ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY
BY
James M. Ennes, Jr.
The following is from the inside cover of Mr. Ennes's Book Assult On the Liberty, published by Random House, Inc. New Your , N.Y. 10022; 1980.
In June 1967, jet aircraft and motor torpedo boats of Israel brutally assualted an American Naval vessel, the U.S.S. 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 attach 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-guned her life rafts and sent troop-carrying helicopters in to finish the job. At this point, with Sixth Fleet rescue air-craft 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 quitly accepted that excuse despite evidence to the contary. 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 assualt on the U.S.S. Liberty and of our government's attempt to keep the truth from public knowledge.
James M. Ennes, Jr., was forn in Newark, New Jersey, in 1933 and spent his early years in Alameda, California. During the Korean war, at age seveteen, he enlisted in the Navy.
Mos of Mr. Ennes's adult life 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.