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title aliases created updated tags category summary start location relations
USS Liberty Incident
USS Liberty Incident
USS Liberty attack
2026-05-17 2026-10-08
Event
Military
UnitedStates
Israel
Major Conflict 1967 attack on the U.S. Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty by Israeli forces during the Six-Day War, killing 34 crew members and sparking enduring controversy. 1967-06-08 Eastern Mediterranean Sea
type with reverse start end role fn
participant_in Ward Boston true 1967-06-10 1967-06-18 senior legal counsel to the Court of Inquiry 10

The USS Liberty Incident refers to the attack on the U.S. Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty by Israeli forces on June 8, 1967, the third day of the Six-Day War. The Liberty, flying the American flag, had been monitoring Middle East communications traffic in international waters off the coast of Israel and had been identified as an American ship before the attack. The incident resulted in the deaths of thirty-four American servicemen and wounded 171 others.1

Walworth Barbour, the American ambassador to Israel, urged Washington, D.C. to downplay the incident, reporting that Israel did not intend to admit to it and suggesting that publicity could feed Arab suspicions of U.S.-Israel collusion. He noted that the Israelis were "obviously shocked by error and tender sincere apologies."1

Orders and operating area

A NSA review of the Technical Research Ship Program, declassified in 2017 after a mandatory declassification review, states that on May 23 the NSA asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to authorize diverting the USS Liberty from Abidjan to an operating area off Port Said for SIGINT coverage of the crisis; that on June 7 the Joint Chiefs initiated a message increasing the ship's closest point of approach to the United Arab Republic to 100 nautical miles after Arab allegations that the United States had participated in Israeli air strikes; and that, as later proven, the Liberty did not receive the order to move.2

Attack in the CIA record

On June 8, 1967, the Liberty, a Navy signals intelligence ship, was attacked in the waters off the Sinai Peninsula. A CIA intelligence memorandum of June 13, 1967, compiled from the reports then available, states that unidentified jet aircraft made six strafing runs beginning at 3:05 p.m. local time, that three torpedo boats approached about twenty minutes later, and that one torpedo struck the starboard side in the spaces occupied by the SIGINT collectors. The memorandum records the hull number 206-T on one of the boats, and says that some fifty minutes later two Israeli helicopters arrived.3 The memorandum states that intercepted conversations between the helicopter pilots and the control tower at Hatzor Air Base "leave little doubt that the Israelis failed to identify" the ship as American before or during the attack. The control tower told helicopter 815 that "there is a warship there which we attacked. The men jumped into the water from it. You will try to rescue them." The memorandum records that the tower later identified the ship as Egyptian, that the weather was clear, that the hull number GTR 5 was prominently displayed, and that an American flag was flying. It gives the casualties as 10 killed, 90 wounded, and 22 missing.3

NSA intercept report

A report of the National Security Agency to the White House of June 22, 1967, based on Israeli plain-language radio traffic intercepted on June 8 between 1229Z and 1328Z, states that it deals solely with the aftermath of the attack and that there are no COMINT reflections of the actual attack itself. It records the control tower telling the helicopters at about 1235Z, "Pay attention: the ship is now identified as Egyptian, you can return home now," helicopter 815 reporting at 1312Z that it had sighted an American flag on the ship, and the tower asking the helicopter to make another pass to check "if this is really an American flag."4

The National Security Agency released transcripts of intercepts in July 2003, in response to a request by A. Jay Cristol filed April 26, 2001. The letter of July 2, 2003, states that "No communications of the attacking aircraft or torpedo boats were available" and that an EC-121 aircraft had collected conversations between two Israeli helicopter pilots and the control tower at Hazor Airfield.5 The NSA stated on June 8, 2007 that it had finished its review and posted further material: "It is not NSA's intention to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material."6 On October 2, 2007, the Chicago Tribune reported that the NSA's position was that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots, and quoted Oliver Kirby, the NSA deputy director for operations at the time, as saying: "I'm willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that we knew they knew." The Tribune also quoted Michael Prostinak, a Hebrew linguist aboard the EC-121, as saying that more than the three recordings posted by the NSA were made that day, and reported that one posted tape begins at 2:29 p.m. local time and that a preceding tape designated A1104/A-01 is absent.7

White House and NSC record, June 1967

Helms's notes of the June 12 meeting of the National Security Council Special Committee record that the President requested a special study on the strafing and torpedoing of the ship, covering pilot conversations and "everything we can get" from the NSA. Rostow sent a preliminary version of the report to Johnson on June 13, calling it the "CIA's first cut at the problem" and noting: "They do not find evidence of U.S. identification before the attack."3 Notes of the NSC Special Committee meeting of June 9, 1967 record Clark Clifford saying: "My concern is that we're not tough enough. Handle as if Arabs or USSR had done it. Manner egregious. Inconceivable that it was accident. 3 strafing passes, 3 torpedo boats. Set forth facts. Punish Israelis responsible." A marginal notation by the note-taker, Harold H. Saunders, next to Clifford's remarks reads: "President subscribed 100%." The notes record under the initials "DR": "Do what is normal. 1) Reparation. 2) Punish. 3) No repetition."8

Navy Court of Inquiry

A CIA memorandum of June 21, 1967, on the Israeli statement, states: "It is now known, however, that the IDF Headquarters had identified the Liberty, probably more than four hours before the attack."9 The United States Navy Court of Inquiry, convened by Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. and presided over by Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, Jr., conducted classified hearings in London and aboard the ship in Malta from June 10 to 16.10 A memorandum from Rostow to Johnson of June 26 forwarding the proposed public summary states that it was the judgment, "not flatly stated in the Report," that the attack was an accident, quotes the report's statement that "It was not the responsibility of the Court to rule on the culpability of the attackers, and no evidence was heard from the attacking nation," and reports that Cyrus Vance told Rostow that the members of the court, on the evidence available to them, believed the attack resulted from a failure within the Israeli communications system and not from premeditation, but that in his view, on the evidence the government had, it should not so state.11 The New York Times reported in 1980 that the court had said the Liberty was in international waters, "properly marked as to identify and nationality," that the attack had been unprovoked, and that the court had insufficient information to make a judgment about the reasons for it.12 The Judge Advocate General's endorsement on the record states that the record discloses beyond any doubt that the Liberty was engaged in peaceful operations in international waters and that the attack was entirely unprovoked and unexpected; it also states that the Israeli government had admitted a tragic accident and agreed to make amends, and that 34 deaths and 171 injuries resulted.13

State Department conference, 2004

The Office of the Historian of the State Department held a two-day public conference on the 1967 war beginning January 12, 2004, timed with the publication of the Foreign Relations of the United States volume on the Arab-Israeli crisis and war of 1967. The volume's press release describes "newly declassified documentation on the USS Liberty incident regarding Israeli involvement."14 The Financial Times reported that the conference opened in the State Department basement "with heated debate" over the newly released NSA intercepts, and that NSA historian David Hatch said the material "doesn't settle much."15

Court of Inquiry counsel

In an affidavit released on October 22, 2003, and printed in the Congressional Record on October 11, 2004, Captain Ward Boston, the senior legal counsel to the Court of Inquiry, stated: "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." He stated that he knew "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."16

Boston's later statements

A longer declaration signed by Boston and dated January 8, 2004, at Coronado, California, states in paragraph 17 that Kidd told him, after returning from Washington, that he had been ordered to sit down with two civilians from the White House or the Department of Defense and rewrite portions of the court's findings. Paragraph 18 states that Kidd said he had been ordered to "put the lid" on everything to do with the attack. Paragraphs 19 and 20 state that the released transcript "is not the same one that I certified and sent off to Washington," and that the testimony of Lieutenant Painter on the machine-gunning of life rafts "is now missing and has been excised."17 The scan of the record posted by Cristol contains the testimony of Lieutenant (junior grade) Lloyd C. Painter at transcript pages 55 to 59, in which Painter states that the life rafts "had been strafed and most of them were burned" and that the three torpedo boats "were laying off, waiting for us to sink," and a page 153 carrying the legend "PAGE 153 BLANK."10 Painter told the Chicago Tribune in 2007 that he testified that an Israeli torpedo boat "methodically machine-gunned one of our life rafts."7 Ronald Fraser reported in July 2003 that Boston had told the Navy Times the previous year: "I feel the Israelis knew what they were doing."18 Thomas H. Moorer asked at the October 2003 news conference: "Why in the world would our government put Israel's interest ahead of our own?"19 The Israeli Embassy spokesman, Mark Regev, responded: "I can say unequivocally that the Liberty tragedy was a terrible accident, that the Israeli pilots involved believed they were attacking an enemy ship."19

NSA oral histories

The NSA's oral history interviews with personnel aboard the ship, conducted in 1980 and posted with the agency's USS Liberty release, contain divergent recollections. Terry McFarland, asked about the helicopter, answered "It was an Israeli helicopter," and said that he learned from others on the bridge, sometime after the helicopter left, that the attackers were Israeli.20 James O'Connor, asked whether the helicopter was well marked as Israeli, answered "Yes, I think it was." He also recounted a story, which he said he could not confirm, that "supposedly only a couple of us on the ship knew that there was an Israeli submarine out there."21 Richard Harvey, asked whether there was a feeling at the time that the attack might have been deliberate, answered "There was speculation but, I don't know that anybody had really any substance to base it on." The interviewer, Henry Millington, said in the same exchange that among the documentation collected was a report the Israelis turned over to the State Department in which, in his words, they "frankly admit that their reconnaissance forces did know, before the attack, that that was a U.S. ship," and that "the word never got down to the operating forces." Harvey replied that he had heard the claim, and that the speculation he had heard rested on the view that Israeli intelligence was too good not to know what the ship was.22

Former NSA officials on deliberate intent, 2003

Oliver Kirby, the NSA's deputy director for operations and production, said that within weeks of the attack he read signals intelligence transcripts and staff reports of Israeli pilots' conversations recorded during it, and that the intercepts made it "absolutely certain" that the pilots knew the ship was American.23 Retired Air Force major general John Morrison, the agency's second-in-command, said he had been informed of Kirby's findings at the time and endorsed them.23

On March 5, 2003, Bobby Ray Inman, NSA director from 1977 to 1981, said he "flatly rejected" the "Cristol/Israeli thesis" of an accidental attack. "It is just exceedingly difficult to believe that [the Liberty] was not correctly identified," Inman said, and he based the view on talks with NSA seniors who had direct knowledge at the time.23 William Odom, a former NSA director, said on March 3, 2003 that the deliberateness of the attack "just wasn't a disputed issue" within the agency.23

Moorer commission

The Independent Commission of Inquiry chaired by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, whose findings were introduced into the Congressional Record by John Conyers, issued findings in October 2003. Its fourth finding is that "there is compelling evidence that Israel's attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew." Its sixth finding is that 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." The commission's published biographies describe Moorer as chairman of the Liberty Alliance, an organization dedicated to obtaining an investigation of the attack.16

Israeli inquiry and apologies

On June 14, Commodore Shlomo Erell, commander of the Israeli Navy, presented apologies to the American naval attaché and said the incident was a "great mistake."24 On June 17 an aide to the Israeli chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, gave the American naval attaché the synopsis of the findings of the Israeli court of inquiry, read from a Hebrew document. The synopsis stated that "the attack on USS Liberty was not in malice; there was no criminal negligence and the attack was made by innocent mistake," attributed the attack to a chain of three mistakes, and stated that "the officers who knew of the identification of Liberty early the same morning did not connect Liberty with the unidentified ships said to be shelling El-Arish." It also stated, in the words of the inquiry officer, that "a grave additional mistake not less decisive than the three above mistakes made by IDF was made by the Liberty itself." The aide mentioned that the Israeli government had received a statement from the United States saying that the Liberty had been identified six hours before the attack rather than one hour as stated in an earlier American communication. The attaché's own evaluation, in the same telegram, called the Israeli standing order to attack any ship moving at more than 20 knots "incomprehensible" and described two of the Israeli justifications as mutually contradictory.25 A CIA memorandum of June 21 reported the preliminary findings of the Israeli court as "not in malice" and "innocent mistake."9

Settlement, 1980

On December 18, 1980, the United States and Israel announced the settlement of American claims for the damage to the ship. The New York Times reported that Israel would pay $6 million over three years, in addition to nearly $7 million already paid ($3,323,500 in 1968 for the families of those killed and $3,452,275 in 1969 for wounds sustained by 75 crew members), and that Israel had maintained the attack was an accident. The paper also reported that James M. Ennes Jr., a retired Navy officer wounded in the attack, had charged in his book Assault on the Liberty that the court of inquiry and public statements by the government amounted to a cover-up, and that messages ordering the Liberty out of the area were not received by the vessel in time.12

Footnotes

  1. Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 12. ↩︎

  2. National Security Agency, "A Review of the Technical Research Ship Program, 1961-1969," released under MDR-85456, February 22, 2017, section on USN-855 (USS Liberty). https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/terrorism/AReviewoftheTechnicalResearchShipProgram-postMDR.pdf ↩︎

  3. Central Intelligence Agency, Intelligence Memorandum, "The Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty," June 13, 1967 (SC No. 01415/67), in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 284, with source note reporting Helms's notes of the June 12 NSC Special Committee meeting and Rostow's covering memorandum of June 13. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d284 ↩︎

  4. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 319, Telegram from the Director of the National Security Agency (Carter) to the White House, June 22, 1967, SIGINT Readiness Bravo "Crayon" Report Nr. 2149. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d319 ↩︎

  5. National Security Agency, letter to A. Jay Cristol, FOIA Case 40039A, July 2, 2003. https://irp.fas.org/nsa/liberty.html ↩︎

  6. National Security Agency, "U.S.S. Liberty," release page (Wayback Machine 2007 capture). http://web.archive.org/web/2007/http://www.nsa.gov/liberty ↩︎

  7. "New revelations in attack on American spy ship," Chicago Tribune, October 2, 2007. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2007/10/02/new-revelations-in-attack-on-american-spy-ship/ ↩︎

  8. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 236, Notes of a Meeting of the Special Committee of the National Security Council, June 9, 1967, 6:30 p.m. (Saunders' handwritten notes). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d236 ↩︎

  9. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 317, Intelligence Memorandum, June 21, 1967 (SC 08384-67). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d317 ↩︎

  10. United States Navy, Record of Proceedings, Court of Inquiry into the armed attack on USS Liberty (AGTR-5), 1967, scan posted at https://libertyincident.com/docs/CourtOfInquiry.pdf, scan pages 34 to 38, 106, 117, 160 to 164, 243, 244, 258, 265. ↩︎

  11. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 324, Memorandum from Rostow to President Johnson, June 26, 1967. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d324 ↩︎

  12. Gwertzman, Bernard. "Israeli Payment to Close the Book On '67 Attack on U.S. Navy Vessel." New York Times, December 19, 1980. CIA Reading Room, CREST document CIA-RDP90-00965R000302640098-3, copy at https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000302640098-3. The article spells the name Ennis. ↩︎

  13. Judge Advocate General of the Navy, Third Endorsement and Enclosure (1), Summary of Events, on the Record of Proceedings, Court of Inquiry into the armed attack on USS Liberty (AGTR-5), 1967, pp. 1-2 of the endorsement (Navy JAG file 131). Scanned copy of the record at https://libertyincident.com/USNcourt.html (a website maintained by A. Jay Cristol). ↩︎

  14. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, press release, January 12, 2004. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/pressrelease ↩︎

  15. Guy Dinmore, "Tempers Flare Over Inquiry on Israeli Attack on U.S. Spy-Ship," Financial Times, January 13, 2004, reprinted by the History News Network. https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/3027 ↩︎

  16. Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty and Affidavit of Captain Ward Boston, USN, JAG (Ret.), introduced by Representative John Conyers, Jr., dated October 7, 2004, in the issue of October 11, 2004 (Volume 150, Number 130, pp. E1886-E1889). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2004-10-11/html/CREC-2004-10-11-pt1-PgE1886-3.htm. Sole source for the finding texts and the affidavit text; the findings are the commission's and the affidavit is Boston's. The Record printing carries no date; the affidavit was released at a Capitol Hill news conference on October 22, 2003 (Associated Press, October 23, 2003). A longer declaration signed by Boston is dated January 8, 2004. ↩︎

  17. Ward Boston Jr., Declaration Concerning the Court of Inquiry into the Attack on USS Liberty, dated January 8, 2004, Coronado, California, paragraphs 16 to 20. Sole source for the Kidd conversations and the transcript account. https://archive.org/download/boston-declaration/BostonDeclaration.pdf ↩︎

  18. Ronald Fraser, "Captain Boston's Secret," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, July 2003. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2003/july/captain-bostons-secret ↩︎

  19. Associated Press, "Ex-Navy Official: 1967 Israeli Attack on U.S. Ship Was Deliberate," Fox News, October 23, 2003. https://www.foxnews.com/story/ex-navy-official-1967-israeli-attack-on-u-s-ship-was-deliberate.amp ↩︎

  20. National Security Agency, Oral History Interview with Terry L. McFarland, June 23, 1980 (OH-1980-26). https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/18/2002804900/-1/-1/0/INTERVIEW_T_MCFARLAND.PDF. Copy of the NSA USS Liberty gallery, captured by the Wayback Machine, at https://web.archive.org/web/20210928195052/https://www.nsa.gov/Helpful-Links/NSA-FOIA/Declassification-Transparency-Initiatives/Historical-Releases/USS-Liberty/ ↩︎

  21. National Security Agency, Oral History Interview NSA-OH-21-80 with CDR James G. O'Connor, May 22, 1980. https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/18/2002804901/-1/-1/0/INTERVIEW_J_OCONNER.PDF. Sole source for the submarine story, which O'Connor recounts as a story passed among the crew. ↩︎

  22. National Security Agency, Oral History Interview with Richard Harvey, July 16, 1980 (OH-1980-29). https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/18/2002804909/-1/-1/0/INTERVIEW_R_HARVEY.PDF. The Millington statement appears in the interviewer's question in the same transcript. ↩︎

  23. David C. Walsh, "Former NSA Officials Agree," Proceedings, June 2003, Vol. 129/6/1,204. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2003/june/former-nsa-officials-agree ↩︎

  24. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 289, Telegram from the Defense Attache Office, Tel Aviv, June 15, 1967, reporting Erell's June 14 presentation of apologies. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d289 ↩︎

  25. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 307, Telegram from the Defense Attache Office in Israel to the White House, June 18, 1967, "Israeli Court of Inquiry in USS Liberty incident." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d307 ↩︎