USS Liberty
January 2nd, 2009 From
>X-Sender: jim@mail.halcyon.com
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>Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 10:16:01 -0700
>To: swrctmo@iamerica.net, mahan@microwrks.com
>From: Jim Ennes
>Subject: USS Liberty
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>At 10:59 AM 5/30/97 -0700, you wrote:
> >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.
>
>No one has suggested that Israel’s attack on the Liberty was intended to
>”avert American protest/approval of an Israeli attack on the Heights”.
>That idea reflects a complete misunderstanding of the issue. Israel
>was not trying to blackmail the US. That’s silly. They wanted the
>Liberty gone and were willing to do whatever it took to make
>that happen.
>
>The most knowledgeable people with whom I have discussed this,
>including then-JCS Chairman Admiral Thomas Moorer and
>then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk and intelligence experts from
>several areas feel that the most likely reason for the attack was to
>remove the Liberty — an obvious intelligence platform — from the
>area because they did not want us watching the war. They had no
>idea of our capabilities and probably had an exaggerated idea of
>what we could detect and a paranoid vision of what we were there
>for.
>
>The most common view is that they feared the US might learn of the
>invasion of the Golan Heights before the Heights were in Israeli
>hands.
>
>Remember, this was only 11 years after the Suez War. At that time,
>Israel had captured much of the Sinai and was approaching the Suez
>Canal when Eisenhower threatened to disallow tax deduction for
>contributions to Israel and take other steps unless Israel ceased
>its advance and withdrew to its own borders. They promptly did
>just that, but they resented it deeply and remained very angry at
>Eisenhower and the United States.
>
>Now they were planning to capture the Golan Heights, a major
>objective of the war, and they did not want more US
>interference. At the very least, they wanted to have the Golan
>under Israeli control before the US could launch an effective
>protest. They wanted to face the US with a fait accompli.
>
>So when the Liberty appeared along the coast just two hours
>before the invasion was to start, they postponed the invasion
>for 24 hours, attacked the Liberty, got us out of the area, and
>invaded and captured the Golan the next day.
>
>True, the US did know that preparations were being made, so the
>invasion was hardly a great surprise, but Washington was
>doing all in its power to stop the Golan invasion.
>
>Dean Rusk personally told me that he spent the entire night of
>June 7/8 on the phone to Israel urging them not to invade.
>Rusk’s main fear was that an invasion might bring the Soviets
>into the war.
>
>Rusk may or may not have known at the time that Soviet Echo II
>submarine K-172 was lying off the Syrian coast with orders to
>fire six nuclear tipped cruise missiles into Israel if Israel
>”and/or the US established a beachhead in Syria”. Did the
>Golan Heights fall under that definition? No one knows. Was
>Rusk aware that a Golan invasion might cause the Soviet
>submarine to start WWIII? No one knows. But it is reasonable to
>suppose that Rusk was aware and had these things in mind.
>
>It is also interesting that in just the past few days reports have
>come from Israel admitting that the Golan was no threat to
>Israel and was not needed for security. They wanted the Golan
>for the WATER. So they sent bulldozers deeper and deeper into
>Syrian territory until someone finally fired at them, then used
>that “attack” as an excuse to call in aircraft for “massive
>defense action” to neutralize and eventually to capture the
>Golan Heights. Perhaps these were among the things that
>the Israelis did not want the Liberty to discover.
>
>Another possible reason, which I covered in an article
>several months ago in the Washington Report, was the
>execution of Egyption POWs. Several reports in the Israeli
>press, including eyewitness reports from senior Israeli
>officers and reporters, are that the Israeli Defense Force
>executed up to 1,000 Egyptian POWs at El Arish during
>the morning of June 8, 1967, while the Liberty was just
>15 miles away. We were in a position to hear any radio
>traffic concerning this crime, and might even have been
>able to see it if we had trained our telescopes in the
>right direction.
>
>Again let me say, they had no way or knowing our
>capability. All they had was their paranoia and their
>fear that we might learn more than they wanted us to
>know.
>
>Jim Ennes
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