| Author | Message | | Guest | | Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2002 6:56 pm Post subject: ISRAELI SHILL CRISTOL CONFRONTED AT BOOKSIGNING! |
| From: nord@famvid.com (Robert E. Nordlander)
Newsgroups:
Subject: ISRAELI SHILL CRISTOL CONFRONTED AT BOOKSIGNING! [USS LIBERTY]
Subject: Report on Cristol book signing
[This sent to crew members and supporters of Liberty./JEG]
From: Richard L. Block To: John Gidusko and all Interested Parties
Subject: Report, A.J. Cristol book signing.
There were about 150 to 200 people crammed into the Coral Gables Book
Store. Of those I counted four who were representing our side. A
retired Naval Captain, a remarkable woman by the name of McPhee from
SW Dade County, Chuck Smith, a Liberty Survivor and myself.
he rest were there to buy his book and pat him on his back. He was
introduced by the Mayor of Coral Gables, evidently his personal
friend. The greater part of his talk was about his trips to Israel
and all the important people he met there. I took my video camera
there and filmed most of the event, except when the bookstore owner
and two others escorted Chuck Smith out of the bookstore.
To be fair Chuck heard a lot of lies and I know he was thinking about
his friends buried and forgotten by America. The video is not the
best, because I was standing in a crowd, but the audio is acceptable.
I will send one to you to use as you see fit.
My presentation was clear and to the point. The only adverse comment
I got was from some hysterical woman who kept shouting that I was a
Communist. I stayed until the lines formed for the book signing.
I have a positive feeling that something was accomplished even in that
biased audience. You have to be the judge when you see the tape, but
I ask you to watch Cristao's face after he was faced down. Aside from
the woman calling me a communist, not one participant could look me in
the eye and nobody approached me afterwards. At the very least, I
think we planted the seed of doubt in the minds of those who attended.
The owner of the bookstore approached me and offered his help if I
ever wanted to write a book- I told him I might just do that!
God Bless You All
Richard L. Block
Miami Springs, Fl 33166
_________________________________________________________________ _
(?< I'll tell you the truth about the USS LIBERTY, visit _)W)
http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/ >/^^ You do cryptograms?
http://gidusko.tripod.com
_________________________________________________________________ | |  | | Guest | | Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2002 11:18 pm Post subject: |
| | Where's the beef? | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Jul 21, 2002 8:58 am Post subject: Cristol's USS LIBERTY Anti-American Dung Dissected |
| Subj: Cristol's USS LIBERTY Anti-American Dung Dissected
Date: 7/21/02 12:40:38 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: nord@famvid.com (Robert E. Nordlander)
Newsgroups:
alt.politics.democrats.d,alt.politics,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.usa.republicans
Subject: Cristol's USS LIBERTY Anti-American Dung Dissected
THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
JUNE 1999 PAGE 62
BOOKS
THE LIBERTY INCIDENT
By A. Jay Cristol University of Miami, 1997
Reviewed by John E. Borne, author of THE USS LIBERTY: DISSENTING
HISTORY VS. OFFICIAL HISTORY
[Introduction by Richard H. Curtiss, Editor, WRMEA]
ANOTHER ASSAULT ON ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY
Wahington Report editor's note:
The dispute over the June 8, 1967 attack by Israeli aircraft and
torpedo boats on the USS LIBERTY, a "ferret" electronic
intelligence-gathering ship operated for the U.S. National Security
Agency by the U.S. Navy, in which 34 Americans were killed and 171
injured, burst into the open with publication of ASSAULT ON THE
LIBERTY by James Ennes. The author was one of the survivors who were
dispersed by the Navy under the threat of discharge from the Navy and
imprisonment if they ever discussed their experience. Ennes, a ship's
officer who witnessed the attack from the LIBERTY's deck, waited until
he had retired from the Navy before daring to publish his carefully
researched account, which subsequently has been supported by fellow
survivors. Later, the ATLANTIC MONTHLY, which follows an
Israeli-government line, published an article obviously designed to
refute facts in books by Ennes and other authors on the subject.
John E. Borne then published a book based upon his Ph.D. Thesis,
refuting the ATLANTIC MONTHLY article and also including additional
facts that had emerged after more people, including U.S. diplomats,
retired, and broke their silence. A. Jay Cristol then published his
own doctoral thesis and sought, despite the new facts to the contrary,
to re-establish the Israeli claim that the attack was accidental. For
its June 1999 issue, on the 32nd anniversary of the assault on the
LIBERTY, the WASHINGTON REPORT asked Dr. Borne to review Dr. Cristol's
book The review is printed below
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE LIBERTY INCIDENT by A. Jay Cristol, University of Miami, 1997.
This is a dissertation at the University of Miami by A. Jay Cristol, a
Rear Admiral in Naval Reserve and a federal judge. It is, he states,
the result of ten years work and hundreds of interviews.
In this work, Cristol intends to show that : (1) the attack on the
LIBERTY was accidental; (2) the attack was brief and little more than
a strafing; (3) those who claim that the attack was deliberate are
"driven by economic, political or emotional motives" (in particular by
antisemitism); (4) these opposing theories are not supported by ANY
evidence (my emphasis).
Above all, Cristol does not want the reader to know that this whole
topic is subject to debate, with two sides to many of the points
discussed.
He begins his argument by stating that there have been 13 reports on
the LIBERTY issue, l0 American and 3 Israeli. All 13, he claims,
conclude that the attack was accidental, and together they make a
"consensus" on this subject.
In contrast to this official consensus, he describes a varied
collection of books, articles and speeches which claim that the attack
was deliberate. He does not discuss the arguments of these works, but
instead examines the motives of the authors. He portrays most of them
as "in the Arab camp".
Cristol is obsessed with the ArabIsraeli conflict and all discussion
of THE LIBERTY is subordinate to this. Some time ago James Ennes was
negotiating with the editor of Naval Reserve Association Magazine to
write an article on THE LIBERTY. As a member of the board Cristol
tried to block the printing of Ennes' article. He did not dispute
Ennes's facts or logic, but instead said that printing the article
would "open up a new front in the ArabIsraeli conflict".
In dealing with documents related to the LIBERTY matter, the reader
must be wary and skeptical. In many cases the conclusion of a report
will contradict evidence in the report. In other cases, the report was
later criticized as dishonest or slanted. In all cases the reader
should be made aware of these internal contradictions and these
criticisms. Cristol does not do this. Instead, he rearranges the data
or reinterprets the substance of the investigation or report. An
example of this is Cristol's portrayal of a meeting of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee in July 1967. McNamara was testifying and
there was a dispute between him and Senator Hickenlooper (R., Iowa).
If an observer reads the committee transcript, if is clear that the
Senators all believed that the attack on the ship was deliberate, and
did not believe McNamara's statements to the contrary. During this
exchange, McNamara simply lied to the Senators, telling them that the
Naval Court had concluded that the attack was accidental. (The court
specifically avoided any statement about Israel's motives). The
Senators did not realize that McNamara had lied to them.
Incredibly, Cristol rearranges this debate to make it seem that the
Committee believed that the attack was accidental. He quotes A
STATEMENT BY MCNAMARA, "the attack was not intentional", AS IF IT WERE
A REPORT FROM THIS COMMITTEE and so lists it in his group of reports.
(The committee issued no report). Cristol speaks of the "friendly
questions" from the Senators, when in fact all questions were
skeptical or hostile. The debate ends with Hickenlooper complaining
angrily that it is apparently not possible to get at the truth.
A second example concerns the National Security Agency report of 1981.
It is true, as Cristol claims, that the conclusion of the report
states that the Israelis mistook THE LIBERTY for the Egyptian ship EL
QUESIR. However, internal evidence in the report is at odds with this
conclusion. The NSA men discuss Israeli motives for the attack, and
make it clear that they consider the attack deliberate. In addition,
the NSA leader wrote "nice whitewash" across the cover of the
Preliminary Inquiry, an Israeli report which is part of Cristol's
"consensus". Cristol never informs his readers of these caveats.
Many of the other reports deal with communications problems, and
discuss the LIBERTY affair only incidentally. None of the reports deal
with the accident/deliberate issue as such. Only the Naval Court and
the NSA report included interviews with the crewmen. Also, Cristol
does not discuss the Salans Report, by the legal adviser to the State
Department, who points out the inconsistencies of the Israeli reports.
The Salans Report would have marred the smooth picture of "consensus "
which Cristol tries to present.
Cristol speaks of the hundreds of interviews which he conducted. Only
six of these were with the crewmen, and these were brief. He did not
attempt to interview such key figures as the radio operator and the
signal man.
To make his case, Cristol presents a view of the attack which differs
from that of the crewmen in many important respects. In this portrayal
he describes only the Israeli view, and the reader has no way to know
that he is hearing only one side of a debate.
(1) Cristol says that the Israeli planes circled the ship before the
attack, looking for a flag. Crewmen say the planes came in shooting
with no circling.
(2) Richard Sturman, radio operator, says that the ship's radio was
jammed by the Israelis. Cristol does not mention this.
(3) Cristol claims that the attack ended at about 1440. The crewmen
all say that the attack by the M[otor]T[orpdeo]B[oats] continued for
40 minutes more.
(4) A dozen men testify that they put life rafts into the water to
abandon ship, and these rafts were sunk by the MTBs. Crystal does not
mention this.
(5) Many crewmen say that there were armed men in the Israeli
helicopters which hovered near the ship after the attack. Crewmen
believed that these men were there to "finish them off." Cristol makes
no mention of this.
(6) Cristol claims that the flag was drooping, and could not be seen
by the Israeli pilots in any event. Crewmen say that the flag stood
out in the wind. In particular, we have the testimony of Joe Meadors,
the signal man. He states that during a short lull in the attack of
the MTBs he was on the bridge and saw one of the MTBs moving slowly
alongside the ship, fifty feet away. Israeli seamen were on deck,
observing the bridge, and just beyond the bridge was the ship's flag,
flying in the wind.
Such testimony given under oath would create a serious problem for the
Israelis. Cristol deals with this simply by not interviewing Meadors.
Cristol ends his work with a hope for "closure". There can never be
such closure until ALL testimony and documents are considered and
discussed. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2002 7:16 am Post subject: >The Cristol booksigning party can now be heard by clicki |
| At 09:28 PM 7/22/02 -0700, you wrote:
>The Cristol booksigning party can now be heard by clicking
>http://www.ussliberty.org/audio/xtol7-17.ram
>This requires Real Audio or a compatible player. The file is 6.1MB and
>runs for 53 minutes, but should "stream" if you have Real Player, which
>means it will start running immediately and does not have to be fully
>downloaded before it can be heard. | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2002 9:40 pm Post subject: A book-signing |
| | Who cares. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2002 8:16 pm Post subject: israel gets away with murder |
| Subj: Israel gets away with murder
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 3:53:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: BGJDAVID@aol.com
The following is a letter submitted to the Atlanta Journal/Constitution.
Israel gets away with murder
It seems that the Israelis can get away with all kinds of crimes by simply labeling them as a mistake. They've been doing it for more than 35 years, and they've been getting away with it for the same period of time.
The latest crime came just a few days ago when the Israelis, flying an American made F-16 fighter jet, dropped a 1-ton "smart bomb" in the middle of a heavely populated area in Gaza City killing a leading Hamas militant but
also killing 14 other innocent Palestinian civilians including 9 children, most of them under the age of 5. In addition to the dead, an estimated 150 Palestinians were seriously wounded.
In 1967 the Isralis deliberately attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and injuring another 171. The Israelis claimed the attack was a mistake even though the ship was flying a clearly visible and brand new American flag and even though Israeli reconnaissance planes had been tracking
the Liberty for five and one half hours prior to the attack.
In 1996 the Israelis intentionally targeted a UN Refugee camp in Qana, Lebanon killing 103 innocent men, women, and children. The Israelis claimed that Hezbollah was using the camp as cover.
In all three incidents the Israelis have tried to blame faulty intelligence as their excuse. It would take a complete fool to believe these lies, but our politicians believed it -- the same politicians who voted today to award Israel an additional $200 million of U.S. taxpayer money. Is it any wonder
why the Israelis continue to lie? Is it any wonder why Israel gets away with murder? Is it any wonder why we were attacked on September 11th.
James J. David
James J. David is a retired brigadier general who served in the Middle East
in 1967-1969.
Subj: American Taxpayers Raped on Behalf of Israel!
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 11:29:01 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: "Robert E. Nordlander" <nord@famvid.com>
To: *************
From: nord@famvid.com (Robert E. Nordlander)
Newsgroups:
alt.rush-limbaugh,alt.news-media,alt.journalism,alt.politics.liberalism,alt.radio.talk
Subject: American Taxpayers Raped on Behalf of Israel!
NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.16.69.48
Message-ID: <d551417f.0207250801.5c611eaf@posting.google.com>
Forwarded:
US Taxpayers pay out 10 million dollars a day to Israel for the rogue state to use our American-provided F-16's to murder Palestinian women and babies.. Such contributes to the Arab/Moslem world's hatred of us which in turn contributes to our domestic terrorism problem like the World Trade Center attack.. For the best interest of the USA, it is time to cut the vast financial aid to Israel as soon as possible like Columbia Jewish professor (Bruce Robbins and his group) called for in the full page ad in the New York Times that his group ran recently. As usual, like the treacherous Israelis did when they intentionally and savagely attacked the USS Liberty (murdering 34 American sailors and wounding 171 more in the process), the Israelis call their recent American-provided F-16 murderous attack a "mistake" as well:
RDT MORRIS
Discussion:
The cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers
Richard H. Curtiss
For many years the American media said that "Israel receives $1.8 billion in military aid" or that "Israel receives $1.2 billion in economic aid." Both statements were true, but since they were never combined to give us the complete total of annual U.S. aid to Israel, they also were lies: true lies.
Recently Americans have begun to read and hear that "Israel receives $3 billion in annual U.S. foreign aid." That's true. But it's still a lie. The problem is that in the 1997 fiscal year alone, Israel received from a variety of other U.S. federal budgets at least $525.8 million above and beyond its $3 billion from the foreign aid budget,
and yet another $2 billion in federal loan guarantees.
So the complete total of U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel for the 1997 fiscal year was $5.526 billion.
One can truthfully blame the mainstream media for never digging out these figures for themselves, because none ever has. They were compiled by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
But the mainstream media certainly are not alone. Although Congress authorizes America's foreign aid total, the fact that more than a third of it goes to a country smaller in both area and population than Hong Kong probably never has been mentioned on the floor of the Senate or House. Yet it's been going on for more than a generation.
Probably the only members of Congress who even suspect the full total of U.S. funds received by Israel each year are the privileged few committee members who actually mark it up.
And almost all members of the concerned committees are Jewish, or have taken huge campaign donations orchestrated by Israel's Washington D.C. lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or both. These congressional committee members are paid to act, not talk. So
they do and they don't.
The same applies to the president, the secretary of state, and the foreign aid administrator. They all submit a budget that includes aid for Israel, which Congress approves, or increases, but never cuts.
But no one in the executive branch mentions that of the few remaining U.S. aid recipients worldwide, all the rest are developing nations which either make their military bases available to the U.S., are key members of international alliances in which the U.S. participates, orhave suffered some crippling blow of nature to their abilities to feed
their peoples such as earthquakes, floods or droughts.
Israel, whose troubles arise solely from its unwillingness to give back land it seized in the 1967 war in return for peace with its neighbors, does not fit those criteria. In fact, Israel's 1995 per capita gross domestic product was $15,800. That put it below Britain at $19,500 and Italy at $18,700 and just above Ireland at $15,400 and Spain at $14,300. All four of those European countries have contributed a very large share of immigrants to the U.S., yet none has
organized an ethnic group to lobby for U.S. foreign aid. Instead, all four send funds and volunteers to do economic development and emergency relief work in other less fortunate parts of the world.
The lobby that Israel and its supporters have built in the United States to make all this aid happen, and to ban discussion of it from the national dialogue, goes far beyond AIPAC, with its $15 million budget, its 150 employees, and its five or six registered lobbyists who manage to visit every member of Congress individually once or twice a year. AIPAC, in turn, can draw upon the resources of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an
umbrella group set up solely to coordinate the efforts of some 52 national Jewish organizations on behalf of Israel.
Among them are Hadassah, the Zionist women's organization, which organizes a steady stream of American Jewish visitors to Israel; the American Jewish Congress, which mobilizes support for Israel among members of the traditionally leftofcenter Jewish mainstream; and the American Jewish Committee, which plays the same role within the growing middle of the road and rightofcenter Jewish community.
The American Jewish Committee also publishes Commentary, one of the Israeli lobby's principal national publications.
Perhaps the most controversial of these groups is B'nai B'rith's AntiDefamation League (ADL). Its original highly commendable purpose was to protect the civil rights of American Jews. Over the past generation, however, the ADL has regressed into a conspiratorial and, with a $45 million budget, extremely well funded hate group. In the 1980s, during the tenure of chairman Seymour Reich, who went on to
become chairman of the Conference of Presidents, ADL was found to have circulated two annual fundraising letters warning Jewish parents against allegedly negative influences on their children arising from the increasing Arab presence on American university campuses. More recently, FBI raids on ADL's Los Angeles and San Francisco offices revealed that an ADL operative had purchased files stolen from the San Francisco police department that a court had ordered destroyed because they violated the civil rights of the individuals on whom they had been compiled.
ADL, it was shown, had added the illegally prepared and illegally obtained material to its own secret files, compiled by planting informants among ArabAmerican, AfricanAmerican, anti-Apartheid and peace and justice groups.
The ADL infiltrators took notes of the names and remarks of speakers and members of audiences at programs organized by such groups. ADL agents even recorded the license plates of persons attending such programs and then suborned corrupt motor vehicles department employees or renegade police officers to identify the owners.
Although one of the principal offenders fled the United States to escape prosecution, no significant penalties were assessed.
Not surprisingly, a defecting employee revealed in an article hepublished in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs that AIPAC, too, has such 'enemies' files.
They are compiled for use by proIsrael journalists like Steven Emerson and other socalled 'terrorism experts,' and also by professional, academic or journalistic rivals of the persons described for use in blacklisting, defaming, or denouncing them.
In the 1970s, when Congress put a cap on the amount its members could earn from speakers' fees and book royalties over and above their salaries, it halted AIPAC's most effective ways of paying off members for voting according to AIPAC recommendations.
Members of AIPAC's national board of directors solved the problem by
returning to their home states and creating political action
committees (PACs).
Most special interests have PACs, as do many major corporations, labor unions, trade associations and publicinterest groups. But the proIsraeli groups went wild. To date some 126 proIsraeli PACs have been registered, and no fewer than 50 have been active in every national election over the past generation.
An individual voter can give up to $2,000 to a candidate in an
election cycle, and a PAC can give a candidate up to $10,000.
However, a single special interest with 50 PACs can give a candidate who is facing a tough opponent, and who has voted according to its recommendations, up to half a million dollars. That's enough to buy all the television time needed to get elected in most parts of the country. All but a handful of the 535 members of the Senate and House
vote as AIPAC instructs when it comes to aid to Israel, or other aspects of U.S. Middle East policy.
There is something else very special about AIPAC's network of
political action committees. Nearly all have deceptive names. Who
could possibly know that the Delaware Valley Good Government
Association in Philadelphia, San Franciscans for Good Government in California, Cactus PAC in Arizona, Beaver PAC in Wisconsin, and even Icepac in New York are really proIsraeli PACs under deep cover?
This is the first of a twopart series. Read part two next week.
Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
JTA 24 Jul 02
OTHER BREAKING NEWS:
* The U.S. House of Representatives approved an additional $200
million in aid to Israel on Tuesday night as part of an anti-terrorism supplemental spending bill.
http://www.ussliberty.com
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/index.php
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uk-and-europe/2002/07/23/child-killers.php
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0
Israeli tanks and bulldozers have rolled into Gaza City, flattening three
buildings and leaving two Palestinians seriously injured.
They destroyed a police post and two metal workshops, in what was the second
operation to be carried out in the Gaza Strip in three days.
Israel has been roundly condemned by Western and Arab nations alike for an
air strike on Gaza City on Monday night which killed 15 people, including
nine children.
In the latest operation, tanks and a bulldozer pushed their way into the
city and flattened a small Palestinian military intelligence position as
well as a metal workshop, before blowing up another workshop in a blast
across the city.
For the full story please visit
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2152595.stm
the bbc and independent newspaper are the two that i rely on the most for the full story in the palestinian v. israel conflict:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=317538
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=316883
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=276379
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=309115
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=307992
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=298681
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=54872
http://www.independent.co.uk/search.jsp?keywords=hobeika&submit=Go
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=313235
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=285777
Click on the link found by accessing the following Web site to listen to Robert Fisk's excellent interview about how Israel is continuing to build Jewish colonies on Arab (Palestinian) land with its settlements in the West Bank and Gaza strip (such is the heart of today's Palestinian v. Israeli conflict):
http://www.kcrw.org/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?show_code=tp&air_date=1/25/02&tmplt_type=show
More of Robert Fisk can be heard (his speech from the University of Southern California) via computer by accessing the link found at thefollowing URL and scrolling down after arriving:
http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20020522.html
http://www.flashpoints.net
http://www.middleeast.org/info/bulletin2.html
http://www.bushwatch.net/bushwater.htm | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2002 6:18 am Post subject: From a USS LIBERTY survivor of the Israeli massacre... |
| From a USS LIBERTY survivor of the Israeli massacre of his comrades:
http://www.ussliberty.com
http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/
"A. Jay Cristol, the most outspoken critic of the Liberty story, is
traveling the country hawking his new book
(http://www.thelibertyincident.com), repeating half-truths, evasions and
outright distortions about the Liberty, accepting everything the Israelis
say as gospel while denouncing everything survivors say as untrue, and at the same time we have a Captain Ward Boston, a member of the Navy Court of Inquiry and the senior legal advisor to the President of the Court saying publicly that the Navy Court of Inquiry was a sham and a fraud and that even he who signed it and the admiral who presided over it disbelieved their own published conclusions. That's powerful stuff, and it is largely being ignored in the newsgroups and in the press. And to further support it, we have a former CIA Director and a former Judge Advocate General of the Navy in the same story declaring the attack deliberate. Why is this not getting more attention?"
The Navy Times article is below
---------------------------------------
From the June 26 2002 issue of Navy Times:
------------------------------------------
CONFLICTING COMMENTS REKINDLE LIBERTY DISPUTE
KEY INVESTIGATORS EXPRESS BELIEF THAT ISRAEL
DELIBERATELY ATTACKED U.S. SHIP
By Bryant Jordan
Times staff writer
Thirty-five years after Israeli air and naval
forces attacked a lightly armed U.S. Navy spy ship
during the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, the CIA
director at the time and the legal counsel to the
Navy's court of inquiry say the attack was
deliberate.
"It was no accident," former CIA director Richard
Helms said May 29, bucking that agency's June 13,
1967, report that indicated the incident could
have been a mistake.
Retired Navy legal counsel Capt. Ward Boston says
he and the court's president, the late Rear Adm.
Isaac "Ike" Kidd, always believed Israeli forces
knowingly attacked the Liberty.
"I feel the Israelis knew what they were doing.
They knew they were shooting at a U.S. Navy ship,"
said Boston, who lives in Coronado, Calif. "That's
the bottom line. I don't care how they tried to
get out of it."
The attack killed 34 men and wounded 172 others,
and sparked a long-running controversy: Did Israel
knowingly try to sink the American ship or did it
believe the ship was an Egyptian vessel?
Officially, the Navy exonerated Israel on June 18,
1967 - 10 days after the attack - when the Navy
court of inquiry found that available evidence
indicated the attack was a case of mistaken
identity.
THE COURT OF INQUIRY
Boston said Kidd told him he believed the attack
was deliberate and that the Israelis knew the ship
was American.
That flies in the face of the findings of Kidd's
court, and also what the author of a new book on
the Liberty says Kidd told him in interviews in
the early 1990s.
A. Jay Cristol, a federal judge in Florida and
retired Navy aviator who also served in the
service's Judge Advocate General's Corps, is the
author of the upcoming "The Liberty Incident."
"Kidd told me an entirely different story," said
Cristol, whose new book is dedicated to Kidd, who
died in 1999.
Cristol said that during one interview with Kidd
in December 1990, Kidd related that when he
brought the court's report to then-Chief of Naval
Operations Adm. David Lamar McDonald, the CNO
asked him, "Ike, was it intentional?"
"Ike said, 'No, Admiral,'" Cristol recalled.
But Boston remembers that when Kidd returned from
Washington, he said officials were not interested
in hearing the truth.
"In military life, you accept the fact that if
you're told to shut up, you shut up. We did what
we were told," Boston said.
He explained that he is willing to talk now
because "everyone else is shooting their mouth
off."
Boston said he does not know whether his beliefs
were shared by the other members of the court,
Capts. Bert M. Atkinson Jr. and Bernard J. Lauff.
Lauff could not be located for comment. Atkinson
died in 1999.
But Boston's statements do put him now in the camp
of retired Adm. Merlin Staring, who as a captain
and staff legal officer in London was initially
told to review the court's report.
Staring said June 3 that the report was taken from
him before he finished his review, but based on
what he had seen, the evidence did not support the
contention that the attack was an accident.
Staring concedes he still has not read the entire
report.
Staring, who went on to become the Navy's top JAG
officer, is now part of a newly formed Liberty
Alliance, which includes former CNO and Joint
Chiefs of Staff chairman Thomas Moorer and two
Marine Medal of Honor recipients, Gen. Ray Davis
and Col. Mitchell Paige.
The group wants a full congressional investigation
into the attack and is lobbying military
organizations, including the Veterans of Foreign
Wars and the American Legion, hoping to garner
support among their members, said Tito Howard, the
group's executive director.
SURVIVORS ALLEGE CONSPIRACY
Many Liberty survivors and their supporters long
have maintained that the attack was deliberate and
that the Kidd report excluded testimony from crew
members that would have shown that.
Boston recalled that testimony was taken from crew
members who said the Israelis fired on life rafts
when they were put into the water.
The court's report includes testimony indicating
the shooting of the life rafts was incidental,
occurring when the ship was strafed by Israeli
jets.
Some allege Israel wanted the spy ship sunk to
ensure it did not pick up communications showing
Israel was planning to seize the Golan Heights
from Syria. Others say it was to prevent Liberty
from intercepting communications dealing with an
alleged Israeli massacre of Egyptian POWs in the
Sinai.
Some Liberty survivors and supporters claim the
U.S. government covered up the incident to avoid a
conflict with Israel that could have cost the
Johnson administration support among Jewish voters
and supporters. Subsequent administrations and
Congresses have avoided a thorough airing of the
incident for the same reasons, they say.
But Cristol says there have been 10 U.S.
investigations, ranging from the court of inquiry
and the CIA's report to several conducted by House
and Senate committees.
Five drew no conclusions regarding Israel,
according to a list compiled by Cristol, while
others accepted that it was an accident.
The most recent official look at the incident was
in 1991, when the House Armed Services
subcommittee on investigations found no evidence
to support the Liberty survivors' claim that
Israel attacked the ship deliberately.
REPORTS AND RECOLLECTIONS
The CIA's report, the earliest of those assembled,
held open the possibility that the attack was a
case of mistaken identity - the finding that the
Kidd court went on to make five days later -
though it did not present that as a conclusion.
In the June 13, 1967, report, the CIA stated that
"an overzealous pilot" could have mistaken the
Liberty for an Egyptian ship, the El Quesir.
Helms, the former CIA director, declined to
discuss the incident at length.
"I've done all I can. I don't want to spend the
rest of my life in court" testifying about the
incident, he said.
Mike Weeks, a naval aviation writer and amateur
historian who studied the official Navy
communications that occurred during and after the
attack and believes it was an accident, said there
is more information on the Liberty still
classified and believes the government should
release all of it.
"Just put it out there and see how it flows," he
said. "The bottom line, all this stuff ought to be
let loose, for heaven's sake."
------------------
Bryant Jordan is a staff writer for Marine Corps Times.
_______________
Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2002 4:34 am Post subject: cristol's backers in publishing and phd committee pro-israel
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
after reviewing the following it seems that cristol's publishing backers and PhD committee along with cristol himself have a jewish pro-israel conflict of interest which most likely would prohibit any objective and neutral analysis of the intentional and brutal israeli attack on the uss liberty
Cristol's Backers in Publishing and PhD Committee
Date:
Fri, 5 Jul 2002 2:56:00 PM Eastern Standard Time
From:
"Erik D. Erikson" <info@metavisual.com>
Cristol's Backers in Publishing:
http://www.miami.edu/miller-center/pages/publications.html
Publishing
The Miller Center was a co-publisher of a book by
Kenneth Treister titled Chapel of Light. The subject of
this book, with its accompanying photos and drawings,
is the conception, design and construction of the
Gumenick Chapel at Temple Israel of Miami. The book
had a foreword by Dr. Haim Shaked and was edited
by Ian Jennings and Maxine Schwartz.
Dr. A. Jay Cristol, Former Chief Federal Bankruptcy
Judge of the Southern District of Florida, who received
his doctorate in 1997 from the Graduate School of
International Studies (GSIS) at UM, has published a
book called The Liberty Incident (Brassey's, June,
2002), based on his doctoral dissertation on The Case of
the U.S.S. Liberty.
http://www.miami.edu/miller-center/pages/outreach.html | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2002 6:30 am Post subject: |
| Subj: Submitted to Amazon.com
Date: 7/26/02 7:27:16 PM Pacific Daylight Time
.
If you ever wonder how much influence Cristol has and how difficult it will
be refuting his baloney, consider this:
All of the unfavorable reviews that have been sent to Amazon.com have been refused or removed. Now the only reviews allowed to stand are several glowing appraisals, including two from members of his faculty review board and one from Mike Weeks (a known pro-israel truth distorter with regard to the intentional and brutal israeli uss liberty attack), all giving him seven stars of glowing praise.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps the rejected people should use this:
If you'd like to know when your review will be posted--In general, reviews
are posted on our site within five days, but occasionally it takes longer.
If your review has not appeared online and you'd like to know why, send an e-mail to community-help@amazon.com. Be sure to include the ASIN and the title of the item you've reviewed. Please remember our reviews are, and always have been, meant for discussion of the content and context of the item. Comments that are not specific to the item's content may not be posted on our site
THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
JUNE 1999 PAGE 62
BOOKS
THE LIBERTY INCIDENT
By A. Jay Cristol University of Miami, 1997
Reviewed by John E. Borne, author of THE USS LIBERTY: DISSENTING HISTORY VS. OFFICIAL HISTORY
[Introduction by Richard H. Curtiss, Editor, WRMEA]
ANOTHER ASSAULT ON ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY
Wahington Report editor's note:
The dispute over the June 8, 1967 attack by Israeli aircraft and torpedo
boats on the USS LIBERTY, a "ferret" electronic intelligence-gathering ship
operated for the U.S. National Security Agency by the U.S. Navy, in which
34 Americans were killed and 171 injured, burst into the open with
publication of ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY by James Ennes. The author was one of the survivors who were dispersed by the Navy under the threat of discharge from the Navy and imprisonment if they ever discussed their experience.
Ennes, a ship's officer who witnessed the attack from the LIBERTY's deck,
waited until he had retired from the Navy before daring to publish his
carefully researched account, which subsequently has been supported by
fellow survivors. Later, the ATLANTIC MONTHLY, which follows an
Israeli-government line, published an article obviously designed to refute
facts in books by Ennes and other authors on the subject.
John E. Borne then published a book based upon his Ph.D. Thesis, refuting
the ATLANTIC MONTHLY article and also including additional facts that had
emerged after more people, including U.S. diplomats, retired, and broke
their silence. A. Jay Cristol then published his own doctoral thesis and
sought, sespite the new facts to the contrary, to re-establish the Israeli
claim that the attack was accidental. For its June 1999 issue, on the 32nd
anniversary of the assault on the LIBERTY, the WASHINGTON REPORT asked Dr. Borne to review Dr. Cristol's book The review is printed below
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE LIBERTY INCIDENT by A. Jay Cristol, University of Miami, 1997.
This is a dissertation at the University of Miami by A. Jay Cristol, a Rear
Admiral in Naval Reserve and a federal judge. It is, he states, the result
of ten years work and hundreds of interviews.
In this work, Cristol intends to show that : (1) the attack on the LIBERTY
was accidental; (2) the attack was brief and little more than a strafing;
(3) those who claim that the attack was deliberate are "driven by economic, political or emotional motives" (in particular by antisemitism); (4) these opposing theories are not supported by ANY evidence (my emphasis).
Above all, Cristol does not want the reader to know that this whole topic
is subject to debate, with two sides to many of the points discussed.
He begins his argument by stating that there have been 13 reports on the
LIBERTY issue, l0 American and 3 Israeli. All 13, he claims, conclude that
the attack was accidental, and together they make a "consensus" on this
subject.
In contrast to this official consensus, he describes a varied collection of
books, articles and speeches which claim that the attack was deliberate. He does not discuss the arguments of these works, but instead examines the motives of the authors. He portrays most of them as "in the Arab camp".
Cristol is obsessed with the ArabIsraeli conflict and all discussion of THE
LIBERTY is subordinate to this. Some time ago James Ennes was negotiating with the editor of Naval Reserve Association Magazine to write an article on THE LIBERTY. As a member of the board Cristol tried to block the printing of Ennes' article. He did not dispute Ennes's facts or logic, but instead said that printing the article would "open up a new front in the Arab-Israeli conflict".
In dealing with documents related to the LIBERTY matter, the reader must be wary and skeptical. In many cases the conclusion of a report will
contradict evidence in the report. In other cases, the report was later
criticized as dishonest or slanted. In all cases the reader should be made
aware of these internal contradictions and these criticisms. Cristol does
not do this. Instead, he rearranges the data or reinterprets the substance
of the investigation or report. An example of this is Cristol's portrayal
of a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July 1967.
McNamara was testifying and there was a dispute between him and Senator Hickenlooper (R., Iowa).
If an observer reads the committee transcript, if is clear that the
Senators all believed that the attack on the ship was deliberate, and did
not believe McNamara's statements to the contrary. During this exchange,
McNamara simply lied to the Senators, telling them that the Naval Court had concluded that the attack was accidental. (The court specifically avoided any statement about Israel's motives). The Senators did not realize that McNamara had lied to them.
Incredibly, Cristol rearranges this debate to make it seem that the
Committee believed that the attack was accidental. He quotes A STATEMENT BY MCNAMARA, "the attack was not intentional", AS IF IT WERE A REPORT FROM THIS COMMITTEE and so lists it in his group of reports. (The committee issued no report). Cristol speaks of the "friendly questions" from the Senators, when in fact all questions were skeptical or hostile. The debate ends with Hickenlooper complaining angrily that it is apparently not possible to get at the truth.
A second example concerns the National Security Agency report of 1981. It is true, as Cristol claims, that the conclusion of the report states that
the Israelis mistook THE LIBERTY for the Egyptian ship EL QUESIR. However, internal evidence in the report is at odds with this conclusion. The NSA men discuss Israeli motives for the attack, and make it clear that they consider the attack deliberate. In addition, the NSA leader wrote "nice whitewash" across the cover of the Preliminary Inquiry, an Israeli report which is part of Cristol's "consensus". Cristol never informs his readers of these caveats.
Many of the other reports deal with communications problems, and discuss the LIBERTY affair only incidentally. None of the reports deal with the accident/deliberate issue as such. Only the Naval Court and the NSA report included interviews with the crewmen. Also, Cristol does not discuss the Salans Report, by the legal adviser to the State Department, who points out the inconsistencies of the Israeli reports. The Salans Report would have marred the smooth picture of "consensus " which Cristol tries to present.
Cristol speaks of the hundreds of interviews which he conducted. Only six
of these were with the crewmen, and these were brief. He did not attempt to interview such key figures as the radio operator and the signal man.
To make his case, Cristol presents a view of the attack which differs from
that of the crewmen in many important respects. In this portrayal he
describes only the Israeli view, and the reader has no way to know that he is hearing only one side of a debate.
(1) Cristol says that the Israeli planes circled the ship before the
attack, looking for a flag. Crewmen say the planes came in shooting with no circling.
(2) Richard Sturman, radio operator, says that the ship's radio was jammed by the Israelis. Cristol does not mention this.
(3) Cristol claims that the attack ended at about 1440. The crewmen all say that the attack by the MTBs continued for 40 minutes more.
(4) A dozen men testify that they put life rafts into the water to >abandon
ship, and these rafts were sunk by the MTBs. Crystal does not mention this.
(5) Many crewmen say that there were armed men in the Israeli helicopters which hovered near the ship after the attack. Crewmen believed that these men were there to "finish them off." Cristol makes no mention of this.
(6) Cristol claims that the flag was drooping, and could not be seen by the
Israeli pilots in any event. Crewmen say that the flag stood out in the
wind. In particular, we have the testimony of Joe Meadors, the signal man. He states that during a short lull in the attack of the MTBs he was on the bridge and saw one of the MTBs moving slowly alongside the ship, fifty feet away. Israeli seamen were on deck, observing the bridge, and just beyond the bridge was the ship's flag, flying in the wind.
Such testimony given under oath would create a serious problem for the
Israelis. Cristol deals with this simply by not interviewing Meadors.
Cristol ends his work with a hope for "closure". There can never be such
closure until ALL testimony and documents are considered and discussed.
------------------------------------------------------
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