There is still a great deal of controversy surrounding the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. While the accepted narrative states that this was a tragic accident, there are many who refuse to accept it, particularly the surviving victims.
Former captain of the Liberty, Ward Boston, signed an affidavit stating unequivocally:
“The evidence was clear. Both Admiral [Isaac C.] Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack ”¦ was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. It was our shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and testimony we received firsthand, that the Israeli attack was planned and deliberate.”
Tim Fischer put it this way:
“If Israel did deliberately attack the most powerful nation on Earth, it knows it can do so and get away with murder. Worse still, U.S. military personnel now know that if the truth is politically inconvenient, they and their legacy are expendable.”
Justin Raimondo suggests that the Lobby had a role to play, but this theory is flawed. At the time, Israel’s lobby did not wield anywhere near the same influence that we are witnessing today. Nonetheless he does raise a valid argument:
Critics may aver that this is all ancient history, that there is no reason to bring up the attack on the Liberty, and even if it wasn’t an accident, it’s time to let bygones be bygones. The Lobby constantly asserts that anyone who even mentions this “incident” is nothing but an anti-Semite, because, after all, why talk about it now?
If indeed the attack was deliberate, then it begs the question as to what Lyndon Johnson’s reasons were for covering it up?
There are two theories that may explain this.
The Israelis attacked the Liberty, according to several books and a BBC documentary on the subject, in order to prevent the U.S. government from learning of Israeli plans to occupy the Golan Heights… belongs to Syria, and which is still causing a great many problems for U.S. interests in the region.
Another more recent theory has surfaced
It has long been assumed that Israel’s deliberate attack on the USS Liberty was just another of her made-to-order false flag operations done simply for the purpose of dragging an unwilling America into a Middle East war on the side of the Jewish state. However, new information uncovered by former BBC investigative journalist Peter Hounam reveals that America–and more specifically the administration of Lyndon Johnson–was not as much the unsuspecting victim in all of this that she has claimed these last 40 years. Based on relatively new evidence, the attack on the Liberty was actually part of a much larger plan and that the Liberty incident was just one domino in a series of them that had as the ultimate goal a real-live shooting war between the US and the USSR. Had the Liberty been sunk with no witnesses as planned, the world would be a much different place now as a result, and certainly not for the better.
In short, what was planned for that awful day in American history was that the a defenseless, unarmed American ship sailing in international waters off the coast of Egypt be sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean and that the Soviets and their Arab allies (in particular Egypt) would be blamed for the event.
Without a comprehensive investigation, these theories will remain pure speculation, however, they will continue to linger so long as the veil of secrecy surrounding this event is maintained.