Assault on the USS LIBERTY: Deliberate Action or Tragic Accident?

The USS Liberty was an unarmed electronic intelligence gathering naval vessel patrolling in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula in 1967. It was abruptly attacked by Israel but received no aid from American aircraft in the area. This paper will explore geopolitical conditions at the time, what happened, what the American and Israeli official response was, and bring other facts together from both interviews with surviving crew and memoirs of senior government officials to attempt to develop a complete picture of events related to the USS Liberty. While personal testimony from those directly involved in the incident indicates Tel Aviv may have deliberately targeted the American ship, the question of whether the attack was intentional or the result of a perfect storm of command and control failures on both sides, remains unresolved.
USAWC Strategy Research Project