The June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the USS Liberty is the ONLY attack on a US Navy ship since the end of World War II NOT to be investigated by the US government.

According to research conducted by USS Liberty Survivors, the attack on the USS Liberty was a deliberate, premeditated, well planned and almost perfectly executed attack by the Israeli military on a lone, freshly painted, well-marked, correctly identified, non-combatant US Navy ship by the most powerful military in the Middle East allied with the President of the United States in violation of international law and US Statutes.

Of a crew of 294 officers and men (including three civilians), the ship suffered thirty-four (34) killed in action and one hundred seventy-four (174) wounded in action.

The ship itself, a Forty Million ($40,000,000) Dollar state-of-the-art signals intelligence (SIGINT) platform, was so badly damaged that it never sailed on an operational mission again and was sold in 1970 for $101,666.66 as scrap.  

The attack included the jamming of our radios on both US Navy tactical and international maritime distress frequencies, the use of unmarked aircraft by the forces attacking the USS Liberty, and the deliberate machine gunning of life rafts we had dropped over the side in anticipation of abandoning ship.

The White House ordered the recall of rescue aircraft that had been launched from Sixth Fleet aircraft carriers while we were still under attack and calling for help. That order cost the lives of 25 of our shipmates killed by the torpedo.  

After those flights were recalled, Sixth Fleet personnel listened to our calls for help as the attack continued, knowing they were forbidden to come to our assistance.

The US government established a tradition of investigating attacks on US Navy ships and has followed that tradition following the attacks on the USS Pueblo, USS Stark, and USS Cole.

Those investigations allowed the US government to determine the how and why of the attacks and to take action to correct any shortcomings determined to exist by those investigations.

The decision not to investigate the attack on the USS Liberty removes that opportunity and creates a precedent that allows attacks on US Navy ships to be conducted with impunity based on undefined criteria.

Attacks on US Navy ships should be investigated by the US government for no other reason than because they happened.

The attack on the USS Liberty happened.

It should be investigated.

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