# Ray McGovern says Lyndon Johnson recalled rescue jets during the USS Liberty attack to avoid embarrassing Israel

The former CIA analyst argues that the 1967 attack was not a tragic mistake, but the moment Israel learned Washington would cover for it.

From [Danny Jones Podcast](https://listenerreader.com/shows/danny-jones)  
By ListenerReader Culture Desk, published 2026-10-25  
Canonical: https://listenerreader.com/story/ray-mcgovern-says-lyndon-johnson-recalled-rescue-jets-during-the-uss

Ray McGovern said on The Danny Jones Podcast that President Lyndon Johnson ordered U.S. rescue jets recalled during the 1967 attack on the [USS Liberty](https://listenerreader.com/topics/uss-liberty) because Johnson did not want to embarrass Israel. McGovern's claim is that the attack was not an accident, and that Washington helped bury it.

That is not a small accusation. That is the kind of sentence that walks into the room carrying a file folder, a grudge, and a Marlboro it swears it quit in 1983. McGovern, a former CIA analyst, is not telling the official version of the USS Liberty story, the one in which Israeli forces mistook an American intelligence ship for an Egyptian vessel during the [Six-Day War](https://listenerreader.com/topics/six-day-war). He is telling the survivor version, the intelligence-community dissident version, the version that says everyone knew exactly whose flag was flying.

> But this is an American ship. It's an American It's got big American flag. Follow your orders. Follow your orders.
>
> Ray McGovern, on the episode ([2:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw4PFDQ7hhc&t=122s))

McGovern describes the Liberty as a state-of-the-art U.S. Navy and NSA intelligence collection ship, sitting in international waters off Sinai in June 1967 with Hebrew, Russian, and Arabic translators aboard. In his telling, Israeli aircraft identified it in the morning, returned later, strafed it, dropped napalm, shot out communications equipment, and were followed by torpedo boats. One torpedo hit near the Marine detachment. The final toll was 34 dead and more than 170 wounded.

The official Israeli position has long been that the attack was a tragic case of mistaken identity. Israel apologized and paid compensation. U.S. inquiries at the time did not conclude that Israel intentionally attacked an American ship. That is the boring sentence the archive wants you to read first.

McGovern's answer is that the archive is exactly the problem.

## The Johnson claim is the explosive part

The claim that makes this more than another dark corner of Cold War history is McGovern's account of U.S. aircraft being launched to defend the Liberty, then ordered back. He says the order first came from Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and that the admiral in charge pushed back by asking to speak to McNamara's superior. That superior was LBJ.

> LBJ is right there. I'll tell you you I don't want to embarrass our ally, Israel. You pull those You pull those those bombers back.
>
> Ray McGovern, on the episode ([7:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw4PFDQ7hhc&t=458s))

This is the podcast's big swing, and McGovern knows it. If true, it turns the Liberty from a battlefield blunder into a brutal lesson in hierarchy: dead sailors below, alliance management above. It would mean the most powerful man in the world looked at an American ship under attack and chose diplomatic embarrassment as the greater emergency.

But the verdict has to be stricter than the vibe. McGovern's case is specific and sourced to survivor testimony and alleged intercepts, but it is not the same as a newly released smoking-gun document. He says the admiral's account came out because a sailor had been sworn to secrecy until the admiral died. That is dramatic. It is also the kind of chain of custody that historians fight over in hotel conference rooms with bad coffee.

> Now, we have this directly from that admiral who swore uh one of the sailors to secrecy until he died, that the admiral died. He finally died, and we have that we have that verbatim.
>
> Ray McGovern, on the episode ([7:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw4PFDQ7hhc&t=472s))

## McGovern's motive theory points to the Golan Heights

Danny Jones asks the correct blunt question: why would Israel do this? McGovern gives two possible motives. The first, and the one he says he leans toward, is that Israel planned to move on the Golan Heights the next day and did not want an American intelligence ship intercepting the communications. The second is that the Liberty may have picked up evidence related to Egyptian prisoners allegedly killed near the shore.

> I lean toward the one about the Golan Heights. Uh they did go up the next day. Uh I think that the Israelis didn't want us to know about that unless we intervene and say don't do that.
>
> Ray McGovern, on the episode ([21:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw4PFDQ7hhc&t=1262s))

That theory fits McGovern's larger argument about [Israel](https://listenerreader.com/topics/israel) and U.S. policy. He says the Liberty was the point at which Israel learned it could, in his phrase, get away with murder. He even criticizes John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's famous work on the Israel lobby for, in his view, missing the Liberty as the key proof point.

Here is where McGovern is persuasive as a witness to a political psychology and less airtight as a prosecutor. The Liberty attack absolutely remains one of the ugliest unresolved arguments in U.S.-Israel history. Survivors have long rejected the official explanation. The damage, death toll, and sequence of attacks make the mistaken-identity story feel thin to many critics. McGovern is right that the case deserves more public memory than it gets.

Still, his strongest claim depends on contested testimony and interpretation, not a clean public record that closes the file. The episode's power is not that it settles the USS Liberty. It doesn't. Its power is that McGovern says the quiet part as a declarative sentence, then builds a whole history of occupation, U.S. deference, and Middle East blowback on top of it.

If McGovern is right, the USS Liberty is not a footnote to 1967. It is the receipt.

## Source episode

'Don't Embarrass Israel' USS Liberty Incident Reeks of a Coverup | Ray McGovern

- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw4PFDQ7hhc