the theet na vietnam war. in all 10,000 troops would die that year. the americans were trapped. couldn't leave, and they couldn't win. in the middle east, too, war looked inevitable. there was growing tension between israel and its arab neighbors. armies were mobilizing. israel said they would not attack first, put they jammed the radar so the americans couldn't attack their jets taking off to launch a surprise assault on egypt. meanwhile, the u.s.s. liberty was sailing across the mediterranean into the war zone. >> liberty was a state-of-the-art intelligence gathering vessel of the time. and what we did was we were a listening ship. my name is lloyd painter. i was a research officer. we could send -- we could receive any signal that was out there. low band, high band, anything, intercepting it, recording it, and we had immediate translation what was going on. we would bounce signals off the moon back to nsa. >> we were spies. i'm jim cavanaugh. i was an officer aboard the u.s.s. liberty and we were spies, intercepting messages from police, anything and everything we could get t