Debunking Candace Owens’ Lies About Israel Attacking the USS Liberty

In a tragic event during the 1967 Six-Day War, the USS Liberty, a US Navy spy ship, came under attack from Israeli forces — resulting in the deaths of 34 American servicemen.

More than 50 years after it occurred, the USS Liberty incident continues to inspire a host of rabid anti-Israel conspiracy theories and to inflame the conversation surrounding the relationship between the United States and Israel.

From antisemitic commentator Candace Owens recently driving a surge of conspiracy theories about the incident on social media, to a campaign of billboards claiming that Israel intentionally bombed the ship, the USS Liberty has been used by those on both the right and the left as a brush to tarnish Israel’s reputation, and turn American public opinion against the Jewish State.

But what exactly happened to the USS Liberty? Was it a case of mistaken identity in the fog of war, or a deliberate strike by Israel against American servicemen? Is there any validity to the conspiracy theories surrounding the incident, or are they all the machinations of a hate-filled imagination?

The USS Liberty Incident

In mid-May 1967, as Egypt ramped up tensions with Israel, the Sixth Fleet of the United States Navy was ordered to the eastern Mediterranean in an attempt to break through the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran.

One of the ships attached to the Sixth Fleet was the USS Liberty, a spy vessel that, while formally under the command of the Sixth Fleet, was in practice under the control of the National Security Agency (NSA).

Although not an original member of the blockade-breaking naval convoy (which never came to fruition), the USS Liberty was ordered on May 30 to sail from Spain to a half mile outside Egyptian and Israeli territorial waters. The Liberty’s mission was likely to spy on the Egyptian military and its Soviet advisers.

On June 5, 1967, after increasing hostilities on its southern border, Israel pre-emptively struck Egypt. The Six-Day War had begun.

Four days later, on June 8, as the Israeli capture of the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt was nearly complete, the USS Liberty finally arrived at the waters off the coast of Sinai.

In the early morning hours, an Israeli plane spotted the USS Liberty. After some uncertainty regarding the identity of this vessel, it was determined by the Israeli Navy to be the USS Liberty, and was designated as a “neutral ship.”

However, at 11:00 A.M., as the shifts changed at the navy’s headquarters, the “neutral” designation was removed from the ship as part of protocol, as the information was five hours old and considered to be no longer relevant.

At 11:24 A.M., a large explosion occurred in the coastal Sinai city of El-Arish. While it is now known that the explosion was likely caused by an ammunition dump, it was assumed by the IDF that Egyptian naval forces had fired at the city (as had occurred in recent days).

From that point, the search was on for which Egyptian ship had fired on El-Arish.

At 1:41 P.M., an officer aboard an Israeli torpedo boat erroneously noted a ship sailing towards Egypt at 30 knots. Since this was faster than the Liberty’s maximum speed, it was assumed that this was the Egyptian vessel in question. This miscalculation would have grave results.

Israeli jets were dispatched to the area and, after not seeing an American flag or distinguishing marks on the vessel, the order was given to bomb the ship.

At 1:58 P.M., two waves of Israeli jets bombarded (including with napalm) the American spy ship over the next 14 minutes, killing nine service members.

At 2:44 P.M., three Israeli torpedo boats approached the ship. With smoke from the earlier aerial bombardment obscuring the ship, the boats requested that the vessel identify itself. The response from the USS Liberty (which could not see the Israeli identity of the boats through the smoke) was for the Israeli boats to identify themselves. As a similar exchange had occurred with an enemy Egyptian naval ship during the 1956 Sinai War, the Israeli naval officers assumed that this was an Egyptian ship acting in the same manner. After consulting their intelligence, the Israelis determined it was the Egyptian freighter El-Quseir.

At the same time, a service member on the USS Liberty disobeyed the captain’s orders and opened fire on the Israeli torpedo boats. Now convinced that it was an enemy ship attacking them, the torpedo boats opened fire on the USS Liberty. Five torpedoes were fired at the ship and one made contact, killing an additional 25 servicemen.

At 3:30 P.M., the ship was positively identified as the USS Liberty. In the immediate aftermath of this incident, Israel accepted blame for firing on the Liberty and opened official investigations into what had occurred.

Since June 8, 1967, there have been three official Israeli investigations and 11 official American investigations (including by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the US Navy, and Congress) into the matter. All investigations have determined that this was a tragic case of mistaken identity.

Israel has paid millions of dollars to the United States, families of those killed in the attack, and those service members who were wounded during the attack, as restitution for this friendly fire incident.

The Conspiracy Theories

Despite Israel’s almost immediate acceptance of blame and investigation of the incident (which was determined to be a tragic case of friendly fire), many in the American government felt that Israel was covering up what truly happened. It was only after several official American investigations that Israel was absolved of intentionally firing upon the USS Liberty.

However, some still refuse to believe the official narrative, stating that Israel intentionally attacked the American spy ship. Due to the top-secret nature of this incident, it took many years before most of the critical evidence regarding the USS Liberty was allowed to be released to the public. These decades of concealed evidence allowed for a wide variety of theories about why Israel intentionally bombed the Liberty to percolate within American and Israeli societies.

While the campaign to find Israel guilty of intentionally bombing the USS Liberty is largely driven by some former veterans who served on the vessel, this incident has also been co-opted by those seeking to harm Israel-United States relations and besmirch the Jewish State.

As one analyst put it, the skepticism of these veterans regarding the official narrative has “swung open the door for antisemites.”

Although many are certain that the American and Israeli governments are lying about Israel intentionally bombing the USS Liberty, there is no consensus among these theorists as to why Israel would bomb the US spy ship.

Here are just some of the theories that have been put forward about the bombing of the USS Liberty since 1967:

• Israel wanted to frame Egypt for the attack on the USS Liberty in order to draw the United States into joining its war against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.
• American President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to use the incident as a false-flag operation in order to advance his strategic goals for the Middle East, which included the toppling of the Egyptian government.
• Israel wanted to draw the United States into a third world war.
• Israel bombed the Liberty as the spy ship had picked up evidence of Israel killing Egyptian POWs.
• Israel bombed the Liberty because the American vessel had picked up the IDF’s plans to conquer the Golan Heights from Syria, which the United States was opposed to.
• Israel bombed the USS Liberty because the ship had picked up evidence of preparations at Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona.

These conspiracy theories, however, do not pass muster when confronted with the now-available evidence and a rational look at the context in which the USS Liberty incident occurred.

The Case Against the USS Liberty Conspiracy Theories

The following are some of the key points and pieces of evidence that cast doubt on the conspiracy theories surrounding the USS Liberty incident, and substantiate the findings that this was a case of friendly fire and not an intentional Israeli attack on an American naval ship:

• It is unclear if the American flag on the USS Liberty was visible to the Israelis. The winds were quiet on June 8, meaning the ship’s flag was drooped. For planes flying overhead at high speeds, it would have been non-discernible.
• The United States had informed Israel that no US ships were in the vicinity off the coast of Sinai. The USS Liberty actually had orders to move further out to sea but, due to communications issues, they did not arrive until a day later.
• Recordings captured during, and immediately after, the bombing of the USS Liberty show that Israel’s biggest fear was that it had accidentally attacked a Soviet ship, not an American one.
• One of the CIA documents includes the claim that the NSA picked up a discussion between an Israeli pilot and his commander ordering him to fire, knowing that it is an American ship. However, this claim is hearsay by the US ambassador to Lebanon and no recording has ever been produced.
• Similarly, in 1991, two Washington Post journalists claimed an American was in the Israeli war room when the decision was made to bomb the USS Liberty, knowing that it was an American ship. The American in question, Seth Mintz, wrote a response to the newspaper, saying he was misquoted and that he believed it to be a case of “mistaken identity.”
• Israel was already more than halfway through the war and had almost totally defeated the Egyptians by June 8. There was no need to attempt to trick the Americans into joining the war so late in the game.
• The Liberty only arrived off the coast of the Sinai Peninsula on June 8, making it unlikely to have possessed any secret Israeli recordings from days prior.
• Declassified documents show that Israel never concealed its plan to conquer the Golan Heights from the United States, disproving the conspiracy theory about the bombing as an attempt to hide the attack plan.
• If Israel had always intended to bomb the Liberty, it could have done so when the ship was first observed at 5:55 A.M. by an Israeli reconnaissance plane. There was no rationale for waiting 8 hours to attack the vessel during the day.
• Friendly fire incidents are common during war. During the Six-Day War alone, at least 50 IDF soldiers were killed in friendly fire incidents, including one that occurred a day before the USS Liberty incident.

While the case of the USS Liberty is used by those on both the left and the right to subvert the relationship between Israel and the United States and to question the integrity of the Jewish State, it is clear that this incident was a tragic case of friendly fire between two allies caused by error, miscommunication, and the fog of war.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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