Re: [A-List] BBC: Why did Israel attack USS Liberty?

[Omahkohkiaayo_ipoyi <omahkohkiaayo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Among the most popular theories as to why Israel would take such
drastic action against its superpower ally is that the Liberty, a $40m
state-of-the-art surveillance ship, was eavesdropping on an Israeli
massacre of Egyptian prisoners of war.
 
Israel strongly denies its troops executed Egyptian POWs, saying those
who died in an incident at that time were 250 armed Palestinian
fighters killed in action.

Another is that the ship had learnt of secret Israeli plans to invade
Syria's Golan Heights two days later and had to be destroyed.

'US collusion' theory

Perhaps the most sinister motive is that put forward by journalist
Peter Hounam in his 2003 book "Operation Cyanide".

Mr Hounam claims secret elements within the US and Israeli governments
colluded to bomb the ship and blame the attack on Egypt and their
superpower ally, the Soviet Union, triggering massive retaliation
which would ensure Israeli victory.
 
"The attack on the Liberty was pre-planned, perhaps from at least a
year beforehand," Mr Hounam says.
 
"The Liberty was sent into a very dangerous situation, where it was,
in my view, placed in a position to be attacked."
 
Mr Hounam says the intention was to sink the ship and kill everyone on
board, but as the Liberty remained afloat the plan was aborted and has
been hushed up ever since.
<...>

In Full: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6690425.stm
 

Response Jim C:

James Bamford dealt with this exhaustively in his "Body of Secrets". 

After his book "The Puzzle Palace", which the NSA tried in every way to
suppress, and members of NSA were forbidden to even acknowledge having read
it, James Bamford was given unprecedented access inside NSA to th epoint of
having him give courses on the history of NSA inside NSA to NSA staffers
and even giving him some raw intercepts (presumably better he was inside
the NSA tent pissing out than outside the NSA tent pissing in). By the way,
lest someone think therefore his book Body of Secrets was as coopted as he
was, read his next book "Pretext for War" which neither the Bush
Administration nor NSA was one bit happy about for sure.

In his book Body of Secrets, Bamford documents that not only wre there
multiple incidents of Zionist troops acting exactly like Nazi
Einstatzgruppen execution squads (having the prsioners did their own graves
before shhoting them in masse), and not only were these incidents being
recorded by Israeli radio communications intercepted by the Liberty
in real time, but the Israelis did not know that a NSA aircraft an EC-121
was in the area recording the same Israeli radio transmissions.

The Israelis made repeated straffing runs from the air and sea over a five
hour period trying to make sure that not only the Liberty did not survive
but also that not one crew member did either; in that they failed.

I had a chat with Victor Ostrovsky, formerly of the Mossad and also
formerly an Israeli Naval commander on his radio show "Spytalk" out of
Tuscon, Arizona, and Ostrovsky comfirmed teh accuracy of the Bamford
account based on access to raw NSA intercepts.

On that same radio program, which I have a tape of, in discussing how
Zionists not only act like Nazis, while trading on the Nazi Holocaust, I
mentioned how they actively colaborate with and even help to shield real
wanted Nazis like Walter Rauff, sentenced to death in absentia at
Nuremberg, he was the inventor of the first Nazi mobile gas vans disguised
as ambulances, and while he was "Internal Security Advisor" to the Pinochet
fascist dicatatorship and a wanted war criminal, Israel was selling cluster
bombs to the Pinochet dictatorship and even training DINA personnel in
"interrogation techniques" on Israeli bases. Ostrovsky shocked me totally
when he said that was nothing and that when he was in the Israeli Navy and
later in Mossad, he saw documentation that in 1949, Otto Skorzeny, known as
Hitler's Commando, who not only led the counterattack against the July 20th
Plot to Assassinate Hitler, and later wound up on the CIA payroll (which is
why he ceased being a wanted war criminal) but was also the head of ODESSA
the underground oprganization hiding wanted nazi war criminals and a
hard-core nazi until his death, was on an Israeli Naval Base as a
"Consultant" on Commando techniques. That absolutely blew my mind and I
have a tape of it.

Clip all extraneous text before replying to a message or risk suspension
=======



                                 USS Liberty
                Did Israel commit one war crime to hide another?

                           By James M. Ennes, Jr.

Washington Report readers know the story well.  In 1967 on the fourth day
of the Six Day War, the armed forces of Israel attacked the American
intelligence ship USS Liberty for 90 minutes in international waters in
broad daylight following several hours of close, low-level reconnaissance. 
Thirty-four men died, 171 were hurt, and the ship was so badly damaged that
it had to be scrapped.

The government of Israel has lied about the circumstances ever since,
telling a story markedly different from that told by American survivors.
Congress has refused to question Israel's demonstrably false account, even
though the State Department's own analysis finds the Israeli story to be
untrue.

Yet the most pressing question remaining from that infamy is not whether
the attack was deliberate.  That was settled long ago for most reasonable
people. The question is why Israel risked its cozy relationship with
America by killing American seaman on the high seas.

Indeed, spokesmen for Israel use that question in Israel's defense.
Why, they ask, would Israel risk alienating its American friends?

So why did Israel attack?  Intelligence analysts and others have long
supposed that Israel attacked to prevent the ship from reporting the
impending invasion of the Golan Heights, then imminent despite cease fire
pleas by the United States.  Israel's defenders reject that explanation.

Recent reports in the Israeli and Egyptian press suggest another powerful
possibility.

According to eyewitness accounts by Israeli officers and journalists, the
Israeli Army - the army that claims to hold itself to a higher moral
standard than other armies - executed as many as 1,000 Arab prisoners
during the 1967 war.

Historian Gabby Bron wrote in the Yediot Ahronot in Israel that he
witnessed Israeli troops executing Egyptian prisoners on the morning of
June 8, 1967, in the Sinai town of El Arish.

Bron reported that he saw about 150 Egyptian POWs being held at the El
Arish airport where they were sitting on the ground, densely crowded
together with their hands held on the back of their necks.  Every few
minutes, Bron writes, Israeli soldiers would escort an Egyptian POW from
the group to a hearing conducted by two men in Israeli army uniforms.
Then the man would be taken away, given a spade, and forced to dig his own
grave.

"I watched as (one) man dug a hole for about 15 minutes," Bron wrote.
"Afterwards, the (Israeli military) policeman told him to throw the shovel
away, and then one of them leveled an Uzi at him and shot two short bursts,
each of three or four bullets."

Bron says he witnessed about ten such executions, until the grave was
filled. Then an Israeli Colonel threatened him with a revolver, forcing him
to leave the area.

USS Liberty was nearby

As those executions were underway, America's most sophisticated
intelligence platform, USS Liberty, was less than 13 miles from El Arish.

We were close enough to see the town mosque with the naked eye.  With
binoculars we could make out individual buildings and might have seen the
executions if we had looked in the right place.

Could our operators have heard voice radio messages revealing these
killings? Did senior Israeli officers sanction the murders, or did they
learn of them? How would they have reacted to the knowledge that USS
Liberty was nearby and might have heard incriminating radio traffic?

Would they have been desperate enough to attack an American ship?

The Liberty attack was a war crime

The attack on USS Liberty was itself a war crime.  US Navy Commander Walter
Jacobsen, a Navy Legal Officer then doing graduate work at George
Washington University, conducted an extensive legal analysis of the attack.

His conclusion, reported in the Winter, 1986, Naval Law Review, was that
several aspects of the attack violated provisions of the Geneva Conventions
-- war crimes. Specifically, Commander Jacobsen found that the attack was
not legally justified, that it constituted an act of aggression under the
United Nations Charter, that the use of unmarked aircraft, the wanton
destruction of life rafts in the water, the jamming of international radio
distress frequencies, and the failure of the torpedo boat commanders to
render immediate assistance to a disabled and helpless enemy were all
violations of international law.

US refusal to investigate violates Geneva Conventions

For years, USS Liberty survivors have asked Members of Congress to
investigate the circumstances of the attack.

The Israeli version is untrue. We did fly a flag. We did identify
ourselves. We were in international waters. They did not stop firing after
seeing our flag as they claim, but continued to fire for another 40
minutes. The attack lasted 75 minutes and was not brief or accidental as
Israel claims. We did not "attempt to hide" or escape when detected, as
Israeli has charged.  These things are easy to prove.

More important are the war crimes discussed by Commander Jacobsen.
These things should have been investigated in 1967.  Yet U.S. officials
have ignored the offenses for 29 years, refusing to investigate or even to
acknowledge them.

That refusal is itself a crime.  The United States, as a signatory to the
Geneva Conventions of 1949, is "under the obligation to search for persons
alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed"
violations of the conventions, and to see that violators are brought to
trial.

There are no exceptions. War crimes reported to government officials must
be investigated and perpetrators tried.

Yet even this is ignored by U.S. officials. Liberty survivors for many
years have reported the crimes committed against us and have requested an
appropriate investigation.  Despite the law, our complaints are ignored. 
No investigation of these charges has ever been held.

Recently Liberty's Joe Meadors, a former president and chairman of the
Liberty Veterans Association, has filed formal complaints with the House
and Senate Ethics Committees against members who have ignored our
complaints.

To no surprise, these complaints, too, are being ignored.  

Navy Refusal to investigate violates Navy Regulations

When the Liberty was attacked, Captain Joseph Tully in the aircraft carrier
USS Saratoga received the ship's call for help and immediately sent jet
aircraft to her assistance.  Tully's jets were recalled almost immediately
by orders from Washington.  As a result, American jet fighter support was
withheld for more than 90 minutes.  By then the damage was done and 34 men
were dead or dying.

Had those aircraft been sent, they would probably have arrived before the
torpedo boats started their part of the attack. At least 25 lives could
have been saved.

We survivors have tried for 29 years to learn why we were denied the
immediate air support that we were promised in case of trouble. There are
no answers.  The Navy still will not even admit that help was not sent,
even though one of the aircraft carrier commanders has offered to testify
that he was forbidden to help us.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice, the body of law that governs every
military person, provides that "Any person subject to this chapter who
before or in the presence of the enemy . . . does not afford all
practicable relief and assistance to . . . troops, vessels, or aircraft of
the armed forces . . . when engaged in battle . . . shall be punished by
death or such punishment as a court martial may direct."

That provision was clearly violated when Liberty's air support was
withheld.  Yet the Navy will not even admit that we were not defended.

George Orwell suggested in 1945 that some animals are more equal than other
animals.  Some countries, too, it would seem.

James Ennes retired from the Navy in 1978 as a lieutenant commander after
27 years of enlisted and commissioned service.  He was a lieutenant on the
bridge of the USS Liberty on the day of the attack.   His book on the
subject, Assault on the Liberty (Random House, 1980), is a "Notable Naval
Book" selection of the U.S. Naval Institute and was "editors choice" when
reviewed in The Washington Post.



"Today American's would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to
restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if
they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or
promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all
peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from
this evil.

The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this
scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the
guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government."
___ 
  
"You have to understand. Future wars will be fought by capitalists and
anti-capitalists as society polarises. When that happens, control of
information will be as important as control of territory used to be in
conventional conflicts. If you can stop your enemy from destroying your
information, then you have a good chance of winning the war." 
Henry Kissinger in an address to the super secret Bilderberg Organization
meeting 








       
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