[freefly]

"They've given me cause to question their veracity in one area. That leads me to question it in others."

No argument from me there. But I have to apply the same standards to the others in this mess....and I tend to give the benefit of doubt to those who have little to gain from a coverup as opposed to those who have a LOT to gain (or avoid) which is the majority of the politicians on all sides. I'd have to say that the reason that we don't know what actually happened is because some people don't want us to know what happened...doubtless for "good" reason...as usual. Too many questions unanswered, too many people in high places who would be "embarrassed", and too many honorable men claiming coverup for this to be passed over and forgotten.

[Poohbah]

What reliable information we have from the Israelis (and not from agenda-driven neo-Nazi cranks who want a Judenrein world) indicates that this was a screwup, prompted by bad data and the usual screwups you can expect in any military establishment bigger than Andorra's.

Unfortunately, we have no reliable information from the primary actor on the American side: the National Security Agency.

What information we do have from the NSA consists of two parts:

1. The Liberty was monitoring the flight operations of Badger bombers based in Cairo to determine if they were flown by Arab or Soviet crews; and
2. That the attack was deliberate.

The problem is that the NSA story about the mission is a lie; the story includes a great little bit of fiction about how we found out that the planes were being flown by Commie Russians just before the attack, as we monitored the radio signals between the airborne Badgers and their Cairo military airfield.

There's only one problem: the aircraft had bugged out for Alexandria on Day One of the war and did not fly at all for the duration of the conflict.

If the one part is a lie, the odds that the second part is a lie increase tremendously.