USS Liberty incident

was originally the light civilian cargo vessel Simmons Victory, a mass-produced, standard-design Victory ship, the follow-on series to the famous Liberty ships that supplied the Allies with cargo during World War II. It was acquired by the United States Navy and converted to an auxiliary technical research ship (AGTR), a cover name for National Security Agency (NSA) "spy ships" carrying out signals intelligence missions. It carried out five operations in waters off the west coast of Africa leading up to 1967. ==Attack on the Liberty==

Events leading to the attack During the Six-Day War between Israel and several Arab nations, the United States maintained a neutral country status. Several days before the war began, USS Liberty was ordered to proceed to the eastern Mediterranean area to perform a signals intelligence collection mission in international waters near the north coast of Sinai, Egypt. After the war erupted, due to concerns about its safety as it approached its patrol area, several messages were sent to Liberty to increase its allowable closest point of approach (CPA) to Egypt's and Israel's coasts from , respectively, to , and then later to for both countries, thereby reducing proximity. However, due to ineffective message handling and routing, these messages were not received until after the attack. With the outbreak of war, Captain William L. McGonagle of Liberty immediately asked Vice Admiral William I. Martin at the United States Sixth Fleet headquarters to send a destroyer to accompany Liberty and serve as its armed escort and as an auxiliary communications center. The following day, Admiral Martin replied: "Liberty is a clearly marked United States ship in international waters, not a participant in the conflict and not a reasonable subject for attack by any nation. Request denied." He promised, however, that in the unlikely event of an inadvertent attack, jet fighters from the Sixth Fleet would be overhead in ten minutes. Meanwhile, at the United Nations on 6 June, U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg told the United Nations Security Council that vessels of the Sixth Fleet were several hundred miles from the conflict, in response to Egyptian complaints that the United States was supporting Israel in the conflict. It would ultimately steam to about north of the Sinai Peninsula. On the night of 7 June Washington time, early morning on 8 June, 01:10 Zulu or 03:10 local time, the Pentagon issued an order to Sixth Fleet headquarters to tell Liberty to come no closer than to Israel, Syria, or the Sinai coast (Oren, p. 263). According to the Naval Court of Inquiry and the National Security Agency official history, the order to withdraw was not sent on the radio frequency that Liberty monitored for her orders until 15:25 Zulu, several hours after the attack, due to a long series of administrative and message routing problems. The Navy said a large volume of unrelated high-precedence traffic, including intelligence intercepts related to the conflict, were being handled at the time; and that this combined with a shortage of qualified radiomen contributed to the delayed transmission of the withdrawal message. It was later reported, based on information from IDF sources, that the over-flights were coincidental, and that the aircraft were hunting for Egyptian submarines that had been spotted near the coast. At about 05:45 Sinai time, a ship-sighting report was received at Israeli Central Coastal Command (CCC) in respect of Liberty, identified by an aerial naval observer as "apparently a destroyer, sailing west of Gaza". The vessel's location was marked on a CCC control table, using a red marker, indicating an unidentified vessel. At about 06:00, the aerial naval observer, Major Uri Meretz, reported that the ship appeared to be a U.S. Navy supply ship; at about 09:00 the red marker was replaced with a green marker to indicate a neutral vessel. USS Liberty marker was removed from CCC's Control Table at 11:00, due to its positional information being considered out of date. At 11:24, the Israeli chief of naval operations received a report that Arish was being shelled from the sea. Additionally, at 11:27 the Israeli Supreme Command head of operations received a report stating that a ship had been shelling Arish, but the shells had fallen short. The ship's speed was estimated on their radars. Bamford, however, points out that Libertys top speed was far below 28 knots. His sources say that at the time of the attack Liberty was following her signal-intercept mission course along the northern Sinai coast, at about speed. The data on the ship's speed, together with its direction, gave the impression that it was an Egyptian destroyer fleeing toward port after shelling Arish. The torpedo boats gave chase, but did not expect to overtake their target before it reached Egypt. Commander Oren requested that the Israeli Air Force dispatch aircraft to intercept. HMS Blean. The Egyptian Navy had Hunt-class destroyers in 1967. The IAF dispatched a flight of two Mirage III fighter jets codenamed Kursa flight which arrived at Liberty at about 14:00. The formation leader, Captain Iftach Spector, attempted to identify the ship. He also communicated, in effect, that the ship appeared to him like a destroyer or another type of small ship. Air and sea attacks After being cleared to attack, the Mirages dove on the ship and attacked with 30-mm cannons and rockets. The attack came a few minutes after the crew completed a chemical attack drill, with Captain McGonagle on the command bridge. The crew was in "stand-down mode", with their helmets and life jackets removed. Battle readiness "modified condition three" was set, which meant that the ship's four .50 caliber machine guns were manned and ammunition was ready for loading and firing. Eight crewmen either were killed immediately or received fatal injuries and died later, and 75 were wounded. Among the wounded was McGonagle, who was hit in the right thigh and arm. During the attack, antennas were severed, gas drums caught fire, and the ship's flag was knocked down. McGonagle sent an urgent request for help to the Sixth Fleet, "Under attack by unidentified jet aircraft, require immediate assistance". The Mirages left after expending their ammunition, and were replaced by a flight of two Dassault Super Mystères codenamed Royal flight. The Mysteres were armed with napalm bombs, and were flown by Captain Yossi Zuk and his wingman, Yaakov Hamermish. The Mysteres released their payloads over the ship and strafed it with their cannons. Much of the ship's superstructure caught fire. At , T-204 paused and signalled "AA", which means "identify yourself". Due to damaged equipment, McGonagle could only reply using a handheld Aldis lamp. Oren recalled receiving a similar response from the Ibrahim el Awal, an Egyptian destroyer captured by Israel during the Suez Crisis, and was convinced that he was facing an enemy ship. He consulted an Israeli identification guide to Arab fleets and concluded the ship was the Egyptian supply ship El Quseir, based on observing its deckline, midship bridge and smokestack. The captain of boat T-203 reached the same conclusion independently. The boats moved into battle formation, but did not attack. As the torpedo boats rapidly approached, McGonagle ordered a sailor to proceed to machine gun Mount 51 and open fire. At 12:35Z (14:35 local time) It has been said the torpedo hit a major hull frame that absorbed much of the energy; crew members reported that if the torpedo had missed the frame the Liberty would have split in two. The other four torpedoes missed the ship. The torpedo boats then closed in and strafed the ship's hull with their cannons and machine guns. According to some crewmen, the torpedo boats fired at damage control parties and sailors preparing life rafts for launch. (See disputed details below.) A life raft which floated from the ship was picked up by T-203 and found to bear U.S. Navy markings. T-204 then circled Liberty, and Oren spotted the designation GTR-5, but saw no flag. A CIA report from the following days stated the aircraft attack began at 15:05, and the torpedo boat attack began at 15:25, with the last attack on the Liberty occurred at 15:28, with the Israeli forces terminating their attack after the torpedo hit as they believed the ship was sinking. It took until 15:30 to establish the ship's identity. Shortly before the Libertys identity was confirmed, the Saratoga launched eight aircraft armed with conventional weapons towards Liberty. After the ship's identity was confirmed, the General Staff was notified and an apology was sent to naval attaché Castle. The aircraft approaching Liberty were recalled to the Saratoga. Aftermath of the attack , standing by Liberty According to transcripts of intercepted radio communications, published by the U.S. National Security Agency, at about 14:30, near the beginning of the torpedo boat attack, two IAF helicopters were dispatched to Libertys location. The helicopters arrived at about 15:10, about 35 minutes after the torpedo hit the ship. After arriving, one of the helicopter pilots was asked by his ground-based controller to verify that the ship was flying an American flag. The helicopters conducted a brief search for crew members of the ship who might have fallen overboard during the air attack. No one was found. The helicopters left the ship at about 15:20. At about 16:00, two hours after the attack began, Israel informed the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv that its military forces had mistakenly attacked a U.S. Navy ship. When the ship was "confirmed to be American" the torpedo boats returned at about 16:40 to offer help; it was refused by the Liberty. Later, Israel provided a helicopter to fly U.S. naval attaché Commander Castle to the ship. (pp. 32, 34) In Washington, President Lyndon B. Johnson had received word from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Liberty had been torpedoed by an unknown vessel at 09:50 eastern time. Johnson assumed that the Soviets were involved, and hotlined Moscow with news of the attack and the dispatch of jets from Saratoga. He chose not to make any public statements and delegated this task to Phil G. Goulding, who was an assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs at the time. Soon afterward, the Israelis said that they had mistakenly attacked the ship. The Johnson administration conveyed "strong dismay" to Israeli ambassador Avraham Harman. Meanwhile, apologies were soon sent by Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol, Foreign Minister Abba Eban, and chargé d'affaires Ephraim Evron. Within 48 hours, Israel offered to compensate the victims and their families. Though Liberty was severely damaged, with a 39 ft wide by 24 ft high (12 m × 7.3 m) hole and a twisted keel, her crew kept her afloat, and she was able to leave the area under her own power. Liberty was first met by Soviet Kildin class guided missile destroyer (DDG 626/4), which offered help. Subsequently, it was met by the destroyers and , and the cruiser . Medical personnel were transferred to Liberty, and she was escorted to Malta, where she was given interim repairs. After these were completed in July 1967, Liberty returned to the U.S. She was decommissioned in June 1968 and struck from the Naval Vessel Register. Liberty was transferred to the United States Maritime Administration (MARAD) in December 1970 and sold for scrap in 1973. From the start, the response to Israeli statements of mistaken identity ranged between frank disbelief to unquestioning acceptance within the administration in Washington. A communication to the Israeli ambassador on 10 June, by Secretary Rusk stated, among other things: George Lenczowski notes: "It was significant that, in contrast to his secretary of state, President Johnson fully accepted the Israeli version of the tragic incident." He notes that Johnson himself included only one small paragraph about the Liberty in his autobiography, in which he accepted the Israeli explanation, minimized the affair and distorted the number of dead and wounded, by lowering them from 34 to 10 and 171 to 100, respectively. Lenczowski further states: "It seems Johnson was more interested in avoiding a possible confrontation with the Soviet Union, ... than in restraining Israel." McGonagle received the Medal of Honor, the highest U.S. medal, for his actions. but this time it was awarded at the Washington Navy Yard by the Secretary of the Navy in an unpublicized ceremony. Other Liberty sailors received decorations for their actions during and after the attack, but most of the award citations omitted mention of Israel as the perpetrator. In 2009, however, a Silver Star was awarded to crewmember Terry Halbardier, who braved machine-gun and cannon fire to repair a damaged antenna that restored the ship's communication; in his award citation Israel was named as the attacker. U.S. government investigations side) American inquiries, memoranda, records of testimony, and various reports involving or mentioning the Liberty attack include, but are not limited to, the following: • U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry of June 1967 • Joint Chief of Staff's Report of June 1967 • CIA Intelligence Memorandums of June 1967 • Clark Clifford Report of July 1967 • Senate Foreign Relations Committee Testimony during hearings of the 1967 Foreign Aid Authorization bill, July 1967 • House Armed Services Committee Investigation of 1971 • The NSA History Report of 1981 The U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry record contains testimony by Liberty crew members, exhibits of attack damage photographs, and various reports. The court concluded that the testimony record revealed "a shallow investigation, plagued by myriad disagreements between the captain and his crew". According to the Navy Court of Inquiry's record of proceedings, four days were spent hearing testimony: two days for fourteen survivors of the attack and several U.S. Navy expert witnesses, and two partial days for two expert U.S. Navy witnesses. The U.S. government and Israel jointly stated: "That the Israeli attack upon the USS Liberty had been the result of error, and nothing more." Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations after the Liberty incident, said that he "never believed [the claim by the Israelis] that the attack on the USS Liberty was a case of mistaken identity". The CIA Memoranda consists of two documents: one dated June 13, 1967, and the other dated June 21, 1967. The June 13 memorandum is an "account of circumstances of the attack ... compiled from all available sources". The June 21 memorandum is a point-by-point analysis of the Israeli inquiry findings of fact. The House Armed Services Committee investigation report, "Review of Department of Defense Worldwide Communications" was not an investigation focused on the Liberty attack, although it contains a section describing the flow of communications connected with the Liberty incident. Oliver Kirby, the NSA’s deputy director for operations at the time of the Liberty attack, confirmed that he had read the NSA transcripts of Israeli communication during the attack. He recalled that he had read "They said ‘Yes, it’s U.S, it’s U.S.’ They said it several times, so there wasn’t any doubt in anybody’s mind that they knew it.” They say it was hastily conducted, in only ten days, even though the court's president, Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd, said that it would take six months to conduct properly. • Preliminary Inquiry (Hearing) by Examining Judge Yeshayahu Yerushalmi ("Yerushalmi Report"—July 1967) (Adjudication of IDF negligence complaints.) • Historical Report "The Liberty Incident"—IDF History Department report (1982) In the historical report, it was acknowledged that IDF naval headquarters knew at least three hours before the attack that the ship was "an electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy" but concluded that this information had simply "gotten lost, never passed along to the ground controllers who directed the air attack nor to the crews of the three Israeli torpedo boats". The Israeli government said that three crucial errors were made: the refreshing of the status board (removing the ship's classification as American, so that the later shift did not see it identified), 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 a common root of these problems, Israel blamed the combination of alarm and fatigue experienced by the Israeli forces at that point of the war when pilots were severely overworked. After conducting his own fact-finding inquiry and reviewing evidence, Judge Yerushalmi's decision was: "I have not discovered any deviation from the standard of reasonable conduct which would justify committal of anyone for trial." In other words, he found no negligence by any IDF member associated with the attack. ==Ongoing controversy and unresolved questions==

Some intelligence and military officials dispute Israel's explanation. In 1991, Dean Rusk, U.S. Secretary of State at the time of the incident, wrote: Retired naval Lieutenant Commander James Ennes, a junior officer (and off-going Officer of the Deck) on Libertys bridge at the time of the attack, authored a book titled Assault on the Liberty describing the incident and saying, among other things, that the attack was deliberate. Ennes and Joe Meadors, also a survivor of the attack, run a website about the incident. Meadors states that the classification of the attack as deliberate is the official policy of the USS Liberty Veterans Association, to which survivors and other former crew members belong. Other survivors run several additional websites. Citing Ennes's book, Lenczowski notes: Libertys personnel received firm orders not to say anything to anybody about the attack, and the naval inquiry was conducted in such a way as to earn it the name of "coverup". In 2002, Captain Ward Boston, JAGC, U.S. Navy, senior counsel for the Court of Inquiry, told the Navy Times that the naval court was a politicized sham with conclusions preordained to exonerate Israel. In 2004, in response to the publication of A. Jay Cristol's book The Liberty Incident, which Boston said was an "insidious attempt to whitewash the facts", Boston prepared and signed an affidavit in which he stated that President Johnson and secretary of defense Robert McNamara had ordered Admiral Kidd, that the assault be ruled an accident, and to reach the conclusion "that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity' despite 'overwhelming evidence to the contrary.'" In 2004, Boston repeated his assertion before a State Department conference about the Six-Day War. Cristol wrote about Boston's professional qualifications and integrity, on page 149 of his book: In his 2004 affidavit Boston stated: Cristol said he believes that Boston is not telling the truth about Kidd's views and any pressure from the U.S. government. Cristol, who also served as an officer of the U.S. Navy's Judge Advocate General, suggests that Boston was responsible in part for the original conclusions of the Court of Inquiry and, that by later declaring that they were false, Boston has admitted to "lying under oath". Cristol also notes that Boston's statements about pressure on Kidd were hearsay, and that Kidd was not alive to confirm or deny them and that Boston did not maintain, prior to his affidavit and comments related to it, that Kidd spoke of such instructions to Boston or to others. Cristol also provides a handwritten 1991 letter from Admiral Kidd that, according to Cristol, "suggest that Ward Boston has either a faulty memory or a vivid imagination". According to James Ennes, however, Admiral Kidd urged Ennes and his group to keep pressing for an open congressional probe. The following arguments, found in official reports or other sources, were published to support the hypothesis that the attack was due to mistaken identity: • Accidents and mistakes do occur in wartime. Journalist Ze'ev Schiff gave an example of a friendly fire incident where Israeli aircraft had bombed an Israeli armored column south of the West Bank town of Jenin the day before the attack on the Liberty. Also given as an example was a similar incident that took place during the Suez Crisis in 1956, when Israeli aircraft attacked and damaged the British frigate HMS Crane after mistaking it for an Egyptian warship, at a time when Britain and Israel were fighting together. • The incident took place during the Six-Day War when Israel was engaged in battles with two Arab countries and preparing to attack a third, creating an environment where mistakes and confusion were prevalent. For example, at 11:45, a few hours before the attack, there was a large explosion on the shores of El-Arish followed by black smoke, probably caused by the destruction of an ammunition dump by retreating Egyptian forces. The Israeli army thought the area was being bombarded, and that an unidentified ship offshore was responsible. • As the torpedo boats approached, Liberty opened fire on them. McGonagle said that he felt sure the torpedo boat captains believed they were under fire from the Liberty. Ensign Lucas, testified that he gave permission for the firing of the 03 level machine gun after the torpedo boats began firing at Liberty. Later, when the gun was unmanned, heat from a nearby fire apparently caused machine gun rounds at the gun to explode. starboard hull and superstructure attack damage Several books and the BBC documentary USS Liberty: Dead in the Water argued that Liberty was attacked in order to prevent the U.S. from knowing about the forthcoming attack in the Golan Heights, which would violate a cease-fire to which Israel's government had agreed. However, Syria did not accept the cease fire until 9 June, after the attack on Liberty. Russian author Joseph Daichman, in his book History of the Mossad, states Israel was justified in attacking the Liberty. Israel knew that American radio signals were intercepted by the Soviet Union and that the Soviets would certainly inform Egypt of the fact that, by moving troops to the Golan Heights, Israel had left the Egyptian border undefended. Lenczowski notes that while the Israeli decision to "attack and destroy" the ship "may appear puzzling", the explanation seems to be found in Libertys nature and its task to monitor communications from both sides in the war zone. He writes that timely knowledge of their decision to invade Syria and preparatory moves toward it "might have frustrated Israeli designs for the conquest of Syria's Golan Heights" and, in the sense of Ennes's accusations, provides "a plausible thesis that Israel deliberately decided to incapacitate the signals-collecting American ship and leave no one alive to tell the story of the attack". The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Barbour, had reported on the day of the Liberty attack that he "would not be surprised" by an Israeli attack on Syria, and the IDF Intelligence chief told a White House aide then in Israel that "there still remained the Syria problem and perhaps it would be necessary to give Syria a blow". The 1981 book Weapons by Russell Warren Howe says that Liberty was accompanied by the Polaris ballistic missile-armed Lafayette-class submarine , which filmed the entire episode through its periscope but was unable to provide assistance. James Bamford, a former ABC News producer, says in his 2001 book Body of Secrets, that Israel deliberately attacked Liberty to prevent the discovery of what he described as war crimes, including the killing of Egyptian prisoners of war by the IDF that he alleges was taking place around the same time in the nearby town of El-Arish. According to CAMERA, his claim that 400 Egyptians were executed has been cast into doubt since reporters present in the town claimed that there had been a large battle and this was the main cause of casualties. Bamford also stated that eyewitness Gabi Bron had said he saw 150 people executed by Israeli troops at El-Arish. The press release for the BBC documentary film Dead in the Water states that new recorded and other evidence suggests the attack was a "daring ploy by Israel to fake an Egyptian attack" to give America a reason to enter the war against Egypt. It stated that President Lyndon B. Johnson launched allegedly nuclear-armed aircraft targeted against Cairo from a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. The aircraft were recalled only just in time, when it was clear the Liberty had not been sunk and that Israel had carried out the attack. An information source for the aircraft being nuclear-armed, James Ennes later stated: The video also reports hearsay of a covert alliance of U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies. Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a critic of the official U.S. government version of events, chaired a non-governmental investigation into the attack on the Liberty in 2003. The committee, which included former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia James E. Akins, found Israel to be culpable and suggested several reasons for Israel's actions, including that Israel meant to sink the ship and blame Egypt in order to bring the U.S. into the Six-Day War. According to John Loftus and Mark Aarons in their book, The Secret War Against the Jews, Liberty was attacked because the Israelis knew that the ship's mission was to monitor radio signals from Israeli troops and pass troop movement information to the Egyptians. The USS Liberty incident is frequently referenced in antisemitic conspiracy theories, which Cristol said are spread to damage Israel–United States relations. He said that conspiracy theorists "don't care what the facts are; they just want to present the idea that Israel did a dirty deed against the US". A Southern Poverty Law Center extremism monitor, Heidi Beirich, described the incident as a "rallying cry" for antisemites, and the scholar Spencer Sunshine called it a "perennial favorite" target of neo-Nazis. ==NSA tapes and subsequent developments==

The NSA reported that there had been no radio intercepts of the attack made by the Liberty herself, nor had there been any radio intercepts made by the U.S. submarine . Within an hour of learning that the Liberty had been torpedoed, the director of the NSA, LTG Marshall S. Carter, sent a message to all intercept sites requesting a search of communications that might be connected to the attack or any reaction to it. The only such communication reported was intercepted by a U.S. Navy EC-121 aircraft that flew near the attacks from 14:30 to 15:27, Sinai time (12:30 to 13:27 Z); it had collected voice conversations between two Israeli helicopter pilots and the control tower at Hatzor Airfield following the attack on the Liberty. On 2 July 2003, the NSA released copies of these recordings and their translations and summaries. These revelations were elicited as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Florida bankruptcy judge and retired naval aviator Jay Cristol. Two linguists who were aboard the EC-121 when the recordings were made said separately that at least two additional tapes were made that had been withheld. The rescue helicopters relayed urgent requests that the rescuers ask the first survivor pulled out of the water what his nationality is; there was discussion as to whether the survivors would speak Arabic. A summary of the NSA-translated tapes indicates that at 12:34Z Hatzor air control began directing two Israeli Air Force helicopters to an Egyptian warship, to rescue its crew: "This ship has now been identified as Egyptian." The helicopters arrived near the ship at about 13:03Z: "I see a big vessel, near it are three small vessels ..." At 13:08Z, Hatzor air control indicated concern about the nationality of the ship's crew: "The first matter to clarify is to find out what their nationality is." At 13:10Z, one of the helicopter pilots asked the nearby torpedo boats' Division Commander about the meaning of the ship's hull number: "GTR5 is written on it. Does this mean something?" The response was: "Negative, it doesn't mean anything." At 13:12Z, one of the helicopter pilots was asked by air control: "Did you clearly identify an American flag?" No answer appears in the transcript, but the air controller then says: "We request that you make another pass and check once more if this is really an American flag." Again, no response appears in the transcript. At about 13:14Z, the helicopters were directed to return home. On 10 October 2003, The Jerusalem Post ran an interview with Yiftah Spector, one of the pilots who participated in the attack. Spector said the ship was assumed to be Egyptian, stating that: "there was positively no flag". The interview also contains the transcripts of the Israeli communications about the Liberty. However, the journalist who transcribed the tapes for that article, Arieh O'Sullivan, later confirmed that "the Israeli Air Force tapes he listened to contained blank spaces". requires the Department of Defense to conduct a thorough investigation of the allegations contained in their report. DoD has responded that a new investigation would not be conducted since a Navy Court of Inquiry had already investigated the facts and circumstances surrounding the attack. As of 2006, the NSA had yet to declassify "boxes and boxes" of Liberty documents. Numerous requests under both declassification directives and the Freedom of Information Act are pending with various agencies including the NSA, Central Intelligence Agency, and Defense Intelligence Agency. "On 8 June 2007, the National Security Agency released hundreds of additional declassified documents on the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, a communications interception vessel, on 8 June 1967." On 30 October 2014, Al Jazeera broadcast a documentary film containing recent first-hand accounts by several survivors of the incident. The documentary argues that Israel knew the ship was American, and planned to blame its sinking on Egypt in order to draw the United States into the war on the Israeli side. ==Details in dispute==

of the Egyptian Navy Various details regarding the attack are the subject of controversy: • Visibility of American flag: The official Israeli reports say that the reconnaissance and fighter aircraft pilots, and the torpedo boat captains did not see any flag on the Liberty. Official American reports say that the Liberty was flying her American flag before, during and after the attack; the only exception being a brief period in which one flag had been shot down and was replaced with a larger flag. The helicopters sent to the attack site to provide assistance after the air attack noticed an American flag flying from the ship almost immediately upon their arrival at the attack site. • Identification markings: Liberty bore an eight-foot-high "5" and a four-foot-high "GTR" along either bow, clearly displaying her hull (or "pennant") number (AGTR-5) to indicate she was a technical research ship. She also had -high letters spelling the vessel's name across her stern. These markings were not cursive Arabic script but in the Latin alphabet. Israeli pilots initially said they were primarily concerned with ensuring the ship was not an Israeli warship and that they ended the air attack when they noticed the Latin alphabet markings. • ''Ship's identification known during attack: A James Bamford book published in 2001 said that secret NSA intercepts indicate that Israeli pilots had full knowledge they were attacking a U.S. vessel. In a study of the incident concluding that there was insufficient evidence to support either accidental or deliberate attack, Colonel Peyton E. Smith wrote: "The attack was most likely deliberate for reasons far too sensitive to be disclosed by the U.S. (or) Israeli government and that the truth may never be known". Author and former crew member James M. Ennes theorized, in the epilogue of his book Assault on the Liberty'', that the motive was to prevent the ship's crew from monitoring radio traffic that might reveal Israel as the aggressor in its impending invasion of Syria, which the White House opposed. • Israeli aircraft markings: The USS Liberty Veterans Association says that the attacking Israeli aircraft were not marked, • ''Israeli ships' actions after the torpedo hit: Officers and men of Liberty'' say that after the torpedo attack and the abandon ship order, motor torpedo boats strafed the ship's topside with automatic gunfire preventing men from escaping from below, and either machine-gunned or confiscated the empty life rafts that had been set afloat. The IDF says that Liberty was not fired upon after the torpedo attack and that a rescue raft was fished from the water while searching for survivors. • Israeli offers of help: The Libertys captain, several of the Libertys crewmen and the Israelis stated that help was offered, but at different times. The Libertys Deck Log, signed by the captain, has an entry at 15:03 stating: "One MTB returned to the ship and signaled, 'Do you need help.'" The Israel Defense Forces's History Report and the Ram Ron report both say that help was offered at 16:40 and the offer was rejected. == See also ==