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  To explain my wrinkles, I admit that my first convocation lecture at Illinois College occurred forty years ago, twenty years before most of you were born.  Wow!  The march of years!

  The college offered me the same privilege perhaps a dozen times since, but this time I invited myself.  I did so because I have a message arising from the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and another I learned sixty-five years ago from Joe Patterson Smith, a blind Illinois College professor.  Both messages, I believe, are vitally important to everyone in this chamber. 

  Freedom of speech, the very essence of the U.S. Constitution, is the keystone of just governance everywhere and anywhere.  It is the most precious of human rights, and our history is replete with evidence that it is even more precious in wartime than in peace.  

  One day, Joe Pat, as we called him but not to his face, told his history class that integrity is the most important qualification for public office.  That message stuck in my mind ever since. 

  In those days, Franklin D. Roosevelt seemed to be America’s permanent president.  I criticized his policies in a column I wrote for the Rambler, but I believed that he had integrity.  In fact, I innocently believed that anyone elected president must have integrity to get the job.  In recent years, my confidence in both the status of free speech and presidential integrity has been shaken. 

  Our country is in great peril today, and our trouble began in terrible events that started 38 years ago in the Eastern Mediterranean, happenings that scuttled truth and free speech and concealed gross malfeasance in high office.     

  I take you back that far in history only because the lying, trickery and cover-up that occurred at that time opened flood gates of criminal behavior in Middle East policy that engulf us today.   

  You will find some of the facts I report almost beyond belief.  They are not make-believe.  They are the truth, but due to a cover-up directed from the White House for the past 38 years, the truth has surfaced only bits at a time. Let’s return to June 8, 1967.  The place?  The headquarters of the military high command in Israel. Presiding over a staff meeting was Israel’s most famous and supremely-confident warrior, General Moshe Dayan.  That day, Israel’s decisive defeat of Arab armies in the Six-day War seemed certain.  The United States, led by President Lyndon B. Johnson, was bogged down in its war in Vietnam.   I was a new member of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee.  My focus was Europe, not the Middle East.

  It was about 1p.m., Tel Aviv time.  Three hours earlier, Israeli pilots reported to headquarters that repeated, close-in reconnaissance positively identified a vessel off the coast of Gaza in international waters as the USS Liberty, an unarmed U.S. Navy intelligence-gathering ship.    

  Dayan immediately stunned his staff by ordering air and sea forces to sink the ship, even though the vessel was a military arm of the only major nation fully committed to the survival of Israel.  Dayan wanted it destroyed without a trace and ordered the assault carried out with utmost secrecy.  One of his generals remonstrated: “This is pure murder.”  Several Israeli pilots refused to attack.

  Beginning at 2 p.m., Israeli forces pounded and blistered the USS Liberty with cannon, rockets and napalm from the air and torpedoes from sea craft.  The attack instantly wrecked the ship’s communication system, and soon killed thirty-four sailors, wounded 174 others, and riddled the ship with holes.  Bodies and body parts were soon scattered on the deck.  Most of the victims were at duty stations below deck when a torpedo ripped a hole forty feet wide just below water line.  Lifeboats were lowered into the water in expectation of an abandon-ship order, but they were immediately shot to pieces by Israeli gunfire.  One more torpedo would likely have sunk the ship and its entire crew.

  After two hellish hours, the assault suddenly ended.  An act of great bravery had led to an SOS that spared the ship and what remained of its crew.  Terry Halbardier, a Liberty sailor, risked his life by mounting a long-wire antenna on the deck while it was being strafed by Israeli gunfire.  This feat enabled radiomen to broadcast a lone appeal for help before the makeshift antenna too was destroyed.  The SOS was picked up by U.S. aircraft carriers nearby, as well as by Israeli intelligence.  The SOS wrecked Dayan’s scheme to pin the blame on Egypt.  Israel had no choice.  It had to stop the assault and try to construct a plausible lie.

  Now we move to the USS America, the command ship of the aircraft carrier group.  On receiving the SOS, group commander Admiral Lawrence Geis immediately ordered fighter aircraft launched to defend the Liberty, then reported to the White House in Washington both the SOS and the aircraft launch.  

  Moments later, the admiral received the shock of his long career.  Over a radio phone, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, calling from the White House, shouted six words: “Get those planes back on deck.”  The call was relayed through a U.S. base in Morocco.  

  Tony Hart, the U.S, Navy petty officer who made the relay, heard the incredulous admiral protest:

  “Mr. Secretary, but the Liberty is under attack and needs help.”  McNamara’s response: “Get those goddam planes back on deck.”  The admiral appealed again. This time he said,

  “Sir, I respectfully wish to appeal the order to higher authority.”  McNamara’s terse response: “This order comes from highest authority.  The president is right here.  He says he doesn’t care if the whole ship sinks, he is not going to war with an ally [Israel] for a couple of sailors.  Get those planes back on deck.”   Geis ended the conversation by saying, “Aye, aye, sir.”  He ordered the planes to turn back, the first time in history that the U.S. Navy refused to answer an SOS.

  Three days later, Geis summoned to his cabin Lt. Comdr. Dave Lewis, a severely burned survivor who had been the officer in charge of the large crew that managed intelligence-gathering on the USS Liberty.  During the assault, Lewis was standing below deck about ten feet from the torpedo blast that opened the forty-foot hole in the ship’s side. 

  The explosion damaged his eardrums, seared both eyelids shut and burned his eyeballs and other parts of his body.  He survived because the blast rolled his body up in a hot but protective sheet of steel. 

  The next day, Lewis was picked up by helicopter and brought to the USS America’s sick bay, where surgical lancing reopened his eyelids.  Two days later, when Lewis arrived at the admiral’s quarters, Geis closed the door, assuring privacy for the two.  He told Lewis:  “I want someone to know I tried to get help to the Liberty.  You just happen to be that someone.”  He then repeated the entire conversation he had had with McNamara and offered another reason for summoning Lewis:  “I know there will be an effort to cover up the facts, and I wanted someone to know the facts and who said what in case I am ordered to be silent.”  The admiral paused before concluding the conversation with this curious order, “I am swearing you to secrecy on what I just said.”  Lewis kept the secret for twenty years, breaking silence only when informed of Geis’ death. 

  Now to the situation room in the basement of the White House, the morning after McNamara ordered the planes returned to deck.  President Johnson had just received a message of apology. In it, the government of Israel falsely claimed the Israeli forces believed the ship was a military vessel of Egypt. 

  In a public announcement, Johnson engaged in prevarication himself.  In it, he played down the severity of the assault and accepted Israel’s lie as the truth.  He had already issued a secret order that covered up all aspects of the tragedy.  He appointed Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd to conduct a Court of Inquiry but, at the same time, he scuttled free speech and integrity by ordering him to absolve Israel of any blame when the court’s report was written. 

  Next stop Malta, where the heavily damaged USS Liberty was berthed, then to Naples, Italy, where some survivors were billeted.  At each stop, following presidential orders, Kidd personally ordered all survivors, some still in hospital beds, to maintain absolute secrecy about their ordeal.

  He warned them that they would face court martial and imprisonment if they said anything to anybody about what happened.  They were forbidden to tell even their families.  In short, Johnson stripped Kidd of free speech and ordered him to do the same to the hapless survivors.  They were later given medals, but these were distributed in unpublicized ceremonies far from the White House.

  The official cover-up continues to this day.  The official answer to all inquiries is an official lie:  the assault on the Liberty was a tragic case of mistaken identity on the part of Israel.  Over the years, Liberty survivors have pleaded repeatedly with official bodies, individual Members of Congress and major media for full disclosure of the facts.  To no avail.

  Besides being a shocking war crime, the assault was stark ingratitude.  At the time, President Johnson was secretly providing unmarked U.S. military aircraft and personnel to aid Israel in its war against the Arabs. 

  Why did Dayan order the destruction of a U.S. Navy ship? The question remains unanswered, but here is the theory most Liberty survivors accept:  It was a cold-blooded, supremely-brazen criminal scheme intended to trick the United States into a fighting alliance with Israel against Arabs states. 

  Dayan believed Israel could get by with a monstrous hoax:  secretly destroying the USS Liberty and its crew but fixing the blame on Egypt.  He probably speculated that in a day or so after the sinking, Israeli officials would be able to display to news media Liberty wreckage that drifted ashore and point the accusing finger straight Egypt.  He was convinced that anti-Arab fury would then spur Congress into a quick war declaration against Egypt and its war partners.  With America’s forces battling at its side, Israel could reasonably expect this would consolidate its gains of Arab territory and guarantee Israel’s security far into the future. 

  Another theory, one that some survivors find plausible:  Israel decided to destroy the USS Liberty quickly, because its intelligence crew might learn Israel’s secret plans to invade Syria the next day, and disclosure might provoke a controversy that would foil the plans.  Either way, sinking the Liberty would be a high-risk gamble.  Except for the lone SOS appeal, Israel’s trickery, whatever its motive, might have worked.  In Moshe Dyan’s autobiography, he does not mention the USS Liberty. 

  Why the presidential cover up?   Johnson’s reaction is even more shocking and inexplicable than the assault itself.  Was the cover-up a frantic effort to win U.S. Jewish support for the faltering war in Vietnam?  Was the president afraid that disclosure would provoke anti-Israel outrage so powerful that all U.S. aid to Israel would cease?  Was it pressure from prominent Zionist leaders?  

  All of the above may have been factors.  Prominent Zionists Arthur and Matilda Krim were close personal advisers and companions during Johnson’s election to a full presidential term in 1964, and significantly, Matilda was almost constantly at his side in the White House or in touch by telephone throughout the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war that included, of course, the assault on the Liberty. 

  Johnson was the first U.S. president since Truman to display strong support of Israel.  As president, Dwight Eisenhower forced Israel to back down from illegal acts, including its 1956 election-eve invasion of Egypt. 

  During John F. Kennedy’s successful campaign for the presidency in 1960, he refused a proposal made by a group of New York Zionists.  They offered to finance his campaign if he would promise, if elected, to let them control Middle East policy.

  Was it fear?  By the time of the assault on the Liberty, U.S. pro-Israel groups had already effectively redefined anti-Semitism to include any criticism of Israel.  Accordingly, almost all U.S. citizens—especially politicians—have a haunting fear of being charged with anti-Semitism, that is, doing something or saying something that could be construed as being unfriendly to Israel.

  Ambassador George W. Ball once cited the reckless charge of anti-Semitism as the most powerful instrument of intimidation used by Israel’s U.S. lobby. 

  All presidents since Kennedy have treated Israel as if it is either sacrosanct or 220-voltage.  They have recognized that Israel’s U.S. lobby is highly organized, politically powerful, aggressive, and successful.  The intimidation is not limited to federal officials. 

  Today, almost everyone is uneasy when Israel is mentioned in other than laudatory tones.  Everyone can find an excuse to avoid even the slightest public criticism of Israeli behavior.  It is a sobering example of censorship, unofficial but effective—a troubling illustration of the price the American people pay when free speech is stifled.

  Forced to make a quick decision in the Liberty crisis, Johnson may have concluded that covering up the truth would cause no long-term harm to America’s vital interests.  If so, it was a dreadful blunder.

  The cover-up marked a major turning point in U.S. foreign policy, not just a blip on history’s screen.  It prompted small Israel, acting through its powerful lobbying apparatus in the United States, to take firm control of mighty America’s Middle East policies and engage broadly and brazenly in criminal activity. It convinced Israeli leaders, beyond any lingering doubt, that the Jewish state could literally get by with murder—even of defenseless U.S. sailors—without disturbing America’s unconditional support.  

  The cover-up showed that Israel could draw blood from its American patrons to feed its own scofflaw ambitions for territorial conquest.  Israel could violate property and human rights—even deliberately break the bones of teenagers, bulldoze homes and orchards, pen up Palestinians behind high walls of their own property, thumb its nose at rules of the International Court of Justice, Geneva institutions, and its solemn obligations under the United Nations Charter with scarcely a murmur of complaint from its chief beneficiary.  For Israel, the rule of the lawless replaced the rule of law.

  The cover-up cleared the decks for massive U.S. aid to Israel.  It set virtually a sky’s-the-limit precedent for tapping the U.S. Treasury, the Defense Department’s munitions stockpiles, and all of America’s top-secret technology.  

  The aid began to soar in all forms—financial, military and diplomatic.  All of it was unconditional and remains so today.  

  No rules or strings are attached.   U.S. officials are even denied the usual authority to monitor how aid money is spent.  Israel demonstrates its command of the U.S.-Israeli relationship in various ways.  One is especially ugly:  Israel occasionally tortures detained U.S. citizens, even teenagers, with impunity.    

  This calamitous criminal tide is the byproduct of President Johnson’s fateful cover-up.  And the original, root cause of this horror is the disappearance of free speech and integrity in the making of U.S. Middle East policy.  For years, there has been no real debate, no unfettered exchange of opinion, no thorough discussion of this vital of policy anywhere in our government.  

  There is no dip in U.S. aid even when Israeli prime ministers publicly defy U.S. presidents, as they occasionally do.  Our officials routinely look the other way when Israel steals secrets.  The imprisonment of Jonathan Pollard was the exception that proves the rule.  These crimes get little attention in our thoroughly intimidated major media, but the rest of the world sees our Congress as a bunch of trained poodles that jump through a hoop held by Israel.  Once revered worldwide, America is now reviled.   

  Two powerful religion-driven lobbies are prominent in Israel’s entry into bold criminality.  One consists of a relatively small group of Jewish zealots, whose most prominent and effective voice is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC], founded a half-century ago.  Its membership is relatively small, consisting mainly of secular Jews often called Zionists and others who are ultra-Orthodox.  The other lobby, whose influence emerged in the last twenty years, consists of millions of fundamentalist Christians who accept a controversial interpretation of the Bible’s Book of Revelations.  This lobby is loosely-organized but effective, with televangelists like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell providing most of the leadership.

  Both groups contend that present-day Israel is a central part of God’s plan and must be kept strong and united until the arrival on earth of each group’s messiah.  The two have political power so great that Congress dutifully appropriates billions to Israel.

  This occurs year after year, without conditions or serious discussion, much less real debate.  Their grip on our government is unhealthy for the well-being of Israel and the United States, as well as for Christianity and Judaism. 

  What is best for America in the Middle East is never examined on Capitol Hill or in the executive branch, much less given the priority it deserves.  I know.  I was a Member of Congress for twenty-two years.  I have followed the grim scene closely ever since. 

  The bitter fruit of this bias is bad policy, gross favoritism on behalf of one small nation, Israel, and against all other states in the region.  The financial cost is not the greatest price of this bias, but it is immense.   A study in the Christian Science Monitor places the cost of U.S. aid to Israel since 1975 at $1.6 trillion, the equivalent of $320,000 for each citizen of Israel.  Per capital aid to Arab states during that period is slightly above zero.

  This policy bias could not have occurred, even for a year, if free speech had prevailed on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Any U.S. president in the last 38 years could have prevented 9/11 simply by suspending all U.S. aid until Israel vacated the territory it has held illegally since 1967.

  If the truth about the assault on the Liberty had been officially disclosed--if surviving crewmen had been permitted to exercise the right of free speech--public outrage would have forced a major change in the U.S.-Israeli relationship.  Future U.S. aid would be tied to firm conditions and to accountability rules like those demanded of all other recipients of U.S. aid.   

  Israel would not have been lured into lawbreaking by protective, unconditional U.S. support.  Years ago, I heard Moshe Dayan state that Israel would have no choice but to obey U.S. demands if they were firm conditions of eligibility for U.S. aid.   

  After many years in politics, I am convinced that America’s gravest burden today is the quiet but firm domination of our Middle East policy by these two religion-driven lobbies and their associates.  Their power is an unprecedented phenomenon that reaches far broader and deeper than the USS Liberty and its crew, important as their fate is to hundreds of families and to the proud annals of the U.S. Navy. 

  Liberty survivors are hurting.  Palestine is hurting.  Israel is hurting.  America is hurting.  You are I are hurting.  For this hurt, guilt must be shared.  Israeli leaders are guilty of criminal activity.  Our Members of Congress and President George W. Bush are guilty of supporting this criminal activity.  So were every Congress and every president beginning with the Lyndon Johnson administration.  I am among the guilty.   While a Member of Congress, I frequently criticized Israel and urged President Jimmy Carter to suspend all aid to Israel, but in the end, I voted for this aid.  I should have voted no every time. 

  What can you do to get America’s Middle East policy back on the high road where it belongs?  Go back to scholastic and work-a-day chores?  Of course.   But as opportunities arise, seek civilized discussion of our Israeli relationship with any one who will listen. 

  Robust debate of U.S. Middle East policy—especially within our political system—is absolutely necessary.  We must liberate ourselves from the suffocating mystique that enables religion-driven lobbies to stifle free speech.  You can help.  Each of you should enter America’s political mainstream.  Promote free speech, unfettered debate.  

  Climb the political ladder and, as you do, offer integrity as your foremost qualification.  Each of you can make a difference.  You can help restore the strength of the U.S. Constitution and its precious bill of rights, of which the most precious is the freedom to speak without fear.  It is a cause worthy of your urgent attention.  Get involved.  Never, never give up.