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What investigations followed the USS Liberty attack in 1967?
Executive summary
Multiple official inquiries followed the June 8, 1967 attack on USS Liberty: U.S. reporting and secondary sources list roughly ten to eleven U.S. investigations and three Israeli inquiries, and Israeli investigators concluded the attack was a mistaken identity while many U.S. participants and some survivors disputed that finding [1] [2] [3] [4]. Declassified U.S. documents and contemporaneous notes show the White House and agencies ordered fast, high‑level reviews — including a Joint Chiefs/Secret fact‑finding team and a CIA “special study” — while debate about adequacy and completeness of those probes has persisted for decades [5] [6].
1. The immediate U.S. and Israeli inquiries: what happened first
Within days of the attack the U.S. Navy and State Department assembled investigations and exchanged diplomatic notes with Israel; the Department of State record includes an official note dated June 10, 1967 about the attacks and early U.S. concern that the Liberty was visible and identifiable [7]. The National Security Council asked for a “special study” collecting pilot conversations, NSA intercepts and other material, and the Joint Chiefs and senior U.S. officials ran rapid internal fact‑finding to report to President Johnson [5] [6].
2. How many official investigations were there — the competing tallies
Published summaries disagree on the exact count but cluster around the same shape: several U.S. probes (commonly listed as ten to eleven) and three Israeli inquiries. HonestReporting and other contemporary summaries state “three official Israeli investigations and 11 official American investigations” [1]. Jewish Virtual Library and related overviews summarize “ten U.S. investigations and three more by Israel,” reflecting a slightly different tally but the same broad point: multiple separate U.S. and Israeli reviews took place [2] [3].
3. Conclusions reached by Israeli probes and U.S. official statements
Israeli official investigations concluded the attack was a mistake — an identification error amid fast-moving combat — and one Israeli report found that naval headquarters had known the ship was American hours before the attack but that the information did not reach those who ordered the strikes [4]. The joint U.S.–Israel public position at the time declared the incident “the result of error” [6]. Some later U.S. official summaries and military reviewers echoed that the attack was not intentional [8].
4. Dissent within the U.S. military, survivors and later authors
Despite official determinations, high‑ranking U.S. officers and many Liberty survivors expressed skepticism. Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chief of Naval Operations, said he “cannot accept” the Israeli claim of mistaken identity [6]. Over decades, books and articles by retired officers and survivors have argued for shortcomings in investigations or even for darker motives; academic and popular treatments track those disputes [9] [10].
5. Declassified memos and continuing gaps in the public record
Declassified State Department and CIA files show the U.S. sought intercepts and pilot transmissions and performed rapid internal analyses, but activists and survivors say some materials remain classified or were never examined publicly; contemporaneous NSC and CIA notes document orders for a “special study” and preliminary reports to the President [5]. Available sources in this set do not provide a definitive, fully public catalogue of every investigative report or their complete contents — accounts differ on numbering and depth [1] [2].
6. Why counts and conclusions vary: methodology, politics, and definitions
Different sources count different items as “investigations” — e.g., a Naval Court of Inquiry, a Secret Joint Chiefs fact‑finding team, congressional hearings, CIA memoranda, and State Department legal reviews are variously listed as separate probes [6] [5]. Institutional motives, the Cold War context, and high-level diplomacy shaped how and which findings were released publicly; commentators note both the immediate diplomatic need to steady U.S.–Israel relations and persistent congressional and veteran pressure for fuller answers [7] [11].
7. What reputable secondary sources recommend for readers who want more
If you want to trace each named inquiry, consult compiled lists in reference overviews and archives cited here — Britannica’s narrative, State Department FRUS records, and library/archival collections that list the Joint Chiefs, CIA, and Department of Defense documents — then compare them to survivor memoirs and later investigative books to see contrasts between official findings and dissenting interpretations [4] [5] [10].
Limitations: the sources provided here disagree on the exact count (ten v. eleven U.S. probes) and provide summaries rather than full, declassified texts of every report; available sources do not mention the complete set of classified documents that defenders of further inquiry often request [1] [2] [5].