Ward Boston

Ward Boston, Jr. (June 21, 1923 – June 12, 2008, in Coronado, California) was an attorney and a retired United States Navy Captain. He served in World War II as a Navy fighter pilot and worked as a special agent for the FBI.

He gained notability due to his service in the Navy as a Legal Specialist, where, as chief counsel to the Naval Board of Inquiry investigating the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 crewmen and injured 172, he personally concluded that the attack was most likely deliberate. He stated the court was ordered by superiors to ascribe the attack to an accident, rather than to deliberate hostility, and that the original findings he signed were later modified by government attorneys.

Early life and career

As senior legal counsel for the Navy's Court of Inquiry, in 1967, Boston, together with Commander-in-Chief Naval Forces Europe and the Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd Jr., were given one week by Admiral John S. McCain Jr. to investigate the USS Liberty incident; They produced a three-inch thick report after gathering evidence from survivors who were still on board. The Court decided that there was insufficient evidence to make a decision regarding why Israel attacked the ship, but stopped short of assigning guilt or ruling that it was an accident.

Affidavit on the USS Liberty incident

In 2002 Boston told the Navy Times that the naval court was a politicized sham with conclusions preordained to exonerate Israel. In a 2004 signed affidavit, Boston stated that U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had ordered the President of the Court, Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, Jr., that the assault be ruled an accident, and to reach the conclusion "that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity' despite 'overwhelming evidence to the contrary.'" He said he felt compelled to make this information public following the 2002 publication of the book The Liberty Incident by bankruptcy judge A. Jay Cristol, which concluded the attack was unintentional, while Boston found that the attack was most likely deliberate. In early 2004, Boston repeated the revelation before a State Department conference about the Six-Day War.

The key excerpt from the affidavit reads as follows: “The evidence was clear. Both Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack, which killed 34 American sailors and injured 172 others, was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. Each evening, after hearing testimony all day, we often spoke our private thoughts concerning what we had seen and heard. I recall Admiral Kidd repeatedly referring to the Israeli forces responsible for the attack as “murderous bastards.” It was our shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and testimony we received first hand, that the Israeli attack was planned and deliberate, and could not possibly have been an accident. I am certain that the Israeli pilots that undertook the attack, as well as their superiors who had ordered the attack, were well aware that the ship was American. I saw the flag, which had visibly identified the ship as American, riddled with bullet holes, and heard testimony that made it clear that the Israelis intended there be no survivors…I know from personal conversations I had with Admiral Kidd that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” He also confirmed that the court of inquiry transcript had been altered before becoming part of the official record, “I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent off to Washington. I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and I did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. Finally, the testimony of Lt. Painter concerning the deliberate machine gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given at the Court of Inquiry and included in the original transcript, is now missing and has been excised.”

In 2007, Cristol suggested that another individual helped Boston with his initial affidavit and declaration, and very likely wrote or assisted in the preparation of a June 8, 2007, article; he claimed this was part of a much broader propaganda effort emanating from "a small but well-funded and very vocal group of people and organizations principally supported by Saudi Arabian money".

Death

Boston, a Coronado, California resident, died June 12, 2008, of complications from pneumonia at a San Diego hospital. He was 84.