It’s Official! No Congressional Investigation of USS Liberty Attack!

It’s Official! No Congressional Investigation of USS Liberty Attack!

by Joe Meadors Let’s face it. Without the publication of Jay Cristol’s apologia “The Liberty Incident,” the fact that the attack on the USS Liberty has never been investigated by the US government would be known only to relatively few. Along came Jay Cristol and his myth that “After ten official US investigations (including five congressional investigations), there was never any evidence that the attack was made with knowledge that the target was a US ship.” To prove his point, Cristol even lists those documents that he claims are investigations of the attack on our ship. Eager to prove we are simply a bunch of Israel-hating anti-Semites, who were only interested in evidence that proves our claim that there never has been an investigation of the attack, the Cristolmyth took on a life of its own.  It has been repeated by the Jewish Virtual Library and by anonymous authors of a Wikipedia article to mention a few.  It has also made its way into boilerplate used by Members of Congress when responding to queries from their constituency. All for naught, I’m afraid. In a response to a request I made to the Center for Legislative Archives of the National Archives, we learned:
“I have been unable to identify any files in the records of House and Senate committees related to an investigation of the 1967 USS Liberty incident.  As far as I can tell, the investigation held by the Naval Board of Inquiry seems to be the primary government investigation into the incident.“
As a matter of routine, and directly opposite the tactics of Israel-Firsters, we never ask people to take what we say without question. Contact the US government sources yourselves. Contact the Historians of both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.  Ask them to provide you with a copy of the Congressional investigation of the attack on the USS Liberty. They will not be able to. Contact your Congressional Delegation and ask them to send you a copy of the Congressional investigation of the attack on the USS Liberty. They will not be able to. Contact your Congressional Delegation and ask them to have the Congressional Research Service send you a copy of the US government investigation of the attack on the USS Liberty. The Congressional Research Service will not be able to. The email address of the Legislative Archives is [email protected]. Write to them — if you dare.