MILITARY HISTORY BOOK REVIEW MH-122 December 2003 Edited 7/23/2003 OPERATION CYANIDE: Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III, by Peter Hounam, Vision, a division of Satin Publications, Ltd, London, 2003, $24.95 Since it reviewed A. Jay Cristol's book, THE LIBERTY INCIDENT, in August 2003, MILITARY HISTORY was bombarded with letters, including some from outraged survivors, insisting that the Israeli attack on their ship on June 8, 1967, was not in error, but deliberate (see letters, P. 8), and demanding that the guilty party confess to the crime. Absent from all such accusations, however, was a substantial explanation of motive: What would make it worth Israel's while to attack a ship -- even a spy ship -- being operated by one of its few supporters in the world? In OPERATION CYANIDE, Peter Hounam, an investigative reporter for the SUNDAY TIMES and the British Broadcasting System with 30 years' experience, presents the results of his research into the question of "who really dunnit," which evolved into more of what he called a "why dunnit." Hounam structures his book accordingly, as the reader follows him from interview to interview, gathering clues like a detective from testimonies that tend to be scattered, fragmentary, guarded and sometimes almost cryptic. As Hounam "connects the dots," however, the scenario that emerges is fantastic and yet, in view of the United States' rush to war with Iraq in 2003, not entirely implausible. In essence, President Lyndon B. Johnson and some key officials, seeing the increasingly Soviet-leaning Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser as a threat, made secret arrangements to help Israel in its coming June offensive with the intention of toppling Nasser. As part of Operation Cyanide, USS LIBERTY was sent to operate off the Sinai coast, where it was to be sunk with all hands by unmarked Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats, after which the United States would blame the attack on Egypt and launch carrier air strikes against Cairo -- with nuclear weapons if necessary. The stubborn refusal of LIBERTY'S crew to die or let their ship sink after 75 minutes of air and sea attack -- in spite of two American carrier sorties to aid her being inexplicably called back -- led to the cancellation of Operation Cyanide, Israel's apology and offer of restitution for a "tragic mistake," the Johnson Administration's swift acceptance of that explanation and an equally quick, reassuring "hot line" telephone call to Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin. The first book to seriously examine the possible reason behind the attack on USS LIBERTY, OPERATION CYANIDE presents fragmentary evidence to support an extraordinary theory. If, however, the emergence of further evidence proves its premise to be true, one cannot help but wonder if their being set up for destruction by the government they swore to serve, in the interests of starting a nuclear war based on a lie, is the sort of truth that LIBERTY'S bitter survivors were hoping for. Jon Guttman ================================================================================ BOOK REVIEW OF "OPERATION CYANIDE" By John Simpson BBC World Affairs Editor This is an extraordinary story, one of the most extraordinary, perhaps, of the entire twentieth century. Suppose, in an attempt to shore up his critically damaged presidency, Lyndon Johnson deliberately engineered an event in which American lives were sacrificed and the United States was brought disturbingly close to an all-out nuclear war with Russia? Suppose this involved a secret agreement between Israel and American intelligence, which resulted in an Israeli attack on an American naval vessel, in the latter stages of the Six-Day War? It sounds, I know, like one of those depressing conspiracy theories which cluster round every big controversial event from the death of Princess Diana to the attack on the World Trade Centre. People often have problems in handling the banality of truth, and prefer to imagine deeper, darker plots beneath the surface. Yet this book is based on careful, rigorous investigation by a well-known and respected journalist who has metic- ulously tracked down the people and the documents who have survived from the event itself: the attack on the USS Liberty, in the eastern Mediter- ranean in June 1967. As with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, four years earlier, the official version is even more unlikely than some of the conspiracy theories. In order to believe the hasty, often contradictory account which came out of Washington, you would have to accept all sorts of virtual impossibilities: that Israeli planes and torpedo boats could have mistaken a modern American warship of ten thousand tons for an elderly Egyptian horse transport less than a quarter of its size, come to within fifty feet of it without spotting that it was flying a particularly large American flag, and blazed away at it from close range for forty minutes before realizing what it was they were shooting at. A hasty American enquiry immediately afterwards called it 'a bona fide mistake.' That seems, to say the least, a little implausible. Yet this is the official version, which stands to this day. Any other version -- that of the Liberty's surviving crew members, for instance -- has been extremely hard to establish because of the intensity of the security blanket which the Israelis and Americans wrapped around the entire incident. The blanket remains in place to this day, yet this book provides sufficient evidence for any open-minded person to see that something else lies underneath: something very disturbing. I have found Peter Hounam's research compelling, and the story which unfolds in these pages rivetting. It is time a little daylight was shed on Operation Cyanide. This book does precisely that, and we should be grateful for it. John Simpson Paris October 2002