Israel owned up to this. They admitted they messed up. The helicopter pilots thought they were rescuing Egyptians. This is shown in the translation of the intercepted communications (see page 3 and pages 6 of the first transcript here:
http://www.nsa.gov/liberty/recordings.cfm). Israel even paid $13 million, I believe to the US government and the sailors and families because they messed up. It was a war. War is stressful. The Israeli military is filled with people. People are known to make mistakes. More stress means more mistakes. It's sad and unfortunate, but it happens.
Ony three tapes are there, several are missing.The plane guys state there were 5 or 6, and know there were more than the three that turned up.
Two at least, that are missing, was during the times of the actual attack. With the numerous references to the ATC being asked what to do, its an American ship.
Concludes one of the declassified NSA documents: "Every official interview of numerous Liberty crewmen gave consistent evidence that indeed the Liberty was flying an American flag -- and, further, the weather conditions were ideal to ensure its easy observance and identification."
The ground control station stated that the target was American and for the aircraft to confirm it," Forslund recalled. "The aircraft did confirm the identity of the target as American, by the American flag.
"The ground control station ordered the aircraft to attack and sink the target and ensure they left no survivors."
Forslund said he clearly recalled "the obvious frustration of the controller over the inability of the pilots to sink the target quickly and completely."
"He kept insisting the mission had to sink the target, and was frustrated with the pilots' responses that it didn't sink."
Nor, Forslund said, was he the only member of his unit to have read the transcripts. "Everybody saw these," said Forslund, now retired after 26 years in the military.
Forslund's recollections are supported by those of two other Air Force intelligence specialists, working in widely separate locations, who say they also saw the transcripts of the attacking Israeli pilots' communications.
Perhaps the most persuasive suggestion that such transcripts existed comes from the Israelis themselves, in a pair of diplomatic cables sent by the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Avraham Harman, to Foreign Minister Abba Eban in Tel Aviv.
Five days after the Liberty attack, Harman cabled Eban that a source the Israelis code-named "Hamlet" was reporting that the Americans had "clear proof that from a certain stage the pilot discovered the identity of the ship and continued the attack anyway."
Harman repeated the warning three days later, advising Eban, who is now dead, that the White House was "very angry," and that "the reason for this is that the Americans probably have findings showing that our pilots indeed knew that the ship was American."
