The USS Liberty and LBJ

The USS Liberty murders are arguably Lyndon Johnson’s greatest crime if one does not include deceiving and dragging America into the horrors of the Vietnam War where millions perished. 

The USS Liberty event is one of the most important and also one of the highly suppressed events in modern American history.

William F. Buckley, the publisher of the National Review smelled a dead rat: “Is the Liberty episode being erased from history. So it would seem…What has happened to our prying journalistic corps and our editors, normally so indignant of attempted suppression of the news?…We believe that a joint select committee of Congress should investigate the strange case of the USS Liberty…” (Buckley on June 27, 1967). 

Why the cover-up? That is because the horrible and grisly truth about the USS Liberty reflects very poorly on Lyndon Johnson, the United States and Israel. Starting at 2PM Mediterranean time on June 8, 1967 Israel bombed, torpedoed, napalmed and even machine gunned the life boats of the USS Liberty.

As I detailed in the second edition (paperback) of my NY Times bestseller The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ, Lyndon Johnson was the one who ordered Israel’s IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) to not just sink the USS Liberty, but also to murder every person on board and eliminate any survivors.

The same man who murdered the president John Kennedy in 1963 is the same man who was hell bent on murdering all 294 Americans on board the USS Liberty in June of 1967: Lyndon Johnson.

But why? The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty occurred on the 4th day of the Six Day War, which was a war between Israel and its Arab neighbors Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The Six Day War was a spectacular success for Israel because it succeeded in taking the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. 

Israel began the Six Day War on June 5th with a surprise attack on Egypt and by the end of that day Israel had utterly destroyed the Egyptian air force as it lay sitting on it airfields. Israel within a one day had claimed air superiority over both Egypt (planes destroyed on tarmac) and Syria (2/3 of air force in ruins by end of June 5th).

Even though Israel crushed the Arabs during the Six Day War, that outcome was not known nor foreordained before the war. Perhaps 900 Israelis were killed while its Arab neighbors lost 20,000 people. Israel lost 46 aircraft while the Arabs lost a whopping 452 aircraft, mostly planes.

Israel was secretly coordinating the Six Day War with LBJ and the United States — we were sharing intelligence with the Israelis. One can read Peter Hounam’s fabulous book Operation Cyanide: How the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War Three (2003) for greater detail. 

The reason LBJ ordered the USS Liberty destroyed and all 294 crew members murdered was because he and Israel were going to blame the massacre of the USS Liberty on Egypt so that the United States would have a pretext to attack, bomb and take out Nasser of Egypt who, as author Barry Chamish points out, had drifted into the Soviet camp over the previous ten years.

Author Peter Hounam discovered the smoking gun on LBJ’s participation in the USS Liberty murders when he interviewed former SAC (Strategic Air Command, i.e. nuclear) B-52 pilot Jim Nanjo who told him his nuclear SAC unit in San Diego went on high alert 1-2 hours before the Liberty was attacked on June 8, 1967. Only President Johnson could have given the grave order to go on nuclear high alert, which implies LBJ knew about Israeli attack on the Liberty in advance.

If LBJ knew about attack on the Liberty in advance then it means he orchestrated the whole plot with the Israeli Defense Forces acting on his orders through IDF head Moshe Dayan.

The other smoking gun that indicts LBJ in the USS Liberty murders is what we learned from what Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis told Lt. Commander David Lewis, who was the head of the Liberty’s NSA group. LBJ told Admiral Geiss that he did not give a damn if the ship sank that he would not embarrass an ally (Israel).

Which begs the question, how did Lyndon Johnson know before anyone else that Israel was attacking the USS Liberty?

The emergency SOS flash bulletin that was sent out by the Liberty within 10-15 minutes of it being attacked (assault began 6:58AM Wash DC time) only said: “Liberty is under attack by unknown enemy air and surface units. Request Assistance.” The SOS emergency bulletin said nothing about Israel attacking the ship, although Israel had made numerous overflights of the Liberty earlier in the day. 

Johnny Carson used to have a character called Carnac the Magnificent and the Carson schtick was that Carnac could answer a question before it was even asked.

So what was Lyndon Johnson: “Carnac the Magnificent?” Giving the answer that it was Israel attacking the USS Liberty before any other person on the planet knew this? How did that happen? What did Lyndon Johnson “know” before anyone else?

Lyndon Johnson had another “Carnac” moment four years before at 1:20 PM on 12-22-63 in Dallas, TX at Parkland Hospital at the very moment he found out that John Kennedy was dead. LBJ immediately told assistant press secretary Mac Kilduff, who was about to hold a press conference, “Well now Mac before you make that announcement we don’t know what kind of a communist conspiracy this might be.” LBJ said this 30 minutes before the arrest of “communist” Lee Harvey Oswald (the CIA’s pre-selected patsy for the JFK assassination). Lyndon “Carnac the Magnificent” Johnson was immediately saying that a red killed JFK while the rest of the world was just sure that the notorious andvociferous Dallas 1963 was behind the JFK assassination.

In 2002 author Peter Hounam interviewed Liberty survivor Moe Schafer who told him what Sixth Fleet Commander William I. Martin told him:

Not only did Admiral Martin tell me that four jets were on their way to the Liberty with conventional weapons [and were recalled]; he stated that four were on their way to Cairo loaded with nuclear weapons.He stated they were three minutes from bombing them [the Egyptians].He also said that the jets could not land back on the carrier with nuclear arms and they had had to land in Athens.He stated this from my bedside while on the Little Rock [the codename of the flagship] after the attack.” Lyndon Johnson had sent planes with nuclear payloads to bomb Cairo and they were turned around 3 minutes before World War III was going to begin. JFK assassination expert Robert Morrow has cogently described Lyndon Johnson as a “functional lunatic” just as some people are “functional alcoholics.

McGeorge Bundy, the former National Security Advisor for both John Kennedy and LBJ was called in from retirement by LBJ to help manage the U.S. response to the Six Day War. Three and one-half years after theUSS Liberty crisis, Bundy was having dinner with Arthur Schlesinger and Schlesinger remarked that he had read Nikita Khruschev’s account of what it was like to work with Joseph Stalin and Schlesinger remarked that it reminded him of Adolph Hitler.

Bundy’s reply was, “When I read Khrushchev, I was reminded of something else in addition – my last days in the White House with LBJ.” Bundy’s last time in the White House was during the USS Liberty crisis.

The reality is that Lyndon Johnson was a one-man crime wave running through the elite levels of American politics for thirty-five years. His own top Aide Cliff Carter bragged that LBJ had ordered the murder of at least 17 men and as well as his own indiscreet sister.

LBJ murdered JFK and LBJ orchestrated the 34 USS Liberty murders, 171 casualties and LBJ was the singular lunatic who brought the world to the precipice of World War III during the Six Day War. 

For anyone who thinks that Israel would have intentionally attacked an American ship and attempt to exterminate all survivors (including machine gunning the Liberty life rafts, a war crime) without the express orders of the head of the American state, please remember that Israel in 1967 was utterly aware that the tall Texan in the White House was their best friend ever. The Jewish Times has gone so far as to say Lyndon Johnson was the USA’s first Jewish president. Lyndon Johnson had been an advocate of Jewish causes from his first moment as a congressman in 1937 and it is just nuts to think Israel would have savagely attacked an American ship unless ordered to do so by Lyndon Johnson personally.

Because Lyndon Johnson had brought the world on the edge of nuclear war in a situation every bit as dangerous as the Cuban Missile Crisis, cooler heads in the USA and USSR decided that relations must be immediately improved between the two nuclear superpowers. That is why the Glassboro Summit Conference was convened June 23-25 in the immediate wake of the Six Day War. 

Final note: Admiral John S. McCain, the father of his namesake U.S. Senator John McCain was the person who LBJ assigned to issue a whitewash on the USS Liberty within 10 days.

The report concluded that Israel had accidentally attacked (“a case of mistaken identity”) the USS Liberty despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Admiral McCain’s whitewash report was the precise equivalent of the discredited Warren Commission report on the JFK assassination.