Speaker 1: The following presentation is Del Marvis Studio's production.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Fact Hunter Radio Network. Here is
Speaker 2: your host, George Hobbs.
Speaker 3: Welcome back truth seekers from around the world. It's time
Speaker 3: for another edition of our classic audio series, and today
Speaker 3: is June the eighth, twenty twenty five, which means it's
Speaker 3: the fifty eighth anniversary of the USS Liberty incident. I
Speaker 3: thought it fitting that we placed some audio from that.
Speaker 3: Of course, fifty eight years ago today, US Liberty USS
Speaker 3: Liberty Pardon me came under attack by Israel, resulting in
Speaker 3: thirty four KIA, one hundred and seventy one wounded, and
Speaker 3: of course it left the Liberty severely damaged. The first
Speaker 3: audio clip Richard Bellfield's The Day Israel attacked America, followed
Speaker 3: by USS Liberty survivor Phil Turney in a thirty five
Speaker 3: minute lecture. Again, these are one of those things that
Speaker 3: are not taught in school that everyone should know about.
Speaker 3: So please take the time to share this with your
Speaker 3: friends and family. God bless all of those who were
Speaker 3: affected that day. I hope everyone has a great week.
Speaker 3: We'll see you Tuesday night. Without any further ado, here
Speaker 3: is our classic audio for this week.
Speaker 2: Early June nineteen sixty seven, the Six Day War in
Speaker 2: the Middle East between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria is underway.
Speaker 2: A spy ship, very lightly armed but bristling with antennae,
Speaker 2: steams into the Mediterranean to eavesdrop on the conflict. It
Speaker 2: is patrolling in international waters off the Egyptian coast. At
Speaker 2: two in the afternoon on June the eighth, with the
Speaker 2: war reaching its climax, Israeli jets and motor torpedo boats
Speaker 2: launched an unprovoked attack on the ship. They dropped napalm
Speaker 2: and straight its decks with rockets, cannon fire and armored
Speaker 2: piercing rounds before trying to sink it with torpedoes.
Speaker 1: We had no way to defend ourselves and it was
Speaker 1: just We're just slaughtered.
Speaker 4: And they shot at life rafts that were put into
Speaker 4: the water, and they shot the ones that were still
Speaker 4: on board the ship. Bullet holes, shell holes everywhere. Blood,
Speaker 4: the forecastle, the front part of the ship was just
Speaker 4: red with.
Speaker 2: Blood throughout the attack. The ship flies the stars and
Speaker 2: stripes the flag of Israel's closest ally, the United States
Speaker 2: of America. Its name the USS Liberty is freshly painted
Speaker 2: on its stern, and the bow carries the distinctive numbers
Speaker 2: of an American naval vessel.
Speaker 5: Out of a crew of just under three hundred, there
Speaker 5: were thirty four killed in one hundred and seventy two
Speaker 5: injured in varying degrees to life threatening life debilitating the injuries,
Speaker 5: so that was more than two thirds of the crew.
Speaker 2: This audio tape, which has never been broadcast before, was
Speaker 2: recorded in real time by the Israeli military during the assault.
Speaker 2: The woman's voice in the background is counting down the seconds.
Speaker 2: It proves that Israeli commanders knew all along that they
Speaker 2: were attacking an American ship.
Speaker 1: A size.
Speaker 2: For the first time. This and other evidence allows us
Speaker 2: to reveal the true story of what happened that day
Speaker 2: and what came after, when a deadly assault by one
Speaker 2: ally on another was covered up and an American president
Speaker 2: was manipulated by the secret agents of a foreign power,
Speaker 2: events that have shaped US Israeli relations ever since. The
Speaker 2: United States Navy Memorial in Washington, d C. June the eighth,
Speaker 2: two thousand and fourteen. Every year on the anniversary of
Speaker 2: the attack on the USS Liberty survivors, relatives and supporters
Speaker 2: gather together.
Speaker 5: It's a remembrance of those who who were killed that day,
Speaker 5: the thirty four and Dave Lucas, I was in charge
Speaker 5: of the deck force. I was twenty five. My first
Speaker 5: child was born when I was one day out on
Speaker 5: that cruise. So as long as there are survivors and
Speaker 5: maybe children of survivors, I think this will probably be
Speaker 5: an annual event.
Speaker 6: Anseelu or.
Speaker 2: The names of the thirty four killed are read out,
Speaker 2: oh ye, punctuated by the tolling of a navy bow
Speaker 2: David Marlborough and the playing of taps, the traditional military
Speaker 2: funeral lament.
Speaker 1: It's important to.
Speaker 5: Not forget what happened and to continue to try to
Speaker 5: find out why it happened and who made it happen.
Speaker 2: In the summer of nineteen sixty seven, America was in turmoil.
Speaker 2: An incendiary mixture of racial discrimination and extreme poverty exploded
Speaker 2: into a summer of rioting in cities across the country.
Speaker 2: But one issue dominated the Vietnam War. In all, ten
Speaker 2: thousand troops would die that year. The Americans were trapped,
Speaker 2: they couldn't leave, and they couldn't win. In the Middle East, too,
Speaker 2: war looked inevitable. There was growing tension between Israel and
Speaker 2: its Arab neighbors, armies were mobilizing. Israel promised the White
Speaker 2: House they would not attack first, but on the fifth
Speaker 2: of June they jammed radar sets at the US embassy
Speaker 2: in Tel Aviv so the Americans couldn't detect that jets
Speaker 2: taking off to launch a surprise assault on Egypt. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the USS Liberty was sailing across the Mediterranean into the
Speaker 2: war zone.
Speaker 1: Liberty was a state of the art intelligence gathering vessel
Speaker 1: of the time, and what we did is we listed.
Speaker 1: We were a listening ship. My name is Lloyd Painter.
Speaker 1: I was a research officer. We could we could receive
Speaker 1: any signal that was out there, low band, high band anything,
Speaker 1: intercepting it, recording it, and we did have on board
Speaker 1: some translators who could have an immediate translation of what
Speaker 1: was going on. We would actually bounce signals off the
Speaker 1: moon back to NSA.
Speaker 7: We were were spies. I'm Jim Kavanaugh. I was a
Speaker 7: communication technician aboard the USS Liberty and I intercepted Morse code.
Speaker 7: We're spies, I mean were intercepting messages from embassies, military bases, police,
Speaker 7: anything and everything that we could get to ensure or
Speaker 7: that the United States was comfortable with what was going
Speaker 7: on in the world and no one's conspiring against us
Speaker 7: and basically goes to protect our interests.
Speaker 2: This was the Cold War. American President Lyndon Johnson knew
Speaker 2: that the Russians already had substantial military influence in Egypt.
Speaker 2: He needed to find out what they were going to
Speaker 2: do next to make sure that a local conflict did
Speaker 2: not become a world war with the USA backing Israel
Speaker 2: and Russia siding with the Arab cause.
Speaker 8: I was assigned as a Russian linguist aboard the ship
Speaker 8: I'm Bryce Lockwood, United States Marine Corps retired to Israelis
Speaker 8: Our primary purpose was to intercept communications of the Russian
Speaker 8: spy aircraft as that were at Alexandria, Egypt, and that
Speaker 8: was our job, was to find them. We were not
Speaker 8: targeted against Israeli's.
Speaker 1: Life was very relaxing. One of the nice things about
Speaker 1: the Liberty is we had air conditioning because we had
Speaker 1: communications equipment, so we were cool in the hot days.
Speaker 1: It was a very laid back, very clean ship. It
Speaker 1: was spotless. The morale was pretty high, I mean very high.
Speaker 2: By the time the Liberty arrived off the coast of
Speaker 2: Egypt on the eighth of June. The war had just
Speaker 2: two days left to run. Israel had seized the Old
Speaker 2: City of Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Speaker 2: Jordanian forces were beaten and Egypt was conceding defeat. Only
Speaker 2: Syria held out.
Speaker 9: The airwaves were dead. The only voices we did get
Speaker 9: were those of Israeli or Hebrew was what we were hearing.
Speaker 9: My name is Bob Wilson. I worked for NSA on
Speaker 9: June the eighth, nineteen sixty seven, when what we were
Speaker 9: trying to monitor find something coming from the direction of Egypt,
Speaker 9: there just was nothing. They on the skies, in the
Speaker 9: ground and everything. I don't think there was anything moving
Speaker 9: at that time that they didn't know about.
Speaker 7: I was listening to the chatter night before. They knew
Speaker 7: it was an American ship that came into the area. They
Speaker 7: knew who we were.
Speaker 2: Five point fifteen am first light. The ship's log recorded
Speaker 2: an Israeli photo reconnaissance plane flying over the Liberty.
Speaker 9: It was easily identifiable as a no ratlesseracraft and those
Speaker 9: are photo reconnaissance aeracraft.
Speaker 2: Israeli records obtained by Al Jazeera showed that their reconnaissance
Speaker 2: plane reported the Liberty as an American spy ship. How
Speaker 2: number gt R five Well.
Speaker 10: I was on the bridge. I'm John Scott. I was
Speaker 10: the damage control officer and his circle the ship kind
Speaker 10: of in a broad circle and headed back towards Israel.
Speaker 2: Israeli planes then continued to fly over the Liberty all morning.
Speaker 7: And they would do half moon passes over us, and
Speaker 7: we saw that they were as early.
Speaker 1: They were slowly lumbering over our ship, and we were
Speaker 1: waving at them. They were waving at act.
Speaker 7: They were sophisticated, almost as sophisticated as we were. As
Speaker 7: far as surveillance and technology. They had everything. We supplied
Speaker 7: them with all the technology to this day.
Speaker 1: And I felt that we were in great shape because
Speaker 1: they knew who we.
Speaker 7: Were, They're are friends. We felt safe, actually, it was
Speaker 7: a secure feeling to see them.
Speaker 2: There was one other thing which made the crew feel safe.
Speaker 1: We had an American flag flying the standard and then
Speaker 1: we put up the Holiday colors, which is a huge
Speaker 1: American flag. And it was a bright sunny day with
Speaker 1: the wind blowing I don't know five or ten knots.
Speaker 1: The flag was unfurled you could see it for miles.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Israeli military jets were on their way. On the
Speaker 2: real time audio tape obtained by Al Jazeera at one
Speaker 2: fifty three pm, the pilots asked their base control about.
Speaker 1: The ship, right, how man prove that about it?
Speaker 2: The USS Liberty was the only ship of any size
Speaker 2: in the area. The American sixth fleet, including two aircraft carriers,
Speaker 2: was five hundred miles away.
Speaker 6: Oh, it was a great day.
Speaker 11: Hello.
Speaker 6: I'm Jim Smith.
Speaker 4: I was a damage controlman and engineering I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: twenty years old.
Speaker 6: It's a time.
Speaker 4: I come from a small town, used to throw hay
Speaker 4: bales in a summertime for a buck an hour. Sun
Speaker 4: was shining, blue sky, clouds, nice people sunbathing on a deck.
Speaker 4: We had lunch, and five minutes later maybe here came
Speaker 4: the jets and when nobody really knew what was happening
Speaker 4: until they started fire.
Speaker 1: The captain said to me, alert the forward gun mouth,
Speaker 1: we're under attack. And I tried to raise the two
Speaker 1: sailors and the forward gun I looked at and they
Speaker 1: were blown to pieces by the rocket.
Speaker 7: When the attacks started and we realized that we needed help,
Speaker 7: we tried to communicate with the six Fleet.
Speaker 8: They were jamming both our distress frequencies and our tactical frequencies.
Speaker 8: The tactical frequencies is all right, but the international distress
Speaker 8: frequencies as a violation of international law of jam them
Speaker 8: and the Israelis were jamming that.
Speaker 7: And we could not get a signal for us. Here's
Speaker 7: the question I have to ask, who would know the
Speaker 7: frequencies other than an ally, and who was the ally
Speaker 7: in the war? It was in Egypt, it was Israel.
Speaker 7: They would know, and only they would know in this
Speaker 7: conflict what our frequencies would be.
Speaker 2: Now cut off from the outside world, the crew on
Speaker 2: the Liberty was defenseless.
Speaker 5: We had four fifty caliber machine guns on board that
Speaker 5: were basically there to repel any borders that might come
Speaker 5: by a pirate situation. Weren't designed to bring down jet
Speaker 5: aircraft that were hammering at us.
Speaker 4: But you can't shoot a jet going six hundred miles
Speaker 4: an hour with a Fity Calvin machine gun.
Speaker 12: It doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It was just in a surreal scene. People who had
Speaker 1: been standing there earlier, joking and laughing were now dead, dying,
Speaker 1: and with the walking dead and wounded. It was just.
Speaker 2: Unreal gasoline barrels stored on the deck of the ship
Speaker 2: burst into flames. The crew rushed to try to put
Speaker 2: out the fires.
Speaker 4: I was watching the aircraft as they circled around, and
Speaker 4: when they got to coming back towards the ship, I
Speaker 4: just holler.
Speaker 6: At him down.
Speaker 4: They'd fire and circle background. We'd jump back up and
Speaker 4: keep fighting fire. The rocket noisiers horrendous. When a rocket explodes,
Speaker 4: you can't escape a rocket. I don't care where you go.
Speaker 2: What the crew didn't know was that at three minutes
Speaker 2: past two, the Israeli pilots were ordered to use a new,
Speaker 2: much deadlier weapon.
Speaker 4: The biggest problem, I guess from from that was the
Speaker 4: napalm which they dropped from the airplane.
Speaker 8: The napalm had burned, scorched almost the entire front part
Speaker 8: of the ship, the bridge area.
Speaker 1: The whole top side of the ship had been set
Speaker 1: on fire and was all charred. It was no longer
Speaker 1: navy gray.
Speaker 4: You have to stop the fires, to stop the flooding,
Speaker 4: to keep that ship afloat. That's your home. You got
Speaker 4: nowhere else to go. You can't pack up and go
Speaker 4: down road because there is no down the road.
Speaker 2: Up above the Israeli military argued about what should happen
Speaker 2: next and who should sink the Liberty.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking I was in pretty good shape. Then
Speaker 1: I said, I think I could swim it to the shore.
Speaker 1: And then I thought sharks, and I thought a lot
Speaker 1: of things all quickly.
Speaker 2: You know, at eleven minutes past two, with the Israeli
Speaker 2: jets running out of ammunition, the pilots were instructed to
Speaker 2: fly down and confirm the identity of the ship. It
Speaker 2: was now twelve minutes past two, and the Israeli controlled
Speaker 2: tower knew for certain this was an American ship, the
Speaker 2: same one its forces had first identified at five point
Speaker 2: fifteen a m that morning, and then buzzed again during
Speaker 2: seven additional reconnaissance flights throughout the day. The jets then
Speaker 2: pulled out, but three Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats were
Speaker 2: all ready on their way. The USS Liberty was a
Speaker 2: spy ship. In the event of an attack, it was
Speaker 2: standard procedure for the spies on board to destroy everything
Speaker 2: just in case it fell into enemy hands.
Speaker 7: Everyone was destroying material, Everyone was stripping information off of computers,
Speaker 7: ripping computers open, pulling information out.
Speaker 8: That's something you just don't want to hear board ship.
Speaker 8: You've done all this work, collected this intelligence and processed it,
Speaker 8: and now you have to destroy it.
Speaker 7: You just didn't want the enemy to get a hold
Speaker 7: of anything classified.
Speaker 2: At two thirty five, the Israeli motor boats fired five torpedoes,
Speaker 2: four missed but one hit. It had been over nine
Speaker 2: hours since the Israeli military first identified the Liberty. Israeli
Speaker 2: planes had flown over it repeatedly, and twenty minutes earlier
Speaker 2: their control tower had confirmed it yet again as an
Speaker 2: American ship. Twenty five Americans were about to die in
Speaker 2: a single moment. This is what it looks like when
Speaker 2: a torpedo hits the ship the size of the Liberty.
Speaker 1: The torpedo threw us up in the air like a
Speaker 1: roller coaster. It felt like one coming down. Dead, silence,
Speaker 1: lights all off, smoke and haze everywhere.
Speaker 8: I went back to the drinking fountain and filled it
Speaker 8: with blood, reached down to get a drink, and a
Speaker 8: black man stirred back at me.
Speaker 4: And when it fell back to get right, it just
Speaker 4: kept getting wrong, kept sinking, and.
Speaker 1: We just waited, all of us weighted, thinking that this
Speaker 1: was it. We're going down.
Speaker 8: And I figured that was the end of life for me.
Speaker 2: The torpedo had blown a huge hole in the hull
Speaker 2: thirty nine feet by twenty four, killing twenty five Americans
Speaker 2: in a single hit.
Speaker 7: The torpedo hit the room that I was in, and
Speaker 7: it was just luck. This guy died, this one lived,
Speaker 7: that guy. It was how much shrapnel was coming in
Speaker 7: your direction, you know, the old fashioned typewriters. I had
Speaker 7: the letter H sticking out of.
Speaker 1: My left foot.
Speaker 7: I had I don't know eighty pieces of shrapland my
Speaker 7: lower extremities, and the place filled up with water that fast,
Speaker 7: totally black, totally filled with.
Speaker 1: Powder and oil. It was like.
Speaker 7: You were gagging, and you only had about eight or
Speaker 7: ten inches of space where you could catch a breath.
Speaker 7: The only way I could go in that direction was
Speaker 7: to drop down and swim under water four or five strokes,
Speaker 7: come back up, and then frantically catch a breath and
Speaker 7: try to find something else.
Speaker 1: Hold on too.
Speaker 7: I got pulled through the hatch and onto the deck.
Speaker 2: Others were not so lucky.
Speaker 8: My friend Ronnie Campbell had a desk right there, and
Speaker 8: I remember Ronnie saying, you fellas can do what you
Speaker 8: want to, said I'm going to write a letter home,
Speaker 8: and he stuck a piece of paper in his Mills
Speaker 8: typewriter and began typing, Dear Eileen, you won't believe what's
Speaker 8: happening to us. And just seconds after that, the torpedo
Speaker 8: struck in, killed both the two Moraines, killed my friend
Speaker 8: Ronnie Campbell, and my.
Speaker 1: Job was to try to get probably twenty or thirty
Speaker 1: wounded sailors out to the main deck and to the
Speaker 1: life rafts. So I went up and looked out myself
Speaker 1: before I tried to get anyone up, and that's when
Speaker 1: I observed a motor torpedo boat Israeli planning marked with
Speaker 1: the star of David machine gunning are life raft.
Speaker 2: The crew of the Liberty were now trapped on board
Speaker 2: the own ship, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Speaker 1: The torpedo boats came in closer and began to machine
Speaker 1: gun the ship using armor piercing projectiles.
Speaker 5: The armor piercing the shells that they were using were
Speaker 5: leading holes. About that big round in the metal plating
Speaker 5: just peel it, I like it was orange peel.
Speaker 2: At close range, the armor piercing rounds ripped through the
Speaker 2: steel hull of the ship nowhere was safe.
Speaker 5: This bullet was retrieved from one of the navigational books
Speaker 5: at the rear of the bridge. It had penetrated the
Speaker 5: skin of the ship, gone through at least one other book,
Speaker 5: and then stopped and in the second book this is
Speaker 5: part of an armor piercing shell. The outer portion or
Speaker 5: jacket makes the hole that this then goes through. And
Speaker 5: a bullet like this that hit Semen Francis Brown and
Speaker 5: killed him.
Speaker 1: He died right on the spot, just fell to the
Speaker 1: floor dead. He was just barely eighteen.
Speaker 8: There weren't enough helmets to go around for everyone.
Speaker 1: It was like sitting in a cardboard box and having
Speaker 1: somebody shoot through it. The bullets were just coming everywhere.
Speaker 2: Throughout the attack. The Liberty had been silent to the
Speaker 2: outside world. All its aerials were either smashed or jammed.
Speaker 8: We had one whip antenna which hadn't worked the entire cruise,
Speaker 8: and it had a bullet hole in it. One of
Speaker 8: the radio men had taken a reel of coax cable
Speaker 8: and ran it from one of the transmitters back there
Speaker 8: to that quip antenna and took some shrapnel in the process.
Speaker 8: He got out in May day Firefox, Firefox, this is
Speaker 8: rock Star. Rock Star under attack by NADDE surface and
Speaker 8: naval are units require immediate assistance.
Speaker 2: The American six feet was five hundred miles away and
Speaker 2: picked up the signal. So did the Israeli armed forces.
Speaker 2: The attack stopped shortly afterwards. The American aircraft carriers were
Speaker 2: in the middle of a nuclear weapons drill and had
Speaker 2: to re arm with conventional bombs before they could take off.
Speaker 2: Once the Israelis knew the US jets were in the air,
Speaker 2: they summoned the American naval attache and told him there
Speaker 2: had been a terrible mistake. The American planes were recalled.
Speaker 2: As they returned, Israeli helicopters flew out to the Liberty.
Speaker 8: This one had some personnel from the Israeli government and
Speaker 8: the US Naval ats achet. It dropped a brown paper
Speaker 8: sack on the deck and fore part of the ship
Speaker 8: weighted down with an orange had a bitiness card in it.
Speaker 8: It landed right next to the severed leg of one
Speaker 8: of the deck personnel, and the note said.
Speaker 9: Do you have casualts?
Speaker 5: Pretty obvious that there were casualts.
Speaker 1: I mean there's still.
Speaker 5: Body parts and blood streaming down the bulkheads message do
Speaker 5: you have casualties?
Speaker 6: Was kind of.
Speaker 1: Out of place.
Speaker 8: One of the sailors carried that sack back to the captain.
Speaker 8: The captain took out the no and read it, looked
Speaker 8: up into helicopter and popped the social finger at him.
Speaker 2: June the eighth, nineteen sixty seven, the height of the
Speaker 2: Six Day War, the USS Liberty and the American spyeship
Speaker 2: had just been attacked by Israeli jets and torpedo boats
Speaker 2: while in international waters off Egypt. Badly damaged, two thirds
Speaker 2: of its crew were dead or wounded. As soon as
Speaker 2: the news reached Washington, the attack on the Liberty instantly
Speaker 2: triggered a domestic political crisis. According to documents released under
Speaker 2: the Freedom of Information Act, one solution suggested in American
Speaker 2: government circles was to sink the Liberty so journalists could
Speaker 2: not photograph it and inflame public opinion against the Israelis.
Speaker 2: The NSSA rejected this idea with an impolite comment. Handling
Speaker 2: the media became the top priority.
Speaker 13: I was taken to my home in White Oak, Maryland.
Speaker 13: My name is Patricia Blue Rushakis, and my husband was
Speaker 13: killed on the Liberty and by the time I got there,
Speaker 13: there were any number of people from the National Security
Speaker 13: Agency there. They were there to make sure that I
Speaker 13: didn't speak to anyone from the press, and I didn't.
Speaker 13: They stay night and day.
Speaker 2: Back in the Mediterranean, the Liberty was now listing at
Speaker 2: ten degrees, a massive hole in the hull above and
Speaker 2: below the waterline.
Speaker 5: The planes that they said they were sending to us
Speaker 5: never arrived.
Speaker 1: Well, I was afraid of, and I think most of
Speaker 1: us was that we were going to sink.
Speaker 4: Well, the mess decks was pretty much littered with the wounded.
Speaker 1: It looks like something out of a horror movie. But
Speaker 1: people standing around are lying wounded and dead and stunned,
Speaker 1: the heads missing parts of their bodies.
Speaker 2: The Liberty had only one doctor on board, with very
Speaker 2: limited medical resources.
Speaker 4: There was not a table that wasn't being used with
Speaker 4: a body on her, a wounded body on it.
Speaker 2: The doctor fixed compound fractures and treated bullet and shrapnel
Speaker 2: wounds while blood transfusions were given arm to arm.
Speaker 11: It was.
Speaker 1: It was real bad, and the doctor said to him,
Speaker 1: do you want me to operate? He says, you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna die if I do it, and you'll certainly die
Speaker 1: if I don't, and he said, go ahead, doctor, And
Speaker 1: so when the doctor operated, we held him this tight
Speaker 1: as we could. It was horrible pain, I'm sure for him,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden he went limp and he
Speaker 1: died right there.
Speaker 10: I don't ever see anything like it again.
Speaker 5: Captain McGonagall received a pretty bad leg injury, lost a
Speaker 5: lot of blood. He was navigating by the stars.
Speaker 1: We had a little bit of power and tons of
Speaker 1: water in our belly which bent. The ship waved back
Speaker 1: and forth all night long.
Speaker 2: The next day American ships arrived to take the injured
Speaker 2: and the dead off the Liberty. The American government now
Speaker 2: made sure that no journalists could get anywhere near the crew.
Speaker 1: When they took the severely wounded to various parts that
Speaker 1: they actually posted guards on their room so that no
Speaker 1: one could be interviewed by the press. The total press
Speaker 1: blackout was in effect back.
Speaker 2: In Washington the government and there was little information for
Speaker 2: the press while politics went on behind closed doors.
Speaker 14: I was told to go up personally to the seventh floor. Well,
Speaker 14: my name is Bill Wolly. I was in charge of
Speaker 14: the Arab Israel disc sit in because the Secretary of
Speaker 14: State himself, Dean Rusk, had summoned Ambassador Harmon of Israel
Speaker 14: to come in urgently, and so I sat through the
Speaker 14: meeting taking notes, and in a loud voice, Secretary was
Speaker 14: really demanding some explanation for why and what had happened.
Speaker 14: The ambassador himself seemed to be ignorant of the incident.
Speaker 14: He immediately said, I can't believe what you're telling me.
Speaker 14: It would be impossible, it would be unheard of.
Speaker 2: It was especially tough for Lyndon Johnson, to date, the
Speaker 2: most pro Israeli Amica president in history.
Speaker 11: Johnson was in a very tough mood. I'm Tom Hughes.
Speaker 11: I was director in the State Department Director of Intelligence
Speaker 11: and Research at the time of the Liberty incident. In
Speaker 11: sixty seven attack on the Liberty, Johnson himself briefed Newsweek
Speaker 11: magazine off the record that the Israelis had attacked, and
Speaker 11: the reason they'd attacked was that they thought this was
Speaker 11: an intelligence ship that was intercepting perhaps Israeli as well
Speaker 11: as Egyptian communications.
Speaker 2: But then everything changed.
Speaker 11: The fact that Johnson himself was the leaker and briefer
Speaker 11: of Newswig was soon leaked, and this alarmed, of course,
Speaker 11: the Israeli Embassy and they're leading friends in the Jewish organizations.
Speaker 11: The Israeli Embassy regarded this as a major problem and
Speaker 11: that what Johnson had told Newswig practically amount of blood libel.
Speaker 2: Declassified Israeli documents show they were going to threaten President
Speaker 2: Johnson with blood libel, gross anti Semitism, and that would
Speaker 2: end his political career.
Speaker 12: Blackmail. This is Admiral bobbie R. Emman Us Navy retired.
Speaker 12: I'm a former director of the National Security Agency. But
Speaker 12: they know if he is thinking about running again, he's
Speaker 12: going to need money for his campaign, so alleging that
Speaker 12: he's blood libeling is going to arouse the Jewish donors.
Speaker 2: The Israeli government hired teams of lawyers, some of whom
Speaker 2: were close friends of Lyndon Johnson, and began an all
Speaker 2: out offensive. They leant on the media to kill critical
Speaker 2: stories and slanted others in favor of Israel.
Speaker 11: There was a campaign mounted to see what could be
Speaker 11: done about returning Johnson to his predictable pro Israeli position.
Speaker 2: At the time, Johnson was still undecided as to whether
Speaker 2: to run for president the following year.
Speaker 11: Efforts were to be made to remind the President of
Speaker 11: the delicacy of his own position that he personally might
Speaker 11: lose support for his run for reelection in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2: Israeli tactics were clever. They identified Johnson's soft spot the
Speaker 2: war in Vietnam, and gave him two extraordinary gifts, neither
Speaker 2: of which were made public at the time. The first
Speaker 2: was political.
Speaker 11: One of Johnson's complaints about Israel was that many of
Speaker 11: the Jewish organizations, in the heads of leaders in the
Speaker 11: Jewish community were opposing him on Vietnam, and they were
Speaker 11: suddenly becoming more silent than Vietnam as the liberty crisis moved,
Speaker 11: So he also knew that there was a move back
Speaker 11: in his favor of he was moderate Israel.
Speaker 2: There was a second gift, much more secret but vital
Speaker 2: to the American president. The dreadful death toll in Vietnam
Speaker 2: was dominating the domestic news agenda. The North Vietnamese had
Speaker 2: Russian surface to air missiles which were bringing down American
Speaker 2: aircraft on a daily basis. The American military attashe in
Speaker 2: Israel got a surprise visit from a senior Israeli intelligence officer.
Speaker 12: Took some helicopters and went across the North Red Sea
Speaker 12: to the surfaced air missile sites and not only captured them,
Speaker 12: but took back everything, the launchers, the missiles, the man
Speaker 12: maintenance manuals, the rest of it. And then he went
Speaker 12: to the US embassy to the Ara Toche and said,
Speaker 12: I think I have something you might be interested in.
Speaker 12: And of course those were the same missiles that our
Speaker 12: aircraft over North Vietnam we're encountering day to day, and
Speaker 12: countermeasures was a huge issue.
Speaker 2: So grateful was the American government. They gave Israel two gifts.
Speaker 2: In return, they resupplied them with the weapons they had
Speaker 2: just lost in the war, and the Liberty Inquiry, run
Speaker 2: by the Department of Defense the DoD was watered down.
Speaker 12: All that's influenced by what have we benefited from from
Speaker 12: the captured essay to missile sites.
Speaker 11: Soon Johnson did respond, and it took a much more
Speaker 11: lenient line and wished that the whole incident could be
Speaker 11: put behind us as soon as possible.
Speaker 2: Johnson's softer approach to Israel was immediately reflected in the
Speaker 2: American Navy inquiry which was now under way. On board
Speaker 2: the Liberty.
Speaker 1: We began to realize that a cover up was descending
Speaker 1: upon us.
Speaker 5: A lot of people that were in a key position
Speaker 5: to offer testimony were not given that opportunity.
Speaker 1: I testified to the machine gunny of life rafts, to
Speaker 1: the captain's state of mind, and it was that those
Speaker 1: two issues in particular were totally omitted.
Speaker 2: Lloyd Painter was not the only officer to have his
Speaker 2: testimony ignored.
Speaker 5: I saw what looked like unburned vasoline, and I scraped
Speaker 5: a little bit of it off and put it in
Speaker 5: the jar and sealed the cap on, and I presented
Speaker 5: to the quart of Inquiry, and that's the last I
Speaker 5: saw that jar. There was no mention of napalm, and
Speaker 5: I'm sure that's what it was.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to hear any of that. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that at the time. I didn't know it till
Speaker 1: many months later, that none of I had been recorded.
Speaker 1: Looking back on it, it was a total sham.
Speaker 2: The US Court of Inquiry reported in just twenty days.
Speaker 2: It was a rush job, full of spelling mistakes, much
Speaker 2: key evidence ignored. No Israelis interviewed, and it exonerated them
Speaker 2: from blame.
Speaker 1: I read the Court of Inquiry and realized that my
Speaker 1: statements had been stricken from the record and never recorded,
Speaker 1: so I knew then for certain that the cover up
Speaker 1: was massive.
Speaker 2: The Israelis then rushed out their own report, which concluded
Speaker 2: that the whole affair was a series of mistakes and
Speaker 2: that no one was to blame. The only dissenting voice
Speaker 2: was that of the Israeli ambassador in Washington. He sent
Speaker 2: a secret telegram back home arguing that Israel was clearly guilty.
Speaker 2: He cited the audio tape of the attack, the existence
Speaker 2: of which was known to top Israeli officials, and mentioned
Speaker 2: the crucial twenty minute gap that followed the liberty's identification
Speaker 2: and the launch of the torpedoes against her. He said
Speaker 2: they should own up to what they had done and
Speaker 2: put the guilty on trial. His advice was ignored. The
Speaker 2: focus now was to repair the damage to American Israeli relations.
Speaker 12: The Israelis have always been very skillful and tracking what
Speaker 12: the US government is doing, saying, thinking and the effort
Speaker 12: influence and thereby no means the only country that does it.
Speaker 12: Many do, They're just more effective at it than most.
Speaker 12: And the great advantage they have is compared to other
Speaker 12: countries is their influence in the Congress.
Speaker 2: Around the time of the attack, the Washington Post had
Speaker 2: noted that the Jewish lobby could help determine the outcome
Speaker 2: of one hundred and sixty nine of the two hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy electoral votes needed to win the White House.
Speaker 11: The big emotive words about the attack disappeared from press
Speaker 11: releases at the Pentagon. Much more bland and neutral sounding
Speaker 11: discourse occurred, and this was true of the private briefings
Speaker 11: that official people in the Venegon made about the incident.
Speaker 2: But whatever was said to journalists, every US intelligence had
Speaker 2: believed the attack was intentional. One of them wrote a
Speaker 2: nice whitewash for a group of ignorant, stupid, and inept
Speaker 2: x x X.
Speaker 12: The Jewish community has always been more generous than many
Speaker 12: of their other counterparts in supporting financially elections, political causes,
Speaker 12: and the process that does translate into influence.
Speaker 2: Many of Johnson's closest friends and advisors were pro Israeli,
Speaker 2: and they reported back to Tel Aviv on his every move.
Speaker 2: The Israeli story constantly shifted to count whatever new intelligence
Speaker 2: the White House received. So sensitive with these communications that
Speaker 2: the Israelis used code names to protect the identity of
Speaker 2: their White House agents. But for the first time the
Speaker 2: members of the ring can be named. Hamlet was a
Speaker 2: million dollar fundraiser for the Democrats. When he rang, Johnson
Speaker 2: took his calls, he was Abe Feinberg. Menache was Arthur Goldberg.
Speaker 2: The US Ambassador to the United Nations Harari was David Ginsberg,
Speaker 2: a high profile Washington lawyer who also represented the Israeli embassy.
Speaker 2: Ilan was Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas. Lyndon Johnson had
Speaker 2: dinner with him on the eve of the Six Day War.
Speaker 2: The strategy worked. The US Israeli relationship proved to be
Speaker 2: stronger than the killing and injuring of more than two
Speaker 2: hundred Americans.
Speaker 11: The American Israeli relationship was very much at stake that
Speaker 11: was brought back from the precipice.
Speaker 2: The crucial intelligence came from the US Ambassador to the
Speaker 2: United Nations, Arthur Goldberg. He warned tell Aviv that the
Speaker 2: United States had the audio tape which revealed Israeli pilots
Speaker 2: knew it was an American ship before they attacked. The
Speaker 2: tape was quietly buried.
Speaker 12: So I think your consciousness as was made to sweep
Speaker 12: it under the rug, to put it behind. My reading
Speaker 12: is that the US government had made a decision to
Speaker 12: accept the apology and reject the other rise now, but
Speaker 12: don't push it further.
Speaker 2: With the politics sorted, the only remaining issue was the
Speaker 2: fate of the USS Liberty, badly damaged and now in
Speaker 2: Malta for extensive repairs. The torpedo hole was massive and
Speaker 2: was revealed to be much bigger once they got the
Speaker 2: ship into dry dock and drained it of water. The
Speaker 2: sealed compartment was a water filled tune full of bodies,
Speaker 2: body parts, and top secret equipment.
Speaker 1: You could smell death and you could smell oil. That's
Speaker 1: what I remember. As soon as the air hit the bodies,
Speaker 1: they began to deteriorate rapidly.
Speaker 4: You do what you have to do. There were your
Speaker 4: ship mates, still are.
Speaker 1: The Navy was more concerned with whip and parts then
Speaker 1: they were body parts. But when I went down, I
Speaker 1: knew that you couldn't separate the two. We had to
Speaker 1: start shoveling up the parts, one hundred and sixty eight bags.
Speaker 2: Worth Elsewhere, the makeup artists were getting to work.
Speaker 5: We were in the drydock about six weeks and three
Speaker 5: hundred Maltese workers are working two shifts a day. And
Speaker 5: I think seven days a week to try. They were
Speaker 5: cutting out the shell holes, welding plates over that on,
Speaker 5: fabricating metal to cover the torpedo hole.
Speaker 1: And then in one day they panted the entire ship.
Speaker 1: We looked like nothing ever happened. We took it across
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. It was like being in a cemetery. But
Speaker 1: when we pulled into Port, we looked good. This press
Speaker 1: and everything were there, and we looked like, basically nothing
Speaker 1: really happened. So it was great for the press to
Speaker 1: downplay what were really happened to us.
Speaker 2: While the survivors met the widows and friends, the one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty eight bags of body parts top secret
Speaker 2: equipment were quietly taken to an incinerator and burnt. A
Speaker 2: year later and the Liberty Captain William McGonagall was given
Speaker 2: the Medal of Honor, America's highest award for gallantry. The
Speaker 2: tradition has always been that it is presented by the
Speaker 2: President in the White House.
Speaker 1: I look at.
Speaker 4: These two gallant marines, and I see a merrack.
Speaker 2: Captain McGonagall never heard words like these from his commander
Speaker 2: in chief. There was no television coverage for him as
Speaker 2: he received his medal in a quiet ceremony in the
Speaker 2: Navy yard. President Johnson was just four miles away at
Speaker 2: the time, he stayed in the White House to hand
Speaker 2: out diplomas to school children. The reason was revealed in
Speaker 2: this internal memo, which advised President Johnson that due to
Speaker 2: the nature and sensitivity of these awards, they should be
Speaker 2: given by the Department of Defense, not by him. The
Speaker 2: advice was clear no press release regarding them should be made.
Speaker 1: When I received my Purple Heart in a secret ceremony
Speaker 1: in the Captain's office, I was admonished the threat of
Speaker 1: court martial. Don't ever tell anyone who you got this.
Speaker 1: Don't ever tell anyone how you got this medal.
Speaker 2: The following year, American aid to Israel increased fourfold, and
Speaker 2: President Johnson agreed a treaty classified above top secret with
Speaker 2: Israel for the mutual exchange of intelligence, an arrangement which
Speaker 2: is still in place today code named Stone Ruby.
Speaker 5: One of the things that bothers me is there wasn't
Speaker 5: a nice explanation of what went on. No one wants
Speaker 5: to talk about the why.
Speaker 2: The big secret the Israelis wanted to protect was their
Speaker 2: next move. They had told the Americans that this was
Speaker 2: to be a limited war and not a land grab.
Speaker 2: But on June eighth, nineteen sixty seven, their forces were
Speaker 2: poised to attack and seize the Golan Heights and invade Syria,
Speaker 2: something they wished to keep from the White House until
Speaker 2: they'd done it. Successive American administrations, both Republican and Democrat,
Speaker 2: had refused to deal with the Liberty. Even the issue
Speaker 2: of war crimes against unarmed Americans has never been addressed.
Speaker 5: There was a war crimes report filed by the Liberty
Speaker 5: Veterans Association to address the issues of such war crimes
Speaker 5: as firing on life rafts that was never answered properly.
Speaker 5: I don't think it was answered period.
Speaker 7: The people who were responsible for attacking the liber Liberty were,
Speaker 7: you know, buy and large, the military individuals in the
Speaker 7: war room. I don't know how many, four, eight ten.
Speaker 7: Those are the people who came up with the plan.
Speaker 7: Those are the individuals who are responsible for the attack.
Speaker 7: The pilots, the motor torpedo boat personnel.
Speaker 1: They were ordered.
Speaker 7: You know, you don't follow orders, go to jail, so
Speaker 7: they have to follow through. It wasn't the Israeli people
Speaker 7: who ordered that attack. It wasn't the average Jewish person
Speaker 7: who ordered that attack. We really need to exonerate the
Speaker 7: average Jewish person Israeli from this and go towards those
Speaker 7: individuals who are responsible for the attack.
Speaker 13: No one was really willing to take this on, not
Speaker 13: the State Department, the White House, not the Congress. It's
Speaker 13: in everybody's best interest to just let this go. And
Speaker 13: that's exactly what they did. By doing that, they left
Speaker 13: a lot of pain for the survivors and for the
Speaker 13: families because there was a lot of broken families, broken marriages, alcoholism, depression,
Speaker 13: post traumatic stress disorder. So those crew members suffered a lot,
Speaker 13: but so did the families.
Speaker 1: The hardest part was the reaction of our own government
Speaker 1: toward us, and we were actually the fingers were pointed
Speaker 1: at us, and the Israelis weren't. They were never questioned
Speaker 1: as to why they did it. They only questioned us.
Speaker 2: The families still want answers from their government, which remained
Speaker 2: silent for many Some memories never fade.
Speaker 13: We had a wonderful time just being together. I met
Speaker 13: Alan at a party and we spent a lot of
Speaker 13: time talking throughout the evening and at the end of
Speaker 13: the year evening he said to me, are you busy
Speaker 13: tomorrow afternoon? And I said, well no, and he said,
Speaker 13: do you think we could get married? Then I was
Speaker 13: told that he was among the dead. It was absolutely
Speaker 13: the worst moment of my life.
Speaker 7: There is not a day that doesn't go by or
Speaker 7: I don't think about those guys. I mean, I went
Speaker 7: through hell, but they left the earth.
Speaker 5: When I'm walking up to the mass grave, I still
Speaker 5: feel a connection with those people. Hard to explain, but
Speaker 5: it's still there. So I want to remember that connection
Speaker 5: as long as I can. What we shared, what we felt.
Speaker 2: Thirteen years of haggling before both sides finally agreed a
Speaker 2: compensation deal for the ship. By nineteen eighty, the bill
Speaker 2: plus interest was just over seventeen million dollars. Israel offered
Speaker 2: six the Americans accepted, then sold the liberty for one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars scrap. The settlement for the victims was quicker,
Speaker 2: but many are still unhappy with it today, not.
Speaker 13: Feel it was a fair settlement. I would have fought it,
Speaker 13: but I was so sad and broken. I just didn't
Speaker 13: have the energy to take on that fight. And it
Speaker 13: wasn't a fight that I thought I could win. The
Speaker 13: state Department were very eager for the survivors to make
Speaker 13: that settlement. They sent a check for the amount, and
Speaker 13: that that was.
Speaker 2: The American government came up with a formula for the
Speaker 2: Israelis to compensate the widows and children for their loss.
Speaker 2: This included a payment for shock and mental anguish. The
Speaker 2: widows got twenty five thousand dollars, with ten thousand dollars
Speaker 2: for each of their children over five. An American government
Speaker 2: lawyer doubted that children under five could sufficiently comprehend the
Speaker 2: event to suffer shock and grief. The US proposed they
Speaker 2: should therefore receive nothing, an offer the Israelis accepted. Since
Speaker 2: the attack on the Liberty, the USA and Israel have
Speaker 2: grown ever closer. At the time, George Ball, the U
Speaker 2: s Undersecretary of State, noted that it seemed clear to
Speaker 2: the Israelis that as American leaders did not have the
Speaker 2: courage to punish them for the blatant murder of American citizens,
Speaker 2: they would let them get away with anything.
Speaker 6: USS Liberty is a story that's been covered up for
Speaker 6: far too long. You've never heard it because it was
Speaker 6: covered up. They used us, the crew of the USS Liberty,
Speaker 6: to be eliminated by the Zionist State of Israel LBJ
Speaker 6: and a handful of others. McNamara is a good example.
Speaker 6: They got this cabala of a few people together to
Speaker 6: send us into a war zone. Our usual steaming was
Speaker 6: from Norfolk, Virginia into Africa. We grew up and down
Speaker 6: the coast all the time, all the time, time four
Speaker 6: or five knots, picking up the signals out of the sky.
Speaker 6: It's perfectly legal. Everybody did it. And we were the
Speaker 6: most sophisticated spy ship in the world at that time,
Speaker 6: the most sophisticated we bound. We could bounce messages off
Speaker 6: the moon and get him back to NAST Security Agency
Speaker 6: within three seconds in nineteen sixty seven. Think about that.
Speaker 6: So what do you think they got now? There's no telling.
Speaker 6: There's just no telling. I saved this for you too.
Speaker 6: You have another gift, Tom, come on up. Sacrifice of
Speaker 6: Liberty four part series with survivors and trusted American admirals
Speaker 6: in generals right here. Thank you, Tom. I recommend everybody
Speaker 6: go on to YouTube watch it or rumble. Uh Rick
Speaker 6: Wilds's he produced that film. A great guy and I
Speaker 6: got to mention a dear, dear friend of mine too.
Speaker 6: Another great guy is Pastor Chuck Baldwin and Callous Bell
Speaker 6: was Montana. I've been with Chuck for a few times,
Speaker 6: several times broken bread together. I've listened to his sermons,
Speaker 6: but he tells it the way it is. I mean,
Speaker 6: the truth is the truth, and no matter, you can't
Speaker 6: hide the truth. But I'm still here because of the
Speaker 6: gallant crew of the USS Liberty and our determination not
Speaker 6: to give up. We were ordered into the Mediterranean from Africa.
Speaker 6: We didn't where we're headed, We had no idea, we
Speaker 6: didn't know the Sixth Day War was going on. We
Speaker 6: stopped in Malta, I excuse me, rode to Spain and
Speaker 6: picked up three linguists and S. A. C. I, a
Speaker 6: tape type guy. The lingers were all three of them
Speaker 6: were marines. Two of them were blown to bits during
Speaker 6: the torpedo attack. One survived, Bryce Lockwood and he had
Speaker 6: to full blastom of torpedo coming at him too, but
Speaker 6: he he survived, thank god. We got into the area
Speaker 6: on June the seventh in the Israeli recon aircraft piper
Speaker 6: cups whatever they had DC three flying box car. If
Speaker 6: you've ever seen those. They would take pictures of our ship.
Speaker 6: They did this over and over on the seventh, over
Speaker 6: and over. They came so close to our ship you
Speaker 6: could see the pilots. We'd wave with them and they'd
Speaker 6: way back. We were very, very happy to see the
Speaker 6: Star of David on those those aircraft because we asked
Speaker 6: for a destroyer escort from the United States Navy, and
Speaker 6: this says, you don't need an escort. You're a Navy ship.
Speaker 6: You have a flag on it. That's your protection, that flag.
Speaker 6: Don't you worry about nothing. Little did little we know,
Speaker 6: we just got set up. We just got set up.
Speaker 6: On June the eighth, the same thing happened over and
Speaker 6: over again. Now listen on that ship. If you weren't working,
Speaker 6: you could be outside sunbathing. Here we are in the Mediterranean, beautiful,
Speaker 6: beautiful water. But you see the bombs going off. We
Speaker 6: were twelve point five miles off the Sinai. You can
Speaker 6: see the bombs bursting in the black. And he said,
Speaker 6: oh my god, I'm glad we're here and not over
Speaker 6: there a little bit. You know, at two o'clock the
Speaker 6: attack began. I had just left the forward gun mount.
Speaker 6: We had a general quarters drilled before that because we
Speaker 6: drilled on that ship all the time to keep up
Speaker 6: our skills. And I loved it. I mean I loved
Speaker 6: doing what I did, firefighting and things like that, damage control.
Speaker 6: I was in engineering and I enjoyed that too. And
Speaker 6: at two o'clock the attack began. I just lept the
Speaker 6: forward gun mount where two men came up. The gunner's
Speaker 6: mate was there, man in the gun. We had four
Speaker 6: fifty caliber machine guns. And David Scolac. Because the sound
Speaker 6: part of phones weren't working. Now this is before the attack,
Speaker 6: he came up there. I said, Heylac, go ahead and
Speaker 6: see if you can get this fixed. The old man
Speaker 6: wants it fixed. I stayed up a few minutes and
Speaker 6: the old man was up on the bridge and I said,
Speaker 6: hey man, I gotta go because the old man did
Speaker 6: not like anybody standing around. You better be working or
Speaker 6: sun bathing, but not anything else. So I walked down
Speaker 6: the starboard ladder. I get to my works station was
Speaker 6: about thirty seconds away in Boom. The attack started just
Speaker 6: before that. They said, prepare to test the motor whale boat.
Speaker 6: They do that every day, make sure it works. And
Speaker 6: they did that, and I thought the whale boat boat
Speaker 6: blew up for some reason. I started to go out
Speaker 6: the hatch. I was right next to that, and this
Speaker 6: chief grabbed me by the back of the neck. He said, man,
Speaker 6: we're under attack. So I immediately high tail it to my
Speaker 6: repair station. Repare two forward to take over my duties.
Speaker 6: Chief Thompson, he's passed now. He was the sing leader.
Speaker 6: I was assistant on leader. Immediately I became the leader
Speaker 6: of those men that were left to put out fires,
Speaker 6: pull people, men off the deck, and try to save lives.
Speaker 6: The two men I just left were made into mist
Speaker 6: with the rac hits on that gun nut. Within three seconds,
Speaker 6: they took out every tuning antenna on that ship. Within
Speaker 6: three seconds, our four to fifty caliber machine guns port
Speaker 6: starbott forward on the three level, they were gone. Every
Speaker 6: antenna was gone, and we're on the concert attack. Now
Speaker 6: remember this. Those planes were unmarked jets. They were Misteer
Speaker 6: and Mirage jets, not just two jets. There were at
Speaker 6: least thirty sorties. Thirty sorties within twenty five minutes. Terry
Speaker 6: hal Lbardier was a radioman and he took that one
Speaker 6: antenna offline or we'd never got a message out. He
Speaker 6: ran a long wire through to that antenna. He took offline,
Speaker 6: got it back online. And this was about ten minutes
Speaker 6: after the attack started. And the attack lasted by the
Speaker 6: airplanes for twenty five minutes, over and over again throughout day,
Speaker 6: dropped napalm on us. They did everything they could kill us.
Speaker 6: Little did we know that was just to soften us up,
Speaker 6: just to soften us up. We thought the attack was over,
Speaker 6: but Terry had gotten a message out Rockstar Rockstar under
Speaker 6: attacked by unknown jet aircraft. Rockstar Rockstar need help, help help.
Speaker 6: This went out as far as way to Vietnam. The
Speaker 6: sixth Fleet picked it up. They sent rescue aircraft from
Speaker 6: the USS Saratoga. Captain Tolly a good friend of mine.
Speaker 6: He's passed too, World War two veteran fighter pilot. He's
Speaker 6: gone now, but he's met it. He lost his command
Speaker 6: because he sent help to us. Mcnamerica called him back
Speaker 6: and to his surprise, the America did not launch. They
Speaker 6: did not launch. About maybe two or three minutes after that,
Speaker 6: they launched aircraft from America again, I mean from the
Speaker 6: Saratoga again, and the America before those planes even hit
Speaker 6: their horizon and recalled by LBJ. I don't give a
Speaker 6: goddamn excuse my French. If those sailors die, well, not
Speaker 6: embarrass my ally. Now, how did he know they were
Speaker 6: our allies? We didn't know who was attacking us, but
Speaker 6: he sure did. They set us up to be slaughtered,
Speaker 6: and the slaughter just started. We saw three mortar torpedo
Speaker 6: boats coming up towards us. Now, I'll remind you we
Speaker 6: had stars of David all inside that ship because we
Speaker 6: wanted the Israelies to win. I mean, there are allies.
Speaker 6: We wanted him to win. Little Nudgy did I know then?
Speaker 6: When we saw the the flag, that's the only time
Speaker 6: we knew it was the Israelis. I thought they were
Speaker 6: there to help us. No, they weren't. They're there to
Speaker 6: sink us. Now, they fired five torpedoes at us. I
Speaker 6: know where two went because I saw him. Two went aft.
Speaker 6: Where the other two went, I don't have no clue.
Speaker 6: I don't have a clue where they went, but I
Speaker 6: know where one hit on the starboard side in the
Speaker 6: research basis where the spies were. Now, these guys were
Speaker 6: the best, the cream of the crops spies in the world,
Speaker 6: the very best. And they never talked to us, and
Speaker 6: we didn't talk to them. It was two different crews
Speaker 6: aboard that ship, the Spies and ship's company, which I
Speaker 6: was ship's company. They never talked to us. But those
Speaker 6: four men were blown to bits. They were blown to bits.
Speaker 6: When that torpedo hit, it picked the ship completely up
Speaker 6: out of the water and it went down like this
Speaker 6: and start going to the right the Starbard's side. I
Speaker 6: thought it was going to roll over, and it just
Speaker 6: stopped by the hand of God. By the hand of
Speaker 6: God saved us. He saved me for this day. I
Speaker 6: think he saved all of us right here, for this moment,
Speaker 6: for this moment to expose with Israel and the United
Speaker 6: States concocted to get us into World War three. The
Speaker 6: attack from the torpedo boats lasted for an hour and
Speaker 6: a half. We had two three flags we put up.
Speaker 6: Two were shot down on the initial ibate flags, big flags.
Speaker 6: They shot two up and down. They put another flag up.
Speaker 6: I didn't personally, but the Sigamund did a seven by thirteen,
Speaker 6: which is call holiday colors. You could see it for
Speaker 6: miles and miles and miles. The Israeli pilots said that,
Speaker 6: but sir, it's an American ship. It's an American ship.
Speaker 6: You have your orders. Hit the ship, and hit it.
Speaker 6: They did, and the consequences are well known. Thirty four
Speaker 6: men were slaughtered, one hundred and seventy four were wounded,
Speaker 6: including myself, and I was walking wounded. The others weren't.
Speaker 6: I've seen men blown in half right before your eyes.
Speaker 6: There's nothing you can do about it. We had none
Speaker 6: to fight back, but our will and our wists and
Speaker 6: are belief in God to survive. In fact, when the
Speaker 6: torpedo hit, I told a friend of mine, Rico Metti,
Speaker 6: he was in the same division. I was in damage
Speaker 6: control and we were there. It said, prepare for torpedo strike.
Speaker 6: And then that's a little bit different than prepare for
Speaker 6: a torpedo hit, because we know what's coming. We have
Speaker 6: our hands on the bulkheads. Boom. It was deafening. You
Speaker 6: couldn't believe the explosion. And they circled the ship, and
Speaker 6: they circled the ship and circled the ship over and
Speaker 6: over and over again, firing that our firefighters, me stretcher bearers,
Speaker 6: people that are trying to get men off deck to
Speaker 6: save their lives. It was horrific. It was horrific to
Speaker 6: see your brothers being blown to bits and killed. It
Speaker 6: was horrific. When the torpedo boats finally got through with
Speaker 6: us after an hour and a half, we thought it
Speaker 6: was over again. No it wasn't. Here come the Israelis
Speaker 6: again in troop carrying helicopters to finish this off. We
Speaker 6: thought they were going to rope down or ladder down, whatever,
Speaker 6: But they were. I was on the starboard, on the
Speaker 6: starboard side. I saw him hovering over the starboard gun
Speaker 6: mount and I just looked at him, you know, I
Speaker 6: figured I was a dead man. Anyway, I just and
Speaker 6: he did the same thing back to me. He went
Speaker 6: like that, he smiled, and all of a sudden they
Speaker 6: were gone. Boom, They just took off. I guess the
Speaker 6: gig was up, you know. Uh, they couldn't seek an
Speaker 6: old World War two cargo ship converted into a spy
Speaker 6: ship with their torpedo boats, with their aircraft, mystere mirage jets,
Speaker 6: dropping napalm and everything else they could on us. There
Speaker 6: were holes in the deck of the ship going. I mean,
Speaker 6: all you could see is daylight all around you. Boom boom,
Speaker 6: boom boom, nothing but daylight. And this one fella I
Speaker 6: want to message his name because he's he infuriates me.
Speaker 6: But he says they really wanted to think that ship
Speaker 6: they would just drop metal or hard bombs and it
Speaker 6: went straight through and you'd be done. Well, Okay, what
Speaker 6: does a forty by forty foot hole?
Speaker 1: Dude?
Speaker 6: What did five torpedoes do that they weren't trying to
Speaker 6: sink it? That was the whole plan. It was cooked
Speaker 6: up by LBJ. Levy Eskill, he was the Prime Minister
Speaker 6: then of Israel. In a cabal of people in our government.
Speaker 6: The USS America and USS Davis and USS Massy came alongside.
Speaker 6: Of course, the aircraft carrier was about a couple of
Speaker 6: miles away. They flew the calicopters over to pick up
Speaker 6: all the dead and wounded, and there were scores of
Speaker 6: them going to different places. They sent them all over
Speaker 6: the world for definity of care. They split up the
Speaker 6: crew so we'd never talk. I stayed with the ship
Speaker 6: two days out at sea. After they took the wounded off,
Speaker 6: and the and the dead except the ones that were
Speaker 6: in the torpedo hole. Here comes Admiral Isaac Kidd and
Speaker 6: Ward Boston doing a board of inquiry, and he got
Speaker 6: us in small groups. I was. I was in sick
Speaker 6: bay with five other guys, and we felt kind of
Speaker 6: relieved because he took his stars off and he threw
Speaker 6: him on the stainless still table that ran out like
Speaker 6: a bellet, really did. I said, Wow, this is pretty cool.
Speaker 6: He says, I'm just like your dad. Just please tell
Speaker 6: me everything you saw and heard. And I did as
Speaker 6: everybody else did, and he got right in my face
Speaker 6: and he says, I'm going to tell all you sobs.
Speaker 6: If you ever repeat a word you just sent to
Speaker 6: me said to me to anybody, I'll make sure you
Speaker 6: end up in prison, living worth or worse. You know
Speaker 6: what worse means. See, yes, sir, I do. So they
Speaker 6: beat us up, the radies, beat us up in our
Speaker 6: own government, beat us up. Medley tell us never talk
Speaker 6: about it when you just see your brothers slaughtered before
Speaker 6: your eyes. How can any human being, how can anybody
Speaker 6: not feel compassion or horror senior brothers slaughtered and not
Speaker 6: talk about it? But I didn't talk about it for
Speaker 6: almost eighteen twenty years until I married my wife, Lisa,
Speaker 6: and I never even told her I was in the military.
Speaker 6: I read a letter from stan Waie Master Chief E
Speaker 6: nine about the USOS liberty, and I said, wow, if
Speaker 6: he can speak, I'm gonna start speaking. I haven't shut
Speaker 6: up since it's my goal. My brothers can't speak, but
Speaker 6: I can. When you've got two crooked governments, the government
Speaker 6: of Israel and the government of the United States set
Speaker 6: us up be murdered to start a World War three,
Speaker 6: that's about as bad as it gets. If we go down,
Speaker 6: the world is completely changed. There were Russian sub under
Speaker 6: US that was ready to knuke Israel. The Temple Mount.
Speaker 6: They need to reflect the to hit, and they were
Speaker 6: ready to do it. But us not thinking, by the
Speaker 6: grace of God, is why I'm here. And it's a
Speaker 6: great honor. And you know what, there's so many different things.
Speaker 6: Navy Court of Inquiry RealD Mount Isaac Kid see Navy
Speaker 6: Court of Inquiry per Captain Ward Boston killed Kid told
Speaker 6: him he believed the attack was deliberate and the Israelies
Speaker 6: knew they the ship was American New York Times two
Speaker 6: thousand and two. Captain Ward Boston, I feel the Israelis
Speaker 6: knew what what they were doing. They knew it was
Speaker 6: American ship used Navy ship. We were identified by Israel
Speaker 6: as a friendly American ship hours an hour before the attack.
Speaker 6: Their issues was they took us off their war title,
Speaker 6: they changed the watch and didn't inform the other watch
Speaker 6: commanders we were in the area, Like anybody believes that
Speaker 6: they just took us off forgot we were there. That's
Speaker 6: sobs Richard Helms, CIA director, It was no accident. Clark Hifford,
Speaker 6: no accident. Dean Russ Secretary of State, no accident. Marshall Carter,
Speaker 6: Former Security Administrative Director n Essay, no mistake. Lewis Battle,
Speaker 6: no mistake. Professor Hayden park Paik, no mistake. FBI officials.
Speaker 6: FBI officials counter the friendly spying can be a damage,
Speaker 6: a damaging as spying for the enemies of the They
Speaker 6: note in nineteen sixty seven went Israeli, Israel just to
Speaker 6: Liberty attacked the electronic intelligence ship USS Liberty. So the
Speaker 6: FBI knew it, the CIA knew it, everybody knew it,
Speaker 6: but they covered up. Thomas Moore, dear friend of mine,
Speaker 6: very good friend. He was a very highly decorated man.
Speaker 6: He was former chief of Staff twice. He's the only
Speaker 6: admiral that ever had command of this Southern Command in
Speaker 6: the Pacific Command, not the same time, but different times,
Speaker 6: and then became two terms Chairman of Joint Chiefs, Captain McGonagall,
Speaker 6: please do not release Jonathan Pollard to the Government of
Speaker 6: Israel until and unless the Government of Hissil acknowledges in
Speaker 6: writing and publicly the government of Israel armed forces the
Speaker 6: Liberty attacked the USS Liberty HGTR five. Now the Captain
Speaker 6: received a medal of honor, and he deserved. I saw
Speaker 6: him in action, great man, he was hit, great man,
Speaker 6: but he was cohersed. Our government curhersed him to tone
Speaker 6: it down, tone it down. I know what they said
Speaker 6: to me, what they say to him. There's no telling.
Speaker 6: Another friend of mine, Cat Buger, of the USS Pueblo,
Speaker 6: which is in North Korea right now. I've talked to
Speaker 6: Mark about it. He's been on that ship. By the way,
Speaker 6: Thank you, Mark, it's a pleasure talking to you. He said,
Speaker 6: they had never been captured if they'd known about the
Speaker 6: USS Liberty. It was so tightly, so tightly covered up.
Speaker 6: And it still is today that people that people simply
Speaker 6: believed that Israel did it by mistake. No, it was
Speaker 6: a pre planned attack to kill us all and get
Speaker 6: us in a lot of trouble, more trouble we ever
Speaker 6: thought of. We were close to a nuclear war. There
Speaker 6: were sacked aircraft in the air headed to car six
Speaker 6: hours before we even got attacked. So the mighty idea
Speaker 6: in this two hour blood bath, they couldn't sink old
Speaker 6: World War two ship. And they couldn't. I bet they're
Speaker 6: still stretching their heads. They can't figure that one out.
Speaker 6: As anybody in here. Didn't know any survivors from a
Speaker 6: torpedo attack. I know one in here. I talked to Indianapolis.
Speaker 6: I guess i'd call him an expert. There's one survivor left.
Speaker 6: He's ninety eight. They hit that ship with one torpedo.
Speaker 6: It was a big ship too, and it brought it
Speaker 6: down immediately. But that ship, our ship took all that
Speaker 6: stayed alive. And that's why I'm here because of the
Speaker 6: gallant crew of the USS Liberty. These are my ship,
Speaker 6: Mason Brothers. There's not very many of us left. There's
Speaker 6: probably fifty or so. I have a crew of two
Speaker 6: hundred and ninety four. Thirty four were killed initially one
Speaker 6: hundred and seventy four woun I helped in operations that
Speaker 6: night with Doc Keefer. He was hitting his stomach. He's
Speaker 6: having him. He had a life jack around it to
Speaker 6: hold his guts in. He was hitting both both legs, knees.
Speaker 6: He stood on those those legs for seventeen hours, operating
Speaker 6: on people that were losing their lives or any hope
Speaker 6: of life. I helped in one operation. One of the
Speaker 6: operations I helped with Doc was a man named Gary Blanchard.
Speaker 6: He was hit and he was hit bad. He got
Speaker 6: hitting the kidneys. He blew his back out. Doc cut
Speaker 6: him open well before that. He says, rub my feet,
Speaker 6: my feet are hard. I took his socks off, rubbed
Speaker 6: his feet, tried to get some circulation, went on to
Speaker 6: the left side of him, and he looked at me.
Speaker 6: He says, you think I'm gonna live. I said, no,
Speaker 6: I don't think you are. Man. Doc cut him open.
Speaker 6: He was dead. Cut him open like a deer I
Speaker 6: used to hunt. I didn't know what it looks like.
Speaker 6: That's what it looked like. We put a few stitches
Speaker 6: in him. Doc did put him over the side and
Speaker 6: it went on all night for seventeen hours. Help never
Speaker 6: got there. For seventeen hours. They left us out there alone.
Speaker 6: They didn't even send a piper cub over there to
Speaker 6: see how we were doing. That's how bad it was.
Speaker 6: They could care less. They did not care, and our
Speaker 6: government still doesn't care. They do not care. They tried
Speaker 6: to silence us, they tried to murder us. They tried
Speaker 6: to call us an i, Samites, jew haters, Nazis, Antisthmitic pigs, jihadis.
Speaker 6: I mean, I can go on and on and on,
Speaker 6: but we're none of that. We're none of that. All
Speaker 6: we want to do is tell the truth to America.
Speaker 6: You deserve the truth. So you paid the taxes. It's
Speaker 6: your money, and you should be able to seek redress
Speaker 6: from your government and say, hey, wait a minute, it's
Speaker 6: been fifty eight years. Coming next June, we're going to
Speaker 6: have a reunion in northern Virginia. I'll bring that up
Speaker 6: again in a minute. But they never have. And I've
Speaker 6: written so many presidents. I only got one letter back
Speaker 6: from Bill Clinton, and he never addressed my letter. He gets,
Speaker 6: I don't know if what was up there, but he
Speaker 6: never addressed my questions. He just sent me a nice
Speaker 6: little note like come on, man. And he's the only
Speaker 6: one I ever got an answer from, including Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 6: I figured he would help us. I put a full
Speaker 6: page add in or I didn't. A donor did, and
Speaker 6: I was president then to have. I'm four time president
Speaker 6: of LVA and former chairman. So I don't give up.
Speaker 6: I'm not going to give I'm almost ad and I
Speaker 6: ain't given up. And my family stand for behind me.
Speaker 6: I know you all do, and listen. I'm not here
Speaker 6: to really beat up on anybody. But when you do
Speaker 6: something like that so horrific, can cover it up for
Speaker 6: all these years. If it was so easy, why didn't
Speaker 6: the governor of the United States just say, okay, we'll
Speaker 6: investigate it as they should have. In seven days, they
Speaker 6: had an invested seven day board of inquiry. In seven
Speaker 6: days they figured out, oh, okay, there's a mistake in identity.
Speaker 6: But no, they were ordered by Johnson to find it.
Speaker 6: In fact, John McCain's daddy was in on that. He
Speaker 6: was an Admiral John McCain junior, and they said make
Speaker 6: sure the crew silenced and make sure this mistaken identity. Now,
Speaker 6: this attack like on the USS Stark and cold, and
Speaker 6: they had a full investigation in depth, not the USS Liberty.
Speaker 6: Oh it's all wrapped up in seven days. A real
Speaker 6: investigation would have taken over several years to figure all
Speaker 6: this out. But no, they would not do that. They
Speaker 6: would not do that. And they're still silences trying to
Speaker 6: silence this. You know they've Last Secember, I had to
Speaker 6: honor spending time with Candice O once on her show.
Speaker 6: A wonderful woman, a kind woman, and a faithful woman
Speaker 6: of God. They're attacking her like I've been attacked. She's
Speaker 6: telling the truth. Everybody's got a right to say something
Speaker 6: that's what's right about this country. Tell her to take
Speaker 6: it away. And we're close to it now, we're very
Speaker 6: close to it. When they make laws that you can't
Speaker 6: talk about another group of people, I don't care if
Speaker 6: they're Asian, Black, whatever, Korean, Arab, you better not talk
Speaker 6: about Israel or you're an anti cement and a Semitic pig.
Speaker 6: And that's just exactly the way they feel. Look what's
Speaker 6: going on now at these colleges. I mean, people see
Speaker 6: what's going on in the world. They see what's going
Speaker 6: on in the world, and the US's liberties of spearhead,
Speaker 6: the hot red hot spearhead to breaking this whole open
Speaker 6: before we all die and with your help, that's going
Speaker 6: to happen. With your help, that's going to happen. And
Speaker 6: whoever out there in tv Land, don't forget us, because
Speaker 6: we're here. We ain't leaving. My greatest fear, well, I
Speaker 6: guess it's not really a fear of My biggest disappointment
Speaker 6: is our own government. We've succeeded our power to a
Speaker 6: foreign country. Israel controls us. They control the Congress, they
Speaker 6: control the Senate, they control our money. We don't control
Speaker 6: our country. Desion the state does? Does that make them
Speaker 6: the real bad people?
Speaker 1: Know?
Speaker 6: The real bad people? The people letting them do it,
Speaker 6: that's the people, real bad people. I mean, if you
Speaker 6: can see anything in godsla, and I'm not an expert
Speaker 6: on it, but I'll tell you what I've seen, These
Speaker 6: pictures that brings me to my knees with sorrow and
Speaker 6: pain for innocence being starved and bombed and burned and
Speaker 6: beat up and raped and robbed. I'm tired of it.
Speaker 6: This whole country should be tired of it. Our passionate
Speaker 6: attachment to the design of state has got to stop.
Speaker 6: My greatest my greatest hope is that I live long
Speaker 6: enough to see some kind of some kind of justice,
Speaker 6: not just for me, but the whole crew. I'm here
Speaker 6: representing the crew. I'm the president of the association, and uh,
Speaker 6: those men that die couldn't speak, but I could speak
Speaker 6: for him and the men that we're old now they're
Speaker 6: all dying off or you know, the diseases, whatever it
Speaker 6: happens in life. We all know that we're all going there.
Speaker 6: Of course, you guys are all young, but uh, I
Speaker 6: know a lot of you in here got some gray hair.
Speaker 6: And I'm sure you remember the USS Liberty, but you
Speaker 6: don't remember the cover up. You heard what you heard
Speaker 6: and you believed it, but it's not the truth, folks,
Speaker 6: that this is one of the most criminal, terrible acts
Speaker 6: committed on a flagged American ship and American history. We're
Speaker 6: the only ship in American history that's never had help
Speaker 6: come to it when they're under attack. That's what they did.
Speaker 6: They left us out there to be slaughtered by the
Speaker 6: zion of State, blame it on Egypt and bring us
Speaker 6: to war. That's why those sack aircraft run the way.
Speaker 6: The only thing that saved us. We didn't sink, and
Speaker 6: they didn't count on that. They did everything they could
Speaker 6: do to silences by intimidation, threats, and evil words. That's
Speaker 6: what our own government did. The crew of the US
Speaker 6: Liberty is most decorated crew in the United States Naval
Speaker 6: history for a single engagement, not none other but the
Speaker 6: US's Liberty. Nobody knows about it from the Medal of
Speaker 6: Honor on down Navy Cross Stars, Bronze Star wars, a
Speaker 6: v combat action, and we got a president until unicitation
Speaker 6: from guests who LBJ I tore it up. I want
Speaker 6: none to do that guy, he left us. He left
Speaker 6: the world in bad shape. We don't need presidents to
Speaker 6: send our young men and women in war all for
Speaker 6: the sake of the design estate. And that's what we're doing.
Speaker 6: I think you all know that. I hope you do.
Speaker 6: That's what they're doing. They want us to bomb our end.
Speaker 6: They want us to take them out and all that shit.
Speaker 6: Israel will probably do it themselves, of course it won't
Speaker 6: be clandestine. The American military would be behind it. I
Speaker 6: really want to thank all of you for being here,
Speaker 6: and thank you Tom for your gracious support. Everybody here
Speaker 6: has been so friendly and nice to me. Boy. I'll
Speaker 6: tell you I wear you, all of you with a
Speaker 6: badge of honor. They can call me anything. They went. Oh,
Speaker 6: by the way, I got my pen and now a member.
Speaker 6: So I would encourage all of you if you would
Speaker 6: help us. Don't write your Congress. They're gonna lie to you.
Speaker 6: They always do. I put the pressure on where send
Speaker 6: it right to Trump. He probably won't listen. But I've
Speaker 6: tried everything. The crew has tried everything. We love our country,
Speaker 6: we love our Lord, we love our families, all families.
Speaker 6: And when they attacked us, they attacked all of you.
Speaker 6: You attack American flagship, you attack an American flagship. They
Speaker 6: attacked all all of us, not just us, but that
Speaker 6: American flag they shot down twice. That's what they did.
Speaker 6: So if they can get by that, if you get
Speaker 6: by with that, they can get by with almost anything.
Speaker 6: And they are right now. I'll ask if you have
Speaker 6: any questions, I'll take a few questions, and I'll relieve you.
Speaker 6: By the way, case close, I rest my case.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Fact Hunter Radio Network.
Speaker 1: Just the facts, Mammy,