STAY AFLOAT: From that Day to Today

The Truth They Tried to Bury. One Man Refused to Let It Sink. On June 8, 1967, Phillip Tourney was a twenty-year-old sailor aboard the USS Liberty — a United States Navy intelligence ship operating in international waters off the coast of the Sinai Peninsula. What happened next would alter the course of his life for the next six decades. Israeli fighter jets and torpedo boats attacked the Liberty for nearly two hours. 34 Americans were killed. At least 171 were wounded. Rescue aircraft launched from the USS Saratoga were recalled — twice — on orders from Washington. The surviving crew was left alone in the Mediterranean, bleeding and burning, while their own government decided what story the world would hear. The story they chose: It was a case of mistaken identity.

Phil Tourney has spent nearly sixty years refusing to accept that answer.

STAY AFLOAT is the memoir of a man who survived one of the most controversial and deliberately buried events in American military history — and then spent a lifetime fighting to make sure his thirty-four fallen brothers would not be forgotten.

In October 2024, Phil wrote a letter to Candace Owens. She listened. Their conversation was watched by more than ten million people worldwide — and for the first time in nearly six decades, most Americans learned that the USS Liberty had ever been attacked at all.

"I've never heard of this."
"How did I not know about this?"
"Why weren't we ever taught this?"

That reaction — shock, not outrage — told Phil everything. The American people had never been given the chance to decide what they believed. This book gives them that chance.

"The Liberty went down in every way but one. And I've been trying to stay afloat ever since."
— Phil Tourney, USS Liberty Survivor, U.S. Navy Veteran

If you believe the American people deserve the truth — all of it — this book belongs on your shelf.