PUEBLO's cover was blown long before she arrived off shore it's quite obvious. Sending a ship with classified material into hostile waters without so much as an E.D. capability raises questions in my mind what were they thinking.
Two possibilities come to my mind with LIBERTY. One has been stated there was something going on Israel did not want leaked or transmitted even by accident. Remember they were in the middle of a war with several nations. The second possibility is they thought the U.S. was going to alert Syria or another nation to their movements. I think if it had been anyone else in the White House but LBJ then LIBERTY likely would have never happened even with it that close. I don't think Israel trusted LBJ.
Third possibility as well is Israel intercepted and misread a shore based communication from a covert operation and assumed PUEBLO was involved. The LIBERTY crew would not have picked up on it and would have been clueless.
Should read: Third possibility as well is Israel intercepted and misread a shore based communication from a covert operation and assumed LIBERTY was involved. The LIBERTY crew would not have picked up on it and would have been clueless.
I wish I had a better memory of it but very recently, and I think here, I read an excellent recap of the seven day war in regards to the USSR and specifically what they told LBJ and the pressure LBJ put on Israel to stand down.
While I can understand the fog of war and probabilities are that was the case if I were Israel I wouldn't have trusted LBJ and could have easily thought we were going to turn on them.
Hopefully someone can correct any memory failures or point to the original article as I found it fascinating.