June 5, 2021 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the Political Cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
As promised, ladies and gentlemen, we are taking you live to Pensacola, Florida right now, where our good friend and colleague Eddie the Bombardier Miller is reporting live from a reunion of the survivors of the USS Liberty.
It was on June the 8th, this week in 1967, when 34 Americans were killed and 172 were injured when the Liberty was attacked by Israeli planes and warships.
There is a website I would like you to jot down or commit to memory, honorlibertyvets.org.
Honor Liberty Vets.org.
There you will find a great deal of information about this attack, much more than we can offer you under the constraints of Commercial Talk Radio tonight, honorlibertyvets.org.
But without further ado, let's go to Eddie.
Eddie, you are in Pensacola, Florida tonight.
Where are you at?
What have you seen?
What have you heard?
What's the atmosphere like?
I know it has to be pretty incredible.
I'll tell you what, James, thank you for having the Sailors of the Night because we need to get the word out as much as possible.
We've been here this.
I got here, let's see, I got here Thursday afternoon.
It took me 11 hours to hear, James, because I got turned around, almost wounded up damn near New Orleans.
And I'll tell you what, I'm not kidding you.
I got so frustrated and I set the cruise on 80, believe it or not.
And it's just like you're crawling.
90.
I tell you what, people, 90 is the new 70.
But yeah, I came down here.
I met a bunch of the sailors Thursday night and Friday morning.
I bonded with them.
It's incredible how I bonded with them immediately.
We're like brothers.
And by the way, I was the only Army guy here.
We've had the Army, Marine, and Navy.
We don't have Air Force.
If we had the Air Force and the National Guard, we'd have a full house.
But, you know, me, I was the only Army guy here.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
But we don't have any.
I'm here.
Well, we got the Navy base.
It's the Pensacola Naval Air Station.
And, you know, some of these guys here train.
But here's what happened.
I came down.
We tested our equipment.
Then we had to move to another location.
Then we had to leave that location, move because the Jacks were dead.
And you know, I'm about as tech savvy as a snail.
But I grabbed every tech guy we had here and got hooked up.
But let me tell you, Friday and Saturday, Friday was so emotional.
These guys, I didn't even know I was supposed to talk until about a week before we came down.
I was supposed to have 30 minutes.
And then the next, I said, okay, well, I'll do something.
Well, the next day, there's this guy named Mo Schaefer, who's organizing the event.
He has to speak for an hour.
But I tell you what, if you've been to my speeches, I tell you what, I messed up the paint off the wall.
I blew these people out of their shocks, out of their shoes, man.
And I really let them who I said, here's who the enemy is.
There's no mistaking, and you know who it is.
But I tell you what, but I tell you what, I kept the confines, though, strictly about the Liberty.
I didn't, you know, me, I didn't want to go too far to the left or the right.
No rabbit trails.
Keep it up.
You're known for your moderation.
If you're known for anything, Pappy, you're known for your discernment.
Yes.
I'm the most discerning guy there is who is.
But like Keith said, he said, when you see Pappy, you don't know if he's going to be hugging or slugging.
But anyway, let me ask you this, just to give us our background.
What happened?
What happened to the USS Liberty and why is it significant to the American people?
Well, let's ask the sailors that because that's obviously their question and answer.
We will start with that.
Let's let Eddie give us a question.
Well, Eddie, give us a quick, give us a 30-second answer on that.
Because I know you have a young lady, a special young lady sitting next to you that wants to say a few words before we start going to the sailors.
And you're down there at this reunion, and everybody's kind of broke for dinner right now, but we're reporting live.
So go ahead.
What happened?
In a nutshell, the United States Ship Liberty was put in harm's way 12 and a half miles off the coast of Malta, off the coast of the Mediterranean when they had never been there.
And they were there.
All research has proven they were put there for one reason and one reason only to be sunk, to be a sacrifice to our God Almighty Israel, our best allies in the Mideast.
They were supposed to be sunk because this was going to happen.
They were soldiers in a war.
That's right.
Absolutely.
You know, they weren't going to be sunk.
And then Israel, United States, LBJ, the sorry dog, they were going to blame it on the Egyptians and therefore bring American boys in once more to do the fighting and bleeding and dying for Israel.
You know, that's what the story was.
But it went bad awry.
And the sailors will tell you that the hand of God held that ship up that day because it hit with torpedoes, 40 millimeter cannons, 50 calibers, armor piercing, even with napalm, which is against international law.
You're not supposed to drop napalm on human beings.
They dropped it.
They even dropped it on the sailors that were trying to, the Medics, in the Navy, they call them Corbin.
They machine gunned their life routes.
They shot out all the antennas.
They destroyed the SOS.
You can get rid of a military signal in battle.
That's legal.
But the whole damn thing was illegal anyway.
But they got rid of even the towers that they send out, the SOS signals.
By the way, a sailor just came by then.
But it was a war crime.
In a nutshell, I'll repeat myself.
They tried to sink the United States Ship Liberty and they were going to blame it on Egypt.
And that's why.
Wow, is that the consensus?
We'll ask the soldiers, but is that the consensus of what happened with the soldiers, the sailors?
Is that their consensus as well?
And we'll be asking them that.
Every single one of them.
Every single one of them will tell you that's true.
And you know what?
The reason we're trying so hard...
You got to get Heidi there, Eddie.
Yeah, I'm just going to say this lady here, I'm bringing her on.
She is indictive of the modern generation, especially young people who've never heard of the Liberty.
And, you know, it's just a travesty of justice.
Our system of powers that be, have kept this secret buried for years and years and years.
And they're still trying to get to her.
We're bringing Jordan on right now.
This lady's name, Jordan, what's your last name, dear?
Okay, go ahead.
We don't have to say a last name.
Jordan's fine.
Jordan, so, I mean, am I taking it that you just so happened to be at this hotel while this gathering's going on and you've kind of learned a little bit about it, or am I totally off base in that assumption?
Yes, and I got the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Miller before he even came here to stay.
And so therefore, I've gotten to know a lot of the USS Liberty veterans just passing through.
And I've heard a lot of their stories and talked to them.
And, you know, now I know a lot more about it than I, you know, because we never hear about USS Liberty here.
And I've been there several times, the museums, and I've never heard anything about it.
So I think I feel like it was kind of like covered up by our government and by everybody else.
And I think that's sad because it's because of our government that that happened to the USS Liberty vets.
And I just think that people should know about it and people should be aware about it because everybody's so dependent on the government to provide for its people.
And in the end, they end up just letting us down over and over and over again.
Well, Jordan, this is Keith.
Let me ask you this.
Do you know who was put in charge of the cover-up of this incident by President Johnson?
I have no idea.
I am my father.
John McCain's father, who was an admiral.
There you have it.
All right.
Well, Jordan, hey, listen, thanks so much for coming on for just a few minutes, and we really appreciate it.
And Godspeed to you and enjoy Pizzacola.
We love the panhandle of Florida.
God's country down there for sure.
And we're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with Eddie.
And we're going to get to the sailors.
Here they come, ladies and gentlemen.
Stay tuned.
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to get on the show and speak with james and the gang call us toll free at 1-866-986-6397 And now back to tonight's show.
I want to thank again, Eddie, the Bobby-Miller, for being our man at the location there in Pensacola and for bringing on and arranging the appearances of the gentleman you'll be hearing from now and the rest of the show.
We set the table for you in that last segment.
A lot of the sailors are now beginning to return to the convention hall from supper.
And I know Eddie has told me they're lining up.
But we have another interesting guest before we get to a sailor.
Who do we have, Eddie?
Hey, James, we have Jordan here.
I'm going to ask her just a few select questions of what she thinks about what she's found out about her government.
And this is a young person.
I'll ask her a few select questions to turn her over to you.
She'll get her story.
And then we'll get the fellow on from the America.
And then we'll get Ernie Galla, who was on the Liberty.
So here we go.
We're bringing people bringing Jordan back on.
Jordan, let me ask you.
I'm going to ask you a question I asked you earlier.
You said you had never heard of the Liberty.
Tell the people briefly in a minute or so what you found out about the United States Ship Liberty and what you think about your government for doing what they did to the Liberty.
What you think about the United States government in general?
Go ahead, Jordan.
I've heard from a few different people about what happened with the Liberty, and I was just informed that they told our vets not to talk about it afterwards.
And if they did, they'd be court-martialed.
Men have been shot because of this.
They have not been given their purple heart because of this.
And with all the problems that we already have now with our vets not getting the proper care that they should be having with their benefits and everything else, I've already, I mean, I'm just enthralled.
Like these men are giving their lives for our countries that we have the freedoms that we do and for our government to go behind their back and not care about the sacrifices that they're making to come up with this elaborate plan to sink their ship and blame it on somebody else.
Like I don't understand how somebody could just put somebody's life on the line like that, recall the planes so that they don't come and rescue them when this happens.
And the fact that we even have survivors from this horrible, horrible incident is amazing.
Just hearing about going in with NATO and everything.
Like I just, it's so amazing to have these men here.
I'm so grateful for them and what they've done for this country.
And it just saddens me to see that people are so dependent on our government now.
And to know that they are this type of government that would just put their people's lives on the line and not care because it's more about money and allies and all of this stuff for everything.
I just, I'm just speechless at this point.
Well, Jordan, thank you again for the United States government now.
Sorry, James, I was going to ask her what she thinks about the United States government right now.
Would you trust, if you had a son, would you want him to go in the military?
No, I just, I would never want my son to put his life on the line for this country if the government doesn't even have his back.
He has their back and they don't have his.
That's sad.
Excellent.
And Lord, I stand correct that we do have all four branches of the military here.
We do now have the Air Force.
All we need is the Coast Guard.
Well, thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Ms. Jordan.
Ms. Jordan is very eloquent, pretty young lady.
She's been kind to me.
She helped me when I was lost and trying to direct me in here.
So, you know what, James, right now, we're going to bring up Joe.
He was the fellow of United States Ship America, a monstrous aircraft carrier.
And once again, I'll tell people what's so important about this.
He was an eyewitness.
He worked to help launch the stinking fighter planes, and they were recalled.
If you will, Joe, tell them about Admiral Geis and how he tried to come to your aid and how the other Admiral Martin was kind of like I consider him a cutthroat.
I guess what I want to tell you.
Oh, this is Joe Witkins.
Again, I was on the aircraft carrier America.
We did a ride there the day that the bombing took place.
And when we got the GQ, which means general quarters, that something had happened, immediately our ship, which was headed for France at the time, turned around and we gained enough airspeed over the flight deck to be able to launch two ready caps, which means we had two jets sitting on the plane or on the deck,
and they were ready to be able to launch within five minutes, which means the pilots have always, whenever we've entered a tent situation, we have the capability of getting out planes.
We did this in Vietnam.
We also did this for the Liberty.
And the point is, is that as soon as we got the planes off, the records show that there were four planes shot off from America, and there were some others shot off from Saratoga.
And as we are going through, as we have trained many, many times, we began to ready the missile system of which I worked on aboard the America.
And that's the ship's missiles.
And all I can say is we had four missiles ready to go.
I won't say what they were.
But we began to hear the officers in the Combat Information Center began to yell, scream, and curse.
And the interesting point was we had no reason, no idea why.
And, you know, we began to pick up pieces from what was going on.
Now, our ship was cruising.
We were probably doing somewhere around 40 knots.
And all of a sudden, we had to start slowing down.
And nobody knew why.
They kept the information from us.
We didn't know why they sent the planes off.
And we were dark.
We were dark about everything.
And all we knew is we were going to war.
We were going to help somebody who needed our help.
But as crew members, we didn't know who.
We didn't know why.
We just reacted to what we had practiced many, many days, many, many times over and over to prepare for such an incident.
And then the ship started to slow down.
And they brought the planes back.
What we heard after that, after they brought all the planes back down, was the Admiral over the Sixth Fleet, which was Admiral Martin, told our Admiral, Admiral Geis, you get those planes back on a ship, and I won't use the expletives.
And our Admiral says it's going to take a bigger person with more stars than you.
And next thing you know, he ended up talking to Robert McNamara in Washington, and apparently that didn't go very well.
And he ends up with President Johnson himself.
And without the expletives, the bottom line was that Johnson didn't care if they sunk the ship.
He didn't care about the lives on the Liberty.
He said, actually, he said he's not going to embarrass an ally of ours, which you probably heard before.
The hard part is, is when we finally reached the Liberty, as you probably heard from other people on the Liberty, they sat idle for 17 hours.
We were ready to send help, send support.
We had airplanes in the air, and we were waiting to be able to get close enough to send helicopters to be able to hear to help the wounded.
And we couldn't do anything.
Our hands were tied.
The Admiral's hands were tied.
And our eluctive President Johnson and his war machine.
And the point is, is that here I am 50-some years later, and there isn't a week that goes by that I don't see that ship listing in the waters.
I see the pain.
I see the colors.
I see the holes.
If you can imagine what a 30-millimeter shell would leave.
And I see what now I'm down here to the Liberty's Reunion.
And I came here because I have PTSD.
My first tour, I saw the Liberty.
My second tour was Vietnam.
My third tour was Vietnam.
Yeah, something in common with Eddie right there, Grizzled Combat Medic.
Sir, thank you for your service.
Thank you for what you tried to do for those heroes on the Liberty.
And thank you for being with us tonight.
We've got to take a quick break.
We'll really thank you for being with us.
We'll be right back.
Eddie in Pensacola.
James Keith up here in the studio.
More sailors coming your way next.
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From the USA Radio News Florida Bureau, I'm Mike Fortier.
USA Radio News.
It's time to jump back into the political cesspool.
To be part of the show and have your voice heard around the world, call us at 1-866-986-6397.
We're back, everybody, with Eddie the Bombardier Miller, and he is in Pensacola, Florida at this reunion of the survivors of the USS Liberty.
And we just heard from a crewman of the USS America who was in the vicinity on that fateful day, June 8th, 1967, could have sent support, but was not allowed to do so.
Eddie, and he was privy to communications, by the way, that the Liberty was not.
I know you want to say a quick word about that, Eddie, before we go to our first sailor from the actual Liberty.
They'll be joining us for the remainder of the show.
Yes, I'll make this quick.
I consider Admiral Martin a traitor.
I consider Admiral McCain a traitor.
You know, Admiral McCain was the father of the stinking Senator John McCain.
They were both politicians.
He wasn't a sailor, wasn't a politician.
Here's the thing.
Like we said, you said it well.
The sailor Joe from the U.S. America was privy.
He heard communications.
He heard the cussing and swearing of Admiral Geis, who did everything he could to rescue those sailors from USS Liberty.
But Admiral Martin tried to overrule him.
Defense Secretary McMurray even, he still wouldn't buckle.
He had to have direct orders from the President of the United States to recall the sailors.
And this can't be said enough.
LBJ himself said he rode that GD ship on the bottom of the ocean.
He said he was not going to embarrass our Jewish Israeli allies because a sailor, like I told the sailors today yesterday, we're nothing, but you know what?
Sailors, soldiers, and nothing but fodder to be used at the behest of the elite, according to, oh, hello, who is not George Soros?
Eddie, one of the things that I've seen.
I was just going to say, one of the most honest answers to any question I've ever asked was a question I asked of you.
And I asked you one time talking about your tours in Vietnam where you were a combat medic.
I mean, a combat medic, my God.
And, of course, honorably discharged.
I asked you years later, I said, who'd you fight for in Vietnam, Eddie?
Goldman Sox and Company.
Goldman Sachs and Company in the Zionist International New World Order and the Banksters.
Yes, sir.
That's what we fought for.
And here's another item.
Get this.
This is how our government deserted our people.
The evil stinking Russians that are so mean.
The Russians had a destroyer that had been shattering the United States ship Liberty for days, and they were there.
The Russians saw everything that went on.
There's some debate on whether the Israeli commandos were recalled, the Israelis backed off the attack of the Liberty because they were damn well going to try to sink it.
The scuttlebutt is that the reason they did this is because the Israelis saw that Russian destroyer that was privy to the whole thing.
Also, there was an American submarine, the United States ship Andrew Jackson, and I'm wondering why they didn't raise more hell about it.
But get this.
The Russians volunteered.
The Russians communicated to Admiral Geis and Admiral Martin, hey, you have sailors in the water.
We were in the eyeball contact.
We're going to get them out of the water for you.
And they told the Russians, and this is my words, to go to hell.
We'll take care of our own.
Well, the way they took care of their own, James, our stinking government let these sailors in the damn water for 17 hours.
And this was Cold War Russia, no less.
I mean, this was Cold War Russia, no less, and still had more honor than our own government.
Well, let's go to a sailor, Eddie.
Who do we have?
Yeah, who's sailor?
I was going to say, we're going back to this.
This is Ernie Gallo.
He's very, very eloquent.
He's more eloquent, more eloquent than I am.
And Ernie is going to tell you what he saw that day.
Take it away, Ernie.
It's Ernie Gallo, people.
Sailor from the United States Ship Liberty.
Go ahead, Ernie.
Ernie, thanks for being with us.
Yes, I mean, by all means, if you can.
Well, tell us your position and what you saw that day and what it was like to be there when it all started.
I mean, my goodness.
I mean, what a hero.
And thank you for being with us.
Thank you.
I was a communication technician, second-class petty officer.
And the USS Liberty was our mission was to monitor the six-day war, especially to make sure that, to find out if the Soviets or Russians were involved or anything like that.
Our mission was actually redundant because by the time we arrived at our station, our operational position, the Israelis had taken the Sinai.
They had the area secured.
And we really couldn't do much except intercept whatever was ever there.
Yeah, so we were one big ear to pick up anything in the ether.
We arrived the morning of June 8th, and we had 12 overflights of Israeli aircraft that reconnoitered our ship.
And there were friendly events all morning long.
In fact, one aircraft flew so low that you could see the pilot's face, and he rocked his wings.
And as I said, it was a very friendly event.
But at 2 o'clock, 2 p.m., all that changed when attack aircraft, excuse me, Mirage aircraft arrived, and they started strafing the ship with rockets and 20-meter cannon.
They first took out our two 50-caliber machine guns, which was no threat to them at all.
They were there for repel borders, but nonetheless, we had four sailors manning the machine guns, and they were taken out immediately, blown to bits.
And then the aircraft then proceeded to take out our transmit antennas to make sure that we could not get a distress call out.
And the other thing that they did was start to jam our distress frequencies and operational frequencies.
And the only way they could do that is they had to know those frequencies.
They were our allies, so yeah, they knew the allies, our frequencies, and they proceeded to jam them.
Let me ask you a question.
How did they get those frequencies?
Do we have a mole inside our organization?
No, I think it was common knowledge amongst our allies what frequencies they were.
Okay, go ahead.
But our radio determined that when the aircraft were actually attacking the ship, they had to turn off the jamming signal.
For what reason, I don't know.
But they did.
And that's how we got the signal off to the 6th Fleet that we were under attack.
Now, the planes were painted black, so we really didn't know who was attacking us initially.
And neither did the 6th Fleet.
But we got the message out that we were under attack.
And that was received by the USS Saratoga.
In the meantime, three torpedo boats finally arrived.
And that's after two Masteir aircraft dropped napalm canisters port and starboard.
So the entire superstructure of the USS Liberty was on fire.
We did everything possible to fight those fires, to contain it, which we did.
The fires remained external.
And, of course, the attacking aircraft tried to shoot at anybody that they saw trying to put out those fires.
Three torpedo boats showed up, and they had 40 millimeter cannons, which they used against the ship.
And they started to drop their torpedoes in the water.
These were dumb torpedoes.
It just simply lined up the ship with their torpedoes, dropped them in the water.
There was no homing devices or anything like that.
Our captain managed to dodge four of them, but the fifth one hit us in our operational spaces.
And this is where the hand of God was there to protect the ship, because had that torpedo hit two foot forward or two foot aft, we would have broken apart and gone down.
Unfortunately, that position, though, was where 25 of our 34 were killed.
Sir, if you don't mind the interruption, what is going through your mind as you see this beginning to take place?
I mean, surely to say a shock would be an understatement, but what are you thinking?
I mean, what are you doing in this moment?
Scared as hell and praying to God to take me in one piece.
Yeah, you know, this was it.
This was meeting your maker time.
It was, there was, we were not a man of war.
There was no way to defend ourselves, really.
We were target practice for whatever the Israelis wanted to do with us.
And they certainly were.
So we took this torpedo, and there was about 100 people in those spaces.
And anyway, the result was 34 were killed and 174 wounded, two-thirds of the crew.
It sounds like our greatest ally has done more damage to us than our supposed enemies, which is an interesting thing to wrap your mind around.
This is, listen, folks, you're listening to the real deal here.
You're listening to the heroes of the USS Liberty.
There were reunion taking place tonight in Pensacola, Florida, and we're so thankful to have them.
We do have to take a quick break.
We're going to come back and we're going to go back to Eddie and the sailors and this gentleman as well.
Stay tuned, everybody.
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Okay, girls, about finished with your lesson on money?
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Well, when you sell a gold coin to a coin shop that's worth, say, $1,200, you don't actually get $1,200.
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Do what we got, girl.
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Welcome back.
All right, everybody.
Welcome back.
So it's James Edwards here in the studio, Eddie the Bombardier Miller, live on the ground in Pensacola, Florida tonight, where again he is bringing us the sailors of the USS Liberty from their reunion.
This is all live, unrehearsed, uncensored, and unedited.
And so we are talking now with Ernie Gallo from the previous segment, who is, or was rather, a communications officer on the USS Liberty.
And we've got so many more sailors to get to in the third hour.
They're all beginning to come back in from their dinner meeting, and they're waiting for us, and we're waiting for them.
But Ernie, if you don't mind, just a very quick thing.
I know we only have two.
How you doing, James?
I'm giving one quick tick bit.
Ernie Gallo had a top secret clearance where the captain of the ship couldn't even get in.
But the captain of the ship later decided he weren't in.
He brought some brains and got in.
But Ernie Gallo had a top secret about as high as you can get.
He heard stuff that you wouldn't believe that he's probably not allowed to say now.
But I just want to set that up.
Go ahead, Ernie.
Well, I know I wanted to.
I know right after Ernie, we're going to go to another sailor who's standing by, also this segment.
But Ernie, Eddie just mentioned the captain.
What would you say about the actions of William McGonagall that day?
He is the most Navy capable captain that I have ever encountered.
I mean, the reason we're here today is because of his professionalism and his ability to inspire and keep us going.
We took this torpedo.
We were listing nine degrees and we were preparing to abandon ship.
And when he found out that our damage control reported that we were not taking additional water and that our engineers were keeping our boilers on the line so we were able to move to get out of the way.
And so he rescinded the order.
And just, I mean, so he, even while he was wounded very badly, he nevertheless nevertheless is, in fact, he received the Medal of Honor.
He kept his, stayed at post and continued to give orders and to keep us motivated and to keep us going, which we did.
So even though the Sixth Fleet and our government abandoned us that afternoon, we managed to stay afloat and going until the next morning where we rendezvoused with two destroyers, which helped us with our wounded.
We had 174 wounded in addition to the 34 that were killed in action.
So the ship was very, we needed help badly.
And it's a miracle that we didn't sink initially and that we stayed afloat and that the damage control that came aboard to help our own damage control to keep the water contained and keep the bulkheads from giving way.
Let me ask James Franklin.
I was going to ask him a quick question on TPC.
Ernie, rate the Admiral, the following Admirals.
Admiral Geis, Admiral Martin, Admiral McCain.
What is your opinion of those Admirals, the three Admirals?
I think Admiral Martin and McCain possibly knew ahead of time that the ship was going to be attacked and was part and parcel to what happened.
I think Admiral Geis was a supreme patriot and a Navy patriot.
He called the shots as he should have when he discovered that our government was abandoning us because of the UCMJ.
He immediately challenged the order, as he should have, and got the president to come online to say, hey, I don't care if this ship sinks and the sailors, you know, the ship goes to the bottom.
I will not have my ally embarrassed.
So they knew that it was the Israelis that were attacking us.
And if that's true.
I was just going to say, traitors of the highest order, traitors of the highest order, if that's true.
One final question.
And James, I'm telling you more to you.
I'm sorry.
Hey, Ernie, just say, for instance, Admiral Geis told LBJ to stick it and went ahead and sent those fighters.
What would happen?
Would Admiral Weiss have been court-martialed and probably put in prison?
What's your opinion?
Amen.
Yeah.
And that's the issue of today, because it can happen again.
And that's one of the reasons we have such a passion to tell our story.
Absolutely.
And for people to analyze the entire facets of the Liberty story.
Because if a general or an admiral refuses to take an order from the chief executive, if it goes against the UCMJ, there's nothing for them to fall back on.
They can be fired immediately or their career is over.
And so there's something that needs to be there for them to say, hey, this is wrong, and I can't follow this order.
You know, Ernie, and I must promise to shut up.
I took an oath.
You took an oath.
We went into the service.
Our oath also said we'll follow all orders unless they're an unlawful order.
But I'm telling you flat out right now that that's a crock.
You try to refuse following an order because it's unlawful or illegal.
Welcome to Leavenworth.
Well, I'll turn you back over to James.
Well, no, thank you.
I just want to thank you.
Well, Eddie, you're going to be with us for the remainder of the show, of course.
We're relying upon you to bring these brave sailors to the program tonight.
You're orchestrating all that on the ground as we do it from the studio.
But want to thank, of course, Ernie Gallo, communications officer there on the USS Liberty.
Got to give you this website again, ladies and gentlemen, honorlibertyvets.org.
There's only so much information we can transmit over the course of two hours of commercial interrupted radio.
If you want to read all about it from their own words, honorlibertyvets.org.
Eddie, we're going to go to another one of those veterans right now.
Joe Vinkert is with us.
Thank you, Joe.
Thank you for having these sailors on.
Like I told the people, it's not about Blood River, not about TPC, not about True News.
It's not about Liberty Radio.
It's about these sailors.
We have to get the word out.
And with that, James, we have Joe Bitker on right now.
And he's also a survivor from the United States Ship of Liberty.
Joe, tell us a little bit where you're from and tell us about what you were doing that day, in your own words, at the United States Ship Liberty on the day of June 8th, 1967.
Go ahead, Joe.
I can't hear very well, and I'm not too sure what he said, but I was there that day.
I was in my office when this all occurred.
And the whole torpedo was right below me, as a matter of fact.
I was on the deck right above it.
I went and opened the hatch to go down below, and several of my friends that I knew very well were dead right there at the bottom of the ladder.
And I went down and brought their bodies up, Warren Hershey and Fred Walton.
As a matter of fact, we're the two.
And I got back to Norfolk, and I was interviewed by the Norfolk newspaper.
I was told by the Navy I could not speak about anything about it.
If I talked about it, I'd be court-martialed.
I didn't listen to them very well because I had talked to the press very well.
I was interviewed, and I told them everything I thought.
And I thought we were abandoned by the Navy.
We were abandoned by the country, that they allowed our people to be killed and didn't care.
We were told we couldn't talk about it.
If we did, we'd be court-martialed.
I did.
Anyway, I got interviewed by the Norfolk newspaper, and I did talk a lot, and I shouldn't have, even though I told him I didn't care whether I got court-martialed or not, because I was going to talk about it.
And it was covered up totally and absolutely.
I was told by an officer who was sent down there to monitor what was going on that I couldn't talk, and I told him to go to H.
I didn't give a damn what he said.
And I did what I wanted to say.
By the way, Joe's one of the guys who said that before we get ready to go to Washington to try to get the tell you about what happened to Phil Tourney and some of the survivors who went to Washington to talk about their peace.
Don't forget to tell you about that later, James.
Go ahead, Joe.
I also, in addition to everything else I had to say, I was interviewed extensively by Jim Innes and others, and I helped write the book about Assault on the Liberty that was written.
I provided much of the information there, and I knew I was threatened to be court-martialed every time I did it, but I didn't care.
And I gave him all the information as they've become unclassified that I knew.
Even though I was threatened to be court-martialed and all that, I didn't care, and I let it out.
Nothing's changed at all.
I was wounded, but I was never lowered a purple heart.
I was given a Navy commendation medal, but at the ceremony when I went, they would give me a bronze star, and they changed it right in the middle of the ceremony and gave me a Navy commendation medal and took back the bronze star.
Was that retribution for what you're telling the truth?
Pardon me?
Was that because you told the truth?
That was their place.
I think it was because I told the truth.
I can't imagine why they would do such a thing.
I read the citation.
I had the medal in my hand, and they took it back and gave me a Navy commendation medal instead of that.
Maybe they should have given you a star of David.
Pardon me?
Maybe they should have given you a star of David.
Maybe you just said you want a star of David.
Maybe they would have treated you better.
They didn't give me any excuses at all.
I just took it.
And I protested that didn't make any difference.
He just laughed.
Plus your heart.
No, God bless you, sir.
God bless you.
Got to thank you again for coming on and for sharing your story.
I mean, ladies and gentlemen, ask yourself this.
How many programs covering in this tonight?
Zero.
This month, this year, zero.
Except for right here on Liberty News Radio Network with Eddie and yours truly.
But these sailors, I mean, that's where the spotlight is shining and should be shown on our libertyvets.org.
Joe, we got just seconds remaining.
Last word to you, my friend.
Last word to you, Jake.
That's it for me.
I just glad to hear somebody's going to do something about it or somebody's going to make noise about it.
So far, it hasn't made any difference whatsoever to the government, apparently.
Well, if you want to make noise with us, ladies and gentlemen, tell Congress and the media to cover the USS Liberty, the true story of what happened that fateful day on this very week in 1967.
And you can get that information on ourlibertyvets.org.
Third hour, you're going to hear from more and more and more and more veterans, sailors on the Liberty the day they were attacked by Israel.