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After the attack ended, THE LIBERTY sailed northward through the night of June 8/9. At dawn it sighted destroyers of the Sixth Fleet, and by midmorning helicopters were taking the severely wounded from the ship to the carrier hospitals. The ship then received orders to continue its journey to Malta, where a Naval Court would be convened to consider the attack. (Despite its name, a Naval Court is not a court, but an investigative body).
RADM Isaac Kidd, who had been named to head the Court, came on board the ship with his fellow court members, three captains, on June 9. During the next few days he spoke informally to crew members to prepare for questions and testimony. He warned the crewmen that they could speak to no one about the attack until after the hearing, and then could speak only in the exact terms stated by the Court. The crewmen said that he threatened "court martial or worse" to those who might disobey.
The Naval Court convened on board the ship in Malta on June 16. The hearing lasted for two days. Captain McGonagle was the main witness, testifying for six hours. The other 12 crewmen who spoke testified for brief periods. James Ennes sent a statement from a hospital in Naples, which, he later learned, was read in court but not entered into the record.
There was a split between the captain and the crew over the testimony. To the dismay of the crewmen, McGonagle wanted to minimize the attack, perhaps feeling that he was partly responsible for the deaths and injuries because he had not withdrawn the ship from dangerous waters. He and the crew differed over the extent and closeness of Israeli aerial surveillance, duration of air attack and torpedo boat attack, and the time when the offer of help came from the torpedo boats.
In addition, the Court did not seem to be interested in much of the testimony of the crew. Some crewmen talked about the jamming of the ship's radios, but the court did not follow up or ask questions. Other crewmen who claimed that the ship's flag stood out clearly in the wind were insistently asked "Are you sure? Could you be mistaken?"
In the end the Court issued a series of "findings", some of which were in direct conflict with the testimony. Most importantly, all crewmen stated that the ship's flag could be easily seen by Israeli planes and boats, while the final finding on this issue stated (falsely) that "witnesses testified that the flag may have hung limp".
The Israelis during this time were issuing a series of reports on the attack, claiming that the ship had no flag, so the findings of the court reinforced the Israeli claims. The final report of the Court made no mention of jamming of the radios or the crewmen's claims that the torpedo boats had fired on the ship's liferafts. The Court record and summary thus gave no hint of the conflicting testimony which had actually been heard in the Court, or of the frequently rebellious atmosphere in the hearing. The crewmen reacted to all this with anger and dismay, later describing the hearing in letters to Ennes as a "hoax" and "whitewash".
The transcript and proceedings, totaling 707 pages, was sent to the London headquarters of CINCUSNAVEUR (Commander in Chief of US Naval Forces in Europe). There it was assigned for review to ADM Melvin Staring, Navy flag officer for the Judge Advocate General. As it turned out, unknown to the crewmen until many years later, Staring would agree with much of their view.
Staring began his review, but it quickly became apparent that the survey would be difficult and time consuming. Early review produced pages of notes and questions which Staring felt he must resolve or comment upon before passing the record on.
Staring later told how he had worked on this transcript for two days and nights when he received word from ADM McCain, commander of CINCUSNAVEUR, that the work must be finished at once. When he replied that this was impossible, he was told he would be relieved of his assignment and endorsement would be prepared elsewhere in the staff. He ceased work and delivered the record to McCain's office. He therefore never completed his study or analysis.
Staring later saw a copy of the endorsement which CINCUSNAVEUR had signed and sent on to Washington. He says that those who replaced him had not dealt with the numerous problems, questions and inconsistencies which he had found so prevalent in the record. Their work, in his opinion, was low caliber.
Since Staring was the senior Navy lawyer on CINCUSNAVEUR staff, he knew that his superiors in Washington would assume that he was responsible for the report. Considering his professional reputation and integrity to be at risk, he immediately communicated personally and informally with the Judge Advocate General of the Navy, apprising him of the facts, and making it clear that he had neither prepared the endorsement nor been given an opportunity to conduct a complete review.
The Naval Court record, then, failed to pass muster with the legal officer assigned to first review it. However, the court record, minimizing the attack, remains as the "evidence" to which the defenders of the Johnson White House, and the Israeli Government, point in making their case and opposing the LIBERTY claims. We should note how A. Jay Cristol, the chief defender of the official history, deals with this record. He never interviewed Staring on the issue but instead claimed that Staring was a "perfectionist" who was disturbed by "typos" in the record and therefore could not complete his review. Staring, who was concerned with substance and not "typos", was enraged by this falsehood, and so should be all who read about the incident.
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