'The Americans have findings that show our pilots were aware the ship was American,' a newly published document by the State Archives says

Amid the jubilee celebrations for the Six-Day War, the tragic story of the American spy ship USS Liberty – which was bombed by an Israeli fighter jet and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967 in the eastern Mediterranean – was somewhat overlooked. Thirty-four American sailors were killed in the Israeli attack and many others were wounded.

Israel apologized and paid compensation to the victims’ families. Israeli and American commissions of inquiry found that the attack was a mistake. But naturally, as often happens in such events, to this day there are some who believe Israel attacked the ship with malicious intent.

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.800584?v=AF7AAD5905E60890FA4540545DAE1E3B

From JFK to MKULTRA, here’s what the Agency didn’t want getting released to the public

In a 1978 memo urging the curbing of the newly-empowered Freedom of Information Act, the CIA compiled a list of six FOIA topics considered to be the most potentially dangerous to the Agency’s reputation.

One reason CIA felt these requests were so dangerous was “because of the FOIA requirement to release bits and pieces of information.” There is no such requirement, only exemptions that CIA chooses to take advantage of - there is nothing stopping the agency from developing briefing books specifically for the public, although the Agency generally prefers anonymously releasing information through journalists.

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/jun/21/cias-six-most-dangerous-foia/

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

On June 8, during Israel’s preemptive Six-Day War, an act of aggression, not self-defense against regional Arab states, the IDF did the unthinkable.

It provocatively attacked its main ally, striking the USS Liberty intelligence gathering ship, in international waters about 25.5 nautical miles northwest of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in international waters.

The incident took 34 US lives, another 171 wounded, the vessel severely damaged, lucky to stay afloat.

It was deployed to monitor belligerents’ communications in response to Israeli aggression on Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq – not the other way around.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/50th-anniversary-of-israels-infamous-uss-liberty-attack/5593223

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assault on the USS Liberty, and though it was among the worst attacks in history against a non-combatant U.S. naval vessel, the tragedy remains shrouded in secrecy. The question of if and when Israeli forces became aware they were killing Americans has proved a point of particular contention in the on-again, off-again public debate that has simmered over the last half a century. The Navy Court of Inquiry’s investigation proceedings following the incident were held in closed sessions, and the survivors who had been on board received gag orders forbidding them to ever talk about what they endured that day.

Now, half a century later, The Intercept is publishing two classified documents provided in the cache of files leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden related to the attack and its aftermath. They reveal previously unknown involvement by Government Communications Headquarters, the U.K. signals intelligence agency; internal NSA communications that seem to bolster a signals-intelligence analyst’s account of the incident, which framed it as an accident; as well as a Hebrew transliteration system unique to the NSA that was in use at least as recently as 2006.

The first document, a formerly unreleased NSA classification guide, details which elements of the incident the agency still regarded as secret as of 2006. The second lists a series of unauthorized Signals Intelligence disclosures that “have had a detrimental effect on our ability to produce intelligence against terrorist targets and other targets of national concern.” Remarkably, information relevant to the attack on the Liberty falls within this highly secret category.

Though neither document reveals conclusive information about the causes of the assault, both highlight that at the time of their publication—approximately four decades after the incident—the NSA was determined to keep even seemingly minor details about the attack classified. The agency declined to comment for this article.

https://theintercept.com/2017/06/06/fifty-years-later-nsa-keeps-details-of-israels-uss-liberty-attack-secret/

Would the US allow its citizens to be attacked and killed by a foreign power and then cover up the facts?

It would - and it has.

On June 8th, 1967, the Israeli military attacked and attempted to sink the USS Liberty as she sailed under a US flag in international waters. Thirty-four US servicemen were killed and 171 injured by a well-coordinated, multi-wave assault which included the use of napalm.

The Israeli military called the attack a "tragic mistake" and then-President Lyndon Johnson agreed it was nothing more. Sailors who were aboard the ship were warned not to disclose the facts of what happened that day under penalty of court martial - or worse.

Loss of Liberty »»


BBC-Dead In The Water - The Sinking of the USS Liberty»»