Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (36 page)

"He's
going down low with napalm all the time," shouted someone with the Israeli
Southern Command at El Arish, where soldiers were hiding the slaughtered
prisoners under the sand.

Crisscrossing
the ship almost every forty-five seconds, the Mystères let loose more
napalm—silvery metallic canisters of jellied gasoline that turned the ship into
a crematorium. Not satisfied, the flight leader radioed to his headquarters.
"It would be a
mitzvah
[blessing] if we can get a flight with iron
bombs," he said. "Otherwise, the Navy's going to get here and they're
going to do the shooting." With the iron bombs, the pilot was hoping for
the coup de grace—to sink the ship before the Navy arrived to finish her off.
In World War II, during the battle of Midway, American dive-bombers sank three
Japanese aircraft carriers with such bombs in only ten minutes.

One of the
quartermasters raced down to the mess deck. "The captain's hurt," he
yelled to Lieutenant Painter, "and the operations officer was dead, and
the executive officer is mortally wounded." Painter charged up to the
bridge.

"Pay
attention," one of the pilots told his headquarters. "The ship's
markings are Charlie Tango Romeo 5," he said, indicating that the
Liberty's
identification markings were CTR-5. (Actually, they were GTR-5.)
Then, with the American flag having been shot down during earlier passes, he
added, "There's no flag on her."

"Leave
her," replied headquarters.

As the
last fighter departed, having emptied out its on-board armory and turned the
Liberty's
hull into a flaming mass of gray Swiss cheese, sailors lifted mutilated
shipmates onto makeshift stretchers of pipe frame and chicken wire. Damage
control crews pushed through passageways of suffocating smoke and blistering
heat, and the chief petty officer's lounge was converted into a macabre sea of
blood-soaked mattresses and shattered bodies. A later analysis said it would
take a squadron of fifteen or more planes to do such damage as was inflicted on
the ship.

At 2:24,
minutes after the air attack, horror once again washed over the crew. Charles
Rowley, the ship's photographer, was lying in the wardroom being treated for
shrapnel wounds when armor-piercing bullets began penetrating the bulkhead.
Through the porthole he saw three sixty-two-ton motor torpedo boats rapidly
approaching in attack formation. Closing in at about forty knots, each of the
French-built boats had a crew of fifteen and were heavily armed with a 40mm
cannon, four 20mm cannons, and two torpedoes. Like a firing squad, they lined
up in a row and pointed their guns and torpedo tubes at the
Liberty's
starboard
hull. Seeing that the Israeli fighters had destroyed the American flag,
Commander McGonagle ordered the signalman to quickly hoist another—this one the
giant "holiday ensign," the largest on the ship. Almost immediately,
the boats opened up with a barrage of cannon fire. One armor-piercing bullet
slammed through the ship's chart house and into the pilothouse, coming to rest
finally in the neck of a young helmsman, killing him instantly. Three other
crewmen were slaughtered in this latest shower of steel.

Back up in
the EC-121 ferret, the Hebrew linguist called Nowicki again. "He told me
about new activity and that the American flag is being mentioned again. I had
the frequency but for some strange reason, despite seeing it on my spectrum
analyzer, couldn't hear it on my receiver, so I left my position to join him to
listen at his position. I heard a couple of references to the flag during an
apparent attack. The attackers weren't aircraft; they had to be surface units
(we later found out at USA-512J it was the Israeli motor torpedo boats
attacking the
Liberty).
Neither [the other Hebrew linguist] nor I had
ever heard MTB attacks in voice before, so we had no idea what was occurring
below us. I advised the evaluator; he was as mystified as we were."

"Stand
by for torpedo attack, starboard side," McGonagle shouted frantically into
the announcing system. The Israelis were ready for the kill. At 2:37 P.M., the
safety plug was pulled from a 19-inch German-made torpedo on Motor Torpedo Boat
203. Seconds later it sped from its launcher and took direct aim at the
Liberty's,
NSA spaces. Four other torpedoes—more than enough to sink the largest
aircraft carrier—were also launched. Had all or most of them hit their mark,
the
Liberty's
remaining life would have been measured in minutes.
Through a miracle, only one struck home. But that hit was devastating.

Down in
the NSA spaces, as the sound of shells hitting the hull grew louder, Petty
Officer Ronnie Campbell jammed a sheet of paper into his typewriter and started
pounding out a letter to his wife. "Dear Eileen," he started,
"you wouldn't believe what's happening to us . . ."

Nearby,
Bryce Lockwood had been summoned to help carry the ditching bags up to the main
deck and throw them overboard. He stepped from the NSA spaces out into the
passageway and a few seconds later, he said, "There was just a—I have the
sense of a large object, and then a tremendous flash and explosion, just a
sheet of flame. It was the torpedo—I was less than ten feet from it. The first
thought that crossed my mind—'Well, it looks like it's over with. I guess I'm
coming home, Lord. At least Lois and the kids are taken care of.' There were
twenty-five men that were killed all around me." The torpedo struck dead
center in the NSA spaces, killing nearly everyone inside, some by the initial
blast and others by drowning—including Ronnie Campbell, who never finished his
letter. "The whole irony," said Lockwood, "is that that Israeli
torpedo struck within just a few feet of the Star of David flag that had been
taped to the starboard bulkhead."

Frank
Raven of G Group later talked to several of the few survivors from the NSA
spaces. "They told me that they saw the torpedo ... in the room with them.
The torpedo came right through the side of the ship before it exploded—they saw
it before it exploded. They had the torpedo in the room with them. It came
right through the side of the ship and they jumped behind desks and things of
that sort and it went off."

Down on
the mess deck, where many of the wounded were being treated, Donald W. Pageler
had just finished giving blood. Following the torpedo-attack warning, someone
told him to throw himself across the wounded. "I did just as I was
told," he said.

Stan White
heard the announcement just as he was about to go down a hatch. "We knelt
down and braced ourselves against the bulkheads and waited. You could hear the
shells from the torpedo boats hitting the ship—seemed like a long time but
wasn't, I'm sure. And then the torpedo hit. The ship was lifted up out of the
water somewhat, the place filled with smoke, and the lights went out. I was
praying before it hit, and after it hit I concluded the prayer with 'Please
take care of my wife and two little children.' We had kids late in our marriage
and I thought how little time I had had with them."

At the
moment of the announcement, Larry Weaver, having had his colon blown out by a
rocket, was lying on a table in sick bay. "I could feel a lot of warmth
from the blood," he said. "They said, 'Stand by for torpedo run,
starboard side.' And I said, 'Fred, get me a life jacket, get one on me.' . . .
Well we got hit by the torpedo and it's like a giant grabbed the ship and threw
it. ... And right afterwards they called [prepare to] abandon ship."

Despite
his injuries, Weaver tried to make it to one of the life rafts.  "And I
was going as fast as I could and I remember my feet were going through blood
that was running down the deck like a small river, I will never forget
that." But by the time he reached his life raft, it had been destroyed.
"My life raft was all blown to smithereens, there just wasn't anything
left of it. ... And there was a guy beside me, a couple feet beside me, and you
could just hear the incoming shells. All of a sudden he was there and the next
thing I knew he wasn't and I was slipping, trying to hold on to the rail, and
there was a lot of blood and I looked down and I was standing on what was left
of his thigh. I remember the skin and the hair from his legs underneath my
foot. And I was sliding."

The firing
continued, now from the torpedo boats. Weaver and a number of other wounded
were placed on gurneys between metal barriers. "We were laying
there," he recalled, "and if I was to summarize what it sounded like,
we were all praying. And it just almost sounded like a guru type of chant, like
a mum-mum-mum-mum, that's the way it sounded because all these guys were
wounded and we were all praying and almost in the same tone. And I remember the
sound of that. And we could hear them [shells] hitting the bulkhead, just
unbelievable. I was so scared to close my eyes because I thought I would never
open them again."

Still down
near the NSA spaces was Bryce Lockwood, who had been knocked unconscious. When
he awoke all he could feel was cold, frigid, oily water. Around him were more
than two dozen dead intercept operators, analysts, and communications
personnel. The water was pouring in from the massive torpedo hole below the
waterline, and smoke, oil, and darkness filled the space. Lockwood heard a
groan behind him and found one sailor alive, Petty Officer Joseph C. Lentini.
The sailor's leg had been smashed by an armor-piercing bullet and then crushed
by a bulkhead when the torpedo struck. In spite of the difficulties, Lock-wood
managed to free the sailor's leg, put him over his shoulder, and climb up the
ladder to the next level, where he again passed out.

Once again
he awoke as the water, climbing still higher, washed over him. Desperate to
escape, he again put the sailor on his shoulder and climbed a second ladder—but
now the top hatch had been sealed shut to help prevent the ship from sinking.
Two, three, four times Lock-wood dropped Lentini into the rising water as he
pounded on the hatch with one hand, held a flashlight with the other, and
screamed at the top of his lungs. Each time he would retrieve Lentini, reclimb
the ladder, and continue pounding. Finally, a sailor doing a damage control
survey opened the hatch and found Lockwood with the wounded Lentini, who, his
leg shredded, was still clinging to life. Lockwood was later awarded the Silver
Star for his heroism. Lentini survived. He was one of two sailors Lockwood
saved.

Immediately
after the attack, one of the boats signaled by flashing light, in English,
"Do you require assistance?" McGonagle, with no other means to
communicate, hoisted the flags indicating that the ship was maneuvering with
difficulty and that they should keep clear. Instead, the torpedo boats
continued to terrorize the crew, firing at the ship, at firefighters, at rescue
personnel, and even at the life rafts in their racks. Larry Weaver, whose raft
was destroyed, said: "They must have known where they [the rafts] were.
They tried to blow them out in their racks."

To prevent
anyone from escaping the badly wounded ship, the Israelis even destroyed the
few surviving life rafts that were put into the water following the call to
abandon ship. "I watched with horror as the floating life rafts were
riddled with holes," said Lieutenant Lloyd Painter, in charge of the
evacuation. "No survivors were planned for this day!" Stan White, the
top enlisted man on the ship, also witnessed the lifeboat attack. "When
'prepare to abandon ship' was announced, what was left of our lifeboats were
released overboard; these were immediately machine-gunned by the torpedo boats.
It was obvious that no one was meant to survive this assault."

Jumping
overboard to escape the sinking ship was also not an option. "If you don't
go down with the ship," said Seaman Don Pageler, "you're going to
jump overboard. If you jump overboard, the way these people were attacking us,
we knew they would shoot us in the water. We did firmly believe that there was
no way they intended to capture anybody."

Earlier
that day, the Israelis had massacred civilians and prisoners in the desert; now
they were prepared to ensure that no American survived the sinking of the
Liberty.
Another witness to the lifeboat attacks was shipfitter Phillip F. Tourney.
"As soon as the lifeboats hit the water they were sunk. They would shoot
at us for target practice, it seemed like. They wanted to kill and maim and
murder anyone they could. . . . One of the torpedo boats picked a life raft up
and took it with them."

"They
made circles like they were getting ready to attack again," added former
petty officer Larry B. Thorn, who also witnessed the sinking of the life rafts.
"Our biggest fear was that the Israeli commandos . . . would come back and
get us that night and finish the job," said Phillip Tourney.

The
Israelis, not knowing what intelligence NSA had picked up, would have had
reason to suspect the worst—that the agency had recorded evidence of the
numerous atrocities committed that morning only a few miles away. This would be
devastating evidence of hundreds of serious war crimes, approved by senior Israeli
commanders.

Indeed,
many Israeli communications had been intercepted. "We heard Israeli
traffic," said section supervisor Charles L. Rowley. Much of what was
recorded was to be listened to and analyzed later, either at the secret
processing station in Athens or back at NSA.

As the
Liberty
continued to burn and take on water from the forty-four-foot hole in its
starboard side, damage control crews dodged Israeli shells to try to save it.
Commander McGonagle, however, was quietly considering killing it himself. He
had glimpsed an Israeli flag on one of the torpedo boats, and he feared that
next the Israelis would attempt to board the ship, kill everyone not yet dead,
and capture the supersecret NSA documents. (Because of the constant strafing by
the fighters and the torpedo boats, the crew had been unable to throw overboard
any of the ditching bags.) Rather than let that happen, he told his chief
engineer, Lieutenant George H. Golden, about the Israeli flag and, said Golden,
"told me that he wanted to scuttle the ship. I told him that we were in
shallow water [the depth was 35 to 40 fathoms], that it would be impossible to
do that. If it came to that point we would need to get our wounded and
everybody off the ship and move it out into deeper water where we can scuttle
it. And he asked me how long it would take me to sink the ship. And I gave him
a rough idea of how long it would take for the ship to sink after I pulled the
plug on it. But we had to be out in deep water—we were too shallow, and people
could get aboard the ship and get whatever that was left that some of them
might want."