Israeli attack on USS Liberty 6-8-67

Great Debates
61

So far, this is the second or third time you have posted to say you are going to ignore my posts. Strange, considering my remarks were not directed at you, but rather were a response to a direct question by Danimal.

I don’t know about you, but to me at least it is the hight of rudeness to butt into a conversation and heap insults on one of the posters. If you think I have nothing to say, please feel free not to talk to me.

As for “moaning and ranting on behalf of Israel”, I would like to see you point to any evidence I doing that in this thread. Please feel free to heap on the questioning of my motives, if it makes you feel better. I myself think you have revealed your own motives in falsely attempting to cast aspersions on mine.

As for myself, I happen to think that critically examining sources of a dubious claim is important. You do not, it is obvious.

That having been said, yes on re-reading it is quite true that I have confused the two intercepts in my previous post. You are right on that fact, and I am wrong.

This however makes little difference, as both intercepts are and remain secret, at least as far as we are concerned. I have all along conceded that the intercept, or intercepts, may indeed be completely valid. However, this cannot be evaluated by us, so it behooves us to evaluate the credibility of those who say what the intercepts mean.

62

“so it behooves us to evaluate the credibility of those who say what the intercepts mean.”
These happen to be the former Director and Deputy Director of the NSA, eminently credible sources (as is the former Ambassador to Lebanon). I will repeat again that Borne’s web-site is based on his NYU dissertation and that prominent universities don’t allow unsubstantiated conspiracy theories as dissertations… I have already exlained several times that your claims of having “demolished” Borne’s credibility make no sense whatsoever.

As for casting “aspersions” on your motives, there is nothing wrong with being pro-Israel. What’s wrong is the nature of your “arguments” which completely ignore the substance of the debate and are nothing but risible attempts to discredit sources along with whining about conspiracy theories.

63

So - you see no difference between what you said before, and I quote: "moan,rant and whine on behalf of Israel ", and what you say now - “being pro-Israel”?

Interesting.

Actually, I am fully capable of being highly critical of Israel - when warranted. Ask me about their government’s settlment policy, and you will know. I am far from being an uncritical, obsessive supporter of that particular country - which is what I took your little diatribe to mean.

This does not mean that I am willing to sit by and see an absurd conspiracy theory go past unchallenged.

Having been to a prominent university myself, and seeing plenty of dissertations in my time, I am not impressed with the claim to legitimacy of a theory pushed by someone based on their dissertation.

Nor do the reminicences of former directors of US secret agencies or ambassadors really impress me. If I was to believe J. Edgar Hoover uncritically, the Mafia didn’t exist and Martin Luther King was a communist; if I was to believe Ambassador Kennedy, ambassador to London during WW2 and father of a president, the Brits ought to have lost that war and Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy … both are far more “eminent” than these fellows.

Argument from authority is weak - unless you are prepared to concede that everything agreed on by several high US government officials must be true. If so, I think I can find a few whoppers for you to swallow. After all, 1967 is around the time of the civil rights movement, and I just bet that many secret service people, etc. had “interesting” beliefs that you, no doubt, would have to concede are valid - after all, these were “eminent men” …

As far as I can see, your explaination as to why the particular source under discussion makes sense amounts to heaping scorn and abuse on me, and simply saying that there is nothing absurd about high Washington official wishing to sink their own ship in order to save Israel from embarrasment.

Well, that is fine if that is what you want to believe. I just wish you wouldn’t take every contradiction so very personally. Who knows, you may be totally right and I may be totally wrong; heaping insults on me is not going to convince others of the fact (far less me), but will aid in convincing others that you are a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy nut.

64

“simply saying that there is nothing absurd about high Washington official wishing to sink their own ship in order to save Israel from embarrasment.”
You are the one who is “simply saying” that the statement is absurd. You have failed to provide any kind of explanation. Just repeating this again and again doesn’t make it true let alone come close to justifying dismissing everything that Borne says.

As for “argument from authority”, professional credentials and expertise matter. Senior government officials and academics are more reliable sources in their field of expertise than some average Joe on the street. They may be wrong of course, but you have to provide solid evidence of this. Just saying again and again that you find a particular statement “inherently absurd” doesn’t count.

As for “taking it personally” I have debated in a civil manner with the likes of Danimal who have something useful to say. You OTOH obviously have nothing to contribute to the debate except unsupported assertions, whining about conspiracy theories and personal insults. I have treated you with all the respect that you deserve.

65

If the IDF ordered the attack on the Liberty in the mistaken belief that she was Egyptian, then the following mysterious questions arise.

  1. All sides apparently agree that the first Israeli reconnaissance flight, (Nord 2501) passed by the Liberty at 0603 local time, almost eight hours before the attack, and correctly identified it. The crew’s account has the Israelis conducting further air reconnaissance passes approximately every half hour thereafter (according to Bamford in Body of Secrets, p. 200) until the attack. Why was Nord 2501 able to correctly identify the Liberty, but follow-on reconnaissance flights were not?

Possible answers: the other aircraft that appeared after Nord 2501 may not have been Israeli, or, if Israeli, may not have been reconnoitering. This is speculation.

  1. At the Israeli court of inquiry, all Israelis involved in the attack denied seeing an American flag at any time on Liberty. Why, then, did Nowicki in the EC-121 operating nearby hear the Israeli torpedo boats transmit a message that the ship was flying an American flag?

Possible answers: The crew denied seeing the flag because they wouldn’t look so incompetent if it were believed that Liberty was not flying one. This is speculation.

If the IDF ordered the attack on the Liberty knowing full well that it was American, then the following mysterious questions arise.

  1. WHY???

Possible answers: I have heard at least four of these, none of which hold water.

Answer 1: The Israelis wanted to make sure no one found out that they had started the Six Day War. (I saw this proposed in *Military History,*June 1997, page 28). Since the ship did not arrive until after the war had started, this is patent nonsense.

Answer 2: The Israelis wanted to prevent Liberty from “revealing the truth behind the disinformation they had been feeding the Jordanians.” (Same source). To this I can only say, huh? Elaborate please.

Answer 3: The Israelis wanted to prevent Liberty from discovering the Israeli plan to attack the Golan Heights. This is the Ennes thesis from Attack on the Liberty and the IJIC thesis, although Oren claims Bamford espoused it in the past, in the book The Puzzle Palace… Impossible, because, as Nowicki’s intercepts prove, Israel was already savaging the Syrians on the Golan Heights before the attack on Liberty began. Also, according to Oren, diplomatic cables declassified in 1997 show that Israel had already informed America of her intentions to attack the Golan, and America had approved.

Answer 4: The Israelis wanted to prevent Liberty from discovering the massacre of Egyptian prisoners at El Arish. This is the Bamford thesis. I will assume for the sake of argument that such a massacre happened, since Bamford cites numerous accounts. Let us further assume that it happened on June 8, 1967 before 1400 Cairo time, although not one of Bamford’s citations contains any overt mention of the date, much less the time. The fact remains that Bamford provides no evidence whatsoever that there were any electronic signals ordering, reporting, or otherwise revealing the massacre. And indeed there were no such signals, or else the survivors of the Liberty and Nowicki and his SigInt operatives in the EC-121 would have intercepted them. It boggles the mind to suppose that IDF ordered the destruction of an American ship to prevent the interception of signals that IDF knew did not exist.

If some evidence, like the authentication of the Porter intercept, should compel us to conclude that the Israelis knew Liberty was American, we must still confess that their motives are a bit obscure.

  1. If the Israelis wanted to destroy Liberty’s “witnesses” (whatever it was they had witnessed), why didn’t they? The Israelis had known of Liberty’s presence since 0603, leaving plenty of time to arm their aircraft with torpedoes and bombs to sink the Liberty, after which the survivors could be killed or captured at leisure. When the attack did come, the Israelis left 263 of the 297 crewmen alive, and failed to sink the ship, when it was helpless and at their mercy. The torpedo boats had a torpedo left, which they did not launch. The Israelis had total air superiority and could spare as many aircraft as they pleased to finish off the Liberty and her crew. Instead they stopped attacking and offered assistance. If this was not because they had realized the ship wasn’t Egyptian, why was it?

Possible answers: Don’t have any. Suggestions?

66

Danimal,
I don’t think the Bramford argument requires that the Americans were actually listening to Israeli activities in Egypt. The Israelis didn’t know what the Liberty was up to and had to make a guess; they may have guessed wrongly. There may have been signals related to the massacre which the Liberty didn’t pick up because they were listening elsewhere.

As for why they called off the attack Fishel says that they were afraid of an impending response from the US 6th Fleet. They may have waited several hours to attack because they were still thinking whether to go ahead.

About the Israeli story in addition to the problems you mention there is the selective jamming mentioned in the Fishel article. Also the point about speed in the State Department note I linked above.

Overall I agree that Israeli motives aren’t completely clear (and won’t be unless they come clean) but I think a deliberate attack is still quite a lot likelier than the alternative given all the points mentioned by Fishel, Borne, Bramford et al.

67

My friend, when presenting a case for an inherently unlikely event, the burden of proof is unfortunately on you to produce:

-convincing evidence of the event;

-where it is a conspiracy, a convincing motivation for the conspiracy.

Claiming that the evidence is supported by reliable (but secret) information, and that the information (although secret) is supported by “reputable government authorities”, is not proof of anything. Nor of course can it be attacked.

Here is a scenario: Edgar Hoover thought Martin Luther King a Communist. In this field, he undoubtably had lots of expertise - I am certain that Hoover knew more about secret communist conspiracies than you or I will ever know. This was based on secret information that Hoover was privy to. Here is a site arguing that King was in fact a Communist.

http://webusers.anet-stl.com/~civil/civilrightsnegative1.html

Can you disprove these allegations? How would you rate the accuracy of this particular conspiracy theory? After all, it has all of the same elements as yours - just a different target:

-Reputable high US government officials believed it;
-It is based on secret evidence;
-It has since been discredited, but many continue to believe in it.

Remember, according to you pointing out absurdities on the same site does not invalidate the evidence, nor does saying that the whole thing is just a cranky conspiracy theory based on those absurdities.

As for the fact that you can be civil when you choose, I must admit to being impressed. Too bad you can’t achieve this state of civility all the time. Maybe one day you will learn the difference between attacking a position and attacking a person.

68

“according to you pointing out absurdities on the same site does not invalidate the evidence,”
Nonsense. According to me you haven’t shown any absurdities on the site. You just keep repeating that you have. Just calling something “inherently absurd” doesn’t make it so.

I have provided plenty of evidence for my position from mulitple, credible sources. Calling something “inherently absurd” and dismissing everything as a conspiracy theory doesn’t constitute a rebuttal.

“Too bad you can’t achieve this state of civility all the time”
Indeed. I don’t see any need to be civil to someone who knows nothing about the topic, has nothing useful to say and yet keeps denouncing the other side as conspiracy cranks. Your posts have been both ignorant and obnoxious and I have given them the respect they deserve.

69

I notice you haven’t addressed the hypothetical. I assume it is because you cannot, and will (predictably) simply say you have “no obligation to consider arguments from someone as pathetic as [myself]”. If you read carefully my last post, you will see I am talking about your approach to the evidence generally - you may believe that the particular absurdity I pointed out is “not absurd”, but that makes no difference at all. The issue is: assuming that a (potential) conspiracy theorist makes absurd, exaggerated claims, and displays overt bias towards the evidence, is it safe to dismiss the fellow as a crank or not? That is the issue, whether you happen to think it is proven in this particular case or not.

There is no possible way to “prove” or “disprove” the inherent absurdity of a position. I happen to have my opinion on that - you have yours, that is clear. No need to repeat ad nauseum that you don’t think the particular statement in question is absurd. I already know that.

I myself think this a very interesting excercise in examining the pathology of belief in conspiracy theories. If you feel so inclined, perhaps you could point out the salient feature of yours, which differentiates it from the one I have posted. How would you go about “disproving” the (on its face, silly and discredited) belief that Martin Luther King was part of a Communist conspiracy? Please examine the site, and note that the “evidence” is in fact just as strong (if not more so) than your “Israeli conspiracy” evidence in the instant case, is almost exactly contemporary in time, and believed in by even more “reputable” US Official sources.

I myself think that laying to rest a conspiracy theory is useful. After all, this board is about “combatting ignorance”, and the ability to seperate out unprovable conspiracy theories from real historical issues deserving of serious enquiry is a useful tool to that end.

As for “knowing nothing about the topic”, I feel obliged to point out that this is a trait you, I, and everyone else arguing here, share - unless you are saying you where actually there at the time, all we know is through hearsay and secondary sources.

I am truly sorry that you feel so strongly about being cast in the role of the supporter of a conspiracy theory. There is noting wrong with that, I assure you - many of us make the same mistake from time to time, there is no shame in it, and some conspiracies may be real. You will never be able to prove or disprove them from evidence culled from online sources, though, except by getting a general sense as to whether they make sense or not. In my opinion, this one doesn’t, and neither does the MLK Communist conspiracy. They both belong in the same category.

I myself am sorry that I called you a tinfoil-hat wearer. That was uncalled for, although I think most would admit the provocation was there.

70

“I notice you haven’t addressed the hypothetical”
The difference is obvious: there is a lot of evidence that Hoover played dirty tricks ,broke the law and was a rabid racist which ,in general, makes him a less reliable source wrt. Martin Luther King. If you have comparable evidence for the likes of Dean Rusk, Admiral Moorer, the Director and Deputy Director of the NSA and Porter I would be happy to consider it. Just picking some statement and calling it absurd without explanation doesn’t count as evidence.

71

So, a reasonable motivation to lie - in the case of Hoover, racism - undermines the evidence? Can I quote you on that?

So, what about the allegation that Rusk et al, while not racist, had every reason to lie about the Liberty incident - not a “generalized” reason like Hoover’s racism, but a specific and personal to their administration reason - to cover their own incompetent handling of the '67 crisis and to attempt to make some diplomatic headway with the Arab states humiliated in that war, to avoid a Soviet diplomatic victory?

Here is a counter-conspiracy claim, which makes these exact points: http://hnn.us/articles/192.html

So if the argument is that Hoover’s testimony is discredited because he was a racist and therefore had a motivation to lie about King, cannot Rusk, the Lebanon Ambassador, etc.'s evidence be discredited in exactly the same manner because they had an even more valid motivation to lie (if more honourable) - to advance what they saw as being US interests by taking Israel down a peg or two, to demonstrate to the newly humiliated Arab nations that there was no favoritism towards Israel, and to attempt thereby to supplant growing Soviet influence in the region?

After all, I have no idea whether these particular individuals would or would not lie or slant the truth in the interests of their country - but I clearly recall that officials of the Johnston administration in general were not above fudging the evidence in the name of national security - remember Vietnam?!? The situation was not improved under subsequent administrations …

However, the issue is more complex - for what needs to be addressed is not only the (possible) reasons for lying in the past, but also the reasons for perpetuating the (possible) lies into the present.

72

“So, a reasonable motivation to lie - in the case of Hoover, racism - undermines the evidence?”
I never said this. It’s much more than a “reasonable motivation to lie”. It’s a long and well-documented history of dirty tricks, breaking the law and rabid racism. Needlessly to say nothing similar exists for Rusk, Porter, Moore et al and none of the reasons you give ,which are pure speculation anyway, come remotely close.

"I clearly recall that officials of the Johnston administration in general were not above fudging the evidence in the name of national security "
OK so why do you place so much weight on the official investigation by the Johnson which is the main source for believing that the attack was not deliberate? Ironically you are making the case that the Johnson administration may have lied which is exactly what Borne, Fishel et al are saying.
The difference is that scholars like Fishel and Borne aren’t pulling out theories out of thin air like you are doing. They are carefully evaluating the evidence in the official investigation, backing it up with other evidence from reputable sources and exposing the inconsistencies in the official story.

That is the difference between serious scholarship and idle speculation.

73

Ummm, no - it’s not my “speculation”, idle or not - it is that of
Ms. Klinghoffer (senior associate scholar at the Political Science department at Rutgers University, Camden). See link above. I seem to recall that one of the ways in which you supported the legitimacy of this conspiracy was that people at a real, live university apparently believed it … and here is what this university scholar has to say:

“Still, the documentary proved how naïve Bundy was to think that the Liberty card was of “more use in the Middle East than in the United States.” Little did he know how useful it would be in the United States once polemicists were given the opportunity to revise history. Those keeping the memory of the Liberty alive are not truth seekers but political activists with an anti-Israeli ax to grind, just like the Chinese who refuse to accept the American apology for the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade are anti-Americans with an ax to grind. Difficult to explain events often happen in the fog of war. Conspiracy theorists are not created by such events. They are strategic political thinkers who exploit them for their own ends. It is a pity to see historians in their ranks.”
As for the official investigations - if the “conspiracy” is true, than surely they are lying - if the conspiracy is not true, than surely those who uphold it are at the least mistaken. I am glad that you are at last realizing that the fact that “government officials” have vouched for something means nothing at all - which fact fatally undermines the credibility of your argument, which totally depends on the trustworthyness of these gentlemen’s accounts and secret evidence. Mine does not, and is not weakened by the assertion (and indeed it cannot be denied) that government officials do lie from time to time.

I cannot see where I have put “so much weight” on the official investigation, other than to mention that there have been several over the years. The focus of my attack has been on the elements of the story which clearly (in my opinion) demonstrate the hallmarks of an axe-grinding conspiracy theory. The main reason for believing the attack was not deliberate is not the official investigation - it is that there is no credible evidence of it, and no reasonable motive for it, and no reasonable motive for the US to cover it up.

As for “well-documented racism, etc.” - what does that amount to, except to a motive to lie about King? “Rabid racism” is, in itself, not a discrediting of a person’s account - except that it provides a motive to lie. I was not putting words in your mouth, but completing a thought which ought to be obvious. It goes like this:

Racist = motive to lie about Black leaders like King = unreliable conspiracy account, if it must depend on “secret” evidence under the control of this person.

For the others, the chart would go like this:

Patriot = motive to lie about events, where an advantage to the US is concerned = unreliable conspiracy account, if it must depend on “secret” evidence under the control of this person.

The first is the more discreditable, certainly. But the results are in fact the same.

74

You appear to be under the impression that all evidence that the attack was deliberate is “secret”. Actually much of it is in the public domain; please read the Fishel article and the State Department memo again. Only some of it like the Beirut intercept is secret. You don’t need the secret evidence to argue the attack was deliberate.

As for officials lying; I think something more than vague speculation about motives is needed to accept. I don’t think that the article you linked accuses Rusk of lying or produces evidence to that effect. The issue with Hoover is much more than a vague motive to lie; it’s evidence of a fundamentally rotten character under whom the FBI itself broke the law. I believe that undermines his credibility much more than than the general speculation you have produced about Rusk and Porter.