The USS Liberty and Conspiracy Theories

[FinnAgain]

While I’m at it, how about a retraction of the claim that a gag order, on pain of court martial, existed even though the crew were almost immediately giving interviews?
How about a reason why, if the attack was deliberate, the Israels were too stupid to use anti-ship weaponry.
How about anybody who has actual proof that they were told to cover up the facts, rather than claims made about what men who who already dead allegedly said in confidence and yet their own statements gainsay.
How about a retraction of the claim that the NSA had intercepts which they themselves said they do not have.
How about an explanation of how an entire Navy report gets changed, altering people’s testimony and nobody notices or speaks up, not even the people who allegedly had their testimony changed… for 36 years.
How about a reason why the guy who did make that claim has not gotten a single person who allegedly had their testimony fabricated to support such a claim?
How about a reason why the guy who makes that claim waited for nearly 4 decades and, coincidently, only began making such claims at the point when Kidd was dead.

Or are we just going to get more appeal to authority (most of which mention nary a fact and consist of personal and subjective incredulity)?
In other words, got any facts, or just more of [Important person 1] didn’t believe it, and that’s good enough for me! How about a cite of some hard evidence that was so clear that we don’t require the subjective personal opinions of people to stand in for actual proof and refutation.

[tomndebb]

I can almost guarantee that you are not going to be happy with the proposed information, but how about waiting for it to be posted before you throw gasoline on the thread? (No. you are breaking no rules. However, I have a hard time believing that you do not see how the tone of your posts shapes the discussion.)

[FinnAgain]

@tomndebb

I can almost guarantee that you are not going to be happy with the proposed information

My guess is that it’ll be something along the lines of one of the deck crew saying something like “I saw the whites of the recon pilot’s eyes, he must have identified us correctly, and so all of the Israelis involved in ordering and carrying out the strike definitely knew exactly who and what we were.”

Then it’ll be asked, if that was the case, why didn’t they use anti-ship weaponry and why didn’t they sink the ship/kill its crew so they couldn’t report back what had happened?

Then the subject will be changed.

@tomndebb

but how about waiting for it to be posted before you throw gasoline on the thread?

Well, because a large part of the problem is that the conspiracy theory works by throwing as much against the wall as possible in the hope that something will stick. It is, in a word protean. Every time something is shown to be false, or irrational, or contradictory, it’s dropped for a bit while something new is advanced, and then the original claim gets brought back out again. When the holes in logic/fact/reason are pointed out, we get opinion quotes from Important Dudes and the promise that they were acting on Very Super Seeekrit And Important Information, so their opinions are worth more than the facts we have or the logic that ties them together. When we ask what those facts are, we’re told that we can only appeal to their authority, and they know best. Then some of the original claims are thrown against the wall again.

Rather than simply have another nugget thrown against the wall while we move on to that, I’d like to keep the tally accurate (want to lay odds on whether or not Gotcher will be cited again?). Someone coming in on page N, for example, might read a Gotcher “fact” and think, by gum, that just proves it! If people will keep referencing non-facts and bits of irrational claim, I’ll keep pointing out that they aren’t factual or rational. I’m not sure how else to do it.

@tomndebb

However, I have a hard time believing that you do not see how the tone of your posts shapes the discussion

Sure, and I wouldn’t claim otherwise.

As soon as the folks advancing the conspiracy theory begin to explain the massive gaps in logic, the problems with their sources, etc… I won’t have to keep harping on the fact that there are still unresolved massive gaps in logic and problems with their sources. It’s hard, verging on impossible me to point that out, for the Nth time, without having my tone reflect the fact that I have to keep pointing that out.

For instance, we were told that a man who was caught and sentenced to two years in prison (suspended) for lying about covert CIA activity can be trusted to relate the contents of a classified CIA study that the CIA has never hinted at and which contradicts the only official statement they do have on the record. Mole, when posted that claim, asked ‘or is Helms a liar?’

Of course, when the fact was pointed out that, yah, Helms is a liar and was sentenced to prison for his lies on another matter of CIA secrets, suddenly Helms’ credibility isn’t all that important anymore.

[Whack-a-Mole]

Some people questioned the veracity/reliability of James Gotcher who claimed to have read intercepts of the incident as it happened. I e-mailed James Ennes who was a sailor aboard the Liberty (when the attack happened) and who wrote a book about it. With his permission I will share his responses.

The short and quick of it is he calls into question the veracity of Cristol who laid the claim that Gotcher is a liar.

My letter:

Mr. Ennes,

I have been involved in a discussion on a message board (my username is Whack-a-Mole…don’t know what I was thinking at the time I chose that name) regarding the USS Liberty incident. It is a remarkable forum and (generally) fairly scholarly if you read past some silliness.

The topic has hit many points, one of which was a cite I made from James Gotcher. It was noted in the thread (linked above) that Gotcher lied about his affiliation with the NSA (see links following).

The Liberty Incident: Gotcher Debunked
http://www.thelibertyincident.com/docs/GotcherFOIArrequest.pdf (PDF)

I am curious if Mr. Gotcher did indeed lie about his affiliation or not. Put another way I am looking for information to refute the attempt on that Board to smear his name and by implication dismiss his testimony.

Mr. Ennes responds:

My experience is that Cristol is very clever with words and is a master of misleading statements.  I know Mr. Gotcher very well and have never known him to be less than 100% truthful.  During the Vietnam War while in the USAFSS he was an intelligence analyst in Vietnam.  USAFSS (like the Naval Security Group) was a "Service Cryptologic Agency" working under the technical direction of the National Security Agency.  In that capacity, I believe he spent some time directly with the Agency, as did many service cryptologists, including myself.  Service cryptologists often spend time at Fort Meade without actually being on the NSA Payroll.  I suspect that Cristol twisted that situation to assert that Mr. Gotcher has been less than factual.  If you have concerns about this, I'm sure Mr. Gotcher can set it straight.

You might read our view of Cristol's distortions at 
www.ussliberty.org/whoiscristol.htm and 
www.ussliberty.org/thebiglie.htm

Another example of Cristol's distortions is an account in his book where he claims that he came all the way to Seattle to interview me, only to be stood up.  The truth is that he called asking me to talk with him by telephone during a brief layover between flights en route to Alaska.  From the nature of our brief conversation, I suspected he had an agenda of his own and was not an objective reporter.  I asked for written questions in advance.  The nature of the questions confirmed for me that he was not looking for the facts, but only looking for ways to exploit and distort our story.  So when he called from the airport I did not take his call.  He makes that sound like he came all the way to Seattle only to be stood up, which is not the case at all.  But this is typical.

Ken Halliwell has reported extensively on Cristol's lies and distortions.  You can find his analysis of Cristol's false reporting at: 
http://usslibertyinquiry.googlepages.com/essay8

Our experience is that if Jay Cristol says something, you must look at it very carefully from all angles because it is almost certainly distorted until the facts behind it are almost unrecognizable.

jim

Mr. Ennes mailed me back a second time with this:

Incidentally, if you are looking for holes in Cristol’s arguments, probably the most outrageous false claim of all is the one he detailed in his book, repeated on numerous radio and TV interviews, in several articles, and on CNN, in which he claims that there have been numerous (12 or 15) “investigations” of the Liberty attack INCLUDING FIVE CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS, and that all have proven that the attack is a tragic accident.

The fact is, no investigation has ever looked into whether it was deliberate, and there has never been a Congressional investigation of any kind. The US Navy Court of Inquiry did report that they found no evidence that it was deliberate. Of course not. They were not permitted to look for any.

You didn’t mention the new Liberty book
www.tinyurl.com/attackontheliberty
and
www.jamesmscott.com

jim

Mr. Ennes mails me a third and last time (italics original):

I asked Mr. Gotcher to refresh my memory on the Cristol distortions. He writes as follows, which you are free to use:

*I was part of USAFSS. Before I got out, I went on TDY to the 6992nd Security Squadron at Ft. Meade. I have referred to that time as “working at NSA” because that’s exactly what happened. The 6992nd is assigned to the NSA complex at Ft. Meade. Was I an NSA employee? No. Did I work in the NSA complex? Yes, absolutely.

Cristol faked an e-mail that was purportedly sent by me to some unknown person that stated this a bit differently. He then did a FOIA request to NSA to ask if I had ever been an NSA employee. They quite correctly said no, I hadn’t. John Crewdson, as part of his background research, tried to deal with this issue. He contacted the head of the 6924th SS alumni assn (my squadron in Vietnam) and asked if anyone knew me and could verify my side. He found ample evidence that what I had told him about my assignments was accurate and verifiable.

There is an easy way to prove all of this up. Unlike most government buildings, the NSA complex is not photographed nor are the floor plans released to the public. Unless you have been there, you can’t really describe it. I’ve been there. I can describe what it looks like on the inside. Does Cristol want to put this to the test? I’ll put my knowledge of the inside of that complex up against his credibility. That is, we make a deal where I will describe it in detail. If I’m right, Cristol will admit all of his lies and go away. If I’m wrong, he gets bragging rights and can call me a liar. I’m happy to put my recollection to the test, but I want Cristol to openly acknowledge that he is a liar in return.*

So, a case of he said/she said? Maybe but remember earlier we have a quote citing: Former NSA/CIA Director Admiral Bobby Inman “flatly rejected” the Cristol/Israeli claims that the attack was an accident.

So an NSA/CIA Director finds Cristol’s claims not very compelling. While that does not speak to Mr. Gotcher directly it lends a sense of how well an NSA/CIA Director (and Admiral) felt about his overall presentation.

Also note that Gotcher provided his info “under penalty of perjury”. Presumably if you can prove Mr. Gotcher a liar you can send him to jail for it. One thing for a person to lie. Quite another for someone to set themselves up for prosecution to knowingly lie if it can so easily be found out and they would go to jail for it.

[Whack-a-Mole]

@Jackmannii

It is entirely possible for a slew of government and military officials from the President on down to supposedly lay out the available evidence and swear up and down that there was a deliberate, dastardly attack on our navy - and for it to be found out later that they “cooked the books” and were utterly mistaken or lied.

The star example is the Tonkin Gulf Incident, where purported unprovoked attacks by North Vietnamese patrol boats on U.S. vessels were used as the prime justification for getting us deeply embroiled in the Vietnam War. Yes. It does.

Remember it does not take some staggering plot run by hundreds of people.

It takes the President of the United States dictating a certain outcome.

Heck, just go back to Bush and Iraqi WMDs. We did this a few years ago and had cites from CIA (or their counterparts from other countries) hearing the President cite information and wonder where in the hell he got that info because it was flatly wrong and no one told him any such thing. Did all these CIA guys come pouring out to say it was wrong? Nope. Not till much later and a lot of people did a lot of digging did some of it come out.

My guess is you just do not cross the President on such things. If he wants a report on the Liberty incident that let the Israelis off the hook then that is what he gets. One can presume he felt it more damaging to US interests to let it all out. Who is to second guess him back then?

So, no need to get hundreds on board. All he needs to do is get one guy to fudge the final report upon which almost all other investigations rely upon.

A report which we have one of the guys responsible for writing gave a sworn affidavit was not the report he submitted.

Why did he wait so long? I don’t know. Maybe he did not want to embarrass Admiral Kidd while he was alive. Maybe he did not want Kidd contradicting him. Maybe there was some time restriction on secrecy he could not cross (e.g. my dad was in Naval Intelligence in WWII and he had a 50 year gag order on him so he would not talk about a lot of his experiences till that time was up…then he wrote a book).

With out talking to Captain Boston I am not sure any of us can say. Again though it is quite a thing for him to give sworn testimony that this was a cover-up and that the guys on the Liberty got thrown under a bus. I would guess such a man comes forward like this because he believes an injustice was done and needs correcting. An injustice he himself was a part of so not exactly something he is proud about. Unless you think this man just wanted some notoriety in his later years why would else would he do such a thing than to correct a wrong?

[Lantern]

WaM,
Thanks for obtaining that information; the stuff about Cristol makes for interesting reading.

BTW let us know if you manage to get a look at the new bookon the Liberty by James Scott. Like I mentioned it received a good review in the Washington Post and reader reviews at Amazon are largely positive as well. It seems like an excellent book which apparently presents fresh evidence.
FinnAgain,
I am honestly failing to see the “contradiction”. Boston says a full court of enquiry would take six months and that after he saw the evidence his assessment was that Israel was guilty of a deliberate attack. There is no contradiction because a court of enquiry has different standards and procedures than an individual assessment even though the latter might be perfectly correct. Not to mention the fact that the court of enquiry would have to deal with a lot more issues than just Israel’s culpability.

As for Kidd’s letter here is the paragraph:

Nothing you told me, wrote to me or provided by way of documentation has been inconsistent with what we had to work with at the time. This has been reassuring to me- even after so many years.You have done a splendid job pulling all of the loose ends together, and having the integrity to clearly cite those few that will probably never come fully together. Such is the nature of the human animal, as we discussed.

First of all let's note that this letter was written in 1991 far before Cristol wrote his book. So it's not as if Kidd was agreeing with the contents of Cristol's book. Presumably Cristol had prepared some material about the Liberty incident and Kidd was praising it. However since we don't know what Cristol sent, we hardly know what Kidd was agreeing to. It may have been some topic not related to the issue of Israel's culpability. For all we know it could have been some material on a naval issue unrelated to the Liberty.

None of this comes remotely close to showing that Boston was just making stuff up about the 1967 enquiry. What possible motive could Boston have for doing that decades after the event?

[FinnAgain]

It remains the NSA/CIA […]disagree with you and think the attack was deliberate.

Still waiting on that cite. If it’s true, it should be easy to find a nice official report.
And we still have no pretense of an answer how, if Boston was telling the truth, nobody else noticed or said a word for 36 years, including but not limited to all the crew who would have had their testimonies changed.
Still no answer on why, if Israel knew the ship was American and still wanted to sink it, they refrained from using appropriate weaponry. Or killing the survivors.
No answer on why, if they wanted to prohibit the Liberty from receiving intel, and they jammed it, why they didn’t just jam it and refrain from launching an attack on the military forces of one of the world’s only two superpowers.

And, ah, so Gotcher’s email was faked. And, of course, the proof is that he’s been inside the NSA building at one point or another.

As for the claim that he would’ve perjured himself by lying, Tom? Remember, as I just pointed out again, that Helms was just cited as an authoritative source. When it was pointed out that he not only perjured himself, but got caught and sentenced to prison for it, he was dropped. Helms’ credibility, of course, still hasn’t been mentioned again.
But of course, if Gotcher’s letter was faked, then Cristol is guilty of libel. Evidently possible perjury is a defense against falsehood but possible libel is to be ignored.

We’re also told that the director flatly rejected the idea that the attack wasn’t accidental. Again, no actual evidence is presented, just his personal opinion. Which (presumably) is based on the above mentioned Seeekrit facts that we can’t see. But, remember, I’ve already cited the NSA report. It analyzed the evidence and came to the conclusion that “… the [Liberty] tragedy
resulted not only from Israeli miscalculations but also from faulty U.S. communications practices …” and that “While these [intercept] reports revealed some confusion concerning the nationality of the ship, they tended to rule out any thesis that the Israeli Navy and Air Force deliberately attacked a ship they knew to be American.”

Of course we’re also told that the NSA itself destroyed the initial report and fabricated another one. There’ve been so many nuggets thrown against the wall, but I could’ve sworn that one of the pages linked to was also claiming that the NSA was objective and impartial. Maybe I’ll indulge my curiosity and track it down. Meh. Probably not. I will note that it’ rather odd to suggest that if they went to such great lengths to destroy the truth and fabricate another fictional report why they then kept it secret instead of releasing it as an authoritative finding. Or why, for that matter, they waited until 1981 to draft the new report, and didn’t release it until 1999. Again, we’ve got an alleged conspiracy of Genius Fools. They hide the truth and craft this elaborate fiction (14 years after the incident), and then forget to tell anybody in the public for 18 years.

But, again, against the actual analysis of the evidence we were given Inman’s personal incredulity.

Of course, none of the dissenting NSA members actually cites evidence (or makes the claim) that they were told to falsify the report. None of them repeat the claim that the original report was to be destroyed. Funny, we have endless members (and directors) willing to express their personal incredulity but none of them say “Oh, and, we were ordered to cover it up/destroyed our reports/fabricated new ones.”

We also have, again, the repeated claim that no Congressional investigation was ever done. Evidently it is “outrageously false” Eh? Really?

Readers can note the link to the GAO letter, which describes Kirk’s duties as “the investigation of the U.S.S. Liberty incident.” But, various conspiracy sites (including the one that’s continually been cited here) actually claim that no such investigation ever existed and that the government denied that it had. Evidently the GAO isn’t a government entity.

[ashman165]

@FinnAgain

We also have, again, the repeated claim that no Congressional investigation was ever done. Evidently it is “outrageously false” Eh? Really?

This link doesn’t go anywhere for me.

[Whack-a-Mole]

@ashman165

This link doesn’t go anywhere for me.

Fixed link: The Liberty Incident: House Armed Services Committee Investigation (1991-2)