The Liberty Incident: Why the "Betrayal" Narrative is a Soviet Ghost Story

The Liberty incident is often compared to the "Lavon Affair" or other "False Flag" theories it’s worth noting that the Liberty is the only maritime incident of its kind that has been investigated ten times by the U.S. and found to be accidental, yet it remains the "favorite" topic for those looking to foster distrust.

The Liberty Incident / Affair is one of the most complex chapters of the 1967 war. 

On 8 June 1967, the USS Liberty, a United States Navy technical research ship (a spy ship), was mistakenly attacked by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats.

The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two marines, and one civilian NSA employee), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship.

Vasili Mitrokhin, the senior KGB archivist who defected to the UK in 1992, was one of the most consequential Russian defectors in history. He was turned away several times by the US before he was eventually accepted by Britain and exfiltrated with his family from Russia by MI6 operatives using a tourist minibus as a disguise..

According to revelations in a 1999 book Mitrokhin, provided a wealth of information that confirmed the Soviet Union's expertise in "Active Measures" (disinformation and subversion) during the Cold War.

Mitrokhin, an introvert who was sent to work in the KGB archives after a failed career as a spy, was motivated by a sense of disgust at the KGB and its role in the Soviet system and made it a condition of his defection that the documents he had copied of top-secret documents on some of the most sensitive Soviet spies and operations should be made public.

Mitrokhin retired from the KGB in 1984, but it was only after the Soviet collapse, in 1992, that he decided to offer up his secret archive to western intelligence services. He travelled, disguised as a dishevelled villager so as not to attract attention from border guards, with a sample of his documents hidden below lengths of sausage in a scruffy bag. 

His disguise was so good that when he arrived as a “walk-in” at the newly opened US embassies in Riga and Vilnius, he was not taken seriously. On one occasion, a cable about him was sent back to CIA headquarters, but was not acted on.

Instead, he tried the British embassy, and a young diplomat in Vilnius offered him a cup of tea and suggested he return later, when MI6 officers could be sent out to assess his credibility. 

When that happened, MI6 realised that the strange walk-in was sitting on a potential goldmine. In a strange twist, the Treasury refused to pay the substantial costs for his exfiltration and resettlement, and so MI6 asked the Americans, who ended up footing the bill for the defector they had originally turned down, in exchange for full access to his material.

Mitrokhin’s archive of copied documents, which were exfiltrated separately, formed the basis for hundreds of counterintelligence investigations across the world during the 1990s. 

His defection was made public in 1999, when a book about his findings was published jointly with the historian Christopher Andrew. Mitrokhin lived under a new identity in Britain, and died in 2004.

In his book Mitrokhin confirmed that the entire Six-Day War was sparked by a deliberate Soviet lie. 

In May 1967, the KGB and Soviet leadership fed false intelligence to Egypt and Syria, claiming Israel was massing 10 to 12 brigades on the Syrian border for an imminent invasion. This was a "masterstroke" of disinformation intended to force Arab mobilization and pull the U.S. into a diplomatic crisis.

They successfully tricked Egypt into the war with false intelligence of troop reports, so it is entirely within their 'Active Measures' playbook to have fed conflicting data to both sides to spark a confrontation between the U.S. and Israel.

Vasili Mitrokhin mentions the USS Liberty, in his book; "The Sword and the Shield" and subsequent research into his archives highlights a broader Soviet strategy of instigation and deception during the 1967 Six-Day War. 

While Mitrokhin's published notes do not contain a single "smoking gun" file stating, "We tricked Israel into hitting the Liberty," they describe a massive KGB apparatus dedicated to creating friction between the U.S. and its allies. 

This  KGB apparatus dedicated to creating friction was called Service "A" which was part of the KGB (Committee for State Security) that was the unit responsible for "Active Measures" (Dezinformatsiya), a key part of Soviet foreign policy focused on influencing foreign governments, media, and public opinion through propaganda, disinformation, political subversion, and supporting foreign movements, all while operating under the First Chief Directorate (foreign intelligence). 

They conducted covert operations, like discrediting Ukrainian nationalists or spreading false narratives to justify invasions, aiming to weaken adversaries and promote Soviet interests. 

Though we may never see the internal KGB files, regading "Service A" which was tasked with "deepening the contradictions" within the Western alliance. We know for a fact that the USSR was the 'Master of Disinformation' from the archives of Vasili Mitrokhin.

Mitrokhin's archives reveal that the Soviets had extensive radio-intercept and jamming capabilities in the region. There has long been an intelligence theory—consistent with the KGB tactics Mitrokhin described—that the Soviets may have jammed or manipulated the frequencies used for identifying the Liberty, or even used "ghost" radio signals to confirm the false reports that an Egyptian vessel was shelling the coast.

The Liberty Incident / Affair 

As for the incident of the USS Liberty itself, here is the context that often gets lost in the media and in the Fog of War: 

• The incident happened in a combat zone during a lightning-fast war when Israeli pilots mistook the ship’s silhouette for the Egyptian vessel El Quseir. 
• Israel apologized immediately, paid millions in reparations to the families and the U.S. government. 
• and ten official U.S. investigations (including the CIA and NSA) concluded it was a tragic mistake, not a deliberate attack.

Figures like Tucker Carlson and other neo Nazi Aryan Nation racists that have "weaponized" the tragic incident into a "conspiracy theory". 

These "Conspiracy Theories omit that at the time, the fact THAT the USS Liberty- WAS a US Spy ship - positioned dangerously close to a war zone without a destroyer escort. 

The "Conspiracy theory" Carlson  and his ilk do mention, is that the Soviets fed false info. 

Mitrokhin's archives reveal that the Soviets had extensive radio-intercept and jamming capabilities in the region. 

There is a strong intelligence theory that the Soviets used "ghost signals" or frequency manipulation to confirm the false reports that an Egyptian vessel was shelling the coast, drawing Israel into the trap aligns with the "Operational Code" found in Mitrokhin's files.

Under "Service A" the Soviets frequently used "third-party" intelligence services to provoke actions they could then use for propaganda.

Immediately after the attack, Soviet propaganda outlets (such as Radio Moscow) flooded the airwaves with the narrative that the attack was a deliberate "joint U.S.-Israeli conspiracy" to create a pretext for the U.S. to enter the war. 

This "double-blind" disinformation is a classic KGB tactic: cause a tragedy, then provide the "explanation" that divides your enemies.

So resurrecting this 57-year-old tragedy now is rarely about the sailors; it’s about trying to isolate Israel from its strongest allies.

The Mitrokhin Archive confirms and is the best proof we have that when a "wedge" appears between allies, the hand of a third-party instigator is often not far away.

From the archives we learn the pattern of 1967 was one of Soviet instigation and Israeli survival—not a calculated attack on an ally.

While the Israeli pilots who hit the ship suffered from a tragic chain of misidentifications (misjudging the ship's speed and mistaking its silhouette for the Egyptian El Quseir), the "fog of war" was made infinitely thicker by Soviet disinformation operations happening in the background.

The resurrection of this incident by media figures like Carlson often ignores this Soviet context, choosing instead to present a complex wartime tragedy as a simple act of betrayal. 

The Mitrokhin Archive is the best proof we have that when a "wedge" appears between allies, the hand of a third-party instigator is often not far away.

History shows that while empires like Rome or the Soviets try to use 'False Narratives' to divide us, the truth usually rests in the broader pattern. The pattern of 1967 was one of Soviet instigation and Israeli survival—not a calculated attack on an ally."

This lecture provides a deeper look into how the Mitrokhin Archive transformed our understanding of the KGB's role in global conflicts like the 1967 war.