A Rare Recording of US Admiral Thomas H. Moorer on the USS Liberty Attack

On June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War, the USS Liberty, a United States Navy technical research ship, was attacked by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 US crew members (naval officers, seamen, two marines, and one civilian NSA employee), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the Liberty. At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, roughly 25 nautical miles northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish. Though Israel apologized for the attack, saying that USS Liberty had been mistaken for an Egyptian ship, survivors of the USS Liberty have maintained that the attack was deliberate. Admiral Thomas Hinman Moorer, the 7th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, later accused President Lyndon B. Johnson of having covered up that fact. As Moorer wrote in a January 2004 article: “Did our government put Israel's interests ahead of our own? If so, why? Does our government continue to subordinate American interests to Israeli interests? These are important questions that should be investigated by an independent, fully empowered commission of the American government.”