"The Attack on the Liberty:" when Israel bombed a U.S. ship

"The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship"

by James Scott

Simon & Schuster, 352 pp., $27.50

On June 8, 1967, a U.S. Navy ship was attacked by Israel. It happened during the Six Day War, when Israel was attacking a lot of things, and the Israeli government apologized, saying it thought the ship was Egyptian. The apology was quickly accepted by the major U.S. politicians and media: It had all been an accident.

The details, however, made no sense as an accident. This has been said before, and is said in detail in James Scott's new book, "The Attack on the Liberty."

Scott is a journalist in South Carolina. He is also the son of one of the Liberty's junior officers, which likely gave him an "in" with the survivors. Many of their stories, including his father's, are in the book.

Much of it is a blow-by-blow account of the attack, which came on a clear day, with the U.S. flag and the U.S. markings, "GTR-7" clearly visible. Over the course of an hour, the ship was hit by cannon fire, rockets and napalm from Israeli aircraft, and a torpedo from an Israeli gunboat. One more torpedo would have sunk the ship, but the attackers broke off, leaving 34 dead and many wounded. It was the worst combat damage to a Navy ship since World War II.

Almost all the book is about events on the U.S. side — about the ship, the mission, the crew, the attack, the rescue, the inquest, what politicians said in public and what they said in private. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was privately sure the attack was intentional. So was the Liberty's captain.

Scott reports that an Israeli reconnaissance pilot spotted the Liberty early in the morning of June 8 and called it in as American. The pilot could see the "GTR," which meant "general technical research," and Israelis knew what that was. It was a spy ship. Nine hours later came the attack: a combined air and naval assault, quickly knocking out the ship's only defense, a couple of 50-caliber machine guns, killing the gunners.

The American story is clear; the Israeli story is not. An Israeli commander ordered an attack, and not a "warning," either. Then someone called it off. But who did it, and why? Scott doesn't know. He is the sort of writer who sticks to the facts, and he doesn't have them.

"Attack on the Liberty" is still an interesting book, partly for the fine description of what it's like to be on the receiving end of modern ordnance, and partly for showing America's pusillanimous politicians and media making excuses for a foreign power that attacked their own Navy. But there is a hole in this story as big as the hole in the side of the unfortunate ship.

Someday, someone will get the full story of the USS Liberty. Probably it will not be an American.