http://www.nypress.com/14/18/taki/lemaitre.cfm
Le Maitre
Taki
The Liberty
New York Press, 05/02/2001
In early May, 1967, I got my first job. I was 29 years old, and
until then I had been a rather unsuccessful player on the tennis
circuit. On April 21 of that year, a bunch of patriotic,
anticommunist, but as it turned out misguided colonels staged a coup
against the then legitimate Greek government. I will not go into the
details because they have nothing to do with my story. Suffice it to
say that the democratic process and the political parties of the time
were totally corrupt, the head of state, 26-year-old King
Constantine, was being pressured by both the right and the left to
rule in their favor, and there was serious rioting in the
streets.
Soon after the colonels took over, a childhood friend of mine,
Nikos Farmakis, called me to his office for a chat. Farmakis was the
first press secretary of the colonels, and it was rumored that he was
up for secretary of state but that his appointment was blocked by the
King-who had, incidentally, sworn in the coup-makers to avoid
bloodshed, and who was to move against them (unsuccessfully) six
months later. Farmakis was judged by Constantine to be much too right
wing.
"How would you like to be my deputy?" asked Niko. I of course
jumped at the chance. My credentials, after all, were impeccable. I
spoke English, which was more than most people who went to work for
the military did at the time. Deputy to the government spokesman
meant I was given a briefing by some flunky about what was going on,
and in turn I then briefed the foreign journalists lounging about the
Foreign Ministry on Zalokosta St. Nothing very difficult was
involved, except for finding a parking space outside.
Everything was hunky-dory for a while, and then both Niko and I
were fired. The former for insisting that everyone who was against
the government should be shot. He meant it. The latter, little old
me, for threatening to hang every foreign journalist who criticized
the government. I had said it tongue-in-cheek.
While sulking on my daddy's boat, I heard the news of Israel's
lightning six-day war. I went into Athens and called on my friends at
the U.S. Embassy who had been briefing me during my short and
inglorious career as a government spokesman. My conversation with one
in particular came back to me last week. "Make no mistake about it,"
said my CIA contact, "Israel's attack on the U.S.S. Liberty was
deliberate... They knew damn well it was American and that it was
eavesdropping."
Thirty-four years later, a book, Body of Secrets by James Bamford,
confirms everything my friend had told me, and much more. It is a
disgraceful tale, with 34 American sailors dead and 171 wounded, and
the Lyndon Johnson government hushing up the facts. Bamford writes
that while the Israelis were attacking the Liberty, an American spy
plane overhead, a Navy EC-121, overheard and recorded Israeli
conversations. The results are devastating. The Israelis were unaware
that anyone was listening, and their pilots talked openly about
seeing an American flag on the ship they were attacking.
The Liberty was a lightly armed, slow Navy ship that never had a
chance while attacked from both air and sea by the Israelis. What was
it doing there in the first place? It was monitoring the 1967
Arab-Israeli war, just as the aircraft that overheard the Israelis
was doing. After all, Uncle Sam provides Israel with most of its
weapons and finances its war machine. I suppose America does have a
right to listen in, but you'd never know it from the Liberty's
fate.
Modest reparations were paid by the Israeli government, but it has
never admitted guilt, claiming that it was an accident. I am not
surprised; Israeli Mordechai Vanunu, who leaked to the London Sunday
Times that Israel possessed nuclear weapons - a fact well known by
everyone - is still doing hard time 16 some years later.
What bothers me is the role of the U.S. government in the
incident. Lyndon Johnson was a rogue, but what about the Congress?
The politicians knew damn well that this was a deliberate attack on a
friendly power's ship, yet it covered it up as if Uncle Sam were the
baddie.
Which brings me to the point I wish to make. Israel's friends and
certain Jewish Americans make a terrible mistake when they interpret
criticism of Israeli arrogance and treatment of the Palestinians as
anti-Semitism. By attempting to silence those who criticize Israeli
behavior by raising the canard of anti-Semitism - a device that has
been triumphantly successful in the United States - they manage
actually to strengthen the argument that the Israeli lobby influence
prevents the Palestinian or Arab case from being properly heard. When
Lord Gilmour, a respected politician with impeccable credentials for
fairness, wrote a letter to The Spectator protesting Conrad Black's
treatment of yours truly as a Goebbels-like figure, he was called in
a return letter "a garden-variety Jew-baiter..." with a few other
choice adjectives thrown in for good measure.
Yet Gilmour only pointed out things that Yoel Esteron, managing
editor of Ha'aretz, the leading Israeli daily, has repeatedly noted.
Which is that "the territory between Jordan and the sea must be
divided into two states, Israel and Palestine, adopting the 1967
borders with slight modifications."
I have nothing more to add to what Charles Glass and George
Szamuely have written the past weeks in these pages about Israeli
intransigence - except that no matter what names we are called by those
who excuse Israel's flouting international law with impunity, we will
not be silenced by the false and cowardly charge of anti-Semitism.
Unlike Lyndon Johnson and the politicians who covered up the crime
committed against the Liberty, thus aiding and abetting Israeli
arrogance, I at least will publish and be damned.
