- WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A new
book quotes U.S. officials around during the 1967 Israeli attack on a U.S.
surveillance ship as saying the attack was not an accident -- as Israel
has always claimed -- but deliberate.
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- The attack, in which 34 American sailors died, was carried
out to prevent the United States from eavesdropping on Israeli military
activities, author James Bamford writes.
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- The USS Liberty was attacked during the Six Day War on
June 8 by air and sea forces off the Sinai coast. Israel said the ship
was mistaken for an Egyptian one and U.S. President Lyndon Johnson then
accepted the explanation.
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- Israel later paid modest reparations to the families
of the 34 Americans killed, and to the 171 others who were injured.
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- What the Israelis did not know, according to "Body
of Secrets" -- published by Doubleday and scheduled for release Tuesday
-- is that the U.S. National Security Agency had a surveillance plane flying
above the Liberty.
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- The book quotes by name a Hebrew-English translator on
that U.S. plane as saying the Israeli pilots talked about completing an
attack. He said "they mentioned an American flag" -- suggesting
the Israelis knew they were attacking a U.S. ship.
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- Bamford's other named sources include a former top N.S.A.
official who conducted a review of the attack and an Air Force major general.
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- Israeli officials have not responded to CNN calls seeking
comment.
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- Bamford writes that National Security Agency intercepts
of the Israeli pilots and sailors remain secret to this day, although his
sources say the communications would clearly show the Israelis attacked
the U.S. ship deliberately.
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- As for motive, Bamford speculates in the book that the
Israelis may not have wanted the United States to know that "at that
same moment, a scant dozen or so miles away, Israeli soldiers were butchering
civilians and bound prisoners by the hundreds, a fact that the entire Israeli
army leadership knew about and condoned, according to the army's own historian."
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- Survivors of the attack on the USS Liberty have long
argued that the Israelis had to know they were attacking an American ship,
since the ship was circled repeatedly at a low altitude by Israeli aircraft
before the attack and the ship was flying U.S. flags.
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- Bamford is an intelligence specialist and the author
of a previous best-selling book about the NSA called "The Puzzle Palace."
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