USS Liberty: The Hidden War Crime
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Hello, my friends, Takuyi here, and welcome back to the History of Everything podcast. Yes, I know that this episode is going out a little bit later here today, and there is also something that I'm actually recording this on the day that this episode is supposed to go out in the first place. Except for that, I apologize, my friends. I have been so behind when it comes to everything for the holidays, for family, for activities, for everything that I have been doing. And so if at any given point I mess something up like this, I again, I do firmly apologize.

But today's episode that we are getting into, this is going to be a spicy one. What we're about to cover here today is one of the most overlooked stories in the history of the United States military. Now, it is a story that I'm saying this from the beginning will likely upset a few listeners, but I have to stress that what we are going to cover is sourced from numerous sources and will be a nonpartisan recollection of events as we know them.

This podcast has and never will be a political platform. That is something that we are absolutely not going to do. But there are things that happen that can't simply be ignored because of who did them. And just because something happened to someone here in the past does not excuse them for future wrongdoing, no matter how many people would try to ignore something.

Now, that's going to sound very ominous from the very beginning, but I need to stress that. And the reason is because we are getting into the story of the USS Liberty incident, which is the time that Israel attacked a U.S. Navy ship. Yeah, those of you who have not heard of this here before, it is a very real thing, and it is something that is oftentimes conveniently forgotten, as it's rather embarrassing.

In June of 1967, the Six-Day War was happening between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, primarily including Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.

Israel was doing quite well in this. They'd occupied and obtained the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, and both the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Now, they would end up giving back the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 after a peace treaty with Egypt, but they kept pretty much everything else and even retained access to the Red Sea, even after giving back almost the entire Sinai Peninsula.

The United States, being in a constant race with the Soviet Union to claim the title of the world's greatest superpower, well, they had their eye on the situation and wanted to have the most up-to-date information on the war. So, they sent the USS Liberty to the Mediterranean Sea. Now, the official position of the United States regarding this conflict was that it was a neutral country, but it didn't mean that they couldn't listen in to what was happening.

The Liberty was an auxiliary technical research ship. This fancy sounding title was really just a cover name for ships that conducted intelligence gathering missions for the NSA and other government agencies. But, you know, I guess that's besides the point. Having just conducted several missions off the west coast of Africa, the Liberty was the closest spy ship available and also in the region. So they received the orders to head to the eastern Mediterranean Sea and gather as much intel as they could.

Their mission mandated that they head to the area just off the coast of the northern Sinai Peninsula, but to absolutely remain in international waters. They could not enter into a territory that could be more questionable. They arrived just before the war kicked off and were ordered to stay at least 12.5 nautical miles from Egypt's coast and 6.5 nautical miles from Israel's coast. When the war officially started, these orders were updated out of concern for the safety of the crew.

The new orders stated that they had to remain at least 20 nautical miles from Egyptian waters and 15 nautical miles from Israeli waters. Later, that distance would be updated to 100 miles away from both countries. But by the time the Liberty received that order, yeah, that was going to be far too late.

According to Israeli sources, General Yitzhak Rabin, who was in charge of the Israeli Air Force during the war, told Commander Ernest Castle, the American Navy attaché in Tel Aviv, that Israel would defend its coast with every means at its disposal, including sinking unidentified ships. He allegedly asked Castle to keep American ships away from Israeli waters or let the Israelis know the exact positions of the ships.

American sources state that no such warning was given until after the USS Liberty incident. It's important to clarify this from the beginning. U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Walworth Barber, would later tell Secretary of State Dean Rusk that, quote, no request for info on U.S. ships operating off Sinai was made until after the Liberty incident.

Had Israelis made such an inquiry, it would have been forwarded immediately to the Chief of Naval Operations and other high naval commands and repeated to the Department of State. End quote. When the war officially started, Captain William L. McGonigal, Commander of the Liberty, would immediately request an armed destroyer escort from Vice Admiral William Martin at United States Sixth Fleet Headquarters. Admiral Martin's reply would show quite a bit of hubris and a heaping helping of ignorance to the realities of the situation.

He had replied to the request from Captain McGonagall saying, and I quote, Liberty is a clearly marked United States ship in international waters, not a participant in the conflict, and not a reasonable suspect for attack by any nation. Request denied. He did promise that if the Liberty came under attack somehow, that fighter jets from 6th Fleet would be deployed and overhead to protect the Liberty within 10 minutes. But that's not exactly how things would play out here.

Official testimony combined with Liberty's deck log established that throughout the morning of the attack, the 8th of June, the ship was overflown at various times and locations by IAF aircraft. Most of the planes were noradnordalist cargo planes, but two unidentified delta-wing jets would fly over them at roughly 9 a.m. local time. One of the cargo planes flew so low over Liberty that the propeller wash and associated noise went and rattled the ship's deck plating.

In fact, it flew so low that the plane's pilots and Liberty crew members even waved at each other. The Israelis would later claim that the planes were searching for Egyptian submarines that had been spotted near the coast, but that claim was never proven. At 5.45 a.m. Sinai time, a report was received at Israeli Central Coastal Command stating that the pilot sending the report had seen, quote, apparently a destroyer sailing 70 miles west of Gaza.

The Israelis would mark it on their command and control tables with a red marker, meaning it was an unidentified vessel. 15 minutes later, Major Uri Meritz would call in reporting that the ship appeared to be a U.S. Navy supply ship. By 9 a.m., that red marker had changed to a green marker, which indicated a neutral vessel.

40 minutes later, another pilot would land and conduct his debriefing, and he would indicate that he saw the GTR-5 pole markings. So, it was clearly established that this ship was an American vessel. But for some reason, by 11 a.m., the marker for the Liberty would be removed from the table entirely. The Israelis state that this was due to the fact that its positional information was out of date, but that doesn't really make sense for the ship to just up and disappear.

Then, reports started coming in around 11.30 a.m. that the city of Arish was being shelled from the sea. The shells had fallen short, but the reports still indicated that the attempted attack had come from the sea. The Israeli chief of naval operations took this seriously and sent three torpedo boats to investigate. General Yitzhak Rabin was worried that the shelling was the first step in an Egyptian amphibious attack that would attempt to outflank Israeli land forces. He again repeated the order to his pilots to sink any unidentified ships in the area.

Now, interesting to note would be the other thing he told his pilots. He told them to use caution, not because there was an American ship absolutely confirmed to be in the area, but because there were allegedly Soviet ships in the vicinity. Then, at 1.40 Sinai time, the torpedo boats would detect an unknown vessel 20 miles northwest of Arish and 14 miles off the coast of Bardaweel. They estimated the unknown vessel's speed at roughly 30 knots, or 35 miles per hour.

It was important for the torpedo boats to estimate a target speed by radar, because Israeli forces had standing orders to fire upon any unknown vessels sailing at over 20 knots, which would indicate that it was a combat vessel and not just some simple civilian craft. This was due to the fact that really at that time, only warships went that fast. The speed of the unknown vessel was recalculated twice, to be sure.

Interesting to note is the fact that the U.S. Liberty's top speed was far below, with an estimated speed of 28 knots reported after the third calculation by the Israelis. Also, according to U.S. sources, at this point in time, the U.S. Liberty was only moving at around 5 knots, or 6 miles per hour. According to Israeli sources, the ship's speed and direction gave them the impression that the unknown vessel was an Egyptian vessel fleeing after shelling the Israeli coast.

The Liberty was never capable of having shelled the Israelis in the first place because it was only armed with four .50 caliber machine guns on its deck. Yes, these could fire, but those are not artillery shells. But since the torpedo boats stated that they wouldn't catch up with the mystery vessel, not a fact proven to be true by the way, they requested air support. Carla only has the best tech. Can't connect to network. But she didn't have the best internet.

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At 2 p.m. local time, the Israeli Air Force would dispatch two Dassault Mirage III fighter jets, codenamed Kurska Flight, which arrived at the Liberty's location within 10 minutes. Captain Iftitch Specter, on board one of the Mirages, attempted to identify the ship. He called in to the torpedo boats and mentioned how it looked like a military ship with one smokestack and one mast. Later, while being debriefed, he would state that he had seen no distinguishable markings on the ship.

Then, a Command HQ Weapons System officer, one of the air traffic controllers, and the chief air traffic controller would actually have a conversation about whether it could be an American ship. Even with all the doubts present in this scenario, Chief Air Traffic Controller Lieutenant Colonel Shmuel Kislev would clear the mirage for attack.

The Mirages would dive and begin an attack with their 30mm cannons and rockets. The Liberty had just finished completing a chemical attack drill and had helmets and lifejackets removed as they were now in stand down mode and likely discussing how the attack drill had gone. Since the men were in a recovery cycle from the drill, they were given free time and many of them were just sunbathing on the deck as it was a beautiful sunny day with clear skies. Then the ship's deck was suddenly raked with fire.

Eight crewmen were either immediately killed or received fatal injuries that would lead to their deaths later. 75 crewmen were injured. Even Captain McGonagall himself was amongst the wounded, having been hit in the right thigh and arm by the initial attack. During the first attack alone, the ship's antennas were severed, gas drums caught fire on the deck, and even the ship's flag was knocked down.

It should be noted that the ship was flying an extra large American flag, like even larger than normal. It would have been nearly impossible to not see the flag. Yet still, they were attacked. It was an incredible amount of damage to have come from only two fighter jets. Then the Liberty noticed that its signals were being jammed. Not only their tactical radio frequencies, but also their distress radio frequencies too, which happens to be a violation of international law. How can we be sure that they were being jammed?

Well, that's easy because one of the best radio specialists in the entire U.S. military were on the Liberty when it was being attacked. They also happen to know that enemies wouldn't know which frequencies to jam. Only an ally would know that. Finally, the Mirages ran out of ammo and left the local airspace. The crews started assessing the damage to the ship and tended to the wounded, and then they saw them.

High in the sky, two Dassault Super Mystere fighter jets, codenamed Royal Flight. These planes were armed with napalm bombs. And as they dove down to drop the bombs, they also made sure to strafe the Liberty with their machine gun fire as well. The napalm flames would turn the ship's deck into hell on earth.

Much of the ship's superstructure would become engulfed in flames. Men were burned beyond recognition. The entire front half of the Liberty was ablaze and turned charcoal black instead of its usual navy gray by the time the men were able to put out the fires. Then, as the jets were preparing for a second attack, the Israeli Navy called in to say that they'd noticed the ship hadn't returned fire even with visible deck guns in place.

This caused the sudden concern that it might actually be an Israeli ship, and so they aborted the second attack momentarily. The Israeli Navy checked to make sure that none of their vessels were being attacked, and then cleared the jets to continue the destruction. Listening into all of this, the chief air traffic controller, Lieutenant Colonel Kislev, was alarmed by what he heard.

He told the pilots to make every effort to identify the ship. And so one of the pilots straight the ship again, this time without firing. And then he noticed the GTR-5 marking on the hull of the ship. Kislev guessed correctly that the ship was American in origin. Israeli radio recordings would reveal that the pilots were too busy discussing whether they should finish off the ship or leave something for the Navy while Kislev was still trying to figure out who they were about to sink.

But General Rabin speculated that the ship was not American, that it could be Russian as it had Latin markings on its side. This seems like a mistake since Russian ships would probably have Cyrillic lettering on their ships. He then ordered the torpedo boats to remain at a safe distance from the ship and sent in two choppers to investigate and look for survivors.

The American Naval Attaché to Israel was aboard one of these choppers and dropped a paper sack with an orange and a note in it. And that note read, quote, Do you have casualties? And the sack would land right next to the dismembered leg of a crewman, just feet away from the bulkheads covered in blood. The note was passed to Captain McGonagall, who was utterly enraged by the thoughtlessness of the message and immediately stepped out to the open deck where the chopper could see him and raised his middle finger up high in the air at the message's sender.

Now, we have proof of much of what occurred due to Israeli radio logs. The torpedo boats would arrive 24 minutes later. In the time between their arrival and the time the torpedo boats arrived, the Americans would manage to hoist up the American flag again. By now, the Israelis were discussing over the radio with the pilots how they were pretty sure that the ship was American, yet the torpedo boats were not called off. The torpedo boats would arrive and try to make contact.

But since their radio had been taken out during the initial attack, they couldn't reply to the incoming boat, which had messaged, identify yourself via light signals. Captain McGonagall had to respond with a handheld lamp.

Unfortunately, Commander Oren, who was aboard one of the torpedo boats, had previously been attacked by an Egyptian vessel under exactly the same conditions during the Suez Crisis. So he was pretty sure it was an Egyptian vessel and looked up an Israeli identification guide for Arab ships and thought the vessel was an Egyptian supply ship called the El Kassir due to its deckline, midship bridge, and smokestack. He had the torpedo boats form into a battle formation, but they did not attack yet.

The unfortunate timing would continue as, by this point, Captain McGonagall was sick and tired of watching his men get wounded or die, and he now had three torpedo boats forming up ready for an attack run. So he ordered the machine guns manned and gave the order to fire. He then rescinded that order just after his machine gunner had let off his first round of gunfire because he noticed that the boats were flying an Israeli flag.

The first burst of .50 caliber gunfire had already lit up the center torpedo boat and the area around it, though. So now, torpedo boats returned fire naturally, and this round of gunfire killed the Liberty's helmsman. Meanwhile, below deck, the intelligence experts and frantic sailors burned classified papers, bagged magnetic tapes, and destroyed key cards until word would be passed to stand by for a torpedo attack.

The men would tuck their pant legs into their socks and button up their shirts to protect against flash burns. Many would pray. One man, who did not want to see what was about to happen, took off his glasses and slipped them into his shirt pocket. Then, the torpedo boats would launch five torpedoes at liberty. Four of them missed, but one of the torpedoes would score a direct hit and left a 39-foot or 12-meter-wide hole in the side of the ship.

From that point on, everything on board was chaos and bloodshed, confusion and fear. The cries of the dying would fill the ship below deck just as they had above deck. The location where the hole was happened to be a cargo hole that had been converted into the ship's research space populated by servicemen who primarily worked in the intelligence branch. 25 of the men in this space were immediately killed and dozens more were wounded.

In a room full of radios and typewriters, everything became shrapnel in a split second. Many men were killed immediately, but some survived with as many as 80 shrapnel wounds reported by one survivor who was in the room. And this guy had the letter H key from a typewriter embedded through his boot and right into his foot. The room where the hole was immediately filled with water and oil, and all the ship's lighting went out.

Water filled up to the very top of the room, and the survivors had to tread water with a small gap of only 8 to 10 inches in which to breathe. The entire rest of that part of the ship was underwater. The only men who survived in this room were lucky enough to be near the overhead hatch that happened to open up to the deck. In what would later be found to be an amazing stroke of luck, the torpedo had hit a major portion of the hull frame at its strongest point, which did absorb much of the energy of the strike.

If the torpedo had hit just a few feet to the left or right of this particular spot, it's very likely that the Liberty would have sunk. The torpedo boats, sensing blood in the water, now attacked at high speed with their 30-million-year cannons and machine gun fire. The armor-piercing rounds that they were firing left massive holes in the ship's hull the size of a baseball. Seaman Francis Brown, just barely 18 years old and situated below deck, was struck in the head by one of these rounds and killed immediately.

The 67-minute attack would prove to be the bloodiest assault on a US ship since World War II, one best described by Patrick O'Malley, quote, There wasn't any place that was safe, you would recall. If it was your day to get hit, you were going to get hit, end quote. Some of the crewmen would later state that the torpedo boats even fired upon damage control crews and sailors preparing lifeboats for launch.

Officers and crewmen of the Liberty would say that after the torpedo attack and the abandoned ship order, motor torpedo boats would strafe the ship's topside with automatic fire, preventing men from escaping from below, and either machine-gunned or confiscated the empty life rafts that had been set afloat. This is why they stayed aboard and tried so hard to keep the Liberty from sinking. They were trapped aboard their own coffin as far as they knew.

By this point, a courageous crewman had run onto the deck with a whip antenna that Khan used on Humvees and portable radios and mounted it high enough to get a signal out.

But even this proved to be ineffective with jets overhead as they were jamming communications. Eventually, the crew realized that when the jets were firing their rockets, they had to disengage their signal jammers as they were interfering with the rocket's ability to hit their target. So they waited until the next attack run, and in a few seconds while the rockets were airborne, they were able to finally send messages out, if only for a few moments.

Captain McGonagall immediately messaged 6th Fleet, stating that they were under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and required immediate assistance. Liberty was barely able to get out a distress signal to 6th Fleet, where it was reported the presence of three enemy torpedo boats headed their way. The USS Saratoga received the message and immediately responded by sending eight aircraft, but they were recalled five minutes later by Vice Admiral Martin. Finally,

The attack was called off after 75 minutes, primarily due to the fact that the Israelis heard that the Saratoga had launched fighters to intercept, but had not yet been informed that they'd been called back. Word was sent to President Lyndon B. Johnson about the attack on the Liberty. Johnson thought that this was the doing of the Soviet Union and contacted Moscow about the attack and about the Saratoga having launched and recalled fighters.

He decided against making any public statements about the event, which began the government's standing of keeping the attack quiet. Within hours, the Israelis were sending messages of apology for having mistakenly attacked the ship. Meanwhile, the chaos on the Liberty still had not ended. The ship's doctor and medical crew faced the monumental task of trying to care for more than 200 wounded sailors.

The immense stress of this was placed on just a handful of medical crew. And the idea of that is unimaginable. Blood transfusions were run straight out of one's arm and into another. Men with broken limbs watched in pain as others underwent attempts to save their lives through surgery without anesthesia in many cases.

Though Liberty was now seriously damaged with a 39 foot wide by 24 foot high hole and a twisted keel, the crew would work their hardest and somehow miraculously kept her floating. Then the ship would limp away from the area under her own power. Captain McGonagall would have to navigate her by the stars since most of their power and systems were down. The Liberty would suffer 34 of her crew killed and 171 crew wounded. I'll rephrase this so you can understand just how bad this is.

Two thirds of the Liberty's crew were dead or wounded. Ironically enough, the first ship that then countered the Liberty and offered assistance was actually Soviet. It was a Soviet missile destroyer. Then it was met by the USS Davis, the USS Massey, and the cruiser USS Little Rock. Medical personnel were brought on board the Liberty and the dead and wounded taken off the ship.

The military made absolutely sure that no journalists could have access to the survivors, even going as far as placing armed guards outside the entrance of the wards where the wounded recovered from their injuries to prevent outside access. The total press blackout of the events that had occurred was already in effect. The USS Liberty was then escorted to Malta, where she underwent massive repairs. A few weeks later, she was sent back to the U.S., and in 1973, she was sold for scrap.

From the beginning, the United States government's response to this event was odd, to say the least. Some people in the Johnson administration were shocked in disbelief that a modern military could make such a catastrophic mistake. Chief among this group would turn out to be Dean Rusk himself.

On June 10th, Secretary of State Dean Rusk would send a message to the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. stating, quote, At the time of the attack, the USS Liberty was flying the American flag, and its identification was clearly indicated in large white letters and numerals on its hull. Experience demonstrates that both the flag and identification number of the vessel were readily visible from the air.

Accordingly, there is every reason to believe that the USS Liberty was identified, or at least her nationality determined, by Israeli aircraft approximately one hour before the attack. The subsequent attack by torpedo boats, substantially after the vessel was or should have been identified by Israeli military forces, manifests that same reckless disregard for human life. President Johnson, on the other hand, ended up completely buying the Israeli version of the story, that this was all a massive mistake.

This was likely due to the fact that Johnson was arguably the most pro-Israeli president in the history of the U.S. Then, in line with his habits of lying to the American people about military affairs, he had the incident minimized in the press and purposely distorted the number of dead and wounded from the Liberty's crew. From 34 dead to only 10, and from 171 wounded to 100. Handling the media became the administration's top priority.

Later, classified documents would show that the idea had briefly floated by someone in Johnson's administration to intentionally sink the Liberty so that the journalists couldn't take photos of the damage. The NSA deputy director at the time, Louis Tordella, would respond with what he later called an impolite reply. No word on whether the idea included getting the ship's crew off the ship first or whether they just planned to kill the men on board and hide the whole thing.

Even the idea of sinking the ship itself intentionally is, to be honest, quite disturbing and incredibly sad and concerning to think about. To survive all that they had only to get sunk by their own country is not something the crew deserved, and thankfully, it did not happen. If it had, the story might never have seen the light of day.

But the primary reason that this story stayed as buried as it did for so long was due to intense Israeli pressure on Lyndon Johnson to keep it quiet. Many of Johnson's supporters and donors had ties to Israel, and they had been critical of Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War. At this point, by 1967, Johnson had not yet decided to not run for re-election in 1968 yet.

In exchange for keeping the story of the Liberty quiet and resupplying the Israelis with weapon stocks they'd just depleted during the Six-Day War, these supporters agreed to stay quiet about how he was conducting Vietnam as well. Although the Israelis got a hold of the same Soviet-built SAM-2 anti-aircraft missile system that were being used against the U.S. by North Vietnam and sent one to the U.S. complete with operating manuals and spare parts.

This was possible because the Egyptians had used the same SAM-2 launchers against the Israel Air Force in the Sinai Peninsula. And when the Israelis took over, the Egyptians simply left the anti-aircraft missile systems where they were and ran. The Israelis began monitoring everything the Johnson administration did or said regarding the event through contacts in Washington.

Documents show that Eugene Rostow, who was third in command of the State Department, repeatedly shared privileged information about U.S. strategy with Israeli diplomats. In addition to this, the Israelis would contact all the people they knew and trusted that were close to the Johnson administration. Their messages to these individuals were so sensitive that they used code names in the communications to protect their identities of those involved.

Decades later, classified documents would be released through the Freedom of Information Act that exposed the identities of these Americans acting under the direction of the Israeli government. Some of Johnson's biggest supporters and donors were powerful members of the American Jewish community. Codename Hamlet was assigned to a million-dollar fundraiser for the Democratic Party named Abe Feinberg.

Codename Menashe was Arthur Goldberg, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Codename Harari was David Ginsburg, a high-profile lawyer who had represented the Israeli embassy. Codename Ilan was Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas. Many of these people were friends of Johnson's, who were used against him to the benefit of the Israeli government.

Johnson had dinner with Fortas the night before the Six-Day War began, for instance. Together, they placed massive amounts of pressure on Johnson, even threatening to accuse him of blood libel and anti-Semitism. Essentially, they placed enough pressure on Johnson that he felt that if he went public with the story, they would derail his entire re-election campaign. Meanwhile, in Malta, the Liberty had been placed in dry dock. It was then that the full extent of the damage was discovered.

Also, I shit you not fear people so you understand, the Navy made the surviving crew members of the Liberty go into the hole that had been blown open by the torpedo and removed the bodies of the dead and all top secret equipment left in the ship. The Navy was more concerned about the equipment and not the 168 bags of body parts that the already traumatized crew had to collect.

300 Maltese workers spent six weeks working two shifts a day, seven days a week, cutting out the 820 holes in the Liberty and covered them with plate metal. They also fabricated a giant metal patch for the massive torpedo hole. Then they painted the entire ship in a single day to hide the burns and bloodstains. The Liberty returned to the U.S. looking like it used to, but feeling like a cemetery.

This way, the media could never see the catastrophic damage and the hundreds of holes that had been punched through the ship's hull. And when they returned to port, the 168 bags of body parts, as well as the ship's top-secret equipment, were taken to an incinerator and burned indiscriminately without ceremony or dignity.

This is one part of the whole thing that should infuriate any American who hears this. The men deserved to be buried or cremated with honor and dignity according to their beliefs and wishes. Instead, they were tossed into a fire with garbage bags. And honestly, it's just insane to hear that. Transcripts of Israeli communications, which have become available in recent years, show that the case is not as simple as the Israeli government wanted the United States to believe back in 1967.

Two minutes before the strafing began, an Israeli weapons system officer in general headquarters would blurt out, What is it? Americans? Probably was the reply from the pilot. By the time the second wave of jets came in, the Americans had two flags knocked down and had pulled out their holiday flag, flown on days like 4th of July and raised it on deck. The holiday flag is a much larger flag and the biggest flag available on any Navy ship. It was an unmistakable indicator that the ship that was being fired upon was American.

Some of the fighter jets would go and drop such accurate fire that they killed sailors manning one of the deck machine guns. If they could see those men at their station accurately enough to drop rounds or rockets directly on them, then they should have been able to see a giant flag. As one transcript would show, quote, great, wonderful. She's burning. She's burning. One of the pilots would exclaim this during the attack.

A pilot would joke at one point during the strafing runs that hitting the defenseless ship was easier than shooting down MiGs. Another quipped that it would be a mitzvah, a kind of deed or blessing, to sink the liberty before Israeli ships arrived. Now, these didn't sound like pilots who were unsure of their enemy. Also, during the day that this battle was taking place, Israel was taking the Golan Heights from Syria, a move which they promised the United States that they would not do.

It's very possible that once they realized Liberty was a U.S. spy ship, they considered it a threat to their plans to attack a third country that week. Later, it would be found that the pilots were urged numerous times to sink the ship and not leave any survivors. Now, why would they say that if they knew it was an American ship? Well, they'd already taken out their communications capabilities. Dead men can't tell their stories. So it's pretty easy to guess that they wanted to cover up their mistake in even initially attacking the ship by sinking it completely before the story could be told.

The United States Navy was also complicit in covering things up by way of their report of the incident. It was slapped together in less than two weeks and omitted eyewitness reports given by the sailor, Marines, and intelligence personnel aboard the Liberty. It was such a rushed report that it contained numerous spelling and grammatical errors. Shallow, cursory, and perfunctionary were words that Liberty officers used to describe the Court of Inquiry's report, which spent only two days interviewing crew members in Malta for an investigation into an attack that had killed 34 men.

The transcripts of the proceedings show just how shallow it truly was. The Liberty's chief engineer was asked only 13 questions. A chief petty officer on deck during the assault and a good witness about the air attack was only asked 11. Another officer was asked just five. In contrast to this, as a heads up, when North Korea captured the USS Pueblo, the inquiry lasted over four months, interviewed over 100 witnesses, and produced a final transcript that was nearly 3,400 pages long.

It was later revealed that investigators were barred from traveling to Israel to interview those responsible, not allowed to collect Israeli war logs or review Israeli communications. President Johnson, as well as everyone's favorite American warmonger, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, would order the court to rule in favor of the Israeli claim that it was an accident.

NSA Chief of Staff Gerard Burke would later state, quote, there was absolutely no question in anybody's mind that the Israelis had done it deliberately. Burke would later say, quote, I was angrier because of the cover up. If that's possible, then the incident itself, because there was no doubt in my mind that they did it right from the outset. That was no mystery. The only mystery to me was why this thing was being covered up. End quote. The Israelis would also hold an investigation in which they exonerated all involved from any wrongdoing.

They held that they had confused the American ship for a World War I-era ship used to haul horses that hadn't been used by the Egyptians for 30 years. During a later investigation by the Israelis, it was acknowledged that IDF naval headquarters knew at least three hours before the attack that the ship was, quote, an electromagnetic audio surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy.

But concluded that this information had simply gotten lost, never passed along to the ground controllers who directed the air attack, nor to the crews of the three Israeli torpedo boats. Yet at various times, identification of the ship was made and the Israelis had flown seven reconnaissance flights over the Liberty. They had more than enough passes of the ship to know who it belonged to.

In the end, an Israeli judge ruled that he found no negligence by any IDF members associated with the attack. And because of this and the American cover up, no one was ever held to justice with this tragedy. Captain William McGonigal was given the Congressional Medal of Honor for his role in keeping his men on board the Liberty alive. Now, this is an award customarily presented by the president at the White House.

The president's senior military aide, James Cross, would urge Johnson not to present McGonagall's medal in person and to make sure the White House issued no press release. So instead, while Lyndon Johnson handed diplomas to schoolchildren, McGonagall received his Medal of Honor in a hushed ceremony a few miles away at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. But that is nothing compared to the rest of his men. 208 Purple Hearts were awarded to the men of the Liberty out of a total crew of 270.

Many of these men were handed their Purple Heart awards in private and told under threat of court martial never to tell how they'd received them in the first place. I can't imagine the level of trauma this caused those men to be silenced from repeating what you clearly know to be true and the reason you lost your closest comrades. In 1968, Israel would pay $3.3 million to the families of the men killed. A year later, Israel paid $3.5 million to the men who were injured.

Israel then bulked at paying the $7.6 million for the loss of the ship, secretly offering much lower amounts. In the end, the American government sold off the Liberty for scrap at the ridiculously low price of just $100,000, as they wanted it dismantled and destroyed as soon as possible. Negotiations dragged on until 1980, at which time the bill plus interest totaled more than $17 million.

Under the threat of a congressional investigation, Israel struck a deal to pay $6 million in three annual installments. The United States accepted. In part of the negotiations, an American lawyer mentioned how the payment for grief and mental anguish to widows was $25,000, and each child of a deceased crew member over the age of five was given $10,000. The lawyer brought up how children under the age of five didn't have the mental capacity to experience grief and mental anguish, and so those children were given nothing.

One last insult to those involved from their own government. It remains to be seen if the survivors and families of the dead from the USS Liberty will actually ever get justice that they so deserve. Both political parties in the U.S. have had the opportunities to do so, but both of them failed in this regard. If they truly cared about our military service members and veterans, then they would have already done something about it, but they don't seem to have the guts or empathy to do things right. So if you want to point fingers at one or the other, you're missing the point.

The entire government let these people down, and it continues to do so by not correcting the mistakes of the past and honoring them for what they endured on one sunny day in the Mediterranean all those years ago. May they rest in peace. Well, my friends, in the end, I wish that we could have a happier story to tell you all today. That would have been nice, but those who don't learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat it, and stories like that need to be told before there aren't any more survivors left to honor.

We spent a lot of time as a society honoring those who gave their lives in World War II, in Korea, etc. But the Vietnam era doesn't really get that same level of treatment. And so when we come across an important story like this, it's kind of our responsibility to share it with you. And I thank you for giving me the opportunity to do so today. If you know a veteran, next time you see them, give them a hug or a handshake and thank them for what they went through for their service, whether it was combat or simply time away from the family.

All gave some, but some gave all, even when it never was or should have been required of them. Check out our Patreon, where we're currently doing a series on the Vietnam War that has a couple of episodes left. And check out our merch, which is available through our YouTube channel. My friends, thank you all for listening, and I wish you all good luck. Goodbye, my friends. ♪