admiral merlin starling, the us judge, advocate general of the us navy said, as you know, it's a voluminous document, and one of the things that uh, i initially had difficulty with, and still do, is the fact that the very first statement of fact that the court arrived at and presented was this, available evidence combines to indicate the... attack on liberty on 8 june was in fact a case of mistaken identity. now that is the sort of thing in this record that i found great difficulty. in supporting from the evidence that was included, but the attack was neither a mistake nor attempt to plug the ears of the us. the attack on the liberty was part of secret and complicated operation that the cia and musad had planned in total intelligence silence. communism was spreading exponentially in the middle east and the us and israel had to stop it and also prevent the arabs in the region from becoming more. powerful with the help of the ussr. the soviets were using cables on the bed of the sea to transfer secret intelligence to the egyptians and for the us to know what was going on between the ussr and