Federalism, New Hampshire, and the USS Liberty
In 1986, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was awarded the “Seal Medallion of the Central Intelligence Agency ‘In recognition of his outstanding accomplishments as… a leader in establishing the oversight of intelligence…'” By 1995, on the first day of the first session of the 104th United States Congress, Sen. Moynihan informed his colleagues and the nation that “Secrecy is a disease. It causes hardening of the arteries of the mind.”
The occasion for Moynihan’s remarks was the introduction of Senate Bill 126, short titled the “Abolition of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1995.” No one would co-sponsor Moynihan’s bill and it died an apparently quiet death in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence without any companion bill in the House of Representatives.
Since 1995, the disease of secrecy has, arguably, only worsened in the federal government. Personally, I can attest that Secretitis (as I shall call it, for lack of a better term) does, indeed, affect the collective mind of the federal government. In my case it manifested as a type of paranoia.
You see, several years ago I requested a bunch of records from three US intelligence agencies – including the CIA – pertaining to the deadly 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty (AGTR-5). In court, the government responded, in part, by asserting that the release of many of these nearly 60-year-old records was properly denied because the information they contained, if disclosed, “could be expected to result in damage to the national security, which includes defense against transnational terrorism…”
Fortunately, through their state legislature, the people of New Hampshire are poised to potentially administer an admittedly small but significant dose of medication to the federal government. A new bill builds on the work of now-former Rep. Jason Gerhard, the prime sponsor of last year’s Liberty bill. Said Rep. Tom Mannion of that effort, “After hearing the survivors’ stories during my first term, it became clear our federal government had let these men and our country down. I chaired the interim study committee that last year unanimously recommended that the bill be refiled this year.”
This month, Matthew R. Sabourin dit Choiniѐre, a former US Air Force Captain introduced House Bill 256, which as of this writing has five co-sponsors. HB 256, if adopted, would establish a legislative committee to:
…study the federal government’s response to the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty (AGTR-5). Specifically, the committee shall investigate, to the best of its ability, whether the United States government properly determined the culpability of Israeli civilian and military officials in the attack.
In my article last month on Antiwar.com – using unclassified and declassified records – I made the case that the US government has never investigated the culpability of Israeli civilian and military officials for the attack. Refusing to conduct a proper investigation is another way of keeping damaging information secret and, thus, concealing it from the American public. Last month, I also demonstrated that the government is still withholding hundreds of pages of records that it has identified as relevant to understanding the attack and/or the government’s response to it.
In this article, drawing upon my written testimony in support of the previous bill introduced last year, I will offer six reasons why New Hampshire legislators and citizens should support HB 256 (and why the legislators and citizens of the forty-nine other states ought to follow New Hampshire’s lead).
First, at perhaps no other time in recent memory, since the 1985 arrest of American-born Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, has US foreign policy regarding Israel been under such close scrutiny as it is now. As Granite Staters and other Americans, citizens and policy makers alike, reconsider our relationship with Israel they deserve to be fully informed about, among other things, the Israeli attack on the Liberty and, perhaps more importantly, why American officials never properly investigated Israel’s culpability.
It is, perhaps, worth recalling here the 1796 farewell address of President George Washington, who warned that:
a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.
Second, American military personnel, including those from New Hampshire, and their families deserve to know that if they are killed or injured in the line of duty by the forces of a foreign power then the American government will hold the officials of the attacking foreign power to public account. And if the federal government fails in that regard then the states will call the feds to account.
Third, in the specific case of the Liberty, the families of the military and civilian personnel who died in the attack (or since then) and the survivors deserve to have the assurance that the US did everything reasonably within its power to ascertain all the relevant facts of why Israeli forces attacked the Liberty. They also deserve to know why the federal government, so far, has declined to conduct a proper, comprehensive investigation to that end.
This, of course, includes the family members of US Navy CDR David Edwin Lewis, a Liberty survivor, who was born in Colebrook, NH in 1931 and died there in 2021. As Rep. Sabourin dit Choiniѐre put it, “We value our veterans in New Hampshire and we are proud to give the crew of the Liberty a chance to share their story with the public. It’s been a community effort and the family of Commander Lewis is very grateful.”
Fourth, some non-trivial number of New Hampshire citizens certainly support scrutiny of the sort contemplated by HB 256. For instance, two Congressionally chartered US military veterans organizations have repeatedly passed national resolutions in favor of a full and proper Congressional investigation (see American Legion resolutions 508 of 1967 and 40 of 2017 as well as Veterans of Foreign Wars resolutions 470 of 2002, 403 of 2003, 424 of 2006, 420 of 2007, 413 of 2009, and 423 of 2013). New Hampshire veterans are counted among the ranks of both organizations.
Fifth, even some ardent supporters of Israel back an investigation. Historian Michael Oren served on active or reserve duty in the IDF for decades, he also served in the Israeli Knesset and as Israel’s ambassador to the United States. In 2007, Oren told the Chicago Tribune “the case of the assault on the Liberty has never been closed.” The article continues: “If anything, Oren said, ‘the accusations leveled against Israel have grown sharper with time.’ Oren said in an interview that he believed a formal investigation by the U.S., even 40 years later, would be useful if only because it would finally establish Israel’s innocence.” Eighteen years later, nothing has changed with respect to the substance of Oren’s argument.
Finally, New Hampshire (and other states) can and should act as part of a vigorous federalism. As James Madison observed in Federalist No. 45, under the US Constitution, the States “retain… a very extensive portion of active sovereignty” and “State governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal government…” As Madison elaborated in Federalist No. 51, the United States is not a “single republic” but a “compound republic” with “the power surrendered by the people… divided between two distinct governments…” This division of power between the federal and state government creates “a double security… to the rights of the people” such that the “different governments will control each other…”
Moreover, the power to investigate federal matters is delegated neither exclusively nor explicitly to Congress; it is an implied power. Thus, under our federal system and also under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, New Hampshire retains the authority to launch its own inquiry into federal (mis)conduct. Ideally, the federal government would have properly investigated the attack on the Liberty decades ago. It did not.
When federal officials shirk their duties, the states and their citizens are not left without recourse. They have the ability and, arguably, a duty to conduct their own oversight into significant matters of federal inaction or misconduct. True, New Hampshire can neither compel the federal government to cooperate in any inquiry nor to take any action based upon the findings of a state effort. However, that should not deter the Granite State from the pursuit of truth, the provision of critical information to the public, and holding the federal government accountable in the courts of history and public opinion.
While HB 256, admittedly, does not call upon New Hampshire to investigate the attack on the Liberty it is, potentially, an important step in that direction. A formal state legislative finding that the federal government failed in its responsibilities to the nation and the crew of the USS Liberty can and should be transmitted to the state’s Congressional delegation. It could also spark similar efforts in other states to build the critical momentum to get Congress to investigate and the President to fully declassify the documentary record – to begin the much-needed treatment of Secretitis. Moreover, it would send a powerful message of solidarity to the Liberty families and to the survivors who lived through the horrors of that day.
Michelle J. Kinnucan was one of the “four core carvers” of the John T. Williams memorial totem pole. She is also an independent researcher whose writing has appeared in Common Dreams, Critical Moment, Palestine Chronicle, Arab American News, and elsewhere. Her 2003 investigative report on the Global Intelligence Working Group was featured in Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories (Seven Stories Pr., 2004) and she contributed a chapter to Finding the Force of the Star Wars Franchise (Peter Lang, 2006). You may contact her at <libertylawsuit@secure.mailbox.org>.
