re: Massie is finally going to name the names!

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Every time Israel comes up, someone mentions the USS Liberty. Hey, even when Israel is not the topic, people bring it up. A lot of folks see it as some kind of ace-in-the-hole that proves without a shadow of a doubt that Israel is a raging enemy of the United States.

So, yeah, let's talk about the USS Liberty.

The USS Liberty was a US Navy technical research ship, which was sailing in the Mediterranean Sea near the Sinai Peninsula on June 8, 1967, two days after the start of the Six-Day War, in which Israel was attacked by a coalition of Arab states including Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon (so all of its neighbors). It was mistakenly attacked by Israeli forces, which mistook it for an enemy Egyptian ship. The attack resulted significant casualties for the US Navy, including 34 killed, 171 wounded, and the ship heavily damaged.

Here's the story:

Several days BEFORE the war started, the Liberty was ordered to proceed to the eastern Mediterranean to perform signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection in international waters near the north coast of Sinai, Egypt. They were initially provided an allowable closest point of approach (CPA) of 12.5 nautical miles (NM) from Egypt and 6.5 NM from Israel, but once the war started they sent follow-on messages increasing those distances to 20 and 15 NM respectively, and again later to 100 NM from both countries, BUT DUE TO INEFFECTIVE MESSAGE HANDLING AND ROUTING, THESE MESSAGES WERE NOT RECEIVED UNTIL AFTER THE ATTACK.

So, the USS Liberty sailed right into the middle of a heavy, active war zone because of poor communication. This was a critical, deadly mistake, leading to the opportunity for further mistakes.

Between 0545 and 0940 the Liberty was spotted multiple times by different Israeli aircraft, and was marked on the Israeli Central Coastal Command (CCC) control table. However, the Liberty was on the move, and at 0545 it had started at 70 NM from Gaza, and later it was about 20 NM from Arish (on the northern coast of Sinai). With the movement of the vessel, and multiple hours without any sighting, it was removed from the CCC control board 1100 due to the positional information being considered out of date.

At 1124 it was reported that Arish was being shelled from the sea. This may have been due to exploding munitions that Egyptian forces had set on fire during their retreat.

Israeli torpedo boats and aircraft were dispatched to the area. Multiple reports were sent back about the Liberty, and it was unfortunately not identified as a US vessel at that time, and there were reports about other vessels coming through at the same time, which may have also been mixed up with reports about the Liberty.

Based on the available information, Israeli forces believed the USS Liberty was an Egyptian destroyer. At 1400 two Israeli Mirage III fighter jets were given permission to engage. They strafed the ship with their 30-mm cannons and rockets. In addition to killing as many as 8, and wounding 75, this initial attack unfortunately severed the ships antennas, and knocked down the flag, making accurate identification of the ship even less likely, and slowing the ability of the ship to communicate.

Over the proceeding 90 minutes there were several more attacks from the air and sea, resulting in significant damage to the Liberty and its crew, before the ship was positively identified as the USS Liberty at 1530.

At 1600, two hours after the attack started, and 30 minutes after its conclusion, Israel informed the US embassy in Tel Aviv that its forces had mistakenly attacked a US Navy ship. At 1640 the Israeli torpedo boats (which had been involved in the attack) returned to help, but were refused. Later Israel also provided a helicopter to fly US naval attache Commander Ernest Carl Castle to the Liberty.

Within hours apologies were sent by Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Foreign Minister Abba Eban, and charge d'affaires Ephraim Evron to President LBJ. Within 48 hours Israel offered to financially compensate the victims and their families.

This was a tragic incident of friendly fire, which is unfortunately all-too-common in war. Some have suggested over the years that it was an intentional attack by Israel, but there's simply not evidence to support that position, while there is significant evidence to the contrary:

- As soon as Israeli forces positively identified the Liberty, they ceased the attack, and immediately apologized
- Both the US and Israel conducted investigations afterwards concluded the attacks were not intentional
- NSA transcripts later showed that the Israeli personnel communicating about the ship believed it was Egyptian
- The attack happened while Israel was being attacked by multiple enemies, and was literally defending its very existence, which meant decisions had to be made quickly without all of the available information

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Liberty incident? That argument is nearly disqualifying.

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