“Israeli Lies and the Six Day War”

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Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt in 1967
Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt in 1967

ERNEST A. GALLO, ernie7900 at aol.com
Gallo is a survivor of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, which took place on June 8, 1967 and killed 34 crew members. He is past president of the USS Liberty Veterans Association, which is having a commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery and associated events on Thursday. He is author of the book Liberty Injustices and just wrote the piece “50 Years Later: Will the Crew of the USS Liberty Ever Receive Justice?” See also, by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern: “Not Remembering the USS Liberty.”

MELVIN GOODMAN, goody789 at verizon.net
Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. His latest book is titled A Whistleblower at the CIA.

He just wrote the piece “The Six Day War and Israeli Lies: What I Saw at the CIA” for Counterpunch, which states: “As a junior analyst at the CIA, I helped to draft the report that described Israel’s attack against Egypt on the morning of June 5, 1967. There were sensitive communications intercepts that documented Israeli preparations for an attack, and no evidence of an Egyptian battle plan. The Israelis had been clamoring about indications of Egyptian preparations for an invasion, but we had no sign of Egyptian readiness in terms of its air or armored power. The assumption was that the Israelis were engaging in disinformation in order to gain U.S. support. …

“We were therefore shocked when President Johnson’s national security adviser, Walt Rostow, refused to accept our intelligence assessment on the Israeli attack. Rostow cited ‘assurances’ from the Israeli ambassador in Washington that under no circumstances would the Israelis attack first. …

“In addition to lying about the start of the war, the Israelis were even more deceitful three days later when they attributed their malicious attack on the USS Liberty to a random accident. If so, it was a well planned accident. The ship was a U.S. intelligence vessel in international waters, both slow-moving and lightly armed. It brandished a five-foot-by-eight-foot Stars and Stripes in the midday sun, and didn’t resemble a ship in any other navy, let alone a ship in the arsenal of one of Israel’s enemies. Yet the Israelis claimed that they believed they were attacking an Egyptian ship.

“The Israeli attack took place after six hours of intense, low-level reconnaissance. It was conducted over a two-hour period by unmarked Mirage jets using cannons and rockets. Israeli boats fired machine guns at close range at those helping the wounded, then machine-gunned the life rafts that survivors dropped in hope of abandoning the ship. The NSA investigation of the disaster remains classified to this day.”

Also see from Mehdi Hasan at The Intercept: “A 50-Year Occupation: Israel’s Six-Day War Started With a Lie.”