Not sure what it means, but today's front page of The News-Leader, Springfield, MO featured this fairly objective and accurate news report of Israel's deliberate attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. The News-Leader is owned by The Gannett Company.

'They got away with it'

During war nearly 40 years ago, Israel attacked the USS Liberty.

John Taylor
News-Leader

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History records an Israeli attack on an American ship during the Six-Day War as a tragic mistake caused by the fog of war.

However, survivors of the USS Liberty, including Bryce Lockwood of Strafford, say history got it wrong — the attack was deliberate.

OAS_AD('ArticleFlex_1'); "They got away with it," Lockwood said.
Nearly 40 years later, his visible injuries have long-since healed, but the emotional wounds are raw and he suffers from post-traumatic stress.
Anger and tears overcome Lockwood as he recounts the June 8, 1967, attack that left 34 Americans dead and 173 wounded.
A Marine staff sergeant, Lockwood was stationed in Bremerhaven, Germany, serving as a Russian linguist when he was reassigned to the Liberty.
"I had expertise in intelligence gathering," he said.
The Liberty, a Navy technical research ship, was deployed to international waters in the Mediterranean Sea.
"War was inevitable in the Middle East," Lockwood said. "Everybody knew it. It was just a matter of when the first shot was going to be fired."
Fighting between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan and Syria began on June 5 after weeks of tension. Over six days, Israel conquered the Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Arab states were "just getting clobbered by the Israelis," Lockwood said.
The Liberty's mission was to keep tabs on the war. Of particular interest was Soviet backing of the Arab states.
"Should we pick up an Israeli transmission, we were supposed to drop it," Lockwood said. "We were not targeting Israel; our main concern was the Soviet Union."
On the morning of June 8, he said, Israeli aircraft flew over the Liberty at least three times.
"They were so low and so close, the crew members that were topside were waving to the pilots and they were waving back," Lockwood said.
He was below deck stamping his name into some new T-shirts when the first rockets hit the Liberty.
"I'd never been in combat before, but I knew the sound of an exploding shell on steel," he said.
Israeli forces attacked the Liberty with rockets, cannon fire, napalm and torpedoes.
One torpedo struck the starboard side, ripped a hole in the hull, charred Lockwood's face and killed the men near him.
He said he felt something cold and looked down groggily. The bulkhead was split and the ship was filling with water.
The torpedo had hit an I-beam, part of the ship's support structure.
"If it had struck ... anywhere else, we would have been in Davy Jones' Locker," Lockwood said, using a phrase synonymous with dying at sea.
Men were at the ladder, trying to get up, screaming and shoving.
"I screamed at the top of my lungs, 'If you don't settle down, none of us will get out,'" Lockwood said.
In the minutes that followed, Lockwood carried three men — although he only remembers two — out of the mixture of water, blood, oil, bodies and debris, up the ladder to the deck above to keep them from drowning.
He was later awarded a Silver Star Medal, the nation's third highest award for valor in combat.
Following the torpedo attacks, the Israeli boats continued to fire on crew members, communications equipment and the life rafts, which had been lowered.
When the attacks were over, a U.S. Naval attache flew in on an Israeli helicopter. The attache tossed a paper sack weighted down with an orange onto the deck.
"Inside was his business card. On the back of the card it said, 'Have you any casualties?' It fell right next to the severed leg of one of the machine- gunners," Lockwood said.
Later, Israel apologized for the attack, and said the Liberty was mistaken for an Egyptian horse carrier, the El-Quseir.
A Navy Court of Inquiry investigation also concluded the attack was a case of mistaken identity.
However, in 2003, Ward Boston, a former Navy attorney who helped lead that investigation, signed an affidavit stating President Lyndon Johnson and his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, ordered investigators to conclude it was an accident.
Lockwood said it isn't possible the Liberty was misidentified — the ship was flying a U.S. flag and its name and the identifier "GTR5" was printed on the sides.
"There is no way they couldn't see 'USS Liberty' on the side. No way," he said.
In addition, he said the Egyptian vessel for which the Liberty was allegedly mistaken was much smaller than the Navy ship.
Dr. John McManus, assistant professor of military history at University of Missouri-Rolla, described the circumstances of the Liberty attack as "murky."
McManus says he understands why Liberty veterans believe the attack was deliberate, but he could not understand why Israel would do it.
Explanations he has heard, such an attempt to cover up a slaughter of Egyptian soldiers or to conceal an invasion of Syria, don't make sense to him.
"It doesn't sound like real good motivation to attack," he said.
Also, confusion is not uncommon during war.
However, the Israeli pilots' flybys before the attack were "really strange," he said.
Not all the government's information on the attack has been declassified.
"We need more investigations and the (National Security Agency) needs to release more documents," McManus said.
After the attack, Liberty survivors were evacuated to the aircraft carrier America, where the injured were treated.
"My face looked like it had been through a meat grinder," Lockwood said.
The crew were taken to Malta, which is where the Liberty was drydocked. Lockwood returned to his ship.
"She had ruptured an oil tank in a torpedo attack. Oil was everywhere," he said.
He spent the night in a room with an 18-square-inch box labeled "unidentified human body parts."
"In Arlington there's a mass grave with five unidentified bodies. That was the ... box I had to sleep with that night," he said. "Three of the five guys that worked for me are supposedly in that box."
Following a stop in Italy, he returned to his family in Bremerhaven, dressed in a borrowed uniform splattered with blood and oil. His clothes were spilling out of his suitcase — a shell blew a hole in it during the Liberty attack.
"When I came back from the ship, my face was a mess," Lockwood said. "I had pus — just ugly pus — oozing out of my face, and it was over the front of my uniform. My uniform was covered with mud and blood and oil and stunk."
His daughter looked at him and cried, "That's not my daddy," he said.
His wife, Lois, said she did not know what had happened, since the Liberty's mission was top secret.
She said, "All I got was a telegram that said 'slightly burned' and I said 'Yeah, right.'
"If he had been killed, I'd probably have never known about this incident."
Nightmares about the attack plagued Lockwood in the weeks that followed.
Lois Lockwood said Bryce "beat me up" in his sleep one night. Another night, she found him under the bed, screaming that he couldn't get out.
The nightmares still return sometimes, he said.
The Lockwoods were high school sweethearts in upstate New York where they grew up, and they've been married for 46 years.
They've beaten the odds.
"There are only a few of us wives (of Liberty survivors) who are still married to their mates," Lois Lockwood said.
"Over 70 percent of the guys who came back wound up being divorced," added Bryce Lockwood.
Last year on the 38th anniversary of the attack, "A Report: War Crimes Against U.S. Military Personnel, June 8, 1967" was submitted to the Secretary of the Army by the USS Liberty Veterans Association.
That report alleges Israel committed war crimes against the military personnel and civilians on the Liberty and urges the Secretary of the Army to convene an investigatory body to carry out an inquiry of the attack.
Two retired admirals, Thomas H. Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1970-1974, and Merlin Staring, former Judge Advocate General of the Navy, are among the Liberty crew's supporters.
The Liberty veterans' call for an investigation has gone unanswered.