Blood in the Water - Joan Mellen's book on the USS Liberty

[Douglas Caddy]

Robert Morrow writes in an email today:

Get Joan Mellen's new book "Blood in the Water" from Amazon. It is very important and is on sale now. Here is my quickie review from Amazon. Lyndon Johnson and Israel jointly were behind the USS Liberty murders.

 

Blood in the Water - Joan Mellen’s book on the USS Liberty - a Review

 

This is a very important book on a very important topic: The LBJ-USA-Israel attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967. When one starts studying the attack on the USS Liberty it is not very hard to figure out what happened. Many very high level players in American government have gone on the record stating that Israel INTENTIONALLY was trying to sink an American ship and that Israel knew it was an American ship. For example, the former head of the NSA Bobbie Ray Inman has often said that Israel was trying to sink an American ship. But what Inman and others Inman and others fail to do is take the next logical step which is THERE IS NO WAY IN THE WORLD THAT ISRAEL WOULD ATTACK AN AMERICAN SHIP UNLESS THEY WERE EXPRESSED ORDERED TO DO SO BY LYNDON JOHNSON. Lyndon Johnson was a hyper Zionist and considered one of the best friends of Israel ever. He looked the other way when Israel got the nuclear bomb. He had to approve the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty which was designed to be blamed on Egypt so that the USA could enter the Six Day War on the side of Israel. Joan Mellen calls Lyndon Johnson a "principal" in the attack on the USS Liberty. That is the same as accusing Lyndon Johnson of mass murdering American innocents.

 

Joan Mellen spends a lot of time on James Angleton, the head of CIA counter-intelligence. Angleton as the historical record has shown, was totally in the pocket of Israel much to the degradation of US national security and US interests.

 

Mellen points out that LBJ and his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ordered Admiral Kidd, in the cover up of what really happened, to conclude, hilariously, darkly and grossly inaccurately that Israel made an innocent mistake in launching its murderous attack on the USS Liberty.

 

Another perp in the criminal cover up of the USS Liberty attack was Adm. John S. McCain, an alcoholic military man who was the father of Sen. John McCain who in turn was the father of TV commentator and talking head Meghan McCain. Do you think you will ever see Meghan McCain tell you on TV the truth about the joint USA-Israel attack on the USS Liberty?

 

This is how this stuff gets covered up for decades. Someone told me, true or not, that all the USS Liberty material at the LBJ Library in Austin was restricted, under lock and key and not available to scholars and researchers. I do not know if that is true but I would not doubt it. I do know that the exhibits at the LBJ Library on the USS Liberty are grossly deceptive about what really happened on June 8, 1967.

 

I have an expertise in the field of the JFK assassination and what I tell people is that once you understand what *really* happened with the USS Liberty, you don't even have to think WHO was behind the JFK assassination because it will become obvious. And that obvious answer is Lyndon Johnson who was up to his eyeballs in the murders and attempted murders of 294 innocent Americans just so he could fool the American people into going to war with Egypt. Yes, of course, Lyndon Johnson murdered John Kennedy as well.

 

All in all, Joan Mellen has written a great and historically significant book and it ought to be required reading in American college courses on history and politics.

 

As Mellen points out on p. 299 "LBJ had revealed that he knew not only the identity of the attackers but that the attack itself had been a collaboration [between the USA and Israel]. The purpose was to remove Nasser."

 

In this respect the LBJ-Israel attack on the USS Liberty was out of the exact same book as Operation Northwoods, which you should google and read about. The JCS presented Operation Northwoods to JFK in the spring of 1962 and he turned down this proposals for a series of false flag attacks to be instigated so the USA would have a deceitful pretext to attack Fidel Castro and Cuba.

 

A year later Operation Northwoods in fact was enacted in the form of the JFK assassination, which was an LBJ-CIA-Texas Oil murder of John Kennedy which was designed to be blamed on Cuba by using an US intelligence asset Oswald who had a false public persona of being a pro-Castro Marxist.

 

There was a lot of evil at the center of American government in the 1960s and Lyndon Johnson was at the heart of it. For those folks who think Donald Trump is evil, dangerous and Machiavellian, Lyndon Johnson was to the 1,000th power

[Ron Bulman]

Her account of the attack as a chapter in Faustian Bargain's pissed me off.  That we as the "American" people would order our allies to kill our own people to justify nuclear attack on their forever enemy blows my mind.  At the same time I cannot imagine myself promoting that anything Robert Morrow does, but...  LBJ was not a Zionist.  He did what he was told.  Thus what Angleton wanted done might be key, as he gave the Israeli's the material to go Nuclear per Morley's Ghost.  To paraphrase the gist of the story, LBJ said words to the effect of " I don't give a damn if the whole ship sinks"  (I'll not embarrass an ally) , after it had been under attack for hours.  American jets with nuclear armaments were turned back moments before attacks on Egypt.  No Shi!t.  

I'm buying the book tomorrow, but not because of Morrow.

Thanks Mr. Caddy for the link.

[Paul Brancato]

We shouldn’t forget that JFK was strongly opposed the Israel’s nuclear ambitions, and Angleton thwarted him. When I read the true accounts of Mossad hiring Otto Skorzeny to destroy Egypt’s nuclear program in 1961-62 it really opened my eyes. 

[Larry Hancock]

While Johnson's actions in responding to news of the attack are despicable,  I need to point out that numerous warnings were sent to the Liberty and efforts were made to pull it back from its exposed position.  There were a number of communications problems involved as well as bungling over joint command of the ship between Navy, NSA and a special command in involved with such missions.  The whole thing was a fiasco not unlike to the Pueblo and for some of the same reasons.  For those who do have my book Surprise Attack, you will find those detailed in separate chapters.  Again, not unlike a number of similar disasters, the problem was not strictly lack of warning but the failure of the total chain of command - exponentially made worse and in this case by the total cupidity of Johnson and for that matter of the Israeli military which clearly knew exactly what it was doing. 

[David Andrews]

Joan Mellen is on Black Op Radio podcast this week:

http://blackopradio.com/archives2018.html

 

[Anthony Thorne]

David Ivry, an Israeli air commander involved in the attack, became the Israeli ambassador to the US in the late 90’s, and receives a thank you from Dick Cheney in Cheney’s autobiography for helping the administration ‘get rid of Saddam’. At the onset of the Iraq war, Ivry left public service to become the Vice President of Boeing International.

[Ron Bulman]

Rereading it the story in Faustian Bargains is still infuriating.  They observed Eight morning reconnaissance overflight's so low they could see the pilot's faces, and the Star of David on the wing's clearly.  Then three blackened fighters attacked the basically unarmed surveillance ship flying the United States Flag.  "Using rockets, cannon and machine guns...", targeting men on deck with the machine guns.  Using heat seeking missiles to target the heat emitting coils at the base of the 45 antenna's on deck (this took intense intelligence knowledge and planning),  and shredde the US flag.  "An eavesdropping EC-121 U.S. Airforce plane with Hebrew linguists on board intercepted the words of one of the pilots".  "It's and American Ship, It's and American ship".  "You have your orders."  They hit 44 of 45 of the antennae, one was down for maintenance.  The sailors, under fire raised the 7' X 13" foot U.S. "Holliday" flag,  While getting shot three times sailor Halbardier re connected the cable to the one undamaged antenna.  They got out a limited message of being under attack.  Defying orders, planes were sent to help.

Then they were called back by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, personally.  "I don't care if the Liberty sinks.", pg. 202, FB.  

Meanwhile new planes arrived with napalm bombing the deck's then shooting the sailors fighting the fires along with stretcher bearers.  

Then the three torpedo boats with the Star of David arrived.  One hit the Liberty blowing a 40 foot hole in the side, killing many intelligence personnel and sailors.

After that they shot up the lifeboats lowered into the water.

All so we could say Egypt did it and attack Cairo with nuclear armed planes,  called back 7 minutes before launch of armaments on behalf of Israel.

This would not have happened without the blessing and assistance of U.S. intelligence.  Angleton was head of the Israeli desk of the CIA at the time.  A subordinate of Allen Dulles in the OSS in WWII in the aftermath directing Jew's out the ratlines through Italy to what was to become Israel, along with Nazis to the USA (Operation Paperclip) and South America.  He gave them the material needed to obtain nuclear capability, see Ghost by Jeff Morley.  There is a reason two engraved stone monuments to Angleton exist today in Israel.     

Edited December 17, 2018 by Ron Bulman

[Ron Bulman]

294 Men on board, 174 wounded, 36 dead.

http://ussliberty.org/casualty.htm

Democracy in action.  President doesn't care if his ship sinks or the sailors die.  Modern Patriotism.  Something worth fighting for eh? 

[Ron Bulman]

I didn't know this part among others.  "As UN peacekeepers were brutally attacked by Israeli tank columns , so Israeli Defense forces at El Arish, just opposite where Liberty had been positioned , murdered their Egyptian prisoners with machine guns and tossed their bodies into mass graves."  pg. 147.  

[Robert Harper]

I have the book from 1979 - Assault on the Liberty by James Ennes Jr. and the 2009 book, Attack on the Liberty by James Scott, and wonder if Joan Mellon's book offers more information than was covered in these. It is an outrage to read about of course and I intend to secure and read Ms. Mellon's book , but I am curious to know if she uncovered new information.

[Robert Harper]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dOfQYBXJOI

Why has it taken so long to even hear of this latest snow job

 

Edited December 26, 2018 by Robert Harper

[Larry Hancock]

Robert, I have the same books and used that as well as more current information in my section on the Liberty in Surprise Attack.  One thing I would point out is that there were a series of warning messages sent to the Liberty and indeed the attacks themselves were monitored in real time on a NSA surveillance aircraft monitoring the entire conflict from an orbit over the Mediterranean.  Why those warnings and advisors were not received by or responded to by the Liberty is a story in Command and Control and tragically similar to the same thing the happened to the Pueblo.  If Joan does not include that sort of information in her book then it would be missing something substantial.  And of course another aspect of the story is that quick reaction aircraft, both Navy and Air Force, of that point in the Cold War were quite frequently nuclear equipped since first priority was responding to a Soviet preemptive strike.  That posed real problems for scrambling strike aircraft configured with an entirely useless set of weapons for actually defending surveillance ships like the Liberty and Pueblo (which were Navy ships operating under a separate command, yet another problem).  Note: none of that is a defense of LBJ whose reaction was loathsome...but that's a different story.

[Ron Ecker]

Larry, the warning messages to the LIberty came from whom? Did someone in our government know that Israel was fixing to attack the Liberty? Or did someone in the Israeli government send these warnings? How far did foreknowledge extend? Did LBJ have some foreknowlege, ala Roosevelt (allegedly) about Pearl Harbor? This info about warnings is confusing.

 

 

[Larry Hancock]

Sorry Ron, I''m afraid I sent you off in the wrong direction.  The Liberty was warned that the fighting was escalating and that it had  moved into an increasingly exposed position - subject to attack by any and all forces engaged.  These were  situational warnings based on intelligence/threat assessments of the situation on the ground and in the air.  In the first instances the warnings were not to move as close to land as in the ships initial orders and after that there were actual directives to move further offshore and distance themselves. The reasons the orders were not communicated correctly and in some instances simply not received by the ship require you really dig into the communications traffic protocols and practices..

There was no specific knowledge of a pending attack, simply indications warnings of an increased threat from all parties in the combat and the warnings and directions were coming from within the intelligence community itself.  As I said, the ship itself was not under direct Navy control but assigned as an intel collection asset...the same thing happened repeatedly,  first in the Tonkin Gulf, then to the Liberty and then to the Pueblo.  The Pentagon always wanted the most detail and accurate technical collections available and ships with this duty were exposed to threats that might well have restricted their missions or done something to give them more cover if they had been part of regular Navy operations.  Assessing these sorts of incidents was one of the reasons I researched and wrote Surprise Attack - what I found was huge gaps in proper military command and control and very basic mission conflicts which exposed service personnel and on occasion produced exactly what you see with the Liberty.  No conspiracy but basically SNAFU.   I know that will probably disappoint many,  for the details and sources as to why I reached that conclusion I have to refer you to the book.

[Ron Ecker]

Larry, thanks.