USS Liberty incident

The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a U.S. Navy intelligence ship, USS Liberty, in international waters about 12.5 nautical miles (23 km) from the coast of the Sinai Peninsula, north 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 and Syria. The attack killed 34 U.S. servicemen and wounded at least 173.

Both the Israeli and American governments have conducted multiple inquiries into the incident, and have issued reports concluding that the attack was a tragic mistake, caused by confusion about the identity of the USS Liberty. These conclusions have been accepted by many prominent intelligence and military analysts from both sides, but have been challenged from several fronts, most notably by an organization of Liberty survivors, as well as by some former high-ranking officials in the United States government. The matter is considered closed for purposes of Israeli-American relations, but remains controversial in the public debate.

Israel's official position remains to this day that the attack was an accident, claiming that it was assured by the United States that no U.S. ships were in the area. Israel has also claimed that its air and naval forces mistakenly identified Liberty as the Egyptian vessel El Quseir. Proponents of the "accident" explanation add that mistakes were inevitable and understandable in the tense atmosphere of the Six-Day War, and that no concrete motive existed for Israel to initiate a surprise attack against a country that was quickly becoming its most powerful and important ally.

Others, meanwhile, assert that the attack was premeditated and deliberate; they note, among other things, that the Liberty was four times larger than the El Quseir, which, along with its Latin-character markings, should have easily distinguished it from the Egyptian vessel. Some have even theorized on possible motives, including a cover-up of Israeli war crimes against Egypt and a secret collaboration between the United States and Israel to create a casus belli for American entry into the war. Skeptics include 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. The charge that Israel attacked the USS Liberty deliberately is also commonly repeated in anti-Zionist circles.

The United States and Israel exchanged diplomatic notes after several inquiries. Though the United States never officially accepted the Israeli explanation, it agreed to accept indemnities of $13 million, for damage and casualties.

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Help arrives after the Israeli attack on USS Liberty.

The attack on the Liberty

USS Liberty was originally the 7,725-ton (light) civilian cargo ship Simmons Victory. 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, the day before the start of the Six-Day War, Israel asked if the United States had any ships in the region. The United States responded that it did not — and it didn't, since the Liberty was just entering the Mediterranean Sea at this time. In addition, five messages had been sent to Liberty warning it to come no closer than 100 nautical miles (185 km) to the Sinai coast. These messages were not received.

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; thus the Americans should either reveal which ships it had in the area, or remove them. Nevertheless, the United States did not give Israel any information about the Liberty. At that time the Liberty was already in the eastern Mediterranean. 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.

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. 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.

At this time, the ship was readying to turn south towards the coast of the Sinai Peninsula from its previous eastern direction. 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. 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 an Israeli pilot, 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. However, although the order was recorded in the ship's log, the commander of the torpedo boat squadron claimed never to have received it.

Liberty turns to evade Israeli torpedo boats.

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,"[1] ordered a machine gun to engage 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 opened fire. 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, causing the majority of the casualties in the incident. The torpedo boats 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 U.S. 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. However, his is the only Medal of Honor not to be awarded by the U.S. President in a formal event. It was awarded at the Washington Navy Yard by the Secretary of the Navy.

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 all parties all.[[2]. The majority of those subsequent U.S. reports were issues such as communications failures rather than culpability. [3]. The Naval Court of Inquiry conclusions continue to be disputed (see below).

On December 17, 1987, the issue was officially closed by the exchange of diplomatic notes between the U.S. and Israel. Israel also eventually paid nearly $13 million in humanitarian reparations to the United States and in compensation to the families of the victims.

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). online at this link
• "The Liberty Incident" - IDF History Department Report (1982)

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Torpedo damage to Liberty's research compartment (Starboard side).

The Israeli government said three crucial errors were made: the refreshing of the status board (nullifying the ship's classification as American), 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.

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 postattack helicopter pilots.
• The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Testimony of 1967
• The U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry as released under FOIA (see below)

Critics 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 properly conduct.[[4]

Additionally, the court's legal counsel, Captain Ward Boston, JACG, U.S. Navy, 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."

During his lifetime, however, Kidd never publicly expressed such opinions.

Critics of Boston believe that he is not telling the truth in regard to Kidd's views and any pressure from the government.[5]). 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 was hearsay, and that Kidd was not alive to confirm or deny them, and they 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.

Ongoing controversy

This incident stands as the only peacetime attack on a U.S. naval vessel not investigated by Congress. The survivors want a full Congressional hearing; they hold that a proper investigation has never taken place and that all previous reports 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).

Israel denied all accusations that the attack was deliberate using the following arguments:

• 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.)

• The attacking aircraft used napalm rockets and machine guns. Machine guns are often used to keep a ship's company under cover, thus keeping them from manning weather deck stations and doing damage control topside. Machine guns are ineffective armament for doing real damage to a steel-hulled ship--other than starting fires in combustibles .

• Liberty opened fire first on the gunboats (though after the aerial attacks). Note: Any ship is entitled to return fire after having been attacked first. Attacking a military unit or naval vessel of another nation is legally an Act of War.

• 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.

Aircraft pelted the superstructure with machine-gun and rocket fire.

Virtually all of the survivors of Liberty, some U.S. government officials and some U.S. military officers have asserted that the attack was premeditated. Jim 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. Like virtually all accounts of the "Liberty" incident, it has come under heavy criticism by those disagreeing with its point of view .

Ennes and Joe Meadors, another survivor of the attack, run a web site 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 tried to prove Liberty was attacked on purpose. They are backed in this position by some representatives of the U.S. intelligence community. Critics claim many of them include incorrect assumptions and use fuzzy reasoning. For example, they claim the ship was attacked to prevent the U.S. from knowing about the forthcoming attack in the Golan Heights, although materials declassified in 1997 stated Israel had already notified the U.S. of the attack in advance.

The 1981 book Weapons by Russell Warren Howe asserts that Liberty was accompanied by the Polaris 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."

James Bamford, a former ABC News producer, in his book Body of Secrets, proposes a different possible motive for a deliberate attack: "to cover up a massacre of 1,000 Egyptian prisoners of war" that was supposedly taking place at the same time in the nearby town of El-Arish. In 1995, mass graves were in fact discovered outside of El-Arish, and IDF veterans have admitted that unarmed civilians and prisoners of war were murdered in the 1967 War.[6][7] In any event, the possibility of a ship at sea discovering such a crime on land, at or beyond the limit of its visual range, is questionable (according to U.S. accounts, the ship was 14 nautical miles (26 km) from shore at the time of the attack, and did not get much closer to it previously).

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. They were recalled only just in time, when it was clear the Liberty had not sunk with all hands, and that Israel was responsible [8].

Nevertheless, it must also be noted that 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 (and even threats) by the United States and the Soviet Union.

Israeli officials and Jewish organizations worldwide have asserted that materials claiming the Liberty incident was deliberate are often used as a pretext for anti-Semitic declarations and acts. They claim these reviews often do not give Israel the benefit of the doubt, turning the incident into an obsessive circus for Israel bashing, especially in comparison to the treatment of other incidents involving foreign attacks on U.S. vessels. Meadors and Ennes have denied an anti-Semitic pretext in their work, and have repeatedly expressed sharp disapproval at the use of the Liberty incident in anti-Semitic contexts, and have pointed out that some of the ship's company was Jewish.

On July 2, 2003, as a result of Florida Judge Jay Cristol's (retired Naval carrier pilot) lawsuit using the Freedom of Information Act, the National Security Agency made two significant admissions: there had been no radio intercepts made by USS Liberty, and there had been no radio intercepts made by the U.S. submarine Amberjack. The National Security Agency released copies of the recordings it made from an EC-121 aircraft in the vicinity of the attacks from 2:30 p.m. to 3:27 p.m. Sinai time, and the resultant translations and summaries. The tapes show that the helicopters were first dispatched to rescue Egyptians, and then demonstrate the confusion as to the identification of the target ship. Cristol adds: "The tapes confirm that the helicopter pilot observed the flag at 3:12 p.m." which would coincide with the audio tapes the Israel Air Force released to Judge 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 Judge 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 [9], and thought to be the lead pilot of the first wave of planes. Spector stated in the interview that the ship was assumed to be Egyptian at the time of the attack; the transcripts of the Israeli communications about the Liberty are also in interview.

As of 2005, 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, 2005 the USS Liberty Veterans Associations filed a "Report of War Crimes Committed Against the U.S. Military, June 8, 1967" with the Department of Defense. Department of Defense Directive 2311.01E requires the Department of Defense to conduct a thorough investigations of the allegations contained in this report.

Details in dispute

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

• Visibility of ensign: The most vehemently debated point is the visibility of the large American flags that the ship was flying; Americans claimed the flags were clearly visible in the wind. The Israeli pilots claimed they were either unable to notice it altogether (possibly due to there being no wind, or because Liberty was steaming with the wind at the same speed that the wind was blowing), or considered it an Egyptian diversion aimed to mislead them. One point is beyond dispute: 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 marking were not cursive Arabic script but in English.
• Israeli aircraft markings: American survivors of the attack unanimously assert that the Israeli aircraft were unmarked. Israel never responded to this claim. It is unknown whether Liberty possessed any crew members trained in aircraft spotting, and the visibility of markings painted on high-speed combat aircraft from a ship hundreds of feet below is questionable in any event.
• 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 47).
• 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.)

Commander W.L. McGonagle in his damaged cabin after the attack.

• Israeli ships' actions after the torpedo hit: The American crew claims that after 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. The former point of view was expressed by many of the crew members, while the latter one is reinforced by the lack of mention of the action by the ship's captain. The former point of view has also been corroborated by Captain Ward Boston, senior counsel to the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry.[10]
• Israeli offers of help: Reports differ regarding whether the Israeli boats offered help. The crew claims the torpedo boats simply withdrew, while the captain and the Israeli crew report that help was offered.
• 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 casualties

The following Liberty personnel were killed in the incident:

• Cryptologic Technician 3rd Class William B. Allenbaugh
• Lieutenant Commander Philip A. Armstrong Jr.
• Seaman Gary R. Blanchard
• Cryptologic Technician 2nd Class Allen M. Blue
• Quartermaster 3rd Class Francis Brown
• Cryptologic Technician 2nd Ronnie J. Campbell
• Cryptologic Technician 2nd Class Jerry L. Converse
• Cryptologic Technician 2nd Class Robert B. Eisenberg
• Cryptologic Technician 2nd Class Jerry L. Goss
• Cryptologic Technician 1st Class Curtis L. Graves
• Cryptologic Technician Lawrence P. Hayden
• Cryptologic Technician 1st Class Warren Hersey
• Cryptologic Technician 3rd Class Alan Higgins
• Seaman Carl L. Hoar
• Cryptologic Technician 2nd Class Richard W. Keene
• Cryptologic Technician James L. Lenau
• Chief Cryptologic Technician Raymond E. Linn
• Cryptologic Technician 1st Class James M. Lupton
• Cryptologic Technician 3rd Class Duane R. Marggraf
• Cryptologic Technician David W. Marlborough
• Cryptologic Technician 2nd Class Anthony P. Mendle
• Cryptologic Technician Carl C. Nygren
• Lieutenant James C. Pierce
• Sergeant Jack Raper, U.S.M.C.
• Corporal Edward Rehmayer II, U.S.M.C.
• Interior Communications Electrician David N. Skolak
• Cryptologic Technician 1st Class John C. Smith Jr
• Chief Cryptologic Technician Melvin D. Smith
• Postal Clerk 2nd Class John C. Spicher
• Gunner's Mate 3rd Class Alexander N. Thompson
• Cryptologic Technician 3rd Class Thomas R. Thornton
• Cryptologic Technician 3rd Class Phillipe C. Tiedtke
• Lieutenant Stephen S. Toth
• Cryptologic Technician 1st Class Frederick J. Walton

Books

• A History of Israel by Ahron Bregman contains extracts from the tapes. (ISBN 0333676319)
• Cristol, A. Jay (2002). The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship. Dulles, Virginia: Brassey's. ISBN 157488414X. {{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 0195151747)
• Assault on the Liberty: The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship, by James M. Ennes, Jr. (ISBN 0972311602) 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, Doubleday, 2001 (ISBN 0099427745)
• Peter Hounam, Operation Cyanide: Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III, Vision Paperbacks. 2003, ISBN 1904132197,
• Anthony Pearson, Conspiracy of Silence: The Attack on the USS Liberty, 1979 ISBN 0704321645
• John Borne, The USS Liberty, Dissenting History vs. Official History

Video

The incident is covered in Alex Jones TerrorStorm.

External links

U.S. government sites

• Additional information released by the National Security Agency on July 2003, including audio recordings (mostly in Hebrew), their transcripts (in English), follow-up reports, and a report originally released in 1999.
• Naval Historical Center, featuring photographs of the ship and crew, and the aftermath of the attack.

Other sources

• USS Liberty attack tapes released by David Ensor, CNN.

Sources claiming attack was a mistake

• 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
• 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

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

Other sources

• 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, Lebanon 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

See also

• Six-Day War
• Israeli Airforce 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 - two incidents involving F-14 Tomcats of the U.S. Navy and warplanes of the Libyan Air Force.
  • Hainan island incident