All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I'm the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you at scotthorton.org.
You can sign up for the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
All right, well, I'm here on location in San Diego, and I'm with Larry Bowen and Joe Metters, and Joe, we've spoken before on the phone.
Very happy to meet you guys here in person.
We've had a great time, went to dinner last night, and got to hang out, become friends here a little bit.
Both of these men are survivors of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, June 8th, 1967, and I want to give thanks to Daryl Cooper for helping arrange this, too, so this could happen today.
So, I guess I want to start with the bottom line, the number of KIA and wounded, and then we'll get into the story of how events started unfolding that morning, and try to pick up the gory details here.
I guess, first of all, name, rank, serial number, what were you guys doing?
You were NSA, and you were in Navy, right?
Right.
So go ahead and just talk about your- Mine was still Navy.
I was a cryptologic technician, radio man, second class petty officer, and my primary duties were to collect international morse code, copy it, and then it would be processed and sent back to NSA for further processing.
That morning, the morning of the attack, I had a day watch, and I was setting a position, copying code, and I found out later that morning that what I was copying was pretty significant, that they were talking about a major offensive against a target, didn't identify the target, and that my buddy Bob Eisenberg told me at lunchtime that it was big, somebody was really going to get their butt kicked.
Of course, I don't know if he knew that it was us, he didn't say it, but then we were outside of the secure spacesuit.
We learned to talk around what's going on, just so that you can communicate like we're communicating now.
So I haven't really told you what I was copying or anything else, but suffice it to say that it was important.
Yeah, sounds like it.
All right, now, and that's Larry, so go ahead Joe, what were you doing on the boat that morning?
My rank was signalman, I was responsible for visual communications between ships like Flag Oyster and Flashing Light and the Semaphore.
I had just gotten out of A school, signalman A school, in Newport, Rhode Island, and I got assigned to the USS Liberty, which steams independently, so I couldn't figure out why they would have me as signalman on the ship.
How old were you guys at this time?
I was 19.
You were 19.
I was 21.
I'm sorry, why was it confusing that they had you being the signalman that day?
Because we steamed independently, we didn't steam in company with other ships.
So I stood quartermaster watches, which I got very adept at, but not what I was born to do as far as the Navy was concerned.
But then that means that the American flag flying on the ship that morning was your responsibility?
That was virtually the only job I had to do except for lookout watches, was to make sure that at the appropriate times the flag was flying.
And do I have it right from this new documentary, Sacrificing Liberty from True News, I believe they say that you started out with a five by eight foot flag.
Yes, a regular steaming ensign we called it.
We normally went out at sea, no ships around, we didn't fly the flag because it would just be destroyed by the wind and the stack blowing all of its carbon out.
But when we got close to land or had ships in the area, we would raise the flag.
I got you.
So for those of us who aren't Navy sailors, how far away would another ship have to be to be too far away to identify that flag by sight, do you think?
I don't mind binoculars and everything, but just by naked eye, how far away could you recognize that as an American flag, do you think?
I'd say about seven or eight miles.
And so if you're talking about a slow flying reconnaissance plane, for example, that was buzzing right by the ship, is there any way in the world they can mistake that flag for any other thing, Joe?
One of the aircraft flew so low it rattled our deck plane.
So we could see the aircraft quite clearly, the pilots, and we knew from the intercepts that they were reporting back to their ship, back to their headquarters that we were an American ship and flying an American flag.
Let me make a comment about the focus on flying the American flag.
Any ship can fly an American flag if they want to, and that is not a specific indicator of the nationality of the ship.
You have things like the color of the ship, the length of the ship, the structure of the ship, the superstructure, and all that stuff to consider the flag.
There's writing on it, too.
Yeah, there's writing.
There's standard U.S. Navy markings.
And so where it says USS Liberty, that's on the stern?
That's on the stern.
It just said Liberty.
It didn't say USS Liberty, but that was the standard writing.
But an experienced Navy or Air Force would be able to recognize those letters as that's American lettering on an American boat.
We're talking broad daylight on a bright sunny morning, right?
Oh, absolutely.
Not a cloud in the sky.
So now in the documentary, they say that you guys saw the Israelis.
Of course, you're rooting for the Israelis.
It's the middle of the 1967 Six-Day War here.
And so you guys are waving at them and saying, hey, look, it's our Israeli friends.
How are you guys doing?
Because they're flying surveillance flights over the Liberty for how long that morning?
How many planes came to check you guys out?
About, I'd say about a dozen times, really.
About a dozen times?
Yeah.
And they would circle the ship.
And like I say, we waved to the pilots.
And did that seem odd, though, that they kept coming back and back and different kinds of planes and everything?
It wasn't uncommon that we would have aircraft come out from the, you know, from the west coast of Africa where we normally steamed up and down during that trip anyway.
It was common for a reconnaissance aircraft to come out and check us out.
So we didn't think anything about it.
Okay.
So then, unless I'm leaving anything out, we go ahead now to the first indications of trouble here that morning.
They just, a fighter jet just opened fire, strafing the ship.
Is that right?
Yeah.
I was on the pilot house.
We had just secured from General Quarters drill.
It was a little after two o'clock in the afternoon.
And Lloyd Painter was the officer at the deck, and he was watching the surface search radar.
And he noted on the radar some very high speed, he assumed, aircraft coming, approaching us, flying up our starboard side.
And so we all ran up to the signal bridge, you know, we thought would just be another circling of the ship.
But when the aircraft got a little ahead of us, they turned left immediately to what we would think was another circling of the ship, but they got straight in and directly in front of us, turned immediately left and began strafing.
And then we all went down to the pilot house.
And so at that point, the captain's on the microphone giving you all instructions, telling you all, you know, what are we supposed to do?
I guess the ship is only armed with a couple of light machine guns, is that correct?
Well, four .50 caliber machine guns.
And so somebody jumps on the guns and starts shooting?
No.
No?
Well, there's one of the guys in the headquarters, excuse me, the General Quarters station was at Mount 51, which was on the starboard side of Bonifoxtel.
And he was on a .50 caliber machine gun, and he's fired one bullet at the attacking torpedo boats, actually.
Because I don't think we fired at the aircraft, they were moving too fast.
But he fired one bullet, and the Israeli says that removed all doubt that we were an enemy ship.
Here we are after going an ungodly barrage from attacking jets without firing a single shot at them.
And then torpedo boats appear, and we fired one shot, and poof, they were the enemy.
Yeah, they were just making up excuses after the fact at that point.
Because isn't it right, Lear, that the torpedo boats didn't even approach until the planes had already been attacking for quite a while, right?
That's correct.
How long had the air attack been going on before the torpedo boats even showed up?
Twenty-five to thirty minutes, and it was a two-prong kind of attack.
They did the strafing, several passes on us, firing .50 caliber armor-piercing shells and rockets at the ship.
The air attack and later the motor torpedo boat attack ended up with, we had 821 rocket-sized holes in the ship's hull and superstructure.
But the torpedo boats came pretty much after the air attack.
Now, I'm going to change the subject.
We'll pick it back up at the torpedoes for a second, but before we started recording, Joe, you mentioned how, of course, virtually all veterans who go through actual combat have some kind of PTSD from this thing, but at least for these other guys that can go through some therapy, some kind of way to put it behind them, but because you guys' story is suppressed, and you guys have to dedicate your lives to being full-time activists to try to tell the truth about this story, to let the people of this country even know that this happened, that you can't ever put it behind you.
I can tell when he's talking, this is really hard for you still, isn't it?
Yeah, very hard, yeah.
It's an incredible amount of violence, and seen in the documentary the way they show a lot of the bullet holes and the damage, and I guess some kind of dramatization of what it was like at the time, but 34 dead, that's not dying in their sleep.
That's torn apart by these bullets coming in at this high speed rate.
One thing, when I do my talks, and I haven't done very many recently, but when I do them, normally you'd write out your notes, whether they're bullet or written out speech that you give.
I can't do that.
I have to get up there and just give it a virtually off-the-cuff comments about the attack, because it's always constantly with me, and if I had to write it down, I just have to be reliving it in detail, and that affects me.
Yeah, and have you guys had therapy and had professional help with this?
I'm still under therapy for PTSD.
See, I was a CT, so as a communications technician, I had top-secret clearance, and knew enough that when they told us never to speak of it, or we'd be fined or imprisoned or both, it was like normal for me to just clam up and not say anything, and then after I retired from the Navy in 1986, I went to work as a defense contractor, still needing my clearances, and so, again, I suppressed all of the trauma.
I was having nightmares and wake up with cold sweats, and my wife knew that there was something wrong, but she didn't quite understand what I was going through until that docu-series by True News.
When she saw that, it kind of opened her eyes to the trauma that we experienced, and so I've been going through therapy now for about four or five years, because I didn't open up until after I retired.
Wow, so it wasn't even until, what, 2016 or 17 or something, maybe the first five years?
No, not 2016.
I reconnected with Ron Kuchel, and we started talking about the ship and the Liberty Veterans Association and getting actively involved, and it helped me so that I can talk to you now without breaking down.
When I first started therapy, I couldn't talk about it, and there's still parts of the attack that are blank for me.
I was, as a secondary or maybe as a third assignment I had during the attack, I was detailed back to the fantail as a phone talker, because our phone talker, Larry Weaver, had been hit by a rocket and tore him up pretty bad.
So I got detailed to go back there and be the phone talker, and when I saw the torpedo boats coming back for the second time, I had to relay that to the bridge, but then there's a part of that that's just blank for me.
I don't know if they were still firing at us or if they were just coming back not to call for assistance, but I'm not sure what their purpose was, but I can't recall what I was doing back there other than trying to hide behind this wench that we use for the anchor, but again, the therapy has helped me to be able to discuss those kinds of things now without breaking down, so that's a good thing, plus I'm on medication.
Ritch, that is a good thing, it's a tragedy, it took 50 years for you to 49 to be able to take that step, I'm really glad it's helping you, is that the same for you Joe?
Yeah, I started talking about the Liberty when I read Jim Ennis' book, and it was interesting the way I found out about it, my wife is a voracious reader and she went into Barnes and Noble looking for a specific book, and so she went up to the desk and asked the clerk to look it up on her computer to find out if they have it, and as luck would have it, instead of her book, Jim Ennis' book appeared, so she bought that book and gave it to me, and I read it in one sitting.
And what year is this?
This was...
79.
79, and I read it in one sitting and I wouldn't speak to anybody for a couple days, and I haven't, to be honest, I haven't picked it up since.
Yeah, man, that must have been tough.
Well, so, I mean, I don't know, maybe I would like to think that doing the activism that you do and telling the truth about it and trying to bring the story to light is helpful, but I guess you're saying it's actually really hurtful too, it really makes it difficult.
It's a brick wall.
After about 35 years, I finally went to the vet center to ask for some counseling, and they wouldn't give me group counseling, they had me individually with the sociologist, and it just turned into, instead of describing the attack and what I was feeling at the time, it turned into a bit session about how my members of Congress have treated us for, at the time, for the past 45 years.
Yeah.
And it helped me then, but after I got out of the session, I went back to trying to interface with these members of Congress and the silence that we received from them.
I mean, that must be so difficult.
They're just, I mean, they're Congress, what can you say, they're the worst.
And, I mean, do you get any encouragement?
We talked a little bit last night about Devin Nunes, cared a little bit, he was one member of the House who was willing to stick up for you guys, gave an award to one of your buddies, right?
Yeah, he gave a silver star to Terry Albardier.
He was the ET who put together the antenna that we finally got out our SOS to the Sixth Fleet.
And I know James Traficant used to stick up for you guys back in Atlanta.
Was there anybody else really in Congress?
No.
Who has your back this whole time?
No.
It's a matter of speaking to members of Congress.
Before the blood on the deck was dry, we had senators from New York City apologizing for the Israeli mistaken attack on the Liberty.
Before one word of any testimony was taken, they just assumed that there was a mistaken attack and got up in Congress to apologize for Israel.
I guess that was before they got the memo that they just shouldn't mention it at all.
I mean, you're just going to put this in the memory hole.
They don't talk about it now.
That's just amazing.
And I told you guys when we were talking last night, I hadn't heard about the USS Liberty until I was in my, probably, I think, mid-20s, 24, 25, right when the Israelis were helping the YSEN to the Iraq War, and I was starting to learn a lot more about America and Israel's relationship.
Haven't you ever heard of this?
Never heard of this?
Yep.
This huge event, just incredible.
The suppression of the history of it is, it's a story almost as remarkable as the event itself, that they're able, in this society, in the USA, the land of the First Amendment and all of these things, the very kind of, the notion of free speech, First Amendment notwithstanding, but the value that the American society has always held in free exchange of ideas and telling the truth in the news and digging into revisionist history and retelling old stories in new ways and all these things, but the USS Liberty, dead silence.
It's just incredible.
There was a time when we would hold an annual memorial service at either the site of the mass grave at Arlington National Cemetery or lately at the Navy Memorial in Washington.
Every year we would invite members of Congress to attend and none of them attended.
I remember one time, it sticks in my mind, we were having a memorial service at the mass grave and right after the memorials, we had invited the Navy to participate and so right after the memorial was completed, the chaplain showed up from the Navy and I thought how ironic that they showed up at the end of the memorial service.
Yeah.
This reminds me of the 16 hours it took them to rendezvous with us after the attack.
Yeah, well, let's talk about that.
I'll make a note of the 16 hours.
Let's talk about the back to the attack here.
You guys say the planes were essentially machine gunning and napalming the ship for about 25 minutes.
Yeah, it was a well-coordinated attack.
They started by jamming our radios on both U.S. Navy and U.S. Navy tactical and international maritime distress frequencies.
They used unmarked aircraft.
They initiated the attack with the high-speed mirage aircraft that took out every gun tub, had rockets in every gun tub and every antenna mount to remove any defensive or communications capabilities we had.
Then they brought in this lower Mystere aircraft to napalm us.
So just let me stop you right there.
This is all those surveillance flights that have been going on in the morning there.
Apparently, they did a really good job of planning this thing back at headquarters that we're going to identify all their little guns and every little different antenna and you're going to hit them here, here, here and here.
Very well planned.
It's hard to reconcile that with any spin that this was some kind of accident when they were being that careful in picking the individual small targets on the ship itself, which is different than just while they tried to sink it, right?
Like the first thing, as you're saying, the first thing they did was very specifically jam all your signals and in fact destroy as much of your radio equipment as they could.
Yeah, the attack was very well coordinated and the Israelis claim that the attacking aircraft circled the ship a few times at low and slow speeds to on identification runs.
Well, we know for a fact because we were there watching them that they never circled the ship and I don't think anybody would claim that a jet aircraft could fly over the ship at low altitude and nobody hear it, nobody would see it.
Sure.
So they're definitely lying about that and it's for only one thing.
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Well, and as Larry was saying, they saw him coming in on the radar.
Uh oh, somebody's coming in hot here.
These aren't those earlier surveillance planes flying slow.
Somebody's coming in fast.
And then the next thing you know, there's machine gun fire.
So there's no time for a slow circle there.
It doesn't sound like in your story there.
All right.
So now the torpedo boats show up and I'm no Navy guy.
I was surprised to hear in the documentary here.
I don't know if I already knew this.
I'd forgotten that five torpedoes were fired in total.
Yes.
But four of them failed to hit the ship.
Now, if I'm shooting a BB gun at the side of a barn, I ought to be able to hit it.
So can you guys explain to me how four out of five torpedoes missed that giant steel ship?
I mean, how evasive of maneuvers could they have possibly been engaged in to dodge those torpedoes?
How does that happen?
They probably weren't very well practiced in launching torpedoes.
One of the things that I'd like to...
Yesterday, Larry was in the interview with Jocko.
He mentioned the fact that in the research spaces, the CTs stayed down there.
I'm sorry, the CTs?
The CTs were down in the...
What's a CT?
Communications technicians.
Oh, gotcha.
They were the spies on the ship in their research spaces.
After the torpedo attack started, the word was passed to stand by for torpedo attack starboard side.
Now, these CTs were below the water level, and they stayed there knowing that a torpedo was headed toward them.
And I'd just like to acknowledge to Larry how proud I am that those guys stayed at their posts, even knowing that they were in mortal danger.
Yeah, and that they were.
Again, 34 killed.
It seems like a miracle that it was less than that, or it wasn't more than that.
Now, okay, so on the torpedoes, I guess I'm to understand that the boat would have been sunk just by the one torpedo, other than just the sheer luck that it slammed straight into an I-beam that served as a shield, essentially, and made the damage much less worse than it otherwise would have been.
Is that correct?
Yeah, the five torpedoes that they admit to firing, four of them missed, and one hit the I-beam.
And it should be noted that while in one version of the Israeli claim of what happened during the attack, they claim they mistook us for the Al-Qazir, which was an Egyptian tramp steamer, half our size, black-hulled, rusted out, chained to a pier in Alexandria at the time.
But a forensic analysis of the torpedo hit tells us that those torpedoes were set to run at a depth that would allow, or that had the torpedo run completely under the Al-Qazir without it striking it.
Yeah, and we'll get back to all the different wild and varied and changing excuses for this attack here in a little bit.
But now, I'm so sorry to say, I meant to get to this, and I did not get to watch the whole new documentary.
I've seen documentaries about it in the past.
The Al-Qazir one has some great stuff where they have the audio of the fighter pilot saying, sir, this is definitely an American ship.
You sure you want me to fire on it?
And headquarters says, you heard me.
Follow your orders and hit the ship.
But I did not get to see the second two parts of the new documentary, Sacrificing Liberty.
Don't feel bad, I haven't watched it all either.
Yeah, we all need to get on that.
But now, so I didn't get to see if they addressed this, but I remember this from either talking to you before or from talking to Ron Kukal, that y'all deployed lifeboats into the water and started evacuating guys into the lifeboats.
No, we didn't.
The life rafts weren't manned.
Oh, they weren't?
They were empty.
Oh, I see.
But they just strafed them before you guys could get in.
We had eyewitness testimony before the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry where Lloyd Painter, the officer of the deck, witnessed the machine gunning of the life rafts.
And he testified to that fact during his testimony before the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry.
But his testimony has been removed from the record, not redacted.
I guess I had misunderstood that.
I thought that you already had sailors in those life rafts when they were being strafed.
They strafed the life rafts so no one could use them.
Yeah.
It's the same difference.
They wanted you to go down with the ship, not with the raft.
The war crime is removing any chance of survival should we have sunk.
That's a war crime that the U.S. government has allowed to be committed with impunity.
Right.
And now you guys told me too last night that, maybe Phil mentioned this, that once the ship is disabled, even your enemy, even if they still thought you were the terrible Egyptians that they were at war with, once they had disabled the ship, they were obligated to come and rescue you guys.
Under the law of the sea and the laws of war and all of that, they can't let you drown.
They have to come and save you, right?
That's right.
But they didn't do that.
No, they left the scene or came back about an hour later, probably hoping that we would have already been sunk.
But they came back about an hour later with an offer of assistance.
Of course, we thought the attack was still on and thought it was just a ruse to get access to the ship.
So Captain McGonigal said no in not so polite terms.
So now, Bobby's question here, I'm sure everyone's wondering as they listen to this, where the hell's the rest of the U.S. Navy during this?
The 6th Fleet was roughly 500 miles away.
But once they got our SOS on the USS Saratoga, they scrambled jets to come to our aid.
And before those jets got over the horizon, Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense, recalled, you know, he called, you know, on a hi-com, I guess it was, or...
It was a telephone call.
Yeah, it was a telephone talk.
And he called and told them, you know, bring those jets back.
I didn't say why, he just said, recall those jets.
Recall those jets.
So in other words, I mean, am I right then that that means that the Israelis were already on the phone with Washington, D.C. saying, we tried to sink your battleship here, and so we're in the middle of trying to sink it, so don't go rescue your guys?
I mean, what could possibly be the explanation for his call at that time?
We didn't know.
We didn't report to the 6th Fleet who we were going to be under attack by.
Right.
So the assumption should have been, it's the Egyptians.
We've got to go save our guys from the Egyptians.
Exactly.
And there's no other reason to think...
Now, do we...
Is there any other indication that we know of from McNamara's side of the story of what he was doing there?
Does he have an official excuse for that?
According to Larry Geiss, who was the commander of Carrier Division 4, I think it was, he took the call from LBJ and McNamara, and it was relayed through Morocco, and we've been in contact with a guy named Tony Hart, who was stationed there, and actually handled the phone call, and he listened to it.
And LBJ said he didn't care if the ship sunk.
His concern was for the well-being of the Israelis.
Yeah, the only thing that came out during, I don't know, the course of the investigations is that there was thought that because the 6th Fleet had been conducting nuclear drills earlier in the day, that possibly McNamara thought that the aircraft were nuclear-armed.
So when they got the notification to recall the first wave of jets, the carriers, both the Saratoga and the America, ended up reconfiguring their jets to conventional weapons, and they relaunched a second wave.
And that's when McNamara got back on the phone and said, you know, I told you to recall those jets.
And that's when Admiral Geiss said, I want it from a higher authority.
And that's when Johnson got on, like Joe was saying, and said, I don't care if the boat sinks and everybody on board goes to the bottom of the Met, I'm not going to embarrass an ally.
I'm sorry, let me just make sure I understand that.
You're saying that they kind of have a plausible excuse for turning the planes back the first time they thought they might have been armed with nukes, but then they launched planes that they knew for certain were armed only with conventional weapons.
And then that was when the President himself intervened and said, you heard me.
Yes.
And this is while you guys are being attacked by the planes still, at the same time frame?
Yes, yes.
This is before the torpedo boats.
And I think Joe mentioned it yesterday during our interview that if the jets had been allowed to proceed and come to our aid, the torpedo boats never would have gotten there to attack us, because the jets would have been able to turn them back.
And that would have saved 25 guys' lives.
When the torpedo hit in the communication spaces, we lost 25 sailors.
Yeah, I was just wondering, how fast do those planes fly again?
If they're 500 miles away?
They could have made it in less than an hour.
Yeah.
Even if they had to go on afterburners all the way, and they were dry, they could almost run out of fuel by the time they got there.
A, they would have driven off the aggressors, and if they did run out of fuel, they could fly to an Israeli air base and refuel.
If they wouldn't get shot out of the sky at that point, right?
Yeah.
For coming to y'all's aid.
Oh, man.
But it should be noted that the radio men in the 6th Fleet were listening to our calls for help, knowing that those aircraft had been recalled.
Yeah.
And that had to affect them.
Yeah.
Have they talked about that much?
You have testimony from the guy who fielded the phone call here.
Because you're right, they must have been all sitting there cringing to death.
We've been in contact with some radio men from the various ships, and they said that it really affected them.
Yeah, man, this is such an unbelievable story.
Now, I want to talk about the motive, but I want to make sure that I'm not missing too much of the actual story of the battle itself, such as it was the massacre.
One of the things that I learned, and we don't have to go into this, guys, if you don't want to, I mean that, but one of the things that they really talk about in the documentary is the scene in the med bay and in, I guess, the mess hall afterwards, which was being shifted into a temporary med bay.
Again, these guys weren't dying in their sleep.
These guys were being torn to bits and dying right there in front of you guys trying to save them and all of that.
I mean, can you describe that scene, the chaos on the ship after the attack finally ended?
The mess decks was made into a dispensary.
We took mattresses off our bunks, put them on the mess tables, and then put the seriously wounded shipmates on makeshift beds out on the mess decks.
The carnage was just unbelievable.
There were people there with missing body parts.
There were people there with shrapnel wounds that, I mean, looked like they'd been through a meat cutter.
I remember one of the fellas had his head split open where you could actually see the gray matter of his brain.
I think he also had a thumb missing or something.
He asked Phil Turney to find his thumb.
I mean, of course, Phil couldn't.
I mean, he had no idea where to even start to look, but here's a guy that's got his whole forehead wide open and he's more worried about his thumb.
During the night, those of us that could walked through those spaces there on the mess decks trying to comfort the guys that were laying there in pain.
We only had one doctor on board, Lieutenant Pfeiffer, and then we had two corpsmen.
I mean, they had their work cut out for them because 70 percent of the crew was either killed or injured.
There were 34 killed and 174 wounded out of a complement of 294.
So there were other places that we had injured other than just on the mess decks because there just wasn't enough room.
Yeah, and I'm sorry, I want to go back one step.
You mentioned, I think, Joe, the story of the guy who, and this is whenever I interview Ray McGovern about this story, he always loves to tell the story of the hero who requested permission from the captain to risk his neck under heavy fire to go and reconnect at a broken antenna and make the antenna work so they could send the SOS.
Can you talk about that?
Yeah, it was Terry Helbardier, who was a, I think, a third class ET.
And he knew of an antenna that had been what we call surveyed.
It means it wasn't working.
And he got that antenna up and working again.
And that was the only antenna that was working on a frequency that we could call out to.
And that's how we got our SOS message out to the 6th Fleet.
So Lyndon Johnson himself calls off the air support, but then these ships, you say they're 500 miles away, do they at least start steaming towards you to rescue you the next day?
Or who comes to your rescue finally?
It was 16 hours later.
The USS Massey and USS Davis came out of the morning fog and rendezvoused with us.
And then we saw the aircraft carriers and the cruisers that were in the 6th Fleet.
They came to our assistance and then not in time.
Yeah, definitely not.
So, and then I guess as soon as they rescue you, some admiral tells you, you all better keep your mouth shut and never talk about this ever again, like immediately, right?
And you guys just, you don't even have a chance to complain, where the hell were you guys while we were getting shot?
Because you're already sworn to secrecy before you can even say that, right?
That's right.
Admiral Kidd was, came on board and he took his admiral stars off and says, okay, tell me what happened.
And so the guys...
Wait, what does that mean?
He took his admiral stars off before he asked?
He said, I'm just one of you guys now.
This is between you and me, Joe, just talk to me straight kind of thing.
Right.
So the guys told him exactly what happened.
And so after they did, he put his stars back on and says, okay, I'm the admiral now.
You're the seaman.
You're not to talk about this to anybody.
Not your wife, not your girlfriend, not your family, not your friends, nobody.
Not each other.
Not each other.
No.
During, for the rest of your life.
You're not to say anything or we will come after you and you'll spend some time in jail.
And you're on the deck of the Liberty still while he's reading you this riot act?
Or you're already on his ship?
No.
You're still on the Liberty when he's telling you this?
We're on the Liberty, yeah.
Unbelievable.
What a story.
This is just...
Okay.
Now, I mean, I almost don't even want to spend time on the Israeli shoddy excuses here.
Let's hold that for a second.
Let's talk about, and I guess this is speculation, but can we talk about what you guys think is the most probable motive?
Or are there a few different choices of what are, I've heard different versions of what was the purpose of this vicious assault on an allied ship?
You know, just before we came in here to record, we were talking to the nice lady out front and I told her, you want to hear a crazy story?
These guys were sailors on a ship that was attacked by Israel.
And she said, what?
But we're best friends.
They always have our back.
I said, well, it's the other way around.
We always have theirs, but they ain't necessarily the best friends of ours.
But she just was so amazed to hear that.
First time in her life.
Guarantee she ever heard of the USS Liberty.
But that sounds crazy.
That sounds like the Canadians attacking us or the British.
Why would our friends, in fact, this little country that is so dependent on American goodwill under what crazy idea would they think that this was a risk worth taking to try to kill you guys?
What do you think?
Well, let me say at the outset that nobody in the official Washington has bothered to ask the Israelis why they attacked.
But the one reason that has garnered some support is the fact that the Israelis delayed the invasion of the Golan Heights for a day while we were there and thinking that they could, you know, keep the U.S. government from finding out about the attack on the Golan Heights until it was a fait accompli.
The fear being that the Americans would pick up the phone and say, no, no, no, that's too far.
But those people who support that theory are apparently ignorant of the fact that we had an embassy in Tel Aviv and undoubtedly there were CIA and NSA guys there listening to the Israeli communications.
So why didn't they attack the American embassy there?
I mean, that might have been a bit more of a problem, but it's a good point, though, that it would have been redundant information as far as, you know, D.C. is concerned.
They would have already known anything that they could have learned from you guys about.
That's right.
And now, so one theory that I had heard before was that they had rounded up all of these Egyptian prisoners and they had either massacred them or they were about to massacre them in the Sinai and that they were worried that you guys would find out about that.
That's one theory.
And then I guess the most severe one of all is that they were hoping to sink the ship to the bottom and then they were going to blame it on Egypt and hope to provoke the United States into going to war against Nasser's Egypt.
Is that right?
That's correct.
I think that's the most prevailing theory because the United States had already activated or, you know, put on alert their nuclear forces, strategic air forces, and, of course, the Sixth Fleet was there and ready to go in and launch a major attack against Egypt because, like you said, that's who we thought was doing the attacking.
The aircraft that came out for the attack were all unmarked.
So, you know, again, it was a very thought-out, planned attack.
It wasn't something that was just a mistaken identity and we'll go out with our, you know, Sar David aircraft and blow it out of the water.
They didn't want us to be able to, you know, identify them.
So they were using unmarked aircraft.
The only time that changed was when the torpedo boats came on the scene and they were flying the Sar David.
I see.
If you just look at the tactics they used for the attack, initiate by jamming our radios, use unmarked aircraft, send in torpedo boats and fire five torpedoes ostensibly to strike us five times.
Only once, thankfully.
Machine gun life rafts in the water and followed by heliborne assault troops to undoubtedly to try to rappel down to the ship and kill all the survivors.
That would, that leads to a conclusion that their intent was to sink the ship and kill any survivors and then undoubtedly blame it on the Egyptians.
Which they would have gotten away with because he was going to be around to tell any other story than that.
But we survived and we're telling the story.
Right.
And what effect has that had on Israeli policies?
Oh, I think probably nothing.
However, it's extremely enlightening for the American citizens who get to learn this story and for the Navy sailors who get to hear this story.
You know, you guys mistaken assumption that morning that, oh, look, those are our friends.
Yeah, well, that's not altogether clear, is it?
And a severe reason for doubt.
So we talk about these excuses here.
First of all, on the mistaken identity.
We talked about how you put up a five by eight flag just because you're near a war zone.
So you put up a flag.
But then I think he said, too, that once the attack started, he put up a much bigger American flag.
Isn't that right?
A 13 by seven or something?
After, in hindsight, I think it was a lull between the air attack and the torpedo attack.
We noticed that the steaming incident had been shot down.
So Frank Brown and I got the largest flag we had on board, Holiday Colors, and hauled that up.
And that was flying throughout the torpedo boat attack.
And that's 13 by seven.
I get that right.
Something like that.
Something like that.
I don't know exactly the dimensions.
That's a big flag.
Yeah.
I mean, three plywoods across is 12 feet.
So people picture that that's 13 feet.
It's pretty wide.
OK, so and then, as you said before, the color of the ship, the silhouette of the ship, all these pilots should be absolutely trained, what every different Navy's boats look like anyway.
You said the writing on the back, Liberty, would have been unmistakable as any other Navy's ship.
Is that correct?
That's right.
Yes.
But they claim that they mistook us for a 40-year-old black-hulled, russet-up, Egyptian tramp steamer that was chained to a pier in Alexandria.
Which they knew good and well what was chained to what pier in Alexandria at the time.
You know, like we even have to mention that.
Like, they were confused about where all Egypt's boats were at the moment.
OK, and now, so in terms of, well, look, I mean, we already know, right, because you guys have all heard the audio too.
Like, we can't really translate from Hebrew, but you have the translations on the screen there of the pilots saying, this is the fighter pilots, I guess they weren't briefed on who they were attacking, right?
They were, the surveillance planes had gathered the intel, but the pilot seemed surprised and says, sir, this is an American ship.
And sir says, you heard me hit it.
Yes.
Follow your orders and hit it.
So there's just, that's it.
There ain't no point in trying to tell that lie anymore.
No.
That's not an accident.
It just couldn't possibly be.
Of course, the question in my mind is, where's the rest of the tapes?
Right.
Why didn't you just release that?
Why did you, you know, to hear the Israeli people, their proponents, talk about the three segments of tape that have been recorded, that's about 23 minutes in total.
You're trying to tell me that NSA people or whoever was monitoring the traffic would switch off their recording machines after a few minutes and then turn them back on, then turn them off, and then turn them back on again.
No way.
Not in the middle of a battle like that.
But then didn't you guys tell me too that the, was it, who was it at NSA was ordered to destroy all of this stuff, right?
Isn't that right?
What was the question?
Somebody was, somebody at NSA was ordered to destroy all the recordings and records about this, but then he, was it Phil was telling the story last night that they went ahead and found a loophole and made a training material and put the transcripts in the training material was the only way some of this survived at all, isn't that right?
I haven't heard that.
I thought that was the story Phil was telling last night, I guess.
Yeah, I wasn't aware of that and I know the NSA made a report in 1980, supposedly the classified true story of what happened on the USS Liberty and I had a copy of that report because I was still, you know, cleared for those and the report never talked about the purpose, you know, why Israel attacked or anything like that.
It was mainly concentrating on the fact that we did not receive a communication from the Pentagon that was supposed to move us 100 nautical miles off the coast, but the problem with that is, you know, we needed line-of-sight communications, you know, we had to be in at that 13 and a half, 14 mile, you know, range so that we could get the ground comms and, you know, line-of-sight communications.
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And then, and plus, I mean, in your experience, did that ever happen that the Pentagon told you to sail somewhere, but that the message accidentally went to the Philippines instead of to you?
That does sound like a catch-22 type scenario.
I could believe that.
Like in any other circumstance, I might buy that, that an order went to Antarctica and it was supposed to go to the Eastern Med, huh?
No, that's, I mean, you would think because of the type of communications that we had, the direct link that we had between the ship and National Security Agency, that we should have been able to get that, you know, direct.
Yeah.
You could hear everything else they were telling you, right?
Right, right.
This is the one order that they're essentially, in other words, they're lying.
Right.
And making this up after the fact that, oh, we told them to move 100 miles away and they didn't, but when there's no actual evidence that that ever happened at all, right?
There's no evidence to show that that message ever got transmitted to the USS Liberty.
How about to anybody else?
Did they get it in the Philippines?
Hey, Liberty, move away from the the Egyptian shore.
They got it in Morocco and they got it in the Philippines and the Sixth Fleet got it.
That's, I mean, that's why their ships were...
You're saying there is evidence that the order went out.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
There's evidence that the order went out, but we were supposed to be under the umbrella of the Sixth Fleet for comms during that.
So are you saying it is a possibility then that the Sixth Fleet was supposed to relay this order to you guys and they just never did or something like that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, this story is a mind blower, man.
I know it is.
I'll say again, I'm really thrilled that Jocko had you guys on.
I think this is really going to make a difference in moving the ball forward on this because, you know, like even if it was the Joe Rogan show, he has a much bigger audience overall, but Jocko's got every Navy base on the planet that's going to listen to that interview.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Like there's going to be captains and admirals and everybody are going to be hearing this thing on all seven seas, you know, all around the world.
And that's, he asked what would be a win-win, you know, if as a result of the interview yesterday.
Yeah.
And, you know, what we were hoping for is his listeners to do a letter campaign to their legislators, you know, trying to get, trying to get a USS Liberty Remembrance Day.
Part of what our goal has been for the Liberty Veterans Association is to get recognition for our 34 fallen shipmates.
If only you would just accept the lie that it was a big accident, you could probably get your memorial, right?
Yeah.
But if it was, you know, an accident, why would it be the most decorated ship in the U.S. Navy since World War II for a single engagement?
There's, you know, the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Bronze Stars, the Silver Stars, the 208 Purple Hearts, the Combat Action Ribbon, the Presidential Unit Citation, they had Navy Commendation Medals.
I mean, it was individual recognitions, but they were all done in private.
There was, you know, and that's another thing that, you know, when you get an award...
But it's a secret.
Yeah, yeah.
Mine was given to me at Captain Byrne's office over in Bremerhaven, Germany, and he told us when we got in there to, you know, that there wasn't going to be any photographs, no public recognition of the award.
You know, we were authorized to wear it, but we still couldn't talk about it.
Yeah.
And the cover-up is just, I mean...
Did you guys get awarded something?
Yeah, Purple Heart, and a Presidential Unit Citation, and Combat Action Ribbon, you know.
But here's your reward, but nobody's allowed to know about it, and you don't want to talk about it.
Yeah, the only people that are sailing around in the Met at the time with the Purple Heart would know Vietnam Medal.
Yeah.
So, now I'm interested in...
Well, there's so many different angles here, but before we talk about Dean Rusk and Admiral Moore and all of these guys, you know, taking it aside, which I think is really important, I guess I wanted to ask about a few of the different excuses that the Israelis have put forward.
There was just the mistaken identity, as we talked about, it was they thought it was an Egyptian trawler, but they had said something about someone had been shelling their beach that morning, and they thought it was you, but you guys, your ship was only armed with, you said, .50 caliber machine guns, and that was it, right?
Yeah.
So, that just did not happen at all, because you would have known if there was any other ship in the neighborhood.
That was just totally made up out of whole cloth, right?
Exactly.
And then, what was it you said in 1980?
Oh, this was the second excuse that they came up with, was that they had warned, they tried to warn you to be 100 miles, to move 100 miles away, but that, at that point, they're admitting that they knew it was an American ship, but they're just saying tough luck, because you were in the wrong spot, and you shouldn't have been.
They knew earlier that day, on June 8th, they actually had us plotted on their, in their war room, on their map, as a friendly ship, and later that morning, they had a change of, you know, watch, and what I understand happened was that they removed the pin from the board, thinking that, well, we were, would have moved off the area, out of the area, but they absolutely knew that it was the USS Liberty, that we were an intelligence ship, and the torpedo boats, when they got us on radar, another part of, an excuse on their part, said that they were, that we were steaming at like 35 knots, and in their mind, that made us a warship.
We couldn't do over 17 or 18 knots, without every boat, you know, the ship rattling, so it was another fabrication, another lie, that they came up with, trying to justify the attack.
Plus, their torpedo boats had a maximum speed of 27 knots, so how did, if we were going 35 knots, how did they catch up to us?
Right, yeah, they refuted themselves just right there.
Were there, is there much other spin, or they mostly just ignore the story, and just hope it goes away, or did they come up with any other excuses?
Yeah, in 1982, after the publication of Jim Nunes' book, Assault on the Liberty, the Israeli Defense Forces History Department did a complete review of all of the documents available for the attack, and they claim now that the reason they attacked was that we weren't displaying the proper Israeli markings, to indicate that we were an Israeli ship.
An Israeli ship?
Yeah, so they were cleared to attack.
Now, that would put every ship in the area under the threat, so they, they, that's so funny, you know, I, I swear, when you said that to me yesterday, I thought you just misspoke, and I let it go, but then you just said it again, and you meant what you're saying, that's what they're saying is, well, they weren't flying an Israeli flag, so it was open season on our allies, the Americans.
Yeah.
Okay, boy, they sure scraping the bottom of the barrel of excuses there, huh?
Oh yeah, and I've been trying to find the email address of somebody in the IDF History Department to pursue that with them, but I can't do it.
That's just incredible.
Okay, now, the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, he's a real hawk, he's with you guys on this.
Yeah.
And same for, who all else, the Admiral Thomas Moore, he was the head of CIA at the time, is that correct?
The DCI?
Moore was, at the time, Chief of Naval Operations.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, after the attack.
He is the only U.S. Navy Admiral that's ever been the commander of the Sixth Fleet and the Fifth Fleet.
I see, and then, so who else in the prominent positions in the Johnson government has come out and been honest about this?
All of the intelligence chiefs come out and supported us.
All of them?
All of them, every one of them.
The Director of NSA, Carter, said that there was no way that it could be anything but a deliberate attack.
And who was the DCI at that time?
I don't know.
I have to go back, I forgot to.
There's certainly something to see in that documentary, Dean Rusk, saying, I never believed these excuses at all, and you could tell he's upset about it, too, because it's his responsibility in a way, right?
He's the Secretary of State at the time.
Of course, McNamara, he's been on camera saying he doesn't even remember the incident.
Is that right?
Oh, yeah.
Is that in the Fog of War?
Does he ask him about it in the Fog of War?
I don't know.
Yeah, I bet he didn't even ask him about it in the Fog of War.
He says he doesn't even remember it happening at all.
That one time that the Israelis almost sank one of his ships when he was the Secretary of Defense slipped my mind.
What were we talking about again?
I don't remember.
That happens to me, too.
You know, I understand, Bob.
Oh, man.
Okay, so I know you need to get going here later, so let's wrap this up with the work that you guys are doing now, your friends, Phil Turney and Ron Kugel, the rest of your group, and all the work you're doing with Congress, the different organizations.
You guys told me last night you have a section at a museum in Wisconsin somewhere or something like that.
Let's hear about all of this stuff, all the good news about the ball being moved forward.
In fact, look, the reason that we're having this conversation right now here in San Diego is because I'm here and you guys are here to do interviews with Jocko Willink, who y'all sat down with and talked to yesterday, which that, to me, is this huge event itself.
That interview is sure to get such traffic and among members of the U.S. military, so I'm extremely excited to find out about the reverberations from that.
So, go ahead and talk about that, the interview with Jocko, how that went.
Talk about the organization, y'all's P.O. box and website and whatever, wherever people can contact you, whatever they can do to help you, your letter-writing campaign to Congress that you're doing, all these things.
Let it rip.
Okay.
Y'all flip a coin.
Who goes first?
Yeah, the letter-writing campaign that you're talking about is an attempt on our part to get the establishment of June 8th as the USS Liberty Remembrance Day.
It doesn't cost anything for Congress to do that.
It's just making that date annually, the Remember the USS Liberty.
And in my mind, and I think in the rest of the Liberty Veterans Association crew members' minds, that will start to show, you know, a little more recognition for the 34 men who lost their lives.
And, you know, we're not going to get a congressional investigation.
I mean, it's been 55 years.
They've already said that there's been congressional investigations, and there haven't been.
Well, let us make up another lie and throw it away, you know?
Right.
So, but...
Yeah, you know, that makes me wonder about the dads of the boys that died there too.
We're talking about all these young men.
All this time, like, there must have been, obviously, they'd all grown old and died by now, but have they been part of this?
The parents of some of the slain here?
Have they been working with you guys at all on this?
Yeah, some of the family members have actually come to our reunions to express their, you know, pleasure in what the Liberty Veterans Association is trying to do.
Joe's the curator of one of our websites that, you know, I mean, we've got a webmaster that actually takes care of it, but Joe's, you know, one of the major contributors to that to make sure he's got the right information in there.
And I'll let Joe talk about that, but it's, you know, what we're hoping for is to have the listeners contact their legislators and say, hey, look, here's a USS Liberty that was, you know, attacked back in 1967, and nothing has been done publicly for the crew.
And that's what we're looking for.
Yeah, we've got three websites.
One, USSLibertyVeterans.org, which is the master website.
Then we have USSLibertyVeterans.blog, which is my admittedly not very well updated attempt to spread the word about the USS Liberty in various articles that I write.
And we also have USSLibertyDocuments.info, which is, it's supposed to be an archive of all the documents available about the USS Liberty.
It's, by definition, it's constantly in a state of flux.
I'm sure, yeah.
But if you go to the USSLibertyVeterans.blog, one of the tabs on there is, I forget exactly the wording, but it is if you want to help us.
And you go to that tab and you have four letters that you can send.
And all it is is one of these things where you just fill in your name and address and all that stuff, and hit a button, and it'll send a letter to your members of Congress.
One asks for you to ask your congressional delegation for a copy of the U.S. government's investigation, or the congressional investigation of the attack.
All the people that have sent that letter and nobody has ever gotten a response.
Another one asks for the members of Congress to contact the Congressional Research Service and ask them if the U.S. government has ever investigated the attack on the USS Liberty.
Of all the ones that I've sent and others have sent in too, only one congressman actually submitted that to the Congressional Research Service.
Now you can't, as a civilian, you can't send a request to the Congressional Research Service.
It has to go through a member of Congress.
And the Congressional Research Service in effect said no, there has been no congressional investigation, no U.S. government investigation of the attack on the Liberty.
And there's another letter that asks for members of Congress to accept USS Liberty survivors bullets or points in their responses to their constituents who write about the USS Liberty in the past and continuing to today.
The members of Congress use bullets or points provided by Israeli partisans.
They refuse to use facts submitted to them by survivors of the USS Liberty.
And even if we contact them regarding that, they just ignore our letters.
Yeah.
Well now, so I know a lot of people, you know, are pretty cynical about the use of democratic politics to achieve a little d.
I mean, and I am too.
They're pretty cynical about that.
However, if there is a time to write letters to congressmen, it's when you know a lot of other people are doing the same thing at the same time, that it's not just some one-off that ends up in the trash.
But some staffer, maybe 435 staffers, have to say to 435 congressmen, sir, we keep getting these letters about the USS Liberty, and it doesn't stop.
They keep asking.
And we got 10 of them today, and we got 20 of them yesterday, and they keep coming.
That's when the difference gets made.
And so now is really the time.
And, you know, I've got a, I'm proud of the size of my audience for what it is.
But with you guys doing the Jocko Willock show, and the amount of attention that that is going to bring to this, I mean, if just a small part of my audience took advantage of the opportunity to know that a very small part of Jocko's audience are also going to be participating in this at the same time, now you're talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of letters at a minimum here.
And that does make the difference.
And I know just from doing this show and talking to people who work on Capitol Hill, or who are like activists trying to lobby on Capitol Hill, that it does make a difference.
Phone calls and letters, they do.
It's just a marginal difference.
But a lot of times the margin is what it takes, right?
You have all these congressmen, they pay all this lip service all day long to our heroic service members.
Well, here's some who deserve some attention.
And then the only contrary argument is, yeah, but a foreign state that's responsible for their pain won't like it.
Yeah, well, out of 435, maybe we can find one or two who aren't going to care so much about that and will in fact care about you more.
You know, it's absolutely worth a try to do.
I'm going to click those buttons and send those letters.
I hope people will do that.
And let's create that scene in those congressional offices.
Sir, these things keep coming in the email.
They just won't quit.
And maybe we need to do something about this.
And just let's at least put them in the position of having to discuss it among themselves that this is a part of reality.
How many of these congressmen have ever even heard of this in their lives?
Like, how many of them are going to have to do research to even find out that they're not allowed to talk about this and that they better shut up?
They might not even understand that they're not allowed to talk about it until they've been talking about it for a week and a half and someone finally comes to shush them, right?
We don't know.
So, worth a shot.
That's my rant.
I'm so happy you guys are doing this and so grateful for Draco having you all on too.
One counter to the claim that it's happened 54 years ago, what can an investigation do now?
It's a federal crime to commit war crimes.
It's also a federal crime to be an accessory after the fact.
So, members of Congress, people in the DOD are in a position to investigate the war crimes committed during the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty and there were war crimes committed during the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty.
Their refusal to do that makes them accessories after the fact of committing war crimes.
They do that today, not 54 years ago.
They've been doing that today.
They probably will get a letter from somebody and they will refuse to initiate an investigation today that makes them accessories after the fact.
Which might be a reason, which probably plays into the reason that they don't want to investigate it because they will be held accountable for their actions, for their inactions.
Well, they should know that the Department of Justice would never hold them accountable in any way and they might as well just tell the truth.
So, at least we have that.
In 2005, we submitted a war crimes report to the Department of the Army, which is the proper vehicle to submit those reports.
And we outlined, you know, just get a prima facie case of the war crimes that were committed.
They're obligated under the DOD law of war program to investigate all allegations of the violations of the laws of war, whether committed by or against the United States.
They waived that requirement under the DOD.
I sent a copy of that war crimes report that we prepared.
I sent that to the federal prosecutor in Houston.
Silence.
Not one word.
Not an acknowledgement that they received it at all.
Yeah.
It's kind of fun to imagine the scene in the office when they get that.
What do we do with this?
Yeah.
Boy, it's so thorough and well done and yet we don't want to touch it.
It's radioactive.
So, you know, at least you're putting them through a little bit of stress, Joe, you know?
All right, listen, we better wrap this up because you've got to get to the airport.
Larry Bowen.
And Joe Matters.
Thank you both so much for doing this interview and for all your hard work on this.
It's so important and I'm happy to whatever little small part I can play and help bring in y'all's story to other's attention.
So, really appreciate you.
Thank you both very much.
Thank you.
Just advertise their websites and Jocko's.
Absolutely.
We'll have all the links in the show notes at scotthorton.org when we post this up.
All right.
Thank you both again.
Thank you.
The Scott Horton Show, anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com, antiwar.com, scotthorton.org, and libertarianinstitute.org.
