What's the difference between murder and massacre?
The answer is Terry Halbardier, whose bravery and ingenuity as a
23-year-old Navy seaman spelled the difference between the murder of 34
of the USS Liberty crew and the intended massacre of all 294.
The
date was June 8, 1967; and for the families of the 34 murdered and for
the Liberty's survivors and their families, it is a "date which will
live in infamy" -- like the date of an earlier surprise attack on the
U.S. Navy.
The infamy is two-fold: (1) the Liberty, a virtually defenseless
intelligence collection platform prominently flying an American flag in
international waters, came under deliberate attack by Israeli aircraft
and three 60-ton Israeli torpedo boats off the coast of the Sinai on a
cloudless June afternoon during the six-day Israeli-Arab war; and (2)
President Lyndon Johnson called back carrier aircraft dispatched to
defend the Liberty lest Israel be embarrassed -- the start of an
unconscionable cover-up, including top Navy brass, that persists to
this day.
Given all they have been through, the Liberty survivors and other
veterans - who joined Halbardier to celebrate his belated receipt of
the Silver Star - can be forgiven for having doubted that this day
would ever come. In the award ceremony at the Visalia (California)
office of Rep. Devin Nunes, the Republican congressman pinned the
Silver Star next to the Purple Heart that Halbardier found in his home
mailbox three years ago.
Nunes said, "The government has kept this quiet I think for too
long, and I felt as my constituent he [Halbardier] needed to get
recognized for the services he made to his country."
Nunes got
that right. Despite the many indignities the Liberty crew has been
subjected to, the mood in Visalia was pronouncedly a joyous one of
Better (42 years) Late Than Never. And, it did take some time to sink
in: Wow, a gutsy congressman not afraid to let the truth hang out on
this delicate issue.
Treatment Accorded the Skipper
As we gathered in Congressman
Nunes's office, I could not get out of my head the contrast between
this simple, uncomplicated event and the rigmarole that senior Navy
officers went through to pin a richly deserved Medal of Honor on
another hero of that day, the Liberty's skipper, Captain William
McGonagle.
Although badly wounded by Israeli fire on June 8, 1967, McGonagle
was able to keep the bombed, torpedoed, napalmed Liberty afloat and
limping toward Malta, where what was left of the bodies of the 34
crewmen killed and the 174 wounded could be attended to.
Do the math: yes, killed and wounded amounted to more than two-thirds of the Liberty crew of 294.
I
remembered what a naval officer involved in McGonagle's award ceremony
told one of the Liberty crew: "The government is pretty jumpy about
Israel...the State Department even asked the Israeli ambassador if his
government had any objections to McGonagle getting the medal."
When McGonagle received his award, the White House (the normal
venue for a Medal of Honor award) was all booked up, it seems, and
President Johnson (who would have been the usual presenter) was
unavailable. So it fell to the Secretary of the Navy to sneak off to
the Washington Navy Yard on the banks of the acrid Anacostia River,
where he presented McGonagle with the Medal of Honor and a citation
that described the attack but not the identity of the attackers.
Please don't misunderstand. The Liberty crew is not big on
ceremony. They are VERY-not-big on politicians who wink when Navy
comrades are killed and wounded at sea.
Getting the Truth Out
The
Liberty survivors are big on getting the truth out about what actually
happened that otherwise beautiful day in June 1967. Last Wednesday's
award of the Silver Star to Terry Halbardier marked a significant step
in the direction of truth telling. Is it too much to hope that the
example set by Nunes may embolden other lawmakers to right the wrongs
done to their Liberty-veteran constituents -- and thus to chip away at
what's left of the cover-up?
Halbardier said he accepted his Silver Star on behalf of the entire
294-man crew. He and fellow survivor Don Pageler expressed particular
satisfaction at the wording of the citation, which stated explicitly --
with none of the usual fudging -- the identity of the attackers: "The
USS Liberty was attacked by Israeli aircraft and motor torpedo boats in
the East Mediterranean Sea...." In the past, official citations, like
Captain McGonagle's, had avoided mentioning Israel by name when
alluding to the attack.
I think former U.S. Ambassador Edward Peck put it best in
condemning this kind of approach as "obsequious, unctuous subservience
to the peripheral interests of a foreign nation at the cost of the
lives and morale of our own service members and their families."
Strong words for a diplomat. But right on target.
Were it not for Halbardier's bravery, ingenuity, and technical
expertise, the USS Liberty would surely have sunk, taking down much -
if not all - of the crew. Israeli commando helicopters were ready to
take care of any personnel still that survived the sinking.
The first thing the Israeli aircraft bombed and strafed were the
Liberty's communications antennae and other equipment. They succeeded
in destroying all the antennae that were functional. One antenna on the
port side, though, had been out of commission and had escaped damage.
On Deck--Just a Guy From Texas
In receiving the Silver Star,
Halbardier made light of his heroism, claiming that he was just a guy
from Texas who could do a whole lot with simple stuff like baling wire.
(In the infantry we called this kind of thing a "field expedient.") In
any case, with his can-do attitude and his technical training, he
figured he might be able to get that particular antenna working again.
But first he would have to repair a cable that had been destroyed on
deck and then connect the antenna to a transmitter.
The deck was still being strafed, but Halbardier grabbed a reel of
cable, ran out onto the deck, and attached new cable to the antenna so
a radioman could get an SOS out to the 6th fleet in the Mediterranean.
Voila.
"Mayday" went out; almost immediately the Israeli aircraft and torpedo
ships broke off the attack and went back to base; the Israeli
government sent a quick apology to Washington for its unfortunate
"mistake;" and President Johnson issued orders to everyone to make
believe the Israelis were telling the truth -- or at least to remain
silent.
To their discredit, top Navy brass went along, and the Liberty
survivors were threatened with court martial and prison if they so much
as mentioned to their wives what had actually happened. They were
enjoined as well from discussing it with one another. As Liberty
crewman Don Pageler put it, "We all headed out after that, and we
didn't talk to each other."
The circumstances were ready-made for serious Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The
stories shared by Liberty survivors after the award ceremony, including
descriptions of the macabre but necessary effort to reassemble
torpedoed body parts, and the plague of survivor's guilt, were as
heart-rending as any I have heard. They are stories that should be
shared more widely for those muzzled far too long -- those who, even 42
years later, might be helped by being in contact with other Liberty
survivors, and being able to talk about it.
These were the deep emotional scars to supplement the ones all over
Halbardier's body, some of which he uncovered when asked by the local
press gathered there in Visalia. Typically, Halbardier made light of
the shrapnel that had to be plucked out of his flesh, emphasizing that
he was lucky compared to some of the other crew.
No Mistake
Despite Israeli protestations, the accumulated
evidence, including intercepted voice communications, is such that no
serious observer believes Israel's "Oops" excuse of a terrible mistake.
The
following exchanges are excerpts of testimony from U.S. military and
diplomatic officials given to Alison Weir, founder of "If Americans
Knew" and author of American Media Miss the Boat:
Israeli pilot to ground control: "This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?"
Ground control: "Yes, follow orders."
.......................
"But sir, it's an American ship -- I can see the flag!"
Ground control: "Never mind; hit it!"
Haviland Smith, a CIA officer stationed in Beirut during the
Six-Day War, says he was told that the transcripts were "deep-sixed,"
because the U.S. government did not want to embarrass Israel.
Tapes Also Destroyed
Equally telling is the fact that the National Security Agency (NSA)
destroyed voice tapes seen by many intelligence analysts, showing that
the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing.
I asked a former
CIA colleague, who was also an analyst at that time, what he remembered
of those circumstances. Here is his e-mail reply:
"The chief of the analysts studying the Arab-Israeli region at the
time told me about the intercepted messages and said very flatly and
firmly that the pilots reported seeing the American flag and repeated
their requests of confirmation of the attack order. Whole platoons of
Americans saw those intercepts. If NSA now says they do not exist, then
someone ordered them destroyed."
One need hardly add at this point that the destruction of evidence
without investigation is an open invitation to repetition in the future.
Think interrogation videotapes, for example.
As
for the legal side: the late Captain Ward Boston, unburdened himself on
his accomplice role as the Navy lawyer appointed as senior counsel to
Adm. Isaac Kidd, who led a one-week (!) investigation and then followed
orders to pronounce the attack on the Liberty a case of "mistaken
identity."
Boston signed a formal declaration on Jan. 8, 2004, in which he
said he was "outraged at the efforts of the apologists for Israel in
this country to claim that this attack was a case of 'mistaken
identity.'" Boston continued:
"The evidence was clear. Both Adm. Kidd and I believed with
certainty that this attack ... was a deliberate effort to sink an
American ship and murder its entire crew ... Not only did the Israelis
attack the ship with napalm, gunfire, and missiles, Israeli torpedo
boats machine-gunned three lifeboats that had been launched in an
attempt by the crew to save the most seriously wounded -- a war crime ...
"I know from personal conversations I had with Adm. Kidd that
President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of 'mistaken
identity' despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary."
W. Patrick Lang, Col., USA (ret.), who was the Defense Intelligence
Agency's top analyst for the Middle East for eight years, recounted the
Israeli air attacks as follows:
"The flight leader spoke to his
base to report that he had the ship in view, that it was the same ship
he had been briefed on, and that it was clearly marked with the U.S.
flag...
"The flight commander was reluctant. That was very clear. He didn't
want to do this. He asked them a couple of times, 'Do you really want
me to do this?' I've remembered it ever since. It was very striking.
I've been harboring this memory for all these years."
Lang, of course, is not alone. So too Terry Halbardier, who told
those assembled last Wednesday, "I think about it [the attack on the
Liberty] every day."
Why Sink the Ship?
What we know for
sure is, as the independent commission headed by former Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Thomas Moorer put it, the attack "was a
deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire
crew."
What we do not know for sure is why the Israelis wanted that done. Has no one dared ask the Israelis?
One
view is that the Israelis did not want the United States to find out
they were massing troops to seize the Golan Heights from Syria and
wanted to deprive the U.S. of the opportunity to argue against such a
move.
James Bamford offers an alternative view in his excellent book,
Body of Secrets. Bamford adduces evidence, including reporting from an
Israeli journalist eyewitness and an Israeli military historian, of
wholesale killing of Egyptian prisoners of war at the coastal town of
El Arish in the Sinai. The Liberty was patrolling directly opposite El
Arish in international waters but within easy range to pick up
intelligence on what was going on there. And the Israelis were well
aware of that.
But the important thing here is not to confuse what we know (the
deliberate nature of the Israeli attack) with the ultimate purpose
behind it, which remains open to speculation.
Also worth noting
is the conventional wisdom prevalent in our Fawning Corporate Media
(FCM) that Egypt forced Israel into war in June 1967. An excellent,
authoritative source has debunked that -- none other than former Israeli
Prime Minister Menachem Begin! In an unguarded moment in 1982, when he
was prime minister, he admitted publicly:
"In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in
the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was
really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided
to attack him."
Thus, the Israeli attack admittedly amounted to starting a war of
aggression, and the occupied West Bank territories and the Golan
Heights - gained by the Israelis in the 1967 war - remain occupied to
this day.
The post WWII tribunal at Nuremberg distinguished a "war of aggression"
from other war crimes, terming it the "supreme international crime,
differing from other war crimes only in that it contains the
accumulated evil of the whole."
Perhaps the attempt to sink the Liberty and finish off all survivors qualifies as one of those accumulated evils.
Terry Halbardier summed it up this way on Wednesday:
"There's lots of theories but let's just say they didn't want us listening in to what they wanted to do."
Getting Away With Murder
In sum, on June 8, 1967, the
Israeli government learned that it could get away with murder,
literally, and the crime would be covered up, so strong is the
influence of the Israel Lobby in our Congress -- and indeed, in the
White House. And those USS Liberty veterans who survived well enough to
call for an independent investigation have been hit with charges of,
you guessed it, anti-Semitism.
Does all this have relevance today? Of course.
Benjamin
Netanyahu, the new Israeli Prime Minister has now had an
up-close-and-personal chance to take the measure of our new president
and has already thumbed his nose at Barack Obama's plea for a halt in
illegal construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.
The Israelis seem convinced they remain in the catbird's seat,
largely because of the Israel Lobby's influence with U.S. lawmakers and
opinion makers -- not to mention the entree the Israelis enjoy to the
chief executive himself by having one of their staunchest allies, Rahm
Emanuel, in position as White House chief of staff.
The recent Obama-Netanyahu encounter reminded me very much of the
meeting in Vienna between another young American president and Nikita
Khrushchev in early June 1961. The Soviets took the measure of
President John Kennedy, and we got the Cuban missile crisis, bringing
the world close to nuclear destruction.
Netanyahu is currently whipping up frenzy and fear in the face of
what he calls the "existential threat" posed by Iran -- frenzy about the
"danger" from Iran that could lead to military action of some kind. So
confident is Netanyahu of the solidity of his position with movers and
shakers in the U.S. that he may be sorely tempted to mount the kind of
provocation that would be aimed at confronting Obama with an unwelcome
choice between joining an Israeli attack on Iran or facing dire
political consequences at home.
And nothing is outlandish any more. Remember Seymour Hersh's report
about Cheney's office conjuring up plots as to how best to trigger a
war with Iran?
"The one that interested me [SH] the most was why
don't we build -- we in our shipyard -- build four or five boats that
look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy Seals on them with a lot of arms.
And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a
shoot-up."
Mullen's Message
President Obama might want to think about delivering a pointed message via a senior U.S. military officer. It worked last time.
In
early July 2008, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike
Mullen, was sent to Israel to read the riot act to then-Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert, who seemed to be itching to start hostilities
with Iran while Bush and Cheney were still in office.
We learned from the Israeli press that Mullen, to his credit, went
so far as to warn the Israelis not to even think about another incident
like the attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967 -- that the Israelis
should disabuse themselves of the notion that U.S. military support
would be knee-jerk automatic if Israel somehow provoked open
hostilities with Iran.
This is the only occasion of which I am aware when a U.S. official
of such seniority braced Israel about the Liberty incident. A gutsy
move, especially with Cheney and Elliott Abrams then in the White
House, two hawks who would bless -- or even encourage -- an Israeli
provocation that would make it very difficult for Washington to avoid
springing to the defense of its "ally."
The Israelis know that Mullen knows that the attack on the Liberty
was deliberate. Mullen could have raised no more neuralgic an issue to
take a shot across an Israeli bow than to cite the attack on the
Liberty. The Jerusalem Post reported that Mullen cautioned that a
Liberty-type incident must be avoided in any future military actions in
the Middle East.
Will Netanyahu give more weight to Mullen or to pro-Israel
politicians like Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey? Lautenberg, who
has visited Israel 80 times since 1968, spoke with the Jerusalem Post
earlier this week and pledged full support for pretty much whatever
Israel wants to do:
"Israel didn't ask us permission to drop bombs twice on Syrian
nuclear facilities. I don't hear America scolding Israel for what it
did then. Hypothetically, if Israel were able to get rid of Iran's
nuclear bomb-making capability, I'm sure that America would not send
Israel a chastising email message. We have to give Israel the courtesy
of [allowing it to] make its own decisions."
For good measure, Lautenberg said Israel "won't return to the '67 borders. They are insufficient to permit Israel to function."
Let
me ask again: Will Netanyahu give more weight to Mullen over Lautenberg
and a pro-Israel U.S. Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton) who spoke
about "obliterating" Iran during last year's campaign?
In gauging President Obama's clout with the Washington
power-brokers, Netanyahu is likely to draw conclusions more from things
like Obama's inability, or reluctance, to turn off the feckless,
counterproductive sabotage squads inside Iran, than from any warnings
Netanyahu may have heard from the president to please not attack Iran.
Seems we are pretty much back where we were a year ago, when it
looked like Olmert might mount some kind of provocation involving Iran.
Perhaps President Obama should send Adm. Mullen back to Israel.
And perhaps this time Mullen should take Terry Halbardier with him.
Netanyahu needs to be confronted without delay. And June 8, the
42nd anniversary of the attempted sinking of the USS Liberty, could
prove an interesting time to be in Tel Aviv.