USS Liberty

Letter to Rear Admiral Samuel Cox (Retired),
Director, Naval History and Heritage Command

The following email was sent to Rear Admiral Cox by If Americans Knew staff on June 18, 2025.

Subject: Request for Reconsideration: USS Liberty Historical Record – Attention Admiral Cox

Dear Admiral Cox,

I hope this message finds you well. I’m following up on an inquiry I sent recently to the Naval History and Heritage Command regarding the current entry on the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty. The response I received was a boilerplate message that did not address the substance of my concerns, so I am respectfully appealing to you directly.

As Director of the NHHC and a retired Rear Admiral, your stewardship of the Navy’s historical record carries enormous weight. That’s precisely why the Liberty entry matters so much.

The current version asserts that “no evidence exists” that the attack was deliberate. Yet, this claim is contradicted by decades of testimony, declassified material, and public statements from highly credible sources — including:

• Captain Ward Boston, JAGC, USN (Ret.), who swore under oath that the Court of Inquiry findings were predetermined and manipulated for political reasons.
• NSA intercepts confirming that Israeli pilots positively identified the ship before attacking.
• Admiral Thomas Moorer, Rear Admiral Merlin Starring (head of JAG), General Ray Davis, and other top U.S. military officials who concluded the attack was intentional.
• Investigative reports by The Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Haaretz, and others documenting the ongoing suppression of evidence.
• The surviving crew, whose consistent testimony has been dismissed or ignored for over five decades. Their eye witness accounts should not be given less credibility than claims by the nation that attacked them.

I understand that in a 2017 FlaglerLive op-ed, you stated that “no evidence has ever surfaced” to suggest the attack was deliberate. That position reflects the dominant official narrative – one that has been reinforced for decades. However, in your role as Director of the NHHC, I hope you’ll consider whether the Navy’s historical account should continue to reflect only that narrative, or whether it should acknowledge the substantial body of evidence that challenges it.

Your article concludes with a statement that The Liberty Incident Revealed by Jay Cristol is the “most objective account” you had seen. But it's important to be aware that Captain Ward Boston, Counsel to the Court of Inquiry, in his affidavit, specifically stated:

“It was our shared belief, [referring to Admiral Kidd] based on the documentary evidence and testimony we received first hand, that the Israeli attack was planned and deliberate, and could not possibly have been an accident.”

“The recent publication of Jay Cristol’s book, The Liberty Incident, twists the facts and misrepresents the views of those of us who investigated the attack.

“It is Cristol’s insidious attempt to whitewash the facts that has pushed me to speak out.”

Numerous people have pointed out errors and falsehoods in Mr. Cristol’s book. For example, on page 171 Cristol writes that the NSA “concluded in the report that the Liberty had been mistaken for an Egyptian ship as a result of miscalculations and egregious errors.”

However, the NSA report actually states, “The fact that two separate torpedo boat commanders made the same false identification only raises the question of the veracity of both commanders. The El Kasir [the Egyptian ship] was approximately one-quarter of the Liberty tonnage, about one-half its length, and offered a radically different silhouette. To claim that the Liberty closely resembled the El Kasir was most illogical.”

The report also specifically notes, “When NSA’s deputy director read the decision of the Israeli Defense Forces Preliminary Inquiry, he summed up his personal feelings on the subject by calling it ‘a nice whitewash.’”

There are numerous such manipulations in the book.

Several surviving crew members would welcome the opportunity to speak with you directly and share their experiences. We would be honored to help facilitate a meeting – in person or by video – if you’re willing to hear firsthand what they’ve carried for nearly six decades.

These honorable and patriotic survivors of the attack are not seeking revenge, simply an honest accounting of what happened – and for their testimony to be treated with the dignity it deserves.

I respectfully urge you to revisit the Liberty page and consider whether its current language reflects the full scope of the historical record – or whether it might read to future generations as an intentional omission.

As Dr. Richard Kiepfer, the ship’s medical officer and Silver Star recipient, later wrote:

“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.”

Thank you for your time and consideration.

We did not recieve a reply.

For more information see: “No Evidence”: WTKR’s Attempt to Sink the USS Liberty Reunion