Anybody dare to talk about the other part of the six day war? "Six days of war, 40 years of secrecy: USS Liberty"
Was the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty deliberate? The US is morally bound to find out.
FORTY years ago in a quiet corner of the Mediterranean off the Sinai Desert, an extraordinary attack was launched by Israeli jet fighters and torpedo boats on the USS Liberty.
It was the fourth day of the Six-Day War. The large intelligence-gathering ship was in international waters, proudly flying the US flag and clearly marked as the USS Liberty. Conditions were calm and clear, but by day's end 34 American sailors were killed and 172 injured.
The USS Liberty struggled back to Malta with several gaping holes and a US Navy Court of Inquiry team on board. The president of this inquiry was Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, and Captain Ward Boston jnr was counsel assisting, but under Pentagon orders the court was not permitted to travel to Israel to complete its investigations.
There is still a fierce debate over the question of whether the attack by Israeli forces was deliberate, allegedly mounted to disrupt US intelligence collection and provide cover for the day-five invasion of Syria and capture of the Golan Heights. Against this serious accusation, a book by retired US judge A. Jay Cristol, The Liberty Incident, contends that the attack was undertaken by Israeli jet fighters and Israeli torpedo boats, but was accidental.
As Donald Rumsfeld says, "stuff happens in war", and as Shimon Peres said about the cluster bombs into Southern Lebanon last year, "mistakes occur in war". However, as a reaction to the Cristol book, many key US intelligence officials and Boston himself have broken their strict orders under the Official Secrets Act to speak up and detail the chilling truth.
Boston signed an affidavit saying: "The evidence was clear. Both Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack
was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. It was our shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and testimony we received first-hand, that the Israeli attack was planned and deliberate."
The affidavit is readily available through Google, along with key statements debunking some official transcripts released to fudge the truth that involved helicopter pilots who arrived on the scene well after the first attacks.
This statement by Stephen Forslund (US Air Force intelligence analyst) is clear enough: "The transcripts made specific reference to the efforts to direct the jets to the target, which was identified as American numerous times by the ground controller. The ground control began asking about the status of the target and whether it was sinking. They stressed that the target must be sunk and leave no trace."
The reader can research the subject and reach a conclusion on deliberate or accidental. For my part, I now believe the evidence all points to it being a deliberate attack by Israel.
The two key issues arising from this are still relevant today. If Israel did deliberately attack the most powerful nation on Earth, it knows it can do so and get away with murder. Worse still, US military personnel now know that if the truth is politically inconvenient, they and their legacy are expendable.
The White House and Pentagon of the day, more so the US Congress, still need to get to the bottom of this saga.
Why is this important 40 years on? Because Israel needs to know that it will be exposed and held accountable for its actions and incidents, likewise Syria and the Palestinians, the latter of whom might contend the Liberty saga was one factor in delaying the creation of the nation state of Palestine.
We now know it is from this period that Israel cheerfully began building its own atomic bomb. We know Israel will push over the edge whenever it suits, because recent history shows that it can get away with such actions. Remember the thousands of cluster bombs that went into southern Lebanon last August after the ceasefire had been agreed but before its actual commencement?
But it is the US that has most to answer for in not dealing honestly with the attack on the USS Liberty, in turning its back on the families of the victims.
The Pentagon has ugly spin form ?- just ask the family of Pat Tillman killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan but initially reported otherwise. In relation to the 34 sailors killed by Israeli forces in 1967, it is corrosive in the extreme that the Pentagon did not fiercely fight to uncover the truth.
To the thousands of US and Allied forces, this is the really ugly part ?- the cause of their death will be airbrushed out if it is politically inconvenient for it to be revealed.
There are further allegations that US defence secretary of the time Robert McNamara and president Lyndon Johnson ordered US fighters, launched from a nearby US aircraft carrier, to turn back and not go to the defence of the USS Liberty. Again, the world is entitled to know whether this is true or not.
It is a sad fact that on June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty was attacked by Israeli jet fighters and Israeli torpedo boats; it is a sad fact that 34 US sailors were killed in the attack. It is true that Israel has paid some reparations to the families involved, and full marks to Israel in this regard. It remains for the real truth to come out.
A former attorney-general of Israel, Michael Ben-Yair, once made a famous observation: "The Six-Day War was forced upon us, the seventh day continues to this day and is our choice."
Tim Fischer is a former deputy prime minister of Australia and a former army officer.
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