By Peter Enav
Jerusalem - Newly declassified transcripts back up the Israeli claim that its military attacked a US spy ship during the 1967 Middle East war by mistake, a Florida judge who been investigating the case for 16 years said on Wednesday.
Israel has always maintained that it thought the USS Liberty was an Egyptian military supply ship when it ordered its forces to attack it on June 8, 1967, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 171.
But critics charge Israel knew the ship was American. Questions about the case have long dogged US-Israel relations.
Miami Judge A Jay Cristol received transcripts of transmissions from two Israeli helicopter pilots, sent to check for survivors after the attack. The pilots referred to the ship as Egyptian and were surprised to discover that it was flying an American flag.
The recordings, in Hebrew, were made by a US spy plane hovering over the site.
Cristol said that he received the transcripts after submitting a Freedom of Information request to the US National Security Agency, which has been holding the recordings secret for 37 years. After his request was denied, Cristol filed suit in federal court and forced their release.
NSA spokesperson Patrick Weadon confirmed that the agency had sent Cristol the transcripts.
"We provided the tapes as part of the historical record," Weadon said. "The agency takes no official position on what happened to the Liberty."
Cristol, who has written a book about the case, said, "The tapes should put an end to 98 percent of the Liberty controversy. They show that both the helicopter pilots and their controller at the Hatzor air force base believed that the Israeli air force had targeted an Egyptian ship."
In the NSA summary of incident, which fills in some blanks from the recordings themselves, apparently using other sources, there is direct reference to Israeli confusion over the identity of the stricken ship more than an hour after the attack.
"At 12h30 GMT two Israeli helicopters, 810 and 815, were dispatched to the area of the incident to check for survivors of an unidentified warship," the summary reads.
The transcript of the transmissions then records the air controller telling one of the pilots, "The ship is now identified as Egyptian, you can return home now."
The summary continues: "At 13h12 GMT, the Israeli helicopter 815 apparently informed Hatzor on a different frequency that it had sighted an American flag on the ship."
The transcript records the air controller telling the pilot, "We request that you make another pass and check once more if this is really an American flag."
Cristol provided the NSA summary and the full transcripts of the pilot and tower recordings to the AP.
Israel has long maintained that the attack on the Liberty was the result of a tragic mistake during the heat of battle. Israel was at war with Egypt, Syria and Jordan at the time.
An Israeli commission of inquiry concluded that the Israeli air force believed that the targeted ship was an Egyptian cargo vessel ferrying supplies to Egyptian troops fighting Israeli forces.
However, some of the Liberty's survivors and some officials in the US defence establishment have rejected this view, contending that Israel deliberately targeted the ship to keep the United States from learning that Israel was planning to attack Syria as part of its strategy during the war.
Body Of Secrets, a 2001 book by best-selling author James Bamford, claimed that Israel struck the Liberty because it suspected the ship had monitored evidence of Israeli army atrocities against Palestinian prisoners. Israel has denied the charges.
The Israeli daily Haaretz, which first reported the disclosures in its Wednesday edition, quoted Cristol as saying that the tape transcripts were the last classified intelligence about the Liberty. - Sapa-AP