The Attack on the Liberty; The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship by James Scott

Author:James Scott [Scott, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2009-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Thursday and Friday were the longest days we have experienced.

—GEORGE SCOTT, LETTER TO HIS SON, ENSIGN JOHN SCOTT

Less than a week after the attack Newsweek broke the story that many senior Washington officials believed Israel had deliberately targeted the Liberty. President Johnson was the magazine’s source. The 178-word article headlined “Sinking the Liberty: Accident or Design?” observed that the assault left a “wake of bitterness and political charges of the most serious sort.” Previous speculation about the mission vanished. The article defined the Liberty as a spy ship tasked to intercept battlefield messages. “One top-level theory holds,” Newsweek reported, “that someone in the Israeli armed forces ordered the Liberty sunk because he suspected it had taken down messages showing that Israel started the fighting. (A Pentagon official has already tried to shoot down the Israeli claim of ‘pilot error.’) Not everyone in Washington is buying this theory, but some top Administration officials will not be satisfied until fuller and more convincing explanations of the attack on a clearly marked ship in international waters are forthcoming.”

Similar articles followed in other newspapers and magazines. U.S. News & World Report declared that “questions outnumbered answers” and “the full story may never be made public.” “Pending investigations, the U.S. Government’s position is that it has accepted the Israeli apology but rejected the explanation that the attack was entirely accidental,” the magazine wrote. “Well-informed officials feel the attack was too deliberate to have been made without a key decision by some Israeli officer.” Life magazine echoed the skepticism, calling the Liberty an “unexplained casualty” in a two-page article that included a photograph of sailors offloading the injured from a helicopter on the deck of the carrier America. “A storm of controversy about the incident immediately swelled,” the magazine reported. “As the listing vessel headed for repairs, the only indisputable facts about the episode were the grim casualty figures.”

Newspaper editorials berated Israel and accused the American government of lying. “When the essentials of an espionage operation have been exposed, continued secrecy or obfuscation only serves to plant more seeds of doubt,” wrote the Washington Post. “The insinuations, carefully circulated by Pentagon officials, that the attack was deliberate and conscious only compound the impression of a shabby cover-up.” Syndicated columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson urged Congress to investigate the “puzzling circumstances.” “The facts are that the Liberty was seen by the Israelis off the Egyptian coast at dawn. They did not attack until 2:30 P.M. This gave them ample time to ascertain the identity of the ship,” the journalists wrote in a joint column. “Furthermore, a coordinated attack by both torpedo boats and airplanes means that the action was planned in advance.”

The families of Liberty sailors raised some of the same questions in telephone calls and letters to the men in Malta. Many of the wives and parents had received detailed accounts from loved ones that discussed Israel’s reconnaissance of the ship, the efficiency of the attack, and the crew’s doubts that it was an accident.

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