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18 November 2003

Why did the Israelis attack the Liberty?

More tales of government lies in the 1960s.

Admiral John McCain, father of current Arizona senator John McCain, was a player in the Israeli military attack on the USS Liberty off the coast of Gaza back in 1967, Jeffery St. Clair reports.

On June 6, the Joint Chiefs sent Admiral McCain, father of the senator from Arizona, an urgent message instructing him to move the Liberty out of the war zone to a position at least 100 miles off the Gaza Coast. McCain never forwarded the message to the ship.

Then Admiral McCain directed the coverup after...

But the book wasn't closed for the sailors either, of course. After a Newsweek story exposed the gist of what really happened on that day in the Mediterranean, an enraged Admiral McCain placed all the sailors under a gag order. When one sailor told an officer that he was having problems living with the cover-up, he was told: "Forget about it, that's an order."

Wikipedia has a nice writeup on the USS Liberty attack, including a letter from the USS Liberty Veterans Association:
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