Aftergood, Steven. "NSA Releases USS Liberty Records." Secrecy News (from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy), 9 Jul. 2003. [http://www.fas.org]

NSA has declassified and released "audio intercepts and related documents concerning the 1967 Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty." NSA's releases are available on the Transcripts page.

Bamford, James. Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency from the Cold War through the Dawn of a New Century. New York: Doubleday, 2001.

Clark comment: Bamford's second major work on NSA has brought forth the same kind of strong feelings as accompanied his earlier The Puzzle Palace. Although the book is much more than a new interpretation of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, Bamford's handling of that incident has dominated much of the discussion.

Steven Aftergood, "Bamford 'Liberty' Account Repudiated," Secrecy News, 17 Jul. 2001 (http://www.fas.org), reported that "[k]ey aspects of ... Bamford's recent account of the 1967 Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty are being disavowed by some of his own sources."

This report elicited a spirited response from the author: "Aftergood's piece was a model of poor reporting.... [He] never bothered to call me ... for any comment prior to publication. This despite the fact that we are both located in Washington and have spoken many times both in person and on the phone." Bamford's letter, dated 25 July 2001, is available at http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/bamford.html. See also, Michael Oren, "Unfriendly Fire," The New Republic, 23 July 2001, for a hostile critique of Bamford's work.

Powers, NYRB, 21 Jun. 2001, says that Bamford provides "a wealth of human and technical detail" in this new history of NSA. The "strengths of the book are to be found in its portrait of the NSA an institution of staggering size and capacity....

"Bamford is a writer of stern and bracing moral judgment, generally as willing to praise as censure, but something about the Liberty incident unhinges him a little, and his account is muddied at the end by a story of the killing of a journalist on the Lebanese-Israeli border last year. The two incidents are neither related nor comparable.... Bamford should have summed up what happened to the Liberty, so troubling in so many ways, in a calmer mood....

"Bamford is particularly good on the SIGINT war in Vietnam.... But [his] stories are not confined to ancient history; he has much to say about recent events like the Gulf War of 1990-1991, which also had a SIGINT side, as do just about all episodes of international rivalry or strife."

For DeFalco, Proceedings, Dec. 2001, Bamford's is "a truly revealing and engaging work." It is "highly readable and often engrossing" as it "recounts secret episodes that reveal much of the inner workings" of NSA.

Cohen, FA 80.5, views Body of Secrets as offering "much fascinating material," but the author "takes a more paranoid turn when he discusses the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty."

To Anderson, I&NS 17.1, "this is unquestionably an important work." Bamford "expands our knowledge of NSA's present-day workings and provides extensive detail about its history and operations." On the USS Liberty controversy, his explanation "is neither satisfying nor well documented"; and his "theory is written in an emotive style that does not serve his cause." The footnotes in Body of Secrets are "cumbersome and frequently uninformative.... For a complete and annotated bibliography, readers must use <http://www.randomhouse.com/features/bamford/bib.html>."

Bath, NIPQ 17.4, calls Body of Secrets "a significant addition to our knowledge" of NSA "and of cryptographic activities during the Cold War. Most assuredly it should be a key volume in any serious library of intelligence history."

Peake, Intelligencer 12.1, finds that this "important work" is "well-documented." It "describes what NSA does and how they do it in non technical terms," producing a "clear and comprehensive picture of the organization." An exception to the latter description "is the table of contents with its enigmatic even inscrutable chapter titles" that "are not helpful in communicating what topics the book covers."

Borne, John E. The USS Liberty: Dissenting History vs. Official History. New York: Reconsideration Press, 1995.

Fishel, IJI&C 8.3: "Borne's work is especially valuable for findings that have turned up in the years since Ennes's book came out." The reference is to James Ennes, Assault on the Liberty (1979), for which see below.

Cristol, A. Jay. The Liberty Incident: The Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 2002.

Jonkers, AFIO WIN 25-02, 24 Jun. 2002, notes that Cristol, "a reputable former naval aviator and esteemed federal judge, spent ten years investigating the incident and concluded that the attack was a tragic mistake by the Israelis.... [He] argues that the Israeli attack must be seen in the context of war and the chaos of the operational environment.... [This] book is a legitimate part of the literature to be examined on this question."

According to Brecher, Miami Herald, 15 Jul. 2002 [http://www.miami.com], this work is "a painstakingly detailed and footnoted account distilled from thousands of U.S. and Israeli documents and interviews with key military and civilian figures from both nations."

James M. Ennes, Jr., Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Jun./Jul. 2002, comments that Liberty "[s]urvivors see it as a flawed work, packed with evasions and misleading statements. Cristol seems to accept at face value all the arguments that support his case, while he nitpicks, dismisses and ignores entirely the eyewitness reports of survivors and other supporting evidence."

Although Tobin, Proceedings, Aug. 2002, does not agree with Cristol's conclusion that the attack was an unfortunate accident, he still finds that the author's research is "rigorous and extensive," and calls the book "a superb reference."

Cohen, FA 81.6, concludes that "for those readers of a rational turn of mind, this book ends the debate" over whether the attack was an overt act or a mistake.

According to Petersen, "Ennes, an officer aboard the Liberty at the time, questions the official explanation attributing the incident to a mistake and ascribes to the Israelis the motive of preventing the ship from monitoring the course of the war."

Constantinides notes that Ennes "has nothing solid on the motive of the Israeli attack" and, therefore, "can only offer his own hypothesis."

Ennes, James M., Jr. "Israeli Attack on U.S. Ship Reveals Failure of C3." Defense Electronics, Oct. 1981, 60-62 ff. [Petersen]

Ennes, James M., Jr. "Israel's Attack on the USS Liberty : Cracks in the 25-Year Cover-Up." Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Jun. 1992, 52-53.

Fishel, Reverdy S. "The Attack on the Liberty: An 'Accident?'" International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 8, no. 3 (Fall 1995): 345-352.

This article ostensibly deals with Davis Rodman's review in IJI&C 7.4 of Loftus and Aarons' The Secret War Against the Jews. Beyond that, however, Fishel uses the article to restate the case for a planned and deliberate attack by the Israelis on the USS Liberty. Fishel takes strong exception to Rodman's statement that the "most credible" explanation of the attack is that it was an "accident": "In fact, Israel's assault on the Liberty was as accidental as Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor." Fishel calls Loftus and Aarons' book, "a collection of preposterous and demonstrably false theories and allegations. With regard to the Liberty attack, the only significant detail they get right is that it was deliberate."

David Rodman, "Against Fishel: Another Look at the Liberty Incident," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 9, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 73-80. The author expresses and explains his continuing skepticism with regard to "the claim that the Israelis knowingly attacked an American ship."

[Gerhard, William D.] "Special Issue: USS Liberty." Cryptolog 17, no. 3 (Jun. 1996): 2-5, 8-11.

"On 8 June 1967, while in international waters, flying the colors of the United States of America, USS LIBERTY was set upon by the military forces of Israel. Many of our cryptographic shipmates were killed or wounded along with other crew members.... William D. Gerhard, National Security Agency, wrote a factual account of the outrage, using the sources at his command. The report was released as a special history report SRH-259. CRYPTOLOG printed this report in a special issue, July 1984, shortly after it became available. We reprint this document now, in memory of our fallen comrades."

Guttman, Nathan. "U.S. Agency Confirms Sinking of USS Liberty Was Accident." Haaretz (Tel Aviv), 9 Jul. 2003. [http://www.haaretzdaily.com]

Documents released by NSA "support Israel's version" of the sinking of the USS Liberty during the 1967 war. The NSA "transcript of conversations held by two Israeli Air Force helicopter pilots who were hovering over the Liberty as it was sinking ... confirm Israel's claim that the sinking of the ship ... was a tragic error."

Hounam, Peter. Operation Cyanide: Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III.  London:  Vision, 2003. 

To Peake, Studies in Intelligence 47.3, the author "is persuasive when it comes to the argument that the attack was deliberate.  But when he attempts to explain why Israel attacked a ship flying a big American flag, he strains credibility.... Hounam claims that Operation Cyanide was a 'clandestine CIA and Mossad plan to foment the Six Day War and guarantee an overwhelming victory for Israel.'  And, he asserts, the outcome nearly caused a nuclear war between the super powers.  Hounam identifies the sources for his facts but not his conclusions, which he admits are speculative."

Paseman, Floyd. "The Great Grafton Library War." Intelligencer 11, no. 2 (Wintor 2000): 51-55.

The author reviews the uproar in Grafton, Wisconsin, in 1987-1989 over the naming of "The USS Liberty Memorial Public Library."

Pearson, Anthony. Conspiracy of Silence: The Attack on the USS Liberty. New York: Quartet Books, 1978.

Constantinides comments that much of this book on the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty is "unreliable.... Pearson's inability to produce respectable evidence further weakens his case."

Rodman, David. "Against Fishel: Another Look at the Liberty Incident." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 9, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 73-80.

The author expresses and explains his continuing skepicism with regard to "the claim that the Israelis knowingly attacked an American ship."

Smith, Richard K. "The Violation of the 'Liberty.'" U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Jun. 1978, 62-70. [Petersen]

Taylor, Jim. Pearl Harbor II: The True Story of the Sneak Attack by Israel upon the USS Liberty. Washington, DC: Mideast Publishing, 1980.

A pro-Arab group stirs the pot.

Walsh, David C. "Friendless Fire?" U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Jun. 2003, 58-64.

This article basically focuses on refuting the conclusions of A. Jay Cristol, The Liberty Incident: The Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 2002).