On June 8, 1967, an Israeli torpedo slammed into the unarmed American naval vessel USS Liberty, traveling approximately a dozen miles off the Sinai coast. Commanded by the NSA and intercepting communications at the height of the Six-Day War, the ship would come under direct Israeli aerial and naval attack. All told, 34 Americans would die, and 171 would be wounded, in that assault.
Ernie Gallo, a communications technician on board the Liberty, still remembers the mayhem when the torpedo blew him across the radio research room. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assault. But the incident remains shrouded in mystery. Public debate has continued to revolve around one key question: did Israeli forces know they were attacking Americans? The Navy Court of Inquiry had its investigation behind closed doors, having gag orders issued to survivors so their stories would not be shared.
Recently, The Intercept has published two classified documents from the cache leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden that reveal new dimensions of the attack and its aftermath. Those documents indicated that the attack involved the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters in a way previously not understood and included internal NSA communications that suggest the incident was framed as an accident. The pair also includes a specific Hebrew transliteration system utilized by the NSA, showing Israel was both a target and a partner in signals intelligence.
The first, a 2006 NSA classification guide, details aspects of the attack that the agency still considered classified. The second lists unauthorized signals intelligence disclosures that have compromised the NSA’s ability to generate intelligence against terrorist targets. Neither document provides conclusive information on the causes of the assault.
The so-called Six-Day War was between Israel and Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, with the United States remaining on the sideline. Still, the U.S. was intercepting Israeli military communications at that time. According to the journalist James Bamford, the proximity of the USS Liberty to the Sinai and its intercepting of Israeli communications could have been the motive for the attack. But other scholars-Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists is among them-dispute the analysis by Bamford; there is no verifiable evidence of a massacre of Egyptian POWs by Israel, they say.
The investigations taken by both the U.S. and Israel concluded that the attack on the Liberty was an accident; Israel had mistaken the ship for an Egyptian freighter. However, Bamford concludes this as a cover-up – the gag orders issued to the survivors and the NSA deputy director referring to the Israeli inquiry as a “nice whitewash.” The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs adds that the Liberty assault was indeed a tragic accident already settled between the parties involved many years ago.
The incident gave birth to various conspiracy theories, and the Liberty Veterans Association has over the years been demanding an open investigation into the incident. “We now know that the Navy Court of Inquiry was merely for show,” said Ernie Gallo, the president of the association. Bamford referred to the scope and duration of the attack as proof that it was intentional; the Israeli forces struck repeatedly against the ship, disrupting its communication channels, and even reportedly fired on life rafts and crew.
Many have taken a terrible psychological toll nonetheless- PTSD, for example. James Ennes, a survivor, was told never to discuss the attack; and Gallo watched a shipmate die in his arms. However, some veterans-even those bearing bitter scars-insist that it was an accident. I’ve gotten some nasty messages from people saying that I’ve betrayed Israel and that I’m anti-Semitic, and this is ridiculous, said Marvin Nowicki, a retired Navy chief petty officer who helped rescue the ship’s crew. Nowicki, who intercepted Israeli aircraft communications during the attack, declared that Israeli pilots mentioned the U.S. flag only after the attack had been initiated.
Even now, 50 years after the assault, very few facts about either the assault or any of its investigations have been publicly revealed. Inquiries by the media, along with efforts by survivors to know more, have met with limited success. For instance, ABC’s Nightline interviewed survivors but never broadcast the interview. It is said that Ted Koppel, then-host of the show, explained: “We did nothing because we found nothing new or substantive.” The USS Liberty incident remains shrouded in controversy and speculation.