| Author | Message | | funglefoot | | Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 4:39 pm Post subject: The Liberty Incident: Analysis and Criticism |
| Published Commentary: The Liberty Incident
Analysis and Criticism
See also: The Liberty Incident's Summary of Position and Critique of the Author.
The Liberty Incident is presented by its author as an objective historical account of the 1967 Israeli attack on USS Liberty. Judged by this standard, the book misses its mark by a mile.
Each of us wants to give others the benefit of the doubt. If we see a small error in a book, we generally assume that it was a mistake, not a deliberate misrepresentation. At some point, however, it becomes clear that some authors do publish deceptive and erroneous material as part of a deliberate attempt to lead the reader to an incorrect understanding. That is the case with The Liberty Incident.
There are so many factual errors, quotes taken out of context, misquotes, and deliberate misrepresentations that it is impossible to conclude that the author is simply careless. Even a casual examination leaves the reader with an understanding that Mr. Cristol is deliberately deceptive. The Liberty Incident is a poorly researched, poorly written advocacy piece and little more. It contradicts itself, misstates evidence and ignores important evidence. It contains enormous logical holes that can only be attributed to an advocate's disregard of objectivity.
The Liberty Incident is a propaganda screed, and a poor one at that.
This web site offers space to authors of books that are reviewed here to post unedited rebuttals to the comments found in these reviews. Any author who wishes to post rebuttal materials need only contact the site administrator and arrangements will be made to post the author's complete, unedited rebuttal.
This web site also considers any reviews or summaries of any book sent to the site administrator. | |  | | funglefoot | | Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 4:55 pm Post subject: |
| Published Commentary: The Liberty Incident
Critique of the Author, A. Jay Cristol
See also: The Liberty Incident's Analysis and Criticism and Summary of Position.
The Liberty Incident is faithful to the "Big Lie Theory" of propaganda: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
Attributed to Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), Minister of Propoganda under Adolf Hitler
charlatan. n.
...A person who makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble claims to skill or knowledge; a quack or fraud...
Background
A. Jay Cristol is a master of the art of lying through misdirection. His book is a perfect example of this talent. Without directly lying, he arranges facts (and omits others) in such a way as to lead a reader to a completely false conclusion. If challenged, he can reply that he didn't really lie, the error of fact only exists in the reader's mind. In addition to the articles in this critique which deal with the application of Cristol's special talent to the telling of the story of the Israeli attack on USS Liberty, it is instructive to see how he has done the same thing to give a false impression as to his own background. Since there is no evidence that he has ever sought to correct these factual mistakes, one can only assume that they were the intended result of his design.
Cristol presently works as a United States Bankruptcy Judge in Miami, Florida. Though he styles himself as "a federal judge," this description is a bit misleading. He works for the federal government and is given the title of judge, but he is not a United States District Judge or Circuit Judge. These positions require Presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. Mr. Cristol, an appointee of circuit judges, has never had his name placed before nor confirmed by the Senate.
Mr. Cristol writes of himself on his web site:
"In November 1951, during the Korean conflict, A. Jay Cristol joined the US Navy as an aviation cadet, earning his Navy Wings of Gold in April 1953. He deployed with VS-37, a Navy anti-submarine squadron aboard the aircraft carrier Princeton (CV-37) to the Western Pacific and the Sea of Japan. He was also part of TG70.4 during February 1955, in support of evacuating Nationalist Chinese from the Tachen Islands near the Communist China mainland in the South China Sea. He flew day and night missions as both a hunter pilot flying the Grumann AF-2W and a killer pilot flying the Grumann AF-2S. He was subsequently attached to the Fleet All Weather Training Unit, Pacific at San Diego, California as an instrument flight instructor and taught maneuvers for the delivery of nuclear weapons. Upon returning to civilian life, Cristol joined the Naval Air Reserve where he qualified as a four-engine Navy transport plane commander. In the 1960s, he flew operational flights during the Cuban Missile Crises and volunteer airlift missions to Vietnam.
After 18 years as a Naval aviator, Cristol joined the Judge Advocate General's Corps. He graduated with distinction from Naval Justice School. He served as a lawyer for another twenty years. His duties included teaching law of war and serving as the administrative officer for the summer Naval Reserve law courses. In 1983, he was made an honorary professor by the Naval Justice School. He has performed special active duty in the office of the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations. In the 1980s, the Department of Defense sent him to the International Institute of Humanitarian Law at San Remo, Italy to lecture on Law of Naval warfare to senior foreign military officers. Captain Cristol retired in 1988. He wears more than a dozen military decorations including the Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal, and the Navy Achievement Medal.
In civilian life, Cristol became a lawyer and practiced civil law. He served as Special Assistant Attorney General of Florida during the 1959, 1961, 1963, and 1965 sessions of the Florida Legislature. In 1985, after 25 years of law practice, he left his position as senior partner in a firm he founded to accept an appointment to the federal bench. He continues to serve as Chief Judge Emeritus in the Southern District of Florida. He is also an adjunct professor, teaching at the University of Miami School of Law.
An interest in international terrorism led him to enroll in the Graduate School of International Studies of the University of Miami where he researched and wrote on terrorism. Because of his background as a navy pilot, a navy lawyer (JAG), a lecturer in law of naval warfare, a civil lawyer, and a federal judge, members of the faculty encouraged him to research and write about the Liberty incident. He spent ten years researching the subject and was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Miami Graduate School of International Studies. His collection of research material on this subject is considered to be the largest and most complete of any collection on the subject in the entire world. After completing his dissertation, he obtained declassification of additional heretofore secret documents through many Freedom of Information Act requests and appeals. His book, The Liberty Incident, was written to update and complete the historical record. He has written numerous articles on law, aviation, history, and other subjects.
Judge Cristol remains an avid aviator. He made his first flight in a Piper J-3 Cub on Biscayne Bay in 1945. He has personally piloted a Ford Tri-Motor, the Goodyear Blimp, a Soviet MiG-15, and many other unique, antique, or historic aircraft. In 1998, he became one of the few persons to have an airplane named after him when Pan Am named one of their 727 aircraft the Clipper A. Jay Cristol. He is a founding member of the National Museum of Naval Aviation at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida and a founding member of the Wings Over Miami Military and Classic Aircraft Museum in Miami, Florida."
This autobiographic description gives the strong impression that Cristol was a combat pilot during the Korean War, though it does not say so explicitly. In fact, he graduated from flight school less than 90 days before the Armistice was signed. He never flew from an aircraft carrier anywhere within striking distance of Korea. His carrier pilot career was limited to training missions in the South China Sea during peacetime. Cristol has done nothing to correct the misimpression created by his self styled description of his war career.
This misdirection through a careful choice of words has achieved his desired goal. Here are some quotes off Internet sites that write admiringly of Cristol, incorrect statements that he has never seen fit to correct:
more at:
http://www.usslibertyinquiry.com/commentary/cristol/critiquecristol.html | | | | funglefoot | | Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:04 pm Post subject: |
| Published Commentary: The Liberty Incident
Summary of Position
See also: The Liberty Incident's Analysis and Criticism and Critique of the Author.
The Israelis always have claimed that their attack on USS Liberty was an accident, a tragic case of mistaken identity, and not a planned, deliberate assault on a known U.S. Navy ship.
This book, by A. Jay Cristol, is an account of the attack from the position of the Israeli government. Cristol, a bankruptcy judge, is a retired Naval reservist, having flown transports for a number of years before switching to the JAG office. This book is a revision and reprint of his heavily flawed dissertation.
Cristol states that he researched and prepared for this book by making fifteen trips to Israel and interviewing more than 500 Israelis. He also spoke briefly with a few of the Liberty survivors, but discounts their information on the basis that direct witnesses to history are poor sources.
The book is slow reading, in part because of the author's turgid style of writing. He insists upon giving his readers not just the full names, but also the nicknames of every Israeli he met during the course of his research.
Cristol's thesis is that Liberty had no business sailing in international waters near a war zone. Because she was near a war zone, responsibility for the attack lies at least in part with the captain and crew of the ship; presumably according to the logic that would hold that a woman is partially responsible for getting raped if she travels outside her home.
He describes an implausible chain of events which led the Israelis to misidentify a ship of known nationality that they had been tracking for more than eight hours before the attack. At each stage, either he finds what he asserts to be a plausible "other explanation" for each Israeli "mistake" or he simply ignores it. (Many lawyers refer to this type of expert witness as a Witness Having Other Reasonable Explanation.)
Cristol ignores the fact that the Israeli attackers do not claim to have ever made a positive identification of the identity of the ship, or its nationality. He also ignores the fact that an attack on a neutral ship on the high seas is a war crime under the laws of war.
To the extent that he finds blame on the side of the Israeli defense forces, he excuses it on the basis of a reasonable amount of zeal due to interservice rivalry between the Navy and the Air Force. The Navy, having been left out of much of the fighting, wanted desperately to get in on the action. For this reason, Cristol explains, their rush to attack is both understandable and excusable.
Cristol mentions, but does not analyze the mathematical error made by the torpedo boat division, resulting in their determination that Liberty was moving, first at 30 knots, then at 28 knots, when the ship's speed during this time never exceeded five knots. This is a crucial determination because the Israeli Defense Forces justify their attack prior to making any positive identification as being authorized by their internal rules of engagement which presumed that any ship moving faster than twenty knots was a warship. He also does not explain why the aircraft which initiated the attack did not immediately recognize the "warship" as a converted freighter with no offensive armament.
A good portion of the book deals with what Cristol describes as "conspiracy theories." Presumably, anything that does not reflect the official position of the government of Israel is a "conspiracy theory." He attempts to explain and refute some of the findings and opinions which contradict the Israeli explanation ("conspiracy theories") by building straw men which ignore the real issues.
For diehard Israeli partisans, this book will be like raw meat. For everyone else, it's more like raw meat that has been left in the sun for a week.
As evidence of the author's intellectual honesty, compare the invitation on his web site (www.thelibertyincident.com) with his actual practice, read an e-mail to his webmaster, advising him of serious factual errors on the site and asking him to correct them. There has been no reply.
This web site offers space to authors of books that are reviewed here to post unedited rebuttals to the comments found in these reviews. Any author who wishes to post rebuttal materials need only contact the site administrator and arrangements will be made to post the author's complete, unedited rebuttal.
This web site also considers any reviews or summaries of any book sent to the site administrator. | | | | funglefoot | | Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:07 pm Post subject: |
| No sign of any rebuttals.  | | | | Jefferson Davis | | Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:24 pm Post subject: |
| Nice posts ff.
Their Hasbara-Megaphones™ are going off as we speak. Trust me.
Look at their quantity of hysterical responses on the Boston thread. The apologists are getting roasted here, They'll be here or turn tail and run and avoid it like Lebanon x2.
Project Censored considers The USS Liberty all most censored story. They have considered naming their annual "Most Censored Story" the 'USS Liberty Award'.
Go on any blog or forum and bring up the USS Liberty, watch the responses if you don't get slandered or banned.
It's a real continual tragedy for the crew and their families but the truth always remains. 34 crewmen were still murdered by Israel. | | | | Veracity | | Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:26 pm Post subject: |
| "I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation. . . . Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept their explanations. I didn't believe them then, and I don't believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous "
-- US Secretary of State Dean Rusk
"...the board of inquiry (concluded) that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing in attacking the Liberty."
-- CIA Director Richard Helms
"I can tell you for an absolute certainty (from intercepted communications) that the Israelis knew they were attacking an American ship."
-- NSA Deputy Director Oliver Kirby
"That the Liberty could have been mistaken for the Egyptian supply ship El Quseir is unbelievable"
-- Special Assistant to the President Clark Clifford, in his report to President Lyndon Johnson
"The highest officials of the [Johnson] administration, including the President, believed it 'inconceivable' that Israel's 'skilled' defense forces could have committed such a gross error."
-- Lyndon Johnson's biographer Robert Dallek in Flawed Giant, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 430-31)
"A nice whitewash for a group of ignorant, stupid and inept [expletive deleted]."
-- Handwritten note of August 26, 1967, by NSA Deputy Director Louis W. Tordella reacting to the Israeli court decision exonerating Israelis of blame for the Liberty attack.
"Never before in the history of the United States Navy has a Navy Board of Inquiry ignored the testimony of American military eyewitnesses and taken, on faith, the word of their attackers.
-- Captain Richard F. Kiepfer, Medical Corps, US Navy (retired), USS Liberty Survivor
"The evidence was clear. Both Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack...was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.... It was our shared belief. . .that the attack. . .could not possibly have been an accident.... I am certain that the Israeli pilots [and] their superiors. . .were well aware that the ship was American."
-- Captain Ward Boston, JAGC, US Navy (retired), senior legal counsel to the US Navy Court of Inquiry
That the attack was deliberate "just wasn't a disputed issue" within the National Security Agency
-- Former NSA Director retired Army Lieutenant General William Odom on 3 March 2003 in an interview for Naval Institute Proceedings
Former NSA/CIA Director Admiral Bobby Inman "flatly rejected" the Cristol/Israeli claims that the attack was an accident
-- 5 March 2003 interview for Naval Institute Proceedings
Of four former NSA/CIA seniors with inside knowledge, none was aware of any agency official who dissented from the position that the attack was deliberate
-- David Walsh, writing in Naval Institute Proceedings
"It appears to me that it was not a pure case of mistaken identity."
-- Captain William L. McGonagle, Commanding Officer, USS Liberty, speaking at Arlington National Cemetery, June 8, 1997 | | | | harrietbuster | | Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:26 pm Post subject: |
| Interesting that James Ennes ( who runs the web site you get all this from) can write about innumerable "lies"...but can't point a single one out?
Ennes is a liar though...provable.
"• The Israelis have stated that when the torpedo boats realized the Liberty was a US ship they stopped the attack and offered assistance. The History Channel allowed Mr. Ennes to state on camera that this was “the purest of baloney":
Ennes: "They claim that they came alongside and immediately offered help. Well, that is the purest of baloney. Instead of offering help, they circled us several times, machine gunning anything that moved. Pulled out, came in, machine gunned the life rafts in the water. "
Despite Mr. Ennes’s denial, the Captain testified that the Israelis did indeed offer help:
MCGONAGLE: Immediately after the ship was struck by the torpedo, the torpedo boats stopped dead in the water and milled around astern of the ship at a range of approximately 500 to 800 yards. One of the boats signalled by flashing light, in English, “Do you require assistance”?
(Confirmed in Mcgonagle's contemporaneous log.)
This was confirmed, under oath, by Chief Communications Technician Harold J. Thompson:
THOMPSON: ... I was asked to report to the bridge, which I did. When I got up there, Signalman David was attempting to rig a hand light. I assisted him. We went to the starboard wing of the bridge and one torpedo boat was making a run straight at us off the starboard beam while the other two stood off. At the Captain’s direction, David sent, “US Naval Ship” “US Naval Ship.” When they were about 500 yards off, the torpedo boat turned astern and came up on the stern on the starboard side and flashed, “do you need help.” ... The Captain ... said “no, thank you.” We sent this back to the boat ... and saw on the last part of that message ... “Do you want us to standby?” I passed this word to the Captain. He said, “no, thank you.” We sent this to the patrol boat. They came up along the port side, I say roughly 100 yards off, flashed “good luck” ... and disappeared. That was the last we saw of them.
http://world.std.com/~camera/docs/alert/hchannel2.html
| | | | funglefoot | | Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:38 pm Post subject: |
| | No sign of any rebuttals | | | | harrietbuster | | Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:41 pm Post subject: |
| No sign of any facts.
| | | | Veracity | | Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:50 pm Post subject: |
| Plenty of facts, HB.
but most telling is the abundance of inanities coming from you these days, you hate filled bigotted scumbag. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
