A brief response to A. Jay Cristol:

Cristol tells us in his book and at every
opportunity that there have been ten US and three
official Israeli investigations of the Liberty
attack.

That is a gross exaggeration if not a deliberate
fabrication.

The fact is, the only investigation that bothered
to consult with, interview, or seek the opinion of
USS Liberty survivors was the US Navy Court of
Inquiry.

The Court of Inquiry was a sham.

We know from the personal experience of those who
testified before the court as well as from the
recent statement of Captain Ward Boston, the legal
counsel to the Court, that the court was a sham.
Boston tells us that he AND Admiral Kidd, the
President of the Court, both reported in their
official findings that the attack was probably an
accident even though they believed otherwise.  In
other words, this Court proceeding was fraudulent.
That is exactly what survivors have been saying
for 35 years.  But it remains the only
investigation that bothered to interview
survivors, and that testimony was controlled and
doctored because the Court had orders from
Washington to report that the attack was
accidental despite the facts.

What about Cristol's claim that 10 US
investigations all exonerated Irael?

Those were all poisoned fruit of the poisoned
tree.
 
Those investigation, such as the infamous
"Clifford Report" in which Clark Clifford reported
to Lyndon Johnson that he found no evidence that
the attack was deliberate, were in most cases not
investigations at all.  They were merely REPORTS
to the boss from advisors.  Clark Clifford
conducted no investigation of his own.  He merely
read the Court of Inquiry report and the CIA
report, which itself had only the Court of Inquiry
report to go on, and summarized the corrupt Court
of Inquiry findings for the president.  In other
words, poisoned fruit from the poisoned tree.

And in fact, Clark Clifford, like Ward Boston,
clearly regarded the attack as deliberate despite
reporting to the President as he did.  For in his
memoirs he wrote:

      I do not know to this day at what level the
      attack on the LIBERTY was authorized and I
      think it is unlikely that the full truth
      will ever come out. Having been for so long
      a staunch supporter of Israel, I was
      particularly troubled by this incident; I
      could not bring myself to believe that such
      an action could have been authorized by Levi
      Eshkol. Yet somewhere inside the Israeli
      government, somewhere along the chain of
      command, something had gone terribly
      wrong--and then had been covered up. I never
      felt the Israelis made adequate restitution
      or explanation for their actions....
  
Cristol also tells us at every opportunity that Jim
Ennes says in a BBC video and elsewhere that no
USS Liberty survivor testified before the Court of
Inquiry. That is a blatant falsehood.  Nowhere do
I make such a statement.  Why Cristol pretends
that I do is a mystery.

Elsewhere Cristol attempts to discredit me by
claiming that he flew to Seattle to interview me
but that I stood him up.  Not so.  He merely asked
to call me by phone from the airport during a
stopover en route to Alaska.  By the time he
arrived I had learned that he was not doing honest
research but to the contrary was on a crusade to
try to discredit survivors, so I elected not to
take his phone call.  He did not fly here to see
me.  He was coming to this area anyway and we
never had an agreement to meet.

These are all typical of the many distortions
found in Cristol's work.

Jim Ennes