← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Sertorius
Thread ID: 8025 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2003-07-10
2003-07-10 06:28 | User Profile
cLast Update: 09/07/2003 09:15
U.S. agency confirms sinking of USS Liberty was accident (!!!!!!-S)
By Nathan Guttman, Haaretz Correspondent
WASHINGTON - New documents released this week by America's National Security Agency support Israel's version of a long-festering controversy between the two countries: Israel's sinking of an American spy ship, the USS Liberty, off the coast of Gaza during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Israel has always said it had no idea the ship was American, but conspiracy theorists and anti-Israel propagandists still claim Israel sank the ship in the full knowledge that it was American.
The documents, originally defined as top secret, were made public by Florida Judge Jay Cristol, who has been investigating the Liberty incident for years and published a book on the subject last year. On Monday, the NSA gave him a transcript of conversations held by two Israeli Air Force helicopter pilots who were hovering over the Liberty as it was sinking, and these tapes confirm Israel's claim that the sinking of the ship, which killed 34 American servicemen and wounded 171, was a tragic error.
After the Liberty was bombed by both the Israel Air Force and the Israel Navy, the two helicopter pilots were summoned from their base to assess the damage and evaluate the possibility of rescuing the surviving crew members. An American spy plane, which had been sent to the area as soon as the NSA learned of the attack, recorded their conversations, which took place between 2:30 and 3:37 P.M. on June 8, the third day of the war.
The spy plane also recorded the orders radioed to the pilots by their supervisor at Hatzor Base, which instructed them to search for Egyptian survivors from the "Egyptian warship" that had just been bombed - thus supporting Israel's claim that it had believed the ship was Egyptian when it ordered it attacked. "Pay attention. The ship is now identified as Egyptian," the pilots were told.
Nine minutes later, Hatzor informed the pilots that it was not an Egyptian warship, but an Egyptian cargo ship. Only at 3:07 were the pilots first informed that the ship might not have been Egyptian at all: Hatzor told them that if they found Arabic-speaking survivors, they should be taken to El-Arish, but if they found English-speaking survivors, they should be taken to Lod. "Clarify by the first man that you bring up, what nationality he is, and report to me immediately," the supervisor instructed, according to the transcript. "It's important to know."
Then, at 3:12, one of the pilots informed Hatzor that he saw an American flag flying over the damaged ship. He was asked to investigate and determine whether it was really an American ship.
This is not the first time such transcripts have been made public: Israel gave its own recordings of the pilots' conversations to the British television station Thames in 1987. But conspiracy theorists charged that Israel had doctored the tapes before handing them over to the station in order to hide the fact that it sank the Liberty intentionally. No such imputation can be made about these new transcripts, as they were never in Israeli hands.
Israel has always said it attacked the Liberty, which America sent to the region to gather intelligence on the progress of the war, because it believed it was an Egyptian supply ship ferrying supplies to the Egyptian troops that Israel was then fighting. When it discovered the error, it immediately informed the Americans, apologized and paid compensation to the victims' families.
The incident was investigated by inquiry commissions in both Israel and the United States, and both concluded that it had, indeed, been a tragic error. Nevertheless, the controversy never died. In 1979, one of the survivors, James Ennes, published a book accusing Israel of bombing the American ship deliberately. Ennes claimed an Israeli spy plane had hovered over the ship all morning and had surely identified it as American, since the American flag was clearly visible.
A later book, written by James Bamford, charged that Israel sank the ship in order to keep America from learning of its plans to attack Syria, and further claimed that the NSA had tapes of conversations among Israeli pilots that not only confirmed this, but also proved that the tapes released by Israel had been doctored.
Another claim that appears frequently on the dozens of Internet sites devoted to the affair is that Israel sank the ship to conceal a mass murder of Egyptian soldiers on the Sinai peninsula.
In its letter to Cristol, the NSA stressed that, contrary to the claims that often appear in such books and Web sites - that the agency has tapes from both the Liberty and from a nearby American submarine that confirm Israel's guilt - the only tapes that exist were those made by the spy plane and given to Cristol this week.
"It's the last piece of intelligence that remained classified, and every rational person that will read it will understand that there is no truth in these conspiracy theories against Israel," Cristol said Tuesday. But he added: "Those who hate Israel, who hate Jews, and those who believe in conspiracy will not be convinced by anything."
Cristol, a former U.S. navy pilot and legal officer, began investigating the Liberty incident 14 years ago. Since publishing his book, which vindicates Israel, he has received threats and been accused of being an Israeli agent. "I take this lightly, but I am saddened to learn that there is this kind of hate toward Israel," he said.
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Sorry Cristol, I believe you as much as I do your fellow tribesman who name is pronounced the same as yours, only spelled differently This "transcript" comes the same office that spent the last year and a half trying and unfortunately succeeded in scaring the hell out of most Americans with their bald face liesabout Iraq and "wmds." I have no doubt that Wolfowitz and Slusky of the "Office of Special Plans" probably wrote this nonesense up in their spare moments when they weren`t writing all that nonsense about Iraq. Then again, when I think about it I think that the Bush Administration is about as truthful as the Clinton Administration.
That must have been one hell of a swim to Malta for LCdr Ennes and his comrades!
[url=http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/315934.html]http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/315934.html[/url]
2003-07-10 17:43 | User Profile
Sertorius
Welcome Back!!!
This lie has been in the preparatory stage for the last 36 years. I want somebody or something to hang for this perfidy. Everything about this release stinks. Only a Washington stooge could believe this.
2003-07-11 03:41 | User Profile
Well, the liars this time weren't careful about their history. There was one Big Lie and one Big Mistake. The lie, of course, was the claim that Israel's attack on the USS Liberty was accidental. That it was deliberate is proved by radio intercepts on Liberty and in Beirut, and by testimony of the Navy crewmen aboard liberty.
Israel wanted to sink Liberty and blame it on the Egyptians, so that Americans would hate Arabs the more, and be more favorable to giving the Jews lots and lots of money. For free. It didn't work, so we got the Big Coverup. Notice how the propagandist used the term "conspiracy theorist" as a way of inviting ridicule to those who know that the Zionist storyline on this attack is a lie.
Zionist Jews almost always lie about their misdeeds, even when it's reasonably certain that the lies will not be believed. They said that American ISM peace activist Rachel Corrie died when a "concrete slab" fell on her. The truth is that she died when a Jewish soldier drove his Caterpiller D9 bulldozer right over her.
The Big Mistake in the Haaretz's article was that Liberty did not sink. The Jews attacked the ship, trying to sink it, but they did not complete the job before jet fighters from the US Sixth Fleet scared the Jews away. Afterward, Liberty was towed to Malta and drydocked for a while. It would be interested to know just who is going around, now, promoting the idea that Liberty sunk in the eastern Mediterranean.
Another error in the Haaretz's article is that James Ennes' book reveals that several Israeli fighters had circled Liberty at least 13 times over a period of several hours, and that some of the pilots of those planes were overheard describing Liberty as an American ship. One of the Israeli Mirage pilots, ordered to attack Liberty, on his approach, radioed a protest that he had been ordered to attack an American ship. The reply? Proceed with the attack anyway.
The numbers of dead and wounded US servicemen appear accurate. But on many other points, it appears that Cristol is lying and that he has written a book of false history with the intention of exculpating Israel for treachery and for war crimes. How Nathan Guttman could have been so careless as to allege that Liberty was sunk, I can't imagine. Jews are usually better liars than that.
Jerry Abbott
2003-07-11 05:17 | User Profile
Greetings to you, Edward!!!
And to you as well, Jerry!
What I found to be amusing in a black way about this sorry tale of treason and cowardice of our "leaders" is the part about the ship being sunk. I guess those photos in Ennes` book was a big rubber blowup of a ship. :lol: :lol: :lol:
I am really surprised that this got past the editor. I know that people in our country don`t study history but the Israelis!?
**Only a Washington stooge could believe this. **
Or an idiotic tub thumping flag waver.