Ward Boston

Ward Boston Jr. (1923 to 2008) was a United States Navy captain and Judge Advocate General's Corps lawyer who served as senior legal counsel to the 1967 Court of Inquiry into the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. In an affidavit released in October 2003 and a longer declaration dated January 8, 2004, he stated that Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd Jr., the court's president, had told him that Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert S. McNamara ordered the court to conclude that the attack was a case of mistaken identity.¹

Early career

Boston was born in Moberly, Missouri, on June 21, 1923, the only son of Ward and Margaret Boston. The family obituary states that before the war he held a scholarship to study oboe at the Curtis Institute of Music, and that at nineteen he entered flight training as an aviation cadet and earned his wings at Pensacola, Florida.² It records that he flew the F6F Hellcat as a fighter pilot in the Pacific fleet, with combat duty aboard the USS Yorktown, and flew Hellcats and Corsairs from two escort carriers and two CVL carriers, including USS Midway, in the Atlantic Fleet, and that his flight crew called him "Blackie."² His 2007 op-ed describes him as a naval aviator in World War II on the Yorktown.³

After the war Boston attended the law school of the College of William and Mary, which his 2007 op-ed names.³ The obituary states that he passed the Virginia bar while still in law school, practiced in Williamsburg with the firm of Richardson & Boston, continued to fly as a reservist stationed at Norfolk, where he met and married Emma Penello, and then accepted an appointment as a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, serving in San Francisco and Los Angeles after graduating from the FBI Academy.² It states that shortly after the Korean War began he returned to active duty in the regular Navy as a Judge Advocate, and that he was a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College, the Naval War College, and did graduate law studies at George Washington University.² A. Jay Cristol, the author of the book that prompted Boston's public statements, wrote in 2007 that Boston returned to the Navy "as a legal specialist in the days prior to creation of the Judge Advocate Generals Corp."⁴ The obituary records that Boston retired as the senior captain in the Navy after thirty-four and a half years of service and that he and his wife settled in Coronado, California, in 1975.²

The Court of Inquiry, June 1967

John S. McCain Jr., Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, appointed the court by order of June 10, 1967, naming Rear Admiral Kidd as president, Captains Bernard J. Lauff and Bert M. Atkinson Jr. as members, Boston as counsel, and Lieutenant Commander Allen Feingersch as assistant counsel.⁵ The record opens in London at 2314 on June 10 with the appointing order read into the record, and the President administered the oath to counsel; the appointed reporter was Yeoman Chief Joeray Spencer.⁵ The court heard its first witness, Captain Leonard Raish of McCain's staff, and adjourned at 0250 on June 11. The president, counsel and reporter boarded the ship at sea off Souda Bay, Crete, and the court met aboard at 0630 on June 12; the record shows the full court in session at Malta from 0755 on June 13, adjourning aboard the ship on June 15. It reconvened in London on June 16 and closed at 1645 that day.⁵ The posted description of the record, which dates the meeting of the full court with the ship at Valletta to June 14, gives nineteen witnesses, transcribed testimony of 158 pages, and forty-nine exhibits, and states that the court presented fifty-two findings with the record to McCain.⁶ The complete record is posted as a 728-page scan.⁵

Finding 1 of the court states: "Available evidence combines to indicate the attack on LIBERTY on 8 June was in fact a case of mistaken identity." Finding 6 states: "There are no available indications that the attack was intended against a U. S. Ship."⁵ McCain's first endorsement of June 18, 1967 describes "an unprovoked attack by Israeli air and naval forces in international waters off the coast of the United Arab Republic" and states that the convening authority's comments "lead to an overall conclusion that the attack was in fact a mistake."⁵ The Associated Press summarized the outcome as a finding that there was "insufficient information to make a judgment about why Israel attacked the ship."⁷

Boston stated that he and Kidd were given one week to gather evidence, although each of them estimated that a proper inquiry would take at least six months.¹³ The scan contains the testimony of Lieutenant (junior grade) Lloyd C. Painter, the officer of the deck, at transcript pages 55 to 59 (scan pages 160 to 164). Painter testified that the ship's life rafts "had been strafed and most of them were burned," that the crew "knocked most of them over the side," and that the three torpedo boats "were laying off, waiting for us to sink."⁵ In the declaration Boston states that Painter's testimony on the deliberate machine-gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which he recalled being given at the court and included in the original transcript, "is now missing and has been excised."¹ Painter told the Chicago Tribune in 2007 that he testified that an Israeli torpedo boat "methodically machine-gunned one of our life rafts" and charged that this testimony was purposely omitted; the Tribune described him as having spent thirty-two years as a Secret Service agent after leaving the Navy.⁸ Transcript page 153 in the scan is a page bearing the typed legend "PAGE 153 BLANK" (scan page 258).⁵

Public statements, 2002 to 2003

Ronald Fraser reported that Boston had told the Navy Times the previous year: "I feel the Israelis knew what they were doing. They knew they were shooting at a U.S. Navy ship. That's the bottom line. I don't care how they tried to get out of it."⁹ Arab News reported that on June 26, 2002, Boston told a reporter for the Marine Corps Times, Bryant Jordan, that the attack was deliberate.¹⁰ Fraser also reported that Boston said Kidd told him after delivering the report to Washington that top officials were not interested in hearing the truth.⁹

Boston said he came forward after reading Cristol's book The Liberty Incident, published in 2002. Arab News reported in July 2003 that Cristol's book tour had included a December 2002 presentation at the Naval Historical Center.¹⁰ In a July 2003 interview with Arab News, Boston said: "There is no question in my mind that those people tried to kill every one on board." He also said: "I made lots of corrections which are no longer in the report. There are even pages missing."¹⁰

On October 22, 2003, a signed affidavit by Boston was released at a Capitol Hill news conference.⁴⁷ The Associated Press quoted it as stating that Johnson and McNamara told those heading the Navy's inquiry to "conclude that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity' despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary." Thomas H. Moorer, chairman of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the attack, spoke at the same event. Moorer, who attended from a wheelchair, asked: "Why in the world would our government put Israel's interest ahead of our own?"⁷¹¹

The affidavit and the January 2004 declaration

The text printed in the Congressional Record on October 11, 2004, headed "Affidavit of Captain Ward Boston, USN, JAG (Ret.)," carries no date. It contains the statements on the one-week deadline, the evidence of a deliberate attack, the flag, the lifeboats, Cristol's book, and the Johnson and McNamara order, and it describes Boston's service as "Judge Advocates General Department," where the declaration reads "Judge Advocate General Corps." Representative John Conyers introduced the findings and the affidavit in remarks dated October 7, 2004.¹¹

The declaration is a four-page signed document with twenty-six numbered paragraphs, dated "January 8, 2004" at Coronado, California.¹ It contains paragraphs that the Record text omits: Kidd's repeated characterization of the Israeli forces (paragraph 7), McCain's refusal to allow travel to Israel (11), the more than sixty witness declarations never received into evidence (12), the order to rewrite the findings and "put the lid" on the attack (17 and 18), the transcript (19 and 20), Kidd's later conversations (21), and Cristol's 1990 telephone call and later letter (22 to 25).¹ Paragraph 16 states: "I know from personal conversations I had with Admiral Kidd that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity' despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary." Paragraph 17 states that Kidd told him, "after returning from Washington, D.C. that he had been ordered to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Defense Department, and rewrite portions of the court's findings." Paragraph 18 states that Kidd said he had been ordered to "put the lid" on everything concerning the attack and that no one was to speak of it again.¹ Paragraphs 19 and 20 state that the transcript released to the public "is not the same one that I certified and sent off to Washington," that it was necessary to hand correct and initial a substantial number of pages and the released version bears none of them, that "the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does," and that Painter's testimony "is now missing and has been excised."¹

The Kidd conversations are sole-sourced to Boston, who attributes them to a man who died in 1999.¹⁹ Boston gave other accounts of how Kidd conveyed the order. Arab News in 2003 reported that Kidd returned to Washington and telephoned Boston: "We have to be quiet," and quoted Boston as saying that Johnson "had ordered us to put the lid on it."¹⁰ In the Chicago Tribune in 2007 Boston said Kidd flew to Washington with the record while he returned to Naples, and that two weeks later Kidd telephoned him from his office in Naples and said: "Ward, they aren't interested in the facts. It's a political issue and we have to put a lid on it. We've been ordered to shut up."⁸ The family obituary describes him as the "Senior Judge Advocate" for the Sixth Fleet in Naples, Italy.² Paragraphs 22 to 25 of the declaration describe a 1990 telephone call from Cristol, after which Kidd said that "Cristol must be an Israeli agent," and a later letter from Cristol containing notes of the conversation that Boston calls "grossly incorrect."¹

Accounts differ on when Boston signed. Arab News on January 11, 2004 described "a signed affidavit last October."¹² The Financial Times reported on January 13, 2004 that Boston had signed an affidavit "last week."¹³ The Associated Press obituary states that "In 2002" Boston made the statement according to a signed affidavit.¹⁴ One transcription of the declaration prints the date as January 9, 2004. The signed page reads January 8.¹

The June 2007 op-ed

On June 8, 2007, the fortieth anniversary of the attack, the San Diego Union-Tribune published a Boston op-ed titled "Time for the truth about the Liberty." It repeats the Kidd account and the claim that the released transcript was altered. It ends with the call: "Let former intelligence officers testify that they received real-time Hebrew translations of Israeli commanders instructing their pilots to sink 'the American ship.'"³

Cristol answered in the History News Network on June 12, 2007. He argued that the Kidd account is hearsay about a dead man and that the record contains no testimony showing that the Israelis intended to destroy the ship.⁴ He also named a man, Ron Gotcher, whom he said helped Boston with the affidavit and declaration and "very likely wrote or assisted in the preparation" of the op-ed. Cristol says that Gotcher's claim to have worked for the National Security Agency is refuted by an NSA letter posted on the Liberty Incident website.⁴ Cristol also states that McNamara told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July 1967 that he had read the record of investigation and supported its conclusion that the attack was not intentional.⁴

Signals intelligence

In July 2003 the NSA released transcripts of the Liberty intercepts in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Cristol filed April 26, 2001. In a letter dated July 2, 2003, the agency enclosed three recordings of Israeli communications in Hebrew, three transcripts, two summary reports, and a compiled report dated June 22, 1967. The letter states that "No communications of the attacking aircraft or torpedo boats were available" and that an EC-121 aircraft had collected conversations between two Israeli helicopter pilots and the control tower at Hazor Airfield.¹⁵

In January 2004 the NSA historian, David Hatch, said that the new material "doesn't settle much." His reading of the conversations between an Israeli air controller and two helicopter pilots "suggested strongly" that the Israelis did not know at first that they were attacking a U.S. vessel, though the pilots mentioned an American flag flying.¹³

On June 8, 2007, the NSA announced that it had finished its review of all material relating to the attack and had posted additional documents, including oral histories, messages, and follow-up reports. The agency wrote: "It is not NSA's intention to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material."¹⁶

In a June 2003 Proceedings article, David C. Walsh reported that Oliver Kirby, the NSA deputy director for operations/production, said in an interview of February 14, 2003 that within weeks of the attack he read transcripts of the Israeli pilots' conversations, and that they made it "absolutely certain" the Israelis knew the ship was American.¹⁷ On October 2, 2007, the Chicago Tribune reported that the NSA's position was that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots, and quoted Kirby as saying he had read such transcripts: "They said, 'We've got him in the zero,' whatever that meant, I guess the sights or something. And then one of them said, 'Can you see the flag?' They said 'Yes, it's U.S, it's U.S.' They said it several times, so there wasn't any doubt in anybody's mind that they knew it." Kirby told the Tribune: "I'm willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that we knew they knew."⁸ The Tribune also quoted a James Gotcher, an attorney in California who served with the Air Force Security Service's 6924th Security Squadron at Son Tra, Vietnam, as recalling transcripts in which controllers urged the aircraft to "complete the job." Records found do not establish whether he is the Ron Gotcher named by Cristol.⁴⁸

Israeli position

The Israeli Embassy spokesman, Mark Regev, responded to the October 2003 news conference: "I can say unequivocally that the Liberty tragedy was a terrible accident, that the Israeli pilots involved believed they were attacking an enemy ship." He added: "This was in the middle of a war. This is something that we are not proud of."⁷ Israel has long maintained that the attack was a case of mistaken identity.⁷

State Department conference, January 2004

The Office of the Historian of the U.S. Department of State announced a two-day conference on the 1967 war, to coincide with the publication of the Foreign Relations of the United States volume on the Arab-Israeli crisis and war of 1967. The announcement, carried by Democracy Now on January 7, 2004, described the conference as a forum to discuss the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.¹⁸ Arab News reported before the event that Cristol would be a featured speaker and that David Satterfield, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, would give the keynote address.¹² The Office's press release, dated January 12, 2004, describes the volume as including "newly declassified documentation on the USS Liberty incident regarding Israeli involvement."¹⁹ The Financial Times reported that the conference opened in the State Department basement "with heated debate" over the newly released NSA intercepts.¹³

Death and papers

Boston died on June 12, 2008, of pneumonia in a hospital in the San Diego area, aged 84.¹⁴ The family obituary gives the place of death as Coronado Hospital and states that he was interred at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery on June 24, 2008, survived by his wife, Emma, three children and six grandchildren.² The History News Network gives the date of death as June 11, 2008, citing his wife.²⁰

Boston's papers at the Hoover Institution, acquired in 2012, consist of three manuscript boxes and a card file covering 1956 to 2008, including correspondence, writings, notes, and a photocopy of the court of inquiry proceedings.²¹ The Hoover also holds a photocopy of the court of inquiry record in one manuscript box.²²