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56 years ago today, Israel deliberately committed an act of war against the United States. It was able to do so because its hand-picked president, Lyndon Johnson\u2014installed after the murderous Zionist coup of 11\/22\/63\u2014was fully on board with the plan to sink the USS Liberty killing all aboard, then blame it on Egypt and enter the war on the side of Israel. According to Peter Hounam\u2019s Operation Cyanide, the (fortunately) botched plot nearly led to global nuclear war. Check out\u00a0Ron Unz\u2019s excellent summary<\/a>, and read David Martin\u2019s piece below for details.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u2013 Kevin Barrett,<\/a>\u00a0VT Editor<\/em><\/p>\n By David Martin<\/p>\n Most Americans have never heard of the Israeli, Ephraim \u201cEppie\u201d\u00a0Evron.\u00a0\u00a0A half century ago, in May of 1967, he was deputy chief of mission in the Israeli embassy in Washington and in that ostensible capacity had a meeting with President Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office on May 26.\u00a0\u00a0From all indications, as we learn from Phillip Nelson in\u00a0Remember the Liberty!:\u00a0Almost Sunk by Treason on the High Seas<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Evron\u00a0was likely the real power in the embassy as the top\u00a0Mossad\u00a0official there.\u00a0\u00a0An even more interesting thing about\u00a0Evron\u00a0was that he was \u201cone of the main conspirators\u201d in the infamous\u00a0Lavon Affair<\/a>, a failed plot in 1954 by Israel to bomb U.S. and British facilities in Egypt and pin it on Arab extremists. (In 2005 the Israeli government\u00a0outrageously honored<\/a>\u00a0nine of its agents involved in that episode.)\u00a0\u00a0Thanks to America\u2019s Israel-first press,\u00a0the appalling, treacherous Lavon Affair is no doubt as little known to Americans\u00a0as is\u00a0Eppie\u00a0Evron.<\/p>\n Thirteen days after that meeting, on June 8, 1967, on the fourth day of Israel\u2019s highly successful Six-Day War with its Arab neighbors, after hours of aerial surveillance, Israel would launch a murderous, multi-staged assault on the American intelligence ship, the USS\u00a0Liberty<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0The identity of the ship was as unmistakable as if it had been the\u00a0Statue<\/em>\u00a0of Liberty.\u00a0\u00a0It was bristling with antennas, it flew a large American flag, and its name was clearly painted on its stern.\u00a0\u00a0The 4-foot high identification numbers on either side of the bow were in Latin writing,\u00a0GTR-5<\/a>, not in Arabic. The weather and visibility were perfect.<\/p>\n Beginning shortly after dawn, \u201cat least twelve, possibly thirteen Israeli aircraft began\u00a0surveilling\u00a0the\u00a0Liberty<\/em>, some of which were only 1,000 feet or less in altitude, apparently to photograph and \u2018map\u2019 her for later targeting purposes.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The assault began without warning just before 2:00 p.m. when three curiously unmarked French-built Mirage fighter jets \u201cbore down on the ship in a fast low-level attack that began with rockets targeted at the four gun mounts and heat-seeking missiles aimed at the communications gear, with their warmed transmitters.\u201d<\/p>\n With the\u00a0Liberty<\/em>\u2019s ability to defend itself completely neutralized by the knocking out of its four meager .50-caliber machine guns, slower Super\u00a0Mystere\u00a0fighters replaced the Mirage jets, \u201cprobably because they could rake the ship even more effectively.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0That they did with cannons, rockets, and napalm, spreading carnage among the defenseless, stunned crewmen.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Liberty<\/em>\u00a0carried 294 men.\u00a0\u00a0Just over 70% of them would end up as casualties of the attack, with 34 dead and 174 injured. Officially, to this day, the episode is written off as just a \u201ctragic accident,\u201d a simple case of \u201cmistaken identity.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0So thoroughgoing has the news suppression been that four years after the event Lyndon Johnson (more precisely, his ghost writer, Doris Kearns Goodwin) was able to write in his memoirs,\u00a0Vantage Point<\/em>, that 10 men had been killed and 100 injured, and no one of note said anything about the outrageous undercount.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWho cares?\u201d our news media said in so many words.<\/p>\n The experience, as it is recounted in the book, is made all the more poignant by the fact that we get eyewitness accounts from Nelson\u2019s co-authors, attack-survivors Ernest A. Gallo, Ronald G.\u00a0Kukal, and Phillip F. Tourney.\u00a0\u00a0The four writers together are almost uniquely qualified to provide in this 50th\u00a0anniversary year the definitive account and analysis of the assault on the\u00a0Liberty<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Nelson, with his previous two books,\u00a0LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0LBJ: From Mastermind to Colossus<\/em><\/a>\u00a0has established himself as the most incisive and fearless biographer of the \u201cpsychopathic,\u201d ultra-Zionist 36th\u00a0president of the United States. In that second book, with most of a chapter devoted to the subject, Nelson gives the sort of attention to the\u00a0Liberty\u00a0<\/em>attack that is missing from\u00a0LBJ\u2019s Wikipedia page<\/a>, but one should not think that he already knows all he needs to know about the\u00a0Liberty<\/em>\u00a0assault from that account.\u00a0\u00a0This latest book is full of important new revelations.<\/p>\n Gallo was one of the many intelligence officers on the\u00a0Liberty<\/em>, which was under the control of the National Security Administration, though manned largely by U.S. Navy sailors.\u00a0\u00a0He is the author of the 2013 book,\u00a0Liberty Injustices: A Survivor\u2019s Account of American Bigotry<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and is the current president of the\u00a0USS Liberty Veterans Association.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Kukal\u00a0was the petty officer in charge of body recovery and identification on the Liberty.\u00a0\u00a0No one is more intimately familiar with the pain and suffering caused by the attack.\u00a0\u00a0Tourney, a three-time president of the USS Liberty Veterans Association, was a Navy enlisted man assigned to damage control (fireman) on the day of the attack.\u00a0\u00a0He is the author of\u00a0What I Saw That Day: Israel\u2019s June 8th, 1967 Holocaust of US Servicemen aboard the USS Liberty and its Aftermath<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and is the host of the Saturday call-in show\u00a0Your Voice Counts<\/a>\u00a0on the Republic Broadcasting Network.<\/p>\n No one reading\u00a0Remember the Liberty<\/em>\u00a0can reach any other conclusion than that, as with the Lavon Affair, this was another failed false flag attack, and that it was virtually a miracle that it failed.\u00a0\u00a0After the ship\u2019s defenses and communications had been blown away, gunboats fired four torpedoes that missed.\u00a0\u00a0The fifth torpedo struck the\u00a0Liberty<\/em>, but it did not penetrate into the bowels of the ship, having squarely hit one of the structural I-beams.\u00a0\u00a0Even so, it opened a large hole in the side of the ship.\u00a0\u00a0Had the torpedo struck a couple of inches to the left or the right, though, it would have caused the ship\u2019s boilers to explode as the cold sea water rushed in and the ship would have fractured and sunk within minutes.\u00a0\u00a0That was the clear intent of the attackers.<\/p>\n As Nelson has pieced together the evidence, the assault on the\u00a0Liberty\u00a0<\/em>was as carefully planned over a long period of time as was the Six-Day War itself.\u00a0\u00a0The 294 men on board were meant to be the sacrificial lambs for the audacious, grandiose scheme that was to draw in the United States with both feet\u2014likely even with the use of nuclear weapons\u2014against the Egyptians, who had been virtually pushed into the orbit of the Soviet Union by America\u2019s strongly pro-Israel policy under Johnson.\u00a0\u00a0Two A-4 bomber aircraft launched from the USS\u00a0America<\/em>\u00a0aircraft carrier at the same time that fighter jets took off from the carrier to come to the aid of the\u00a0Liberty<\/em>\u00a0were, according to one of the pilots, carrying nuclear weapons targeted for Cairo.\u00a0\u00a0Those fighter jets, had they not have been recalled by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara himself, would have arrived in time to prevent the worst of the attack, the torpedo attack that killed 26 men in the communications room.\u00a0\u00a0For their part, the bombers did not return until four or five days later.\u00a0\u00a0As the pilot explained, the nuclear bombs made the planes \u201ctoo heavy and dangerous to land back on the aircraft carrier,\u201d and they had to be diverted to a land-based airstrip.<\/p>\n In California, at Beale Air Force Base north of Sacramento, B-52 bombers along with KC-135 midair refueling tankers were scrambled between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m., which would have been at least an hour before the attack actually took place.\u00a0\u00a0Presidential adviser and future defense secretary Clark Clifford wrote in his memoirs that he was awakened at home at 6 a.m. that same morning, June 8, for an emergency meeting at the White House.\u00a0\u00a0That was two hours before the \u201csurprise\u201d Israeli attack began.<\/p>\n At the center of the scheme was President Johnson.\u00a0\u00a0As an American politician not from the state of New York, Johnson had long since shown himself to be ahead of his time in his total commitment to the state of Israel, his \u201cpassionate attachment<\/a>,\u201d if you will.\u00a0\u00a0To illustrate his point, Nelson reminds us of the letter that Johnson, as Senate majority leader, wrote to President Dwight Eisenhower\u2019s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles in February of 1957 in opposition to UN sanctions on Israel for its role in the Suez Crisis and then leaked to\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Eisenhower and his administration supported the sanctions and he was furious with Johnson for undercutting official U.S. government policy.\u00a0\u00a0In response to Johnson\u2019s affront, Eisenhower went on radio and television with this message, not mentioning Johnson by name: \u201cAmerica has either one voice or none, and that voice is the voice of the President\u2014whether everybody agrees with him or not.\u201d He further stated that the U.N. had \u201cno choice but to exert pressure upon Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n As president, Johnson didn\u2019t just reverse John Kennedy\u2019s policy on Vietnam, dramatically escalating American involvement in the war as opposed to Kennedy\u2019s directive to begin bringing our troops home, but he gave the green light to Israel\u2019s nuclear program, which Kennedy had strongly opposed, setting the country off on the extremely pro-Israel course that it has followed ever since.\u00a0\u00a0That this was done in spite of the vicious, unprovoked assault on 294 Americans serving their country is evidence, almost in itself, that something is seriously amiss here.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0America\u2019s military assistance to Israel also took a big jump up during Johnson\u2019s administration.\u00a0\u00a0In Nelson\u2019s words:<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the cost to the United States was very high, especially in terms of the intangible loss of valued integrity, respect and honor to its friends and allies.\u00a0\u00a0Even to Israel itself, which Undersecretary of State George Ball concluded, poignantly, resulted in the Israelis coming to believe that, if they could get by with an attack of this enormity, then they could \u201cget by with almost anything.\u201d It may explain why Israel gets the most foreign aid dispensed by the U.S., but still wants more.\u00a0\u00a0Their 2016 request is up to $5 billion per year from $3 billion in recent years.<\/p>\n As Nelson tells it though, as things have turned out they are not nearly as bad as they might have been had the\u00a0plot\u00a0to sink the\u00a0Liberty\u00a0<\/em>succeeded. By Nelson\u2019s thesis, Johnson saw our big plunge into the Middle East on the successful side of beleaguered little Israel as a dramatic way to reverse the course of his own political fortunes, always foremost in his consideration.\u00a0\u00a0Jewish Americans, who tend to be heavily liberal in their orientation, were in the forefront of the opposition to his Vietnam policy.\u00a0\u00a0Here was his chance for him to be their hero and to thereby cement his chance for re-election in 1968.\u00a0\u00a0What the grand gesture on behalf of Israel needed was what something that the Project for a New American Century has since given a rather bad name, a \u201ccatalyzing event<\/a>.\u201d That event was to have been the sinking of the\u00a0Liberty<\/em>\u00a0by the Soviet-allied\u00a0Egyptians,\u00a0we were to be told, with the loss of all of its crew.\u00a0\u00a0A more dastardly plot is hard to imagine, but no other explanation for what is known to have transpired makes nearly as much sense.<\/p>\n \u201cI want that Goddamn ship going to the bottom.\u00a0\u00a0No help.\u00a0\u00a0Recall the wings.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0That is the precise order that Johnson gave Rear Admiral Lawrence\u00a0Geis, the commander of the battle group of which the\u00a0America<\/em>\u00a0was a part,\u00a0<\/em>the second time American planes were recalled, this time after the torpedo had struck.\u00a0\u00a0Geis\u00a0gave that information years later to Lieutenant Commander David Lewis, who had been the head of the NSA group on the\u00a0Liberty.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Geis\u00a0had asked Lewis to keep it secret until after he was dead, which Lewis did.<\/p>\n Johnson apparently thought Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had not been forceful enough when he recalled the planes from their first attempt at a rescue effort.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0McNamara\u2019s words to\u00a0Geis\u00a0had been, \u201cPresident Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.\u201d This information comes from Chief Petty Officer J.Q. \u201cTony\u201d Hart, who worked in a U.S. Navy relay station in Morocco processing communications between Washington and the 6th\u00a0Fleet.\u00a0\u00a0Probably the most revealing thing about this conversation is that at that early stage of the attack neither\u00a0Geis\u00a0nor even the men on the\u00a0Liberty\u00a0<\/em>knew that the attackers were actually our Israeli \u201cally.\u201d\u00a0Geis\u00a0learned the identity of the attackers from his superiors, not from the ones who were crying for help.<\/p>\n The scheme to sink the\u00a0Liberty\u00a0<\/em>was thwarted not just by the fortunate trajectory of that one torpedo that struck the ship.\u00a0\u00a0The heroic efforts of Captain William\u00a0McGonagle\u00a0and his crew must also be credited, but, before that, what the 23 year-old seaman Terry\u00a0Halbardier\u00a0did saved the day for the 260 men who survived, and probably saved the day for a lot more of us.\u00a0\u00a0One can read a very moving and informative tribute to\u00a0Halbardier\u00a0by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern at\u00a0Consortiumnews.com<\/a>.,\u00a0who also wrote the foreword to\u00a0Remember the Liberty!<\/em><\/p>\n As noted, the attacking airplanes had specifically targeted the ship\u2019s communications.\u00a0\u00a0Within ten minutes of the initial onslaught\u00a0Halbardier\u00a0risked his life to go out amid the strafing to string a new cable from the one undamaged antenna to the one functioning transmitter, which was only functioning because it happened to have been shut down when the heat-seeking missiles came in.\u00a0\u00a0They sent a cry for help that somehow got through the intense radio jamming efforts of the Israelis (which were tellingly aimed at American radio frequencies).\u00a0\u00a0It was because of this fact that Johnson and McNamara were forced into their extraordinarily incriminating scurry-around mode in which they had to justify orders to American military officers not to go to the aid of fellow servicemen under attack.\u00a0\u00a0That action might well represent the lowest point in the history of the American presidency (although one can think of a number that rival it).<\/p>\n The authors are not sure as to what caused the Israelis to scuttle the fourth,\u00a0coup de grace,\u00a0<\/em>stage of the attack.\u00a0\u00a0Helicopters with armed commandos hovered for a while over the blasted ship with its gaping hole in the side.\u00a0\u00a0The plan, apparently, was for the commandos to rappel down onto the deck and kill all the survivors before finally sinking the ship.\u00a0\u00a0But not only did the Israelis know that the cry for help had gone out and might, in spite of the plan in which the American president was known to be complicit, result in rescuers arriving at any minute from one of their warships, but also a Russian destroyer had come into view.<\/p>\n When the\u00a0Liberty\u00a0<\/em>failed to sink, LBJ and our ruling criminal elite were forced into full cover-up mode, and that is where we have remained now for exactly half a century.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cRush up and hush up\u201d is how we might sum up the farce of an \u201cinvestigation\u201d and the general aftermath of the attack.\u00a0\u00a0Given the assignment of overseeing the under-rug-sweeping, the Court of Inquiry, was the Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, John McCain, Jr., the father of Senator and former Republican presidential nominee, John McCain III.\u00a0\u00a0How McCain performed his duties is well summed up by this information from Gallo in the book:<\/p>\n We later learned the testimonies of the wounded on the USS\u00a0America<\/em>\u00a0and USS\u00a0Little Rock<\/em>\u00a0(a cruiser and Sixth Fleet Flag Ship) were considered important by the court but were over-ruled by Admiral McCain in London.\u00a0\u00a0They also wanted to interview Israelis, however McCain insisted the court conclude as soon as possible.\u00a0\u00a0Members of the crew who gave critical testimony obtained a copy of this report and they indicated that their testimony was left out if it indicated Israeli brutality.<\/p>\n A proper inquiry into the incident, according to the Navy Judge Advocate General Captain Ward Boston, Jr., who was chief assistant to the president of the Court, Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd, would have required at least six months.\u00a0\u00a0Instead, they were given a week.<\/p>\n So much for the \u201crush up\u201d part.\u00a0\u00a0The \u201chush up\u201d comes from the words of Admiral Kidd, addressing the men on the crippled ship, as recalled by Tourney.\u00a0\u00a0The quote heads up Chapter 4:<\/p>\n Ok fellas, now I\u2019m an admiral again and I want each and every one of you to understand something.\u00a0\u00a0We\u2019re talking about National Security here, not your personal feelings, not what you did or did not do\u2026 I could really give a shit about any of that.\u00a0\u00a0You listen to me\u00a0once,\u00a0because this is the only time you\u2019re ever going to hear it.\u00a0\u00a0You are NEVER to repeat what you just told me to ANYONE\u2014not your mother, your father, your wife\u2014ANYONE!\u00a0\u00a0Including your shipmates.\u00a0\u00a0You are not to discuss this with anyone, especially\u2014ESPECIALLY\u2014not with the MEDIA, or you will end up in PRISON, or WORSE!<\/p>\n The general hush-up was successful for quite a long time.\u00a0\u00a0The silence was broken with a bang, though, in 1979 when survivor James M.\u00a0Ennes\u00a0Jr. came out with his book\u00a0Assault on the Liberty; The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Since that time there has been no good excuse for anybody really interested in the truth to believe the official \u201ctragic accident\u201d story.<\/p>\n That did not stop former U.S. Navy aviator and retired bankruptcy court judge\u00a0A. Jay\u00a0Cristol<\/a>\u00a0from publishing\u00a0The\u00a0<\/em>USS Liberty Incident: The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S Navy Spy Ship<\/em><\/a>, which purported to give the last word on the matter, that is, the same as the official first word, \u201ctragic accident.\u201d Thirteen investigations, said\u00a0Cristol\u00a0among a lot of other things, had all come to that same conclusion.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As Terence O\u2019Keefe pointed out in his\u00a0December 2003 article<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs<\/em>, actually that hasty first inquiry remains to this day the only thing that has been done that even purports to be an investigation, and here\u2019s what he says about that:<\/p>\n The U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry: The senior legal adviser to the Court of Inquiry reflected that, in his entire career, he has never seen court of inquiry appointing letters with such limited authority, or an investigation made in such haste. The court\u2019s hearings began before the Liberty even arrived in Malta, and the report was completed just 10 days after the attack. The court commented on this haste in the official record: \u201cThe Court of Inquiry experienced no unusual difficulties incident to conducting the subject proceedings except for the necessity of investigating such a major naval disaster of international significance in an extremely abbreviated time frame.\u201d<\/p>\n Due in part to the required haste and the limitations imposed on the scope of the court\u2019s inquiries (\u201cIt was not the responsibility of the court to rule on the culpability of the attackers, and no evidence was heard from the attacking nation\u201d), the court concluded that \u201cavailable evidence combines to indicate\u2026[that the attack was] a case of mistaken identity.\u201d<\/p>\n How, one might ask, could one inquire into all of the circumstances without hearing from the attacking nation? In fact, the court did neither. According to Captain Ward Boston, chief legal counsel to the Court of Inquiry, the court found that the attack was deliberate, but reported falsely that it was not because they were directed by the president of the United States and the secretary of defense to report falsely. So the findings are fraudulent. Yet these fraudulent findings were the basis for several other reports that followed.<\/p>\n Boston, in fact, had been so infuriated by the\u00a0Cristol\u00a0book that he came forward with an affidavit stating that what the Court of Inquiry had done was, in effect, a cover-up.\u00a0\u00a0The full affidavit is on pp. 125-128 of\u00a0Remember the Liberty.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0On the Internet, one can read it at the web site of\u00a0If Americans Knew.<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vtforeignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/USS-Liberty-0-1024x975-1.jpg\")
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\n<\/a><\/p>\nFrustrated Madman President<\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nThe Foiled Plot<\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nFrom \u201cCatalyzing Event\u201d to Cover-up<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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