A. Jay Cristol Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Cristol remains an avid aviator. 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. Cristol is an Angel Flight volunteer pilot, flying people in need of transportation to and from regional medical centers for treatment. The 2007 May/June issue of Airliners magazine published a story about Judge Cristol; and Dow Jones featured Judge Cristol on January 2, 2008 in a three-page article.

In 2007, Judge Cristol awarded the rights of O. J. Simpson’s book If I Did It to the family of Ronald Goldman to satisfy a $38 million wrongful death judgment against Simpson.

On February 1, 2007, St. Thomas University School of Law honored Cristol with its Outstanding Jurist Award.

Following completion of course work, Cristol continued to pursue information surrounding the event. He sued the National Security Agency under the Freedom of Information Act. In 2004 the agency released audio tapes which had been collected by an NSA unit aboard a Navy Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star aircraft flying near the scene of the USS Liberty attack. Subsequently, Cristol published his analysis in 2002 as a book about the attack, The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship. Cristol concluded that the tapes show the attack was an accident, and that the Israelis mistook the ship for an Egyptian warship.

In 2003, the Greater Miami Aviation Association honored Cristol with their Glenn Curtiss Award which recognizes the contributions of an individual to improve the South Florida community.

In 1998, Pan Am was sold to Guilford Transportation, in a transaction which removed Pan Am from bankruptcy. Consequently, the company honored Cristol, who presided over the speedy reorganization, by naming one of their 727-225 aircraft the Clipper A. Jay Cristol. After presiding over the reorganization of Arrow Air, he was honored by having an Arrow Air Douglas DC-8-62 named the “Judge A. Jay Cristol.”

Cristol received his B.A. degree from the University of Miami in 1958 and his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the University of Miami School of Law in 1959, where he was research editor of the law review and recipient of other honors. (Cristol returned to the school in the late 1980s, and received his Ph.D from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Miami on May 9, 1997.)

He graduated from Naval Justice School and served as a naval JAG lawyer for another twenty years. In 1983, Cristol was appointed an honorary professor of the Naval Justice School. During the 1980s, he was sent to the International Institute of Humanitarian Law at Sanremo to lecture on the Law of Naval Warfare.

While working on his Ph.D. thesis (from the late 1980s into the 1990s), Cristol analyzed the official investigations of the USS Liberty incident of June 8, 1967, in which Israeli forces attacked an American ship, resulting in a significant loss of life. Officially, the Liberty incident had already been investigated by more than a dozen government agencies and government-commissioned groups; it had always been reported to have been a tragic accident. Cristol conducted over 450 interviews. Freedom of Information Act requests were used to obtain declassification of the Clark Clifford Report, 22 hot-line messages, 22 National Security Agency documents, and 31 National Security Council documents. Cristol was also able to obtain classified Israeli documents. The conclusion of his dissertation confirmed the official investigations and demonstrated that the attack on the USS Liberty was a mistake.

Cristol’s second book, The Liberty Incident Revealed: The Definitive Account of the 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship, was published by the Naval Institute Press in 2013.

In November 1951, during the Korean war, Cristol joined the US Navy. After receiving his wings in 1953, he deployed to the western Pacific and flew both day and night missions in the Grumman AF Guardian from the USS Princeton (CVS-37). Upon returning to the US, Cristol left active duty and joined the Naval Reserve.

Cristol 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, a Czech L-39, a Chinese CJ-6, a French Fouga Magister, and many other unique, antique, or historic aircraft.

A. Jay Cristol is an Eagle Scout of the Boy Scouts of America, earned on March 6, 1944. He was honored as a National Eagle Scout Association Outstanding Eagle Scout in South Florida Council in 2021.

A. Jay Cristol (born September 25, 1929) is a judge, poet, author, pilot, and a lecturer of naval warfare. He served as a Special Assistant Attorney General of Florida from 1959 to 1965 and as a trustee in bankruptcy from 1977 to 1985. He was appointed judge to the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida on April 17, 1985, and served as the district’s Chief Bankruptcy Judge from 1993 to 1999.