Rating: 
Summary: A wishful fantasy
Review: Even without going outside the covers of The Liberty Incident, a conclusive case can be made for the proposition that this book was written in defense of the official Israeli position. If one goes outside the book to verify facts, the result is that the reader is unable to verify almost none of the facts.
Within the book, the author appears to make a conscious effort to obfuscate contrary facts by constantly digressing into wholly irrelevant subjects before returning to the subject under consideration.
For True Believers, this book is exactly what you are looking for. For everyone else, it is a complete waste of time.
Rating: 
Summary: Conspiracy theorists should be wary of trade libel
Review: A sad incident - not a conspiracy, December 17, 2003
As a USNA graduate I left active duty in 1965. The attack on the Liberty took place two years later. Over the years I have read many articles on the incident and have been well aware that though inquiry after inquiry has concluded that the attack was a true friendly fire incident the conspiracy theorists still abound. The tragedy of the attack is only exceeded by the viciousness of the theorists. Judge Cristol does a singularly thorough job of tracing the affair from start to finish. While the account is somewhat repetitious I can see why this could not be avoided as Judge Cristol presents the chilling narrative as a seasoned lawyer presenting evidence, tying all pieces back to the whole.
To discredit Judge Cristols's effort one has also to believe that not only was the nations political leaders dishonest and in collusion with Israel but that many senior Navy leaders, all with unblemished records in peace and war, joined in the criminal collusion. Perhaps even more telling is that Judge Cristol fully explores possible motives and in no way can any reasonable motive be attached to the multiple Israeli mistakes or to the U. S. Navy's absolute inability to effectively communicate with one of it's ships that had been sent into harms way. Far more than the book being a uniquely detailed account of the event it places a harsh light on the conspiracy theory folks whether they are enamored with the "Grassy knoll" theory of the Kennedy assignation or the nonsense that Israel knew about 911 before it occurred and then worked with the Bush administration to cause the loss of the shuttle Columbia to mask activity concerning Iraq. Judge Cristol can not cure irrational paranoia but his excellent effort exposes it for what it is.
Rating:
Summary: a factual and excellent presentations of the truth
Review: A. Jay Cristol obviously knows his facts; and his use of de-classified material displays that the "support" behind the conspiracy theories regarding the Libert Incident are completely false. Cristol employs hard facts to expose the lies of blatant anti-Semites and anti-Israel slanderers.
There were a few things in this book that really allowed me to understand the true nature behind this "controversy." First of all, the fact that the interpreters aboard the Liberty only spoke Russian and Arabic blatantly reveals that the conspiracy theorists' argument that the Liberty was there to moniter Israeli communications. It makes the lies behind these conspiracy theorists look absolutely ridiculous: how could they be there to mointer Israeli communications if they don't even speak Hebrew?
Crsitol also exposes that there is no way that the IDF would knowingly fire upon a US ship. Historically noted, the US had agreed with the United Nations that no ships would enter the "war zone." Therefore, when a ship that was not visibly marked enterd the war zone, the IDF had no way of knowing it was an ally and justly assumed that it was an enemy ship.
This book had recently been proven correct on a much larger scale: it is now public knowledge that the Liberty incident was a mistake; and anyone who makes up false and illogical conspiaracy theories obviously doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. This was an excellent book!
Rating:
Summary: Liberty Incident Reveals the Truth to the Dismay of Some....
Review: A. Jay Cristol obviously knows his facts; and his use of de-classified material displays that the "support" behind the conspiracy theories regarding the Libert Incident are completely false. Cristol employs hard facts to expose the lies of blatant anti-Semites and anti-Israel slanderers.
There were a few things in this book that really allowed me to understand the true nature behind this "controversy." First of all, the fact that the interpreters aboard the Liberty only spoke Russian and Arabic blatantly reveals that the conspiracy theorists' argument that the Liberty was there to moniter Israeli communications. It makes the lies behind these conspiracy theorists look absolutely ridiculous: how could they be there to mointer Israeli communications if they don't even speak Hebrew?
Crsitol also exposes that there is no way that the IDF would knowingly fire upon a US ship. Historically noted, the US had agreed with the United Nations that no ships would enter the "war zone." Therefore, when a ship that was not visibly marked enterd the war zone, the IDF had no way of knowing it was an ally and justly assumed that it was an enemy ship.
This book had recently been proven correct on a much larger scale: it is now public knowledge that the Liberty incident was a mistake; and anyone who makes up false and illogical conspiaracy theories obviously doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. This was an excellent book!
Rating:
Summary: Beyond a reasonable doubt
Review: For over 35 years, conspiracy theories have revolved around a half-hour episode that transpired in the eastern Mediterranean on June 8, 1967: Israeli gunfire hit an American spy ship during the heat of the Six-Day War. Conspiracy theorists have come up with the bizarre claim that the Israelis intended to sink the ship even though they knew that it was a U.S. vessel. This allegation has been used to attempt to drive a wedge between the United States and Israel, challenging the conclusions of 11 U.S. investigations. But the verdict is now in, thanks to federal judge and former U.S. Navy aviator A. Jay Cristol. His authoritative book, The Liberty Incident: the 1967 Attack on the US Navy Ship, presents the final word on the matter by laying out the facts and systematically analyzing the allegations. Cristol's examination of the incident comes after fourteen years of research on the topic, backed by hundreds of interviews, scores of documents, and a seasoned naval background that included years as a military attorney. Honest to history, Cristol dispels the myths that have arisen from the affair, and proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the tragedy resulted from mistaken identification of the vessel as an Egyptian warship. Finally this sad episode can be put to rest.
Rating:
Summary: A Comprehensive Review of the Facts
Review: I am a former Cryptologic Technician (76-80) and served with personnel who were aboard USS Liberty when she was attacked. I have read most of the mainstream books and articles about the attack and had the opportunity to read some classified reports while in the Navy. While Ennis makes a powerful emotional argument that he and his shipmates were the victims of a premeditated attack, his information is based on hearsay and incomplete information. It did not convince me that the attack was intentional. Bamfords work is flawed by his misquotations and mistatements and while he has written some interesting stuff about the NSA, he comes to the Liberty investigation late and with his mind already made up. Judge Cristol's book is very well researched and documented, since it was derived from his Doctoral Disseration, where shoddy research is not tolerated. It does require some flipping back and forth between the text and the notes, but any reader who truly wants to understand what happened on the June 8, 1967, should be willing to do that. Unless, of course, they have already reached a conclusion. This isn't fiction. It can be dense, but at the end, I felt that Judge Cristol wrote an excellent, well researched book on the topic. I hade some lingering doubts, but those were dispelled. Some people claim the book attacks other points of view. It does not attack, but does refute, with facts, other points of view where, in Cristol's judgement, those points of view are not based in fact. The arguments over the attack on USS Liberty will continue for years. While I agree that this has been thorougly investigated by the CIA, NSA, JCS and Congress, if it takes a full Congressional investigation to put this into the past, then I am fine with it. Mark
Rating:
Summary: CIA chief contradicts Cristol
Review: Just one point - the autobiography of Richard Helms, CIA director at the time of the Liberty incident, contradicts what Cristol has to say (Over My Shoulder, ISBN 037550012X). Helms says that internally the government did believe that "the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing in attacking the Liberty," and pretty much affirms that there was a US government coverup. Whom are you going to believe, a reservist aviator turned small-time legal scholar with a PhD from a second tier school, or the ex-head of the CIA? In particular, Helms describes a realtime Pentagon flash that fighters were sent to defend the Liberty - the fighters never arrived, so either this realtime Pentagon report was wrong, or the fighters were recalled, just as the 'conspiracy theorists' claim. The big problem with Cristol's thesis is that there are now several high level Washington and military insiders (not ages-after-the-fact outsiders, like Cristol) who say that the attack was deliberate and the US government knew it all along.
Rating:
Summary: NSA Releases Documents Supporting Cristol
Review: New documents released this week by America's National Security
Agency support Israel's version of a long-festering controversy between the two countries: Israel's sinking of an American spy ship, the USS Liberty, off the coast of Gaza during the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel has always said it had no idea the ship was American, but conspiracy theorists and anti-Israel propagandists still claim Israel sank the ship in the full knowledge that it was American.
The documents, originally defined as top secret, were made public by Florida Judge Jay Cristol, who has been investigating the Liberty incident for years and published a book on the subject last year. On Monday, the NSA gave him a transcript of conversations held by two Israeli Air Force helicopter pilots
who were hovering over the Liberty as it was sinking, and these tapes confirm Israel's claim that the sinking of the ship, which killed 34 American servicemen and wounded 171, was a tragic error. After the Liberty was bombed by both the Israel Air Force and the Israel Navy, the two helicopter pilots were summoned from their base to assess the damage and evaluate the possibility of rescuing the surviving crew members.
An American spy plane, which had been sent to the area as soon as the NSA learned of the attack, recorded their conversations, which took place between 2:30 and 3:37 P.M. on June 8, the third day of the war. The spy plane also recorded the orders radioed to the pilots by their supervisor at Hatzor Base, which instructed them to search for Egyptian survivors from the "Egyptian warship" that had just been bombed - thus supporting Israel's claim that it had believed the ship was Egyptian when it ordered it attacked. "Pay attention. The ship is now identified as Egyptian," the pilots were told. Nine minutes later, Hatzor informed the pilots that it was not an Egyptian warship, but an Egyptian cargo ship. Only at 3:07 were the pilots first informed that the ship might not have been Egyptian at all: Hatzor told them that if they found Arabic-speaking survivors, they should be taken to
El-Arish, but if they found English-speaking survivors, they should be taken to Lod. "Clarify by the first man that you bring up, what nationality he is, and report to me immediately," the supervisor instructed, according to the transcript. "It's important to know." Then, at 3:12, one of the pilots informed Hatzor that he saw an American flag flying over the wounded ship. He was asked to investigate and determine whether it was really an American ship. This is not the first time such transcripts have been made public: Israel gave its own recordings of the pilots' conversations to the British television station Thames in 1987. But conspiracy theorists charged that Israel had doctored the tapes before handing them over to the station in order to hide the fact that it sank the Liberty intentionally. No such
imputation can be made about these new transcripts, as they were never in Israeli hands. Israel has always said it attacked the Liberty, which America sent to the region to gather intelligence on the progress of the war, because it believed it was an Egyptian supply ship ferrying supplies to the Egyptian troops that Israel was then fighting. When it discovered the error, it immediately informed the Americans, apologized and paid compensation to the victims' families. The incident was investigated by inquiry commissions in both Israel and the United States, and both concluded that it had, indeed, been a tragic error. Nevertheless, the controversy never died. In 1979, one of the survivors, James Ennes, published a book accusing Israel of bombing the American ship deliberately. Ennes claimed an Israeli spy plane had hovered over the ship
all morning and had surely identified it as American, since the American flag was clearly visible. A later book, written by James Bamford, charged that Israel sank the ship in order to keep America from learning of its plans to attack Syria, and further claimed that the NSA had tapes of conversations among Israeli pilots that not only confirmed this, but also proved that the tapes released by Israel had been doctored. Another claim that appears frequently on the dozens of Internet sites devoted to the affair is that Israel sank the ship to conceal a mass murder of Egyptian soldiers on the Sinai peninsula. In its letter to Cristol, the NSA stressed that, contrary to the claims that often appear in such books and Web sites - that the agency has tapes from both the Liberty and from a nearby American submarine that confirm Israel's guilt - the only tapes that exist were those made by the spy plane and given to Cristol this week. "It's the last piece of intelligence that remained classified, and every rational person that will read it will understand that there is no truth in these conspiracy theories against Israel," Cristol said Tuesday. But he added: "Those who hate Israel, who hate Jews, and those who believe in conspiracy will not be convinced by anything." Cristol, a former U.S. navy pilot and legal officer, began investigating the Liberty incident 14 years ago. Since publishing his book, which vindicates Israel, he has received threats and been accused of being an Israeli agent. "I take this lightly, but I am saddened to learn that there is this kind of
hate toward Israel," he said. U.S. agency confirms sinking of USS Liberty was accident
By Nathan Guttman, Haaretz Correspondent Haaretz 9 July 2003
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book
Review: The Liberty Incident is the definitive book on this event of June 8, 1967 and the aftermath of the attack. Chapter 2 puts the military-political situation of June 1967 into perspective and informs the reader of what was going on in the Middle East at that time. The book goes on to explain why the U.S.S. Liberty was sent into harms way and the many U.S. and Israeli mistakes and blunders that caused her to be targeted and attacked. The maps and diagrams make it understandable even to those without a military background. Chapter 7 is especially interesting as it is an historical catalogue of friendly fire incidents from the U.S. Civil War up to recent times and clearly establishes that in the fog of war mistakes happen. Finally, the book analyzes the many U.S. and Israeli investigations and refers the reader to a wealth of footnotes and citations to document the story told. Highly recommended as one of the finest military history books of our time.
Rating:
Summary: Accidental Friendly Fire
Review: The term "friendly fire" has always been controversial. Some tend to see a conspiracy behind each such incident. A case in point is the Israeli attack, during the 1967 Six-Day War, on the U.S. Navy spy ship-- the USS Liberty. Israel has expressed deep regret for this tragedy, which resulted from an unfortunate mistake of the Israeli intelligence and faulty communication between the two nations. Israel was in a state of war with its neighbors and the vessel was thought to be an Egyptian warship. No American ship was known to be in the vicinity. The United States forgave Israel for that tragic mistake, but the issue has not disappeared. Some are still claiming it was an intentional attack, and several books have been published attempting to show that it was an Israeli conspiracy. A. Jay Cristol, a federal judge and a former naval aviator, after studying tapes, pictures and interviews with all relevent people, reached the conclusion that the attack was a case of accidental "friendly fire." After more than twelve years of diligent research, he published The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship, in which he proved the conclusion he has reached. This book is a true example of what research is all about-- facts and not baseless accusation.
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