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Ussliberty navytimes { June 26 2002 } Fwd: Navy Times article (fwd)
>---------------------------------------
> From the June 26 2002 issue of Navy Times:
>------------------------------------------
>
> CONFLICTING COMMENTS REKINDLE LIBERTY DISPUTE
>
> KEY INVESTIGATORS EXPRESS BELIEF THAT ISRAEL
> DELIBERATELY ATTACKED U.S. SHIP
>
> By Bryant Jordan
> Times staff writer
>
>Thirty-five years after Israeli air and naval forces attacked a
>lightly armed U.S. Navy spy ship during the Arab-Israeli Six-Day
>War, the CIA director at the time and the legal counsel to the
>Navy’s court of inquiry say the attack was deliberate.
>"It was no accident," former CIA director Richard Helms said May
>29, bucking that agency’s June 13, 1967, report that indicated the
>incident could have been a mistake.
>
>Retired Navy legal counsel Capt. Ward Boston says he and the
>court’s president, the late Rear Adm. Isaac "Ike" Kidd, always
>believed Israeli forces knowingly attacked the Liberty.
>
>"I feel the Israelis knew what they were doing. They knew they
>were shooting at a U.S. Navy ship," said Boston, who lives in
>Coronado, Calif. "That’s the bottom line. I don’t care how they
>tried to get out of it."
>
>The attack killed 34 men and wounded 172 others, and sparked a
>long-running controversy: Did Israel knowingly try to sink the
>American ship or did it believe the ship was an Egyptian vessel?
>
>Officially, the Navy exonerated Israel on June 18, 1967 — 10 days
>after the attack — when the Navy court of inquiry found that
>available evidence indicated the attack was a case of mistaken
>identity.
>
> THE COURT OF INQUIRY
>
>Boston said Kidd told him he believed the attack was deliberate
>and that the Israelis knew the ship was American.
>
>That flies in the face of the findings of Kidd’s court, and also
>what the author of a new book on the Liberty says Kidd told him in
>interviews in the early 1990s.
>
>A. Jay Cristol, a federal judge in Florida and retired Navy
>aviator who also served in the service’s Judge Advocate General’s
>Corps, is the author of the upcoming "The Liberty Incident."
>
>"Kidd told me an entirely different story," said Cristol, whose
>new book is dedicated to Kidd, who died in 1999.
>
>Cristol said that during one interview with Kidd in December 1990,
>Kidd related that when he brought the court’s report to then-Chief
>of Naval Operations Adm. David Lamar McDonald, the CNO asked him,
>"Ike, was it intentional?"
>
>"Ike said, ‘No, Admiral,'" Cristol recalled.
>
>But Boston remembers that when Kidd returned from Washington, he
>said officials were not interested in hearing the truth.
>
>"In military life, you accept the fact that if you’re told to shut
>up, you shut up. We did what we were told," Boston said.
>
>He explained that he is willing to talk now because "everyone else
>is shooting their mouth off."
>
>Boston said he does not know whether his beliefs were shared by
>the other members of the court, Capts. Bert M. Atkinson Jr. and
>Bernard J. Lauff.
>
>Lauff could not be located for comment. Atkinson died in 1999.
>
>But Boston’s statements do put him now in the camp of retired Adm.
>Merlin Staring, who as a captain and staff legal officer in London
>was initially told to review the court’s report.
>
>Staring said June 3 that the report was taken from him before he
>finished his review, but based on what he had seen, the evidence
>did not support the contention that the attack was an accident.
>
>Staring concedes he still has not read the entire report.
>
>Staring, who went on to become the Navy’s top JAG officer, is now
>part of a newly formed Liberty Alliance, which includes former CNO
>and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Thomas Moorer and two Marine
>Medal of Honor recipients, Gen. Ray Davis and Col. Mitchell Paige.
>
>The group wants a full congressional investigation into the attack
>and is lobbying military organizations, including the Veterans of
>Foreign Wars and the American Legion, hoping to garner support
>among their members, said Tito Howard, the group’s executive
>director.
>
> SURVIVORS ALLEGE CONSPIRACY
>
>Many Liberty survivors and their supporters long have maintained
>that the attack was deliberate and that the Kidd report excluded
>testimony from crew members that would have shown that.
>
>Boston recalled that testimony was taken from crew members who
>said the Israelis fired on life rafts when they were put into the
>water.
>
>The court’s report includes testimony indicating the shooting of
>the life rafts was incidental, occurring when the ship was strafed
>by Israeli jets.
>
>Some allege Israel wanted the spy ship sunk to ensure it did not
>pick up communications showing Israel was planning to seize the
>Golan Heights from Syria. Others say it was to prevent Liberty
>from intercepting communications dealing with an alleged Israeli
>massacre of Egyptian POWs in the Sinai.
>
>Some Liberty survivors and supporters claim the U.S. government
>covered up the incident to avoid a conflict with Israel that could
>have cost the Johnson administration support among Jewish voters
>and supporters. Subsequent administrations and Congresses have
>avoided a thorough airing of the incident for the same reasons,
>they say.
>
>But Cristol says there have been 10 U.S. investigations, ranging
>from the court of inquiry and the CIA’s report to several
>conducted by House and Senate committees.
>
>Five drew no conclusions regarding Israel, according to a list
>compiled by Cristol, while others accepted that it was an
>accident.
>
>The most recent official look at the incident was in 1991, when
>the House Armed Services subcommittee on investigations found no
>evidence to support the Liberty survivors’ claim that Israel
>attacked the ship deliberately.
>
> REPORTS AND RECOLLECTIONS
>
>The CIA’s report, the earliest of those assembled, held open the
>possibility that the attack was a case of mistaken identity — the
>finding that the Kidd court went on to make five days later —
>though it did not present that as a conclusion.
>
>In the June 13, 1967, report, the CIA stated that "an overzealous
>pilot" could have mistaken the Liberty for an Egyptian ship, the
>El Quesir. Helms, the former CIA director, declined to discuss the
>incident at length.
>
>"I’ve done all I can. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in
>court" testifying about the incident, he said.
>
>Mike Weeks, a naval aviation writer and amateur historian who
>studied the official Navy communications that occurred during and
>after the attack and believes it was an accident, said there is
>more information on the Liberty still classified and believes the
>government should release all of it.
>
>"Just put it out there and see how it flows," he said. "The bottom
>line, all this stuff ought to be let loose, for heaven’s sake."
>
> ------------------
>
>Bryant Jordan is a staff writer for Marine Corps Times.
>
>_______________
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