Thomas Massie is set to take the House floor to honor and memorialize the crew of the USS Liberty, bringing fresh attention to one of the most disputed episodes of the 1967 war. Several survivors are expected to attend his speech on Monday in the congressional gallery.
The Kentucky Republican described the incident as an unprovoked attack by Israel, and his remarks will put the USS Liberty back before lawmakers nearly 60 years after the day Israeli air and naval forces struck the intelligence-gathering ship off Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The attack on June 8, 1967 killed at least 34 U.S. sailors and wounded 171 others.
The Liberty was a U.S. Navy technical research ship in the Mediterranean Sea when Israeli jets hit it with anti-personnel weapons and armor-piercing bullets, according to survivor accounts and historical records. Israeli torpedo boats later struck the vessel and blew a massive hole in its starboard side, instantly killing 25 men in the lower research spaces. Crew members had been flying the American flag and had exchanged waves with low-flying Israeli aircraft earlier that morning.
Israel has long said the strike was a tragic case of mistaken identity, arguing that exhausted pilots thought the ship was Egyptian. Survivors and researchers have rejected that explanation for years. Richard Brooks said in a 2015 interview that it was not a tragic accident, and called it deliberate, saying the crew had been known and the ship had been targeted to sink. Ernie Gallo has also dismissed the mistaken-identity account and said the U.S. government went along with a false narrative.
That dispute has endured because the official record never settled it in a way that satisfied the people who were there. A naval board of inquiry was convened while the damaged ship was dry-docked in Malta, and the proceedings concluded swiftly. Survivors and advocates say the deeper issue is that records tied to the attack remain classified nearly 60 years later, while the U.S. Congress never formally questioned the incident or formed a committee to investigate it.
Massie’s speech will not end that fight, but it may widen it. By putting the USS Liberty on the House floor, he is forcing a public revisit of a killing that has stayed in the background of U.S.-Israel ties for decades, even as Washington has continued to provide Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance and the two countries have maintained close military and intelligence links. For Gallo and other survivors, Monday is another chance to press the same demand they have made for years: a full official inquiry into what happened in the Mediterranean that day.
