I'll throw out some thoughts on why I do
not believe this was a 'false flag' operation. Starting from some of MK's points:
1. Communications between the Liberty and other ships in the region was monitored and these other ships were told NOT to aid the Liberty in any way.
As best as I have been able to reconstruct from the declassified communiques, messages, transcripts, and the testimony of those who had access to other (non-extant) message traffic, only ONE US ship was told not to assist the Liberty. That one ship was an aircraft carrier with 'ready aircraft' (i.e., aircraft loaded with nuclear missiles). It seems a 'no-brainer' to me for the Pentagon to recall nuclear missiles from being employed in the defense of a single surface ship, especially when the combatants involved were not yet known/identified (at the time, it was possible it was Egypt, or the Soviet Union, who had naval vessels patrolling in the same region, or any of a number of allies (including Israel) that could have been involved in a true 'friendly fire' incident). The decision to go to nuclear war was a decision that, rightly, was kept to the highest levels, and only after all facts could be weighed and options evaluated.
On orders from the President of the United States, the 'ready craft' were returned to deck of the A/C carrier. The carrier captain then sought permission to re-arm them with conventionl (non-nuclear) munitions and send them back to assist the Liberty. Permision was denied. This is one of those few cases where, if I were in such a position of command, I would have to weigh everything very carefully, with the possibility of throwing away my military career, going to jail for the erst of my life, and ignoring a direct Presidential order to obey the dictates of my conscience and help my fellow-service members in peril. I am sure such thoughts were weighed in the mind of the carrier captain. However, to remove the nuclear missiles (which were there as part of a deterrent force for the Soviets in a tense time at the height of the Cold War) and re-arm the planes with conventional munitions would have given the Soviets (who had an intelligence trawler of their own in the near vicinity) exact data on the time such change-outs take under operational conditions. A split-second decision was made, weighing the impact to the effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent capability against the lives of the sailors aboard the Liberty.
There is a possibility that another vessel nearby *might* have received orders not to aid the Liberty. There are persistent rumours that a US submarine was patroling nearby. The presence of the submarine (whether it was really there or not), its armaments (conventional or nuclear), and any/all message traffic to/from it will probably still be classified long after we're all gone, and for much the same reason.
I alluded to this fact before, but it bears restating: you will not understand US history, politics, or foreign policy of this era if you ignore or forget that everything happening at the time was viewed through the lens of the Cold War and the overarching threat of the Soviet Union and nuclear war.
2. The admiral of the carrier group in the area was specifically told by President Johnson to not aid the boat. According to this person, he was told by the President that, "he wanted the Liberty on the bottom."
Not the exact quote, and it was made by (US Sec of Defense) Robert Macnamara, not President Johnson. The exact quote was more along the lines that he would rather every one of those sailors go to the bottom then to embarrass one of our key allies. The quote is often cut, edited, ammended, and attributed to different people, depending on if the quoter is trying to prove a case for conspiracy or not
Was this an accurate quote? I can say that the original person reporting it was knowledgeable and reliable enough to have heard it said first-hand and to report it accurately. Would President LBJ have said such a thing? No way in a million years!! (He was, after all, from Texas!). Could Macnamara have said such a thing? You betcha! He was one of the original Kennedy 'Whiz kids', held over into the Johnson years, in an era when military affairs were micromanaged horribly and the opinions of well-educated 'think-tankers' was valued enormously above the opinions and concerns of operational comanders and experienced military members. Such a quote is typical of the view of the military as an expendable commodity for political ends.
3. The Captain was given a Medal of Honor in secret and told to keep quiet.
It was not in secret - it was a public ceremony, and the award is part of the captain's permanent (unclassified) military record. The ceremony was greatly downplayed - it was the only MoH ceremony since WWI to have been anywhere other than the White House, persented by anyone other then the president of the US. This is what you would expect for an incident that caused embarrassment, not for an incident that you wanted to deny ever happened.
4. The crew was threatened with Court Martial and in some cases, death, if they revealed anything about the incident.
This is almost SOP (sorry - that's 'standard operating procedure'). For any event about which the press asks questions, military members are supposed to refer all askers to a central office (usually the designated Public Affairs officer). A lot of the information (about Liberty's location, configuration, mission, capabilities, etc) were still classified. There was an on-going investigation while the sailors were at port in Malta (where the original preliminary repairs were performed). Even LTCDR Ennes says that a lot of the concern about 'silence' was largely due to miscommunication and a misunderstanding of what could and could not be discussed.
5. The US already laid plans to attack its own warships and blame it on someone else as a pretext for starting a larger war.
One memo does not a 'plan' make. Options of every concievable kind are often explored. There is a reason why most of them are discarded.
Other factors to consider:
1.
The 'numerical' factor. Basically, the larger a conspiracy, the harder to keep it secret. In order for this to have been a 'false flag' operation, the US could have (and
should have) made sure there were no EC-121 planes in the area, made sure it happened when the Soviet EC trawlers weren't near by, and either made sure the carreir group wasn't nearby OR made sure the carrier group was ready with conventionally-armed munitions and immediately got the go-ahead to send them to attack Egypt.
2.
The plausibility factor. If this were a 'false flag' operation, then there
must have been some way to push the 'blame' in the desired direction afterwards. However, all of the operational 'chatter' picked up from the Liberty, the EC aircraft, and other listening assets was in Hebrew,
not in Egyptian. Additionaly, there was never any denial by the Israelis that they had aircraft and warships patroling the area. In fact, by this time, the Israelis had already established complete tactical air superiority (meaning that any successful aerial attack in the vicinity could not reasonably be ascribed to Egypt or the Arab coalition).
3.
Other actions: The Liberty was sent message traffic at least thirteen hours before the attack to remove from the vicinity. Due to a series of command, control, and communications (C3) issues, the message never reached the Liberty in time. However, due to the nature of the C3 system at the time, there is no way the message senders could have known that would happen. The timing indicates the message was sent because HQ wanted the Liberty out of harms way, not smack in the middle of it.
