Smearing of USS Liberty Crew by Jewish Bankruptcy Judge Jay Cristol Backfires: William Hughes

When Ahron Jay Cristol, a self-described “amateur historian,” showed up at the National Security Agency's (NSA) National Cryptologic Museum at Fort George C. Meade, MD., on Jan. 14, 2004, there was something almost sacrilegious about his presence there.

He was there to peddle his pro-Zionist Israel book, “The Liberty Incident.” It is a clever, but seriously flawed, apologia, that attempts to mask the wrongdoing associated with Israel’s premeditated attack on the USS Liberty, an NSA-fitted spy vessel, on June 8, 1967. That attack killed 34 brave Americans and wounded 172 others. His book also smears those demanding justice in the Liberty matter as “conspiracy theorists.”


Who is Cristol? Now, in his 70s, he has worked mostly as a bankruptcy judge, a federal sinecure that doesn’t need congressional approval. He has a non-combat background in the U.S. Navy.

Two days before his appearance, Cristol was on a State Dept. panel, in DC, pontificating about the 1967 “Six-Day War” and the fate of the Liberty. When survivors of the Liberty, during the Q&A period, began to speak out about the “Whitewash,” one Marc Susser, a State Dept. honcho, ordered them silenced.

Cristol’s insufferable mantra: “The Israelis’ attack on the Liberty was an accident,” was repeated by him ad nauseam at the book signing. However, the overwhelming credible evidence shows that the Israeli attack was intentional (James M. Ennes, Jr.’s “Assault on the Liberty”), and that an insidious cover-up of that fact has continued down to the present day (James Bamford's “Body of Secrets”). Recently, two individuals from the U.S. intelligence community have come forward to verify that they had viewed intercepted real-time transcripts, on June 8, 1967, between Israeli jet pilots and their ground controllers, in which the Israelis clearly acknowledged that they knew that they were attacking, and worse still, trying to sink, “the American ship.”

(http://www.ussliberty.org/smoking.htm).