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40 - EVENTS/MAJOR_CONFLICTS/USS Liberty Incident.md
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@ -65,13 +65,19 @@ A longer declaration signed by Boston and dated January 8, 2004, at Coronado, Ca
The NSA's oral history interviews with personnel aboard the ship, conducted in 1980 and posted with the agency's USS Liberty release, contain divergent recollections. Terry McFarland, asked about the helicopter, answered "It was an Israeli helicopter," and said that he learned from others on the bridge, sometime after the helicopter left, that the attackers were Israeli.[^20] James O'Connor, asked whether the helicopter was well marked as Israeli, answered "Yes, I think it was." He also recounted a story, which he said he could not confirm, that "supposedly only a couple of us on the ship knew that there was an Israeli submarine out there."[^21] Richard Harvey, asked whether there was a feeling at the time that the attack might have been deliberate, answered "There was speculation but, I don't know that anybody had really any substance to base it on." The interviewer, Henry Millington, said in the same exchange that among the documentation collected was a report the Israelis turned over to the State Department in which, in his words, they "frankly admit that their reconnaissance forces did know, before the attack, that that was a U.S. ship," and that "the word never got down to the operating forces." Harvey replied that he had heard the claim, and that the speculation he had heard rested on the view that Israeli intelligence was too good not to know what the ship was.[^22]
### Former NSA officials on deliberate intent, 2003
Oliver Kirby, the NSA's deputy director for operations and production, said that within weeks of the attack he read signals intelligence transcripts and staff reports of Israeli pilots' conversations recorded during it, and that the intercepts made it "absolutely certain" that the pilots knew the ship was American.[^23] Retired Air Force major general John Morrison, the agency's second-in-command, said he had been informed of Kirby's findings at the time and endorsed them.[^23]
On March 5, 2003, [[Bobby Ray Inman]], NSA director from 1977 to 1981, said he "flatly rejected" the "Cristol/Israeli thesis" of an accidental attack. "It is just exceedingly difficult to believe that [the Liberty] was not correctly identified," Inman said, and he based the view on talks with NSA seniors who had direct knowledge at the time.[^23] William Odom, a former NSA director, said on March 3, 2003 that the deliberateness of the attack "just wasn't a disputed issue" within the agency.[^23]
### Moorer commission
The Independent Commission of Inquiry chaired by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, whose findings were introduced into the Congressional Record by [[John Conyers]], issued findings in October 2003. Its fourth finding is that "there is compelling evidence that Israel's attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew." Its sixth finding is that the White House "deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of the Liberty by recalling Sixth Fleet military rescue support while the ship was under attack." The commission's published biographies describe Moorer as chairman of the Liberty Alliance, an organization dedicated to obtaining an investigation of the attack.[^16]
### Israeli inquiry and apologies
On June 14, Commodore [[Shlomo Erell]], commander of the Israeli Navy, presented apologies to the American naval attaché and said the incident was a "great mistake."[^23] On June 17 an aide to the Israeli chief of staff, [[Yitzhak Rabin]], gave the American naval attaché the synopsis of the findings of the Israeli court of inquiry, read from a Hebrew document. The synopsis stated that "the attack on USS Liberty was not in malice; there was no criminal negligence and the attack was made by innocent mistake," attributed the attack to a chain of three mistakes, and stated that "the officers who knew of the identification of Liberty early the same morning did not connect Liberty with the unidentified ships said to be shelling El-Arish." It also stated, in the words of the inquiry officer, that "a grave additional mistake not less decisive than the three above mistakes made by IDF was made by the Liberty itself." The aide mentioned that the Israeli government had received a statement from the United States saying that the Liberty had been identified six hours before the attack rather than one hour as stated in an earlier American communication. The attaché's own evaluation, in the same telegram, called the Israeli standing order to attack any ship moving at more than 20 knots "incomprehensible" and described two of the Israeli justifications as mutually contradictory.[^24] A CIA memorandum of June 21 reported the preliminary findings of the Israeli court as "not in malice" and "innocent mistake."[^9]
On June 14, Commodore [[Shlomo Erell]], commander of the Israeli Navy, presented apologies to the American naval attaché and said the incident was a "great mistake."[^24] On June 17 an aide to the Israeli chief of staff, [[Yitzhak Rabin]], gave the American naval attaché the synopsis of the findings of the Israeli court of inquiry, read from a Hebrew document. The synopsis stated that "the attack on USS Liberty was not in malice; there was no criminal negligence and the attack was made by innocent mistake," attributed the attack to a chain of three mistakes, and stated that "the officers who knew of the identification of Liberty early the same morning did not connect Liberty with the unidentified ships said to be shelling El-Arish." It also stated, in the words of the inquiry officer, that "a grave additional mistake not less decisive than the three above mistakes made by IDF was made by the Liberty itself." The aide mentioned that the Israeli government had received a statement from the United States saying that the Liberty had been identified six hours before the attack rather than one hour as stated in an earlier American communication. The attaché's own evaluation, in the same telegram, called the Israeli standing order to attack any ship moving at more than 20 knots "incomprehensible" and described two of the Israeli justifications as mutually contradictory.[^25] A CIA memorandum of June 21 reported the preliminary findings of the Israeli court as "not in malice" and "innocent mistake."[^9]
### Settlement, 1980
@ -101,5 +107,6 @@ On December 18, 1980, the United States and Israel announced the settlement of A
[^20]: National Security Agency, Oral History Interview with Terry L. McFarland, June 23, 1980 (OH-1980-26). https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/18/2002804900/-1/-1/0/INTERVIEW_T_MCFARLAND.PDF. Copy of the NSA USS Liberty gallery, captured by the Wayback Machine, at https://web.archive.org/web/20210928195052/https://www.nsa.gov/Helpful-Links/NSA-FOIA/Declassification-Transparency-Initiatives/Historical-Releases/USS-Liberty/
[^21]: National Security Agency, Oral History Interview NSA-OH-21-80 with CDR James G. O'Connor, May 22, 1980. https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/18/2002804901/-1/-1/0/INTERVIEW_J_OCONNER.PDF. Sole source for the submarine story, which O'Connor recounts as a story passed among the crew.
[^22]: National Security Agency, Oral History Interview with Richard Harvey, July 16, 1980 (OH-1980-29). https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/18/2002804909/-1/-1/0/INTERVIEW_R_HARVEY.PDF. The Millington statement appears in the interviewer's question in the same transcript.
[^23]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 289, Telegram from the Defense Attache Office, Tel Aviv, June 15, 1967, reporting Erell's June 14 presentation of apologies. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d289
[^24]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 307, Telegram from the Defense Attache Office in Israel to the White House, June 18, 1967, "Israeli Court of Inquiry in USS Liberty incident." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d307
[^23]: David C. Walsh, "Former NSA Officials Agree," *Proceedings*, June 2003, Vol. 129/6/1,204. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2003/june/former-nsa-officials-agree
[^24]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 289, Telegram from the Defense Attache Office, Tel Aviv, June 15, 1967, reporting Erell's June 14 presentation of apologies. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d289
[^25]: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 307, Telegram from the Defense Attache Office in Israel to the White House, June 18, 1967, "Israeli Court of Inquiry in USS Liberty incident." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d307