The attack on the USS Liberty

On Thursday June 8, 1967, Israeli air and naval forces promulgated a concentrated, unprovoked attack upon America's most advanced surveillance ship, the virtually undefended USS Liberty, killing 35 of its crew and wounding 171, many seriously.

- by John Hamer

The Six-Day War cover-up

Israel insisted that its attack on the Liberty was an unfortunate 'accident', and a case of 'mistaken identity'. This incident went unreported by the world's media. Had it been an Arab attack on an American vessel, there would have been saturation coverage with demands for retaliation and in fact, the Johnson administration's subsequent cover-up was led by the President himself.

The Liberty was a 'floating listening post'. It had a very sophisticated system of radio antennae including a sonar-radio listening device with a range of over 500 miles and, up to that distance, the Liberty could intercept virtually any form of wireless communication and could then decode and process the intercepted messages and relay them back to the U.S. The USS Liberty was in fact America's most advanced 'spy ship'.

The aim of U.S. counter-intelligence was to prevent Israel from attacking Syria and this was the Liberty's mission, and therefore as long as the Liberty was in place and still functioning, the U.S. would have control over Israel. But from Israel's perspective, before it could order its planned invasion of Syria, the Liberty had to be silenced.

On June 8, without any warning, the Israeli Navy and Air Force attacked the ship with torpedoes, rockets, cannons, armour-piercing bullets and napalm, which turned the Liberty’s deck into a 3,000° firestorm. 35 Americans were killed and 171 others were seriously wounded.

The first wave of attacks destroyed the transformers and this was a premeditated strategy to prevent the Liberty from alerting the world to the attack, but the main objective was to slaughter the crew and sink the ship. When the crew launched the lifeboats, Israeli torpedo boats even attacked those.