The truth on the USS
Liberty is revealed in hot new book by Phil Nelson, LBJ historian.
50th Anniversary of Murders
Lyndon Johnson was behind the USS Liberty murders
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From Robert Morrow, 512-306-1510
I highly recommend Phil Nelson’s new book Remembering the
Liberty!
Remember the Liberty by Phil Nelson, June 2, 2017
The astounding story in
this new book is about one of the most explosive and hidden secrets in U.S.
history – one that has never been previously told in such a transformative
way. It is a story that has been kept so secret from most Americans that
it is completely unknown by the vast majority, and those who have even heard of
it have accepted the lie that it was an accident, a case of “mistaken
identity.” But the very reason it was kept as “Top Secret” by the
government and embargoed by the mainstream media was because it was always
about presidential treasons and treachery of the highest order.
Remember the
Liberty! explores how
a sitting U.S. president collaborated with Israeli leaders in the fomentation
of a war between them and their Arab neighbors, Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
It had been planned for months, as much as two-plus years – though
disguised as “spontaneous” – to be a war that would ensure a victory for
Israel, the weakening of her enemies in neighboring Arab nations, and include
the acquisition of additional territories for Israel, all incentives to ensure
the support of Israeli leaders.
But the 36th President of
the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, harbored his own interests in
facilitating what would become known as the Six Day War: To him, the highest
tier of his interests always centered around his accumulation of power, and in
this case, it was about
holding on to it the
following year by ensuring his reelection. Upset with his loss of
popularity by Jewish voters, he wanted to give Israel as much covert – and
ultimately, had the plan succeeded, overt – support as possible in the plan to
engage their neighbors in that war, including the creation of a pretext to join
them in attacking Egypt.
This book finally exposes
the actual cause – the only realistic possible explanation – of the mysterious,
and unresolved, vicious attack on a U.S. Naval ship. After the botched plan had
been executed, the ship refused to sink even after being hit by a torpedo,
leading the attack to be cancelled and a massive cover-up invoked, including
severe threats for the crewmembers to “keep their lips sealed.” As the ex-CIA
analyst Ray McGovern put it in the book’s Foreword, those orders “put steroids
to the PTSD suffered by many of the survivors.” That cover-up is still, barely,
in place, and now completely exposed. Written largely by three of the survivors
themselves (Ernie Gallo, Ron Kukal and Phil Tourney), the truth is finally
being told, with the remaining secrets of the real story finally revealed.
Remember the
Liberty! puts much more focus on
the brutality with which the Johnson administration and the U.S. Navy hierarchy
treated the sailors themselves, not only then, but, as importantly, continuing
even now. It began before, during and immediately after the attack but –
because of the threats of prison “or worse” if they ever uttered a word about
it, even to their wives or parents – it festered for decades, while they had to
live – alone, sans support groups – with the horrors they had experienced
first-hand, in real time. It meant keeping their appalling memories within
themselves for 15-20 years before they felt safe enough to even discuss it with
anyone else. Their stories relate how they have continued to be
marginalized and dismissed by the mainstream media (MSM) and accused of
anti-Semitism by Israeli defenders in knee-jerk fashion. In fact, the
book contains an entire chapter dedicated to this point, along with other
references to the same point within other chapters.
Another very significant
point – never previously noted in any other book on this “incident” – is how,
after the motor torpedo boats had fired four torpedoes and all had missed the
target, the fifth torpedo which hit the Liberty
was fired, according to one sailor’s account, as the result of a presidential
order to one of his own ships. The severely wounded sailor who discovered
this part of the story – a well-respected man of impeccable reputation – was
nearly killed during the attack, only saved by another sailor who came to his
rescue and helped him to the medics, holding his intestines inside his abdomen
until he delivered his fellow sailor to the ship’s only doctor. When he
was finally released from the hospital and returned to the U.S., he then
discovered that his Navy records had been fudged to hide the fact that he was
even on the ship, so he had to hire an investigator to prove it in order to
obtain his disability acknowledged. His investigator had high-level
Pentagon contacts who revealed many of the hidden secrets to him, and that’s how
the survivor found out about that “fifth torpedo.” No one else has
ever come forward to verify his story, and allow their names to be released,
so, accordingly, we had to treat this part of it very “deftly,” almost as
though it was merely a “rumor” that may one day finally be acknowledged.
Many other books have
been written on the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. Some of those present the case
put forth by the U.S. and Israeli governments’ “official story” (See those by
A. J. Cristol, or Michael Oren), developed to perpetuate the contrived cover-up
account, hiding the incriminating facts and essentially writing it off as a
freak “accident.” But that was never the reaction of the State Department
officials of the time, or the Navy brass who were not under orders to conduct a
phony investigation designed to cover it up. One of them, former chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer, observed that the
president’s handling of the Liberty attack was “… the most disgraceful act I
witnessed in my entire military career.” The man who wrote the original
fabricated Navy “Court of Inquiry” report on the incident – the report used by
those same authors as the basis for their books – eventually retracted all of
it: Former Navy Captain Ward Boston Jr., JAGC, in 2004 wrote a scathing
renunciation of the book by A. J. Cristol, admitting that the original Navy
report was designed to cover up the truths and replace them with bald-faced lies,
as we detail in the book.
The many books which have
attempted to lay out the substantiated facts behind the attack all come to the
conclusion that the brutal 2+ hour attack was not only intentional – nor was it
designed to merely put the ship out of commission, which was accomplished
within the first five minutes – it was meant to ensure that it sank to the
bottom of the Mediterranean Sea and that there would be no survivors who might
attempt to “correct history.” These books (primarily those by James
Ennes, James Scott and several others referenced in our book) do not mention
the primary factor that actually caused the attack in the first place, and
which then created the massive cover-up. Some of the best books
(e.g. Peter Hounam’s Operation
Cyanide) did point to strange actions going on at the White House,
and suggested that Johnson’s political troubles might have something to do with
the chain of events.
But Remember
the Liberty! is the first book to factor into the equation
LBJ’s clear psychosis, known to those close to him but long hidden from the
public by the press and fawning historians. Only by understanding his
manic desire to win back the political support of Jewish people in the biggest
cities – especially New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles –
who had abandoned him because of his Vietnam policies, can one understand what
really happened. Like his previous “false flag” operation – the phantom
attack at the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnamese gunboats on two U.S. Navy
destroyers, conveniently occurring just three months before the 1964 elections,
which helped him win his landslide victory – he thought this attack would
secure his re-election the following year. Yet the opposite happened:
When the Liberty did
not sink – and his devious “false flag” plan to use it as a pretext for blaming
the attack on Egypt and join Israel in their victorious “Six Day War” collapsed
– his re-election chances were the only thing that sank. Nine months
later he reluctantly announced that he would remove himself from the 1968
elections to the very office that he had lusted for his entire life.
The conflicted goals of
the Six Day War are the root cause of the turbulence in the Mid-East, which the
world has witnessed for the last five decades. It has produced ironies,
such as the fact that over half of the U.S. foreign aid budget goes to Israel,
a well-developed, prosperous economic power set amidst some of the most
poverty-ridden nations in the world. And it was through the paradox of
Johnson’s most sordid manipulations that the U.S./Israel relationship became so
close in the aftermath of the Liberty
attack: Suddenly, U.S. policy was transformed from being “neutral”
towards all countries in the area – as previous administrations had tried to
remain, to avoid being seen as partial to either side – to that of openly,
aggressively, backing Israel in all possible ways, including its acquisition of
nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Meanwhile, the tensions between
Israel and its Palestinian “citizens” in what they consider as “occupied territory”
has descended into a state of constant fighting between the two sides,
especially as manifested in the walled-off territory called Gaza. While
Israel claims to be the only democracy in the area, that term seems to apply
only to those of the Jewish faith or their descendants. For Palestinians,
the more correct term would be “apartheid.” The worst part of
the current state of affairs in the existential Israel / Palestine state is how
all of those facets appear to have been the product of the insouciance – or
worse, the rigidly pro-Zionist views – of America’s leadership, regardless of
the individuals or the parties in power.
This book will
undoubtedly come under fire for its controversial assertions. But any
criticisms of it being biased against Israel will be misplaced, since, if
anything, it finally puts the primary blame for the attack on the USS Liberty where it should have
always been: upon Lyndon Johnson. Israeli leaders were only taking their
despicable actions because Johnson had insisted on it, implicitly, as a
condition for his assistance in their plans for extending Israeli borders into
Palestine. The fact that his diabolical plan failed, and the Liberty did not sink, thanks
to the heroic efforts of the survivors, saved the world from the nuclear
conflagration which might have otherwise occurred, with Jerusalem – the “city
of peace” – at ground zero.
_______________________________________________
Authors: Phillip F.
Nelson, with Ernest A. Gallo, Ronald G. Kukal and Phillip F. Tourney (survivors
of the attack on the USS Liberty, and Foreword by ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern;
Preface by Edgar F. Tatro