USS Liberty/San Diego Union Tribune Article on Captain Ward Boston

From the web site at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...17liberty.html
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EX-OFFICER ALLEGES COVER-UP IN PROBE OF SPY SHIP ATTACK
By James W. Crawley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

February 17, 2004

Ward Boston is an unassuming octogenarian who resides in a gated
community on Coronado's Silver Strand.

A retired Navy captain, he hardly attracts attention in a town
full of active-duty and retired sailors.

Yet Boston is in the maelstrom of a nearly 37-year-old
controversy surrounding Israel's deadly attack on the Navy's spy
ship Liberty during the Six-Day War with Egypt, Syria and
Jordan. The June 1967 attack killed 34 Americans and wounded
171.

Last October, Boston broke decades of silence and declared that
the Navy admiral who investigated the incident had been ordered
by President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara to conclude it was a case of mistaken identity, despite
evidence to the contrary.

As the chief counsel for the Navy's court of inquiry, Boston had
an insider's view.

"I didn't speak up earlier because I was told not to," Boston
said in an interview.

His revelation, repeated last month before a State Department
conference about the Six-Day War, has rekindled a smoldering
debate over how it happened and whether the United States and
Israel covered up the truth.

Anti-Israel factions portray Boston's words – true to his legal
background, memorialized in two affidavits but rarely spoken to
an audience larger than one person – as proof of Israel's guilt.

Israel's supporters, including a federal bankruptcy judge who
researched the attack and wrote a book on it, say Boston is
lying. Some pin an anti-Semitic badge on his lapel.

On Web pages and through e-mail, an electronic brawl is raging
over Boston's disclosures among his admirers and detractors.

But, for the men who survived the attack, Boston's comments
endorse views smelted in cordite, blood and smoke.

"We feel we've been vindicated," said James Ennes, the Liberty's
officer of the deck the day of the attack, which left him
severely wounded.

"We've been saying for 37 years that the court of inquiry was a
fraud, that it was corrupted, that it ignored evidence and made
findings not supported by the evidence," said Ennes, whose book
about the incident claims it was a deliberate Israeli attack.

Boston's cover-up allegation is "enormously significant," said
author James Bamford, who has written several books about the
super-secret National Security Agency, which analyzed radio
intercepts from Liberty and other U.S. surveillance ships.

"It's equivalent to former Supreme Court (Chief) Justice Earl
Warren coming out and saying 'the Warren Commission report on
(the) Kennedy (assassination) – everything we said was not what
we believed, but we were pressured to say it,' " Bamford said.

"It puts an enormous shadow over everything that was in the
(Navy) report," he said.

Even with Boston's affidavits and some newly released documents
presented at the State Department conference, no consensus was
reached on whether the attack was deliberate, accidental or the
result of negligence.

---

The Liberty was a Navy spy ship, plain and simple.

Like its ill-fated sister vessel Pueblo, which was captured by
North Korea six months later, the Liberty was festooned with
antennas and its cargo holds were converted into top-secret
locked compartments lined with receivers where petty officers
eavesdropped on other nations' militaries.

During the Six-Day War, the Liberty loitered off the Sinai
Peninsula, listening to Israel's lightning victory over Egypt.

On the afternoon of June 8, 1967, Israeli jets strafed the ship.
Hours later, Israeli torpedo boats attacked. By the evening, 34
U.S. sailors were dead and 171 injured.

Israel said the attack was a terrible mistake caused by the
misidentification of the Liberty as an Egyptian vessel.
Investigations followed, including the Navy's court of inquiry.

That's when Ward Boston's involvement began.

---

If Hollywood had discovered Boston, he could have been the
real-life prototype for Cmdr. Harmon Rabb, one of the leads on
the television show "JAG."

In the Pacific during World War II, Boston flew harrowing
photo-reconnaissance missions over Tokyo and Iwo Jima in Navy
Hellcat fighters, sometimes making three passes over a single
target – once to take pre-bombing pictures, then joining other
planes in attacking the target and, finally, a post-attack pass
to photograph the damage.

After the war, Boston went to law school, passed the bar and
entered private practice. Meanwhile, he continued to fly Navy
fighters as a reservist, including its first jet, the FH-1
Phantom.

In the late 1940s, he joined the FBI and was assigned to field
offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. During the Korean War,
he rejoined the Navy, this time as a JAG officer.

By June 1967, Boston was legal officer for then-Rear Adm. Isaac
Kidd Jr. when the flag officer was assigned to head the hastily
convened inquiry into the Liberty attack.

Unable to interview hospitalized sailors and Israeli military
and civilian officials, the investigative panel was given just a
week to examine the battered ship, interview survivors and
collect radio intercepts and other information.

Boston said it was obvious then who was responsible.

"There's no way in the world that it was an accident," Boston
said.

In his affidavits and a recent interview, Boston recounted how
he and Kidd discussed their conclusions about the survivors'
testimony.

"(Kidd) referred to the Israelis as 'murderous *******s,' "
Boston said.

After Kidd delivered the panel's report to Washington officials,
Boston said the admiral told him, "they aren't interested in the
facts or what happened. It's a political issue. They want to
cover it up." Then Kidd admonished Boston to keep silent.

Boston said Kidd told him privately that orders came from
Johnson and McNamara to find the incident was a mistake and not
a deliberate act.

There is no documentation to support Boston's account.

Kidd died in 1999 at 79 after a career topped by command of the
Atlantic Fleet. He never spoke of a cover-up.

The late '60s was the height of the Cold War between the United
States and the Soviet Union. The Soviets were backing the Arab
nations; the United States was allied with Israel. U.S. troops
were fully engaged in Vietnam and the United States was fearful
of growing Soviet influence, especially in the oil-rich Mideast.

Those who claim the attack was no accident argue that Israel
wanted to stop the Liberty from snooping on its military during
the war.

Boston kept quiet too, until the 2002 publication of "The
Liberty Incident," by Judge Jay Cristol, provoked him.

Cristol's book, based on more than 10 years of research and
hundreds of interviews and the collection of thousands of
documents, argued that Israeli pilots, sailors and top military
officials, in the heat of combat and the fog of war, were
unaware the Liberty was a U.S. ship, mistaking it for an
Egyptian vessel.

The two men spoke twice during the 1990s while Cristol
researched his book, but Boston said recently that he only
discussed his career and did not reveal details of the inquiry.

"It is Cristol's insidious attempt to whitewash the facts that
has pushed me to speak out," Boston said in a Jan. 8 affidavit,
read by Bamford at the State Department conference last month.
Boston did not attend the conference.

Boston's affidavit was passed to Bamford by a friend who
believes that Israel is responsible for the attack on the
Liberty.

The judge, during a recent telephone interview, discounted
Boston's contention that Johnson and McNamara covered up Israel
complicity.

"I think those (accusations) are kind of nonsense," Cristol
said.

Cristol – also a former Navy pilot and JAG officer – said
Boston's comments show that he either lied in 1967 by knowingly
filing a false report or that his memory has changed with age.

Referring to Cristol, Boston said, "I'm not going to get into a
spitting contest with a skunk."

He also rejected suggestions that he is anti-Semitic, while
acknowledging some sympathy for the plight of Palestinian
refugees.

As he splits his day between local organizations and daily
visits to the gym to loosen up arthritic joints, Boston remains
largely oblivious to the electronic cacophony of e-mail and
Internet chat that makes him out to be either a patriot or a
patsy for anti-Israel factions.

That's because Boston doesn't have a computer. Friends print out
and pass along Internet postings mentioning him or his
statements.

"I'm a dinosaur," he said. "I use a pencil with an eraser and a
typewriter."

----------------------------------------------------------------

James W. Crawley: (619) 542-4559;

__________________________________________________ _____________

o__ I'll tell you the truth about the USS LIBERTY, visit
_./)_
(_) \(_) http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/

_____________________(updated frequently)______________________

Subject: USS Liberty/San Diego Union Tribune Article on Captain Ward
Boston
From: Ari Ben Canaan lid
Date: 2/18/04 12:48 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

Ward Boston is an unassuming octogenarian who resides in a gated community

And Morris434 is still grieving over that girl who dumped him for a Jew,
so long ago. Poor bloke.

Ari.

What a pathetic response by a Jew in Ari.

From: (MORRIS434)


What a pathetic response by a Jew in Ari.

Do you have a problem with Jews?

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

Maybe he has a problem with anyone who bombs our ships. We didn't like it
when the Japs did it, same with Germans. No reason we should like it when
"our" friends do it..

Frank

"B2431" wrote in message
...
From: (MORRIS434)


What a pathetic response by a Jew in Ari.

Do you have a problem with Jews?

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

From: "Legal Tender"


Maybe he has a problem with anyone who bombs our ships. We didn't like it
when the Japs did it, same with Germans. No reason we should like it when
"our" friends do it..

Frank

"B2431" wrote in message
...
From: (MORRIS434)


What a pathetic response by a Jew in Ari.

Do you have a problem with Jews?

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

Maybe so, but his "Jew from Ari" is off the mark. It is also out of line.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

"Legal Tender" wrote in message
...
Maybe he has a problem with anyone who bombs our ships.
No, he and you only have problems when Jews bomb American ships in error.
People of that sort have no problems with non-Jews deliberately murdering
241 Marines Beirut, killing 37 sailors aboard the USS Stark or crashing
passenger planes into buildings. I'm pretty sure that Morris subscribes to
the "Mossad did 9-11" theory.

We didn't like it when the Japs did it, same with Germans. No reason we
should like it when "our" friends do it..

Somehow I don't think you objected too strongly to the Iraqi attack on the
Stark or Beirut 1983. I doubt if you remember those attacks at all. I posted
a message about the March 2003 USAF attack in Iraq where 18 Marines got
killed. Nobody seemed to care and I guess the reasons for that are that
there was no Israeli involvement and no Arab money to promote the story.


Frank

"B2431" wrote in message
...
From: (MORRIS434)


What a pathetic response by a Jew in Ari.

Do you have a problem with Jews?

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

http://www.ussliberty.org
http://natallwest.com/docs/lg/USS_Liberty(CO)lg.gif


Taken from: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ar...004_02_15.html

Ex-officer alleges cover-up in probe of spy ship attack
Israel's shills are already screaming "anti-Semite" at anyone who
mentions this story, and the reason they do that is a simple one. They
cannot answer two simple questions about the attack on the USS
Liberty.
1. If it was a case of mistaken identity, with Israel attacking what
they thought was a legitimate enemy ship in time of war, why did they
attack using UNMARKED aircraft and boats?

2. If Israel thought they were attacking an Egyptian ship, why did
they jam AMERICAN military emergency channels?

But the real question is why would LBJ be more worried about Israel
than the US servicemen killed in the attack? What hold did (does)
Israel have over the US Government that they can carry out these kinds
of actions against American lives and know that it will be covered up?

What did LBJ owe Israel for that he would help them get away with
murdering 34 Americans? - M. R.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...17liberty.html


Pictures from Palestine:
http://www.alkhilafah.info/massacres...ne/index10.htm



"Legal Tender" wrote:
Maybe he has a problem with anyone who bombs our ships. We didn't like it
when the Japs did it, same with Germans. No reason we should like it when
"our" friends do it..
Frank

"B2431" wrote:
Do you have a problem with Jews?
Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

"Julious Cesar" wrote in message
om...
http://www.ussliberty.org
http://natallwest.com/docs/lg/USS_Liberty(CO)lg.gif


Taken from:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ar...004_02_15.html

Ex-officer alleges cover-up in probe of spy ship attack
Israel's shills are already screaming "anti-Semite" at anyone who
mentions this story, and the reason they do that is a simple one. They
cannot answer two simple questions about the attack on the USS
Liberty.

Yes they can answer those two simple "questions" and yes they have done so
repeatedly.
1. If it was a case of mistaken identity, with Israel attacking what
they thought was a legitimate enemy ship in time of war, why did they
attack using UNMARKED aircraft and boats?

The planes and boats were not UNMARKED but UNIDENTIFIED. Those are two
different words.

2. If Israel thought they were attacking an Egyptian ship, why did
they jam AMERICAN military emergency channels?

Because they did not. The Liberty was able to transmit throughout the attack
and nobody who was listening heard any jamming.

But the real question is why would LBJ be more worried about Israel
than the US servicemen killed in the attack?

LBJ didn't know of the attack until it was over.

What hold did (does)
Israel have over the US Government that they can carry out these kinds
of actions against American lives and know that it will be covered up?

None, except in the minds of crackpots.


What did LBJ owe Israel for that he would help them get away with
murdering 34 Americans? - M. R.

Nothing whatsoever.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...17liberty.html


Pictures from Palestine:
http://www.alkhilafah.info/massacres...ne/index10.htm

Here's a question: Why do Palestinians and their supporters care so much for
the USS Liberty? They were cheering at 9-11.



"Legal Tender" wrote:
Maybe he has a problem with anyone who bombs our ships. We didn't like
it
when the Japs did it, same with Germans. No reason we should like it
when
"our" friends do it..
Frank

"B2431" wrote:
Do you have a problem with Jews?
Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

"Legal Tender" wrote
Maybe he has a problem with anyone who bombs our ships. We didn't like it
when the Japs did it, same with Germans. No reason we should like it when
"our" friends do it..

Do they deserve this help http://www.ifamericansknew.org/ from America
to do this http://www.alkhilafah.info/massacres...ne/index10.htm ?

and now he resorts to Pallie propaganda sites. wow this is confusing as hell
is he a goose stepper or just a supporter of terrorists.......
HMm Hey Julie. how about posting the results of the investigation by the PA
into the killing of the Americans in Gaza a few months ago and why they
refuse to make arrests. or how the money you supposedly send is being used
to pay for Arafat's whore in Paris?

--
"I have seen the worst that man can do.and I can still laugh loudly"
R.J. Goldman

http://www.usidfvets.com
"Julious Cesar" wrote in message
om...
"Legal Tender" wrote
Maybe he has a problem with anyone who bombs our ships. We didn't like
it
when the Japs did it, same with Germans. No reason we should like it
when
"our" friends do it..

Do they deserve this help http://www.ifamericansknew.org/ from America
to do this http://www.alkhilafah.info/massacres...ne/index10.htm ?