Israel 'deliberately attacked Liberty' [align=left] Press TV
Wednesday, October 3, 2007[/align]
A new report by a US newspaper says that Israeli warplanes had deliberately attacked a US Navy ship and killed 34 US crew in 1967.
The new information also suggests that the US government has since kept secret the details of the attack to protect Israel against criticism, according to The Chicago Tribune.
Four Israeli pilots later claimed that they had mistakenly attacked the virtually defenseless USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what became known as the Six-Day War. The Israeli pilots said that they had confused the US Navy ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and looked nothing like it.

The attack on the US Navy ship also injured 171 other US troops aboard the Liberty.
"I don't think you'll find many people at (the National Security Agency) who believe it was accidental," Benson Buffham, a former deputy NSA director, told the Tribune.
NSA Deputy Director Louis Tordella speculated in a recently declassified memo that the attack "might have been ordered by some senior commanders on the Sinai Peninsula who wrongly suspected that the Liberty was monitoring the Israeli activities."
Many of those who believe the Liberty was purposely attacked have suggested that the Israelis feared the ship might intercept communications revealing Tel Aviv's plans to widen the war, which the US opposed.