Customer Reviews

The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I, Gary W Brummett, surviving crewman of USS Liberty & former President of the USS Liberty Veterans Association do highly recommend The Attack on the Liberty by James Scott to be the most authoritative and well researched book to date. I would recommend anyone interested in the history of this country and this event read and pass the book around and recommend it to any and all civic, military or any other organization interested in the truth. I want to thank James Scott for a wonderful book. Job well done, James!

I was Officer of the Deck when the Israeli Defense Forces attacked our ship, the USS Liberty (AGTR-5), without warning. I have read James Scott's riveting account of the attack and can vouch for it's historical accuracy. A fine piece of Investigative Journalism.

Lloyd C. Painter
US Secret Service (retired)

This review is written by one of the survivors who also was the Petty Officer in Charge of the body recovery and identifcation. I know how well
researched James Scott's book is, because I know he sat in with four of the survivors who were interviewed by the Army War College. Mr. Scott
had first hand knowledge from those survivors including James Ennes
who wrote "Assault on the Liberty". The student at the Army War Collge researched this in depth also, and in his report stated that this attack was most likely deliberate. James Scott had the knowledge of his father John Scott who was an officer aboard the Liberty at the time of the attack.
I am only writing in my review of the fourth chapter of the book, but would like the readers to know how close Mr. Scott is to those who saw this first hand.

This is the most detailed and well-sourced book about events during the attack and associated happenings that I've read to-date -- and I've read them all.

The only nit-pick (reason for 4 instead of 5 star rating) I have is with chapter five where the author used some of Captain McGonagle's demonstrably confused and sometimes impossible Court of Inquiry testimony in an uncritical, matter-of-fact manner when describing the sequence and timing of key events during the attack.

To some extent, the author addresses this later, in chapter 12, when he presents various conflicts between McGonagle's testimony and others', and gives an example showing that McGonagle was truly confused, but he leaves it to the reader to infer that this may invalidate claims based on McGonagle's testimony in chapter five.

I suppose one shouldn't fault the author in attempting to weave McGonagle's confused and sometimes impossible testimony into a coherent story. This was done by the Court of Inquiry too, and the author accurately reported what he found in the Court of Inquiry's record. In this regard, the author reported faithfully.

My name is John D. Scott, and I was an officer and damage control engineer on board the USS Liberty when Israel attacked. I am also the author's father. This is an incredibly accurate account of what we went through on that horrible afternoon of June 8, 1967. James sat for countless hours of interviews with me and my fellow shipmates to capture the vivid details of the attack in this book. At times, it was difficult to relive, but this book benefits from his dogged effort. Much of the information uncovered about events in Washington and elsewhere was new to me. This book is a must read for anyone who has ever served in the US Navy or for anyone whose family members have ever served.

I am the widow of Allen M. Blue, a civilian from the National Security Agency, who was killed in the torpedo attack on the Liberty.
James Scott has written a powerful story of the brutal, bloody attack on the Liberty. Scott's account is painful reading for the families and surviving crew who have petitioned the US Navy and the Department of Defense to do the right thing and set the record straight by conducting a full and proper investigation of this tragic event for more than 40 years.
Please support our efforts to petition the US Government to conduct an investigation while there are still competent and credible witnesses available. Forty two years of silence from our government has been hard to bear.
Patricia Blue-Roushakes

I was the Research Officer on board Liberty. 195 of the ships 295 worked in my department. This book tells the whole truth in all its sordid detail. In my mind it is incomprehensible that any Congressman could read this book and still deny the crew the justice they deserve with a full Congressional investigation which has been denied the survivors for 43 years. Congress has always used the flawed Navy Court of Inquiry as an excuse not to have to conduct their own investigation

James Scott's book is absolutely the best of the best and I've read them all. This book is a thunderclap and should wake up American citizens. Scott has dug up a lot of recently declassified stuff and presents an extremely interesting view of the activities around DC after the attack and the back-door ploys of the Israeli and American governments in the attempts to keep the story low key. Absolutely, you must read it. I'm a lucky crew-member having left the ship a few weeks before the attack but I, too, have lost 34 shipmates and have been as angry as I can be because the truth has been covered up.
John Gidusko, LT, USN, (Ret)

I am the spouse of a survivor of the USS Liberty. James Scott has done
an excellent and thorough job researching this book. His research took
him to Israel where he was able to investigate this incident. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to find out the truth of what
happened to the Liberty on June 8, 1967.
Ingrid Painter

After I have read a book and have formed my own opinion of it, I like to read what others thought about it -- a reverse of the usual procedure, but still useful. And that's why I was even more interested in the most negative review of "Attack on the Liberty", by J. Gordon.

His concluding remark about the case being closed almost exactly parrots the subtitle of a piece by Michael Oren ("case closed") rejecting the idea that the attack was deliberate, and a phrase that has been used against me by Israeli apologists in other forums, so instinctively I bristle when I read it in a review of this topic. In part that is because no one whose vision is adequate to drive a car, much less fly a plane, could even approach the USS Liberty and not know that it assuredly was NOT a much smaller, rusty Egyptian tramp steamer plying the coastal trade. Just look at the profiles of the ships & their pictures, and -- words and analysis aside -- this is beyond self-evident. The Israelis knew precisely what ship they were attacking, tried very hard to sink it with no survivors, failed to that -- no thanks at all to the US Government then -- and escaped the sure and certain retribution that would have been visited on the Egyptians or Syrians, had they done the same thing.

What Scott's book does is drive home in excruciating detail what happened, why, and most importantly, how the Israelis were able to get away with it. None of these things will bring joy to the hearts of Israel's supporters in America, but that is just why Scott's book needs to be read, and why Americans need to know as much as possible about the incident. Jim Ennes's earlier book, "Assault on the Liberty," broke important ground and dug a grave for all of the myths about US-Israeli relations; Jim Scott's "Attack on the Liberty" will lower the casket into the ground; and I cannot wait for Scott or someone else to do the essential sequel. Until it appears, I strongly recommend Scott's book, and encourage people who are interested in the topic to first read the one by Ennes, to see how much more we have learned.

And that is the real "case closed."