Forty
Years Later, Searching For Truth
By Ward Boston, Jr.
10 June, 2007
San
Diego Union-Tribune
Forty
years ago this week, I was asked to investigate the heaviest attack
on an American ship since World War II. As senior legal counsel to the
Navy Court of Inquiry it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding
Israel’s June 8th 1967 bombing of the USS Liberty.
On that sunny, clear day
40 years ago, Israel’s combined air and naval forces attacked
our American intelligence-gathering ship for two hours, inflicting 70
percent casualties. Thirty four American sailors died and 172 were injured.
The USS Liberty remained afloat only by the crew’s heroic efforts.
Israel claimed it was an
accident. Yet I know from personal conversations with the late Admiral
Isaac C. Kidd -- president of the Court of Inquiry -- that President
Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara ordered him to conclude that
the attack was a case of “mistaken identity”.
The ensuing cover-up has
haunted us for forty years. What does it imply for our national security,
not to mention our ability to honestly broker peace in the Middle East,
when we cannot question Israel’s actions – even when they
kill Americans?
On June 8th, survivors of
Israel’s cruel attack will gather in Washington, DC to honor their
dead shipmates as well as the mothers, sisters, widows and children
they left behind. They will continue to ask for a fair and impartial
congressional inquiry that, for the first time, would allow the survivors
themselves to testify publicly.
For decades, I have remained
silent. I am a military man and when orders come in from the Secretary
of Defense and President of the United States, I follow them. However,
attempts to rewrite history and concern for my country compel me to
share the truth.
Admiral Kidd and I were given
only one week to gather evidence for the Navy’s official investigation,
though we both estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry would take at
least six months.
We boarded the crippled ship
at sea and interviewed survivors. The evidence was clear. We both believed
with certainty that this attack was a deliberate effort to sink an American
ship and murder its entire crew.
I am certain the Israeli
pilots and commanders who had ordered the attack knew the ship was American.
I saw the bullet-riddled American flag that had been raised by the crew
after their first flag had been shot down completely. I heard testimony
that made it clear the Israelis intended there be no survivors. Not
only did they attack with napalm, gunfire, and missiles, Israeli torpedo
boats machine-gunned at close range three life rafts that had been launched
in an attempt to save the most seriously wounded.
I am outraged at the efforts
of Israel’s apologists to claim this attack was a case of “mistaken
identity.”
Admiral Kidd told me that
after receiving the President’s cover-up orders, he was instructed
to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Defense
Department, and rewrite portions of the Court’s findings. He said,
"Ward, they're not interested in the facts. It’s a political
matter and we cannot talk about it." We were to "put a lid
on it" and caution everyone involved never to speak of it again.
I know that the Court of
Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same
one that I certified and sent to Washington. I know this because it
was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand correct and initial
a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version
of the transcript and did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections
and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank
pages, as the released version does. In addition, the testimony of Lt.
Lloyd Painter concerning the deliberate machine-gunning of the life
rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being
given at the Court of Inquiry and including in the original transcript,
is now missing.
I join the survivors in their
call for an honest inquiry. Why is there no room to question Israel
– even when they kill Americans -- in the halls of Congress?
Let the survivors testify.
Let me testify. Let former intelligence officers testify that they received
real-time Hebrew translations of Israeli commanders instructing their
pilots to sink “the American ship".
Surely uncovering the truth
about what happened to American servicemen in a bloody attack is more
important than protecting Israel. And surely forty years is long enough
to wait.
In addition to serving as
chief counsel to the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the attack on
USS Liberty, Ward Boston served as a naval aviator in World War II on
the carrier Yorktown, and as an FBI agent prior to his assignment to
the Navy’s Judge Advocates General Corps. He is a graduate of
the Law School of the College of William and Mary, and a resident of
Coronado, California.
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