2003 USS LIBERTY ESSAY CONTEST WINNER Kyle Pflug, Sophomore Liberty High School, Renton, Washington The history of the race, and each individual's experience, are thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal. -Mark Twain Truth in the Tides It is not an uncommon thing for a man to lie to protect a friend. Lies such as these, in fact, are often heralded as honorable, laudable; even worthy of emulation. But what if the lie was told to protect a friend undeserving of the honor? What if the lie deceived not the guilty, but the innocent? What if the lie meant killing those who most need protection? June 8th, 1967. It was a beautiful day. As the Six Day War raged between Israel and several Arab states, the U.S.S. Liberty, a WWII-era vessel reconfigured for intelligence-gathering operations, was in position in international waters nearly 13 miles from the Israeli shoreline, near the Gaza Strip. The main drive of the mission was to observe a group of Soviet bombers operating out of Egypt and to determine their affiliation. There was concern aboard the Liberty that it might be attacked by Arabs who believed the US had sided with Israel, but Israel's rapid progress toward defeating the Arab states largely deflated this fear. It was decided by the commander of the Sixth Fleet that the Liberty did not need any escort, so the Liberty sailed alone. Thirteen times the Liberty was circled by Israeli fighter planes, planes closely enough that the crew of the Liberty could see the Star of David painted on the side of the fuselage, closely enough that the pilots and the sailors exchanged waves. The American flag was raised high above the superstructure of the ship. Chief Melvin Smith reassured the crew that "each time they circle we can hear the pilot telling his headquarters that we are an American ship." The crew took extra care to make sure the flag was displayed clearly, that it did not wrap around the lines. There was to be no confusion, no tragic misidentification. At 2:00, three Israeli torpedo boats appeared on the horizon, 16 miles away. Then came the "tragic misidentification". Sailors on the deck of the liberty report seeing flashes underneath the wings of Israeli Mirage III fighters, then searing heat. Rockets and 30mm pummeled the ship, leaving holes in the hull and in the bulkheads. Most of the crewman topside were incapacitated or killed in the initial strafing-the ship never had a chance to fight back. The cannon and rocket attacks continued; the initial passes took out nearly all of the ship's radio towers. At 1158 Zulu time, the ship sent its first call for help. Two US aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean launched fighters in response. However, these launches were immediately called off from inside the White House, by Secretary of Defense McNamara. The initial excuse was a fear that the fighters might have been equipped with nuclear ordinance. Rear Admiral Geis, in command of the Sixth Fleet, ordered the fighters refitted with conventional weapons and relaunched. Once again, the White House ordered the fighters recalled. Not satisfied, Geis asked for confirmation of the order. President Johnson came on the line and made sure that there was no confusion-the sailors of the Liberty would be left to die. According to Commander Dave Lewis of the Liberty, He requested confirmation of the order, and the next higher in command came on to confirm that ...President Johnson ... with the instructions that the aircraft were to be returned, that he would not have his allies embarrassed, he didn't care who was killed or what was done to the ship...words to that effect. The Liberty sailors waited earnestly for help that wasn't coming. And while they were being forsaken by their own Commander in Chief, things grew progressively worse. The Mirage fighter jets that had pummeled the Liberty were joined by Mystyre fighter-bombers, outfitted with rockets and a lethal payload of napalm jelly. The Mystyres coated the ship in jellied gasoline, swathing the Liberty in an infernal blanket. The air attacks continued. The pilots of the Israeli jets were apparently - deliberately? - ignorant of the clearly displayed identifiers that adorned the ship: the American flag, the 10-foot letters spelling "GTR-5" on the hull, the name "Liberty" scrawled across the gray steel. The worst had yet to come. The torpedo boats sighted previously were no longer sixteen miles away. They circled the Liberty so closely that there could be no mistaking her alignment. Five torpedoes were loosed-one of them struck the Liberty amidships, leaving a gaping hole in the plating. The torpedo killed 25 of the 34 sailors who died that day. Life rafts attempting to leave the Liberty were riddled with machine-gun fire. One of them was picked up by an Israeli torpedo boat - yet through all this, the attackers supposedly failed to recognize the nationality of the ship under siege. The official story is that the Israeli forces mistook the Liberty for the Egyptian El Quseir, a horse-transport vessel. This argument holds no water. The superstructure, size, design, and markings of the El Quseir are vastly different from those of the Liberty, and the Liberty was flying an American flag. The real story is this: The USS Liberty had come within visible range of the town of El Arish, where the Israeli forces were committing atrocities such as ambushing UN Peacekeeper convoys and mercilessly slaughtering helpless prisoners of war. Faced with an NSA surveillance vessel laden with over $10 million in the latest espionage gear, senior Israeli officials chose to eliminate the threat of accountability. Reports began to spread that a ship was shelling the Israelis-but the Liberty was 13 miles distant, and her defensive machine-guns had a maximum effective range of barely over a mile. The Israelis knew this, and this is proof of their true intentions; they weren't trying to protect lives. They were trying to protect secrets. They were trying to mask atrocity by "mistakenly" silencing the only credible witnesses. They knew that thirteen miles offshore, a U.S. surveillance vessel was sitting and listening. Both the US and Israel officially denied that the attack was an intentional one. Two Israeli officers have stepped forward and admitted that the attack was deliberate, but Israel officially continues to characterize the survivors and the witnesses as lying or confused. Proof, though, does exist; a US Navy EC-121, flying overhead at the time of the attack and eavesdropping for the NSA, picked up scattered transmissions in Hebrew that "mentioned an American flag" flying on a ship under attack. Nevertheless, despite the witnesses and confessions, Israel continues to lie-and the US continues to lie in her defense. Facts, it seems, are not enough to shatter a fabricated truth. Why? Why would the world's largest superpower protect an aggressor from the world's outrage? Why did the US government help Israel get away with murder? The answer is simple: politics. An in-depth investigation would obviously reveal that the Israelis knew full well whom they were killing. Disclosure would bring the Israeli massacre of Arabs into the spotlight. Congress feared triggering an international hullabaloo that would damage relations with one of the western world's most important allies. It is a cruel irony that in doing this, they destroyed Liberty-literally and figuratively. American justice does not-cannot-tolerate war criminals; and there is no greater war criminal than one that would attack an ally to conceal a massacre.

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Jim Ennes and Joe Meadors

USS Liberty