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**U.S. Agency CONFIRMS Attack On USS Liberty An Accident**
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WASHINGTON - New documents released this week by
America's National Security Agency support
Israel's version of a long-festering controversy
between the two countries: Israel's sinking of an
American spy ship, the USS Liberty, off the coast
of Gaza during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Israel has always said it had no
idea the ship was American, but
conspiracy theorists and
anti-Israel propagandists still
claim Israel sank the ship in
the full knowledge that it was
American.
The documents, originally
defined as top secret, were
made public by Florida Judge Jay Cristol, who
has been investigating the Liberty incident for
years and published a book on the subject last
year. On Monday, the NSA gave him a transcript
of conversations held by two Israeli Air Force
helicopter pilots who were hovering over the
Liberty as it was sinking, and these tapes
confirm Israel's claim that the sinking of the
ship, which killed 34 American servicemen and
wounded 171, was a tragic error.
After the Liberty was bombed by both the Israel
Air Force and the Israel Navy, the two
helicopter pilots were summoned from their base
to assess the damage and evaluate the
possibility of rescuing the surviving crew
members. An American spy plane, which had been
sent to the area as soon as the NSA learned of
the attack, recorded their conversations, which
took place between 2:30 and 3:37 P.M. on June
8, the third day of the war.
The spy plane also recorded the orders radioed
to the pilots by their supervisor at Hatzor
Base, which instructed them to search for
Egyptian survivors from the "Egyptian warship"
that had just been bombed - thus supporting
Israel's claim that it had believed the ship
was Egyptian when it ordered it attacked. "Pay
attention. The ship is now identified as
Egyptian," the pilots were told.
Nine minutes later, Hatzor informed the pilots
that it was not an Egyptian warship, but an
Egyptian cargo ship. Only at 3:07 were the
pilots first informed that the ship might not
have been Egyptian at all: Hatzor told them
that if they found Arabic-speaking survivors,
they should be taken to El-Arish, but if they
found English-speaking survivors, they should
be taken to Lod. "Clarify by the first man that
you bring up, what nationality he is, and
report to me immediately," the supervisor
instructed, according to the transcript. "It's
important to know."
Then, at 3:12, one of the pilots informed Hatzor
that he saw an American flag flying over the
wounded ship. He was asked to investigate and
determine whether it was really an American
ship.
This is not the first time such transcripts have
been made public: Israel gave its own
recordings of the pilots' conversations to the
British television station Thames in 1987. But
conspiracy theorists charged that Israel had
doctored the tapes before handing them over to
the station in order to hide the fact that it
sank the Liberty intentionally. No such
imputation can be made about these new
transcripts, as they were never in Israeli
hands.
Israel has always said it attacked the Liberty,
which America sent to the region to gather
intelligence on the progress of the war,
because it believed it was an Egyptian supply
ship ferrying supplies to the Egyptian troops
that Israel was then fighting. When it
discovered the error, it immediately informed
the Americans, apologized and paid compensation
to the victims' families.
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