The Liberty was conducting surveillance of Israeli comms during the 1967 6 day war, and intercepted orders for Israeli soldiers to execute Egyptian prisoners that had surrendered, which is a war crime. Israel did not want this info to be leaked, so they tried to destroy the USS Liberty. LBJ colluded with Israel in the cover-up by going with the story that the Liberty was mistakenly identified as an Egyptian ship and fired upon by the Israeli air force. LBJ did not want the world to know about the Israeli war crimes so he went along with the lie to save Israel’s image. This went as far as changing the names of US wounded sailers from the Liberty that were taken to hospitals, making sure they had no clothing/uniforms that could identify them as from the Liberty, and instructing them that they could not speak of the Liberty incident. I think 34 US Service members were killed in the attack, with significantly more wounded.

The Liberty was conducting surveillance of Israeli comms during the 1967 6 day war, and intercepted orders for Israeli soldiers to execute Egyptian prisoners that had surrendered, which is a war crime. Israel did not want this info to be leaked, so they tried to destroy the USS Liberty. LBJ colluded with Israel in the cover-up by going with the story that the Liberty was mistakenly identified as an Egyptian ship and fired upon by the Israeli air force. LBJ did not want the world to know about the Israeli war crimes so he went along with the lie to save Israel’s image. This went as far as changing the names of US wounded sailers from the Liberty that were taken to hospitals, making sure they had no clothing/uniforms that could identify them as from the Liberty, and instructing them that they could not speak of the Liberty incident.