Fifty Years Later, NSA Keeps Details of Israel's USS Liberty Attack Secret – The Intercept

Gallo, a communications technician aboard the Liberty, found himself and his fellow shipmates in the midst of an attack that would leave 34 Americans dead and 171 wounded.

The second lists a series of unauthorized signals intelligence disclosures that "Have had a detrimental effect on our ability to produce intelligence against terrorist targets and other targets of national concern." Remarkably, information relevant to the attack on the Liberty falls within this highly secret category.

Though neither document reveals conclusive information about the causes of the assault, both highlight that at the time of their publication – approximately four decades after the incident – the NSA was determined to keep even seemingly minor details about the attack classified.

Bamford argued in his 2001 book, "Body of Secrets," that the USS Liberty's proximity to the Sinai, and its ability to intercept Israel's motives and activities during the Six-Day War, might have prompted Israel's attack on the vessel.

Ultimately, both the United States' and Israel's investigations deemed the attack on the Liberty an accident that resulted when Israel mistook the American spy ship for an Egyptian freighter.

According to a spokesperson at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign affairs, the Liberty assault was "a tragic accident that was settled between the parties involved years ago," and that, "As is the case with many of these matters, there are always enough conspiracy theories to go around, but they never hold water.”

The Liberty Veterans Association, an organization comprised of survivors of the 1967 attack, has called for a robust and transparent investigation into the incident for decades, to no avail.

In a statement to The Intercept, Ernie Gallo, who currently serves as the president of the Liberty Veterans Association, said, "We now know that the Navy Court of Inquiry was merely for show, as the officers were told to come to the conclusion the Liberty did [its] job and the attack was accidental." Bamford also references the magnitude and length of the attack as proof of its deliberateness: The ship was hit repeatedly, first by planes dropping thousand-pound bombs and napalm, and then by torpedo boats.

"They were flying a large U.S. flag. [The ship] said USS Liberty on the back. I mean, what do you need?".

Former Navy Chief Petty Officer Marvin Nowicki, the chief Hebrew-language analyst aboard a U.S. Navy EC-121 spy plane that was intercepting Israeli aircraft communications as they were assaulting the Liberty, believed the attack was an accident.

Unbeknownst to Nowicki at the time, his letter to the editor sparked concerns at NSA that he had revealed classified information on the Liberty.

While James Bamford presumes this is because interested parties didn't want unsavory information about Israel broadcast on mainstream American television, Nightline's then-host Ted Koppel said otherwise: "At the risk of contributing to the veneer of 'cover-up' that surrounds any discussion of the USS Liberty story, my only recollection is that we did nothing because we found nothing new or substantive." Neither, it seems, has anyone else.