Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/9/23 James Bamford on the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

Scott is joined by James Bamford to discuss Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. Bamford lays out the story of what happened. They then discuss the coverup and play down by the US government and compare it with the impression at the top of the intelligence community that the attack was deliberate.  Discussed on the show: Spyfail by James Bamford Body of Secrets by James Bamford James Bamford is a journalist, professor, documentary filmmaker, and the author of Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency and A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies. Find him on Twitter @WashAuthor. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already, time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more the 5,500 interviews since 2000. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line we've got the great james bamford he is the author of the puzzle palace body of secrets and the shadow factory about the national security agency and he also wrote a pretext for war. 9-11, Iraq and the abuse of America's intelligence agencies

which is, oh man, he goes hard on the neocons in that thing. It's so good. And then he's got a new one which, Jim, I apologize to you, but I have a great excuse. I'm really, really busy. It's called SpyFail, and I haven't read it yet, but we did talk about it when it first came out

and you wrote a couple of pieces at the nation and I know it's good and I read actually recently, Grant Smith wrote a nice little review of it for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. So I guarantee that it's good. I know the kind of work that you do. So that's the latest. Everybody run out and get spy fail.

But I got you here today, Jim, because I want to talk about body of secrets, and particularly the chapter on the USS Liberty. And I guess I got to start with a guilty plea that I didn't go back and read Puzzle Palace on it. because I know that you wrote about it in both, but I figured since Body of Secrets came second, that would be the more authoritative one. And I read Puzzle Palace, but like 25 years ago or something, so that doesn't count. So, anyway, I'm severely interested in this story. I know a few of the survivors, as I know you do as well. And I like these guys, and I finally am taking the time to read a few different books about it and really try to learn the story as in depth as I can. But there's a lot I still want to understand.

So that's why you're here. So, but I was wondering, I guess, maybe first of all, if I could just say hi, welcome to the show. How are you? Well, great. Thanks for having me on, Scott. I appreciate it. And I, yeah, I also have a very great admiration for the survivors of the Liberty. As you mentioned, I wrote about them in my first book, The Puzzle Palace, and then I wrote an entire chapter on the attack on the Liberty on my next book,

which was a Body of Secrets. And just this past summer, I was out in Colorado. I was invited to their reunion. They had a reunion of survivors. I mean, the survivors are getting fewer and fewer, obviously. So I was very honored to go out there and give a little talk. Oh, that's great. Is there video on that, by the way?

There could be. I don't have it myself. but the organization U.S.S. Veterans Association probably would have it if you wanted to contact them. Okay, that's great. Listen, so, yeah, I'm going to have Joe Meadors on the show here, I believe, next week. And I've been watching all these documentaries, and I've been reading James Scott's book. And I have James Ennis's book here as well. and I'll mention it

I put down Joan Mellon's book Blood in the Water all of her best claims you flip to the back and it's like so I don't know never mind I got tired of that but so I went back to yours and as always

you put together one hell of a meticulous story here and with a lot of NSA materials that you got your hands on and interviews that you did and all of these things so I guess first of all We've got to presume that there are some people listening who really don't know much about this,

or maybe they heard of it one time a long time ago, but they really wouldn't know what to think at all. So can you give us sort of just the basics of what the story is that we're talking about here, kind of the date and the time and the circumstance and the basic outline of what happened? Yeah, sure. It happened in June of 1967, which was during the Six-Day War between Israel and, Egypt. And what happened was the United States National Security Agency, the NSA. At the time, had a number of spy ships. These were converted sort of transport ships that have been converted into signals intelligence ships, eavesdropping ships. And there was one that was

sailing along the coast of Africa. It was called the U.S. U.S. Liberty. And when the Six-Day War broke out, or just before that, the NSA sent the liberty to the Mediterranean to listen to what was happening during the war. So the liberty sailed up through the Strait of Gibraltar, then it sailed up, and it sailed off of Sinai, which was one of the scenes of a number of the battles. while it was there, it was just in international waters, which is beyond 12-mile limit, beyond 12 miles from the coastline. And so it was listening to the events that were taking place between Israel and Egypt in that part of the world. And because of extensive antennas and

so forth, it was able to pick up a great deal of communications. So on June 7th, they were just doing their normal eavesdropping, and again, in international waters. And all of a sudden, there was a surveillance by a number of Israeli reconnaissance planes. They flew over fairly low and apparently took pictures, at least saw what the ship was all about. And at the time, the ship said U.S. Liberty on the back, there were American sailors on the day. and it was flying an American flag. It wasn't hard to identify it. It was listed in Jane's Fighting Ships,

the standard book of naval ships that Israelis, everybody has a copy of, and it lists the USS Liberty, USS basically a reconnaissance ship. And so after the surveillance by the planes, a few hours later, there was this enormous attack. It began with fighter aircraft, and they came over, and they shot up, first of all, they shot the small anti-aircraft machine guns they had on the deck. I think there were only two of them. So they took those out, and around the same time, they also took out all the communications. They shut out the antennas. So in that first attack, they made, the ship silent for one thing and then second of all they took out any kind of defensive armaments and once they did that then the ship was basically a sitting duck there and later on

after the initial attack by the fighters other fighters came in and they shot up the ship with cannon fire. They dropped napalm on the ship. They did everything possible to kill it, killing a lot of people, a lot of the sailors. And then finally, the Israeli Navy sent three torpedo boats, and they all sat targeting the liberty as if it was a, you know, just a sitting duck, which basically it was. And they fired five torpedoes at the, at the liberty, which certainly would have taken it to the bottom. Unfortunately for them, four of them missed, but unfortunately for the liberty,

one of them hit dead center. And that killed, well, a total of 34 people altogether and injured. In the attack, there were over 190 people injured. And so it was an attack that went on for hours. And as the sailors were trying to get off and get into lifeboats, since the ship was listing and it looked like it might sink,

then the Israeli Navy started shooting up the rubber lifeboats. Eventually the ship made it back to, I think it was to Malta, where the dead were removed and injured were taken care of, and the rest were flown back to Washington. The ship was eventually scrapped because it was too badly, damaged and the captain, Captain McDonagall, received the Medal of Honor by President Johnson. But because the U.S. government wanted to pretty much cover this up, it was presented to, not at the White House by the president, but in sort of a backroom at the U.S. Navy headquarters

by a Navy official. So the crew were told not to say anything about it. And ever since then, there's largely been a cover-up by the United States government. All right. So there's so much there. I guess the, can we start with the surveillance flights? And I have this from a few different sources that I've been looking at, but I think some of these quotes directly from the sailors, were that there were as many as a dozen surveillance flights that morning before the attack happened.

And then the implication there was that they were meticulously planning this attack with those photos. And they were saying, go out and get me more photos. Okay, I want you to hit them here and here and here and here. That was kind of the only explanation for that. And the Israelis say, no, but Jim, what happened is every morning at 10, we wipe the board clean and start over and forget everything we knew. And that's actually what they really say in the IDF report, that that's their standard procedure is to wipe the board clean. So they, of course, yes, they knew it was an American ship, but then they didn't. Do you buy that?

No. They claim they, you know, they're the world, one of the world's best intelligence organizations, military organizations, and so forth. And no, I mean, I don't. There's a ship out there. They have surveillance flights over it and fly an American flag. What about the planes that followed afterwards, the fighter planes? I mean, the flag was still flying. The sailors were still dressed in American sailor uniforms,

and the ship still said the USS Liberty. And they attacked it. So what were the pilots wearing blindfolds or something? So no, I don't buy that. Well, you know what, though? I mean... It still has an excuse for everything. Yeah.

It's like most governments and most... If you go to the Pentagon and tell them that something bad happened, the first thing they're going to come out was some defensive explanation. Oh, that didn't really happen or it happened because of this or that. So that's what governments do. It's called propaganda. And now, I'm sorry because I know it's been quite a while since you wrote this, but we have a timeline here as far as the different flights of planes. It was first the mirages with, you know, one kind of bombs and then came the misdeers with the napalm. And then we have the ships came.

And we have also, in the timeline, various bits of audio leaked where the pilots are identifying it as an American ship. And I think, isn't it right, Jim, they say that I think the second wave of planes finally identified it as an American ship. American ship, and that was when they call it off, but then due to a snafu, word didn't get to the Navy. So then the torpedo attack still proceeded anyway for another hour or more, too. That's their official excuse? Well, you know, when I did a lot of research on this, I interviewed a lot of people at NSA, and the people at NSA who had access to all the information, the intercepts and all that, all agreed that they thought it was deliberate. I interviewed the former director of the National Security Agency, Marshall Carter. Anyway, he was adamant that he thought

that it was deliberate. I interviewed his deputy, the guy that was in charge of operations, and he said it was deliberate. Then I interviewed the former head of the CIA, who was at the time, Richard Helms. And he said it was deliberate. I mean, if you go back and look at all the quotes from members of the intelligence community and the national security area, you know, the Secretary of State at the time said he thought it was deliberate. So you have all these officials, a lot of them, with more knowledge than anybody else, and those were the people at the NSA and the CIA, saying that they thought it was deliberate. I mean, these aren't people that just would say something like that or make it up.

I mean, you know, it's not advantageous to their career to go against the establishment in the White House and so forth. So, you know, they took a political risk by admitting the truth. So I buy what they say a lot more than I do with the Israelis. As a matter of fact, the Israelis did what they call it, a investigation. And the NSA was given a copy of it. And the deputy director of the NSA at the time wrote on the very top of it, a nice whitewash. So that was a view of the intelligence.

community, that Israel did do this deliberately and that they were covering it up, which is what I wrote and what a number of other writers have written about. Well, okay, there's so many different aspects here I want to follow up on, but how about, how certain are you that the flag was flying in the first place? Because, you know, a skeptic said to me on the internet that, well, it was a top secret ship, and so it didn't have a flag. That's nonsense. I mean, I was actually in the Navy, in that part of the Navy, that did that kind of work at the very same time.

Or actually, I had gotten out of the Navy just months before the actual attack, but I was in that same, basically that same unit, and we ran a ship called the USS Pueblo, which was another spy ship off the coast of North Korea, which was also attacked. But that one flew a flag, just like they all fly a flag. There were six of those ships, and they all flew the American flag. And they all said exactly who they were on the stern of the ship, the name of the ship, and the bows of the ship on both port and starboard said whatever their designation was, their ship designation was.

All that stuff is very look-upable in a copy of Jane's fighting ship. Identification is not really at issue. It was flying the flag. Its name was there. It had American sailors on board that you could easily see. I mean, you could easily tell an American sailor from an Egyptian sailor. You could tell an American ship from an Egyptian ship. Egyptian ship would have Arabic script written on it in terms of the name.

It probably has it in English and Arabic, but certainly wouldn't be flying in American. American flag. So all these things, these arguments that it wasn't identifiable, I don't buy, and most of the people that I talk to in the intelligence community don't buy. To your knowledge, has a surviving member, a sailor, Marine, or NSA civilian from the Liberty ever said that the flag wasn't flying? Or they all agree that it was? Well, they all agree that it was. I mean, there were pictures taken before the attack and the flag was there. Yeah, I mean, it's insane to sail in international waters opposite a hostile war going on and pull your flag down. Well, now there is a parentheses, though, here, right, which is that the Israelis apparently shot the flag down,

and then the sailors put up the bigger flag, the 7 by 13 holiday flag, and that was after, I think, the first wave of planes. So before the napalm planes arrived, long before the torpedo boats arrived. Well, sure. And, you know, flag or no flag, the ship had his name on the back and on the bow where it's naval letters that indicated what it was. You just look it up and it says USS Liberty. I spent three years in the Navy. I mean, it's not that hard to identify a U.S. Navy ship. Yeah. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq. Rock War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies, by me, for free. Just sign up for the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org, or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe.

Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. Hey, y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts & Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Who knew? Artificial bank creditors. expansion leads to price inflation and terribly distorted markets. If you've got any savings left at all, you need to protect them.

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regarding the attack on the liberty by Israeli airplanes and torpedo boats. He said, this is, again, the CIA officer quoting or paraphrasing the Israeli source. He said, quote, you've got to remember that in this campaign there is neither the time nor room for mistakes, end quote, which was, again, this is quote within a quote there, which was intended as an obtuse reference that Israel's forces knew what flag, liberty was flying and exactly what the vessel was doing off the coast deletion that is i guess the guy's name implied that the ship's identity was known six hours before the attack but that israeli headquarters was not sure how many people might have had access to the information the liberty was intercepting he also implied that something deleted was no certainty on controls as to where the intercepted information was going and again reiterated that Israeli forces did not make

mistakes in their campaign. He was emphatic and stating to me, again, that's the CIA official writing here, that they knew what kind of shit the USS Liberty was and what it was doing offshore. What does that mean? What does that mean? Well, like I said, I interviewed the director of the CIA who was there at the time, and that was Richard Helms. I had a nice long lunch with him and talked all about it, and he agreed with everything I wrote in my book. And he said that in his opinion, based on that and other information that they had, he came to the same conclusion that the director of the NSA, Marshall Carter came to, which is that it was a deliberate attack, plus their deputies agreed to it, the people in charge of operations. So there was no ambiguity.

on their parts. And as you just quoted that that was a Israeli source, basically emitting it. And the CIA released that information. So, I mean, there's very little question, at least in my mind, and I've been writing for a very long time, and I don't take a lot of chances with conspiracy theories or anything. It's valid information, as far as I'm concerned, when you have that many people with that much knowledge, all agreeing on one particular topic. Yeah, especially when you have, like, Admiral Moorer, who said, let me tell you something, my job was flying over the seas and identifying ships.

Any pilot can do that. That's the job, you know, and I don't want to hear no guff either. And he's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And he's just saying, don't buy it. And that was not his only reason, by the way. But just to hear him talk about it like that, hey, what are you going to do? I mean, this is a guy who essentially, these are American sailors and Marines who were killed. Right?

So he's just not willing to throw them that far under the bus. He's just, no way. If this is true, I'm going to say it even, you know, as you were quoting, all these guys from the NSA and even Dick Helms. It's amazing. Right. And again, I did actually work in that unit, the Naval Security Group unit, that ran the ship. And we ran our own ship, which was very similar to the Puevo. So I know how the rules were.

There was never a rule or there was never an opportunity or a time when a captain would ever put the flag down. It would always be up, but the ship would always have its numerals and letters on the front. indicating what it was and it would always have its name on the back. Plus this is a ship with 100 or 200 sailors on it and a lot of them were on the deck and they all you need is binoculars to see that they're American Americans in American uniforms. So you're talking about five torpedo boats, mirage jets, reconnaissance planes, the odds of all those people not seeing it before they're they you know these are people that are about to kill all these people you take talk about five torpedoes on a small reconnaissance ship

that should have gone down probably in a matter of minutes if all those torpedoes hit one hit and created an enormous hole in the side of the ship and it had a list back to uh malta and then it was put up for scrap after after that. So you're talking about a deliberate attack against an American ship full with American sailors, and yet no action was ever taken against the Israelis. Yeah. Well, and now, so, you know, back to this CIA official here, where this Israeli sources admitting to him that, look, we don't make mistakes in this thing. And then secondly, he's saying, it sounds like he's eluding quite directly.

to their motive, that we weren't sure what all you were intercepting. And he all but says, and so we didn't want your interceptions to continue. And I think there are three major theories as to motive here. And I actually read somewhere else, Jim, so please correct me if this is wrong. I read somewhere else that in Puzzle Palace, your best information was that it was to cover up a move on the Golan Heights. But then you changed your mind for Body of Secrets and said, no, it looks more like they were trying to cover up massacres of Egyptian prisoners on the Sinai. And then, of course, ultimately is the theory that the whole thing was a false flag

with varying degrees of participation by LBJ and his men in order to be an excuse to get us into a war with Egypt. So I wonder if you could take us through the origins of those different theories and where you stand on at all now. Yeah, again, they're all theories. Unfortunately, because the U.S. government never did an investigation. I mean, could you imagine a ship being destroyed by a foreign country, 34 American sailors being killed, 190 wounded, and yet there's no FBI investigation. FBI agents are not sent to the country to investigate, interrogate people, ask questions, demand documents and all that. None of that stuff ever had.

Congress takes the year off. Yeah, so. They never held a single hearing in Congress either, did they? No, there was never any, there was never any congressional investigation. There was no investigation ever. There were lots of investigations of other things that have taken place where the U.S. was attacked. U.S. coal, other incidents, the attack on the U.S. as embassies in East Africa and so forth.

In all those cases, and bombing of the American barracks in Saudi Arabia, I guess it was, and the embassy bombing in Beirut a number of years ago. So all these investigations, the FBI was involved and they went over there and conducted a very thorough investigation. That never happened with this one. though, not with the liberty. And so that's why it's left a speculation in terms of what happened.

There were, I mean, first of all, these are two countries that are at war. The Egypt and Israel were battling it out about 13 miles away from the liberty. Israel had a lot of secrets that they didn't want a lot of people. people to know. First of all, they claimed, they told the United States that the war had been started by the Egyptians, which was a lie. It was actually started by the Israelis. They didn't want the U.S. to know that they were planning to go into the Golan Heights. They were committing war crimes by killing prisoners and the Sinai and so forth. So there are a lot of secrets that they had. Which one of those or all of those or some other one,

that might have been there, could have been the reason for attacking it, again, because nobody, not even the press or anybody, did any thorough investigation of this. And the only thing we have is a report from the Israelis that the deputy director of the NSA wrote on the top of a nice whitewash. Yeah. So that's what we're left with. And we're left with people like me and, you know, a few other writers who have taken it on to look into it. So unfortunately, yeah, we don't have any decisive answers because there was never any formal investigation and the Israelis decided to cover it up.

Yeah. Well, you know, I don't really buy into a lot of the theories that it was all assessed. up just to blame Egypt and get America into the war because after all Israel was handling Egypt just fine with their surprise attack as you explained there already and um and you know most of those theories they seem to rely on footnotes that don't quite say what they're purported to say or some kind of thing I was having trouble nailing all that down I guess I need to really you know hammer out a timeline as sufficient as I can to look at but i think a lot of that stuff didn't seem to hold up it's so one thing that really

does stick out though is of course that if the ship had been sunk and all of them killed then of course they would have blamed it on egypt and then of course linden johnson would have bombed cairo probably not with nukes i'm not sure why they're so married to some of these theories have it where he was going to nuke cairo and start a world war i don't believe that but it seems like he would have had to go to war with egypt if it had succeeded so even if the Israeli's plan was to silence some eavesdropping and some record keeping that it represented the danger of a real escalation of the war there. And if America had gone to war with Egypt, that might have brought us into conflict with the Soviet Union. It seemed like, in fact, one of the

things I was reading was about how when they launched the planes, they also immediately called Moscow. And so we want you to know, we are not going to Egypt. We are just going to check on our ship. So please do not misinterpret this launch. Like, they were already. already quite concerned about the precarious position the Israelis had put them in as it was already, you know? Well, exactly, yeah. The danger since the Soviet Union at the time was supporting Egypt, the danger would have been enormous if the Soviet Union, if the Kremlin at the time thought that, or if, if the U.S. had thought that the Kremlin was involved with the Egyptians and sinking an American ship. So, yeah, that would have been enormously dangerous. You know, but in all the writing I do, I stay away from speculation as much as I can.

I just try to write out, this is what we know and this is what we know. So, you know, whether that was, you know, a thought or not, I don't know. and I try not, like I said, speculating in that. All I point out in the book is that the Israelis had a lot of secrets, and when countries have lots of secrets, they don't want those secrets to get out. And beyond that, whatever the reason was for the attack is left to somebody to investigate at some point. And the story, Jim, that when Captain McGonigal was.

concerned that hey maybe we're too close and should back off here and then his head NSA guy said well if we do that we'll lose our VHF awareness here we'll be able to get the UHF stuff but we'll lose I guess it was the Egyptian band was what they would lose and so he decided now let's go ahead and stay then that was up to him and that was you know a variable essentially here where the rest of the fleet oh and I guess the story is and did you ever verify this that they said that they told the whole fleet, everybody stay 100 miles away, but that the Liberty never got that request. Yeah, there's no question about that. That's in the naval record that the, yeah, we're talking in 1967. You know, this is long before the internet, long before sophisticated

communications. The ship was one of the very few that had a satellite dish on the back. But these communications were sent by high frequency mostly and was quite unreliable. So, yeah, there's no question that the naval command, especially NSA, sent out a message saying, you know, move further away from the coast. They were somewhere around 13, 14 miles off, which is outside the 12-mile limit. In other words, in international waters, but because of the hostilities, the Navy and the NSA wanted them to move further away. But they never got that message from the Navy or the NSA. And so McGonagall had to rely on his earlier orders, which was to just remember.

remain in the international waters. And like you said, the problem is if you're trying to intercept low-frequency communications, such as walkie-talkies and other kinds of communications, it's the closer you are, the better. So if you moved 50 miles further away, you wouldn't be able to pick that out. So that was what was going on. Plus, there was no indication. There was no indication from Egypt that they were planning any hostile actions against a ship. And there was, you know, no, obviously no indications that our ally, Israel would attack the ship.

So they didn't really, having talked to a lot of people who were on the ship and read a lot about what was going on that day, there wasn't a lot of concern. Of course. But the ship was going to be targeted by one side or the other. It was a dark and stormy night at 2 o'clock in the afternoon in the sunshine. Yeah, it was a bright day light out, two in the afternoon. I don't think there are any clouds or hardly any clouds. So there's no excuse for not recognizing as a ship.

And it would be the same as if, you know, some police officer went out and started shooting people without, you know, without thinking, oh, they may be a bank robber or something and without any indication and just start shooting. I mean, you don't do that. You can't just go and attack a ship without identifying what it is. And if they tried to identify it, they would have identified it because it wasn't hiding what it was.

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They deal nationwide over the phone at 619-299-1500. That's Leo Hamill find jewelers out of San Diego. Go to JewelrystoreSD.com to check out their fine selection and to find out more. Hey, y'all, you should sign up for my substack. It's Scott Horton's show.substack.com, and if you do that, you'll get the interviews a day before everybody else. they'll be free of commercials. How do you like that?

Pretty good, huh? Scott Horton'show.substack.com. Hey, y'all, libertosbella.com is where you get Scott Horton Show and Libertarian Institute, shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobstas designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart. Libertas Bella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs, too. That's Libertasbella.com. And so, again, it does make sense that McGonagall would take the risk, because what's really the risk?

The Egyptians are going to attack us? Probably not. And obviously, our frenzy Israelis are not going to attack us. So let's just sit right here. But then that also would be an indication if, Jim, they didn't get their orders to stay back. And then also, even within the orders that they had, McGonigal had decided on his own to go ahead and stay in place when he could have pulled back, even based on the orders that he already had, based on this. UHF, VHF problem here, then that would tend to belie the idea that this whole thing was a long, planned out exercise to sink this ship to get us into the war when it sounds much more like a target of opportunity or maybe even somehow the Israelis had convinced themselves of necessity that they just, for whatever reason, absolutely had to take this ship out, but it was a decision that must have been made that morning, not weeks before in concert with LB.

and his secret massad mistress lady i mean i don't know i don't want to quit lbj he was a dirty sob i don't know but well he he has a lot to uh blame for the cover up and everything else uh but again i my job is to sort of report whatever i i find and uh i try to leave speculation to other people so whatever the reason was whether there was some um plot to try to get the u.S. involved in the war against Egypt or to hide secrets that they were going to invade other parts of the Middle East or whatever, that, you know, that's up to somebody else. My job is just to report what I've found, and that's what I found, is that there was no excuse for not knowing it was an American ship and that the U.S. had and still has an

obligation to investigate why these Americans who were, you know, honorable Americans serving their country, were killed by a foreign country. Why? That's the issue that's never been resolved. And the U.S. government is what we paid taxes for, for the government to go out and not only tell the American public, but especially tell the families of the people who are killed. why it happened and why nothing was ever done about it. It's not too late.

I mean, it's getting later all the time with people dying off, but still, at least there should be some decency shown by the U.S. government or the Navy or the Department of Defense to Congress to look into it. Yeah, I guess I was just noting there, because you're really confirming that there was a bit of accident and variable to this, right? Some missed orders, a decision made by McGonigal himself that could have been made the other way and based on presumptions of what was going on in the world

and how safe they might have been. And that kind of thing, which, you know, that's important for the story that we understand. It's not all just a black and white cookie cutter thing, you know, especially on the whole idea, I think, of the kind of furthest, speculation but anyway um i wanted right i mean i think people should uh speculate um on it but they should speculate on it based on actual facts sure conspiracy uh theory so take the facts

and try to figure out why it happened but uh at the same time demand the u.s government investigate why it happened yeah um and i think you know with a lot of these things you know there's different interpretations and usually if you try to be charitable in your interpretation those tend to be the the um the more likely ones than the more nefarious not always but i wanted to go back to something that is news that you broke in here and we're going back to earlier in the interview here but this is something that's brand new in this book body of secrets i believe is the story of the nsa plane that was flying overhead and the partial information that they were getting and what came of that.

Can you talk about that? Just tell me again what you wanted to... Well, I believe, you know, you had a couple of sources from that plane who talked about what they had heard and what they thought it meant, right? Yeah, that was new to Body of Secrets because it was the NSA had just released some of that information. I mean, the problem is that the NSA kept so much information secret that could have shed some more light on what was taking place

because they were intercepting communications all the time that were going on, intercepting communications from both Egyptian and Israeli aircraft. So that was one of the things that they intercepted and they eventually released under the Freedom Information Act was some of those conversations that were intercepted of the Israeli pilots. And it's been, you know, I think 20 years since I wrote the book, so I can't really exactly remember what the conversations were, but they gave indications that it was deliberate.

Yeah, I think what it was was that they heard them talking about an American flag, and then the thing kept going on. And it kept going on and kept going on long after the flag had been identified, even according to their own timeline. That's right. Yeah, yeah. It's coming back to me now, right? Yeah, that was the issue.

You know, if you said you didn't see the flag or that you erased a whiteboard or whatever, you know, well, the flag was still flying and the Israeli pilots were still talking about it around the time of the attack. so then or during the attack whatever and so how do you explain the fact that you know that there's a flag on this ship that indicates it's an American ship and yet you're going ahead with this attack so I think that was some of the issues that came up with the release of this material how much other material the NSA has I have no idea having written three books about the NSA I know that they keep a tremendous amount of information secret. It's the most secret agency in the government. So they pride themselves on what little they release and it would be nice to have some

congressional committee demand that they go through their records. It was done before with the JFK assassination when Oliver Stone came out with his movie JFK that raised a lot of questions about the Kennedy assassination, the Congress order created, I guess it was a bill or an order of some sort, created a law, basically, saying that the government is required to release all information, not just some, but all information related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Well, I mean, you could create a similar law saying the

administration, whatever administration it is, plus the NSA has to release all information dealing with the attack on the U.S. Liberty. Again, we're talking about 1967, you know, more than half a year, half a century ago.

So anyway, it was a long time ago. So there's no reason there should be anything secret about what what took place during that time yeah all right now listen um can we talk about these sailors again for a minute because i know that in every documentary and every book about this and all my conversations with these guys and others that i've heard interviews of theirs and so forth it always

comes up about the level of secrecy and clamp down at the time and how you know i know phil attorney says he was even threatened with the death penalty essentially i'll put you in prison for life or worse admiral kid told him if you say a word of this so all these guys who just had to scrape up their buddies in pieces now were forbidden to talk to even their dad or anyone about it in any way whatsoever or or even to each other and they had to carry this for i don't know how long do you know when it became okay for them to even talk about this and i know that so many of them talk about how this just absolutely destroyed them because it wasn't just the violence, but the level of betrayal.

And Lyndon Johnson had just stabbed his men in the back. Yeah, it was easy for the government to do that. Like I said, I was in the same unit that was sailing that ship. And so we all had assigned secrecy oaths and get top secret clearances and so forth. and violations of those you go to jail for a long time so that's what they were using they were using the leverage of

those secrecyos to keep them from saying anything they were told that all this is top secret you can't say anything and if you do your violation of the US espionage laws and you will go to jail for 20 years or something like that so yeah

here they are their on a ship attacked by a foreign country. 34 of their sailors were killed. 190 of them were wounded. Their ship was blown out from under them, and yet they're not allowed to say anything about it. So obviously that would be enormously frustrating. It would never happen today.

I mean, you would never have a Navy ship attack. It would be like the sailors on the USS Cole that was attacked by al-Qaeda. not being able to say anything about the attack, which was far more, far less of an attack than the attack on the U.S. of Liberty. Yeah. Although, yeah, I'm pretty sure it was bad for the – well, it was about half as many killed, so it's still pretty bad, though.

But, yeah, I understand what you're saying. And then, yeah, the secrecy and the cover-up and the – you're not even allowed to tell your psychiatrist about it and this kind of thing when they went through you know absolute brutal warfare even for just a couple hours here with their buddies torn to shreds the way they were the ways they they talk about um that's pretty tough betrayal plus uh almost immediately uh again i wrote about this in um one of my books or articles or whatever i guess uh at some point i wrote about the USS Cole, and which as I mentioned was attacked by an al-Qaeda attack, and almost immediately within days, a whole squad of FBI agents were flown to Yemen to investigate what had happened

and try to get answers. And the person who was responsible for basically was captured and I think he still may be in Guantanamo or something like that. So, you know, the U.S. government does that when there's an attack on American ship or American building or whatever, and they didn't do it in this case. And that's why the public should demand the answers to why they didn't do it and to belatedly do what they should have done back then. Well, you know, it reminds me of the Cobar Towers, where they blame that one on Iranian-backed Saudi Hezbollah, which is a giant steaming load of crap.

And it was Osama bin Laden that did that, as Michael Schoyer wrote. And did you ever write about that one? I think I just mentioned Cobar Towers at one point, but I didn't, it wasn't focused on anything that I wrote. But again, 19 airmen betrayed there and their families lied to. And again, the FBI sent a whole bunch of agents over to investigate right away. They just lied, but at least they performed an active cover-up instead of just a passive one, I guess. Well, at least the U.S. government sent agents there to investigate whatever happened as a result of the investigation. I understand. I'm just teasing a little bit. What can you do?

yeah but that's it's not me I mean I'm just a writer I didn't have anything to do with I didn't lose any friends I wasn't on the ship but the people who were on the ship a number of them were still alive I met with them this past summer at their reunion and after all these years there's there's still angry and sad that the government let them down by never pursuing who attacked them and who killed their shipmates and who'd the ship out from under them. So it is interesting, isn't it,

that as secret as the NSA is, I mean, I know that you've cracked that thing open and gotten a lot out of them, but they really wanted you to know how they feel about this, right? You have so many guys that talk to you here, or maybe some of these are secondhand sources that you picked up who had talked to others, but you have so many of the senior leaders of the NSA

in agreement here and seem like they really are determined that the official history at least says that, you know? Yeah, this was in secondhand. These were, you know, I spent time, I spent three days with Marshall Carter, the head of the NSA at the time. I spent countless hours over long periods of time meeting with the, you know, the deputy director, or rather the head of operations for the NSA at the time. I spent a couple hours at a lunch with the former head of the CIA, Richard Helms, saying the same thing.

And more, too? You interviewed Moore? I'm sorry? Moore? Admiral Moore? I never personally interviewed Moore, no. I think he, I'm not sure if he had died before, the book or whatever. We got some great quotes from him anyway, though, so yeah.

I quote from him from official documents and everything, but I don't, but I never did interview more. Anyway, though, still, point being, and I'm sorry, I interrupted, because the point was they really wanted you to put this in the history of the world here, that this is what their consensus is. They were, they were anxious for me to write this. and because you know this was on their watch you know this was they feel responsible these people were working for them these were intelligence people working for them and they were killed by a foreign country and they had never nothing ever happened to that foreign country or the people who pulled the triggers or shot the torpedoes. And so they've always been very angry.

The problem is that there was no outlet for their anger since Congress never held an investigation. The FBI never did an investigation. And there were very few journalists that looked into it. Yeah, I mean, it's really unfortunate. I didn't learn about the thing until I was in my 20s or 30s. And I was interested in sort of alternative right-wing politics, various sorts. I still never heard anybody talk about it until the 2000s, early 2000s, I guess

was the first time. No, no, that's not right. It must have been in the 90s. But still, I remember thinking, wow, I hadn't heard of that, but I should have by now when I ever I did hear about it. Yeah, very few people. I mean, don't feel bad because, you know, you're looking if you You got one in 100,000 people that would know, you know, know what happened if you just mentioned the name USS Liberty. Right. As I said, I lived through it. I was there working on these issues when I was in the Navy.

So I was doubly shocked that there was no investigation because I'd known about it since the very beginning. Yeah. Okay, well, I guess we'll end the interview with another apology that I have not had a chance to read your latest book yet, but I do have it here. It's called Spy Fail, which must be about... Yeah, pretty much you'll... I'm sure you'll enjoy it, Scott. Oh, I know.

I know I will, and I really feel bad because I know I was the very first to read and interview you about Shadow Factory when it came out. So I'm your biggest fan, but damn it, I'm busy writing a book about Russia right now, and, but I'm... going to get to it and we'll do a great interview when I finally do, I promise. Terrific. Well, great for, I really appreciate you having me on your show. I always do. You have a great audience out there that are really in tune to issues, which are the kind of people I really like. That's great. And I sure appreciate your time, as always. And really, well, for these decades that you've made yourself available to us on this show, Jim, I really appreciate you a lot. Thank you. Take care. Good luck.

all right you guys that is the great james banford the book is body of secrets and also spy fail the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk ninety point seven fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scott horton dot org and libertarian institute dot org