The Day Israel Attacked America | Special Series

early June 1967 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 2:00 in the afternoon on June the 8th with the war reaching its climax Israeli Jets and motor torpedo boats launch an unprovoked attack on the ship they dropped napalm and strafe its decks with rockets cannon fire and armor-piercing rounds before trying to sink it with torpedoes [Music] and we had no way to defend ourselves and it was just we're just slaughtered and they shot up the life rafts that were put into the water and they shot the ones that were still on board ship bullet holes shell holes everywhere blood the fo'c'sle the front part of this ship was just red with blood throughout the attack the ship flies the Stars and Stripes the flag of Israel's closest ally the United States of America it's named the USS Liberty is freshly painted on its Stern and the bow carries the distinctive numbers of an American naval vessel out of a crew of just under 300 there were 34 killed and 172 injured and varying degrees to life-threatening life debilitating injuries so that was more than two-thirds of the crew [Music] this audiotape 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 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 [Music] [Music] the United States Navy Memorial in Washington DC June the 8th 2014 every year on the anniversary of the attack on the USS Liberty survivors relatives and supporters gathered together it's a remembrance of those who who were killed that day the 34 on Dave Lucas I was in charge of the deck force I was 25 my first child was born when I was 1 day out on that cruise it's as long as they're survivors and and maybe children of survivors I think this will probably be an annual event and the names of the 34 killed are read out punctuated by the tolling of a navy bell and the playing of taps the traditional military funeral lament [Music] it's important to not forget what happened and to continue to try to find out why it happened and and who made it happen in the summer of 1967 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 10,000 troops would die that year the Americans were trapped they couldn't leave and they couldn't with [Music] in the middle-east to war looked inevitable there was growing tension between Israel and its Arab neighbors armies were mobilizing Israel promised the White House they would not attack first but on the 5th of June they jammed radar sets at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv so the Americans couldn't detect their jets taking off to launch a surprise assault on Egypt meanwhile the USS Liberty was sailing across the Mediterranean into the war zone 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 scent we could receive any signal that was out there Loeb and I ban anything intercepting it recording it and we did have on board some translators who could have an immediate translation of what was going on we would actually bounce signals off the moon back to NSA we were we're spies I'm Jim Cavanaugh I was a communication technician aboard the USS Liberty and I intercepted Morse code we're spies when we were intercepting messages from embassies military bases police anything and everything that we could get to ensure that the United States was comfortable what was going on in the world and no one's conspiring against us and basically to protect our interests [Music] 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 back in Israel and Russia siding with the Arab cause I was assigned as a Russian linguist aboard the ship I'm Bryce Lockwood United States Marine Corps retired the Israelis our primary purpose was to intercept communications of the Russian spy aircraft as it were at Alexandria Egypt and then that was our job was to find them we were not targeted against Israelis life was very relaxing and 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 it was spotless the morale was pretty high coming very high by the time the Liberty arrived off the coast of Egypt on the 8th 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 the airwaves were dead the only voices we did get were those of Israeli or Hebrew with what we were hearing my name is Bob Wilson I worked for NSA on June the 8th 1967 when and what we were trying to monitor find something coming from the direction of Egypt there just was nothing they owned the skies and the ground and everything David I don't think there was anything moving at that time that they didn't know about I was listening to the chatter night before he knew it was an American ship that came into the area they knew who we were 5:15 a.m. first light the ship's log recorded an Israeli photo reconnaissance plane flying over the Liberty that was easily identifiable as an or Atlas aircraft and those are photo reconnaissance aircraft Israeli records obtained by al-jazeera show their reconnaissance plane reported the Liberty as an American spy ship hull number gt-r five well I was on the bridge John Scott I was the damage control officer circled the ship kind of a broad circle and headed back towards Israel Israeli planes then continued to fly over the Liberty all morning and they would do half moon passes over us and we saw that they were Israeli they were slowly lumbering over our ship and we were waving at them they were waving at action they were sophisticated almost as sophisticated as we were as far as surveillance and technology they had everything we supplied it with all the technology to this day and I felt that we were in we were in great shape because they knew who we were they're our friends we felt safe actually was a secure feeling to see them there was one other thing which made the crew feel safe 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 meanwhile Israeli military jets were on their way on the real-time audio tape obtained by al-jazeera at 1:53 p.m. the I asked their base control about the ship the USS Liberty was the only ship of any size in the area the American 6th fleet including two aircraft carriers was 500 miles away oh it was a great day hello I'm Jim Smith I was a damage Controlman in engineering I mean I'm 20 years old it's the time I come from a small town used to throw hay bales and in the summertime for a buck an hour Sun was shining blue sky clouds nice people sunbathing on the deck we had lunch and five minutes later maybe here came the Jets and when nobody really knew what was happening until they started firing [Music] the captain said to me alert the forward gun mouth were under attack and I tried to raise the two sailors in the forward gun mounts I looked out and they were they were blown to pieces by the rocket when the attack started and we realized that we needed help we tried to communicate with the sixth fleet they were jamming both our distress frequencies and our tactical frequencies the tactical frequencies is alright but the International distress frequencies is a violation of international law to jam them and the Israelis were jamming them and we could not get a signal across here's a question I have to ask who would know the frequencies other than an ally and who is the ally in the war I was in Egypt it was Israel they would know and only they would know in this conflict what our frequencies would be now cut off from the outside world the crew on the Liberty was defenseless we had four fifty caliber machine guns on board that were basically there to repel any borders that might come by you know a pirate situation certainly weren't designed to bring down jet aircraft that we're hammering at us but you can't shoot a jet going 600 miles an hour with a 50 caliber machine gun it doesn't work it was just a surreal scene people who had been standing there earlier joking and laughing we're now dead dying and with the walking dead and wounded it was just unreal gasoline barrels stored on the deck of the ship burst into flames the crew rushed to try to put out the fires I was watching the aircraft as they circled around and when they got to coming back towards the ship I just holler at him down then fire the circle back round we jump back up and keep fighting fire the rocket noises are in this when a rocket explodes I can't escape a rocket Oh care where you go 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 the biggest problem I guess from from that was the napalm which they dropped from the airplane the napalm had burned scorched almost the entire front part of the ship the bridge area the whole top side of the ship had been set on fire and was all charred it was no longer a navy gray 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 back up and go down the road because there is no down the road up above the Israeli military argued about what should happen next and who should sink the Liberty remember thinking I was in pretty good shape then I said I think I can swim it to the shore and then I thought sharks and I thought a lot of things all quickly you know [Music] at 11 minutes past 2:00 with the Israeli Jets running out of ammunition the pilots were instructed to fly down and confirm the identity of the ship it was now 12 minutes past 2:00 and the Israeli control tower knew for certain this was an American ship the same one is forces had first identified at 5:15 a.m. that morning and then buzzed again during seven additional reconnaissance flights throughout the day the Jets then pulled out but three israeli navy motor torpedo boats were already on their way the USS Liberty was a spice 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 everyone was destroying material everyone was stripping information off of computers ripping computers open pulling information out that's something you just don't want to hear aboard ship you've done all this work collected this intelligence and processed it and now you have to destroy it you just didn't want the enemy to get a hold of anything classified at 235 the Israeli motor boats fired five torpedoes four missed but one hit [Music] [Music] [Applause] it had been over nine hours since the Israeli military first identified the liberty Israeli planes had flown over it repeatedly and 20 minutes earlier their control tower had confirmed it yet again as an American ship 25 Americans were about to die in a single moment this is what it looks like when a torpedo hits a ship the size of the Liberty the torpedo threw us up in the air like a rollercoaster it felt like one coming down dead silence lights all off smoke and haze everywhere I went back to the drinking fountain and filled it with blood reached down to get a drink and a black man stared back at me and when it fell back to get right it just kept getting wrong kept sinking and sinking and sinking we just waited all of us waited thinking that this was it we're going down and I figured that was the end of life for me the torpedo had blown a huge hole in the hull 39 feet by 24 killing 25 Americans in a single hit 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 my left foot I had I don't know 80 pieces of shrapnel in my lower extremities and the place filled up with water that fast totally black totally filled with powder and oil it was like [Music] you were gagging and you only had about eight or ten inches of space where you could catch a breath only way I could go in that direction it was to drop down and swim underwater four or five strokes come back up and then frantically catch a breath and try to find something else on hold on to I got pulled through the hatch and onto the deck others were not so lucky my friend Ronnie Campbell had a desk right there and I remember Ronnie saying you fellas can do what you want to say I'm gonna write a letter home and he stuck a piece of paper in his mill his typewriter and began typing dear Eileen you won't believe what's happening to us and just seconds after that the torpedoes struck and killed both the two Marines killed my friend Ronnie Campbell and my job was to try to get probably 20 or 30 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 plainly marked with a star of david' machine-gunning our life raft the crew of the Liberty were now trapped on board their own ship with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide the torpedo boats came in closer and began to machine-gun the ship using armor-piercing projectiles the armor-piercing the shells that they were using we're leaving holes about that big around and the metal plating just peel it out like it was orange peel at close range the armor-piercing rounds ripped through the steel hull of the ship nowhere was safe this bullet was retrieved from one of the navigational books at the rear portion of the bridge it had penetrated the skin of the ship going through at least one other book and then stopped in 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 I'm bullet like this that hit seaman Francis Brown and and killed him he died right on the spot just fell to the floor dead he was just barely 18 [Music] there weren't enough helmets to go around for everyone it was like sitting in a cardboard box and having somebody shoot through it the bullets were just coming everywhere throughout the attack the liberty had been silent to the outside world all its aerials were either smashed or jammed we had one whip antenna which hadn't worked the entire cruise and it had a bullet hole in it one of the radio man had taken a reel of coax cable and ran it from one of the transmitters back there to that with antenna and took some shrapnel in the process he got out and made a Firefox Firefox this is rock star rock star under attack by unidentified surface and neighbor units require immediate assistance the American Sixth Fleet was 500 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 rearm with conventional bombs before they could take off once the Israelis knew the u.s. jets were in the air 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 this one had some personnel from the Israeli government and the US naval attache has dropped a brown paper sack on the deck in the fore part of the ship weighted down with an orange added business card in it it landed right next to a severed leg of one of the deck personnel and the note said do you have counselors pretty obvious that there were casualties I mean there's still body parts and blood streaming down the bulkheads so his message do you have casualties was kind of out of place one of the sailors carried that sack back to the captain the captain took out the note and read it looked up at the helicopter and popped the social thing or Adam June the 8th 1967 the height of the Six Day War the USS Liberty an American spy ship 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 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 the NSA rejected this idea with an impolite comment handling the media became the top priority I was taken to my home in White Oak Maryland my name is Patricia blue-ray Jacques 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 didn't speak to anyone from the press and I didn't they stay night and day back in the Mediterranean the Liberty was now listing at ten degrees a massive hole in the hull above and below the to line the planes that they said they were sending to us never arrived what I was afraid of and I think most of us was that we were gonna sink well the mess decks was was pretty much littered with the wounded it looks like something out of a horror movie but people standing around or lying wounded and dead and stunned the heads missing parts of their bodies the Liberty had only one doctor on board with very limited medical resources there was not a table that wasn't being used with a body honor a wounded body on it the doctor fixed compound fractures and treated bullet and shrapnel wounds while blood transfusions were given arm to arm it was it was real bad and the doctor said to him do you want me to operate he said you're probably going to die if I do it and you'll certainly die if I don't and and he said go ahead doctor and so when the doctor operated we held him as tight as we could as horrible pain I'm sure for him and all of a sudden he went he went limp and he died right there I don't want to ever see anything like that again captain McGonagall received a pretty bad leg injury lost a lot of blood he was navigating by the stars we had a little bit of power and tons of water in our belly which meant the ship waved back and forth all night long the next day American ships arrived to take the injured in the dead of the Liberty the American government now made sure that no journalists could get anywhere near the crew when they took the severely wounded to various parts are they actually posted guards on their rooms so that no one could be interviewed by the press the tol press blackout was in effect back in Washington the government insured there was little information for the press while politics went on behind closed doors I was told to go up personally to the seventh floor well my name is Bill Wooley 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 sent through the meeting taking notes and in a loud voice Secretary was was really demanding some explanation for why and what had happened the Ambassador himself seemed to be ignorant of the incidents he immediately said I can't believe what you're telling me it's it would be impossible it would be unheard of it was especially tough for Lyndon Johnson to date the most Pro Israeli American president in history 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 and 67 attack on the Liberty Johnson himself briefed Newsweek magazine off-the-record that the Israelis had attacked and the reason they detect was that they thought this was an intelligence ship that was intercepting perhaps Israeli as well as Egyptian communications but then everything changed the fact that Johnson himself was the leaker and briefer of Newsweek was soon leaked and this alarmed of course the Israeli embassy and they're leading friends and the Jewish organizations the Israeli embassy regarded this as a major problem and that what Johnson had told Newsweek practically amounted to blood libel declassified Israeli documents show they were going to threaten President Johnson with blood libel gross anti-semitism and that would end his political career blackmail visit Admiral Bobby our Emlyn US Navy retired our former director of the National Security Agency but they know if he is thinking about running again he's gonna need money for his campaign so alleging that he's blood labelling is gonna arouse the Jewish donors the Israeli government hired teams of lawyers some of whom were close friends of Lyndon Johnson and began an all-out offensive they lent on the media to kill critical stories and slanted others in favor of Israel there was a campaign mounted to see if what could be done about returning Johnson to his normal and predictable pro-israeli position at the time Johnson was still undecided as to whether to run for president the following year efforts were to be made to remind the president of the delicacy of his own position that he personally would might lose support for his run for re-election in 1968 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 one of Johnson's complaints about Israel was that many of the Jewish positions in the heads of the leaders in the Jewish community were opposing him on Vietnam and there was suddenly becoming more silent on Vietnam as the Liberty crisis moved so he also knew that there was a move back in his favor if he was moderate Israel 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 Russians surface-to-air missiles which were bringing down American aircraft on a daily basis the American military attache in Israel got a surprise visit from a senior Israeli intelligence officer took some helicopters and went across the North Red Sea to the surface-to-air missile sites and not only captures them but took back everything the launchers the missiles from the Manion maintenance manuals the rest of it and then he went to the u.s. embassy sierra de chelly and said I think I have something you might be interested in and because those were the same missiles that our aircraft flying over North Vietnam were encountering day to day and countermeasures was a huge issue so grateful was the American government they gave Israel two gifts in return they we supplied 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 all that's influenced by what have we benefited from from the captured sa-2 missile sites soon Johnson did respond and it took a much more lenient lion and wished that the whole incident could be put behind us as soon as possible Johnson's softer approach to Israel was immediately reflected in the American Navy inquiry which was now underway onboard the Liberty we began to realize that a cover-up was was descending upon us a lot of people had were in a key position to offer testimony were not given that opportunity I testified to the machine-gunning of life rafts to the captain state of mind and it was that those two issues in particular were totally omitted Lloyd painter was not the only officer to have his testimony ignored I saw what looked like unburned Vaseline and I've scraped a little bit of it off and put it in the jar and sealed the cap on and I presented it to the court of inquiry and that's the last I saw of that jar there was no mention of napalm and I'm sure that's what it was they want to hear any of that I didn't know that at the time I did don't tell many months later that that I had been recorded looking back on it was a total sham the US court of inquiry reported in just 20 days it was a rush job full of spelling mistakes much key evidence ignored no Israelis interviewed and it exonerated them from blame 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 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 of which was known to top Israeli officials and mentioned the crucial 20-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 the Israelis have always been very skillful and tracking what the US government is doing saying thinking and effort to influence and they're by no means the only country that doesn't many do they're just more effective at it than most and the great advantage they have as compared to other countries here's their influence on the Congress around the time of the attack the Washington Post had noted that the Jewish lobby could help determine the outcome of a hundred and sixty nine of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House the big aborted words about the attack disappeared from press releases at the Pentagon and a much more bland and neutral sounding discourse occurred and this was true of the private briefings of official people in the venogram made about the incident 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 community has always been more generous than many of their other counterparts in supporting financially elections political costs in the process that does translate into influence many of Johnson's closest friends and advisers were pro-israeli and they reported back to Tel Aviv on his every move the Israeli story constantly shifted to counter whatever new intelligence the White House received so sensitive with these communications that the Israelis used code names to protect the identity of the White House agents but for the first time the 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 a brine burg minashi was Arthur Goldberg the US ambassador to the United Nations Harare was David Ginsburg a high-profile Washington lawyer who also represented the Israeli embassy 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 200 Americans the American Israeli relationship was very much at stake and was brought back from the precipice the crucial intelligence came from the US ambassador to the United Nations Arthur Goldberg he warned Tel 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 I think a conscious decision 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 another rationale but don't push it further 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 drydock and drained it at water the sealed compartment was a water-filled too full of bodies body parts and top-secret equipment [Music] you can 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 you do what you have to do they were your shipmates still are the Navy was more concerned with Whitman parts than 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 the parts 168 bags worth elsewhere the makeup artists were getting to work 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 it they were cutting out the shell holes welding plates over that and fabricating metal to cover the torpedo hole and then in one day they painted 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 look good this press and everything with air and we look like basically nothing really happened so it was great for the press to downplay what worry happened to us while the survivors met the widows and friends the 168 bags of body parts and 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 president in the White House I look at these two gallon reams and I see Oh 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 schoolchildren the reason was revealed in this internal memo which advised President Johnson that due to 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 when I received my Purple Heart in a secret ceremony in the captains office I was admonished threat of court-martial don't ever tell anyone where you got this don't ever tell anyone how you got this medal 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 codenamed stone Ruby [Music] [Music] 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 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 8th 1967 their forces were poised to attack and seize the Golan Heights and invade Syria something they wish to keep from the White House until they'd done it successive American administrations both Republican and Democrat have refused to deal with the Liberty even the issue of war crimes against unarmed Americans has never been addressed 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 was answered period the people who are responsible for attacking the Liberty Liberty were you know by 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 they were ordered you know you don't follow orders go to 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 individuals who are responsible for the attack no one was really willing to take this on not to start 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 but by doing that they left a lot of pain for the survivor and for the families because there was a lot of broken families broken marriages alcoholism depression post-traumatic stress disorder so those those crew members suffered a lot but so did the families the hardest part was the the reaction of our own government toward us and we were actually the fingers were pointed to us and the Israelis were they weren't they and they were never questioned as to why they did it they only questioned us the families still want answers from their government which remains silent for many some memories never fade we had a wonderful time just being together I met Alan at a party we spent a lot of time talking throughout the evening and at the end of the evening he said to me are you busy tomorrow afternoon and I said well no and he said 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 there's not a day that doesn't go by where I don't think about those guys I mean I went through hell but they left the earth [Music] 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's hope I want to remember that connection as long as I can what we shared what we felt [Music] it took 13 years of haggling before both sides finally agreed a compensation deal for the ship by 1980 the bill plus interest was just over 17 million dollars Israel offered six the Americans accepted then sold the Liberty for $100,000 scrap the settlement for the victim was quicker but many are still unhappy with it today [Music] not filled it was a fair settlement I would have bought 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 we're very eager for the survivors to make that settlement they sent a check for the the amount and that that was that 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 $25,000 with $10,000 for each of their children over five an American government lawyer doubted that children under five could sufficiently comprehend the event to suffer shock and grief the u.s. 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.s. Under Secretary 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 [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 1,361,762

Rating: 4.6566863 out of 5

Keywords: 1967, america, palestine, us, Israel, al Jazeera, US Navy, USA, USS Liberty, investigation, aljazeera, Six-Day War, The Day Israel Attacked America, uss liberty

Id: tx72tAWVcoM

Length: 49min 0sec (2940 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 03 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/mi-16evil]

Oh boy, this again. Hey everyone once again it seems someone loves marking the thread for this particular documentary as "locked" even though THIS THREAD WAS NEVER LOCKED. OP was being funny and recreated the same firestorm that happened a year ago when this very same documentary was posted when someone also marked the posted with the locked flair when the post was never locked. Seems to be a trend now, so here's the deal. OP is banned. Anyone who marks any post with the flair LOCKED is banned. We won't remove the video, we won't lock the comments, but we aren't going to tolerate people starting a riot over something not real.

Here's proof: http://imgur.com/U66L9u7

Also just a note remember if you can make a comment the post isn't locked. The whole point of locking a post is no one but mods and admins can comment. So if you successfully post something that says "Why is this post locked?" well...it isn't.

[u/madcuzimflagrant]

Thank you for posting this. My uncle died on the ship. Unfortunately I couldn't make it down to the reunion this year but my family said there was a decent turnout since it's the 50th anniversary. Probably won't be too many more.

[u/cojoco]

Comments were never locked on this post. OP was playing silly buggers with flair.

[u/henazo]

Thanks for posting.

About 16 years ago I asked an older work colleague, he was in the Navy around this time, about what he knew concerning this entire debacle. His response was not kind to our Navy or theirs for what happened during or after.

[u/tash_76]

Well that pissed me off watching that.

[u/rddman]

USS Liberty veterans association
https://www.usslibertyveterans.org/

[u/datums]

The Six Day War is one of the most misunderstood conflicts of the 20th century, because of it's continuing political relevance. The only way to get a balanced view is to read books from both perspectives.

There is little doubt that it was intended to be a war of annihilation carried out against the Israeli state by a far superior military force. But it was 1967, and a very obvious attack could draw intervention by the USA or the USSR. The Arab armies needed the war to look like the result of a miscalculation, rather than outright aggression.

In a straight fight, Israel did not stand a chance.

The war really began on May 22, when Egypt blockaded Israel's access to the Red Sea, cutting of their access to the Indian Ocean. That was an unambiguous act of war, and it made it pretty clear that a fight was coming, whether Israel wanted it or not.

At the time, Israel had no real allies, not even the US. Their Air force was almost exclusively jets purchased from France, and the army consisted of mostly outdated equipment from Europe and the US. Nobody was going to come to their rescue.

Having been totally cornered, they bet their whole country on a single air mission, which was their only chance. On June 5, they sent almost every plane that would fly to attack the Egyptian air force on the ground. The Israeli jets flew in, used up their ammo, and came home. They were able to refuel and rearm them in less than eight minutes.

In three hours, almost the entire Egyptian air force was destroyed.

And there was this spy ship from a non ally parked off their coast, analyzing their movements, communications, electronic warfare tactics, etc. If the US decided to side with the Arabs, that information could be devastating to Israel.

So they attacked the ship.

Whether you think that was justified or not, that's what happened.

[u/MaximumCameage]

What an ally.

[u/DursleyDudley]

lol Reddit hates israel so much