History & Overview
(June 8, 1967)
by Mitchell Bard
The Israeli attack on the USS
Liberty was a grievous error,
largely attributable to the fact that
it occurred in the midst of the confusion
of a full-scale war in 1967. Ten official
United States investigations and three official Israeli inquiries have
all conclusively established the attack
was a tragic mistake.
On June 8, 1967, the fourth
day of the Six-Day
War, the Israeli high command received
reports that Israeli troops in El Arish
were being fired upon from the sea, presumably
by an Egyptian vessel, as they had a day
before. The United States had announced
that it had no naval forces within hundreds
of miles of the battle front on the floor
of the United
Nations a few days earlier;
however, the USS Liberty, an American intelligence
ship under the dual control of the Defense
Intelligence Agency/Central Intelligence
Agency and the Sixth Fleet, was assigned
to monitor the fighting. As
a result of a series of United States communication
failures, whereby messages directing the
ship not to approach within 100 miles were
not received by the Liberty, the ship
sailed to within 14 miles off the Sinai coast.
The Israelis mistakenly thought this was
the ship shelling its soldiers and war planes
and torpedo boats attacked, killing 34 members
of the Liberty's crew
and wounding 171. Ships from the Sixth Fleet
were directed to launch four attack aircraft
with fighter cover to defend the Liberty,
but the planes were recalled after a message
was received at the White House that the
Israelis had admitted they had attacked
the ship.
Numerous mistakes were made by both the United States
and Israel. For example, the Liberty was first reported — incorrectly,
as it turned out — to be cruising at 30 knots (it was later recalculated
to be 28 knots). Under Israeli (and U.S.) naval doctrine at the time,
a ship proceeding at that speed was presumed to be a warship. The sea
was calm and the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry found that the Liberty's
flag was very likely drooped and not discernible; moreover, members
of the crew, including the Captain, Commander William McGonagle, testified
that the flag was knocked down after the first or second assault.
According to Israeli Chief of Staff Yitzhak
Rabin's memoirs,
there were standing orders to attack any unidentified vessel near the
shore.1 The day fighting began, Israel
had asked that American ships be removed from its coast or that it be
notified of the precise location of U.S. vessels.2 The Sixth Fleet was moved because President Johnson feared being drawn
into a confrontation with the Soviet Union. He also ordered that no
aircraft be sent near Sinai.
A CIA report on the incident
issued June 13, 1967, also found that an
overzealous pilot could mistake the Liberty for an Egyptian ship, the El Quseir.
After the air raid, Israeli torpedo boats
identified the Liberty as an Egyptian
naval vessel. When the Liberty began
shooting at the Israelis, they responded
with the torpedo attack, which killed 28
of the sailors. In 1981, the National Security
Agency noted that
accounts by members of the Liberty crew
and others did not have access to the relevant
signal intelligence reports or the confidential
explanation provided by Israel to the United
States, which were used in the CIA investigation.
The NSA concluded: “While these [signal
intelligence of Israeli communications] reports
revealed some confusion on the part of the
pilots concerning the nationality of the
ship, they tended to rule out any thesis
that the Israeli Navy and Air Force deliberately
attacked a ship they knew to be American.”2a
The Joint
Chiefs of Staff investigated the communications failure and noted
that the Chief of Naval Operations expressed concern about the prudence
of sending the Liberty so close to the area of hostilities and four messages were subsequently
sent instructing the ship to move farther away from the area of hostilities.
The JCS report said the messages were never received because of “a
combination of (1) human error, (2) high volume of communications traffic,
and (3) lack of appreciation of sense of urgency regarding the movement
of the Liberty.” The report also included a copy of a flash
cable sent immediately after the attack, which reported that Israel had “erroneously” attacked the Liberty,
that IDF helicopters
were in rescue operations, and that Israel had sent “abject apologies”
and requested information on any other U.S. ships near the war zone.
Initially, the Israelis were terrified that they had
attacked a Soviet ship and might have provoked the Soviets to join the
fighting.3 Once the Israelis were sure
what had happened, they reported the incident to the U.S. Embassy in
Tel Aviv and offered to provide a helicopter for the Americans to fly
out to the ship and any help they required to evacuate the injured and
salvage the ship. The offer was accepted and a U.S. naval attaché was
flown to the Liberty.
The Israelis were “obviously
shocked” by
the error they made in attacking the ship,
according to the U.S.
Ambassador in Tel
Aviv. In fact, according to a secret
report on the 1967
war, the immediate concern was that
the Arabs might see the proximity of the Liberty to
the conflict as evidence of U.S.-Israel
collusion.3a A
second secret report concluded, “While
the attack showed a degree of impetuosity
and recklessness, it was also clear that
the presence of a U.S. naval vessel, unannounced,
that close to belligerent shores at a time
when we had made much of the fact that
no U.S. military forces were moving near
the area of hostilities was inviting disaster.”3b
Many of the survivors of the Liberty remain bitter, and are convinced the attack was deliberate as they make
clear on their web
site. In 1991, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak trumpeted
their discovery of an American who said he had been in the Israeli war
room when the decision was made to knowingly attack the American ship.4 In fact, that individual, Seth Mintz, wrote a letter to the Washington
Post on November 9, 1991, in which he said he was misquoted by Evans
and Novak and that the attack, was, in fact, a “case of mistaken
identity.” Moreover, the man who Mintz originally said had been
with him, a Gen. Benni Matti, does not exist.
Also, contrary to claims that an Israeli pilot identified
the ship as American on a radio tape, no one has ever produced this
tape. In fact, the official Israeli Air Force tape clearly established
that no such identification of the ship was made by the Israeli pilots
prior to the attack. Tapes of the radio transmissions made prior, during
and after the attack do not contain any statement suggesting the pilots
saw a U.S. flag before the attack. During the attack, a pilot specifically
says, “there is no flag on her!” The recordings also indicate
that once the pilots became concerned about the identity of the ship,
by virtue of reading its hull number, they terminated the attack and
they were given an order to leave the area. A transcript of the radio
transmissions indicates the entire incident, beginning with the spotting
of a mysterious vessel off El Arish and ending with the chief air controller
at general headquarters in Tel Aviv telling another controller the ship
was “apparently American” took 24 minutes.5 Critics claimed the Israeli tape was doctored, but the National Security
Agency of the United States released formerly top secret transcripts
in July 2003 that confirmed the Israeli version.
A U.S. spy plane was sent to the area as soon as the
NSA learned of the attack on the Liberty and recorded the conversations
of two Israeli Air
Force helicopter pilots, which took place between 2:30 and 3:37
p.m. on June 8. The orders radioed to the pilots by their supervisor
at the Hatzor base instructing them to search for Egyptian survivors
from the “Egyptian warship” that had just been bombed were
also recorded by the NSA. “Pay attention. The ship is now identified
as Egyptian,” the pilots were informed. Nine minutes later, Hatzor
told the pilots the ship was believed to be an Egyptian cargo ship.
At 3:07, the pilots were first told the ship might not be Egyptian and
were instructed to search for survivors and inform the base immediately
the nationality of the first person they rescued. It was not until 3:12
that one of the pilots reported that he saw an American flag flying
over the ship at which point he was instructed to verify if it was indeed
a U.S. vessel.6
In October 2003, the first Israeli pilot to reach the
ship broke his 36-year silence on the attack. Brig.-Gen. Yiftah Spector,
a triple ace, who shot down 15 enemy aircraft and took part in the 1981
raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor,
said he had been told an Egyptian ship was off the Gaza coast. “This
ship positively did not have any symbol or flag that I could see. What
I was concerned with was that it was not one of ours. I looked for the
symbol of our navy, which was a large white cross on its deck. This
was not there, so it wasn't one of ours.” The Jerusalem Post obtained a recording of Spector's radio transmission in which he
said, “I can't identify it, but in any case it's a military ship.”7
Spector's plane was not armed with bombs or, he said,
he would have sunk the Liberty. Instead he fired 30mm armor piercing
rounds that led the American survivors to believe they had been under
rocket attack. His first pass ignited a fire, which caused the ship
to billow black smoke that Spector thought was a ruse to conceal the
ship. Spector acknowledged in the Post interview that he made
a mistake, and said he admitted it when called to testify in an inquiry
by a U.S. senator. “I'm sorry for the mistake,” he said. “Years
later my mates dropped flowers on the site where the ship was attacked.”
None of Israel's accusers can explain why Israel would
deliberately attack an American ship at a time when the United States
was Israel's only friend and supporter in the world. Confusion in a
long line of communications, which occurred in a tense atmosphere on
both the American and Israeli sides (five messages from the Joint Chiefs
of Staff for the ship to remain at least 25 miles — the last four
said 100 miles — off the Egyptian coast arrived after the attack
was over) is a more probable explanation.
Accidents caused by “friendly fire” are common
in wartime. In 1988, the U.S. Navy mistakenly downed an Iranian passenger
plane, killing 290 civilians. During the Gulf War, 35 of the 148 Americans
who died in battle were killed by “friendly fire.” In April
1994, two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters with large U.S. flags painted
on each side were shot down by U.S. Air Force F-15s on a clear day in
the “no fly” zone of Iraq, killing 26 people. In April 2002,
an American F-16 dropped a bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers in
Afghanistan. In fact, the day before the Liberty was attacked,
Israeli pilots accidentally bombed one of their own armored columns.8
Retired Admiral, Shlomo Erell, who was Chief of the
Navy in Israel in June 1967, told the Associated Press (June 5, 1977):
“No one would ever have dreamt that an American ship would be there.
Even the United States didn't know where its ship was. We were advised
by the proper authorities that there was no American ship within 100
miles.”
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told Congress
on July 26, 1967: “It was the conclusion of the investigatory body,
headed by an admiral of the Navy in whom we have great confidence, that
the attack was not intentional.”
In 1987, McNamara repeated his belief that the attack
was a mistake, telling a caller on the “Larry King Show” that
he had seen nothing in the 20 years since to change his mind that there
had been no “coverup.”9
In January 2004, the State Department held a conference
on the Liberty incident and also released new documents, including
CIA memos dated June 13 and June 21, 1967, that say that Israel did
not know it was striking an American vessel. The historian for the National
Security Agency, David Hatch, said the available evidence “strongly
suggested” Israel did not know it was attacking a U.S. ship. Two
former U.S. officials, Ernest Castle, the United States Naval Attache
at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in June 1967, who received the first
report of the attack from Israel, and John Hadden, then CIA Chief of
Station in Tel Aviv, also agreed with the assessment that the attack
on the Liberty was a mistake.10
The new documents do not shed any light on the mystery
of what the ship was doing in the area or why Israel was not informed
about its presence. The evidence suggests the ship was not spying on
Israel.
Israel apologized for the tragedy immediately and offered
on June 9 to compensate
the victims. Israel ultimately paid nearly $13 million in humanitarian
reparations to the United States and to the families of the victims
in amounts established by the U.S. State Department. The matter was
officially closed between the two governments by an exchange of diplomatic
notes on December 17, 1987.
Sources:
1For the most comprehensive analysis, see
A. Jay Cristol, The
Liberty Incident. (Washington, D.C.: Brassey's Inc., 2002);
Yitzhak Rabin, The
Rabin Memoirs, (CA: University of California Press, 1996),
pp. 108-109.
2Rabin, p. 110.
2aAttack
on a SIGINT Collector, the U.S.S. Liberty.
3Dan Kurzman, Soldier
of Peace: The Life of Yitzhak Rabin, (NY: HarperCollins, 1998),
pp. 224-227; Rabin, p. 108-109.
3a“United States Policy and Diplmacy
in the Middle East Crisis, May 15-June 10, 1967,” declassified
secret document, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library, pp. 143-144.
3bL. Wainstain, “Some
Aspects of the U.S. Involvement in the Middle
East Crisis, May-June 1967,” Institute for Defense Analysis, (February 1968).
4Washington
Post, (November 6, 1991).
5Hirsh Goodman, “Messrs. Errors
and No Facts,” Jerusalem
Report (November 21, 1991); Arieh O' Sullivan, “Exclusive:
Liberty attack tapes revelead,” Jerusalem
Post, (June 3, 2004) .
6Nathan Guttman, “Memos show Liberty
attack was an error,” Ha'aretz,
(July 9, 2003).
7“Pilot who bombed 'Liberty' talks to 'Post,“ Jerusalem
Post (October 10, 2003).
8Hirsh Goodman and Ze'ev Schiff,
“The Attack on the Liberty,” Atlantic Monthly,
(September 1984).
9“The Larry King Show”
(radio), (February 5, 1987).
10Jerusalem
Post, (January 13, 2004); Washington Times, (January 13, 2004). |