The simple fact is that they admitted it. They had to after being caught red handed. The evidence did not sink to the bottom of the Mediterranean and there were witnesses. The Israeli government admitted to the June 8, 1967 attack by Israeli Defense Forces on the American "spy" ship USS Liberty. The Liberty was a SIGINT or signals intelligence gathering ship. In that attack, on an American ship in the Eastern Mediterranean, 34 military personnel including a civilian crew-member were killed, and 175 were wounded, with enough damage to the ship to end her useful service life. Among the 34 dead, 33 were naval personnel and one was a civilian employee of the National Security Agency, the NSA. The ship had a crew compliment of 290 officers and men including three civilian linguists.