USS LIBERTY Survivors agree: "It Was God That Kept Us Afloat"
Remember LIBERTY?
Part 1 in a Series: "It Was God That Kept Us Afloat"
It was the events of THAT DAY we call 9/11 that woke this pampered physician's wife up to the fact on the ground that people in the world hated the U.S. so much, that they would target and murder innocent Americans.
I did not react with fear, but curiosity. I did not want to shop as President Bush encouraged us all to do if we wanted to help. I wanted my questions answered and the MSM was not asking them and Congress was not demanding them.
Seven years ago, I was your typical uninformed, misinformed American, but with diligence and persistence I have learned much. But, it was not until June 2005 and my first journey to the Little Town of Bethlehem: Occupied Territory did my rage erupt against the empire; the American governments allegiance to Israel's Military Occupation of Palestine.
It was not until the whistle-blower of Israel's WMD Program, Mordechai Vanunu informed me of things I had never heard of did I wake up to the depth of the deception of America's 'best ally' and blind collusion of the U.S.A. government. It was at a rooftop restaurant in east Jerusalem, where they serve the fish with skeleton and head intact, and fries on the side, that Vanunu blew my mind, "Did you know that President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons? In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Gurion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’ Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Gurion open up the Dimona for inspection. When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.”
It was not until October 13, 2007, when Phil Tourney, Petty Officer and survivor of the attack on the USS LIBERTY affirmed that, "It was God that kept us afloat" at the "No More Wars for Israel Conference" in Irvine, California, did I wake up to that day in infamy forty years ago which remains "the only incident of damage to a major US ship since the sinking of the USS MAINE in Havana Harbour in 1898, prior to the Spanish-American War, that has not been investigated by the US Congress."-Captain Joseph Tully, commanding officer of the USS Saratoga, page 175, Operation Cyanide, by Peter Hounam.
On November 2, 2007, I conversed on the phone with fellow Floridian, survivor of the USS LIBERTY, and the current President of the USS LIBERTY'S Veterans Association, Ernie Gallo, who was a Petty Officer and Communication Technician on the LIBERTY. We shared our frustrations seeking justice for the LIBERTY by beseeching the professed Christian and our Republican Senator Mel Martinez.
Ernie quipped, "I met with Martinez's legal council and let me tell you that Congress will not lift a finger to help us. AIPAC would crucify them! Our government is lock stepped not to say anything about the LIBERTY."
For forty years our government has denied justice to our Veterans and crucified the truth because "We will not embarrass an ally." -President Lyndon Johnson, June 8, 1967.
Forty years ago the American government not only colluded with Israel in the treasonous cover-up of the attack on the USS LIBERTY the survivors "were ordered to remain silent under threat of court martial, imprisonment or worse...The U.S. government has never challenged the obviously phony Israeli excuse of "mistaken identity" nor have they attempted to expose the dishonorable cover up that continues to date. Truth and America's honor were ignominiously sacrificed to provide cover for Israel's transparent lies and despicable act of perfidy." -Phillip F. Tourney, President USS LIBERTY Veterans Association, June 8, 2007, Marriott Courtyard, VA.
The Veterans of the USS LIBERTY have repeatedly requested an open independent panel to investigate the horrific and unprovoked attack upon them and have only received pro-forma letters from a White House staffer in this Administration stating that the attack had already been investigated.
"This is a bald-faced lie!" Tourney wrote in a postscript to our Commander In Chief in his most recent appeal.
"The declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel… showed [that] the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel. The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel's reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation."-
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/
tuesday/chi-liberty_tuesoct02,0,1050179.story?coll=chi_business_ugc
"Israel got away with cold blooded murder! Forty years ago the CIA and the NSA all threatened the survivors not to talk! They scared me so much; I didn't for twenty years… Israel wanted the world to believe that Egypt [committed the crime]…Thirty-four were killed and 172 were wounded out of a crew of 294…The Israeli planes marked out the Star of David so we wouldn't know who was attacking us… Our keel was broken, we should have sunk but God kept us alive…Eighteen hours after the attack we were rescued…McNamara said, 'We're not going to attack our ally.' How did McNamara know who attacked us?"- Phillip Tourney, On October 13, 2007.
"J.Q. 'Tony' Hart, then a chief petty officer assigned to a U.S. Navy relay station in Morocco that handled communications between Washington and the 6th Fleet, remembered listening as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, in Washington, ordered Rear Adm. Lawrence Geis, commander of the America's carrier battle group, to bring the jets home. When Geis protested that the Liberty was under attack and needed help, Hart said, McNamara retorted that "President [Lyndon] Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors."
"The Johnson administration did not publicly dispute Israel's claim that the attack had been nothing more than a disastrous mistake. But internal White House documents obtained from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library show that the Israelis' explanation of how the mistake had occurred was not believed. Except for McNamara, most senior administration officials from Secretary of State Dean Rusk on down privately agreed with Johnson's intelligence adviser, Clark Clifford, who was quoted in minutes of a National Security Council staff meeting as saying it was "inconceivable" that the attack had been a case of mistaken identity. The attack "couldn't be anything else but deliberate," the NSA's director, Lt. Gen. Marshall Carter, later told Congress. [IBID]
Ernie Gallo had been above the water line when the torpedo hit the LIBERTY and he informed this reporter, "It was a beautiful clear sunny day and all morning Israeli reconnaissance planes were flying over us, I counted twelve over flights and one came so close I could see the pilots face; we waved and he dipped his wing as he went by. We were all very comfortable because they were our allies. That morning Captain McGonagle called a general quarter's drill. That's a created special kind of emergency –I can't remember what the mock drill was about-but it was to test our skills and the Captain was well pleased. Because we were in dangerous ground he kept the gunners manning the machine guns-two guys on each 'nest' –this was unusual for them to stay in flack jackets and heavy helmets after the drill, but we knew we were in hostile territories. But we were all comfortable; guys were sunbathing and we were all happy because we saw our friends, the Israelis in the sky. We were all so very relaxed because of their over flights; it was like a scene out of McCales Navy.
"It was about an hour and a half after lunch when the unmarked planes attacked us and they knew exactly where to hit; the communication antennas! They knew the machine guns weren't a threat, those pilots were very careful to take out the antennas. Then they dropped two napalm bombs on us, miraculously the fires all staid on the outside, and even though the fire hoses were bullet ridden, like a garden hose and every CO2 canister on board was used, that fire easily could have gone inside the ship, but the firefighters kept their cool and it didn't. A Signalman constantly watched that our flag was raised, the first one burnt up in the fire but in a few minutes he raised the holiday flag and our ship was well marked with USS LIBERTY on it.
"It wasn't until the torpedo boats came at us did I see the Star of David again. But the Israelis claim mistaken identity that they mistook us for the El-Quseir an Egyptian transport ship that only carried horses [and was a third of the size of the LIBERTY] and had been tied up and out of use for a year. The LIBERTY had at least forty antennas- yet Israel claims they made a mistake in identifying us-if this were ever heard in a Court of Law; it would be beyond belief!
"I was a 'spook' an interceptor, a CT; Communication Technician. Back then, the NSA had security groups in all the branches of Military Service. Normal operations were that for four months at a time, up and down the African Coast, anything within the ambient atmosphere; the air waves I would monitor. The CT's had a multitude of talents; Administrators, Linguists, Morse Code Operators, Communicators and Electronics specialists-that's what I did; kept all the equipment working.
"We all worked behind closed locked doors; none of the rest of the crew ever knew what we were doing. Our whole purpose in life was to intercept messages; UHF, LHF, long and short wave. There were two gigantic Christmas tree antennas on the LIBERTY. Mid-ship there was a pedestal; with a sixteen foot dish pointed sky wards. How they could mistake us for a horse carrying ship is beyond belief.
"You know that when the North Koreans attacked the Pueblo, they wanted to capture it? The North Koreans gave repeated opportunities to surrender. The Israelis never gave us one! Any of the torpedo boats could have approached and asked us to surrender or follow them, but that never occurred.
"The most miraculous part, and I honestly believe the Lord saved the LIBERTY for a reason and for this time in the world…That ship was built in 1944, the LIBERTY was a converted cargo ship and the mechanics of that ship should have broken up and sunk! One foot more or less from where that torpedo hit and we would have sunk! But that torpedo hit a brace; and that brace absorbed the energy and kept us from blowing up."
In 1967, John Hrankowski, was nineteen years old and on his third cruise on the LIBERTY. "I worked in the engineering department, responsible for the air conditioning, electricity, water and steam. I was topside when out of nowhere the blasting of shrapnel knocked me down. I returned to my general quarters space in the boiler room when the call came, 'This is not a drill; we are under attack.'
"Fifteen feet in front of me the torpedo hit and knocked the ship out of the water! If that torpedo had hit the boiler the steam pressure of 750 degrees mixed with cold water would have been like an atomic bomb exploding!
"The lights went out, the generator was knocked out, shrapnel flew around me like fire flies; it was dangerous but somehow beautiful. I worked with a lantern to keep the steam under control. If that boiler blew the ship would have blown up too!"
One of the men who was below the water line when the torpedo hit was Ron Kukal, who has become the Chaplain for the USS LIBERTY Vets Association. In an email to me on October 22, 2007, he reported, "On June 8, 1967 during the Vietnam War, I was aboard a Navy vessel called the USS LIBERTY. This unarmed ship was sailing the waters off the coast of Israel during the "Six Day War"…It may be possible that the only reason God saved the LIBERTY was so that we could tell our story.
"The ship was sailing 15 miles off the coast in international waters when the Israeli Defense Force attacked her. She was subjected to torpedoes, 50 caliber machine gun fire, napalm, and rocket fire. There was over 800 holes in the LIBERTY after the attack, she was listing about 10 degrees to the starboard, and was on fire in many places. Thirty-four men were killed and close to 70% of the crew were wounded, of which I was one.
"For what seemed like an eternity… many miracles occurred during, and after the attack. The only armament we had were 50 caliber machine guns, and they were like peashooters against the French built Mirage jets that attacked the LIBERTY…we were not ready for any kind of attack whatsoever. The element of surprise was theirs.
"I survived the attack by the planes, but the worst was yet to come, as five torpedo boats were bearing down on us, with one thing in mind, and that was to put us to the bottom. Only one found its mark. This was the second miracle that I was exposed to that day, the first being the surviving of the onslaught by the jet aircraft.
"The torpedo hit the Liberty almost amidships on the starboard side, and I was approximately thirty feet from the explosion. There were a couple of bulkheads between the explosion, and myself but they were like paper to the several tons of TNT that tore up the bowels of the Liberty. What had been several compartments were turned into one big room in a very short time. I was immediately immersed in sea water, and it was rising fast to the point where it would be above my head in a short time, and even though I could swim, the compartment would soon become completely full, and there would be no place to go. The hatch to the above deck was closed, and dogged down, and so my life again depended completely on what God would do. Just before the compartment became fully flooded the hatch above me was opened to let as many of us as possible out of there before we became a part of a watery grave. This was the third miracle that I saw that day, but there was even more to come, and so as I ran to get to the main deck, I was slipping and sliding because of the water, and blood that was awash within each passageway.
"The fourth miracle occurred when I was exposed to the machine gun fire on the main deck, and still remained alive, and still there was more to come. Every antenna we had was shot to pieces except one, and it had never worked very well. One of the radiomen told me that he tried several times to call for help, and finally when he realized that all the antenna were shot, he switched to the one that had always given him trouble, and when it was needed, it worked. We were able to call the Sixth Fleet, and notify them of our predicament through an antenna that had hardly ever worked. The fifth miracle had just occurred.
"The attack had gone on for two hours, or more, but it seemed like only a few minutes. The captain told us that we had lost our steering control, and that we would have to go aft, and steer the ship manually. We were able to make headway, and in time were headed for the island of Malta, and to dry dock. This was almost one thousand miles away, and here we were with a ship that had a forty by forty-foot hole in her side, on fire, and riddled with holes.
"The Liberty could go down at any minute, but we did sail the thousand miles without incident, and this had to be the sixth miracle of the day. I was one of the crew that went down below to identify the deceased and I know that God gave me the strength to go and do what was expected of me. Let it suffice to say that, under the conditions, only men that were strengthened, and held up by God himself would be able to enter the dark area down below."
"For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known."- Luke 12:2
LEARN MORE:
USS LIBERTY Home Page:
Operation Cyanide, Peter Hounam, 2003
The above was published first on WAWA and has been published by secular, liberal Editors from the Peoples Voice, Dissident Voice and crossposted by many others.
LIBERTY, Vanunu, Dylan and Doors
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.-Bob Dylan
On January 7, 2008, I received the following good news email from Mordecahi Vanunu:
Hi There,
The news:
The court hearing today postponed. Israel Gov' by their prosecutor agree to change the 6 months prison sentence to community service. Next the prosecutor will discuss with us which community service I will do. So all this trial and sentence for the last 3 years come to nothing.
Wishing you to see me free very soon,
vmjc
Ever since Vanunu was convicted in July 2007 and sentenced to six more months in jail for the interviews he gave foreign media in 2004, this civilian journalist has suffered a guilty conscience because I have been streaming 2005 and 2006 video of Vanunu on my site and YOUTUBE. I figured if Israel would send Vanunu back to jail for interviews nobody is reading anymore, what would they do to him for videos that are currently freely streaming on the World Wide Web?
This civilian journalist also owes her very career to Vanunu, so I am in his debt for he inspired me to realize my childhood dream of growing up to be Brenda Starr, the red headed ace investigative journalist of the Sunday comics. Because of a chance crossing of paths with Vanunu in June 2005 that lead him to share with me about his childhood and journey into Christianity, I was also inspired to imagine an adult hope; of becoming the 21st century Dorothy Day, a radical Christian who birthed The Catholic Worker newspaper that gave voice to the poor and oppressed in the 20th century.
Because I had been reporting on Vanunu's historic year and a half long freedom of speech trial in Jerusalem I was asked to speak in California on October 13, 2007-Vanunu's 53rd birthday- at the NO More Wars for Israel Conference, which had been dedicated to him. I went with the hope and desire to raise some funds for Vanunu's Defense before his January 8, 2008 appeal.
And another door opened to me when I heard another speaker there say,
"It was God that kept us afloat."
That speaker was Phil Tourney, a USS LIBERTY Veteran who has now become a brother, a friend and comrade in the good fight for justice for the USS LIBERTY.
Liberty also means freedom from captivity.
When Phil spoke those seven words, I immediately knew in my heart/gut, I had to do something. In less than three months, I have heard those same words affirmed by every USS LIBERTY survivor and supporter, I have thus far spoken with; and I have only just begun.
Although Vanunu's and the LIBERTY Vet's situations are very different, they are also very connected in my heart/gut. In both instances governments that claim to be democracies told truth tellers to SHUT UP and both governments have lied and covered up........
I made a phone call on January 5, 2008, to LIBERTY CENTRAL/Rich Schmucker. I thought I was just doing another USS LIBERTY article, but another door opened up to me.
Rich wasn't on the USS LIBERTY, the spy ship that Israel attacked and tried to destroy during the Six Day War, but he has been a supporter and accumulator of records galore about that day in infamy when the USA Government failed to support the troops, Congress went limp and the MSM went MIA.
Rich told me, "From 1963 until 1969, I was a CT, a Communications Technician stationed at the Naval base in Wahiawa, Hawaii. CT's are apart of the intelligence community and our work was classified. I never heard a word about what happened on June 8, 1967 in the Mediterranean until I was in a library in Auburn, Nebraska in 1979 and came across Jim Ennis's book, ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY.
"I checked it out and after reading it, I became so dang angry because I hadn't heard anything about it while in the Navy, or in the newspapers or on TV, so I began doing research. Through the years I have obtained over two hundred pounds of documents and I have stuff the crew never even knew about. What I read opened more doors and I was led to contact Russians, Egyptians, Israelis and others and my phone bill was higher than a kite.
"I got the USA documents using the Freedom of Information Act and most of the time I got what I asked for, but sometimes, I was completely ignored. I signed a secrecy agreement when I entered the Navy and I think one of the reasons our government has ignored me was because they didn't want to give me any credibility. The only negativity I met with was when I received a package from Paris, France. Two hours after opening it up, I landed in the hospital because it had some kind of poison in it. Apparently somebody in France didn't like me because I was asking questions about the USS LIBERTY. I have gotten a couple of phone threats, but it's the one's who won't talk to you, you have to worry about. "
Rich's comment caused me to reflect upon the link I have to my website that affirms that the USA Government, Israel [and France!] are consistently in the Top 20 out of 70+ countries that hit on WAWA every day. Nobody from any of those governments ever email me, but I have been and remain grateful they are interested in this little sister of Christ, for Big Brother is out of control and it is empire that I am challenging on the web.
Rich continued, "It's not the Jewish people or the Jewish religion I have a problem with. It's the governments of America and Israel that colluded in the cover-up that I have a problem with…This is off topic, but I want to tell you that one day I was just sitting there looking at a picture of the Star of David and I realized it had six little triangles, six sides in the center and six points and I wondered if it was the Mark of The Beast; you know 666 from the Book of Revelation."
I had never heard of such a thing but I do know that some modern day Biblical scholars contend that the number 666 was code for the Roman Emperor Nero. The ancients used numerical codes of the alphabet and writers were thus able to name without actually naming those contemporary figures that were politically dangerous to openly criticize.
Some current day Christian fundamentalists believe that 666 is a code for the letters of a name or title of the Antichrist. A particular cult of modern day USA fundamentalist Christians who are pro-war, pro-torture, pro-military occupation and lust for Armageddon best exemplify what centuries of theologians understood to be what the term anti-Christ is really all about.
The term "antichrist" never appears in John's Revelation or Daniel, two disparate works of literature written three centuries apart and under very different circumstances, yet some modern day Christian fundamentalists have woven them together and have left behind what the author who coined the term 'antichrist' actually penned. The writer of 1 John and 2 John-the only sources in the Bible where the term appears wrote:"...as you have heard that the antichrist is coming; even now many have come..."- I John 2:18
To be anti anything is to be against something. To be anti-Christ is to be against what Jesus was all about; and Jesus was all about forgiving, blessing and loving one's enemies and remaining nonviolent even while being nailed to a cross.
Nuclear weapons and military occupation are in direct conflict with what Jesus taught and lived.
Jesus also taught liberation from the bondage of the corrupt teachers of The Law, who made their bread off of the poor. The Temple priests made their living by convincing the people that God would only accept them after they paid for ritual baths and sacrificing livestock, that only the Temple priests could perform.
Jesus was a dissident, a subversive, social justice radical revolutionary Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who challenged the job security of the Temple priests by teaching the people that they didn't need to pay the priests a dime to be OK with God, for God already loved them, just as they were; sinners, diseased, outcasts, refugees, prisoners all living under Roman Military occupation.
What got Jesus crucified was disturbing the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces because he taught the people that in God's eyes everyone is equally valuable and Caesar only had power because God allowed it.
2,000 years ago the cross has NO religious symbolism. When Jesus said: "Pick up your cross and follow me," everyone then understood he was issuing a political statement. The Roman Empire crucified thousands of agitators, rebels, dissidents and any others who disturbed the status quo, and the road to Jerusalem was lined with the Roman Occupying Forces method of the death penalty.
Jesus did not speak Hebrew, he spoke Aramaic. The word Nero, written in Aramaic was valued at 666 in the Hebrew numbering system. The Roman Empire oppressed Jews and Christians and both communities used codes, symbols and numerology understood by their members, but not the empire.
I asked Rich had he ever considered that the anti-Christ might actually be nuclear weapons. Had he ever considered that the anti-Christ is not a man at all but is the evil that comes from a heart that seeks power, control and empire. I asked Rich had he ever wondered about how governments promote nuclear weapons as instruments of peace, but nukes only reap destruction and instability for they fill others with the desire to obtain them.
Rich hadn't thought of such a thing and neither had Vanunu when I raised the very same question to him in June 2005.
But Vanunu did reply, “The only way to peace is peace; the only way is nonviolence. The only answer to Israeli nuclear weapons, their aggression, occupation and oppression, and the wall and refugee camps is to answer them with truth and a peaceful voice. When I became the spy for the world, I did it all for the people of the world. If governments do not report the truth, and if the media does not report the truth, then all we can do is follow our consciences. Daniel Ellsberg did, the woman from Enron did, and I did. The United States needs to wake up and see the truth that Israel is not a democracy, unless you are a Jew. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where America can right now find nuclear weapons.
"America can also find where basic human rights have been denied Christians: right here in Israel.The time has come for the United States to see the truth of Zionism. It began as a secular nationalist movement, not a religious one. Then some Christians believed that when Israel became a nation, it was the beginning of the second coming. They are deluded if they believe peace will come through atomic weapons. Atomic weapons are holocaust weapons. Christians should be the first people against them.
"The Christians in America should be helping the Christians here. America needs to wake up to this fallacy that Jesus will come back by nuclear war. America needs to wake up to the fact that the Palestinian Christians here have no human rights. Aren’t Christians supposed to be concerned about other Christians? Aren’t Christians supposed to be concerned about all the poor and oppressed?”
I totally agreed with Vanunu and told him, “It is non-negotiable: all of that stuff Jesus said about doing for the least and the oppressed. It is non-negotiable for Christians; we must forgive our enemies, and we must love those who hate us. Whatever we do or do not do, we do it unto God. Every time I went through a checkpoint, saw The Apartheid Wall, or heard a story of oppression, I wondered how God can stand this situation. I can’t. I also think you were crucified for telling the truth."
Vanunu agreed, “My human rights have been denied me because I am a Christian. When I was on trial, I was treated just like a Palestinian: no human rights at all, and cruel and unusual punishment, all because I told the truth. The government spread slander about me, that I was a homosexual, that I hated Jews, that I wanted fame and money. What I did was sacrifice my life for the truth. In prison, I really began to feel like Jesus and Paul. When Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, it was like me in Dimona, exposing the Israelis’ dirty secrets. I felt like Paul, being thrown in prison for speaking the truth.
"The only real way to worship is in loving one’s enemies. It was not easy to love my tormentors; it was only because I felt so much like Jesus crucified on the cross, and as if I was crucified in prison, that I could do it. It was not ever easy. I have forgiven but not forgotten anything, and I never will. In Israel, a life sentence is twenty-five years. Even murderers go free after seventeen. They imposed the same restrictions on me that Palestinians receive: no human rights at all; no phone; no visitors, except family, and only through an iron grill; no vacation; no holidays; and no gifts. Even murderers get out for vacations! I was locked up for eighteen years and still cannot go on vacation; I cannot leave, and that is all I am asking for, just to leave here. For eighteen years in prison, they even attempted to control my thoughts on paper. I would write exactly what I wanted and they would censor words like kidnapped and atomic bomb. They would show me how they chopped up my letters, but I continued to write exactly what I wanted. They held my body, but never my spirit or mind.”
......After I said good bye to Rich I immediately flipped my Bible open to the Book of Revelation as I prayed for a revelation of my own. What jumped out at me was:
"The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words…to blaspheme God and to slander his name and his dwelling place…He who has an ear, let him hear…If anyone kills…he will be killed." Rev.13: 5-10
"I saw a new heaven and a new earth…I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven…and I heard a loud voice saying, "There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Rev. 21: 1-4
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer of "30 Minutes with Vanunu"
"There Can Be No Peace in the Middle East Until Israel Owns its
Published on Dec. 4, 2008 WAWA blog
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/
HEADLINE BLOG Dec. 4, 2008 @
http://www.arabisto.com/p_home.cfm
7th in the USS LIBERTY Series: "It was God that kept us afloat"
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all... The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils."- George Washington, Farewell Address
In an email from USS LIBERTY survivor, Donald W Pageler, Seaman E-3 Communications Technician at the time of the attack on the USS LIBERTY [honorably discharged as an E5 2nd class] Petty Office wrote: "I was once in email contact with an ordained rabbi who was a professor in an Eastern University. He said he was of the belief that there could be no peace in the Middle East until Israel owned its own atrocities."
In a phone call interview with Don on December 31, 2007, I inquired who that rabbi was and Pageler responded, "I can't remember his name, but after Jim Bamford's, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, was released [2001] I read a review about it on Amazon.com by a rabbi. He included his email address so I wrote him to thank him and that was his reply."
Currently there are 141 customer reviews for that book on Amazon's site, but missing from them is one by Yomin Postelnik, dated May 22, 2001. LIBERTY supporter Richard Schmucker, who for years has been known as LIBERTY CENTRAL because he obtained hundreds of pounds of documentation about that day in infamy when the USA Government failed to support our troops, Congress went limp and the MSM went MIA. Schmucker had the foresight to copy and save the following review and filed it in a notebook labeled 'Bamford 2' which is now in this reporter's possession.
Yomin Postelnik wrote: "I am a religious Jew with rabbinical ordination. I have always felt that one must be fair in one's position towards Israel, not defending the indefensible. The Israeli military attack against the USS Liberty, has irrevocably been proven to have been deliberate and was completely unjustified, it being against Israel's long-standing ally. The Israelis didn't want information the ship had picked up concerning its plan to advance the war, [of 1967] pushing the Arab armies out of the West bank, Golan, etc., to reach the United States, as President Johnson had already warned Israel against such moves. That they bombed this ship, poured napalm on it, shot at and torpedoed it is reprehensible and gruesome to say the least. Even John Loftus, a man very sympathetic towards Israel, has written the attack was deliberate. He cites that Israel tried to spare as many lives as possible, but the act itself was nothing short of treacherous. Many refuse to believe anything bad of Israel and this book has therefore been subject to unfair criticism by those who know nothing of the incident, nor have they cared to find out. All American Jews should pressure Congress to reopen the investigation which President Johnson agreed to suppress when Israel apologized for the incident. Our loyalties must be to our country, not Israel."
Pageler was not sure if that was the review he had replied to, but stated, "It sure was written at the right time and sure sounds like it. But who I really blame more than anybody is the Media for failing to do its job by not investigating what happened to the LIBERTY on June 8, 1967.
"My grandparents were from Germany and the LIBERTY issue has made me even more sensitive to anti-Semitism. It's not the Jewish people or Judaism that is the problem, it's the governments of America and Israel that wanted to sweep this incident under the rug and cover it up that has caused the survivors and families much suffering.
"What June 8, 1967 did to me was a nightmare that I repressed for years and have suffered greatly from. As a kid I always kept things in; like my father I am quiet and reserved. I always internalized things and thought stuff was my fault, even though logically I knew that wasn't rational. Emotionally I felt responsible somehow about what happened on June 8, 1967 in the Mediterranean and since nobody was taking responsibility for what happened to the LIBERTY; not our government, not Israel and the media failed at their mandate to investigate, I felt responsible but I also suppressed it. When I was debriefed after the attack I was told to never talk about it."
Pageler had achieved Top Secret Crypto clearance which is the highest level of clearance and was a 'spook' which is what all CT's/Communication Technicians were called. CT's intercepted UHF, LHF, long and short wave communications in the air waves. CT's were Administrators, Linguists, Morse Code Operators, Communicators and Electronics specialists who all worked behind closed locked doors, so that the rest of the crew never knew what they were doing or hearing.
On the morning of June 8, at 6 AM, the unarmed spy ship, the USS LIBERTY was in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, about 15 miles north of the Sinai Peninsula. Until noon, the LIBERTY was over flown by propeller aircraft and flying boxcars with the Star of David emblazoned on them. The LIBERTY was one of the most easily identifiable ships in the world because of its many antennas, her name and call numbers adorned her sides and she was flying the Ensign/American flag traveling at five knots in a good position to intercept radio messages from throughout the war zone during the Six Day War.
Around 2 PM, jet aircraft with heat seeking missiles attacked and blew up all but the one cold antenna-which had never worked well-but miraculously, became the one that enabled the LIBERTY to get the SOS message out. Jets also dropped napalm and one torpedo boat made contact and ripped a hole in LIBERTY'S starboard side, immediately killing twenty-five crewmen. The boats then encircled the LIBERTY, and commenced machine gun fire at the firefighters on the deck and the water line, in an attempt to explode the ship’s boilers. The torpedo boats also blew apart every one of the ship’s life rafts.
The LIBERTY was a spy ship and was not built or trained for combat. She was armed with only 50 caliber machine guns, which were totally inadequate and ineffective against the brutal barrage of missile fire and napalm that engulfed the LIBERTY and she became a flaming inferno.
Not until June 9th, did the Sixth Fleet arrive with helicopters to transfer the most severely of the 171 wounded and at 11:30 AM on that day, Israel invaded Syria. Records reveal that the Israeli attack on Syria was scheduled for 11:30 AM on June 8, 1967, but the spy ship, the USS LIBERTY had arrived less than three hours before that scheduled assault on the Syrian Heights. Israel postponed their invasion of Syria until the next day and instead cold bloodily attacked Americans instead.
"Word of the attack reached President Johnson in the White House about two hours after it all began. Pentagon officials had apparently been aware of the situation for nearly forty minutes when NSA Advisor Walt Rostow telephoned the President to tell him that a U.S. Navy ship was in trouble…ready aircraft, which normally carry nuclear weapons, were launched toward Liberty, and the Pentagon reacted to the launch with anger bordering on hysteria…"Help is on the way!" [COMSIXTHFLT message 081305Z]…was received by a Liberty radioman and quickly passed to every man aboard…Navy radio operators at the Naval Communications Center in Morocco worked to establish communications for the emergency…they could hear USS Liberty, her operators still pleading for help, and in the background the exploding rockets…through the Morocco communications relay station, destined for the Pentagon, State Department and the White House…Every man recognized the voice [of] Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, and he spoke with authority: "Tell the Sixth Fleet to get those aircraft back immediately," he barked…A few minutes later the Chief of Naval Operations himself came on the air. The circuit was patched to the Sixth Fleet flagship and Admiral David L. McDonald bellowed: "You get those fucking airplanes back on deck, and you get them back now!" [ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY, James M. Ennis, Jr. pages 97, 98, 76, 77, and 78]
Every LIBERTY survivor this reporter has spoken with have all affirmed that : "It was God that kept us afloat."
One of them was Dave Ed Lewis who spoke with me on the phone on November 3, 2007. In 1967, Lt. Commander David Ed Lewis was the officer in charge of 195 men out of the total crew of 294 on the US LIBERTY. Lewis told me, "Rear Admiral Lawrence Geiss was in charge of the USS Saratoga and USS America. He swore me to secrecy until his death, which happened about nineteen years later. What he told me I kept secret until I learned of his death at the first reunion and twenty year anniversary of the veterans of the USS LIBERTY. He told me that as soon as he got the word of our distress he launched aircraft and notified D.C. Immediately he heard from McNamara to recall the aircraft. He said he assumed it was because some idiots in Washington thought that he was launching nuclear weaponry. He reconfigured and then re-launched aircraft without nuclear capabilities. Admiral Geiss notified Washington of this and once again the immediate response that came from McNamara was the order to recall the aircraft. Admiral Geiss challenged the order and pleaded that people are dieing! LBJ was heard to say, 'I don't give a damn! I won't embarrass an ally." http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com
_content&task=view&id=701&Itemid=180
Every survivor of the brutal attack upon the LIBERTY that this reporter has so far spoken with have also expressed either feelings of guilt for surviving or symptoms of post traumatic stress syndrome.
Pageler told me, "I married my first wife in March 1967 and we divorced in 1987, just after I began seeking help for what I learned was delayed Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. In 1985 I began to lose my vision and learned my blood pressure was sky high. I then underwent a psychological inventory examination and the Dr. told me my self esteem was zero. I had a good job and all, but one day I just began balling my head off and it took me about ten minutes to realize I was crying about what happened on June 8, 1967 and the aftermath I endured.
"Days after the attack when we got to Malta and into dry dock, the first people to go down below, where the equipment was classified were those with Top secret Crypto Clearance the highest security clearance there was. I went down and picked up a piece of equipment and underneath was a guy’s arm. We had a lot of body bags with a lot of pieces of bodies, not just arms and legs, but pieces of bodies and all sorts of stuff. I remember finding this guy’s arm, and after five days in the ocean, a body swells up when it’s in salt water, and even though that was the case, I looked at the muscle structure, and I knew whose arm it was. He was a communications technician. I can remember that I was sun bathing with him just a couple of days before when I was off—duty. I remember picking up his arm, and at that point, I remember thinking it was like there was two of me, like an out of body experience. My first instinct was I was one person saying, 'You gotta run around and find the rest of the pieces of his body and make sure they all get in the same body bag so they all get buried together.'
"But also, I am this other guy saying, 'You dumb shit-stupid son of a bitch, he’s all blown apart. It doesn’t make any difference. Just throw it in a body bag and get on with it', which seems really callous, but was probably much more rational.
"My life after June 8, 1967 was a life dissociated from my emotions. My first wife left me, my father was in a car crash and died 6 months later, and I was just totally numb about it all. I was put on blood pressure medicine but my pressure remained dangerously high until I began talking about what happened on the LIBERTY, and only then did it come down. Until 1985 I was drinking five martinis and a couple of bottles of wine a day.
"I married Eva in 1993 and drink socially today. My blood pressure is normal, but I have Type II Diabetes, which my doctor told me is due to being under such severe stress at such a young age that my pancreas over worked and gave out by the time I hit 50.
"I am 61 now, but it wasn't until four years after I began therapy and this Vietnam Veteran says to me, 'You LIBERTY guys got screwed worse than any of us Viet Vets. But, what are you going to do with all your anger?'
"What I wanted to do with my anger was get rid of it! I wrote my congress people and had a face to face with a California house rep who told me, 'No way was that attack on the LIBERTY a mistake! But nobody in Congress will do anything about it, until there first is peace in the Middle East.''
"Three years ago, Eva and I were in Taos, New Mexico and I was wearing a LIBERTY t-shirt. This guy out of nowhere appears and sheepishly says to me, "I was an officer in the Israeli army when the LIBERTY was attacked. I never could figure out why the USA government covered it all up when Moshe Dayan made no bones about it that we attacked the LIBERTY because we didn't want America to find out our plans."
On July 25, 2001, James Bamford wrote a response to the attacks upon his book, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency:
"The time for secrecy has long passed on the USS LIBERTY incident, in both Israel and the United States…there is more than enough probable cause to conduct a serious investigation into what really happened-and why."
"There was no other answer than it was deliberate."-Lieutenant Marshall S. Carter, Director National Security Agency/NSA 1965-1969.
"Dr. Louis Tordella, Deputy Director of NSA, 1958 -1974 stated, "I believed the attack might have been ordered by some senior commander on the Sinai Peninsula who wrongly suspected that the LIBERTY was monitoring his activities." Tordella also scrawled across the top page of the formal Israel 'mistake' report: "A nice whitewash."
"Nobody believes the [Israeli] explanation. The only conjecture that we ever made that made any sense is that the Israelis did not want us to intercept their communications at that time." Major General John Morrison, NSA Deputy Director of Operations, 1963-1967.
"There is no way that they didn't know that the LIBERTY was American."-Walter Deeley, Senior NSA official who conducted an internal NSA investigation of the incident.
"I don't think that there's any doubt that it was deliberate… [It is] one of the greatest cover-ups of our military history."-David G. Nes, the deputy head of the American mission in Cairo, 1967.
"American leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of its citizens."-George Ball, Under Secretary of State 1961-1966."
"I never believed that the attack on the USS Liberty was a case of mistaken identity. That is ridiculous. I have flown over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, thousands of hours searching for ships and identifying all types of ships at sea. The Liberty was the ugliest, strangest-looking ship in the US Navy. As a communications intelligence ship, it was sprouting every kind of antenna. It looked like a lobster with all those projections moving every which way. Israel knew perfectly well that the ship was American."-Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff. [Operation Cyanide, by Peter Hounam, pages 244-245,]
A wise American rabbi once wrote that there will be no peace in the Middle East until Israel owns its own atrocities. May we the people rise up and demand the American government also own theirs.
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer of "30 Minutes with Vanunu"
The Torpedo that Hit the USS LIBERTY: Made in the USA?
Part 3 in the series: "It was God that kept us afloat."
On October 2, 2007, John Crewdson, Chicago Tribune Senior correspondent reported that, "Bryce Lockwood, Marine staff sergeant, Russian-language expert, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism, ordained Baptist minister, is shouting into the phone.
"I'm angry! I'm seething with anger! Forty years, and I'm seething with anger!"[1]
When I spoke with Ol' Sarge Bryce from his beef cattle farm in Missouri on the phone November 10, 2007 he was not only still seething and shouting, he also broke down and cried as he recalled that day in infamy on June 8, 1967 when the Johnson Administration colluded with the state of Israel in a treasonous cover-up of the attack on the USS LIBERTY, an Intelligence gathering [spy ship] vessel, barely armed with just four .50-calibre machine guns, sailing in international waters, flying the American flag during the Six Day War.
But, it was not until the evening of Sept. 26, 2006, that Ol' Sarge Bryce publicly opened up after bottling up his experiences of June 8, 1967.
On that night, former CIA analyst for 27 years, Ray McGovern, "gave a talk on Iraq to an overflow crowd of 400 at National Avenue Christian Church in Springfield, Missouri… [regarding the Israel Lobby and its power] over our government and Congress. In sum, in June 1967, after deliberately using fighter-bombers and torpedo boats to attack the USS Liberty for over two hours in an attempt to sink it and kill its entire crew, and then getting the U.S. government, the Navy, and the Congress to cover up what happened, the Israeli government learned that it could-literally-get away with murder." [2]
McGovern faced 400 blank stares and asked how many in the crowd had ever heard of the USS Liberty and three hands went up.
McGovern called on the man closest to him and "ramrod straight he stood:" Sir, Sergeant Bryce Lockwood, United States Marine Corps, retired. I am a member of the USS Liberty crew, Sir; I have not been able to [speak about the attack]. But it has been almost 40 years, and I would like to try this evening, Sir."[IBID]
Bryce Lockwood, a descendant of Mayflower pilgrims was a Russian linguist and Staff Sergeant Marine on a special mission on the LIBERTY assigned to collect communications intelligence aboard a most easily identifiable ship, for it was 455 feet long and festooned with radio aerials.
Ol' Sarge Bryce informed me that, "Admiral Tom Moorer, a former Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs stated that the LIBERTY was the most identifiable ship in the US Navy. He thought it was the ugliest ship in the Navy, but I thought it was pretty!"
Lockwood choked up frequently as he recalled the events of June 8, 1967 and the post traumatic stress he has endured for forty years, "Ten feet from where I stood that torpedo that may have been made in the USA hit us and twenty five Americans died immediately…
"Before the attack, some sailor had gotten blank teletype paper and made a four by six foot Israeli flag and using a blue felt tipped marker he had drawn the Star of David on it. That torpedo struck only a few feet from it. That torpedo that may have been made in the USA hit a main brace and absorbed the energy. If that torpedo had hit six inches to the left or the right of that brace, the LIBERTY would have split in two!"
This reporter's fact checker, Ken Halliwell, a former US Navy Communications Technician, was honorably discharged in 1974 as a Petty Officer First Class, after serving six years in the Naval Security Group. Ken wrote in an email to me on November 11, 2007, “The torpedo did not directly strike the hull on the deck where he [Lockwood] was located. It hit the hull on the deck below him and opened a large hole in the hull on his deck, during its explosion. See my research at: http://usslibertyinquiry.googlepages.com/essay4 . Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that a torpedo hit the ship, and made a large hole in the hull on Bryce's deck."
On the phone, Ol' Sarge Bryce admitted, "My first thought was: I guess this is it God! I am coming home! But at least my kids and Lois will be taken care of. I would never deny that it was God that kept the LIBERTY afloat!
"I could have saved myself, but it was Phil Tourney who saved me and an unconscious man I had been trying to save. It was Phil who opened the scuttle hole to check how badly the ship was hurt and I was on the other side. I had been trying to carry an unconscious man up the ladder and every time I got to the top of the ladder I dropped him. The only light I had was coming through the torpedo hole, a torpedo that may have been made in the USA.
"Nobody can actually prove that torpedo was or wasn't made in the USA, but my understanding is that America sold WWII surplus torpedoes to Italy and Italy sold those torpedoes to Israel.
"You also need to understand that the sea has natural rolls, and every time the ship rolled water gushed in and out of that torpedo hole, a 36 X 24 foot hole, the size of a small American home!
"I dropped this guy four times trying to get up the ladder; every time I dropped him I could see him being sucked out of that torpedo hole; a torpedo that may have been made in the USA!
"I was so angry, the hatch was sealed shut and I was pounding on it for help. Phil broke regulations for he didn't have clearance to be there, but he saved our lives. There was so much confusion, I passed out for a while and when I came to I was told I saved the lives of three men, but I only remember two."
Lockwood wailed and needlessly apologized for crying while he informed me, "Both my Arabic linguists, Sergeant Jack Raper and Corporal Eddie Rehmeyer were killed…After the 25th Reunion of the LIBERTY Vets I was sitting in a truck stop in Cabool, Missouri. I am wearing a LIBERTY t-shirt and this lady comes up to me and asks if I was from Norfolk, where the LIBERTY had been docked. She tells me she had been Gary Blanchard's fiancée…Gary was sitting in a boatswain's chair chipping and painting when the jets struck and riddled his kidneys with shrapnel…Dr. Keifer sedated him as he told him, 'Gary, it doesn't look good, but if I don't operate you won't make it'… Gary never woke up."
I let Lockwood catch his breath and composure for a few minutes before I inquired what he had been told his mission was and if there had been any Hebrew linguists aboard.
He replied that Lt. Commander David Ed Lewis, the officer in charge of 194 men out of the total crew of 294 on the LIBERTY, "Called Raper, Rehmeyer and me together and told us that our mission was to keep track of all the Russian and United Arab Republic's communications. He said if we picked up any Israeli communications to note it and drop it…I am not saying there weren't any Hebrew linguists aboard and I certainly was in a position to know about it, but I had no knowledge of any...
"An English reporter, I think his name is Trevor Penick, he worked for Thames Television in London and when he interviewed Moshe Dayan he questioned him about the LIBERTY and American Congress. Dayan said something like, 'Forget about Congress. We own Congress.'"
1: www.baltimoresun.com/news/world/chi-liberty_tuesoct02,0,6015776.story
2: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/100507a.html
LEARN MORE:
ussliberty-inquiry.us
http://www.ussliberty.org/
http://hometown.aol.com/kjhalliwell/myhomepage/profile.html
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer of "30 Minutes with Vanunu"
Honoring LIBERTY and Calling for a Second American Revolution!
Part II in the Series: "It was God that kept us afloat."
In 1967, Commander David Ed Lewis was the officer in charge of 195 men out of the total crew of 294 on the US LIBERTY. After we spoke for over an hour on the phone on November 3, 2007, 76 year old spry Dave was off to pull out his frozen garden harvested berries and begin making elderberry jelly.
Dave is the fifth USS LIBERTY Veteran thus far to speak to me about that day in infamy on June 8, forty years ago when Israel tried and failed to take an American spy ship down as she sailed in international waters flying the American flag.
Although I couldn't see Dave, I heard his grief and heartbreak as he said, "Twenty-eight of the thirty-four that were murdered that day worked for me. I also still feel personally responsible for the loss of my Communication Officer and Communication Chief. Just before the LIBERTY sailed they both brought me their retirement papers. They both had all their time in and I asked if one of them would do me a favor in the interest of continuity and go on one last assignment. They both replied, 'For you Commander, we'll both go!'"
"Not only did they die, their families also paid a price. One widow went over the edge and the state took her kids away."
I responded, "This is an area I have been wondering about. The trauma all of you veterans experienced and how it has played out. I am aware of broken marriages, bad backs, addictions and I have barely scratched the surface here. I wonder about the lives of all you guys and your families who have all been traumatized and irrevocably altered, not just because of the unmerited violence done to you, but mostly because of our government's cover-up."
Dave replied, "Some of my men were threatened with being put in a mental institution if they spoke out. None of us had any contact with the other until the first reunion of the LIBERTY twenty years after the attack. Everybody was assigned to different duty stations to keep us apart."
I joked, "Sounds like apartheid!" But upon reflection I understand that more precisely what was implemented was the standard operating procedure of empires to divide and conquer.
Dave recalled, "That morning I saw a couple of the Israeli overflights, we waved at each other. We all felt safe as they were friends. I was back in my general quarter's station two levels down when I heard the thud-thud-thud of the rockets overhead, but they never penetrated the bowels of the ship.
"It was such a well planned accident. They took out just about every antenna we had. All of them were knocked out except for one that never worked right. It was also the first satellite communications in the U.S.A. It leaked hydrolic fluid but when it worked right, it bounced off the moon."
According to Peter Hounam's research in Operation Cyanide, "All the aerials were destroyed save one that had been malfunctioning, and was thus turned off and 'cold'. This turned out to be a godsend. A signalman thought he could get it going, and wired up the only transmitter still working. Miraculously, it began to load up with current and a sense of relief spread through the radio room."-page 28, Operation Cyanide, by Peter Hounam.
The LIBERTY'S transmissions were jammed by the attacking planes "with the specific intention of preventing the ship communicating with the outside world... [and the] international distress frequency, used for Mayday messages, was also jammed."-IBID, page 29.
Ten minutes after the attack began the LIBERTY was miraculously able to communicate their distress and received a reply from the USS Saratoga. The shipmates breathed a sigh of relief thinking that the Sixth Fleet was on the way to their rescue and that the Pentagon also now knew of their dire need for immediate assistance.
No help arrived from their brothers in arms until the next day, but about fifteen minutes after the jets attacked Israeli torpedo boats came bearing down on the American spy ship.
Dave informed me," The torpedo explosion happened less than ten feet from where I stood and blew out the bulkhead and covered me with twenty years of navy paint. All the troops within twenty feet of me were killed instantly. The bulkhead [wall] protected me as a shield from the blast. I shouldn't have even survived. I was on the second level down and the compartment was sealed. Seamen Shnell broke regulations and saved my life. It's against regulations to break water tight integrity, but he took the risk of sinking the ship to check for survivors.
"I would have loved to have seen the carnage as devastating as it was, but the last thing I heard was the call to stand by for torpedo attacks on the starboard side. The next thing I knew I was sitting on the deck up against a bulkhead. My eyes were seared shut with burnt paint and not until the next morning when I was helicopter lifted out, all wrapped up from head to toe so tightly that a coreman couldn't tell my head from my feet and he sat on my head the entire ten minute flight. I was cyanotic when they unwrapped me, I nearly suffocated.
"The Dr. stood me up against a wall to lance my eyes open and told me don't move, just keep your eyes on the scalpel so he didn’t blind me. Then they took me straight away to Rear Admiral General Geiss who had been waiting just for me.
"Rear Admiral Lawrence Geiss was in charge of the USS Saratoga and USS America. He swore me to secrecy until his death, which happened about nineteen years later.
"What he told me I kept secret until I learned of his death at the first reunion and twenty year anniversary of the veterans of the USS LIBERTY.
"He told me that as soon as he got the word of our distress he launched aircraft and notified D.C. Immediately he heard from McNamara to recall the aircraft.
"He said he assumed it was because some idiots in Washington thought that he was launching nuclear weaponry. He reconfigured and then re-launched aircraft without nuclear capabilities.
"Admiral Geiss notified Washington of this and once again the immediate response that came from McNamara was the order to recall the aircraft.
"Admiral Geiss challenged the order and pleaded that people are dieing!
"LBJ was heard to say, 'I don't give a damn! I won't embarrass an ally."
"McNamara had been talking to Geiss on an unsecured but plain language telephone, the Automatic Digital Network, Autodin.
"President Eisenhower had once gotten so upset when it took three days once to receive critical information and he established the CRITTICOM system. This enabled all critical intelligence to be delivered to the White House within two minutes and CRITTICOM is how Geiss and McNamara exchanged information."
According to an October 4, 2007 article by Israeli journalist, Yossi Melman, a Haaretz Correspondent,
"Oliver Kirby, the NSA's deputy director for operations at the time of the Liberty attack, was quoted by the Chicago Tribune confirming that the Israeli Air Force was well aware the ship was the USS LIBERTY, an intelligence gathering ship and that the "U.S. National Security Agency was able to intercept Israeli Air Force communications according to which, at some stage, the pilots identified the ship as American but were nonetheless instructed to push ahead with the attack. According to the report, some of the transcripts and intelligence information have disappeared, while the rest can be found in U.S. government archives.
"Oliver Kirby, the NSA's deputy director for operations at the time of the Liberty attack, is quoted by the Tribune as confirming the existence of the transcripts, saying he personally read them.
"They said, 'We've got him in the zero,'" Kirby was quoted as saying, "whatever that meant - I guess the sights or something. And then one of them said, 'Can you see the flag?' They said 'Yes, it's U.S, it's U.S.' They said it several times, so there wasn't any doubt in anybody's mind that they knew it."
Kirby told the newspaper that the transcripts were "something that's bothered me all my life. I'm willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that we knew they knew."
The report also states that then U.S. defense secretary Robert McNamara ordered jets that had been dispatched to assist the Liberty turned around.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/909552.html
On June 8, 2007, this reporter attended the 27th annual American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Washington, D.C. Conference.
It was 86 year old, walker-bound Congressman Paul Findley, a moderate Republican who blew my mind that day, when he addressed the luncheon crowd:
“I was here for the first convention 27 years ago and I still have a fire in my belly for the civil and human rights of Arabs. It is time to speak openly and honestly about Israel. But, in American politics, that is still forbidden.
“…Pity that we cannot seem to shed our fear of Israel. We are afraid to speak out on Capitol Hill, for fear of losing the next election. They are more like trained poodles jumping through hoops than leaders!
"Why this fear? How did we get here?
“Forty years ago to this day, June 8, 1967 the change occurred, the floodgates opened and money poured into Israel as never before. When President Johnson heard about the U.S.S. Liberty being attacked by Israel he ordered the rescue fighter planes to return to the deck. The rescue mission was aborted and the survivors have said they heard LBJ’s voice tell Admiral Giess, 'Get those planes back on deck. I don’t care if the ship sinks, I will not embarrass Israel.'
“LBJ also threatened to court martial anyone who reported what had happened. Johnson accepted Israel’s false claim of “mistaken identity” and he knew it was a lie. That is when the change began and Israel learned they could get away with murdering U.S.A. soldiers."
In 1776, fifty-five rich white land owners had the wisdom and foresight to write:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, [and] liberty ; [and] that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. -July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence"
"The nation which indulges toward another...is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils."-President George Washington, Sept. 17, 1796 Farewell Address.
On with the second American revolution!
The above was published first on WAWA and has been published by secular, liberal Editors from the Peoples Voice, Dissident Voice and cross posted by many others.
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer of "30 Minutes with Vanunu"