Classic Audio: Remember the USS Liberty

Today is the 58th anniversary of Israel's attack on the USS Liberty. The first audio clip is Richard Belfield's "The Day Israel Attacked America." The second clip is a lecture given by USS Liberty survivor Phil Tourney.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The following presentation is Del Marvis Studio's production.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
You're listening to the Fact Hunter Radio Network. Here is
your host, George Hobbs.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Welcome back truth seekers from around the world. It's time
for another edition of our classic audio series, and today
is June the eighth, twenty twenty five, which means it's
the fifty eighth anniversary of the USS Liberty incident. I
thought it fitting that we placed some audio from that.
Of course, fifty eight years ago today, US Liberty USS

(00:38):
Liberty Pardon me came under attack by Israel, resulting in
thirty four KIA, one hundred and seventy one wounded, and
of course it left the Liberty severely damaged. The first
audio clip Richard Bellfield's The Day Israel attacked America, followed
by USS Liberty survivor Phil Turney in a thirty five

(01:00):
minute lecture. Again, these are one of those things that
are not taught in school that everyone should know about.
So please take the time to share this with your
friends and family. God bless all of those who were
affected that day. I hope everyone has a great week.
We'll see you Tuesday night. Without any further ado, here

(01:22):
is our classic audio for this week.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Early June nineteen sixty seven, the Six Day War in
the Middle East between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria is underway.
A spy ship, very lightly armed but bristling with antennae,
steams into the Mediterranean to eavesdrop on the conflict. It
is patrolling in international waters off the Egyptian coast. At

(01:52):
two in the afternoon on June the eighth, with the
war reaching its climax, Israeli jets and motor torpedo boats
launched an unprovoked attack on the ship. They dropped napalm
and straight its decks with rockets, cannon fire and armored
piercing rounds before trying to sink it with torpedoes.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
We had no way to defend ourselves and it was
just We're just slaughtered.

Speaker 4 (02:23):
And they shot at life rafts that were put into
the water, and they shot the ones that were still
on board the ship. Bullet holes, shell holes everywhere. Blood,
the forecastle, the front part of the ship was just
red with.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Blood throughout the attack. The ship flies the stars and
stripes the flag of Israel's closest ally, the United States
of America. Its name the USS Liberty is freshly painted
on its stern, and the bow carries the distinctive numbers

(03:02):
of an American naval vessel.

Speaker 5 (03:05):
Out of a crew of just under three hundred, there
were thirty four killed in one hundred and seventy two
injured in varying degrees to life threatening life debilitating the injuries,
so that was more than two thirds of the crew.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
This audio tape, which has never been broadcast before, was
recorded in real time by the Israeli military during the assault.
The woman's voice in the background is counting down the seconds.
It proves that Israeli commanders knew all along that they
were attacking an American ship.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
A size.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
For the first time. This and other evidence allows us
to reveal the true story of what happened that day
and what came after, when a deadly assault by one
ally on another was covered up and an American president
was manipulated by the secret agents of a foreign power,
events that have shaped US Israeli relations ever since. The

(04:36):
United States Navy Memorial in Washington, d C. June the eighth,
two thousand and fourteen. Every year on the anniversary of
the attack on the USS Liberty survivors, relatives and supporters
gather together.

Speaker 5 (04:52):
It's a remembrance of those who who were killed that day,
the thirty four and Dave Lucas, I was in charge
of the deck force. I was twenty five. My first
child was born when I was one day out on
that cruise. So as long as there are survivors and
maybe children of survivors, I think this will probably be

(05:12):
an annual event.

Speaker 6 (05:14):
Anseelu or.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
The names of the thirty four killed are read out,
oh ye, punctuated by the tolling of a navy bow
David Marlborough and the playing of taps, the traditional military
funeral lament.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
It's important to.

Speaker 5 (05:53):
Not forget what happened and to continue to try to
find out why it happened and who made it happen.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
In the summer of nineteen sixty seven, America was in turmoil.
An incendiary mixture of racial discrimination and extreme poverty exploded
into a summer of rioting in cities across the country.
But one issue dominated the Vietnam War. In all, ten

(06:29):
thousand troops would die that year. The Americans were trapped,
they couldn't leave, and they couldn't win. In the Middle East, too,
war looked inevitable. There was growing tension between Israel and
its Arab neighbors, armies were mobilizing. Israel promised the White

(06:51):
House they would not attack first, but on the fifth
of June they jammed radar sets at the US embassy
in Tel Aviv so the Americans couldn't detect that jets
taking off to launch a surprise assault on Egypt. Meanwhile,
the USS Liberty was sailing across the Mediterranean into the

(07:12):
war zone.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Liberty was a state of the art intelligence gathering vessel
of the time, and what we did is we listed.
We were a listening ship. My name is Lloyd Painter.
I was a research officer. We could we could receive
any signal that was out there, low band, high band anything,
intercepting it, recording it, and we did have on board
some translators who could have an immediate translation of what

(07:35):
was going on. We would actually bounce signals off the
moon back to NSA.

Speaker 7 (07:40):
We were were spies. I'm Jim Kavanaugh. I was a
communication technician aboard the USS Liberty and I intercepted Morse code.
We're spies, I mean were intercepting messages from embassies, military bases, police,
anything and everything that we could get to ensure or

(08:00):
that the United States was comfortable with what was going
on in the world and no one's conspiring against us
and basically goes to protect our interests.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
This was the Cold War. American President Lyndon Johnson knew
that the Russians already had substantial military influence in Egypt.
He needed to find out what they were going to
do next to make sure that a local conflict did
not become a world war with the USA backing Israel
and Russia siding with the Arab cause.

Speaker 8 (08:37):
I was assigned as a Russian linguist aboard the ship
I'm Bryce Lockwood, United States Marine Corps retired to Israelis
Our primary purpose was to intercept communications of the Russian
spy aircraft as that were at Alexandria, Egypt, and that
was our job, was to find them. We were not

(08:58):
targeted against Israeli's.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Life was very relaxing. One of the nice things about
the Liberty is we had air conditioning because we had
communications equipment, so we were cool in the hot days.
It was a very laid back, very clean ship. It
was spotless. The morale was pretty high, I mean very high.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
By the time the Liberty arrived off the coast of
Egypt on the eighth of June. The war had just
two days left to run. Israel had seized the Old
City of Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Jordanian forces were beaten and Egypt was conceding defeat. Only
Syria held out.

Speaker 9 (09:38):
The airwaves were dead. The only voices we did get
were those of Israeli or Hebrew was what we were hearing.
My name is Bob Wilson. I worked for NSA on
June the eighth, nineteen sixty seven, when what we were
trying to monitor find something coming from the direction of Egypt,

(09:58):
there just was nothing. They on the skies, in the
ground and everything. I don't think there was anything moving
at that time that they didn't know about.

Speaker 7 (10:07):
I was listening to the chatter night before. They knew
it was an American ship that came into the area. They
knew who we were.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Five point fifteen am first light. The ship's log recorded
an Israeli photo reconnaissance plane flying over the Liberty.

Speaker 9 (10:22):
It was easily identifiable as a no ratlesseracraft and those
are photo reconnaissance aeracraft.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Israeli records obtained by Al Jazeera showed that their reconnaissance
plane reported the Liberty as an American spy ship. How
number gt R five Well.

Speaker 10 (10:38):
I was on the bridge. I'm John Scott. I was
the damage control officer and his circle the ship kind
of in a broad circle and headed back towards Israel.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Israeli planes then continued to fly over the Liberty all morning.

Speaker 7 (10:56):
And they would do half moon passes over us, and
we saw that they were as early.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
They were slowly lumbering over our ship, and we were
waving at them. They were waving at act.

Speaker 7 (11:05):
They were sophisticated, almost as sophisticated as we were. As
far as surveillance and technology. They had everything. We supplied
them with all the technology to this day.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
And I felt that we were in great shape because
they knew who we.

Speaker 7 (11:19):
Were, They're are friends. We felt safe, actually, it was
a secure feeling to see them.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
There was one other thing which made the crew feel safe.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
We had an American flag flying the standard and then
we put up the Holiday colors, which is a huge
American flag. And it was a bright sunny day with
the wind blowing I don't know five or ten knots.
The flag was unfurled you could see it for miles.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Meanwhile, Israeli military jets were on their way. On the
real time audio tape obtained by Al Jazeera at one
fifty three pm, the pilots asked their base control about.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
The ship, right, how man prove that about it?

Speaker 2 (12:06):
The USS Liberty was the only ship of any size
in the area. The American sixth fleet, including two aircraft carriers,
was five hundred miles away.

Speaker 6 (12:18):
Oh, it was a great day.

Speaker 11 (12:20):
Hello.

Speaker 6 (12:20):
I'm Jim Smith.

Speaker 4 (12:21):
I was a damage controlman and engineering I mean, I'm
twenty years old.

Speaker 6 (12:25):
It's a time.

Speaker 4 (12:27):
I come from a small town, used to throw hay
bales in a summertime for a buck an hour. Sun
was shining, blue sky, clouds, nice people sunbathing on a deck.
We had lunch, and five minutes later maybe here came
the jets and when nobody really knew what was happening
until they started fire.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
The captain said to me, alert the forward gun mouth,
we're under attack. And I tried to raise the two
sailors and the forward gun I looked at and they
were blown to pieces by the rocket.

Speaker 7 (13:04):
When the attacks started and we realized that we needed help,
we tried to communicate with the six Fleet.

Speaker 8 (13:11):
They were jamming both our distress frequencies and our tactical frequencies.
The tactical frequencies is all right, but the international distress
frequencies as a violation of international law of jam them
and the Israelis were jamming that.

Speaker 7 (13:23):
And we could not get a signal for us. Here's
the question I have to ask, who would know the
frequencies other than an ally, and who was the ally
in the war? It was in Egypt, it was Israel.
They would know, and only they would know in this
conflict what our frequencies would be.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
Now cut off from the outside world, the crew on
the Liberty was defenseless.

Speaker 5 (13:50):
We had four fifty caliber machine guns on board that
were basically there to repel any borders that might come
by a pirate situation. Weren't designed to bring down jet
aircraft that were hammering at us.

Speaker 4 (14:04):
But you can't shoot a jet going six hundred miles
an hour with a Fity Calvin machine gun.

Speaker 12 (14:08):
It doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
It was just in a surreal scene. People who had
been standing there earlier, joking and laughing were now dead, dying,
and with the walking dead and wounded. It was just.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Unreal gasoline barrels stored on the deck of the ship
burst into flames. The crew rushed to try to put
out the fires.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
I was watching the aircraft as they circled around, and
when they got to coming back towards the ship, I
just holler.

Speaker 6 (14:34):
At him down.

Speaker 4 (14:36):
They'd fire and circle background. We'd jump back up and
keep fighting fire. The rocket noisiers horrendous. When a rocket explodes,
you can't escape a rocket. I don't care where you go.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
What the crew didn't know was that at three minutes
past two, the Israeli pilots were ordered to use a new,
much deadlier weapon.

Speaker 4 (15:01):
The biggest problem, I guess from from that was the
napalm which they dropped from the airplane.

Speaker 8 (15:15):
The napalm had burned, scorched almost the entire front part
of the ship, the bridge area.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
The whole top side of the ship had been set
on fire and was all charred. It was no longer
navy gray.

Speaker 4 (15:27):
You have to stop the fires, to stop the flooding,
to keep that ship afloat. That's your home. You got
nowhere else to go. You can't pack up and go
down road because there is no down the road.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Up above the Israeli military argued about what should happen
next and who should sink the Liberty.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
I remember thinking I was in pretty good shape. Then
I said, I think I could swim it to the shore.
And then I thought sharks, and I thought a lot
of things all quickly.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
You know, at eleven minutes past two, with the Israeli
jets running out of ammunition, the pilots were instructed to
fly down and confirm the identity of the ship. It

(16:32):
was now twelve minutes past two, and the Israeli controlled
tower knew for certain this was an American ship, the
same one its forces had first identified at five point
fifteen a m that morning, and then buzzed again during
seven additional reconnaissance flights throughout the day. The jets then

(16:54):
pulled out, but three Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats were
all ready on their way. The USS Liberty was a
spy ship. In the event of an attack, it was
standard procedure for the spies on board to destroy everything
just in case it fell into enemy hands.

Speaker 7 (17:15):
Everyone was destroying material, Everyone was stripping information off of computers,
ripping computers open, pulling information out.

Speaker 8 (17:25):
That's something you just don't want to hear board ship.
You've done all this work, collected this intelligence and processed it,
and now you have to destroy it.

Speaker 7 (17:34):
You just didn't want the enemy to get a hold
of anything classified.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
At two thirty five, the Israeli motor boats fired five torpedoes,
four missed but one hit. It had been over nine

(18:04):
hours since the Israeli military first identified the Liberty. Israeli
planes had flown over it repeatedly, and twenty minutes earlier
their control tower had confirmed it yet again as an
American ship. Twenty five Americans were about to die in
a single moment. This is what it looks like when

(18:27):
a torpedo hits the ship the size of the Liberty.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
The torpedo threw us up in the air like a
roller coaster. It felt like one coming down. Dead, silence,
lights all off, smoke and haze everywhere.

Speaker 8 (18:41):
I went back to the drinking fountain and filled it
with blood, reached down to get a drink, and a
black man stirred back at me.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
And when it fell back to get right, it just
kept getting wrong, kept sinking, and.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
We just waited, all of us weighted, thinking that this
was it. We're going down.

Speaker 8 (19:07):
And I figured that was the end of life for me.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
The torpedo had blown a huge hole in the hull
thirty nine feet by twenty four, killing twenty five Americans
in a single hit.

Speaker 7 (19:20):
The torpedo hit the room that I was in, and
it was just luck. This guy died, this one lived,
that guy. It was how much shrapnel was coming in
your direction, you know, the old fashioned typewriters. I had
the letter H sticking out of.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
My left foot.

Speaker 7 (19:36):
I had I don't know eighty pieces of shrapland my
lower extremities, and the place filled up with water that fast,
totally black, totally filled with.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Powder and oil. It was like.

Speaker 7 (20:00):
You were gagging, and you only had about eight or
ten inches of space where you could catch a breath.
The only way I could go in that direction was
to drop down and swim under water four or five strokes,
come back up, and then frantically catch a breath and
try to find something else.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
Hold on too.

Speaker 7 (20:23):
I got pulled through the hatch and onto the deck.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Others were not so lucky.

Speaker 8 (20:31):
My friend Ronnie Campbell had a desk right there, and
I remember Ronnie saying, you fellas can do what you
want to, said I'm going to write a letter home,
and he stuck a piece of paper in his Mills
typewriter and began typing, Dear Eileen, you won't believe what's
happening to us. And just seconds after that, the torpedo
struck in, killed both the two Moraines, killed my friend

(20:57):
Ronnie Campbell, and my.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
Job was to try to get probably twenty or thirty
wounded sailors out to the main deck and to the
life rafts. So I went up and looked out myself
before I tried to get anyone up, and that's when
I observed a motor torpedo boat Israeli planning marked with
the star of David machine gunning are life raft.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
The crew of the Liberty were now trapped on board
the own ship, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
The torpedo boats came in closer and began to machine
gun the ship using armor piercing projectiles.

Speaker 5 (21:36):
The armor piercing the shells that they were using were
leading holes. About that big round in the metal plating
just peel it, I like it was orange peel.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
At close range, the armor piercing rounds ripped through the
steel hull of the ship nowhere was safe.

Speaker 5 (21:55):
This bullet was retrieved from one of the navigational books
at the rear of the bridge. It had penetrated the
skin of the ship, gone through at least one other book,
and then stopped and in the second book this is
part of an armor piercing shell. The outer portion or
jacket makes the hole that this then goes through. And

(22:16):
a bullet like this that hit Semen Francis Brown and
killed him.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
He died right on the spot, just fell to the
floor dead. He was just barely eighteen.

Speaker 8 (22:36):
There weren't enough helmets to go around for everyone.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
It was like sitting in a cardboard box and having
somebody shoot through it. The bullets were just coming everywhere.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
Throughout the attack. The Liberty had been silent to the
outside world. All its aerials were either smashed or jammed.

Speaker 8 (22:58):
We had one whip antenna which hadn't worked the entire cruise,
and it had a bullet hole in it. One of
the radio men had taken a reel of coax cable
and ran it from one of the transmitters back there
to that quip antenna and took some shrapnel in the process.
He got out in May day Firefox, Firefox, this is

(23:21):
rock Star. Rock Star under attack by NADDE surface and
naval are units require immediate assistance.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
The American six feet was five hundred miles away and
picked up the signal. So did the Israeli armed forces.
The attack stopped shortly afterwards. The American aircraft carriers were
in the middle of a nuclear weapons drill and had
to re arm with conventional bombs before they could take off.
Once the Israelis knew the US jets were in the air,

(23:52):
they summoned the American naval attache and told him there
had been a terrible mistake. The American planes were recalled.
As they returned, Israeli helicopters flew out to the Liberty.

Speaker 8 (24:07):
This one had some personnel from the Israeli government and
the US Naval ats achet. It dropped a brown paper
sack on the deck and fore part of the ship
weighted down with an orange had a bitiness card in it.

(24:29):
It landed right next to the severed leg of one
of the deck personnel, and the note said.

Speaker 9 (24:41):
Do you have casualts?

Speaker 5 (24:47):
Pretty obvious that there were casualts.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
I mean there's still.

Speaker 5 (24:51):
Body parts and blood streaming down the bulkheads message do
you have casualties?

Speaker 6 (25:01):
Was kind of.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
Out of place.

Speaker 8 (25:06):
One of the sailors carried that sack back to the captain.
The captain took out the no and read it, looked
up into helicopter and popped the social finger at him.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
June the eighth, nineteen sixty seven, the height of the
Six Day War, the USS Liberty and the American spyeship
had just been attacked by Israeli jets and torpedo boats
while in international waters off Egypt. Badly damaged, two thirds
of its crew were dead or wounded. As soon as

(25:50):
the news reached Washington, the attack on the Liberty instantly
triggered a domestic political crisis. According to documents released under
the Freedom of Information Act, one solution suggested in American
government circles was to sink the Liberty so journalists could
not photograph it and inflame public opinion against the Israelis.

(26:11):
The NSSA rejected this idea with an impolite comment. Handling
the media became the top priority.

Speaker 13 (26:20):
I was taken to my home in White Oak, Maryland.
My name is Patricia Blue Rushakis, and my husband was
killed on the Liberty and by the time I got there,
there were any number of people from the National Security
Agency there. They were there to make sure that I

(26:41):
didn't speak to anyone from the press, and I didn't.
They stay night and day.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Back in the Mediterranean, the Liberty was now listing at
ten degrees, a massive hole in the hull above and
below the waterline.

Speaker 5 (27:00):
The planes that they said they were sending to us
never arrived.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Well, I was afraid of, and I think most of
us was that we were going to sink.

Speaker 4 (27:06):
Well, the mess decks was pretty much littered with the wounded.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
It looks like something out of a horror movie. But
people standing around are lying wounded and dead and stunned,
the heads missing parts of their bodies.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
The Liberty had only one doctor on board, with very
limited medical resources.

Speaker 4 (27:25):
There was not a table that wasn't being used with
a body on her, a wounded body on it.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
The doctor fixed compound fractures and treated bullet and shrapnel
wounds while blood transfusions were given arm to arm.

Speaker 11 (27:41):
It was.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
It was real bad, and the doctor said to him,
do you want me to operate? He says, you're probably
gonna die if I do it, and you'll certainly die
if I don't, and he said, go ahead, doctor, And
so when the doctor operated, we held him this tight
as we could. It was horrible pain, I'm sure for him,
and all of a sudden he went limp and he

(28:06):
died right there.

Speaker 10 (28:09):
I don't ever see anything like it again.

Speaker 5 (28:20):
Captain McGonagall received a pretty bad leg injury, lost a
lot of blood. He was navigating by the stars.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
We had a little bit of power and tons of
water in our belly which bent. The ship waved back
and forth all night long.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
The next day American ships arrived to take the injured
and the dead off the Liberty. The American government now
made sure that no journalists could get anywhere near the crew.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
When they took the severely wounded to various parts that
they actually posted guards on their room so that no
one could be interviewed by the press. The total press
blackout was in effect back.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
In Washington the government and there was little information for
the press while politics went on behind closed doors.

Speaker 14 (29:07):
I was told to go up personally to the seventh floor. Well,
my name is Bill Wolly. I was in charge of
the Arab Israel disc sit in because the Secretary of
State himself, Dean Rusk, had summoned Ambassador Harmon of Israel
to come in urgently, and so I sat through the

(29:31):
meeting taking notes, and in a loud voice, Secretary was
really demanding some explanation for why and what had happened.
The ambassador himself seemed to be ignorant of the incident.
He immediately said, I can't believe what you're telling me.

(29:52):
It would be impossible, it would be unheard of.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
It was especially tough for Lyndon Johnson, to date, the
most pro Israeli Amica president in history.

Speaker 11 (30:02):
Johnson was in a very tough mood. I'm Tom Hughes.
I was director in the State Department Director of Intelligence
and Research at the time of the Liberty incident. In
sixty seven attack on the Liberty, Johnson himself briefed Newsweek
magazine off the record that the Israelis had attacked, and
the reason they'd attacked was that they thought this was

(30:23):
an intelligence ship that was intercepting perhaps Israeli as well
as Egyptian communications.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
But then everything changed.

Speaker 11 (30:33):
The fact that Johnson himself was the leaker and briefer
of Newswig was soon leaked, and this alarmed, of course,
the Israeli Embassy and they're leading friends in the Jewish organizations.
The Israeli Embassy regarded this as a major problem and

(30:53):
that what Johnson had told Newswig practically amount of blood libel.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
Declassified Israeli documents show they were going to threaten President
Johnson with blood libel, gross anti Semitism, and that would
end his political career.

Speaker 12 (31:14):
Blackmail. This is Admiral bobbie R. Emman Us Navy retired.
I'm a former director of the National Security Agency. But
they know if he is thinking about running again, he's
going to need money for his campaign, so alleging that
he's blood libeling is going to arouse the Jewish donors.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
The Israeli government hired teams of lawyers, some of whom
were close friends of Lyndon Johnson, and began an all
out offensive. They leant on the media to kill critical
stories and slanted others in favor of Israel.

Speaker 11 (31:56):
There was a campaign mounted to see what could be
done about returning Johnson to his predictable pro Israeli position.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
At the time, Johnson was still undecided as to whether
to run for president the following year.

Speaker 11 (32:13):
Efforts were to be made to remind the President of
the delicacy of his own position that he personally might
lose support for his run for reelection in nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
Israeli tactics were clever. They identified Johnson's soft spot the
war in Vietnam, and gave him two extraordinary gifts, neither
of which were made public at the time. The first
was political.

Speaker 11 (32:41):
One of Johnson's complaints about Israel was that many of
the Jewish organizations, in the heads of leaders in the
Jewish community were opposing him on Vietnam, and they were
suddenly becoming more silent than Vietnam as the liberty crisis moved,
So he also knew that there was a move back
in his favor of he was moderate Israel.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
There was a second gift, much more secret but vital
to the American president. The dreadful death toll in Vietnam
was dominating the domestic news agenda. The North Vietnamese had
Russian surface to air missiles which were bringing down American
aircraft on a daily basis. The American military attashe in
Israel got a surprise visit from a senior Israeli intelligence officer.

Speaker 12 (33:31):
Took some helicopters and went across the North Red Sea
to the surfaced air missile sites and not only captured them,
but took back everything, the launchers, the missiles, the man
maintenance manuals, the rest of it. And then he went
to the US embassy to the Ara Toche and said,

(33:52):
I think I have something you might be interested in.
And of course those were the same missiles that our
aircraft over North Vietnam we're encountering day to day, and
countermeasures was a huge issue.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
So grateful was the American government. They gave Israel two gifts.
In return, they resupplied them with the weapons they had
just lost in the war, and the Liberty Inquiry, run
by the Department of Defense the DoD was watered down.

Speaker 12 (34:22):
All that's influenced by what have we benefited from from
the captured essay to missile sites.

Speaker 11 (34:30):
Soon Johnson did respond, and it took a much more
lenient line and wished that the whole incident could be
put behind us as soon as possible.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Johnson's softer approach to Israel was immediately reflected in the
American Navy inquiry which was now under way. On board
the Liberty.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
We began to realize that a cover up was descending
upon us.

Speaker 5 (34:54):
A lot of people that were in a key position
to offer testimony were not given that opportunity.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
I testified to the machine gunny of life rafts, to
the captain's state of mind, and it was that those
two issues in particular were totally omitted.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Lloyd Painter was not the only officer to have his
testimony ignored.

Speaker 5 (35:17):
I saw what looked like unburned vasoline, and I scraped
a little bit of it off and put it in
the jar and sealed the cap on, and I presented
to the quart of Inquiry, and that's the last I
saw that jar. There was no mention of napalm, and
I'm sure that's what it was.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
They didn't want to hear any of that. I didn't
know that at the time. I didn't know it till
many months later, that none of I had been recorded.
Looking back on it, it was a total sham.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
The US Court of Inquiry reported in just twenty days.
It was a rush job, full of spelling mistakes, much
key evidence ignored. No Israelis interviewed, and it exonerated them
from blame.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
I read the Court of Inquiry and realized that my
statements had been stricken from the record and never recorded,
so I knew then for certain that the cover up
was massive.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
The Israelis then rushed out their own report, which concluded
that the whole affair was a series of mistakes and
that no one was to blame. The only dissenting voice
was that of the Israeli ambassador in Washington. He sent
a secret telegram back home arguing that Israel was clearly guilty.
He cited the audio tape of the attack, the existence

(36:24):
of which was known to top Israeli officials, and mentioned
the crucial twenty minute gap that followed the liberty's identification
and the launch of the torpedoes against her. He said
they should own up to what they had done and
put the guilty on trial. His advice was ignored. The
focus now was to repair the damage to American Israeli relations.

Speaker 12 (36:46):
The Israelis have always been very skillful and tracking what
the US government is doing, saying, thinking and the effort
influence and thereby no means the only country that does it.
Many do, They're just more effective at it than most.
And the great advantage they have is compared to other

(37:07):
countries is their influence in the Congress.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Around the time of the attack, the Washington Post had
noted that the Jewish lobby could help determine the outcome
of one hundred and sixty nine of the two hundred
and seventy electoral votes needed to win the White House.

Speaker 11 (37:23):
The big emotive words about the attack disappeared from press
releases at the Pentagon. Much more bland and neutral sounding
discourse occurred, and this was true of the private briefings
that official people in the Venegon made about the incident.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
But whatever was said to journalists, every US intelligence had
believed the attack was intentional. One of them wrote a
nice whitewash for a group of ignorant, stupid, and inept
x x X.

Speaker 12 (38:00):
The Jewish community has always been more generous than many
of their other counterparts in supporting financially elections, political causes,
and the process that does translate into influence.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
Many of Johnson's closest friends and advisors were pro Israeli,
and they reported back to Tel Aviv on his every move.
The Israeli story constantly shifted to count whatever new intelligence
the White House received. So sensitive with these communications that
the Israelis used code names to protect the identity of
their White House agents. But for the first time the

(38:38):
members of the ring can be named. Hamlet was a
million dollar fundraiser for the Democrats. When he rang, Johnson
took his calls, he was Abe Feinberg. Menache was Arthur Goldberg.
The US Ambassador to the United Nations Harari was David Ginsberg,
a high profile Washington lawyer who also represented the Israeli embassy.

(39:03):
Ilan was Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas. Lyndon Johnson had
dinner with him on the eve of the Six Day War.
The strategy worked. The US Israeli relationship proved to be
stronger than the killing and injuring of more than two
hundred Americans.

Speaker 11 (39:26):
The American Israeli relationship was very much at stake that
was brought back from the precipice.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
The crucial intelligence came from the US Ambassador to the
United Nations, Arthur Goldberg. He warned tell Aviv that the
United States had the audio tape which revealed Israeli pilots
knew it was an American ship before they attacked. The
tape was quietly buried.

Speaker 12 (39:58):
So I think your consciousness as was made to sweep
it under the rug, to put it behind. My reading
is that the US government had made a decision to
accept the apology and reject the other rise now, but
don't push it further.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
With the politics sorted, the only remaining issue was the
fate of the USS Liberty, badly damaged and now in
Malta for extensive repairs. The torpedo hole was massive and
was revealed to be much bigger once they got the
ship into dry dock and drained it of water. The
sealed compartment was a water filled tune full of bodies,

(40:40):
body parts, and top secret equipment.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
You could smell death and you could smell oil. That's
what I remember. As soon as the air hit the bodies,
they began to deteriorate rapidly.

Speaker 4 (40:52):
You do what you have to do. There were your
ship mates, still are.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
The Navy was more concerned with whip and parts then
they were body parts. But when I went down, I
knew that you couldn't separate the two. We had to
start shoveling up the parts, one hundred and sixty eight bags.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Worth Elsewhere, the makeup artists were getting to work.

Speaker 5 (41:16):
We were in the drydock about six weeks and three
hundred Maltese workers are working two shifts a day. And
I think seven days a week to try. They were
cutting out the shell holes, welding plates over that on,
fabricating metal to cover the torpedo hole.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
And then in one day they panted the entire ship.
We looked like nothing ever happened. We took it across
the Atlantic. It was like being in a cemetery. But
when we pulled into Port, we looked good. This press
and everything were there, and we looked like, basically nothing
really happened. So it was great for the press to
downplay what were really happened to us.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
While the survivors met the widows and friends, the one
hundred and sixty eight bags of body parts top secret
equipment were quietly taken to an incinerator and burnt. A
year later and the Liberty Captain William McGonagall was given
the Medal of Honor, America's highest award for gallantry. The
tradition has always been that it is presented by the

(42:17):
President in the White House.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
I look at.

Speaker 4 (42:21):
These two gallant marines, and I see a merrack.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Captain McGonagall never heard words like these from his commander
in chief. There was no television coverage for him as
he received his medal in a quiet ceremony in the
Navy yard. President Johnson was just four miles away at
the time, he stayed in the White House to hand
out diplomas to school children. The reason was revealed in
this internal memo, which advised President Johnson that due to

(42:52):
the nature and sensitivity of these awards, they should be
given by the Department of Defense, not by him. The
advice was clear no press release regarding them should be made.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
When I received my Purple Heart in a secret ceremony
in the Captain's office, I was admonished the threat of
court martial. Don't ever tell anyone who you got this.
Don't ever tell anyone how you got this medal.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
The following year, American aid to Israel increased fourfold, and
President Johnson agreed a treaty classified above top secret with
Israel for the mutual exchange of intelligence, an arrangement which
is still in place today code named Stone Ruby.

Speaker 5 (43:55):
One of the things that bothers me is there wasn't
a nice explanation of what went on. No one wants
to talk about the why.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
The big secret the Israelis wanted to protect was their
next move. They had told the Americans that this was
to be a limited war and not a land grab.
But on June eighth, nineteen sixty seven, their forces were
poised to attack and seize the Golan Heights and invade Syria,
something they wished to keep from the White House until
they'd done it. Successive American administrations, both Republican and Democrat,

(44:31):
had refused to deal with the Liberty. Even the issue
of war crimes against unarmed Americans has never been addressed.

Speaker 5 (44:39):
There was a war crimes report filed by the Liberty
Veterans Association to address the issues of such war crimes
as firing on life rafts that was never answered properly.
I don't think it was answered period.

Speaker 7 (44:57):
The people who were responsible for attacking the liber Liberty were,
you know, buy and large, the military individuals in the
war room. I don't know how many, four, eight ten.
Those are the people who came up with the plan.
Those are the individuals who are responsible for the attack.
The pilots, the motor torpedo boat personnel.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
They were ordered.

Speaker 7 (45:20):
You know, you don't follow orders, go to jail, so
they have to follow through. It wasn't the Israeli people
who ordered that attack. It wasn't the average Jewish person
who ordered that attack. We really need to exonerate the
average Jewish person Israeli from this and go towards those

(45:42):
individuals who are responsible for the attack.

Speaker 13 (45:45):
No one was really willing to take this on, not
the State Department, the White House, not the Congress. It's
in everybody's best interest to just let this go. And
that's exactly what they did. By doing that, they left
a lot of pain for the survivors and for the

(46:06):
families because there was a lot of broken families, broken marriages, alcoholism, depression,
post traumatic stress disorder. So those crew members suffered a lot,
but so did the families.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
The hardest part was the reaction of our own government
toward us, and we were actually the fingers were pointed
at us, and the Israelis weren't. They were never questioned
as to why they did it. They only questioned us.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
The families still want answers from their government, which remained
silent for many Some memories never fade.

Speaker 13 (46:49):
We had a wonderful time just being together. I met
Alan at a party and we spent a lot of
time talking throughout the evening and at the end of
the year evening he said to me, are you busy
tomorrow afternoon? And I said, well no, and he said,

(47:09):
do you think we could get married? Then I was
told that he was among the dead. It was absolutely
the worst moment of my life.

Speaker 7 (47:22):
There is not a day that doesn't go by or
I don't think about those guys. I mean, I went
through hell, but they left the earth.

Speaker 5 (47:38):
When I'm walking up to the mass grave, I still
feel a connection with those people. Hard to explain, but
it's still there. So I want to remember that connection
as long as I can. What we shared, what we felt.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Thirteen years of haggling before both sides finally agreed a
compensation deal for the ship. By nineteen eighty, the bill
plus interest was just over seventeen million dollars. Israel offered
six the Americans accepted, then sold the liberty for one
hundred thousand dollars scrap. The settlement for the victims was quicker,

(48:22):
but many are still unhappy with it today, not.

Speaker 13 (48:29):
Feel it was a fair settlement. I would have fought it,
but I was so sad and broken. I just didn't
have the energy to take on that fight. And it
wasn't a fight that I thought I could win. The
state Department were very eager for the survivors to make

(48:53):
that settlement. They sent a check for the amount, and
that that was.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
The American government came up with a formula for the
Israelis to compensate the widows and children for their loss.
This included a payment for shock and mental anguish. The
widows got twenty five thousand dollars, with ten thousand dollars
for each of their children over five. An American government
lawyer doubted that children under five could sufficiently comprehend the

(49:22):
event to suffer shock and grief. The US proposed they
should therefore receive nothing, an offer the Israelis accepted. Since
the attack on the Liberty, the USA and Israel have
grown ever closer. At the time, George Ball, the U

(49:43):
s Undersecretary of State, noted that it seemed clear to
the Israelis that as American leaders did not have the
courage to punish them for the blatant murder of American citizens,
they would let them get away with anything.

Speaker 6 (50:11):
USS Liberty is a story that's been covered up for
far too long. You've never heard it because it was
covered up. They used us, the crew of the USS Liberty,
to be eliminated by the Zionist State of Israel LBJ

(50:35):
and a handful of others. McNamara is a good example.
They got this cabala of a few people together to
send us into a war zone. Our usual steaming was
from Norfolk, Virginia into Africa. We grew up and down

(50:57):
the coast all the time, all the time, time four
or five knots, picking up the signals out of the sky.
It's perfectly legal. Everybody did it. And we were the
most sophisticated spy ship in the world at that time,
the most sophisticated we bound. We could bounce messages off
the moon and get him back to NAST Security Agency

(51:17):
within three seconds in nineteen sixty seven. Think about that.
So what do you think they got now? There's no telling.
There's just no telling. I saved this for you too.
You have another gift, Tom, come on up. Sacrifice of

(51:39):
Liberty four part series with survivors and trusted American admirals
in generals right here. Thank you, Tom. I recommend everybody
go on to YouTube watch it or rumble. Uh Rick
Wilds's he produced that film. A great guy and I

(52:03):
got to mention a dear, dear friend of mine too.
Another great guy is Pastor Chuck Baldwin and Callous Bell
was Montana. I've been with Chuck for a few times,
several times broken bread together. I've listened to his sermons,
but he tells it the way it is. I mean,

(52:24):
the truth is the truth, and no matter, you can't
hide the truth. But I'm still here because of the
gallant crew of the USS Liberty and our determination not
to give up. We were ordered into the Mediterranean from Africa.

(52:45):
We didn't where we're headed, We had no idea, we
didn't know the Sixth Day War was going on. We
stopped in Malta, I excuse me, rode to Spain and
picked up three linguists and S. A. C. I, a
tape type guy. The lingers were all three of them
were marines. Two of them were blown to bits during

(53:07):
the torpedo attack. One survived, Bryce Lockwood and he had
to full blastom of torpedo coming at him too, but
he he survived, thank god. We got into the area
on June the seventh in the Israeli recon aircraft piper

(53:30):
cups whatever they had DC three flying box car. If
you've ever seen those. They would take pictures of our ship.
They did this over and over on the seventh, over
and over. They came so close to our ship you
could see the pilots. We'd wave with them and they'd
way back. We were very, very happy to see the

(53:50):
Star of David on those those aircraft because we asked
for a destroyer escort from the United States Navy, and
this says, you don't need an escort. You're a Navy ship.
You have a flag on it. That's your protection, that flag.
Don't you worry about nothing. Little did little we know,

(54:11):
we just got set up. We just got set up.
On June the eighth, the same thing happened over and
over again. Now listen on that ship. If you weren't working,
you could be outside sunbathing. Here we are in the Mediterranean, beautiful,
beautiful water. But you see the bombs going off. We

(54:35):
were twelve point five miles off the Sinai. You can
see the bombs bursting in the black. And he said,
oh my god, I'm glad we're here and not over
there a little bit. You know, at two o'clock the
attack began. I had just left the forward gun mount.

(54:56):
We had a general quarters drilled before that because we
drilled on that ship all the time to keep up
our skills. And I loved it. I mean I loved
doing what I did, firefighting and things like that, damage control.
I was in engineering and I enjoyed that too. And
at two o'clock the attack began. I just lept the

(55:18):
forward gun mount where two men came up. The gunner's
mate was there, man in the gun. We had four
fifty caliber machine guns. And David Scolac. Because the sound
part of phones weren't working. Now this is before the attack,
he came up there. I said, Heylac, go ahead and
see if you can get this fixed. The old man
wants it fixed. I stayed up a few minutes and

(55:41):
the old man was up on the bridge and I said,
hey man, I gotta go because the old man did
not like anybody standing around. You better be working or
sun bathing, but not anything else. So I walked down
the starboard ladder. I get to my works station was
about thirty seconds away in Boom. The attack started just

(56:07):
before that. They said, prepare to test the motor whale boat.
They do that every day, make sure it works. And
they did that, and I thought the whale boat boat
blew up for some reason. I started to go out
the hatch. I was right next to that, and this
chief grabbed me by the back of the neck. He said, man,
we're under attack. So I immediately high tail it to my

(56:32):
repair station. Repare two forward to take over my duties.
Chief Thompson, he's passed now. He was the sing leader.
I was assistant on leader. Immediately I became the leader
of those men that were left to put out fires,

(56:55):
pull people, men off the deck, and try to save lives.
The two men I just left were made into mist
with the rac hits on that gun nut. Within three seconds,
they took out every tuning antenna on that ship. Within

(57:16):
three seconds, our four to fifty caliber machine guns port
starbott forward on the three level, they were gone. Every
antenna was gone, and we're on the concert attack. Now
remember this. Those planes were unmarked jets. They were Misteer
and Mirage jets, not just two jets. There were at

(57:39):
least thirty sorties. Thirty sorties within twenty five minutes. Terry
hal Lbardier was a radioman and he took that one
antenna offline or we'd never got a message out. He
ran a long wire through to that antenna. He took offline,

(58:05):
got it back online. And this was about ten minutes
after the attack started. And the attack lasted by the
airplanes for twenty five minutes, over and over again throughout day,
dropped napalm on us. They did everything they could kill us.
Little did we know that was just to soften us up,

(58:30):
just to soften us up. We thought the attack was over,
but Terry had gotten a message out Rockstar Rockstar under
attacked by unknown jet aircraft. Rockstar Rockstar need help, help help.
This went out as far as way to Vietnam. The
sixth Fleet picked it up. They sent rescue aircraft from

(58:50):
the USS Saratoga. Captain Tolly a good friend of mine.
He's passed too, World War two veteran fighter pilot. He's
gone now, but he's met it. He lost his command
because he sent help to us. Mcnamerica called him back
and to his surprise, the America did not launch. They

(59:11):
did not launch. About maybe two or three minutes after that,
they launched aircraft from America again, I mean from the
Saratoga again, and the America before those planes even hit
their horizon and recalled by LBJ. I don't give a
goddamn excuse my French. If those sailors die, well, not

(59:35):
embarrass my ally. Now, how did he know they were
our allies? We didn't know who was attacking us, but
he sure did. They set us up to be slaughtered,
and the slaughter just started. We saw three mortar torpedo
boats coming up towards us. Now, I'll remind you we

(01:00:00):
had stars of David all inside that ship because we
wanted the Israelies to win. I mean, there are allies.
We wanted him to win. Little Nudgy did I know then?
When we saw the the flag, that's the only time
we knew it was the Israelis. I thought they were
there to help us. No, they weren't. They're there to

(01:00:23):
sink us. Now, they fired five torpedoes at us. I
know where two went because I saw him. Two went aft.
Where the other two went, I don't have no clue.
I don't have a clue where they went, but I
know where one hit on the starboard side in the

(01:00:46):
research basis where the spies were. Now, these guys were
the best, the cream of the crops spies in the world,
the very best. And they never talked to us, and
we didn't talk to them. It was two different crews
aboard that ship, the Spies and ship's company, which I
was ship's company. They never talked to us. But those

(01:01:12):
four men were blown to bits. They were blown to bits.
When that torpedo hit, it picked the ship completely up
out of the water and it went down like this
and start going to the right the Starbard's side. I
thought it was going to roll over, and it just
stopped by the hand of God. By the hand of
God saved us. He saved me for this day. I

(01:01:35):
think he saved all of us right here, for this moment,
for this moment to expose with Israel and the United
States concocted to get us into World War three. The
attack from the torpedo boats lasted for an hour and
a half. We had two three flags we put up.

(01:01:57):
Two were shot down on the initial ibate flags, big flags.
They shot two up and down. They put another flag up.
I didn't personally, but the Sigamund did a seven by thirteen,
which is call holiday colors. You could see it for
miles and miles and miles. The Israeli pilots said that,

(01:02:21):
but sir, it's an American ship. It's an American ship.
You have your orders. Hit the ship, and hit it.
They did, and the consequences are well known. Thirty four
men were slaughtered, one hundred and seventy four were wounded,
including myself, and I was walking wounded. The others weren't.

(01:02:44):
I've seen men blown in half right before your eyes.
There's nothing you can do about it. We had none
to fight back, but our will and our wists and
are belief in God to survive. In fact, when the
torpedo hit, I told a friend of mine, Rico Metti,

(01:03:05):
he was in the same division. I was in damage
control and we were there. It said, prepare for torpedo strike.
And then that's a little bit different than prepare for
a torpedo hit, because we know what's coming. We have
our hands on the bulkheads. Boom. It was deafening. You

(01:03:31):
couldn't believe the explosion. And they circled the ship, and
they circled the ship and circled the ship over and
over and over again, firing that our firefighters, me stretcher bearers,
people that are trying to get men off deck to
save their lives. It was horrific. It was horrific to

(01:03:58):
see your brothers being blown to bits and killed. It
was horrific. When the torpedo boats finally got through with
us after an hour and a half, we thought it
was over again. No it wasn't. Here come the Israelis

(01:04:19):
again in troop carrying helicopters to finish this off. We
thought they were going to rope down or ladder down, whatever,
But they were. I was on the starboard, on the
starboard side. I saw him hovering over the starboard gun
mount and I just looked at him, you know, I

(01:04:39):
figured I was a dead man. Anyway, I just and
he did the same thing back to me. He went
like that, he smiled, and all of a sudden they
were gone. Boom, They just took off. I guess the
gig was up, you know. Uh, they couldn't seek an
old World War two cargo ship converted into a spy

(01:04:59):
ship with their torpedo boats, with their aircraft, mystere mirage jets,
dropping napalm and everything else they could on us. There
were holes in the deck of the ship going. I mean,
all you could see is daylight all around you. Boom boom,
boom boom, nothing but daylight. And this one fella I

(01:05:24):
want to message his name because he's he infuriates me.
But he says they really wanted to think that ship
they would just drop metal or hard bombs and it
went straight through and you'd be done. Well, Okay, what
does a forty by forty foot hole?

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
Dude?

Speaker 6 (01:05:37):
What did five torpedoes do that they weren't trying to
sink it? That was the whole plan. It was cooked
up by LBJ. Levy Eskill, he was the Prime Minister
then of Israel. In a cabal of people in our government.

(01:06:00):
The USS America and USS Davis and USS Massy came alongside.
Of course, the aircraft carrier was about a couple of
miles away. They flew the calicopters over to pick up
all the dead and wounded, and there were scores of
them going to different places. They sent them all over
the world for definity of care. They split up the

(01:06:22):
crew so we'd never talk. I stayed with the ship
two days out at sea. After they took the wounded off,
and the and the dead except the ones that were
in the torpedo hole. Here comes Admiral Isaac Kidd and

(01:06:46):
Ward Boston doing a board of inquiry, and he got
us in small groups. I was. I was in sick
bay with five other guys, and we felt kind of
relieved because he took his stars off and he threw
him on the stainless still table that ran out like

(01:07:06):
a bellet, really did. I said, Wow, this is pretty cool.
He says, I'm just like your dad. Just please tell
me everything you saw and heard. And I did as
everybody else did, and he got right in my face
and he says, I'm going to tell all you sobs.

(01:07:27):
If you ever repeat a word you just sent to
me said to me to anybody, I'll make sure you
end up in prison, living worth or worse. You know
what worse means. See, yes, sir, I do. So they
beat us up, the radies, beat us up in our
own government, beat us up. Medley tell us never talk

(01:07:49):
about it when you just see your brothers slaughtered before
your eyes. How can any human being, how can anybody
not feel compassion or horror senior brothers slaughtered and not
talk about it? But I didn't talk about it for
almost eighteen twenty years until I married my wife, Lisa,

(01:08:14):
and I never even told her I was in the military.
I read a letter from stan Waie Master Chief E
nine about the USOS liberty, and I said, wow, if
he can speak, I'm gonna start speaking. I haven't shut
up since it's my goal. My brothers can't speak, but
I can. When you've got two crooked governments, the government

(01:08:35):
of Israel and the government of the United States set
us up be murdered to start a World War three,
that's about as bad as it gets. If we go down,
the world is completely changed. There were Russian sub under
US that was ready to knuke Israel. The Temple Mount.

(01:08:55):
They need to reflect the to hit, and they were
ready to do it. But us not thinking, by the
grace of God, is why I'm here. And it's a
great honor. And you know what, there's so many different things.
Navy Court of Inquiry RealD Mount Isaac Kid see Navy

(01:09:20):
Court of Inquiry per Captain Ward Boston killed Kid told
him he believed the attack was deliberate and the Israelies
knew they the ship was American New York Times two
thousand and two. Captain Ward Boston, I feel the Israelis
knew what what they were doing. They knew it was

(01:09:41):
American ship used Navy ship. We were identified by Israel
as a friendly American ship hours an hour before the attack.
Their issues was they took us off their war title,
they changed the watch and didn't inform the other watch
commanders we were in the area, Like anybody believes that
they just took us off forgot we were there. That's

(01:10:02):
sobs Richard Helms, CIA director, It was no accident. Clark Hifford,
no accident. Dean Russ Secretary of State, no accident. Marshall Carter,
Former Security Administrative Director n Essay, no mistake. Lewis Battle,

(01:10:26):
no mistake. Professor Hayden park Paik, no mistake. FBI officials.
FBI officials counter the friendly spying can be a damage,
a damaging as spying for the enemies of the They
note in nineteen sixty seven went Israeli, Israel just to

(01:10:47):
Liberty attacked the electronic intelligence ship USS Liberty. So the
FBI knew it, the CIA knew it, everybody knew it,
but they covered up. Thomas Moore, dear friend of mine,
very good friend. He was a very highly decorated man.
He was former chief of Staff twice. He's the only

(01:11:08):
admiral that ever had command of this Southern Command in
the Pacific Command, not the same time, but different times,
and then became two terms Chairman of Joint Chiefs, Captain McGonagall,
please do not release Jonathan Pollard to the Government of

(01:11:32):
Israel until and unless the Government of Hissil acknowledges in
writing and publicly the government of Israel armed forces the
Liberty attacked the USS Liberty HGTR five. Now the Captain
received a medal of honor, and he deserved. I saw

(01:11:54):
him in action, great man, he was hit, great man,
but he was cohersed. Our government curhersed him to tone
it down, tone it down. I know what they said
to me, what they say to him. There's no telling.
Another friend of mine, Cat Buger, of the USS Pueblo,

(01:12:14):
which is in North Korea right now. I've talked to
Mark about it. He's been on that ship. By the way,
Thank you, Mark, it's a pleasure talking to you. He said,
they had never been captured if they'd known about the
USS Liberty. It was so tightly, so tightly covered up.

(01:12:36):
And it still is today that people that people simply
believed that Israel did it by mistake. No, it was
a pre planned attack to kill us all and get
us in a lot of trouble, more trouble we ever
thought of. We were close to a nuclear war. There
were sacked aircraft in the air headed to car six

(01:13:02):
hours before we even got attacked. So the mighty idea
in this two hour blood bath, they couldn't sink old
World War two ship. And they couldn't. I bet they're
still stretching their heads. They can't figure that one out.
As anybody in here. Didn't know any survivors from a

(01:13:23):
torpedo attack. I know one in here. I talked to Indianapolis.
I guess i'd call him an expert. There's one survivor left.
He's ninety eight. They hit that ship with one torpedo.
It was a big ship too, and it brought it
down immediately. But that ship, our ship took all that

(01:13:50):
stayed alive. And that's why I'm here because of the
gallant crew of the USS Liberty. These are my ship,
Mason Brothers. There's not very many of us left. There's
probably fifty or so. I have a crew of two
hundred and ninety four. Thirty four were killed initially one
hundred and seventy four woun I helped in operations that
night with Doc Keefer. He was hitting his stomach. He's

(01:14:13):
having him. He had a life jack around it to
hold his guts in. He was hitting both both legs, knees.
He stood on those those legs for seventeen hours, operating
on people that were losing their lives or any hope
of life. I helped in one operation. One of the
operations I helped with Doc was a man named Gary Blanchard.

(01:14:39):
He was hit and he was hit bad. He got
hitting the kidneys. He blew his back out. Doc cut
him open well before that. He says, rub my feet,
my feet are hard. I took his socks off, rubbed
his feet, tried to get some circulation, went on to
the left side of him, and he looked at me.
He says, you think I'm gonna live. I said, no,

(01:15:03):
I don't think you are. Man. Doc cut him open.
He was dead. Cut him open like a deer I
used to hunt. I didn't know what it looks like.
That's what it looked like. We put a few stitches
in him. Doc did put him over the side and
it went on all night for seventeen hours. Help never
got there. For seventeen hours. They left us out there alone.

(01:15:27):
They didn't even send a piper cub over there to
see how we were doing. That's how bad it was.
They could care less. They did not care, and our
government still doesn't care. They do not care. They tried
to silence us, they tried to murder us. They tried
to call us an i, Samites, jew haters, Nazis, Antisthmitic pigs, jihadis.

(01:15:56):
I mean, I can go on and on and on,
but we're none of that. We're none of that. All
we want to do is tell the truth to America.
You deserve the truth. So you paid the taxes. It's
your money, and you should be able to seek redress
from your government and say, hey, wait a minute, it's
been fifty eight years. Coming next June, we're going to

(01:16:19):
have a reunion in northern Virginia. I'll bring that up
again in a minute. But they never have. And I've
written so many presidents. I only got one letter back
from Bill Clinton, and he never addressed my letter. He gets,

(01:16:39):
I don't know if what was up there, but he
never addressed my questions. He just sent me a nice
little note like come on, man. And he's the only
one I ever got an answer from, including Ronald Reagan.
I figured he would help us. I put a full
page add in or I didn't. A donor did, and

(01:17:01):
I was president then to have. I'm four time president
of LVA and former chairman. So I don't give up.
I'm not going to give I'm almost ad and I
ain't given up. And my family stand for behind me.
I know you all do, and listen. I'm not here
to really beat up on anybody. But when you do
something like that so horrific, can cover it up for
all these years. If it was so easy, why didn't

(01:17:24):
the governor of the United States just say, okay, we'll
investigate it as they should have. In seven days, they
had an invested seven day board of inquiry. In seven
days they figured out, oh, okay, there's a mistake in identity.
But no, they were ordered by Johnson to find it.
In fact, John McCain's daddy was in on that. He

(01:17:45):
was an Admiral John McCain junior, and they said make
sure the crew silenced and make sure this mistaken identity. Now,
this attack like on the USS Stark and cold, and
they had a full investigation in depth, not the USS Liberty.

(01:18:07):
Oh it's all wrapped up in seven days. A real
investigation would have taken over several years to figure all
this out. But no, they would not do that. They
would not do that. And they're still silences trying to
silence this. You know they've Last Secember, I had to

(01:18:32):
honor spending time with Candice O once on her show.
A wonderful woman, a kind woman, and a faithful woman
of God. They're attacking her like I've been attacked. She's

(01:18:53):
telling the truth. Everybody's got a right to say something
that's what's right about this country. Tell her to take
it away. And we're close to it now, we're very
close to it. When they make laws that you can't
talk about another group of people, I don't care if
they're Asian, Black, whatever, Korean, Arab, you better not talk

(01:19:15):
about Israel or you're an anti cement and a Semitic pig.
And that's just exactly the way they feel. Look what's
going on now at these colleges. I mean, people see
what's going on in the world. They see what's going
on in the world, and the US's liberties of spearhead,
the hot red hot spearhead to breaking this whole open

(01:19:36):
before we all die and with your help, that's going
to happen. With your help, that's going to happen. And
whoever out there in tv Land, don't forget us, because
we're here. We ain't leaving. My greatest fear, well, I

(01:20:03):
guess it's not really a fear of My biggest disappointment
is our own government. We've succeeded our power to a
foreign country. Israel controls us. They control the Congress, they
control the Senate, they control our money. We don't control

(01:20:26):
our country. Desion the state does? Does that make them
the real bad people?

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
Know?

Speaker 6 (01:20:33):
The real bad people? The people letting them do it,
that's the people, real bad people. I mean, if you
can see anything in godsla, and I'm not an expert
on it, but I'll tell you what I've seen, These
pictures that brings me to my knees with sorrow and

(01:20:55):
pain for innocence being starved and bombed and burned and
beat up and raped and robbed. I'm tired of it.
This whole country should be tired of it. Our passionate
attachment to the design of state has got to stop.

(01:21:20):
My greatest my greatest hope is that I live long
enough to see some kind of some kind of justice,
not just for me, but the whole crew. I'm here
representing the crew. I'm the president of the association, and uh,
those men that die couldn't speak, but I could speak

(01:21:41):
for him and the men that we're old now they're
all dying off or you know, the diseases, whatever it
happens in life. We all know that we're all going there.
Of course, you guys are all young, but uh, I
know a lot of you in here got some gray hair.
And I'm sure you remember the USS Liberty, but you
don't remember the cover up. You heard what you heard

(01:22:01):
and you believed it, but it's not the truth, folks,
that this is one of the most criminal, terrible acts
committed on a flagged American ship and American history. We're
the only ship in American history that's never had help
come to it when they're under attack. That's what they did.

(01:22:22):
They left us out there to be slaughtered by the
zion of State, blame it on Egypt and bring us
to war. That's why those sack aircraft run the way.
The only thing that saved us. We didn't sink, and
they didn't count on that. They did everything they could
do to silences by intimidation, threats, and evil words. That's

(01:22:42):
what our own government did. The crew of the US
Liberty is most decorated crew in the United States Naval
history for a single engagement, not none other but the
US's Liberty. Nobody knows about it from the Medal of
Honor on down Navy Cross Stars, Bronze Star wars, a
v combat action, and we got a president until unicitation

(01:23:06):
from guests who LBJ I tore it up. I want
none to do that guy, he left us. He left
the world in bad shape. We don't need presidents to
send our young men and women in war all for

(01:23:29):
the sake of the design estate. And that's what we're doing.
I think you all know that. I hope you do.
That's what they're doing. They want us to bomb our end.
They want us to take them out and all that shit.
Israel will probably do it themselves, of course it won't
be clandestine. The American military would be behind it. I

(01:23:55):
really want to thank all of you for being here,
and thank you Tom for your gracious support. Everybody here
has been so friendly and nice to me. Boy. I'll
tell you I wear you, all of you with a
badge of honor. They can call me anything. They went. Oh,
by the way, I got my pen and now a member.

(01:24:24):
So I would encourage all of you if you would
help us. Don't write your Congress. They're gonna lie to you.
They always do. I put the pressure on where send
it right to Trump. He probably won't listen. But I've
tried everything. The crew has tried everything. We love our country,

(01:24:46):
we love our Lord, we love our families, all families.
And when they attacked us, they attacked all of you.
You attack American flagship, you attack an American flagship. They
attacked all all of us, not just us, but that
American flag they shot down twice. That's what they did.

(01:25:11):
So if they can get by that, if you get
by with that, they can get by with almost anything.
And they are right now. I'll ask if you have
any questions, I'll take a few questions, and I'll relieve you.
By the way, case close, I rest my case.

Speaker 2 (01:25:39):
You're listening to the Fact Hunter Radio Network.

Speaker 1 (01:25:45):
Just the facts, Mammy,