Evidence suggests that the Israelis were ordered to attack the ship as part of a false-flag operation aimed at provoking a U.S. invasion of Egypt that was to result in the overthrow of Gamal Abdel Nasser. The Johnson administration then planned to carry out a nuclear first strike with the aim of “clobbering Russia,” and securing unfettered global hegemony.
On June 8, 1967, Israeli air and naval forces—with covered over insignia—fired rockets, torpedoes and napalm on a U.S. spy ship, the USS Liberty, in the Mediterranean Sea, killing 34 Americans and injuring 174 more. A secret congressional hearing revealed that two of the pilots were Americans—ex-Navy fliers.[1]
A survivor stated that the ship’s deck afterwards looked “like the floor of a slaughterhouse, with pieces of flesh, bone, hair, various organs and everything else…held in place by dried blood.”
In 2021, the CIA released three one-page information reports from June and October 1967, which quoted sources in Tel Aviv stating: “Israel’s forces knew exactly what flag the LIBERTY was flying” and Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan “personally ordered the attack” on the USS Liberty “over the objections of senior military officers, one of whom characterized the attack as “pure murder.”
When an Israeli pilot, Ammon Tavni (aka Even Tov), radioed Israeli air command that the USS Liberty was an American naval vessel, he was ordered to attack it, and then arrested for disobeying orders after he refused.[2]
In 2001, it was disclosed that the National Security Agency (NSA) had a plane hovering overhead—a Navy EC-121 ferret—whose intercepts confirmed the Liberty attack was deliberate. NSA Director Marshall Carter was told by future Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to “keep his mouth shut” about this.
Highly suspicious also was a) the fact that the nearby U.S. submarine Amberjack did not signal for help, leaving the Russians to be the first to assist the Liberty survivors, and that b) when the Liberty came to port, the Israelis provided no help or medical aid and earlier machine-gunned three life boats launched by the Liberty’s captain in an attempt to save the wounded.
Prior warning messages from the office of the U.S. Defense attaché additionally were misrouted or delayed in convoluted channels through the Pentagon’s worldwide communications system which normally worked perfectly, and White House records were distorted to cover up the timing of when President Lyndon B. Johnson received notification of the attack.[3]
Commander David E. Lewis, who was temporarily blinded from torpedo blasts, learned later that Admiral Lawrence Geis, the Sixth Fleet’s carrier division commander, twice ordered the launching of aircraft to defend the USS Liberty and each time he received orders from the White House—Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara specifically—to recall them when they were already in the air.[4]
Ernest Gallo, a USS Liberty survivor and 28-year CIA veteran specializing in electronics, told CovertAction Magazine that, when Geis challenged one of McNamara’s orders, President Johnson came on the line and stated “I don’t care if the ship sinks; I won’t have my ally [Israel] embarrassed.”[5]
“Repeat of the Tonkin Gulf Fabrication”
The motive for the USS Liberty attack and its cover-up remains the subject of speculation and debate reminiscent of the JFK assassination and other “deep political events.”
Many consider the attack as an example of the overwhelming power of the Israeli lobby and how the U.S. fealty toward Israel allows it to literally get away with murder.
The most convincing theory, however, is that the attack on the USS Liberty was part of a botched “false-flag” operation, whose aim was to blame the destruction of the ship on Egypt as a pretext for launching an attack that was designed to overthrow Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, an Arab nationalist considered by the Johnson administration to be a Soviet stooge.
George Golden, the USS Liberty’s chief engineer and a Purple Heart recipient, told BBC journalist Peter Hounam “they didn’t want any survivors. I was told when we got to Malta—and I’m not going to mention any names—that their orders were to sink that ship and kill everyone on it….the crew all feel that McNamara and Johnson were looking for an excuse to jump in and help Israel.”[6]
The denouement of the plan was that, when Russia intervened to defend Egypt, the Johnson administration would launch a preemptive nuclear strike.
CIA officer Dick Thompson had in his possession a memoir by a Mossad agent named “Frank” who reported: “With no evidence other than that it had been sunk in view of the shore, it would be assumed that Egyptian warplanes had perpetuated the attack [on the USS Liberty]. This unprovoked attack on an American unarmed ship would legitimate the U.S. entering the [Six-Day] war. Arab oil would become the property of Israel and the USA. The presence of American ships in the area would be accepted and Russia could be clobbered without time for retaliation. China would present no threat, and the USA—or the 303 Committee [a top-secret government body that initiated covert operations] could rule the world.”[7]
Significantly, Jim Nanjo, an Air Force pilot with the Strategic Air Command (SAC), was awakened hours before the USS Liberty attack and told to wait on the runway of Beale Air Force base, north of Sacramento, California, on high alert to drop a thermonuclear bomb.[8]
David E. Lewis, who reported on Secretary McNamara’s recall of the rescue planes, said: “I’ve always thought [the sinking of the Liberty] was Johnson’s repeat of the Tonkin Gulf fabrication [which provided a pretext for the Americanization of the Vietnam War].”
The main difference was that the effects were to be even more far-reaching—with even more casualties than Vietnam.
Operation Cyanide
Peter Hounam details in his book, Operation Cyanide: Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III (2003), how close the world came to nuclear conflagration as a result of the USS Liberty attack.
According to Hounam, Operation Cyanide was approved by the top-secret 303 Committee—an elite top-secret government body founded by the Kennedy administration as the Special Group on Counterinsurgency, that approved clandestine operations.
The chair of the 303 Committee was Walt W. Rostow, Johnson’s National Security Adviser and a key architect of the Vietnam War.[9]
Fletcher Prouty said that, bypassing normal democratic channels, the 303 Committee was so powerful, they were “like the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” According to Prouty, there was “almost nothing in the world that cannot be done secretly by the might and money of the Government of the United States.”[10]
According to researcher Philip Nelson, Operation Cyanide was part of a broader plan, called “Frontier 615,” that called for Israeli provocations toward Egypt, Syria and Jordan to induce broader clashes that would then provoke a military conflict.[11]
Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance and the 303 Committee were the ones to initiate movement of the USS Liberty to the eastern Mediterranean by way of Rota, Spain, where a CIA officer, Robert Wilson, joined the Liberty’s ship company.[12]
Joan Mellen reports that Operation Cyanide was authorized by President Johnson who signed documents so that he could “plausibly deny” he had been involved.[13]
After the Liberty’s SOS went out, Admiral William Inman Martin, Commander of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, followed the plan by sending a telling message to the Pentagon through the Morocco station: “Liberty under attack by Egyptian forces.”[14]
John Hadden, the CIA’s Station Chief in Tel Aviv from 1963 to 1967—who had informed Washington the evening of June 7 that the Israelis would attack the USS Liberty if it continued on its course—said that he was given orders by Desmond Fitzgerald, the CIA chief of operations, after the USS Liberty attack to tell the chief of Israeli intelligence that “we think its OK to go ahead and bomb Cairo.”[15]
Admiral Martin, subsequently admitted that he had sent planes off the USS America—equipped with nuclear weapons—with instructions to bomb Cairo.[16]
The Acting Ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, David G. Nes, received warning to expect an imminent bombing attack on Cairo by U.S. planes, while Lyndon Johnson slipped and admitted to Alexei Kosygin, Chairman of the Soviet Union’s Council of Ministers, to U.S. planes crossing Egyptian territory.[17]
The Mossad agent “Frank” said that it was the 303 Committee that gave orders for the deployment of three strike aircraft to Cairo, which were less than an hour—perhaps as little as seven minutes according to Admiral Martin—from carrying out a nuclear attack if the USS Liberty had been sunk.
“Frank” wrote that “all Russian nuclear missiles were primed and pointed, and that the first mushroom in Egypt would be the signal for a Russian mass launch.”[18]
Achieving a Greater Israel
The Israeli army at the time of the Six-Day War was commanded by former members of the Palmach (the elite fighting unit of the Israeli War of Independence) who were eager to complete what was denied them in 1948: to take over the Palestinians’ remaining territories and, through the power of conquest, realize the true Greater Israel.
In a letter released after his death, Israeli General Moshe Dayan acknowledged that at least 80% of clashes that occurred in the build-up to the Six-Day War were the result of Israeli provocations.[19] Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin stated frankly in 1982: “In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
Territorial gains achieved in the Six-Day War—the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights—proved particularly valuable in solving Israel’s water problems for the rest of the century.[20]
At the end of the Six-Day War, Israeli General Dayan was not prepared to continue to Cairo to unseat Nasser—as Israel may have promised—because Israel was satisfied with its success.[21]
The USS Liberty attack was thus needed as a pretext for the U.S. to be able to finish the job it had been planning since early 1966—that is to get rid of Nasser, with nuclear weapons if necessary.
CIA Operation Designed to Get Nasser
The U.S. president at the time of the Six-Day War, Lyndon B. Johnson, was a Texan whose political career had been financed by wealthy Texas oilmen. He feared that the Soviet Union would ally with Nasser to take control of the Middle East’s oil reserves.
Beloved through the Arab world, Nasser was a pan-Arab socialist who a) preached an anti-colonial message; b) had nationalized the Suez Canal; c) inspired other Arab nationalist leaders like Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and Karim Qassem in Iraq; and d) formed the United Arab Republic (UAR), a loose confederation merging Egypt, Syria and the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen.
When President Dwight Eisenhower had commented that he hoped “the Nasser problem” could be eliminated, Allen Dulles and James J. Angleton of the CIA took that as a signal to begin to concoct plans to overthrow and assassinate Nasser, which the Israelis were plotting as well.[22]
