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MACEDONIA - It's the name of the sovereign country to the north of Greece
Apr 2000
time: 07:29
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http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/315934.html
quote:
U.S. agency confirms sinking of USS Liberty was accident
By Nathan Guttman, Haaretz Correspondent
WASHINGTON - New documents released this week by
America's National Security Agency support
Israel's version of a long-festering controversy
between the two countries: Israel's sinking of an
American spy ship, the USS Liberty, off the coast
of Gaza during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Israel has always said it had no
idea the ship was American, but
conspiracy theorists and
anti-Israel propagandists still
claim Israel sank the ship in
the full knowledge that it was
American.
The documents, originally
defined as top secret, were
made public by Florida Judge Jay Cristol, who
has been investigating the Liberty incident for
years and published a book on the subject last
year. On Monday, the NSA gave him a transcript
of conversations held by two Israeli Air Force
helicopter pilots who were hovering over the
Liberty as it was sinking, and these tapes
confirm Israel's claim that the sinking of the
ship, which killed 34 American servicemen and
wounded 171, was a tragic error.
After the Liberty was bombed by both the Israel
Air Force and the Israel Navy, the two
helicopter pilots were summoned from their base
to assess the damage and evaluate the
possibility of rescuing the surviving crew
members. An American spy plane, which had been
sent to the area as soon as the NSA learned of
the attack, recorded their conversations, which
took place between 2:30 and 3:37 P.M. on June
8, the third day of the war.
The spy plane also recorded the orders radioed
to the pilots by their supervisor at Hatzor
Base, which instructed them to search for
Egyptian survivors from the "Egyptian warship"
that had just been bombed - thus supporting
Israel's claim that it had believed the ship
was Egyptian when it ordered it attacked. "Pay
attention. The ship is now identified as
Egyptian," the pilots were told.
Nine minutes later, Hatzor informed the pilots
that it was not an Egyptian warship, but an
Egyptian cargo ship. Only at 3:07 were the
pilots first informed that the ship might not
have been Egyptian at all: Hatzor told them
that if they found Arabic-speaking survivors,
they should be taken to El-Arish, but if they
found English-speaking survivors, they should
be taken to Lod. "Clarify by the first man that
you bring up, what nationality he is, and
report to me immediately," the supervisor
instructed, according to the transcript. "It's
important to know."
Then, at 3:12, one of the pilots informed Hatzor
that he saw an American flag flying over the
damaged ship. He was asked to investigate and
determine whether it was really an American
ship.
This is not the first time such transcripts have
been made public: Israel gave its own
recordings of the pilots' conversations to the
British television station Thames in 1987. But
conspiracy theorists charged that Israel had
doctored the tapes before handing them over to
the station in order to hide the fact that it
sank the Liberty intentionally. No such
imputation can be made about these new
transcripts, as they were never in Israeli
hands.
Israel has always said it attacked the Liberty,
which America sent to the region to gather
intelligence on the progress of the war,
because it believed it was an Egyptian supply
ship ferrying supplies to the Egyptian troops
that Israel was then fighting. When it
discovered the error, it immediately informed
the Americans, apologized and paid compensation
to the victims' families.
The incident was investigated by inquiry
commissions in both Israel and the United
States, and both concluded that it had, indeed,
been a tragic error. Nevertheless, the
controversy never died. In 1979, one of the
survivors, James Ennes, published a book
accusing Israel of bombing the American ship
deliberately. Ennes claimed an Israeli spy
plane had hovered over the ship all morning and
had surely identified it as American, since the
American flag was clearly visible.
A later book, written by James Bamford, charged
that Israel sank the ship in order to keep
America from learning of its plans to attack
Syria, and further claimed that the NSA had
tapes of conversations among Israeli pilots
that not only confirmed this, but also proved
that the tapes released by Israel had been
doctored.
Another claim that appears frequently on the
dozens of Internet sites devoted to the affair
is that Israel sank the ship to conceal a mass
murder of Egyptian soldiers on the Sinai
peninsula.
In its letter to Cristol, the NSA stressed that,
contrary to the claims that often appear in
such books and Web sites - that the agency has
tapes from both the Liberty and from a nearby
American submarine that confirm Israel's guilt
- the only tapes that exist were those made by
the spy plane and given to Cristol this week.
"It's the last piece of intelligence that
remained classified, and every rational person
that will read it will understand that there is
no truth in these conspiracy theories against
Israel," Cristol said Tuesday. But he added:
"Those who hate Israel, who hate Jews, and
those who believe in conspiracy will not be
convinced by anything."
Cristol, a former U.S. navy pilot and legal
officer, began investigating the Liberty
incident 14 years ago. Since publishing his
book, which vindicates Israel, he has received
threats and been accused of being an Israeli
agent. "I take this lightly, but I am saddened
to learn that there is this kind of hate toward
Israel," he said.
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It's good to see our lackeys in the US in action. that Cristol guy was rather expensive, though, so we had to take some money from our internet paedophilia networks. Luckily we still have control of the African diamond slave mines. This, esp. with our new Iraq assets, will be sufficient to expand our "cleansing" operations against the natives in Palestine. Deathcamps are expensive bussiness, you know.
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Eli
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Israel
Jul 2000
time: 07:29
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Dont forget about "mistakes".
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All times are GMT. The time now is 05:29.
Apolyton Time is 00:29. |
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09-07-2003 12:40
ureshit:
@ DD.
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