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News :: International Relations |
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Another Conspiracy Theory Bites The Dust. |
Current rating: 0 |
by haaretz via gehrig
(No verified email address) |
08 Jul 2003
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The last classified intelligence documents on the 1967 friendly fire incident in which Israel sank the USS Liberty are unclassified. |
U.S. agency confirms sinking of USS Liberty was accident
By Nathan Guttman, Haaretz Correspondent
WASHINGTON - New documents released this week by America's National
Security Agency support Israel's version of a long-festering
controversy between the two countries: Israel's sinking of an American
spy ship, the USS Liberty, off the coast of Gaza during the 1967
Six-Day War.
Israel has always said it had no idea the ship was American, but
conspiracy theorists and anti-Israel propagandists still claim Israel
sank the ship in the full knowledge that it was American.
The documents, originally defined as top secret, were made public by
Florida Judge Jay Cristol, who has been investigating the Liberty
incident for years and published a book on the subject last year. On
Monday, the NSA gave him a transcript of conversations held by two
Israeli Air Force helicopter pilots who were hovering over the Liberty
as it was sinking, and these tapes confirm Israel's claim that the
sinking of the ship, which killed 34 American servicemen and wounded
171, was a tragic error.
After the Liberty was bombed by both the Israel Air Force and the
Israel Navy, the two helicopter pilots were summoned from their base
to assess the damage and evaluate the possibility of rescuing the
surviving crew members. An American spy plane, which had been sent to
the area as soon as the NSA learned of the attack, recorded their
conversations, which took place between 2:30 and 3:37 P.M. on June 8,
the third day of the war.
The spy plane also recorded the orders radioed to the pilots by their
supervisor at Hatzor Base, which instructed them to search for
Egyptian survivors from the "Egyptian warship" that had just been
bombed - thus supporting Israel's claim that it had believed the ship
was Egyptian when it ordered it attacked. "Pay attention. The ship is
now identified as Egyptian," the pilots were told.
Nine minutes later, Hatzor informed the pilots that it was not an
Egyptian warship, but an Egyptian cargo ship. Only at 3:07 were the
pilots first informed that the ship might not have been Egyptian at
all: Hatzor told them that if they found Arabic-speaking survivors,
they should be taken to El-Arish, but if they found English-speaking
survivors, they should be taken to Lod. "Clarify by the first man that
you bring up, what nationality he is, and report to me immediately,"
the supervisor instructed, according to the transcript. "It's
important to know."
Then, at 3:12, one of the pilots informed Hatzor that he saw an
American flag flying over the wounded ship. He was asked to
investigate and determine whether it was really an American ship.
This is not the first time such transcripts have been made public:
Israel gave its own recordings of the pilots' conversations to the
British television station Thames in 1987. But conspiracy theorists
charged that Israel had doctored the tapes before handing them over to
the station in order to hide the fact that it sank the Liberty
intentionally. No such imputation can be made about these new
transcripts, as they were never in Israeli hands.
Israel has always said it attacked the Liberty, which America sent to
the region to gather intelligence on the progress of the war, because
it believed it was an Egyptian supply ship ferrying supplies to the
Egyptian troops that Israel was then fighting. When it discovered the
error, it immediately informed the Americans, apologized and paid
compensation to the victims' families.
The incident was investigated by inquiry commissions in both Israel
and the United States, and both concluded that it had, indeed, been a
tragic error. Nevertheless, the controversy never died. In 1979, one
of the survivors, James Ennes, published a book accusing Israel of
bombing the American ship deliberately. Ennes claimed an Israeli spy
plane had hovered over the ship all morning and had surely identified
it as American, since the American flag was clearly visible.
A later book, written by James Bamford, charged that Israel sank the
ship in order to keep America from learning of its plans to attack
Syria, and further claimed that the NSA had tapes of conversations
among Israeli pilots that not only confirmed this, but also proved
that the tapes released by Israel had been doctored.
Another claim that appears frequently on the dozens of Internet sites
devoted to the affair is that Israel sank the ship to conceal a mass
murder of Egyptian soldiers on the Sinai peninsula.
In its letter to Cristol, the NSA stressed that, contrary to the
claims that often appear in such books and Web sites - that the agency
has tapes from both the Liberty and from a nearby American submarine
that confirm Israel's guilt - the only tapes that exist were those
made by the spy plane and given to Cristol this week.
"It's the last piece of intelligence that remained classified, and
every rational person that will read it will understand that there is
no truth in these conspiracy theories against Israel," Cristol said
Tuesday. But he added: "Those who hate Israel, who hate Jews, and
those who believe in conspiracy will not be convinced by anything."
Cristol, a former U.S. navy pilot and legal officer, began
investigating the Liberty incident 14 years ago. Since publishing his
book, which vindicates Israel, he has received threats and been
accused of being an Israeli agent. "I take this lightly, but I am
saddened to learn that there is this kind of hate toward Israel," he
said.
@%< |
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READ BOTH SIDES OF THE STORY DONT BELIEVE THEIR LIES |
by Mick
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
09 Jul 2003
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many key government officials
including Secretary of State Dean Rusk and former JCS Chairman Admiral Thomas Moorer say it was
no accident.
http://ussliberty.org/
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