The attack on the USS Liberty
The short piece in Lobster 45 on the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was curiously timely. Soon after it appeared Captain Ward Boston, senior legal counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the incident broke his silence and stated, inter alia:
‘There is no question in my mind that those people tried to kill every one on board. I was the counsel. I put witnesses on. I talked to kids never exposed to combat who’d seen their friend’s head blown off. Kids who were crying as they told me what they’d gone through. Those boys who had their heads blown away were not out fighting [the Israelis]. They were sun-bathing. They weren’t even given a chance to get to their machine guns.’
Boston was provoked to break ranks by the publication of a book by Judge Jay Kristol arguing, yet again, that it was all a mistake. The excellent, detailed piece carrying Boston’s comments (1) also contains a number of quotes from senior administration officials of the period, including Richard Helms, Clark Clifford and former NSA head Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, all rejecting the ‘accident’ thesis.
The Malcolm Kennedy case
A potentially important development in the Malcolm Kennedy case (see previous Lobsters) has occurred. Kennedy was wrongly convicted of the killing of Patrick Quinn in Hammersmith Police Station in 1990. In October the researcher and writer Mark Metcalf reported that a man from Northern Ireland had contacted the Kennedy-Quinn campaign and told them that one of Quinn’s best friends, a Joseph Fallon, had also died in the same police station three years earlier; and, further, that on the night of Quinn’s death at least one officer present had worked out that Quinn and Fallon had been friends. Fallon died in police custody at Hammersmith on 17 September 1987. He had a ruptured liver. Because of the circumstances an inquest was held at which Fallon’s death was recorded as natural causes. (2)
Notes
1. < http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=28888&d16&m=7&y=2003&pix =opinion.jpg& category=Opinion > See also < http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID= 20031022-052400-3673 > at which Boston’s sworn affidavit is discussed after being presented at an October press conference called by a private group headed by former US head of naval operations, Admiral Thomas Moorer.
2 Metcalf reported this in ‘Who murdered Patrick Quinn?’ in the Morning Star 9 October 2003. In three years 158 people died while in, or just after leaving, police custody in the UK.
< www.guardian.co.uk/celldeaths/article/0,2763,1077135,00.html >