- (Via Milinet)
San Diego Union-Tribune
June 22, 2000
The Mysterious Attack On The Liberty
By Mark L. Genrich
June 8, 1967, was a calm, clear day off the Sinai Peninsula in
the
Mediterranean. The Liberty, an intelligence-gathering ship, was
cruising in international waters when Israeli air and naval
forces
suddenly attacked.
Even though the American vessel was flying the U.S. flag, and
clearly
marked with her name and identification numbers, the Liberty was
hit
by machine-gun fire, rockets, and napalm from Israeli warplanes.
Israeli torpedo boats then attacked the ship with torpedoes and
machine-gun fire.
Thirty-four American servicemen were killed and another 171 were
wounded.
Israel claimed the attack was a mistake, part of the unfortunate
exigencies of the Six-Day war. The U.S. Navy convened a
perfunctory
Court of Inquiry -- an inquiry limited exclusively to a review
of the
performance and training of the crew, not culpability for the
attack
itself. Reparations were eventually paid, and the incident
quickly
was pushed aside by both Israeli and U.S. government officials,
and
soon forgotten by most Americans.
But what happened that day has never been far from the minds of
those
on the Liberty who survived the attack. Thirty-three years
later,
haunting questions remain unanswered, and no U.S. government
official
seems anxious to help the survivors fulfill their reasonable
request
for a congressional investigation to answer:
*Was the attack a mistake?
Some in President Lyndon Johnson's administration -- then U.S.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, among them -- concluded
the
attack was not intentional. But the late Secretary of State Dean
Rusk, told the Israelis: "There is every reason to believe that
the
USS Liberty was identified, or at least her nationality
determined,
by Israeli aircraft approximately one hour before the attack. In
these circumstances, the later military attack by Israeli
aircraft on
the USS Liberty is quite incomprehensible."
Clark Clifford, then chairman of the Foreign Intelligence
Advisory
Board, told President Johnson in a National Security Council
meeting
that the attack was deliberate. Richard Helms, then chief of the
Central Intelligence Agency, Paul Warnke, then senior national
security adviser to the secretary of defense, and Adm. Thomas
Moorer,
former Joint Chiefs chairman, insist that the attack could not
possibly have been a mistake.
*Were crimes committed?
There is no statute of limitations on war crimes.
Article 50 of the Maritime Convention provides for the
protection of
lives of survivors at sea. In fact, violators of this article
were
successfully prosecuted for war crimes in 1945. A Naval Law
Review
article titled "A Juridicial Examination of the Israeli Attack
on the
USS Liberty," concludes that the crew members of the Israeli
torpedo
boats "violated their duty under the Maritime Convention and the
customary law of war recognized by the post World War II war
crimes
trials to adequately care for survivors of battles at sea, and
they
committed a grave breach of the Maritime Convention by
intentionally
and wantonly destroying the ship's life rafts."
Liberty survivor Joe Meadors suggests there were American
violations
of law as well, pointing to the fact that a flight of rescue
aircraft
was launched from the Saratoga within minutes of the start of
the
attack on the U.S. ship.
"For reasons yet to be explained, those aircraft were recalled,"
Meadors notes. "The attack on the USS Liberty continued for at
least
another 90 minutes while personnel on the USS Saratoga and
elsewhere
listened to but ignored our radio calls for assistance."
The relevant portion of Section 899, Article 99 of the Uniform
Code
of Military Justice states quite clearly: "Any person subject to
this
chapter who before or in the presence of the enemy . . . (9)
does not
afford all practicable relief and assistance to any troops,
combatants, vessels, or aircraft of the armed forces belonging
to the
United States or their allies when engaged in battle . . . shall
be
punished by death or such punishment as a court-martial may
direct."
Liberty survivors simply want Congress to address the unanswered
questions and other issues surrounding the assault on the ship.
The survivors want a report with conclusions of fact, if not
culpability. The Israeli assault on the Liberty is the only
major
maritime event in American history that has not been
investigated by
Congress. It has been 33 years. It is time to put things right,
not
only for history, but also for the men of the Liberty who have
simply
been asking for the truth. The national disgrace is that our
senators
and
representatives have been unwilling to provide it.
Genrich who lives in Phoenix, has studied and written about the
attack on the Liberty for the past several years
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