He gained notability due to his service in the Navy as a Legal Specialist, where, as chief counsel to the Naval Board of Inquiry investigating the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS "Liberty" that killed 34 crewmen and injured 172, he personally concluded that the attack was most likely deliberate. He stated the court was ordered by superiors to ascribe the attack to an accident, rather than to deliberate hostility, and that the original findings he signed were later modified by government attorneys.