PART 5:THE ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY:The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship

JAMES M. ENNES JR.

 ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY 

The True Story of the Israeli Attack 

on an American Intelligence Ship

 

Chapter 9 

COVER-UP 

The barrier of rank is the highest of all barriers in the way of access to the truth. 

B. H. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, xi (1944) 

In Washington, apparently while the ship was still under attack and fighting for her life, Pentagon officials struggled with the first news report of the attack. Immediately, they were faced with the vexing problem of how to describe her mission.

Phil G. Goulding, assistant secretary for public affairs, argued that the ship was an intelligence collector and should be identified as such. "This ship collects intelligence," said Goulding. "We should take the public affairs initiative, leveling with our people from the beginning. " 

But the United States government had never declared officially that any of its peacetime ships were in the intelligence-collection business, and the intelligence and diplomatic authorities argued against making such a declaration now. Goulding tells us in his book Confirm or Deny that they made three points: first, Defense Department employees are taught never to discuss intelligence matters  under any conditions, and nothing must be done to change this policy or to suggest a change to it. Second, although Liberty would be called a spy ship by the press, this was not the same as an official government admission. A neutral country may accept a Technical Research Ship in its port regardless of how the press describes it, but may not accept an acknowledged United States intelligence vessel. Third, they argued that Israel and Egypt might be offended if the United States openly admits it had sent an intelligence ship to eavesdrop on their radio conversations. 

Secretary McNamara listened carefully before finally yielding to the security and diplomatic arguments. The Pentagon, he decided, would use the official unclassified description of Liberty as a Technical Research Ship and would elaborate upon her duties somewhat to describe a specific communication mission. Goulding prepared the initial statement, adding two more paragraphs as new information poured in. Soon this report was cleared with the State Department and the White House, and was handed to the press: 

A U.S. Navy technical research ship, the USS LIBERTY (AGTR-5) was attacked about 9 A.M. (EDT) today approximately 15 miles north of the Sinai Peninsula in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea. 

The LIBERTY departed Rota, Spain, June 2nd and arrived at her position this morning to assure communications between U.S. Government posts in the Middle East and to assist in relaying information concerning the evacuation of American dependents and other American citizens from the countries of the Middle East.

The United States Government has been informed by the Israel government that the attack was made in error by Israeli forces, and an apology has been received from Tel Aviv. 

Initial reports of casualties are 4 dead and 53 wounded. The LIBERTY is steaming north from the area at a speed of 8 knots to meet U.S. forces moving to her aid. It is reported she is in no danger of sinking. 1 

1. Phil G. Goulding. Confirm or Deny-In/orming the People on National Security (New York: Harper & Row. 1970)

Although the carrier America teemed with newsmen-twenty nine of them, including representatives from every major wire service, the television networks and several large newspapers, plus newsmen from England, Greece and West Germany-Admiral Martin somehow managed to keep these men in the dark about the Liberty attack for more than five hours. These were some of the best newsmen in the business, but they might have received more information if they had been ashore. Admiral Martin told them only what the Pentagon wanted told, and apparently he waited for instructions from the Pentagon before telling them of the attack at all. 

WE UNLEARNED ABOUT [the Liberty attack] UNTIL SAW WX STORY AT 5:30 P.M., GMT, correspondent Bob Horton complained to his home office. When Sixth Fleet briefing officers finally did talk, they revealed very little, and what they did say was cloaked in security restrictions. 

Frustrated by inability to promptly file their stories, Neil Sheehan of the New York Times, Bob Horton, writing for the Associated Press, and Harry Stathos, writing for United Press International, sent urgent messages to their home offices asking to "immediately work on Pentagon Public Affairs to spring [the stories] loose." The stories were being filed not to their home offices, but as classified traffic to the Pentagon. 

Other reporters, chafing at the restrictions placed upon them, interfered with ship's routine as they schemed to conduct forbidden interviews and plotted to file uncleared stories. One particularly enterprising reporter, after earning the enmity of dozens of ship's officers, attempted to file his ill-gotten and uncleared story by disguising it as a personal letter, which he asked a helicopter pilot to mail. The pilot forwarded the letter, not to the reporter's newspaper, but to the Navy's Chief of Information in the Pentagon, who returned it, unfiled. 

Confusion grew. Captain McGonagle's original report, dictated to Lieutenant Bennett while McGonagle was sick, delirious and nearly unconscious, was soon released to the press. ATTACKED WITH UNIDENTIFIED JET FIGHTERS BELIEVED ISRAELI, McGonagle'S message said. APPROX SIX STRAFING RUNS MADE ON SHIP ...• TOOK TORPEDO HIT STARBOARD SIDE.2 This mild, understated report eventually became the nucleus of the official story of the Liberty incident. 

No one asked whether it was possible to inflict in six strafing runs the damage that Liberty suffered, or how many aircraft would be required to put on target the hits that Liberty received. When a group of the Navy's most senior admirals were briefed on the incident, they agreed among themselves that at least ten aircraft would be required to do the job, but their professional opinions were never reconciled with the official report. 

2. See Appendix G, page 244, for full text of McGonagle's message. 

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One of Israel's first public responses to news of the attack was to issue a news release asserting that Israel had specifically asked our government for the location of any American ships near the Israeli coast, and had not received a reply. This caused some consternation in the State Department until officials realized, after an urgent exchange of messages, that no such question had been asked at all-that the news release was simply a public relations ploy. 

Next, Israeli newspapers reported that the American flag was not flying. Pentagon officials added that there was little wind in the area and that our flag "may have hung limp and unrecognizable at the mast." The public was now convinced that the flag either was not flying at all or was hanging limp at the mast on a windless day. 

The news stories from Washington seemed tom in two directions. On one side was the need to tell the story as quickly and as accurately as possible without revealing classified information, and on the other side was a diplomatic and political need to give Israel the benefit of reasonable doubt. 

"This would be called 'keeping everything in perspective,' " Philip Armstrong had said a few hours before he died.

**************** 

On Saturday, two days after the attack, this wire-service story appeared: 

WASHINGTON JUNE 10 (UPI) 

US MILITARY OFFICIALS SAID SATURDAY THAT THEY WERE SATISFIED ISRAEL'S ATTACK THURSDAY ON THE U.S. COMMUNICATIONS SHIP LIBERTY WAS ONE OF THE TRAGIC MISTAKES OF WARFARE. 

THEY SAID THEY STILL DID NOT HAVE A COMPLETE ACCOUNT OF THE ATTACK FROM THE LIBERTY'S CAPTAIN, BUT WHAT THEY HAD LEARNED SO FAR SHOWED NO INTENT ON ISRAEL'S PART TO DELIBERATELY DESTROY AN AMERICAN VESSEL. 

PENTAGON OFFICIALS SAID THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE ATTACK, SO FAR AS THEY WERE KNOWN, MADE HUMAN ERROR A PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATION FOR IT. 

THE LIBERTY WAS MOVING SLOWLY AND THERE WAS LITTLE WIND AT THE TIME OF THE AIR AND SEA ASSAULTS, THEY SAID, MAKING IT QUITE POSSIBLE ITS AMERICAN FLAG WAS HANGING LIMP AND UNIDENTIFIABLE AT THE MOMENT THE ISRAELI JET PLANES FIRST APPROACHED. 

SHORTLY AFTER THE ATTACKS, WHEN THE SHIP'S AMERICAN IDENTITY BECAME KNOWN TO THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT, A STATEMENT WAS ISSUED IN TEL AVIV CLAIMING THE VESSEL HAD DISPLAYED NO FLAG, BUT U.S. OFFICIALS INSISTED IT WAS FLYING THE AMERICAN FLAG, CARRIED ITS NAME ON THE STERN AND BORE ITS NUMERICAL DESIGNATION ON ITS BOW. 

IN DESCRIBING THE EVENTS OF THE ENCOUNTER, THE PENTAGON SAID FRIDAY, THERE WAS A 20 MINUTE INTERVAL BETWEEN THE SIX STRAFING RUNS OF THE ISRAELI JETS AND THE SUBSEQUENT ATTACK BY THREE ISRAELI TORPEDO BOATS. 

BUT OFFICIALS NOW BELIEVE THAT TIMING SEQUENCE TO BE INEXACT SINCE IT WAS NOT YET KNOWN WHETHER THE PERIOD WAS CLOCKED STARTING WITH THE FIRST PASS OF THE JETS OR SOMETIME LATER. THE INTERVAL BETWEEN THE PLANE AND NAVAL ATTACKS COULD HAVE BEEN SUBSTANTIALLY SHORTER, THEY BELIEVE. 

THERE WAS ALSO THE POSSIBILITY THE TORPEDO BOATS WERE SOME MILES FROM THE U.S. VESSEL WHEN THE JET ATTACKS BEGAN, SAW THE ACTION FROM A DISTANCE, AND LOOSED THE TWO TORPEDOES FIRED AT THE LIBERTY AS THEY CAME RACING UP TO JOIN THE ENGAGEMENT, OFFICIALS SAID. 

ONE TORPEDO STRUCK THE LIBERTY, A LIGHTLY ARMED WORLD WAR II VICTORY SHIP OUTFITTED WITH THE LATEST ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT. IT REPORTED "EXTENSIVE BUT SUPERFICIAL DAMAGE TOPSIDE AND SOME LOWER-DECK SPACES FORWARD DESTROYED," THE PENTAGON SAID. IT WAS IN NO DANGER OF SINKING.3 

President Johnson read the story almost as soon as it appeared on the White House ticker and immediately called Secretary McNamara. There was nothing plausible about the attack. The attack was an outrage. Thirty-four Americans were dead. Many wounded. The attack was inexcusable and was not to be brushed off lightly by anyone in the United States government.4 

Phil Goulding dictated and quickly cleared the following statement: 

We in the department of Defense cannot accept an attack upon a clearly marked noncombatant United States naval ship in international waters as "plausible" under any circumstances whatever. 

The implication that the United States flag was not visible and the implication that the identification markings were in any way inadequate are both unrealistic and inaccurate. 

The identification markings of U.S. Naval vessels have proven satisfactory for international recognition for nearly 200 years. 5 

3. See Goulding, Confirm or Deny, p. 123, for an account of the circumstances of the story. 

4. Goulding, p. 123, and wire-service stories.

5. Goulding, p. 124, and wire-service stories.  

The ship's mission became an issue in Washington when the press quoted an officer on America as saying: "To put it bluntly, she was there to spy for us. Russia does the same thing. We moved in close to monitor the communications of both Egypt and Israel. We have to. We must be informed of what's going on in a matter of seconds."6 

Messages came out of the Pentagon telling everyone to pipe down. "No comment" was the only acceptable answer to questions about spying. 

Somehow failing to get the word, Vice Admiral Martin, when asked about Liberty's mission, gave the answer that governments always give to such questions: "I emphatically deny she was a spy ship," he said.7 

Finally, in an effort to maintain some credibility and to avoid conflicting stories, McNamara clamped a news lid on all Liberty stories until the official Court of Inquiry report could be published. He asked the Navy to expedite the report and issued a statement that read as follows: 

Many rumors and reports about the attack have been circulating. The Department of Defense has no evidence to support some of these rumors and reports. Others appear to be based on partial evidence. Some appear to be accurate on the basis of present information here, which is incomplete. Until the Court has had an opportunity to obtain the full facts, the Department of Defense will have no further comment. 8 

This "intriguing piece of prose," as it was described by Fred Farrar of the Chicago Tribune, was issued to everyone in or near the Sixth Fleet. It became an order to be followed. Nothing was to be said to the press. And with that order went the last hope of countering the wildly inaccurate stories that were being circulated and widely accepted. On Sunday, Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd 9 came aboard Liberty with a small staff to head the Navy Court of Inquiry assigned to investigate the incident. I had seen this exceptional man operate and knew him for the tough, brilliant, personable and ambitious genius that he was. I remembered the blizzard of 1965, when the Pentagon was snowed in and virtually nothing moved in or around Washington. Isaac C. Kidd reported to his office as usual; he drove in behind a Navy snowplow.  

6. Goulding, p. 124, and wire-service stories. 

7. Goulding, p. 125; Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, June 11, 1967, p. A6; and wire-service stories. 

8. Goulding, p. 130; SECDEF message 141747Z June 1967. 

9. Rear Admiral Isaac Campbell Kidd, Jr.: born 1919; U.S. Naval Academy, class of 1941; promoted to rear admiral September I, 1964. A rapidly rising star, he would be promoted vice admiral October 1,1969, and to admiral December I, 1971. He retired from the Navy in 1978.

The admiral came to Liberty from the destroyer USS Barry before dawn on Sunday morning. He moved into Lieutenant Commander Dave Lewis's now-empty stateroom, next to the captain's on the 02 level and, after meeting Captain McGonagle and discussing the incident briefly with him, removed the intimidating stars from his collar, as was his custom, and circulated among the crew. 

He had, of course, been instructed by his seniors to "keep everything in perspective." Modem diplomacy simply does not permit one to embarrass a "friendly" nation, even when that nation is caught red-handed with its torpedo in one's ship. There are indications that Admiral Kidd did not accept those orders easily, and there are reports from an officer in Norfolk that he complained of the restrictions placed upon him, but he was too much a part of the system not to follow orders. And after all, this order came from the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson. 

One can suppose that President Johnson was also tormented by the order, having so recently and so strongly reacted to the question of the attack being "plausible." By now, though, the Department of State had entered the picture, and the question of diplomacy and "perspective," as Philip Armstrong had so clearly prophesied, overcame the facts. 

Admiral Kidd would be required to collect evidence, to screen witnesses, to complete a report for the record; he would not be expected to collect or publish a lot of embarrassing detail about wind speed, identification markings, extent and duration of reconnaissance, or intensity of attack, and he would not be expected to discuss the fleet's failure to provide air protection. Such details would cause untold diplomatic and political problems. So, before the formal court interviewed Liberty sailors, it would be prudent for the admiral to talk privately with the potential witnesses to learn what they might be expected to say and to decide who should be called to testify and what questions they should be asked in court. 

This process went on until the ship arrived in Malta. "Just think of me as some old chief," he told the crew as he worked his way quietly through the ship, chatting informally with small groups of men. A few men were invited to the admiral's stateroom for extended conversation. At this point the investigation was casual and informal; all conversations were unofficial and quite off the record. 

****************

In Washington, meanwhile, officers and senior civilians who had participated in Liberty's scheduling were summoned to an almost unprecedented Saturday afternoon meeting. McTighe, Fossett, Raven, Brewer and others were ushered into a smoke-filled room occupied by shirt-sleeved men. 

NSA SIGINT operations

Walter G. Deeley stared grimly from behind a pile of documents at the head of the table. Deeley was a senior Defense Department executive of "supergrade" rank, and he was clearly impatient with the task that had been suddenly thrust upon him. "Can you write?" he snarled. His eyeglasses hung askew on broken frames, giving him a wild and cockeyed look, but Deeley seemed not to know or care. "Well, damn it, write down some reasons for sending that ship out there." 

Fossett wrote. ''Liberty was sent to the eastern Mediterranean in order to provide VHF and UHF communication coverage," he said. 

"Good. Good. Line-of-sight comms. That makes sense," said Deeley. "Now write why you needed that kind of coverage. Who needed it? What for? Write it all down." 

Deeley's group spent the weekend questioning everyone they could find who had any connection with the decision to ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff to divert Liberty to Gaza. When they were finished, they had compiled a report more than two inches thick consisting of statements, charts, background information, fold-outs and multicolored transparent overlays. Prominently displayed on page one was the message to JCS asking to have the ship moved away from the contested coast. 

Deeley's masterpiece discusses the technical reasons for sending Liberty to Gaza in the first place and explains the decision to move the ship away from the coast. The report establishes that Deeley and his organization were not at fault; it does not discuss a cover-up of the circumstances of the attack-and Deeley's group seems unaware of any cover-up effort. 

A few hours after the group finished its work, the report was reproduced on a rush basis in a Department of Defense print shop manned by specially cleared lithographers, and was distributed on a strict need-to-know basis to a small number of senior officials. Despite repeated Freedom of Information Act inquiries, the government has resisted acknowledging even the existence of this report.

**************** 

Captain McGonagle was regaining his strength and, while Admiral Kidd slept, entertained a small group of visitors in his cabin. Recalling that Dr. Kiepfer's supply of medicinal alcohol had been an important morale booster in the hours following the attack, McGonagle decided that his guests might appreciate some of the same spirits. 

Locating Dr. Kiepfer by telephone in the wardroom, he asked, tongue in cheek, "Do you have any more of that medicinal alcohol? I think you could prescribe some for our visitors to help them recuperate from the rigors of their journey." 

"Certainly, Captain," Kiepfer said. "Give me five minutes. I'll bring it up to your cabin." 

Kiepfer knew that the medicinal alcohol had long since been consumed. Not one to be caught unprepared, he quickly rounded up the empties (which he had been careful to preserve) and brought them to a stateroom that had become a collection point for the many unmedicinal spirits that had been turning up. Breaking the seal on an imperial quart of brandy, Kiepfer carefully filled the tiny medicinal alcohol containers. Then he restored the larger bottle to its hiding place and gathered up the smaller ones, which the captain and his guests could consume with clear conscience. 

Only as he prepared to leave did he notice that the bunk was occupied. Kiepfer had forgotten that this room was now assigned to Admiral Kidd, who--driven suddenly to bed with a severe bronchial infection-had quietly watched the entire operation.

**************** 

On Saturday, Papago recovered the body of a Liberty sailor that had been swept through the hole in the ship's side. Other bodies were lost, along with a more or less steady flow of paper, much of it presumed to contain sensitive information. Men on both ships were detailed to watch for bodies or for paper, and at night Papago swept the water with a searchlight. Although no more bodies were found, every so often a large amount of paper would be seen leaving the ship, and this would be reported to Papago by flashing light. Papago would retrieve what it could, and what it could not retrieve it would try to destroy by backing over it with the ship's screws. 

On Sunday it was decided that if the hole could not be patched, at least it should be possible to control what passed through it, and for this effort the deck department officer, Ensign Lucas, and the damage control officer, Ensign Scott, worked together. Four cargo nets were located, each twenty feet square. Boatswain's mates laid them out on Liberty's main deck and tied their edges together to form one huge net forty feet square. Then the net was lowered over the side and tied in place, with the top edge just below the water. Finally, Bob Roberts and his divers from Papago spread the net so that it covered most of the torpedo hole, and held it in place with long lines that they carried under the ship and passed up to men who waited on the port side. 

With lines girdling the ship to hold the netting in place-already nicknamed a "brassiere" by the crew-the ships resumed their slow journey toward Malta. The netting was swept away almost as soon as the ship reached speed, and it was cut loose to avoid catching in the screws. No further attempts were made to cover the hole. 

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Numerous musters of the crew were held, and somehow each muster was different from every other muster. Men who had been reported missing turned up hard at work in some distant repair party. Jeff Carpenter, now aboard America for treatment, missed the list of those transferred. No one remembered seeing him, and he was reported missing, presumed dead; and in due course his wife received a telegram from Washington, advising her of his presumed demise. At about the same time she received another telegram, this one sent by her husband from America, assuring her of his good health. Confused and frightened, she placed a call to her congressman, asking that he find out what was going on. 

Presumably, other confused wives called their congressmen also. Soon Liberty was besieged with angry messages from the Navy in Washington, advising the ship of insistent congressional inquiries and demanding a prompt and correct muster report. 

Golden had had enough. Now he would take the most careful,complete muster in the history of the Navy. After advising the captain of his intentions and obtaining his concurrence, Golden stopped the ship in mid-ocean. He secured the main engines. He secured every piece of equipment that required a man near it. He called every man on the ship, assembled them in ranks on the main deck, and had them kept there while he personally searched the entire ship for the inevitable ignoramus who wouldn't otherwise get the word. Finally satisfied that every man alive and aboard Liberty was standing in rank on the main deck, he walked from man to man with a clipboard and checked off each name.

**************** 

While Liberty steamed toward Malta, the Naval Hospital at Naples was told to prepare for fifty wounded Liberty survivors. The hospital staff promptly discharged all but the most needy patients in order to make room for the new arrivals; except for two maternity cases and one officer with jaundice, the hospital was emptied. Leaves were canceled as doctors and nurses were put on special alert to await the Liberty wounded. 

America, however, had decided that most of the wounded could be treated on board after all, and-without informing the hospital kept all but six men in the ship. Four men with brain injuries were sent to an Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, while a man with a broken arm and I were sent to Naples for treatment; the rest stayed in the carrier. Electronic Technician Barry Timmerman and I arrived after dusk to find a fully staffed and nearly empty hospital eager to care for us. 

Separated from my traveling companion, I was placed in a private room where I was fed, bathed and powdered, and introduced to Barbara, Joyce and Felicity, who would be my nurses. The doctor prescribed whiskey, which I drank. Lovely Australian-born Felicity provided tender care. And my outlook began to improve. 

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Tuesday evening, just hours before the ship's arrival in Malta, McGonagle summoned Dr. Kiepfer to his cabin. "I'd like you to read the statement I have prepared for the Court of Inquiry," he said. 

Several pages long, the statement elaborated upon the report that McGonagle had recited to Bennett on the day of the attack and that had been sent by message to Washington. It contained the same errors, the same omissions. 

Although Kiepfer was unaware of the extent of pre-attack reconnaissance, he clearly remembered numerous strafing runs extending over a considerable period of time, and he knew the ship was fired upon after the torpedo explosion. He knew that McGonagle had been under incredible strain, that he was still sick and distraught-that he was, in fact, still in pain and quite weak from wounds and from loss of blood. No one man could be expected to recall the details of this attack, least of all McGonagle, who was too busy reacting and fighting to accurately report such abstract particulars as duration, time, number, sequence and intensity. 

Gently, Kiepfer tried to explain the discrepancies that he saw. And McGonagle seemed not to hear. McGonagle did not take advice well anyway, particularly from junior officers, and he did not accept Kiepfer's version of the attack. After all, Kiepfer spent most of the battle below decks, treating wounded men. McGonagle had already reported his version of the incident by message, and he was not going to change the story now. Kiepfer wondered why he had been called. 

In the ensuing conversation it became clear that McGonagle was worried: "I want you to remember that Admiral Kidd is not coming here to give us medals," he said. "I don't know what we did wrong, but if they look hard enough they can find something. We don't have to help them. I'm going to answer their questions and no more, and I don't expect you to do any more than that." 

During the evening he had a similar conversation with Lieutenant Golden. Like Kiepfer, the engineer officer suggested tactfully that the attack had involved more than the six strafing runs and single torpedo that McGonagle described, but the captain insisted that his report was accurate. He would acknowledge no errors and would consider no changes in his report. 

During the next few days, McGonagle cautioned officers and key enlisted men who might testify before the court. Once he assembled a group of officers and chief petty officers in the wardroom and told them, "Our best course of action is don't volunteer a thing. Answer their questions, but don't tell them anything you don't have to tell them." 

McGonagle seemed tormented by the idea that he was somehow responsible for the agony his ship and crew had suffered. Where had he gone wrong? Should he have moved away from shore? Did the presence of men in battle dress in the gun mounts cause Liberty to appear hostile? Did the ship stray into Egyptian waters? Had he trained the crew properly to handle emergencies? Had the crew Cover-up - 137 responded properly to this emergency? Had he? Could he have saved those men? 

Thirty-four of his men were dead, but nearly three hundred were alive despite an encounter with a force hellbent on murdering every last man; and McGonagle's training, example, leadership and inspiration had kept them alive. 

This brave man, who had defied bullets, shrapnel and napalm, now seemed worried that he might not have done enough. This man, who had remained at his post under impossible conditions in a performance that had saved his ship, now seemed concerned that he might have done more. And apparently he feared the court that had come to investigate. 

****************

On Wednesday, the day Liberty arrived in Malta and the day the Court of Inquiry convened in formal session, the hospital's executive officer brought me a message from the Department of State. Israel's ambassador to Italy wanted to talk with me. Would I consent to see him? 

I was the first Liberty officer ashore. The others were all either still aboard the ship, or wounded and aboard America, or dead. I considered the alternatives. If he came, he would no doubt convey condolences and an apology. It would be inappropriate for me to accept or reject an apology. Anyway, I was convinced that the attack was deliberate, premeditated murder. And as a junior officer, I certainly could not allow myself to be rude or angry to this man whose visit, no doubt, was offered in good faith and in ignorance of the background for the attack. 

"No," I said. 

****************

On Thursday, Jim O'Connor, Dave Lewis, Ensign Dick "Slippery" Taylor (Liberty's supply officer), Seaman George Wilson and twenty others arrived in Naples from USS America. Higher authority had finally directed the carrier to send Liberty's wounded to shore-based hospitals. Although the ship was probably capable of handling most of them, the presence of a large number of wounded men in her medical department impaired the ship's combat readiness, she was told, so the men would have to go. 

Now Naples became a battle scene. The hospital staff manned the operating room more or less continually for two days as they extended the treatment of our scraggly group. Most of the men were ambulatory. Many were in pain. Some wanted to return to our ship, but few were allowed to do so. And three men with large bleeding wounds who had convinced America's doctors that they were in good health had been ordered back to duty. These men were intercepted at the local airport by the Naples Hospital medical staff, and were reexamined and re-hospitalized. 

To prevent unauthorized contact with the outside world, guards were stationed at each door of the Liberty men's ward. If it became necessary for a man to leave the ward, a guard went along. 

Jim O'Connor became my roommate again. He was walking now and feeling chipper. The large wound in his side was healing, and he found that if he moved carefully, he could take a shower. With a look of satisfaction, he walked gingerly from the room, toward the showers. 

He returned in pain, face ashen, biting his lower lip to control the screaming. He leaned against the doorway, holding his side, then lurched toward his bed, where he pulled his knees up toward his chest and groaned. I called for a nurse. 

"No, I can't call a doctor in surgery. No, I can't get anything for the pain," announced an officious nurse, not Barbara, Joyce or Felicity. The doctors were all in surgery and the nurses would not call them. 

Jim was in agony, and it seemed that nothing could be done until all of the day's scheduled surgery was completed. Finally, after more than four hours of unnecessary misery, a surgeon stopped to see him. Recognizing the problem immediately, the doctor called a local Italian urologist in for consultation. This man confirmed the diagnosis. Jim's kidney was riddled with shrapnel and probably would have to be removed. 

A few minutes later a Navy helicopter settled near a rear door of the hospital, where Jim was loaded aboard for the short trip to the local public airport. A military airplane was waiting. Later that afternoon he joined other Liberty survivors at the Army hospital in Landstuhl, West Germany, where, as predicted, the kidney was removed. As at Naples, guards stood at each door of the Liberty men's ward. 

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Meanwhile, Liberty had arrived in Valletta, Malta, shortly after sunrise on Wednesday, six days after the attack. She was accompanied by the destroyer Davis and fleet tug Papago, and spent most of the day standing in the harbor. During the afternoon she was moved into a dry dock. 

The grim task of removing the remains of friends and shipmates could only be done by the men who had worked there. That left perhaps fifty men for the initial cleanup of the torpedoed spaces. For security reasons, no one else was admitted to the compartment. 

As water was pumped from the dry dock, Liberty settled heavily on huge blocks previously placed on the dry-dock bottom; and as the water level around her dropped, so did the water level within the ship. From outside, nothing could be seen, as a previously placed canvas awning effectively screened the torpedo hole in Liberty's side. 

A group of sailors crouched in awe around the single interior access to the space, the second-deck hatch through which so many had so narrowly escaped only a few days before. For days they had imagined what they would find here; now they saw, and no one was prepared for the experience. 

The ladder was still in place, but little more was recognizable. The ladder these men had descended so many times had ended in a small corridor, and leading from the corridor had been a number of doors to the surrounding offices. No longer was there a corridor. The doors and supporting bulkheads were gone. The several offices were now one over sized compartment, and strewn wildly about were the twisted sheet-metal bulkheads, desks, file cabinets and communication equipment. All this was covered with a thick film of black oil from ruptured tanks nearby. The smell of oil mixed with the stink of death to suggest the horror within, but only the hardware could be seen as the men surveyed the room from above. A body had been pulled through the hatch shortly after the attack; another had floated free and had been found by Papago in Liberty's wake. The men knew that twenty-three of their friends were still here. 

The odor was overwhelming. "Oh, bloody shit!" announced a pink-faced seaman as he decided that he didn't want to be here. 

"Oh, wow!" said another. 

A man threw up. Another cried. 

The group fell silent until a young sailor, more brazen than most, stepped forward. "The longer we wait, the harder it will be," he said, mounting the ladder. 

"Careful! Slippery." 

"No sweat," he said. 

He wore overalls and gloves and his boot-camp marching shoes.  Descending the ladder, he found firm footing near the bottom. Clipped to his belt was a Navy-issue flashlight, which he now removed to help survey the dimly lighted room, otherwise illuminated only by light from the hatch and from the canvas-covered torpedo hole. 

He kept up a running commentary as he swept the room with his flashlight. "This is gonna be hell! Oil is everywhere. Bulkheads all down. Looks like half the stuff here is pushed into one comer. No bodies that I can see. Must be under the equipment. Here's a desk. On its side. Oh! OW! OH!" He dropped the flashlight. 

The men above could not see what frightened him as he stepped back, slipped on the oily metal, scrambled to get his footing, slipped again, and finally got a handhold on the ladder. Whining in uncontrollable gasps, he scrambled up the ladder, hands and feet slipping on oil in wild panic until he came within reach of the many arms that extended from the hatch to help him. 

Hoisted through the hatch, he stammered helplessly, unable to speak. Finally, he crouched on deck with his head between his knees and shivered. Then he cried. 

"What the hell is down there?" 

He couldn't answer. He could only sob. 

It was a long time before anyone else braved the slippery black hole to find out what was down there. The next man to try found a shipmate, six days dead, fully clothed and impaled on some stray pipe that held him, with toes just touching the ground, eyes and mouth open, guarding the ladder. And overhead, caught in the pipes and electrical wiring, a long-dead officer blankly surveyed the scene. 

For several days these men worked continuously at their terrible task. Secret papers and publications had to be sorted from the wreckage and destroyed. Twisted steel plates, aluminum sheets and supporting beams had to be cut away-usually by hand, because power tools could not be used amid the inflammable oil. And the bodies of shipmates had to be located, identified and, too often, assembled. 

Officers and men worked together-the stink growing ever worse in the June Maltese heat-and when it was done, three men, apparently swept away and into the sea, could not be accounted for. Three others could not be identified. These were eventually buried, along with stray limbs and other unidentifiable parts, in a mass grave at Arlington National Cemetery.

**************** 

Newsweek, meanwhile, published the following story: 

SINKING OF THE LIBERTY: ACCIDENT OR DESIGN? The Israeli attack on the naval communications ship U.S.S. Liberty has left a wake of bitterness and political charges of the most serious sort. First of all, the Liberty was no ordinary vessel but an intelligence-gathering ship on a "ferret" mission. It carried elaborate gear to locate both Israeli and Egyptian radio and radar and to monitor and tape all military messages sent from command posts to the battlefield. Although Israel's apologies were officially accepted, some high Washington officials believe the Israelis knew the Liberty's capabilities and suspect that the attack might not have been accidental. One top-level theory holds that someone in the Israeli armed forces ordered the Liberty sunk because he suspected that it had taken down messages showing that Israel started the fighting. (A Pentagon official has already tried to shoot down the Israeli claim of "pilot error.") Not everyone in Washington is buying this theory, but some top Administration officials will not be satisfied until fuller and more convincing explanations of the attack on a clearly marked ship in international waters are forthcoming. 10 

10. Newsweek, June 19, 1967.

This report, circulated even before Kidd's court convened in formal secret session, seemed to indicate that the administration was not entirely complacent about the "mistaken identity" claims coming from Israel and echoed in the Pentagon. Liberty officers rejoiced when they read it. It seemed to us to be the most perceptive paragraph yet written on the subject. It personally rankled Israel's General Yitzhak Rabin ("General Rabin has never been so angry," a senior Israeli officer informed the U.S. naval attache), and it drew an immediate reaction from the government of Israel: 

Such allegations are just malicious. Such stories are untrue and without any foundation whatever. It was an unfortunate and tragic accident which occurred in an area where fierce land and air fighting took place in recent days. 

Philip Goulding (Confirm or Deny) describes the final sentence of that reply as "typical of Israel's casual attitude toward the episode, an attitude which suggested from the beginning that it was really our fault for being there in the first place." Indeed, it was more than a suggestion. As we shall see, messages from Israel directly charged that a share of the blame was McGonagle's for being there at all,a presence which, Israel said, demonstrated a "lack of care" and contributed to Liberty's identification as an enemy ship. 

A few days after the Newsweek story, the Shreveport Times suggested in an emotional editorial that our government was involved in a cover-up and-in a fresh slant on the motive of the attackers that the attack itself may have been conducted to prevent the ship (and the United States) from prematurely detecting the pending invasion of Syria: 

The tragic and vicious attack is becoming more and more shocking daily as hitherto covered-up details become public. What adds to the shock is that much of the cover up has been made more by Washington than by Israel. 

Almost as shocking as the attack itself has been the manner in which Washington---especially the Defense Department-has seemed to try to absolve Israel from any guilt right from the start. Some of these efforts would be laughable but for the terrible tragedy involved. 

But there are some 34 American mothers and fathers, perhaps also wives and children of those 34 American sailors who died in a reckless tragedy for which not an iota of logical excuse has been made public so far by Israel or Washington. Yet, in the Pentagon, various so-called excuses have been "slipped" to the communications media reporters, ranging from "the sun was in the eyes of the torpedo boat captain"; "it was mistaken identity"; "it was a still day and the flag may have hung limp" (the Liberty captain says it was unfurled) to "they probably thought the Liberty was Egyptian." 

When the Pentagon announced the attack on June 8, it stated without qualification that the attack was by mistaken identity, that Israel had apologized, that the U.S. had accepted the apology. In other words, it was all over. Too bad about the dead and their families. Just forget it all. 

There may be significance to the timetable of what was going on in Tel Aviv, in Washington and in the United Nations at New York as the Liberty arrived at its East Mediterranean post, and on the day it was attacked, and on the day after it was attacked. For example: 

June 7: The Liberty took up its post off the Sinai Peninsula. In New York, Foreign Minister Abba Eban of Israel, who has rushed to New York from Tel Aviv to tell Israel's case to the world through the U.N., was proclaiming that "only Israel has accepted the U.N. cease fire mandate." Later developments showed that even as Abba Eban spoke, Israel was massing columns of tanks, sizable forces of mechanized infantry, and squadrons of jet warplanes on the Syrian border for invasion of Syria. 

Israel had shut down Government House in Jerusalem, the U.N.'s Middle East headquarters for its observers. Thus, the U.N. Security Council was barred, by Israel, from getting the truth from its own Middle East observers about cease fire progress or observance. There was no normal way for the U.S. or the U.N. to learn of the military buildup at the Syrian border; except that the Liberty now was only 15 miles offshore from Egypt and Israel and only 90 miles from Tel Aviv. 

June 8: The Liberty was put out of action by Israel. 

June 9: Israel invaded Syria, an act that was almost as big a shock to the world as the war itself. 

Whether this timetable is meaningful or meaningless we do not know. Only Washington and Tel Aviv can say. But the American people especially the families of American sailors so pitifully and ruthlessly slain -have a right to know who ordered the attack on the Liberty. The ship's senior crewmen testified they believed the attack was by intent in full knowledge that the ship was American. 11 

11. The Shreveport Times, July 18, 1967. 

The Shreveport Times editorial was typical of widespread demands for a better explanation of what happened to the ship. What set the Times apart (aside from its choleric tone) was that this was the first public speculation on a specific motive for the attack. 

As we shall see, evidence suggests that the Shreveport Times was correct: Liberty was indeed attacked to prevent her from detecting and reporting preparations for the Syrian invasion. For that aspect to be explored, Liberty crewmen would have had to talk freely and openly with the press. And few Liberty crewmen ever got that chance. 

Sailors were reminded daily-by their division officers, by notes in the ship's Plan-of-the-Day, and personally by Admiral Kidd in meetings he held before arrival in Malta-that nothing could be said to the press: "Refer all questions to the commanding officer or executive officer or to Admiral Kidd. Answer no questions. If somehow you are backed into a comer, then you may say that it was an accident and that Israel has apologized. You may say nothing else." 

When reporters approached the ship for interviews, they were told that nothing could be said until the Court of Inquiry had completed its work. Once the report was published, the Navy said, the blackout would end and the men would be free to talk to the press. But this was not to be. 

Chapter 10 

THE COURT OF INQUIRY 

While COMSIXTHFLT supposedly had [Liberty] under his operational control, this was a misnomer. Her movements were not being directed by COMSIXTHFLT but by the JCS in view of her recognized high risk mission. 

Statement for Court of Inquiry by Deputy Chief of Staff, 

Commander-in-Chief, u.s. Naval Forces, Europe 

A Navy Court of Inquiry is a formal fact-finding body convened to investigate an incident involving substantial loss of life or possible significant international or legal consequences. Its purpose, says the Navy's governing directive, is to "formulate clearly expressed and consistent findings of fact [in order to] inform authorities of the Department of the Navy fully and concisely as to the incident, its causes, and the responsibility therefor." It is an administrative, not judicial, body; its report is purely advisory. 

The Court of Inquiry into the USS Liberty attack was convened at the direction of Vice Admiral McCain at his headquarters in London. Admiral McCain, in a letter to Admiral Kidd dated June 10, 1967, charged Kidd to "inquire into all the pertinent facts and circumstances leading to and connected with the armed attack; damage resulting therefrom; and deaths of and injuries to Naval personnel." 

The court consisted of Kidd as president and Captains Bernard J. Lauff and Bert M. Atkinson as members. Assigned as counsel to the court was Captain Ward M. Boston, Jr., a Navy legal officer. Assistant counsel was Lieutenant Commander Allen Feingersch, a thirtyfour-year-old surface-warfare officer. Chief Petty Officer Joeray Spencer was assigned as recorder. 

The first crew member was examined in the Liberty wardroom immediately after breakfast on June 14 while the ship rested at anchor in the Malta harbor. Ensign David Lucas testified for nearly three hours, providing vivid recollections of events on and around the bridge during much of the attack, but his recollections grew hazy and seemingly contradictory when questioned about the sequence of events. Despite persistent questioning by Kidd, Lucas was unable to estimate how much time passed between the torpedo explosion and the offer of help, and could not recall whether or not the ship had been fired upon during that period. To Lucas, much of the chaos on the bridge was a timeless, disordered blur; although he recalled the details, he could not fit them into an orderly chronology. 

Next to appear was McGonagle, who testified for about six hours on June 14 and 15, filling thirty-seven pages of legal-size transcript in the official record of the proceeding. McGonagle described the ship's mission, her operating orders, her location in international waters and the navigational situation. He told the court of the ship's hasty departure from Abidjan and of her transit across the Mediterranean Sea. He described the normal operating routine of the ship, told of the type of reconnaissance ordinarily experienced, and alluded to an incident in which a minor African dictator had once attempted to board the ship by force. He described the preattack reconnaissance in some detail. Like Lucas, he provided lucid descriptions of the situation as seen from the bridge during battle; unlike Lucas, he professed nearly total recall. Inexplicably, many of his key recollections were wrong. 

In direct examination by the court, McGonagle testified: 

During the 0800 to 1200 watch on the morning of 8 June, at about 1030, a flight of two unidentified jet aircraft orbited the ship at about 10,000 feet, three times at a distance of approximately two miles. It was not possible to identify any insignia on the aircraft and their identity remains unknown. [McGonagle also described a small patrol plane seen during the morning flying along the coast at an altitude of about 500 feet.] At about 1056 ... an aircraft similar to an American flying boxcar crossed astern of the ship at a distance of three to five miles, then circled the ship . . . and headed back toward the Sinai Peninsula. This aircraft continued to return in a somewhat similar fashion approximately at 30 minute intervals. It was not possible to see any markings on the aircraft and [its] identity remains unknown. This aircraft did not approach the ship in any provocative manner.1 

Portions of a statement I signed in Naples were read to the court in the presence of Captain McGonagle: 

The flying boxcar was usually close enough that I could see the pilot. It had a Star of David under one wing. On at least one occasion the Captain was on the bridge as the airplane passed directly overhead at very low level. We stood together as we saw it approaching. The Captain said, "If you see those bomb bay doors start to open, order an immediate hard right turn."2 

"Captain McGonagle, can you account for the differences between your testimony and the statement by Lieutenant Ennes?" the court asked. 

"No, sir, I cannot, except that I would like to point out that the statement is inconsistent with my own testimony before this court, and it is not confirmed in the ship's logs." 

This ambiguous reply went unquestioned. Lookouts, gunners and bridge personnel who could have described the pre-attack reconnaissance were not asked to testify, and I was never advised of the challenge to my story or asked to explain the discrepancies. 3 

1. All of McGonagle's testimony (here condensed) is taken from the twenty-eight-page officially released Unclassified Transcript of Testimony and Summary of Proceedings of Navy Court of Inquiry into the Attack on USS LIBERTY. 

2. This statement is reconstructed from memory and cannot be found in any of the court records that have been released. 

3. This exchange was described to me by a ship's officer. It cannot be found in any available record of the Court of Inquiry.  

****************

McGonagle described the onset of the attack: 

About 1400 lookouts ... reported ... jet aircraft ... in the vicinity of the ship .... I went to the starboard wing of the bridge ... and there observed one aircraft . . . similar . . . to the two aircraft which were sighted earlier in the day and upon which a sighting report had been submitted. The relative bearing of this plane was about 135, its position angle was 45 or 50 degrees, its elevation approximately 7,000 feet, and it was approximately five to six miles from the ship. 

The airplane could not have been in the position McGonagle says, because McGonagle has described an impossible triangle; his report is in error by perhaps 300 percent. If the airplane was about 45 degrees above the horizon, as McGonagle says, then its altitude and its distance over the water from the ship must have been nearly identical. Other errors, not so easy to demonstrate but of similar magnitude, exist throughout his testimony. 

The reader will recall that the first report of approaching aircraft was made by radar operators who detected high-performance aircraft at sixteen miles, bearing 082°. As the aircraft faded from the surface-search radar screen they were replaced by surface craft, again reported by radar operators at sixteen miles, bearing 082°. Lloyd Painter, as officer of the deck, also spotted the boats on radar and summoned the captain to see: "Captain, you gotta look at this! I never saw anything move so fast." 

Then came the report from the radar operators that the boats were approaching at thirty-five knots. At that speed they would be alongside in about thirty minutes-time for the aircraft to disable Liberty before the torpedo boats arrived to finish her off. 

The fact that the boats and the aircraft approached from the same direction at ideal intervals to deal a fatal one-two body blow smacks of a planned, coordinated attack-which is exactly what it was. But no such testimony was published by the Court of Inquiry. 

****************

McGonagle's testimony continues: 

Within a couple of minutes a loud explosion [came] from the port side of the ship. I immediately ordered the general alarm to be sounded, and this was done .... two 55-gallon gasoline drums ... were burning furiously. [Moments later] the ship received an apparent bomb hit in the vicinity of the whaleboat stowed on the ... starboard side, immediately aft of the bridge. Mr. Armstrong, Mr. O'Connor and others in the bridge area were thrown back into the bridge and other personnel in the pilot house were blown from their feet. 

As I have described earlier, the initial attack, in which I was wounded as I stood on the ship's highest deck stupidly facing the  approaching aircraft, hammered Liberty with at least two to three dozen rockets. The rockets arrived in staccato fashion, peppering the ship with rapid-sequence explosions, lifting the gunners bodily from the gun tubs, tossing them into the air, and only incidentally causing an explosion in the motor whaleboat. The gasoline explosion did not occur until the arrival of the second airplane, and by that time O'Connor was already wounded and so bloodied and helpless that some of the crew thought he was dead. 

The captain continues: 

It seemed to me that the attacks were made in a criss cross fashion over the ship, with each attack coming at approximately forty-five second to one minute intervals. . . . It is estimated that the total air attack was completed in approximately five to six minutes. 

Those of us who were moving about the ship during the air attack know that no mortal could do so many things or be in so many places in five or six minutes; for example, Dr. Kiepfer and Corpsman Thomas VanCleave completed several surgical procedures during the air attack. Judging the duration of the attack from the work done, Kiepfer first guessed that the air attack lasted for an hour. 

In the latter moments of the air attack, it was noted that three high speed boats were approaching the ship from the northeast on a relative bearing of approximately 135 at a distance of 15 miles .... It is believed that the time of initial sighting of the torpedo boats was about 1420. The boats appeared to be in a wedge type formation with the center boat the lead point of the wedge. Estimated speed of the boats was about 27 to 30 knots. 

Nowhere in the published testimony are we told that the boats were first detected by radar, approaching in a high-speed attack formation, moments before the first air strike. 

It appeared that they were approaching the ship in a torpedo launch attitude, and since I did not have direct communication with gun control or the gun mounts, I told [Seaman Apprentice Dale Larkins] to proceed to Mount 51 and take the boats under fire 

.... About this time I noticed that our Ensign had been shot away during the air attack and ordered [Signalman Russell David] to hoist a second The Ensign from the yardarm. During the air attack, our normal Ensign was flying. Before the torpedo attack, a holiday size ensign was hoisted 

.... When the boats reached an approximate range of 2,000 yards, the center boat of the formation was signaling to us .... it appeared that they were flying an Israeli flag. 

McGonagle must have been mistaken about sighting the Israeli flag at this point in the attack. For one thing, it would have been practically impossible to identify a tiny and wildly fluttering Star of David a mile away, particularly since any flags displayed by the torpedo boats would have streamed back, away from McGonagle and out of his line of sight. 

I yelled to machine gun 51 ... to hold fire [but] the man ... fired a short burst at the boats before he was able to understand .... [Then] machine gun 53 began firing at the center boat. ... At this time, they opened fire with their gun mounts and in a matter of seconds, one torpedo was noted crossing astern of the ship at about 25 yards. . . . without advance warning, the ship sustained a torpedo hit and took a 9 degree list to starboard .... The explosion caused the ship to come dead in the water. Steering control was lost. All power was lost. Immediately, I determined that the ship was in no danger of sinking and did not order any preparations to be made to abandon ship. It was my intention to ground the ship on shoal waters to the left of the ship's track to prevent its sinking if necessary. 

Liberty men recall very clearly that the order was given to prepare to abandon ship. That order was passed by messenger, by sound powered phone, and where it still worked, over the ship's general announcing system. In Main Engine Control, Lieutenant Golden received an order from the bridge to "disable the main engines and scuttle the ship." Elsewhere, orders came from the bridge to "demolish ship," and in the ship's log the entry was made, "1433-demolishion [sic] bill in affect [sic]." 

****************

McGonagle continues: 

Immediately after the ship was struck by the torpedo, the torpedo boats stopped dead in the water and milled around astern of the ship at a range of approximately 500 to 800 yards. One of the boats signaled by flashing 150 - Assault on the Liberty light, in English, "Do you require assistance?" We had no means to communicate with the boat by light but hoisted CODE LIMA INDIA [a flag-hoist signal meaning "I am not under command," not able to control movements of the ship]. The signal intended to convey the fact that the ship was maneuvering with difficulty and that they should keep clear. 

In perhaps his only departure from 100 percent acceptance of McGonagle's testimony, Kidd did not support McGonagle's claim that the boats offered assistance "immediately," even though this timing tallied closely with a report from the government of Israel that assistance had been offered and refused at 1427; instead, Kidd concluded as a Top Secret "Finding of Fact" that the offer came from the boats "thirty minutes after attacking."4 Even that finding is wrong, however. As we have seen, the flashing light and megaphone offer of assistance did not come until 1632, nearly two hours after the torpedo explosion. Much of the intervening time was spent machine-gunning our sailors as they attempted to extinguish the many still-raging fires; machine-gunning our life rafts, which had been put in the water in response to orders to prepare to abandon ship; and occasionally just drifting about with the engines apparently stopped, waiting for Liberty to sink. 

4. Israel's claim to have offered help at 1427 corresponds exactly with McGonagle's initial message report that the torpedo attack occurred at that time. Actually, of course, the torpedo explosion came eight minutes later, and McGonagle, after correcting for clock error apparently caused by rocket explosions, eventually changed his report to read 1435. One suspects that Israel selected 1427 after reading McGonagle's initial report, which was broadcast in the clear on an uncovered radio circuit.

McGonagle is an authentic hero of rare courage. He testified under tremendous strain; he was ill, weary, grief-stricken and apparently worried that he might be charged with some as-yet-unidentified offense. We don't know, perhaps we will never know, why his testimony is so wide of the mark. I belabor his testimony here not to diminish McGonagle-his stature is assured-but to demonstrate that much of what he said is obviously wrong and that his errors should have been clear (and must have been clear) to the Court of Inquiry.

**************** 

Following the McGonagle interview, the court held rather limited interviews with twelve other Liberty officers and crewmen, finally reinterviewed McGonagle briefly to receive some records they had asked him to gather, and then adjourned on June 15 to return to London after two days of formal session aboard ship. Men who testified told me later that they felt deeply frustrated by the court's apparent lack of interest in details of the attack, its duration, intensity, the extent of pre-attack surveillance and the like. Most of the ship's officers, once they realized the shallowness of the questioning, dismissed the inquiry as "whitewash." 

One officer whose testimony strayed repeatedly into areas not directly asked about was removed from the courtroom and privately reprimanded. "You are to answer the questions asked by the court and you are to say nothing else," he was told. "If testimony is desired in other areas, you will be asked about those areas." Another officer who left the narrow path that the questioning took was warned, "We don't want to hear about that." 

What questions did the court ask? Little that might conflict with McGonagle's testimony. Nothing that might prove embarrassing to Israel. And testimony that did conflict with McGonagle or that tended to embarrass Israel was covered with a "Top Secret" label, if it was accepted by the court at all. 

For instance, while McGonagle told the court that no order was given to prepare to abandon ship, Painter reported that such an order was given; Painter's testimony was ignored and no further questions were asked on that subject. After McGonagle described the air attack as having lasted five minutes, Painter and Thompson told the court that it lasted twenty to thirty minutes; their testimony was ignored and other crew members were not asked about the duration of the attack. 

When the ship's radiomen reported the apparent jamming of Liberty's radios, their testimony was classified "Top Secret" and was not followed up. Here was strong evidence that the attack was planned in advance and that our ship's identity was known to the attackers (for it is practically impossible to jam the radio circuits of a stranger), but this information was hushed up and no conclusions were drawn from it. 

Several witnesses were asked about the flag. Scott testified that the flag was clearly displayed in the wind during his early morning watch and that he used it to help determine the wind direction; Lieutenant "Mac" Watson testified that he saw the flag flying during the noon hour reconnaissance and observed that it was extended in a breeze; Painter described the flag he saw in the morning when he came up to look at a reconnaissance airplane; Golden told the court that he saw the flag standing out in a breeze during the noon hour while reconnaissance aircraft flew over the ship; I filed an affidavit with the court in which I swore that the flag stood out all morning, clearly displayed in eight knots of wind; the ship's weather log recorded the precise wind reading each hour, proving positively that the relative wind was eight knots or more for most of the morning and was twelve knots shortly before the attack. And while the court was still in session, Kidd received a report that Israeli Defense Force aircraft had been heard reporting by radio to a ground station that they had made two or three identification passes over a ship that displayed an American flag-a ship which -can only have been USS Liberty. All this evidence was ignored or classified "Top Secret," and was thus kept from public knowledge. 

While several witnesses were anxious to establish for the record that napalm was used on Liberty, they found it difficult or impossible to testify about napalm. Ensign Lucas collected some jellied green goo from an unexploded napalm canister and presented it to the court in a medicine bottle. This the court accepted, although they seemed to Lucas to be oddly disinterested in it. The court did question Dr. Kiepfer about napalm bums among the survivors, but this exchange and the few other ambiguous references to napalm were classified "Top Secret" and thus kept from public knowledge. 

Dr. Kiepfer, commissioned as a lieutenant after medical school, had been on active duty for less than nine months, and he was as unawed by brass as he was by the proceeding. "No one came to help us," he told the court. "We were promised help, but no help came," he said. "The Russians arrived before our own ships did," he told Admiral Kidd. "We asked for an escort before we ever came near the war zone, and we were turned down," he said. 

The court bristled. This was not a line that the court intended to explore, and they told him so. "You will stick to the line of questioning, Doctor," Kidd snapped to end an exchange that is not to be found in the transcript. As with the others, Kiepfer was asked little that might conflict with the captain's testimony, and when he was finished he was told, as was each man who testified, "I am proud to be wearing the same uniform that you wear." 

Other officers were asked about the state of readiness of the ship, the performance of the crew during the battle, the amount of training ordinarily conducted aboard Liberty, the attitude of the captain toward training. They were asked little more. "Do you feel that Captain McGonagle permitted sufficient training in damage control procedures?" they were asked. "Did the crew respond expeditiously to drills?"[5] 

****************

Soon after the attack, Israel had offered a preliminary report of the circumstances. The message, telephoned to the embassy by Israel's Lieutenant Colonel Michael Bloch and copied verbatim by Commander Castle, read as follows: 

1. Ship was sighted and recognized as a Naval ship 13 miles from coast. 

2. Presence in a fighting area is against international custom. 

3. The area is not a common passage for ships. 

4. Egypt had declared the area closed to neutrals. 

5. LIBERTY resembles the Egyptian supply ship EL QUSEIR.

6. Ship was not flying flag when sighted and moved at high speed westward toward the enemy coast.

7. Israeli Defense Force Navy had earlier reports of bombardment of EI Arish from sea.6
5. McGonagle was a true believer in drills and training. If anything, the men and some of the officers thought he was a nut on the subject. Before our arrival at Abidjan, for example, the crew spent many hours practicing emergency procedures to be taken in case the ship lost rudder control from the bridge-a typical McGonagle precaution in preparation for a difficult and narrow harbor. Then there were damage control drills, gunnery exercises, engineering exercises, lifeboat drills, man overboard drills. The men quickly became expert at every one of these drills while the suspicion grew that McGonagle was a bit daffy about training. The issue became clear on June 8. More than anything else, it was McGonagle's leadership and McGonagle's training that enabled the ship and most of the men to survive. 

6. United States Defense Attache Office, Tel Aviv, Secret message 091250Z June 1967
Castle was already disenchanted with Israeli slowness of response to his queries, and was clearly not satisfied with this sketchy and evasive explanation. He pressed Bloch for a title for the report, and when Bloch could not supply one, urged him to call back. Soon Bloch called to provide "Further Information on Yesterday's Incident with the American Ship" as the official authorized title. 

Castle promptly forwarded copies to the White House, State Department and other top government offices, and added his own observations: ALUSNA [naval attache] cannot understand how trained professional Naval Officers could be so inept to carry out yesterday's attack. Certainly IDF [Israeli Defense Force] Navy must be well drilled in identification of Egyptian ships. EL QUSEIR is less than half the size, is many years older, and lacks the elaborate antenna array and hull marking of LIBERTY. ALUSNA evaluates yesterday's erroneous attack resulted from trigger happy eagerness to glean some portion of the great victory being shared by IDF Army and Air Force and which Navy was not sharing.7 

The Israeli government must have been desperate for a scapegoat to have singled out El Quseir. The entire Egyptian Navy consisted of a few converted Soviet and British destroyers, frigates and submarines, some minesweepers, several boats, two yachts and a single transport-El Quseir. An unlikely wartime threat, thirty-eight-year old El Quseir was a coastal transport outfitted to pack up to four hundred men and forty horses into her 275-foot hull for short hauls. Very short hauls, one would hope. She was not a combat vessel, would have had a tough time unloading anything near EI Arish, and was in such poor shape that she would soon be sold for scrap. Certainly she was an unlikely suspect for the fancied "shelling from the sea" of EI Arish. No one could pretend that Liberty was mistaken for a destroyer, a submarine or the former royal yacht, so she would simply have to be mistaken for El Quseir, which was, after all, the only scapegoat around. 8 
7. Ibid. 

8. Israeli intelligence officers doubtless were aware that EI Quseir was nowhere near EI Arish. Early in 1976, John Scott (Liberty'S damage control officer) wrote to the embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt on my behalf to ask the whereabouts of EI Quseir on June 8, 1967. Several months later Major General Mohamed A. Abou Ghazala advised by letter and confirmed by telephone that EI Quseir was in port in Alexandria throughout the Six Day War. Alexandria is about 250 miles from El Arish, or about twenty-four hours steaming for aging EI Quseir. In an environment so hostile that even the Egyptian guided missile patrol boats were kept safely at their berths, no one could suppose that EI Quseir would be sent near the Israeli coast. 

Castle's report reached Kidd even before the court convened, and became part of Exhibit 10 of the Top Secret court record, along with a number of messages that Kidd had copied from the files of the Navy headquarters in London. 

In the ensuing message traffic, our government reminded the government of Israel that Liberty had been fully identified by Israel at least six hours before the attack, and the Israeli government agreed. The information, Israel claimed, simply failed to reach the operating forces-and the officers in the war room who were aware of Liberty's identification and location failed to connect Liberty with the ship that they attacked. The Israeli statement, then, that the ship was "sighted and recognized as a Naval ship" meant that it had been identified as a United States naval ship. And although Kidd was aware of this critical fact and held copies of many of the pertinent messages, the information was ignored and did not warrant comment among his ultimate findings. 

On June 15 Kidd received a report from the American embassy of an interview with an Israeli naval officer who was aboard one of the attacking torpedo boats. The officer claimed that the torpedo boats had assumed Liberty to be an enemy and joined in the attack because they saw her under attack by Israeli warplanes. Interestingly, his story contradicts Israel's "official" excuse, which was to come out a few days later. In that excuse, Israel would claim that the aircraft attacked because they were called in by the torpedo boats. Neither Kidd nor anyone else in government ever commented publicly on these stories or their credibility. 

Also known to Kidd was a threat made some months before by the Israeli Air Force chief of intelligence. When a U.S. Navy aircraft accidentally penetrated Israeli air space, the Israeli officer suggested that "next time [he] might have to attack the plane or ship." Although Israeli officers dismissed the remark as facetious, Americans did not find it amusing. The remark was discounted by the Court of Inquiry and no comment was made concerning it. 

**************** 

While Kidd's court was in session, the government of Israel ordered its own Court of Inquiry, assigning the task to Colonel Ram Ron, a former Israeli military attache to Washington. When the report was completed, Commander Castle was summoned to the Israeli Foreign Liaison Office where Lieutenant Colonel Efrat, an aide to Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff Rabin, translated the main points from the Hebrew text and read them aloud. Castle copied verbatim from the oral presentation, here condensed and paraphrased: 

• EI Arish was erroneously reported to have been shelled from the sea. (The erroneous report, it turns out, came one full day before Liberty arrived on the scene.) 

• Torpedo boats, belatedly sent to investigate the erroneous shelling report, erroneously reported Liberty to be moving at thirty, knots (when it was actually making only five knots). 

• Israeli gunnery doctrine (unwisely, Ron conceded) allows Israeli forces to open fire on unidentified ships moving faster than twenty knots near a bombarded shore. 

• Since the foregoing errors marked Liberty as an "enemy" ship, the torpedo boat commander radioed ashore for an air strike on the ship. 

• A dubious I.D.F naval operations section questioned the report that the ship was moving at thirty knots, whereupon the torpedo boat commander rechecked and erroneously verified Liberty's speed as thirty knots. 

• "Even the officers who knew of the identification of LIBERTY early the same morning did not connect LIBERTY with the unidentified ships said to be shelling EI Arish," said Ron. "Even if the unidentified ship were thought to be LIBERTY, the fact that she was reported to be making 30 knots would have denied the identification since, when LIBERTY was identified in the morning, her max speed was determined to be 18 knots." 

• Satisfied, the shore forces called the air strike. 

• Upon completion of the air strike, Israeli torpedo men erroneously identified Liberty visually as Egyptian supply vessel El Quseir (whose top speed was known to be fourteen knots or less), noted that the ship appeared to be firing upon them, and commenced cannon and torpedo attack. 

• "LIBERTY," said Ron, "made a grave additional mistake not less decisive than mistakes made by the Israeli Defense Force .... the American ship acted with lack of care by approaching excessively close to the shore in an area which was a scene of war and this at a time when it was well known that this area is not one where ships generally pass, this without advising the Israeli authorities of its presence and without identifying itself elaborately. Furthermore, it appears that the ship made an effort to hide its identity, first by flying a small flag which was difficult to identify from a distance; secondly by beginning to escape when discovered by our forces, and by failing to identify itself immediately by its own initiative by flashing light, and by refusing to do so even when asked by the M.T.B's. From all this [the investigating officer] conclude[s] that the ship LIBERTY tried to hide its presence in the area and its identity both before it was discovered and even after having been attacked by the Air Force and later by the Navy, and thus contributed decisively toward its identification as an enemy ship." 

• Ron found: "It is concluded clearly and unimpeachably from the evidence and from comparison of war diaries that the attack on USS Liberty was not in malice; there was no criminal negligence and the attack was made by innocent mistake."9 
9. United States Defense Attache Office, Confidential message 181030Z June 1967.
Efrat could not help noticing Castle's look of surprise and incredulity, and when he finished reading, asked Castle his "off the-record" opinion of the findings. Although Castle did not answer, his forwarding message told the White House of the question and added: 

.•. ALUSNA pretended he had not heard the question and thanked the Colonel for his time. The burden of diplomacy bore heavily on ALUSNA whose evaluations are: 

A. The standing order to attack any ship moving at more than 20 knots is incomprehensible. 

B. . .. If the "thirty knot ship couldn't have been LIBERTY," it follows that it could not have been EL QUSEIR. 

C. That a professional Naval Officer could look at LIBERTY and think her a thirty knot ship is difficult to accept. 

D. Smoke which covered LIBERTY and made her difficult to identify was probably a result of the I.D.F Air Force attacks. 

Colonel Ron's Court of Inquiry report is clearly unsatisfactory. It is evasive and seems carefully contrived not to explain what happened, but to shift the blame to McGonagle. The report should have been returned to Israel with a demand for a better explanation. The Israeli investigation, in the first place, should have been conducted by a flag officer. Indeed, the circumstances cry out for a flag officer. Colonel Ron was required to investigate the performance of forces commanded by officers considerably his senior-a situation virtually guaranteed to produce a finding of no fault. No one could have been surprised when this relatively junior Army officer concluded that the Israeli Navy had made several unprofessional (but noncriminal and nonnegligent) errors, and that everyone else involved in the attack was blameless. And more important, his story has a fatal flaw: the motor torpedo boat commander could not possibly have called in the air strike as claimed, because the boats were just entering radar range when the attack commenced and were many miles short of radar contact with Liberty when the air strike was called. The attack, then, must have been called and coordinated by forces ashore not by the torpedo boat commander-because the torpedo men were too far away to have detected the ship at all until the moment the air strike began. 

Kidd received the Israeli report in time to include a copy in Exhibit 48 of his Top Secret transcript, but he failed to comment on it and the report apparently had no effect upon his findings. Perhaps he was influenced by a message from our Tel Aviv embassy: "The circumstances of the attack strip the Israeli Navy naked," said the embassy in a plaintive request to keep the report under wraps. More embarrassing than professed naval ineptness, Israel's official explanation of the attack simply could not stand close scrutiny, and it was not exposed to any. Government officials docilely agreed not to embarrass Israel by releasing Israel's report, and little was ever heard of it. 10 
10. The essential facts of Israel's Court of Inquiry report first appeared in Newsweek on May 6,1968, and in somewhat more detail in Goulding's book, Confirm or Deny (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). Attempts by ordinary citizens to obtain a copy of the report were fruitless until August 1976, when Liberty's Dr. Kiepfer was suddenly handed a message synopsis by a patient who had obtained it under the Freedom of Information Act. Subsequent requests to obtain a copy through the Pentagon Freedom of Information Office were denied. An appeal of the denial on the grounds that the material had previously been released both to the press (Goulding and Newsweek) and to the public (Kiepfer's patient) was also denied. But even as the Pentagon denied the appeal, the Department of State-knowing not what the other hand was doing-declassified and released the message in its entirety; and at about the same time, the Navy Judge Advocate General released the American Court of Inquiry report (including the requested message) under the Freedom of Information Act, making the nine pound package available to the public at $27 per copy. 

The full text of the Israeli Court of Inquiry report, however, has yet to be released; the declassified version is the synopsis that was read to Commander Castle, who then telegraphed the text to the White House. According to a senior U.S. Navy officer whose duties gave him access to the full text, it provides another curious detail of Israel's reported failure to identify. In this story, Colonel Ron claims that although Liberty was identified and her track was plotted on a large chart in the war room, an off-going watch inadvertently erased the ship from the plot at the end of a shift. Consequently, when next sighted she was plotted as "unidentified." Just as the torpedoes were launched, so the story goes, an off-duty officer who happened to be in the war room recognized the error, and word was sent out to stop the attack, "but it was too late. The torpedo boat radioman cried, 'Hold firel Hold firel' just as the torpedoes were let go." Ron, in reporting this story, again overlooked the fact that the firing continued long after the torpedoes were launched. 
In London, Rear Admiral Kidd and Admiral McCain worked together to edit the court report into its final form: the relatively complete Record of Proceedings, which included exhibits, photographs, messages, testimony, and much conflicting and contradictory information, and which was classified "Top Secret." Despite the many weaknesses, the transcript does present a fairly complete record of evidence that the court received, including much that conflicts with the findings. For instance, Israel's Court of Inquiry synopsis is there, even though the message arrived very late in the proceeding and was ignored. And most messages reviewed by the court appear in the file whether they support the court's position or tend to refute it. 

On the other hand, a large volume of material-including original transparencies, bullet and rocket fragments, tape recordings, my sworn statement and other evidence that proved extraneous, bulky, awkward or sensitive-went into a large separate file, which was also classified "Top Secret." This file was ultimately delivered to a special storage vault in Wing Five of the Navy's Arlington Annex in Virginia, where it is safeguarded by the Navy Judge Advocate General. The court record contains no reference to this material, and its existence has never been admitted to the press or to other researchers. 

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On June 18, the completed report was approved by Admiral McCain, and for the next ten days Kidd worked with Phil Goulding's deputy, Richard Fryklund, to reduce the 707-page Top Secret transcript to a twenty-eight-page unclassified version. 

The problem was enormous. Although the court produced several unsupportable or just plain wrong "Findings of Fact" that seemed designed to excuse the attack, a careful reading of the full report at least revealed the weakness of the findings. The much-abbreviated Summary, on the other hand, published only selected findings and part of McGonagle's testimony; none of the contrary evidence and none of the contradictory testimony can be found in the unclassified version. As a result, while the Top Secret report was mild enough, the Summary of Proceedings watered the court's product even more to cut the heart out of the few unwelcome and unpolitic findings that were made. 

The opening paragraphs read as follows: 

A Navy Court of Inquiry has determined that USS LIBERTY was in international waters, properly marked as to her identity and nationality, and in calm, clear weather when she suffered an unprovoked attack by Israeli aircraft and motor torpedo boats June 8 in the Eastern Mediterranean.  

The Court produced evidence that the Israeli armed forces had ample opportunity to identify LIBERTY correctly. The Court had insufficient information before it to make a judgment on the reason for the decision by Israeli aircraft and motor torpedo boats to attack. 

Paraphrasing the Top Secret report, the Pentagon said: 

Available evidence combines to indicate that the attack was a case of mistaken identity. Flat, calm conditions and the slow five knot patrol speed of LIBERTY may have produced insufficient wind for streaming colors enough to be seen by pilots. The torpedo boat crews may have identified the colors for the first ,time when they got in close enough to see clearly through the smoke and flames. There are no indications that the attack was intended against a U.S. Ship.11 [I so beg to differ D.C.]
11. It was nine years after the attack before I could prove my claim that the wind was strong enough to hold the flag aloft; in 1976 a former ship's officer delivered to me the origina1"Ship Weather Observation Sheet" for the day of the attack. The officer, frustrated with the court's unconcern for such things, took possession of the log after the court failed to do so. The log appears in Appendix H (pages 245-46), along with a table converting true wind (over the sea) to relative wind (over the ship). 
Admiral Kidd handled the conflicting pre-attack reconnaissance reports by acting as though McGonagle was the only reliable witness. My sworn statement was excised even from the Top Secret report; other testimony about surveillance was, for the most part, ignored and had little or no bearing upon the findings. 

The unclassified version summarized findings on this subject to report "significant surveillance of the LIBERTY on three separate occasions from the air at various times prior to the attack," and went on to identify the significant flights as those that occurred at 0850, when "a single unidentified jet crossed her wake three to five miles astern"; at 1056, when "a flying boxcar crossed astern at a distance of three to five miles"; and at 1126, when "another aircraft circled ship." 

Thus the court and the Pentagon characterized the surveillance as much more distant than most of it was, dismissed as insignificant the three orbits by two armed jets, ignored my unwelcome description of a direct masthead-level overflight, failed to acknowledge a report by John Scott of flying boxcar reconnaissance at sunrise and disregarded testimony from Liberty officers of additional reconnaissance flights during the noon hour. 

Concerning Bloch's seven points telephoned to Castle on June 9, the Pentagon (without mentioning Israel's excuse) paraphrased a legal opinion in the Top Secret report to say: 

The Court affirmed LIBERTY'S right to be where she was. A neutral nation, the Court stated, has a legal right to dispatch a ship into international waters adjacent to an area of hostilities. So long as such neutral ship maintains the impartial attitude of neutrality, the Court pointed out, each belligerent has a duty to refrain from attacking her. 12 
12. The full text of the legal opinion as it appears in the Top Secret Record of Proceedings of the Court of Inquiry is reproduced in Appendix I, pages 248/9
Again without revealing the true source of the story, the Pentagon said: 

The Court also noted reports of rumors that the town of El Arish had been bombarded from the sea, but pointed out that neither LIBERTY, with four .50 caliber machine guns, nor EL QUSEIR, which is armed with two 3-pounders, could logically be suspected of having conducted a shore bombardment. 

Concerning the erroneous identification that Israel presented as the crucial mistake, the Pentagon (still protecting the source of the El Quseir story) quoted directly from the Top Secret report to say: 

While EL QUSEIR bears a highly superficial resemblance to LIBERTY, she more closely resembles the majority of older tramp steamers operating in ocean shipping. EL QUSEIR is less than half the size and lacks the elaborate antenna array and distinctive hull markings of LIBERTY. The location of the superstructure island, a primary recognition feature of merchant type ships, is widely different. By this criteria as a justification for attack, any ship resembling EL QUSEIR was in jeopardy. 

Describing the communication fiasco, which certainly contributed to the likelihood of attack, the Top Secret report said: 

..• LIBERTY'S 7 June Position Report which stated her final destination prompted concern in the [Pentagon] ... and resulted in follow-on actions and directives to the ship ... The ship is known not to have received at least five messages, each of which was ... critical ... 

The first sentence, of course, unknown to Kidd, is not entirely true. The JCS effort to recall the ship did not result from any sudden realization that she was near the war zone. Liberty's position, after all, was well known to officials in the Pentagon and elsewhere. Rather, as we have seen, the recall order grew from a Defense Department "staff study," which recommended the immediate withdrawal of the ship and resulted in a last-minute Flash message requesting that the Joint Chiefs of Staff order Liberty promptly away from the coast. 

On the same subject, the unclassified report quoted from Admiral McCain's endorsement to the Top Secret report, in which McCain said: 

Early on the 8th, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had issued orders for LIBERTY to move farther from the coast, even though such a move would partially degrade her mission. The messages were misrouted, delayed, and not received until after the attack .... since [McGonagle] was in international waters, his standard identification symbols were clearly visible, and foreign aircraft had inspected him three times that day, he had no reason to believe the ship was in danger of attack .... The Court reached no judgment on whether earlier arrival of the messages would have reduced the likelihood of the attack. 

Despite statements from our embassy and evidence we have seen that Liberty was indeed identified by Israel during the morning, Kidd ignored the evidence. The Pentagon reported the court's negative findings on that score in this manner: 

Inasmuch as this was not an international investigation, no evidence was presented on whether any of these aircraft had identified LIBERTY or whether they had passed any information on LIBERTY to their own higher headquarters. 

And in an introduction to the unclassified Summary. the Pentagon added: 

It was not the responsibility of the Court to rule on the culpability of the attackers, and no evidence was heard from the attacking nation. Witnesses suggested that the flag may have been difficult for the attackers to see, both because of the slow speed of the ship and because, after five or six separate air attacks by at least two planes each, smoke and flames may have helped obscure the view from the torpedo boats. 

The addition of the phrase "attacks by at least two planes each," appearing as it does in both the Top Secret and unclassified versions, is apparently a last-minute attempt by Kidd to resolve conflicts in testimony. However, little was ever resolved. The unclassified report gives no hint of the conflicting and contradictory evidence, and the Top Secret version, which does suggest conflict (since it contains testimony ofthe officers and crew along with numerous messages and other evidence that was not released to the public), was destined to spend the next several years in special security containers reserved for Top Secret material and to be seen by only a very few senior officials. A Navy JAG (legal) Corps officer who finally achieved access to the document told me, after studying the 707 legal-size pages of testimony, photographs, evidence, legal opinions and findings: "The report is confusing. After you read the testimony, review the evidence, and then read the findings, your first impulse is to go back and see if you missed a couple hundred pages, because the evidence simply does not lead to the findings. Many of the findings are not supported by evidence at all. The message you get from the report is that Admiral Kidd had some orders that are not spelled out in his appointing letter." 

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While Admiral Kidd's Court of Inquiry was the only investigating panel to receive public notice, there were several such groups. As we have seen, Walter Deeley conducted an investigation for the Department of Defense, producing a large and colorful report. The Joint Chiefs of Staff detailed Major General Joseph R. Russ to head a fact-finding team; the JCS group apparently sent representatives to the Mediterranean for some on-the-spot investigating, particularly into the mishandling of communications, and produced a still classified report that resists Freedom of Information Act inquiries. The Central Intelligence Agency completed a "staff summary" report on the attack. As we know, Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Chairman Clark Clifford was detailed by President Johnson to head an immediate investigation into the matter for the President. All of these investigations seem to have been conducted in great haste. Volumes of information were collected and innumerable man hours were spent, but much of the information was not pertinent and only Kidd's group collected any firsthand information from on board the ship. The others relied primarily upon McGonagle's testimony to the Court of Inquiry, or directed their inquiries into other aspects of the incident, such as communications. Each of the reports either concluded that the attack was probably conducted in error, or avoided making conclusions by lamely reporting that it could find no evidence that the attack was deliberate. 

Perhaps the most penetrating official observation was made by Commander Castle in a wrap-up report to the White House: " ... only the Israeli Defense Force knows with certainty the exact sequence of events that led to the tragic incident."

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 "PRESS GUIDANCE"