USS Liberty survivor Bryce Lockwood gives a firsthand account of the 1967 Israeli attack on the American spy ship
Tucker Carlson interviews Bryce Lockwood, a Marine sergeant and Russian linguist who survived the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in June 1967.
Summary
Bryce Lockwood, a Marine sergeant and Russian linguist, was aboard the USS Liberty when it was attacked by Israeli forces on June 8, 1967. In this firsthand account, he provides He provides a detailed firsthand account of the attack — including air strikes, torpedo fire, the machine-gunning of life rafts, and the jamming of distress frequencies — and describes his personal efforts to rescue wounded crewmates from flooding compartments below decks. He and fellow survivors believe the attack was a deliberate false flag operation, intended to sink the ship with no survivors and blame Egypt in order to draw the United States into the war on Israel's side. Central to this belief is the account of Admiral Lawrence Geis, who told senior intelligence officer Commander David Lewis that aircraft launched to aid the Liberty were twice recalled on the orders of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, with President Lyndon Johnson reportedly saying he would "not have my allies embarrassed." He also references James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's counterintelligence chief, who he says was simultaneously an Israeli Mossad asset. He calls for a full, open congressional investigation while survivors are still alive to testify.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Background: What the USS Liberty Was and Why It Was There
Tucker Carlson: Mr. Lockwood, thank you very much for joining us.
Bryce Lockwood: My pleasure.
Tucker Carlson: Tell us about the USS Liberty. Many people have heard the name. They're aware there's a controversy about what happened to the ship in 1967. If you wouldn't mind starting at the beginning and telling us the story of the USS Liberty.
Bryce Lockwood: The USS Liberty was a spy ship back in the 1960s. Several of the sub-Saharan African countries had just won their independence from Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, and France. There was a heavy influence both from the Soviet Union and from Cuba — Cubans had a lot of troops around the area. That entire area is very wealthy in natural resources and precious metals, and the United States wanted to keep track of what was going on over there. Mind you, this is when satellites were pretty rudimentary, so the best way to gather that information was to get close.
The USS Liberty was a World War II Victory-class freighter. She was originally commissioned as the SS Simmons Victory. She saw service as a cargo carrier during the Second World War, was mothballed, brought back out of mothballs for the Korean War as an ammunition carrier, then back into mothballs. Then in 1965, when the National Security Agency decided they needed vessels of that type, her hull was probably in the best condition of almost any of them that were in the Ghost Fleet or the mothball fleet. She was brought out of commission. The US government spent $26 million in 1965 money equipping her with the latest in intelligence collection. We could literally suck up every frequency that was being used. We had aboard her the world's largest mobile computer, the UNIVAC 500 — at that time, the world's largest. You could likely do about as much with your cell phone now, but technology has come a long way in the last 60 years. She was equipped with linguists and cruised up and down the west coast of Africa listening in on whatever was going on.
As war appeared to be imminent between Israel and her neighbors in 1967 — the neighbors included what was then called the United Arab Republic, primarily Egypt, Syria, and to a lesser extent some influence from Jordan and Libya — the administration sent some F-4 photo reconnaissance planes, high-performance photo intelligence planes, to Torrejón Air Base in Spain. Those markings were obliterated. The pilots were given neutral uniforms and neutral identification and sent to overfly Israel's neighbors.
When hostilities broke out in June of 1967, the Israelis had intelligence courtesy of the US administration locating every aircraft, every tank, locations of personnel, where they were billeted, where they were based, and so forth. Hostilities broke out on the 5th of June 1967. The National Security Agency had ordered the USS Liberty to proceed from her cruise up and down the west coast of Africa with all due speed to Rota, Spain, take on stores, refuel, pick up six additional linguists, and proceed with haste to the eastern Mediterranean where they could monitor what was going on.
She was stacked with linguists. Out of a crew of 294 aboard the ship, roughly 190 were intelligence personnel — linguists, code-breakers, Morse operators, voice intercept operators, and so forth. The Soviets had a group of Tu-95 long-range bombers equipped for intelligence collection at Alexandria, Egypt. They told the world that they had given those planes to Egypt and that they were manned by Egyptian troops. Such was not the case. They were Soviet troops wearing Egyptian uniforms.
The task that we were given as linguists — there were three of us Russian linguists aboard her, with three watch sections rotating eight hours each — our primary task was monitoring those Soviet Tu-95 intelligence aircraft at Alexandria. The aircraft would communicate in plain-language Egyptian until they were airborne and over the Mediterranean Sea, then change frequencies and go to plain-language Russian.
It was ironic that while we were under attack, my relief came into the processing and reporting room where I was and said, "Hey, Bryce, I got him. I got him." I said, "You got who, Jim?" "The Russkies." "Really?" "Yeah, plain language was Russian." He went back into the room where he was copying the intercept, and a torpedo struck him and killed him.
The Attack Begins: June 8, 1967
Hostilities broke out on the 5th of June 1967. We arrived on station on the 7th of June. Throughout the day of the 7th and in the early morning hours of the 8th of June, we were overflown by several different Israeli aircraft. They flew very close to us. We could plainly see the pilots. The fellows that were off duty and sunning themselves on the decks would wave to the pilots, and the pilots waved back. We had a drill — general quarters — at noon on the 8th. The captain came on the address system aboard the ship, the 1MC, and told us there were a few things he wanted us to improve: get to our general quarters stations a little more rapidly, get the watertight doors closed a little more rapidly. Then we secured from general quarters.
I was at my berthing spaces in the after part of the ship. I heard a tremendous noise roughly 2:00 local time. I had never been under hostile fire before, but I knew that we were in trouble. I immediately dropped what I was doing and headed for my general quarters station, which was below decks. Mind you, the cargo spaces in the forward part of the ship were where all of our intelligence people were — roughly 190 men. The only way out was a narrow, steep ladderway about two feet wide with a railing.
The ship would ring whenever a projectile struck it. There were 826 large-caliber strikes from aircraft aboard her — 40-millimeter cannon fire, 30-millimeter cannon fire, heat-seeking rockets. On either side of the ship on the starboard side, there were racks that contained life rafts with a charge. You jerk on a cord and the charge would go off and fire these life rafts into the sea. Both of those were napalmed. The captain's gig was riddled with rocket fire. The Liberty launch was riddled with rocket fire. Basically no means of getting any survivors off.
The Israelis were jamming our distress frequencies, which was a violation of international law. They were using unmarked aircraft, which is a violation of international law.
During the court of inquiry, which was conducted after the attack was over, ordered by the Johnson administration and conducted by three-star Admiral Isaac Kidd, the Israelis said that they had mistaken us for an Egyptian ship — the El Quseir. The El Quseir was a World War I horse transport. Her only armament was a four-inch muzzle-loading cannon. The Israelis claimed that they were being shelled from the sea. We were the only ship in the vicinity. We had no capacity to shell anything. The bottom line was the Israelis had captured an entire Egyptian brigade. They were blowing up the captured ammunition, and that's what the explosions were that they claimed was fire from the sea. Quite obviously that was not possible from the El Quseir or from us.
The Torpedo Strike and Rescue Below Decks
Tucker Carlson: Let me ask you — when you come under fire around 2:00, how long does it last?
Bryce Lockwood: There are various testimonies about that. The claimed air attack lasted about 25 minutes, but of course when you're under fire and trying to survive, it seems a lot longer. And as I mentioned, the entire ship would ring with each shell that struck it.
The captain came on the 1MC and said, "Brace yourselves — torpedo attack, starboard side." Well, that's where I was located. My friend Ronnie Campbell was sitting there at a desk and he said, "Well, they hit us with everything else. What else can they hit us with?" The division officer, Lieutenant Bennett, stuck his head in the hatchway and said, "Sergeant Lockwood, would you come a minute, please?" I stepped out into the passageway. He got me into a conversation with Lieutenant Commander David Lewis, who was the senior research officer aboard the ship, about getting these ditching bags topside and pitched over into the sea. We had large canvas bags with brass grommets in the sides and lead weights in the bottom. The idea was to get all the classified information into these ditching bags, take them topside, and pitch them into the sea. Should they be recovered, by the time they could be, any information in them would be useless.
Then there was a sudden blinding flash of flame and a tremendous loud noise that knocked me to the deck. I was kind of semi-conscious, thinking to myself, "Well, Lord, I guess this is it. I guess I'm coming home. At least Lois and my kids are taken care of." I felt something cold, looked down, and water was gushing in.
I didn't find out what had actually taken place until many years later. Some of the sailors told me that when the torpedo struck, it literally lifted the ship out of the water and sent her back down. When she came down and rolled toward the starboard side, there was a roughly 40-foot hole in the side. That water was gushing in.
I heard a moan behind me. Struggling to my feet, there was a sailor trapped in the wreckage. His name was Joe Lentini — I didn't know who that was until 25 years later. Joe was one of the communicators who worked with the teletype equipment. We weren't getting anything out and couldn't understand why we weren't getting a mayday out or receiving any aid. A piece of shrapnel from a rocket had penetrated the ship and struck him in the left thigh. Joe was bleeding profusely. He was sitting on the deck leaning up against the bulkhead. The only way out, and he was putting a tourniquet on that wound when the torpedo struck. Our office spaces were separated by sheet-steel bulkheads. That bulkhead just mushroomed out, caught him in his left knee, upturned, and literally made toothpicks out of his femur bone.
I was trying to pull him loose. The water was coming up pretty rapidly. I said, "Come on, you've got to help me. I can't do it by myself. Come on, get your legs under you and push." I didn't realize that his left leg was smashed, but I felt him get his right leg under him and push just enough where I could free him, though he was still partially tangled up in that wreckage. By that time, the water was within a foot and a half of the overhead. There were some pipes carrying cabling and power hanging from the overhead. I said, "Here, get a hold of these pipes."
About that time, I saw a body floating out toward the hole. I reached down with my right arm and got an arm around him and tried to hold his head above water. I heard the division officer, Lieutenant Bennett, at the top of the ladderway say, "This is Mr. Bennett — open this hatch." There was a lot of confusion. You can imagine roughly 190 people crammed into that space in fear of their lives — a lot of shouting. I said as loudly as I could, "Knock it off. If y'all don't settle down, none of us will get out of here alive." That was the last thing I remember. I apparently passed out.
The next thing I recall was being alone with the unconscious sailor — nobody there but me and the sea and him. The ship was rolling. The torpedo had ruptured one of the fuel tanks on the starboard side. That was the heavy oil that powered the ship — a stinking oil. That oil was everywhere, and oil and water don't mix. Just about everything was coated with it.
I tried to start up the ladderway with this unconscious sailor, slipped, and dropped him. He was going back out through the hole. Got him. Got back up. Started back up the ladderway. About half to two-thirds of the way up, a piece of shrapnel from the torpedo had bent in the railing, so there was only a space roughly a foot wide. Got to that point, slipped, dropped him again — he was going back out through the hole. Got him back up the ladderway again. Got up to the top and the hatch was sealed shut.
I was trying to hold his head above water and pound on the hatch. A sailor named Bobby Schnell — there were dogs that held the hatch sealed shut around a rubber gasket and about an eight-inch-high metal seal, probably a dozen large bolts that bolted it down — he got a wrench, knocked those nuts loose, and opened the hatch and let me out.
I tried to drag the sailor out, dropped him, tried to drag him again, couldn't quite get him out, tried to turn him over. His foot caught in the chain that was holding the hatch open, and I was literally trying to drag his leg off. Phil Turney, one of the damage control people, was standing there. He said, "Wait a minute — he's got his foot caught." He freed his foot. Then he said, "The captain has ordered us to prepare to abandon ship. You need to get a life vest on. There are life vests there. Put one on him. They're doing triage at the midships part of the ship, so you need to get him back there."
I tried to pick him up — pretty weak — dropped him. Tried to pick him up again and dropped him again.
Years later, when I found out who he was — it was some 30 years before I even found out who he was — we were sitting in his kitchen on a Sunday morning in Chicago, his family gathered around. They wanted to know what had happened to their dad. I'm trying to tell him, and his name was Dave McFagen. He kind of blurted out, "I wouldn't be hurt nearly as bad if you hadn't dropped me so many times."
He had been topside when a rocket from one of the air attacks exploded very close to him and flung him back into the bulkhead. He was wounded from that, in a lot of pain, thinking he had to get to his general quarters station. His GQ station was down below decks. He gets down there just as they slam the hatch shut and bolt it down. He's sitting on the ladderway with his head in his hands, hurting badly, when the torpedo struck and slammed him back into the ladderway and made a mess out of his spine.
He's still alive, but barely, and confined to a wheelchair. Joe Lentini passed away from a heart attack some three years ago. The book Assault on the Liberty credits me with diving underwater and freeing Joe Lentini's leg. That was actually a sailor named Bobby Schnell who did that — freed his leg and carried him topside.
There was some conversation that I carried a man out, went back down, and a senior enlisted man said, "Why are you going back down there? You can't go back down there." That man has since passed away too, but he told me, "You gave me kind of a blank stare and went back down." I don't recall any of that. I think there's a good possibility I was confused with someone else.
After the Torpedo: Mayday and the Life Rafts
Bryce Lockwood: We were told to go to the radio room on the port side of the ship. I was lying on the deck in the radio room and couldn't understand why we weren't getting any aid. There was machine-gunning going on. The motor torpedo boats were circling the ship, riddling us with heavy machine gun fire. There were 3,100 heavy-caliber machine gun strikes on the ship.
One of the radiomen figured out that when they were shooting rockets at us, they couldn't jam our distress frequencies because the jamming would have screwed up the flight of the rockets. In a brief period when those rockets were being fired, this mayday went out: "Firefighter, Firefighter, this is Rockstar. Rockstar under attack by unidentified surface and air units. Require immediate assistance." As soon as that mayday was acknowledged, the shooting stopped.
I saw some sailors carry three inflatable rafts through the radio room. I heard them fall into the sea. There were lines attached to keep them from floating away. I heard a revving of engines and some more machine gun fire. One of those sailors came back through the radio room and said, "I don't know what we're going to do now. They've riddled what we had left." It is my understanding that machine gun fire severed the line that was holding one of those life rafts. The torpedo boat came in and picked it up — plainly labeled US Navy. It can't be proven. I'd have no idea, but I heard a rumor that that life raft and the ship's wheel from the torpedo boat that fired the fatal torpedo are in the Israeli Naval War Museum at Haifa as trophies of war.
Did the Israelis Offer Aid After the Attack?
Tucker Carlson: Did the torpedo boats come to the aid of survivors? When the Israelis stopped firing on the Liberty after your mayday call was received, did they help the survivors in any way?
Bryce Lockwood: We heard some helicopters overhead. I did not see them myself, but the deck crew told me that two large armored helicopters came over, fully loaded with armed troops — automatic weapons, hand grenades. It seems fairly obvious the idea was to sink the ship, kill everyone aboard, no survivors.
We think there's a very good possibility that we were set up by our own government. President Lyndon Baines Johnson was very friendly toward Israel. His predecessor, John F. Kennedy, had actually given a speech about the necessity for discourse between the Palestinians and Israelis about getting some 700,000 refugees from the so-called War of Independence of Israel in 1947–48. They were driven from their homes. The Israelis said they voluntarily left. My personal opinion is there was nothing voluntary about it. They were told to leave or be destroyed. Kennedy's position was to have at least a portion of those refugees be allowed to return to their ancestral homes.
As a result of our Congress and our president doing nothing about the attack on the USS Liberty, the Court of Inquiry accepted the Israelis' excuse — it was a case of mistaken identity. Case was closed.
The Johnson Administration's Role: Aircraft Recalled Twice
Tucker Carlson: I'm sorry to interrupt. Why? Why would the Johnson administration have known this attack was coming on the Liberty and allowed it?
Bryce Lockwood: Commander Lewis, who was the senior intelligence officer aboard the ship, and I both had pretty much the same wounds. My glasses protected my face from debris. His eyes were sealed shut. We were both medevaced off to the carrier America. Admiral Lawrence Geis, who was the task force commander — that included the carriers USS Saratoga, USS America, and the guided missile cruiser USS Little Rock — asked for Commander Lewis to come to his stateroom. This was several days after the attack had taken place. He swore Mr. Lewis to secrecy until after his own death, then told him that he had ordered aircraft to come to our aid.
Planes were launched from the USS Saratoga. They had nuclear weapons aboard them. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered them returned. Both Admiral Geis and the skipper of the Saratoga, Captain Joseph Tully, figured out that was probably because there were nuclear weapons aboard them. They were recovered. Conventional aircraft with conventional weapons were relaunched to come to our aid. Captain Tully renotified Washington. Secretary of Defense McNamara came on the circuit again and ordered those aircraft returned. Admiral Geis said, "I want to exercise my authority and hear that from higher authority." Well, the only higher authority was the president.
This is a conversation that was related to David Lewis from Admiral Geis. The president said, "Get those aircraft back. I will not have my allies embarrassed." They were using unmarked aircraft and we did not know who was attacking us. How did the president know?
The number two man in the US CIA at the time was a gentleman named James Jesus Angleton. Angleton was not only the number two man in the US Central Intelligence Agency — he was a US double agent working for Israeli Mossad. Many of us survivors believe that we were set up by our own government. A false flag operation. Sink the ship. No survivors. Blame it on Egypt. Get the United States involved on the side of Israel against her neighbors.
Tucker Carlson: And excuse me — what's happening now? The head of counterintelligence that you mentioned, James Jesus Angleton, was also clearly involved in the Kennedy assassination, the beneficiary of which was of course Lyndon Johnson and Israel.
Bryce Lockwood: That's beyond my comprehension, Tucker.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah. Well, it's pretty clear, I think, from documents that have subsequently been released.
The Death Toll: 34 Americans Killed, 174 Wounded
Tucker Carlson: So, just to wrap up the story of what actually happened that day — how many Americans were killed in the attack?
Bryce Lockwood: There were 34 Americans killed. One civilian, Allan Blue — he was an Arabic linguist from the National Security Agency. Two Marines were both killed: Sergeant Jack Raper and Corporal Ed Ray, both Arabic linguists. The remaining 31 were all sailors — linguists, Morse intercept operators. 34 killed. There were 174 wounded, and 28 Purple Hearts were awarded.
Several of the crewmen who were wounded were never awarded Purple Hearts. Jack Bey — he was a machinist's mate who was working on the Liberty launch, changing oil when the air attack took place. He had shrapnel in the back of his head. He didn't find out about it until many years later when the Veterans Administration performed an X-ray on his skull. There was another Navy chief — last name is slipping me right now — who had one of those heavy-caliber strikes in his left calf. He was a Boy Scout instructor, knew first aid, took that projectile out of his leg himself, wrapped himself up. He was never awarded a Purple Heart. There were others.
When Did Survivors Learn It Was Israel?
Tucker Carlson: When did you find out it was the Israelis who attacked the ship?
Bryce Lockwood: Not until the next morning, in my own recollection. The aircraft were all unmarked. The torpedo boats were flying the Star of David. One of the officers on deck happened to be Jewish. When he saw the Star of David flag, I understand he broke out in tears.
Tucker Carlson: The torpedo boats that fired machine guns at the Liberty — they must have been close enough to see the American flag flying over the ship.
Bryce Lockwood: Yes. Our initial flag was flying from the flagstaff at the back of the main mast. That was knocked down in one of the first air attacks. Our signalman ran it back up again. It was knocked down again. Then he ran up the holiday flag, which is five feet by eight feet — the largest flag we had aboard ship. That flag was literally riddled with shrapnel. He ran that up on one of the port signal arms on the port side. But we had a good breeze blowing that day. The flag was out there, pretty obvious.
Egyptian ships are painted black with hull markings in Arabic script. Every highway sign in Israel is in Hebrew, Arabic script, and English lettering. So that excuse falls away. US ships are painted gray with hull markings in English lettering. Our hull marking was GTR-5, which stands for General Technical Research, the fifth, the newest of her class. "Technical research" means she's a non-combatant. It is a violation of international law to fire on non-combatants. The Israelis were riddling our life rafts with machine gun fire — that's a violation of international law. The irony of that is that prohibition came about as a result of refugee ships being machine-gunned by Nazi wolf packs during World War II.
What Commanding Officers Said — and Didn't Say
Tucker Carlson: What did your commanding officers tell you about the motive for this attack? You're lying there recovering, you've got wounds to your face and your hands, and at some point someone explains to you why this happened. What did that person say?
Bryce Lockwood: Honestly, I didn't hear anything. Years later, when I reconnected with some of the crew — and it was well over 20 years later before I reconnected with any of them, I'd say it was 1982 before I reconnected with any of the crew, so this is 15 years afterwards — I honestly didn't know.
Most of us were pro-Israel aboard the ship. It's kind of ironic — one of our analysts was processing the United Arab Republic traffic that we were getting. He had made a small UAR flag and had it stuck in his out-basket. Most of the crew were smoking back then. They'd walk by and say, "Hey, Rich, your Arabs aren't doing so well," and they'd set fire to his flag. He'd say, "No, cut that out. Put it out." One of the sailors had made a huge Star of David out of teletype paper that was pasted up on the starboard bulkhead. That Israeli torpedo struck within a few feet of that Star of David flag.
Returning Home: Silence, Trauma, and Secrecy
Tucker Carlson: Did you talk about this after? Did you do interviews with the media? Did you tell your friends, your family? How did you respond to this once you recovered?
Bryce Lockwood: My situation was a little different. I was on temporary assignment from my home base in Bremerhaven, Germany. It was ten days aboard the carrier America, then flown back to Luqa, Malta, where the ship was dry-docked. I was one more day aboard her there.
I didn't have a place to sleep, and one of the sailors said, "Go up to sick bay and talk to Dr. Van Lane. He'll find you a place to sleep up there." We were chatting, getting along late in the afternoon, and he said, "You're welcome to sleep in whichever bunk you want." I said, "I hope that doesn't stink in the night," because at that time there was a box in the corner, roughly 18 inches square, labeled "unidentified human body parts." That's what's buried in the mass grave in Arlington National Cemetery. I slept over that box that night. Two of the men who worked for me were in that box — what was left of them.
Tucker Carlson: Were you told by the US military, by the Marine Corps, by the Navy, not to talk about this?
Bryce Lockwood: Well, mind you, we're in the intelligence business. There's an old saying: what you see here, what you say here — when you leave here, leave it here. I did not talk about it outside of secure spaces. When I got back to my home base in Bremerhaven, I was put on twelve on, twelve off watch. I talked about it rather freely in the secure spaces. My wife didn't know what had happened to me.
I was not supposed to tell anyone when I was aboard this ship, but no one bothered to tell me I wasn't. When I first got aboard her, the petty officer of the deck was a longtime friend of mine, Ronnie Campbell. I said, "Ronnie, I need to let Lois know where I'm at. Can you give me the address of the ship?" He gave me the fleet post office address and I got a postcard, wrote on it, told my wife I'd be aboard her, didn't know how long, I'd let her know sometime in the future. Dropped it in the mail. She'd received that card and knew I was aboard it.
On the 9th of June, a dear friend of hers who lived across the street in Bremerhaven waved to her to come over. She went over and the friend said, "Did you hear about that US ship being attacked?" My wife said, "I think Bryce is aboard that ship." Well, that set off a panic.
When I got back home, I was a mess. I had to borrow a uniform from one of the Marines aboard the carrier America — an African-American Marine, same build as me, same rank, a real gentleman, who loaned me a khaki uniform. I had to wear that uniform for the next five days. Part of that was because when I got back to the ship, that oil was everywhere. Everywhere you went, you'd get drops of that oil all over you. So I stunk from that. I had fever blisters on my face and a yellowish pus was oozing out, dripping over the front of me.
The morning I got back, I couldn't get into the apartment — second floor apartment. The neighbor, Betty Bryant, came to the door and said, "Oh, Bryce — Lois went out to the base to get the mail." She said, "Come on in, I'll get you a cup of coffee." She sent me around behind the door and gave me a cup of coffee. A while later she said, "Oh, here she is now." Well, my wife had just gotten the mail and had just received a letter from her mother saying her grandfather had passed away. My wife didn't get along very well with her mother, but she was her grandfather's pride and joy. She was all broken up about that. Betty said, "Lois, you need to come in here."
Three kids were there — Marsha, our oldest, was six, Dorothy was four, and John was three. And I was the ugliest mess, stunk to high heavens. The kids were screaming. My wife was crying.
The Marine commander called me to his office the next day and said, "The best thing for you to do to forget about this is go to work." He put me on twelve hours on, twelve hours off watch. I had to go to the doctor on my time off to get my wounds taken care of. The Navy sent a JAG officer, a lieutenant commander, all the way from Washington with a sheet of papers for me to sign. He never bothered to tell me personally, "You are not to talk about this."
I talked about it freely in secure spaces because these fellows — many of them had been aboard the Liberty or ships of her class doing the same task. If they weren't, they would likely be in the near future. So they were all aware of it. But I did not tell my wife anything. She had no idea what was wrong with me. I'd wake up screaming and crying and she had no idea.
Reconnecting with the Crew — and Finding Out What Happened
It wasn't until January of 1981. I was in Bible college in Springfield, Missouri. Class was broken up over the Christmas holidays. I was sitting in homiletics class waiting for the class to start on Monday morning and one of my classmates came in. He said, "Bryce, were you aboard a ship that was torpedoed?" I said, "How did you know about that?" He had been in Texas over the Christmas holiday and was on his way back late in the evening, listening to a National Public Radio program called Radio Reader. They were reading a book by James M. Ennes Jr., Assault on the Liberty. It was on page 86, the narration about what I had done that day, and my name was there.
It wasn't until the following year — I'd taken a position as assistant pastor at a church in Key West — that the city library librarian, who was a member of the church, told me she had a copy of that book. She said there was a six-month waiting list. She put me on the list. When it became available, I immediately wrote a letter to Random House Publishers and said, "I'd like to get in touch with the author, James Ennes." They said, "We can't give you his information, but we'll forward your letter to him." Just a few days after that, I got a thick packet of mail from Mr. Ennes — copies of the ship's newsletter that they put out and mailed to all the crew, back issues, and a list of survivors with their contact information. I immediately started calling the crew.
It wasn't until 1986 that we had a reunion in Milwaukee, Wisconsin — the first one I attended. There was a library in Grafton, Wisconsin, about 30 miles north of Milwaukee. The town had built a new high school, and the old high school — a building roughly a century old but perfectly serviceable — the town wanted to make into a public library. They had a committee to raise funds. There were a couple of industrial donors. Ted Grubb was one of them and gave a six-figure donation. The committee said, "We'll give you the privilege of naming the library." He said, "I'd like it to be named the USS Liberty Memorial Library." Well, during World War II, not far from Grafton, Wisconsin, there had been a Nazi youth camp. You can imagine what that implied for the Jewish population of the city of Milwaukee — it raised a firestorm. But it went forward, and to the best of my knowledge there was no violence at all, and to this day it's still the USS Liberty Memorial Library.
The "Mistaken Identity" Claim
Tucker Carlson: That was 19 years after the attack. And I remember that at that time — around 1986, 1987 — the consensus was that this was an accident. If you learned about the USS Liberty at school, which you probably didn't, but if you did, you would be taught that this was a case of mistaken identity, that the Israelis thought it was an Egyptian ship.
Bryce Lockwood: Well, I suppose you could claim that the Israeli pilots were color blind. Egyptian ships are painted black and ours are painted gray. You can't jam distress frequencies by accident — you must know your target. So that falls by the wayside. Machine-gunning life rafts — that's pretty obvious. That's a violation of accepted law.
Tucker Carlson: How did it make you feel as a survivor of the attack to hear people dismiss it as a case of mistaken identity?
Bryce Lockwood: At that time I had a small trucking company, and you pretty well had to work around the clock. I had a grain-hauling business — two trucks, three trailers. When I wasn't booking loads, I was hauling loads. When I wasn't booking or hauling loads, I was underneath changing the oil or fixing this or fixing that. I barely had time to think. It really wasn't until sometime after that, when I happened to get a job with a union company and had a little more income coming in, that we were able to attend a reunion in Washington DC. That's where I began to really find out about what had taken place. That was later in the 1980s, early 1990s.
Tucker Carlson: And what did you find out?
Bryce Lockwood: I didn't know the names of any of the fellows that I pulled out or was credited with saving. Joe Lentini — even though I kept him from drowning, I didn't actually get him out of there. Dave McFagen. It was not until a reunion in 1997 that I found out who that was. It was pretty ironic. He had been in the hospital at Naples, Italy. He'd taken some shrapnel in a sensitive area. Doctors told him he'd probably never have any more children. Well, he did — he had a boy and a girl, and at that reunion one of the other fellows that I thought I had brought out of there was Harold "Jean" — Jean was his nickname. He and I were having a beer, kind of joking around. Someone else came in — we had a tub in the bathroom full of ice water and beer, we were in there talking — and someone came in and said, "Hey, Sergeant, there's another guy here you saved his life." Really? I went out into the other room and there was Dave McFagen in a wheelchair, with his daughter — born later after the attack — pushing him.
The 59th Anniversary: Defending the Israeli Government's Actions
Tucker Carlson: The 59th anniversary of the attack on the Liberty was just the other day, within the last week, and it was a topic that was discussed in public. You heard people defend the Israeli government by saying they didn't know it was an American ship, and that anyone who says otherwise is an antisemite who hates Jews. How would you respond to that?
Bryce Lockwood: Anyone who knows anything about international recognition of ships at sea would conclude differently — would have to conclude differently. It's very obvious that it was a deliberate attack. Dave Lewis, prior to his death, was giving an interview and he said if it was an attack, it was the best-planned attack in military history. The ammunition they were using, the targets they were hitting — heat-seeking missiles designed to knock out all of our heavy transmitting antennas. It had to all be planned in advance.
The upshot, in my opinion — Israel is grabbing Palestinian lands. Gaza Strip in total rubble. 70,000 documented killed, probably twice that many buried in the rubble that can never be recovered given the time that's elapsed. The United States supplying the bombs. Israel invading their neighbors to the north — Lebanon. There are a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip homeless as a result of Israel's actions. In southern Lebanon, whole towns destroyed and leveled. A million Lebanese refugees without a home. Where is the humanity? Shouldn't that be on the conscience of every American that we're supplying the bombs, that we're supplying Israel with $3.8 billion a year in foreign aid? Shouldn't that shake our conscience?
Tucker Carlson: Well, if our leaders were able to ignore an attack on an American vessel — the Liberty — almost 60 years ago, clearly this is not a normal relationship between the United States and Israel. What country ignores an attack on its own navy?
Bryce Lockwood: Tucker, in 2005, Stephen Rosen, who was then a senior official with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, was dining with Jeffrey Goldberg — at that time with The New Yorker magazine, I believe he's with The Atlantic now. He said to Jeffrey, "You see this napkin? In 24 hours, I can have the signature of 70 senators on this napkin." Does that tell you something about who runs America?
Tucker Carlson: How does that make you feel as someone who was wounded in the service of the US military?
Bryce Lockwood: Disgusted.
Thomas Massie's Congressional Speech and the Call for Investigation
Tucker Carlson: Why hand it to Thomas Massie?
Bryce Lockwood: His political career was over. The president and his political affairs supporters literally threw millions of dollars at Thomas Massie's primary campaign and got him pitched off the ballot. And Congressman Massie stuck his neck out by speaking publicly from the floor of the United States Congress. There were roughly 15, perhaps 17, of us survivors there, with family members sitting in the gallery when he gave his five-plus-minute speech on the USS Liberty, urging Congress to take action. Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution — this is not the exact wording — calls on Congress to investigate acts of piracy on the high seas and offenses against the law of nations. And Congress has ignored that for the past 59 years.
Thomas Massie stuck his neck out. The gentleman took us all to lunch afterwards at the Bull Feathers restaurant there in Washington — I think that name is rather ironic. He treated us to lunch, personally met each one of us while we were there. The Speaker pro tempore of the Congress, Darrell Issa, came in, personally shook hands with every crew member, introduced himself around, made a few jokes. Another congressman also came in — Congressman McGuire — same thing, introduced himself around. It left me with a wonderful feeling. Perhaps something can be done after 59 years to wake Congress up to their obligation to humanity, to do the right thing.
Tucker Carlson: What would you like to see Congress do?
Bryce Lockwood: An open investigation while some of us are still alive to testify. Let all the dirty laundry hang out there. If there are charges to be brought, bring them forward. Just air it out and let the American people, the world's public at large, make up their own minds when they see the facts laid bare. It's the same thing with the Epstein files — hiding it. Let it hang out. Let us all look at it. If someone's guilty, fine, charge them. Sure, there are going to be some big-time names. Sure, there are going to be some billionaires involved. I'm just a little guy. I'm not even a millionaire. Fine, come get me.
Tucker Carlson: Do you think that'll happen?
Bryce Lockwood: I don't know. Don't care.
Closing Reflections
Tucker Carlson: Well, I'm grateful you did this interview, Mr. Lockwood.
Bryce Lockwood: Tucker, this is such an honor.
Tucker Carlson: It's an honor for me. Ray McGovern's a rascal, by the way.
Bryce Lockwood: He's a good man. Thank you. Thank you for letting me tell my story. I hope Congress listens.
Tucker Carlson: I hope so too. The chain of events — I know you couldn't recall all the names today.
Bryce Lockwood: I'm pretty tired, for one thing. I did an interview yesterday with Rick Sanchez. Did an interview the day before yesterday with Pedro Garro — K radio, Austin, Texas. By the way, he said to tell you his audience is a lot bigger than yours.
Tucker Carlson: He's probably right. That's amazing. How was Rick Sanchez?
Bryce Lockwood: Oh, he was such a gentleman.
Tucker Carlson: He is a nice man. Yeah.
Bryce Lockwood: He says you were friends. Long-time friends.
Tucker Carlson: I've known him a long time. A long time. Well, I hope this brings shame to the people who are denying it. I really do.
Bryce Lockwood: It should. I'm not sure how effective I was, but —
Tucker Carlson: You were very effective, and your recall is unbelievable. Are you still preaching?
Bryce Lockwood: No, I haven't preached in 40 years. Preaching doesn't pay very well when you're honest.
Tucker Carlson: No. And you have a daughter called Dorothy?
Bryce Lockwood: Yes. She worked her way through Missouri State University as a speech pathologist. She waitressed at Red Lobster in Springfield, and she got a little tired of folks asking where Toto was, so she started calling herself D. She has a garden gift shop in Knoxville, Tennessee. Tucker, you know you're old when your kids are all retired.
Tucker Carlson: Yes, that is true. Are your kids really retired?
Bryce Lockwood: Yes, they are. My youngest is 62. He medically retired — he had a terrible accident while he was in the Air Force. My oldest daughter, Marsha, has a doctorate in gifted children. She retired three years ago, I think — 30 years as a public school teacher of gifted children, middle school, Washington Irving Middle School.
Tucker Carlson: Well, thank you for taking the time to do this, Mr. Lockwood. That was great.
Bryce Lockwood: My privilege, Tucker.