Israel deliberately attacked the USS Liberty spy ship during the 1967 Six-Day War, killing 34 Americans, and both governments covered it up

On June 8, 1967, during Israel's Six-Day War with Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, the USS Liberty—an American intelligence-gathering ship stationed in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula—came under sustained attack. Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats pounded the vessel for more than an hour and a half, leaving 34 American servicemen dead and 171 wounded. The ship's hull was shredded by machine gun fire, rockets, and a torpedo. Yet what happened next may be more significant than the attack itself: the U.S. and Israeli governments moved quickly to bury the incident.

Israel's explanation was swift and categorical. The Israeli military claimed the attack was a tragic case of mistaken identity—that pilots and naval commanders genuinely believed they were targeting an Egyptian vessel. Case closed. The Johnson administration accepted this explanation without pushing back, and the incident largely disappeared from public view. An official U.S. Navy court of inquiry rubber-stamped the Israeli account, and the matter was filed away.

But survivors of the USS Liberty have told a different story for decades. They describe a ship flying a large American flag in clear daylight. They describe radio operators trying desperately to contact Israeli forces to identify themselves. They describe deliberate targeting, not confusion. More significantly, several high-ranking American officials who reviewed classified intelligence eventually reached the same conclusion as the survivors.

Admiral Thomas Moorer, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated plainly in later years that he believed the attack was intentional. Secretary of State Dean Rusk said he was convinced Israel knew what it was doing. CIA Director Richard Helms concurred. These weren't fringe voices—they were men with direct access to the classified information of the time, men whose job was to assess military intelligence accurately.

The motive, according to documented accounts, appears straightforward enough. On the morning of June 8, Israeli forces were preparing to seize Syria's Golan Heights—territory that belonged to another country. American intelligence officers aboard the USS Liberty were intercepting radio traffic that confirmed Israel's intentions. If Washington understood what Israel was about to do, the thinking goes, it might object. Better, from an Israeli perspective, if that intelligence platform were silenced.