AP report re Liberty Captain
January 2nd, 2009 From
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>Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 22:37:02 -0700
>To: mike.potter@artecon.com, mahan@microwrks.com
>From: Jim Ennes
>Subject: AP report re Liberty Captain
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>Here is a later story by the same AP reporter after
>Captain McGonagle’s surprising speec at Arlington
>National Cemetery. McGonagle has declined for 30
>years to make any comment about deliberateness or
>Israeli culpability. In that respect he has been the only
>known survivor not to be on record calling the attack
>deliberate. Finally he spoke out, saying the attack was
>not a case of mistaken identity as the Israeli government
>claims.
>
>
>By GENE KRAMER
>Associated Press Writer
>Sunday, June 8, 1997 8:33 pm EDT
>
>
>WASHINGTON (AP) — Ending three decades of noncommittal silence, the USS
>Liberty’s last skipper on Sunday urged that the U.S. and Israeli
>governments release full details about Israel’s 1967 assault on his ship
>that killed 34 and wounded 171 Americans.
>
>“I think it’s about time that the state of Israel and the United States
>government provide the crew members of the Liberty and the rest of the
>American people the facts of what happened, and why it came about that the
>Liberty was attacked 30 years ago today,” said retired Navy Capt. William
>L. McGonagle.
>
>“For many years I have wanted to believe that the attack on the Liberty
>was pure error,” said the 71-year-old winner of the Medal of Honor, his
>voice cracking with emotion.
>
>But “it appears to me that it was not a pure case of mistaken identity, it
>was on the other hand gross incompetence and aggravated dereliction of duty
>on the part of many officers and men of the state of Israel,” said
>McGonagle, who now lives in Palm Springs, Calif.
>
>His appeal for facts came in a speech to nearly 200 people at nearby
>Arlington National Cemetery. The occasion was a reunion of survivors from
>the intelligence-gathering ship, relatives and descendants.
>
>He recalled to reporters later that Israel quickly apologized for the
>tragedy, noting that the State Department accepted the apology but not
>Israel’s explanation of faulty identification and inadequate ship markings.
>By 1980, Israel had paid $12,889,907 compensation, some of which went to
>victims’ families and survivors, according to U.S. figures.
>
>McGonagle’s brief speech and later comments stopped short of some public
>allegations that the Israeli air and torpedo boat attack was undertaken for
>strategic reasons with knowledge that the target was an American ship in
>international waters of the Mediterranean north of Sinai.
>
>Shipmates who credit the former skipper’s heroic leadership with keeping
>the listing, crippled ship from sinking, agreed that it was the first time
>he has shared publicly their frustration about withheld information and
>suspicions of a cover-up.
>
>“American citizens deserve no less than to know exactly what transpired”
>when the U.S. 6th Fleet twice launched jets to aid the Liberty but they
>never appeared at the site of the ship, McGonagle said.
>
>The Liberty Veterans Association, which McGonagle joined only recently, has
>circulated assertions that the U.S. jets were recalled to avoid
>embarrassing Israel.
>
>“I do know that the U.S. government activated the hot line between
>Washington and Moscow, and the message to Moscow was in effect” to advise
>Egypt, its ally, that U.S. planes went aloft on a mission “to establish
>the status” of the crippled Liberty, the ex-skipper said.
>
>Then Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin “reported back to Washington in
>an hour that the message was received” by Egypt, he said, but still no
>planes came.
>
>Elaborating on his use of “incompetence” and “dereliction of duty,” the
>captain said Israeli spotters “identified us within minutes of arriving at
>our initial point of operation and yet we were surveilled eight times
>altogether” over several hours.
>
>“Not one time did they move the tower indication of our ship’s position at
>each sighting. … Had they done so they would have discovered we were in
>international waters the entire time, and we were not provoking any
>incident with our 40 50-caliber machine guns for limited self-defense.”
>
>After the June 8, 1967, daylight attack, the crippled Liberty drifted
>alone, “for 23 hours a ship without a country,” recalled former
>Boatswain’s Mate Larry Weaver, who four years ago moved from Lancaster,
>Pa., to Hawaii to continue treatment for massive injuries from 60 pieces of
>shrapnel.