“TELL ME! TELL ME! PLEASE TELL ME TRUE!"

By Edwin Cooney

A couple of weeks ago, a friend sent me an article by military attorney Ward Boston who bitterly complained about a “cover up” concerning Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty on Thursday, June 8, 1967 during its Six Day War with Egypt.

Cover ups have been all the rage in America since President Kennedy‘s assassination and President Nixon’s “Watergate Caper."

Of course, everyone wants -- or says they want -- “the truth” all the time.

“Did you, my lad, deliberately spray ink on sister Susie’s white sweater?”
“Susie, did you cheat on that math quiz as teacher insists?”
“Is it true that Churchill deliberately let the German Luftwaffe bomb Coventry?”
“Did FDR know the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor?”

Okay, I’ll tell you the truth, as I understand it, on the above public questions, but first let’s examine the value of “the truth.”

How valuable is the truth to you or me on any single occasion? Can the truth in fact be far more damaging than strengthening? Is our “entitlement” to the truth a guarantor of a healthy existence?

Fortunately, there are few among us who are comfortable believing that their wellbeing is best served by a lie. There are, however, occasions when “less than the truth” is essential to one’s outlook. Sadly, it is often necessary to withhold the truth about the presence of catastrophic illness especially from young children and elderly adults. Even in matters of the heart, while a lie may be emotionally toxic, it might be better to delay the truth about one’s feelings for a potential partner until the relationship is more mature or until outside factors more clearly verify what direction the relationship is taking.

Like its cousin Logic, Truth -- with respect to the circumstances -- is the evaluation of what to do about difficult situations. Truth and logic are too often considered the sole legitimate tools in determining the best solutions to modern problem solving. “Why?” you may ask. The answer is simple, but also a bit disconcerting. There are small truths and big truths—even more, there are very often many truths about a situation all clamoring for attention.

Then there’s that wonderful observation by President Kennedy of which I’m very fond:

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic…”

Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II, Polish Intelligence gave Britain and France the German’s Enigma Intelligence Codes which it had broken into as early as 1932. Thus, British Intelligence knew the truth about a lot of German military activities in advance. Hence, there is the question of whether the British Government knew in advance about the devastation that was about to be visited on the people of Coventry -- that night from hell -- in November 1940. Thus, an element of truth can be vulnerability! That particular air attack might well have been a German test to determine whether Britain had its Enigma Code!

As to the truth about whether FDR knew in advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, I insist it’s the wrong question. What could FDR have done about it if he’d known? He could hardly stop it. I insist that if he’d known, he’d have never let those battleships sit there, targets for years of Japanese resentment against America. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from the time he was a lad, simply loved boats too much. Furthermore, he loved the U.S. Navy having, in a way, inherited the office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy from his fifth cousin Teddy Roosevelt. The right question has to do with the wisdom and effectiveness of FDR’s foreign policy toward Japan up to December 7, 1941.

Ward Boston, the military counselor, insisted that LBJ and Robert McNamara deliberately buried his original findings about the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. He may well have been pining for the wrong truth. The pride and fate of at least four nations (the United States, the Soviet Union, Egypt and Israel) were all at stake. Two of these nations had nuclear weapons and competing interests. Add to that the prestige and complexities of four intelligence services that relied on rumor and circumstance to justify their value to these four governments during wartime and you have disasters anxious to happen. In short, LBJ and McNamara may well have been dealing with truths far more significant than the mere existence of prejudices pro or con.

Since truth is the product of integrity and integrity is one of the most vital of human traits, I offer this piece of unsolicited advice: all truth seekers should be certain that their search for the truth will be both nurturing and just to everyone with whom it’s shared!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY