The O.G. (Original Gonzo) journalist Hunter S. Thompson wielded a way with words that cut through a lot of 20th-century America’s crap, and throughout the mythic course of his life, the moments in which he crossed the country’s police state were well-documented in his books and articles.

In some cases, these times also live on in the government’s filing cabinets, crumbs in the official record of a citizen concerned but good-humored. Materials living at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, for example, are characteristically stamped with the writer’s wry wit and the flair of life on the road, sixties-style. Though some of these materials have been published before, the original colorful copies are something special to see.

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/aug/16/HST-LBJ-OMG/

June 8, 1967 was the worst day in the history of the National Security Agency. On that date, Israeli airplanes and torpedo boats mauled and nearly sank an American spy ship in international waters, killing or maiming most of its crew. This tragedy appears as a footnote to Israelis, an unpleasant sideshow of their victorious Six Day War, while official Washington preferred the embarrassing episode be forgotten. But NSA has never let the Liberty and her ill-fated crew disappear from memory altogether.

The USS Liberty was owned and operated by the U.S. Navy, which euphemistically referred to her as one of its Technical Research Ships, but she really worked for NSA. A converted World War Two freighter, the Liberty was barely a warship, possessing minimal armament for self-defense, and her mission was very hush-hush. She sailed the world collecting signals intelligence on behalf of her bosses at Fort Meade, Maryland. Her hull contained a large top-secret room where sailors of the Naval Security Group, NSA’s Navy component, intercepted and translated foreign communications.

In the mid-1960s, the Liberty sailed from crisis to crisis, wherever NSA needed her on station to collect SIGINT, and the beginning of June 1967 found her off the coast of west Africa. However, the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Middle East required her dispatch to the eastern Mediterranean, where war was about to break out again between Israel and her Arab neighbors.

http://observer.com/2017/06/50-years-ago-nsa-israel-attack-uss-liberty/

Dave Gahary & Phil Tourney with Andrew Carrington Hitchcock, June 8, 2017.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyfEkZ0Zmuw

In 1967, at the height of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, the Israeli Air Force launched an unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty, a US Navy spy ship that was monitoring the conflict from the safety of international waters in the Mediterranean.

Israeli jet fighters hit the vessel with rockets, cannon fire and napalm, before three Israeli torpedo boats moved in to launch a second more devastating attack. Though she did not sink, the Liberty was badly damaged. Thirty-four US servicemen and civilian analysts were killed, another 171 were wounded.

Later Israel apologised for what it claimed to be a tragic case of mistaken identity. It said that it had believed the ship to be hostile Egyptian naval vessel. US President Lyndon Johnson was privately furious but publicly the White House chose not to challenge the word of its closest Middle East ally and accepted that the attack had been a catastrophic accident.

However, as this exclusive Al Jazeera investigation reveals, fresh evidence throws new light on exactly what happened that fateful day - and the remarkable cover up that followed.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2014/10/day-israel-attacked-america-20141028144946266462.html

Alex Jones exposes the agenda behind the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty June 8, 1967 .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltoYJHQyDJ4

A former editor of LIFE magazine has just provided explosive information, in November of 2009, that indicates the Attorney General of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy, was working with LIFE in November of 1963 to bring down Vice President Lyndon Johnson and ruin his political career, so that his brother, President Kennedy, could replace LBJ as his running mate in 1964.

Read full article »»

LBJ and the Assassination of JFK»»

Was Johnson feigning hysterics to hide his role in the murder plot?

Recently declassified testimony by Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh, President Kennedy’s military aide for his fateful Dallas trip in November 1963, reveals how Lyndon Baines Johnson thought the assassination of JFK was part of a wider conspiracy in the very hours after the event.

Some would argue that LBJ was a very credible source for claiming the murder was part of an intricate plot, primarily because he was one of the conspirators who spearheaded the whole operation.

However, McHugh’s testimony suggests that either LBJ was deliberately attempting to extricate himself from suspicion of involvement, or that he was genuinely afraid he could be the next target of a gargantuan plot.

The interview with McHugh was originally conducted for the John F. Kennedy Library in 1978 but has remained classified until recently.

Read full article »»

Exactly when did doctors give up their efforts to save Kennedy's life? And when did Lyndon Johnson learn that JFK was dead? These are the central questions that need to be addressed in understanding the transfer of power on November 22, 1963. The questions may be obvious; the answers are not.

Read full article »»

A recently declassified oral history by Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh, President Kennedy's military aide on the Dallas trip, sheds new light on the critical hours after the shooting. McHugh makes startling claims about Lyndon Johnson's behavior in the wake of the assassination.

Read full article »»