The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship[/large]
JAMES M. ENNES JR.
ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY
The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship
[large]http://www.balderexlibris.com/index.php ... he-Liberty[/large][/center]
In June 1967, jet aircraft and motor torpedo boats of Israel brutally assaulted an American naval vessel, the USS Liberty, in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea. The attack was preceded by more than six hours of intense low-level surveillance by Israeli photo-reconnaissance aircraft, which buzzed the intelligence ship thirteen times, sometimes flying as low as 200 feet directly overhead. The carefully orchestrated assault that followed was initiated by high-performance jet aircraft, was followed up by slower and more maneuverable jets carrying napalm, and was finally turned over to lethal torpedo boats, which blasted a forty-foot hole in the ship's side.
The attack lasted more than two hours? killing 34 Americans and wounding 171 others ?and inflicted 821 rocket and machine-gun holes in the ship. And when the Liberty stubbornly remained afloat despite her damage, Israeli forces machine-gunned her life rafts and sent troop-carrying helicopters in to finish the job. At this point, with Sixth Fleet rescue aircraft finally en route, the government of Israel apologized and the attacking forces suddenly withdrew. Only then did the identity of the assailants become known.
Details of the attack were hushed up in both countries. Israel claimed that her forces mistook the Liberty for an Egyptian ship, and our government quietly accepted that excuse despite evidence to the contrary. Then our government downplayed the intensity of the surveillance and the severity of the attack, and imposed a news blackout to keep the story under control. The official version is that the Liberty was reconnoitered only three times and then only from great distance. The American people were told that the air attack lasted only five minutes and that it was followed by a single torpedo and an immediate apology and offer of assistance. Now, after more than twelve years of research and dozens of interviews with government executives, military officers and Liberty survivors, a former ship's officer who was there reveals the inside story of the assault on the USS Liberty and of our government's attempt to keep the truth from public knowledge.
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JAMES M. ENNES, JR., was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1933 and spent his early years in Alameda, California. During the Korean War, at age seventeen, he enlisted in the Navy.
Most of Mr. Ennes's adult fife has been spent in the Navy. He left the service briefly to earn a B.A. degree in business administration at San Francisco State College in 1961. He was commissioned an ensign in 1962, and from 1965 until he retired from the Navy in 1978 he was assigned to cryptologic duties.
The author now lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. He and his wife, Terry, have three children, Mark, Julie and Carolyn.
Praise for ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY
"The book, which reads like a thriller, should be required reading for all government employees. The writing is first class. The relationships and conflicts of important shipboard personalities add suspense and human drama to the story."
?The Washington Post Book World
"Ennes has done his homework well. His facts are well documented and his clarity of writing brings them together in a totally readable fashion. Ennes's treatment of the attack is awesome...an important book."
? U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings
"I've never read a more graphic depiction of war and its effects at sea.. .an insider's book by an honest participant."
?Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh
"As Ennes fills in the critical details of the incident, he also succeeds in giving us the human face that has been so strangely absent. Ennes's Liberty is populated by a sturdy crew that went fairly bonkers upon learning it was heading for the simmering eastern Mediterranean. We see them rowdy and brawling on their last shore leave, finally compliant before their tough, rule-bending executive officer, then heroic, palsied, bewildered and crippled during the attack."
?The Washington Star
"A disquieting story of Navy bungling, government cover-up and Israeli duplicity that is well worth reading. And remembering."
?The Atlanta Journal
"A graphic description of despair and bravery aboard the defenseless vessel. This is more than a detailed report: it is an inquest of cover-up in the area of inter-nation political intrigue."
?The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch
"The book is remarkably enjoyable?a balance between The Cruel Sea and Mister Roberts... the first book in decades that makes the reader take pride in American servicemen... a tribute to the Navy... one of the finest accounts of combat at sea...the most important book you'll read this year."
?The Hartford Courant
