The USS Liberty Story by Ernie Gallo

 THE USS LIBERTY STORY

 

The USS Liberty – the most decorated Navy ship (single action)

PURPOSE -- The USS Liberty Veterans Association (LVA) has tried for over 53 years to expose the true story of the deliberate Israeli attack on the USS Liberty to the American people through books, news media, movies, and letters to the President of the United States and congressmen.  The mission of the LVA is to pursue the publication of the true story.  While we have encountered politicians and news media personnel who were willing to help, they have been unable to interest their superiors or others in supporting our cause.  Due to political correctness, many people believe it is just too risky to say anything negative about Israel.    FYI:  The USS Liberty is the most decorated US Navy ship in the history of the Navy for a single action.

THE ISSUE -- The Israelis and the US Government do not want the truth to be told.  It is obvious that they fear that America may be less of a supportive ally if the truth were known.  The truth of their deeds and the Johnson Administration require an objective and complete investigation.  Congress has never officially investigated the attack and so the attack continues to be a cover-up of the worst magnitude.  The House has a constitutional mandate to “define and punish Pirates and Felonies committed on the high seas and offenses against the Law of Nations (Article 1, section 8)”.  Regarding the Arab/Israeli ’67 War, we believe the operational plan was Operation Cyanide.  We have discovered that the USS Liberty was part of this plan.  This document should be declassified immediately and released to the American public for analytical historic purposes.  The complicity of the Israelis and the Johnson Administration in starting the Six Day War alarmed the Soviet Union.  When the Soviets suspected that the U.S. was planning to enter the war militarily, they challenged President Johnson with a military confrontation and President Johnson wisely backed down from any further military activities leaving Israel to fend for themselves.  On June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty was now a perceived threat to Israel’s war agenda and they were not entertaining peace until the Golan Heights were taken a few days later.  It is obvious that an American/Soviet confrontation did not matter to them -- just so long as the Soviets stayed out of their way.

SYNOPSIS OF OUR STORY -- On June 8, 1967, the Israeli Defense Forces murdered 34 Americans on the high seas (31 sailors, 2 marines, and a NSA civilian).  Out of a total compliment of 294 men, 70% of the crew became casualties as 174 were wounded in addition to the 34 killed.  Israel’s use of a torpedo attack was the willful attempted murder of 294 Americans on the high seas.

For 6 hours the morning of the attack, the ship was subjected to intense scrutiny by Israeli photo-reconnaissance aircraft, 12 over flights, flying as low as 200 feet.  The USS Liberty had traditional American markings on her bow (GTR-5) and stern (USS LIBERTY) and flying a large American Flag standing out in the breeze.  She was sailing in international waters off the Egyptian coast on a clear and sunny day.  The ship was a WWII victory hull cargo ship, lightly armed with four 50 caliber machine guns for repel boarder purposes.  Her military mission was to monitor, intercept, and record all radio transmissions in the ambient ether.  The attack occurred in three coordinated phases (Israeli Air Force, Navy, and Marines)

(Phase 1) Following aircraft observations, the Israelis began the attack with 3 fighter jets which strafed, rocketed, and bombed the Liberty.  (Phase 2) This was followed with 3 torpedo boats that fired 40mm canons and torpedoes.  Since the Liberty was a virtually unarmed vessel and not a military threat, at no time did the torpedo boats request the Liberty surrender as did the North Koreans regarding the USS Pueblo in 1968.  The Israeli choice that day was live target practice as the USS Liberty could not fight back.  The motor torpedo boats leisurely circled the ship shooting at anything that moved and whatever target suited their whim.  It defies logic as to why they expended so many munitions on a defenseless ship unless they were trying to send the United States a message.  When they were finished, the Liberty was riddled with 821 holes, sustained 2 napalm bombs, and a torpedo blowing a 24 by 39 foot hole in her starboard side.  Miraculously, the Liberty refused to sink and was able to get underway under her own power.  It was obvious to the Liberty crew that survivors were not to be taken as the Israelis were observed machine gunning life rafts and fire fighters.  

At the beginning of the attack, the Liberty Radiomen and Electronic Technicians attempted to send a May Day.  Responding to our SOS about 15 minutes into the Israeli attack, the USS Saratoga launched conventionally armed fighter aircraft to assist the USS Liberty.  Our SOS did not identify the attacker at the time as the identity of the attacker was unknown.  Within minutes after the launch, the White House recalled all aircraft abandoning the USS Liberty subjecting her to an additional 1 hour of an Israeli turkey shoot.  In disbelief, RADM Raymond Geis, Sixth Fleet Carrier Division Commander, challenged the order (as was his right and responsibility in this situation).  Unbelievably, the White House again reaffirmed the order to recall all aircraft despite her plea for help.  Without an investigation, it cannot be determined if Sixth fleet aircraft would have prevented the Israeli torpedo boat attack and ended all hostility thus preventing the torpedo attack murdering 25 of the 34 crew.

(Phase 3) When hostilities ceased, helicopters were observed overhead with Israeli commandos at the ready to finish us off.  Fortuitously, the Israelis intercepted an invalid message that U.S. help was on the way (the Israelis had no way of knowing that the aircraft were recalled).  Israel was reluctantly forced to terminate its ongoing attack.  Ironically help did not arrive until 18 hours after the attack when the Liberty was only 15 air minutes away from USS Saratoga and USS America fighter jets.  In addition to the loss of American lives, Israelis destroyed one of the most advanced intelligence ships.  

Proof that Israel positively knew that she was attacking an American ship:  Three Air Force intelligence personnel at different locations and unaware of each others responsibilities (Ronald Gotcher, Steve Forslund, and Richard Block), observed real time U.S. Air Force Security Group aircraft translations (Hebrew to English) of intercept discussions between the attacking Israel fighter pilots and their ground controllers.  The ground control station asked the pilots to confirm the target was American and they replied “yes”.  Ground control then ordered the aircraft to attack and sink the target and ensure no survivors.

In conjunction with the above, another confirmation that the attack was deliberate comes from the Israeli State Archives (Ha’aretz, Israel’s leading newspaper).  That is, U.S. Ambassador (Amb.) to the UN, Arthur Goldberg revealed to Israeli Amb. Abraham Harman that the Americans managed to record the Israeli pilots during the attack and the recordings proved they knew their target was an American vessel.  Goldberg told Harman there was only one way out of the crisis:  Israel had to put someone on trial which never happened.

The subsequent US Naval Court of inquiry was a sham.  It sorely lacked naval judicial standards (as cited by Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, former Judge Advocate General of the Navy) and was deliberately falsified to compliment the Israeli story (as observed by retired Navy Lawyer, Captain Ward Boston in a sworn affidavit).  Details acquired were either changed or dropped so that the Israeli version indicated that the attack was a tragic mistake.  The orders to falsify came directly from President Johnson.   This is obstruction of justice at the highest levels.  The rights of 291 military personnel were violated.

The survivors of the USS Liberty were told never to talk about the incident under penalty of fine and/or imprisonment.  Military orders that followed were in line with the White House which was not to indicate on any documents, monuments, and the like that Israel was the attacker.  As an example, the USS Liberty skipper, Captain William McGonagle was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions to keep the ship afloat and operational, saving countless lives.  His award was given to him not by President Johnson at the White House which was the custom.  The Captain’s medal was presented to him by the Secretary of the Navy at a low level Washington Navy Yard ceremony and his citation lacked any mention of an Israeli attack.

Note:  Everything written heretofore and the remaining details are accurate and can be proven by corroborated individual witness testimony, logical deduction, and documentation.  

CONCLUSION -- What a crime it would be for historical reasons if the US Government continues to lie about details of the Six Day War.  In the end, truth always wins out.  What a shame for elected officials who will not stand up to be counted.  For the sake of our fallen 34 shipmates, we will not give up. They deserve justice!  On June 8, 2005, the LVA filed a War Crimes Report against Israel in compliance with a Department of Defense Directive.  The Pentagon has indicated that no investigation will take place.  The LVA only asks for a complete and honest investigation.    

The crew of the USS Liberty did everything possible not to give up our ship and fight the only way we could by maintaining our vital engineering propulsion machinery, water tight integrity, and most of all help keep our wounded alive.  With the decorations mentioned, we have been dishonored and chastised by the lies of Israel and our Government.  The United States Government does not understand that by joining the Israeli lie (that the attack was a case of mistaken identity), they:  make the LVA appear as Jewish bigots; frustrate our efforts to distance ourselves from Neo-Nazi organization that use us thereby aiding the bigot label; ignore the fact that since Israel used a torpedo, this was the attempted murder of 294 Americans; and, never pressed Israel for the perpetrators of the attack.  They:  do not realize the embarrassment to the crew as we are considered the “bad guys” for speaking up; put the Israeli relationship over and above the crew of the USS Liberty; and, dishonors the crew and our lost shipmates by making us a politically correct item of the day.   Time after time, the eye witnesses of the attack, the Liberty crew, are called conspiracy theorist.  Because the event involved Israel and compounded by a state lie, we are automatically labeled – a bunch of whiners.  I guess we are supposed to keep our mouths shut – after all, Israel is our ally.  I suppose if no one was killed or wounded, we could possibly do that.  However, the fact that 34 were murdered, 174 wounded, and they attempted to murder 294 Americans, we would be remiss as Americans if we did not speak out as our 34 shipmates would have died for nothing.   

WE NEED YOU

After reading this article, if your American spirit is challenged, please write to the President of the United States and your congressmen requesting an official investigation.  If enough citizens demand to know the truth, the pressure may be too great for our distracters to stop us.  Make no mistake, our society will be the winners when the complete truth of the attack on the USS Liberty and the Six Day War (June 67) are fully understood.  The US Government can then stop living this lie and history can then be recorded accurately.  Your Tax deductible contributions are also gladly accepted.  Please help!  Become an Associate member of the USS Liberty Veteran Association for $20.00 and receive our periodic newsletter.   Since we are 501c3 tax exempt, all desperately  needed donations are tax deductible.

God bless America and may God give our officials the grace and courage to do the right thing and initiate a proper and honest investigation.    

Ernest A. Gallo Former CTM-2, USS Liberty Survivor, President, USS Liberty Veterans Association, ernie7900@aol.com

REFERENCES

Books:  Liberty Injustices – A Survivor’s Account of American  Bigotry: author, Ernest A. Gallo

            Beyond Treason – author Robert J. Allen, JD

             Enemies Within – author Clint Burnette

Blood in the Water – author Joan Mellen

             Remember the Liberty, author Phillip Nelson

              Eagles Are Gathering, author, Merlin Miller

              Erasing the Liberty , author, Phil Tourney

Assault on The Liberty; author, James Ennes, Jr.

              Guilt By Association, author, Jeff Gates

              The Attack on the Liberty, author, James Scott

              Body of Secrets; author, James Bamford

Films:  Sacrificing Liberty

Justice for the Liberty

Dead in the Water; BBC Films

Web Sites: www/usslibertydcoumentcenter.org

 www.usslibertyveterans.org

List:  Over 30 prominent US Officials, Admirals, and authors who believe the attack was deliberate.  Among them are: Admiral Thomas Moorer (former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Richard Helms (former CIA Director), and Dean Rusk (former Secretary of State).  A complete list provided upon request.  Other documents can also be provided upon request.  Email “ernie7900@aol.com”.  

You can also contact us at the following address

USS Liberty Veterans Association

PO Box 680275

Marietta, GA 30068

770-363-3986

          

Captain William McGonagle, USN (ret.)

Medal of Honor Recipient

The Moorer Commission for the USS Liberty (October 22, 2003)

  The Moorer Commission

Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on USS Liberty, the Recall of Military Rescue Support Aircraft while the Ship was Under Attack, and the Subsequent Cover-up by the United States Government

October 22, 2003

Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, U.S. Navy (deceased) Former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

General Raymond G. Davis, U.S. Marine Corps (deceased) (MOH)*, Former Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps

Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, U.S. Navy (deceased)

Former Judge Advocate of the Navy (73-75)

Ambassador James Akins (deceased)

Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (73-76)

 

We, the undersigned having undertaken an independent investigation of Israel’s attack on USS Liberty , including eyewitness testimony from surviving crew members, a review of naval and other official records, an examination of official statements by the Israeli and American governments, a study of the conclusions of all previous official inquiries, and a consideration of important new evidence and recent statements from individuals having direct knowledge of the attack or the cover up, hereby find the following:**

1.       That on June 8, 1967, after eight hours of aerial surveillance, Israel launched a two-hour air and naval attack against USS Liberty, the world’s most sophisticated intelligence ship, inflicting 34 dead, and 173 wounded American servicemen (a casualty rate of 70%, in a crew of 294).; 

2.       That the Israeli air attack lasted approximately 25 minutes, during which time unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on USS Liberty’s bridge, and fired 30mm cannons and rockets into our ship, causing 821 holes, more than 100 of which were rocket-size; survivors estimate 30 or more sorties were flown over the ship by minimum of 12 attacking Israeli planes which were jamming all 5 American emergency radio channels;

3.        That the torpedo boat attack involved not only firing of torpedoes, but the machine-gunning of Liberty’s firefighters and stretcher-bearers as they struggled to save their ship and crew, the Israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine-gun at close range 3 of the Liberty’s life rafts that had been lowered into the water by survivors to rescue the most seriously wounded;

4.       That there is compelling evidence that Israel’s attack, was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew; evidence of such intent is supported by statements from Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Undersecretary of State George Ball, former CIA director Richard Helms, former NSA directors Lieutenant General William Odom, USA (Ret.), Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, USN (Ret.), and Marshall Carter; former NSA deputy directors Oliver Kirby and Major General John Morrison, USAF (Ret.), and former Ambassador Dwight Porter, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon in 1967;

5.       That in attacking USS Liberty, Israel committed acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the U.S.;

6.       That fearing conflict with Israel, the White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty by recalling Sixth Fleet military rescue support while the ship was under attack; evidence of the recall of rescue aircraft is supported by statements of Captain Joe Tully, Commanding Officer of the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, and Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis, the Sixth Fleet carrier division commander, at the time of the attack; never before in American naval history has a rescue mission been canceled when an American ship was under attack;

7.       That although Liberty was saved from almost certain destruction through the heroic efforts of the ship’s Captain, William L. McGonagle (deceased) (MOH), and his brave crew, surviving crew members were later threatened with “court-martial, imprisonment or worse,” if they exposed the truth, and were abandoned by their own government;

8.       That due to the influence of Israel’s powerful supporters in the U.S., the White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people;

9.       That due to continuing pressure by the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., this attack remains the only serious naval incident that has never been thoroughly investigated by Congress; to this day, no surviving crewmember has been permitted to officially testify about the attack;

10.     That there has been an official cover-up without precedent in American naval history; the existence of such a cover-up is now supported by statements of Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, USN, (deceased), former Judge Advocate General of the Navy; and, Captain Ward Boston, USN (deceased), the chief counsel to the Navy’s 1967 Court of Inquiry of Liberty attack;

11.    That the truth about Israel’s attack and subsequent White House cover-up continues to be officially concealed from the American people to the present day and a national disgrace;

12.    That a danger to our national security exists whenever our elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation, and specifically are unwilling to challenge Israel’s interests when they conflict with American interests; this policy, evidenced by the failure to defend USS Liberty and the subsequent official cover-up of the Israeli attack, endangers the safety of Americans and the security of the U.S.

WHEREUPON, we the undersigned, in order to fulfill our duty to the brave crew of the USS Liberty and to all Americans who are asked to serve in our Armed Forces, hereby call upon the Department of the Navy, the Congress of the U.S. and the American people to immediately take the following actions:

FIRST:  That a new Court of Inquiry be convened by the Department of the Navy, operating with Congressional oversight, to take public testimony from surviving crew members; and to thoroughly investigate the circumstances of the attack on the USS Liberty, with full cooperation from the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the military intelligence services, and to determine Israel’s possible motive in launching said attack on the U.S. naval vessel;

SECOND:  That every appropriate committee of the Congress of the U.S. investigate the actions of the White House and Defense Department that prevented the rescue of the USS Liberty, thereafter threatened he surviving officers and men if they exposed the truth, and covered up the true circumstances of the attack from the American people; and

THIRD:  That the eight day of June of every year be proclaimed to be hereafter known as USS LIBERTY REMEMBERANCE DAY, in order to commemorate USS Liberty heroic crew; and to educate the American people of the danger to our national security inherent in any passionate attachment of our elected officials for any foreign nation.

*IN MEMORIAM:  General of Marines Raymond G. Davis, one of America’s most decorated military heroes (including the Congressional Medal of Honor), Vice Chairman of this panel and one of the principal members of this Independent Commission of Inquiry, passed away in Conyers, Georgia, on September 3, 2003.

**[1] Captain Ward Boston, USN, JAGC, Ret., the chief Navy attorney for the 1967 U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry into the Israeli attack, has recently come forward to repudiate the Court’s conclusion that the attack was “a case of mistaken identity”.  Captain Boston has revealed that all available evidence, in fact, pointed in exactly the opposite direction – that it was a deliberate attack on a clearly identified American ship.  In his affidavit dated October 9, 2003, Captain Boston states, “Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack, which killed 34 American sailors and injured 173 others, was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.  I am certain that the Israeli pilots that undertook the attack, as well as their superiors who had ordered the attack, were aware that the ship was American.”  Captain Boston stated that has personal knowledge that Admiral Kidd found the attack to be “a case of mistaken identify” in 1967 only because he was under direct orders to do so by Defense Secretary McNamara and President Johnson.

[2] Lieutenant Commander David Lewis, USS Liberty’s chief intelligence officer (who was severely wounded in the attack) has reported a conversation with Admiral Lawrence R. Geis, the Sixth Fleet carrier division commander, who visited Lewis after he had been medically evacuated by helicopter to the aircraft carrier USS America.  According to Lewis, “He (Admiral Geis) said that he wanted somebody to know that we weren’t forgotten” attempts HAD been made to come to our assistance.  He said that he had launched a flight of aircraft to come to our assistance, and he had then called Washington, Secretary McNamara came on the line and ordered the recall of the aircraft, which he did.  Concurrently he said that since he suspected that they were afraid that there might have been nuclear weapons on hand, he reconfigured another flight of aircraft – strictly conventional weaponry and re-launched it.  After the second launch, he again called Washington to let them know what was going on.  Again, Secretary McNamara ordered the aircraft recalled.  Not understanding why, he requested confirmation of the order; and the next higher in command came on to confirm that “President Johnson….with the instructions that the aircraft were to be returned, that he would not have his allies embarrassed, he didn’t care who was killed or what was done to the ship “words” to that effect.  With that, Admiral Geis swore me to secrecy for his lifetime.  I had been silent up until I found out from Admiral Moorer that Admiral Geis had passed away” (transcript from NBC’s Liberty Story, aired on national television 1/27/92.  This statement by Commander Lewis has recently been corroborated by Tony Hart, a Navy Communication Technician stationed at the U.S. Navy Base in Morocco in June 1967.  Mr. Hart connected the telephone conversation between Secretary McNamara and Admiral Geis and stayed on the line to keep them connected.  Hart has been recorded as saying that he overheard Admiral Geis refusing McNamara’s order to recall the Sixth Fleet rescue aircraft while the ship was under attack.  Mr. Hart reported that McNamara responded, “we are not going to war over a bunch of dead sailor”. 

[3] New evidence of intercepted radio communications between attacking Israeli pilots and the Israeli War Room, recorded by a U.S. Navy EC-121 spy plane, in which the Israeli pilots report seeing Liberty’s American flag flying, has been collected by investigative author James Bamford – for 9 years the Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings (and author of Body of Secrets, which includes a chapter entitled Blood about the attack on USS Liberty).  A similar radio message was intercepted by the EC-121 from the Israeli motor torpedo boats.  This corroborates statements by surviving crew members, by Ambassador Dwight Porter, and by senior National Security Agency officials concerning NSA intercepts of Israeli pilot communications identifying the ship as American.

 

Judy Morris' essay: "Israel's and LBJ's Order to Destroy the USS Liberty"

 Web link: http://judymorrisreport.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-most-incredible-story-never-told.html 

What was Lyndon Johnson's greatest crime? Was it murdering JFK? Was it prosecuting the Vietnam War and murdering and maiming millions of Vietnamese who were no threat to the USA? Honestly, that has to be it. Well, what about LBJ conspiring with Israel to sink the USS Liberty (June 8, 1967) and murder all 294 Americans on board so the USA could have a pretext, a casus belli, to bomb, attack and remove Nasser of Egypt, who had drifted into the Soviet camp over the previous 10 years?

I invite everyone to read Judy Morris' fine essay above. I also encourage everyone to buy and watch the amazing, newly released DVD www.sacrificingliberty.com . This DVD is blockbuster and it really highlights how it was so obvious that Israel's attack on the USS Liberty was completely intentional; and if Israel was intentionally attacking an American ship it HAD to have been ordered by the American president Lyndon Johnson.

Understanding the USS Liberty murders is key to understanding the lunacy and off-the-charts criminal psychopathy of Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka "Lucifer Before Jesus."

Sincerely,

Robert Morrow

Presidential Historian and Distinguished Fellow at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Institute for the Study of Presidential Crime

The World’s Foremost Authority on the JFK Assassination

The Top Historian in the World on Lyndon Johnson

Up and Coming Scholar on the USS Liberty Murders

The Greatest Presidential Historian in American History

Austin, TX     512-306-1510 

January 14 1969

I took part with Bill Moyers, Jack Valenti, Eric Goldman and Ted Sorensen (in Kansas City) in a National Education Television commentary. Afterward Bill and I went over to the Algonquin for a drink. We talked a bit about the problem of writing about Johnson. Bill said, as he has said to me before (and Dick Goodwin has said even more often), that one great trouble was that no one would believe it. He said that he could not see how one could write about Johnson the private monster and Johnson the public statesman and construct a credible narrative. "He is a sick man," Bill said. At one point he and Dick Goodwin became so concerned that they decided to read up on mental illness - Dick read up on paranoia and Bill on the manic-depressive cycle."

[Arthur Schlesinger, Journals 1952-2000, p. 306]

 

January 15 1971

Last night I spoke at the annual dinner of the Century. I sat next to Mac Bundy and we discussed, among other things, the Khrushchev memoirs. I remarked on the curious resemblance between Khrushchev's account of the life around Stalin - the domineering and obsessive dictator, the total boredom of the social occasions revolving around him, the horror when invited to attend and the even greater horror when not invited - and Albert Speer's account of the life around Hitler. Mac said, "When I read Khrushchev, I was reminded of something else in addition - my last days in the White House with LBJ."

[Arthur Schlesinger, Journals 1952-2000, p. 333]

 

McGeorge Bundy in 1971 compared the Lyndon Johnson of 1967 to Joseph Stalin and former top aide Bill Moyers said he was a “paranoid” in 1968 and a “sick man” in 1969. McGeorge Bundy’s last days in the Johnson White House were in June, 1967 when he come back in to manage the USA response to the Six Day War (a period when the USA almost had nuclear war with the USSR)

Please write your Congressman and ask him to tell President Biden to RELEASE THE JFK RECORDS next month!

 Here is my letter to my Congressman Michael McCaul in which I ask him to tell President Biden to release the CIA documents which are supposed to be released under the JFK Records Act.

Send your email to the people who do CASEWORK for your congressman.

In 2017 President Trump, at the urging of CIA director Mike Pompeo, disgracefully issued a presidential executive order to keep these CIA documents secret. I am in great fear that President Creepy Joe Biden will do the exact same thing. However, we should all lobby as hard as we can for Biden to release the CIA documents which is what the JFK Records Act calls for.

9/7/2021

The Honorable Michael McCaul,

          I am writing to ask you to write a letter to President Joe Biden to ask him to release the remaining files of that were supposed to be released in 2017 under the JFK Records Act. These documents would have been released in October 2017 but President Donald Trump signed an executive order postponing their release until October of 2021, in other words next month.

          Specifically, Congressman McCaul, I would like for you to ask President Joe Biden to release the withheld JFK Records Act files on CIA operatives James Angleton, Birch O’Neal, David Atlee Phillips, Ann Goodpasture, George Joannides and William King Harvey.

          Here is a 2017 article by Jefferson Morley entitled “5 of the most important JFK files the CIA is still hiding:” https://www.salon.com/2017/11/18/5-of-the-most-important-jfk-files-the-cia-is-still-hiding_partner/

          These documents will be very embarrassing to the CIA which is why they have fought so hard for decades to keep them secret. I do not believe for one second that 58 years after the JFK assassination the CIA has a legitimate national security interest in keeping secret the files of these deceased CIA operatives and employees.

          Nor do I think these documents are needed to prove who murdered John Kennedy because I already am 100% sure that Lyndon Johnson arranged the JFK assassination in league with certain CIA and military intelligence operatives and his super wealthy Texas business cronies.

          By law these withheld CIA documents were supposed to have been released years ago under the JFK records act and they will be released in October, 2021 unless President Joe Biden specifically signs an executive order keeping them secret yet again. I am fearful Joe Biden will do that unless you intervene and lobby him to release the CIA records that by law were supposed to be released under the JFK Records Act.

          Instead, please ask President Joe Biden to follow the JFK Records Act and release ALL the CIA documents that pertain to James Angleton, Birch O’Neal, David Atlee Phillips, Ann Goodpasture, George Joannides and William King Harvey.

          Btw, the odds of David Atlee Phillips being involved in the murder of JFK are about 99% and he pretty much confessed to his family, as he lay dying, that he was involved in the heinous crime that was committed in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

          This is crunch time, Cong. McCaul, and I need you help on this. Ever since the 1990s the JFK research community and the American people have been waiting so see these documents that were marked as relating to the JFK assassination.

Respectfully,

Robert Morrow

2901 Riva Ridge Road

Austin, TX 78746

My home land line is 512-306-1510 and my cell is 512-496-1293

 

 

 

 

 

Grace Halsell, former staff writer for Lyndon Johnson: only Zionist Jews had influence with LBJ during the Six Day War

Grace Halsell, a former staff writer for Lyndon Johnson, explains that in the White House of Lyndon Johnson only ardent Zionist Jews had access to and influence with LBJ and this was especially true in the Six Day War of 1967. 

https://www.wrmea.org/1993-june/how-lbj-s-vietnam-war-paralyzed-his-mideast-policymakers.html

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 1993, Page 20:

How LBJ's Vietnam War Paralyzed His Mideast Policymakers

by Grace Halsell

In the summer of 1967, I was a staff writer for President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House. I was aware of that year's Middle East crisis but, like most Americans, understood little about it other than the fact that it involved Jews and Arabs. In that year I did not know a single Arab, and possibly LBJ did not either. Like most Americans, I was pro-Israel, Israel having been sold to most all of us as the underdog.

Everyone around me, without exception, was pro-Israel. Johnson had a dozen or more close associates and aides who were both Jewish and pro-Israel. There were Walt Rostow at the White House, his brother Eugene at State, and Arthur Goldberg, ambassador to the United Nations. Other pro-Israel advisers included Abe Fortas, associate justice of the Supreme Court; Democratic Party fundraiser Abraham Feinberg; White House counsels Leo White and Jake Jacobsen; White House writers Richard Goodwin and Ben Wattenberg; domestic affairs aide Larry Levinson; and John P. Roche, known as Johnson's intellectual-in-residence and an avid supporter of Israel.

“Everyone around me, without exception, was pro-Israel.”

I did not "know," but could sense, that events of great portent were transpiring. I heard rumors of CIA Director Richard Helms sending a warning to LBJ that the Israelis were about to attack, and the president getting word from Moscow that if the Israelis attacked any Arab country, the Soviets would go to that nation's defense.

I could see the comings and goings of Abe Fortas and Arthur Goldberg, and I knew that Walt Rostow, in particular, had close Israeli connections, and met frequently with Israeli Embassy Minister Ephraim (Eppy) Evron.

On occasion I saw a strikingly attractive blonde woman who, I learned, was an ardent supporter of Israel and a woman of whom the president was fond. Her background sounded like material from a spy novel. She was born Mathilde Galland in 1927 in Italy, where she was reared as a Roman Catholic. Then, when her family returned to her father's birthplace in Switzerland, she became a Lutheran.

While a student in Geneva, she fell in love with a young Bulgarian Jew, David Danon, who had been brought up in Palestine and exiled by the British for his association with the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a Jewish terrorist group led by Menachem Begin. Danon was studying to become a medical doctor, but spent most of his time recruiting and carrying out secret Irgun operations throughout Western Europe.

In later interviews with former Time reporter Donald Neff, Mathilde said that as a teenager she saw Danon as a dashing and heroic figure, an activist dedicating his life to the founding of a Jewish state in Palestine. He was a personal friend of the Stern Gang terrorists, led by Yitzhak Shamir, who killed British resident minister Lord Walter Moyne in Cairo during World War II, and the Irgun terrorists who blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, with heavy loss of life. As bloody as these actions were, Mathilde said, she saw them as heroic. They represented the depth of the convictions of Danon and the Irgunists—and drew her to them.

Mathilde became so enamored of the Jewish struggle and of Danon's daring undercover operations in Europe that she converted to Judaism and married Danon. Then she, too, became an Irgun agent.

Reporter Neff, in his book entitled Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days That Changed the Middle East, documents Mathilde's role as a young "gun-runner" for the Jewish terrorist group. "As a seemingly innocent petite and pretty blonde out for a bicycle ride along Switzerland's borders," wrote Neff, "she in reality was taking messages and explosives into neighboring France and Italy—to be passed on to the Irgunists.

Five years after the creation of Israel obviated the need for pretty blonde gunrunners, Mathilde received a Ph.D. in genetics at the University of Geneva in 1953. She and Danon then moved to Israel, where she became a cancer researcher at the Weizmann Institute. After the birth of a daughter, she and Danon separated. While still at Weizmann, however, she met and later married the rich—and 20 years her senior—Arthur Krim, a motion picture executive who became finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee.

American Jews such as Krim and Abraham Feinberg—a New York banker and the first Jew to become a prominent moneyraiser in presidential campaigns—were by then bringing in well over half of the Democratic Party's funds. Thus it was natural that such fund-raisers would become very important to many Democratic candidates—and particularly to the leader of the Democratic Party, Lyndon B. Johnson.

LBJ often invited the Krims to his Texas ranch. There also were many instances in which Arthur and Mathilde were guests at the White House, and other times when, for many days running, Mathilde—without her husband—was a guest there. The Krims built a house near the LBJ ranch known as Mathilde's house, and Johnson often traveled there by helicopter.

ADVICE AND COUNSEL

The Krims, as well as other Jewish Americans who were closely associated with Johnson, advised and counseled him on the events leading up to the Six-Day War of June 1967. On the Memorial Day weekend in May 1967, Mathilde and her husband were guests at the LBJ ranch. On arrival at the ranch, Johnson learned that the Soviets had warned the U.S. that if Israel attacked an Arab state, the Soviets would go to the aid of that state. The State Department was preparing a message for LBJ to send to Israel.

While awaiting the draft message, Johnson got behind the wheel of his Lincoln Continental and took Mathilde and Arthur Krim for a drive over the hill country. They were at a neighbor's house when an aide brought Johnson a message drafted by the State Department for Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. It relayed to Israel Moscow's warning that "if Israel starts military action, the Soviet Union will extend help to the attacked party."

After reassuring Eshkol of America's interest in Israel's safety, the draft message cautioned: "It is essential that Israel not take any preemptive military action and thereby make itself responsible for the initiation of hostilities." The president strengthened the warning by adding two words so that the sentence read, "It is essential that Israel JUST MUST NOT take any preemptive military action. . ."

On June 3, Johnson traveled to New York to deliver a speech at a Democratic Party fund-raising dinner. He moved on to a $1,000-a-plate dinner dance, sponsored by the President's Club of New York, whose chairman was Arthur Krim. While at the table, fund-raiser Abe Feinberg leaned over the shoulder of Mathilde Krim, seated next to Johnson, and whispered: "Mr. President, it [Israel's attack] can't be held any longer. It's going to be within the next 24 hours."

On June 4, Johnson went to the home of his close adviser and friend, Justice Abe Fortas. The following day, June 5, Rostow woke Johnson with a phone call at 4:30 a.m. "War has broken out," Rostow said. The Israelis had attacked Egypt and Syria.

Mathilde Krim was a guest at the White House and, before going to the Oval Office, and apparently before waking Lady Bird or notifying anyone else, Johnson dropped by the bedroom where Mathilde was sleeping and gave her the news: "The war has started."

At 7:45 a.m., Johnson talked—for the first time—on the hot line with Moscow. Soviet Premier Aleksi Kosygin expressed the hope that the United States would restrain Israel. Both leaders vowed to work for a cease-fire.

On that day—June 5, 1967—I walked the White House corridors as the telephone lines and news tickers recorded developments of the first morning of the war that would change the Middle East. I learned that in the war's first hours, Israeli planes had destroyed the air forces of both Egypt and Syria on the ground.

UNCONCEALABLE GLEE

Several U.S. officials in a State Department Operations Room briefing could not conceal their glee over Israel's successes. With a wide smile, Eugene Rostow said, "Gentlemen, gentlemen, do not forget that we are neutral in word, thought and deed."

At the State Department's noon briefing on June 5, press spokesman Robert J. McCloskey repeated those words for reporters. (Since the U.S. was not neutral but totally supportive of Israel, however, this statement would need—over the next several weeks—endless clarification.)

Also on June 5, Arthur Krim wrote a memo to the president saying: "Many arms shipments are packed and ready to go to Israel, but are being held up. It would be helpful if these could be released." Johnson got the shipments on their way.

Walt Rostow, in a memo to the president, referred to the results of Israel's surprise attack on Egypt and Syria as "the first day's turkey shoot." On June 6, in another memo to the president, Walt Rostow recommended that the Israelis not be forced to withdraw from the territories they had seized—short of peace treaties with the Arab states.

"If the Israelis go fast enough and the Soviets get worried enough," he wrote, "a simple cease-fire might be the best answer. This would mean that we could use the de facto situation on the ground to try to negotiate not a return to armistice lines but a definitive peace in the Middle East."

Mathilde Krim, still a guest in the White House, left for meetings in New York. Before departing, however, she wrote out a statement supportive of Israel which she asked the president to deliver "verbatim to the American people." Johnson was sufficiently impressed with her comments to, later in the day, read some of them to Secretary of State Dean Rusk. But the president did not, as she had asked, read them to the American people.

Jordan, treaty-bound to come to the aid of Egypt and Syria if either were attacked, had done so and, on June 7, Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem. Also on June 7, Wattenberg and Levinson wrote in a memo to Johnson that the U.N. might attempt "to sell Israel down the river."

They urged LBJ to support Israel's claim to the territories seized militarily. They referred to McCloskey's statement that the U.S. was neutral, suggesting LBJ issue a statement affirming total support for Israel which, they said, might stop American Jews from meeting in Lafayette Square to protest the "neutrality" statement.

While Johnson never minded getting pro-Israel advice from such close friends as Mathilde Krim or Abe Fortas, he apparently resented advice from relatively minor White House staffers such as Wattenberg and Levinson. Seeing Levinson he stormed:

"You Zionist dupe! You and Wattenberg are Zionist dupes in the White House! Why can't you see I'm doing all I can for Israel! That's what you should be telling people when they ask for a message from the president for their rally." As LBJ abruptly stormed off, Levinson reports, he stood there, "shaken to the marrow of my bones."

Meanwhile, on the night of June 7, the USS Liberty, a Navy "ferret" ship equipped to monitor electronic communications, had approached within sight of the Gaza Strip so the National Security Agency personnel aboard could intercept the military communications jamming the airwaves. The president retired at 11:30 p.m., but White House logs reported that at one minute to midnight he got a call from Mathilde Krim, still in New York.

By June 8, despite U.S. and Soviet demands for a cease-fire, the Israelis were planning one more attack to take Syria's Golan Heights. Perhaps to prevent U.S. intelligence from learning of their plan, despite Syria's acceptance of the cease-fire, the Israelis dispatched planes to the USS Liberty. One roared over the Liberty so closely that the portholes of the aircraft's reconnaissance cameras were clearly visible. Lieutenant James M. Ennes, deck officer, saw on its wings Israel's insignia, the Star of David.

THE LIBERTY ASSAULT

Ennes glanced at the U.S. flag atop his ship's tall mast. If he could see the Israeli pilots in their cockpits, he reasoned, the pilots could certainly see the large U.S. flag. It was not long after the last of several such Israeli reconnaissance flights, however, that an Israeli aircraft swooped down and fired rockets directly at The Liberty. Rocket fragments and 30mm bullets punched through the heavy deck plating—and through the flesh of the stunned crewmen. Then more planes—with cannon and napalm—turned the Liberty into a floating hell of flames and screaming men.

The Israeli attacks killed 34 Americans and wounded 171. The ship was partly flooded when an Israeli torpedo boat hit the U.S. ship with a torpedo below the water line. Another machine-gunned the ship's life rafts when the crew tried to launch them.

Only by a miracle did The Liberty remain afloat. But its threat to Israel's plans was finished. The next day, June 9, Israeli forces attacked and captured the Golan Heights. On Saturday, June 10, the war's sixth day, Israel agreed to a cease-fire.

It was Rostow who first notified Johnson of the assault on the Liberty. Asked who did it, Rostow said he did not know. Later the Israelis said they had done it, by mistake.

Johnson sent an immediate report to Kosygin that the Israelis had torpedoed a U.S. ship. Thus the Kremlin now knew about the Israeli attack, but the American people did not. From the beginning, the Johnson administration covered it up. Surviving crew members were separated from each other and the Navy was ordered to make certain that no survivor talked with any reporter—or to anyone else—about the assault on the USS Liberty.

It went virtually unnoticed. Not only the crew of the USS Liberty, but all Americans were victims. Johnson and most of those who entered and left the Oval Office were oriented toward Israel. For that matter, I too, was ready and eager to believe in 1967 that the Arabs, not the Israelis, had started the war and that the bombing raid on the USS Liberty was not intentional, but a mistake.

While there can be no moral justification for the White House cover-up orders to the Navy after the assault on the Liberty, from hindsight Johnson's political motivation is obvious. It was the same motivation that led him subsequently to listen to the Jewish friends and advisers who urged him not to put any pressure on the Israelis to relinquish territories they had seized in the Six-Day War.

In 1967, President Johnson felt he needed all the support he could get to I 'win" in Vietnam. Many American Jews were liberals outspokenly opposed to the war there. Johnson was told if he gave all out support to Israel—which would include ignoring the Israeli attack on the Liberty influential Jewish Americans would stop opposing his Vietnam policies.

In a memo to the president, Wattenberg, whose parents had moved to the U. S. from Palestine and who was known as a strong supporter of the Jewish state, said flatly that if the president came out with strong support for Israel, he would win American Jewish support for the war in Vietnam. Many American Jewish leaders are "doves" on Vietnam, Wattenberg wrote, but "hawks" on a war with Arab states.

A "BONUS" FOR JOHNSON

"You stand to be cheered now by those (American Jewish leaders) who were jeering last week," Wattenberg wrote the president. He added that the Mideast crisis could be "a bonus" for Johnson. All-out support of Israel, he predicted, would "help turn around 'the other war'—the domestic dissatisfaction about Vietnam."

The support given by the American Jewish leaders "was welcome to the president," as reporter Donald Neff observed, when at every turn he was being attacked by critics, particularly in the media, of his Vietnam policy.

I was, at the time, a typical American. I was convinced back then that the Arabs had started the war and deserved what they got. I didn't try to reason how, if the Arabs had started the war, they were surprised with their air forces on the ground and how it was that Israel so easily seized all of Palestine, including the rest of Jerusalem. Instead, like millions of Americans, I was thrilled by the might of "little Israel."

Yet, despite the euphoria around me, what I saw in the White House planted questions in my mind. As Americans we had just passed through a dangerous Middle East conflict that threatened to explode into World War III. There were two parties to the conflict, Arabs and Jews. But for weeks on end I had seen only one set of advisers who could call or see Johnson whenever they pleased. The Arabs had no voice, no representation, no access, whatsoever.

It was only later that I came to reflect on how America, which devoted so much of the efforts of its "best and brightest" to the problem of Vietnam, had in 1967 quite unwittingly stumbled into a Middle East quagmire that, long after the fall of Saigon, would continue to enmesh U.S. soldiers and diplomats, and project an image of double standards and insincerity onto U.S. diplomacy all over the world.

Far more than his failed policies in Vietnam, the Middle East policies that LBJ allowed to fall into place in the June 1967 war would remain to haunt the U.S. for decades to come.

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Grace Halsell, a Washington-based writer, is the author of Journey to Jerusalem and Prophecy and Politics, as well as several other works of nonfiction.

 

Grace Halsell obituary -  https://www.wrmea.org/000-october-november/in-memoriam-grace-halsell-1923-2000.html

Grace Halsell (1923-2000)

By Andrew I. Killgore

So convincing was Grace Halsell’s stoical endurance of pain and suffering that we almost thought she would make it. We knew reasonably that she could not survive the malignancy with which she had been afflicted for more than a year. Still, we were shocked, and deeply saddened, when she died suddenly in Washington, DC, on Aug. 16.

Grace Halsell was an intergenerational Wonder Woman, not less good-looking than the TV version, whose real-life adventures and accomplishments would make an exciting film in itself.

Her father, an Indian fighter who lived to the age of 96, was 65 years old when Grace was born on the high, dry plains of west Texas. As a girl she accompanied him as he roved around the Texas territory and beyond, making speeches about his adventures, including an exchange of shots with Geronimo, the great Apache warrior. The young Grace’s job on these travels was to collect the money from audience members who purchased her father’s books relating his adventures.

Perhaps because she was so frequently on the move as a young girl, Grace never considered her own lifetime peregrinations as a journalist/author/speaker to be all that special. But moving, moving, moving, and writing about something new and different, became her life. No one ever quite understood why. But she was driven by a wanderlust angel and always, as well, by an idealism that made her empathize and side with those most marginalized by society.

Part daredevil, Grace was thrown from a horse and painfully injured as a young teenager. Later adventures included being sneaked illegally across the the border from Mexico into the U.S. by night and, her most dangerous escapade, crossing over the Peruvian Andes and floating on a raft 2,000 miles on the upper Amazon with a group of rough men with no one, apparently, in charge.

Grace Halsell wrote 13 books, the most famous of which, Soul Sister, was first published in 1969. Using medicine to augment a suntan, she was able to pass as a black maid in Mississippi. Some of her experiences were shocking, and her book opened the eyes of white readers to the hard life of African-American workers, especially women. Not only did South Africa have apartheid, Grace wrote, but the U.S. had its own version as well.

As “Bessie Yellowhair,” she described in her book of the same name the hard life she saw on a Navajo reservation in Arizona and then experienced working as a Native American for a white family in California.

Grace Halsell first worked as a journalist in Texas, and in Washington, DC for a Texas newspaper. She was recruited as a writer by by the White House, where she found President Lyndon Johnson “the worst boss I ever had,” then was a journalist for some years in Peru and Japan.

She was raised in a devout Christian family where the first greeting frequently was, “Are you saved?”—meaning had the person to whom the question was addressed made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. Perhaps it was that background which inspired Grace’s investigations in recent years into the role of Christian evangelism in the Arab-Israeli dispute.

In highly acclaimed books such as Journey to Jerusalem and Prophecy and Politics, she described her young years as a Christian and trips to the Holy Land she later took, “disguised” as a follower, with televangelist Rev. Jerry Falwell. She revealed the unsavory relationship between Falwell and right-wing Israeli leaders, reporting, for example, that the evangelical Falwell had been provided by Israel with an expensive private plane. And that, despite the fact that some 15 percent of Palestinians are Christian, Falwell’s American Christian tour groups rarely saw or had the opportunity to talk to Middle East Christians.

Although Grace Halsell was deeply versed in Biblical and Christian teachings, she gave little outward sign that her belief was the source of her commitment to justice for the Palestinians. Rather, she was motivated by sympathy for the Palestinians being made to pay with their suffering for Western Christian persecution of the Jews through the centuries.

Her last book, Forcing God’s Hand: Why Millions Pray for a Quick Rapture—And Destruction of Planet Earth, paints a very disturbing picture of an unholy alliance between Israel and political Zionism, on the one hand, and evangelical dispensationalists on the other. In the view of the latter, there will be a cataclysmic destruction of most of mankind, including most Jews, but only after the Jews have been ingathered around Canaan. Hence the support of dispensationalists for the Zionist state.

Grace Halsell was a central figure in the fight for truth and justice in the Middle East. Her great circle of friends and admirers will miss her wonderful combination of curiosity, courage and commitment to justice, for surely she cannot be replaced.

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Andrew I. Killgore is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, on Middle East Affairs.