There are three items in this update. The first two are about the FOIA lawsuit and the third item is my critique of a recent article in The New York Times about an upsurge in interest in the case of USS Liberty.
Court Approves Amicus Brief Filing
On February 10, 2026, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals approved the motion of the USS Liberty Veteran’s Association for leave to file an amicus brief in Kinnucan v. NSA et al. You may read the amicus brief on DocumentCloud.
Upcoming Oral Arguments
Oral arguments in Kinnucan v. NSA et al. (no. 24-7642) in the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals are scheduled for Monday, March 2, 2026 at 09:00 A.M. As I wrote last May on Antiwar.com, the appeal seeks to reverse a US District Court decision that a 58-year-old classified, never-before-released report in the possession of the National Security Agency is a Congressional record and, therefore, is not subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act. The two-volume report was prepared by the US House Appropriations Committee (“HAC Report”) and pertains to the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty (AGTR-5). You may read the appellate brief on DocumentCloud.
Readers may recall that the USS Liberty was a WW II-era, Victory-class cargo ship converted to serve as a signals intelligence collector or “spy ship”. On the early afternoon of June 8, 1967 – three days after Israel initiated war with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria – a combined aerial and naval assault on the Liberty by Israeli forces killed 34 Americans and wounded more than 170 others. As James M. Scott notes in Naval History: “A State Department report later determined that [Israeli] recon planes buzzed the Liberty as many as eight times over a nine-hour period [before the attack].” The combined Israeli air and naval strikes lasted over an hour. At the time of the attack, about 2 PM local time, Liberty was properly marked as to her identity and nationality while underway in calm, clear weather in international waters of the eastern Mediterranean.
The HAC Report is of significant public interest because, according to the late Rep. Robert L. F. Sikes, who was an Appropriations Committee member, it contains testimony from a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) witness that on June 7, 1967 – before the Liberty arrived at its designated area of operations – the Israeli government threatened to attack the ship. (Stephen Green, Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel (Morrow & Co., 1984) p. 239, see also pp. 215, 226).
Green also reports: “The information provided by Representative Sikes has been corroborated by other committee sources who do not wish to be identified.” (Green, p. 275, note 48). These claims were also partially corroborated by a survivor of the attack, LCDR James M. Ennes, Jr., US Navy (ret.) who writes: “To verify Green’s report even further, we had a long interview with a former CIA analyst who confirms the essential details.” (Ennes, Assault on the Liberty (Reintree Press, 2013) p. 308).
The NY Times on the “MAGA” Split Over Israel & USS Liberty
On February 8, 2026, The New York Times published, in its online edition, “MAGA’s Split Over Israel Extends to a Ship Attacked 58 Years Ago” by Ken Bensinger. It’s great that the Times is belatedly covering the Liberty controversy but there are important shortcomings in the article.
Not least of all is that the article’s main subject is not the controversy over the attack itself but the controversy about the controversy. That is to say, the most pressing unresolved matters are whether the Israelis attacked the ship with foreknowledge that it was an American vessel and whether the US government failed to properly investigate the attack and, if not, why not? These questions are barely acknowledged, certainly they are not validated, in the new Times article.
On the contrary, the piece begins with “The Israeli military killed 34 people on the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967. Whether it was an accident, as many historians believe, has become a litmus test within President Trump’s movement.” Mr. Bensinger doesn’t cite a source for his “many historians” claim but, more to the point, no informed person, historian or not, honestly believes the attack “was an accident”. The attack was a combined air-sea assault that lasted about an hour – it was deliberate. The dispute is whether this intentional attack was the result of mistaken identity, a distinction Bensinger seemed to later affirm in a comment online.
Bensinger also writes: “While many Americans have never heard of the Liberty, it has become a topic of obsession …” One doubts whether Bensinger and his editors would characterize many other issues that persistently command the attention of many of their subscriber as topics of “obsession”.
The “obsession” framing seems to signal Times readers to be dismissive of the underlying issue even as they relish the split within “MAGA”. Similarly, when President Trump, albeit far less subtly, characterizes the Jeffrey Epstein scandal as a “Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics …” it is obvious that he is trying to re-frame the scandal as partisan and without merit and, further, that he is demeaning those who take an interest in the “Hoax” as the dupes of “Lunatics”.
Also, not addressed in the Times article is why the incident, as Bensinger admits, is largely unknown. Later in the article Bensinger also says: “The topic stayed out of the mainstream until the recent Israel-Hamas conflict” as if the “topic” was actively hiding itself only to opportunistically pop up recently. Could it be that the mainstream US media, as a rule, has done a very poor job at covering the attack and the lingering questions about it and, thereby, ceded the field to others for decades?
Since 1967, I am aware of only two important exceptions to this rule when it comes to major US daily newspapers. The first, in 2003, was Ken Ringle’s “The Attack On Liberty,” published in the Washington Post. The second was a 2007 investigative report by John Crewdson, who won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting while working for the Times. His 2007 article was titled “New revelations in attack on American spy ship” and was published by the Chicago Tribune. As far as I can tell, Crewdson’s piece was never picked by any other major media outlet.
Well before the existence of “MAGA,” Ringle and Crewdson both reported on the unanswered questions and new information that had become public since the attack. (Curiously, Ringle’s article was relegated to the “Lifestyle” section while Bensinger’s is in the “Business” section.)
In words that are still apt today, Ringle wondered: “Will we ever learn everything surrounding the attack on the Liberty?” Ringle’s answer: “Probably not without intense pressure on the government from the public and the media, both of which have been fitful at best in their concern with the 205 U.S. casualties at the hands of a U.S. ally 35 years ago.” Sadly, twenty-three years later the much needed “intense pressure” is not yet in evidence but the recent Times article and the “split” it references may be seen as a hopeful sign.
Concerning those who deny the Israeli claim of mistaken identity, Bensinger writes:
[They] point to the day’s clear weather, distinctive markings on the ship’s hull and the U.S. flag it flew. They also point to statements by Dean Rusk, the secretary of state at the time, that the attack was ‘outrageous’ and no accident, as well as by other military officials who cast doubt on the official account and suggested there was a cover-up…
As I wrote in “Deadly USS Liberty Attack Records Remain Secret – For Now,” on June 28, 1967, the Defense Department issued a public media release that included a summary of the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the attack. On the summary’s first page it is stated that:
It was not the responsibility of the Court to rule on the culpability of the attackers and no evidence was heard from the attacking nation… The Court heard witnesses testify… to significant surveillance of the LIBERTY…
Inasmuch as this was not an international investigation, no evidence was presented on whether any of these [Israeli] aircraft had identified LIBERTY or whether they had passed any information on LIBERTY to their own higher headquarters.
The fact that the Navy had not investigated “the culpability of the attackers and no evidence was heard from the attacking nation” should have been above-the-fold, headline news on the front page of every newspaper in the country. After all, we’re talking about an unprovoked attack by a foreign power in international waters that killed thirty-four American military personnel and wounded scores more.
Nevertheless, the Navy’s inadequate investigation was not front page news. For example, the Times page 1 article on June 29, 1967, by Neil Sheehan was titled “ORDER DIDN’T GET TO U.S.S. LIBERTY”. It should have said: NAVY FAILS TO INVESTIGATE REASON FOR ISRAELI ATTACK ON U.S.S. LIBERTY.
Sheehan’s coverage focused on the failed delivery of a message ordering the Liberty to “move farther away from the Sinai coast before Israeli forces attacked her …” Buried, wholly unremarked upon, on page 15 is the following statement: “The [US Navy] court of inquiry took no evidence from Israeli witnesses and gave no explanation of why the Israeli launched the attack.” Then, the article simply turns to an Israeli investigation, the findings of which had not been released at the time.
On the same day as the DoD’s media release Rusk read the media release text quoted above to members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations meeting in secret session (the transcript of the secret session was not made public until 2007). In response to a question by Senator Hickenlooper about whether Israeli pilots had identified the Liberty as an American vessel Rusk replied: “You see, we do not have in front of our own Naval Court of Inquiry Israeli personnel or officers or anything of that sort so the Court of Inquiry under those circumstances could not, I suppose, properly make a finding on that point.” Astonishingly, this admission of investigative inadequacy elicited no outrage or questions from the senators in attendance.
In fact, Secretary Rusk’s Department already had pertinent information about the Israeli identification of the ship as American. In my 2024 article, I go into detail about that intelligence and how the Court of Inquiry also completely neglected it. The failure of the Navy to investigate Israeli culpability in the attack and the failure of Secretary Rusk and the Court of Inquiry to acknowledge the existence of evidence of Israeli foreknowledge both suggest the existence of a cover-up in which the US media tacitly or actively colluded.
If you think that the US government eventually conducted a proper investigation of Israeli culpability then I challenge you to identify that investigation. As of 2005, it was the position of the US Navy’s highest legal authority, the Office of the Judge Advocate General, that “The Court of Inquiry was the only United States Government investigation into the attack.”
Notwithstanding the lack of a proper investigation, the USS Liberty FOIA lawsuit has resulted in the identification of hundreds of pages of relevant records that, decades later, have never been fully declassified. In addition to the HAC Report in the NSA’s control, the CIA holds at least 256 pages of records partially or fully redacted or unacknowledged. These are records that CIA itself has identified as relevant to the attack on the Liberty.
It also seems telling that the first and last sources Bensinger directly quotes both frame the controversy as evidence of antisemitism. At the outset Richard Stern, formerly of the Heritage Foundation, is quoted as saying: “But every single time I’ve heard it [the USS Liberty] brought up, it’s because people are looking for something to blame on the Jews.”
Stern’s predispositions in the matter may be discerned from his comments in a Jewish News Syndicate article last December. According to Stern, anxiety over the economy and their personal finances has left “conservatives susceptible to the world’s oldest hatred.” Stern further lamented:
Americans who are disenchanted with their economic situation are also increasingly isolationist. “They view the U.S. military-industrial base with suspicion,” he said, seeing it as encouraging American involvement in foreign conflicts. Military aid to Israel has become wrapped up in this idea. “These circles see U.S aid as yet more spending on America’s military industrial complex,” he said.
At the end of the article Bensinger quotes Daniel Flesch. According to a Jewish Insider article published last December: “Flesch led the drafting of Heritage’s Project Esther report, a plan released in 2024… He also served as Heritage’s point person for the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism…”
According to Times reporting from last May, the Project Esther policy paper was a “proposal to rapidly dismantle the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States, along with its support at schools and universities, at progressive organizations and in Congress.” Flesch put the matter rather more starkly in an X post responding to the May Times article: “Project Esther endeavors to crush those who support US-designated terrorist organizations, antisemitism and the destruction of American society and Western civilization…”
In the February Times article Flesch says that the Liberty is being weaponized in a “larger anticonservative agenda.” Bensinger does not interrogate on what basis Flesch sees the failure to tow the mistaken identity line as “anticonservative”. However, in the very next sentence Bensinger promptly brings the subject back to antisemitism writing that “Heritage itself has been in turmoil in recent months after its president defended a friendly interview that Mr. [Tucker] Carlson conducted with Nick Fuentes, a prominent antisemite who has pushed narratives about the Liberty for years.”
With this framing in place Flesch gets the last word: “The Liberty is being weaponized by people who seek to use the issue for other ends.” As it turns out, Flesch knows a thing or two about weapons. You see Flesch is also a former Israeli paratrooper and “senior advisor to Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations”. These are facts Bensinger does not disclose to his readers.
Thus, you have an Israeli veteran, without evidence, maligning those who question or criticize the Israeli military’s reason for attacking the Liberty. The Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists says: “The public is entitled to as much information as possible to judge the reliability and motivations of sources.” At a minimum, in an article about an Israeli military action, Bensinger should have informed his readers that Flesch is an Israeli military veteran.
Returning to Trump’s “hoax” quip above, shared commonalities between the Liberty controversy and the Epstein scandal are the marginalization of the victims, the evident impunity of most (in the case of the Liberty, all) of the perpetrators, and the salience of connections to Israel. In both cases justice and accountability for the victims would require openness and transparency about the perpetrators and the decades-long cover-ups that have protected them. Given this, it is unsurprising that popular interest in the Israeli connections to the Epstein scandal was also recently denounced in the Jerusalem Post as, you guessed it, an “obsession”.
In a piece last fall titled “The Jeffrey Epstein obsession“, we are told, that the problem is that “Epstein discussions inevitably spiral into ‘questions’ about Mossad connections, global control, and ‘greater agendas.'” Bizarrely, we are also told, “The truly insidious aspect of this phenomenon is how rarely anyone explicitly mentions Epstein’s Judaism.” In reality, the mainstream US media has generally avoided discussion of Epstein’s Jewishness and his significant ties to Israel and the American Zionist enterprise, except to occasionally dismiss or diminish them (see e.g. critiques here and here and here).
For instance, last November, the Times published an opinion column by David Brooks wherein he asked, “So what has America’s political class decided to obsess about over the last several months?” Brooks’ answer: “Jeffrey Epstein.” According to Brooks, “the most important reason the Epstein story tops our national agenda is that the QAnon mentality has taken over America.” He also expressed disappointment that “Ro Khanna, a House Democrat… use[d] the phrase ‘the Epstein class’ in his public statements.” (Rep. Khanna was the sponsor of the “Epstein Files Transparency Act.”)
As it happens, Brooks himself is part of the “Epstein class“, a fact neither he nor the Times saw fit to disclose when his piece was published. His Epstein ties go beyond merely attending the same exclusive dinner meeting as Epstein. A recently released email indicates Brooks was also on a first name basis with John Brockman, the president of the Edge Foundation, which “cloaked eugenics, race science and sexual misconduct in Ivy League respectability.” Edge was bankrolled by Epstein and also hosted the aforesaid dinner. The email shows Brockman soliciting a plane ride from Epstein so Brooks can attend a weekend “EDGE Master Class” in July 2011. Brockman tells Epstein that Brooks is “EDGE’s biggest fan and booster.”
Brooks is also a Zionist stalwart who, among other things, agitated for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. In his obsession piece, Brooks’ only reference to Epstein’s foreign ties is an aside: “To Candace Owens, Epstein was not just a rancid man; he was a scheming Jew working on behalf of Israel to control assets via blackmail.”
No doubt some people who hate Jews qua Jews want to leverage the Liberty and the Epstein scandals for nefarious purposes; however, refusing to investigate, deflection, and name-calling can only further those purposes. Moreover, the broad-brush message to anyone who seeks to understand why both of these scandals have lingered unresolved for decades seems to be right out of The Wizard of Oz: “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain“.
And if you do pay attention then, it is asserted, you are probably, if not certainly, an antisemite. It couldn’t possibly be that the Israel über alles crowd is cynically using false claims of antisemitism to try to shut down interest in and discussion of matters deleterious to their cause, could it? As Shulamit Aloni, a former Palmach fighter and Israeli Knesset member, said twenty-four years ago: “Well, it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country [the US] people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic.”
Michelle J. Kinnucan was one of the “four core carvers” of the John T. Williams memorial totem pole. She is also an independent researcher whose writing has appeared in Common Dreams, Critical Moment, Palestine Chronicle, Arab American News, and elsewhere. Her 2003 investigative report on the Global Intelligence Working Group was featured in Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories (Seven Stories Pr., 2004) and she contributed a chapter to Finding the Force of the Star Wars Franchise (Peter Lang, 2006). You may contact her at libertylawsuit@secure.mailbox.org.
