50th Anniversary of the Unprovoked Attack on the USS Liberty

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larsenb
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50th Anniversary of the Unprovoked Attack on the USS Liberty

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The attacked occurred about 2 PM on the 8th June, 1967. Still no accountability. None.

Here is an interview of a survivor of that attack by Chuck Baldwin, located at: http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Articles/ta ... vivor.aspx

Here are some excerpts:
My Interview With A USS Liberty Survivor
Published: Thursday, June 8, 2017

Today is the 50th anniversary of the unprovoked attack of the USS Liberty by the State of Israel, which killed 34 American sailors and Marines and wounded 174. To this day, the State of Israel has never been held accountable for this despicable and dastardly attack against the people of the United States. In fact, the U.S. government and news media have covered up this horrific attack for all of these decades. On this, the 50th anniversary of Israel’s attack against the USS Liberty, I am doing something I have never done in over 15 years of writing this column: I am using my column to print a recorded interview--my interview with a USS Liberty survivor. His name is Ron Kukal.

Ron was born in 1939. He grew up in Rushville, Nebraska, and now lives in Sheridan, Wyoming. He joined the Navy at the age of 20. He served 8 years in the Navy and had served 7 years when he was assigned to the Liberty. He was a first class petty officer and a communications supervisor on board the Liberty. Here is my interview with Ron Kukal (edited for space):

[Begin interview]

CB: So Ron, why was the USS Liberty where it was in the Mediterranean Sea on June 8, 1967? Why was it there?

RK: We were first assigned to sail up and down the coast of Africa. We all know that the USS Liberty is a spy ship. That’s no secret anymore. We were gathering the intelligence that we were supposed to gather. And in the middle of our tour over there, we got a call (I think in the middle of the night) that we were needed to go to the Med. And none of us really knew what it was all about. Although I think the Six-Day War had already been in progress about three days, if I remember correctly. And so we knew we were going there; we just didn’t know why.

CB: Obviously, your ship was not designed for combat.

RK: Absolutely not.

CB: And you were not there for the purpose of any aggressive action.

RK: Absolutely not.

. . . . . . . .
CB: So when the attack occurred, it was machine gun fire. Were there bombs dropped?

RK: Well, when the planes attacked, it was limited to machine gun fire, cannon fire, rocket fire, and they tossed some napalm at us too.

CB: And then were the aircraft reinforced with watercraft in the attack?

RK: Yeah, and I can’t tell you how far into the attack; I can only make it a guess. But I think it would be a half an hour to forty-five minutes into the attack [that] the torpedo boats showed up. They fired five torpedoes at us and hit us with one.
. . . . . . . .
CB: Do you believe that the Israelis fully intended to sink the ship? Do you believe that that was their goal?

RK: I certainly do! Yes. As a matter of fact, one of the Israeli pilots actually radioed back to--I don’t know if it was Ashdod or Tel Aviv or where it was--but said that he would not participate in this attack because it was an American ship. And those transcriptions and that voice has been on TV a couple of times where he literally said that he wouldn’t attack, and he turned back. They told him to turn around [to pursue the attack], but he flew back to their headquarters. He was jailed for several years, and when he got out of jail he came over to this country. And he actually went straight to former Congressman Pete McCloskey, and told him his story: that he would not attack an American ship.

CB: And what did the congressman do with that story?

RK: Pete McCloskey was one of the very few congressmen or senators that showed up for the dedication of the USS Liberty Memorial [Public] Library in Grafton, Wisconsin. Pete flew all the way from California and stood by us. Heck of a man.
. . . . . . . . .
CB: Okay. So the torpedo boats showed up; then they launched torpedoes. One of them hit the Liberty, and what else took place? I remember reading somewhere about some of the fellows on the Liberty trying to escape--trying to get a lifeboat or something. Walk me through that. Was there actually fire on the men who were trying to get off the ship? Am I remembering that correctly?

RK: You are. It would be Lieutenant Lloyd Peters that could tell that story about as well as anyone. Because he literally was going to testify at the court of inquiry that they fired on our lifeboats, and they literally did not want any lifeboats out there for anybody. They wanted us all dead. And so they had to get rid of those [lifeboats].

The torpedo hit I’m guessing about 30 feet from me, maybe 40. And then you do know the story. As soon as I got done with my prayers, the audible voice came to me (maybe it wasn’t audible--maybe just to me). “Get down, and get down now!” is all I remember of it. And then from that point to the point of me being either pushed--or somehow I ended up on the steel deck with my nose right on the steel--and the torpedo exploded, and the shrapnel was flying through the air. It took a while for the water to get in there. Not very long, but you could hear the shrapnel flying through the air. Killed all the men around me. There was only myself and two or three other guys that escaped from down in that area.

CB: You said 25 men died down in that area?

RK: 25 in that area. That would have been the second deck down, the third deck, and the fourth deck down. That torpedo took--I think the height of that hole was something like 30-some foot. And so it encompassed a lot of decks. And it took all of the security group personnel; that was most of the men that died down there. Well, that was all of the security people--naval security people--that I served with died in that area. The other guys topside were ship’s company, I guess you’d call them.

CB: So, after the torpedo hit and you were still alive (you and a couple of others), then what happened?
. . . . . . . .

CB: But you said that during the attack that U.S. aircraft were launched to come to your assistance from a U.S. aircraft carrier?

RK: USS America, yeah. That’s the aircraft carrier. I believe also the USS Saratoga launched some, and they were turned around.

CB: So those planes never arrived at your location to help you. Somebody ordered those planes to go back to the ship and to not come to your assistance?

RK: That’s correct. It was either McNamara or Johnson; I’m not sure which one it was.

CB: So either President Lyndon Johnson or Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara?

RK: That’s right.
. . . . . . . . . .

CB: So after everything happened and it was after the fact, what happened from the U.S. government? Do you believe there was a concerted effort by the White House and members of Congress to cover up that attack?

RK: Yes. Matter of fact, if you were to talk with this fellow Phil Turney, he will tell you that he and several other of the Liberty crewmen were called into a room and told that if they ever talked about this, they would be imprisoned and fined a huge amount of money.

CB: They were told that by a Navy officer?

RK: Yes. An admiral.

CB: An admiral. So when you say that there was a cover-up, that must have involved a lot of different people. So you are talking about a chain of command starting from the White House and going all the way down the command structure of the Navy? How far would this go? How far would this cover-up go?

RK: I guess if I could make it short and concise, I could tell you that Captain Ward Boston (who conducted the Board of Inquiry) before he died left his testimony that he was told to make the outcome of that Board that the attack was an accident. He said he had no choice. That’s written down in black and white. He was forced.

CB: So the official story from Washington--they finally did acknowledge that it was Israel that launched this attack, but then they claimed it was an accident. Was that the official story?

RK: That was the official story. Captain Boston told me, and he wrote some handwritten letters to me about this stuff. And he literally said that he was forced to make the outcome what the administration wanted--I guess what LBJ wanted.
- - - - - - - - -
And given the nature of the cover-up, the media was also obviously complicit in the cover-up. I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of the American people do not even really know what happened to the USS Liberty, that the vast majority of people have never studied it in school, and that they haven’t heard it from the press. So it seems that the cover-up has been far more extensive than we might would like to think. Because unless you know somebody or you happen to hear about it from somebody like yourself in some small ceremony or something of that nature, one wouldn’t even know about it. It just seems to me to have been a cover-up that extended all the way from the highest levels of government to the media and so forth. Would you agree with that?

RK: I certainly would.
. . . . . . . . . .
CB: Ron, is there a website or Facebook page people can go to in order to learn more about the attack on the USS Liberty or to participate in helping to spread the word?

RK: Yes. I recommend that people go to this Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/login/?next=ht ... 7058855%2F
Do you think the Deseret News memorialized this 50th anniversary of the attack on the US Liberty? Think again. Still have warm fuzzies toward the State of Israel? If they attacked the USS Liberty, could they have been involved (Zionists, Neocons, Mossad) with perpetrating 9/11? Something to seriously consider, IMHO. Should this event and its 50 year cover-up bolster our belief in American Exceptionalism? Don't think so.

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