The other day, a good friend of mine put up a controversial Facebook post that was bound to turn some heads in shock and awe. 

It was about the USS Liberty, and the post was a quote that read: 

“Never before in the history of the United States Navy has a Navy Board of Inquiry ignored the Testimony of American Military Eyewitnesses and taken, on faith, the word of their attackers.” 

The quote came from Captain Richard F. Kiepfer, US Navy, and beneath his words was reproduced a legend: 

“8 June 1967, USS Liberty. Murdered by Israel, Betrayed by America.” 

My friend added his own take on the event: 

“They wanted to sink it with minimal survivors and blame it on someone else to draw the US into their wars.” 

MILLIEU OF THE MASSES  

I have heard this account of the USS Liberty attack before. 

In the last six years, I have noticed that this account has become prominent all across social media, portraying the attack as a kind of Judeo Pearl Harbor that proves that Israel runs the US. 

This account is part of a broader milieu that has dominated social media in the last few years since the War in Gaza began on October 7, 2023. 

That milieu explains events in the Middle East like this: 

Helpless America hunts innocent Arabs at the behest of Israeli financial domination, and neither Americans nor Arabs have any kind of agency at all under the present circumstances to do anything about it. 

And while this story has a hard-hitting emotional appeal, it does not take into account a number of facts… 

SHOCKING DOUBLE DEALINGS

The definitive account of the USS Liberty attack comes from a book entitled Assault on the USS Liberty: The Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship by James M. Ennes, Jr. 

In it, the author  interviewed all of the survivors of the attack, as well as a number of NCIS Agents and CIA Agents that were involved in the aftermath. 

And what he found was shocking:

The USS Liberty was one of the United States’ highest-tech signals intelligence ships…

And the Israelis attacked it because they didn’t want our signals intelligence going to the Egyptians during the Six Day War. 

Why would the US be passing signals intelligence on to the Egyptians from our highest-tech signals intelligence ship…signals intelligence to be used against our ally who supposedly controls our every move? 

The truth is stranger than most people realize…

STRATEGY OF DUPLICITY 

At the end of WWII, the United States ran half the world, while the Soviets ran the other half. 

And because the US homeland was largely untouched by the War, it maintained its status as the sole economic powerhouse…the only one able to dish out the funds to help the shattered countries of the world rebuild. 

With this unique power, the United States decided upon a Foreign Policy Strategy that was long on duplicity and short on Honor. 

Beginning in the 1950s at the behest of Henry Kissinger, Dean Acheson, and the Dulles brothers, the US Strategy within the Middle East and the broader world was to “play both sides of the coin” against each other.

The idea was to hedge the bets of one against the other, thereby keeping both off balance. 

Supposedly, this would bring peace. 

But it would only bring trouble…

CRISIS IN THE SUEZ 

This Strategy went into full effect in 1956, when Great Britain, France, and Israel went to war to stop Nasser from nationalizing the Suez Canal.

Nasser had a long history of anti-Western sentiment abroad and internal oppression at home…you know, classic Third World Dictator stuff! 

And the British and the French decided to put the upstart Arab dictator in his place, just like they did in the Colonial Days of old.

And this time, the Israelis would be coming along for the ride!

But it was not to be…

A RUDE AWAKENING

The British, French, and Israelis thought they had American support in the bag…after all, they were the United States’ top allies in all the world!

But they were in for a rude awakening…

For when the attack began, not only did American President Dwight D. Eisenhower threaten England, France, and Europe with total economic devastation if they didn’t leave Nasser alone…

He was actually running Nasser’s War Effort!

THE EAST AFLAME 

The CIA Agent Miles Copeland Jr. developed Nasser’s entire strategy as the Commanding Officer of this endeavor…

And the former SS Commando Otto Skorzeny was contracted by the CIA to develop the Operational and Tactical details as the Executive Officer.

Under Copeland Jr.’s command, Skorzeny was responsible for setting up Nasser’s entire Special Forces capability.

Their mission? 

To create Jihadist insurgencies across the Middle East, as well as directly conducting “Direction Action” missions to attack Israelis and Western targets in the region!

TEMPLATE FOR TERROR

This model, established by the CIA through Nasser, would become the template for Baathist “State Sponsors of Terror”. 

It would soon be copied by Moammar Qaddafi in Libya and Hafez al-Assad in Syria. 

Omar al-Bashir in the Sudan, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq would follow suit decades later. 

In fact, Saddam personally studied under Nasser in Cairo in the late 1950s and early 1960s when he was on the run from an unsuccessful coup attempt in Iraq!

A KNIFE IN THE BACK

What was the American justification for this policy of creating Jihadi insurgent forces for Nasser, instead of supporting their closets allies, the British, French, and Israelis? 

The big idea was that supporting Nasser would keep him out of the Soviet Orbit.

But it did not. 

Because if we could play both sides of the coin, then so could the Arabs. 

And they did!

The United States was left out in the cold, while the Arabs got guns, money, and training that they would one day turn against us. 

Meanwhile, our closest allies were left with a knife in their back. 

A BRUSH UNDER THE RUG

When the United States was passing signals intelligence to Nasser eleven years later during the 1967 Six Day War, the Israelis were determined not to have a repeat of the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis.

So they attacked the USS Liberty to cut off the flow of signals intelligence, in a giant game of geopolitical chicken.

As James Ennes Jr. reported in his book, the Israelis got on the phone with LBJ and Robert McNamara after the attack, and told them that they knew all about the US double dealings.

The Israelis said that they figured it would be best for everybody to keep the whole thing quiet, and the dirty laundry in-house amongst friends.

LBJ knew exactly what they meant.

He was having a very tough time politically in 1967, preparing to run for President again the following year. 

Vietnam and Civil Rights had totally gone off the rails, and were killing him in the polls…neither one of his signature policy moves had gone according to plan. 

And he didn’t need another headache to deal with.

So the whole thing was brushed under the rug. 

PLAYING BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE 

The above facts are the strategic context for the Israelis attacking the USS Liberty.

It provides an insight into their decision-making process, and why they launched the attack on what they knew was an American Navy ship. 

It also explains the Israeli effort to “flip” Skorzeny to get him to work for them in the early 1960s.

And it also explains their efforts to obtain nuclear weapons in the early 1960s as well. 

They had seen that the US was not a reliable partner, and instead was a double dealing Superpower more interested in playing both sides of the fence. 

So the Israelis figured they would take matters into their own hands, friendship be damned.

After all, hadn’t the US done it first?

MIDDLE EAST MIND READER 

The above facts are just as controversial as the original facebook post that inspired this piece. Nobody comes out looking good in them. 

However, I have sought to take out the whirlwind of emotions that dominate the current social media milieu, and look only at the facts. 

Because whether one supports Israel or not, one has to get inside the mind of the other party and see what they are going to do, and why they are going to do it. 

And whether the other party is friend or foe, it behooves one to possess this skill of strategic empathy…all to successfully master the decision-making process of survival in the world. 

If you want to be able to do this within the context of the Middle East, then check out my book, All Men Follow the Strongman: The Forgotten History of the Iraq War. 

Then you can become a mind-reader of friend and foe alike…

In one of the most controversial and dangerous places on the face of the earth!

Sincerely,

Richard Barrett

01-04-2026

Written at 10:04 PM, somewhere in the USA…

Sources Cited 

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