Abandoned By their Own President - June 8, 1967

On June 8, 1967, Israeli jets and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, a lightly armed American intelligence ship in international waters, killing thirty-four U.S. sailors and wounding 171 more. Israel called it a tragic mistake. The survivors have called it something else. And the Johnson administration, which had every reason to press for the truth, chose not to. Nearly sixty years later, the full record remains classified, the survivors remain unvindicated, and the question of accident or deliberate has never been honestly answered. This episode holds all three truths simultaneously: the alliance mattered, the calculation had logic, and thirty-four Americans deserved better than a government that chose to look away.