The Tucson Phantom

The 1967 attack on the United States Navy intelligence ship Liberty off the coast of Israel during the Six Day War has never been fully explained. Even today, in the 50th year of the anniversary of the event, remaining survivors still dispute the official version of events. Author John Van Horn blends historical fact with crime fiction to tell the story of Jack Harvey, a retired detective turned photographer who while on vacation unwittingly discovers that the attack on the Liberty may have been part of a 30-year-old plot involving F4 Phantom fighter jets diverted from the Vietnam War to covertly assist Israel, and carrying cargo unknown to either their pilots or the majority of either government. Jack, his friend and vintage aircraft restorer Wulfe Koch, and Jack's assistant Katherine Delacroix, soon become entangled in a vast cover-up spanning three decades and involving covert government departments using whatever means necessary to ensure that their secret stays buried. Though the speculations and conclusions drawn in the novel are fictional, they touch upon how the majority of the world still views the incidents that occurred during that time period in the Middle East and Vietnam. The Tucson Phantom illustrates how seemingly unrelated events, thousands of miles apart, can be connected and manipulated by powerful, and sometimes bungling, bureaucracies, with unforeseen and disastrous consequences.