Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/23/25 Phil Tourney on the Barbarity and Relevance of the USS Liberty Attack

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Scott interviews USS Liberty survivor, author and spokesperson Phil Tourney. They talk about what really happened the day of the attack, the infuriating lengths the US government went to ensure nobody would find out about it and the continued effort by figures and groups in the conservative movement to shut down discussion about this heinous chapter of US-Israeli relations. Discussed on the show: What I Saw That Day by Phil Tourney and Mark Glenn BBC’s USS Liberty: Dead in the Water (IMDb) The Day Israel Attacked America | Al Jazeera Sacrificing Liberty Operation Cyanide: How the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War Three by Peter Hounam Pre-Order Phil’s New Book Phillip F. Tourney is a decorated U.S. Navy Veteran, survivor of the 1967 USS Liberty attack, and recipient of the Bronze Star V and Purple Heart. Prior to Liberty, he did two tours on the USS Mauna Kea in waters off Vietnam. For his actions during the Liberty attack, he received a Bronze Star with “V” device plus a Purple Heart. He’s been President (or multiple-term President) of the USS Liberty Veterans Association. Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app:  https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! For more on Scott’s work: Check out The Libertarian Institute:  https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott’s other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott’s books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/47jMtg7 (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/3tgMCdw Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people, what's going on in this country? Because the babies are making this. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show, Libertarian Foreign Policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

negotiate now end this war and now here's your host scott horton all right you guys welcome back to the show again and introducing phil terny retired formerly of the u.s navy and in fact of the USS liberty he is the author of a book called what i saw that day Israel's June 8th, 1967 Holocaust of U.S. servicemen aboard the USS Liberty and its aftermath. Welcome to the show. How you doing, Phil? I'm doing well. Thank you so much, Scott, for the invite. I'm looking forward to this very important discussion, and the USS Liberty couldn't be brought up at a better time. Yeah, absolutely right. Now, it's funny because I have interviewed Ron Kukal, who I believe is now no longer with us.

And Larry Bowen and Joe Meadors before. And I thought I'd interviewed you, but no, I just had dinner with you twice. And we talked about all this stuff when I was out there in San Diego and you were doing Jocko's show. And we all hung out with Daryl Cooper and all that. But I actually haven't had a chance to interview you yet on my show. So I'm very happy to have you here and to talk about this. And let me just start by saying, I was in my 20s before I had. ever heard of the USS Liberty attack.

And I was actually pretty shocked and surprised. And in fact, I had been the consumer of a lot of pretty alternative right-wing anti-government type information up until that time. And it was many years of that before I've ever even heard of the USS Liberty. It is quite a shocking story. I must say, I think, oh, and I also want to say, I'm grateful to Ben Shapiro for bringing this subject back into controversy with his ridiculous denials and all of that. It's become a huge controversy on Twitter and, you know, out in the conversation on social media over the last

week or so, two weeks. Thank you to the young man at the Turning Point conference who asked him this question. And so it's a huge controversy. And so now people are going to have, people have never had the opportunity before, Phil, who were going to be just as shocked as I was when I first heard this thing, just as shocked as you were, maybe, or almost when you began to live through the thing, are going to get a chance to hear the true story of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. So let's start with your name rank and serial number, sir, and then tell us about this ship and where exactly, we're talking June 8th, 1967, if you want to start the story on the 6th of

the 7th, that's fine with me. Who were you? What were you doing there? And then go ahead and hit us with what happened and I'll come up with follow-up questions as we go through here. Yeah, thanks, Scott. We got emergency orders from Avedgen, Africa to go to Road to Spain, for what reason we didn't know. We found out when we picked up more linguist CIA-type personnel, NSA, three Marines, and a couple of civilians, Alan Blue, and another fellow.

and we got on our way as fast as we could to into the Mediterranean. At that time, we did that the war was going on between Israel and the Arab states. We arrived on station on June the 7th. On that morning, we were overflown by Israeli aircraft. We were clearly marked with the star of David. We waved at them,

and we waved at them, and they waved at us. And everything seemed very friendly. And by the way, Scott, we had requested a destroyer escort going into a war zone all alone with a ship unarmed, basically, with four-fifty caliber machine guns. And those orders were denied.

The Secretary of Defense said, you're going into an area with a clearly marked ship flying an American flag with GTR5, clearly marked on both sides of your bow and USS Liberty on the stern end of the ship. You have nothing to worry about. If anything ever happened, help we be there immediately. So this happened again on the 8th of June, early in the morning.

Beautiful sunny day, by the way, too, Scott. Beautiful sunny day. It was just a relaxed day No problems Our best friends were there We thought because we thought they were there Protect us and help us Because nobody else was there

Our own government wasn't there It was all of us alone In a war zone basically We were 12.5 miles off the coast Over and over again They flew over us a flying box car What's they call a NORAS It's taking pictures

A DC3 and smaller aircraft and they did the same thing again, waved it at us. In fact, they got so close to our ship, the deck plates would rattle. That's how close they got. We had no problems with anything.

Everything was good for us. In fact, we were even sunbathing on the decks, as we always did, if we weren't working, we were sunbathing or working or going to chow. So that's basically, what happened until the attack started at approximately 2 o'clock we were attacked by

unmercifully by unknown jet aircraft they were misdere and marized jets blackened out we didn't know who they were we thought they were the Arabs we thought they were Egyptian planes attacking us because of course Israel wouldn't attack

their best friends in the whole wide world There's no way they would do that. And we didn't think it was Israel. But Terry Hald-Bardier got a signal out to the 6th Fleet within 12 to 15 minutes into the 25-minute attack. Aircraft was immediately launched from USS Saratoga. Captain Tully launched the airplanes. McNamara, Secretary of Defense, got on the line. said return those aircraft do not help liberty do not help liberty return aircraft back to base

and they did they went back to base while we were still under a ferocious attack and then again they went to a higher authority the USS America launched and the Saratoga launch and they went to a higher the authority the president of the United States got online and said, I do not care about a few dead sailors. I will not embarrass my ally. How did we know who was attacking us

if we didn't? But he sure did. And that was the whole deal. They set us up to go to the bottom. And they left us out there for another hour and a half when the torpedo boats got there. They circled the ship,

and they circled the ship, they fired five torpedoes at us. I saw two of them go out where the other two went. I have no clue, but I know where the other one. It hit in the CT spaces where all the spies were. It instantly blew the bits, 25 American heroes. CIA, NSA personnel were blown literally into little pieces. and that went on and on and on and it was just terrible napalm burning us up we had over 830 or 40 50 rocket holes in us 5,000 army piercing bullets in us

napalm burning us up and then the life rash were all shot up except three we put him aside to put our most seriously wounded men in him scott and believe me they were they were some badly wounded. You could barely look at these guys. It was so blown up. The Israeli deported torpedo government would have none of that and they shot them out of the water. Shot our

life right out of the wire, which is war crimes. Many, many war crimes that day. And they took one aboard their boat as a trophy of the kill. And finally the attack stopped, we thought. And then here comes

helicopters with troop-bearing helicopters. after, I mean, Marines in them, ready to board our ship and finish this off. But all of a sudden, they just took off. And then all we did was go to damage control and try to help everybody we could. Hey, you guys, big news. I have just added part one of the new Cold War, my second course at the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. So pick it out, Scott Hortonacademy.com.

Got my terror war course. You got the great Jim Bovard on the domestic police state, mostly. COVID and Waco and drug wars and TSA and so much good stuff. Ramsey Baroud on Israel Palestine, Bill Bupert on America losing war after war since World War II. Adam Francisco on debunking Christian Zionism. Well, and really the whole history of Christianity and Judaism and, or at least since Christianity. and the modern state of Israel and all of that. And now we have part one of my Cold War course for you,

the new Cold War course, based on my book Provoked, of course. So check it out. It's been a huge success already. Everybody loves it getting nothing but positive feedback and really happy that everybody's getting such a good kick out of it. So if you haven't signed up yet, now is your chance. We got annual as well as lifetime subscriptions there. And you get a free copy of enough already

if you sign up for a lifetime subscription. asterisk in the U.S. only. And thanks very much. See you over there. Scott Horton Academy.com. All right. Now, there's a few things there, but I want to go back to,

well, first of all, you said there's NSA and also CIA officers on board. I guess maybe I never knew that or I had forgotten if there were CIA guys. So it's a basically NSA electronic spy ship. You said you're just barely armed with these 50 caliber machine guns that are meant to like fend off surface craft or something like that but surely cannot knock a plane out of the sky coming in and strafing you like this

and so you're there without it really any form of defense against this aerial assault as it begins and so I guess one thing I can't remember if I ever wondered about this before or asked about this before, but did you guys ever make sense of the, the time lag between the naval attack and the air attack? Because this thing went on for a long, long time. And then I think as you say there, there was kind of a lull after the air attack. And then the boats come to finish you off with the torpedoes. It seems like they would have just done it all at once or something, right? Or did you guys ever have an explanation for that or even a feeling for what must have been going on there?

Well, actually, we did. When the planes stopped attacking us, we thought, well, help must be on the way they're going to drive these guys off. But help never did come. And we didn't know who was attacking us until we saw the torpedo boats flying the star David. And all of us thought, wow, thank God they're coming to help us. no they weren't they're coming there to sink us that was the whole plan that LBJ and Levi Askell

of the Prime Minister of Israel at the time they made a pack they made a terrible evil pack against Americans men on the high seas to be sunk and blaming it on Egypt to bring us into World War III on the side of Israel

Well, all right, let's put off that motive for a minute. We will get back to that, but let's stick with what we know from what happened on the water that day. And first of all, I'm sorry, I don't know if I even gave you a chance to say, what were the total casualties killed and wounded again? Initially, there were 34 men killed that day and 174 wounded. so, like I said, so many severely wounded, you couldn't hardly look at him. You know, and another thing, Scott,

our government didn't come to help us for 17 hours after the attack when help was only 40 minutes away. They left us out there to sink, hopefully move to sink, and go to the bottom and still blame Egypt. And then you guys have all talked about this before how it was just the greatest stroke a luck or a miracle or however you want to frame it that the one torpedo that did hit the ship

true hit right on an eye beam and so luckily that eye beam was able to deflect much of that explosion so as you said a lot of those NSA guys and others in the bowels of the ship there were killed but the structure of the ship was not nearly as damaged as it otherwise might have been if the torpedo was able to gain kind of full entry into the thing before exploding. And so that seemed to have been the difference right there between whether the ship sank or not. And then as you're saying, no one was coming. So if that torpedo had just hit a foot to the left or to the right, that would have been the end of all of you guys. That's a very true story.

If it hits and explodes inside the ship, we're all dead. We go down like a rock. but by the grace of God the hand of God for whatever reason it hit that eye beam to take the majority of the blow and what it did

it blew the outside of the ship it was a 40 by 40 foot torpedo hole in it I mean it was enormous you could put a house in it and that old ship stayed afloat by the way it was an old World War II victory ship hole

they called them one way during World War II. Now, let's talk about this flag for a minute, because it depends. Sometimes the Israelis don't lie about this, but sometimes they do. You know, it's been a lot of years of a lot of claims and a lot of Hasbara and different propaganda and whatever. But I was actually just reviewing my recent interview with James Bamford, and I had forgotten this, that he had been stationed on a very similar ship right around that same time

before coming home and becoming a great investigative journalist. and the greatest journalist on the National Security Agency, well, until, well, Snowden the Source and all of that. But he said, listen, when people say that the fact that it was a spy ship means that it wouldn't be flying an American flag, but maybe another country's flag, and that it was deep undercover in that way, Bamford says that there's no way that that's true,

that he was essentially signed to the same mission on a sister ship, more or less, that they would always fly the American flag. The fact that it was a spy ship just meant that they would try to make it look somewhat like another type of ship, but never flying under a foreign flag. And I've talked to some of your shipmates already in the past, and we all know this story, but I want to hear it from the horse's mouth myself. You swear, sir, that you guys were flying the stars and stripes on a sunny day for hours and hours and hours under Israeli aerial surveillance, and that there's just no other

explanation than they had to have known that that was an American ship flying an American flag? Absolutely. I'll put my hand on a Bible to swear to it right now. We had three flags flown on that day. Two of them were five by eight flags. They were steaming incense. They were brand new flags. Brand new flags, Scott. They shot one down, and then they shot another one down. And then we put up the holiday colors, which is seven by 13 feet high. You could see it forever. We were so close to the war zone, to what was going on. You could see the bombs bursting on, on the shore. You could see the bombs bursting on the Sure, going after the Egyptian soldiers or whoever they were bombing up. I'm sure it was them.

But, yeah, we could see everything. In fact, they said we were American ship and friendly even before they started the attack. And they also said the reason they attacked us, the war table, they took us off their war table and forgot we were there. Right. And so I guess everybody forgot we were there. Hey, guys, Scott here. You know, you've probably noticed when I'm interviewing somebody or somebody's interviewing me, that I've got this great bust of Dr. Ron Paul in the background on my bookshelf here.

Well, you can get one like that too. They're available again from the great artist Rick Casali. Just go to my website, Scott Horton.org, and look in the right-hand margin. Click the link through there and use promo code Horton. You'll save 25 bucks and get free shipping, at least in the lower 48 states. And he does custom work as well. Yes, thank you so much for saying that because I think this is just I mean, of all the ridiculous excuses, but it comes with this massive admission

that, yes, of course, Bill Turney is right, that it was Israeli planes, as you said, marked with Israeli flags, flying sorties over you guys, surveilling y'all all morning long. Of course, yes, yes, yes, that is true. All that happened, though, was there was a shift change. And at that point, they totally forgot everything that they knew. And the new crew coming in just went ahead. and went to war without checking or some kind of thing, which is completely crazy.

I mean, that that's the best excuse that they can come up with. At least goes to show that they admit that, oh, yeah, no, you're right. Before the napalm runs began, they,

quote unquote, and not just the Israeli government, but the Israeli Air Force knew exactly who y'all were. So you have to really, love these guys and really want to have faith and believe them when they claim that that is their excuse for how this began. And then again, as you say, but it's a clear day. And even in the fog or whatever, they would know, and they're flying the stars and stripes, which is pretty hard to mistake for an Egyptian flag, I'd think. Sure it is. And, you know, you could take basically a blind person

to see it was an American ship, an American flag. And their excuse was, It was the Alquazir, which was about a third as big as our ship. It was a little horse transport, sunk in some port. In Egypt, it was out of commission, but that was her excuse. It was the Alcazir. And, oh, by the way, we were bombing the shore. We were bombing their troops. So they had every right to try to sink our ship.

And so that's the narrative. and that's been the narrative. You know, there was a preacher. I'm sorry, I forget his name, but he was, oh, man, somebody punched me on the stomach, if I get this wrong, I'm 99% sure, filled that it was at the recent turning point event where this preacher was brought up and essentially said that, well, the liberty deserved it because they were treacherously betraying Israel

and passing intelligence to Egypt. And Oren McIntyre tweeted, wow, the Israelis, pardon me, the American sailors deserve to be murdered. It's a bold take. You don't hear that one very often. But here, you know, usually they just deny. And so it was, of course, it was an accident, Bill. But here it's no, they had good motive. According to this American, the Israelis had good motive to try to sink that ship because it was, right, not to pick up the phone call and ask LBJ to please stop passing Intel to Egypt.

that's indeed your accusation. And I believe, because I saw someone demanded I read this, and I'm pretty sure, I don't remember it very well, but I think I looked into this book that's called The Secret War Against the Jews, that claims essentially that the CIA is all run by these horrible anti-Semites and that everything that looks like Israel ever did wrong

was really about how America is out to get Israel. And in that narrative, this was part of, you know, the liberty was part of America betraying Israel during the 67 war, and so they had no choice but to do that. Although now, I have to go back and re-read that, but I'm pretty sure that's the same case that they made in that book, which just rings completely preposterous. And, you know, like I would recommend to their Hasbara team

that you guys should just stick with it was a mistake instead of the sailors deserved it. And Israel can attack American Navy ships if they feel like it, which is a pretty, as Orrin said there, a pretty bold take on this situation. I saw that pastor, him and three other guys aged, and when he made that claim, I thought, oh, my God, is he really a man of God that he wishes that, you know, we got, we just deserved. You know, 34 men were murdered, and so many lives were destroyed that day by their wounds and the metal scars and everything.

then being denied by our own government out at sea by Admiral Isaac Kidd and Ward Boston and we can get into that too. But please go ahead. Yeah, well, so yeah, we do need to get in that. Before we go there, let's talk about, you know, I don't know, I think this stuff matters. And especially, Phil, when things happened a long time ago,

back before we're born and all that, it just kind of seems so inevitable. and just storybook stuff or whatever. So I think it's worthwhile to really give you an opportunity to mention some of the guys and what happened there because you could make a Hollywood blockbuster out of this thing if some of the names were changed as far as the heroic stories of,

and I mean of the assalters, obviously, but some of the heroic stories of guys who saved each other's lives and in some cases died trying and even succeeding in saving their friends' lives during this thing. And I know the story of the guy who, you know, under heavy fire, reconnected one last emergency, you know, Morse code antenna and all of this kind of stuff. And guys, I know from the different things I've read and the documentaries and whatever,

people down below decks who are drowning and then the people from above go down there and get them and this kind of thing or close to that. Anyway, so if you want to talk about any of that kind of thing, recognize some people and and kind of bring home to the audience how very real all this was and all you guys were and are yeah thanks the the gentleman that ran that coaxial cable his name is terry halbar die he was a third class radioman and scott he took that antenna offline even before the attack because it wasn't tuning properly. So that's the only reason they didn't hit that antenna

because all the missiles they shot at us were he's seeking missiles. And they took out every tuning antenna on that ship within three seconds as they did the 50 cows. And we were basically incommunicado. We had no way to communicate. Can you imagine the most sophisticated spy ship in the world at that time they can't get out a signal and that one signal sent aircraft from the

America and the Saratoga which we were recalled and the heroes aboard that ship there are so many to name just so many to name but all of them are American heroes that went through what we went through and that night it was nothing but operations and men standing by men that were dying you know it was a

it was it was a wonderful thing to see your shipmates all pulled together together as one to save each other I did help in one operation with a doctor keeper up in sick bay

with a guy by the name of Gary Blanchard and he was on on a table and he was he was really hit bad scott and he asked me to take his socks off his feet were hot i rubbed his feet tried to give him some circulation i went over to his left side and he says turny do you think i'm going to make it i said no man i don't think he are I didn't I was in a lie to him Scott I couldn't

and sometimes we regret that but Doc Kiefer cut him open and he was dead at that moment he was dead and so he stitched him up with a few stitching we put him over the side

and that went on all night all night would nobody come to help us when they knew we were in dire straits that's the most disturbing part of it is our own government betrayed us. They betrayed us then, and they're betraying us now by keeping this lid on terrible, terrible, terrible, awful cover-up. I think it's probably the worst cover-up is this century. I really do. Yeah, or tied for first place with a few, but

yeah, it is absolutely. All right, guys. Well, if you're like me and pretty much everybody else, you use amazon.com all the time because what are you going to do they got prime they bring this stuff right to door and all that so that's fine but what you do is make sure and stop by scott horton.org and click the amazon link in the right hand margin there get yourself a bug assault shotgun for destroying flies trespassing on your property and then also whatever you get from amazon and the scott horton show will get a kickback from amazon's end of the sale which is very nice. You know, it's, yeah, the level of outrage versus the level of silence. It's a, it's a pretty stark ratio there. So, and even beginning with LBJ recalling the planes, McNamara recalling

the planes, can you talk a little bit about how we know that? And, um, and then as, as you alluded there, a little bit about y'all's long journey finally to port when they finally, I guess, recognized that the ship was not going to sink and they had to go ahead and tow you. Right. Well, the betrayal wasn't immediate because most of us figured, Scott, that, again, we didn't know. Was there a World War III going on somewhere? They didn't have time for us or something else going on that they couldn't help us. That was my thought. I think a lot of the other guys, too. But when the USS America and the USS Davis and Massey got there, they met a back, all the seriously wounded off the ship, is there were a lot of them, a bunch of them. They went to America for definitive care. And also, I believe, another ship was there.

I can't recall it now. But anyway, they got all the guys off. And I'm sorry, when did they get there? Like, it wasn't until the next afternoon or something, right? They got there about 0,600 the next morning. Oh, okay. We could see them, you know, the great big, beautiful U.S.S. America and the sister ships and what a beautiful sight that was. And they came aboard our ship to help get the people off and, you know, they flew them off in helicopters.

And I got to tell you that the guys that came aboard that ship, Scott, were crying. They had tears in their eyes of what they saw of this broken, broken ship and broken men. but our spirits were never broken. And once they got Medevac and everybody was off, we were off to Malta because it went to a closer spot. You know, we had to 1,000 miles away with the 40 by 40 foot torpedo hole in the side. We had to go 1,000 miles to Malta.

Two days into that trip, Admiral Isaac Kid and Ward Boston gag officer, came aboard our ship to debrief us and get everything they could about what happened. And we told them everything. They got us in small groups. In fact, I was in sickbay. We were four or five other sailors. And we told them, you know, he took his stars on, I'm just like you did.

Tell me everything. And we did. So why didn't you come help us? How come help never came? How came he left us out there alone? You know, all the war crimes they did with the napalm and shooting our life rafts and using us as pop-up targets. That's what they did.

Anything that moved, they would shoot or kill. That's what they did. That's how brutal, how brutal the IDF was to us. And the admiral kid put his stars back on. He says, now on my admiral again. And I'm telling every one of you, SOBs, If you ever repeat a word of what you just told me to anybody, your parents, anybody, especially the media,

I will make sure you end up in Leavenworth or worse. And he got right in my face. He was beat red. Do you understand what worse means, Saylor? I said, yes, sir, I did, because I'm very vocal to the admiral, because I should have been. He said it was my dad. But he was the devil, doing the devil's work for our government that set us up.

And it was disgusting that they put it on this whole thing. And the same lid goes on today. The only investigation we ever had was a phony seven-day investigation by a kid in Boston, ordered by LBJ to find a mistake in identity. and they did that in seven days. They said it was a mistake of an identity and in seven days when an investigation like that

would take at least six months. Yeah. All right. Now, I'm going to ask you about this because I know from the other guys that I've talked to, other survivors, that I don't want to name names

because I forget who said what, but it may have been Joe. Anyway, talked about how it was really hard to be, sworn to such secrecy about this and you know

for many years until the story finally broke open I don't know how many years it was before you guys someone finally of a high enough rank talked about it that the rest of you guys sort of finally had license to talk about it but I guess I'm wondering because you guys obviously would do

classified missions all the time but I don't think that or I don't know like how severe that is where they say to you like no matter how traumatic this was being torn apart by machine guns and napalmed and all this you can never say a word about this to your father to your priest to your wife to you know your your drunken best friend in the world to anyone ever no matter what and i know that was a hell of a burden for guys to carry but then i wonder that raised the question to me of well how does that level of threat one of that tight of

secrecy never you can't talk to your dad your priest your wife no one ever ever ever no matter what um and also then combined with those uh consequences where he threatened to kill you basically right you threatened the death penalty uh for espionage if you were to dare to say anything about this i mean obviously classified things are classified you can't talk to your priest about anything right you can't talk to your father you can't talk to your wife about anything but then so how would that usually work they would give you like um a name Navy counselor who does have the clearance to hear you talk about something traumatic that happened to you, something like that. You would talk to Navy doctors about it, VA doctors about it.

In this case, you're being forbidden from even talking to them, correct? Yes, we weren't supposed to talk to anybody. And that, we took that for approximately 20 years of silence until Jim Ennis, January, he was an officer aboard the ship, wrote a book. assault on the liberty. And we all started coming together then, Scott, and we started talking to each other and saying, well, we're here, we're going to tell the truth. It's been close to 20 years since the attack.

We're going to start talking because we want the truth to come out. And that's when we've been getting hammered ever since that day for the last 40-plus years. And there'll be 58 years coming. Our 59 years is coming June the 8th since the attack. And we've been hammered by the ADL, A-PAC, even our own congressmen tell us that we're lying. In fact, we've written many letters to them. And we said, well, we've had many, many investigations.

They're all lying. They said they have at least five official investigations. They've never had one. never won they're all they do if you write congress or call them be prepared to be lied to because they will not they will not go against their apak handlers none of them will they're afraid to well look at our congress 98% of them are taking money from apac if you want to get elected and stay in congress you better abide by the rules boys you're out the door yeah devon nunez stood up for you and i think we call him former representative

Devin Nunes now, right? Absolutely. We also had Pete McCluskey, former congressman from California. Paul Finley, former congressman from Illinois. Senta McKinney, she stood up for us. Jim Trafficant.

All of them were thrown out. In fact, Jim Trafficant, in my view, died of suspicious circumstances. I think they killed Jim. I can't prove it, but that's just my own personal thought. Well, they say he died in a horrific single tractor accident, you know, out there.

So, and there's certainly reason to suspect, you know, what can you say? Man, if you have any money, you should be buying gold with it. Central banks are hoarding it up. And if you need some, you should go to rrbi.c.0.C.O. That's Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc. It's my buddy Tim Frye. He's a really great guy, him in this business. They've been over there for a very, very long time.

and they will help you get your medals and they will always do you right. That's Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc. at R-RBI.co. Oh, man. So listen, I don't want to keep you too much longer, but I do want to be useful to the audience here too. So can we do a couple of things here? I want to start with, well, first of all, let me, I just have, I jotted this down here.

I have, for people who are book disinclined as, many are these days. It's understandable, but there is a really useful and worthwhile BBC documentary about the USS Liberty. There is another one by Al Jazeera that did quality work on this thing. And the same thing for the three-part documentary at True News, which is also highly valuable that everyone can find. And then, as I mentioned at Scott Horton.org, I have previous interviews with Larry Bowen, Joe Meadors, two with Joe Meadors and one with Ron Kukal. And then I have quite a few with Brent F. Smith, with Ray McGovern, and also with James Bamford on the subject as well. And so that I want to show people this book. It's called Body of Secrets by

James Bamford. His first book on the NSA was called The Puzzle Palace. This is the sequel. Body of secrets that came out, I forget when, I'm going to say early 90s, like 93-ish or something. He's the same guy who wrote a book called The Pretext for War about Iraq and the Shadow Factory, also about the NSA in the post-9-11 era. But in this one, he has a, for what's for my money, Phil, from everything that I've read on this, his chapter is, to me, the most authoritative, stand by this, give it to your Uncle Bob, absolutely, you know, right on. James Bamford is just fantastic. And so this is, to me, my highest recommendation.

I just want to show these others that I have here that are all worthwhile. And although I don't think I've actually read this one, attack on the Liberty by James Scott. And I'm perfectly happy to hear your remarks about any of these. I have a ship without a country. This is by Victor Thorne and Mark Glenn eyewitness accounts of the attack on the USS Liberty. And this is, oh, this is the one you mentioned, James Ennis, assault on the liberty. This is the one that really got the ball rolling on willingness to discuss this in public.

Now, this one I will mention, Honorable Mention, it's Blood in the Water by Joan Mellon. I have to say I was not convinced by it in as far as like some of her claims about her determination of the motive for the thing. I did not find that compelling enough, but I'll recommend it just the same. It's still a good book. It has a lot of great stuff in it and for people to draw their own conclusions from for sure. That's Joan Mellon. So I'll turn that over to you if you wanted to recommend any more documentaries or books that I failed to mention here or if you want to remark on which are your favorite of these or you think are the most authoritative. And of course, I'm sorry because I don't have yours, but I do want to mention your very important book. Of course, what I saw that day, Israel's June 8, 1967, Holocaust of U.S. servicemen aboard the USS Liberty. and its aftermath, which is available on Amazon as well.

Go ahead. Yeah, thanks. Scott, I recommend all those books. They're good books. Another one is a must-read is Operation Sinite. Okay. That is a beautiful good book by Peter Hunum. He's from Scotland.

He's been to one of our reunions, maybe two of them. But boy, that is a real, real good book. and yeah they're all good and I got a new book coming out it'll be coming out in January coming up soon it's called stay afloat and you can find it on my web page phil ternypodcast.com Phil tourney pat podcast.com and I do want to add this if I may please Scott I was in Washington D.C. this time last week. I went there specifically to go to the Heritage Foundation, which I was invited. You were invited to the Heritage Foundation.

You don't say. Yes. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, another friend of mine recommended it. I was in the second row when Ben Shapiro was speaking. I went there to confront him about the USS Liberty. the president of the Heritage Foundation, knew I was there, and so did the Vice President.

And I asked for a private meeting with him, and they would not meet with me. And that was very disappointing because the Heritage Foundation is supposed to be about truth. And it didn't happen that day. All Ben Shapiro did was cut down, Tucker Carl. The whole 30 minutes he spoke, how bad Tucker Carlson was. No, Ben, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, people like you, Ray Doubster, and many, many others are the heroes that keep this country going by telling the truth. And Ben Shapiro would not even look at me. He knew I was there.

They warned him I was there. That's why they wouldn't take any questions from the audience. They took four scripted questions from one of their age there, and they rushed him out. I was going to get him in the reception, and he'd been long gone. He was gone because I wanted to talk to that boy, a person, and I was not allowed to it. The USS Liberty is such an integral part of history, and the Heritage Foundation denied it. They wouldn't let the president of the organization speak for one moment. to the man that says it was mistaken identity

because I was going to say he's butt straight but I didn't get the opportunity. I also will add, along with my friend Carl Gloven, he lives in D.C. We went to the Republican Club. Every night I was there, I was meeting a lot of senators, excuse me, congressman, James Comer.

I met many of them. I met James Raffkin, or Jamie Raskin and who was Tom Massey in the elevator they were going to vote but I handed them a brochure actually was a declaration from Ward Boston saying

now he was a legal counsel he says everything that was said about the board of inquiry was a lie we were ordered by Ward Blas I mean by Kennedy or Kennedy my goodness Bill that were ordered by Johnson to find it a mistaken identity. And I took that very declaration to the Israeli embassy

saying it was not a mistaken identity, but a pre-planned vicious, murderous attack. And I also wrote on the top of it, We want our life wrap back. And I stood in the embassy, and I waved my arms and waved my arms. I wasn't going to leave until I was going to be able to pass that. piece of paper on to him.

And we wondered our life wrap back. And here's the Declaration Ward Boston saying that it was not a case of my mistaken identity. They finally came out and got it. One man did. And he said, what do you want here? And I told him. And then when that was done, I had to deal with the Secret Service.

And excuse me. they were very kind they treated me with dignity of respect I told me what I was there for and they sent me on my way but that's how deep the cover-up goes but as long as Phil Turner is alive I'm going to be on it like stink on you know what

because the 34 men that died that day don't have a voice but I have a voice I'm speaking for them there were young men that were killed that day murdered in cold blood and they'd never had a chance to love to live to have families to see their grandkids like I was so fortunate to do. So that is my purpose in life, and I will continue that as long as I can until the day I die.

If I have to get on the bed of my dying breath will be on a microphone about the USS Liberty and the brave sailors that served our country and have been betrayed since 1967 and until now, our ship not sinking, saved millions of lives because SAC aircraft were on the way to bomb Egypt with nuclear weapons. If our ship goes down, that's what was going to happen. The world would have changed at that moment. What's going on in Gaza right now, the land grab, that's what they got back in 67. They've got it all back in 67 instead of what they're doing right now, killing everybody in Gaza and putting new settlements in the West Bank and everything like that.

I mean, this is not off topic. This all comes back to the same people, and the same people that are protecting him. The president of the United States saying, I'll give Bibi any kind of bombs he wants he. Bibi calls me for this. Bibi calls me for that. I'll give him anything he wants. Well, thank you, President Trump, for nothing. You're helping commit a genocide of innocent people, men, women, and his children, for what?

Land. That's all they want is land. So that, that's my take on Scott, and it'll be my take on it. Hey, guys, Scott here from Moondos, artisan coffees. It's the Scott Horton Show-flavored coffee, breakfast blend. It's part Ethiopian, part Sumatra. It's really good. All you do is go to Scott Horton.org slash coffee, and it'll forge you on there to

Moondos artisan coffees. Get it, they hate Starbucks because they represent the war party, of course. And so they're Moondos, and they support peace. And guess what? Scott Horton Show Coffee is the number one bestselling coffee at Moondos Artisan Coffees right now. Just go again to Scott Horton.org slash coffee. Yeah, right on, man. You're a hero, man, not just for what you did that day and surviving all of that, you know,

and all of your buddies, but for all the work you've done to tell the truth this whole time. And you know, that story about going to heritage and being, you know, prevented from being allowed to have this conversation with Ben Shapiro and all of that. that the whole story from the attack that day through the cover up right now and the controversy over the the words USS Liberty being used so prominently these days as they never have been before in the controversy about it all all of it says so much I mean just think about what a world are we living in sir where you and I are even having this conversation right now that one the Israelis would have dared to do this and two that they got away with it and

three that they covered it up since 1967, which is nine years before I was even born. And they got away with making this some kind of like marginal topic where like, yeah, some of us are interested in who all really helped McVe do the Oklahoma City bombing. Nobody else

cares. And they kind of made this one of those type topics. But that's incredible and impossible. And they have, well, although I have to say, and this is maybe where we can end it on a positive note, is that you're winning. sir. And all they got left is Ben Shapiro up there stammering. And quite frankly, like, we couldn't

have a better foil. He is the least credible spokesman for whatever cause you got. And here he is the best guy that the Zionists have to make their case. And he might as well be our secret agent at this point. He's just a walking face palm. And he is completely, he's doing everything that you've been thus far unable to do in completely discrediting this is regular. regime and their influence in the United States. I've been trying my best to help this whole time. But Ben Shapiro is finishing off, you know, at least the popular American belief in the credibility of this project anymore, you know.

And so we got to, in a kind of left-handed way, we got to thank him for that. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We have to thank him so much. Keep on talking, Ben. You know, all you're doing is just making yourself look like a fool. And, you know, I do want to say this. The young people in this country are smart. They're very smart.

They read and they're wondering, why, why, why? Has this never been brought up? Well, because it's been covered up so long. But the young people aren't going for it. They're smarter than that because of social media. People like you and Candace and Jake Shields and Jay Slay. I mean, I can tell you right here, I'll just run through a quick list.

Candice On, Jake Shields, Myron Gaines, Nick Fuentes, Jaco Wilnick, Jay Slay, Mike Fitzpatrick, Jimmy Dorr, Scott Ritter, Bermpit, Deep Shallow Dive. I've been on all these podcasts with these guys, all of them, great American patriots, heroes, that want America to understand the truth. And everybody says that we're Jew haters.

I'm a Jew hater. I'm not a Jew hater. All I'm doing is just tell us for America to understand the truth. When they shot our American flag down twice and tried to shoot the other one down and sink a flagged American ship, they just didn't attack us.

They attacked all of you, everyone in America. If you were born that or not, They were attacking you because they attacked our symbol and our government from LBJ to every president and most of Congress from that day on has covered Israel's ass for a cold-blooded, premeditated murder and almost got us into World War III. So young people keep on doing for what you're doing. And I'll tell you what, Scott. It's been my great honor to be with you today and go through this. try to get this straightened out for our not just for me but America not just for the veterans

but all veterans this is my goal in life is to get the truth told and with people like you and others we're going to continue to do this so god bless you sir it's my honor to be here with you today great thank you so much phil it's been great to have you on the show and to see you again here and everyone please go and check out the book what i saw that day And as he said, Phil has a new book coming out just next month called Stay Afloat. And the website is philternipodcast.com. Thank you so much again for coming on the show, Phil. God bless you, sir.

This Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts & Roberts, Brokerage, Inc., Moondos Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods Liberty Classroom, and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, Fool's errand, enough already, and my latest, Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above at Scott Horton.org, and I'm serializing the audio book of Provoked at Scott Horton Show.com and Patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show. Bumpers by Josh Langford Music, intro and outro videos by dissident media, audio mastering by Potsworth Media.

See you all next time. Thank you.