USS Liberty

EVENTS | 1967

The Attack on the USS Liberty

The USS Liberty, an American intelligence ship, was subjected to a deadly, unprovoked assault by Israeli air and naval forces on 8th June 1967, during the Six Day War.

This attack upon an almost defenseless American military vessel sailing in international waters resulted in over 200 American servicemen killed or wounded, constituting the greatest naval loss of life suffered by the United States since World War II.

Only tremendous luck and the heroic actions of the sailors prevented the ship from being sunk with all hands lost. The Liberty is established as perhaps the most highly-decorated ship in American naval history concerning a single engagement.

The official Israeli claim that the attack was accidental, a consequence of mistaken identification and the fog of war, is false.

The survivors never believed this story, nor did many top American political and military leaders, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Director Richard Helms. Although a brief investigation ordered by President Lyndon Johnson quickly endorsed the Israeli account, the official verdict was a cover-up and a whitewash.

The Deliberate Nature of the Assault

The facts and gripping eyewitness testimony conclusively established that the Israeli attack was entirely intentional and constituted a major war-crime. The sustained attacks lasted for more than an hour and completely perforated the vessel, pitting the sides and decks with more than 800 holes larger than a man’s fist.

• Attack Sequence: The first wave of unmarked attacking jets targeted and destroyed all the Liberty’s regular transmission antennas while trying to jam all standard American broadcast frequencies to prevent any calls for help. A flotilla of torpedo boats later machine-gunned the life-rafts to ensure there would be no survivors. The obvious goal was to sink the ship, leaving no survivors to report what had happened.
• Identification Failure: The Israeli claim that the Liberty was misidentified as a particular Egyptian naval vessel is demolished by the facts. As America’s most advanced electronic surveillance ship, the Liberty had one of the most unique profiles in any navy, with its topside covered by an enormous array of communications antennas, including a 32-foot satellite-dish used to bounce signals off the Moon. By contrast, the Egyptian vessel was a decrepit old horse-transport just a fraction of the size, rusting away in the port of Alexandria.
• Visual Confirmation: Israeli surveillance planes repeatedly over-flew the Liberty all that morning, sometimes flying so low that the faces of the pilots could be seen, meaning the ship would have been easily identified. The clear, bright weather that day provided perfect visibility.
• Flag Status and Nationality: Despite Israeli claims to the contrary, the Liberty had a large and very visible American flag flying at all times, and when the first one was shot down, an even larger Stars and Stripes was quickly hoisted as a replacement. The name of the ship was written in large English letters on its side, instead of the Arabic used by Egyptian vessels.
• Electronic Proof: From the moment the attack began, Israeli electronic jamming had been employed to blanket all regular American communication channels, proving that the attackers knew the nationality of the ship they were targeting.

Intercepted Communications: The entire Liberty incident was monitored in real-time by an American electronic spy plane cruising far overhead, which intercepted and rapidly translated all radio communications between the attacking Israeli forces and their Tel Aviv controllers. These transcripts proved beyond any doubt that the pilots reported the ship was American and had been ordered to sink it regardless. The content of the transcripts, long regarded as NSA’s deepest secrets, was later confirmed by American intelligence specialists around the world, though some key tapes have gone missing.

The American Cover-Up

The attack was followed by a long and shameful American cover-up, rooted in political treachery and the desire to protect a foreign ally.

• Recall of Rescue Jets: When the desperate sailors braved constant enemy fire to jury-rig a single transmission antenna and send out an urgent plea for help, the commanders of the nearby Sixth Fleet immediately dispatched two waves of jet fighters to rescue the Liberty and drive off the attackers. Both flights were recalled by order of America’s highest political leadership, which chose to abandon the Liberty and its crew to their fate. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara personally ordered the recall, stating that President Lyndon Johnson was not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.
• Official Intimidation: An American admiral met with all the surviving sailors, many still hospitalised, and issued fearsome threats that if any of them ever mentioned a word of what had happened, they would immediately be court-martialled and end their lives in prison or worse. The surviving sailors were subsequently distributed across other ships of the navy, with efforts made to prevent any of them from serving together.
• Manufactured Findings: The Navy attorney who authored the official 1967 inquiry report, Captain Ward Boston, Jr., later revealed that he and his superior, Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, were convinced Israel deliberately attacked the Liberty and murdered American sailors, but they were ordered by their superiors to absolve the Jewish State of any blame. Major elements of their written report were deleted or altered before release to conceal the clear evidence of Israel’s guilt.
• Governmental Silence: The intercepted transcripts proving the deliberate nature of the attack were deep-sixed because the administration did not wish to embarrass the Israelis. Five days after the attack, the Israeli Ambassador secretly warned his government that the Americans had clear proof that the attack had been deliberate.

Motives and Strategy

The motive for such a deadly, unprovoked attack upon the ship of its sole ally has long puzzled observers. Several compelling explanations exist, including the concealment of concurrent war crimes and a broader geopolitical strategy involving the Johnson administration.

• Concealment of War Crimes: The Liberty was targeted for destruction because the Israeli leadership feared its extensive electronic surveillance equipment might record evidence of the enormous war crimes they had then been committing along the neighbouring coast. This involved the execution of some 1,000 helpless Egyptian captives and local civilians, certainly one of the largest such atrocities committed by any Western army since World War II.
• Concealing Strategic Plans: The Israelis may have feared that the Liberty’s electronic surveillance might have revealed their plans to invade Syria and conquer the Golan Heights against American wishes. That attack indeed occurred soon after the Liberty was crippled.
• The Pursuit of a New Tonkin Gulf Resolution: The official records show numerous, glaring discrepancies surrounding President Johnson’s awareness of the attack. Despite flash messages being sent to the White House Situation Room almost immediately, official records indicate Johnson was not notified until almost two hours later, after the assault had ended. This indicates the official logs were doctored. Johnson’s political situation was difficult in 1967 due to mounting losses in Vietnam, and he had emphasised the urgent need to get Congress to pass another Tonkin Gulf Resolution with regard to the Middle East.
• Plot to Attack Egypt: The attack on the Liberty may have been part of a broader American-Israeli plan to overthrow Egyptian leader Gamal Nasser, a key regional Soviet ally. If the Liberty had been sunk without survivors as expected, Egyptian forces would very likely have been blamed, producing powerful demands for immediate American retaliation on a vast scale. The day before the attack, top NSA and Pentagon officials, recognising the obvious peril to the ship, sent urgent messages ordering the captain to withdraw, but through a bizarre and inexplicable series of repeated routing errors, none of those messages were received, ensuring the Liberty was alone and defenseless in a highly vulnerable location. The overall secret submarine project related to the Liberty’s positioning was officially named Operation Cyanide.

Near Nuclear Retaliation

Strong evidence indicates that a powerful American retaliatory strike against Egypt had already been put into motion from almost the moment the Liberty was first attacked, based on the assumption that Egyptian forces were responsible.

• A former top American diplomat recalled receiving an urgent flash message alerting him that the Liberty had been attacked, presumably by Egyptian planes, and that bombers from an American carrier were already on their way to strike Cairo in retaliation. The American warplanes were just minutes from Egypt’s capital city when they were recalled after the attackers were identified as Israeli.
• Testimony suggests that the bombers dispatched to strike Egypt in retaliation may have been armed with nuclear warheads. A catapult operator on board the U.S.S. America recalled the entire ship was put into Condition November, a top alert status only used in connection with armed nuclear warheads. There was a widespread belief on the ship that a nuclear attack was about to be launched. The target was likely a squadron of nuclear-capable Soviet strategic bombers based at a West Cairo airfield.
• A former Liberty crewman claimed that the commanding admiral of the Sixth Fleet mentioned that several of his bombers had been three minutes away from a nuclear attack on Cairo when they were recalled.

The potential plan to sacrifice American lives and risk World War III to bolster President Johnson’s re-election chances is an inference supported by the highly suspicious events and the seemingly doctored record surrounding the incident. The sudden deployment of American strategic bomber forces on full war-alert status at least an hour before the Liberty came under Israeli attack lends weight to the possibility that the operation was pre-arranged.