Adm. Crowe Denies Vincennes Sought to Provoke Attacks

The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Tuesday denied charges that the United States was trying to provoke attacks from Iranian gunboats as part of a “secret war” when the Navy cruiser Vincennes accidentally shot down an Iranian commercial airliner in July, 1988.

Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. answered reports that the military covered up details of the incident to hide a policy of intervening on behalf of Iraq in its war against Iran.

The military did conduct some secret operations, Crowe admitted, because public disclosure would have endangered American lives. But the military activities were reported to Congress, he said.

Crowe emphatically denied that the Vincennes’ captain acted as an aggressor to engage Iranian gunboats. The ship was responding to a hostile environment, Crowe said.

He confirmed that the Vincennes was in Iranian waters at the time of the attack--not in international waters, as originally reported. But he insisted that the ship’s location played no role in the decision to fire at the airliner.