The average American taxpayer would likely find it hard to reconcile a settlement of less than two cents on the dollar in the case of the Liberty with our recent large-scale support for Israel.
—CONFIDENTIAL STATE DEPARTMENT LETTER
Family, friends, and shipmates gathered on the banks of the Potomac River at Arlington National Cemetery on a warm August morning to bury the last of the Liberty’s dead. Two tents set up along either side of the grave sheltered rows of folding chairs that protected grieving families from the summer sun. Women in dark knee-length dresses sobbed in the shade, comforted by men in business suits. A single casket suspended over the fresh grave held little more than bone fragments and tissue—shoveled into body bags two months earlier in Malta—of five sailors and one Marine vaporized by the torpedo. The casket and funeral served largely as a symbolic gesture.
Taps soon sounded over the rolling hills of the cemetery as the morning service, performed according to Catholic and Protestant traditions, concluded. Officers in formal Navy whites saluted the flag-draped coffin. Some of the men in suits placed their right hands over their hearts. Others bowed their heads. Seventy-four days after a torpedo ripped open the side of the Liberty—and nearly six thousand miles from where it happened—the remains of the men were lowered into the ground. The rectangular headstone that marked the new grave read: “DIED IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN.”
Few newspapers covered the funeral. The press, like much of the country, focused elsewhere. Race riots recently had rocked more than one hundred cities, including Detroit, Newark, and Milwaukee, triggering a presidential commission and congressional probes. News stories depicted armored personnel carriers and even tanks rolling past looted stores. Others showed smoldering city blocks and bloodied bodies strewn on sidewalks. A photo published in U.S. News & World Report in early August showed National Guardsmen crouched behind a jeep in Detroit, battling rooftop snipers in what the magazine described as a “guerrilla war.” Newsweek’s cover that same week displayed an urban inferno beneath the headline “Battlefield, U.S.A.”
Beyond the riots, the war in Vietnam slogged on and President Johnson’s approval ratings plummeted. An August 13 poll showed that only 39 percent of Americans approved of the president, down nine points from May and marking Johnson’s lowest approval rating during his forty-five months in office. A poll released a week later revealed that potential Republican presidential candidate George Romney boasted an eight-point lead over the president in the race for the White House. Johnson’s political future appeared dim. At his Texas ranch a few weeks later, the president confided in his friend Texas governor John Connally that he would not run again.
The president, a virtual prisoner in the White House and at his ranch because of the Vietnam War protesters, watched as his team of advisers continued to unravel. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who popped sleeping pills some nights and faced mounting doubts over the winnability of Vietnam, stepped down in November after nearly seven years at the head of the Pentagon. McNamara, who became president of the World Bank, would later write that he was not sure whether he resigned or was fired. One thing was clear: the two men had grown apart. Johnson felt isolated. “I have seldom felt as sorry for him,” Lady Bird confessed in her diary. “The sense of loneliness and separation is deep.”
Against this backdrop of dour news, the Liberty faded.
Newsweek, which broke the story that many senior American leaders believed Israel had deliberately targeted the ship, reported in August on McNamara’s closed-door session with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The magazine noted in a one-paragraph column that the defense secretary was “satisfied that the strafing of the U.S. ship Liberty by Israeli pilots during the Mideast war was unintentional.” The article failed to mention McNamara’s efforts to stifle debate in the contentious session, the frustrated questions of the senators, or Hickenlooper’s declaration that he believed the attack was a “deliberate assault.”
The magazine reported the next week that Israel’s investigation had exonerated the attackers. The Israeli report merited only a four-sentence brief. The magazine printed the Israeli claims that the Liberty had refused to identify itself and that the attackers mistakenly confused it with an Egyptian cargo ship, claims that had been discredited by the American government. “An Israeli court of inquiry has just concluded that the Liberty was attacked because she greatly resembled an Egyptian supply ship known to be in the area,” Newsweek wrote. “Moreover, the Israelis say that when the Liberty was asked to identify herself, she replied: ‘Identify yourself first.’”
Newsweek printed a follow-up story in May 1968, explaining in more detail Israel’s account of the attack, but the magazine again failed to question what many in Washington viewed as serious discrepancies. U.S. News & World Report, in a story that also appeared that month based on diplomatic accounts, took a more tempered approach, spotlighting the differences between the Israeli and American investigations. Neither article questioned why no one was ever punished. “Why didn’t the Israelis take more time to confirm the ship’s identity?” the article asked. “Military experts make this point to explain: One of the reasons Israel is alive is that it strikes quickly, asks questions later.”
Several congressmen rallied for answers as 1967 waned.
The day after the mass burial at Arlington, Republican representative H. R. Gross demanded to know if American taxpayers were bankrolling Israeli reparations or had provided the weapons used against the Liberty. Unbeknownst to the Iowa congressman, a preliminary Navy analysis two months earlier found that torpedo boat gunners had targeted the spy ship with 40-mm tracer rounds made in the United States. “Is this Government now, directly or indirectly, subsidizing Israel in the payment of full compensation for the lives that were destroyed, the suffering of the wounded, and the damage from this wanton attack?” Gross asked. “It can well be asked whether these Americans were the victims of bombs, machine gun bullets and torpedoes manufactured in the United States and dished out as military assistance under foreign aid.”
On September 19, Louisiana Democratic representative John Rarick protested the failure of the government and national press to investigate the Liberty. He inserted into the record a couple of articles that raised questions about the attack and a resolution approved at the American Legion’s recent national convention in Boston that demanded the government “conduct a complete and thorough investigation.” “The more the case is studied the more questions occur. Who planned the attack on the Liberty, and why was it made? Why has the report of the naval court of inquiry not been made public?” Rarick asked. “I submit that the attack on the Liberty warrants a full and complete investigation by the Congress.”
Republican representative Craig Hosmer of California—one of only two lawmakers to challenge the Navy’s censored report when it was first published—in October inserted into the Congressional Record a letter he wrote to the State Department and Defense Department, demanding answers about the attack and the status of Israel’s reparations. “Inasmuch as American lives were lost, American sailors were injured, and an American naval vessel was severely damaged by the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, it seems to me that the U.S. Government by this time should be in a position to say something definitive about the whole affair,” Hosmer said. “The U.S.S. Liberty incident is, at this point, by no means satisfactorily closed.”
When lawmakers considered spending nearly $6 million to build schools in Israel in November, Representative Gross interrupted the debate and returned to his previous concerns over Liberty reparations. “Does the gentleman mean to tell me that we are going to embark upon this multimillion-dollar program in Israel before there is a settlement for this loss of life, pain and anguish to the wounded, and damage to the vessel,” Gross demanded of his colleague, Representative Otto Passman, a Louisiana Democrat. “I will say to the gentleman that as far as I am concerned not one dollar of U.S. credit or aid of any kind would go to Israel until there is a firm settlement with regard to that attack and full reparations have been made.”
Gross introduced an amendment the next day to block aid to Israel until it “provides full and complete reparations for the killing and wounding of more than 100 United States citizens in the wanton, unprovoked attack.” Passman objected and demanded Gross explain his amendment.
Gross countered that his amendment was “self-explanatory.” “It simply means that none of the funds provided in this bill shall go to the State of Israel until that Government provides full and fair reparations for the more than 100 U.S. servicemen who were killed and wounded—I believe some 34 or 35 were killed and another 75 or 80 were wounded—in the unprovoked attack by Israel’s military forces upon the U.S.S. Liberty.”
Democratic representative Clarence Long of Maryland defended Israel, arguing that the Jewish state had promised to pay the families and should be given time to do so. “Is it not the purpose of the gentleman’s amendment simply to give a slap in the face to a friendly country that has already admitted it made a mistake and has offered to make full reparations?” Long demanded. “I ask the gentleman if he is willing to give them time and not to insult somebody gratuitously.”
“This is not an insult,” Gross replied. “Let them first compensate those to whom they caused so much pain and anguish.”
Long refused to relent. “If this is not an insult, I would like to hear from the gentleman what he regards as an insult.”
“I wonder how you would feel if you were the father of one of the boys who was killed or maimed on that U.S. naval vessel,” Gross replied. “I do not know what kind of descriptive word you would use to express your feeling in that connection—or perhaps you do not have any feeling with respect to these young men who were killed, wounded and maimed, or their families.”
Moments later, Gross’s amendment failed.
Long’s confidence in Israel’s willingness to pay its debts for the Liberty proved premature. At 10:30 A.M. on March 25, 1968—more than nine months after the attack—Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yitzhak Rabin arrived in the seventh-floor office of Nicholas Katzenbach, the State Department’s second in command. After serving as the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces during the Six-Day War, Rabin had replaced Avraham Harman as ambassador to the U.S. in February 1968. Many Israelis believed that Rabin “incarnated the narrative of Israel’s courageous fight for independence.”
State Department lawyers sensed trouble with Rabin’s visit. Washington lawyer David Ginsburg accompanied him. Throughout the summer and fall of 1967, U.S.-government lawyers had calculated claims on behalf of the wives, children, and parents of the thirty-four men killed on the Liberty. The American Embassy in Tel Aviv had presented the Israeli government with a bill for $3.3 million on December 29. In its accompanying note, the State Department urged Israel to promptly pay in “view of the substantial economic hardship suffered by these claimants.” Israel responded by hiring Ginsburg.
Deputy State Department legal adviser Carl Salans, who drafted the earlier analysis highlighting the myriad discrepancies between the reports of the Israeli and American investigations, dashed off a memo to Katzenbach days before the meeting with Rabin. Salans was blunt. “We clearly do not want to encourage a protracted nit-picking and haggling exercise. An extended ‘negotiation’ over the death claims would result in considerable delay and added hardship for the claimants and would, we think, be severely criticized in Congress,” he advised Katzenbach. “We should again urge the Israelis to proceed expeditiously with payment of the death claims.”
Rabin began by stating that Israel “accepted in principle the obligation to pay the claims, but that more than half the compensation claimed related to shock and emotional anguish.” Rabin said the Israeli government wanted to know how the United States quantified emotional anguish. Ginsburg then elaborated. The veteran lawyer said Israel was willing to pay $1.54 million for loss of support, but described shock and mental anguish as an “arbitrary figure.” He also pointed out that Israel still faced claims for the injured and the Liberty repairs, figures the American government had not yet calculated.
Katzenbach responded “that the death claims had been presented first out of humanitarian considerations.” Some of the families, the undersecretary said, had a “genuine financial need.” The remaining claims for the injured demanded more time to compile. The government still did not know the full extent of the injuries in some cases or did not have long-term medical care estimates. Katzenbach again “urged that the Government of Israel not hold up the death claims.” Congress was concerned most, he warned, with compensation for the families of the dead.
If Israel agreed to pay an “arbitrary figure” for emotional anguish, Rabin said he feared it might set a precedent forcing it to “accept other arbitrary figures, such as that for pain and suffering in the personal injury cases.” Ginsburg said he wanted details of how the United States determined the figures for emotional anguish in the death cases and asked for the formula the government planned to use for the personal injury cases and an estimate of the Liberty repair bill. The embassy’s lawyer added that federal statutes don’t recognize payments for emotional anguish in claims against the United States. Why should Israel have to pay?
Katzenbach again emphasized that Israel should pay the death claims immediately rather than wait for the other claims. State Department officials warned Rabin after the meeting that any delays would spark victims to “redouble efforts through congressional and other channels to insure their claims not being sidetracked. This could seriously agitate issue of Liberty attack at time when it has generally subsided.” The threat didn’t sway Rabin, who “seemed unimpressed by political risks involved.”
State Department lawyers outlined on several occasions in the following weeks how the United States calculated the $3.3 million claim. Israel still waffled. As the one-year anniversary of the attack approached, the Jewish state proposed a compromise. Israel wanted to use the same formula the American government used to pay death claims for service members. State Department lawyers calculated that Israel’s proposal slashed its total compensation to $1.25 million. The proposal would hit the parents of unmarried sailors the hardest, cutting payments from $20,000 each to $5,000 each.
State Department officials fumed. The Liberty men didn’t die in a combat zone or a war in which the United States was involved. The Liberty sailed in international waters with an American flag on a clear day. Liberty sailors had a reasonable expectation of safety. “We think this proposal entirely misconceives the legal situation,” the State Department’s top lawyer wrote in a memo to Katzenbach. “The payments provided for in United States legislation are in no way related to liability of another government under international law to pay compensation for wrongful death.”
Some in the State Department advocated that if necessary, the United States could have a “public airing” of Israel’s refusal to pay. Pressure mounted as the days passed and the first anniversary of the attack approached. The public and members of Congress continued to harass the State Department, demanding to know if Israel had paid its reparations. On May 27—354 days after its pilots and skippers strafed and torpedoed the Liberty—Israel relented and wrote a check to the United States treasurer for $3,323,500. The two-paragraph press release issued at noon the next day stated that as soon as the check was deposited in the treasury, families would be paid.
On July 3 the United States billed Israel $7,644,146 for the Liberty’s repairs. Lawyers still calculated injury claims. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran an article stating that Israel expected America to reconsider whether it owed further reparations since the Pentagon had failed to order the Liberty farther from shore. “It has become clear that the U.S. Naval Command realized that a ship that is virtually in the midst of a battle zone endangers herself and therefore the order was given to the ship to get away,” the article read. “It is believed in Jerusalem that the U.S. is likely to take that fact into account when she submits further claims to Israel.”
The article, immediately translated and forwarded to the State Department, foreshadowed Israel’s new legal theory to avoid claims, a theory it formally presented two weeks later in a note to the American Embassy in Tel Aviv. Israel now stated that various investigations of the attack exonerated the Jewish state of any liability. The previous $3.3 million payment to the families of the dead, Israel now claimed, “was motivated by humanitarian considerations relating to the economic hardship suffered by the families of the deceased.”
Israel’s posture outraged Rusk, who called it “totally unacceptable.” The United States refused to accept Israel’s claim that it was “not legally liable for death and material damage resulting from attack.” Furthermore, Rusk wrote that no evidence had arisen in any inquiry exonerating Israel from paying. The secretary of state threatened that the United States would release Israel’s note to the press. “We have not made either fact of receipt or contents known to public or to Congress,” he warned. “If necessary, we will respond formally.”
Israel backtracked. Its Foreign Ministry asked that the note be returned and forgotten. In March 1969 the United States presented claims on behalf of injured sailors. Israel paid the full $3,566,457 a month later, a figure that included $92,437 to reimburse the government for medical care and $21,745 to pay for ruined personal property. Awards ranged from a few hundred dollars for sailors with minor wounds to some in excess of $100,000 for more severe injuries, which included brain damage in one case and the loss of a kidney in another. Then the United States returned to the $7,644,146 bill for the Liberty’s repairs.
Israel ignored it.
Various memos and telegrams reveal the frustration the State Department faced, describing Israel as “evasive” and “petulant.” A telegram to the American Embassy in Tel Aviv urged the diplomats to remind Israel that its “unresponsive attitude towards this claim will not lead to its being forgotten.” In August 1971, Israel secretly offered the United States the token sum of $100,000, about 1.5 cents on the dollar. Walworth Barbour, the American ambassador to Israel, urged that the United States accept the deal. Others disagreed. Israel’s lowball offer was an insult. “The suggested sum is so small as to call clearly for a courteous rejection out of hand,” wrote Heywood Stackhouse, then the State Department’s country director for Israel and Arab-Israel affairs. “We think it better to keep the claim outstanding than to make a settlement unsatisfactory in so many ways. It would not be a serious irritant in our relations, and it would be a continuing reminder we are not that easy a mark.”
The issue dragged on for years. Lawmakers and the press finally began asking questions in 1977 when the Liberty repair bill showed up as outstanding debt on the annual claims report of money owed by foreign governments submitted to Congress. The State Department hustled to come up with a deal, but negotiations stalled again as the United States soon focused on the Camp David peace process. By 1980, Israel’s bill had climbed to $17,132,709, a figure that included $9,488,563 in interest. Democratic senator Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, chairman of the Senate select subcommittee on the collection and production of intelligence, threatened a congressional investigation. “Since this ship was on an intelligence mission, I intend to use the subcommittee as a means of looking into this matter further, to try to determine belatedly what the truth is,” he told a reporter. “Those sailors who were wounded, who were eyewitnesses, have not been heard from by the American public.”
Israel offered to settle for $6 million, payable in three annual installments of $2 million. The final offer was less than the original bill for damages. The United States, weary of the negotiations, accepted the deal in December 1980. Thirteen years had passed since the attack and nearly eight years since President Johnson had died of a heart attack at his Texas ranch. The New York Times wrote in a front-page story that the United States and Israel “had finally closed the book on one of the most divisive issues between the two countries.” Stevenson dropped his proposed investigation.
Former secretary of state Rusk challenged the idea that the issue was dead in a 1981 letter to one of the Liberty’s officers. Rusk wrote that he believed the attack “was and remains a genuine outrage.” Despite the years of negotiations, he added that he felt Israel did not pay enough to the families of the men killed or the survivors. Rusk was pragmatic. The bill for the ship was the least important: “It was not a major point because, in light of our aid programs for Israel, we would, in effect, be paying ourselves.”
Captain William McGonagle sipped coffee with Secretary of the Navy Paul Ignatius and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Thomas Moorer at the Washington Navy Yard on the morning of June 11, 1968. The Navy had chosen to honor McGonagle with the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for heroism, on this day. The skipper dressed for the occasion in his formal whites. The government offered to pay the transportation and hotel costs for McGonagle’s siblings to attend the 11:30 A.M. ceremony in the sail loft. McGonagle’s wife, three children, and mother-in-law also came, as did some of the Liberty’s remaining officers and crewmembers who lived in the Washington area.
The forty-two-year-old skipper, recently promoted to the rank of captain, had relinquished responsibility for the Liberty eight months earlier. McGonagle now commanded the U.S.S. Kilauea, a new twenty-knot ammunition ship built by General Dynamics in a Massachusetts shipyard. A little more than a year earlier, as the Liberty trolled the west coast of Africa, McGonagle had feared his career was over. Now it had soared. The Los Angeles Times noted his heightened status in a story on his promotion: “Command of a new ship is considered a career plum in the Navy.” But the Navy readied its greatest plum for McGonagle this morning.
The Medal of Honor often is awarded posthumously because of the extraordinary criteria required to earn it. Those service members fortunate enough to survive combat traditionally are invited to the White House, where the president presents the medal. President Johnson often performed the ceremony, personally placing the medal around the neck of each recipient. Johnson presented at least nine Medals of Honor during the first half of 1968. He had dined with the parents of a deceased recipient in March. Less than a month before McGonagle’s ceremony, the president presented medals to four servicemen simultaneously—one from each branch of the military—at the dedication of the Pentagon’s new Hall of Heroes.
McGonagle would not be so fortunate. The Liberty remained too politically sensitive for the administration even a year later and after Johnson’s announcement that he would not run for reelection. James Cross, the president’s senior military aide, delivered McGonagle’s citation and a Presidential Unit Citation for the rest of the crew to the president for his signature on May 15. Cross urged Johnson not to present either award in person. The president signed both citations that afternoon, then followed Cross’s advice. “Due to the nature and sensitivity of these awards, Defense and State officials recommend that both be returned to Defense for presentation, and that no press release regarding them be made by the White House.”
The president instead visited former president Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, and Senator Richard Russell at the Walter Reed Army Hospital the morning of McGonagle’s ceremony. During his ten-minute visit with Russell, Johnson presented the Georgia Democrat with a signed copy of his speeches, To Heal and to Build, scribbling inside: “To my friend Dick Russell with appreciation.” The president returned to the White House afterward, less than four miles from the Washington Navy Yard, where he presided over the graduation ceremony of the Capitol Page School in the East Room. Too concerned about domestic politics to present the nation’s highest award for heroism, the commander in chief instead handed out diplomas to high school students.
Admiral Moorer, who would go on to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, years later wrote that he had attended numerous Medal of Honor ceremonies at the White House. The four-star admiral, who was often outspoken in his belief that the Israelis deliberately targeted the Liberty, described the president’s refusal to present McGonagle his award as a “back-handed slap.” “They had been trying to hush it up all the way through,” Moorer said of McGonagle’s award. “The way they did things I’m surprised they didn’t just hand it to him under the 14th Street Bridge.”
McGonagle never publicly questioned why the president did not present him his medal. He remained a loyal officer, reluctant to challenge his superiors. He refused efforts years later by some of his crew to have his medal represented at the White House. “I do not feel that I ‘earned’ or ‘won’ the Medal that was bestowed on me,” he wrote to one of his crewmembers. “As far as I am concerned, I did no more than fulfill my duties and responsibilities as Commanding Officer, as set forth in U.S. Navy Regulations.”
The skipper’s reserved demeanor masked his private feelings. Handwritten notes in his personal files show that McGonagle later researched how other service members were awarded their medals. He appeared to locate only two others during that era who, like him, failed to receive medals in person from the president. On a single sheet of unlined paper, McGonagle listed their names: Captain Harvey Barnum, Jr., followed by 1st Lieutenant Walter Marm, Jr. Beneath them, he simply wrote: “ME.”
McGonagle kept any concerns he had to himself on this June morning in the Washington Navy Yard. As the men sipped coffee the secretary of the Navy commended McGonagle for saving the Liberty. The skipper, as he always did, demurred. The honor belonged to his men. Secretary of the Navy Ignatius disagreed. “When you and Admiral Moorer have finished your coffee,” Ignatius ordered, “we’re going to go right out there and we’re going to have this ceremony.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” McGonagle replied.
McGonagle, surrounded by friends, family, and Liberty crewmembers, listened as the National Anthem played. Moorer then read the medal citation, recounting how the skipper, despite his injuries, had remained at the helm of his battered ship until help arrived nearly seventeen hours later. Like the vaguely worded tombstone in Arlington that marked the mass grave of Liberty sailors, McGonagle’s citation never mentioned Israel, nor was the Jewish state identified as the attacker in the ceremony, a fact the Chicago Tribune noted in an article the next day.
“Despite continuous exposure to fire, he maneuvered his ship, directed its defense, supervised the control of flooding and fire, and saw to the care of the casualties,” Moorer read. “Captain McGonagle’s extraordinary valor under these conditions inspired the surviving members of the Liberty’s crew, many of them seriously wounded, to heroic efforts to overcome the battle damage and keep the ship afloat.”
Ignatius turned to McGonagle afterward. The secretary of the Navy, against a backdrop of whirring cameras, placed the Medal of Honor around the skipper’s neck. The five-pointed gold star, suspended from a blue ribbon, rested just beneath McGonagle’s chin. The son of a sharecropper-turned-janitor, the man who had guided his ship to safety by the North Star, lowered his head and wept.
The Liberty’s voyage home from Malta proved its last. The spy ship languished alongside a Virginia pier throughout 1967 and the first half of 1968. The $162,608 the Navy spent to patch the torpedo and shell holes in Malta—the minimum required to allow the Liberty to steam home—was a fraction of the estimated $7.6 million needed to fix its battered hull and restore its electrical and mechanical systems. Those extra millions the United States sought from Israel seemed less likely to materialize each day as Israel haggled with the United States over the bill.
Ensign Dave Lucas’s journal reveals the routine life of the men still on board the Liberty as the summer gave way to fall, then winter. Some sailors left to attend Navy training programs while others studied for promotions and high school equivalency exams. The remaining sailors swabbed decks, chipped paint, and cleaned filters. Others inventoried the narcotics locker, audited the ship’s post office, and stood watch. Days off were plentiful.
The Navy continued to reassign officers and crewmembers as it became increasingly clear the Liberty would not sail again. Dr. Kiepfer departed for a hospital residency in Boston. The Navy dispatched Painter to Germany. Golden and Watson soon departed. Scott shipped off to Vietnam along with many other Liberty crewmembers. The wardroom, where men had traded stories over coffee and cigarettes, soon hosted many of the farewell dinners.
McGonagle returned to the Liberty one morning in June 1968 to award medals to some of his remaining men. The Medal of Honor presented to him only days earlier dangled from his neck as McGonagle once again climbed the spy ship’s gangway. The morning breeze blew the smell of creosote across the Liberty’s port quarter as the former skipper walked down the line, pinning medals on the uniforms of his men. Family members trailed behind, snapping photos.
The Navy awarded more than two hundred Purple Hearts to the Liberty’s injured and to the families of the deceased, a staggering figure considering that the ship’s crew totaled less than three hundred. The Navy also awarded more than forty medals for heroism and exemplary service, including the Navy Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star, and the Navy Commendation Medal. Some of the medals were posthumous, including Navy Crosses, an award second only to the Medal of Honor, for Francis Brown and Philip Armstrong, Jr.
McGonagle presented the Silver Star—the nation’s third-highest award for heroism—to Lucas, Golden, and Richard Brooks. Ten other Liberty officers and crewmembers also were awarded medals. In small ceremonies elsewhere reassigned crewmembers Kiepfer, Scott, Larkins, and Lockwood, among others, received Silver Stars.
For the collective effort to save the ship the Navy honored the entire crew with the Presidential Unit Citation, the nation’s highest award for a military unit. The Virginian-Pilot noted in a story about the June ceremony that the scars from the assault a year earlier largely were gone. “The ship looked good, dressed for the occasion, with the only hint of the attack in the many patches of new paint,” the paper wrote. “But it was really a day for the men.”
The sailors sipped punch, ate cookies, and posed for pictures with McGonagle after the awards ceremony. Shortly before the skipper left, someone asked him to share his thoughts on the attack. He declined: “What I have to say, I’ve already said.” McGonagle refused to speak of the attack again, other than to congratulate the efforts of his crew, until he returned to Arlington twenty-nine years later to meet with his men one last time shortly before his death.
Many Liberty crewmembers correctly speculated that the Navy would mothball the spy ship. The men prepared final reports, collected charts, publications, and clocks and audited the cash in the ship’s post office. The Liberty’s engineers opened the valves and removed the nuts, bolts, and gaskets, sealing each inside bags and wiring them in place in case the Navy reactivated the ship. Crews opened the inside hatches to dehumidify the ship and coated the gears with Cosmoline to prevent rust.
The echo of voices down the narrow passageways soon fell silent. The smell of eggs, fried one hundred at a time, no longer flooded the mess deck each morning. Gone was the hum of the engines that had lulled many men to sleep as the ship steamed the oceans. The Liberty would never sail again. The Pentagon dismantled the spy ship program the following year. In December 1970, the Navy removed the Liberty from its registry. It was then sold to the Boston Metals Company in Baltimore for $101,667. Metal cutters later broke it down for scrap.
Sailors scavenged for souvenirs long before the Liberty reached the scrap yard. Men cut up the African mahogany rails, handcrafted by the Liberty’s first skipper and still burned and peppered with shrapnel, into two-inch blocks. Other sailors collected tattered flags that once flew from the ship’s mast along with Zippo lighters adorned with the ship’s insignia of an eagle clutching the Liberty bell in its talons. Many sailors clung to bits of twisted shrapnel and machine gun bullets from the attack. Mac Watson took the bloodstained log.
The few remaining officers and crewmembers gathered a final time on board the deck of the Liberty to decommission it at 11 A.M. on June 28, 1968. The spy ship was tied up alongside Pier Bravo in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. During a quiet ceremony on a hot summer morning, the Liberty’s executive officer read the ship’s history, from its naming in honor of ten American cities and towns to the final attack that killed thirty-four men and injured nearly two hundred others. Some of the families of the deceased listened in the audience. Another officer read the decommissioning order. The skipper lowered the Liberty’s flag and a chaplain offered a final prayer.
The sailors shook hands afterward and said good-byes before filing down the gangway. Brooks departed last, pausing at the top. He stared up at the bridge where McGonagle had fought to steer the ship that awful day. He observed the guntubs where the men had died desperately trying to protect the Liberty. He looked down at the patch that covered the torpedo hole. This aged cargo ship that had plowed the seas through the final days of World War II and Korea miraculously had survived a torpedo blast and 821 rocket and cannon hits. Brooks felt sad. He knew that a part of him would forever remain on board. He raised his right hand and saluted the Liberty.