Israel’s attack in 1967 on the intelligence ship Liberty, which killed 34 American sailors and wounded 171 others, was deliberate, according to a new book on the National Security Agency, disputing the longstanding Israeli claim that the attack was accidental, writes the New York Times. The book, “Body of Secrets,” by James Bamford, provides a detailed recounting of the Israeli attack on the American eavesdropping ship, along with new evidence in an incident that has been debated ever since the Liberty, a slow, lightly armed navy ship that was working with the security agency to monitor the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, was attacked from both the air and sea by Israeli forces off the Sinai coast on June 8.
****
Redford to the Bush administration
Robert Redford is ticked off at President Bush. And he ain’t too thrilled with Dick Cheney, either.
“I think Bush is pretty well a puppet for the interests behind him,” the 63-year-old environmentalist told the Washignton Post from a Nashville movie set, where he’s currently playing a prison warden. “He and the vice president come from the oil business, which gave them the money to get elected. What are they going to do, talk about solar energy?”
According to the Post, Redford, a long-time board member of the Natural Resources Defense Council, has written an open letter decrying the White House’s plan to drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
“I didn’t come this far and spend this much of my other life so committed to the environment to turn my back on this,” he told us in a conversation about Bush’s allegedly anti-green policies.
****
Sibling rivalry
“Already clashing over offshore oil drilling permits in Florida, the First Siblings are facing another family row after the Quebec summit that agreed to launch a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas by 2005,” UPI reports. “Governor Jeb Bush of Florida was elected with the loyal support of the state’s sugar and orange growers, who would be bankrupt without protection from foreign competition.
For the sugar industry alone, that protection is worth over $1.3 billion a year, and the American consumer pays double the world market price,” the wire service said.
****
Longest term
“Talk about your job security,” observes National Press Club President Richard Ryan, introducing the nation’s comptroller general, David Walker, to reporters this week.
While administrations and members of Congress come and go, says the scribe’s president, Walker is granted a rare luxury of 15 years to perform his job, the longest term available in federal government.
Walker was appointed in 1998 by President Clinton, which means he doesn’t have to start looking for another job until 2013.
****
Back to where she started from
Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright is returning to Georgetown University.
Albright has accepted a professorship at the School of Foreign Service, where she will teach diplomacy, the university said yesterday.
“Georgetown has been an important part of my life because it respects education and public service,” said Albright, who was a professor of international affairs at the university between 1982 and 1993.
Robert Gallucci, dean of the foreign service school, said Albright, would be “a bridge between the academic study of international affairs and the world of the practitioner.”
