From John Gidusko’s USS Liberty Newsletter #571 2/28/12

IRANIAN NEWSPAPER INTERVIEWS U.S. NAVY SAILOR, SURVIVOR OF 1967  ISRAELI ATTACK!!!

This was big news when survivor Phil Tourney was interviewed by Ali
Jafari for Iran-Daily in May, 2011, but we feel it’s bigger now
that we have the COMPLETE interview!  We had thought the inter-
view was published in 3 parts but now we realize there was a
4th!  [[Read either the printed newspaper pages or the text ver-
sion following them -- press CTRL + keys together to
enlarge page../jg]]

http://gidusko.webs.com/translat.htm

The official translation of survivor Phil Tourney’s interview
with Ali Jafara as appeared in the newspaper IRAN DAILY for May 21, 22, 23, and 24 2011:
(Scroll down, enlarge if desired, by using [CTRL +])

Part 1: http://www.iran-daily.com/1390/2/31/MainPaper/3961/Page/9/MainPaper_3961_9.pdf

Part 2: http://www.iran-daily.com/1390/3/1/MainPaper/3962/Page/9/MainPaper_3962_9.pdf

Part 3: http://www.iran-daily.com/1390/3/2/MainPaper/3963/Page/9/MainPaper_3963_9.pdf

Part 4: http://www.iran-daily.com/1390/3/3/MainPaper/3964/Page/9/MainPaper_3964_9.pdf

Don’t know how long the newspaper will carry and display the interviews above, but
should they not be there, they are available below in my copies:

(Plain text version follows newspaper versions)

Israeli Attack on American Ship The Forgotten Crisis Interview with Phillip F.Tourney, USS Liberty Survivor Interviewer: Ali A. Jafari aliajafari369@yahoo.com Introduction: During the 1967 Arab-Israel war, US Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty entered the Mediterranean Sea to gather information. The Israeli regime, which was dissatisfied with the presence of USS Liberty in the region, decided to attack the USS Liberty. The Israeli forces attacked with full knowledge that this was an American ship and lied about it. 34 people were killed and more than 171 were wounded in the Israeli attack. Israeli regime insists that they mistakenly attacked the USS Liberty. The survivors have been forbidden for some 44 years to tell their story under threat of imprisonment and/or death. One of the survivors, Phillip F. Tourney decided to tell the full story of the incident in a book titled ‘What I Saw That Day’. Iran Daily conducted an interview with him which will be published in several parts. Q: Greetings Mr. Tourney. We, at Iran Daily, thank you for giving us this great opportunity to present your side of the story of USS Liberty. When did you join the US Navy and USS Liberty and what was your motive? Phillip Tourney--I joined the US Navy as a young man of only 17 years old. Technically I was not even an adult yet, but they had a thing back then where you could join at 17 with your parent’s permission, so on my 17th birthday I went down and signed up. My reason for doing it was simple--I loved America. I loved America then and I love America now, just as much as I did the day I first set foot on that ill-fated ship. Now, at the age of 64 however, I understand things better. Back then I loved America because I believed America could do no wrong. Now, I love America because I see that she can do wrong, and nowhere is this more obvious than in our Middle East policy. More than anything else I want to see America saved and freed from this terrible sickness that plagues her. This is the place my wife, children, and grandchildren call home, and if she--America--goes down, everyone and everything that I love will go down with her, as well as all my fellow Americans who stand to lose just as much. We need to become the sovereign United States of America again, and not the slave to another foreign power that yanks us around like a dog on a leash. The day that this foreign power--Israel--attacked my ship for 2 hours, butchered 34 of my friends, and then colluded with my government to cover it up, that was the day we ceased being a sovereign country and instead became a slave to someone else. As a very popular saying here in America goes, and as many in the Middle East living under oppressive systems would say today, “I love my country, but I hate my government.” Q: Mr. Tourney, you have written a book titled ‘What I Saw That Day’. On second page you have: “To my friends, the brave men, both living and dead, who served aboard the good ship USS Liberty … Attacked by an ally, betrayed by their own government, forsaken by their country and forgotten in the hearts of their own fellow Americans, except those of us who were there that day and saw everything…”Very powerful statements indeed. What motivated you to pen this book 42 years later? We would like to know what you wish to achieve by writing this book. PT--What I wished to achieve, no, let me rephrase that--What I INSIST upon achieving in writing this book along with my co-author Mark Glenn is what I said before--to see America saved and returned to her former place of goodness and greatness, both in the eyes of God and of my fellow man. Our founding fathers had a vision of what a good nation was supposed to be. However, others who did not share the vision of our founding fathers had other plans, which we can plainly see taking place in the world today. Our sins as a nation are great, the suffering we have brought to millions of others did not have to be that way. We could have been a blessing upon mankind, but because of the poisonous influence of a small minority of people and the nation whose interests they serve--Israel--America was transformed from a blessing upon the world to a curse. It is my goal to reverse this magic spell and to have the goodness of America restored. Q: Acclaimed author Gore Vidal has called your country ‘The United States of Amnesia’ when you say ‘forgotten in the hearts of their fellow Americans’, one of the questions that comes to one’s mind is that, how does the press in the United States succeed in deviating the needle of the American people’s compass away from its natural direction? How did American people come to forget about your story, your plight, in particular when one considers its severity? PT-As brilliant a writer as Gore Vidal is, the fact is this--there is no ‘amnesia’ on the part of the American people as far as the USS LIBERTY story goes for the simple reason that they know nothing about it and never did. They were never given the opportunity of hearing about it for the simple reason that Israel failed in sinking us. Had we sunk and Egypt blamed, as Israel had planned, then every American today would know about the LIBERTY. There would have been a national holiday instituted to commemorate the event. Outside of the LIBERTY survivors themselves and their families, there is only a relatively small handful of people who know about it, and Israel knows that it better remain this way or her days are numbered. If the American people ever found out what happened that day when Israel deliberately murdered 34 of us and would have finished all of us off were it not for the grace of God, the Jewish state would go the way of Hiroshima. You use a very powerful image here, of the compass and the needle. What makes a compass so important is that it is driven by forces of nature, namely the magnetic pull of the earth. People have compasses, both as individuals and nations. They know what is in their best interests, where they need to go and what they need to do. Unless someone gets in there and tampers with those forces of nature. Then, we see people--again, both as individuals and as nations--not acting in their best interests, and clearly this is what has happened to America. Now, our needle only points in one direction and that is towards Israel. All of our policies--be they domestic or foreign, are geared towards benefiting the Zionist state, and even when it harms us. Perfect proof of this is what we are losing, both in blood and treasure, in fighting the wars on Israel’s behalf. We have people losing their homes, fathers unable to feed their children--many of them US servicemen who have served or are serving--because of the massive amount of expenditure going for Israel’s benefit. Are the American people up in arms about this? No. They continue to fork out everything they have down to the last penny and they won’t realize what they have lost until it is gone and can’t be brought back. Q: All right let’s get to the most important issue. Can you please talk about the run up to the actual attack? PT--Absolutely--the run up to the actual attack is a clashing of images. We had no idea what we were in for. We knew there was a war going on and we were all cheering for Israel and hoping she would beat the Arabs. Remember that we had all received a heavy dose of post-WWII propaganda about what the Jews of Europe had suffered through, so naturally we wanted to see them come out on top. We actually made small Israeli flags out of paper and had taped them in various parts of the ship in showing our solidarity with them. We had requested an armed escort but had been denied. The official answer from Washington was that we were an American-flag ship and no one was going to pick a fight with us. Israeli planes had started surveilling us early, flying low and slow about twice an hour for about 6 hours. We thought they were coming to check on us and to let us know they were looking out for our safety, since we were a defenseless ship. Little did we know that what they were actually doing was photographing every square inch of the ship so that they could map out to the smallest detail how they were going to attack and murder us all in the most expedient and expeditious manner. Like any mafia hit, it had to be quick so that the perpetrators got away clean. From where we were, 13 miles off the coast of the Sinai in international waters, we could see and hear the remnants of the war. Smoke, explosions, and, like I said, we all cheered because we figured that the Arabs were getting what was coming to them. Little did we know the real story. Q: And now could you please speak about the most terrible incident of your life. I mean the actual attack on USS Liberty? PT--Our Captain, McGonagle, was a stickler about drilling, and so, typical for him, he ordered a preparedness drill for washing down the ship in the event of an attack. After the drill was over I remained on deck to do some repairs as ordered by my superior officer. I stood on deck next to one of our only 4 guns designed to repel pirates talking with a friend of mine, David Skollack. We both remarked how this would be the one place we wouldn’t want to be in an attack. I left and stepped inside the ship. As soon as I closed the hatch door I heard a huge explosion just a few feet from me on the other side. I figured that an accident had taken place. Little did I know that we were under attack. I thought we must be in the middle of World War III. The bombardment was relentless. It seemed that our attackers would never run out of ammo. It was like being in a rainstorm and trying not to get hit by drops of water. Rockets, bullets, napalm, they threw everything they had at us in a hurry. Remember, as I said, they wanted this to be a quick job so that they could get out of there with no witnesses to tell any tales. I had seen war films when I was a kid but they are nothing like the real thing. No matter how hard Hollywood tries to capture the terror of being in combat--and worse, not being able to fight back--there is no way to describe what it is like. Being a stupid 20 year old, the first thing I did upon realizing we were under attack was to open the hatch door and run out on deck to see if any of my shipmates were hurt and needed help. I was joined by my good friend Rick Aimetti who obviously was just as dumb as I was, and so we darted out in between volleys to grab an arm, a leg, or whatever we could and drag a wounded servicemen someplace where he could get at least a little bit of protection from the hell that was raining down on all of us. Once I was sure we had recovered everyone off deck, I went below to see what I could do in keeping the ship afloat and helping the wounded. Remember at this time we thought it must be the Arabs who were attacking us, since the planes were unmarked and there was no way that Israel would do something like this. Once the planes had done everything they could and had failed in sinking us, we then saw a team of torpedo boats steaming in our direction at a high rate of speed, proudly flying their Star of David flag. We breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that our dear friend and ally Israel had scared off our attackers and was now coming to assist us. All of this changed however when we saw the torpedoes being dropped into the water and heading in our direction. At that point we knew we were dead, because no ship survives a torpedo blast. The captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker telling us to prepare for torpedo explosion. In total, 5 torpedoes had been launched. 4 passed us by and had missed the ship, which I account as being an act of God. The last one however hit us. Again, it is nothing like the movies. I was inside when the torpedo hit, just one deck above the point of impact, as a matter of fact. The noise from the explosion was like nothing I had ever experienced. My eardrums were immediately blown out, leaving me almost permanently deaf to this day. The blast completely picked the ship up out of the water and threw it in the air like a child’s toy. When it landed back on the water, it landed HARD. Next, with what hearing I still had, was the sound of metal creaking, ripping and folding, as the rush of sea water poured into the gaping hole in our side. Then came the vertigo of feeling the ship turning towards the side of the blast as if it were about to roll over and sink. Finally, it settled, listing considerably, but still afloat, thank God. Having run out of torpedoes, the Israeli torpedo boats then circled the wounded and dying ship like vultures, firing at anything that moved, including the firefighters and those trying to retrieve wounded men from the deck. We lowered the 3 remaining life rafts we had into the water in order to put our most seriously wounded in them, since it appeared we were going to sink. The gunners in the Israeli boats shot them out of the water, a war crime. Once they ran out of ammo and left, an Israeli helicopter approached the ship. It was loaded with commandos armed with submachine guns. They hovered above the ship for a minute, preparing to rappel down and kill us all off one by one. Then, for whatever reason, they took off in a hurry, another miracle that day. Estimates vary as to the length of the attack, but in general it was about 90 minutes, the same length of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that brought America into World War II. Q: Several Israeli motivations for their attack on USS Liberty have been discussed over the years. The British said that, at least one Israeli objective was to keep the US from warning off Jordan, which in those days was the only Arab country that had reasonably good relations with the US, and the Israelis dearly wanted to sucker Jordan into the war so they could more easily take the West Bank and East Jerusalem. (The Brits thought the Israelis would have attacked Jordan anyway, but they wanted it the other way around if they could manage it.) The French said it was to impress on all Arab countries that even then, only a decade after their decision to put AIPAC & company into high gear, Israel had the US (or at least its government) so firmly under its influence that it could even attack a US Navy ship and kill Americans, and get away with it. There is an incentive behind any crime that a criminal commits. In your opinion could it be that Israelis really wanted to instill fear in the hearts of Arabs that ‘we are who we are and we even have the audacity to attack our ally’s ship’, knowing that they could get away with it? What do you believe was their incentive for attacking USS Liberty, knowing full well, as you claim, that this was an American ship? PT--I have heard all the theories concerning the ‘why’ of Israel’s attack, and all of them are very plausible. However, today we know a lot more than we did when we were just beginning to piece together exactly what took place that day, and one of the things we know beyond any doubt is that Israel did not act alone, but rather with the assistance of the US government, going all the way up to the President. We now know from having spoken to people who were in various positions of authority that in the early part of our attack when we were able to get a distress signal out and US rescue planes were launched in order to save us that they were then recalled by then-President Johnson who justified his decision by saying ‘I will not embarrass our ally’. Remember, this was in the early part of the attack when even we did not know it was Israel, so how would Johnson have known unless it was with pre-planning and collusion? My personal feeling is that the attack on the USS LIBERTY was meant to be blamed on Egypt, an ally of the Soviet Union at the time, that would then lead to the situation that took place following 9/11--meaning a permanent American military presence in the Middle East on behalf of Israel. The Soviets would have been driven out of the Middle East and America would remain as the sole protector of the region for the foreseeable future. Q: Generally speaking, as the recent history of the Middle East has shown, Israelis will not own up to anything unless they absolutely have to or there are absolutely undeniable or unassailable evidence linking them to their wrongdoing or crime. Likewise, in the case involving their attack on the USS Liberty, despite all the testimony of you and your shipmates to the contrary, they have claimed that attack on USS Liberty was a case of ‘friendly fire’, and that they misidentified Liberty for an Egyptian horse carrier EL Quseir. One of the reasons that they present for their argument is that, the attacking jets circled the ship three times looking for a flag, but no flag was flown. What is your answer to such claim? PT--The first thing we have to keep in mind when considering anything that Israel says is that it is the motto of her intelligence agency Mossad that ‘By way of deception, thou shalt do war’. With Israel, the very first order of business is to lie, lie, and then lie again. She understands the value of blinding your enemy by throwing sand in his eyes so that he cannot see the picture before him clearly. Our flag was as clear as day. It was literally as big as a truck. It was flying in the breeze. In fact, Israel made sure to shoot it down in the initial seconds of the attack. We replaced it, and that one was shot up as well. Furthermore, the El Quesir, a horse transport vessel, was ¼ the size and antiquated. The LIBERTY was the most sophisticated ship sailing on the seas at that time. We used to joke about the ship’s appearance, that it looked like a giant lobster with antennae everywhere. Mistaking the El Quesir for the LIBERTY is like confusing a donkey for a race car. We had English letters 10 feet tall on the ship’s hull. These words were written in the Latin alphabet, not Arabic, something the troops onboard the torpedo boats could see up close, as they were a mere 50 feet away at times. More than this though, I now know from personal experience that the ‘flag’ story just does not hold water because of personal testimony I received recently. I recently had a conversation with a gentleman who was in a US submarine very close to us when we were being attacked. The submarine’s job was to film the attack and our sinking so that the video footage could then be played on American news media to whip the American people up into going to war against Israel’s enemies. He told me, personally and specifically, that the flag was clearly visible through the periscope. Q: Mr. Tourney, we have read the attack on the USS Liberty was to serve as a pretext incident to justify an American attack on Egypt, a pretext to bomb Cairo and other Egyptian cities and add all of Egypt to the ‘Greater, or Eretz Israel’, as part of a plan called, ‘Operation Cyanide’. What can you tell us about that aspect of the attack on the USS Liberty and Operation Cyanide? PT--Yes, as I said, the plan was to sink our ship, blame it on Egypt as a pretext for the US going to war for Israel’s benefit and to drive the Soviets out of the region for good. We know that as an official operation, Cyanide was real, as some of the LIBERTY crew working with the US National Security Agency were briefed on it before we headed out to sea from Norfolk, Virginia, our home port. To my knowledge however they did not know the whole scope of the operation, obviously, as they would have been participating in their own deaths. Another thing that your readers, and indeed all persons around the globe need to realize is that there were US bombers in the air headed to Egypt with orders to drop nuclear weapons on Cairo. According to witnesses serving aboard the aircraft carriers from where the bombers were launched, they were a mere 3 minutes away from nuking Cairo. The only reason they did not is because we had not sunk yet, and the US and Israel would have some explaining to do if a nuke was dropped on a major city like Cairo when they were innocent of any wrongdoing. People would have figured out that Israel and America had colluded to sink a US ship and kill all 300 men on board. Q: Mr.Tourney, let’s talk about the media coverage and why the story of USS Liberty has not been and still is not newsworthy. On November 8, 1979, just 4 days after the Iran hostage crisis started, ABC News launched a new program called Nightline, only and specifically to present American viewers with the latest news about American hostages held in Iran on a nightly basis. After 444 days, American hostages came home unscratched, nonetheless, the news coverage and all the sensationalism that went along with it, continued unabated. Ted Koppel invited the hostages to the Nightline numerous times so that they could tell American people about their experience and what happened to them in American embassy in Tehran. In chapter 5 of your book entitled ‘Broken men, Broken hearts’ which deals with your nightmare immediately after the attack, you write: “It was a sea of casualties-bleeding head wounds…bones protruding from arms and legs…” On Sept. 26, 2006, former CIA analyst for 27 years, Ray McGovern, ‘gave a talk on Iraq to crowd of 400 people at National Avenue Christian Church in Springfield, Missouri… [regarding the Israel Lobby and its power] over your government and Congress’. When McGovern asked how many in the crowd of 400 had ever heard of the USS Liberty, only three hands went up. Don’t you think that you are living in a land of flagrant double standards? PT--We should change the name of our country from the US to ‘the land of double standards’. Everyone in America knows about the USS Cole that was attacked off the coast of Yemen where 17 American sailors were killed, a terrible loss to be sure, but NO ONE knows about the USS LIBERTY, and deliberately so. As I indicated earlier, if the American people were to learn the awful truth of what happened to us and the cover-up, it would result in a domino effect that would be deadly for Israel and her supporters here in the US. All the sudden, Americans, now overwhelmed with the heavy cost of fighting Israel’s wars for her in the Middle East would start asking questions about 9/11 and possible American/Israeli collusion in that. The next thing you know, the entire house of cards would come tumbling down. Q: And while we are on the subject of double standards, let me ask you another question. You have mentioned in your book that ‘Israel rules America’. You also talk about the very powerful Israeli lobby. I cannot think of a better example than John Demjanjuk, former United States citizen who was accused numerous times of Holocaust-related war crimes. The United States government, under relentless pressure from the pro-Israeli groups, once again kowtowed to the demand of the Israeli government and in 1986 deported him to Israel to stand trial. So here, some 45 years later, we have a man whose family went bankrupt in order to prove that this was a case of mistaken identity and that he was not ‘Ivan the Terrible’, the notorious prisoner/guard at the Treblinka and Sobibor extermination camps during the period 1942–1943. His conviction for crimes against humanity was later overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993 due to a finding of reasonable doubt based on evidence suggesting that Demjanjuk was not ‘Ivan the Terrible’. Mr. Tourney, on pages 134 and 135 in your book, regarding the scheduled meeting between you and other survivors of the USS Liberty with President George Herbert Walker Bush which never took place, you go into details of the most tantalizing moments and how, after breathtaking moments, your president was ‘too busy to meet with you’. Then you blame all these on the Israelis. You have and I quote “It was obvious to me that the ‘fix’ had been put in.” So, once again the pro-Israeli groups had directed Bush not to meet with you. Again, here we have Israelis who destroy a and real wman’s life based on their ‘suspicion’ that he might be ‘Ivan the Terrible’, and you and the rest of the USS Liberty survivors, who were ‘live witnesses’ to Israel Holocaust of USS Liberty on June 8th, 1967, cannot even get a chance to see your president so that you could talk about your side of the story personally. How frustrating is this? PT--As I said in my book, we were crushed. We had thought amongst ourselves “This is it…Our day has finally come…Our president, sitting in the very White House, will hear our story, feel our pain and do what any leader of a country so grievously wounded would do. When he refused to even meet with us, we realized (or at least I did) that our country was gone and that there was little, if any, difference between the president who consigned us to our deaths many decades before and every president since who has participated in the cover-up of the murderous attack on our ship. Q: A.J. Cristol, a federal judge, a Navy captain, author, scholar, former Navy lawyer and apparently a combat fighter pilot who claims to have studied this matter for 15 years, with an open mind, has as his mantra, “Thirteen investigations have all exonerated Israel,” What is your reaction to his mantra? PT--Well, as I said earlier, remember that it is Israel’s motto that ‘by way of deception thou shalt do war.” Cristol is a liar. No one who has spent 5 minutes looking at the evidence walks away thinking it was a case of mistaken identity. Cristol, who is not only Jewish but a big supporter of the Jewish state, is no different than a lawyer hired to defend some Mafioso in court who knows his client is guilty of all the crimes he has been charged with but will still work his fingers to the bone in getting his client acquitted so that he can be set loose on society to continue on with his criminality and mayhem. In a better time in our country’s history, men like Cristol would have been tried for treason and upon conviction, executed. Q: The Israel Lobby instills fear in the heart of everyone in the United States. It tries to crush those who stand up against them; some suffer but persist, and the pragmatics survive by changing their tune. Nobody is immune; reporters, editors, columnists, professors, academics, politicians…. Everyone is labeled ‘anti-Semite’ when he/she criticizes the power of the Israel Lobby or talks about what happened to you and your shipmates on that day. With pusillanimous and spineless politicians and members of congress kowtowing to special interest groups such as AIPAC, how do you ever hope to get justice served, in other words, punish those who were responsible for attacking USS Liberty and killing 34 of its sailors? PT--As sure as I am here today having this conversation with you, I know there is a power higher than that of Israel, and it the God who saved me that day when we were under attack, because the fact is that we should have sunk that day. He saved us men of the LIBERTY for a reason, and I believe it was for us to warn the world about the danger it faces from this dangerous animal roaming our planet earth known as Israel. Israel plots but God is the wisest of plotters and I know as sure as I stand here today speaking to you that He will have the last say on this matter and justice will be served. I don’t know how or when, I simply know it is and I will leave it up for Him to decide the how and when. Q: With the advent of the Internet, it is obvious that the mainstream media monopoly has been broken. Some people say that the Internet has functioned like a double-edged sword. No wonder that here and there, we hear Liberals, conservatives, Democrats, and Republicans--all are united on the alleged necessity of reigning in the Internet. For and your shipmates who are tasked with penetrating the fog of lies and deception of the pro-Israeli apologists, Internet has offered a great opportunity to tell your story. Have you taken all the advantage that you could of the Internet? Where can our reader get the latest information about the latest developments on your story? PT--Well, I have certainly utilized the tools at my disposal to the best of my abilities. I write articles, I wrote a book, I have my own radio program. Yes, the Internet has given us a mighty tool to fight back against the lies. And as much as I hate to sound like I am promoting myself, the truth nevertheless is that I recommend people read my book if they want to find out what happened to us. It is not a difficult book to read in terms of being technical and tedious. It is the story of one man and what he saw that day and it is explained in easy to understand, very human terms. Q: President Ahmadinejad has been called to judgment, sentenced and pronounced guilty at the high court of the American media. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for the Iranian President, this negative publicity has produced exactly the opposite of the intended consequences; because at the end they turned him into a saint whom young Muslims world over would come to admire and cherish as a defender of Islam and the Arabs. His recent visit to Lebanon is a living testimony to that. He even had the audacity to tell Americans to ignore stories they were told long ago about the Holocaust, but rather to look at it from all sources not just from one point of view. As it was, in Ahmadinejad the world community saw an Iranian leader who eclipsed both the American President and the other leaders of the world. In the very heart of New York where the Jewish opponents of the Iranian leader could have embargoed or sabotaged his coverage they failed miserably to deny him the coverage and the attention. American reporters were racing for pictures and sound bites from the Iranian president and all their colleagues covering the White House and the United Nations joined in the pursuit. He owes a great part of his popularity in Iran and in the Islamic world to his bold behavior and performance at the United Nations. He is indeed the voice of the voiceless in a world which pays little to the oppressed. In the final pages of your book, you touch on the possibility of Iran’s president bringing up the issue of USS Liberty on the floor of UN. For some reasons things did not go as planned. Let me quote from your book. “The result would have been tsunamic. Iran’s leader getting up in front of literally the entire world and mentioning the unmentionable would have sent shock waves throughout the entire world.” Mr. Tourney, here is your opportunity to send your message to Iran’s president. Go ahead please: PT-- What I would tell the Honorable President of Iran and to all the leaders of all the world’s nations is this--you are in mortal danger. What Israel and America did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere they will do to you if they are not stopped. You cannot fight this beast militarily, only with the truth, but you must be bold in doing so. Tell the truth, loudly and boldly, and you must do it soon, because time is running out. There is no telling what Israel and America will do next in feeding their lust for power. We already know that this 2-headed beast has no regard for human life. I believe firmly that the story of the USS LIBERTY is THE KEY to locking up this beast forever. Imagine if all the sudden it were being discussed in every public forum, including the U.N. Israel and America would be defeated before the eyes of the world Nothing they said or did would be credible. As I said earlier, God saved us for a reason, and I believe that it was so that our story could save the world. Q: Mr. Tourney, there is no doubt that the United States has paid a very hefty price for its blind and relentless support of Israel. A total of $114 billion dollars in direct military and economic aid since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1947, as well as other unquantifiable costs which include widespread hatred in the Islamic world and in fact non-Islamic world, attack on USS Liberty in 1967, assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968 by a young Palestinian called Sirhan Sirhan, murder of Rachel Corrie on March 16, 2003, crushed to death in the Gaza Strip by an Israel Defence Forces bulldozer, the list is endless. In your book, you try to persuade your readers that, following the attack on USS Liberty, “Had America dealt with Israel the way she dealt with Japan after December 7, 1941, the events of 9/11/2001 would never have occurred… “. But what about the military-industrial-congressional complex or what others have referred to the beast as the "Iron Triangle"? you know wars have always been good business for weapons manufacturers. You also know I am sure that, after 9/11 which you believe was the work of Israeli Mossad, that very "Iron Triangle" found a golden opportunity to increase its profits by leading the US into the ruinous Iraq adventure. The question is how could prevention of all these disasters, including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which according to Professor Chalmers Johnson is going to bring American empire to its knees very soon, revolve around USS Liberty? PT-- Again, we must remember that criminals do their dirty work at night, away from watchful eyes. Like cockroaches that scurry for cover when the light is turned on or like sunlight on a vampire, the truth is poison to these creatures of the night. The story of the USS LIBERTY being broadcast far and wide around the world is the first step in turning on those lights and causing those cockroaches to scurry. Soon to follow are all the other crimes that have been committed by this syndicate, including the murder of 3,000 Americans on 9/11. After that, we leave the light on permanently so that they don’t come back. Q: Ever since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, with media sensationalism in full swing, the United States has been busy capitalizing on the slightest chance to demonize Iran. You might remember that on 20 January, 1981, minutes after the inauguration of the new U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Iranian released 52 American hostages that had spent 444 days in Iran. Jimmy Carter went to West Germany to greet them as President Reagan's special envoy. After entering the United States, they stayed at the Thayer Hotel at West Point for three days receiving a heroes' welcome all along the route. Ten days after their release, the former hostages were given a ticker tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes in New York City. Taking into consideration that 34 sailors of the USS Liberty killed and the 171 wounded as a result of Israel’s attack and your own heroic actions to save the ship, I am sure our readers would be interested to know how you were treated by your government when you returned to the United States? PT-- I was treated worse than if I had been a criminal convicted of a capital offence. I was warned that if I ever told anyone of what happened to us out there that I would be put in prison, or ‘worse,’ and we all knew what ‘worse’ meant--dead. We have been ignored, mocked, spat upon and treated the way that a nation’s enemies would be treated upon being conquered. Every step of the way my government has dealt with me with contempt, including a recent event where my life was threatened by someone claiming to be with Israel’s Mossad and my own government, in this case the FBI, was put out that time and resources had to be expended in protecting a citizen of the United States from a foreign terrorist organization. Q: Mr. Tourney, on June 22, 2009, in an interview with Harry Smith of CBS, President Obama, regarding the seditionist in Iran said, “...and we believe that the voices of people have to be heard, that that's a universal value that the American people stand for and this administration stands for.” I do not know exactly how many administrations have come to power in the Unites States since June 8th 1967. But I would like to know has there been any administration that has shown any meaningful illingness to hear the voice of USS Liberty survivors? PT-- Not one. As we already discussed, the closest we came was the meeting with George Bush Sr that was aborted at the last moment. I am sure that were I to make my way face to face with the president, tell him who I was and what had been done to us that more than likely he would pass out with raw, visceral fear. Q: Mr. Tourney, it is a reality that the Israel Lobby Juggernaut scares people to death. It tries to crush those who stand up against them; some suffer but persist, and the pragmatics survive by changing their tune. Nobody is immune; reporters, editors, columnists, professors, academics, politicians…. Everyone is labeled “anti-Semite” when s/he criticizes the power of the Israel Lobby. Ahmadinejad has been compared with Hitler for making statements that are welcomed by those who challenge your government.. Former president George w. Bush lies your nation into wars in the Middle East and then out he goes. Then comes President Obama with the promise of change and he continues with lies: “Israel’s quest for peace with its neighbors has stalled, despite the heavy burdens borne by the Israeli people.” With such an impotent political system are you optimistic that things will change for the better? Do you hope that this whole thing will someday take a U-turn and the truth will shine thru for you and your shipmates? PT-- Like I said, I know that someday the truth will win out over the lies. I don’t know when or how, but it will happen. Personally, from what I know of the American people and their present mindset, it is going to take something bad, and I mean REALLY bad, to snap them out of the trance that presently imprisons them. It will take the complete collapse of their way of life, which is happening as we speak, before they will start asking the difficult questions--who am I, why am I here, how did my world come crashing down the way it did and who is responsible for it?” The fact is, I want justice for my shipmates, but more important to me is justice for my country, because the past is the past, but the present and the future are what we have to deal with, and they are becoming more and more dangerous everyday. Q: The Middle East in recent months has been witnessing a wave of revolutions which obviously has Israelis shaking in their boots. People are happily talking about a Middle East without America. These revolutions may indeed be the beginning of the end for the Jewish state of Israel as well. The end of Zionism might in turn begin the international peace process. You have rightfully shown your deep resentment towards the Israel and its stooges inside your congress. How happy would you be to see that day, I mean the day that Israel and its powerful lobby, namely AIPAC, are once and for ever gone from the life of Americans? PT-- It would be like being born again, or hearing from your doctor that after a long and painful healing period that you are cancer-free, with an open road in front of you for a peaceful, productive life. Q: Do you have any message for Iranian nation? PT--Yes--stay cancer free. Do not let Zionism infect your country as it has ours. It is fatal. Q: Is there anything else that you would like to add? PT--May God bless all people of good will with peace, happiness and justice. Phillip F. Tourney, 3-Time President of the Liberty Veterans Association and author of the book "WHAT I SAW THAT DAY" available at www.amazon.com http://gidusko.webs.com/translat.htm