


                         LIBERTYGATE


 It has been twenty-two years since the military forces of
 the State of Israel attacked the U.S.S. Liberty.  It has
 been 43 years since Hitler's atrocities.

 If Congress can spend our money chasing senile Nazis, after
 all these years, it's about time they spend a little money
 investigating the Liberty coverup.

 The only way it will ever happen is if YOU write your
 representatives and insist on a full investigation.



 ------------------------------------------------------------
 The following article appeared in *Defense Electronics*,
 October 1981.
 ------------------------------------------------------------
 Editor's Note: This article is printed by *Defense
 Electronics* as an example of a direct attack on U.S. forces
 by a nation that has access to advanced western military
 equipment, and which is an ally. In light of the Libyan-U.S.
 air clash in August and the loss of advanced equipment in
 Iran, the danger of western technology being used against
 U.S. forces by a hostile Third World nation is apparent.
 This article is presented in unabridged form and represents
 only the views of its author.
 ------------------------------------------------------------


                       Part One


         Israeli Attack on U.S. Ship Reveals Failure of C3

      By James M. Ennes, Jr., Deck Officer of the USS Liberty

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

 Fourteen years ago, the USS Liberty was attacked by Israeli
 Warplanes and ships, resulting in the deaths of 34 Americans
 and the wounding of 171 others. The attack lasted 2 and 1/2
 hours and ended the Navy's program of dedicated electronic
 intelligence collection ships.

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

 Fourteen years ago, one of the most serious peacetime
 American naval disasters occurred, and perhaps the most
 serious since the sinking of the battleship *Maine* in 1898.
 But while every bright schoolchild remembers some details of
 the explosion that led to the Spanish-American War, hardly
 anyone can recall the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967,
 which cost the lives of 34 Americans, wounded 171 others,
 and brought a premature end to the Navy's program of
 dedicated electronic collection ships.

 The attack on the USS Liberty by Israeli forces on the
 fourth day of the Arab-Israeli Six Day War is not widely
 known because the facts are politically and diplomatically
 awkward. The truth about the attack includes evidence that
 this was a planned, carefully coordinated and deliberate
 attack by a friendly power upon a known American naval
 vessel, and a botched exercise of Command, Control, and
 Communications. But such knowledge is politically unwelcome
 in the United States, so the facts about the attack were
 witheld from the American people.

 In 1967, the US Navy operated a worldwide fleet of
 electronic intelligence collection ships under tasking from
 the Department of Defense. These consisted of United States
 Ships *Oxford*, *Georgetown*, and *Jamestown*, which
 operated on converted Liberty hulls; *Belmont* and
 *Liberty*, on Victory hulls; *Banner*, *Pueblo*, and *Palm
 Beach*, on converted 180-foot AKL hulls; and civilian-manned
 United States Naval Ships *Private Jose E. Valdez* and
 *Sergeant Joseph P. Muller*, on converted 338-foot T-AG
 hulls.

 In May 1967, as tension built rapidly toward what would soon
 become the "Six Day War," USS Liberty was diverted from her
 usual patrol area on the west coast of Africa to patrol a
 section of the Gaza Strip in the Eastern Mediterranean.

 The trip required 16 days of hard steaming, and when Liberty
 arrived at her assigned station, the war was four days old
 and almost over.

 I was Liberty's electronic materials officer. A 34-year-old
 former enlisted man, I took special pride in my Navy
 commission, my lieutenant's rank, and my specialty in
 cryptology. I was soon to be assigned officer of the deck
 for special sea detail and general quarters. And as the ship
 arrived on station 13 miles from the Israeli and Egyption
 coasts, I was to be officer of the deck for the forenoon
 watch.

                         Throughout the Night

 The ship had been reconnoitered throughout the night by
 Israeli military aircraft. Well before midnight, Liberty's
 crytologic operators had detected fire control radar
 directed steadily at the ship by orbiting Israeli aircraft.
 But the supervisor on duty refused to believe that Israeli
 forces would direct fire control radar at an American ship,
 and so he insisted that the operators must have
 misinterpeted the signal.  The signal went unreported.

                                 0700 Hours

 At about 0700, as I relieved the watch on the bridge, I was
 told that a "flying boxcar," later identified as an Israeli
 Nord 2501 Noratlas reconnaissance aircraft, had circled the
 ship from a distance at sunrise.

 I checked out colors, found them dirty and ragged after
 several days of high-speed steaming, and ordered them
 replaced. Two extra lookouts were stationed above the
 bridge, and I ordered them to keep an eye on the flag to
 assure that it never fouled.

                                 0900 Hours

 At 0900, the ship reached point "alfa," the northernmost
 point of our assigned patrol track. I turned south and
 slowed to five knots, and at that moment we were
 reconnoitered by a single jet aircraft. I immediately
 checked the flag and saw it clearly displayed in a good
 breeze.  We were headed almost directly into a four-knot
 wind, giving us nine knots over the decks, which was more
 than enough to hold the flag aloft.  For the next several
 hours, the wind increased steadily, reaching 12 knots over
 the deck before the ship came under attack.

                                 1000 Hours

 At about 1000, the ship was circled three times at low level
 by two armed Israeli Mirage jets, each carrying 18 rockets
 under each wing.  One of the pilots was heard reporting by
 radio to Israeli headquarters that we were flying the
 American flag, but this was no news to the Israeli war room.
 Duty officers in the war room had identified the ship long
 before and had plotted her track on a large wall chart,
 along with her name, her top speed, and a reference to her
 intelligence mission.  And according to several reports,
 Israel's immediate reaction to the ship's presence was to
 complain bitterly to the United States via the Central
 Intelligence Agency, demanding that the ship be moved.

 The United States made several serious, almost frantic
 attempts to move the ship. As the Liberty approached Gaza,
 the Joint Chiefs of Staff first sent a priority message
 ordering the ship to move 20 miles from the coast; the
 message was swamped by higher precedence traffic and was not
 processed until long after the crisis had ended. Hours
 later, a JCS duty officer phoned naval headquarters in
 London to relay an urgent JCS order to move the ship 100
 miles from the coast; the telephone call was ignored, and
 Liberty's copy of the confirming message was misrouted to
 the Philipines before being returned to the Pentagon, where
 it was again misrouted, this time to Fort Meade in Maryland,
 where it was lost.

 Eventually, at least six critical messages were lost,
 delayed, or otherwise mishandled. Any one of those messages
 might have saved Liberty. None reached the ship.

 During the next four hours, the ship was visited five more
 times by Israeli reconnaissance aircraft, usually flying at
 very low level, and always close enough that I could readily
 see the pilot. On one occasion, the captain was on the
 bridge when the Noratlas approached at masthead level,
 causing him to warn me of a posible bombing run; the
 aircraft passed overhead at such low level that the deck
 plating shook.

 The continued close surveillance was reassuring. Israel was
 an ally and, although several Arab states were then hostile
 toward the United States, Israel clearly dominated the sky,
 and we were comforted to be watched so closely, as this
 seemed to assure that there could be no mistakes.

                                 1400 Hours

 After being relieved of the watch at noon, I spent most of
 the noon hour on the bridge preparing for a general quarters
 drill scheduled for 1300.  Finally, at 1400, all drills and
 bridge duties were completed, and I was preparing to go
 below after nearly seven hours on the bridge when three
 aircraft and three high-speed surface craft were
 simultaneously picked up on radar, all approaching the ship
 from starboard quarter.

 Moments later, the ship came under severe and continued
 attack, first by Israeli Mirage jets that momentarily
 knocked out our four puny 50-caliber machine guns and
 disabled all radio antennas, then by slower Israeli Mystere
 jets, which plastered the stack, gun mounts, open bridge,
 and superstructure with an inferno of napalm.

 When technicians jury-rigged an antenna in order to call for
 help, radiomen found the frequencies blocked by buzz saw
 signals from the jets. Radiomen worked on their hands and
 knees and held microphones close to the deck to escape smoke
 and heat from fires nearby, and in less than nine minutes,
 they broke through the jamming. The carrier *Saratoga*,
 operating about 500 miles away from the Sixth Fleet near
 Crete, was first to answer.

 On the bridge of the Saratoga, Captain Joseph Tully promptly
 turned his ship into the wind and relayed Liberty's message
 to the Sixth Fleet commander, Vice Admiral William Martin,
 who was on the bridge of his flagship conducting maneuvering
 exercises. Because of the emergency, Captain Tully addressed
 the message directly to Admiral Martin with his personal
 callsign on the Primary Tactical Maneuvering Circuit
 (PRI-TAC), and then he duplicated the transmission by
 teletype and flashing light with information copies to naval
 headquarters in Washington and London.

 Admiral Martin immediately directed carriers *Saratoga* and
 *America* to launch aircraft to defend Liberty, but when the
 launch order was executed, only Saratoga launched. Except
 for some F-4 Phantoms that were eventually sent up to defend
 the fleet, *America* did not respond.  She had, according to
 some reports, been authorized to relax from an alert posture
 that was imposed on much of the rest of the fleet. (The
 aircraft *America* did launch for air defense were thought
 by some to have been armed with nuclear weapons, since it
 was widely known that nuclear-armed weapons were in alert
 status, but it is now clear that no such aircraft were
 launched.)

 Captain Tully sent a flashing light query to Captain Donald
 Engen on the America, and got no reply. Moments later
 Saratoga's aircraft were recalled without explanation by
 Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis, who commanded the carrier task
 force.

 America, which had no appropiate conventional armament in
 position, started bringing up weapons from below decks,
 while Saratoga, which *was* prepared to defend Liberty was
 required to wait -- apparently for White House permission.

 Meanwhile, unobstructed by Sixth Fleet air power, the three
 Israeli torpedo boats arrived on schedule to finish the job.
 The target was already in flames after 25 to 30 minutes of
 aerial strafing and napalm bombardment by perhaps a dozen
 aircraft.

 The boats approached at high speed and fired torpedos from
 2,000 yards but, owing to a near collision between two boats
 at the moment of firing, the first shots went wild. One
 torpedo passed safely astern, where it missed by a bare 25
 yards. Another passed so close ahead of the ship that it
 vanished under the bow, "sounding like amotorboat" to Petty
 Officer Rick Aimetti, who stood, astonished, on the
 forecastle. And one torpedo made a direct hit on the ship's
 crytologic spaces, where it killed 25 men and momentarily
 trapped at least 50 more in the flooded compartment.


                      to be continued..............


        From:

                      ASSAULT ON LIBERTY
                     By: James Ennes

            Available at most good libraries.

 Or from the National Educational Trust, (800) 368 5788

                              ...............

 If you are tired of "learning" about American foreign policy
 from what is effectively, Zionist controlled media, I highly
 recommend checking out the Washington Report.  A free sample
 copy is available by calling the National Education Trust
 at:
                      (800) 368 5788

                  Tell 'em arf sent you.

     You can also tune in to the Amateur Radio Forum (ARF)
     Thursday evening at 9:PM Chicago time, 3950 KHZ, LSB.

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