The assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and the attack on the USS Liberty 

In this document I’m trying to show how the Democratic Party had changed since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the last good Democratic President. I tried to connect all the dots and show a timeline.

If the Democratic party would sacrifice the lives of thousands of servicemen in an unnecessary war in Vietnam and 34 seamen on the USS Liberty, it’s not too farfetched for the Democratic party to sacrifice American lives by using mentally ill people in mass shootings as a pretext to taking our guns?

We betrayed a onetime ally of Ho Chi Minh 

The problem that President Truman faced after WII was the growing threat of the Soviet Union. France had colonies in what was then known as French Indochina, which is now Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The French left their colonies in French Indochina to help the allies fight the Nazis and guess what, Ho Chi Minh was also an ally who was trained and equipped by the American OSS to fight off the Japanese.

It was originally claimed by the National Security Agency that the second Tonkin Gulf incident occurred on August 4, 1964, as another sea battle, but instead may have involved “Tonkin ghosts” (false radar images) and not actual NVN torpedo boat attacks.

The outcome of these two incidents was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by “communist aggression.” The resolution served as Johnson’s legal justification for deploying US conventional forces and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.

Personally, I think that LBJ was looking for anything to get the US involved in Vietnam.

Why?

There were basically two main reasons why Kennedy was assassinated. These reasons are involved with the Vietnam War, and the Federal Reserve Bank.

President Kennedy sent two aides to Vietnam, McNamara and Taylor, who gathered intelligence that convinced him that the United States needed to withdraw from Vietnam. Their memo to the president was entitled, Report of McNamara-Taylor Mission to South Vietnam.

With this report in hand, President Kennedy had what he wanted. It contained the essence of decisions he had to make. He had to get re-elected to finish programs set in motion during his first term; he had to get Americans out of Vietnam. — Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and The Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, Carol Publishing Group, p. 264.

Fletcher Prouty tells us that,

On Nov. 22, 1963, the government of the United States was taken over by the superpower group that wanted an escalation of the warfare in Indochina, and a continuing military buildup for generations to come. — Ibid. p. 264.

Who was this group? Who wanted us in South Vietnam and why? When we answer these questions, the people behind the assassination of JFK will be known.

Nothing has been said about one of the most significant forces which contributed to its promotion, namely, the role played by religion, which in this case, means the part played by the Catholic Church, and by her diplomatic counterpart, the Vatican. The tragedy of Vietnam will go down in history as one of the most pernicious deeds of the contemporary alliance between politics and organized religion.

Avro Manhattan, world authority on Vatican politics, has blown the cover on the real reason our boys suffered and died in Vietnam. He traces their death to the Vatican’s passionate desire to make Asia Roman Catholic. Vatican agents hatched and plotted the Vietnam War. American soldiers were serving the Vatican in their desperate struggle to survive the jungles, the hell of warfare, pain, death and destruction. It was all engineered by…her Jesuits. — Ibid. p. 3, emphasis added.

When this article speaks about the Catholic Church, it is not speaking of the faithful church members who know nothing about things like this. It is speaking of the rulers of the Vatican and their Order of the Jesuits.

The Vatican played both sides against each other in this Vietnamese Civil War. They controlled Diem in the South while advising and making secret deals with Ho Chi Minh in the North. Thus, however the war turned out, the Vatican would triumph and have control in Vietnam. President Kennedy’s attempt to halt the bloodbath incurred the undying wrath of the instigators of the war — the Jesuits of the papacy.

President Kennedy began to de-escalate America’s involvement in Vietnam shortly before his death. The day after his brutal murder, the following occurred:

At 8:30 a.m., Saturday, the 23rd of November, 1963, the limousine carrying CIA director John McCone pulled into the White House grounds…. He was also there to transact one piece of business prior to becoming involved in all the details entailed in a presidential transition — the signing of National Security Memorandum 278, a classified document which immediately reversed John Kennedy’s decision to de-escalate the war in Vietnam. The effect of Memorandum 278 would give the Central Intelligence Agency carte blanche to proceed with a full-scale war in the Far East…. In effect, as of November 23, 1963, the Far East would replace Cuba as the thorn in America’s side. It would also create a whole new source of narcotics for the Mafia’s worldwide markets. — Robert Morrow, First Hand Knowledge, Shapolsky Publishers, p. 249.

The day after Kennedy was killed, the decision to stop America’s involvement in Vietnam was reversed and the Vatican’s program continued.

Morrow’s statement also revealed another reason for the Jesuits wanting to continue the war; they would make billions of dollars in the international drug trade. For the last four centuries, the Jesuits had been involved in the Far East drug trade and they certainly did not want to lose this opportunity, even if it meant the lives of millions of people!

Since the original Jesuit mission had established itself in Beijing in 1601, the Society of Jesus [the Jesuits] had held the key to the Far East Trade — including the drug trade. — assorted authors, Dope, Inc.: The Book that Drove Kissenger Crazy, Executive Intelligence Review, p. 117, (emphasis added).

The Jesuit controlled politicians in Washington wanted to continue the war in Vietnam. They wanted to create a Catholic power in Southeast Asia. They wanted to maintain their control of the international drug market that they had held for 400 years in the Far East. When President Kennedy stood in their way, he had to be removed. The Jesuits had John Kennedy assassinated.

The second reason for Kennedy’s assassination was his intention to eliminate the Federal Reserve. Colonel James Gritz explains,

When Kennedy called for a return of America’s currency to the gold standard, and the dismantling of the Federal Reserve System — he actually minted non-debt money that does not bear the mark of the Federal Reserve; when he dared to actually exercise the leadership authority granted to him by the U.S. Constitution…Kennedy prepared his own death warrant. It was time for him to go. — Colonel James Gritz, Called to Serve: Profiles in Conspiracy from John F. Kennedy to George Bush, Lazarus Publishing, pp 511, 512.

President Kennedy was attempting to dismantle the Federal Reserve System, which is the central bank of the United States, a creation of the Jesuits.

The Constitution of the United States gives to Congress the power to coin money. If the U. S. Congress coined its own money as the Constitution directs, it would not have to pay the hundreds of billions of dollars of interest that it now pays each year to the bankers for the national debt, for money that came out of nothing This is why Kennedy began to issue U.S. government money that was free of debt to replace the Federal Reserve dollars we have been using.

The Jesuits, who was responsible for the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank, and the unconstitutional operation of this bank that steals money from U.S. citizens, tried to assassinate President Andrew Jackson for discontinuing the central bank. They unfortunately succeeded in assassinating Kennedy for trying to do the same thing. The Jesuits uses the wealth created by the Federal Reserve to finance their murderous deeds.

John Kennedy incurred the deadly wrath of the Jesuits for daring to act as the President and not as their puppet.

Do you think that the Catholic Church isn’t that powerful? Do you think this makes them out to be too strong? Avro Manhattan tells us:

Cardinal Francis Spellman, of New York, was the military vicar of the American Armed Forces in Vietnam. He was also the unofficial link between the pope and John Foster Dulles, the U.S. Secretary of State and therefore the Secretary’s brother, Alan, who was the head of the CIA. — Avro Manhattan, Murder in the Vatican, Ozark Books, pp. 35, 36.

Jean Hill was also a witness to the Kennedy murder. In her book, entitled JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness, she states that during a conversation her friend, J.B., who was one of the policemen in the motorcade that was with Kennedy, told her, Lyndon Johnson, the vice president of the United States, was apparently having a real problem.

“What are you talking about?” Jean asked innocently. “I don’t understand.” “My friends in the motorcade say he started ducking down in the car a good 30 or 40 seconds before the first shots were fired. I’d say that’s just a little peculiar, wouldn’t you?” “Oh, come on, J.B,” Jean Hill said, thinking he had to be joking. “They obviously weren’t serious, were they?” “As far as I know they were dead serious.” J.B. said. “One of them told Maguire that he saw Johnson duck down even before the car turned onto Houston Street, and he sure as __ wasn’t laughing when he said it.” “Well, maybe Johnson just dropped something on the floor and bent over to pick it up. I mean there can be a simple explanation.” “Maybe so.” J.B. said. “I don’t claim to know what his reasons were but this guy said it sure looked like he was expecting bullets to be flying. When I heard it, it made me start wondering about a whole lot of other stuff too.” — Ibid. pp. 114–116.

Lyndon Johnson was acting as if he knew bullets would soon be flying, ducking down repeatedly before the shots went off.

Texas law prohibits people that die in the state of Texas from being removed without an autopsy. Leading doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas were held at gunpoint as the body of John F. Kennedy was removed from that hospital without an autopsy. Why? There was overwhelming evidence that there was more than one bullet that killed JFK. There was overwhelming evidence that the Warren Commission report was nothing but lies. There were many bullets that the doctors would have found that would have shattered the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman. That is why an autopsy was not allowed in Texas. That is why Kennedy’s body was shipped to Washington D.C. where a federal autopsy could be made, where they could fabricate the evidence to support the lies of the Warren commission. There was a Jesuit led conspiracy to kill JFK and they didn’t want the evidence to get out, no matter how many people had to be killed in the process.

There were many people who knew a great deal about the Kennedy assassination. Unfortunately, almost all of them died under mysterious circumstances. There was a concerted effort to be sure that no secrets were ever told. Even Jean Hill stated that several attempts were made to kill her and her children.

Jim Marrs, author of Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, wrote: “In the three-year period which followed the murder of President Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, 18 material witnesses died — six by gunfire, three in motor accidents, two by suicide, one from a cut throat, one from a karate chop to the neck, five from natural causes.” …A mathematician hired by the London Sunday Times in February of 1967 concluded that the odds of the number of witnesses involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy dying between November 22, 1963 and that date were 100,000 trillion to one…. In the time period ranging from November 22, 1963 to August 1993 over 115 ‘witnesses’ have died or fallen victim to death by strange circumstances, suicides or murder. — Craig Roberts and John Armstrong, JFK: The Dead Witnesses, Consolidated Press, p. 3.

Winston Churchill, the famous English Prime Minister during World War Two, once said,

Most men occasionally stumble over the truth, but they pick themselves up and continue on as if nothing had happened.

Arms to Israel

A lot of people are of the belief that the United States was the major military arms supplier to Israel. NOT TRUE!

In December 1947, in deference to the U.N.’s appeal to avoid inflaming the Palestine situation still further, Washington imposed an arms embargo on the Middle East. The United States continued its arms embargo, despite persistent pressure from Israel and her supporters, until the Kennedy Administration.

United States policy for denying American arms to Israel was based on the following arguments: 1) the country was strong enough to defend itself without U.S. arms; this belief was reinforced by Israel’s success during the Suez campaign; 2) Israel had access to arms from other sources; 3) the United States did not want to appear to be starting an arms race in the Middle East; 4) the U.S. sales of arms to Israel would lead the Arabs to ask the Russians and Chinese for arms; 5) the U.S. did not want to risk a Middle East confrontation with the Soviet Union; and 6) U.S. military aid to Israel would alienate the Arabs.

Not until 1962 did Israel receive its first major weapons system from the United States when Kennedy agreed to sell HAWK anti-aircraft missiles to Israel.

From 1948 until the 1962 HAWK sale, the Israeli lobby (consisting of those individuals and organizations which attempt directly and indirectly to influence American policy to support Israel) was largely unaware of any U.S. military aid to Israel. In 1956, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Abba Eban, told the president of the American Jewish Committee, Irving Engel, that the main source of weapons was France. In fact, it was U.S. encouragement of third-party arms suppliers which had enabled Israel to meet its defense needs.

The French-Israeli relationship began in the mid-1950s, when Israel became a major customer for the French arms industry. But the bond was not merely commercial: at the time France was trying to quash a rebellion in Algeria, and it shared with Israel a strategic interest in combating radical Arab nationalism. In 1956, France and Israel even fought together against Egypt in the Suez crisis.

The tacit alliance, championed by Israel’s deputy defense minister, Shimon Peres, deepened during the late ’50s and early ’60s through military cooperation and cultural exchanges. French technical assistance helped Israel get nuclear weapons, and France supplied the advanced military aircraft that became the backbone of the Israeli Air Force.

The relationship only grew warmer when Charles de Gaulle, the World War II hero, took over as French president in 1959. He recognized the historic justice of a Jewish “national home,” which he saw “as some compensation for suffering endured through long ages,” and he heaped praise on David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister, as one of the “greatest leaders in the West.”

The bilateral bonds ran outside the government, too, with strongly pro-Israel public opinion, both among French Jews and non-Jews. But with the end of the Algerian war in 1962, de Gaulle began mending France’s ties to the Arab world and the relationship came under strain. Eventually France and Germany imposed a total weapons embargo on Israel.

Israel was now facing a dilemma!

The geopolitical drama of the Middle East is acutely linked to the Cold War because the Soviet Union was arming and funding Middle East regimes, notably Egypt and Syria. The Middle East was a pawn on the chessboard of America vs. the Soviets during the Cold War because influential dominance of the region was a key goal of both nations. Of course, the obviously oily nature of Middle East natural resources was considered a prize, not only to the United States, but to France and Germany.

When Lyndon Johnson became President, the Israeli lobby was encouraged not only by the fact that he had pledged to carry on the work of John Kennedy but also by Johnson’s own record of support for Israel which dated back to his leadership in the Senate during the Eisenhower Administration.

Like most U.S. presidents, Johnson’s support for Israel was based on a combination of realism, romanticism, and cold political calculation. Viewed realistically, Israel was a relatively powerful, pro-Western democratic nation in a region of strategic importance where Communism and Pan-Arabism were seen as serious threats to U.S. interests. Although the United States did not yet perceive Israel as a strategic ally, it recognized that a strong Israel was a deterrent to the forces of radicalism in the Middle East.

Johnson’s dependability was tested immediately when the Israelis began to pressure the Administration to sell them tanks and planes. As early as January 1964, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Komer was complaining that Myer Feldman was badgering him about supplying Israel with tanks. Feldman, the holder of the “Jewish portfolio” as an aide in the Administration, meanwhile wrote to the President in May that he had “rarely been exposed to as much pressure as I have had recently on the question of tanks for Israel.” In the same memo, however, Feldman reveals how the White House successfully exerted its own pressure: “It has only been after considerable effort that members of Congress have been restrained against making speeches on the question, the Anglo-Jewish press has killed several articles and responsible leaders of the Jewish community have demonstrated their confidence in the Administration by keeping silent.”

The U.S. unsuccessfully pursued diplomatic efforts to recruit Israel government support for its Vietnam policy. At the same time, it mounted a similar effort at home to make Johnson’s support for the Israel lobby’s objectives conditional upon that lobby’s support on Vietnam. On September 9, 1966, for example, the National Commander of the Jewish War Veterans, Malcolm A. Tarlov, paying his annual courtesy call to the President, was told that “Jews who seek U.S. support for coreligionists in Russia and for Israel should vigorously identify with Administration actions in Vietnam.” The President could not understand why the American Jewish community was not supporting his Vietnam policy when he was improving U.S.-Israel relations.

Although Administration officials denied that Johnson had made support for his Vietnam policy a condition for U.S. support for Israel, the President’s obsession with protecting his own credibility led him to suspect Israel lobby demands were somehow responsible for the opposition to Vietnam. When it comes to Israel, he told Israeli Minister Evron, American Jews are interventionists, but when it comes to Vietnam, they want the United States to be a pacifist. Johnson could not understand the contradiction and believed that the Jewish community was too selective. Abba Eban recalled being told by Johnson how a group of rabbis who had come to visit him in May 1967, asked him to put the whole American fleet in the Gulf of Aqaba to show the U.S. flag in the Straits of Tiran. In the meantime, Johnson asserted, they didn’t think he should send a screwdriver to Vietnam.

The rise of Arab nationalism was also heating up as Egyptian President Gamal Nasser and the Marxist styled Baathist movements were flourishing. Syria and Iraq had shed western imposed monarchs and were raising their own brand of dictators. Israel was becoming America’s unofficial 51st state as the Evangelical movement was rising in anticipation of fulfilling Biblical prophecy now that Israel existed for the first time since Biblical times.

The rise of Arab nationalism was also heating up as Egyptian President Gamal Nasser and the Marxist styled Baathist movements were flourishing. Syria and Iraq had shed western imposed monarchs and were raising their own brand of dictators. Israel was becoming America’s unofficial 51st state as the Evangelical movement was rising in anticipation of fulfilling Biblical prophecy now that Israel existed for the first time since Biblical times.

The bellicose rhetoric blossomed as Arab leaders publicly vowed to destroy Israel. This was nothing new and even the Israelis perceived that such utterances were an appeasement to the neurotic Arab Street rather than an actual threat.

The Middle East was a pawn on the chessboard of America vs. the Soviets during the Cold War because influential dominance of the region was a key goal of both nations. Of course, the obviously oily nature of Middle East natural resources was considered a prize.

Who was behind the Six Day War and why? 

It’s highly unlikely that Israel unilaterally initiated the Six Day War without specific instructions and support from the U.S. and continued source of weapons by the U.S. Some observers believe that the US and LBJ engineered the Six Day War as part of America’s Cold War strategy to humiliate the Soviet Union and advance U.S. hegemony in the Middle East.

I think that Israel was an unwilling partner, but the U.S. had an ace that was used to get Israel to go along with this plan.

U.S. policy changed markedly after the Six-Day War of 1967, in response to a perception that many Arab states (notably Egypt) had permanently drifted toward the Soviet Union. In 1968, with strong support from Congress, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson approved the sale of F-4 Phantom II fighters to Israel, establishing the precedent for U.S. support for Israel’s qualitative military edge over its neighbors. The U.S., however, would continue to supply arms to Israel’s neighbors, particularly Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, in order to counter Soviet arms sales and influence in the region.”)

USS Liberty

The attack on the Liberty was pre-planned, perhaps from at least a year beforehand,” Journalist Peter Hounam in his 2003 book “Operation Cyanide”.

However, the USS Liberty incident was far more sinister. Nasser, other Arab leaders and Arab journalists tended to believe that the U.S. and Britain were behind the Six Day War and actually participated. The consensus in the Arab world was that the entire Israeli Air Force wasn’t sufficient in numerical strength to accomplish the now infamous Israeli aerial armada that struck the Egyptian Air Force with such a devastating force that the entire Egyptian Air Force was demolished. Moreover, it appears that the Arab world was clueless about US plans to start a war with Egypt through its proxy Israel and/or that the nuclear bombing of Cairo was on the table. Hounam writes:

1967 USS Liberty attacked by submarine USS Amberjack — Crew member blows whistle

“The Liberty was sent into a very dangerous situation, where it was, in my view, placed in a position to be attacked.”

Mr Hounam says the intention was to sink the ship and kill everyone on board, but as the Liberty remained afloat the plan was aborted and has been hushed up ever since.

Before Day Four of the war, Nasser had been accusing the US and Britain of directly assisting Israel. After the hot-line exchange about the Liberty, he was convinced of it. Of course, he was not aware that the ‘reconnaissance planes’ had in fact been on their way to bomb Cairo or…..that an atomic device could have been detonated.

Hounam interviewed a guy named Joe Sorrels who back in the 1960′s was doing freelance special operations and intelligence work for the U.S. and Britain. Sorrels was no ordinary technician with skills; his function was sufficiently important that he personally met Meir Amit, head of the Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Hounam writes:

From his viewpoint, it seemed the Israelis were responding to pressure from the United States to eradicate Nasser; Israel was not the prime mover….

According to Sorrels the war plans went well, the driving force being the US…

Sorrels described as ‘horse shit’ the commonly-held notion that Israel fought this war on its own: ‘Anybody working around intelligence knows it isn’t true’. He repeated that Operation Cyanide was a secret plan to start a war against Egypt….and it was elements in the United States who were pushing them to invade Egypt…”

At a 5/4/2002 gathering, Hounam met with Moe Schafer and shared his recollection of two important USS Liberty events.

Moe said he was hurt by shrapnel during the assault….Unlike most of the injured who had already been taken away to the USS America, he was loaded into a helicopter and flown to the USS Davis, the flagship of Sixth Fleet commander Admiral Martin. The next morning, he was sitting on his bunk with two or three other injured men when Martin came in to see them.

Shafer said he seemed to want to tell someone about what had happened before he would be obliged through pressure from above to clam up: ‘Not only did Admiral Martin tell me that four jets were on their way to the Liberty with conventional weapons [and were recalled]; he stated that four were on their way to Cairo loaded with nuclear weapons. He stated they were three minutes from bombing them [the Egyptians]. He also said that the jets could not land back on the carrier with nuclear arms and they had had to land in Athens. He stated this from my bedside while on the Little Rock [the codename of the flagship] after the attack.

The story told by Moe Schafer about Admiral Martin confirming that the US planned to nuke Cairo is also a story that is validated by Air Force pilot Jim Nanjo in California and a member of the H-bomb attack force. Nanjo didn’t know that Cairo was the target, only that he and other crews were on standby to take-off and drop nuclear bombs. Nanjo could never understand why he was called out of bed in the middle of the night on June 8, 1967 (California time) BEFORE the USS Liberty was attacked by Israel. Nanjo also confirmed that he knew that other nuclear bomb units were on under the same alert in Guam, Britain, Moron, Spain as well as in the US.

Lyndon Johnson and the USS Liberty Murders of 1967

By Roger Stone

on June 08 ‘15

Operation Cyanide: How the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War Three (2003) for greater detail.

The reason LBJ ordered the USS Liberty destroyed and all 294 crew members murdered was because he was going to blame the massacre of the USS Liberty on Egypt so that the United States would have a pretext to attack, bomb and take out Nasser of Egypt who, as author Barry Chamish points out, had drifted into the Soviet camp over the previous ten years.

LBJ as the mastermind behind murdering JFK, in the spring of 1962, he and the full Joint Chiefs of Staff were proposing Operation Northwoods. Operation Northwoods was a Pentagon proposed Fake Terror Attacks on Citizens to Create Support for Cuban War.

The argument has been made that Operation Northwoods was a diabolical U.S. military proposal that was never carried out. The counter reply to that is the JFK assassination itself was the expression of Operation Northwoods by Lyndon Johnson and his Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The Nazi-like crime against the men of the USS Liberty comes out of the precise playbook of Operation Northwoods and the JFK assassination.

Author Peter Hounam discovered the smoking gun on LBJ’s participation in the USS Liberty murders when he interviewed former SAC (Strategic Air Command, i.e., nuclear) B-52 pilot Jim Nanjo who told him his nuclear SAC unit in San Diego went on high alert 1–2 hours before the Liberty was attacked on June 8, 1967. Only President Johnson could have given the grave order to go on nuclear high alert, which implies LBJ knew about Israeli attack on the Liberty in advance.

So here we have a sitting US President not only proposing a false flag military attack by Israeli aircraft and patrol boats against a non-combatant US naval electronic surveillance vessel in international waters, but going so far as to have a US submarine fire a torpedo on a US naval vessel, and then stop a US aircraft carrier from launching a rescue within 10 minutes of the attack.

One US officer, the captain of the USS Amberjack, dismissed his oath to defend the Constitution of the USA, and fired on shipmates instead of refusing what was clearly an illegal order and high treason on the part of the sitting president, LBJ. Admiral Lawrence Geis, betrayed his oath as well, in obeying an illegal order to stand down any rescue of the USS Liberty as was well within his power as the senior flag officer aboard the aircraft carrier USS America. So also did Admiral John McCain, in willfully covering up this atrocity and failing to hold his own President culpable, betray his oath to defend and support the Constitution against all enemies, domestic as well as foreign.

In 1979 Liberty survivor James M. Ennes Jr. wrote the first full treatment concerning the Israeli assault on the unarmed U.S. naval ship. After the release of his book, Ennes pursued further research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas. Within that research, Ennes found a misfiled document that detailed the minutes of a meeting held by a “303 Committee” in April 1967. The 303 Committee was responsible for all covert CIA operations within the Johnson administration.

The 303 Committee consisted of CIA director Richard Helms, former ambassador to the Soviet Union Foy Kohler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Earle Wheeler, Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance, and National Security Adviser Walt Rostow. Rostow.

McNamara was often used by LBJ as the key liaison of the covert operations birthed by the 303 Committee and the other groups.

The minutes of the 303 Committee meeting — held two months before the attack on the Liberty — referenced an operation called “Frontlet 615.” Operation Cyanide was found within the subparts of Frontlet 615. The 303 Committee used Frontlet 615 as a code name for the pending Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt. As planned, the war was scheduled to begin on June 15. The Americans had agreed to provide equipment, officer training, and the limited use of aircraft to the Israelis.

Operation Cyanide was a provocative false flag that called for an Israel Defense Force attack on a U.S. ship. The assault on the unarmed ship would use unmarked fighter jets so that the destruction could then be blamed on the Egyptians, and the Americans could enter the war on the side of Israel.

It was not the first time Johnson had dabbled in false-flag operations. Years earlier, he had tasked National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy with “Plan 34A” in Vietnam. Buddy was charged with constructing a series of provocations that would cause the North Vietnamese to attack American destroyers (i.e., Gulf of Tonkin). Some historians cite Tonkin as the primary reason for Johnson’s 1964 win over Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.).

In a decision that confounded LBJ, Israel began its war with Egypt 10 days early. The USS Liberty was rushed from its position off the horn of Africa to the Mediterranean Sea. The Liberty had been chosen as the victim of Operation Cyanide.

In Remember the Liberty! Nelson recalls the tense confusion and abandonment Admiral Lawrence Geis experienced as the Liberty was being attacked. Geis later relayed the tale to Chief Intelligence Officer David Lewis, who agreed not to reveal the information until Geis had died, which he did in 1987.

Geis explained to Lewis that Johnson had ordered two sorties of fighter jets recalled — one that had been en-route to the Liberty ten minutes after the attack. Johnson had also recalled two A-4s, launched from the USS America within minutes, armed with nuclear weapons and headed for Cairo, Egypt.

McNamara called Geis and instructed him to recall the aircraft. “We’re not going to war over a few dead soldiers,” McNamara told Geis. McNamara, expecting the Liberty to sink within the hour, told Geis that he could order another sortie of fighter jets in 90 minutes. When the hour-and-a-half had passed, Geis prepared to order assistance. McNamara again instructed him to recall the order.

Geis demanded to speak to the president, who was standing next to McNamara. Johnson confirmed to Geis that he should “recall the wings.” He told Geis that he didn’t care if the Liberty sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean.

Upon assuming the presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Johnson had told Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Golda Meir in 1963, “You’ve lost a great friend, but you’ve found a better one.”

In Remember the Liberty! Nelson further details the political maneuverings that make Johnson, McNamara, and LBJ’s administration culpable in the 1967 attack on American sailors off the coast of Egypt and Israel. A part of the proceeds from Nelson’s work are donated to the Liberty Veterans Association.

Edited and shortened version of USS Liberty Dead In The Water (BBC Documentary 2002)

Click on image below to see video