Conspiracies: The Facts * the Theories * the Evidence (14 page)

Another version of events runs that the Israelis were keen

to conceal a shocking massacre of Egyptian prisoners of war

that may have been carried out illegal y by the Israel Defence

Forces (IDF) that day in the North Sinai town of El-Arish. Such

an atrocity – entirely denied by the IDF – would have outraged

the international community at a time when Israel needed

moral support, and might have been revealed by
Liberty
’s radio monitoring, necessitating the ship’s neutralization. Although a

massacre has never been proved, nor perpetrators identified, a

mass grave containing the bodies of 30 Egyptian soldiers, most

likely from 1967, was uncovered in the relevant area in 2008.

The most adhered-to theory behind the
Liberty
incident,

however, remains the one which identifies it as a likely attempt

to escalate the conflict into an international war against Egypt, drawing in the USA first by sinking one of its ships with action

hoped to be seen as Egyptian. In the event, Israel would not need outside help to secure its victory, but this outcome was far from certain at that point in the six-day conflict, and anything that

weakened the reputation of its enemies would in any case be

helpful to Israel’s long-term security.

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All this, of course, assumes that US intelligence was entirely

a victim to the events, whichever version one subscribes to.

However, with New World Order theories never far behind, some

hold that the incident was a component of ‘Operation Cyanide’, a

clandestine attempt to increase Israel’s power and give a stronger US foothold in the Middle East against the encroaching influence

of the Soviet Union. In this view,
Liberty
was the necessary sacrifice proffered by the USA. It has even been suggested that the original intention may have been to implicate the Soviets directly, rather than the Egyptians, perhaps to initiate a third world war.

If global escalation was the true motive, then it would seem

that the critical assault at its core was seriously mismanaged – a noteworthy point usual y raised against the theory. Taking out

Liberty
’s effectiveness to monitor communications with relatively moderate action that could be easily written off as accidental

would be less risky, but implementing a full false-flag scenario

to engineer world opinion would surely require the ship’s total

destruction and, preferably, an absence of any survivors to cast

doubt on the identity of the attackers. Why, then, did
Liberty
remain afloat, with the majority of its crew left alive to tell the tale? Perhaps, suspecting the real purpose of their mission, or at least doubting the morality of their orders, the Israeli pilots and captains simply couldn’t find it in themselves to turn the full

required fury on allies, and virtual y unarmed ones at that. Why, after al , did four out of the five torpedoes aimed at a wounded

vessel fail to reach their target? Was there a half-heartedness at work which unwittingly compromised the intentions of those

giving the orders? If the attack
was
planned to sink the ship and thus trigger wider repercussions, it would appear to have been

critical y undermined either by sheer military incompetence or

unexpected reluctance among those at the front line.

If, on the other hand, the action took place merely to

compromise
Liberty
’s ability to monitor signals, more sense is made of the restrained tactics used against it. It might be argued 80

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that, rather than resort to such drastic measures, Israel could

instead have just explained its plans to its closest al y, but maybe it was leaving nothing to chance, especial y if Washington was not ful y supportive of the strategies used.

Whatever the primary aim of the attack, it seems that there

was
some kind of intention, if an ambiguous one, to obfuscate awareness of who was carrying it out. The planes that struck
Liberty
were, according to the crew, unmarked. There does also seem to

have been a loose attempt to wipe out some of the survivors, with claims that the torpedo boats strafed the life rafts as they were launching. But, given that these vessels
were
clearly identifiable as Israeli, again there is the suggestion that not everyone involved in attacking
Liberty
may have been made party to the same agenda

– otherwise, why not disguise the torpedo boats too and make a

better job of wiping out everyone, ensuring that the ship and its occupants vanished more conveniently beneath the waves?

The failure to destroy
Liberty
, for whichever reason, must have necessitated some fast backtracking and policy reversals. Some

say a US-backed invasion of Egypt was abandoned at this point,

requiring a drastic redrawing of NWO plans, which would find

new focus in the events surrounding 9/11.

There are, without doubt, several grey areas at the centre of

the
Liberty
mystery. But a conspiracy of one kind or another was very likely at work, unless one believes the Israeli claim that it was indeed an unfortunate mistake. To accept that, however, means

placing blind faith above many unresolved anomalies.

Despite President Johnson’s acquiescence, Dean Rusk, the

US secretary of state at the time of the incident, certainly didn’t believe the official verdict, writing:

I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation. Their

sustained attack to disable and sink Liberty precluded an

assault by accident or some trigger-happy local commander.

Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept their

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explanations. I didn’t believe them then, and I don’t believe
them to this day. The attack was outrageous.

Many other officials had similar misgivings. The subsequent US

Naval Court of Inquiry, hastily convened in the days following the attack, weakly concluded that it was all most likely a simple case of

‘mistaken identity’, but there is a wide belief that the hearing was a whitewash, if not an overt cover-up. In the way of most official inquiries, it failed to address some of the key evidence, heard no statements from surely crucial Israeli sources, and had no remit

by which to apportion culpability anyway, thus rendering it

meaningless.

As for President Johnson, his priority seemed to be one of

drawing a veil over the whole thing, even as the events were

occurring. Some testimony suggests that, on hearing that
Liberty
was being assaulted – and on supposedly making the assumption

that the attackers were Egyptian – Johnson had planes launched

from a Mediterranean-based aircraft carrier to mount a retaliatory assault on Cairo. When it became plain that the ship was still afloat and that the Israelis were undeniably responsible, the fighters were recalled at the last minute. If true, these actions can be seen in three ways: either the events occurred as the official story would have it; or Israel felt it had achieved enough by crippling
Liberty
’s monitoring capabilities and so made clear its ‘accidental’ role,

perhaps afraid of what intensified US action against Egypt might

bring to the region. Or, in the full false-flag/NWO view, Johnson was just about to step up the conflict as part of its intended

widening, when the unexpected failure to completely erase
Liberty
and its crew necessitated a rapid change of plan.

Either way, it would seem that Johnson had little regard for

the welfare of his own men and was more concerned with not

humiliating Israel than saving lives. When it became clear that

Liberty
had been attacked, very probably by Israeli ‘friendly fire’, it is said that Johnson blocked rescue orders and ordered a recall 82

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of the support aircraft that were automatical y dispatched to aid the vessel, as if happier to see it sink without trace. When a new independent inquiry into the incident was final y held in 2003,3

Rear Admiral Lawrence (‘Larry’) Geis quoted Johnson as saying:

I want that goddamn ship going to the bottom. No help –

recal the wings

Another telling statement attributed to Johnson had him telling

the 6th Fleet Commander that he didn’t ‘give a damn’ if the ship

sank: ‘We’re not going to embarrass an al y.’

Allowing for the potential unreliability of paraphrased recollec-

tions, the flavour of the remarks nonetheless make it plain that few tears were shed in Washington for the crew of
Liberty
, and that the survivors, with all their awkward questions and memories, must

have been most diplomatical y tiresome. What conspiracy theories

do always unambiguously reveal among the myriad uncertainties

is the disheartening reality that the one thing which always results from the deceptive power games of those we allow to govern us is

human misery.

It has been said that, with the Cold War at its height, perhaps

Johnson was merely making tough choices, worried maybe that

the incident could risk enflaming an already tense stand-off

with the Soviet Union (especial y if the USA at first thought it

might have been responsible for the attack). Moscow was an open

supporter of Israel’s enemies, supplying arms and intelligence,

and some have even suggested that the Soviets may have

deliberately helped accelerate the situation into the Six-Day War to give them grounds to bomb Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona, thwarted only by Israel’s unexpectedly swift victory. But this is largely conjecture, adding one more layer to the enduring enigma

of the
Liberty
incident.

Appropriately like Russian dol s, we have yet another situation

here of false-flag accusations within false-flag accusations, vying 83

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for space with middle-ground scenarios and countered by

denials and probable cover-ups at the other end of the spectrum.

There are many other instances of maritime dubiousness, such as

the sinking of USS
Maine
in 1898, which mysteriously exploded while moored at Havana during a Cuban revolt against Spanish

rule, killing over 270 of its crew and precipitating a US–Spanish war. Some say it was a simple accident, others that it was sunk

by Spain, and, of course, there is the popular view that the USA

sank it itself as a pretext for war. Yet again, confusing evidence supports more than one of the possibilities, which remain

unsettled to this day, but a ‘meta-analysis’ of all such incidents does begin to reveal a repeating pattern that is hard to brush

aside as mere coincidence.

v) The gulf of Tonkin inCiDenT

The
Liberty
incident was at least an attack that
did
take place, despite the disputed details. Yet some major conflagrations begin merely with
claims
of an attack. Just three years before the Arab–

Israeli clash, a worse conflict erupted in the form of the Vietnam War, when a tense stand-off erupted into full-blown combat

following a supposed attack by North Vietnamese Communist

forces on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. A moderate

and not unprecedented skirmish had taken place between USS

Maddox
and three torpedo boats, and been easily repelled, on 2 August 1964. But the second, supposedly more serious, attack on 4 August was the one that tipped President Johnson into openly

bombing targets in North Vietnam the next morning, despite

having official y informed the Soviets the same day that he had

no intention of escalating a dangerous situation in Vietnam. Thus began a war that would see many thousands of lives lost on both

sides, dividing Western opinion and the American nation itself on a scale previously unseen.

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Yet it is now accepted that the second Gulf of Tonkin event, the

primary fuse which set off this appalling chain of events, never

actual y occurred.

How could this be? As an internal US National Security Agency

document, declassified in 2005, clearly states:

It is not simply that there is a different story as to what

happened; it is that no attack happened that night . . . In
truth, Hanoi’s navy was engaged in nothing that night but the
salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2.

Alleged sonar errors and unusual weather conditions apparently

had USS
Maddox
and USS
Turner Joy
firing on targets that simply weren’t there. It might be said that, in an anxious situation, as with the
Liberty
attack, nations might be forgiven for acting rashly in their own defence, and that sometimes vital information comes

too late. But in this instance it was known almost immediately

after the false pursuit of the ‘Tonkin ghosts’ that a mistake had been made. Intelligence confirming this was cabled to Washington

within a few hours. Time enough, perhaps, to halt a war. But

when a pretext is required, nothing, it would seem, will stop the wheels of conflict, certainly not the truth. Ignoring the qualifying messages, yet almost certainly aware of the real situation, Johnson, ever the pacifist, issued this statement: