within their group.
On May 30, 2002, Salon Magazine published an article by Myra MacPherson on the HBO movie “Path to War” in which she discusses Hollywood’s attempt to “humanise” McNamara “while entirely overlooking … one of his most heinous acts” and ignoring his “arrogance and duplicity”. She notes that the HBO movie omits “some of the most shameful brainstorms of the Vietnam War’s masterminds – including a little-known recruitment program that turned the mentally and physically deficient into cannon fodder.”
She details how military recruiters “swept through urban ghettos and Southern rural back roads”, offering hundreds of thousands of the retarded poor – with IQs as low as the 60s – “a one-way ticket to Vietnam”, and that “McNamara’s Moron Corps, as they were pathetically nicknamed by other soldiers, entered combat in disproportionate numbers”, noting that they received combat assignments at 250% of the rate of general servicemen. MacPherson tells us that few today are aware of what she calls “this particularly shameful chapter” of American history, and that her stories of this episode were “generally met with disbelief”. This entire project had been so well buried by the government that almost no one was aware of its existence and few could believe it would be possible for the American government to perpetrate such an obvious genocidal travesty against its own population, especially after the military had already admitted the war “could not be won”.
In a 2006 article in the New York Times (3), this Project was dismissed as “a failed experiment” that was “of little benefit to the men it was created to help”, but my research leads me to conclude that, contrary to being a failed experiment, this program was a “success”, a truly ingenious and criminal method of applying eugenics to eliminate poverty (especially black poverty) and idiocy in America by using the mentally-deficient as cannon fodder in a trumped-up war, far from the first time a nation’s surplus poor discovered themselves in similar conditions. In recognition of his success, McNamara was rewarded by being given the post of President of the World Bank.
In 1968 Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms wrote urgently to Attorney General Ramsey Clark and President Lyndon B. Johnson that some highly enriched uranium fueling Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor was stolen from America. LBJ reportedly uttered, “Don’t tell anyone else, even [Secretary of State] Dean Rusk and [Defense Secretary] Robert McNamara.” The FBI immediately launched a deep investigation into the inexplicably heavy losses at the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation NUMEC in Pennsylvania and the highly suspicious activities and Israeli connections of the Americans running it. The CIA was tasked to find out what was going on in Israel, and compiled thousands of documents about the incident. (PDF) Although CIA officials in a position to now unofficially went on record claiming a diversion had occurred, for decades the CIA has thwarted declassification and release of the LBJ memos. On October 18, 2013 the only appeals panel with the power to overrule the CIA—the Inter-agency Security Classification Appeals Panel ISCAP—sent notification that Americans are not yet ready to know the contents of the memos (ISCAP decision PDF). This denial of public release of decades-old secrets concerning U.S.-Israel relations is far from unique. Although the Obama administration promised unprecedented transparency, it has emasculated the public’s ability to give informed consent on a wide range of key foreign policy issues. A review of ten particularly toxic U.S. secrets about Israel suggests stakeholders should start assuming the worst but most logical explanation.
In 2006 former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously told reporters at an Iraq war briefing “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” Bush administration secrecy and Rumsfeld’s pithy quotes failed to quell gradual public awareness that the ill-fated invasion was launched on purposely fabricated pretexts. And yet the Iraq debacle could have been avoided if Americans had been better informed over time how government truly functions through greater access to the fourth category left unmentioned by Rumsfeld: “unknown knowns.”
“Unknown knowns” are the paradigm-shifting bits of information known only by a select few in government but kept from their fellow American citizens because they would reveal indefensible, secret policies and institution-level corruption that favor a special interest. By locking “unknown knowns” under heavy guard in document archives, covering them in secrecy classification stamps and making an example out of whistleblowers who release them without authorization, busy bureaucrats with the highest security clearances maintain a vast and growing trove of “unknown knowns.” Historians and watchdog organizations are continually thwarted in their mandate to contextualize and educate the public about relevant past events that could deeply inform the governed—and ultimately improve governance. Senator Carl Schurz said, “My country right or wrong, if right, to be kept right, and if wrong, to be set right.” “Unknown knowns” obliterate the public’s ability to execute the latter two-thirds of that sage advice.
Even the passage of time does not guarantee “unknown knowns” ever become “known knowns.” Under current government records preservation guidelines—particularly for information that researchers are not actively seeking to declassify— some “unknown knowns” quietly become “unknown unknowns” as they decay, are physically destroyed, erased or “lost.” Many knowledgeable former officials take their secrets to the grave. As a product of the ill-gotten power and influence of the Israel lobby, the pile of “unknown knowns” about U.S.-Israel policy is particularly large. Curious Americans who rightfully question official narratives about the U.S.-Israel “special relationship” have often requested “known unknowns” under the Freedom of Information Act. Former government insiders who know firsthand about explosive secrets often seek their public release to alert others using the Mandatory Declassification Review, even requesting documents by name, subject, location, author and date. After such “unknown knowns” (like the LBJ memos) are unsuccessfully sought for decades by multiple researchers, well-warranted suspicions arise about the reasons behind the impermeable government wall of refusal. The following ten US-Israel policy “unknown knowns” suggest the Israel lobby’s ongoing corrupt power is the only possible explanation for why they are still secret.
1. Henry Morgenthau Jr’s Israel policy is the stuff of legend in accounts about the birth of Israel. Some researchers claim that FDR’s former Treasury Secretarywas present at the original 1945 meeting of American Zionists with Jewish Agency executive director David Ben-Gurion to set up the massive Haganah smuggling network to steal, illegally buy and smuggle surplus WWII arms from the U.S. to Jewish fighters in Palestine. (report PDF) This was the first major broadly organized Israel lobby challenge to U.S. sovereignty. It successfully overrode American policy enshrined in neutrality and arms export laws. Others claim Morgenthau was also instrumental in the illicit financing Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program in direct opposition to policy set by American presidents.
The FBI’s dusty 10,000 page file on Morgenthau, numbered 105-HQ-188123 (the 105 code signifies “foreign counterintelligence”) including intercepts to Morgenthau from Israel, could finally clear up many of these allegations, especially when compared to current research. Although the FBI—after a process that began in 2010—in September 2013 claims it has fully declassified the Morgenthau file, censors have blanked out nearly every page with a paint-roller of black ink (sample PDF). How do high officials with strong ties to Israel and its lobby who are politically appointed to the U.S. Treasury Department flout U.S. laws with their own foreign-coordinated foreign policy movements? The FBI and Justice Department do not believe Americans are quite yet ready to know.
2. Eisenhower and the Lavon Affair. In 1954, the Israeli government launched its “Operation Susannah”false flag terrorist attack on U.S. facilities in Egypt. Israel’s operatives were quickly arrested when bombs exploded prematurely. The operation’s utter failure resulted in a political crisis known as the Lavon Affair. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, periodically swarmed by American Zionist Council lobbyists urging him to send money and arms to Israel, must have learned some very hard lessons about U.S.-Israel relations from the incident. Yet the Eisenhower presidential archive—which is not subject to FOIA—has never released anything revelatory about the administration’s reaction to the attempted false flag attack. A narrow request for such files yielded only a single non-specific declassified opinion that the commander-in-chief believed the Israelis were “fanatics.” (National Security Council PDF) Yet the false flag operation‘s objective, attacking to keep U.S. troops stationed in the Suez Canal Zone to respond to “Egyptian militants,” seemed entirely rational to Israel, and possibly to some of its U.S. supporters who struggled for years afterwards to minimize the importance of the affair. Today Eisenhower library archivists claim that huge quantities of Eisenhower’s papers are still “unprocessed,” but may hold some private reflections or lessons learned.
3. Israeli theft of nuclear material from NUMEC. In 2013, the CIA continues to resist release of thousands of files about the NUMEC diversion by referring to CIA Deputy Director for Operations John H. Stein’s secret decision in 1979 (2013 FOIA denial PDF). Stein claimed that release of even a few of CIA’s closely-held files—especially if they were compared with Science Advisor of the Interior Commission Henry Meyer’s blunt allegations (PDF) to Congressman Morris Udall in 1979 that NUMEC was an Israeli smuggling front—was impossible “because of the need to have a coordinated Executive Branch position and our desire to protect a sensitive and valuable liaison equity.” In plain English, that appears to mean Americans still cannot have official CIA confirmation of the uranium theft because the U.S. president would have to drop the ongoing nonsense of “strategic ambiguity” and forgo intelligence Israel is funneling to America.
4. FBI files of Israeli (but not Russian) spies Russia’s dashing red-headed spy, Anna Chapman, was arrested in 2010 and sent packing back to Russia. Any interested American can now watch Chapman’s moves in surveillance videos and read the FBI counterintelligence files. Not so with most of Israel’s top spies who targeted American economic, nuclear and national defense infrastructure. The United States are still crawling with Israeli spies (our “constant companion” according to intelligence expert Jeff Stein). The 2010 revelations of nuclear equipment smuggling from Telogy (prohibited export smuggling PDF) in California and Stewart Nozette’s 1998-2008 Israel Aerospace Industries-funded penetrations of classified U.S. information storehouses around Washington reveal that while Israeli spying has never stopped, secret prosecution strategies now emphasize quietly rolling up Israeli operations via industry regulators, fines and penalties or isolating and entrapping American spies on lesser charges but steering around their Israeli handlers.
Unlike its treatment of information requests about Russian spies, the FBI and Justice Department have denied every individual FOIA request for the files of major Israeli spies. Access to Rafael Eitan’s many harmful exploits against U.S. targets are banned from release unless Eitan personally waives his privacy rights (FOIA denial). The FBI claimed it can no longer find files about deceased nuclear espionage mastermind Avraham Hermoni, even though his name appears across many previously released NUMEC files (FOIA denial PDF). Flooding from Hurricane Sandy is the excuse the FBI gives for not being able to find files on spy-for-Israel Ben Ami-Kadish (Flood FOIA denial PDF). One might argue it is merely a series of unfortunate events that keeps Israeli spy files out of public hands, except that the Justice Department has now issued a blanket ban on declassifying any files about the FBI’s decades-long counterintelligence tango with Israel’s Mossad. (Justice Department blanket denial PDF).
The results of the Justice Department’s kid-glove approach to Israel propagates into mandatory counterintelligence reports to Congress. Although Israel unambiguously ranked as a top economic and national defense intelligence threat in past assessments of agencies like the Office of National Counterintelligence Executive, because criminal prosecution strategies toward Israel (through not Iran, Russia or China) have been undermined from within, Israel has disappeared from the most current reports.
5. Jonathan J. Pollard’s most heinous crime. Israel’s only American spy ever to do serious time in jail—despite the best efforts of his many American and Israeli supporters to spring him—once confidently claimed before he was convicted that “…it was the established policy of the Department of Justice not to prosecute U.S. citizens for espionage activities on behalf of Israel.” Many believe it was only Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger’s classified briefing to sentencing Judge Aubry Robinson that made Pollard the near sole exception to that curious rule.
Some Pentagon insiders and national security reporters believe Pollard’s sentence was so harsh because Israel used stolen U.S. intelligence as “trade goods” with the Soviet Union to increase Russian émigrés to Israel. As Pollard’s sentence draws to a close, few know exactly what Weinberger told Robinson that caused him to deliver a life sentence. The recent partial releases of a CIA damage assessment and a DIA video about Pollard shed little light.
In 2010, the Department of Defense disclaimed all ownership of the still-classified “Weinberger declaration” passing the FOIA ball to the Justice Department’s Criminal Division (FOIA transfer PDF). In a novel approach, the Executive Office of US Attorneys now claims that it cannot find its own copy but that FOIA does not require EOUSA FOIA officers to travel two blocks to the DC District Court to retrieve a sealed copy of the memorandum for review (FOIA denial PDF) or even ask DOD for a copy. The National Archives and Records Administration Office of Government Information Services OGIS agrees that there is no “duty for agencies to retrieve records that are not physically present in their own files.” Although the 2008 case of Ben-Ami Kadish proves the Pollard espionage ring was much larger than was publicly disclosed in the late 1980s, the FBI has also not allowed release of its Jonathan Pollard investigation files (FOIA denial PDF) for overdue public review of how the investigation might have—like many others—been short-circuited by the Department of Justice because it involved Israel.
6. Wiretap of AIPAC pushing for a US war on Iran. When AIPAC executives Keith Weissman and Steven J. Rosen dialed up Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler in 2004, they were determined to leverage purloined classified U.S. national defense information into a story that Iran was engaged in “total war” against the US in Iraq. FBI special agents played audio intercepts of their pitch to AIPAC’s legal counsel and AIPAC promptly fired the pair to distance itself from activities it had long supported. Rosen and Weisman were later indicted under the Espionage Act, although the case was later quashed under an intense Israel lobby pressure campaign shortly after President Obama entered office.
What exactly did AIPAC’s two officials tell the Washington Post in its unrelenting drive to gin up a U.S. war with Iran? A decade later, the U.S. Department of Justice doesn’t believe the American public is entitled to hear a tape long ago played to AIPAC’s lawyer Nathan Lewin, even as AIPAC continues to agitate for more wars. (MDR denial PDF)
7. Niger uranium forgery underwriters. Although Ike may or may not have worried much about the implications of Operation Susannah, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee certainly did. A secret memo touched off years of Senate and Justice Department investigations into Israel lobbying over fears that American operatives might engage in other overseas clandestine provocations aimed at duping the U.S. into ill-advised conflicts that would benefit Israel (the short memo references the Lavon affair twice). The Iraq war proves those fears were well-founded.
Many have long suspected that the Niger uranium forgeries, fake documents the Bush administration trumpeted to falsely accuse Iraq of buying uranium from Africa for nuclear weapons, were chartered by American neoconservatives in order to provide a pretext they desperately needed for war. Perhaps the FBI’s investigation into the matter definitively proves it. However, despite years of requests for the 1,000 pages of that investigation, the FBI after initially duly proceeding with a FOIA, has now suddenly clammed up. (Niger uranium denial PDF)
8. Israel lobbyists embedded in the Treasury and Justice Departments. Israel lobbying organizations have been very effective at embedding their operatives in key positions across the Federal government, such as Stuart Levey in the Treasury Department’s economic warfare unit, or former AIPAC director Tom Dine as a contractor at the floundering US government-funded Arabic-language broadcaster Alhurra. It used to be possible to get a phone directory or conduct a comprehensive audit of which key political appointees (and the people they brought in) were running critical divisions of federal agencies by obtaining detailed Office of Personnel Management and other public records. Not anymore. (FOIA response PDF) Leveraging heightened post-911 sensitivities, the US Treasury Department now claims the same protections against disclosure formerly enjoyed only by intelligence agency employees.
Since the 1940s, the U.S. Department of Justice has earned a reputation as a place where Israel lobby criminal investigations go to die. Justice is also where an AIPAC official like Neil Sher can while away a few years on pet projects at taxpayer expense before moving on to more lucrative outside work. DOJ also routinely denies files about its past official decisions not to pursue criminal cases on the basis that doing so could jeopardize privacy, ongoing investigations, or factors underlying its coveted “prosecutorial discretion” (e.g. charging the disenfranchised but not powerful insiders for wrongdoing). Like Treasury, it is now almost impossible to survey and produce an organization chart of the Israel lobby’s political appointees embedded at high and mid-level Justice Department posts or the biographies of the staff and contractors they bring in with them.
9. Unclassified IDA report about US charities funding the Israeli nuclear weapons program. Sensitive reports need not be classified for the government to hang on to them indefinitely. In 1987 the Institute for Defense Analyses delivered an unclassified report to the Department of Defense titled “Critical Technology Issues in Israel.” The study implicates the Israeli Weizmann Institute for Science and Technology in nuclear weapons research, raising deep questions about the group’s U.S. tax-exempt charitable fundraising and U.S. commitment to enforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Department of Defense withheld the IDA report from release on the basis of FOIA exemptions covering trade secrets and “intra-agency communications protected by the deliberative process privilege,” among others. (FOIA denial PDF)
10. Justification forNSA funneling raw intelligence on Americans to Israel. If former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has taught Americans anything, it is that “unknown knowns” are usually even worse than many might have first imagined. Some careful observers knew about massive NSA surveillance, while others alerted the public about the danger of “backdoor” U.S. intelligence flows to Israel. But who ever suspected the NSA was shipping wholesale raw intercepts gathered on Americans to Israel under a secret deal struck in 2009? No government that wholly denies such relevant information can claim legitimacy via consent of the governed. There can be little doubt why these ten files are kept closed: it serves the Israel lobby. The means by which this closure is sustained is also no secret. The millions of dollars that line politician’s pockets, promote media pundits and quietly spirit political appointees into key gatekeeper positions maintain closed files and prevent informed public debate.
Because of this, Americans should proceed assuming the worst conceivable, most logical explanation for any given U.S.-Israel “unknown known” is correct—until proven otherwise. Under this guideline, it is prudent to believe that LBJ—properly warned by his intelligence services and advisors that Israel was stealing the most precious military material on earth from America—was simply too marinated in Israel lobby campaign cash to faithfully uphold his oath of office. It is similarly reasonable to believe the Justice Department and FBI won’t release Israeli spy files because Americans would finally understand that, despite massive ongoing harm to America, political appointees in the Justice Department thwart warranted prosecutions. DOJ finds it much easier to stay “on message” through a long line of lobby-approved but mostly bogus “Islamic terrorism cases” (many made via sketchy undercover informants goading members of targeted minority communities into “terror” plots). According to its own records, every time it tried to uphold the law in the 1940s the DOJ suddenly found itself internally and externally swarmed by Israel lobbyists with inexhaustible financial war chests and legal experts working to quash warranted prosecutions in secret coordination with Israel. The DOJ now likely believes it can never win against Israel lobby generated media and political agitation when it moves to prosecute, and has now simply given up.
It is logical to assume that Israel was found selling out America to the Soviets in Pollard’s case, since little else explains the unusually harsh impact of Weinberger’s secret memo. It is similarly likely that the FBI’s AIPAC wiretaps would, if released today, accurately reveal Rosen and Weissman to be what they actually were—unregistered foreign agents operating on behalf of and in ongoing contact with the Israeli government rather than legitimate domestic lobbyists. It is similarly more productive to assume that at least one neoconservative operative with strong ties to the involved entities in Italy—such as Michael Ledeen—served as barker to the Italian sideshow that disseminated forged documents.
According to documents released by Edward Snowden, the transfer of raw NSA intercepts on American citizens to Israel was authorized under a secret doctrine that “the survival of the state of Israel is a paramount goal of US Middle East policy.” This “prime directive” was probably a secret because it is a blank check obligating American blood and treasure to a cause American citizens never approved via advise and consent. But why did the Obama administration—even as it dismissed espionage charges against AIPAC staff in 2009—so deeply betray American privacy? Under “unknown known” doctrine, most would assume that like LBJ before him, Obama sold out America because his Israel lobby handlers secretly demanded and paid for it on behalf of a foreign country. What other goodies Obama doled out to Israel in exchange for help gaining the highest office remain to emerge.
The official process for obtaining official public disclosure of “known unknowns”—the Freedom of Information Act—does not function when the stakes in disclosure are high and Israeli interests are involved. Agencies (and ISCAP) correctly perceive government credibility is at stake when there is real openness, and that bona fide transparency would positively impact how government behaves. Visibly corrupt federal government officials and institutions are counting on continued secrecy to accumulate illegitimate power by undermining public accountability.
During the Six-Day War, Israel attacked and nearly sank the USS Liberty belonging to its closest ally, the USA. Thirty-four American servicemen were killed in the two-hour assault by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats. Israel claimed that the whole affair had been a tragic accident based on mistaken identification of the ship. The American government accepted the explanation.
For more than 30 years many people have disbelieved the official explanation but have been unable to rebut it convincingly. Now, Dead in the Water uses startling new evidence to reveal the truth behind the seemingly inexplicable attack. The film combines dramatic reconstruction of the events, with new access to former officers in the US and Israeli armed forces and intelligence services who have decided to give their own version of events.
Interviews include President Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, former head of the Israeli navy Admiral Shlomo Errell and members of the USS Liberty crew.
What happened to the USS Liberty?
The USS Liberty was a virtually unarmed American navy ship that was attacked by Israeli planes and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967.
What were the American casualties?
34 American sailors were killed and 172 injured that day, a casualty rate of 70%. This is among the highest casualty rates ever inflicted upon a U.S. naval vessel.
What was Israel’s explanation for the attack?
Israel claimed the attack was “a case of mistaken identity”; that they didn’t know it was an American ship.
Why would we question that explanation more than 30 years later?
The ship’s survivors were afraid to speak out in the early years because of threats of “court martial, prison or worse” if they did not remain silent. However, as time passed, they have stepped forward to say the attack was deliberate.Recently, high government and military officials have suggested that not only was the attack deliberate, but that the US government covered-up the incident. Today, an Independent Commission of Inquiry has found that Israel committed “an act of war” against the United States (see Findings of Independent Commission).
In addition, the Navy’s chief attorney to the original 1967 military Court of Inquiry has issued a statement that orders to cover-up the incident were issued by President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara [see Statement of Captain Ward Boston, USN, JAG (Ret.)].
Did Israel have reason to believe the USS Liberty was an Egyptian ship?
Israel says its pilots and torpedo boat commanders confused the USS Liberty with the El Quseir, an Egyptian ship allegedly firing upon its forces in the Sinai. But there was no Egyptian naval bombardment that day; nor did the El Quseir (an unarmed 1920s-era horse carrier out of service in Alexandria) bear any resemblance to the Liberty.
Isn’t it difficult to identify a ship if you’re in an airplane?
In 1967, the USS Liberty was the most sophisticated intelligence ship in the world, with dozens of large antennas, including a large moon-bounce “satellite-dish” mounted on a tall structure near the stern. It may have been one of the most easily identifiable ships of any navy in the world. With a displacement of 10,000 tons, it was four times the size of the antique Egyptian transport it is claimed to have resembled. Freshly painted, the Liberty carried large white identification numbers on its bow. Egyptian hull numbers are painted black.
Doesn’t Israel say that the Liberty flew no flag?
According to American survivors, a 5-by-8 feet American flag was hoisted early that morning and was flying all day until it was shot away by attacking aircraft. Within several minutes, it was replaced by the giant 7-by-13 feet holiday ensign, which flew for the duration of the attack.
Could Israel have thought the ship was in a war zone, acting suspiciously?
According to surviving crewmembers, Israeli reconnaissance aircraft closely studied the Liberty over an eight-hour period prior to the attack, one flying within two hundred feet of the ship. At all times the Liberty was a clearly marked American ship in international waters, proceeding at a speed of only 5 knots.
What was the weather like the day of the attack?
Weather reports confirm that it was a clear day with unlimited visibility. The Israeli reconnaissance planes could have seen the Liberty’s crew sunbathing on the upper decks just before the attack. The flag was flying in a 12-knot breeze for most of the afternoon.
Doesn’t Israel say they ended the attack the minute they saw someone hoist an American flag?
The Israeli attack by combined air and naval forces spanned two hours — as long as the attack on Pearl Harbor. The air attack alone lasted approximately 25 minutes: consisting of more than 30 sorties by approximately 12 separate planes using napalm, cannon, and rockets which left 821 holes in the ship. Following the air attack, three Israeli motor torpedo boats torpedoed the ship, causing a 40’x 40’ wide hole in her hull, and machine-gunning firefighters and stretcher-bearers attempting to save their ship and crew. More than 3,000 machine-gun bullet holes were later counted on the Liberty’s hull. After the attack was thought to have ended, three life rafts were lowered into the water to rescue the most seriously wounded. The Israeli torpedo boats returned and machine-gunned these life rafts at close range. This was followed by the approach of two large Israeli Army assault helicopters filled with armed commandos carrying what appeared to be explosive satchels (they departed after hovering over the ship for several minutes, making no attempt to communicate).
Did the Liberty send out a distress signal when it was under attack?
Throughout the air attack, the Liberty’s radio operators found it difficult to transmit a distress signal because the attacking Israeli aircraft jammed all five of the Liberty’s American, not Egyptian, emergency radio channels. However, a call for help did reach the U.S. Navy command in the Mediterranean.
What was the American response time?
Although American carrier-based air support was only 40 minutes away, help did not reach the USS Liberty for seventeen hours. Navy fighters were launched from the aircraft carriers America and Saratoga while the Liberty was under attack. However, they were quickly recalled by the White House. This is the only instance in American naval history where a rescue mission was cancelled when an American ship was under attack.
Why would Israel have deliberately attacked an American ship?
Israel’s motive for launching the attack has never been determined with certainty. This is why an impartial investigation is critical. One hypothesis is that Israel intended to sink the ship (with no survivors) and blame Egypt because this might have brought the United States into the 1967 war. Another hypothesis is that the Liberty was gathering intelligence about activities that Israel did not want revealed. Examples might include the massacre of Egyptian prisoners of war that was then occurring in the Sinai, as well as Israel’s impending invasion of Syria.
Has the incident been investigated in the past?
Some people say that there have been “thirteen official investigations” all concluding the attack was a case of mistaken identity. Several were conducted by Israel. Upon examination, however, every one is based upon the conclusions of the original 1967 US Navy Court of Inquiry, which accepted the Israeli version, but which has been exposed and discredited by its chief attorney as a cover-up.
Did the surviving crewmembers testify in the other investigations?
In not one of these “investigations” were any of the Liberty’s surviving crewmembers permitted to publicly testify.
Why would the White House prevent the rescue of an American ship?
This is, perhaps, the most disturbing question arising out of Israel’s attack. It is why there needs to be a thorough investigation of the actions taken by the White House and the Secretary of Defense. Why did they order the recall of the planes that had been sent to rescue the Liberty? Why did they order that the survivors be silenced and the true facts be withheld from the American people?
What kind of investigation are you calling for?
We are calling for a new Court of Inquiry by the Department of the Navy, with congressional oversight, to take public testimony from surviving crewmembers and otherwise thoroughly examine the circumstances of the attack.
Why are you calling for a naval — and not a congressional — investigation?
We believe this would remove the inquiry from the political pressures traditionally exerted by special interest groups upon individual congressional offices. Fundraising and election pressures have prevented an honest investigation from being conducted for the past 36 years.
Why is this significant for the American people so many years later?
We have a duty to the crew of the USS Liberty, while the survivors are still alive to testify, and while the perpetrators can be brought to justice. Furthermore, any policies that paralyze our elected leadership to the extent they become unable or unwilling to protect Americans and American interests, endangers not only the safety of all Americans but also the national security of the United States.
Doesn’t America have a special relationship with Israel?
No nation or people should be above the law; nor should American interests be subordinated to the interests of any foreign nation. Those Israelis responsible for ordering the attack and the resulting murder of American sailors must be held accountable for their actions.
By John Wear – Inconvenient History – January 26, 2019
Establishment historians claim that U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt never wanted war and made every reasonable effort to prevent war. This article will show that contrary to what establishment historians claim, Franklin Roosevelt and his administration wanted war and made every effort to instigate World War II in Europe. … continue
This article will examine some of the connections between the US and UK National Security apparatus and the appearance of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory beginning after the accident at Three Mile Island. … continue
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The word "alleged" is deemed to occur before the word "fraud." Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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