The Liberty Affair and the Problem with the Truth of History
I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent to Washington. I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. In addition, the testimony of Lt. Lloyd Painter concerning the deliberate machine-gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given to the Court of Inquiry and included in the original transcript, is now missing.
I join the survivors in their call for an honest inquiry. Why is there no room to question Israel, even when they kill Americans, in the halls of Congress?
Let the survivors testify. Let me testify. Let former intelligence officers testify that they received real-time Hebrew translations of Israeli commanders instructing their pilots to sink “the American ship.”
Surely uncovering the truth about what happened to American servicemen in a bloody attack is more important than protecting Israel. And surely forty years is long enough to wait.
I salute the courage and integrity of three parties: Ward Boston Jr. for writing that; the Editor of the San Diego Union Tribunefor publishing it; and the Copley family which owns the newspaper and allows it to be a beacon of light in an otherwise very dark and menacing mainstream media landscape. (I’m a former ITN and BBC Panorama correspondent, and it’s my view that the mainstream media, out of fear of offending Zionism, is not only complicit in Zionism’s suppression of the truth of history, but is betraying democracy).
The attack on the Liberty was ordered by Defence Minister Moshe Dayan, Israel’s charismatic, one-eyed warlord and master of deception. (I knew this Moshe well enough to have private conversations with him. If asked today to describe him in retrospect, I would say that he was a most engaging war criminal).
Like so much else to do with the making and sustaining of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the motive for the attack on the Liberty has to be deduced from what happened in the countdown to the 1967 war (one could say the countdown began when the fighting of 1948 ended), and what happened during the war.
In Zionism, The Real Enemy of the Jews, the story unfolds in two chapters of Volume Two, Chapter 24, which is titled America Takes Sides, War with Nasser Act II; and the Creation of Greater Israel; and Chapter 25, which is titled The Liberty Affair, “Pure Murder” on a “Great Day” and includes a very graphic and detailed account of the attack.
The key to more or less complete understanding is knowledge of the Liberty’s capabilities and what its mission was as it patrolled off the Mediterranean coast of Israel and the Sinai Peninsula. The essence is summarised in nine paragraphs of my Chapter 25 as follows:
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 USS 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 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 Libertyat 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 defense. (A coincidence?)
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