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On June 8, 1967, as war raged between Israel and its neighbors, an American spy ship, the U.S.S. Liberty, eavesdropped on communications off the coast of Egypt. When Israeli fighter jets and reconnaissance planes flew overhead, the Liberty’s crew assumed that the ship’s identifying markings and American flag would be visible to the pilots in the clear skies above. After as many as eight passes over a period of nearly nine hours, fighters suddenly opened fire and began strafing and napalming the Liberty, which had only four machine guns for defense. When the air attack ended, Israeli torpedo boats appeared and scored a direct hit. By the time the assault was over, 34 crewmen had been killed and 171 wounded, two-thirds of the crew. Only heroic efforts by the officers and crew saved the ship from sinking.

Back in Washington, news of the attack on the Liberty was received with a mixture of shock and outrage. Many in the Pentagon, State Department and in Congress demanded that Israel be held accountable for the unprovoked assault in international waters. The Johnson Administration initially responded by threatening Israel but soon softened its attitude. Israel’s stunning victory in the Six-Day War, as it became known, was a source of pride to many American Jews, whose support was crucial to an administration mired in an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam. With the death toll mounting daily in Vietnam, the attack on the Liberty was pushed to the back pages of the nation’s newspapers, and ultimately all but forgotten.

Honored with the 2010 RADM Samuel Eliot Morison Award

for Excellence in Naval Literature

– James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory

James Scott is a journalist and the son of a surviving Liberty officer. In this riveting book, he recounts the story of the horrifying attack and the tremendous impact it had on the lives of the crew. He puts the attack in context, showing how political considerations trumped the demands for justice from the survivors and their supporters in the military and in Congress. Drawing on new interviews and recently declassified documents in both the United States and Israel, he demonstrates that Israel’s initial insistence that the attack was a mistake caused by misidentification of the ship is implausible. He documents, for the first time, the fact that at least one Israeli pilot correctly identified the Liberty during the attack and that others inside Israel’s chain of command were aware of the ship’s identity as the assault unfolded. His descriptions of the crew under fire and their frantic work to save the ship are dramatic and unforgettable. Scott takes readers into the conference rooms at the White House where the most senior officials in the government debated how to respond to the attack and then eventually devised a plan to protect Israel from public outrage. He shows the debate inside the Israeli government over whether to punish the attackers, and reveals the widespread disbelief many American leaders had with Israel’s explanation.

The Attack on the Liberty is the finest account yet of this tragedy, and a remarkable tale of men under fire in an incident that remains bitterly disputed after more than forty years.

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