ATTACK ON USS LIBERTY, 1967: The Israeli ambassador to the US said he concluded it had to be deliberate. The only one who admitted it.

The USS Liberty: Argument From Authority:

· Dean Rusk, Secretary of State at the time: "The Liberty was flying an American flag. It was not all that difficult to identify, and my judgment was that somewhere along the line some fairly senior Israeli official gave the go-ahead for… pic.twitter.com/gjWDLgtOcl

— Scott Horton (@scotthortonshow) November 22, 2023

 USS Liberty: Argument From Authority:

· George Ball, Under Secretary of State at the time: "American leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of its citizens."

· Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "I have to conclude that it was Israel's intent to sink the Liberty and leave as few survivors as possible. Israel knew perfectly well that the ship was American."

· NSA Director Marshall Carter said “it couldn’t be anything else but deliberate. There’s just no way you could have a series of circumstances that would justify it being an accident” … "There was no other answer than it was deliberate."

· Captain William McGonagale, Captain of USS Liberty, initially aided in the coverup but at the end of his life called for a true investigation, feeling that it was not a case of mistaken identity. "After many years I finally believe that the attack was deliberate."

· NSA Deputy Director Louis Tordella believed it was a deliberate attack. -- Dr. Louis Tordella, the deputy director of NSA at the time: "I believed the attack might have been ordered by some senior commander on the Sinai Peninsula [where the massacres were taking place] who wrongly suspected that the Liberty was monitoring his activities." Tordella also scrawled across the top page of the formal Israeli "mistake" report, "A nice whitewash."

· Major General John Morrison, NSA deputy director of Operations at the time: "Nobody believes that explanation. The only conjecture that we ever made that made any near sense is that the Israelis did not want us to intercept their communications at that time."

· Walter Deeley, the senior NSA official who conducted an internal NSA investigation of the incident: "There is no way that they didn't know that the Liberty was American."

· Director of CIA Richard Helms did not believe that the Israelis did not know what they were doing. -- Richard Helms, Director of Central Intelligence at the time: to Bamford: "Your chapter on the Liberty was exactly right." ... (to BBC?) “My … view … was that they intended to attack the ship and that there’s no excuse that can be found for saying this was just a mistake.”

· Deputy Director of CIA Rufus Taylor believed that the Israelis knew what they were doing as well.

· Paul C. Warnke, Under Secretary of the Navy at the time: "I found it hard to believe that it was, in fact, an honest mistake on the part of the Israeli air force units.... I suspect that in the heat of battle they figured that the presence of this American ship was inimical to their interests."

· David G. Nes, the deputy head of the American mission in Cairo at the time: "I don't think that there's any doubt that it was deliberate.... [It is] one of the great cover-ups of our military history."

· “The day after the attack, Johnson confided to a Newsweek reporter that he believed Israel deliberately attacked the Liberty to prevent her from spying. Israeli officials learned the details of Johnson’s interview within 24 hours and successfully pressured the magazine to water down its planned story. “The Newsweek editorial has made changes in the last proofreading of the news item compared with the original version that I was shown last night,” Patir cabled Jerusalem. “It toned down the version by adding a question mark to the heading, leaving out the words deliberate attack, and leaving out the commentary paragraph that said that the leak is intended to free American policy makers from the pressure of the pro-Israeli public opinion.”

· Senior leadership of NSA was “virtually unanimous” that it was deliberate, 231.

· NSA had an official investigation. Its leader, Walter Deeley, concluded, “There is no way that they didn’t kow that the Liberty was American.” 232

· NSA Director Carter: “There was no other answer than that it was deliberate,” he told Bamford in 1980. 232

· NSA Deputy Director Dr. Louis Tordella. He wrote it up in an official memo and also to a Congressman, George Mahon, (D-TX) 232

· US Air Force Major Gen. John Morrison, deputy chief of NSA operations: “Nobody believes that explanation. The only conjecture that we ever made that made any sense is that the Israelis did not want us to intercept their communications at that time.” When Bamford told him of the massacres, he thought that sounded like the right motive. “What a hell of a thing to do.” 233

· Adm. Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations beginning just after the attack: “I have to conclude that it was Israel’s intent to sink the Liberty and leave as few survivors as possible.” … “Israel knew perfectly well the ship was American.” 237

· Capt. McGonigal, dying of cancer in 1998: “After many years, I finally believe that the attack was deliberate. I don’t think there has been an adequate investigation of the incident. The flag was flying prior to the attack on the ship.” 233

· Tom Hughes Director of INR; · Bobby Ray Inman deputy director of Central Intelligence · NSA Deputy Director for Operations Oliver Kirby; · General John E. Morrison the next DD; · and Lieutenant General William E. Odom, later Director. · The Israeli ambassador to the US said he concluded it had to be deliberate. The only one who admitted it. · CIA official quoting an Israeli source: “[Regarding the attack on the USS Liberty by Israeli airplanes and torpedo boats … he said that, ‘You’ve got to remember that in this campaign there is neither the time nor room for mistakes,’ which was intended as an obtuse reference that Israel’s forces knew what flag the Liberty was flying and exactly what the vessel was doing off the coast. [Deletion] implied that the ship’s identity was known six hours before the attack but that Israeli headquarters was not sure how many people might have access to the information the Liberty was intercepting. He also implied that [deletion] was no certainty on controls as to where the intercepted information was going and again reiterated that Israeli forces did not makes mistakes in their campaign. He was emphatic in stating to me that they knew what kind of ship the USS Liberty was and what it was doing offshore.”

· U.S. Ambassador Dwight Porter heard them: “It’s an American ship!”

• Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Remembering the Liberty,” Washington Post, November 6, 1991 Now tell me that's a logical fallacy.

Yes, the attack on our ship happened over 55 years ago. But we’re not just bringing it up now.

Unlike the attacks on the #USSPueblo, #USSStark and #USSCole as well as the 1983 bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, the US government has not investigated the attack on the…

— USS Liberty Veterans Association (@usslibertyvets) November 23, 2023