Jerry Russom’s misinformed and, by his own admission, sarcastic letter “Give Him a Chance” [July 18] was just another sad example of how disinformation and personal attacks continue to plague American citizens who are still seeking the truth behind Israel’s unprovoked attack of the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967.
Russom offered no sources or citations to defend his claim that it was a U.S. intelligence error that led to the repeated attacks by IDF fighter jets and torpedo boats on the Liberty. Instead, he merely vented his faith-based, unsupported assertions about the incident.
To date, Congress has never investigated the attack that killed 34 and wounded 173. The pervasive, recycled myths falsely claim there have been [some] 11 U.S. investigations of the Liberty incident, and that each investigation has concluded (for reasons that keep changing) that the attack was a friendly fire mistake. These myths need to be put to rest once and for all.
I hope that Xpress readers will take the time to read the following sources and make up their own minds about the fate of the USS Liberty, without recourse to religious bigotry:
• June 8, 2005, war crimes report, www.ussliberty.org/report/report.pdf
• Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2004, www.wrmea.com/archives/March_2004/0403009.html
• Joe Meadors, “The Big Lie,” www.ussliberty.org/thebiglie.htm
• Judge Ahron Jay Cristol, “The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship,” www.thelibertyincident.com
• James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, Doubleday, 2001
• Dr. Michael B. Oren, “Unfriendly Fire: Why Did Israeli Troops Attack the USS Liberty?” The New Republic, 2001
Dr. Michael B. Oren, “The USS Liberty: Case Closed,” Azure, Spring 2000, www.azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=143&search_text=Michael%20B.%20Oren
— Brian Knopp
Asheville
