[82Rigger]

Found this on the web:



Fifteen years after the attack, an Israeli pilot approached Liberty survivors and then held extensive interviews with former Congressman Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey about his role. According to this senior Israeli lead pilot, he recognized the Liberty as American immediately, so informed his headquarters, and was told to ignore the American flag and continue his attack. He refused to do so and returned to base, where he was arrested.

Later, a dual-citizen Israeli major told survivors that he was in an Israeli war room where he heard that pilot's radio report. The attacking pilots and everyone in the Israeli war room knew that they were attacking an American ship, the major said. He recanted the statement only after he received threatening phone calls from Israel.

The pilot's protests also were heard by radio monitors in the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon. Then-U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight Porter has confirmed this. Porter told his story to syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak and offered to submit to further questioning by authorities. Unfortunately, no one in the U.S. government had any interest in hearing these first-person accounts.

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At 2.50 pm (Liberty time), 50 minutes after the first shells tore into the ship and as the attack was still going on, the aircraft carrier USS America, cruising near Crete, launched four armed A-4 Skyhawks. At the same time, the carrier USS Saratoga was also told by Sixth Fleet to send four armed A-1 attack planes to defend the ship. "Sending aircraft to cover you," the Sixth Fleet told the Liberty at 3:05 pm (9.05 am in Washington). "Surface units on the way."

President Johnson ordered that the Sixth Fleet recall its fighters while the Liberty still lay smouldering, sinking, fearful of another attack and with its decks covered with the dead, dying and wounded. On board the flagship of the Sixth Fleet, Rear Admiral Lawrence R Geis, who commanded the carrier force in the Mediterranean, was angry and puzzled at the recall and protested to the secretary of defence, Robert S McNamara.
Geis was shocked by what he heard next. "President Lyndon Johnson came on with a comment that "I will not have our allies embarrassed. I don't give a god damn who gets killed." Geis told Lieutenant Commander David Lewis, head of the NSA group on the Liberty, about the comment but asked him to keep it secret until after Geis died. It was a promise that Lewis kept.