Writing, reading, photographing, helping tell the story of the Israeli attack on USS Liberty that killed 34 of my shipmates and destroyed the ship.
Doing everything within my power to preserve and honor the memory of my 34 shipmates who were killed by Israeli forces in the June 8, 1967, attack on USS Liberty.
Working to thwart the efforts of a group of extremists who seek to pervert the effort of USS Liberty survivors to tell our story honestly and widely. Distancing ourselves from racists and antiSemites is an ongoing and never ending task.
Author of Assault on the Liberty (Random House 1980 and three other publishers in 12 editions selling more than 110,000 copies).
Founding member and co-founder with Master Chief Stanley White of the USS Liberty Veterans Association.
Director and Board Member: USS Liberty Alliance, founded by Admiral Thomas Moorer to seek justice for the USS Liberty.
Life Member: Navy League, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, Military Order of the Purple Heart, Military Officers Association of America, USS Liberty Veterans Association, Navy Together We Served.
Member: US Naval Institute, Navy Cryptologic Veterans Association.
Member: American Civil Liberties Union (since 1955); Common Cause (since 1955); National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; World Wildlife Federation; Sierra Club; American Humanist Association; Human Rights Watch; National Association for the Separation of Church and State; Amnesty International; Greenpeace.
Former member of American Legion: Resigned with some shipmates to protest the Legion's failure to support USS Liberty and the Legion's refusal to support its own 1967 national resolution calling upon the United States to investigate the Israeli attack on USS Liberty as called for in the Legion's own National Resolution #508.
Webmaster of:
http://www.ussliberty.com (This is the primary USS Liberty Memorial Web Site, news, analysis, links, reports)
The ussliberty.com and ussliberty.org URLs redirect to www.gtr5.com
http://www.ussliberty.com/index2.html
(This was the original USS Liberty Memorial Web Site and the primary database and source for background information and over 500 files.)
Description The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship, USS Liberty, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats, on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two marines, and one civilian), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship. At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 nmi (29.3 mi; 47.2 km) northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish.
Israel apologized for the attack, saying that the USS Liberty had been attacked in error after being mistaken for an Egyptian ship. Both the Israeli and U.S. governments conducted inquiries and issued reports that concluded the attack was a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the ship's identity, though others, including survivors of the attack, have rejected these conclusions and maintain that the attack was deliberate.
In May 1968, the Israeli government paid US$3,323,500 (US$22.9 million 2017) in compensation to the families of the 34 men killed in the attack. In March 1969, Israel paid a further $3,566,457 to the men who had been wounded. On 18 December 1980, it agreed to pay $6 million as settlement for the final U.S. bill of $17,132,709 for material damage to Liberty herself plus 13 years' interest.
My Participation in This Battle or Operation
From Month/Year
June / 1967
To Month/Year
June / 1967
Last Updated: Mar 16, 2020
Personal Memories
People You Remember www.ussliberty.com/roster.htm
Memories I find it very strange that some Americans can argue endlessly that the attack on the USS Liberty was a tragic accident and not the deliberate attack on a known American ship that survivors know it to have been. A point that baffles me (and my shipmates) about that view is that the Israelis did NOT stop firing when they drew close enough to positively identify us as American.
I was lying in a stretcher in a starboard passageway just inboard of the wardroom and almost directly over the torpedo that exploded. I remember very clearly the warning that torpedo boats were approaching followed by the explosion, the ship lifting away from the blast, then settling back to starboard and the very real fear that it would continue to settle until it rolled over and sank. Moments later the torpedo boats approached within fifty feet of the ship. One boat stopped alongside and trained a heavy machinegun on a man who was standing alone on a hatch on the main deck, but did not fire even though the man gave the boatmen the finger. Then a boat moved to within fifty feet of the fantail where the ship displayed her name in large letters in English painted on the hull and her GTR5 numbers in even larger letters. The boatmen clearly examined those markings and can hardly have failed to see other very distinctive American markings and the American flag that flew from the mast. Yet, even though the Israeli government claims it was at that point that they offered help, never firing at us again after the torpedo explosion, this is not so. Almost every man on that ship recalls -- as I personally recall very clearly from my position outside the wardroom -- that the torpedo boats then circled the ship for a long time firing at close range at anything that moved. Men trying to aid their wounded shipmates on deck were fired upon. Men fighting fires were fired upon and recall seeing their fire hoses punctured by machinegun fire. This went on for several minutes. At one point the boatmen concentrated their fire near the waterline amidships, presumably hoping to blow up the boilers to hasten our demise. Finally they pulled a distance back from the ship. We figured they were waiting for us to sink. And then at 3:15, forty minutes after the torpedo explosion and in response to orders from the bridge to prepare to abandon ship, men launched the only three life rafts that seemed still usable. The boats quickly drew closer, machinegunned the liferafts and then took one aboard after the machine gun fire severed a line that had tethered it to the ship. At this point, apparently in response to messages in the air from the Sixth Fleet promising (falsely) that aircraft were en route to our aid, the boats left the area. It was another 75 minutes later, about 4:30, that they finally returned to signal, "Do you need help?"
Now that is not my recollection alone, but is the recollection of nearly every man in the ship. It is one of several reasons that we reject the Israeli claim that it was a "tragic accident" in which they identified us as American even while the torpedos were in the water, never fired again, and immediately offered help.
Our Congress, much to our dismay, has from the beginning accepted "at face value" the Israeli claim that they never fired again after the torpedo explosion. Survivors have never been allowed to testify to the contrary, either to Congress or to the Court of Inquiry.
Of course there are many other reasons for us to disbelieve the Israeli version of events. Among them, for instance, their contrived claim that the aircraft were called in by the torpedomen after we were picked up on radar from over 30 miles away (well beyond their maximum radar range) and mistakenly plotted to be moving 32 knots when in fact we were moving at only 5 knots. Or their claim that the numerous Israeli reconnaissance aircraft that we saw circling us all morning at very low level were actually high in the sky carrying troops to the front and were unaware of our presence below. Or their claim that they mistakenly identified us as the Egyptian cavalry's 40-year-old horse carrier El Quseir, when in fact El Quseir had been out of service for years which must have been well known to the Israeli Navy. All those and other things convince us that the Israeli account is not true. Yet I think most convincing of their deliberate intent is that they continued to fire for forty minutes after examining our markings from as close as fifty feet away, did not offer help until nearly two hours after the torpedo explosion, and then lied about it.
So we are convinced that they are lying about virtually the entire prelude to, conduct of, and aftermath of the attack. Together, these things have convinced every man on that ship including her commanding officer that the attack was deliberate.
Yet despite these things a few Americans seem to accept the preposterous claim that the attack was a mistake and that firing stopped with the torpedo explosion. One can accept and understand this attitude from an Israeli, as he would have a natural tendency to believe his country's version of events and to disbelieve contrary versions -- especially since he has no personal experience to draw upon. But how can an American disbelieve the virtually identical eyewitness reports of scores of surviving fellow Americans and accept instead the undocumented claims of the foreign power that tried to kill them? That is very difficult to understand or to accept.
The typical Israeli reaction is that we are liars or antiSemites, which of course we are not. We are American sailors honestly reporting an act of treachery at sea. At the very least we deserve your courtesy and understanding.
