The USS Liberty, an American intelligence ship…

The USS Liberty, an American intelligence ship with two hundred and ninety-four men aboard, arrives near the Gaza Strip in the Eastern Mediterranean at 9:00 on the morning of June 8, 1967, the fourth day of the "June War."

Hours before, much of this coast area had been captured by Israel.

The unmistakably identified ship sustains a seventy-five minute-attack in international waters by Israeli motor torpedo boats and Israeli aircraft using rockets, aircraft cannon, napalm, and machine guns.

Thirty-four men die and one hundred and seventy-two are wounded in "the navy's bloodiest 'peacetime' international event of the 20th century." (Chomsky, Noam: Fateful Triangle; the United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (p. 31, notes 36, 39; 1983, Updated Edition 1999, South End Press, Boston MA, USA.)

The circumstances of the clearly premeditated attack remain a matter of controversy.

Survivors and many key government officials, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk and former JCS Chairman Admiral Thomas Moorer will say the attack "could not possibly have been a case of mistaken identity," as officially claimed.

Israel and its supporters will insist it was a "tragic case of misidentification."

Israel will claim their forces mistook the Liberty for the out-of-service Egyptian horse carrier El Quseir and that the ship was operating in a war zone without displaying a flag, but surviving crewmembers will dispute this assertion.