I was a student in the Military Intelligence Officer Advanced Course at Ft Holabird, Maryland, in 1967-1968. The course lasted about ten months, and we were required to take several electives from a group of offered electives. I chose Cryptology, taught by people from the NSA School at nearby Ft. Meade.
This was the winter or early spring of 1967-1968. The course included several sub-courses, one of which dealt with voice intercepts. During that section, the instructor introduced a booklet produced at Ft Meade as course material. It contained various items, and among them were transcripts of translated intercepts of radio conversations between the Israeli strike commander and his base before and during the attacks on USS Liberty.
The instructor, a retired cryptologic warrant officer or NCO, identified the transcript as being of the Liberty incident. The booklet itself was also marked that way.
In the transcript, the flight leader spoke to his base to report that he had the ship in view, that it was the same ship he had been briefed on, and that it was clearly marked with the American flag. I believe he said the ship was displaying the US flag on an upper deck, though my memory of that detail might be inexact. He asked for confirmation of his orders to attack the ship and seemed reluctant to do so, understandably. He asked more than once. Each time, he was told to carry out his orders and attack.
There was some further discussion of damage to the ship after the attack began.
That’s what I know. That’s what I saw with my own eyes in a classroom paid for by the American taxpayer, taught by instructors from the nation’s premier signals intelligence agency, using materials produced at Ft. Meade.
Thirty-four American sailors died that day. One hundred seventy-four were wounded. The ship was attacked by aircraft and torpedo boats for over an hour, in international waters, during a time of peace between the United States and Israel. The flag was flying. The markings were clear. The pilots could see them.
And according to the transcripts I read in that classroom, at least one pilot questioned his orders before carrying them out.
The official story has always been that it was a case of mistaken identity, a tragic error, an accident of war. The Israelis apologized. The United States accepted. Compensation was paid. The matter was closed.
But the transcripts existed. They existed in 1967, in that classroom in early 1968, and they still exist somewhere, assuming they haven’t been destroyed. They tell a different story. A story of a pilot who knew exactly what he was looking at and asked permission not to attack. A story of orders given and repeated despite that knowledge. A story of an attack that was not a mistake.
I’ve re-published this before, in 2007 and again now, because people keep writing to say the transcripts weren’t published before the recent Haaretz article. They were. They just weren’t published where most people would see them. They were buried in a classroom at Ft. Holabird, shown to intelligence officers in training, then presumably filed away where no one would ask too many questions.
Thirty-four Americans died. The men who served on that ship know what happened. The men who intercepted the communications know what happened. The men who transcribed those intercepts and bound them into course booklets know what happened.
And now, anyone reading this knows too.
