USS Liberty Survivor Reveals What Really Happened the Day Israel Attacked & the Lies Covering It Up

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There was a heavy influence, both from the Soviet Union and from Cuba. Cubans had a lot of troops around the area. That entire area is very wealthy in natural resources, precious metals. And the United States wanted to keep track of what was going on over there. Mind you. This is when the satellites were pretty rudimentary. So the best way to gather that information is to get close. The USS Liberty was a World War II victory class freighter. She was originally commissioned as the SS Simmons Victory. She saw service as a cargo carrier during the Second World War. Mothballed, brought back out of mothballs for the Korean War. Ammunition carrier for the Korean War. Back into mothballs. And in 1965, when the National Security Agency decided they needed vessels of that type, her hull was probably in the best condition of almost any of them that were in the Ghost Fleet or the mothball fleet. She was brought out of commission. The U.S. government spent $26 million in 1965 money. Outclipping her with the latest in. Intelligence collection. We could suck up literally every frequency that was being used. We had aboard her the world's largest mobile computer, the UNIVAC 500, at that time the world's largest. You could likely do about as much with your cell phone now. But technology has come a long ways in the last 60 years. She was equipped with the most advanced technology in the world. And she was able to do it in the first place. Thank you. The Al-Qusayr was a World War I horse transport. Her only armament was a four-inch muzzle-loading cannon. The Israelis claimed that they were being shelled from the sea. We were the only ship in the vicinity. We had no capacity of shelling anything. The bottom line was the Israelis had captured an entire Egyptian brigade. They were blowing up the captured ammunition, and that's what the explosions were. That they claimed was fire from the sea. Quite obviously, that was not possible from the Al-Qusayr or from us. 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Peace of mind for an honest price. DefendCellCam.com is the address. Go there, see for yourself. DefendCellCam.com. If you've got a signal, you've got 24-hour security. Home of the save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. BJ's, home of the save. Let me ask you, when you come under fire around 2 o'clock, how long does it last? There are various testimonies about that. The claimed air attack lasted about 25 minutes. But, of course, when you're under fire and try to survive, it seems a lot longer. And as I mentioned earlier, the entire ship would ring with each shell that struck her. The captain came on the 1MC and said, brace yourselves, torpedo attack, starboard side. Well, that's where I was located. My friend, Ronnie Campbell, was sitting there at a desk and he said, well, I hit us with everything else. What else can I hit us with? The division officer, Lieutenant Bennett, stuck his head in a hatchet and he said, Sergeant Locke, would you come in, please? I stepped out into the passageway. I ran down the center of the ship and he got me in a conversation with Lieutenant Commander David Lewis, who was a senior research officer aboard the ship, about getting these ditching bags topside pitched over in the sea. We had large canvas bags, brass furrows. The sides led right in the bottom. The idea was all the classified information that we had, get them into these ditching bags, the topside, pitch into the sea. Should they be recovered by the time they could be, any information in them would be useless. When there was a sudden blinding, flash of flame, tremendous loud noise, knocked me to the deck. I was kind of semi-conscious. I'm thinking to myself, well, Lord, I guess this is it. I guess I'm coming home at least the lowest my kids are taking care of, the lowest of my life. I felt something cold. I looked down and water was gushing in. I didn't find out what had actually taken place until many years later. Some of the sailors told me that when the torpedo struck, it literally lifted the ship out of the water and sent her back down. When she came down, it rolled towards the starboard side. There was a roughly 40-foot hole on the side that water was gushing in. I heard a moan behind me, struggling in my feet. There was a sailor trapped there in the wreckage. His name was Joe Lentini. I didn't know who that was until 25 years later. Joe was one of the communicators that worked with the teletype equipment. We weren't getting anything out. I couldn't understand why we weren't getting Mayday out and weren't getting any aid. He's a shrapnel from a rocket that penetrated the ship and struck him in the left thigh. Joe was bleeding profusely. He sat there on the deck and leaned up against the lighter weight the only way out. I was putting a tourniquet on that wound when the torpedo struck. Our office spaces were separated by sheet steel bulkheads. That bulkhead just muscled. We had to get him out of the wreckage. topside in the rocket from one of the air attacks that exploded very close to him and flying you back into the bulkhead. He's wounded from that. He's in a lot of pain. He's thinking, I've got to get to my GQ station. His GQ station was down below decks. He gets down there just as they slam the hatch shut and bolt it down. He's sitting on the ladder weight with his head in his hands, hurting badly when the torpedo struck. It slammed me back into the ladder weight and made a mess out of his spine. He's still alive, but barely and confined to a wheelchair now. Joe Lentini passed away from a heart attack some three years ago. The book Assault on the Liberty credits me with diving underwater and freeing Joe Lentini's leg. That was actually a sailor named Bobby Schnell that did that. Freed his leg, carried him topside. There was some conversation that I carried a man out, went back down. Senior enlisted man, Stan White, said, Sarge, you can't go back down there. Stan has since passed away too, but he told me, he said, you gave me a kind of a blank stare and went back down. I don't recall any of that. I think there's a good possibility. I was confused with someone else, but the Navy Marine Corps uniforms are different color. We were told to go to the radio room on the port side of the ship. I was lying on the deck in a radio room, and I couldn't understand why we weren't getting any aid. There was machine gunning going on. The motor torpedo boats were circling the ship, riddling us with, heavy machine gun fire. There were 3,100 heavy caliber machine gun strikes on the ship. One of the radio men figured out that when they were shooting rockets at us, they couldn't jam our distress frequencies because the family would have screwed up the flight of the rocket. In a brief period, when those rockets were being fired, this mayday went out. Firefox, Firefox, this is Rockstar, Rockstar. Under attack by unidentified surface and air units require immediate assistance. As soon as that mayday was acknowledged, the shooting stopped. I saw some sailors carry three inflatable IFRATs through the radio room. Heard them fall into the sea. There were lines. Attached to keep them from floating away. I heard a revving of engines, more machine gun fire. One of those sailors came back through the radio room and he said, "I don't know what we're going to do now. They've riddled what we had left." It is my understanding that that machine gun fire severed the line that was holding one of those life rafts. The torpedo boat came in, picked it up, plane was able, US Navy. Can't be proven, I'd have no idea, but I heard a rumor that that life raft and the ship's wheel from the torpedo boat that fired the fatal torpedo are in the Israeli Naval War Museum at Haifa as trophies of war. America is exceptional because in this country, we know that our rights come from God, not the government. Yet every day, abortion denies unborn babies. The most important fundamental right of all the right to be alive. Freeborn exists to give struggling expectant mothers an option to abortion. Freeborn network clinics welcome women with surprise pregnancies. They welcome them with compassion and support and a free ultrasound. Because when a mother sees her baby and hears his heartbeat for the first time, she becomes twice as likely to choose life because she understands what the choice is about. These babies are the future. They'll grow up into parents and teachers and pastors and entrepreneurs and moms and leaders. They won't if they're killed. 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We think there's very good possibility that we were set up by our own government. The president, Lyndon Bage Johnson was very friendly towards Israel. His predecessor, John F. Kennedy had actually given a speech about the necessity for discourse between the Palestinians and the Israelis about getting some 700,000 refugees from the so-called war of independence, Israel, 1947, 48. They were driven from their homes. The Israelis said they were voluntary, voluntarily left. My personal opinion is there was nothing voluntary about it. It was just an attempt to get the Palestinians out of their homes. Kennedy's conversation was to have at least a portion of those refugees be allowed to return to their ancestral homes. As a result of our Congress and our president doing nothing about the attack on the OSS Liberty, the Court of Inquiry accepted the Israelis' excuse. There was a case of mistaken identity. Case was closed as a result of our doing nothing. Israel realized they could do whatever they wanted. The United States Congress, the United States administration would say nothing, do nothing. I'm sorry to interrupt. I just want to go back to what you said about your belief that the Johnson administration knew that this attack was coming on the Liberty. Why do you think they would have allowed that? The United States Congress, the United States administration knew that this attack was coming on the Liberty. Commander Lewis, who was a senior intelligence officer aboard a ship, and I both had pretty much the same wounds. My glasses protected my face from debris. His eyes were sealed shut. We were both medevaced off to the Carrier America. Admiral Lawrence Larry Geiss, who was the task force sixth commanding officer, I included the carriers, USS Saratoga, USS America, and the guided missile cruiser, the USS Little Rock, asked for Commander Lewis to come to his stateroom. This is several days after the attack had taken place. He swore Mr. Lewis to secrecy until after his death. Told him that he had ordered aircraft to come to our aid. Planes were launched from the USS Saratoga. They had nuclear weapons aboard them. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered them returned. Both Admiral Geiss and skipper of the Saratoga, Captain Joseph Tully, figured out that that was probably because there were nuclear weapons aboard them. They were recovered. Conventional aircraft with conventional weapons were relaunched to come to our aid. Captain Tully re-notified Washington. Secretary of Defense McNamara came on the circuit again and ordered those aircraft returned. Admiral Geiss said, "I want to exercise my authority and hear that from higher authority." Well, the only higher authority was the president. This is the conversation that was related to David Lewis from Admiral Geiss. The president said, "Get those aircraft back. I will not have my allies embarrassed." They were using unmarked aircraft, and we did not know who was attacking us. attacking us. How did the president The number two man in the U.S. CIA at the time was a gentleman named James Angleton. James Angleton was not only the number two man in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, he was a double agent with Israeli Mossad. Many of us survivors believed that we were set up by our own government. False flag operation. Sink the ship. No survivors. Blame it on Egypt. Get the United States involved on the side of Israel against her neighbors. And excuse me, Tucker, what's happening now? The head of counterintelligence that you mentioned, James Jesus Angleton, was also clearly involved in the Kennedy assassination. The beneficiary of which was, of course, Lyndon Johnson and Israel. That's behind my comprehension, Tucker. Yeah. I don't doubt that. Yeah, well, it's pretty clear, I think, from documents that have subsequently been released. So, how many, just to end the, to wrap up the story of what actually happened that day, how many Americans were killed in the attack? There were 34 Americans killed. One civilian, Alan Blue, he was an Arabic linguist from the National Security Agency. The other two Marines were both killed. Sergeant Jack Raper, Corporal Ed Raymire, they were both Arabic linguists. And the amounts of the 31 were all sailors. They were all linguists, manual force intercept operators. How many were wounded? There were two hundred and twenty-two. Two hundred and eight Purple Hearts awarded, 174 wounded. Several of the crewmen that were wounded were never awarded Purple Hearts. Jack Beattie, he was a machinist mate who was working on the, he was changing oil on the Liberty Launch, the enlisted launch. When the air attack took place, he had a shot. At that time, there was a in the corner, roughly 18 inches square. It was labeled unidentified human body parts. That's what's buried in the mass grave in Arlington National Cemetery. And I slept over that night. Two of the men that worked for me were in that box. What was left of that? Were you told by the U.S. military, by the Marine Corps, by the Navy, not to talk about this? Well, mind you, we're in intelligence business, and you just don't talk about it. There's an old saying, what you see here, what you say here, when you leave here, leave it here. I did not talk about it outside of secure spaces. When I got back to my home base in Bremerhaven, I was put on 12-on, 12-off watch. I talked about it rather freely in the secure spaces. My wife didn't know what happened to me. I was not supposed to tell anyone when I was aboard this ship, but no one bothered to tell me I wasn't. When I first got aboard her, the petty officer of the deck was a longtime friend of mine, Ronnie Campbell. I said, Ronnie, I need to let Lois know where I'm at. He said, can you give me the address of the ship? Well, he gave me the FBO address. I got a postcard, wrote it on, told my wife I'd be aboard her, don't know how long. I'll let you know sometimes. Time in the future. Dropped it in the mail. She'd received that card, knew I was aboard it. On the 9th of June, a dear friend of hers that lived across the street in Bremerhaven waved to her to come over. She went over and said, did you hear about that U.S. ship being attacked? I said, no. She said, yeah, the USS Liberty. I said, I think Bryce is aboard that ship. Well, that set a panic button. I said, yeah, I think it's a ship. I said, yeah, it's a ship. She said, yeah, it's a ship. fix of that i barely had time to think it really wasn't till sometime after that or uh i happened to get a job with a union company had a little more income coming in we were able to attend a reunion in washington dc and that's where i began to really find out about what all had taken place that was um later in the 1980s early and what what did you find out um i didn't know the names of any of the fellows that i pulled out or was credited with saving their lives and joe lentini um even though i kept him from browning i didn't actually get him out of there and dave mcfagan it was not until uh 1997 a reunion where i was able to get him out of there and i was able to get him out of there and 1997 i found out who that was it's pretty ironic uh he was in the hospital at naples italy he'd taken some travel in his privates doctors told him he'd probably never have any more children well he did have he had a boy and a girl at that reunion um one of the other fellows that i thought that i had brought out of there was a guy named jane six jane was his nickname and he and i were having a beer kind of joking around and someone else came in the tub in the bathroom was full of ice water and beer we're in there yakking and somebody came in and said hey sarge there's another guy here to save his life really went out into the other room and there's dave mcfagan in a wheelchair with his daughter born later after the attack um and i was able to get him out of there and i was able to get him out of there and i was able to get him out of there and i was able to get him out of there and i was able to get him out of there now uh the the anniversary the 59th anniversary of the attack on the liberty was just the other day within the last week and it was a topic that was discussed in public and you heard people defend the israeli government by saying they didn't know it was an american ship and anyone who says otherwise is an anti-semite hates jews how would you respond to that anyone who knows anything about international recognition of ships at sea would conclude differently would have to conclude differently it's very obvious that it was a delivered attack um dave lewis prior to his death was giving an interview and he said if it was an attack it was a best planned attack in the military the ammunition that they were using the targets that they were doing heat-seeking missiles designed to knock out all of our trans heavy and transmitting antennas it had to all be planned in advance the upshot in my opinion the whole thing um israel is grabbing palestinian lands gaza strip in total rubble 70 000 documented killed probably twice that many buried in the rubble that could never be recovered for the time it's elapsed united states supplying the bombs israel invading their neighbors to the north lebanon there are a million palestinians in the gaza strip homeless as a result of israel's actions lebanon southern lebanon whole towns destroyed and leveled a million lebanese refugees without a home where is the humanity should that be on the conscience of every american that we're supplying the bonds that we're supplying israel with 3.8 billion dollars a year and foreign aid shouldn't that shake our conscience well if our leaders were able to ignore an attack on an american vessel the the liberty almost 60 years ago clearly this is not a normal relationship between the united states and israel what country ignores an attack on its own navy tucker in 2005 stephen rosen who was then a senior official with the american-israeli political affairs committee was dying with jeffrey goldberg at that time he was uh with the new yorker magazine i believe he's with atlantic magazine now he said to jeffrey you see this napkin in 24 hours i can have the signature of 70 senators on this napkin how does that make you feel as someone who is wounded in the service of the u.s military in the service of the united states disgusted yeah why are you saying about thomas massey uh his political career was over the president and his political affairs supporters literally threw millions of dollars at thomas massey's uh primary campaign and got him pitched off the ballot and congressman massey stuck his neck out by speaking publicly from the floor of the united states congress there were uh roughly 15 perhaps 17 of us survivors that were there family members sitting in the gallery when he gave his five plus minute speech on the uss liberty urging the congress to take action article 1 section 8 u.s constitution to uh it's not exact wording investigate uh acts of piracy on the high seas and offenses against the law of nations and congress has ignored that for the past 59 years now here thomas massey sticks his neck out um the gentleman took us all to lunch afterwards at the bull feather restaurant there in washington i think that name is rather ironic bullshit bull feathers treated us to lunch we had lunch at the bull feather restaurant and i think we had lunch in that restaurant we had lunch at the bull feather restaurant we had lunch at the bull feather restaurant