Editing USS Liberty incident (section)

===Events leading to the attack===
During the [[Six-Day War]] between [[Israel]] and several [[Arabs|Arab]] nations, the United States maintained a [[neutral country]] status.<ref name=NSAhistory1>{{harvnb|Gerhard|Millington|1981|p=1}}</ref> Several days before the war began, USS ''Liberty'' was ordered to proceed to the eastern [[Mediterranean Sea|Mediterranean]] area to perform a signals intelligence collection mission in international waters near the north coast of Sinai, Egypt.<ref name=NSAhistory5>{{harvnb|Gerhard|Millington|1981|p=5}}</ref> After the war erupted, due to concerns about its safety as it approached its patrol area, several messages were sent to ''Liberty'' to increase its allowable closest point of approach (CPA) to Egypt's and Israel's coasts from {{convert|12.5|and|6.5|nmi|mi km}}, respectively, to {{convert|20|and|15|nmi|mi km}}, and then later to {{convert|100|nmi|mi km}} for both countries,<ref name=NSAhistory21>{{harvnb|Gerhard|Millington|1981|p=21}}</ref> thereby reducing proximity.  However, due to ineffective message handling and routing, these messages were not received until after the attack.<ref name="NSAhistory21"/>

According to Israeli sources, at the start of the war on 5 June, General [[Yitzhak Rabin]], [[Israeli Air Force]] (IAF) [[Chief of the General Staff (Israel)|chief of staff]] informed [[Commander (United States)|Commander]] [[Ernest Carl Castle]], the American naval attaché in [[Tel Aviv]], that Israel would defend its coast with every means at its disposal, including sinking unidentified ships. He asked the U.S. to keep its ships away from Israel's shore or at least inform Israel of their exact positions.{{sfn|IDF History Report|1982|page=22}}{{efn |The failure of the Israeli navy's attacks on Egyptian and Syrian ports early in the war did little to assuage Israel's fears. The U.S. had previously rejected Israel's request for a formal naval liaison. On 31 May, [[Avraham Harman]], Israel's ambassador to Washington, had warned Under Secretary of State [[Eugene V. Rostow]] that if war breaks out, "we would have no telephone number to call, no code for plane recognition, and no way to get in touch with the [[United States Sixth Fleet|U.S. Sixth Fleet]]".{{sfn|Oren|2000}}}}

American sources said that no inquiry about ships in the area was made until after the attack on ''Liberty''. In a message sent from U.S. Secretary of State [[Dean Rusk]] to U.S. Ambassador [[Walworth Barbour]] in Tel Aviv, Israel, Rusk asked for "urgent confirmation" of Israel's statement. Barbour responded: "No request for info on U.S. ships operating off Sinai was made until after ''Liberty'' incident." Further, Barbour stated: "Had Israelis made such an inquiry it would have been forwarded immediately to the chief of naval operations and other high naval commands and repeated to dept [Department of State]."<ref name="JamesScottBookp197">{{harvnb|Scott|2009|p=197}}</ref>

With the outbreak of war, Captain [[William McGonagle|William L. McGonagle]] of ''Liberty'' immediately asked [[Vice admiral (United States)|Vice Admiral]] William I. Martin at the [[United States Sixth Fleet]] headquarters to send a destroyer to accompany ''Liberty'' and serve as its armed escort and as an auxiliary communications center. The following day, Admiral Martin replied: "''Liberty'' is a clearly marked United States ship in international waters, not a participant in the conflict and not a reasonable subject for attack by any nation. Request denied."<ref>{{harvnb|Ennes|1987|pages=38–39}}</ref> He promised, however, that in the unlikely event of an inadvertent attack, jet fighters from the Sixth Fleet would be overhead in ten minutes.<!-- 5 Jan 2012: no reference to a primary source (e.g., copy of messages or official report) seems to exist that supports statements in this paragraph. Thus, these secondary source claims cannot be verified. -->

Meanwhile, at the United Nations on 6 June, U.S. Ambassador [[Arthur Goldberg]] told the [[United Nations Security Council]] that vessels of the Sixth Fleet were several hundred miles from the conflict, in response to Egyptian complaints that the United States was supporting Israel in the conflict.<ref name=NSAhistory21/> When this statement was made, it was in fact true; ''Liberty'', now assigned to the Sixth Fleet, was in the central Mediterranean Sea, passing between Libya and Crete.<ref name=NSAhistory20>{{harvnb|Gerhard|Millington|1981|p=20}}</ref> It would ultimately steam to about {{convert|13|nmi|mi km|abbr=on}} north of the Sinai Peninsula.<ref name=NSAhistory25>{{harvnb|Gerhard|Millington|1981|p=25}}</ref>

On the night of 7 June Washington time, early morning on 8 June, 01:10 [[Coordinated Universal Time#Time zones|Zulu]] or 03:10 local time, the Pentagon issued an order to Sixth Fleet headquarters to tell ''Liberty'' to come no closer than {{convert|100|nmi|mi km}} to Israel, Syria, or the Sinai coast (Oren, p.&nbsp;263).<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.nsa.gov/liberty/51668/3084841.pdf |title=Chronology of Events |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070628075318/http://www.nsa.gov/liberty/51668/3084841.pdf |archive-date=28 June 2007 |url-status=dead |access-date=17 June 2007}}</ref>{{rp|5, 58 (Exhibit N)}} According to the Naval Court of Inquiry<ref name=USNCOIreport>[http://www.thelibertyincident.com/docs/CourtOfInquiry.pdf U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061219235857/http://www.thelibertyincident.com/docs/CourtOfInquiry.pdf |date=19 December 2006 }} Court of Inquiry for USS ''Liberty'' attack, Record of Proceedings, 18 June 1967</ref>{{rp|23 ff, 111 ff}} and the National Security Agency official history,<ref name=NSAhistory2123>{{harvnb|NSA History Report|pp=21–23}}</ref> the order to withdraw was not sent on the radio frequency that ''Liberty'' monitored for her orders until 15:25 Zulu, several hours after the attack, due to a long series of administrative and message routing problems. The Navy said a large volume of unrelated high-precedence traffic, including intelligence intercepts related to the conflict, were being handled at the time; and that this combined with a shortage of qualified [[Radioman|radiomen]] contributed to the delayed transmission of the withdrawal message.<ref name=USNCOIreport/>{{rp|111 ff}}