Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 2013, Pages 71-72
In Memoriam
Rear Admiral Merlin Staring (1919-2013) Worked to Expose USS Liberty Cover-up
By Peter Viering
“…I am of the firmest conviction that the Liberty survivors have suffered an unprecedented injustice at the hands of our very own Navy and government…”
—Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, JAGC, USN (Ret), former Judge Advocate General of the Navy
Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, former Judge Advocate General of the Navy, who played a key role in exposing the cover-up of Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, died June 3, 2013 in Palm Desert, California, at the age of 94.
Merlin Staring was born March 20, 1919, in Frankfort, New York. A 1941 graduate of Louisiana State University, he was named outstanding ROTC field-artillery cadet and was elected to Phi Kappa Phi and numerous other scholastic honorary societies.
His distinguished naval career spanned 34 years. Commissioned an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve on May 26, 1941, Staring was called to active duty in December and reported to Washington. As a young officer at the U.S. Naval Observatory, he recalled seeing Japanese diplomats descending the steps of the State Department on Sunday, Dec. 7. In 1947, he received his law degree with honors from Georgetown University, where he was associate editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. In 1949, he was assigned as judge advocate and defense counsel in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He attended the Naval Justice School in Newport, Rhode Island in 1951, after which he served as trial counsel and law officer of general courts-martial at the Potomac River Naval Command in Washington, DC. In 1952, he received his master of laws degree from Georgetown.
During his career, he served in the Office of the Judge Advocate General Administrative Law Division; as special assistant to the Judge Advocate General; on the staff of Commander in Chief, Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean in London; Commander Service Force SIXTH Fleet/Commander Service Squadron SIX; Fleet Legal Officer for Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor; Force Legal Officer for Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe; and Special Counsel to the Secretary of the Navy. On Feb. 1, 1971, he became the Navy’s Deputy Judge Advocate General. Attaining the rank of Rear Admiral in 1972, he was appointed Judge Advocate General of the Navy, the Navy’s chief attorney—a position he held until his retirement in 1975. Following his retirement, he practiced law in the Washington, DC area.
Admiral Staring is best known for his support of Liberty veterans and his work to correct the official record and expose the cover-up of the true circumstances about the attack on their ship.
The Attack on USS Liberty
Israeli aircraft and surface vessels attacked the USS Liberty, an American intelligence ship under the direction of the National Security Agency—and possibly the most easily recognizable ship in the world, with a towering radio antenna and giant satellite dish, and flying a large American flag—in international waters in the eastern Mediterranean on June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War. The two-hour air and naval attack inflicted more than 200 American casualties—70 percent of the crew. With 34 killed and more than 170 wounded by Israeli gunfire, napalm, rockets and torpedoes, it was the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II. The Liberty sustained the highest casualty rate of any ship that remained afloat after an attack in American naval history. After the air attack, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned at close range life rafts that had been lowered to rescue the most seriously wounded.
Navy investigators, including Capt. Ward Boston—the Navy Court of Inquiry’s chief counsel—concluded unanimously that the nature of the attack indicated a deliberate intent to sink the clearly marked American ship and leave no survivors. Badly damaged with a 40-foot diameter hole in its side, the Liberty miraculously remained afloat and limped to Malta due only to the heroic efforts of its crew and captain, Commander William McGonagle (who would receive the Medal of Honor for his actions). The Liberty became the most decorated ship in U.S. Naval history for awards for valor in a single action. The attack so devastated the $40 million ship that she was ultimately sold for scrap.
An Official Cover-up
Although a hastily conducted U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry accepted the Israeli explanation that the attack was “a case of mistaken identity,” this had long been disbelieved by leading figures in Washington’s military and intelligence communities, and has now been fully discredited by the Navy Court’s own counsel as a cover-up ordered by the White House. The severity and duration of the attack (which had been coordinated by combined Israeli air and naval forces jamming Liberty’s five American emergency radio channels) precluded any possibility the attack was intended for an Egyptian vessel. Israeli aircraft had closely studied the ship for more than eight hours prior to the attack. In the days that followed, surviving members of Liberty’s crew were threatened with imprisonment by government personnel if they spoke about it, and the matter was officially hushed up by the White House. For many years, conflicting and implausible explanations for the attack by the government of Israel were the only information available to the American public.
At the time of the attack, Rear Admiral (then Captain) Staring was serving in London as the senior Navy Judge Advocate on the staff of Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. , Commander-in-chief of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe. It was Admiral McCain who convened the Navy Court of Inquiry to investigate the attack, an administrative proceeding that ordinarily takes six months to complete. However, the Court (comprising Admiral Isaac Kidd as president, Capt. Ward Boston as chief counsel, and two junior JAG officers, Capts. Bernard Lauff and Bert Atkinson) was given only a week to complete its report. A day or two after the attack, Admiral Kidd and Captain Boston flew with a stenographer to Crete, where a destroyer took them out to the Liberty, then limping to Malta. They boarded the Liberty at sea, collected evidence on-scene, and returned to London to complete their report. The “official” conclusion of the report that the attack was accidental, dated June 18 and endorsed by Admiral McCain without the required legal review, was accomplished at the London headquarters.
Before transmitting the report to the Department of the Navy in Washington, it was delivered to Merlin Staring, as Force Legal Officer for Admiral McCain, for his examination and endorsement. It was here, within 10 days of the attack, that Staring became an eyewitness to the unprecedented irregularities that surrounded the creation of the Navy’s official record. After having had less than 24 hours to review the 700-page document, he was asked to return the file to Admiral Kidd. Staring was convinced the report was withdrawn from him because of statements he had made that he was having serious problems with the evidence available to support the conclusion that the attack was a case of mistaken identity.
In “Loss of Liberty,” a documentary he would later make, he stated, “In the course of my career as a Navy lawyer, I have been called upon to review and take action upon hundreds of investigations of various degrees of importance and volume. This is the only instance in which a record of such an investigation was withdrawn from me before I had been given an opportunity to complete my advice to the convening authority.”
Not until many years had passed did Staring learn from Liberty survivors and other competent witnesses the full facts of the attack and the whole truth concerning the fraudulent findings of the official investigation. Capt. Ward Boston, a former FBI agent, revealed to him, “It was a political thing. We were ordered to ‘put a lid on it.’ The facts were clear. Israel knew it was an American ship and tried to sink it and murder its entire crew. The outrageous claims by Israel’s apologists who continue to claim the attack was a mistake pushed me to speak out. The official record is not the one I certified. My initials are not on it.”
The Cover-up Exposed
Staring joined forces with a growing number of flag officers seeking to shed light on the tragedy as further revelations became known. Of special concern was a disclosure by senior officers that efforts by the Navy to rescue Liberty had been overruled by the White House. Statements by Rear Admiral Lewis Geis, the Sixth Fleet Carrier Division commander, and Capt. Joseph Tully, commanding officer of the Saratoga, revealed that Navy fighters launched from the aircraft carriers Saratoga and America to rescue Liberty had been recalled at the personal intervention of President Lyndon B. Johnson while the ship was still under attack.
Admiral Staring worked with Admiral Thomas Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. Ray Davis, former assistant commandant of the Marine Corps; and Ambassador James Akins, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, to bring public attention to the matter. With other prominent Americans and Liberty survivors, they formed the Liberty Alliance, an organization dedicated to informing the American public about the truth of the attack and seeking an honest investigation into the reasons behind both the attack and President Johnson’s decision to cancel the rescue. They produced “Loss of Liberty,” a documentary containing interviews with Liberty survivors, former senior government officials, and Medal of Honor recipients. Admiral Staring introduced the film before numerous public, veterans’ and university audiences. At the request of more than 50 retired senior Naval and Marine Corps officers, and the growing outrage over the cancellation of the rescue mission, Admiral Staring joined Admiral Moorer, General Davis and Ambassador Akins to form an Independent Commission of Inquiry (known as the Moorer Commission) to formalize their conclusions about the attack and cover-up, and its implications for America’s national security.
In 2003, the Independent Commission reported its findings on Capitol Hill, where Admirals Moorer and Staring presented a screening of “Loss of Liberty” for congressional staffers. Admiral Staring read the affidavit of Capt. Ward Boston, the original Navy Court of Inquiry’s chief counsel, which was published in the Congressional Record with the Commission’s findings the following year, and subsequently incorporated into a Report of War Crimes filed by the Liberty Veterans Association with the Department of Defense. This was Admiral Staring’s final public appearance on Capitol Hill, although he would work passionately on behalf of Liberty survivors until his death to correct the official record of the attack.
At this writing, the Department of Defense has taken no action on the Liberty Veterans’ War Crimes Report, and no government agency has been willing to conduct an honest investigation of the attack. Nevertheless, the Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry now stand as a permanent record exposing the official cover-up of the attack on USS Liberty (Congressional Record, Oct. 11, 2004, Vol. 150, No. 130, E1886 to E1889).
Peter Viering served as staff attorney and program coordinator for the Moorer Commission, and is currently a director of the Council for the National Interest Foundation.
