Link to pdf of dissertation, here
On the afternoon of June 8, 1967, Israeli Air Force aircraft and then Israeli motor torpedo boats attacked the U.S.S. Liberty, GTR 5, an intelligence gathering warship. It was sailing approximately twelve and one-half miles off the coast of the Sinai peninsula, in the vicinity of El Arish. Thirty-four U.S. personnel died in the attack and an additional 171 were wounded. Thirteen official investigations of the incident, three by Israel and ten by the United States (including five congressional investigations) have concluded either that there is no evidence that the attack or attacks were intentional or that there is evidence that the attacks were the result of a mistake in identification.
Method/PhD Author, A Jay Cristol
All thirteen official investigations of the Liberty incident and various unofficial reports and explanations, including five television productions, were compiled and analyzed. Independent research was conducted in the United States, Israel, Egypt, England and elsewhere. Four Hundred and fifty-eight interviews of two hundred and twenty-two persons were conducted. Freedom of Information Act requests were used to obtain declassification of the Clark Clifford Report, twentyfour hot line messages, twenty-two National Security Agency documents and thirty-one National Security Council documents. Numerous classified Israeli documents were also obtained. Over 3,318 relevant documents have been collected in binders…
I have studied all of the investigations and the theories of all the so-called doubters and all other available data on the incident. I have conducted 458 interviews, during which I interviewed 222 individuals, some of whom were interviewed multiple times. On the Israeli side, I have interviewed all the significant participants in the event from the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, Yitzhak Rabin, to the pilots who squeezed the triggers and the MTB (Motor Torpedo Boat) Commanders who launched the torpedoes. On the U.S. side I have interviewed the principal U.S. military and governmental persons involved in the incident. I have collected thousands of documents pertaining to the incident and have catalogued in binders over 3320 documents related to the event and its aftermath. I believe I have the largest existing collection of documentary material on this incident. I have searched everywhere for a smoking gun that would provide evidence in support of any of the doubters’ theories.
THE AUTHOR, A Jay Cristol (1929-2024) died https://bbasdfl.org/in-memoriam-the-honorable-a-jay-cristol/ 10/24/2024: In November of 1951, during the Korean Conflict, I withdrew from my last semester of college at the University of Miami and entered Navy flight training. Seventeen months, 337 hours of flight instruction, and twelve carrier landings later I was designated a Naval Aviator. I remained in the Navy and Naval Reserve for a total of thirty-eight years. The first eighteen years were spent as a naval aviator…During the 1960s I flew volunteer air lifts to Vietnam. After eighteen years as a naval aviator, I became a Navy lawyer and spent twenty more years in that capacity…In 1988, I became sixty years old and retired from the Naval Reserve, although I keep in touch by lecturing occasionally at the Pentagon or Judge Advocate General (JAG) headquarters. On the civilian side, when I returned from active duty, I went back to school and completed my Bachelor of Arts degree (1958) and obtained a Law degree, cum laude (1959) [both from the University of Miami]. I had an interesting and successful career as a lawyer for twenty five years. In 1985, I had the opportunity to be appointed a Federal Judge. I believed that this would give me the ability to slow down my life style as well as to teach at the University of Miami School of Law. I began taking courses at the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Miami just for fun. After a while, I was approached by a member of the faculty and asked if I had decided on something to research and write about. When I confessed that I had not, it was suggested that, with my background as a naval aviator, Law of Naval Warfare lecturer, lawyer, and Federal Judge, I was well suited to research the Liberty Incident.
The most reliable source of a conclusion on whether the Liberty incident was a tragic mistake comes from five U.S. investigations, the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry, the CIA Report, the Clifford Report, the House Armed Services Committee of Investigations of World-Wide Communications and the NSA Report. These investigations were all conducted by governmental officials or agencies of the United States in the ordinary course of what they saw their duty to be. They were fact finding in nature and had the power and assets of the U.S. Government at their disposal…
It might disappoint the scandal mongers looking for a sensational story that would sell books and movie rights, but the official investigations had no problem in eliminating the “red under the bed,” the “Israeli under the bed,” or the “Arab under the bed” stories because there was simply not a scintilla of evidence to suggest their veracity. Beyond that point, the official investigations did proceed completely in accordance with what would have been anyone’s national interest at the time, namely to figure out how the dreadful “orrery of errors” (Earl of Orrery; compounding of errors or snowballing) could have occurred and to find out whether some of these errors were punishable due to unforgivable negligence or incompetence. Much of the official investigations were classified not to hide a hidden sinister “lie” but presumably to keep its systems of naval and military communications secret, which too is undeniably in the U.S. national interest. But the fact that the official investigations remained classified for many years, inadvertently fueled the suspicions that could be set aside once the reports were declassified.
The three Israeli Reports corroborate the U.S. findings and explain many aspects that were not investigated by U.S. investigators…If Israel wants and needs good relations with the U.S., is it rational for Israel to intentionally attack a ship of its only friend in the world at the time, and then risk a coverup that might be discovered? It would be more reasonable not to attack the ship of such ally in the first instance.
