The Day Israel Attacked America | Special Series

In early June 1967, the six-day war in the Middle East between Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Syria is underway. A very lightly armed spy ship bristling with antennas enters the Mediterranean to eavesdrop on the conflict patrolling in international waters off the Egyptian coast in At 2:00 p.m. on June 8, with the war reaching its climax. climax. Israeli jets and motor torpedo boats launch an unprovoked attack on the ship, dropping napalm and strafing her decks with rockets, cannons and armor-piercing shells before attempting to sink her. with torpedoes and we had no way of defending ourselves and they just massacred us and shot at the life rafts that were put in the water and shot at the ones that were still on board the ship bullet holes shell holes everywhere blood the forecastle the The front part of this ship was red with blood throughout the attack.

The ship flies the Stars and Stripes. The flag of Israel's closest ally, the United States of America, is called the USS Liberty and is freshly painted on its stern and the bow bears the distinctive numbers of an American warship. Of a crew of just under 300 people there were 34 dead and 172 injured and varying degrees of debilitating life-threatening injuries, so it was more than two-thirds of the crew this audio tape that has never before been broadcast was recorded in real time by the Israeli army during the assault the woman's voice in the background counts the seconds proves that the Israeli commanders knew from the beginning that they were attacking an American ship for the first time this and other evidence allows us to reveal the true story of what What happened that day and what came after, when a deadly attack by one ally against another was covered up and an American president was manipulated by the secret agents of a foreign power, events that have shaped relations between the United States and Israel. from the United States Navy Memorial in Washington DC on June 8, 2014, each year on the anniversary of the attack on the USS Liberty, family members and supporters of the survivors gathered to remember those who were killed that day , Dave Lucas's 34. in charge of the deck force I was 25 years old, my first child was born when I was one day on that cruise, as long as they are survivors and perhaps children of survivors.

I think this will probably be an annual event and the reading of names of the 34 dead is done to the sound of a naval bell and the sound of taps, the traditional military funeral lament. It is important not to forget what happened and to keep trying to find out why it happened and who made it happen in The summer of 1967, the United States was in crisis. An incendiary mix of racial discrimination and extreme poverty exploded in a summer of unrest in cities across the country, but one issue dominated the Vietnam War. In total, 10,000 soldiers would die that year.

The Americans were trapped. They could not. to leave and they could not handle the war in the Middle East it seemed inevitable there was growing tension between Israel and its Arab neighbors the armies were mobilizing Israel promised the White House that they would not attack first but on June 5 they blocked the radars at the embassy of United States in Tel Aviv so that the Americans could not detect their planes taking off to launch a surprise attack on Egypt while the USS Liberty sailed across the Mediterranean toward the war zone. The Liberty was a state-of-the-art intelligence gathering vessel. of time and what we did was list that we were a listening ship, my name is Lloyd Painter, I was a research officer, we could smell, we could receive any signal that was there, Loeb and I prohibit anything that intercepts it from recording it and we had some translators on board who could have an immediate translation of what was actually happening we would send signals from the moon to the NSA we were spies I'm Jim Cavanaugh I was a communications technician aboard the USS Liberty and I intercepted Morse code we were spies when we intercepted messages from embassies, military bases, police, anything we could get to ensure that the United States was comfortable with what was going on in the world and that no one was conspiring against us and, basically, to protect our interests in this Cold War era. .

US President Lyndon Johnson knew that the Russians already had substantial military influence in Egypt and needed to know what they were going to do next to ensure that a local conflict did not escalate into a global war with the US in Israel. and Russia sided with the Arab cause. I was assigned as a Russian linguist on board the ship. I'm Bryce Lockwood. The United States Marine Corps withdrew the Israelis. Our main objective was to intercept the communications of Russian spy planes as if they were in Alexandria, Egypt and then that. Our job was to find them, we were not targeting the Israelis, life was very relaxing and one of the good things about the Liberty was that we had air conditioning because we had communications equipment so we were cool on hot days, it was a very quiet place .

The ship was very clean, it was spotless, morale was quite high and it was very high when the Liberty reached the coast of Egypt on June 8, the war just two days away from ending. Israel had taken over the ancient city of Jerusalem. West Bank and Gaza Strip The Jordanian forces were defeated and Egypt recognized defeat, only Syria resisted. The radio waves were dead. The only voices we heard were Israeli or Hebrew with what we were hearing. My name is Bob Wilson. I worked for the NSA. on June 8, 1967, when and what we were trying to monitor, we found something coming from the direction of Egypt, there was just nothing, they owned the heavens and the earth and everything, David, I don't think there was anything I don't know, I was listening to the talk the night before I knew it was an American ship that arrived in the area.

They knew who we were. 5:15 a.m. m. At first light, the ship's log recorded an Israeli photo-reconnaissance aircraft flying over the Liberty that was easily identifiable as an aircraft or Atlas and those are photo-reconnaissance aircraft. Israeli records obtained by Al-Jazeera show that her reconnaissance aircraft reported that the Liberty was an American spy ship with hull number GT-R five. Well, I was on the John Scott Bridge. I was the damage. The control officer surrounded the ship in a kind of wide circle and headed back to Israel. The Israeli planes continued to fly over the Liberty all morning and they made crescent passes over us and we saw that they were Israelis, they moved slowly over our ship and we waved at them they waved at the action they were sophisticated almost as sophisticated as we were in terms of surveillance and technology they had everything that we supply them with all the technology to this day and I felt that we were in great shape because they knew who we were, they were our friends, we felt safe, it was actually a feeling of security to see them, there was another thing that it made the crew feel safe, we had an American flag flying the standard and then we put up the Christmas colors which is a huge American flag and it was a bright sunny day with a wind that was blowing, I don't know, five or ten knots, the flag was deployed, you could see miles away as Israeli military planes were en route on the audio tape in real time. obtained by al-jazeera at 1:53 p.m.

I asked their base control about the ship. The USS Liberty was the only ship of any size in the area. The US 6th Fleet, including two aircraft carriers, was 500 miles away. Oh, it was a great day. Hi, I'm Jim Smith. I was a damage. Controlman in engineering, I mean, I'm 20 years old, this is the time when I come from a small town that used to pull hay bales and in the summer, for a dollar an hour, the sun was shining, blue sky, clouds, nice people drinking the sun on the terrace, we had lunch and Five minutes later maybe the Jets arrived and when no one really knew what was happening until they started shooting, the captain told me that he warned that the muzzle of the forward gun was under attack and I tried to Lift the two sailors onto the front gun mounts.

I looked outside and They were blown to pieces by the rocket when the attack began and we realized we needed help. We're trying to contact Sixth Fleet. They were jamming both our distress frequencies and our tactical frequencies. Tactical frequencies are fine, but international distress frequencies. Jamming them is a violation of international law and the Israelis were jamming them and we couldn't transmit a signal. Here's a question I have to ask: who would know the frequencies other than an ally and who is the ally in the war I was in? Egypt was Israel what they would know and only they would know in this conflict what our frequencies would be now isolated from the outside world the crew of the Liberty was defenseless we had four fifty caliber machine guns on board that were basically there to repel any borders that might pass, you know, A pirate situation was certainly not designed to shoot down the jet planes we are attacking, but you can't shoot a plane at 600 miles per hour with a 50 caliber machine gun, it doesn't. work, it was just a surreal scene, the people who had been there before joking and laughing, now we are dead, dying, and with the walking dead and the injured, it was simply unreal, the barrels of gasoline stored on the deck of the ship burst into flames. flames and the crew rushed to I tried to put out the fires.

I was watching the plane as they circled and when they started coming back towards the ship I just yelled at him and then I shot the circle back and we jumped back in and kept fighting the fire. The rocket noises are in this when a rocket explodes I can't escape a rocket Oh, be careful where you're going, what the crew didn't know was that at three minutes past two the Israeli pilots received the order to use a new weapon much deadlier, the biggest problem, I guess, since that was the napalm that was thrown from the plane the napalm had burned burned almost the entire front of the ship the bridge area the entire top of the ship had been set on fire and it was all charred already It wasn't a navy gray color you have to stop the fires to stop the floods to keep that ship afloat that's your home you have nowhere else to go you can't go back and follow the path because there is no path above the Israeli military argued about what should happen next and who should sink the Liberty.

Remember I thought I was in pretty good shape, then I said I think I can swim to shore and then I thought about sharks and I thought about a lot of things, all quickly, you know, at 2:11:00 with the Israeli planes staying out of ammunition, the pilots were instructed to fly down and confirm the ship's identity. It was now 2:00 12 minutes and the Israeli control tower knew for sure that it was an American ship, the same as the forces. she had first identified herself at 5:15 a.m. m. that morning and then sounded again during seven additional reconnaissance flights throughout the day, the Jets withdrew, but three Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats were already en route, the USS Liberty was a spice ship in case In an attack, it was standard procedure for the spies on board to destroy everything in case it fell into enemy hands, everyone was destroying material, everyone was removing information from the computers, opening the computers, taking information out, that's something that just You don't want to listen on board. ship, you've done all this work, you collected this intelligence and processed it and now you have to destroy it, you just didn't want the enemy to get hold of anything rated 235, the Israeli motor boats fired five torpedoes, four missed but one hit.

More than nine hours had passed since the Israeli army first identified freedom. Israeli planes had flown over her repeatedly and 20 minutes earlier her control tower had confirmed once again that she was an American ship. 25 Americans were about to die at a single moment. This is what it looks like when a torpedo hits a ship the size of the Liberty, the torpedo launched us into the air like a roller coaster, it felt like you were going down, dead silence, lights off, smoke and fog everywhere. I went back to the fountain and filled it. with blood he bent down to take a drink and a black man looked back at me and when he fell back to get it right he kept making mistakes he kept sinking and sinking and sinking we just waited we all waited thinking this was all we were going down and I thought that was it the end of my life, the torpedo had blown a huge hole in the hull 39 feet by 24, killing 25 Americans in one hit, the torpedo hit the room I was in and it was just luck that this guy diedthis guy lived was how much shrapnel was coming your way you know the old typewriters I had the letter H sticking out of my left foot I had I don't know 80 pieces of shrapnel in my lower extremities and the place filled with water so fast, totally black, completely filled with dust and oil, it was like you were choking and you only had about eight or ten inches of space where you could get air.

The only way I could go in that direction was to fall and swim underwater four or five strokes come back up and then frantically catch my breath and try to find something else to hold on to me they pulled me out the hatch and I fell to the deck others weren't so lucky my friend Ronnie Campbell had a desk right there and I remember Ronnie saying you guys can do whatever you want to say. I'm going to write a letter home and he put a piece of paper in his typewriter and started writing dear Eileen, you won't believe what's happening to us. and just a few seconds after that, the torpedoes hit and killed the two marines, they killed my friend Ronnie Campbell and my job was to try to get probably 20 or 30 wounded sailors to the main deck and to the life rafts, so I went up and look.

I myself before trying to lift anyone and that's when I observed an Israeli motor torpedo boat clearly marked with a Star of David strafing our life raft. The crew of the Liberty were now trapped aboard their own ship with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, the torpedo boats arrived. We closed in and began strafing the ship using armor-piercing shells, the armor-piercing shells they were using, We're leaving holes that big around us and the metal coating just peels off like orange peel at close range. The armor-piercing bullets pierced the ship's steel hull. No place was safe.

This bullet was recovered from one of the navigation books at the rear of the bridge. It had penetrated the skin of the ship, passing through at least one other book and then. He stopped at the second book. This is part of an armor piercing shell. The outer part or jacket makes the hole through which it then passes. I am a bullet like this that hit sailor Francis Brown and killed him. He died right on the spot. he just fell to the ground dead he was barely 18 there weren't enough helmets for everyone it was like sitting in a cardboard box and someone was shooting through it bullets were coming everywhere during the attack freedom had been silent to the world Outside all their antennas were broken or jammed we had a whip antenna that hadn't worked the entire cruise and had a bullet hole in it one of the radio operators had taken a spool of coaxial cable and ran it from one of the transmitters back with antenna and took some shrapnel in the process went out and made a Firefox Firefox this is a rock star rock star under attack by unidentified surface and neighboring units require immediate assistance the US Sixth Fleet was 500 miles away and picked up the signal and so did the Israeli Armed Forces.

The attack stopped shortly after. The US aircraft carriers were in the middle of a nuclear weapons drill and had to be rearmed with conventional bombs before they could take off once the Israelis met the US. The US planes were in the air, they summoned the US naval attaché and They told him there had been a terrible mistake. The American planes were withdrawn when they returned. Israeli helicopters flew into the Liberty. This one had Israeli government personnel and the American naval attaché dropped a brown paper bag on the deck at the front of the ship loaded with an orange business card attached, it landed right next to a severed leg of one of the members. from the deck staff and the note said: do you have counselors?

It's pretty obvious there were casualties, I mean, there are still body parts and blood running down the bulkheads, so does his message have casualties? It was a little out of place one of the sailors took the bag to the captain the captain took out the note and read it he looked up in the helicopter and the social thing or Adam appeared on June 8, 1967, at the height of the War of On Six Days, the USS Liberty, an American spy ship, had just been

attacked

by Israeli planes and torpedo boats while in international waters off Egypt severely damaged.

Two-thirds of its crew were dead or wounded as soon as the news reached Washington. The attack on the Liberty instantly triggered an internal political crisis according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. One solution suggested in US government circles was to sink the Liberty so that journalists could not photograph it and inflame public opinion against the Israelis. The NSA. rejected this idea with a rude comment handling the media became the top priority I was taken to my home in White Oak Maryland my name is Patricia blue-ray Jacques and my husband was murdered on the Liberty and when I got there there were several people from the National Security Agency there, they were there to make sure he didn't talk to anyone from the press and that they didn't stay night and day in the In the Mediterranean, the Liberty was now listed at ten degrees, a gaping hole in the hull from above and below to align the planes that they said they were sending us never arrived.

What I feared and I think most of us feared was that we were going to sink. Well, the dining room decks were quite full of injured people, it seems like something out of a horror movie, but there were people standing or lying injured, dead and stunned, their heads were missing body parts. The Liberty only had one doctor on board with very few staff. medical resources there was not a table that was not being used with a body honoring a wounded body on it the doctor fixed compound fractures and treated gunshot and shrapnel wounds while they gave blood transfusions arm to arm it was very bad and the doctor told him: Do you want me to operate on you?

He said you will probably die if I do and you will surely die if I don't. And he said, "Go ahead, doctor," and when the doctor operated on him, we held him as tight as we could in horrible pain, I'm sure because of him, and all of a sudden he went limp and died right there. I don't want to see something like that again. Captain McGonagall received a pretty serious injury to her leg and lost a lot of blood. He was sailing by the stars. We had a little bit of power and tons of water in our bellies which meant the ship waved back and forth all night.

The next day American ships arrived to take away the wounded in the dead of the Liberty. The US government now ensured that no journalists could approach the crew as they carried the seriously injured to various locations. In fact, they placed guards in their rooms so that no one could be interviewed by the press. The Tol press blackout was in effect in the past. In Washington the government ensured that there was little information for the press while politics played out behind closed doors. They told me to go up to the seventh floor myself. Well, my name is Bill Wooley.

I was in charge of the Arab-Israeli sit-in because Secretary of State Dean Rusk himself had summoned Ambassador Harmon of Israel to come urgently, so I went through the meeting taking notes and out loud the secretary really demanded some explanation of why and what had happened. The ambassador himself seemed to be unaware of the incidents, he immediately said: I can't believe what you're telling me, it would be impossible, it would be unheard of, it was e

special

ly difficult for Lyndon Johnson to date the most pro-Israel American president in history, Johnson was in a situation very tough humor I'm Tom Hughes, I was director of the State Department, director of intelligence and investigation at the time of the Liberty incident and the '67 attack on the Liberty.

Johnson unofficially informed Newsweek magazine that the Israelis had

attacked

and why. What they detected was that they thought it was an intelligence ship that was perhaps intercepting both Israeli and Egyptian communications, but then everything changed: the fact that Johnson himself was the leaker and Newsweek's informant soon leaked and this alarmed , of course, to the Israeli embassy and To his senior friends and Jewish organizations, the Israeli embassy considered this a major problem and that what Johnson had told Newsweek practically amounted to blood libel. Declassified Israeli documents show they were going to threaten President Johnson with blatant anti-Semitism for blood libel and that would end his political career blackmail visit Admiral Bobby our Emlyn The US Navy retired our former Director of the Agency Homeland Security, but they know that if he's thinking about running again he'll need money for his campaign, so claiming he's blood labeling will wake up Jewish donors.

The Israeli government hired teams of lawyers, some of whom were close friends of Lyndon Johnson, and began an all-out offensive that lent the media to kill critical stories and tilt others in Israel's favor. A campaign was organized to see if something could be done. Every effort had been made to return Johnson to his normal, predictable pro-Israel position at the time when Johnson was still undecided about whether to run for president the following year. Efforts should be made to remind the president of the delicacy of his own position, which he would personally make. could lose support for his re-election bid in 1968 Israeli tactics were smart, they identified Johnson's weakness, the Vietnam War, and gave him two extraordinary gifts, neither of which were made public at the time, the first was political , one of Johnson's complaints about Israel. was that many of the Jewish positions in the heads of the Jewish community leaders were opposed to him in Vietnam and suddenly there was more and more silence about Vietnam as the Freedom crisis progressed, so he also knew that there was a move in his favor if he was moderate Israel there was a second, much more secret but vital gift for the American president the terrible death toll in Vietnam dominated the domestic news agenda the North Vietnamese had Russian surface-to-air missiles that shot down American planes at On the base, the American military attaché in Israel received a surprise visit from a senior Israeli intelligence officer, took some helicopters and crossed the Northern Red Sea to the surface-to-air missile sites and not only captured them but took them all missile launchers.

Manion's maintenance manuals, the rest and then he went to the US at the Sierra de Chelly embassy and said: I think I have something that might interest you and because those were the same missiles as our planes that were flying over Vietnam in the North encountered day by day and countermeasures were a huge issue, so the US government was very grateful for giving it to Israel. two gifts in return, we provided them with the weapons they had just lost in the war and the Liberty research led by the Department of Defense, the Department of Defense was watered down.

All of that is influenced by how much we have benefited from the captured SA-2 missile sites. Johnson soon responded and a much more lenient lion was needed and he hoped the whole incident could be put behind him as soon as possible. Johnson's softer approach to Israel was immediately reflected in the US Navy investigation that was now underway aboard the Liberty and we began to realize that a cover-up was descending upon us. Many people were in a key position to offer testimony they were not given that opportunity I testified about the strafing of life rafts to the captain's state of mind and it was that those Two issues in particular were completely omitted.

Lloyd Painter was not the only officer whose testimony was ignored. I saw what looked like unburned Vaseline, I scraped some off, put it in the jar, sealed the lid and presented it to the court of inquiry and that was the last I saw of that jar. There was no mention of napalm and I'm sure that's what they wanted to hear. I didn't know that at the time I didn't do it. I'm not saying many months later that they had recorded me remembering that it was a total farce. The US court of inquiry reported in just 20 days that it was a rush job riddled with spelling errors.

Many key pieces of evidence ignored any Israelis interviewed and exonerated them. of guilt I read the court of inquiry and realized that my statements had been removed from the file and never recorded, so I knew for sure that the cover-up was massive. The Israelis rushed to publish their own report which concluded that the whole affair was a

series

of errors and that no one was to blame. The only dissenting voice was that of Israel's ambassador in Washington who sent a secret telegram home arguing that Israel was clearly guilty. cited the audio tape of the attack whose existence was known to senior Israeli officials and mentioned the crucial 20-minute interval that followed the identificationof the Liberty and the launching of the torpedoes against him said that they should confess what they had done and bring the guilty to trial his advice was ignored the focus now was To repair the damage to relations between the United States and Israel, the Israelis have always They have been very adept and have followed what the US government is doing and thinking and trying to influence, and they are by no means the only country that doesn't, many do, there are just more of them. more effective than most and the great advantage they have compared to other countries is their influence in Congress at the time of the attack, the Washington Post had noted that the Jewish lobby could help determine the outcome of one hundred and sixty-nine of the 270 electoral votes were needed to win the White House, the abortive big words about the attack disappeared from the press releases at the Pentagon, and much more bland and neutral speech ensued, and this was true in the private briefings of officials in the venogram performed on the incident, but whatever was told to journalists, all US intelligence services had believed that the attack was intentional.

One of them wrote a nice cover-up for a group of ignorant, stupid and inept people. The x-x-x community has always been more generous than many of its other counterparts in financially supporting elections and political costs. In the process that translated into influence, many of Johnson's closest friends and advisors were pro-Israel and informed Tel Aviv of his every move. The Israeli story was constantly changing to counter any new intelligence the White House received so sensitive with these communications that The Israelis used code names to protect the identity of White House agents, but for the first time members of the Ring can being named Hamlet was a million-dollar fundraiser for Democrats when he called Johnson took his calls was a pickle minashi. was Arthur Goldberg the US ambassador to the United Nations Harare was David Ginsburg a high-profile Washington lawyer who also represented the Israeli embassy Ilan was Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas Lyndon Johnson had dinner with him on the eve of the six day war strategy worked the relationship between the United States and Israel proved to be stronger than killing and wounding more than 200 Americans.

The relationship between the United States and Israel was very much at stake and was rescued from the precipice. The crucial information came from the US ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg. He warned Tel Aviv that the United States had the audio tape that revealed that the Israeli pilots knew it was an American ship before attacking the tape was quietly buried. I think a conscious decision was made to sweep it under the rug and leave it behind. ThatThe US government had made the decision to accept the apology and reject the other reason, but did not insist further with the policy resolved.

The only unfinished business was the fate of the USS Liberty, badly damaged and now in Malta for extensive torpedo hole repairs. she was huge and it was revealed that she was much bigger once they took the ship to dry dock and drained it into the water. The sealed compartment was filled with water, too full of bodies, body parts, and top secret equipment. You can smell death and you can smell oil. What I remember as soon as the air hit the bodies they started to deteriorate rapidly, you do what you have to do, they were your shipmates and they still are.

The Navy was more concerned about Whitman parts than body parts, but when I went down, I knew. the two couldn't be separated, we had to start shoveling the pieces, 168 bags worth from other places, the makeup artists were getting to work, we were in the dry dock for about six weeks and three hundred Maltese workers are working two shifts a day and I think seven. days a week to test it they were cutting out the shell holes, welding plates on top and making metal to cover the torpedo hole and then in one day they painted the whole ship, it looked like nothing ever happened, we took it across the Atlantic , it was like being in a cemetery, but when we get to the port we look good, this press and everything with air and it seems like basically nothing happened, so it was great for the press to make light of the worry that happened to us while the survivors They gathered with widows and friends. 168 bags of body parts and top-secret equipment were quietly taken to an incinerator and burned a year later and Captain Liberty William McGonagall was awarded the Medal of Honor, America's highest award for bravery;

The tradition has always been for the president to present it. in the White House I look at these two-gallon reams and see: Oh, Captain McGonagall never heard words like these from her commanding officer, there was no television coverage for him when he received his medal in a quiet ceremony at the Navy Yard. President Johnson was only four miles away at the time he remained at the White House to present diplomas to schoolchildren, the reason was revealed in this internal memo informing President Johnson that, due to the nature and sensitivity of these awards, should be awarded by the Department of Defense. not for him, the advice was clear, no press release should be made about it when I received my Purple Heart in a secret ceremony in the captain's office.

I was reprimanded, I was threatened with a court martial, never tell anyone where you got this from, don't do it. Have you ever told anyone how you got this medal? The following year, American aid to Israel quadrupled and President Johnson agreed to a top-secret treaty with Israel for mutual intelligence sharing, an agreement that is still in effect today codenamed the Ruby stone, one of things. What bothers me is that there was no good explanation for what happened. No one wants to talk about why the big secret the Israelis wanted to protect was their next step. They had told the Americans that this was going to be a limited war and not a land grab, but on June 8, 1967, their forces were prepared to attack and seize the Golan Heights and invade Syria, something they wish to hide from the White House until they have done so.

Successive US administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have refused to deal with the Liberty; even the issue of war crimes against unarmed Americans has never been addressed. There was a war crimes report submitted by the Liberty Veterans Association to address war crimes issues such as shooting at life rafts that was never adequately responded to. I don't think it was. point answered the people who are responsible for attacking the Liberty Liberty where you generally meet the military in the war room I don't know how many four eight ten those are the people who came up with the plan those are the individuals who are responsible for the attack the pilots the motor torpedo boat personnel were ordered you know you don't follow orders go to jail so you have to move on it wasn't the Israeli people who ordered that attack it wasn't the average Jewish person who ordered that attack we really need to exonerate the person average Israeli Jew of this and go after those individuals who are responsible for the attack no one was really willing to take this on not to start the State Department the White House nor the It is in everyone's interest to Congress to let this go and that is exactly what they did , but in doing so they left a lot of pain for the survivor and for the families because there were many broken families, broken marriages, alcoholism, depression, post-traumatic stress. mess, so those crew members suffered a lot, but so did the families.

The hardest part was our own government's reaction to us and it was actually the fingers that were pointed at us and the Israelis, they weren't and never were. When asked why they did it, they only questioned us. Families still want answers from their government, which has remained silent for many. Some memories never fade. We had a wonderful time just being together. I met Alan at a party. We spent a lot of time talking. the afternoon and at the end of the afternoon he said to me: are you busy tomorrow afternoon? and I said, well, no, and he said, do you think we could get married?

Then they told me I was among the dead, it was absolutely the worst moment in my life. Not a day goes by when I don't think about those guys. I mean, I went through hell but they left the earth when I walked to the mass grave. I still feel a connection with those people. It's hard to explain, but there is still hope. I want to remember that connection as much as I can. What we share. What we feel. It took 13 years of haggling before both sides finally agreed to a compensation deal for the ship in 1980. It was just the bill plus interest. more than $17 million Israel offered six the Americans accepted and then sold the Liberty for $100,000 worth of scrap metal the settlement for the victim was quicker but many are still unhappy with it today it was not fulfilled it was a fair deal I would have bought it but I was very sad and broken I just didn't have the energy to take on that fight and it wasn't a fight that I thought I could win the State Department we are very anxious for the survivors to reach that agreement they sent a check for the amount and that was The American government devised a formula for the Israelis to compensate widows and children for their loss.

This included payment for shock and mental anguish. Widows received $25,000 and $10,000 for each of their children over the age of five. The lawyer doubted that children under five could understand the event enough to suffer shock and pain from the U.S. Therefore, they should receive nothing, an offer the Israelis accepted since the attack on the Freedom. The United States and Israel have become increasingly closer at the time George Ball the United States. The deputy secretary of state noted that it seemed clear to the Israelis that since American leaders did not have the courage to punish them for the blatant murder of American citizens, they would let them get away with anything.