USS AMERICA CVA-66, USS LIBERTY AGTR-5, USS LITTLE ROCK CLG-4. June 9, 1967.

Flight Deck Memorial Service USS AMERICA CVA-66 June 10, 1967.







Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who biddest the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

May the rest in Peace.

Its now exactly 40 years since that attack and as it says on the bottom of my posts.

USS Liberty, Never Forget.

I can't.

Forty Years Later, Searching for Truth
Ward Boston, Jr.
The San Diego Union Tribune
June 8, 2007

Forty years ago this week, I was asked to investigate the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II. As senior legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding Israel's June 8th 1967 bombing of the USS Liberty.

On that sunny, clear day 40 years ago, Israel's combined air and naval forces attacked our American intelligence-gathering ship for two hours, inflicting 70 percent casualties. Thirty-four American sailors died and 172 were injured. The USS Liberty remained afloat only by the crew's heroic efforts.

Israel claimed it was an accident. Yet I know from personal conversations with the late Admiral Isaac C. Kidd -- president of the Court of Inquiry -- that President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of "mistaken identity."

The ensuing cover-up has haunted us for forty years. What does it imply for our national security, not to mention our ability to honestly broker peace in the Middle East, when we cannot question Israel's actions – even when they kill Americans?

On June 8th, survivors of Israel's cruel attack will gather in Washington, DC to honor their dead shipmates as well as the mothers, sisters, widows and children they left behind. They will continue to ask for a fair and impartial congressional inquiry that, for the first time, would allow the survivors themselves to testify publicly.

For decades, I have remained silent. I am a military man and when orders come in from the Secretary of Defense and President of the United States, I follow them. However, attempts to rewrite history and concern for my country compel me to share the truth.



Admiral Kidd and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy’s official investigation, though we both estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry would take at least six months.

We boarded the crippled ship at sea and interviewed survivors. The evidence was clear. We both believed with certainty that this attack was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.

I am certain the Israeli pilots and commanders who had ordered the attack knew the ship was American. I saw the bullet-riddled American flag that had been raised by the crew after their first flag had been shot down completely. I heard testimony that made it clear the Israelis intended there be no survivors. Not only did they attack with napalm, gunfire, and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned at close range three life rafts that had been launched in an attempt to save the most seriously wounded.

I am outraged at the efforts of Israel’s apologists to claim this attack was a case of "mistaken identity."

Admiral Kidd told me that after receiving the President's cover-up orders, he was instructed to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Defense Department, and rewrite portions of the Court’s findings. He said, "Ward, they're not interested in the facts. It’s a political matter and we cannot talk about it." We were to "put a lid on it" and caution everyone involved never to speak of it again.

I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent to Washington. I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. In addition, the testimony of Lt. Lloyd Painter concerning the deliberate machine-gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given at the Court of Inquiry and including in the original transcript, is now missing.

I join the survivors in their call for an honest inquiry. Why is there no room to question Israel – even when they kill Americans -- in the halls of Congress?

Let the survivors testify. Let me testify. Let former intelligence officers testify that they received real-time Hebrew translations of Israeli commanders instructing their pilots to sink "the American ship."

Surely uncovering the truth about what happened to American servicemen in a bloody attack is more important than protecting Israel. And surely forty years is long enough to wait.

In addition to serving as chief counsel to the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the attack on USS Liberty, Ward Boston served as a naval aviator in World War II on the carrier Yorktown, and as an FBI agent prior to his assignment to the Navy’s Judge Advocates General Corps. He is a graduate of the Law School of the College of William and Mary, and a resident of Coronado, California.

This article was originally published by The San Diego Union Tribune.

This was taken from the bridge of the Davis on June 9th just after launching the whaleboat with the rescue crew.

quote:

We were to "put a lid on it" and caution everyone involved never to speak of it again.

Those of us involved were warned if we ever spoke of the attack, or what we knew, we would be prosicuted and sent to prison. I personely was told by an officer when I was discharged from the Navy that I could not travel to a forign country for 20 years without permission from the NSA or speak to anyone about what transpired. Everyone in the Radio shack of the Davis recieved the same instructions.

Thanks for making sure the rest of us with little or no knowledge could understand this attack better.
God bless the surviving crew for keeping her afloat and those who perished in the attack.
May one day you get the official acknowledgement of the truth that you are looking for.

I was on the flight deck. We launched the A-4's. They had returned from a training mission and still had the nuke weapons when launched. I fueled one of them. Also, during the launch some of the Russian ships responded by turning their weapons. Myself and others from V-4 (fuels) volunteered to help care for wounded. Many shared stories that it was no mistake. We were warned and some signed papers not to repeat what we were told. I am still pissed after all these years. Not only for the attack but, the way these men were treated after by their own Government.

[RE: http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos.do?displayContent=129603
This is a Great Classic Navy Film. God Bless the part of me that sits six thousand feet below the Waters of North Carolina. My
USS America. What do you think?QUOTE]Originally posted by CVA66er:
Gerry,

I share your goose bumps.
Note our closing speed.

FLASH
DTG 090513Z JUN 67

FROM: COMSIXTHFLT

TO: USCINCEUR

INFO: CINCUSNAVEUR/CINCUSAFE/CINUSAFEUR/CNO/JCS/COMFAIRMED/
CTF 60/CTG 60.2/USCINCEUR GREYHOUND/SILK PURSE/USCINCEUR
AIRBORNECOMMAND POST/

CONFIDENTIAL FLASHSITREP 06010 [06001] COMSIXTHFLT 090500Z

1. DAVIS AND MASSEY HAVE RENDEZVOUSED WITH LIBERTY AT 090425Z.
MEDICAL PERSONNEL HAVE BOARDED LIBERTY.

2. POSIT OF RENDEZVOUS LAT 33-01N/LONG 31-59E.

3. AT 0455Z LIBERTY WAS 138 MILES FROM USS AMERICA. CLOSURE
SPEED 30 KTS.

GP-4[/QUOTE]

New revelations in attack on American spy ship
Tuesday, October 02, 2007 5:48 PM
Front page article from today’s Tribune

chicagotribune.com
Special report
New revelations in attack on American spy ship
Veterans, documents suggest U.S., Israel didn't tell full story of deadly '67 incident
By John Crewdson

Tribune senior correspondent

October 2, 2007


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-libe...soct02,0,66005.story

I recieved this lead from one of my former shipmates on the Davis. Its an eye opener and proves what the USS Liberty crew and the rest of us who helped in their rescue have known all along.

It was a delibrit attack and was covered up at the expense of the crew that manned her.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: GerryRM3,

Released messages from the National Security Agency

ALL
Just a comment.
The area this occurred in, is so tight CVAs have to signal for left turns.
We old timers have so many NEAR miss stories in that area, that I wonder if the current generation can grasp the Cold War brinkmanship we practiced. Today, the NEAR misses still occur, I am sure. The Free world still lives under the NUCLEAR gun, even if not so blatant.
May the Good Lord be with those standing on the wall today and in the future.
end

quote:

Originally posted by GerryRM3:
Released messages from the National Security Agency

Outraged. I was then, I am now, and I always will be..

After reading some of the more recent releases, I'm even more outraged.

With Mc the Knife involved could we expect anything less??

I see in the news that Ward Boston has died.
May He Rest in Peace.

Key Figure in USS Liberty Inquiry Dies
June 16, 2008
Military.com|by Bryant Jordan

Retired Navy Capt. Ward Boston, who in 2002 broke 35 years of silence to say the US Navy Board of Inquiry long cited to clear Israel of wrongdoing in attacking a US Navy ship during the Six Day War was a sham, died June 11 in California. He was 84.

Emma Boston, his wife of 60 years, told Military.com that Boston had been sick for about six weeks before his death and had been hospitalized. She said he ultimately died of pneumonia, which he contracted in the hospital.

"He was sharp as a tack right up until they put him under sedation" because of his difficulty breathing, she said.

In 1967, Boston was a Navy lawyer and assigned as the legal adviser to the board, which was convened within days of the June 8 attack by Israeli air and naval forces on the USS Liberty, an American surveillance ship floating in international waters in the Mediterranean.

Israel claimed the attack was a case of mistaken identity, and that it believed the Navy ship was an Egyptian vessel. The report ultimately turned over by the board made no conclusions on culpability, though survivors have long maintained that the Israelis knew full well they were attacking an American ship.

In the years since, the three members of the board died, leaving only Boston as an inside witness to their work. In 2002 he at last began to talk about the investigation, saying the board's work was intended as a cover-up. Subsequently Boston drafted and signed a full statement, in which he said the final report was not the one he signed off on as the legal counsel. Handwritten corrections and his initials were absent from the board transcript released publicly, he said.

He also stated that the board president, Rear Adm. Isaac Kidd, told him that he had been ordered to re-write portions of the report when he brought it to Washington.

Boston's comments were welcomed by stunned Liberty survivors, who believed they would finally get the congressional hearings they sought for more than three decades.

Other credible sources had called the incident a deliberate attack on an American ship -- among them former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, former CIA Directors Richard Helms and Bobbie Inman, former National Security Agency Director Marshall Carter, and Rear Adm. Merlin Staring, who was legal counsel to board's appointing authority, Adm. John McCain.

But Ennes said Boston's first-hand knowledge of the board's work lent greater weight to his words.

"We … felt the lid had finally been lifted in 2002 when Captain Boston came forward to report the inner workings of the cover-up,” Jim Ennis, a Liberty survivor and author of the 1980 book Assault on the Liberty, told Military.com. "Finally, we thought, Congress would give us the investigation we have sought since 1967.”

But a statement from a witness to the board's work, said Ennes, "could not move a single member of Congress to look seriously at what survivors agree was a cover-up of the deliberate attack by Israel.” Thirty-four men were killed in the attack and more than 170 wounded. The board, told it had just one week to wrap up its work, interviewed about 15 survivors, and took no testimony from the more than 60 men hospitalized, Boston said.

Supporters of Israel argue that Israel would have no motivation to attack an American ship. Among explanations offered by those who believe the attack was deliberate is that Israel feared the U.S. spy ship would pick up radio signals indicating Israeli soldiers were executing captured and unarmed Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai, or because they feared the U.S. would react negatively if it knew that Israel launched its attack on the Golan Heights without having been attacked by Syria.


© Copyright 2008 Military.com. All rights reserved

He was a good man who tried to correct an injustice before he left us. He will be missed.
Rest easy shipmate.