There are three items in this update. The first two are about the FOIA lawsuit and the third item is, primarily, a 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.
The NY Times on the “MAGA” Split Over Israel & USS Liberty
This update is an abbreviated version of my new article on Antiwar.com. In that longer piece, I provide a detailed critique of a recent New York Times article by Ken Bensinger titled “MAGA’s Split Over Israel Extends to a Ship Attacked 58 Years Ago.” Bensinger’s article strikes me as a spin piece published only because the burgeoning controversy on the Right has gotten too large for the mainstream media to completely ignore. For precisely this reason, the Times piece ignores the roots of the controversy and, instead, frames the matter as a “topic of obsession” and antisemitism in order to try to steer readers away from the substantive questions that have, purposefully, never been answered. As I show in the piece, the Times has taken a very similar approach–and for similar reasons–in their obfuscatory coverage of the Epstein scandal. I also reveal evidence from FBI files that former Times columnist David Brooks was more deeply embedded in the “Epstein class” than has previously been reported. Finally, the Times and Mr. Bensinger also violated basic journalistic ethics by failing to disclose to readers that one of their sources is a former Israeli paratrooper. Here, again is the URL for the new article: <https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2026/02/17/updates-uss-liberty-foia-lawsuit-ny-times-article/>.
Background
(source citations available on request)
The USS Liberty (AGTR-5), a WW II-era, Victory-class cargo ship converted to serve as a signals intelligence collector or “spy ship”, was commissioned in 1964 at the naval shipyard in Bremerton, WA. On June 8, 1967, 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. As a result of the heroic response of its officers and crew to the onslaught, the Liberty is “the most highly decorated ship … for a single action” in US Navy history. At the time of the attack, her home port was the naval base in Norfolk, VA.
Following the 1967 attack, the US Navy undertook a hasty and incomplete Naval Court of Inquiry (NCOI) that found: “Available evidence combines to indicate the attack on LIBERTY on 8 June was in fact a case of mistaken identity.” However, the June 28, 1967, Defense Department public summary of proceedings of the NCOI stated: “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”. According to the US Navy, “The Court of Inquiry was the only United States Government investigation into the attack.”
At the time of the attack Liberty was properly marked as to her identity and nationality while underway in calm, clear weather in international waters of the eastern Mediterranean. Many of Liberty’s surviving crew dispute the claim of mistaken identity. Over the years they have been joined in that by American officials including Richard Helms (Director of Central Intelligence, 1966-1973), Lieut. Gen. Marshall S. Carter (Director of the NSA, 1965-1969), Captain Ward Boston, Jr., JAGC (legal counsel for the 1967 Navy Court of Inquiry), and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas H. Moorer.
