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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 incident remains controversial. Israel, and various U.S. government agencies, maintain the attack was an error, but American survivors of the attack, and others, dispute this.

The Israel conducted an inquiry 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. In the US, there was only one quickie investigation into the attack, which was later repudiated by its chief counsel, Captain Ward Boston. While Israel advocates claim that there were numerous investigations, according to the Library of Congress there was only one. Captain Boston filed an official document:

Declaration of Ward Boston, Jr.,Captain, JAGC, USN (Ret.)Counsel to the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry’s investigation into the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty

I, Ward Boston, Jr. do declare that the following statement is true and complete:

For more than 30 years, I have remained silent on the topic of USS Liberty. I am a military man and when orders come in from the Secretary of Defense and President of the United States, I follow them.

However, recent attempts to rewrite history compel me to share the truth.

In June of 1967, while serving as a Captain in the Judge Advocate General Corps, Department of the Navy, I was assigned as senior legal counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the brutal attack on USS Liberty, which had occurred on June 8th.

The late Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, president of the Court, and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy’s official investigation into the attack, despite the fact that we both had estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry into an attack of this magnitude would take at least six months to conduct.

Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., then Commander-in-chief, Naval Forces Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR), at his headquarters in London, had charged Admiral Kidd (in a letter dated June 10, 1967) to “inquire into all the pertinent facts and circumstances leading to and connected with the armed attack; damage resulting therefrom; and deaths of and injuries to Naval personnel.”

Despite the short amount of time we were given, we gathered a vast amount of evidence, including hours of heartbreaking testimony from the young survivors.

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. 10. Not only did the Israelis attack the ship with napalm, gunfire, and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned three lifeboats that had been launched in an attempt by the crew to save the most seriously wounded — a war crime.

Admiral Kidd and I both felt it necessary to travel to Israel to interview the Israelis who took part in the attack. Admiral Kidd telephoned Admiral McCain to discuss making arrangements. Admiral Kidd later told me that Admiral McCain was adamant that we were not to travel to Israel or contact the Israelis concerning this matter.

Regrettably, we did not receive into evidence and the Court did not consider any of the more than sixty witness declarations from men who had been hospitalized and were unable to testify in person.

I am outraged at the efforts of the apologists for Israel in this country to claim that this attack was a case of “mistaken identity.”

In particular, the recent publication of Jay Cristol’s book, The Liberty Incident, twists the facts and misrepresents the views of those of us who investigated the attack.

It is Cristol’s insidious attempt to whitewash the facts that has pushed me to speak out.

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.

Admiral Kidd told me, after returning from Washington, D.C. that he had been ordered to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Defense Department, and rewrite portions of the court’s findings.

Admiral Kidd also told me that he had been ordered to “put the lid” on everything having to do with the attack on USS Liberty. We were never to speak of it and we were to caution everyone else involved that they could never speak of it again.

I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of that statement as 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.

Following the conclusion of the Court of Inquiry, Admiral Kidd and I remained in contact. Though we never spoke of the attack in public, we did discuss it between ourselves, on occasion. Every time we discussed the attack, Admiral Kidd was adamant that it was a deliberate, planned attack on an American ship.

In 1990, I received a telephone call from Jay Cristol, who wanted to interview me concerning the functioning of the Court of Inquiry. I told him that I would not speak to him on that subject and prepared to hang up the telephone. Cristol then began asking me about my personal background and other, non-Court of Inquiry related matters. I endeavored to answer these questions and politely extricate myself from the conversation. Cristol continued to return to the subject of the Court of Inquiry, which I refused to discuss with him. Finally, I suggested that he contact Admiral Kidd and ask him about the Court of Inquiry.

Shortly after my conversation with Cristol, I received a telephone call from Admiral Kidd, inquiring about Cristol and what he was up to. The Admiral spoke of Cristol in disparaging terms and even opined that “Cristol must be an Israeli agent.” I don’t know if he meant that literally or it was his way of expressing his disgust for Cristol’s highly partisan, pro-Israeli approach to questions involving USS Liberty.

At no time did I ever hear Admiral Kidd speak of Cristol other than in highly disparaging terms. I find Cristol’s claims of a “close friendship” with Admiral Kidd to be utterly incredible. I also find it impossible to believe the statements he attributes to Admiral Kidd, concerning the attack on USS Liberty.

Several years later, I received a letter from Cristol that contained what he purported to be his notes of our prior conversation. These “notes” were grossly incorrect and bore no resemblance in reality to that discussion. I find it hard to believe that these “notes” were the product of a mistake, rather than an attempt to deceive. I informed Cristol that I disagreed with his recollection of our conversation and that he was wrong. Cristol made several attempts to arrange for the two of us to meet in person and talk but I always found ways to avoid doing this. I did not wish to meet with Cristol as we had nothing in common and I did not trust him.

Contrary to the misinformation presented by Cristol and others, it is important for the American people to know that it is clear that Israel is responsible for deliberately attacking an American ship and murdering American sailors, whose bereaved shipmates have lived with this egregious conclusion for many years.

       Dated: January 9, 2004
       at Coronado, California.
       Ward Boston, Jr., Captain, JAGC, USN (Ret.)

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-boston.html

       Senior Counsel to the USS Liberty Court of Inquiry

In 2003 a blue-ribbon panel delivered its findings on Capitol Hill -- that the attack had constituted at act of war against the United States, and consisted of killing American servicemen. The findings were:

Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty, the Recall of Military Rescue Support Aircraft while the Ship was Under Attack, and the Subsequent Cover-up by the United States Government

CAPITOL HILL, WASHINGTON, D.C. OCTOBER 22, 2003

ADMIRAL THOMAS H. MOORER, UNITED STATES NAVY, (RET.) Former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Liberty Alliance

GENERAL RAYMOND G. DAVIS, UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS, (MOH)* Former Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Vice Chairman, Liberty Alliance

REAR ADMIRAL MERLIN STARING, UNITED STATES NAVY, (RET.) Former Judge Advocate General of the Navy Director, Liberty Alliance

AMBASSADOR JAMES AKINS, (RET.) Former United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Director, Liberty Alliance

We, the undersigned, having undertaken an independent investigation of Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty, including eyewitness testimony from surviving crewmembers, a review of naval and other official records, an examination of official statements by the Israeli and American governments, a study of the conclusions of all previous official inquiries, and a consideration of important new evidence and recent statements from individuals having direct knowledge of the attack or the cover up, hereby find the following: **

  1.

     That on June 8, 1967, after eight hours of aerial surveillance, Israel launched a two-hour air and naval attack against the USS Liberty, the world’s most sophisticated intelligence ship, inflicting 34 dead and 172 wounded American servicemen (a casualty rate of seventy percent, in a crew of 294);
  2.

     That the Israeli air attack lasted approximately 25 minutes, during which time unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on the Liberty’s bridge, and fired 30mm cannons and rockets into our ship, causing 821 holes, more than 100 of which were rocket-size; survivors estimate 30 or more sorties were flown over the ship by a minimum of 12 attacking Israeli planes which were jamming all five American emergency radio channels;
  3.

     That the torpedo boat attack involved not only the firing of torpedoes, but the machine-gunning of the Liberty’s firefighters and stretcher-bearers as they struggled to save their ship and crew; the Israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine-gun at close range three of the Liberty’s life rafts that had been lowered into the water by survivors to rescue the most seriously wounded;
  4.

     That there is compelling evidence that Israel’s attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew; evidence of such intent is supported by statements from Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Undersecretary of State George Ball, former CIA director Richard Helms, former NSA directors Lieutenant General William Odom, USA (Ret.), Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, USN (Ret.), and Marshal Carter; former NSA deputy directors Oliver Kirby and Major General John Morrison, USAF (Ret.); and former Ambassador Dwight Porter, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon in 1967;
  5.

     That in attacking the USS Liberty, Israel committed acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States;
  6.

     That fearing conflict with Israel, the White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of the Liberty by recalling Sixth Fleet military rescue support while the ship was under attack; evidence of the recall of rescue aircraft is supported by statements of Captain Joe Tully, Commanding Officer of the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, and Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis, the Sixth Fleet carrier division commander, at the time of the attack; never before in American naval history has a rescue mission been cancelled when an American ship was under attack;
  7.

     That although the Liberty was saved from almost certain destruction through the heroic efforts of the ship’s Captain, William L. McGonagle (MOH), and his brave crew, surviving crewmembers were later threatened with “court-martial, imprisonment or worse” if they exposed the truth; and were abandoned by their own government;
  8.

     That due to the influence of Israel’s powerful supporters in the United States, the White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people;
  9.

     That due to continuing pressure by the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, this attack remains the only serious naval incident that has never been thoroughly investigated by Congress; to this day, no surviving crewmember has been permitted to officially and publicly testify about the attack;
 10.

     That there has been an official cover-up without precedent in American naval history; the existence of such a cover-up is now supported by statements of Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, USN (Ret.), former Judge Advocate General of the Navy; and Captain Ward Boston, USN, (Ret.), the chief counsel to the Navy’s 1967 Court of Inquiry of the Liberty attack;
 11.

     That the truth about Israel’s attack and subsequent White House cover-up continues to be officially concealed from the American people to the present day and is a national disgrace;
 12.

     That a danger to our national security exists whenever our elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation, and specifically are unwilling to challenge Israel’s interests when they conflict with American interests; this policy, evidenced by the failure to defend the USS Liberty and the subsequent official cover-up of the Israeli attack, endangers the safety of Americans and the security of the United States.

WHEREUPON, we, the undersigned, in order to fulfill our duty to the brave crew of the USS Liberty and to all Americans who are asked to serve in our Armed Forces, hereby call upon the Department of the Navy, the Congress of the United States and the American people to immediately take the following actions:

FIRST: That a new Court of Inquiry be convened by the Department of the Navy, operating with Congressional oversight, to take public testimony from surviving crewmembers; and to thoroughly investigate the circumstances of the attack on the USS Liberty, with full cooperation from the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the military intelligence services, and to determine Israel’s possible motive in launching said attack on a U.S. naval vessel;

SECOND: That every appropriate committee of the Congress of the United States investigate the actions of the White House and Defense Department that prevented the rescue of the USS Liberty, thereafter threatened her surviving officers and men if they exposed the truth, and covered up the true circumstances of the attack from the American people; and

THIRD: That the eighth day of June of every year be proclaimed to be hereafter known as USS LIBERTY REMEMBRANCE DAY, in order to commemorate the Liberty’s heroic crew; and to educate the American people of the danger to our national security inherent in any passionate attachment of our elected officials for any foreign nation.

We, the undersigned, hereby affix our hands and seals, this 22nd day of October, 2003.

   Thomas H. Moorer

   Former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff,
   Chairman, Liberty Alliance

   General of Marines Raymond G. Davis, USMC, MOH*
   Vice Chairman, Liberty Alliance

   Merlin Staring
   Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, USN, Ret.,
   Former Judge Advocate General of the Navy,
   Director, Liberty Alliance

   James Akins
   Ambassador James Akins, Ret.,
   Former United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia,
   Director, Liberty Alliance

• IN MEMORIAM: General of Marines Raymond G. Davis, one of America’s most decorated military heroes (including the Congressional Medal of Honor), Vice Chairman of the Liberty Alliance, and one of the principal members of this Independent Commission of Inquiry, passed away in Conyers, Georgia, on September 3, 2003.

• • Captain Ward Boston, USN, JAGC, Ret, the chief Navy attorney for the 1967 U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry into the Israeli attack, has recently come forward to repudiate the Court’s conclusion that the attack was “a case of mistaken identity”. Captain Boston has revealed that all available evidence, in fact, pointed in exactly the opposite direction — that it was a deliberate attack on a clearly identified American ship. In his affidavit dated October 9, 2003, Captain Boston states, “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. I am certain that the Israeli pilots that undertook the attack, as well as their superiors who had ordered the attack, were aware that the ship was American.” . Captain Boston stated that he has personal knowledge that Admiral Kidd found the attack to be “a case of mistaken identity” in 1967 only because he was under direct orders to do so by Defense Secretary McNamara and President Johnson.

Lieutenant Commander David E. Lewis, the Liberty’s chief intelligence officer (who was severely wounded in the attack) has reported a conversation with Admiral Lawrence R. Geis, the Sixth Fleet carrier division commander, who visited Lewis after he had been medically evacuated by helicopter to the aircraft carrier USS America. According to Lewis, “He (Admiral Geis) said that he wanted somebody to know that we weren’t forgotten…attempts HAD been made to come to our assistance. He said that he had launched a flight of aircraft to come to our assistance, and he had then called Washington. Secretary McNamara came on the line and ordered the recall of the aircraft, which he did. Concurrently he said that since he suspected that they were afraid that there might have been nuclear weapons on board, he reconfigured another flight of aircraft - strictly conventional weaponry - and re-launched it. After the second launch, he again called Washington to let them know what was going on. Again, Secretary McNamara ordered the aircraft recalled. Not understanding why, he requested confirmation of the order; and the next higher in command came on to confirm that…President Johnson...with the instructions that the aircraft were to be returned, that he would not have his allies embarrassed, he didn’t care who was killed or what was done to the ship…words to that effect. With that, Admiral Geis swore me to secrecy for his lifetime. I had been silent up until I found out from Admiral Moorer that Admiral Geis had passed away” . This statement by Commander Lewis has recently been corroborated by Tony Hart, a Navy communications technician stationed at the U.S. Navy Base in Morocco in June, 1967. Mr. Hart connected the telephone conversation between Secretary McNamara and Admiral Geis and stayed on the line to keep them connected. Hart has been recorded as saying that he overheard Admiral Geis refusing McNamara’s order to recall the Sixth Fleet rescue aircraft while the ship was under attack. Mr.Hart reported that McNamara responded,“we are not going to war over a bunch of dead sailors.”

New evidence of intercepted radio communications between attacking Israeli pilots and the Israeli War Room, recorded by a U.S. Navy EC-121 spy plane, in which the Israeli pilots report seeing the Liberty’s American flag flying, has been collected by investigative author James Bamford - for 9 years the Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings (and author of Body of Secrets, which includes a chapter entitled Blood about the attack on the Liberty). A similar radio message was intercepted by the EC-121 from the Israeli motor torpedo boats. This corroborates statements by surviving crewmembers, by Ambassador Dwight Porter, and by senior National Security Agency officials concerning NSA intercepts of Israeli pilot communications identifying the ship as American. http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-commfindings.html

An op-ed by the chairman -- World War II hero and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer also stated this position in "The Stars and Stripes," the US Military newspaper overseas.

Israel's official position is that the attack was not the result of an intentional targeting of an American ship, but a deliberate attack on what Israel thought was an Egyptian ship, a ship one-fifth the mass of the Liberty, and that would have had Arabic lettering on the hull. Some Israeli officials claim they were assured by the United States that no U.S. ships were in the area, 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 Israel's only significant ally, and the Naval Court of Inquiry, led by Admiral John McCain, found that the attack was a mistake, not intentional, found that the profiles of US ships "were not readily locatable" for identification purposes and found that the Liberty's "configuration susceptible to confusion with other ships of other nations." (see page 37, mentioning Jane's "Fighting Ships" as apparently insufficient).

They also note that the tense atmosphere of the Six-Day War created the possibility of such mistakes, Israel had accidentally bombed its own tank column the day before on land, and point out that the U.S. government, concerned about such dangers, ordered the Liberty further away from shore the night before the attack. 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, 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 contends 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.

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.

A later book by the same author -- James Bamford -- "Body of Secrets" gives considerable more information about the attack, including the hypohtesis that one of the motivations was to hide Israeli forces' murder of prisoners of war in the Sinai.

The attack on the Liberty

USS Liberty was originally the 7,725-ton (light) civilian cargo vessel Simmons Victory (a mass-produced, standard-design Victory Ship, the follow-on series to the famous Liberty Ships which supplied England and Allied troops with cargo). 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 (560 km) to 400 miles (640 km), 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 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 (10.5 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. 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 or 3:10 AM local time, 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). (pages 5 and Exhibit N, page 58).

According to the National Security Agency -- for whom the Navy was conducting the mission -- the order to withdraw was broadcast to the Liberty in sufficient time for the Liberty to have left the area long before the attack, but not on the frequencies that the Liberty crew was monitoring for orders until 1525Zulu, hours after the attack, due to a long series of administrative and communications problems. NSA report pp. 21-23 The Liberty's communications files were located in the sections destroyed in the attack, (page 23) such that whether the Liberty received its orders earlier cannot be known with certainty.

According to the U.S. Navy -- which had operational control over the ship -- an "immediate precedence" order to withdraw to 100 miles was broadcast at 01:10Zulu, or 3:10 AM local time, the night before the attack. The Navy agrees that this "immediate precedence" order from the Joint Chiefs of Staff was mis-routed through the Phillipines, but was still broadcast to the Sixth Fleet (the Liberty's operational command) at 06:37 -- 7 1/2 hours before the attack at 14:03. (pages 24 - 25) (pages 5 and Exhibit N, page 58) Nevertheless, the Liberty did not obey those orders. The Navy Court of Inquiry reports many other messages were successfully broadcast and received to and from the Liberty in the 24 hours before the attack, including the Liberty's report of being overflown at 05:15Zulu. From this 05:15 Zulu report until 1525Zulu, the Liberty did not report any inability to receive incoming traffic from the Sixth Fleet.

The Navy also faulted a shortage of qualified radio men as a contributing factor to the Liberty's failure to leave the area as ordered.

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 () to 28 knots (), 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, 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 , 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. However, although the order was recorded in the ship's log, the commander of the torpedo boat squadron claimed never to have received it.

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," 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. The Medal of Honor is generally presented by the President of the United States.

Investigations of the attack

Israeli investigations and one limited US investigation, since repudiated, 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. The majority of those subsequent U.S. reports were issues such as communications failures rather than culpability. . 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.”

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)

Experts-- including an active group of survivors from the ship -- explain 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 reality, the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry is the only investigation on the incident to date, and 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 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 , 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."

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."

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 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 and I looked and there was positively no flag ."

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 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."

Details in dispute

The events surrounding the attack, even very simple elements such as its duration, are the subject of controversy. Conclusions require resolution of the following disputes of facts:

• US Crewmen's Perceptions of Israeli Intent: Perhaps more than any other detail, this issue remains in dispute because the surviving crew of the Liberty report their subjective perception that Israel's attack on the ship was "deliberate." Yet, Israel agrees that the attack was deliberate -- but against the wrong ship. Israel agrees that its jets acted as if they intended to deliberately attack a ship. Israel responds that its attack was meant for its Egyptian enemies, and not for its most important ally.

• Distinctiveness of USS Liberty's Appearance: One major dispute is whether the Liberty would have been immediately recognized as a different ship from the Egyptian ship El Quseir. Critics of the Israeli attack argue that the Liberty was distinctive, and "bristling with antennae." Those who believe the attack was intended against a different ship point out that the Liberty was a mass-produced Victory Ship of standardized design, built as a cargo ship -- exactly like the Egyptian ship El Quseir -- and that spy ships are designed to be inconspicious and unnoticed, and do not "bristle with antennae" so as to be easily identified as NSA spy ships.

• Size of a Ship Against Open Ocean: Those who contend that Israel intended to attack an American, instead of Egyptian, ship assert that the USS Liberty was twice the size of the Egyptian ship El Quseir. An assumption left unresolved is whether a pilot in the air flying at hundreds of miles per hour can judge the size of a ship against a field of nothing but water, offering no visual frame of reference (context).

• 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. The Court of Inquiry found that the Liberty was cruising at 5 knots (9 km/hour) on a calm day, so that the flag would have been furled or fouled, and could not be seen. Others maintain the ship was cruising at 28 knots (), and insist the flag should have been clearly visible, unfurled in the breeze caused by the ship's speed. This dispute of fact is inter-related with how far the Liberty traveled from the last location where it was identified by the IDF. If traveling at 28 knots, the Liberty could have traveled as much as 100 miles away from where it was identified that morning. If traveling at only 5 knots, its flag would not have been 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."

• Significance of U.S. ensign: 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. It is assumed, but not established, that Egyptian ships attacking Israel would not have been flying a U.S. flag as a deception. Others question whether a U.S. flag might be properly have been interpreted as a deception by Egypt in war time.

• 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 the Latin alphabet (used in European or English languages). 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.

• Israeli Jets Not Armed for Attacking a Ship: Advocates dispute why Israeli jets flew out to the Liberty armed only with machine guns -- instead of bombs -- incapable of sinking a US warship, although perhaps able to sink the Egyptian ship El Quseir (half as large) which Israel said it was targeting.

• Israeli Terminates Attack: Critics of Israel maintain that Israel intended to attack and sink the USS Liberty. Those arguing that Israel attacked the wrong ship point out that Israel did not in fact sink the Liberty, but terminated the attack... leaving witnesses and survivors. It remains unknown why Israel would begin to attack a US ship but then leave the Liberty afloat with witnesses aboard.

• 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.. 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. 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.

• 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: 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, and if so by which country, or whether the deficiency in communications originated in the attack itself (i.e., loss of power and damage of antennas). And yet despite the lack of evidence, allegations of jamming figure prominently in the controversy. With 7 Arab nations at war with Israel, at that time lodging formal protests in the United Nations about their belief the USA was entering the war on Israel's side, and the keen interest of the Soviet Union in the conflict, speculation that jamming might have taken place certainly does not answer the question by whom. Yet, critics of Israel insist that Israel engaged in jamming. Both Liberty and USS Saratoga radio operators reported hearing the distinctive buzzing sound usually indicative of radio frequency jamming. However, the Navy Court of Inquiry found that the Saratoga in fact received radio reports from the Liberty and successfully relayed these to the Sixth Fleet. (see page 28). The Liberty radio operators also report that their equipment was disabled or damaged in the first wave of the attack. Since there is only speculation that jamming took place, one is forced to also consider whether during the attack Liberty's radio transmitters were jammed in transmit mode with damaged circuitry. Meanwhile, US surveillance aircraft recording radio traffic of the incident did not report any interference with US frequencies in the area.

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 someone was aware of the nationality of the ship. Yet balancing the speculative nature of these allegations, the Liberty also claimed to have not received its orders to withdraw the night before because the Liberty itself was not listening to the radio frequencies on which the Navy was broadcasting those orders.

• 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 (140 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.
• 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

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

See also

• 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

1. "The surviving Liberty crewmen . . . believed the attack was deliberate." *Mission Memorial: Remembering the USS Liberty from the Veterans of Foreign Wars Magazine, June/July 2005.
2. "The failure of the Israeli navy's attacks on Egyptian and Syrian ports early in the war did little to assuage Israel's fears. Consequently, the IDF Chief of Staff, Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, informed the U.S. Naval Attaché in Tel Aviv, Cmdr. Ernest Carl Castle, that Israel would defend its coast with every means at its disposal. Unidentified vessels would be sunk, Rabin advised; the United States should either acknowledge its ships in the area or remove them. Nonetheless, the Americans provided Israel with no information on the Liberty. The United States had also rejected Israel's request for a formal naval liaison. On May 31, Avraham Harman, Israel's ambassador to Washington, had warned Under Secretary of State Eugene V. Rostow that if war breaks out, we would have no telephone number to call, no code for plane recognition, and no way to get in touch with the U.S. Sixth Fleet.'" Oren, Michael B. The USS Liberty: Case Closed, Azure, Spring 5760 / 2000, No. 9.
3. Numbers are written by Russian using the same Latin numbering system
4. "While Egyptian naval ships were known to disguise their identities with Western markings, they usually displayed Arabic letters and numbers only. The fact that the ship had Western markings led Rabin to fear that it was Soviet, and he immediately called off the jets. Two IAF Hornet helicopters were sent to look for survivors - Spector had reported seeing men overboard - while the torpedo boat squadron was ordered to hold its fire pending further attempts at identification. Though that order was recorded in the torpedo boat's log, Oren claimed he never received it." Oren, Michael B. The USS Liberty: Case Closed, Azure, Spring 5760 / 2000, No. 9.
5. Even as USS Liberty's Heroic Captain Receives New Honor, Coverup of Israeli Attack on His Ship Continues, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 1998 Issue, Pages 26, 88
6. Navy Medal of Honor: Vietnam War (era) 1964-1975, citation for Captain William L. McGonagle, U.S. Navy, accessed May 15, 2006
7. Congressional Medal of Honor Society, accessed June 20, 2007
8. Raymond Garthoff, A Journey Through the Cold War Washington, DC: 2001 p. 214.
9. Crewdson harvnb error: no target: CITEREFCrewdson (help)
10. William D. Gerhard and Henry W. Millington, National Security Agency, Attack on a SIGINT Collector, the USS Liberty, 1981. Top Secret Umbra. See page 41 of the report, page 49 of the pdf; see also footnote 4 on same page.
11. CNN report by David Ensor, CNN, April 23, 2001. Report cites material from: Body of Secrets, by James Bamford, Doubleday, 2001 (ISBN 0-09-942774-5)

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. {{cite book}}: External link in |title= (help)
• 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
• 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

• 1967
• Combat incidents
• Espionage scandals and incidents
• History of cryptography
• History of Israel
• International maritime incidents
• Military history of the United States 1900-1999
• National Security Agency
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