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The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a U.S. Navy signals intelligence ship, USS Liberty, in international waters about 12.5 nautical miles (23 km) from the coast of the Sinai Peninsula, north of the Egyptian town of El Arish, by Israeli fighter planes and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967.

It occurred during the Six-Day War, a conflict between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. The Israeli attack killed 34 U.S. servicemen and wounded at least 173. The attack was the second-deadliest against a U.S. warship since the end of World War II, surpassed only by the Iraqi Exocet missile attack on the USS Stark on May 17, 1987, and marked the single greatest loss of life by the U.S. intelligence community.

The Israeli and American governments conducted multiple inquiries into the incident, and issued reports concluding that the attack was the result of a mistake, caused by confusion among the Israeli attackers about the precise identity of the USS Liberty and the fact that the United States Ambassador to the United Nations had publicly announced to the world at the U.N. that the United States had no ships within 350 miles of Israel and the battle.

Israel's official position is that the attack was not the result of an intentional targeting of an American ship. Israeli officials say they were assured by the United States that no U.S. ships were in the area, [1] and that its air and naval forces mistakenly identified Liberty as the Egyptian vessel El Quseir. Supporters of this position say Israel had no motive for a surprise attack on an important ally. They also note that the tense atmosphere of the Six-Day War created the possibility of such mistakes, and point out that the U.S. government, concerned about such dangers, ordered the Liberty further away from shore the night before the attack (bureaucratic and communications problems kept the order from arriving in time).[2] Finally, they note that the United States has several times mistakenly attacked its own and allied forces in so-called friendly fire incidents.

Others believe that the attack was deliberate and premeditated. They note that the Liberty was more than twice as large as the El Quseir, and was clearly designated with Latin rather than Arabic letters and numbers, rejecting claims that Egyptians could have intentionally mimicked a US ship as deception in war. Proponents include some of the surviving Liberty crewmen,^[1] and some former U.S. government officials, including then-CIA director Richard Helms and then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk as well as Admiral Thomas Hinman Moorer, former Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Israel concedes that the Israeli Air Force deliberately attacked what Israel believed to be an Egyptian ship.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, on December 17, 1987, the issue was officially closed by the two governments through an exchange of diplomatic notes. Israel also eventually paid nearly $13 million in humanitarian reparations to the United States and in compensation to the families of the victims. [3]

According to the book "The Puzzle Palace" (a history of the NSA written by James Bamford), the issue was closed by President Jimmy Carter accepting an Israeli government offer of $6 million in damages for destruction of the vessel; this book also indicates that the surviving family members of crewman affected by the incident had to work out a civil settlement of approximately $3.6 million with lawyers hired by the Israeli government.

The attack on the Liberty

USS Liberty was originally the 7,725-ton (light) civilian cargo ship Simmons Victory (a Victory Ship, the follow-on series to the famous Liberty Ships). She was acquired by the United States Navy, converted to an Auxiliary Technical Research Ship (AGTR), and began her first deployment in 1965 , to waters off the west coast of Africa. She carried out several more operations during the next two years. During the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab nations, she was sent to collect electronic intelligence in the eastern Mediterranean.

On June 4, 1967, the day before the start of the Six-Day War, Israel asked if the United States had any ships in the region. The U.S. said it did not, and United States Ambassador Goldberg announced in the United Nations that the U.S. had no ships within 350 miles (0 km) to 400 miles (0 km), [4] [5] despite Arab complaints that the U.S. and British were supporting Israel in the conflict. (ibid.) At the time the statement was made, this was the case, since the Liberty was just entering the Mediterranean Sea [6] but would ultimately steam to within a few miles of the Sinai Pensinsula. Numerous messages were sent by the U.S. Navy to the Liberty, repeatedly changing its operational area, variously ordering the Liberty 33 miles (53 km) away from the conflict and at others as close as 6.5 miles (0 km) from Israel.

On June 5, at the start of the war, General Yitzhak Rabin (then IDF Chief of Staff) informed Commander Ernest Carl Castle, the American Naval Attache in Tel Aviv, that Israel would defend its coast with every means at its disposal, including sinking unidentified ships. ^[2] Gen. Rabin went on to advise that the Americans should either reveal which ships it had in the area, or remove them. Despite this, the United States did not give Israel any information about the Liberty, which was by now in the eastern Mediterranean. (ibid). As war broke out Captain William L. McGonagle of the Liberty immediately asked Vice Admiral William I. Martin at the U.S. 6th Fleet headquarters to send a destroyer to accompany the Liberty and serve as its armed escort and as an auxiliary communications center.

The following day, June 6, Admiral Martin replied: “Liberty is a clearly marked United States ship in international waters, not a participant in the conflict and not a reasonable subject for attack by any nation. Request denied.” He promised, however, that in the unlikely event of an inadvertent attack, jet fighters from the Sixth Fleet could be overhead in ten minutes.

On the night of June 7 Washington time, early morning on June 8, 0110Z, the Pentagon issued an order to Sixth Fleet headquarters to tell the Liberty to come no closer than 100 nautical miles (185 km) to Israel, Syria, or the Sinai coast (Oren, p. 263). [7](pages 5 and Exhibit N, page 58). According to the National Security Agency the order to withdraw was not broadcast on the frequencies that the Liberty crew was monitoring for orders until 1525Z, hours after the attack, due to a long series of administrative and communications problems. NSA report pp. 21-23

During the morning of the attack, early June 8, the ship was overflown by several Israeli Air Force (IAF) aircraft. Their exact number and type is disputed; at least one was a Nord Noratlas "flying boxcar" (claimed by the survivors and confirmed by Israel); a photograph shows a C-47 Dakota and other reports speak about Mirage III jet fighters. At least some of those flybys were from a close range. In fact, at 6:00 a.m. Sinai (GMT +2) time that morning, Israel confirmed that a Nord Noratlas identified the ship as the USS Liberty, and an additional craft made a separate identification at 9:00AM (Oren, 263-4). Many Liberty crewmen gave testimony that one of the aircraft flew so close to Liberty that its propellers rattled the deck plating of the ship, and the pilots waved to the crew of Liberty, and the crewmen waved back. One explanation explored why subsequent pilots did also not identify the Liberty despite close proximity is that that pilot's attention was diverted to locating Egyptian submarines, and his observation was not relayed to other pilots. (Oren, 264).

At this time, the ship was readying to turn south towards the coast of the Sinai Peninsula from its previous eastern direction. According to author James Bamford, it would then turn east and patrol at 5 knots (9 km/h) in international waters, 13 nautical miles (23 km) off the Sinai Peninsula near El-Arish, just outside Egypt's territorial waters. This course took the Liberty approximately 45 kilometers from its last sighting by IAF pilots by 2 p.m. According to other sources, the Liberty was cruising as fast as 21 knots (39 km/h) to 28 knots (52 km/h), and could have moved 100 kilometers from its last sighting.

At about 2 p.m. the Liberty was attacked by several IAF aircraft, possibly two or three Mirage IIIs, carrying cannon and rockets, [8] followed by Dassault Mysteres carrying napalm . After a series of passes by aircraft, one Israeli pilot Rabin, who wondered why the Liberty had not returned fire, made a close pass and noted that the ship had Western (not Arabic) lettering. Rabin immediately feared that the ship was Soviet ^[3], ordered the planes and a three torpedo boat squadron, which had been ordered into the area, to withhold fire pending positive identification of the ship, and sent in two helicopters to search for survivors. These radio communications were permanently recorded by Israel. [9] However, although the order was recorded in the ship's log, the commander of the torpedo boat squadron claimed never to have received it.^[4]



About twenty minutes after the aircraft attack, the ship was approached by three torpedo boats bearing Israeli flags and identification signs. Initially, McGonagle, who perceived that the torpedo boats "were approaching the ship in a torpedo launch attitude,"[10] ordered a machine gun to fire on the boats. After recognizing the Israeli standard and seeing apparent Morse code signalling attempts by one of the boats (but being unable to see what was being sent, due to the smoke of the fire started by the earlier aircraft attack), McGonagle gave the order to cease fire. This order was apparently misunderstood in the confusion, and two heavy machine guns on the USS Liberty again opened fire. One gun was fired accidentally due to exploding ammunition (Oren, 267). Subsequently, the Israeli boats responded with fire and launched at least two torpedoes at Liberty (five according to the 1982 IDF History Department report). One hit Liberty on the starboard side forward of the superstructure, creating a large hole in what had been a former cargo hold converted to the ships research spaces. Most of the U.S. deaths and injuries in the incident were caused by the torpedo attack after the USS Liberty fired on the Israeli ships. According to some witnesses the torpedo boats then approached Liberty and strafed crewmen (including damage control parties and sailors preparing life rafts for launch) on deck. (See disputed details below.)

When the ship was confirmed to have been American, the torpedo boats returned to offer help; it was refused by the American ship. About three hours after the attack, Israel informed the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv about the incident and provided a helicopter to fly a U.S. naval attaché to the ship.

Though Liberty was severely damaged, with a 50-foot (15 m) hole and a twisted keel, her crew kept her afloat, and she was able to leave the area under her own power. She was escorted to Malta by units of the U.S. 6th Fleet and was there given interim repairs. After these were completed in July 1967, Liberty returned to the United States. She was decommissioned in June 1968 and struck from the Naval Vessel Register. Liberty was transferred to United States Maritime Administration (MARAD) in December 1970 and sold for scrap in 1973.

McGonagle received the Medal of Honor, the highest U.S. medal, for his actions. It was awarded at the Washington Navy Yard by the Secretary of the Navy.^[5][6] The Medal of Honor is generally presented by the President of the United States. ^[7]

Investigations of the attack

Several official US and Israeli investigations maintained the initially published conclusion that the event was a tragic mistake through misidentification. The scope of the Israeli investigations was to decide whether or not anyone in the Israeli Defense Forces should be tried on crimes (no criminal wrongdoing was found), accepting as a premise that the attack was a mistake. The scope and performance of U.S. congressional investigations and four other U.S. investigations subsequent to the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry did not satisfy some parties.[11]. The majority of those subsequent U.S. reports were issues such as communications failures rather than culpability. [12]. The Naval Court of Inquiry conclusions continue to be disputed (see below). According to Raymond Garthoff, nonetheless, US military and intelligence agencies are unanimous in finding that the Israeli attack was “deliberate and unprovoked.” ^[8]

Israeli investigations

Three subsequent Israeli inquiries concluded the attack was conducted because Liberty was confused with an Egyptian vessel and because of failures of communications between Israel and the U.S. The three Israeli commissions were:

• Preliminary Inquiry by Colonel Ram Ron ("Ram Ron Report" - June 1967)
• Inquiry by Examining Judge Y. Yerushalmi ("Yerushalmi Report" -July 1967).
• "The Liberty Incident" - IDF History Department Report (1982)

The Israeli government said three crucial errors were made: the refreshing of the status board (removing the ship's classification as American, so that the later shift did not see it identified), the erroneous identification of the ship as an Egyptian vessel, and the lack of notification from the returning aircraft informing Israeli headquarters of markings on the front of the hull (markings that would not be found on an Egyptian ship). As the general root of these problems, Israel blamed the combination of alarm and fatigue experienced by the Israeli forces at that point of the war when pilots were severely over-worked.

American investigations

Ten official American investigations are claimed regarding the Liberty incident, including:

• The CIA Report of 1967
• The Clark Clifford Report of 1967
• The Joint Chief of Staff's Report, on U.S. communications failures.
• The NSA Report of 1981 including recordings of intercepted Israeli military radio transmissions and translated transcripts of post-attack helicopter pilots.
• The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Testimony of 1967
• The U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry as released under FOIA (see below)

Critics -- including an active group of survivors from the ship -- assert that five U.S. congressional investigations and four other U.S. investigations were not investigations into the attack at all, but rather reports using evidence only from the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry, or investigations unrelated to the culpability of the attack but rather discussing issues such as communications. In their view, the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry is the only investigation on the incident to date. They claim it was hastily conducted, in only 10 days, even though the court’s president, Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd, said that it would take 6 months to conduct properly.

The incident exposed possible weaknesses in the military capabilities of the U.S., in that the USA was apparently unable to reliably transmit orders from Washington to its naval ships in the field and count on them being received and promptly obeyed. [13] The USS Liberty was a highly sophisticated electronics eavesdropping ship with the best radio equipment in the fleet, yet it claimed not to have received orders to leave the battle zone. Investigations threatened to expose publicly and emphasize either an inability of U.S. warships to receive orders from Washington dependably or else a failure of a U.S. naval captain to follow orders. One possibility is that the U.S. Navy sought to avoid embarrassing discussions of its operational deficiencies.

The National Archives in College Park, Md., includes in its files on casualties from the Liberty copies of the original telegrams the Navy sent out to family members. The telegrams called the attack accidental. The telegrams were sent out June 9, the day before the Navy court of inquiry convened. [14]

Ongoing Controversy & Unresolved Questions

Several key intelligence and military officials dispute Israel's explanation:

• "...the board of inquiry (concluded) that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing in attacking the Liberty."- Former CIA Director Richard Helms^[9]
• "I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation. . . . Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept their explanations. I didn't believe them then, and I don't believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous "- Former US Secretary of State Dean Rusk^[10]

Some of the survivors claim that this incident stands as the only peacetime attack on a U.S. naval vessel not investigated by Congress, and want a full Congressional hearing[15]. They claim that a proper investigation has never taken place and that all previous reports, including the ones by the U.S. Congress, are incomplete, mention the incident in passing, and either that they are intended to exonerate Israel or that they do not even question the culpability of the attack (instead, they hold, it focuses on other topics, such as American communication problems). In 2002 Captain Ward Boston, JAGC, U.S. Navy, ended his own silence on the work of the court of inquiry, saying its findings were intended to cover up what was a deliberate attack by Israel on a ship it knew to be American. He has prepared and signed an affadavit (pdf) in which he claimed that Admiral Kidd had told him that the government ordered Kidd to falsely report that the attack was a mistake, and that he and Kidd both believed the attack was deliberate. He wrote, in part:

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.

Still, there is no record of Kidd ever publicly expressing such opinions.^[11]

Critics of Boston believe that he is not telling the truth in regard to Kidd's views and any pressure from the government.[16]. In particular, A. Jay Cristol, who also served as an officer of the Judge Advocate General in the U.S. military, suggests that Boston was responsible in part for the original conclusions of the Court of Inquiry, and that by later declaring that they were false he has admitted to "lying under oath." Critics also note that Boston's claims about pressure on Kidd were hearsay, and that Kidd was not alive to confirm or deny them. They also note that Boston did not maintain prior to his affadavit and comments related to it that Kidd spoke of such instructions to him or to others. Supporters of the intentional-attack theory believe that Boston's statement invalidates the conclusions of the Court, and that Boston would not have made such an accusation if he did not know it to be true.

Israel stated that the attack was not deliberate using the following arguments:

• The previous day, Israel's warplanes had erroneously attacked an Israeli armored column, demonstrating unintentional mistakes, where the IAF had even attacked Israel's own forces.
• The incident took place during the Six Day War when Israel was engaged in battles with three Arab countries, creating an environment where mistakes and confusion were prevalent. For example, at 11:45, a few hours before the attack, there was a large explosion on the shores of El-Arish followed by black smoke, probably caused by the destruction of an ammunition dump by retreating Egyptian forces. The Israeli army thought the area was being bombarded, and that an unidentified ship offshore was responsible. (According to U.S. sources, Liberty was 14 nautical miles (26 km) from those shores at the time of the attack.)
• Had Israel intended to attack the USS Liberty, IAF aircraft would have been sent out with bombs, not light machine gun ammunition, sinking the Liberty within the first few minutes of the incident. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/998942/posts
• The attacking aircraft used napalm rockets and machine guns, and napalm is an ineffective armament for doing real damage to a steel-hulled ship—other than starting fires in combustibles. Machine guns, though, are often used to keep a ship's company under cover, thus keeping the company from manning weather deck stations and doing damage control topside.
• Liberty opened fire first on the gunboats. This, though, was after the aerial attacks.
• No adequate benefit has been put forward that the Israelis would derive from the attack on an American ship, especially considering the high cost of the predictable complications that must inevitably follow such an attack on a powerful ally, and the fact that Israel immediately notified the American embassy after the attack.

Some survivors of Liberty, U.S. government officials and U.S. military officers have asserted that the attack was premeditated. (All sides agree that the IAF intended to attack a ship, and in that sense the attack was premeditated. The survivors argue, however, that when IAF jets and IDF boats attacked, they knew the ship was not Egyptian but American.)

James Ennes, a junior officer (and off-going Officer of the Deck) on Liberty's bridge at the time of the attack, has published a book titled Assault on the Liberty.

Ennes and Joe Meadors, another survivor of the attack, runs a website that was built "with support and encouragement from the USS Liberty Veterans Association." Meadors states that the classification of the attack as deliberate is the official policy of the association, to which all known survivors belong. Other survivors run several additional websites.

Several books and the BBC documentary USS Liberty: Dead in the Water argued that Liberty was attacked in order to prevent the U.S. from knowing about the forthcoming attack in the Golan Heights, which apparently would violate a cease-fire to which Israel's government had agreed.[17] Such a motive remains only speculation, however, and in fact the USS Liberty had no Hebrew translators on board, but was manned to monitor Arabic and Soviet radio traffic,[18] although Israel may not have known this.

Critics claim many of the books and documentaries include incorrect assumptions. For example, critics note that a document declassified in 1997 indicated that the U.S. Ambassador at the time had reported on the day of the Liberty attack that he "would not be surprised" by an Israeli attack on Syria, and that the IDF Intelligence chief had told a White House aide then in Israel that "there still remained the Syria problem and perhaps it would be necessary to give Syria a blow,"^[12] which, the critics argue, indicate that Israel was not trying to conceal the planned invasion of Syria from the U.S.

The 1981 book Weapons by Russell Warren Howe asserts that Liberty was accompanied by the Polaris armed Lafayette class submarine USS Andrew Jackson, which filmed the entire episode through its periscope but was unable to provide assistance. According to Howe: "Two hundred feet below the ship, on a parallel course, was its 'shadow'- the Polaris strategic submarine Andrew Jackson, whose job was to take out all the Israeli long-range missile sites in the Negev if Tel Aviv decided to attack Cairo, Damascus or Baghdad. This was in order that Moscow would not have to perform this task itself and thus trigger World War Three."

In 2003, journalist Peter Hounam wrote Operation Cyanide: How the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III, which proposes a completely different theory regarding the incident. In an attempt to explain why there was no support by U.S. forces as backup, Hounam claims that Israel and U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson had secretly agreed on day four of the Six Day War that Liberty would be sunk with complete loss of life. The attack would be blamed on Egypt, allowing the U.S. in turn to attack Egypt, thus helping out Israel. However, according to Hounam's theory, because the Liberty did not sink after two hours, the plan was quickly reversed, Israel apologized for the case of mistaken identity, and a cover-up put into place. Likewise the BBC documentary (2002) claims that the Liberty incident provoked the launch of nuclear-armed planes targeted against Cairo from a US aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. It is claimed in the theory that they were recalled only just in time, when it was clear the Liberty had not sunk with all hands, and that Israel was responsible [19].

From the early 1950s up to shortly before the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel's primary military ally was France. The United States, with a few exceptions, consistently refused requests for sales of offensive weapons to Israel until 1968. The height of French-Israeli cooperation was in the 1956 Suez war, when France, Israel and the United Kingdom participated in a combined ground, sea and air offensive against Egypt, despite stringent opposition from the United States and threats from the Soviet Union.

The Johnson administration did not publicly dispute Israel's claim that the attack had been nothing more than a disastrous mistake. But internal White House documents obtained from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library show that the Israelis' explanation of how the mistake had occurred was not believed[20].

NSA Tapes & Recent Developments

On July 2, 2003, the National Security Agency released copies of the recordings made by an EC-121 aircraft that flew near the attacks from 2:30 p.m. to 3:27 p.m., Sinai time (1230 to 1337 Z), and the resultant translations and summaries.[21] These revelations were elicited as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Florida bankruptcy judge and retired naval aviator Jay Cristol. Two linguists who were aboard the EC-121 when the recordings were made, however, have claimed separately that at least two additional tapes were made that have been excluded from the NSA releases up to and including a June 8, 2007 release.^[13]

English transcripts of the tapes -- recorded by U.S. warplanes -- indicate that Israel still believed it had hit an Egyptian supply ship even after the attack had stopped. [22] [23] After the attack, the rescue helicopters are heard relaying several urgent requests that the rescuers ask the first survivor pulled out of the water what his nationality is, and discussing whether the survivors from the attacked ship will speak Arabic. [24]

The NSA reported that there had been no radio intercepts related to the attack made by the USS Liberty itself, nor there had been any radio intercepts made by the U.S. submarine Amberjack.

Within an hour of learning that the Liberty had been torpedoed the Director, NSA, LTG Marshall S. Carter, USA, sent a message to all intercept sites requesting a special search of all communications that might reflect the attack or reaction. No communications were available. However, one of the airborne platforms, a U.S. Navy EC-121, had collected voice conversations between two Israeli helicopter pilots and the control tower at Hazor Airfield following the attack on the Liberty.[25]

The NSA-translated tapes show that the helicopters were first dispatched to rescue Egyptians (control tower to helicopter 815 at 1234Z: "The ship has now been identified as an Egyptian ship"), and that they demonstrate confusion as to the identification of the target ship. (e.g. control tower to helicopter 815 at 1310Z "The first thing is for you to clarify what nationality they are. Notify me immediately.") Cristol adds: "The tapes confirm that the helicopter pilot observed the flag at 3:12 p.m." (1312Z) which would coincide with the audio tapes the Israel Air Force released to Cristol of the radio transmissions before, during and after the attack. The English translations of the Israeli Air Force tapes are published in Appendix 2 of Cristol's book The Liberty Incident.

On October 10, 2003, The Jerusalem Post ran an interview with Yiftah Spector, one of the pilots who participated in the attack [26], and thought to be the lead pilot of the first wave of planes. Spector said the ship was assumed to be Egyptian. The interview also contains the transcripts of the Israeli communications about the Liberty.

As of 2006, the National Security Agency (NSA) has yet to declassify "boxes and boxes" of Liberty documents. Numerous requests under both declassification directives and the Freedom of Information Act are pending in various agencies including the NSA, Central Intelligence Agency, and Defense Intelligence Agency.

"... On June 8, 2007, the National Security Agency released hundreds of additional declassified documents on the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, a communications interception vessel, on June 8, 1967." [27]

On June 8, 2005, the USS Liberty Veterans Association filed a "Report of War Crimes Committed Against the U.S. Military, June 8, 1967" with the Department of Defense (DoD). They say Department of Defense Directive 2311.01E requires the Department of Defense to conduct a thorough investigation of the allegations contained in their report. Since the DoD maintains that the incident has already been investigated, it is unclear at this writing if the DoD will process this "Report" as a new investigation.

Most recently, on October 2, 2007, The Chicago Tribune published a lengthy special report into the attack. The newspaper's article pointed out that the USS Liberty survivors' "anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots - communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel. The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel's reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation."^[14]

The Tribune's report is based on the declassified NSA documents as well as interviews with people with first-hand experience of the Israeli attack, ranging from Liberty survivors, to NSA analysts to US and Israeli journalists and politicians. The Tribune article's author, John Crewdson, mentions the Liberty survivors' disbelief that "Israeli pilots [could have] confused the U.S. Navy's most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile."

Frequently cited by those making the case for mistaken identity is Yiftah Spector, the first Israeli pilot to attack the Liberty. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post in 2003, Spector states that, "I circled it twice and it did not fire on me. My assumption was that it was likely to open fire at me and nevertheless I slowed down [emphasis added] and I looked and there was positively no flag [emphasis added]."

Spector's assertion about the absence of a US flag on Liberty is contradicted by every single one of the Liberty's survivors. This fact is confirmed by one of the declassified NSA documents which concludes that, "Every official interview of numerous Liberty crewmen gave consistent evidence that indeed the Liberty was flying an American flag - and, further, the weather conditions were ideal to ensure its easy observance and identification."

The Tribune investigation also makes mention of a Jerusalem Post article from 2004 which carried a transcription of the Israeli Air Force tapes of the actual attack. The journalist who transcribed the tapes for that article, Arieh O'Sullivan, later confirmed that "the Israeli Air Force tapes he listened to contained blank spaces." The Chicago Tribune article also notes that, "The transcript published by the Jerusalem Post bore scant resemblance to the one that in 1967 rolled off the teletype machine behind the sealed vault door at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, where Steve Forslund worked as an intelligence analyst for the 544th Air Reconnaissance Technical Wing, then the highest-level strategic planning office in the Air Force." The paper goes on to quote Forslund as remembering that: "The [Israeli] ground control station stated that the target was American and for the aircraft to confirm it. The aircraft did confirm the identity of the target as American, by the American flag... The ground control station ordered the aircraft to attack and sink the target and ensure they left no survivors."

Forslund's recollections are confirmed by, amongst others, James Gotcher, then with the Air Force Security Service's 6924th Security Squadron, an adjunct of the NSA, and USAF Captain Richard Block, then commanding an intelligence wing of more than 100 analysts and cryptologists monitoring Middle Eastern communications. Oliver Kirby, the NSA's deputy director for operations at the time of the Liberty attack, confirmed the existence of NSA transcripts of the actual attack - not just the aftermath - to The Chicago Tribune. When the newspaper asked whether Kirby had personally read such transcripts, Kirby replied, "I sure did. I certainly did. They said, 'We've got him in the zero,' whatever that meant - I guess the sights or something. And then one of them said, 'Can you see the flag?' They said 'Yes, it's U.S, it's U.S.' They said it several times, so there wasn't any doubt in anybody's mind that they knew it."

The Tribune also interviewed Michael Prostinak, a Hebrew linguist aboard a U.S. Navy EC-121 that was monitoring communications in the area at the time of the attack. Like Kirby, Prostinak confirms that recordings were made during the attack which had not been released by the NSA, and that those recordings mention an American flag during the attack. The linguist further noted that the numbering sequence of the tapes released by the NSA clearly indicate that at least two tapes that had once existed were not included in the NSA release.

Even in the immediate aftermath of the attack, the widely-held view of US intelligence and military personnel was expressed succinctly by the then deputy director of the NSA, Louis W. Tordella, in response to the IDF Preliminary Inquiry into the attack: Tordella called it "a nice whitewash."^[15]

Details in dispute

The events surrounding the attack, even very simple elements such as its duration, are the subject of controversy. Among the disputed facts:

• Visibility of ensign: The most vehemently debated point is the visibility of the American flags that the ship was flying; Americans claimed the flags were clearly visible in the wind. The survivors uniformly agree that the Liberty was flying the Stars and Stripes before, during and after the attack, except for a brief period in which one flag that had been shot down was replaced with another, larger flag that measured 13 feet long. The Israeli pilots claimed they did not see any flag. Official reports have the Liberty cruising at 5 knots (9 km/hour) on a calm day, so that the flag would have been furled or fouled, while others maintain the ship was cruising at 28 knots (52 km/h), and insist the flag should have been clearly visible. NSA documents declassified on June 8 2007 state "Every official interview of numerous Liberty crewmen gave consistent evidence that indeed the Liberty was flying an American flag and, further, the weather conditions were ideal to ensure its easy observance and identification."
• USS Liberty bore an eight-foot-high "5" and a four-foot-high "GTR" along either bow, clearly indicating her hull (or "pendant") number (AGTR-5), and had 18-inch-high letters spelling the vessel's name across the stern. These markings were not cursive Arabic script but in English. Israeli pilots claim initially they were primarily concerned with making sure the ship was not Israeli and that they called off the attack when they noticed the latin alphabet markings.http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/liberty.html
• A James Bamford book, published in 2001, claimed that secret NSA intercepts recorded by an American reconnaissance aircraft indicate that Israeli pilots had full knowledge they were attacking a U.S. vessel.^[16]http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/04/23/liberty.attack/. This 2001 proposition has played a significant role in the on-going controversies about the incident, and continues to be widely cited. However, the tapes were later released by the National Security Agency in 2003 as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judge and author A. Jay Cristol. These tapes record communications after the attack was over with Israeli helicopter pilots who were not involved in the attack and who were sent to provide assistance. These pilots noticed an American flag flying from the ship.http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/07/09/uss.liberty.tapes/index.html and informed their control tower. See other souces for a link to the NSA website with complete transcripts. The NSA Website denies that there were any U.S. recordings of the attack itself.
• Significance of U.S. flag: Critics and defenders debate whether a U.S. flag, if seen, should have been believed by the IAF in wartime, when the U.S. had informed Israel that the U.S. had no ships in the area, or taken as a deception by Egypt.
• Israeli aircraft markings: Some American survivors of the attack assert that the Israeli aircraft were unmarked. However, aircraft markings are not required by the laws of war and Israel almost exclusively flew distinctive Dassault Mirage III aircraft.
• Jamming: An additional point on which Israel did not comment is the use of radio jamming. In the absence of reliable records, it is only left to speculate whether jamming (of Navy tactical and international maritime distress frequencies) did take place, or whether the deficiency in communications originated in the attack itself (i.e., loss of power and damage of antennas). Both Liberty and USS Saratoga radio operators reported hearing the distinctive buzzing sound usually indicative of radio frequency jamming. According to a book by Russell Warren Howe (see below), Captain McGonagle testified that the jamming of his transmissions had been on American, not Egyptian, frequencies, suggesting that the Israelis were aware of the nationality of the ship. The U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry concluded that Liberty experienced jamming (finding 48).
• Probability of identification: Americans claim the thirteen closer flybys of the previous two days should have been sufficient for identification. Israel acknowledged the ship had been identified as American and neutral the previous day; however, it claims that at 11 a.m., the ship moved out of the status board. An hour later, when explosions were heard in El-Arish, Israel claims to have reacquired the ship without being aware that it was the same one that was flown over the day before.
• Effort for identification: The American crew claims the attacking aircraft did not make identification runs over Liberty, but rather began to strafe immediately. One Israeli report claims several passes were made.
• Speed of the vessel: According to Israeli accounts, they made (admittedly erroneous) measurements that indicated the ship was steaming at 30 knots (56 km/h). Supposedly, Israeli naval doctrine at the time required that a ship traveling at that speed must be presumed to be a warship. The speed of Liberty was later recalculated to be 28 knots (52 km/h), although maximum sustained speed of Liberty was only 17.5 knots (32 km/h), 21 knots (39 km/h) being attainable by overriding the engine governors. According to Body of Secrets, by James Bamford, and Liberty crewmen (including the Officer-of-the-Deck), the ship was steaming at 5 knots (9 km/h) at the time of the attack.
• Visual communications: Joe Meadors, the signalman on bridge, states that "Immediately prior to the torpedo attack, he was on the Signal Bridge repeatedly sending 'USS Liberty U.S. Navy Ship' by flashing light to the torpedo boats." The Israeli boats claim to have read only the signal "AA", which was exactly the signal dispatched by the Egyptian destroyer Ibrahim Al-Awal when it was engaged by the Israeli Navy eleven years earlier. Meadors claims he never sent "AA" (which would require him to identify himself as well); this disagreement may be settled by considering the fact that Liberty was unable to read signals sent from the boats.
• Call for ID: Israel claims to have called the ship on radio several times without receiving an answer, while the American crew members deny ever receiving a call for identification. The crew's failure to receive any call for identification may be related to the possible Israeli jamming of radio frequencies. (Refer to Jamming above.)

• Israeli ships' actions after the torpedo hit: Some of the crewmembers claim that after the Liberty had been torpedoed, Israeli boats circled the ship firing machine guns at descended (unmanned) life rafts and sailors on board the ship. Israelis claim they recognized the ship as American immediately after it was hit and ceased fire. Two survivors Lloyd Painter and Glenn Oliphant claim to have seen the life rafts being fired upon, but the ship's captain and others on deck made no mention of this. Oliphant said the life rafts were about 150 yards (0 m) behind the ship, Painter said the life raft he saw getting shot “had been cut loose and was floating in the water”. Captain Ward Boston, senior counsel to the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry, supports Painter’s claim that his testimony about the life rafts being shot at was removed from the court’s report. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/boston.html
• Israeli offers of help: Reports differ regarding whether the Israeli boats offered help. Some crew members claim the torpedo boats simply withdrew, while the captain and the Israeli crew report that help was offered; the captain testified before the court of inquiry that he had asked the Israeli boats to stay away by the means of signal flags-. Ennes acknowledges the Israelis offered help but claims they only did so at 4:30
• U.S. rescue attempts: At least two rescue attempts were launched from U.S. aircraft carriers nearby but were recalled, according to David Lewis, officer of the deck (OOD) during the attack. Lewis wrote and made an audio recording about a meeting 6th Fleet Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis requested in his cabins: "He told me that since I was the senior Liberty survivor on board he wanted to tell me in confidence what had actually transpired. He told me that upon receipt of our SOS, aircraft were launched to come to our assistance and then Washington was notified. He said that the Secretary of Defense (Robert McNamara) had ordered that the aircraft be returned to the carrier which was done. RADM Geis then said that he speculated that Washington may have suspected that the aircraft carried nuclear weapons so he put together another flight of conventional aircraft that had no capability of carrying nuclear weapons. These he launched to assist us and again notified Washington of his actions. Again McNamara ordered the aircraft recalled. He requested confirmation of the order being unable to believe that Washington would let us sink. This time President Johnson ordered the recall with the comment that he did not care if every man drowned and the ship sank, but that he would not embarrass his allies. This is, to the best of my ability, what I recall transpiring 30 years ago."

Names of fatalities

Cryptologic Tech 3rd Class William B. Allenbaugh, USN Lt Cmdr. Philip M. Armstrong Jr., USN Seaman Gary R. Blanchard, USN Cryptologic Technician 2nd Class Allen M. Blue, NSA Quartermaster 3rd Class Francis Brown, USN Cryptologic Tech 2nd Class Ronnie J. Campbell, USN Cryptologic Tech 2nd Class Jerry L. Converse, USN Cryptologic Tech 2nd Class Robert B. Eisenberg, USN Cryptologic Tech 2nd Class Jerry L. Goss, USN Cryptologic Tech 1st Class Curtis L. Graves, USN Cryptologic Tech Lawrence P. Hayden, USN Cryptologic Tech 1st Class Warren Hersey, USN Cryptologic Tech 3rd Class Alan Higgins, USN Seaman Carl L. Hoar, USN Cryptologic Tech 2nd Class Richard W. Keene, USN Cryptologic Tech James L. Lenau, USN Chief Cryptologic Tech Raymond E. Linn, USN

Cryptologic Tech 1st Class James M. Lupton, USN Cryptologic Tech 3rd Class Duane R. Marggraf, USN Cryptologic Tech David W. Marlborough, USN Cryptologic Tech 2nd Class Anthony P. Mendle, USN Cryptologic Tech Carl C. Nygren, USN Lt. James C. Pierce, USN Sgt. Jack Raper, U.S.M.C. Cpl. Edward Rehmayer II, U.S.M.C. Interior Comms Electrician David N. Skolak, USN Cryptologic Tech 1st Class John C. Smith Jr, USN Chief Cryptologic Tech Melvin D. Smith, USN Postal Clerk 2nd Class John C. Spicher, USN Gunner's Mate 3rd Class Alexander N. Thompson, USN Cryptologic Tech 3rd Class Thomas R. Thornton, USN Cryptologic Tech 3rd Class Phillipe C. Tiedtke, USN Lt. Stephen S. Toth, USN Cryptologic Tech 1st Class Frederick J. Walton, USN

Note: The rating "cryptologic technician" reflects current usage. In 1967, the rating was called "communications technician."[28]

See also

• Israeli Air Force during the Six-Day War
• Other international incidents involving the U.S. military:
• Sinking of the USS Maine
• Gulf of Tonkin Incident
• Capture of USS Pueblo
• Iran Air Flight 655
• French submarine Surcouf
• Gulf of Sidra incident (1981) and Gulf of Sidra incident (1989) - two incidents involving F-14 Tomcats of the U.S. Navy and warplanes of the Libyan Air Force.
• Hainan Island incident

References

Books

• A History of Israel by Ahron Bregman contains extracts from the tapes. (ISBN 0-333-67631-9)
• Cristol, A. Jay (2002). The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship. Dulles, Virginia: Brassey's. ISBN 1-57488-414-X. 
• Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Michael B. Oren, Oxford University Press (ISBN 0-19-515174-7)
• Assault on the Liberty: The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship, by James M. Ennes, Jr. (ISBN 0-9723116-0-2) Currently in its 9th printing.
• The Puzzle Palace, by James Bamford, Penguin Books, 1982, has a detailed description of the Israeli attack on the SIGINT ship USS Liberty, and the events leading up to it, on pages 279-293.
• Body of Secrets, by James Bamford, devotes a detailed chapter to the incident, and concludes it was deliberate. Doubleday, 2001 (ISBN 0-09-942774-5)
• Peter Hounam, Operation Cyanide: Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III, Vision Paperbacks. 2003, ISBN 1-904132-19-7,
• Anthony Pearson, Conspiracy of Silence: The Attack on the USS Liberty, 1979 ISBN 0-7043-2164-5
• John Borne, The USS Liberty, Dissenting History vs. Official History
• Thomas, Baylis (1999). How Israel Was Won: A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. ISBN 0-7391-0064-5.  In Chapter 15 on "The Six Day War and Its Consequences", dissects the sequence of events and concurrent attacks on Arab towns and explores the possibility that the attack on this U.S. spy ship was an intentional act to prevent U.S. monitoring of Israeli military actions, and that the intent was to kill all on board before any kind of communications could be sent out.

External links

U.S. government sites

• Attack on a Sigint Collector, the U.S.S. Liberty, by William D. Gerhard and Henry W. Millington, U.S. Cryptologic History series, National Security Agency, 1981, partially declassified 1999, 2003.
• Additional information released by the National Security Agency on July 2003, including audio recordings (mostly in Hebrew) of conversations between two Israeli helicopter pilots and their control tower following the attack, transcripts of the recordings (in English), and follow-up reports.
• Naval Historical Center, featuring photographs of the ship and crew, and the aftermath of the attack.
• National Security Agency's Memorial Wall, including list of names inscribed on the wall.

Other sources

• Naval Institute Proceedings interviews key intelligence officers in 2003
• USS Liberty attack tapes released by David Ensor, CNN.
• Chicago Tribune Article 2007
• Israeli communications said to prove IAF knew Liberty was U.S. ship, Yossi Melman, Ha'aretz, October 4, 2007.

Sources claiming attack was a mistake

• US tapes confirm Israel's '67 attack on 'Liberty' was accidental
• The Liberty Incident, by Naval Aviator and JAG A. Jay Cristol. Includes original documents, as well as rebuttals to various theories and articles that hold that the attack was deliberate.
• Pages devoted to USS Liberty Incident maintained by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, including a collection of contemporaneous diplomatic documents and telegrams.
• The USS Liberty: Case Closed Azure article by Michael Oren
• Michael Oren's "Six Days of War." Ballatine Books, 2003, p. 263-271
• Memos show Liberty attack was an error Haaretz article by Nathan Guttman
• Return of the USS Liberty Critique of Bamford's "Body of Secrets" from Honest Reporting
• Bamford Bashes Israel: Conspiracy Theorist Claims Attack on USS Liberty Intentional from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
• Viewers’ Guide to the History Channel’s Cover Up: Attack on the USS Liberty from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
• The USS Liberty Attack from the Anti-Defamation League
• Response to the History Channel Program on the USS Liberty prepared for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs by A. Jay Cristol
• Declassified Documents Show Israel's 1967 Attack On USS Liberty Was Accidental from the Israel National News
• USS Liberty: Israel Did Not Intend to Bomb the Ship by A. Jay Cristol
• USS Liberty on www.sixdaywar.org
• Hank Roth:Truth about U.S.S. Liberty]-->
• USS 'Liberty' hit was unintentional, says CIA
• to 'Post - interview with pilot (Yiftah Spector) who led attack]

Sources claiming attack was deliberate

Survivors of the attack

• The website of the Veterans of USS Liberty, run by survivors Jim Ennes and Joe Meadors. This site includes a wide variety of documents, photographs, and responses to authors who argue that the attack was a mistake.
• The USS Liberty Inquiry website, run by USS Liberty survivors Jim Ennes, Joe Meadors and John Hrankowski and maintained by researcher Andrew Nacin. This contains hundreds of documents and evidence on the attack, as well as a public forum..
• USS Liberty, by John Gidusko, Communications Officer aboard the USS Liberty
• Assault on Liberty Still Covered Up After 26 Years by Jim Ennes at Washington-Report
• Loss of Liberty Film, featuring multiple survivors who claim they were set-up
• Dead in the Water BBC documentary (2002).
• Eric S.Margolis article on the Lew Rockwell page: America's Most Shameful Secret

Other sources

• Captain Ward Boston (USN, Ret.), chief counsel to the Navy's Board of Inquiry interviewed on Electric Politics June 29, 2007
• A Juridicial Examination of the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty by Lieutenant Commander Walter L. Jacobsen, JAGC, USN
• USS LIBERTY: Public History vs. Dissenting History, by John Borne
• Possible strategic and political backgrounds by Eric Margolis, foreign correspondent for the Toronto Sun.
• Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Israel Deliberately Attacked US Ship, Daily Star, January 21 2004.
• Naval Institute Proceedings: Friendless Fire? by David Walsh
• San Diego Union-Tribune: Lifting the "fog of war" by David Walsh
• BBC Documentary Dead In The Water
• documentary Terror Storm (minutes 13 through 18) by Alex Jones
• U.S. Navy and Marine Casualties in Wars, Conflicts, Terrorist Acts, and other Hostile Acts
• Telegrams Cast Doubt on Liberty Report, Navy Times,June 4, 2007 by Bryant Jordan
• Conflicting comments rekindle Liberty dispute, Marine Corps Times, June 26, 2002, by Bryant Jordan
• Alison Wier article from Counterpunch June 22, 2007
• RayMcGovern article on AlterNet: The "Hidden Day" Israel Deliberately Attacked American Ship, Killing 34

International incident Isaac C. Kidd, Jr.

James Ennes Jr. John S. McCain, Jr.

USNS Pvt Jose F Valdez USS Liberty

USS Liberty (AGTR-5) USS Liberty Veterans Association

USS Pueblo (AGER-2) Yeshayahu Yerushalmi