WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- Negligence is the most likely explanation for the Israeli attack on the U.S. spy ship Liberty in 1967.
This conclusion emerged from the first panel of an international conference on the Six-Day War at the State Department Monday, though surviving crewmembers dissented and one panelist said a proper investigation has never been conducted.
On June 8, 1967, on the fourth day of the Arab-Israeli war, Israeli planes and torpedo boats attacked the lightly armed ship, killing 34 Americans and injuring 172. Israel has always maintained this was an accident that occurred in the fog of war. Others have disputed this.
The conference, which continued Tuesday, marks the release of a volume of historical papers from the Johnson administration dealing with the events of May through November 1967. The documents, some recently declassified, come from the archives of the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, and various intelligence agencies.
Volume Editor Harriet Schwar, citing a CIA memo of June 13, 1967, said the agency had no intercepts from the attacking planes and torpedo boats, but that the communication of Israeli helicopter pilots sent to identify and pick up survivors left little doubt that the attackers had failed to identify the Liberty as a U.S. ship.
The transcripts of tapes between the helicopter pilots and their air controller were released last July.
National Security Agency historian David A. Hatch, while saying this material "doesn't settle much" because the conversations intercepted occurred after the attacks, nevertheless concluded that a fatal error probably had taken place.
"While falling short of proof, the intercepts to me suggest strongly that the Israeli attackers did not know they were aiming deadly fire at a vessel belonging to the United States," he said. "In a careful reading, the intercepted communications between the air controller at Hatsor and the helicopters dispatched in the wake of the attack show a progressive reversal of perception on their part.
"At first, confidence that the aircraft were to inspect an Egyptian ship. Then, signs that the ship might not be Egyptian after all. And finally, growing evidence that it could belong to a friendly nation."
Schwar said: "A follow-up CIA memo on June 21 (1967) noted that the Liberty had been identified prior to the attacks but concluded that the Israelis were not aware at the time of the attack that they were attacking a U.S. ship. It concluded that the attack was not made in malice, but was by mistake, representing gross negligence."
That the Israelis first identified the ship and then lost track of it is a point made by panelist A. Jay Cristol in his book "The Liberty Incident" (2002). Panelist Michael Oren, an American-born Israeli historian and author of "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East" (2002) addressed this issue.
Oren said that at 5:55 a.m. an Israeli cargo plane reported seeing what the pilot believed to be a U.S. supply ship about 70 miles from Gaza. Officers at Israeli Naval Headquarters looked up the hull number, identified it as the Liberty, and marked it on their war board as a friendly vessel.
At 9 a.m. an Israeli jet reported "a gray bulky ship 20 miles north of El Arish." Neither aircraft reported seeing a flag, Oren said.
At 11 a.m., an officer coming on duty, seeing the most recent report on the Liberty was two hours old, removed the marker. "This was standard operating procedure in the Israeli navy," Oren said. "They felt it better to have no information about a ship - because ships don't stay in place, they move - rather than to have inaccurate information. But the basic fact remained that as far as the State of Israel was concerned, the USS Liberty no longer existed."
Panel commentator Charles D. Smith, of the University of Arizona, said this raises very serious questions about the analytical process.
"How do you know that the ship had left?" Smith asked. "What, then, are you going to base future actions on if you find a ship in the same area?"
He said at the least this marks the failure of Israeli intelligence to observe movements in the precise area where they had previously identified an American ship.
Oren said that at 11:24 Israeli infantry near the beach at El Arish reported they had come under fire from an Egyptian destroyer, as they had the day before. In fact, what they heard was an exploding Egyptian ammunition depot. The Israeli navy overestimated the Liberty's speed and called for the air force.
The jet pilots could see that the ship was military and was not Israeli. The planes had no bombs, which would have sunk the Liberty immediately, but attacked with cannon and napalm. After 14 minutes, one of the pilots noticed Latin, not Arabic, letters on the hull, Oren said. The air force immediately called off the attack and sent helicopters to look for survivors.
"But there was a complete breakdown in communications between the Israeli air force and the Israeli navy," Oren said, "and 20 minutes later ... the torpedo boats arrived on the scene."
Oren said the Liberty was shrouded in thick, dark smoke, and the boats held their fire until one of the Liberty's .50 caliber machine guns opened up. The boats then fired torpedoes, one of which hit the NSA intelligence compartment.
Panelist James G. Bamford, author of "The Puzzle Palace: A Report on NSA, America's Most Secret Agency" (1982), has been a longtime critic of the Israeli account. "The Israelis said it was a mistake. Maybe it was; maybe it wasn't," he said Monday, but he charged that the Liberty incident has never been independently investigated.
Bamford departed from his prepared paper to read the affidavit of retired Navy Capt. Ward Boston, senior legal counsel 1967 Court of Inquiry. Boston said the inquiry was a whitewash.
"Boston already admits he has not told the truth under oath," said Cristol, a federal judge in Florida. "The question is: Was he not telling the truth under oath in 1967 or now?"
