On Monday, thanks to the National Security Archive, the National Security Agency released thousands of pages from its enormous, official, classified history of the nation's signal intelligence and communications security operations during the code war. Its author is Dr. Thomas Johnson, the agency's official historian.

In the labyrinthine and opaque history of the United States's relationship with Israel, the deadly 1967 attack by Israeli fighter jets on a United States Navy intelligence ship, the USS Liberty, remains a sore point and is much debated. Despite the sensitivity of the incident -- it involved the most secretive agency in government, a most important American alliance, extremely sensitive technical details, historians and journalists have an enormous reservoir of documents to mine through, and most of the major players have long-since given their first-person interviews.