EP#393 | DSD | The USS Liberty Survivor's Truth with Moe Shafer - Deep Shallow Dive

Episode Transcript
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(00:15):
All right, so I mean, I think a lot of people, obviously the USS
Liberty is on the map now and obviously we'll talk about one
of your shipmates, Phil Tourney and his episode on Candace Owens
and all that. But all right, listen everybody,
we are in for another great episode today and, and what I
personally am so looking forwardto with MO Schaefer.
MO was also on the USS Liberty June 8th, 1967.

(00:40):
He was shipmates with Phil Tourney.
I think you guys remember Phil, I had him on the podcast just a
couple months ago. He's been on Candace, he's been
on other places. But today is is really great for
us because MO was on the same exact ship, but in a totally
different area, totally different role, and his

(01:01):
experience was completely different.
And I think it's going to be absolutely fascinating to
experience. June 8th, 1967.
Now from Moe's perspectives. Hey man, I am.
I'm so appreciative of you taking the time and welcome to
the deep shallow dive. Well, thank you, Ray.
I, I'm very honored to be a partof your show and very honored to

(01:24):
be a part of my other crewmates out there who I served with and
who I've certainly stayed in touch with for the past 58
years. But my name is MO Schaefer.
I was a third class Petty Officer TT as a communications
technician. A simple definition today as a
spook or a spy because I can saythat after I was let down by my

(01:47):
country and but served with Philwho was in the other parts of
the shipmates who ran the ship. And then we had our security
spaces to where we found out a lot of stuff going on in the
world, so to speak. And but I grew up in West
Virginia, had some issues in my home life.
So what alternatives are there back?

(02:07):
And then it was the military andI asked my mother to save the
day at home, to go and list me in the military and Get Me Out
of that environment, which was not healthy.
From that time on, I went in theNavy.
And then you are tested and selected for what you're going
to do. And I didn't know that I had the

(02:28):
green power or whatever being togo West Virginia boy, that I was
selected to go in to the Naval Security group to become a part
of the very sophisticated spy network of the military, which
is not going out and shoot them up, bang, bang people or
whatever. It's doing what it makes to
protect the United States of America and try to get a front

(02:50):
end idea of what's going on. And then our information
provided all the information that NSA or whoever needed to
move forward with whatever we had intercepted.
Wow, how? How old were you at that time?
Were you 1819? That time I was 18 years old,
correct? Yeah.
That's amazing. And then let me, let me ask you
this, what made you decide on the Navy?

(03:12):
You know, you join the military and back then, you know, I guess
what guided you to the Navy versus the Army or the Marines
or the Air Force. I guess I had a brother who was
11 months older than me and he chose to join the Navy and he
was actually on air, Saratoga aircraft carrier.
He had died the year before my attack on January of 1966

(03:39):
through an accident, but he was on the Saratoga, which you'll
hear about later. He joined the Navy and I said,
well, I got to follow my brother.
Yeah, yeah. And so we did different things
in there, but yet that's what happened just quickly
interesting story because my my older brother little shorter
than me, so I used to kick his ass.

(03:59):
He was went in and listed like Idid, but he was one of only
there were 5000 of some on the Saratoga, the only one accepted
to the Naval Academy and he was on his lead before he went to
Annapolis to the Naval Academy when he was killed.
Oh. My gosh.
But anyway, God bless my brother.
Yeah, God bless your brother. He was killed at the Naval

(04:20):
Academy or killed in battle. No, no, he was in an accident
going to the base and was killedby a vehicle.
So. My gosh, I'm so sorry to hear
that. I'm so sorry to hear that.
You know what's interesting? I have an older brother who's
also shorter than me. I don't know if I could kick his
ass. Maybe I could, but I followed in
his footsteps as well. But that was to the same high

(04:41):
school and the same college. So I have to thank my brother
Bob for maybe not going in into the military because I probably
would have followed in his footsteps there as well.
OK. OK.
So that's interesting. So you really went down the Navy
path a lot to do with your brother.
And then was was the USS Libertyyour first assignment or did
you? Have other No, I went to
Pensacola, to the school where we were trained to do what we

(05:04):
did, and then I was assigned. Well, I joined the Navy thinking
I'd be on the ship the whole time.
Why would you join the Navy and not expect to go to sea?
But I went to Bremerhaven, Germany for two years and guess
where Bremerhaven, Germany was near OK, I was right there on
the North Sea at the very top ofthe country.
Who's out there in the North Sea?

(05:25):
Who's what country is up the road from there was Russia.
And so that was my first experience for two years of
doing my job. And I'll just leave it to that.
You'd I've already told you whatmy background was.
So they were there and that's what we were doing.
OK, got it. Then after two years, they kind
of said, where do you want to go?

(05:46):
I said, well, I joined the Navy to go on a ship and and the the
Naval Communications group had five ships on the seas.
That's at that time that all were they highly classified spy
ships. And I was selected to go on the
Liberty and with, you know, no idea what was ahead.
And I was sent there and I was on, I guess I was on there a

(06:08):
little over a year and a half before the attack.
But I was on my second major cruise on the ship.
So I was kind of seaworthy by them.
Got it, got it. Before we get to the attack,
let's talk about that year and ahalf.
Like what do you guys do on thatship or what did you do on that
ship? What was a What was an average

(06:28):
day for that year and a half before June 1860?
So that's interesting you asked because we worked on ships.
So to do my job, OK, to be in myspaces, which was down below
water in a very sophisticated space, you had to have keen
indoors. So only the highest crypto top

(06:49):
secret clearance people could get in there.
OK, Nobody else in the ship had access to any of that.
And it was so private. They thought we told him we had
a swimming pool, We told him we had a bowling alley.
We told him, you know, we had everything done there, a pool
hall and that's why they weren'tallowed in.
So that just made everybody elseon the ship mad at us.
But that was our very secure space.

(07:12):
So in that eight on, 8 off, 8 on, 8 off, 8 on, then we got 56
hours off, which is technically 2 1/2 days.
And what did we do? We spent time working on
equipment on our ship, doing things that we were asked to do
to clean up and not so forth in our spaces or whatever.

(07:34):
But we weren't part of the crew that chipped paint or painted
the ship or did anything. We had a very sophisticated
communications basket on the back of the ship.
You've seen the pictures of the ship and there's this huge
Montana. It looked like the old movie
antenna in your backyard when you were trying to get satellite
TV in the beginning, these huge dishes and that dish was there

(07:54):
to to beam at at moons when the moon was visible, we could beam
off of that to moon to NSA in Washington DC and that's when we
would get our crypto informationto them.
So think about 1967 on sophisticated that was.
That's amazing. There you have all the
satellites up there we beamed off the moon.

(08:15):
That was the the thing we used to bounce the signals off of and
to get back to them so. That's incredible.
OK, well, I'm, I'm going to, I'mgoing to make a mental note
because obviously that plays into what happened on June 8th
and the the attempt to communicating, you know, this is
this isn't this is interesting for you.

(08:36):
When I interviewed Phil, I really didn't know that much
about the story. You know, I had watched him on
Candace Owens. But now, man, the liberty has
gotten so much more attention and so much more notoriety.
And I personally am so much morewell versed.
This is going to be great to getit from your perspective.
OK, a year and a half, we get it.

(08:56):
You're kind of doing the daily thing.
You guys, you know, people don'trealize it was a spy ship.
Like when you say that, are you trying to gather and were you
guys trying to gather intelligence on what other
countries were doing? Were you trying to intercept
signals? What were you?
What was that about? And I would say the answer is D
all the above. All the above OK.

(09:17):
Interesting. And, and yeah.
And we were so classified that we ran alone.
We never had escorts with us or anything.
We ran by ourselves. I guess technically we could
always be in harm's way because we were easy to identify.
Because you have a ship that's out there and it has these
antennas on it and all these things, the big mast that goes

(09:39):
up and then the arms go out on the, on the ship.
And, and on all those arms were sophisticated antennas,
sophisticated equipment out there that turned out to be what
the Israelis hung in on before they attacked us.
And once I get into the story ofmy story of the attack, I'll,
I'll tell that. OK, OK.

(10:02):
OK, it was it. Was it was asking this, are
there other ships out at sea like that?
Like did other countries have spy ships remotely as
sophisticated as this? Or was the United States so far
ahead? I guess really, I mean, that was
the Soviet Union. That was like the beginnings of
the Cold War, I'm thinking. Correct, Correct.

(10:24):
And of course, this was after World War 2, after Korea, all
that. So this was the beginning of the
Cold War time. And that's when everything kind
of changed. The way the naval Security
Group, NSA, went out to the world to gather information and
whatever they did, and they put five of our ships out there.
I'll name one of them because it's a very public issue Also

(10:47):
was the USS Pueblo that was captured by the North Koreans in
January of 1968 at 81 crew, 82 crew members, one crew member
was killed and 81 of them were tortured for 10 months by North
Korea. OK and we're let ghost the the
ship is on a trophy over in North Korea that they took they

(11:11):
did get all the codes and all the stuff from NSA.
So the NSA had to redo all the codes for the whole world
because North Korea captured those codes.
And that's how sophisticated what we did is today after the
liberty And it was certainly mothballed and sold off to
Shika's razor blades. But that metal is good for

(11:32):
something, you know? Anyway, the communications, the
ignition category still exists. It still goes on today, but it's
all broken down into to other ships.
In other words, cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers
all have a small segment of their ship where there might be
4 or five people attached to theNaval Security Group who do what

(11:55):
we did. But it's invisible, so to speak,
for as visible as we were out there as a target.
That's crazy. And then are you guys just
sailing around the ocean or are you, you're not anchored to the
bottom right, you're actually moving?
On the ship, we were working theWest Coast of Africa, so the
Pueblo was working the around Korea and all that area.

(12:17):
So each ship had a different part of the world to go to.
So we worked down from like Senegal down to Cape Town in
that area and we worked to Angola, the Ivory Coast.
So we would be out from there along the Congo River and let's
say we could see the land, we were probably 1315 miles off in

(12:38):
international waters, 3 miles isthe international water line,
but doing our job. And then once a month we'd pull
into port, into a day car, Senegal or into Angola.
And places when you got off the ship for our liberty, they'd
give us a day or two to get off and relax or whatever.

(12:59):
And you, it's hard to relax whenevery person you pass in those
countries has machine guns on their shoulders and whatever,
because all at war with each other probably still are today.
They're always in some type of fight or whatever of control.
And so that that's how we lived.And so we were, we got pretty
reckless. If you give me two days off the

(13:19):
ship and I've been on there 30, I'm ready to to cut loose, you
know what I'm saying? I bet, I bet.
Plus you guys are like, you know, you know, this is this is
something interesting. And I think maybe you and I
spoke about this in one of our conversations leading up to
this. You know, I'm interviewing you
right now and you're, you're, you're a distinguished 6070

(13:40):
something year old gentleman, right?
Late 70s. Late 70s.
OK, well, hey, you're doing good.
I'm knocking on wood. What what people don't realize
is when you and Phil and everyone else went through this,
you guys were 18/19/20. You were like young bucks,
probably young stallions, you know what I mean?

(14:03):
Like, that's pretty wild. So, so yeah, when you got to
land for a couple days, you guysprobably, I mean, it's like what
I did when I was 18. Like that's pretty crazy.
I was like Phil, I didn't want to run up against him in the
backroom because he would have kicked my hands.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They already didn't like us
because we had these clearances and all that, you know.

(14:24):
Yeah, yeah. And you guys were the.
You know, it's funny you hear the term spook.
I know you guys call each other that.
I mean, that's kind of like a derogatory word, but that kind
of means spy. Yes.
OK, interesting. It does.
OK, Yeah. OK, All right, so man, that's
pretty fast. Oh, you know what I wanted to
ask you So, so the Six Day War was going on and that was, I

(14:45):
believe, between Israel and Egypt and some of the Arab
nations at that time. Did leading up to June 8th did
you guys know this Six Day War was happening or did you guys
know this was taking place? We did not.
In other words, we weren't Privyto the outside World News.
There weren't CNN's, there weren't Fox News is there

(15:06):
weren't any of these type of things that broadcast.
We we're in the Ivory Coast in acity called Abidjan and the
captain said all crew back to the ship, brought us all back at
2:00 AM in the morning and says we're selling out in the
morning. You can't notify your parents.
You can't do anything and tell anybody where we're going.
We're not going to tell you where we're going right now.

(15:28):
But then when we got in our spaces, our private security
spaces, we were told we were heading into the Mediterranean.
But I couldn't tell Phil that, you see what I'm saying?
So he didn't, he didn't have theneed to know because he didn't
have a clearance, OK. How many guys were on that ship
do you remember? 294.
OK. And did you know everybody?

(15:49):
Did everybody know? Each other.
No, we didn't. I mean, I knew who Phil was.
I knew whatever the best relationships I've built are
since then of the people who come together and have our
reunions and different things that we do.
So the relationships have expanded dramatically with those
interest that over the years. And every year we seem to find

(16:11):
somebody who's never attended a reunion or whatever, and it's
just unbelievable because the fellowship is so profound and
the pain people have lived through is so profound over that
many years. The pain you guys have lived
through and, and I want to get to that in a little bit.
It's just unbelievable. And to be honest, I'm so glad
I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit.

(16:32):
But I'm so glad the USS Liberty story is getting to the
forefront now because you guys, more than anything, you guys
deserve to be heard and you guysdeserve for the American people
to understand the truth. But OK, before we get that, all
right, let's get to June 8th, 1967.
What do you remember? June the 8th, 1967, I told you

(16:55):
we'd left Abidjan, we're headinginto the Mediterranean and
wasn't sure what was going on. Some of us knew there was a
battle going on between Egypt and Israel, and our destination
was to go into the Sinai Peninsula and find out who
started this thing, who was doing what, who was doing what,
everything. And we had all the equipment to

(17:16):
do that. Whether it's Egypt, whether it's
Israel, it doesn't matter. We could pick up anything we
wanted to pick up. What's interesting is we could
pick up all that 100 miles away,200 miles away, you know, or 12
miles away. And but we went into the Sinai
Peninsula and we arrived there on June the 7th and we were told

(17:38):
to be on alert that that anything could happen.
We asked for a military escort, a destroyer.
We asked the 6th Fleet, Admiral Martin, as a matter of fact, who
was a commandant of the Sixth Fleet for a ship, and he
refused. He would not give us any, any
protection whatever. So we went right into harm's

(17:58):
way. We pulled that.
Strange. Was that strange?
I mean, hindsight's 2020 obviously, but like at the time,
did that register with anybody that like, hey, why are we not
getting protection? It wouldn't register with me
because what did that mean? Yeah.
In other words, you know, I'm 20at this time, but still, I mean,
I'm, I'm good at what I do, doing my work and so forth, but

(18:22):
I, I just don't know what to expect.
I don't know what what to come as an attack, but I don't know
how to get ready for that. But anyway, so we're there and
so we're just doing our regular jobs.
Everybody seems comfortable. If you want to go upside up the
top side and throw a fish line over the side of the ship and

(18:44):
fish because we're kind of sitting still or cruising very
slow or sunbathe or whatever. Then the morning of June the
8th, my buddy Jimmy and I were asked to go out and work on
cleaning because we were off of our duty from down underneath
that day. So we were on this big
Tresscomm, it was called this big basket, crater basket on the

(19:05):
back of the ship that sent all the messages off because it was
so sophisticated and so tedious that we had to clean it with
toothbrushes and whatever. So I mean, it was it was
definitely a sophisticated pieceof equipment.
Now, now that means we're elevated 50 feet or so in the
air and we're up in that basket.So let me see, I'm closest to

(19:25):
the top to see what's going on out in this absolute spectacular
day. I call it the cloud.
A cloud locker takes all the clouds and puts them in the
locker and doesn't let them out that day.
And the sky is perfect, OK? The sun is beautiful.
It's everything. And and then these boxcar
planes, a couple of them start flying around us circling, and

(19:47):
they had to star a David on them.
That's kind of kind of a comfortzone for you to say, OK,
they're, they're out there. We we know who they are and
they're our number one ally on earth.
And so anyway. Let me ask you something because
this is interesting. So at that time, 1967, even

(20:07):
then, Israel was sort of known as being the number one ally to
the United States. You know, you hear now them
saying Israel's our greatest ally and all that.
Did that have me meaning to you,1967?
So when when you saw that Star of David on the plains, it
really gave you a feeling of comfort.

(20:29):
Probably. Well, it did there because we're
sitting there watching bombs go off on land.
We know this war's been going ona few days.
And here we're sitting. This side of the peninsula's got
Israel. The other side of the
peninsula's got Egypt. Wow.
OK. And we're sitting there in the
water in between sunbathing. I mean, you know, it's just
probably doesn't make sense whenyou think about it.

(20:50):
But anyway, but they came out and they're circling us and they
have cameras hanging out of the side.
So they're taking pictures afterpictures.
They're close enough that like I'm watching you right now in
the screen that you could see them and wave at them and have a
hand communication of waving at each other and so forth.
So it's it's it's like, wow. And that even makes you then

(21:13):
they did this five different Times Now.
Why I'm setting the stage for this is, is we had no idea we
were going to be attacked. We had zero idea that we'd be
attacked, especially when we felt protected by planes flying
around with the Star of David. But why are they coming out
there five times? What are they doing?
All those cameras? Well, we can tell you what they

(21:35):
were doing. They were photographing every
single piece of that ship. Remember I told you the mass had
the antennas on them and everything going up to mass?
There were big cables going up to connect everything through
all the electronics, and they were photographing everything to
prepare for that afternoon. And so they were going back to

(21:55):
Tel Aviv and going to the war room with Mushy Diane and so
forth, and laying all that intelligence out there that they
were doing. So they're spying while we're
waving at them. Yeah, Yeah.
That's interesting. They're spying on you guys.
I mean, you're your greatest ally.
Spies. Not intercept in what we're
saying, it's looking at what we have on the ship.
So that's their target. OK, got it And, and, and so, so

(22:21):
after that we came off the basket, went down to lunch and
the captain called a general quarters drill.
That is a battle drill we do multiple times out of sea that
everybody has a battle station if they run to their battle
station and lock the ship down and prepare it if it were going
to be attacked to secure the hatches, to secure everything so

(22:41):
everybody that's inside is safe or whatever.
So we went through one of those practice drills.
He came over says great job guys, you all did a good job.
You beat the clock, you know, because we always have a clock
time trying to get it done and batten down by that time and
then he. And again, by the way, doing a
drill like that and doing a practice drill like that, that's
normal, right? Like.

(23:03):
That's very normal, but probablybecause we practiced it that day
might have helped because an hour later we got attacked.
But anyway, so so we had two general quarters drills that
day. By the way, the second one was
real and and you're out there with no guns, no nothing.
And it's real. Then we we Jimmy and I are on

(23:23):
our way back up to the basket togo back in the basket and work.
And this is at 2:00 PM, OK. And there's guys laying on the
back of the ship sunbathing. There's everything's going on.
I told you it's a gorgeous day. And then I, I, I kind of heard
like this and I looked up and I saw a jet fly over my head.
And then I saw that postman beside me over there because I'm

(23:44):
standing outside on the on the decks in the after part of the
ship get hit with a missile, youknow, and said, Oh my God,
what's going on? And then so the the jet came is
straight onto the to the over the ship was shooting over the
bow over the bridge of the ship.That's where our captain was
when they strive the ship and soforth.
Then to us in the after part of the ship.

(24:04):
Then the sunlight was directly on our left, the port side of
the ship. Another plane came directly out
of the sun so nobody could see it.
So that was another surprise of that plane coming in.
And that's what they used armored.
Excuse me, they used regular bullets and so forth to kill all
the people on the surface surface of the on the on the top

(24:25):
of the ship. So, so anti personnel weapons,
I'll call it and that's what they use to kill everybody.
They could see that was out on the ship or shoot or do
whatever. And of course when that
happened, we all jumped in the ship.
Now where am I going to go versus where it's filled?
Want to go that general drills as you go there you go there.
My general quarter spaces were down in the bottom of the ship

(24:49):
where the top security spaces were.
So I had to go through the coated doors, go down to work
and there were about 45 of us down in those spaces.
We had three rooms down there, OK, where different talents took
places and then we had another space on the floor above us
which was not underwater. And so we had a very
sophisticated partnership and I'm going to say it was probably

(25:12):
40% of the ship underneath the water was.
Underneath the water, got it. Got.
Our spaces okay and so anyway wego down there I've already been
in the line of fire of the of the the guns.
So I go down. I don't know what's happening
about. Like do you think this is a

(25:33):
drill? Like what do you think?
No, no, no. I saw the planes come over.
They were fired. I saw.
I saw them strike my friend. I knew somebody was shooting us.
OK. I think I thought it was.
I thought it was. We thought it was Egypt, right?
Right. And by the way, the two jets
they attacked us with were French Phantom jets, which are
designed to look like delta wingMigs, and they had them all

(25:54):
painted black with no markings on.
There was no identity on those jets, OK?
It was a surprise attack, made us believe it was the Arabs
attacking us, OK, and and so so we're under attack.
And then to add on to the story there we had a crewman, a radium
and named Terry Harbardier, who who got one of the highest.

(26:15):
He didn't get the medal bonder, but now he got the Navy Cross or
whatever. But we had been wiped out.
I told you all those antennas onthe ship, the first strength of
those planes, those two planes took out every single antenna on
our ship. If there were 10 cables going up
a mass post, OK, they shot, theyshot holes through kenna, holes

(26:37):
through the mass. Not only did they hit every
antenna, they hit other. So they wiped out every piece of
communication in the first straight of The Jets.
So let me. Let me try to let me try to
connect these dots. So on June 7th, when they flew
by taking all those pictures, that was.
Probably that was that was that morning.

(26:57):
OK, but but they had they had a layout of where everything was.
So now when they're attacking, the first line was to take out
all your communication devices in the antennas so you couldn't
call for help. And that happened.
They, they, they definitely shutdown our ship completely.
And this Terry Hubbardier went out in harm's way there on the

(27:19):
side where they napalmed and everything and hand fixed an
antenna where we got one messageout.
And I don't know what all the terminology is, Rockstar,
whatever, but it just, it was simply a message out.
We're under attack, believed to be Arabs, we said we believed to
be Earth. Who else would you think it was?
Absolutely. And so then we got one message

(27:40):
back. One message back, and this is
all it said. And this will come up in the
story. OK, Help is on the way.
That's all we got back. Silence from that point on, OK,
for close to 20 hours. The last thing we had heard is
help is. On the way and again that's an
audio that's somebody on the other end audio said over the

(28:03):
radio. OK, OK.
This isn't like like some type of print out that comes help is
somebody said help is on the way.
And we found that person, I can't remember who it is or
whatever, but you know, you can trace down all those things as
to who intercepted, who got those messages and so forth.
But anyway, so while, while thisis going on the planes, and I

(28:24):
didn't know this, by the way, armored piercing bullets are
coming into our space. They're coming down into our
spaces underwater. So we, we can hear the bullets
piercing the metal and so forth.So we're just there kind of
waiting. Now what do we do?
What we do and we know there hasto be massive carnage going on
on top of the ship. And we didn't have any idea that

(28:46):
not only did they shoot us with the with the anti personnel,
then the armored piercing and then with cannons and then they
napalmed us. OK, napalm is a Jelly gas.
It just burns everything. So, but back to me, back down in
the hole with my shipmates down there, we're like saying, OK,
what's going to happen? What's going on?

(29:07):
We kind of know we're going to die, we just don't know when.
That's crazy. And again, this entire time, at
this point, you guys are thinking it's either the
Egyptians or another Arab nation.
Had it, had it remotely even crossed your mind yet that this
was the Israelis? Probably.
Not at all. Not at all, no.

(29:28):
And so anyway, we are down thereand then everything stops, just
goes silent and we're there for and it turns out it was 20
minutes. And you just don't know how the
clock is working, you know, whenyou're in these situations.
And the captain says, and I'm sitting in my station and so
forth. And our room had a bunch of

(29:48):
electronic equipment in it. It filled up the walls and so
forth. So anyway, the captain comes
over the speaker and says prepare for torpedo attack.
And I looked at Jimmy, my buddy who had already been injured
because he got shot with one of those harming piercings that
came through in the shower. When I was up topside.
He was down in the shower. We were in that basket all day

(30:09):
together. He'd already been hit with a
bullet before he came down to our spaces.
Like literally a bullet pierced his body.
In the shower, He was in the shower in the first, first level
and yeah, and he was hit, but hecame down to the spaces.
And so he and I are sitting there and he's not really
talking about his injury or anything.
He's as, I'm not going to say, panicked.

(30:31):
He's as stressed as any one of us far.
It is somewhat panicking when you have no way to defend
yourself. Of course it.
Is but anyway. And again, I have to say this,
you guys are 20 years old at this 20/21/22 whatever.
Their officers who are in their mid 20s and so forth.
Yeah, and how old? Was the captain and is that

(30:52):
captain? Member of the guests.
He was in his mid. OK, OK.
Oh God. But this is anyway, I mean,
young kids, 222325 they had families.
They had kids already. You know, everybody got married
at 18 back then, not 40 like they are now.
Yeah. But anyway, so he said prepare

(31:13):
for torpedo attack. And I looked at Jimmy and I says
how the F do we do that? Nobody ever trained me in the
Navy how to prepare for a torpedo attack.
And I swear to you, I looked over and saw a little table over
beside us over there. I says, why don't you and I lay
down on the floor and wrap our arms around that table leg.
He says I don't know what, yes, we should bury our head.

(31:36):
I guess we should whatever, but I'm going to lay down and I
don't know what let us do that. But he and I laid down and what
I'm telling you now is that torpedo hit and it hit within 25
feet of us, came through the side of the ship, came through a
room, threw out two little thin paper thin walls and into our
space. And in that time with 45 of us

(31:59):
down there, it killed 25, OK, with the impact of the
explosion. And the rest of us were.
I remember falling. I remember falling.
So I thought the floor from underneath me, the deck had
blown away and I had fallen a whole nother level.
But that's not the case. I was blown head first into the

(32:20):
ceiling, into the pipes, and I was falling till the water
caught me and the water caught me and it came down.
Then the water kept filling up and filling up and filling up in
the room, totally black. The oil tanks were hit down
there, so the oil filled our water.
So our water was black. You couldn't.
And we were underwater. So you got your eyes up and
you're trying to see and all youcan see is this murky stuff.

(32:42):
And then I saw it got real dark in front of my eyes.
And so I said that must be somebody.
So I reached out and it happenedto be my friend Jimmy's shirt.
And I found it later. I'd been unconscious.
But everything is milliseconds. You think about it, it's all
milliseconds. It's not.
It seems like an hour, but it's not.
And, and, and then he and other people helped pull people

(33:03):
totally. And there's only a foot of
airspace to breathe, okay, between the ceiling and the
water level in there. All right.
And so in that time that we're there, excuse me, So this side
of the ship, a little paper thinwall, a little paper thin wall,
the other side of the ship and one ladder, 1 ladder.

(33:25):
This side of the ship is gone 39feet wide and 24 feet high hole.
This wall is never to be found. This wall was never to be found
and blew out holes in the other side of the ship and.
That was all from one torque. One torque that by the way was a
homing to a French homing torpedo, and a homing torpedo is
supposed to Pierce the side of your ship, Go completely in,

(33:50):
then implode and explode and blow your ship in half and it
sinks. By the grace of God, by the hand
of God there was one i-beam on the side of the ship.
A big huge metal i-beam is one of the major stretch to hold the
ship together is where the torpedo had it.
So it exploded on impact. So even though there were 25

(34:13):
killed in that room, it saved 200 and some people because the
only intent was for us to be sunk that day.
We were supposed to have never been heard of or seen her ever
again. We were gone.
And you'll find out more about that detail as that go on.
But anyway, then I told you I grabbed Jimmy's shirt.

(34:33):
But then we got up the ladder, went up the ladder to get out.
And that hatch had a had a, the hole lift hatch, but it had a, a
hole in it, a skeletal. And we were going out through
that hole one at a time. And I remember a shipmate
Buddha, who was down there with us, must have been the first out
and he was pulling us all out ofthere.
And so I say all the people killed.

(34:56):
We had one survivor that got outof there was really banged up
bad, but he was smashed between doors or whatever and was spared
probably from the frames of the doors versus because think about
everybody was still standing up or sitting around or whatever,
not even thinking about a torpedo coming in.
But I think because Jimmy and I laid down now he got a lot of

(35:17):
shrapnel on him. I did not.
I was injured. I had my head injured from
hitting the ceiling. I had concussions and then I had
a leg injury. And that way, I had little
pieces of shrapnel on me, but nothing where they had to put me
in a hospital and do that. So now we get out of this hole
and somebody has to shut that hole.
And it wasn't me, but somebody had to close that hatch off.

(35:39):
Yeah. And not know whether they were
leaving live people down there or not.
Oh. My let me ask you something.
How big is a torpedo? Is a torpedo like 6 feet?
Like what are the dimensions? I think a torpedo was probably
2025 feet and like a a manatee size.

(36:00):
If you snall a big fat, you know, manatee or whatever,
probably something like that, but it's big.
It's big and they fire that thing from a submarine.
What do they fire? That's where they normally do.
Israel used torpedo boats. As a matter of fact, Israeli
torpedo boats came out to do that attack and we had no idea

(36:21):
there were Israeli torpedo boatsuntil they got really close.
But they fired the torpedoes andthey fired like 4 torpedoes at
us. Either they're bad shots or the
captain maneuvered well seeing them coming, but one hit us in
the dead center of our ship, which caused all the casualties
and caused us to go dead in the water.
We could not go any further until we had some issues fixed

(36:42):
where we could get under our ownpower and keep going.
And the ship turned and listed about 10 to 10° or so.
So you know, you the ship was leaning like this.
So OK, I just got out of this hole.
I just walked up and the black smoke and the smell is something
I can't explain to you. And then you're a young kid
getting out of this and some guyin front of you else chemical

(37:05):
attack. And I say to myself, holy shit,
I just lived on the yeah, well, now I climbed out this hole.
Now I'm going to die from mustard gas or something.
What's that going to feel like? Then I go up on the deck to go
up on the outside of deck and all the ships on fire, there's
people laying out their blood everywhere or whatever.

(37:25):
So now when are they going to come and finish me off?
OK, so that's what you're thinking about.
Would you just hurry up and killme?
Because this is But when that torpedo hits at IBM that I,
i-beam. That saved us and that's what I
say, and then I go back to that ladder and by the.
Way when that torpedo hit the boat and do you remember I mean

(37:49):
that seems like it would have been so violent like did the
boat go in the air and slam on the water the.
Ship actually probably left the water and.
Insane. This is insane.
MO. This is insane.
Oh my gosh. And this is our ally.
But before I go any further, I want to say that it's our ally.

(38:09):
But I got to say it was Israel, it was the end of it was the
Israeli Defense Forces. I've got tons of Jewish friends.
I don't have any anti-Semitic blood in my body.
And I think all the other Jewishpeople were out mowing lawns and
sunbathing and doing everything that we would do that day as
normal people and had no clue they were attacking an American

(38:30):
ship that debt. And it turns out that more were
involved in just the Israeli Defense Forces, which hopefully
we'll get to a little later, but.
I appreciate you saying that. And you know, I feel that exact
same way about what's going on today.
You know, like what's going on in the world today, whether it's
Gaza or wherever, whether it's anywhere else.
It's like, you know, people needto really differentiate between

(38:54):
the people of certain countries or anywhere and then then the
governments and other other their entities.
So I appreciate you saying. That it could have been Somalia
that attacked us, it doesn't matter.
Somebody attacked us. Somebody killed 34 people,
somebody wounded 174 sailors with a total crew of 294 people.

(39:18):
Think about that. That casualty rate is profound.
I think it's one of the largest in history.
That is profound, which is stillcovered up today.
But anyway, we get out of there and then let's say the ship is
on fire and then the captain's yelling.
People come up to the bridge, help it out the fires, do
whatever. We're standing down there and
then a helicopter and I saw a guy named Birdman over there

(39:38):
sitting on the water. He was just like a hole in his
head from the bullets and everything.
And, and I ran over to him. But then this helicopter comes
and hangs over the ship and justright there and he throws a bag,
a paper bag off with an orange in it to to put the weight in it
with a message to was sent up tothe to the bridge.
The captain. Do you have casualties?

(40:00):
And they're looking out of theirhelicopter and the ship is
covered in blood. The it's it's.
Do you have casualties? Are you kidding me?
Whose helicopter is this? Oh, it's Israel's OK.
We now feel we have proof that Mushi Diane was actually in that
plane relishing over his kill that day.

(40:21):
The man was absolutely a brutal,brutal human being when it came
to war. You know who, Mushi?
I don't even know who that is. Who is?
That right, well, that's somebody that people should
study because he would be like MacArthur and our military.
He would be, you know, like one of the biggest, you know, what
was his General Patton, you know, somebody of that type of

(40:42):
rank. He was the, he was the like,
maybe it's Pete. Pete Hedgeseth is our secretary.
For the Israelis, he was like the Secretary of Defense or
secretary of war, like he likes to call it.
Wow. OK, Got.
It he wore a patch on his eye. He was quite a warrior.
But anyway, they left. I matter of fact, when the

(41:02):
message came on, the captain gotit and he flipped him the bird
and told him to get away. And from that minute on, we went
under our own steam very slowly,very carefully, and knew we had
casualties underneath because weknew people didn't get out of
the hole where our torpedo was. We were mending bodies.
I carried this guy Birdman. I sat down and I found out the

(41:23):
mess decks where we ate what became our hospital.
So every table and where we ate became a bed for all the wounded
and so forth. And we took care.
Then I remember for probably from dusk until the next
morning, sitting in that mess deck helping save people's
lives, doing whatever. We had one doctor on board,

(41:46):
Doctor Kiefer, who had been shotup bad.
He, he, he put the life vests onand sewed himself up some and
probably saved 100 lives. He should have gotten the Medal
of Honor, but he he didn't. And he kept a lot of, a lot of
them alive. I know that I had a guy who had
51 holes in him and I couldn't believe he was alive.

(42:06):
And I, I, I did, I held a straw with his mouth and that would
suck out his gargle so he didn'tdrown, you know, and his and his
own gargle. So we did those type of things.
You know, you went over to our commanding officer who didn't
last long, but he's on it layingon a table and he says to one of
his crewmen that he knew better than me because I he wasn't ACT

(42:29):
so he couldn't come in our spaces.
But anyway, he says go up to thestateroom and get me a bottle of
vodka or whatever, bottle bourbon, whatever, and bring it
down to me. And he liked it.
He liked his little mixers. But anyway, he's laying there
bleeding to death, but he wants his bottle and, and so can we
help you? Just just get me my booze and
leave me alone. Take care of the crew.

(42:51):
Do not try to help me until you've taken care of the crew.
So he's laid there and bled out and died hero.
By the way, so so the entire attack from what I remember in
terms of some of Phils interviews and other started
around 2:00 in the afternoon. Do you remember did it last for
like 5 hours or? No, no, no, two hours Max.

(43:14):
Two hours Max. OK, God.
Yeah. What?
What do you think caused? I mean, they're trying to sink
you guys. It's pretty obvious they want
that ship at the bottom of the ocean.
Well, what do you think happenedthat caused them to, I guess,
give up on that goal? I'm curious how much time we
have here because. We have as much time as you

(43:34):
want, man. So repeat your question.
My question is, so they absolutely wanted to sink that
boat. They wanted to sink the Liberty
without. Question.
Sink the boat so we would think it was Egypt and then do
whatever else was going on. What's interesting, we're in the
third day technically, of the Six Day War.
What was there for us to come inand do against them?

(43:57):
Because Israel wiped out the Egyptian military, their whole
Air Force in one day. Egypt had no way to defend
themselves anymore. And we're there day three in a
six day war, but yet and we're planted we're we're put in a
place 13 miles off the thing that we're positioned there and

(44:18):
that's where we're supposed to sit.
OK, So probably when I get to some false flag issues.
Yeah, yeah, you'll. Understand.
Yeah, I want to get into the false flags.
OK, so so it the attack is abouttwo hours and then you guys
after that you're trying to mendto the injured, you're probably
like, what the hell just happened?

(44:40):
I mean, and I have to imagine part of you might have been
like, is it over or are they going to come back?
Like you probably had that fear probably that entire night.
Every second until the till the we saw the Navy the next
morning. That goes back to my my point
earlier. Help is on the way.

(45:00):
That's the one message we got back.
OK, so we sit there all night mending our wounded and so forth
and it's about 8:30 the next morning and we on the horizon we
can see the ships coming. The fleet was about 460 miles
from us so they had a long ride to come.
But anyway, in that time right after the attack or during the

(45:23):
attack, remember 1 message goes out, one message comes back.
Now I'll tell you what happened in that time.
The Saratoga, when they said help is on the way, they
immediately loaded 4 jets with conventional weapons, meaning
that's that's to protect us, come to our ship and help us out
and do whatever they need to do to protect us against who was

(45:46):
shooting us. Admiral Martin on the American
aircraft carrier without authorization to do nuclear
bombs. He didn't have that
authorization but loaded up fourjets with nuclear warheads
directly headed to Cairo, Egypt.OK.
And again, at this point, here we are 830 next morning, June

(46:07):
9th, you guys, do you still think it's Egypt or did you know
it was Israel at that point? We, you know, it was Israel
because the torpedo boats had the Star of David on them.
And, and there and there's, there's even, I'll, I'll go back
to that rule because they came in and when they, they shot
thousands of rounds at us. So, and you know, for armored

(46:27):
piercing and so forth. And then they, we even called an
abandoned ship and we shot our life, we dropped our life rafts
and, and Israel shot our life rafts out of the water.
You're required by the Geneva Convention.
You're required by all war crimes to take prisoners, but
you don't take prisoners if the American flags hanging.

(46:48):
OK, Remember, we were supposed to split in half and sink and
never be heard of again. They were probably just as pant
shut. Now, what do we do?
You know? So they were still determined
for us to sink and go away. So shooting the life rafts, I
mean, that is a war crime, that is.
Absolutely. And I've been on the, I've been
on a podium in Washington, DC and I personally read and filed

(47:10):
the war climb crime through the Secretary of the Army and the
secretary of these, we now call him the Secretary of War.
It was Rumsfeld at that time anyway, and we never heard a
word from him. But I'm I'm kind of getting
ahead of myself. OK, OK, yeah, let's go back to.
So now we're June 9th. It's in the The ships are on
the. Horizon ship and it's called the

(47:33):
USS Davis and they came and boarded and they got on ship and
took any helped us with medical stuff, helped us get some food
on board and do it because nothing was cooking on no food
was nothing was happening. Remember, the best act was a
hospital. So they got on board and then
the the fleet came up in the America aircraft area, came up

(47:54):
nearby. And then the America aircraft
took helicopters and came off came up to the front of the
ship. And I don't have the old
terminology memorized anymore, but to the FOXL they called the
FOXL. But anyway, and they carried on
multiple trips, carried the injured off the ship onto the
America and then the America gotfilled to capacity.

(48:17):
Their hospital could not take any more wounded and there were
five of us left on the ship thatwere wounded.
But you have to take people off by their degree of injury.
So my injury was not life threatening, was not in any way
but say I had a concussion. I had enough that they were
concerned about me. So they sent five of us in that
same situation over to the USS Little Rock, which was Admiral

(48:40):
Martin's fleet ship. They had a guided missile
cruiser, had a helicopter landing on it, and they flew us
off in the helicopter and dropped us off there.
And I spent the next five days on that ship.
And now what what I can say to the American public.
I sat on a bed and Admiral Martin came into the room.
He's the person out of his mouthsaid to us right there in that

(49:04):
room. I loaded 4 planes with
conventional and I loaded 4 planes with with nuclear
warheads headed to Cairo. We came within 6 to 9 minutes of
bombing them if need be. In other words, Austin would
have had to call that to pull the trigger.
Had we sunk, that would have happened.
Russia was there waiting to get into it too.

(49:25):
It would have been a potential nuclear Holocaust.
Nuclear. June 8th, 19th, June 8th, This
world came in to a within 9 minutes of a potential nuclear
Holocaust and the world doesn't even know about the USS Liberty,
let alone that they don't know any of this story.

(49:47):
That's it. That's incredible.
And, and, and let me pause on that for a second, because this
is important. Literally the world barely knew
about the USS Liberty until the past year.
And now what you're talking about is another level of of
knowledge that nobody knew that we were 9 minutes away from a

(50:08):
nuclear Holocaust. This is insane.
This story just gets crazier andcrazier and honestly scarier and
scarier as to what what was diabolically being intended to
happen. Because had you guys sunk, had
it not been for that, i-beam, you probably would have sunk and

(50:30):
they would have. They would have gone nuclear on
Egypt. I'm assuming Russia would have
came to the defense of Egypt then, right?
I. Think they would have wiped his
roll off the map. Interesting.
Russia would have. OK, All right, I'm going to
leave that one alone. But yeah.
OK, wow, my God, MO, this is awesome.
This is like a totally different.
This is, you know, it's crazy. You and Phil were on the same

(50:52):
ship and you've got like completely different, not even
versions, but different aspects.Of this right?
And I say I was there. I wasn't up doing all that
stuff, but I was doing my job and took a torpedo had I had to
lay down there and be one of the20 survivors of 45 people and

(51:15):
live with that the rest of my life.
When I washed my buddy who's 7 feet from me blown to
smithereens and he's got 2 babies at home and I'm single.
But I'll tell you why I was spared.
I know why I was spared. My brother had died the year
before in January of 66. This is June of 67 and I was

(51:35):
spared for my mother not to lose2 kids in a year.
That's what I believe. OK, I love that.
I love that you believe that. And you know what?
I'll believe that as well. Let me ask you this.
Did Jimmy survive? He did.
He did, as a matter of fact. Coincidence.
He's my neighbor three blocks down the street here in the
South Carolina right now. So that's amazing.

(51:55):
Our sea stories. Our sea stories get bigger every
day. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
We just bullshit the world. It's like the movie.
What is that movie Big Fish, where the stories just keep
getting bigger and bigger and bigger?
OK. Oh my God.
OK. That is really cool that you and
Jimmy live so close to each other.
That's interesting. But but but you had friends that

(52:16):
day. I mean a.
Lot of friends I mean I had a lot of friends I'm, you know
when you say 34 total, but I, I knew I knew everybody kind of
personally except I didn't know Lieutenant Toth, but God, what a
what, what a mess and you know, and up up top side you think
that when everybody ran inside like I ran down to my spaces

(52:37):
underwater, but they ran inside to get out of harm's way.
Now they're inside of a metal room, UPS on the top side of the
ship, feeling safe. And most of the acts for the
harm, even the major wounds weredone because of the shrapnel.
And the shrapnel would come through the side of the ship
with a three inch hole or whatever, and then the metal

(52:58):
particles would just wipe out. People just fill them with
holes. I mean, you know, got counted 54
holes in this one guy did that guy.
I don't know if he's alive today, but I know he lived.
He lived with broke. He had he had two 20mm in his
head. They went through his head
completely and he still lived and he could talk but with

(53:18):
broken speech after that. But I have no idea if he's still
still a survivor. OK, OK.
OK, let let me ask you this man,this is this is incredible.
OK, let's talk about kind of what happened over the next
maybe week. Like like where did they take
your ship from there? And then did they tell you guys

(53:43):
like I'm trying to think how to how to ask this like like I know
there was a huge cover up obviously, because I know the
story now, but I'm curious how that played out.
Like, like, did they take you somewhere and then say, hey,
don't ever talk about this or you know what talk?
So I, I went on the, I told you the Little Rock and after five

(54:04):
days our ship was headed toward Malta to go into, to dry dock to
be repaired or whatever they were going to do in dry dock to
get the bodies out. And I flew back to Crete.
They're at Greece or right therenear Malta.
And I said, they said, what do you want to do?
Where do you want to go? Like you want to go home?
And just I want to go back to myship.

(54:25):
I want to be with my ship. So they took me back to the
ship. And when I got on the ship, Ron
Kukel and his team and all the spaces, they only allowed the
top secret people to go back down in Earth spaces.
Even after the torpedo hit, theywouldn't allow a fuel attorney
down there ever. They wouldn't allow any of those
people to ever come down there. And even though it was blown to

(54:47):
smotherings. But anyway, we were at sea 8
days getting back to Malta, justgoing churning in the water with
25 bodies churning in the water inside the ship, rotting, decay
and doing whatever for that 8 days.
Oh my God, those bodies. So those bodies are like what?

(55:08):
Just just just in in the area that that.
Either stuck between two cabinets or either whatever,
wherever they were, a furniture fell on them, whatever happened
or whatever, but they're in there.
Maybe. Could you?
See them? Could you see them?
Or no, no, no, with the rememberthe ship was was battened down.
You couldn't. Batten down.
OK, OK, got it, got it. Got.

(55:30):
It because all that water was still in there.
OK. All the way that eight days with
all the water still inside half the ship.
Got it. So it's almost like for us non
Navy people, when you guys say batten down the hatches and
batten down, it's almost like you're boxing it closed and
isolating it. You're boxing anything that can

(55:50):
harm you. OK, so.
We didn't want that water to go to another part of the ship or
whatever. So anyway, Ron and his team,
Larry Bowen and a few of them, they're cleaning out.
Think about this. And I, I went back that day and
I went down in the hole too, butthey had already cleaned out
most of the bodies of the body bags and so forth.
But they, they, they found, of course, they only identified one

(56:15):
person by their features or anything because they were so
decayed and so blown to pieces. They found belt buckles and they
found whatever that had their name on them is how they
identified. So there was a documentary that
came out and called Sacrificing Liberty and Ron Kukel, our
shipmate on there, his section in that documentary talks about

(56:38):
putting a puzzle together. It was like putting a puzzle, he
says. I had to take body parts and put
them all together on the ship totry to create the body.
And that's what we and I, those guys stayed there a couple days
and did all that and left. I stayed there 31 days and
cleaning out that space and cleaning out party parts.
The last day I found Captain Pierce or Lieutenant Pierce's

(57:01):
arm in an air conditioning vent.OK, 30 days later.
OK, I'll tell you something elseis fascinating.
My brother, I told you, had died.
I had his classroom. OK.
And the the implosion of the ship and all that stuff that
happened to big, huge electronicgear.
At one point we started tearing all that electronic gear apart
to see. And inside that perfectly, those

(57:24):
boxes that were still perfectly in shape, we took them apart.
We found eyeglasses, we found rings, we found all kinds of
stuff, bracelets and whatever inside those machines.
So that means those machines hadimploded enough to go, and then
the blast blowing the stuff off your body, OK, went into those
machines and I found my brother's classroom 'cause it

(57:46):
had blown off my hand during theattack.
What's the odds on that? That is an incredible.
Wow. Yeah.
So you know, God works in mysterious ways and and by the
way, I haven't said it yet, but this whole thing for us that are
alive and is divine intervention.
We were in God's hands that day and didn't sink and that's what

(58:09):
caused all the trouble after that, because had we sunk, this
would have gone away in a week. And there's these guys, they're
gone. The some submarine sunk and 36
guys went down. Goodbye, see you later.
And you never heard about it again, you know, And that's what
would have happened. But then when we got in Malta,
they had a, a like they called it a inquiry, board of inquiry.

(58:34):
And by the way, that's the only inquiry that's ever been done in
history. And it was lasted a few days and
they swore everybody to secrecy.They took us like Admiral Kidd
and Macisaacs or Isaacs and JohnMcCain.
Junior, he wasn't there. But yet or no, it might have
been senior. Senior was there.
McCain's dad. Yeah.

(58:54):
Yeah, I. Remember reading that, but
anyway, they came on and fill with Italian experience that he
had that they took their bars off their Admirals bars that
says OK, we're just normal people.
We want to talk. So then the guys told their
stories and I was not involved in that conversation, OK, but
they told us all of us because Igot the exact same instructions.

(59:16):
If you ever talk about this attack even to the guys who did
not have a top secret clearance.But if you ever talk about this,
we're going to send you to Leavenworth, We're going to send
you to wherever, and you don't know what's going to happen.
So I'm going to say the majorityof us went 15 years without

(59:38):
saying a word. I didn't say a word to my first
wife. I didn't say anything to my
parents, nothing. If I talk to you, I'll have to
shoot you, you know so. My God, so.
We were sworn to. Back to America, finally.
You didn't tell your parents this.
You didn't tell. I didn't tell them anything of
what happened other than we wereattacked.

(59:58):
That's that's it. And, and you know, everyone
needs to remember, this is 1967.This is there's no Internet.
There's no cell phones, there's no social media, there's no, I
mean the and I and I bet you theTV news, it wasn't really
covering it. OK, let let me ask you this.
In case of mistaken identity, that's what that's that was the

(01:00:21):
official story. Still is.
Still is the official story. There's no chance of that.
No chance. I watched an old video last
night that I pulled out of the archives.
It's on our website of them honoring Admiral Moorer.
Who was the common dent of the Navy then?
And the whole Navy, not forget his title.
But anyway, we honored him. And he just said that he knew

(01:00:45):
that was a deliberate attack at the time, but the government
took, I say swore us to secrecy.And he's always stood out for us
all the way there. And so, you know, when I went
back on the ship and I said I stayed that whole time with him,
it was time if I wanted to communicate with my family, you
had to write a letter then or whatever.

(01:01:06):
But I couldn't say anything. But even back when I went back
to my normal life in that 15 years, remember, I was injured,
I had bad issues that went were going on and so forth.
But I was afraid to go to a doctor, and the military wasn't
helping me with anything, never contacted me.
As a matter of fact, they sent me one letter.
Would you accept $500 if you swear to never say anything in

(01:01:30):
the world? And we'll send you a settlement
check for $500.00. So you'll never blame Israel or
anything for whatever. And my stepfather says, yeah,
you'd be lucky to get that sign it.
And my buddy Jimmy refused to sign and they sent him $47,000
so 40. $7000. Yeah, so that's the same Navy
that I belong to because he refused to sign the release.

(01:01:52):
They sent him 47 to shut him up.But anyway, and he's the guy
that's in a in that Al Jazeera video you like.
Yeah, yeah. OK, guys.
He's in a yellow yellow golf shirt.
Jimmy Kavanaugh, that James Scott author, was who kind of
made that that documentary. That's a great documentary as

(01:02:13):
well. So so is the sacrificing
liberty. I think Rick Wiles was
responsible for that. That's a four hour I I think a
four hour documentary in in fourdifferent parts.
It's long a man, it's good. It's.
Good. I'd like to tell your audience
that there is a a documentary you can go on Rumble and search

(01:02:33):
for Sacrificing Liberty. It is a four and a half hour.
It's in four separate sections like a Netflix documentary.
It's actually done that well. It's never made the public media
because of the cover up, OK. And so we will never get the
exposure that we should. But this documentary is from our

(01:02:54):
crew. It tells a powerful story.
And it also takes you through tothe last segment of the story,
which I'll kind of jump to rightnow is after surviving all this
and going through it and living all these years.
And I'm the executive director of our Liberty Veterans
Association. So I'm very connected to the
crew all the time. My my dear shipmate and good

(01:03:17):
friend, Phil Turney, who's our president of our organization,
has lived and breathed EU s s Liberty his entire life.
He is the finest spokesman we have and he fights every day.
I've run a business, I've had myown life, I've had whatever, but
I've always stayed very close tothe to the Liberty.

(01:03:39):
And, and it's, it's also, it's been a hardship because of my
wife and she's very volunteers to to help, but we live and
breathe this. It took me 56 years to get
benefits from the government formy injuries and for my whatever.
And by the way, I told you I hadwhat were minor injuries.

(01:04:01):
I've had 12 back operations, 9 fusions in my back from hitting
that ceiling in that ship with that torpedo.
Think of the impact of a torpedothat lifted the ship out of the
water. How fast was I going to that
ceiling? Yeah, yeah, OK.
And how hard? How hard did you slam onto?

(01:04:22):
That guys hit, you know, you think of the guys that were
closer to the impact, that torpedo, they didn't have any
idea of what hit. But I'm less than 25 feet and
survived and it's just, well. Yeah, that is, this is
incredible. I want to tell I'm jumping
around a little bit, but I want to tell you to the the cover up
and it's still the largest coverup today in the history of our

(01:04:46):
government. If you write to your senator or
congressman, you will get a formletter back.
It says the US of celebrity has been investigated.
It was proven to be accidental and that's it.
No more nothing. So we our mission today.
Why am I here? Why am I here with with Ray
doing this podcast? It's to tell our story.

(01:05:08):
All we want is to tell our story.
Our greatest goal in life would be for our government to give us
a true congressional hearing. Yeah.
It proved that this was not an accident, that it was
deliberate. We're not asking for
compensation. We're not asking for anything.
We certainly live by donations that people provide for us.

(01:05:32):
But, and I'll just say ussliberty.org, ORGUSS,
liberty.org is our website. We're in the process of bringing
that up to date. We're going to have a really
exclusive site coming up and we're going to also be reaching
out much more in the social media category to reach people

(01:05:53):
like yourselves. And I asked each of you to go
tell your neighbor, I heard thisguy.
And I want you to go watch Ray'sdeep Shallow dive podcast and
and see this. And and there's at least two
crewmen on his podcast and myself and Phil Turney.
You know what, you know what, listen this, first of all, I'll

(01:06:13):
put all those links in the show notes.
I want people to go to ussliberty.org, donate.
Absolutely. That's great to hear you guys
have a new site coming and all that stuff That's exciting.
You know, I will tell you the USS Liberty and, and I don't
know how much you keep up on social media, but man, it is, it

(01:06:33):
is at a, at a focal point for a lot of people.
And I'll tell you who is really supportive of you guys, it's
Gen. Z.
These young kids are absolutely understanding what took place
that day. And quite frankly, they are
championing your cause. So, you know, I don't know if
you see these Turning Point USA events, you know, it started

(01:06:57):
with Glenn Beck at I think the University of North Dakota or
one of those places. And I had the young guy who
stood up and asked Glenn Beck, hey, why, why are we ignoring
the story of the USS Liberty? His name was Jeb Baugh.
I had him on the podcast and it was great.
He grilled Glenn Beck. And then a week later, Eric and

(01:07:20):
Laura Trump, they got grilled atanother university.
You know, Gen. Z, Gen.
Z, millennials, even Gen. X people are waking up and
learning about the USS Liberty. And I'll tell you, it's because
of obviously, Phil Tourney's episode on Candace Owens.
I think that sparked everything.But I love that you're coming

(01:07:41):
forward now. Maybe there's other shipmates of
yours that that I could bring on.
And what we should do is I'd love to do a panel discussion
with you guys, maybe have you fill maybe one or two other guys
and really kind of have a have an overall discussion because
people need to know this story. This is an unbelievably

(01:08:03):
important story in the history of the United States.
And it's it's it's one of the worst cover ups we've ever had.
And people need to you know the truth.
Well, I can't leave this, leave this without another comment
that I have too on the back end of all this as the story
progressed on to later times with Lyndon Johnson.
But we actually have Lyndon Johnson on tape saying let the

(01:08:27):
son of a bitch's sink. I will not jeopardize my
relationship with Israel. That was during the time we
didn't know who'd attacked us. We did not know we were under
attack by Israel and Lyndon Johnson said Israel on his
points he was making. So that proves proves that he
and McNamara were in on the attack and it goes to false

(01:08:50):
flags that told you we were sitting ducks in the sign out
peninsula. We were positioned there, told
not to move. So we were sitting there for
America, believe it or not, and Israel combined to sink our ship
to kill 294 sailors and get awaywith it and then go in and nuke
Egypt. So that's what you all need to

(01:09:12):
understand what we dealt with then.
You think our world is screwed up right now?
It's never going to change. That's the way it is.
But I'm telling you that we needyour support to pass our story
on. That's all just to help us get
this story told and absolutely I'm honored to be here and be
able to talk to your. Viewers listen, MO I I

(01:09:34):
thoroughly appreciate this this I mean, my episode with Phil was
great. This is equally as great.
And it's so interesting to hear the same day from two different
perspectives. And I'll tell you what I truly
think that you know, I've got some resources I'm going to put
into play on this. You guys need a congressional

(01:09:56):
hearing. You need you need your day in
court, so to speak, and an investigation, a hearing,
whatever they call it. The bottom line is we've got to
enroll guys like Thomas Massie on the Republican side, somebody
like a Ro Khanna on the Democratside.
I'm going to reach out to these guys because somebody needs to
champion this. And you guys need a chance to

(01:10:18):
sit in front of the Congress of the United States and the
American people and quite frankly, tell your story about
that day and let the American people decide who's really at
fault and quite frankly, get some justice for you guys.
Oh my God this is insane. You know, I used to sit at my
Country Club in Atlanta, GA. I was blessed to be a member

(01:10:39):
there for 32 years. But my dear friend, I said on
the porch with all the time withJohnny Isakson, who was a United
States senator for the state of Georgia and never politically
did much with him except I made sure he knew about the liberty.
I got a book by James Scott signed personally for him.

(01:10:59):
He we didn't have the documentaries at that time, but
he said he read the book and then he sent me.
I asked him, I says, I'm not asking you to do anything
because I know you're ahead the head of the Israeli lobby, but
I'm only asking you as my senator and as a veteran to help
me get through the bureaucracy and get my benefits from the

(01:11:22):
military. So he sent me over to a girl at
his office. I never heard another word.
I sat there and probably had 20 more times with him having
cocktails and shooting the bull.And I chose to never address it
again with him. And he's still my friend.
But he was afraid paid for his career as a United States
senator to to stir anything. That was the cover up.

(01:11:47):
And that's what we're dealing with, I mean.
No, that is, that is what we're dealing with.
But you know what I think, I think slowly but surely with
everything that's gone on, and quite frankly, a lot of it has
to do with what's taken place inGaza over the past two years.
You know, they opened up Pandora's Box and it is not

(01:12:10):
closing. It is not closing.
And I'll tell you what's in Pandora's box, the USS Liberty's
in Pandora's box, the JFK assassination's in Pandora's
box, 9 is in Pandora's box, the moon landings in Pandora's box.
And and I'm telling you, we are going to rally this Gen.
Z, this group of young kids, these kids are after the truth

(01:12:32):
and they don't have the baggage that the older generations do.
And I mean, knock on wood, I really, I am really praying that
you guys get your due because you deserve it.
Man. I don't know how you've lived
with this. Like has any, gosh, I hate to
even ask this question, but I'm but I'm going to.
Has anybody committed suicide oris anybody like just not been

(01:12:56):
able to deal? Yes, recently and I'm, I'm not
going to say who the crew memberis, but yes.
And one of the dearest humans I've ever known in my life.
And but yes, and I'm sure it's happened more than once and but
it's, it's taken a toll on people like you wouldn't
believe. I mean, it's destroyed people

(01:13:18):
with the PTSD again, I've been blessed, I think because I was
able to talk about it. I'm able I get riled up today,
but I I'm able to talk about it.I have so many Vietnam friends
that were boiled up and could never ever talk about it and it
ended up destroying them completely because I think you
need to release. And so I'm I'm a fighter.

(01:13:39):
I want somebody to I want somebody to sweat through these
these times that are coming and and I love it.
These kids are asking all the questions and they want to know
the truth. And by the way, when that guy
asked Laura Trump and what's hisname, the other son?
Eric. Eric.
Eric, Eric on they're sitting onthe stage and he asked them
about the USS Liberty. And I'm watching this.

(01:14:01):
And, and I said to myself, Eric Trump has never heard the word
USS Liberty in his life. Yeah.
He's a president son and certainly not his wife.
So how could they even possibly address that question?
I mean it's it's but people are asking and the podcasts are
helping us. Candace Owens has been a

(01:14:22):
blessing to us and you know who's been the really the
blessing to us who gets our wrath of crap is Phil turning
because he's made a lot of enemies over the years.
He's got different people in thecrew that but he is our I'll say
our Angel who is relegated himself committed himself Yeah

(01:14:43):
to never stop talking about thisand looking for the truth.
The same thing I'm looking for. But I get to spout all my stuff
in this one hour and then I get to go play golf tomorrow.
But you. Know Phil's a Phil's a beast.
Phil's a beast. him and I have gotten to know each other since
I had him on the podcast. And you know what?
I actually love the combination of you and Phil because you guys

(01:15:05):
do provide people with two different perspectives.
And honestly, you know, I think with the fact that Phil's been
so vocal and so out front of everything, you know, there are
people that are like, oh, that'sjust one guy's opinion.
Well, now you know what they're hearing MO Shaffer on the deep
shallow dive. There might be other people on
the deep shallow dive. And then you guys collectively,

(01:15:28):
you know, maybe we'll try to getthe two of you on Candace Owens
or Tucker Carlson or Pierce Morgan.
We got to get you guys on Pierce, Morgan, Rogan, all these
guys. Joe Grogan, I think it gives you
3 hours. We could tell a hell of a story.
There you go. You could tell a hell of a
story. All right, listen, you and I
could go on for three hours. But why don't we?
Why don't we cut it here? Because I don't have that Joe

(01:15:49):
Rogan audience yet. Is there anything else you want
to say to people? I mean, and before you do,
because I'm going to give you the last word.
I don't. I ask for you, all you listeners
in your audience, God bless you.I ask you to pray for us.
I ask you, even though this is 58 years ago, to pray for us.
Pray for those who still suffer from the wounds and also try to

(01:16:15):
do your part to help spread the word about our story.
If you believe this today and are upset as we are, we, I ask
you to to go to ussliberty.org, visit our site and I'll also, I
ask you to go to Rumble and watch any part or any piece of
the Sacrificing Liberty documentary.

(01:16:36):
You'll be overwhelmed because there's a different story from
every person with the exact sameending.
We were deliberately attacked. We were to be murdered, which
they've got 34 of us. They wounded 174, maimed them,
blew holes all over them. And but we're survivors.

(01:16:58):
And thank you. Thank you, Ray.
Thank you so much, Ray. Thank you so much.
This has been a genuine pleasureand honestly I I'm going to get
you and Phil back on. I'd like, I'd like to do a more
in depth dive on this thing. Oh my God, it makes me so mad.
I can't even believe. I can't even fathom how you guys

(01:17:19):
have felt not only now, but overthe past 5758 years.
But you know what? We're going to get you guys your
due. We're going to get you guys your
due. I'm going to this is something
that's close to my heart. So I'm absolutely going to be
going to be somebody that puts his effort towards it.
So all right, hang on the line, MO All right, listen everybody,
I hope you guys really enjoyed this.

(01:17:39):
This honestly was one of the thedeepest, most raw episodes I
think I've done. And I know I say this about a
lot of my episodes, but man, this one, this one really hit me
hard. So MO, I appreciate it.
Call a spade a spade, call your parents, everybody, and hang on
the line MO and we'll talk to you guys soon.

(01:18:00):
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EP#393 | DSD | The USS Liberty Survivor's Truth with Moe Shafer

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}EP#393 | DSD | The USS Liberty Survivor's Truth with Moe Shafer