Letter from USS Liberty Survivor

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/23/world/23LIBE.html

Book Says Israel Intended 1967 Attack on U.S. Ship
By JAMES RISEN, New York Times April 23, 2001

WASHINGTON, April 22 - Israel's attack in 1967 on the intelligence
ship Liberty, which killed 34 American sailors and wounded 171 others,
was deliberate, according to a new book on the National Security
Agency, disputing the longstanding Israeli claim that the attack was
accidental.

The book, "Body of Secrets," by James Bamford, provides a detailed
recounting of the Israeli attack on the American eavesdropping ship,
along with new evidence in an incident that has been debated ever
since. Mr. Bamford wrote an earlier book on the security agency, "The
Puzzle Palace," published in 1982.

The Liberty, a slow, lightly armed Navy ship that was working with the
security agency to monitor the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, was attacked
from both the air and sea by Israeli forces off the Sinai coast on
June 8.

While the Israeli government said the incident was an accident, it did
pay modest reparations to the victims and their families. But Mr.
Bamford writes that the Israeli explanation is a cover story for a
deliberate attack meant to prevent the United States from
eavesdropping on its military activities. And the book provides
evidence from crew members of an American spy plane that overheard the
attack.

While Israeli planes and boats were attacking the Liberty, the
American plane, a Navy EC-121 intelligence-gathering aircraft, was far
overhead, and recorded Israeli conversations, Mr. Bamford wrote.

And the crew heard Israeli pilots talking about seeing an American
flag.

The Israelis did not have any idea "that witnesses were present high
above," Mr. Bamford writes in "Body of Secrets," which Doubleday is to
publish on Tuesday. The National Security Agency "has hidden the fact
the one of its planes was overhead at the time of the incident,
eavesdropping on what was going on below," he wrote. "The intercepts
from that plane, which answer some of the key questions about the
attack, are among N.S.A.'s deepest secrets."

The aircraft crew did not hear the Israelis mention the Liberty by
name, but did hear enough to piece together the fact that Israeli
forces were attacking a ship flying the American flag.

"Although the attackers never gave a name or hull number, the ship was
identified as flying an American flag," one air crew member recalled
in an interview with Mr. Bamford. "We logically concluded that the
ship was the U.S.S. Liberty."

Surviving crew members of the Liberty also believed that the Israeli
attack was deliberate, according to those interviewed in Mr. Bamford's
book. Before the attack, Israeli planes flew over the Liberty
repeatedly, they noted, and could have clearly seen what it was.
During the attack, they could also see that it was flying an American
flag, they told Mr. Bamford.

Mr. Bamford argues that the Liberty attack came at a time when
President Lyndon B. Johnson was anxious to avoid worsening relations
with Israel in the midst of the Middle East crisis. The Israeli
government gave Washington a classified report to show that the attack
was a mistake, and the Johnson administration then discounted the
incident.

"Despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel had attacked the ship
and killed the American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson
administration and Congress covered up the entire incident," Mr.
Bamford wrote.

But security agency officials never believed the Israeli excuses, Mr.
Bamford said. "The senior leadership of N.S.A. officials who had
unique access to the secret tapes and other highly classified evidence
was virtually unanimous in their belief that the attack was
deliberate," he wrote.

Walter Deely, who was a senior N.S.A. official at the time of the
attack and who was ordered to conduct a secret study of the Liberty
for the agency, told Mr. Bamford that his review showed "there is no
way they didn't know that the Liberty was American."

John Morrison, an Air Force major general who was deputy chief of the
agency's operations at the time of the attack, told Mr. Bamford that
"nobody believes that explanation."