Where was the U.S. president when Captain McGonagle was awarded?
Upvote:16
Note: I don't have the daily schedule of LBJ in front of me at the moment, nor do I have any explicit substantiation at all for this answer (I do cite some vaguely supportive references), outside of my own knowledge of the USA and its politics in general, and at the time in question:
Even if the President was abroad, since it was customary to give the award at the White House and that was significant with respect to the honor accompanying the medal, it seems quite feasible that the award could have been given at the White House by the Vice President or the Secretary of the Navy, who did indeed award the medal. That indicates that the issue was not simply that the President was indisposed.
In all likelihood, what we have here is a concerted effort on the part of the Johnson Administration to ensure that this would be a low profile event. Why? Because Johnson wanted minimize potential focus on the attack on the Liberty, which was quite controversial, to the extent that Johnson rejected the opinion of his Secretary of State that the attack was deliberate and opted to accept the Israeli explanation that the attack was accidental. See: George Lenczowski notes: "It was significant that, in contrast to his secretary of state, President Johnson fully accepted the Israeli version of the tragic incident." He notes that Johnson himself only included one small paragraph about the Liberty in his autobiography,[50] in which he accepted the Israeli explanation of “error”, but also minimized the whole affair and distorted the actual number of dead and wounded, by lowering them from 34 to 10 and 171 to 100, respectively. It is seems clear then, that Johnson was making efforts to minimize and 'hush up' the Liberty incident.
If so, it's quite reasonable to assume the reason for breaking tradition in this case was because Johnson wanted to protect his ally Israel from the wrath of public opinion that might have been unleashed, had all the details of Liberty incident been publicized in a full blown White House ceremony, etc.
In addition, we can add that perhaps Johnson wanted to minimize the Liberty incident because there may have been those who believed the Soviets were actually responsible - that would have been a blight on Johnson's record as well as increasing American-Soviet tensions. See: In Washington, President Lyndon B. Johnson had received word from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the Liberty had been torpedoed by an unknown vessel at 9:50 am eastern time. Johnson assumed that the Soviets were involved, and hotlined Moscow with news of the attack and the dispatch of jets from the Saratoga. Soon afterward, the Israelis said that they had mistakenly attacked the ship. and supra: Lenczowski further states: “It seems Johnson was more interested in avoiding a possible confrontation with the Soviet Union, …than in restraining Israel.
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