Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They called me Bed. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here that makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know? And fellow conspiracy realist
Speaker 3: on Netflix or your podcast platform of choice. Tonight's episode
Speaker 3: has been quite some time in the making. You know
Speaker 3: you guys will recall that ever since we started the show,
Speaker 3: certain conspiratory oriole subjects kept popping up repeatedly, and Matt,
Speaker 3: you'll re called this, and Noel, you'll recalled this. We
Speaker 3: used to spend a lot of time in the YouTube
Speaker 3: comments on our original show. It would be going back
Speaker 3: and forth through like hundreds of week and noticing different
Speaker 3: things that kept resurfacing.
Speaker 4: Spiracy, Whack the mole man, conspiracy, whack them all. This
Speaker 4: is a fascinating one, A vaguely maritime naval navally themed
Speaker 4: episode and an absolute conspiracy that has been I know
Speaker 4: you've been following for a long time.
Speaker 2: Then, well, fourteen years ago we put out episodes on
Speaker 2: the Old House Stuffworks channel about false flag attacks. We
Speaker 2: did a multi video series on false flag attacks, and
Speaker 2: that got us extremely interested in all the various times
Speaker 2: that countries and powers have used the flag of so
Speaker 2: someone else to get something done.
Speaker 4: It's dirty, pool man. Isn't that kind of like against
Speaker 4: the rules of engagement?
Speaker 5: And it seems like, I mean.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, it's kind of if you
Speaker 3: if you at least, yeah, it's a bad look. I
Speaker 3: agree with that. If you study the passage of Empires. Uh,
Speaker 3: it's street ball. What's the trojan horse? Is that a
Speaker 3: false flag attack? Or is that just a trojan horse attack?
Speaker 3: That's a trojan horse attack? Correct, Yeah, congrats to everybody
Speaker 3: who built that one off one of these topics. Look
Speaker 3: for the movie right right what it's an odyssey. I'm
Speaker 3: sure hopefully not, Honda. One of the one of the
Speaker 3: things these topics that we continually saw way back in
Speaker 3: the day was historically considered too sensitive to be in
Speaker 3: your textbooks in the United States. This is a true story.
Speaker 3: Even talking about this could get you in trouble, and so,
Speaker 3: inspired by a recent conversation on our weekly listener mail segment,
Speaker 3: we decided to dive in. This is a story of death.
Speaker 3: It is fraught with communication breakdowns, quite possibly depending upon
Speaker 3: whom you ask. This is one of the biggest cover
Speaker 3: ups in modern American history.
Speaker 2: And one of the primary reasons we're talking about this
Speaker 2: today is because a guy named Thomas Massey went before
Speaker 2: Congress and kind of laid it all out as a
Speaker 2: Congressional record. Not that it wasn't already a part of
Speaker 2: American history. The thing we're talking about today and a
Speaker 2: known thing has been known for a long time, but
Speaker 2: a human being that is on the upper echelons of
Speaker 2: our legislature spelled it all out in front of everybody
Speaker 2: because he had recently met with some folks who were
Speaker 2: at the heart of the thing we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about today. So I think that's important just to put here,
Speaker 2: because you can go right now and you can listen
Speaker 2: to those remarks. You can read some Snopes articles that
Speaker 2: are in relation to theories that have popped up around
Speaker 2: the Internet about the things that Thomas Massey said. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of red meat there and things to discover,
Speaker 2: and we're going to be talking about it today. It
Speaker 2: is vastly important, but it is it is heated up
Speaker 2: I think because of that action.
Speaker 3: Agreed, this is the true story of the USS Liberty
Speaker 3: or We're going to give you what we know, folks,
Speaker 3: and we want to hear from you. So conspiracy at
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio dot com. You tell us your thoughts at the
Speaker 3: end of this exploration, well, pause for a word from
Speaker 3: our sponsors. Will be right back. Here are the facts
Speaker 3: USS Liberty. It's a ship, right.
Speaker 5: Body mcbotface would have been a more appropriate name, though, no,
Speaker 5: it was not that.
Speaker 4: But it was not originally called the USS Liberty. This
Speaker 4: ship has had a long and surprisingly distinctive, unique story.
Speaker 4: It was originally called the SS Simmons Victory, that is,
Speaker 4: the ship that would become the Liberty. And it was
Speaker 4: finished being built on May the fourth, nineteen forty five,
Speaker 4: intended to serve in.
Speaker 5: World War Two.
Speaker 3: The day after it was completed May fifth, nineteen forty five,
Speaker 3: it shipped off for the Pacific Theater and then, of course,
Speaker 3: as we know, world War two ended, so the Simmons
Speaker 3: became part of what was called the National Defense Reserve. Fleet,
Speaker 3: which meant essentially that it was helping assist commercial charter
Speaker 3: vessels and cargo carriers, right, the kind of things you
Speaker 3: would see all around ports in the United States. They
Speaker 3: removed all of the armament so it couldn't fire on,
Speaker 3: you know, a rogue cargo carrier. This ship, the Simmons,
Speaker 3: could have spent the rest of its career just cruising up, down,
Speaker 3: and around the Hudson. Also, we should note that in
Speaker 3: maritime culture and tradition, we're supposed to refer to vessels
Speaker 3: in a gendered way. We're gonna say it instead of she,
Speaker 3: just for the sake of conversation.
Speaker 2: That makes sense.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, things didn't really work out that way. The Simmons
Speaker 3: could have stayed the Simmons and probably have been up
Speaker 3: and down and around that area of the US until
Speaker 3: the seventies, but war was not done. The Simmons got
Speaker 3: pulled back into action during the Korean War. From nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty to nineteen fifty two. It made something like nine
Speaker 3: trips to the Pacific theater, primarily to carry war supplies.
Speaker 4: Well, what are we talking here, like, how many sailors
Speaker 4: would have manned this vessel?
Speaker 3: Pretty small amount in comparison to the naval might we
Speaker 3: here when other US vessels are discussed to.
Speaker 4: Not a warship per se, not like a battleship. This
Speaker 4: is more of a courier. Like you said, it was
Speaker 4: there to ferry supplies to and from the theater of war.
Speaker 3: Right right, a logistics supplier, and it did that function
Speaker 3: during the Korean War. The Korean War reached its current
Speaker 3: state as we record on July fourteenth, which is a
Speaker 3: Tuesday in twenty six folks, it's important to remember, maybe
Speaker 3: the West won't tell you as often as they should,
Speaker 3: the Korean peninsula is still very much in conflict. They
Speaker 3: just hit the pause button. They've been in a cartoonishly
Speaker 3: long cease fire for decades.
Speaker 5: What's a cold war of its own?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: I mean essentially between the North and the South. They're
Speaker 4: just in like the what is it called the what's
Speaker 4: that line of demarcation called the DMZ the DMZ, right.
Speaker 4: But then there's also Joint Security Area.
Speaker 5: Yes, got it.
Speaker 3: That's a little blue building that you.
Speaker 4: Could where they show you a video if I'm not mistaken, Ben,
Speaker 4: that you experienced, right, mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all about how the DMZ is great for birds.
Speaker 5: That's right. I knew there was. It was bird related.
Speaker 5: If I'm coming back to me now.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, next time we hang out there. Man, you
Speaker 3: got to check out the film.
Speaker 5: Sounds good.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: The Simmons, we do know, survived the Korean War. It
Speaker 3: comes back to the United States and it is deemed
Speaker 3: a missillaneous auxiliary ship. And that's I'm reading tea leaves here.
Speaker 3: But it does sound a lot like Uncle Sam said
Speaker 3: down loud. Yeah, it's been in two wars, it hasn't sank.
Speaker 3: We should just you know, keep it around. It's a
Speaker 3: lunch of money.
Speaker 4: Too though, right, Like it's sort of like saying that
Speaker 4: maybe it's seen, it's it's time, right, and maybe it's
Speaker 4: time to do something different with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and different happens. This is the story of the
Speaker 3: Simmons and it's transformation. It's June of nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 3: when the Simmons gets a new lease on life. It
Speaker 3: is renamed. It is now the USS Liberty, and it
Speaker 3: is reclassified. No longer civilian stuff, no longer helping cargo carriers.
Speaker 3: It is now a Belmont class Technical Research Ship or
Speaker 3: designation agt R five. Can't let the euphemistic name, fool us.
Speaker 3: It is a spy ship.
Speaker 4: Now, I mean it's researching the business of the enemy basically.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, Joseph or anybody, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's gathering intel.
Speaker 4: It's gathered it's it's data mining, you know, out there
Speaker 4: in those high seas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is highly important to our story today,
Speaker 2: this moment. Don't let it slip past you. The concept
Speaker 2: that a ship was refitted to be a spy implement
Speaker 2: that floats around on the water and is big and imposing,
Speaker 2: but also just a ship and it's a research vessel.
Speaker 5: It's fine, where do they get all those marvelous toys?
Speaker 3: Happened right now? This is why we're saying it's a euphemism.
Speaker 3: Fellow conspiracy realist, that title technical research it refers to
Speaker 3: in this case, when the million dollars worth of spoopy
Speaker 3: Dupe upgrades, and for a quick inflation calculator, that equates
Speaker 3: to a little over two hundred and nineteen million dollars
Speaker 3: worth of upgrades here in twenty six.
Speaker 5: That's the budget of Avatar three f ash And so
Speaker 5: of course they expect to return I think so how
Speaker 5: it hopes to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting thing. To consider because often on
Speaker 2: the show we've talked about spy planes and satellites, you
Speaker 2: know technology that's usually up above that has the capability
Speaker 2: of looking down and observing things.
Speaker 4: Well, it makes more sense logistically, like it's a bird's
Speaker 4: eye views, and it's a lot more out of the way,
Speaker 4: it's easier to kind of hide. But these, you know,
Speaker 4: naval vessels out in the ocean, they're also got their
Speaker 4: own kind of way of hiding for sure.
Speaker 2: But if you're going to do any kind of let's say,
Speaker 2: visual spying, you're at sea level literally, and anything you
Speaker 2: know above sea level, you're going to have a problem
Speaker 2: checking out and seeing. If you've got high level microphone
Speaker 2: systems they can pick things up from far away. You're
Speaker 2: going to pick up other vessels potentially, or stuff at ports,
Speaker 2: things that are happening very close to the coastline. It
Speaker 2: does maybe wonder what are they actually, like, how are
Speaker 2: they spying on people?
Speaker 3: Ben, Yeah, the mission of the newly minted Liberty is
Speaker 3: to support our friends at no such agency, national Security Administration,
Speaker 3: by collect national security agency, by collecting and processing what
Speaker 3: is called signals intelligence. So, like you were saying, Matt H.
Speaker 3: Scuttle butt off the port radio communication WORSE code, which
Speaker 3: was very huge at the time. Anything related to a
Speaker 3: very vague definition of national interest is up for grabs,
Speaker 3: up for hoovery. It also got four pretty heavy machine
Speaker 3: guns added on to you know, make it look serious
Speaker 3: in the case, right, justin.
Speaker 5: You know you have not need it, then need it
Speaker 5: and not have it, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you get in situations.
Speaker 5: So they're they're intercepting. That's what they're out there.
Speaker 4: They're out there in the in those seas, intercepting communications
Speaker 4: and then funneling that information to the appropriate parties in
Speaker 4: the NSA that they can then add that to their
Speaker 4: bundle of intel.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, intercepting but not interfering. Kind of like
Speaker 3: lurking on a subreddit. This is photographers want to get
Speaker 3: back to what you were saying earlier, because this is
Speaker 3: a pretty brilliant concept. The problem with so much land
Speaker 3: based collection stuff is that your HQ often ends up
Speaker 3: being static. It's difficult to move all your equipment without
Speaker 3: being noticed, and once an enemy force clocks you, the
Speaker 3: jig is up. So if you basically what they did
Speaker 3: with the Liberty is they created a pop up spy
Speaker 3: store on the high seats. It was very easy to
Speaker 3: move and as long as you're not looking for something
Speaker 3: super far in land, you have a catbird seat. Pretty cool,
Speaker 3: and they were pretty successful for a while. So where
Speaker 3: are you going to park your pop up spy store
Speaker 3: right if your uncle Sam. In June of nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 3: the Liberty went off on its first leg of monitoring missions,
Speaker 3: and like you were saying earlier, Nol, they were not
Speaker 3: intervening in things, they were collecting stuff. Into your earlier
Speaker 3: question that I think we know they had radio monitoring capabilities,
Speaker 3: so totally if they could, if they could clock or
Speaker 3: track some sort of aircraft, they were doing that too.
Speaker 3: They were off the western coast of Africa and Ran
Speaker 3: I don't want to sound too weird about it or paranoid,
Speaker 3: but they ran five missions that we know of, five
Speaker 3: spy missions in that area on the western coast of
Speaker 3: Africa from nineteen sixty five up to nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 4: And we were talking a little bit off Mike, just
Speaker 4: trying to like come up with an appropriate comparison in
Speaker 4: the spy world of like a land version of this,
Speaker 4: and I think we landed on like it's sort of
Speaker 4: like the unmarked van sitting outside of like you know,
Speaker 4: a mafia headquarters, like with the dudes with headphones on
Speaker 4: the end, but at sea and completely moveable and much
Speaker 4: more focused on intercepting communications rather than like listening in
Speaker 4: on like you know, physical bugs or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like a spy food truck. You know, there you go.
Speaker 3: Everything changed in nineteen sixty seven, in summer in June,
Speaker 3: the Liberty deployed to the Mediterranean. And this is where
Speaker 3: it lingers technically in international waters, so they're not intruding
Speaker 3: upon sovereignty. They're in international waters near the north coast
Speaker 3: of Sinai, Egypt. And as in previous missions, they're not
Speaker 3: there to fire munitions, they're not there to try to
Speaker 3: storm the beach or anything. They just want to collect
Speaker 3: as much intelligence as possible. So why the Mediterranean, right,
Speaker 3: why West African coast to the Mediterranean.
Speaker 4: Well, historians seem to have a pretty good idea of
Speaker 4: why the Mediterranean, and that would be the infamous Six
Speaker 4: Day War, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty much everybody in the know felt something bad
Speaker 3: was in the wind, kind of like remember that scene
Speaker 3: in the Lord of the Rings adaptation where the elf
Speaker 3: legalis walks out on a promontory and says, there's a
Speaker 3: fell wind.
Speaker 4: Oh I do love a fell wind. And that's an
Speaker 4: elden ring thing too, the fell omen isn't that one
Speaker 4: of the bad guys? Margot, Margot, Margot anyway, Yeah, fell
Speaker 4: it's a good word, very very spooky.
Speaker 3: An open conflict had not broken out in the Middle
Speaker 3: East just yet, but everybody was thinking this is inevitable.
Speaker 3: It's a matter of when rather than a matter of if.
Speaker 3: The usual diplomatic off ramps are failing. So Uncle Sam, understandably,
Speaker 3: the biggest superpower post World War Two, they want to
Speaker 3: know what's going on, and they successfully predicted, as you
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, Noel, a six day war. They didn't call
Speaker 3: it that until after it was.
Speaker 5: Over, for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was not aware of the Sixth Day War.
Speaker 4: Were aware of the Hundred Years War and other spans
Speaker 4: of time, but didn't know about the Sixth Day War.
Speaker 4: So maybe some folks out there didn't either. So let's
Speaker 4: jump into what that was all about. It took place
Speaker 4: from June fifth to the tenth six days of nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty seven. It was an escalation of ongoing tension.
Speaker 5: It's been going on for so so long.
Speaker 4: It's exhausting in the Middle East, with the nation of
Speaker 4: Israel fighting a group of other countries in the region,
Speaker 4: mainly we're talking about Egypt, Syria.
Speaker 5: And Jordan.
Speaker 2: I'm not an historian, but it is a fascinating moment
Speaker 2: in history. The reason that six days is literally because
Speaker 2: of six days, but it also reminds everybody how quickly
Speaker 2: the conflict was ended by Israel, right like it was
Speaker 2: one and done. We knocked this out six days. That's
Speaker 2: what's up. It was a coalition of countries and I
Speaker 2: mean you could there's gorilla groups involved. There's just as
Speaker 2: we talk about in many of the conflicts that have
Speaker 2: occurred in the Middle East, there's money flowing into you know,
Speaker 2: groups right that end up operating and doing things and
Speaker 2: attacks taking over places like in an individual city, a town,
Speaker 2: a region. But then you also have full fledged countries
Speaker 2: that are stepping up and doing military operations. There is
Speaker 2: a lot to learn about the Six Day War. I
Speaker 2: would just put out there, and we're not going to
Speaker 2: be able to cover all of it right now, but
Speaker 2: this is we're going to give you the overview.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the quick and dirty. The quick and dirty is
Speaker 3: this Israel had already stated to the nation of Egypt
Speaker 3: that if they closed the straits of Tehran t I
Speaker 3: r a n, they would consider it a hause for
Speaker 3: a hot war, an open conflict. And they were saying
Speaker 3: this because Egypt had banned Israeli vessels from that straight earlier.
Speaker 3: The reason that's important is because the vital port of
Speaker 3: Israel El Yat is you need the street to get there,
Speaker 3: basically for shipping to happen Egypt.
Speaker 2: Before we keep going there, just think about how much
Speaker 2: this is lining.
Speaker 3: Up with.
Speaker 4: It seems like it's like a one to one with
Speaker 4: like the Straight of Hormuz, only in this case we
Speaker 4: did the action that led to the closing of the strait,
Speaker 4: whereas this was I'm curious it's maybe some a little
Speaker 4: more uh detail around why.
Speaker 5: They closed it in the first place.
Speaker 4: It didn't seem like they were provoked in the way
Speaker 4: that Iran was in this current situation.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of back and forth leading up
Speaker 3: to the Six Day War, and these nations, not the
Speaker 3: people necessarily the government, hated each other. They're an economic competition.
Speaker 3: They are both attempting regional control. That's just the truth,
Speaker 3: plainly put. And Egypt pulled Israel's bluff and they banned
Speaker 3: not all ships from the strait because they still wanted
Speaker 3: to make money, they banned all Israeli flagged ships. Israel
Speaker 3: did retaliate. They had something called Operation Focus. This was
Speaker 3: a series of concurrent air strikes and ground force movements
Speaker 3: that absolutely demolished Egypt's air force, establishing regional air supremacy.
Speaker 3: And then they entered and occupied the Snai Peninsula. It
Speaker 3: was terrible for the innocent people living on the peninsula
Speaker 3: at the time because the Egyptian government said, hey, everybody
Speaker 3: has to evacuate, and this land was overtaken. And this
Speaker 3: occupation of the Nai peninsula inspired or galvanized, we could say,
Speaker 3: other Arab nations to join with the cause of Egypt.
Speaker 3: Now they weren't all like Syria and Jordan, weren't all
Speaker 3: attacking with the same ferocity, but they were very much
Speaker 3: on on on the side of Egypt. So we've got
Speaker 3: the one nation, Israel, and then we've got the other
Speaker 3: nations responding in force. This is one the multiple fight.
Speaker 2: And again i'm I might get some of this wrong,
Speaker 2: but this is my understanding. So if we've got historians
Speaker 2: right in and tell us and we can we can
Speaker 2: fix things. But my understanding is that that is a
Speaker 2: pretty aggressive move by Egypt to say, hey, everybody could
Speaker 2: come through, but you Israel, you can't come in.
Speaker 5: That's a pretty out.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's like you know, calling calling them out
Speaker 4: and then the most you know, public way possible or
Speaker 4: at least among the coalition.
Speaker 2: But it's still not hot conflict, right, it's not.
Speaker 4: That's not a violent, dangerous It is a lead up
Speaker 4: to that, for sure.
Speaker 5: It feels like, yeah, them's fighting words, right.
Speaker 2: Last thing here is just that the attacks that that
Speaker 2: Israel carried out in response to some of this uh
Speaker 2: been the way you describe them as perfect. But there's
Speaker 2: that there's a word that's really important in here. And
Speaker 2: this is my understanding of it too in writing about it.
Speaker 2: Even the US historian on the website you can find
Speaker 2: now talks about the surprise, the nature of the surprise
Speaker 2: attacks like the not that attacks are announced. Right, it's different, right,
Speaker 2: It's it's all of a sudden, bombs are going off
Speaker 2: at an airport, an airfield, and now you can't get
Speaker 2: any flight, like you can't send anything out of that
Speaker 2: airfield anymore. And it just happens like that, and it's over.
Speaker 2: When Ben you were you were talking about gaining air superiority. Again,
Speaker 2: just the nature of it happening in a flash, rather than.
Speaker 5: Even some warning me.
Speaker 3: Again, they did say, they did say if you, if
Speaker 3: you ban Israeli vessels from the Strait, this will be
Speaker 3: caused as belly, which is the Latin phrase for reason
Speaker 3: to go to war. Egypt called their bluff and the
Speaker 3: other nation responded. And we're just being objective about that.
Speaker 3: We're not we're not trying to tilt the scales on
Speaker 3: this one, folks, but we do want you to know
Speaker 3: the context because in the midst of this sudden chaos
Speaker 3: and bloodshed what could indeed be called disproportionate response, our
Speaker 3: little USS liberty is continuing its mission and they get
Speaker 3: they get notes from I call it good stuff.
Speaker 5: I bet they're getting some good stuff during all of this.
Speaker 3: Well, they get. What was going to say is they're
Speaker 3: getting notes from their command that says, okay, scoop back
Speaker 3: a little bit further, right, make sure you're in international waters.
Speaker 2: My understanding is that on June second, so before this
Speaker 2: this whole conflict got hot, they were headed from Spain.
Speaker 2: I think there were the USS Liberty was in Spain
Speaker 2: and it was heading towards that Egyptian coast over there
Speaker 2: by the Sinai Peninsula. But so they were already, as
Speaker 2: you're saying, they were already doing their thing kind of
Speaker 2: all the way over there, and then all of this
Speaker 2: takes off. Isn't that a little I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: if their tensions happening diploma, you know, diplomatic tensions occurring
Speaker 2: openly the way it was going down, you might send
Speaker 2: your your ship over there just to check things out.
Speaker 2: Or you're saying one side.
Speaker 4: You're saying, maybe it was already in the zone because
Speaker 4: this was sort of like brewing, and it was predicted
Speaker 4: that maybe this was going to go down, and then
Speaker 4: once it really popped off, the bosses to your point, band,
Speaker 4: we're like, just pop a little scooch so you can
Speaker 4: get right out of harm's way, but stick around enough
Speaker 4: to keep those tapes rolling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again they had previous since that fell wind.
Speaker 3: That's why they were sending the Liberty in the first place,
Speaker 3: because the United States was technically a neutral country in
Speaker 3: the war, but they wanted to know what's going on.
Speaker 3: They wanted visibility Israel. According to the sources we've looked at,
Speaker 3: their government asked the US government to remove quote any
Speaker 3: vessels from its shore and end quote there. And they said, look,
Speaker 3: at a bare minimum, let us know the exact position
Speaker 3: of any US vessels in the area. So if you
Speaker 3: have some reason, Uncle Sam, that you cannot get these
Speaker 3: out of our way while we're doing this war, let
Speaker 3: us know who not to shoot. That was their message.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that in that God, that makes sense.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: Hey, we're in a hot conflict right now. We're attacking
Speaker 2: things actively with our airplanes in our or the rest
Speaker 2: of the arsenal we have. Let us know if you're
Speaker 2: going to be around, because we are shooting stuff in
Speaker 2: the moment, and people fly false flags sometimes, right. What
Speaker 2: I'm saying is somebody else could be flying an American
Speaker 2: flag potentially out there on a.
Speaker 3: Ship, and again, not an unreasonable request.
Speaker 5: Guys, I didn't really know that.
Speaker 4: So that's obviously the term false flag attack comes from
Speaker 4: this concept, but it's sometimes as simple as that as
Speaker 4: someone literally hoisting a decoy flag.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Check out our episode on Russian shadow fleets.
Speaker 5: It's been a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Nobe, I.
Speaker 2: Think think back to our experience on the Virgin Voyages cruise.
Speaker 2: And imagine looking out in the distance and seeing a ship. Yea, right,
Speaker 2: and now imagine you can look at that ship with
Speaker 2: binoculars and some high powered optics from your ship, or
Speaker 2: you can connect with them via some kind of communications. Right,
Speaker 2: How else are you going to verify who that is
Speaker 2: from that distance?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure. Now I gets the concept.
Speaker 4: I just the simple subterfuge of just hoisting an artificial flag.
Speaker 5: For lack of a better term, I just think it's so.
Speaker 2: We're responding with colms that you are of whatever nation,
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 3: And so it came to pass. On June eighth, nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty seven, Israeli forces attacked the USS Liberty. This is
Speaker 3: not a matter of speculation. This did occur. There were
Speaker 3: jet fighters bombing from the sky. Israeli naval forces were
Speaker 3: launching torpedoes. Over one hundred and seventy people on the
Speaker 3: Liberty were injured, some grievously. Thirty four crew members died
Speaker 3: on that day within about twenty three minutes to an hour.
Speaker 3: The ship is basically dead in the water. From what
Speaker 3: we understand from what has been declassified, the attacking forces
Speaker 3: led up and relented when they thought the Liberty was
Speaker 3: due to sink into the water. Make no mistake, folks,
Speaker 3: this was the deadliest assault on a US ship since
Speaker 3: World War Two. There are a bunch of inquiries.
Speaker 5: As there should have been.
Speaker 3: Well, guys, we know what they found. Both nations they concluded. Well,
Speaker 3: the government of Israel concluded that the attack was mistaken identity.
Speaker 3: It was a deadly a deadly mistake, but it was
Speaker 3: a mistake. Nonetheless, the US investigation largely agreed. They stopped
Speaker 3: short of saying it was an accident, but they definitely
Speaker 3: did not say it was malevolence. And the issue is
Speaker 3: even now people don't buy the official story.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and it's also gosh, it is wrapped up
Speaker 2: with all kinds of terrible stuff. I'm not gonna put
Speaker 2: this guy's allegations of anti Semitism if you think about
Speaker 2: this too much, or you talk about this too much.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at the Anti Defamation League's website. It's a
Speaker 2: great article which I recommend you read, The USS Liberty Incident.
Speaker 2: How a tragic mistake became an enduring anti Semitic trope.
Speaker 2: So we do know that it can be used and
Speaker 2: weaponized the topic we're talking about, this attack, this mistake,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, it can be used in a very
Speaker 2: negative way. But it is important to be able to
Speaker 2: explore a topic like this and everything that we're going
Speaker 2: to be doing today without that fear of being labeled
Speaker 2: something just because you're exploring history.
Speaker 4: It's a tricky well, it's a tricky moment now in
Speaker 4: particular for that kind of stuff, just with a lot
Speaker 4: of the division, you know, between Israel and Palestine and
Speaker 4: all of that stuff. I mean, it is kind of
Speaker 4: become this hot It has been a hot button issue
Speaker 4: for a long long time, but now in particular, I
Speaker 4: think that fear is very valid. But that is we are,
Speaker 4: of course coming at it from a place of ultimately historical,
Speaker 4: not neutrality, but just we're talking about history here.
Speaker 3: And we have to ask what actually happened. Thank you
Speaker 3: again to everybody who has written in inspiring this episode.
Speaker 3: Will be right back after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. Okay, Factually we can all
Speaker 3: agree the events themselves are pretty cut and dry. What
Speaker 3: we mean by that is we know when the attack occurred,
Speaker 3: we know that it did happen, we know the planes
Speaker 3: the aircraft, the vessels involved. We know the rough time span.
Speaker 3: I think I said this earlier, but twenty three minutes
Speaker 3: to an hour, depending upon whom you ask. We know
Speaker 3: the placing, the positioning, which was in international waters. What
Speaker 3: we don't know is way more difficult to ascertain. Why
Speaker 3: did this attack occur in the first Was it really
Speaker 3: an accident? Was it later portrayed as such to sort
Speaker 3: of calm the waters of international relationships between the US
Speaker 3: and Israel. I think it's worth noting that from the
Speaker 3: beginning the Nation of Israel apologized for the attack, has
Speaker 3: consistently always said it was basically a screw up, and
Speaker 3: their claim is that they legitimately mistook, in the fog
Speaker 3: of war, the USS Liberty for an Egyptian ship.
Speaker 4: And just to be clear, at this point in history,
Speaker 4: US and Israel were not nearly as cozy buddy buddies
Speaker 4: as we are now.
Speaker 3: Well that's an interesting question, though. They were pretty close.
Speaker 3: Maybe not for I mean, countries don't really have friends.
Speaker 3: They were pretty close because Israel was the US at
Speaker 3: the time saw it as the bulwark of democracy in
Speaker 3: the region, So this was their way in to the region.
Speaker 4: I guess what I'm asking is to understood if this
Speaker 4: were to happen today, do you think that same streak
Speaker 4: of anti Semitism and blame gamery would happen or would
Speaker 4: it be much more quickly played off and supported by
Speaker 4: the US government. That yes, in fact, it was a
Speaker 4: dreadful mistake by our dear pals.
Speaker 3: It's a tough it's a sticky wicket. It's a bag
Speaker 3: of badgers for sure. Because then is now, the US
Speaker 3: response was deeply divided. We can't even talk about the
Speaker 3: public of America just yet. We have to talk about
Speaker 3: the political class and the members of the military, some
Speaker 3: of whom immediately accepted this official explanation. A lot of
Speaker 3: people had seen war before, they know terrible mistakes occur,
Speaker 3: and they said, okay, we believe you. We are going
Speaker 3: to launch our own US led inquiry. The problem was
Speaker 3: from day one, the survivors of the attack on the
Speaker 3: USS Liberty disputed all of this, and they said very
Speaker 3: basic questions. Guys. They said, look, our signage is visible,
Speaker 3: We're an American flagged ship. There's no way this is
Speaker 3: an accident. For Pete's sake, the signage on our ship
Speaker 3: was in English. It's not in Arabic, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. And also, if you're a highly trained military,
Speaker 3: shouldn't you recognize what most of Egypt's naval forces will
Speaker 3: look like, how they will present.
Speaker 4: Ah, do you think the fog of war is always
Speaker 4: an excuse?
Speaker 5: Is more of like is it real?
Speaker 4: I know it is real, and we're literally talking about
Speaker 4: on the battlefield friendly fire type stuff. But I'm with you, man,
Speaker 4: this seems odd like they using that argument, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean in this like, I don't know, Like
Speaker 4: to Matt's point, you probably could have just used your
Speaker 4: deck but binoculars and taking a look and figured out
Speaker 4: what was going on in terms of who the ship
Speaker 4: belonged to.
Speaker 2: Well, it is weird to me. According to the Office
Speaker 2: of the Historian for the United States Government, when you
Speaker 2: can chere other website and the official stuff there it's
Speaker 2: the US Department of State Bureau of Administration.
Speaker 5: To imagine, I have to imagine it's been edited a
Speaker 5: good bed. Well in recent they've times right, they got.
Speaker 2: Well, they've got official timelines here. The CIA has done
Speaker 2: some significant writing about like trying to get to the
Speaker 2: bottom of exactly what happened. There's all kinds of sources
Speaker 2: you can find out there. The thing that that strikes
Speaker 2: me as interesting in context of this is that the
Speaker 2: ship was they call it orbited by two unidentified Delta
Speaker 2: wing single engine jet fighters, and they are presuming that
Speaker 2: these are Israeli Mirages, that's the type of vehicle, type
Speaker 2: of plane or jet, And and that happens at nine
Speaker 2: point fifty am and the attack doesn't officially start until
Speaker 2: three zero five pm, which makes me think, if you've
Speaker 2: got that amount of time elapsed between first buzzing this
Speaker 2: ship with jets theoretically to warn and to perhaps estab
Speaker 2: like fully identify the ship, that's just a lot of
Speaker 2: elapsed time. And it's curious to me. And I do
Speaker 2: wonder why that exists, why that was real. Do you
Speaker 2: think that's normal buzz by a ship and then all
Speaker 2: those hours later just do an attack, almost a surprise attack.
Speaker 3: The buzz is normal, It feels right to me. The
Speaker 3: buzz is normal for sure, and.
Speaker 4: Meaning buzz like what like just a little bit of
Speaker 4: a low fly fly by, Yeah, if you want to
Speaker 4: call it that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And we know that part of the reason we're
Speaker 3: doing this episode is because of the survivors, the people
Speaker 3: who made it. Through this thing, we know that they
Speaker 3: were as consistent and have been as consistent in their
Speaker 3: claims of a cover up. We also know that high
Speaker 3: level military minds agreed. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs
Speaker 3: of Staff at the Times, a guy named Thomas Minman Morr.
Speaker 3: He didn't. He's like a Smedley Butler level character, not
Speaker 3: so much on bedside manner. He straight up accused the
Speaker 3: President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, of knowing the
Speaker 3: official story was crap and hogwash, and he said, you potus,
Speaker 3: have hovered up the truth. He's speaking, he's speaking hard
Speaker 3: things to what is essentially kind of the King of
Speaker 3: the United States, the commander in chief. Of This debate
Speaker 3: continued for decades, and even now, as we're recording again
Speaker 3: fourteenth July twenty six, survivors and their families and their
Speaker 3: descendants they feel no justice was served. I do think
Speaker 3: it's important for us to point out that, in addition
Speaker 3: to an official apology and an official inquiry determining this
Speaker 3: was an accident, the Israeli government paid millions in compensation
Speaker 3: over decades, and pretty significant amounts of money as well.
Speaker 3: We're talking three point three two million dollars in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty eight, which is again the year after the attack,
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine. Another three point five seven million dollars
Speaker 3: in March of that year. Fast forward to nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: six million dollars in payment. This was agreed to be
Speaker 3: the final settlement payment. Plus get this guy's thirteen years
Speaker 3: of interest. I'm still weirded out about that part.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the interest, let's yeah, that's got to add up.
Speaker 2: That's a really good thing, though, Right a country, any country,
Speaker 2: recognizes they've done something wrong in an attempt to make
Speaker 2: something right, that we have to acknowledge how positive that is.
Speaker 5: I think I agree.
Speaker 2: It doesn't forgive, It doesn't forgive the you know, dead lives.
Speaker 4: It's taking responsibility at the very least and owning up
Speaker 4: to it in a way that seems like has become
Speaker 4: less and less a thing.
Speaker 3: Right, it's a blood price. Sure. I'm just not a
Speaker 3: fan of quantifying a human life well as a dollar amount.
Speaker 4: I don't think anyone's saying I just I just mean,
Speaker 4: like it seems like lately just no one will ever.
Speaker 4: It seems like no one ever admits they've made a
Speaker 4: mistake in government anymore, or in these kinds of conflicts,
Speaker 4: and this is there's something a little refreshing about the
Speaker 4: framework of this.
Speaker 2: At the very least, it does feel like it goes
Speaker 2: against the mantra of you know, never apologize, that kind
Speaker 2: of thing that we hear in power.
Speaker 3: Circles from gross people.
Speaker 2: Most people say, never apologize.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I deny and always claim victory.
Speaker 3: It always claim it was somebody else's fault. Right, the
Speaker 3: narcissist prayer, which is unfortunately very easy to look up
Speaker 3: and see an action today. As we mentioned earlier, the
Speaker 3: US had an official conclusion that largely agreed with the
Speaker 3: inquiry of the Israeli government.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: The US stopped short of calling it an accident, but
Speaker 3: did not determine purpose or malevolence. It turns out, even now,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of problems with this story. Now, folks,
Speaker 3: we talked backstage as we were recording, and we have
Speaker 3: determined that this will be a two part series, So
Speaker 3: please do stay tuned as we get into the problems
Speaker 3: with that official narrative, the questions, the further investigations. I
Speaker 3: can't wait to talk about Ward Boston, can't wait to
Speaker 3: talk about survivors like Maurice Schaeffer. We have so much
Speaker 3: more to get to. We cannot wait for you to
Speaker 3: join us, and we want to hear from you, so
Speaker 3: in advance of second chapter on the USS Liberty, we'd
Speaker 3: love your thoughts. Please find us on the line, call
Speaker 3: us on a phone. You can always send us an email.
Speaker 5: You sure can.
Speaker 4: If you want to find us on the lions, do
Speaker 4: so by reaching out to the handle's Conspiracy Stuff or
Speaker 4: Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on which of those platforms is
Speaker 4: your thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, and we have a phone number. It is one
Speaker 2: eight to three three std WYTK. It's a voicemail system.
Speaker 2: You got three minutes. Give yourself a cool nickname and
Speaker 2: let us know if we can use your name and
Speaker 2: message on one of our listener mail episodes that show
Speaker 2: up on our audio feeds where if you find those
Speaker 2: in the meantime, believe before you come back for the
Speaker 2: second episode, see if you can find the intelligence memorandum
Speaker 2: the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty put together by
Speaker 2: the CIA. It's only you can find it on the
Speaker 2: CIA dot gov website. Check that out. We love to hear,
Speaker 2: we'd love to hear your thoughts on that, in particular,
Speaker 2: as we continue to explore this topic. Hey, we have
Speaker 2: an email.
Speaker 5: We are the.
Speaker 3: Entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be
Speaker 3: well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back quick
Speaker 3: pro quo, clarice. Send us a random fact. We will
Speaker 3: send you one in return. I'd like us to end
Speaker 3: chapter one of this series with an intelligence report we'll
Speaker 3: get into in chapter two. This is a reading from
Speaker 3: an Israeli pilot to the IDF war room. It goes, quote,
Speaker 3: but sir, it's an American ship. I can see the flag.
Speaker 3: The IDF war room to the Israeli pilot responds, never mind,
Speaker 3: hit it. We'll see you out here in the dark.
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