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The USS LIBERTY was a freighter built in the Kaiser shipyards of Oregon and launched in May 1945. It sailed the Pacific until 1958 when it was "mothballed" in Puget Sound. In 1964 it was refitted as a technical research ship for the National Security Agency. In the center of the ship below deck was a room containing electrical equipment which could pick up all radiio broadcasts over a wide area. The information from these broadcasts could be relayed back to NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.
The ship had no armor and was armed only with four 50-caliber machine guns, two forward and two aft. For protection it relied upon the flag it flew and upon being recognized by any observer as "in a surveillance mode", i.e. it was not a warship and was remaining in international waters. It was easily recognizable as an electronics listening ship because of the large amount of electronic gear visible on deck and superstructure. This gear, including a tall Trescomm tower amidships, gave the ship a silhouette unlike that of any other ship in the world.
The ship had its identification number, Gtr5, painted in l0-foot high letters on the bow. This id. number is prominent and visible in all photos of the ship both before and after the attack. The ship also had its name painted on the stern, and a large flag flew from the forward mast. These facts are important because Israeli spokesmen would later claim that the ship had no flag or other marks of identification.
LIBERTY was listed in JANE'S FIGHTING SHIPS as a non-combatant. The ship was 460 feet long, displaced 10,000 tons, and had a top speed of16 knots (18 mph). It had a crew of 290 men.
LIBERTY was one of five LIBERTY-type ships deployed worldwide. One of its sister ships, PUEBLO, would be captured off the coast of North Korea eight months after the attack on LIBERTY. (The reader can see at once that the NSA policy was a faulty and ill-considered one. These NSA communications ships, without armor or serious armament, but loaded with valuable and confidential equipment and records, were sent without escort into dangerous waters.
In May 1967 LIBERTY was stationed off the Ivory Coast in west Africa. As the Mideast crisis developed, NSA sent orders to the ship to proceed to Rota, Spain, to take on board six NSA technical specialists (speakers of Russian and Arabic). The ship was then to proceed to a specifically assigned station 13 miles off the Gaza coast.
The US has never made any official statement concerning the ship's mission, but the crewmen generally agree with the following scenario. There was in 1967 a disputye between the US and Egypt concerning the status of several Soviet "Bear" bombers based near Alexandria. The US suspected that Soviet pilots still manned these planes. Since the ship's assligned station enabled it to hear radio traffic in northern Egypt, and the NSA men brought on board understood Arabic and Russian, it made sense to assume that the ship's mission centered around these bombers. (The ship had no official Hebrew speaking technicians, but some of the crewmen understood Hebrew and later were able to understand overheard Israeli radio talks).
As the ship was passing south of Sicily, the Six Day War began. Captain McGonagle, commander of LIBERTY, was worried about the danger to his ship, and asked Admiral William Martin, commander of the US Sixth Fleet stationed off Crete, to provide LIBERTY with a destroyer escort. Martin refused, stating that "LIBERTY is a clearly marked ship in international waters, not a participant in the conflict and not a likely subject for attack by anyone". He promised that in the unlikely event of an attack, jet fighters from the Sixth Fleet would be overhead "in ten minutes".
Unknown to both McGonagle and Martin, NSA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had begun to reconsider LIBERTY's mission. Several messages went from NSA to the ship on June 7, instructing LIBERTY to withdraw 25 miles or more from the Gaza coast, or to leave the area altogether. All messages were misrouted and none reached the ship. |
