USS Amberjack & USS Liberty Why? WHY??
January 2nd, 2009 From
>Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 10:59:35 -0700
>From: TMO/TX
>Reply-To: swrctmo@iAmerica.net
>Organization: Kestrel/SWRC/OAssoc
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Win16; I)
>To: mahan@microwrks.com
>CC: “Louis R. Coatney”
>Subject: Re: USS Amberjack & USS Liberty Why? WHY??
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>Louis R. Coatney wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 29 May 1997, Bill Riddle wrote:
> > > The best hypothesis I have seen is in Jim Ennes’ book. He > has a time
> > > line that puts Liberty’s arrival in context with IDF operations.
> > >
> > > Specifically the Golan Heights campaign which was actually > delayed for
> > > 24 hours, until AFTER Liberty was not available to monitor > events. He
> > > quotes LBJ’s book in which LBJ states that he told the Israeli
> > > ambassador that the US would stand with Israel ONLY if > Israel did not
> > > initiate hostilities. As the IDF was in fact going to occupy the
> > > Golan without waiting for a Syrian event to which they could react,
> > > Ennes’ assertion is that Israel did not want Liberty to provide LBJ
> > > with the evidence.
> >
> > I think I can remember this suggestion, from times past, but it
> > is literally crazy to think that an attack on an American ship
> > would somehow avert American protest/disapproval of an Israeli
> > attack on the heights. Could anyone be so tactically tunnel-
> > visioned (politically)? Is anyone suggesting Dayan was …
> > irrational?
> >
> > There *must* be something else.
> >
>Speaking privately (Ha!) and not for attribution (as if it mattered),
>I’ve always suspected that at some levels of Israeli political
>leadership/military command, there was (and likely still is) some
>perception/blief/suspicion that the US was actively passing INTEL to
>Arab states (the “Counterbalance” theory, the US as inheritors of 19th
>British hegemony playing the “Great Game”).
>
>Given his combative nature and his “position”, Dayan certainly seems a
>likely candidate as an advocate of that position, with an Israeli
>scenario of the Liberty passing real time info to Washington/Maryland?
>where it was piped to “Arabist” State Dept. officials who passed it on.
>
>The concept of “perception” requires assigning to the involved Israelis
>either hard INTEL confirming the scenario or, in my mind more likely, an
>not unreasonable level of “paranoia”. After all, in Israel more than
>anywhere else, there were politicians, military commanders and a
>populace who had recent reason to be somewhat distrustful of the designs
>and motives of the great powers.
>
>Did the scenario represent reality?
>
>I doubt it, not believing that the data which the Libery could rapidly
>pass back to the US could be so quickly pipelined to the “Arabists” (who
>certainly may have existed) and fed to Damascus/Cairo/Amman/etc.
>
>Why?
>
>I’m not sure that our communications capacity (even among the cloak and
>dagger set/BJs/etc.) was that good.
>
>I suspect that most of what Liberty collected was tactical junk,
>examples of our concentration on volume with the hope of panning a few
>grains of gold from a tub full of sand. Sure, there may have been some
>pearls, but it takes better evaluators than most of the Navy types I
>knew to quickly recognize pearls (and even then the pearls may be the
>sort to use for predictions of future methods and activities).
>
>I’m relatively sure that, given the Washington of the time, that the
>Liberty’s sort of INTEL data could be chewed, digested and communicated.
> either accurately or quickly enough to make the scenario operative.
>
>Dealing with a Washington in which paper and ideas move at a snail’s
>pace (as I do), the idea that info could move from NSA to the Executive
>Branch National Security structure to State to the legendary “Arabists”
>quickly enough to alter the course of events in the ME seems unlikely.
>
>What self-respecting Arab leader would have treated INTEL received by
>such a pipeline as credible without a bunch of corroboration? The stuff
>would have literally smelled of disinformation.
>
>But reality is not the cause of events, pereception is (especially the
>perceptions of those able to dispatch combat units). Mutual suspicion
>forms the keel of international relations (and rightly so).
>–
>Kestrel Syndicate – Oliver Associates – Southwest Regional Council
> “Quid consilium cepit…”