operations. The Navy detachment typically included three officers; almost all enlisted men were Communications Technicians (a rating that has been renamed Cryptologic Technician). An advantage of the USNS designation is that the ship was not required to return to an American port on a regular basis. Thus the first deployment of Private Jose F. Valdez started in 1961 and she did not return to the USA until 1967. Operation in African waters Since the "Happy Jose" did not regularly return to the US, the crew was rotated by flying them to a major port city in Africa, such as Cape Town. This occurred on an annual basis. The old crew would be flown back to the USA. Private Jose F. Valdez was typically at sea for about 30 days and then spent four or five days in port. Some of the sub-Saharan ports of call, from West to East, were Dakar, Senegal; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Monrovia, Liberia; Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Lagos, Nigeria; Brazzaville, Republic of Congo; Luanda, Angola; Walvis Bay, Southwest Africa (now Namibia); Cape Town, South Africa; Port Elizabeth, South Africa; Durban, South Africa; Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), Mozambique; and Mombasa, Kenya. A brush with fate In May 1967 tensions were rising in the Middle East between Israel and her Arab neighbors; this resulted in the Six-Day War in June 1967. The National Security Agency (NSA) decided to deploy a SIGINT collection ship to the area to monitor the situation. Most of the technical research ships were too far away: and were in Southeast Asia, and were in South America, and was off Cuba. Choice of a ship for the operation narrowed between Private Jose F. Valdez, then headed from the eastern Mediterranean to Gibraltar, and in port at Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The NSA selected Liberty because she had superior cruising speed (18 knots vs. 8 knots for Private Jose F. Valdez), because her VHF/UHF multichannel collection capability was better, and because she was, unlike Private Jose F. Valdez, at the beginning of a deployment. On 23 May 1967 Liberty was diverted for duty in the eastern Mediterranean. Liberty stopped at Rota on 1 June and departed the next day for the eastern Mediterranean. Eastbound Liberty passed westbound Private Jose F. Valdez on the night of June 5/6. June 7 Contact X (Private Jose F. Valdez was Contact A ) removed from Libertys navigation chart. Seven days after arriving