USS Liberty incident

The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a U.S. Navy intelligence ship, USS Liberty (AGTR-5), in international waters near the Sinai Peninsula, north of El Arish, by Israeli fighter planes and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab States. The attack killed 34 U.S. servicemen and wounded 173.

Investigations of the attack

Since the attack on the USS Liberty, those supporting the accidental-attack theory claim that ten official U.S. investigations and 3 or more official Israeli investigations have concluded that the event was a tragic mistake and a case of mistaken identity. http://www.israelnewsagency.com/usslibertyisrael10034.html. However, those supporting the intentional-attack theory say that the Israeli investigations were to decide whether or not anyone in the Israeli Defense Forces should be tried on crimes (no wrongdoing was found), and that the fact that the attack was a mistake was a given. They also assert that five U.S. congressional investigations and four other U.S. investigations were not investigations at all, but rather reports using evidence only from the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry, and that some never occurred at all. As well, they insist that the majority of those nine U.S. reports have nothing to do with the culpability of the attack. Rather, they discuss issues such as communications failures. http://www.wrmea.com/archives/December_2003/0312014.html. The remaining U.S. investigation (the Naval Court of Inquiry) is in great controversy (see below).

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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.

Related Topics:
December 17 - 1987 - $

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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:

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• 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 claimed that 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 tiredness experienced by the Israeli forces at that point of the war.

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American investigations

Ten official American investigations are claimed regarding the Liberty incident, among them (all go to links to original documents):

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• 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 discuss issues such as communcations. 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.

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Additionally, the court's legal counsel, Captain Ward Boston, JACG, U.S. Navy, has stepped forward and stated that the government ordered him and Kidd to falsely report that the attack was a mistake, and his statement says that he and Kidd believed the attack was deliberate. He wrote this declaration with regard to the evidence and conclusions (pdf) presented to the inquiry that he and Admiral Kidd, President of the U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry, shared regarding the incident. 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." Critics of Boston believe that he is not telling the truth in regards to Kidd's views and any pressure from the government (see this PDF). Supporters of the intentional-attack theory believe that this invalidates the conclusions of the Court.

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