FINAL JUDGMENT
The Missing Link in the
JFK Assassination Conspiracy
By MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER
Chapter Six
The Coming of the Messiah:
Lyndon Johnson Rushes to
Israel's Rescue;
U.S. Middle
East Policy Is Reversed
Within weeks of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Israel
was perhaps the most immediate primary beneficiary of
Kennedy's death—although this was not something that the
controlled media told the American people.
The most immediate individual beneficiary of JFK's death
was, of course, Lyndon Johnson who was a political favorite
of Israel and its allies in Meyer Lansky's Organized Crime
Syndicate.
It was Johnson who promptly reversed Kennedy's Middle
East policy and who, for all intents and purposes, according
to one historian, established Israel as America's 51st state.
There can be no question but that the assassination of John F. Kennedy
accomplished several very specific things insofar as the U.S.-Israeli
relationship was concerned:
1) It removed from the White House a president—John F. Kennedy—
who had reached a bitter impasse with Israel over its steadfast determination to
assemble a nuclear arsenal;
2) It placed in the Oval Office a president—Lyndon Johnson—who
completely reversed long-standing U.S. Middle East policy and placed the
United States firmly in Israel's camp—with a vengeance.
3) It allowed Lyndon Johnson to reverse JFK's Vietnam policy and
begin escalating U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. This permitted Israel
to advance its own geo-political stance in the Middle East; and
4) It enabled Israel's allies in the CIA and the Meyer Lansky Organized
Crime Syndicate to gain a lock on drug trafficking in Southeast Asia as a
proximate result of U.S. involvement in the region.
Israel was clearly—and beyond doubt—the primary
international beneficiary of Lyndon Johnson's presidency
which only became possible through the assassination of
John F. Kennedy.
ISRAEL'S SURVIVAL
If protection of its national security interests and its very survival can
be considered a motive—and surely it can be—then Israel, perhaps above all,
obviously had a major interest—and motivation—in helping orchestrate the
assassination of President Kennedy. Indeed, the very survival of Israel has
been a cornerstone of its foreign policy from that nation's earliest
beginnings. Thus, elimination of a perceived enemy to Israel's survival—that is, John F. Kennedy—would only be a logical course of
action.
This especially, of course, in light of the fact that the man who succeeded Kennedy—Lyndon Johnson—had long and often proven a history of personal affinity for Israel and its international interests.
There are indications, however, that Johnson's ties to Lansky and his associates go even deeper. When Lansky himself was living in Israel, one of his American cronies, Benjamin Sigelbaum, came visiting. 151
Another of Baker's business collaborators, was Edward Levinson, who operated the Fremont Casino in Las Vegas as a front man for longtime Lansky friend and business partner, Joseph (Doc) Stacher (who ultimately died in exile in Israel). 153
What's more, author Robert Morrow, a former CIA contract agent, has revealed that one of Baker's closest associates, with whom he was reportedly "thick as thieves," was a mob courier named Mickey Weiner who was "a complete user of Baker's office, of all the Baker facilities on Capitol Hill." 154 Needless to say, Baker's office and Baker's "facilities" were one and the same with those of Lyndon B. Johnson.
It was this same Mickey Weiner who, as we shall see in Chapter 7, was one of Meyer Lansky's chief couriers between his Miami banking operations and his European money-laundering center at the Banque de Credit International (B.C.I) in Geneva, Switzerland.
(B.C.I, as we shall see in detail in Chapter 7, Chapter 12 and Chapter 15, was operated by an Israeli banker, Tibor Rosenbaum, former Director for Finances and Supply for Israel's Mossad.)
Mr. Baker, who served time in federal prison for his criminal activities during his time as Johnson's protege (and as his reputed bag man), would have been the one person who could have sent Lyndon Johnson to prison if he had revealed all.
Indeed, it was Johnson's involvement with Bobby Baker that had led John F. Kennedy to begin laying the groundwork for dropping Johnson from the Democratic ticket in 1964. But even with Kennedy's death, the stench of corruption surrounding the Lansky-linked Baker still threatened Johnson.
According to Winter-Berger Johnson suddenly realized that he was present. Speaker McCormack assured the president that Winter-Berger was "all right" and that Winter-Berger was close to one of Baker's other associates, Nat Voloshen.
Johnson asked Winter-Berger to have this message relayed to Baker. "Tell Nat to tell Bobby that I will give him a million dollars if he takes this rap. Bobby must not talk." 156 Baker did not talk. Baker went to jail. Johnson did not.
Obviously, Johnson's Lansky connection is far more complex than we might even be able to determine—but the interplay between Johnson and his intimates and those of the Lansky syndicate is indisputable, to say the least.
What, of course, however, is most significant about Lyndon Johnson's assumption of the Oval Office were the profound—and immediate—changes in U.S. policy toward Israel and the Arab world that came rapidly upon LBJ's sudden succession to the presidency.
Hailing Johnson's "front-rank pro-Israel position"157 during his Senate career, the memo was dated November 26, 1963, just one day after John F. Kennedy was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The memo, incidentally, was formally noted "Not for Publication or Circulation."158
Clearly, those in the Israeli camp didn't want their seeming delight in Kennedy's passing—and Johnson's sudden good luck—to be in the public record.
What is additionally interesting are Kenan's memoirs of his service as one of the Israeli lobby's top men in Washington. The memoirs contain, as we have seen, a chapter about John F. Kennedy cryptically—perhaps critically—entitled—"A Multitude of Promises" along with the intriguing— and accurate—reference to 1963 as "The Turbulent Year," (for U.S.-Israeli relations).159
The very next chapter—about Lyndon Johnson—is warmly entitled "Israel's Texas Friend." Johnson—who was, in Kenan's words, the "New Man in the White House"—proved to be a very loyal friend of Israel.
Seymour Hersh points out that one of Johnson's first symbolic acts as president was to dedicate a synagogue in Austin, Texas—less than six weeks after assuming the presidency. In fact, Hersh notes, Johnson was the first American president in history to dedicate a synagogue. It was, we shall see, a very symbolic act indeed. 160
Lady Bird Johnson, the new president's wife, later tried to explain why her husband was so fond of Israel and its friends in the American pro-Israel lobby. "Jews have been woven into the warp and woof of all his [Johnson's] years," she said. 161
In the Arab world, however, the response was far different. According to
former diplomat Richard Curtiss, who spent much time in the region, "The
mourning stretched across the Arab world, where to this day faded
photographs on humble walls depict the young hero." 164
In Algeria, the new Arab republic that had achieved independence with help from John F. Kennedy, Premier Ahmad Ben Bella telephoned the U.S. ambassador to say, "Believe me, I'd rather it had happened to me than to him."165 Kennedy's friendly gestures for peace were being remembered.
In Egypt President Nasser realized that the death of John F. Kennedy would have a profound impact upon the Arab world. With Kennedy's departure, Nasser later said that "French President Charles DeGaulle is the only Western Head of State on whose friendship the Arabs can depend.” 166
However, according to DeGaulle's biographer, Jean Lacouture, DeGaulle was "a friend neither of the Arabs, nor of Israel, but only of France." 167 One might say that similar words could likewise be applied to John F. Kennedy: "a friend neither of the Arabs, nor of Israel, but only of America.” And Israel certainly did not consider JFK a friend.
In fact, as we shall see, the very same elements that had conspired against the life of DeGaulle were indeed those same elements who had brought about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And if DeGaulle did not know it then, he ultimately would.
According to Curtiss: "The circumstances gave rise to many conspiracy theories, including one believed by virtually all Arabs that the assassination was to prevent an impending U.S. policy change in the Middle East."171
Curtiss' next comment, however, has proven wrong in the light of what we are about to explore in the pages of Final Judgment: "No Middle East connection of any sort has ever been discovered, however."172
Curtiss notes that, "Instead, ironically, the assassination five years later by an Arab-American in California of President Kennedy's younger brother, an outspoken supporter of Israel, made Robert Kennedy the first American
victim of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute to be killed on U.S. soil."173 (However, as we shall see in Chapter 18, there is—as in the assassination of John F. Kennedy—a lot more about the murder of his younger brother than really meets the eye.)
Nonetheless, as Alfred Lilienthal, the veteran critic of U.S. Middle East policy, has written, "There is little question that Kennedy intended to move decisively in his second term. The assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, shattered the possibility that his second term might see Washington start to free itself from the grave burdens of U.S. partisanship on the Arab-Israeli conflict and of continuous politicking for domestic votes." 174
“You have lost a very great friend, but you have found a better one,” the new president told one Israeli official. 175 Although Johnson’s quote has been oft repeated, it is not quite certain just who that official was. The quote, indeed, may have been apocryphal—another legend in the Lyndon Johnson legacy.
However, most sources believe that Johnson's comment was probably
made to Ephraim Evron, the number two man in Israel's embassy in
Washington. It was Evron who ultimately became a very close friend of
Lyndon Johnson.
At the time of the Kennedy assassination—interestingly enough—Evron was in Washington in charge of Israeli intelligence operations, working closely with James Jesus Angleton, Israel's man at the CIA. Thus, it seems likely, that whatever Angleton knew about JFK's assassination, Evron likely knew—and vice versa. And perhaps, we might speculate, Johnson also thus knew as well. (In Chapter 8 and in Chapter 16 we will consider Angleton's peculiar part in the JFK assassination conspiracy in full detail.)
According to Johnson aide Harry McPherson, "I think Evron felt what I've always felt, that some place in Lyndon Johnson's blood there are a great many Jewish corpuscles." 176
The aforementioned McPherson, speaking on tape for the LBJ Library Oral History Project, interestingly described himself as the Johnson White House's "staff anti-Semite," 177 McPherson explained that this meant that he had to maintain "a continuing relationship with B'nai B'rith, the Anti-Defamation League, to some extent the Zionist organization, and others who want various things,"178 presumably a difficult task. As a consequence, McPherson was especially tuned in to Johnson's relationship with Israel and its lobby in Washington.
In fact, as the record shows, Johnson had a long and close relationship with Israel and its partisans. Israel knew that it had a loyal devotee of its interests in the White House now that John F. Kennedy was out of the way.
The Arab States were also watching Johnson closely, particularly after he assumed the presidency. Particularly concerned was Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser with whom JFK had hoped to build bridges. In fact, as we have seen, it was during his last White House press conference that JFK bemoaned the efforts by Israel and its partisans to sabotage his Middle East peace initiatives, especially in regard to relations with Nasser.
This was just little more than three months after John F. Kennedy had been assassinated and Lyndon B. Johnson was catapulted into the presidency.
Nasser's assessment was on target. According to intelligence historian Richard Deacon, Johnson's new policy was keeping in line not only with Israel's demands, but those of Israel's friends at the CIA:
"President Johnson had already swung away from the tentative pro-Arab stance of the Kennedy administration which had always been frowned upon by the CIA."181
Deacon reports that Walt Rostow, the president's national security adviser believed that US policy towards Israel would serve as an effective check on Soviet support for Arab countries. "Thus," according to Deacon, "Rostow reflected almost totally the views of the CIA hierarchy." 182
Johnson, himself, also had long-standing ties to Israel's friends in the CIA from his years of service in the Senate.
As Senate Majority Leader, Johnson worked closely with the CIA on a regular basis and was considered a "CIA friend" in Congress.
Unquestionably, however, Lyndon Johnson did indeed begin a major shift in U.S. Middle East policy—keeping in line with his joint devotion to not only the CIA's interests, but those of Israel's as well.
This, of course, had a momentous impact on the course of American foreign policy and was an immediate and absolute turn-about of the policy that had been pursued by the late President Kennedy.
According to historian Stephen Green: "Perhaps the most significant development of 1963 for the Israeli nuclear weapons program, however, occurred on November 22 on a plane flying from Dallas to Washington, D.C., Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
"In the early years of the Johnson administration the Israeli nuclear weapons program was referred to in Washington as 'the delicate topic.' Lyndon Johnson's White House saw no Dimona, heard no Dimona, and spoke no Dimona when the reactor went critical in early 1964."183
Thus it was that the critical point of dispute between John F. Kennedy and the Mossad-dominated government of Israel was no longer an issue. The new American president—so long a partisan of Israel—allowed the nuclear development to continue. This was just the beginning.
As the Washington Observer newsletter noted: "Humphrey was first
catapulted into public office as Mayor of Minneapolis in 1945 via the
machinations and campaign slush funds raised by the notorious Kid Cann,
king of the Minneapolis underworld.
"Cann, whose real name was Isadore Blumenfeld, along with his brothers (who were known by their aliases, Harry and Yiddy Bloom) were partners with Meyer Lansky in the ownership of many of the plush resorts in Miami, along with Humphrey's chief advisor, Max Kampelman, a top figure in the Israeli lobby in Washington."
"Blumenfeld and Lansky were partners in the syndicate that owned the Sands and Fremont Hotels gambling operations in Las Vegas—until they sold their interest in the Sands to Howard Hughes. When Humphrey and his top aides are in Miami," the Observer reported, "they enjoyed free accommodations at the syndicate's plush hotels."184
Alan H. Ryskind, writing in his critical biography of Humphrey, demonstrated how then-Minneapolis Mayor Humphrey managed to look the other way when Blumenfeld got himself into a widely-publicized set of difficulties 185—just one of HRH's favors for the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate.
Thus, in the 1964 presidential election—which was Johnson's to lose— Lansky and his partners in Israel were assured a dream ticket come November. Both Johnson and his vice president were bought and paid for. Lansky and Israel made sure there wouldn't be any problems with any independent upstart second-generation multi-millionaire Irishmen like John F. Kennedy who was not only the son of a notorious anti-Semite but a bullheaded proponent of America's interests to boot.
Thus, having become ensconced in the presidency, Lyndon Johnson was in a position to do many favors for Israel.
Former Undersecretary of State George Ball comments that in the foreign aid realm: "The Israelis were proved right in their assumption that Johnson would be more friendly than Kennedy." 186
According to author Stephen Green, citing U.S. Agency for International Development data: "Over the next few years—the first three years of the Johnson administration—the level of foreign aid support to Israel would change both qualitatively and quantitatively. U.S. government assistance to Israel in FY 1964, the last budget year of the Kennedy administration, stood at $40 million. This was substantially reduced from the levels of assistance in previous years. In FY 1965, this figure rose to $71 million, and in FY 1966, to $130 million."187
"More significant, however, was the change in the composition of that assistance. In JFK's FY 1964, virtually none of the official U.S. assistance for Israel was military assistance; it was split almost equally between development loans and food assistance under the PL 480 program. In LBJ's FY 1965, however, 20 percent of U.S. aid was military in nature, and in FY 1966, fully 71 percent of all official assistance to Israel came in the form of credits for purchase of military equipment.
"Moreover, the nature of the weapons systems we provided had changed. In FY 1963, the Kennedy administration agreed to sell five batteries of Hawk missiles valued at $21.5 million. This however was an air defense system. The Johnson administration, in FY 1965-1966, provided Israel with 250 modern (modified M-48) tanks, 48 A-1 Skyhawk attack aircraft, communications and electronics equipment, artillery, and recoil-less rifles.
Given the configuration of the Israel Defense Forces, these were anything but defensive weapons.
"The $92 million in military assistance provided in FY 1966 was greater than the total of all official military aid provided to Israel cumulatively, in all the years going back to the foundation of that nation in 1948."188 Green summarizes the massive extent of Johnson's giveaways: "Seventy percent of all U.S. official assistance to Israel has been military. America has given Israel over $17 billion in military aid since 1946, virtually all of which—over 99 percent—has been provided since 1965."189
"In the years 1948-1963, America was perceived by all of the governments in the Middle East as a major power that acted upon the basis of its own, clearly defined national self-interest. Moreover, U.S. Middle East policy was just that—Middle East policy; it was not an Israeli policy in which Arab countries were subordinate actors.
"In the years 1948-1963, Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy firmly guaranteed Israeli national security and territorial integrity, but just as firmly guaranteed those of Jordan, Lebanon, and the other nations of the region. That was what the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 was all about.
"For successive Israel governments in this period, the boundary line between U.S. and Israeli national security interests was drawn frequently, and usually decisively. Truman's policies on arms exports to the middle East, Eisenhower's stands on regional water development and on territorial integrity during the Suez Crisis, and Kennedy's candor with Mrs. Meir—all of these were markers on this boundary line.
"Nevertheless, during this time U.S. financial support for Israel far exceeded that given any other nation in the world, on a per capita basis. And U.S. diplomatic support for Israel in the UN and elsewhere was no less generous.
"But the limits to U.S. support for Israel were generally understood by all of the countries of the region, and it was precisely these limits that preserved America's ability to mediate the various issues that composed the Arab-Israeli dispute.
"Then, in the early years of the Johnson administration, 1964-1967, U.S. policy on Middle Eastern matters abruptly changed. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that it disintegrated. America had a public policy on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, but suddenly had a covert policy of abetting Israel's nuclear weapons program. We had a public policy on arms balance in the region, but secretly agreed, by the end of 1967, to become Israel's major arms supplier.
"Officially, the United States was "firmly committed to the support of the political independence and territorial integrity of all the [Middle Eastern] nations," while consciously, covertly, the Johnson "Middle East team" set about enabling Israel to redraw to her advantage virtually every one of her borders with neighboring Arab states.
"It was, of course, a policy without principle, without integrity. But it was also ineffective, in the sense that Israel steadily continued to act in ways that ignored U.S. national security interests."190
All of this is most ironic when one considers the fact that Israel repeatedly and pointedly refused to support Johnson's Vietnam policy, much to the dismay of "Israel's Texas Friend." "Dammit," Johnson once complained to his "staff anti-Semite" Harry McPherson, "they want me to protect Israel, but they don't want me to do anything in Vietnam." 191
Clearly, Israel's allies in the CIA now had a free hand to conduct their own private war in Vietnam—one CIA benefit resulting from Kennedy's removal from the presidency. (In Chapter 9 we will examine Kennedy's war with the CIA in further detail.)
Johnson's reversal of JFK's decision to begin withdrawing U.S. forces (and CIA personnel) from Southeast Asia was, in its own sense, a CIA coup. The CIA also expanded its own power during the Vietnam conflict.
Likewise with Johnson's many friends in the defense industry both at home in Texas and elsewhere. The defense contractors reaped untold billions in profits from Johnson's dirty little war in Southeast Asia—a war that probably spelled the end of Johnson's popular chances for a second term.
As Stephen Green points out, a direct and proximate result of U.S. military adventurism in Southeast Asia was Israel's ability to advance its own military muscle and political influence in the Middle East.
After all, Israel could now argue, with the United States bogged down in Southeast Asia, Uncle Sam needed its close, reliable, democratic ally in the Middle East looking out for America's interests in the region.
According to Green: "In a period in which the Johnson White House was becoming increasingly obsessed with the war in Vietnam, Israel's military leaders offered to impose stability upon the peoples and countries of the Middle East—it was to be a 'Pax Hebraeca.
"There were, of course, costs involved for America. The United States would have to take the initial steps toward becoming what three previous Presidents had said we never would be—Israel's major arms supplier. We would also at least temporarily forfeit our role as primary mediator of the multifaceted Arab-Israeli dispute.
"The new arrangement would necessitate throwing our long-standing nuclear nonproliferation treaty to the winds, the 1968 treaty to the contrary notwithstanding.
"Perhaps most important, U.S. national security interests in the region would become merged with Israel's to a degree that was, and is to this day, unique in the history of U.S. foreign relations."192
Israel—above all—stood to benefit immensely from U.S. involvement in Vietnam, something which would not have occurred had JFK lived.
There is yet an additional irony in the relationship of the United States and Israel vis-à-vis the Vietnam conflict that is very much worth noting.
After the war in Vietnam was underway, dragging Lyndon Johnson deeper and deeper into the muck of public discontent, Israel was beginning to encounter its own difficulties as it flexed its muscle in the Middle East.
Although America's entry in Southeast Asia had given Israel a free hand in its own sphere of geographic influence, the tiny Jewish state found that it now needed the United States—perhaps more so than ever. Israel's aggression against its Arab neighbors had rallied the Arab world against Israel.
With the United States in too deep in Southeast Asia, Israel and its American lobby perceived U.S. energy to be focused in the wrong direction. Thus it was that many of the very voices urging U.S. withdrawal from the arena of Vietnam were those who were most stridently demanding that the U.S. re-insert itself into the Middle East cauldron.
"Many of those, both at home and abroad, who most loudly condemn the American presence in Vietnam, were the first to urge total American involvement in the Middle East.
"And having made the leap from isolation to intervention, they have gone on to argue that our commitment in the Middle East is additional justification for disengagement in Asia. The nation, so this line of reasoning goes, cannot afford involvement in both areas.
"A choice must be made. And the Middle East is the logical place for the United States to intervene," 193 according to the Star's assessment of the attitude of the pro-Israel advocates of withdrawal from Vietnam who were urging U.S. intervention in the Middle East.
So it was that Israel, which initially reaped benefits from U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, ultimately began banging the drum for U.S. withdrawal—but it was only well after the damage of the Vietnam War had already been done. Israel was placing its own interests—not America's interests—first.
The Lansky crime empire began operating major global drug trafficking, largely under CIA cover, throughout Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, during which time the drug problem began escalating to a major degree in the United States and elsewhere.
Now, many years later, the CIA's role in the global drug market is only now just coming to the surface. The Iran-contra scandal, for example, shed some light on this little known aspect of the underbelly of world affairs. Thus, the joint Israel-Lansky-CIA combine shared a major benefit from American involvement in Vietnam. They had Lyndon Johnson to thank.
"Second, by assuring the Israelis that the United States would always provide them with a military edge over the Arabs, Johnson guaranteed the escalation of an arms race . . . Third, by refusing to follow the advice of his aides that America make its delivery of nuclear-capable F-4 Phantoms conditional on Israel's signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Johnson gave the Israelis the impression that America had no fundamental objection to Israel's nuclear program.
"Fourth, by permitting a cover-up of Israel's attack on the Liberty [see Chapter 2], President Johnson told the Israelis in effect that nothing they did would induce American politicians to refuse their bidding. From that time forth, the Israelis began to act as if they had an inalienable right to American aid and backing."194
As Stephen Green concluded in his discussion of the incredible changes in U.S. policy toward Israel that took place during the Johnson era:
"By June of 1967, for a variety of reasons that prominently included `domestic political considerations,' Lyndon Johnson and his team of foreign policy advisers had completely revised U.S.-Israeli relations. To all intents and purposes, Israel had become the 51st state.”195
Israel was established as a state, in major part, through the political, financial and moral support of Meyer Lansky and his associates and henchmen in Organized Crime. Lansky's interests and Israel's interests were almost incestuous. In fact, Lansky's chief European money laundering bank was an operation run under the auspices of a high-ranking, longtime officer of Israel's Mossad.
Lansky's intimate ties with not only America n intelligence (including both the CIA and the FBI) made the Jewish mobster the "untouchable" leader of the global organized crime syndicate.
During John F. Kennedy's short-lived presidency, he was not only at odds with Israel and its powerful lobby in America. Kennedy, as we saw in Chapter 4, had also double-crossed his secret allies in the criminal underworld who had helped him achieve the presidency. The president's brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was waging a relentless war against organized crime. In the years prior to Kennedy's ascendancy to the presidency, a little known, but immensely powerful underworld figure by the name of Meyer Lansky had schemed and shot his way to the top of the crime syndicate.
That syndicate was not just national—it was international—and the
uncrowned king of crime was Meyer Lansky—the so-called "chairman of the
board" of that incredible criminal empire which spanned the globe.
It was Meyer Lansky, early in his criminal career, who had emerged as one of the leading sponsors of the state of Israel and whose most intimate associates were among the chief financial patrons of the influential Israeli lobby in America.
What's more, as we shall see, Lansky had also forged close ties with Israel's allies in the American CIA—an agency that, in itself, had entered into a bitter war with John F. Kennedy.
Thus, when JFK came to blows with not only Israel and its allies in the Lansky Organized Crime empire, but also with the CIA, the American president had unwittingly forged a deadly alliance among his fiercest foes.
It is the Meyer Lansky connection which explains how Israel's Mossad was able to utilize and manipulate, among other elements, the anti-Castro Cuban community—itself working with not only the CIA but also the Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate—in the conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy.
To begin our investigation of the shadowy crevices of the underworld where Israel's Mossad, Organized Crime and the CIA came together in the Kennedy murder, it is most appropriate to begin with Lansky.
It is Lansky (individually) and his crime syndicate which tie all of these diverse strands together, pointing the finger toward the until-now undisclosed role of Israel in the JFK assassination.
A spokesman for the Bahamas Commission of Inquiry which was investigating organized crime in the islands, once said, "At one stage, we began to wonder whether the name of Meyer Lansky was not some vast journalistic piece of fiction, so ghostly and mythical a figure did he appear." 196 But exist he did.
Meyer Lansky, in fact, is a pivotal player in the international conspiracy that resulted in the assassination of John F. Kennedy—all of the literature propagating the theory that "The Mafia Killed JFK" notwithstanding.
"Born Maier Suchowjansky in Grodno, Russia, Lansky arrived in the U.S. at age nine. His family settled in New York's immigrant slums. By the time he was 27, young Maier had five arrests on his record, on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to suspicion of murder, but he was never convicted. He had begun his painstaking climb up the underworld ladder.
"It was during the 1920’s that Lansky became a pal and partner of Bugsy Siegel. The two became a formidable pair, first as hired gunmen for Legs Diamond, soon as leaders of their own gang, called the 'Bugs and Meyer Mob.'
"By the early 1930’s, the Eastern syndicate began to form a loose alliance with other regional mobs. Thus was the national syndicate born. Each gang retained its own identity and pursued its own activities, with the federation coming together occasionally to discuss matters of common interest. Final decisions rested with individual gang leaders, with one acting as federation chairman. The first chairman was Lucky Luciano, head of the Mafia in the East.
"Lucky Luciano was by then in prison, but he still held power and the loyalty of Mafia members. Luciano's attorney and Meyer Lansky were recruited to persuade Luciano to give the arrangement his blessing. After several months of prison visits, Luciano agreed . . . After the war, Lucky was paroled and sent home to Italy on promise he would never again enter the U.S.
In the meantime, Lansky had already cemented his ties with the Washington establishment. In fact, those ties were long-standing.
Roosevelt himself sent Lansky as a personal emissary to Cuba to meet with Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista. F.D.R believed that Batista's authoritarian rule was stirring popular discontent which could be exploited by a growing communist movement in Cuba. Through Lansky F.D.R hoped to influence Batista to institute reforms that would quell the communist threat. It was during this period that Lansky had begun establishing his lucrative gambling empire in the tropical paradise and a long and profitable personal and business relationship with Batista and other Cuban leaders who made millions in kickbacks from Lansky's casino operations.
(Among those on the receiving end of Lansky's pay-offs was Carlos Prio Soccaras, whom, we shall see in Chapter 14, ultimately became a business partner in gunrunning activities with Dallas nightclub operator and Lansky Syndicate henchman, Jack Ruby.) 198
(In Chapter 11, we shall examine Lansky's Cuban gambling activities and his Israeli Mossad-linked European money laundering operations. In Chapter 12 we shall examine Lansky's international narcotics trafficking, and his consequent connections with the CIA, in detail.)
Although Batista was in and out of office several times during the next two decades, the Cuban strongman remained the de facto leader of the island through successive puppet regimes until the advent of Fidel Castro on New Years Day, 1960.
However, Lansky also had extensive contacts much farther away from American shores. Lansky—as we shall see here—was a key force in establishing the State of Israel.
The Wall Street Journal's account of Lansky's rise to power hints at these contradictions, but doesn't explore them in the fashion needed. Two interesting things left out of the Journal summary of Lansky's career should be mentioned.
It is generally known that Lansky launched his criminal career working in conjunction with the famed Mafia figure Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Their alliance is noted in the Journal account and a recent Hollywood extravaganza entitled Mobsters highlighted the youthful exploits of Lansky, Luciano, Benjamin Siegel and Frank Costello.
In his own memoirs Luciano provides a detailed account of how he was, in fact, framed on the white slavery and prostitution charges that resulted in his imprisonment. Luciano does not blame Lansky, by any means, although, as we shall see, he may have had his suspicions.
Luciano doesn't ask the reader to believe that he (Luciano) wasn't engaged in extensive criminal activity. He does present a very cogent case, however, that he was not guilty of the crimes for which he was convicted. Indeed, Luciano was never brought to trial for any of the crimes in which he was engaged with Lansky.
In any case, it is quite possible that Lansky, in fact, did have some role in framing Luciano on the prostitution charges. Tom Dewey's war against Lucky Luciano, the Mafia chieftain's imprisonment, and his subsequent deportation smoothed the way for Lansky's rise to the top.
It was upon Luciano's deportation, that Luciano actually named Lansky
as his official spokesman. According to Luciano, "I worked it all out with
Lansky, and that's the point where Meyer became the real treasurer of the
outfit. I put him in charge of my money and later on he started to take care
of the finances of quite a few guys." 199
Lansky was—despite his Jewish origins—the capo di tuti capi ("boss of all bosses") in Luciano's absence. Theoretically, Lansky could never be a "member" of the Mafia, but he certainly ranked higher than even "made" members who had been inducted into the so-called "honored society."
As a consequence of his prosecution of Luciano, Dewey won widespread political fame and in 1938 ran, unsuccessfully, for governor of New York. In fact, at that time, Lansky reportedly donated fully $250,000 (in 1938 dollars) to Dewey's campaign.
Dewey did not win that race, but during the remaining period of his service as New York's "racket-busting" prosecutor he did obtain a conviction of one of Lansky's Jewish rivals in organized crime, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, who eventually died in the electric chair.
Then, in 1942 when Dewey once again—this time, successfully—sought the governorship, Lansky provided additional financial support and political muscle. Dewey, as governor, commuted Luciano's sentence. In return for his freedom, Luciano agreed to go into exile to his homeland of Italy. Thus, Lansky's influence widened in Luciano's absence abroad.
This would not be, however, the end of the Dewey-Lansky relationship. Dewey later became a major stockholder in the Mary Carter Paint Company in the late 1950's.
According to former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow, "Carter Paint was originally an active corporation set up by Thomas Dewey and CIA director Allen Dulles to use as a CIA front. In 1958, Dewey and some friends had bought controlling interest in the Crosby Miller Corporation, with two million dollars in CIA money—authorized by Allen Dulles. Then, in 1959, the Crosby Miller Corporation was merged with the CIA-owned paint company. As an example of one of its early activities, it provided laundered CIA money for the Bay of Pigs army. In 1963, Mary Carter Paint spun off its paint division, after a Florida land scandal, and became Resorts International.” 200
Resorts International, Inc. controlled virtually all of the resorts in the Bahamas and throughout the Caribbean where Lansky reorganized his gambling operations after being forced out of Cuba in 1960.
Resorts International ultimately set up a subsidiary known as International Intelligence, Inc. (Intertel) ostensibly designed to curtail organized crime involvement in the casino industry. However, in reality, this was a myth.
There are those who suspect that Intertel—like Resorts International and Mary Carter Paint before it was not simply a CIA operation, but a joint CIA-Lansky operation—an intelligence network interacting with Israel's Mossad. 201
Perhaps not surprisingly, Dewey's admiring biographer, Richard Norton Smith, writing in Thomas E. Dewey and His Times, never mentions Dewey's Mary Carter Paint Company—or Lansky's support for Dewey's political endeavors. Another Lansky connection gone unmentioned. All of this illustrates the depth of Lansky's political influence and his wide range of connections.
According to Luciano, his Mafia associate Vito Genovese was his own Cassius. However, upon further thought he added, "Come to think of it, I even had two Cassiuses in my life, the other one bein' a guy by the name of Meyer Lansky. But I didn't get on to him for a long time." 202
In his waning days Luciano considered offers from Hollywood producers who wanted to film his life story. However, Luciano—in exile in Italy—got word from home that there were "orders" that he not participate in any such venture. It was then that Luciano saw the whole picture—the whole truth about what "the Mafia" had really become.
"Lansky held the purse strings, too; he was the treasurer and he was really trying to be the boss of everything. He was so hungry for power behind the scenes he'd kiss anybody's ass and do anything he had to do so that in the end, he—Meyer Lansky, my old partner and a Jew—would wind up the real boss of bosses of all the Italians and the Jews—and without a single fucking vote on the organized crime syndicate council.
"I never really knew what it meant when we was kids and I used to call him the Genius. But at the age of sixty-four, I finally got wise." 203
If, as some claim, "The Mafia Killed JFK," it couldn't have been done without the foreknowledge—and guiding hand—of Meyer Lansky.
And as we shall see in this chapter—and further throughout the pages of this work—Lansky's connections with Israel and its Mossad (as well as Israel's allies in the CIA), demonstrates that Israeli loyalist Meyer Lansky is an integral player who bound together the diverse elements which came together in the JFK assassination conspiracy.
This is the only reference in Lacey's book to even the most tenuous link between Lansky and the JFK murder. However, as we shall see, the connections are very deep indeed. Yet, contrary to what Lacey contends, Lansky's name seldom appears in any significant fashion in most standard accounts which contend that organized crime played a role in the assassination.
The fact is that Lansky's name has been continuously and conveniently buried behind a host of Italian Organized Crime ("Mafia") figures. In Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 we review, extensively, Lansky's connections with the more famous—perhaps infamous—Italian-surnamed underworld figures linked to the Kennedy assassination.
As we shall see, in fact, those individuals in question were, practically to a man, Lansky's underlings. However, Lansky's name is hardly mentioned at all in standard accounts which suggest that organized crime— particularly "the Mafia"—played a part in the president's murder.
Says Messick: "The real leaders of crime have remained hidden while the nation's law enforcement agencies have chased minor punks. And naive is he who believes this development is accidental. Research reveals that non Mafia leaders of crime have been hiding behind the vendetta-ridden society the Italian Mafia for decades. . . Attempts to frame me have been made, and I've been smeared as anti-Semitic from coast to coast by gangsters who used religion as a cloak." 205
In his own memoirs, Lansky's crony, Charles "Lucky" Luciano revealed one rather interesting fact. According to Luciano, it was Lansky himself who suggested that the newly-assembled national crime syndicate dub itself "the Union Siciliano"—a sobriquet which gave the criminal underworld a decidedly "Sicilian" imagery. 206
According to Scott: "What Robert Kennedy had meant by the `syndicate' was very different from what Mafia experts meant by the term La Cosa Nostra." 208 According to Scott, "anyone speaking about organized crime . . . does so under conditions of great political restraint." 209
To put it bluntly: the term "Mafia" does not account for the substantial— and indeed predominant—role of Meyer Lansky and his Jewish associates in the national crime syndicate.
Because of political constraints and fear of being accused of "antisemitism," many have been afraid to point out the important role of Jewish criminals in the world of crime.
One Jewish gangster, Lansky's West Coast henchman, Mickey Cohen, discussed the Italian-Jewish conflict in organized crime in his memoirs. He said, frankly: "See, I don't want to pull any wool over anybody's eyes because I'm writing a true autobiography, right? And I certainly don't want to mince any words, but I really don't consider the Mafia or anything of that type the only strength in organized crime.” 210
Cohen differentiated between the Italian elements in organized crime, popularly known as "the Mafia" and "La Cosa Nostra" and the Jewish forces sometimes satirically called, "the Kosher Nostra."
"It's an organization. It's more what I would refer to as a syndicate.. . So it was an organization, but it wasn't the Mafia. Being Jews, Benny and me and even Meyer couldn't be a real part and parcel of that [the Mafia]."211
The "Benny" to whom Cohen referred was the aforementioned Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the lifelong friend and crime partner of Lansky's. It was Lansky who ultimately ordered Siegel's assassination.
(We will learn much more about the Lansky-Siegel-Cohen connection in Chapter 13 where we uncover Cohen's own pivotal role in the JFK assassination conspiracy.)
It was not, in fact, until the infamous Mafia conclave at Appalachian, New York, in 1957 when the media began hyping "the Mafia" as a major force in organized crime.
Americans had long been aware of legendary mobsters such as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, but general awareness that a national crime syndicate did indeed exist was not commonplace.
Following a police raid of the Appalachian conference,attended exclusively by top Italian-surnamed Mafia figures from around the country public attention began focusing on "the Mafia",thanks to the media.
"The delegates were scattered before any alliance could be reached. And the publicity caused the greatest heat since the 1930's. It focused not only on the men who attended the session but on the entire Mafia. What's more, it continued for well over a year as state and federal officials tried to find some charge to stick against the delegates they had captured or identified.
"Not only were Mafia leaders immobilized by the continuing publicity, but also they were demoralized. Almost instinctively they rallied to Lansky and other non-Mafia syndicate leaders for advice and assistance." 212
Perhaps not coincidentally, one of the young attorneys who played a key role in the Appalachian raid was one Justin Finger. It was Finger who later went on to become chief of the "civil rights division" of the Anti Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the primary intelligence and propaganda arm of Israel's Mossad in the United States. 213 In subsequent chapters, Chapter 17 in particular, we will examine the role of the A.D.L in the JFK assassination cover-up in more explicit detail.
Obviously, the Appalachian raid was a critical event in Lansky's continuing rise to power. It solidified Lansky's hold over the crime syndicate.
Michael Milan, a low-level Jewish organized crime figure who grew up in Lansky's sphere of influence claims to have, in fact, been ritually inducted into the Mafia—by Lansky himself. It was to Lansky that Milan swore his allegiance. Writing in his memoirs, Milan remembers the event fondly: “`Omerta' whispered Meyer Lansky, only half believing in the ritual itself, but not wanting to show the slightest sign of disrespect to . . . Mafia traditions." 214
In any case, as we have seen, Meyer Lansky's predominant role in the criminal underworld was already well in place.
Writing in Secret File, Hank Messick comments: "Was Lansky rewarded? No final answer is possible, but he has been strangely immune to prosecution on the Federal level. Twice the IRS Intelligence Division has recommended prosecution, and twice the Justice Department has declined. Lansky remains the only top man in the national crime syndicate to escape untouched. Because of his brains and the troubles of his colleagues, he rules as undisputed chairman of the board."215
Lansky himself acknowledged his role in the so-called "Operation Underworld." "Sure, I'm the one who put Lucky and Naval Intelligence together," he told his Israeli friend, Israeli newsman Uri Dan. Lansky's reasons were interesting: "The reason I cooperated was because of strong personal feelings. I wanted the Nazis beaten. I was a Jew and I felt for those Jews in Europe who were suffering. They were my brothers."216
Former Lansky associate (and covert FBI operative) Michael Milan also points toward another critical Lansky connection that may have accounted for his immunity from federal harassment.
"I also knew that J. Edgar Hoover and Meyer Lansky sometimes broke bread together. Mr. L. was never rousted, was rarely served with federal subpoenas, and was generally left alone to conduct his business. Mr. L., on the other hand, didn't go around shooting anybody like people in some of the other Mafia Families, and making life embarrassing for the cops and the feds.
"So in this way everybody got along. Mr. H. could worry about his fifth column,the communists. Mr. Costello could worry about keeping peace among the different Families and looking forward to retirement, and Mr. L. could worry about the cash flow in his Las Vegas casinos. “ 217
J. Edgar Hoover's own connections to the Lansky Crime Syndicate and to the pro-Israel lobby have been the subject of rumors and controversy for many years.
It was the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (A.D.L) of B'nai B'rith that was largely responsible for the establishment of the J. Edgar Hoover Foundation in 1947. (Top Lansky associates have long been generous financial backers of the A.D.L.) The Hoover Foundation's first president was Rabbi Paul Richman, Washington director of the A.D.L.
Hoover's longtime associate, Louis B. Nichols, the FBI's Assistant
Director in charge of the Records and Communications Division of the
Bureau, was the FBI's key contact with the A.D.L when the A.D.L helped
orchestrate mass sedition trials against key critics of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt's foreign policy.
Nichols went on to serve as president of the J. Edgar Hoover
Foundation, but only after he left the FBI. Upon retirement from the bureau
he signed on as Executive Vice President of Schenley Industries, a major
liquor firm run by ex-bootlegger and Lansky associate Lewis R.
Rosenstiel.218 Rosenstiel himself was a very close friend of the FBI director
in spite of, or perhaps precisely because of, his ties to Lansky.
The origins of Hoover's sponsor—the A.D.L—is quite interesting. The organization's initial impetus came not so much out of a desire to defend members of the Jewish faith, but, more so, in particular, Jewish mobsters.
In the early part of this century New York City Police Commissioner
Thomas Bingham had begun a dedicated investigation of organized crime in
his city. By 1908 Bingham was under fire and being accused of being "antisemitic"
for pointing out the role of certain Jewish gangsters in organized
crime.
Ultimately, Bingham was forced out of office and organized crime took
hold in New York City. One of the immediate beneficiaries of Bingham's
departure was mobster Arnold Rothstein, Lansky's mentor and the
undisputed Jewish underworld leader prior to the younger Lansky's rise to
power.
The source of the attacks on Bingham was a public relations committee
formed by a corporate attorney by the name of Sigmund Livingston. By
1913 Livingston's committee had formally incorporated as the Anti Defamation
League of B'nai B'rith. 220
So it was that "crime buster" J. Edgar Hoover was himself a beneficiary of A.D.L largesse (a large portion of which, as we have seen, came from the coffers of Lansky and his criminal syndicate.)
Gentry adds: "There was a rumor, often heard in the underworld, that Meyer Lansky had his own man very high up in the FBI. William Sullivan had his own suspect, someone close to both the director and Hoover's close friend and second in command, Clyde Tolson, who was reputedly living far above his means. This was one case the FBI never solved." 222
This same Sullivan happened to be the number three man at the FBI behind Hoover and Tolson. As head of the Bureau's highly secretive Division Five, Sullivan was in charge of domestic counterintelligence. Also in charge of the FBI's participation in the Warren Commission investigation, Sullivan was not only a close friend of James Angleton, head of the Mossad desk at the CIA, but also—incredibly enough—a CIA conduit within the FBI itself.223 (We will examine Angleton's role in the JFK assassination in much further detail in Chapter 8 and in Chapter 16).
As head of the FBI's Domestic Intelligence, Sullivan was in charge of the infamous COINTELPRO operations against, among others, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a bevy of left-wing (and right-wing) political groups.224 COINTELPRO relied heavily on the Israeli lobby's Anti Defamation League for continuing and ongoing intelligence reports as it had since at least before World War II.
Sullivan, who had resigned from the FBI, having broken with Hoover, had told investigators that he had become disenchanted when Hoover told him personally, "I am most concerned about having something issued so we can convince the public that Lee Harvey Oswald is the real assassin." 225
Whatever Sullivan did know about Hoover—and perhaps Hoover's relationship with Meyer Lansky will never be known.
The Giancanas' say that Hoover had worked out a deal with Lansky's
boyhood friend and criminal associate Frank Costello. The New York
mobster would pass horse race betting tips to columnist Walter Winchell, a
Hoover intimate. Winchell, in turn, would pass the information on fixed
races to Hoover. Hoover would arrange his real bets through his associates
while making minimal bets on his own ticket at the horse races. According to
the Giancanas', "Hoover won every time." 227
That Hoover was well versed in Lansky's criminal activities there is no question. His intelligence sources were legendary.
"Hoover knew who was skimming from the casino profits—and how much they were taking in. He knew where the money went and how it made its way to the top bosses.
"He also knew that some people, well connected with this place, were very unhappy with the Kennedy's, John and Robert, unhappy to the point they were talking about killing them."
"Eventually the FBI discovered that most of the `skim’ loot went to Meyer Lansky in Miami. In a typical month in 1963, the skim from one casino amounted to $123,500, of which Lansky kept $71,000, then transmitted the rest to the New Jersey mobster Gerald Catena. Catena distributed in the north and Lansky in Florida. Each recipient would have a small percentage of his share deducted for casino employees who kept mum about the operation. There were also couriers, $300,000 to a Swiss bank, $100,000 to the Bahamas."228 (Later in this chapter and in Chapter 11, Chapter 12 and Chapter 15 we shall discuss Lansky's Swiss bank connections. They are central to the joint Lansky-CIA-Israeli Mossad operation that resulted in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.)
Even in the late 1960's, according to Gentry , "Hoover still had a blind spot so far as [Lansky] was concerned."229
Citing numerous sources—some suspect and virtually all of them unsavory—Summers claimed that not only Lansky, but also several others had access to similar photos (which Summers is apparently unable to produce). Summers reports that former O.S.S man and later longtime CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton also had control of the Hoover photos, as did former O.S.S chief William Donovan.
The question, though, is whether Angleton, Donovan and company gave the photos to Lansky—or vice-versa--either option being possible in light of Lansky's own longtime association with American intelligence. 230
That both Lansky and Angleton were in possession of such evidence is quite interesting in light of their joint interest in the welfare of the state of Israel, a subject we will be examining shortly. Angleton, as we shall see in Chapter 8 and Chapter 12, had been directly involved with the Lansky crime syndicate through the CIA's dealings with Lansky's drug-smuggling allies in the Corsican and Sicilian Mafias. He was also Israel's chief CIA patron.
Robert Lacey points out in his biography of Lansky that Israeli agents were introduced to Lansky in the summer of 1948, the year that Israel became a state. Lansky permitted the Haganah (Jewish terrorist underground) fund-raiser, Joseph Baum, to hold a $10,000 benefit at (Lansky's gambling house), the Colonial Inn. He gave a donation himself. Lansky told them: "I'm at your service."232 (As we noted in Chapter 4, one of the smaller shareholders in the Colonial Inn—at least at one point—was a Dallas nightclub keeper named Jack Ruby.)
Lansky also provided other "technical assistance" to the Israeli gunrunning operations in the United States. In one instance, a Pittsburgh arms dealer's shipment of weapons to the Arabs who were fighting the Jews in Palestine was tossed overboard after Lansky talked to his friends at the New York docks. On other occasions, arms intended for the Arabs were, instead, hijacked by Lansky's henchman and shipped to Israel.
Lansky also wasn't above putting the squeeze on rackets buddies—Jewish and non-Jewish alike—to buy Israel bonds. "Hey, these are a great investment," he would say.233 In fact, according to journalist Robert Friedman, Lansky was later a major contributor to radical New York-born Rabbi Meir Kahane who founded the militant Jewish Defense League. Kahane, who was ultimately assassinated, actually served, at one point, in the Israeli parliament. 234 And, as we shall see in Chapter 8, Kahane himself had unusual connections to American intelligence that bring his Lansky connection full circle.
(In later years, following the establishment of Israel, the Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate-financed A.D.L emerged as an unregistered foreign agent for Israel, handling intelligence and propaganda operations for the Jewish State, in collaboration with the FBI and the CIA. In Chapter 17 we will examine the A.D.L's role more fully, particularly in regard to its manipulation of the media. )
In any case, as we shall see in Chapter 15, it was Operation Underworld's William Stephenson who became a critical player in the establishment of Israel's Mossad. Stephenson's top aide was Louis Bloomfield, later an attorney for the Lansky-linked Bronfman bootlegging family and himself a key player in the conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy. (We shall examine Bloomfield in detail in Chapter 15.)
There is little question but that Stephenson and Bloomfield were in close contact with Lansky and his henchmen during this period. Lansky himself, as we have seen, acknowledged his own role in Operation Underworld.236 Following World War II, the activities of Operation Underworld and many of the key players shifted to a new front: the establishment of Israel.
Both Stephenson and Bloomfield were integral to gunrunning operations on behalf of the Jewish terrorist underground that later emerged as the government of the new Jewish State in 1948.
It was in 1947 that Rudolph Sonneborn (husband of New York
publisher Dorothy Schiff) set up an entity known as the Sonneborn
Institute. It was this institute that provided the Jewish Haganah, and later
the Irgun, in Palestine with arms and money. The Institute's coordinator for
arms smuggling to the Jewish underground was Louis Bloomfield.
Working with Bloomfield were liquor baron Samuel Bronfman, one Hank
Greenspun (about whom we shall see much more later in Chapter 17) and
Lansky himself. 237
It was during the 1947-1948 period that Teddy Kollek, later mayor of Jerusalem, was in charge of the Haganah station in Lansky's then-base of operations, New York City. He was said to be the formal liaison with American organized crime. 238 Kollek worked with the Lansky Syndicate and ultimately had contact with yet another key player in our story, one James Jesus Angleton—a controversial figure indeed. 239
It was Angleton, an O.S.S man, who later became a top-ranking figure in the American CIA and Israel's chief contact—some would say co-opted agent and loyalist—within CIA ranks. Angleton worked closely with Jewish underground activities both in London and in Italy and was instrumental in orchestrating U.S. intelligence collaboration with the Corsican Mafia and the Sicilian Mafia in intelligence operations during these same years and thereafter. (In Chapter 8 and Chapter 16 we shall examine Angleton's CIA activities, working closely with Israel and of his pivotal role in the JFK assassination and cover-up conspiracy in detail.)
Clearly, during the period of the establishment of Israel, Meyer Lansky was directly and intimately involved with all of the major players. Many of these same people would later be involved with Lansky in what some call "the crime of the century." The Russian-born Jewish immigrant had come a long way from the slums of Brooklyn to a singular and pre-eminent role in global power politics. Indeed, Lansky was emerging as the "godfather" of a newly born nation: Israel.
It was Lansky's foreign banking connection that draws him into the web of Israel's international intrigue to the utmost.
Lansky's primary link with Israeli intelligence and financial operations
came through the entity of the Banque de Credit International in Geneva
Switzerland. This bank emerged as Lansky's primary European money laundering
operation.241 This bank was the brainchild of one Tibor
Rosenbaum.
An Orthodox rabbi, Rosenbaum served for a period as international vice president of the World Jewish Congress (of which Lansky-connected Bronfman family member Edgar Bronfman has served as president). Rosenbaum also was a co-founder of the World Zionist Congress and a director of the Jewish Agency in Geneva, Switzerland. 242
However, and most importantly, Rosenbaum had served as Director General for Finance and Supply for Israel's secret intelligence agency, the Mossad. Rosenbaum was, very clearly, a key figure in Israel's international intrigue and a critical player in the world of organized crime syndicate boss Meyer Lansky.
Rosenbaum, among other things, also served on the board of the Swiss-Israel Trade Bank, established by Pinchas Sapir, Israel's Finance Minister and a Mossad officer. 243 It was during the time he served on the Swiss Israel Trade Bank that Rosenbaum created the Banque de Credit International (B.C.I).
Indeed, one of the board members of B.C.I was Zwi Recheter, director of the Bank Hapoalim, one of Israel's largest banks and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Israel's Histadrut, the national labor confederation. 244 What's more, B.C.I held the bulk of funds for the World Jewish Congress and the Jewish Agency, no minor deposits by any means.
B.C.I was to become Meyer Lansky's primary overseas money laundering bank—sharing those money laundering services that the bank provided to Israel's Mossad. In fact, during its heyday, B.C.I included among its board of directors two longtime Lansky associates, Edward Levinson and John Pullman. 245
As we noted in Chapter 6, Levinson was one of the operators of the
Fremont Casino in Las Vegas, a front man for Lansky's close friend, Joseph
"Doc" Stacher, and a frequent business partner of Bobby Baker, reputed
"bagman" for Lyndon Johnson. John Pullman, about whom we shall learn
more later in this chapter and in Chapter 12 and Chapter 15, was Lansky's
key international money handler.
The extent of Lansky's Israeli connection—through Rosenbaum's B.C.I—
first became part of the public record in 1970 during the criminal trial of
Alvin Malnik, one of Lansky's lieutenants.
Testimony in the trial revealed that one of the main money laundering channels for the illegal proceeds of the Lansky Crime Syndicate's narcotics, vice and gambling rackets in the United States was Tibor Rosenbaum's B.C.I. Rosenbaum's bank received its Lansky Crime Syndicate cash flow mainly through the Lansky-dominated Bank of World Commerce in Nassau, Bahamas.
The middleman was a Swiss national, Sylvain Ferdmann, a courier for
Lansky. Ferdmann was an official of Rosenbaum's bank, an associate of
the Bank of World Commerce (controlled by Lansky's longtime crony, John
Pullman) and a legman for Investors Overseas Services (I.O.S), the fiefdom of
financier Bernard Cornfeld.
Cornfeld, in fact, was sponsored by Rosenbaum, and had emerged as a major money launderer for Lansky's global drug trafficking. Millions in small bills were transferred from Lansky's casinos, often masked as Israeli Bond sales and contributions to Jewish philanthropies.246 This, of course, an outrageous betrayal of honest supporters of the Zionist cause. (In Chapter 12 we shall examine in detail how as a result of active U.S. involvement in the region, the Lansky Syndicate used the cover of CIA covert activities in Southeast Asia to carry out multi-billion dollar drug smuggling operations.)
Investigative reporter Jim Hougan focused on the Lansky-Rosenbaum connection and its central link to Israel's international operations—particularly those of the Mossad:
"During the Second World War Rosenbaum had become a hero of the resistance through his underground activities on behalf of the Jews.
"After the war he became a delegate to the World Zionist Congress in Basel, where plans were made for the creation of Israel, and worked in various European capitals for the Palestine Liberation office (forerunner of the Jewish Agency). This was at the height of Zionist terrorist attacks in Palestine. A superb clandestine operator, Rosenbaum is said to have been instrumental in providing weapons to the Haganah and Stern Gang. That would tend to explain why the International Credit Bank [i.e. Banque de Credit International or B.C.I], `Rosenbaum's Baby," became gambling czar Meyer Lansky's Number One conduit abroad.
"Rosenbaum was more than a friend to the Jews, however. When his bank was rocked with scandal after the collapse of [Bernard Cornfeld's] I.O.S, the newspaper Ha'aretz solemnly declared, 'Tibor Rosenbaum is Israel.' And the paper wasn't far from wrong. While Rosenbaum's bank facilitated the flight-capital schemes worked by I.O.S, it also served as a source of secret funds for the Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, and as one of the country's primary weapons brokers. At one point 'as much as ninety percent of the Israeli Defense Ministry's external budget flowed . . . through Rosenbaum's bank on the Rue de Conseil General.'
"In economic matters he was equally important, founding the Israel Corporation with the help of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a French aristocrat committed to the Zionist cause. The raison d'etre of the Israel Corporation was to raise money among the world's Jews, money to be invested in a variety of public and semi-public Israeli enterprises.
By finding money abroad to fund development projects in "the homeland," Rosenbaum and Rothschild freed Israeli tax monies to be spent on the country's critical military needs. Accordingly, [Rosenbaum] became the "Mr. Fixit" of Israeli finance, cementing friendships with the country's most important military and political leaders.
"The mix of Mob, Mossad, IOS, and Rothschild monies was an intoxicating one in which the common denominator appears to have been a love of Israel. Certainly Rosenbaum and Cornfeld shared that affection with Lansky and the French baron."247
Prominent among them was Sam Rothberg of the National Distilleries.
Rothberg, in fact, was one of the initial investors in Lansky's first Las
Vegas casino, established by Benjamin Siegel, the Flamingo Hotel.
Rothberg was one of the leading lights in the American Jewish community
and the U.S. director of the Israeli Bonds drive. Rothberg later came to
Lansky's aid and fought against Lansky's forced return to the United States
to face criminal charges following Lansky's flight to Israel (more about
which later in this chapter.)
Others included two interesting figures in particular:
Shaul Eisenberg, Israel's wealthiest industrialist and longtime Mossad operative—a key figure in Israel's nuclear bomb project; and
Philip M. Klutznick, a top-ranking figure in the Anti-Defamation League (A.D.L) of B’nai B’rith. 248
The A.D.L connection here is interesting in that it further backtracks to Lansky's BCI-Rosenbaum linkage. Klutznick, who had been associated with the Lansky-linked Sonneborn Institute gunrunning operations coordinated by Louis M. Bloomfield (mentioned earlier), had become chairman of the board of the American Bank and Trust Company.
American Bank and Trust was a subsidiary of the Swiss-Israel Trade Bank, a Mossad financial operation of which Rosenbaum and his long-time associate, Shaul Eisenberg, had been directors. By coincidence—maybe not—Swiss-Israel Trade Bank assumed management of American Bank and Trust on a very memorable day: November 22, 1963.249
Installed as one of the new directors of the company was New York businessman Abe Feinberg. It was Feinberg, whom we first met in Chapter 4, who was instrumental in arranging highly critical American Jewish financial support for the 1960 presidential campaign of then-Senator John F. Kennedy.
American Bank and Trust had an unhappy ending. The company was looted in 1975-76 by financier David Gravier who subsequently was supposed to have died in an airplane crash in Mexico. Tibor Rosenbaum's B.C.I also, incidentally, had a similarly unhappy ending. The bank collapsed in 1974 resulting in a scandal that shook Israel to its core. In his book, Jews and Money: The Myths and the Reality, author Gerald Krefetz details the collapse of the Lansky-Mossad banking operation.
Lansky's Miami banks were central to Lansky's gambling operations in the Caribbean. According to former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow, the Bank of Miami Beach "was originally set up to service Cuban casinos operated by organized crime and continued to perform laundering services through the 1960's—and was still considered mob-connected. It was considered a sister bank of the Miami National Bank in the 1960's, sharing many of the same directors and performing many of the same services." 250
These Miami banks, additionally, have close ties to the Anti Defamation
League of B'nai B'rith, Israel's intelligence and propaganda arm
in this country. For example, Leonard Abess was chairman and founder of
City National Bank of Miami. His bank managed A.D.L Foundation funds
and Abess himself served as A.D.L national vice chairman. 251
https://theundergroundmovement.org/tag/city-national-bank/
City National's chairman, beginning in 1982, was Donald Beazley, who was a former director of the mysterious Australian Nugan Hand Bank.252 The Nugan Hand Bank, the subject of an interesting study by Jonathan Kwitny entitled The Crimes of Patriots, has been repeatedly linked to international drug money trafficking out of Southeast Asia conducted through the conduit of CIA operations in the region. (And as we shall see in Chapter 12, Lansky utilized the CIA's activities in Southeast Asia as a cover for his drug-running operations which were, in fact, carried out hand-in-hand with the CIA. In Chapter 15, however, we shall see the Lansky-Rosenbaum connection once again, and in further detail. Their linkage is critical to recognizing the important role that Israel played in the JFK assassination conspiracy.)
At home in the United States, Lansky was under criminal investigation. Exile in Israel seemed a likely way of escaping the trouble. Israel was an ideal location for Lansky to relocate his operations and he set about plans for setting up the Jewish State as the new, formal headquarters for his global crime syndicate. As Hank Messick put it: "As chairman of the board of the Syndicate International, Lansky could operate just as easily—perhaps more easily—from Tel Aviv as Miami Beach." 253 Lansky's longtime associate Joseph (Doc) Stacher had already gone to Israel to live. So had a wide-ranging assortment of other American Jewish mobsters, including Lansky's good friend Phil "The Stick" Kovolick.
The Mossad-dominated government of Israel seemed to welcome these criminals as new countryman. Israel, according to Newsweek, "appeared to be motivated by self-interest. Each year, Lansky and his underworld associates pour vast sums into Israeli bonds and Israeli philanthropies.
Lansky's initial entree to Israel was quietly orchestrated. Word leaked out that a wealthy "Miami philanthropist” had taken up residence in the Jewish State. However, circumstances beyond Lansky's control made matters difficult for the grand wizard of the underworld.
During his stay in Israel, two American grand juries (in March of 1971 and in June of 1972) handed down indictments against Lansky and several of his associates. The first indictment charged—correctly, of course—that Lansky had been skimming millions from the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The second indictment charged Lansky with income tax evasion.
There were more than a few honest, law-abiding Israelis who objected to the "chairman of the board" staking his future in Israel, and the political pressure was such that there was widespread clamor for his deportation. It didn't help matters that fearless crime reporter Hank Messick's biography of Lansky appeared during that same period and portions of it appeared in the Israeli press. Lansky himself made his own loyalties clear, however. In a friendly series of interviews with Ma'ariv, an Israeli daily, Lansky said, "I don't care what they wrote and write about me in America. I care what they think of me in Israel."255
Between the public outcry in Israel and pressure from American authorities, the Israel government buckled and agreed to expel Lansky. However, the "boss of all bosses" appealed his expulsion all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court. The emotional issue of a Jew who had made "aliyah" and settled in Israel under the Law of Return—and who was then being expelled to face possible punishment in a criminal court in another country—played heavily in Lansky's favor. However, despite Lansky's best efforts—including an offer of $10,000,000 if he was permitted to remain—he was forced to return to the United States.
But Lansky's traditional magical powers over the American criminal justice system were still with him. First of all, a jury in his home base of Miami acquitted him on the income tax evasion charges. Then, in mob controlled Nevada, the criminal charges against Lansky were thrown out of court on the basis that Lansky was in ill health. And in Washington, U.S. Solicitor General Robert Bork decided that going after Lansky—the ruling boss of international organized crime—was not in the nation's best interests. Bork decided that the Justice Department just didn't have a case against Lansky. The case was dropped.257 Lansky had once again prevailed—to nobody's surprise. (Bork later suffered an ignominious rejection by the Senate when nominated for the Supreme Court. However, it was not Bork's pandering to Lansky that weighed against him—although it probably should have.)
Lansky's remaining years were quiet ones spent with his wife and dog and an assortment of other aging racketeers. He still maintained some oversight over his business operations but increasing health problems continued to plague him. The mastermind behind the global crime syndicate finally died on January 15, 1983.
In his final years—and posthumously—Lansky (with the willing help of Hollywood and the rest of the media) became a folk hero of sorts. Gangsterism was being made fashionable—even as the glory days of John F. Kennedy and Camelot were being trashed by that same media. Lansky's days with Benjamin Siegel were glamorized in films such as The Gangster Chronicles, The Neon Empire, and in Mobsters, where a host of teen idols played Lansky, Siegel, Costello and Luciano in their early years.
Author Robert Lacey—who had previously written a glowing profile of the British royal family—turned his attention to the royal family of the international crime syndicate and produced—with the help of the Lansky family—a Lansky biography, Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life. Lacey's epic tells much—but ignores a lot. He would have us believe that Lansky was, more than anything, a devoted family man, and not the ruthless thug that he truly was. Even as Lacey's Lansky biography was hitting the bookstores, yet another Hollywood production brought Lansky to the screen. This film, Bugsy, starring heart-throb Warren Beatty as Benjamin Siegel, cast the highly-regarded actor Ben Kingsley (who had even played Mahatma Gandhi) as a wise and all-knowing Meyer Lansky.
However, the Hollywood versions of the life and times of Meyer Lansky were far from the truth, no matter how colorful a story they told about the evil genius they portrayed.
Thus, even in death, Meyer Lansky prevailed. Lansky's central role As a virtual middleman between the high-level forces that conspired in the assassination of John F. Kennedy has been cleverly buried by a willing media. "Israel's Godfather" was lionized almost as a misunderstood statesman. Meyer Lansky, however, was not that.
Instead, Lansky was a cynical, cold-blooded killer who had ordered the death of his closest friend—Benjamin Siegel—and who certainly had no qualms about helping orchestrate the murder of an American president who threatened not only his own survival, but that of his beloved State of Israel.
next
Thick as Thieves: A Dangerous Liaison—
James Jesus Angleton and the Unholy
Alliance Between Israel, the CIA and
the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate
footnotes
Chapter Six The Coming of the Messiah
150 John Davis. Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. (New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1989), p. 159.
151 Robert Lacey. Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life. (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1991), pp. 332-333.
152 Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris. The Green Felt Jungle. (New York: Pocket Books edition, 1964), pp. 217-219.
153 Ibid.
154 Robert Morrow. The Senator Must Die (Santa Monica, California: Roundtable Publishing, Inc., 1988), p. 126.
155 Robert N. Winter-Berger. The Washington Pay-Off (New York: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1972), pp. 65-66.
156 Ibid., p. 66.
157 Stephen Green. Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations With a Militant Israel. (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1984), p. 186.
158 Ibid.
159 I. L. Kenan. Israel's Defense Line: Her Friends and Foes in Washington. (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1981), p. 173.
160 Seymour Hersh. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 127.
161 Ibid., p. 128. 162 Green, p. 185. 163 Ibid., p. 186. 164 Richard Curtiss. A Changing Image (Washington, D.C.: American Educational Trust, 1986), p. 68.
165 Ibid.
166 Jean Lacouture. DeGaulle: The Ruler. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993), p. 446.
167 Ibid.
168 Ibid, p. 378.
169 Ibid.
170 Curtiss, Ibid.
171 Ibid.
172 Ibid.
173 Ibid.
174 Alfred Lilienthal. The Zionist Connection II. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: North American, 1982), p. 549.
175 Kenan, p. 173.
176 Curtiss, p. 75.
177 Green, p. 246.
178 Ibid.
179 Curtiss, p. 75.
180 Green, p. 186.
181 Richard Deacon. The Israeli Secret Service. (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., Inc., 1978), p. 179.
182 Ibid.
183 Green, pp. 165-166.
184 Washington Observer, September 15, 1968.
185 Alan H. Ryskind. Hubert. (New York: Arlington House, 1968), pp. 79-84.
186 Ball, p. 52.
187 Green, pp. 186-187.
188 Ibid.
189 Ibid., p. 251.
190 Ibid., pp. 243-244.
191 Ibid., p. 249.
192 Ibid., p. 180.
193 Washington Star, June 4, 1967.
194 Ball, pp. 65-66.
195 Green, p. 250.
Chapter Seven Israel's Godfather
196 Marvin Miller. The Breaking of a President: The Nixon Connection. (Covina, California: Classic Publications, 1975), p. 336.
197 The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 1969, p. 1.
198 Miller, p. 327.
199 Martin Gosch & Richard Hammer. The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano. (Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1974), p. 229.
200 Robert D. Morrow. The Senator Must Die: The Murder of Robert F. Kennedy. (Santa Monica, California: Roundtable Publishing, Inc., 1988), p. 238.
201 The Spotlight, September 25, 1978.
202 Gosch & Hammer, p. 381.
203 Ibid., p. 431.
204 Robert Lacey. Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life. (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1991), p. 386.
205 Hank Messick. Lansky. (New York: Berkley Medallion Books, 1971), pp. 8-10.
206 Gosch & Hammer, p. 146.
207 Peter Dale Scott. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993), p. 192.
208 Peter Dale Scott. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993), p. 187.
209 Ibid.
210 Mickey Cohen with John Peer Nugent. Mickey Cohen: In My Own Words. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975), p. 35.
211 Ibid.
212 Messick, p. 215.
213 Executive Intelligence Review. Dope, Inc. (New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1986), p. 587.
214 Michael Milan. The Squad: The U.S. Government's Secret Alliance With Organized Crime. (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1989), p. 194.
215 Hank Messick. Secret File. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1969), p. 185.
216 Interview with Ma'ariv, July 5, 1971.
217 Milan, p. 206.
218 Washington Observer, May 15, 1969.
219 Twin Circle , September 29, 1968.
220 Executive Intelligence Review. (Dope, Inc.), pp. 578-579.
221 Curt Gentry. J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), p. 530.
222 Ibid., p. 531.
223 Tom Mangold. Cold Warrior. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 235.
224 Peter Dale Scott. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993), p. 64. 562 Reference Notes [465]
225 Morrow, p. 98.
226 Sam Giancana and Chuck Giancana. Double Cross: The Explosive Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America. (New York: Warner Books, 1992), p. 255.
227 Ibid., p. 256.
228 Gentry, p. 495.
229 Ibid., p. 628.
230 Antony Summers. Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1993), pp. 244-245.
231 Messick, p. 276.
232 Lacey, p. 163.
233 Ibid., p. 164.
234 Robert I. Friedman. The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane: From FBI Informant to Knesset Member. (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1990), p. 144.
235 Intelligence Review. Moscow's Secret Weapon: Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Mafia. (Washington, D.C.: Executive Intelligence Review, March 1, 1986), p. 14.
236 Ibid
237 Ibid., pp. 14-15.
238 Ibid
239 Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn. Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991), pp. 41-42.
240 Ed Reid. The Grim Reapers: The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America, City by City. (New York: Pocket Books edition, 1964), p. 293.
241 Messick, pp. 248-249.
242 Executive Intelligence Review (Moscow), p. 17
243 Ibid, p. 16.
244 Ibid., p. 18.
245 Life, September 16, 1967.
246 Messick, Ibid.
247 Jim Hougan. Spooks: The Haunting of America—The Private Use of Secret Agents. (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1985), p. 172.
248 Executive Intelligence Review (Moscow,), p. 13.
249 Ibid., p. 16.
250 Morrow, p . 1 5 2 .
251 Executive Intelligence Review. Project Democracy: The 'Parallel Government' Behind the Iran-Contra Affair. (Washington, D.C.: Executive Intelligence Review, April 1987), pp. 271-272.
252 Ibid., p. 272. 253Hank Messick and Burt Goldblatt. The Mobs and the Mafia. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972), p. 204.
254 Newsweek, November 29, 1971.
255 Lacey, p. 333. [466] Final Judgment 563
256 Wall Street Journal, Ibid.
257 Lacey, pp. 383-384.
This especially, of course, in light of the fact that the man who succeeded Kennedy—Lyndon Johnson—had long and often proven a history of personal affinity for Israel and its international interests.
JOHNSON'S LANSKY CONNECTION
Johnson, too, had a long and sordid record of involvement in criminal
activities—including murder—that have finally begun to surface. The record
is far too complex to examine here—besides which, popular literature on the
subject is quite complete.
Carlos Marcello
Nonetheless, it is certainly worth noting that one major Johnson backer
was Meyer Lansky's Louisiana henchman, Carlos Marcello. According to
John W. Davis, Lansky's man Marcello funneled at least $50,000 a year in
payoffs to then-Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson who, in turn, helped kill in
committee all rackets-related legislation that might have been harmful to the
Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate. 150 There are indications, however, that Johnson's ties to Lansky and his associates go even deeper. When Lansky himself was living in Israel, one of his American cronies, Benjamin Sigelbaum, came visiting. 151
Bobby Baker
It was Mr. Sigelbaum (not to be confused with Benjamin "Bugsy"
Siegel whom Lansky had ordered killed in 1947) who was involved with
longtime Johnson intimate Bobby Baker in two major dealings: the
purchase of a bank in Tulsa, Oklahoma and in Baker's controversial Serv-U
Vending Machine Company.152 Another of Baker's business collaborators, was Edward Levinson, who operated the Fremont Casino in Las Vegas as a front man for longtime Lansky friend and business partner, Joseph (Doc) Stacher (who ultimately died in exile in Israel). 153
What's more, author Robert Morrow, a former CIA contract agent, has revealed that one of Baker's closest associates, with whom he was reportedly "thick as thieves," was a mob courier named Mickey Weiner who was "a complete user of Baker's office, of all the Baker facilities on Capitol Hill." 154 Needless to say, Baker's office and Baker's "facilities" were one and the same with those of Lyndon B. Johnson.
It was this same Mickey Weiner who, as we shall see in Chapter 7, was one of Meyer Lansky's chief couriers between his Miami banking operations and his European money-laundering center at the Banque de Credit International (B.C.I) in Geneva, Switzerland.
(B.C.I, as we shall see in detail in Chapter 7, Chapter 12 and Chapter 15, was operated by an Israeli banker, Tibor Rosenbaum, former Director for Finances and Supply for Israel's Mossad.)
Mr. Baker, who served time in federal prison for his criminal activities during his time as Johnson's protege (and as his reputed bag man), would have been the one person who could have sent Lyndon Johnson to prison if he had revealed all.
Indeed, it was Johnson's involvement with Bobby Baker that had led John F. Kennedy to begin laying the groundwork for dropping Johnson from the Democratic ticket in 1964. But even with Kennedy's death, the stench of corruption surrounding the Lansky-linked Baker still threatened Johnson.
JOHNSON FACES PRISON?
Washington lobbyist Robert N. Winter-Berger recalls a visit by then President
Johnson to the office of House Speaker John McCormack while
Winter-Berger was there. Johnson burst in unexpectedly. Unconscious of
Winter-Berger's presence, Johnson began shrieking and shouting and
condemning his longtime friend and protege, Bobby Baker. "John, that son
of a bitch is going to ruin me. If that cocksucker talks, I'm gonna land in
jail," Johnson roared. "I practically raised that motherfucker and now he's
gonna make me the first President of the United States to spend the last days
of his life behind bars." 155 According to Winter-Berger Johnson suddenly realized that he was present. Speaker McCormack assured the president that Winter-Berger was "all right" and that Winter-Berger was close to one of Baker's other associates, Nat Voloshen.
Johnson asked Winter-Berger to have this message relayed to Baker. "Tell Nat to tell Bobby that I will give him a million dollars if he takes this rap. Bobby must not talk." 156 Baker did not talk. Baker went to jail. Johnson did not.
Obviously, Johnson's Lansky connection is far more complex than we might even be able to determine—but the interplay between Johnson and his intimates and those of the Lansky syndicate is indisputable, to say the least.
SUDDEN POLICY CHANGES
Needless to say, when Lyndon Johnson became president, the Kennedy
war against organized crime came to a sudden halt. There were other
important policy reversals as well, including, of course, the change in
Vietnam policy (about which we will explore further in this chapter and in
Chapter 9.) What, of course, however, is most significant about Lyndon Johnson's assumption of the Oval Office were the profound—and immediate—changes in U.S. policy toward Israel and the Arab world that came rapidly upon LBJ's sudden succession to the presidency.
`GOOD NEWS' FROM DALLAS
The earliest evidence we can find that Israel and its lobby in America
were delighted by Lyndon's elevation to the presidency comes in a memo
that I. L. Kenan, director of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (A.I.P.A.C) sent out to top-ranking figures in A.I.P.A.C and others in the Israel
lobby in Washington. Hailing Johnson's "front-rank pro-Israel position"157 during his Senate career, the memo was dated November 26, 1963, just one day after John F. Kennedy was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The memo, incidentally, was formally noted "Not for Publication or Circulation."158
Clearly, those in the Israeli camp didn't want their seeming delight in Kennedy's passing—and Johnson's sudden good luck—to be in the public record.
What is additionally interesting are Kenan's memoirs of his service as one of the Israeli lobby's top men in Washington. The memoirs contain, as we have seen, a chapter about John F. Kennedy cryptically—perhaps critically—entitled—"A Multitude of Promises" along with the intriguing— and accurate—reference to 1963 as "The Turbulent Year," (for U.S.-Israeli relations).159
The very next chapter—about Lyndon Johnson—is warmly entitled "Israel's Texas Friend." Johnson—who was, in Kenan's words, the "New Man in the White House"—proved to be a very loyal friend of Israel.
Seymour Hersh points out that one of Johnson's first symbolic acts as president was to dedicate a synagogue in Austin, Texas—less than six weeks after assuming the presidency. In fact, Hersh notes, Johnson was the first American president in history to dedicate a synagogue. It was, we shall see, a very symbolic act indeed. 160
Lady Bird Johnson, the new president's wife, later tried to explain why her husband was so fond of Israel and its friends in the American pro-Israel lobby. "Jews have been woven into the warp and woof of all his [Johnson's] years," she said. 161
ISRAEL'S INTERESTS FIRST
In Israel, Johnson's presidency was greeted with pleasure. The Israeli
newspaper Yedio Ahoronot said that in a Johnson presidency the issue of
"U.S. interests" would not be as much of a problem in U.S.-Israeli relations
as they had been under Kennedy.162 In other words, Johnson—unlike
Kennedy—would be willing to set aside American interests in favor of
Israel's. The Israeli journal added, "There is no doubt that, with the
accession of Lyndon Johnson, we shall have more opportunity to approach
the President directly if we should feel that U.S. policy militates against our
vital interests." 163
MOURNING IN ISLAM
In Algeria, the new Arab republic that had achieved independence with help from John F. Kennedy, Premier Ahmad Ben Bella telephoned the U.S. ambassador to say, "Believe me, I'd rather it had happened to me than to him."165 Kennedy's friendly gestures for peace were being remembered.
In Egypt President Nasser realized that the death of John F. Kennedy would have a profound impact upon the Arab world. With Kennedy's departure, Nasser later said that "French President Charles DeGaulle is the only Western Head of State on whose friendship the Arabs can depend.” 166
However, according to DeGaulle's biographer, Jean Lacouture, DeGaulle was "a friend neither of the Arabs, nor of Israel, but only of France." 167 One might say that similar words could likewise be applied to John F. Kennedy: "a friend neither of the Arabs, nor of Israel, but only of America.” And Israel certainly did not consider JFK a friend.
MOURNING IN PARIS
In Paris, DeGaulle—who had granted Algerian independence and who
had suffered numerous attempts on his own life in retaliation—was
thoroughly stunned by the murder of the American president. He interrupted
a Cabinet meeting to announce: "John Fitzgerald Kennedy has been
assassinated. He was one of the very few leaders of whom it may be said
that they are statesmen. He had courage and he loved his country."168
According to DeGaulle's biographer, "It was a tribute without precedent and
one that was never repeated." 169 In fact, as we shall see, the very same elements that had conspired against the life of DeGaulle were indeed those same elements who had brought about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And if DeGaulle did not know it then, he ultimately would.
SUSPICIONS
There was additional fall-out in the Arab world as a consequence of
Kennedy's assassination. According to Curtiss, the fact that Kennedy's
alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald was promptly murdered by Jack
Ruby—in Curtiss' words—“an American Jew with gangster
connections,"170 suspicions about Israel's complicity in the crime were
widespread. According to Curtiss: "The circumstances gave rise to many conspiracy theories, including one believed by virtually all Arabs that the assassination was to prevent an impending U.S. policy change in the Middle East."171
Curtiss' next comment, however, has proven wrong in the light of what we are about to explore in the pages of Final Judgment: "No Middle East connection of any sort has ever been discovered, however."172
Curtiss notes that, "Instead, ironically, the assassination five years later by an Arab-American in California of President Kennedy's younger brother, an outspoken supporter of Israel, made Robert Kennedy the first American
victim of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute to be killed on U.S. soil."173 (However, as we shall see in Chapter 18, there is—as in the assassination of John F. Kennedy—a lot more about the murder of his younger brother than really meets the eye.)
Nonetheless, as Alfred Lilienthal, the veteran critic of U.S. Middle East policy, has written, "There is little question that Kennedy intended to move decisively in his second term. The assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, shattered the possibility that his second term might see Washington start to free itself from the grave burdens of U.S. partisanship on the Arab-Israeli conflict and of continuous politicking for domestic votes." 174
MOVING FAST
Arab hopes for peace had been shattered and a new American president
in Washington was—in the meantime—busy ingratiating himself with
Israel's representatives in the American capital. “You have lost a very great friend, but you have found a better one,” the new president told one Israeli official. 175 Although Johnson’s quote has been oft repeated, it is not quite certain just who that official was. The quote, indeed, may have been apocryphal—another legend in the Lyndon Johnson legacy.
At the time of the Kennedy assassination—interestingly enough—Evron was in Washington in charge of Israeli intelligence operations, working closely with James Jesus Angleton, Israel's man at the CIA. Thus, it seems likely, that whatever Angleton knew about JFK's assassination, Evron likely knew—and vice versa. And perhaps, we might speculate, Johnson also thus knew as well. (In Chapter 8 and in Chapter 16 we will consider Angleton's peculiar part in the JFK assassination conspiracy in full detail.)
According to Johnson aide Harry McPherson, "I think Evron felt what I've always felt, that some place in Lyndon Johnson's blood there are a great many Jewish corpuscles." 176
The aforementioned McPherson, speaking on tape for the LBJ Library Oral History Project, interestingly described himself as the Johnson White House's "staff anti-Semite," 177 McPherson explained that this meant that he had to maintain "a continuing relationship with B'nai B'rith, the Anti-Defamation League, to some extent the Zionist organization, and others who want various things,"178 presumably a difficult task. As a consequence, McPherson was especially tuned in to Johnson's relationship with Israel and its lobby in Washington.
In fact, as the record shows, Johnson had a long and close relationship with Israel and its partisans. Israel knew that it had a loyal devotee of its interests in the White House now that John F. Kennedy was out of the way.
A LONG-TIME FAVORITE OF ISRAEL
Israel, of course, had been keeping a close watch on Lyndon Johnson
for a long time. About Johnson, Israeli intelligence man Evron said as
follows: "Johnson's feeling about Israel came out very early in the Suez crisis in 1957 when he was Senate majority leader. When at that time
President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles wanted to force us to
withdraw from Sinai, they threatened us with economic sanctions. Johnson
persuaded Senator William Knowland of California, who was then minority
leader, to come with him to the White House and tell the President that it
just wouldn't do."179 The Arab States were also watching Johnson closely, particularly after he assumed the presidency. Particularly concerned was Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser with whom JFK had hoped to build bridges. In fact, as we have seen, it was during his last White House press conference that JFK bemoaned the efforts by Israel and its partisans to sabotage his Middle East peace initiatives, especially in regard to relations with Nasser.
THE CHANGE IN POLICY BEGINS
According to author Stephen Green, as early as March 5, 1964 Nasser
told Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Phillips Talbot that "The U.S. had
shifted its policy into more active support of Israel." 180 This was just little more than three months after John F. Kennedy had been assassinated and Lyndon B. Johnson was catapulted into the presidency.
Nasser's assessment was on target. According to intelligence historian Richard Deacon, Johnson's new policy was keeping in line not only with Israel's demands, but those of Israel's friends at the CIA:
"President Johnson had already swung away from the tentative pro-Arab stance of the Kennedy administration which had always been frowned upon by the CIA."181
Deacon reports that Walt Rostow, the president's national security adviser believed that US policy towards Israel would serve as an effective check on Soviet support for Arab countries. "Thus," according to Deacon, "Rostow reflected almost totally the views of the CIA hierarchy." 182
Johnson, himself, also had long-standing ties to Israel's friends in the CIA from his years of service in the Senate.
As Senate Majority Leader, Johnson worked closely with the CIA on a regular basis and was considered a "CIA friend" in Congress.
Unquestionably, however, Lyndon Johnson did indeed begin a major shift in U.S. Middle East policy—keeping in line with his joint devotion to not only the CIA's interests, but those of Israel's as well.
This, of course, had a momentous impact on the course of American foreign policy and was an immediate and absolute turn-about of the policy that had been pursued by the late President Kennedy.
THE NUCLEAR BOMB
Interestingly enough, Israel's initial primary benefit from the death of
JFK was, in fact, the removal from the White House of a president who
vehemently opposed Israel's nuclear weapons development. According to historian Stephen Green: "Perhaps the most significant development of 1963 for the Israeli nuclear weapons program, however, occurred on November 22 on a plane flying from Dallas to Washington, D.C., Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
"In the early years of the Johnson administration the Israeli nuclear weapons program was referred to in Washington as 'the delicate topic.' Lyndon Johnson's White House saw no Dimona, heard no Dimona, and spoke no Dimona when the reactor went critical in early 1964."183
Thus it was that the critical point of dispute between John F. Kennedy and the Mossad-dominated government of Israel was no longer an issue. The new American president—so long a partisan of Israel—allowed the nuclear development to continue. This was just the beginning.
HUBERT HUMPHREY &
THE LANSKY SYNDICATE
Johnson was also cementing his long-standing ties to Meyer Lansky's
Organized Crime Syndicate. In 1964 seeking his first full term in the
White House Johnson selected Minnesota Senator Hubert H. Humphrey as
his vice-presidential running mate. "Cann, whose real name was Isadore Blumenfeld, along with his brothers (who were known by their aliases, Harry and Yiddy Bloom) were partners with Meyer Lansky in the ownership of many of the plush resorts in Miami, along with Humphrey's chief advisor, Max Kampelman, a top figure in the Israeli lobby in Washington."
"Blumenfeld and Lansky were partners in the syndicate that owned the Sands and Fremont Hotels gambling operations in Las Vegas—until they sold their interest in the Sands to Howard Hughes. When Humphrey and his top aides are in Miami," the Observer reported, "they enjoyed free accommodations at the syndicate's plush hotels."184
Alan H. Ryskind, writing in his critical biography of Humphrey, demonstrated how then-Minneapolis Mayor Humphrey managed to look the other way when Blumenfeld got himself into a widely-publicized set of difficulties 185—just one of HRH's favors for the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate.
Thus, in the 1964 presidential election—which was Johnson's to lose— Lansky and his partners in Israel were assured a dream ticket come November. Both Johnson and his vice president were bought and paid for. Lansky and Israel made sure there wouldn't be any problems with any independent upstart second-generation multi-millionaire Irishmen like John F. Kennedy who was not only the son of a notorious anti-Semite but a bullheaded proponent of America's interests to boot.
Thus, having become ensconced in the presidency, Lyndon Johnson was in a position to do many favors for Israel.
THE FOREIGN AID PORK BARREL
Perhaps his most drastic efforts in service to Israel involved massive
increases in U.S. taxpayer-financed foreign aid giveaways. Although John F.
Kennedy himself had been generous to Israel in that regard, Johnson made
Kennedy look like a piker. Former Undersecretary of State George Ball comments that in the foreign aid realm: "The Israelis were proved right in their assumption that Johnson would be more friendly than Kennedy." 186
According to author Stephen Green, citing U.S. Agency for International Development data: "Over the next few years—the first three years of the Johnson administration—the level of foreign aid support to Israel would change both qualitatively and quantitatively. U.S. government assistance to Israel in FY 1964, the last budget year of the Kennedy administration, stood at $40 million. This was substantially reduced from the levels of assistance in previous years. In FY 1965, this figure rose to $71 million, and in FY 1966, to $130 million."187
ARMING ISRAEL'S WAR MACHINE
Green notes further that under Lyndon Johnson, United States military
aid to Israel also saw a drastic increase: "More significant, however, was the change in the composition of that assistance. In JFK's FY 1964, virtually none of the official U.S. assistance for Israel was military assistance; it was split almost equally between development loans and food assistance under the PL 480 program. In LBJ's FY 1965, however, 20 percent of U.S. aid was military in nature, and in FY 1966, fully 71 percent of all official assistance to Israel came in the form of credits for purchase of military equipment.
"Moreover, the nature of the weapons systems we provided had changed. In FY 1963, the Kennedy administration agreed to sell five batteries of Hawk missiles valued at $21.5 million. This however was an air defense system. The Johnson administration, in FY 1965-1966, provided Israel with 250 modern (modified M-48) tanks, 48 A-1 Skyhawk attack aircraft, communications and electronics equipment, artillery, and recoil-less rifles.
Given the configuration of the Israel Defense Forces, these were anything but defensive weapons.
"The $92 million in military assistance provided in FY 1966 was greater than the total of all official military aid provided to Israel cumulatively, in all the years going back to the foundation of that nation in 1948."188 Green summarizes the massive extent of Johnson's giveaways: "Seventy percent of all U.S. official assistance to Israel has been military. America has given Israel over $17 billion in military aid since 1946, virtually all of which—over 99 percent—has been provided since 1965."189
ISRAEL'S INTERESTS FIRST
It was clearly Lyndon B. Johnson who set the precedent for unlimited
aid to Israel. All told, however, the death of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon
Johnson's assumption of the Oval Office marked a major change in overall
U.S. policy. As Stephen Green writes, in all too clarifying detail in Taking
Sides: America's Secret Relations With A Militant Israel: "In the years 1948-1963, America was perceived by all of the governments in the Middle East as a major power that acted upon the basis of its own, clearly defined national self-interest. Moreover, U.S. Middle East policy was just that—Middle East policy; it was not an Israeli policy in which Arab countries were subordinate actors.
"In the years 1948-1963, Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy firmly guaranteed Israeli national security and territorial integrity, but just as firmly guaranteed those of Jordan, Lebanon, and the other nations of the region. That was what the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 was all about.
"For successive Israel governments in this period, the boundary line between U.S. and Israeli national security interests was drawn frequently, and usually decisively. Truman's policies on arms exports to the middle East, Eisenhower's stands on regional water development and on territorial integrity during the Suez Crisis, and Kennedy's candor with Mrs. Meir—all of these were markers on this boundary line.
"Nevertheless, during this time U.S. financial support for Israel far exceeded that given any other nation in the world, on a per capita basis. And U.S. diplomatic support for Israel in the UN and elsewhere was no less generous.
"But the limits to U.S. support for Israel were generally understood by all of the countries of the region, and it was precisely these limits that preserved America's ability to mediate the various issues that composed the Arab-Israeli dispute.
"Then, in the early years of the Johnson administration, 1964-1967, U.S. policy on Middle Eastern matters abruptly changed. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that it disintegrated. America had a public policy on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, but suddenly had a covert policy of abetting Israel's nuclear weapons program. We had a public policy on arms balance in the region, but secretly agreed, by the end of 1967, to become Israel's major arms supplier.
"Officially, the United States was "firmly committed to the support of the political independence and territorial integrity of all the [Middle Eastern] nations," while consciously, covertly, the Johnson "Middle East team" set about enabling Israel to redraw to her advantage virtually every one of her borders with neighboring Arab states.
"It was, of course, a policy without principle, without integrity. But it was also ineffective, in the sense that Israel steadily continued to act in ways that ignored U.S. national security interests."190
VIETNAM—ISRAEL BENEFITS
These incredible facts about the sudden reversal of traditional U.S.
policy have gone too long ignored in the context of considering the question of
who stood most to benefit by the assassination of John F. Kennedy.Israel clearly
stood most to benefit—and did. All of this is most ironic when one considers the fact that Israel repeatedly and pointedly refused to support Johnson's Vietnam policy, much to the dismay of "Israel's Texas Friend." "Dammit," Johnson once complained to his "staff anti-Semite" Harry McPherson, "they want me to protect Israel, but they don't want me to do anything in Vietnam." 191
Clearly, Israel's allies in the CIA now had a free hand to conduct their own private war in Vietnam—one CIA benefit resulting from Kennedy's removal from the presidency. (In Chapter 9 we will examine Kennedy's war with the CIA in further detail.)
Johnson's reversal of JFK's decision to begin withdrawing U.S. forces (and CIA personnel) from Southeast Asia was, in its own sense, a CIA coup. The CIA also expanded its own power during the Vietnam conflict.
Likewise with Johnson's many friends in the defense industry both at home in Texas and elsewhere. The defense contractors reaped untold billions in profits from Johnson's dirty little war in Southeast Asia—a war that probably spelled the end of Johnson's popular chances for a second term.
VIETNAM—ISRAEL'S DIRTY
LITTLE SECRET
However, what has been unfortunately ignored is that Israel, too, had
much to gain from U.S. involvement in Vietnam. As Stephen Green points out, a direct and proximate result of U.S. military adventurism in Southeast Asia was Israel's ability to advance its own military muscle and political influence in the Middle East.
After all, Israel could now argue, with the United States bogged down in Southeast Asia, Uncle Sam needed its close, reliable, democratic ally in the Middle East looking out for America's interests in the region.
According to Green: "In a period in which the Johnson White House was becoming increasingly obsessed with the war in Vietnam, Israel's military leaders offered to impose stability upon the peoples and countries of the Middle East—it was to be a 'Pax Hebraeca.
"There were, of course, costs involved for America. The United States would have to take the initial steps toward becoming what three previous Presidents had said we never would be—Israel's major arms supplier. We would also at least temporarily forfeit our role as primary mediator of the multifaceted Arab-Israeli dispute.
"The new arrangement would necessitate throwing our long-standing nuclear nonproliferation treaty to the winds, the 1968 treaty to the contrary notwithstanding.
"Perhaps most important, U.S. national security interests in the region would become merged with Israel's to a degree that was, and is to this day, unique in the history of U.S. foreign relations."192
Israel—above all—stood to benefit immensely from U.S. involvement in Vietnam, something which would not have occurred had JFK lived.
There is yet an additional irony in the relationship of the United States and Israel vis-à-vis the Vietnam conflict that is very much worth noting.
After the war in Vietnam was underway, dragging Lyndon Johnson deeper and deeper into the muck of public discontent, Israel was beginning to encounter its own difficulties as it flexed its muscle in the Middle East.
Although America's entry in Southeast Asia had given Israel a free hand in its own sphere of geographic influence, the tiny Jewish state found that it now needed the United States—perhaps more so than ever. Israel's aggression against its Arab neighbors had rallied the Arab world against Israel.
With the United States in too deep in Southeast Asia, Israel and its American lobby perceived U.S. energy to be focused in the wrong direction. Thus it was that many of the very voices urging U.S. withdrawal from the arena of Vietnam were those who were most stridently demanding that the U.S. re-insert itself into the Middle East cauldron.
WHERE SHOULD AMERICA FIGHT?
It was on the eve of the 1967 War—a war that could have been the end
for Israel—that the Washington Star (in its June 4 lead editorial) pointed out
the strange paradox. "Many of those, both at home and abroad, who most loudly condemn the American presence in Vietnam, were the first to urge total American involvement in the Middle East.
"And having made the leap from isolation to intervention, they have gone on to argue that our commitment in the Middle East is additional justification for disengagement in Asia. The nation, so this line of reasoning goes, cannot afford involvement in both areas.
"A choice must be made. And the Middle East is the logical place for the United States to intervene," 193 according to the Star's assessment of the attitude of the pro-Israel advocates of withdrawal from Vietnam who were urging U.S. intervention in the Middle East.
So it was that Israel, which initially reaped benefits from U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, ultimately began banging the drum for U.S. withdrawal—but it was only well after the damage of the Vietnam War had already been done. Israel was placing its own interests—not America's interests—first.
LANSKY, THE CIA & VIETNAM
It should be noted, too, that Israel's friends in the Meyer Lansky
Organized Crime Syndicate also stood to benefit from the Vietnam conflict.
In Chapter 12 we shall examine in detail the little-known collaboration
between the Lansky syndicate, its Mossad-linked banking money launderers,
and the CIA in the drug pipeline out of Southeast Asia. The Lansky crime empire began operating major global drug trafficking, largely under CIA cover, throughout Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, during which time the drug problem began escalating to a major degree in the United States and elsewhere.
Now, many years later, the CIA's role in the global drug market is only now just coming to the surface. The Iran-contra scandal, for example, shed some light on this little known aspect of the underbelly of world affairs. Thus, the joint Israel-Lansky-CIA combine shared a major benefit from American involvement in Vietnam. They had Lyndon Johnson to thank.
A PASSIONATE ATTACHMENT
Israel and its covert allies did indeed have a messiah in Lyndon Baines
Johnson. In his book, The Passionate Attachment, former Undersecretary
of State George Ball summarized the results of Johnson's Middle East policies:
"First, the administration put America in the position of being Israel's
principal arms supplier and sole unqualified backer. "Second, by assuring the Israelis that the United States would always provide them with a military edge over the Arabs, Johnson guaranteed the escalation of an arms race . . . Third, by refusing to follow the advice of his aides that America make its delivery of nuclear-capable F-4 Phantoms conditional on Israel's signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Johnson gave the Israelis the impression that America had no fundamental objection to Israel's nuclear program.
"Fourth, by permitting a cover-up of Israel's attack on the Liberty [see Chapter 2], President Johnson told the Israelis in effect that nothing they did would induce American politicians to refuse their bidding. From that time forth, the Israelis began to act as if they had an inalienable right to American aid and backing."194
As Stephen Green concluded in his discussion of the incredible changes in U.S. policy toward Israel that took place during the Johnson era:
"By June of 1967, for a variety of reasons that prominently included `domestic political considerations,' Lyndon Johnson and his team of foreign policy advisers had completely revised U.S.-Israeli relations. To all intents and purposes, Israel had become the 51st state.”195
Chapter Seven:
Israel's Godfather:
The Man in the Middle
Meyer Lansky, the CIA,
the FBI & the Israeli Mossad
If it had not been for international crime boss Meyer
Lansky there might not be a state of Israel today. This is
something that Israel would rather be forgotten. Israel was established as a state, in major part, through the political, financial and moral support of Meyer Lansky and his associates and henchmen in Organized Crime. Lansky's interests and Israel's interests were almost incestuous. In fact, Lansky's chief European money laundering bank was an operation run under the auspices of a high-ranking, longtime officer of Israel's Mossad.
Lansky's intimate ties with not only America n intelligence (including both the CIA and the FBI) made the Jewish mobster the "untouchable" leader of the global organized crime syndicate.
During John F. Kennedy's short-lived presidency, he was not only at odds with Israel and its powerful lobby in America. Kennedy, as we saw in Chapter 4, had also double-crossed his secret allies in the criminal underworld who had helped him achieve the presidency. The president's brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was waging a relentless war against organized crime. In the years prior to Kennedy's ascendancy to the presidency, a little known, but immensely powerful underworld figure by the name of Meyer Lansky had schemed and shot his way to the top of the crime syndicate.
It was Meyer Lansky, early in his criminal career, who had emerged as one of the leading sponsors of the state of Israel and whose most intimate associates were among the chief financial patrons of the influential Israeli lobby in America.
What's more, as we shall see, Lansky had also forged close ties with Israel's allies in the American CIA—an agency that, in itself, had entered into a bitter war with John F. Kennedy.
Thus, when JFK came to blows with not only Israel and its allies in the Lansky Organized Crime empire, but also with the CIA, the American president had unwittingly forged a deadly alliance among his fiercest foes.
It is the Meyer Lansky connection which explains how Israel's Mossad was able to utilize and manipulate, among other elements, the anti-Castro Cuban community—itself working with not only the CIA but also the Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate—in the conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy.
To begin our investigation of the shadowy crevices of the underworld where Israel's Mossad, Organized Crime and the CIA came together in the Kennedy murder, it is most appropriate to begin with Lansky.
It is Lansky (individually) and his crime syndicate which tie all of these diverse strands together, pointing the finger toward the until-now undisclosed role of Israel in the JFK assassination.
A spokesman for the Bahamas Commission of Inquiry which was investigating organized crime in the islands, once said, "At one stage, we began to wonder whether the name of Meyer Lansky was not some vast journalistic piece of fiction, so ghostly and mythical a figure did he appear." 196 But exist he did.
Meyer Lansky, in fact, is a pivotal player in the international conspiracy that resulted in the assassination of John F. Kennedy—all of the literature propagating the theory that "The Mafia Killed JFK" notwithstanding.
WHO WAS MEYER LANSKY?
The most concise summary of the origins and rise to power of Meyer
Lansky appeared in a lengthy profile of Lansky that appeared on the front page
of The Wall Street Journal in 1969. It reads, in pertinent part: "Born Maier Suchowjansky in Grodno, Russia, Lansky arrived in the U.S. at age nine. His family settled in New York's immigrant slums. By the time he was 27, young Maier had five arrests on his record, on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to suspicion of murder, but he was never convicted. He had begun his painstaking climb up the underworld ladder.
"It was during the 1920’s that Lansky became a pal and partner of Bugsy Siegel. The two became a formidable pair, first as hired gunmen for Legs Diamond, soon as leaders of their own gang, called the 'Bugs and Meyer Mob.'
A MEMBER OF THE BOARD
"Their specialty was protecting liquor in transit from hijackers to East
Coast gangs. They were good at it, and when an alliance called the Eastern
Syndicate was formed to coordinate rum-running Lansky and Siegel were
named to the board. Lansky was put in charge of handling the syndicate's
finances. "By the early 1930’s, the Eastern syndicate began to form a loose alliance with other regional mobs. Thus was the national syndicate born. Each gang retained its own identity and pursued its own activities, with the federation coming together occasionally to discuss matters of common interest. Final decisions rested with individual gang leaders, with one acting as federation chairman. The first chairman was Lucky Luciano, head of the Mafia in the East.
TIES TO U.S. INTELLIGENCE
"During World War II, Lansky played a part in an incredible alliance
between the underworld and the U.S. Navy . . . Apparently, the Navy
decided East Coast piers could be protected from sabotage only with the aid of
the Mafia. "Lucky Luciano was by then in prison, but he still held power and the loyalty of Mafia members. Luciano's attorney and Meyer Lansky were recruited to persuade Luciano to give the arrangement his blessing. After several months of prison visits, Luciano agreed . . . After the war, Lucky was paroled and sent home to Italy on promise he would never again enter the U.S.
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD
"With Luciano gone, a triumvirate of Lansky, Joe Adonis and Frank
Costello took over leadership of the syndicate. By the late 1950's, Costello
had been ousted from power by his colleagues and Adonis had been deported.
Lansky sat alone at the top." 197 In the meantime, Lansky had already cemented his ties with the Washington establishment. In fact, those ties were long-standing.
LANSKY & CUBA
(In Chapter 10, we shall discuss Lansky's critical role in helping win
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt the Democratic presidential
nomination in 1932.) Roosevelt himself sent Lansky as a personal emissary to Cuba to meet with Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista. F.D.R believed that Batista's authoritarian rule was stirring popular discontent which could be exploited by a growing communist movement in Cuba. Through Lansky F.D.R hoped to influence Batista to institute reforms that would quell the communist threat. It was during this period that Lansky had begun establishing his lucrative gambling empire in the tropical paradise and a long and profitable personal and business relationship with Batista and other Cuban leaders who made millions in kickbacks from Lansky's casino operations.
(Among those on the receiving end of Lansky's pay-offs was Carlos Prio Soccaras, whom, we shall see in Chapter 14, ultimately became a business partner in gunrunning activities with Dallas nightclub operator and Lansky Syndicate henchman, Jack Ruby.) 198
(In Chapter 11, we shall examine Lansky's Cuban gambling activities and his Israeli Mossad-linked European money laundering operations. In Chapter 12 we shall examine Lansky's international narcotics trafficking, and his consequent connections with the CIA, in detail.)
Although Batista was in and out of office several times during the next two decades, the Cuban strongman remained the de facto leader of the island through successive puppet regimes until the advent of Fidel Castro on New Years Day, 1960.
However, Lansky also had extensive contacts much farther away from American shores. Lansky—as we shall see here—was a key force in establishing the State of Israel.
ALLIANCE & RIVALRY
To understand Lansky's preeminent leadership position in organized
crime, however, we must first look at the strange and complex alliance—and
rivalry—between the Italian and Jewish elements in the organized crime
world. The Wall Street Journal's account of Lansky's rise to power hints at these contradictions, but doesn't explore them in the fashion needed. Two interesting things left out of the Journal summary of Lansky's career should be mentioned.
It is generally known that Lansky launched his criminal career working in conjunction with the famed Mafia figure Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Their alliance is noted in the Journal account and a recent Hollywood extravaganza entitled Mobsters highlighted the youthful exploits of Lansky, Luciano, Benjamin Siegel and Frank Costello.
LUCIANO GETS FRAMED
However, it may have been Lansky, through his political contacts, who
arranged the criminal indictment and subsequent imprisonment of Luciano.
It was Luciano's imprisonment—and ultimate deportation—that smoothed
Lansky's further advancement in organized crime. In his own memoirs Luciano provides a detailed account of how he was, in fact, framed on the white slavery and prostitution charges that resulted in his imprisonment. Luciano does not blame Lansky, by any means, although, as we shall see, he may have had his suspicions.
Luciano doesn't ask the reader to believe that he (Luciano) wasn't engaged in extensive criminal activity. He does present a very cogent case, however, that he was not guilty of the crimes for which he was convicted. Indeed, Luciano was never brought to trial for any of the crimes in which he was engaged with Lansky.
In any case, it is quite possible that Lansky, in fact, did have some role in framing Luciano on the prostitution charges. Tom Dewey's war against Lucky Luciano, the Mafia chieftain's imprisonment, and his subsequent deportation smoothed the way for Lansky's rise to the top.
Lansky was—despite his Jewish origins—the capo di tuti capi ("boss of all bosses") in Luciano's absence. Theoretically, Lansky could never be a "member" of the Mafia, but he certainly ranked higher than even "made" members who had been inducted into the so-called "honored society."
LANSKY, DEWEY & THE CIA
Both Dewey and Lansky did, of course, stand to benefit from Luciano's
imprisonment. The case of Dewey and his Lansky connection is most
interesting. As a consequence of his prosecution of Luciano, Dewey won widespread political fame and in 1938 ran, unsuccessfully, for governor of New York. In fact, at that time, Lansky reportedly donated fully $250,000 (in 1938 dollars) to Dewey's campaign.
Dewey did not win that race, but during the remaining period of his service as New York's "racket-busting" prosecutor he did obtain a conviction of one of Lansky's Jewish rivals in organized crime, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, who eventually died in the electric chair.
Then, in 1942 when Dewey once again—this time, successfully—sought the governorship, Lansky provided additional financial support and political muscle. Dewey, as governor, commuted Luciano's sentence. In return for his freedom, Luciano agreed to go into exile to his homeland of Italy. Thus, Lansky's influence widened in Luciano's absence abroad.
This would not be, however, the end of the Dewey-Lansky relationship. Dewey later became a major stockholder in the Mary Carter Paint Company in the late 1950's.
According to former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow, "Carter Paint was originally an active corporation set up by Thomas Dewey and CIA director Allen Dulles to use as a CIA front. In 1958, Dewey and some friends had bought controlling interest in the Crosby Miller Corporation, with two million dollars in CIA money—authorized by Allen Dulles. Then, in 1959, the Crosby Miller Corporation was merged with the CIA-owned paint company. As an example of one of its early activities, it provided laundered CIA money for the Bay of Pigs army. In 1963, Mary Carter Paint spun off its paint division, after a Florida land scandal, and became Resorts International.” 200
Resorts International, Inc. controlled virtually all of the resorts in the Bahamas and throughout the Caribbean where Lansky reorganized his gambling operations after being forced out of Cuba in 1960.
Resorts International ultimately set up a subsidiary known as International Intelligence, Inc. (Intertel) ostensibly designed to curtail organized crime involvement in the casino industry. However, in reality, this was a myth.
There are those who suspect that Intertel—like Resorts International and Mary Carter Paint before it was not simply a CIA operation, but a joint CIA-Lansky operation—an intelligence network interacting with Israel's Mossad. 201
Perhaps not surprisingly, Dewey's admiring biographer, Richard Norton Smith, writing in Thomas E. Dewey and His Times, never mentions Dewey's Mary Carter Paint Company—or Lansky's support for Dewey's political endeavors. Another Lansky connection gone unmentioned. All of this illustrates the depth of Lansky's political influence and his wide range of connections.
FRANK COSTELLO 'RETIRES'
There is also the question as to whether Lansky may have had a hand in the
unsuccessful assassination attempt against his other boyhood friend, the
aforementioned Frank Costello, who was often called "the Prime Minister of the
Mafia." Whatever the truth, the attempt on Costello forced the "prime
minister" into early retirement and gave Lansky further influence in
organized crime.
LUCIANO REMEMBERS . . .
"Lucky" Luciano, who had initially smoothed Meyer Lansky's way to the
top, later rued the day that he had placed so much trust in his early gangland
associate. In 1961, well after his influence in the international crime
syndicate had begun to dwindle, Luciano reflected upon his relationship
with Lansky. "In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, you remember a guy by the
name of Cassius? He was a pain in the ass. It seems like everybody's got a
Cassius in his life." According to Luciano, his Mafia associate Vito Genovese was his own Cassius. However, upon further thought he added, "Come to think of it, I even had two Cassiuses in my life, the other one bein' a guy by the name of Meyer Lansky. But I didn't get on to him for a long time." 202
In his waning days Luciano considered offers from Hollywood producers who wanted to film his life story. However, Luciano—in exile in Italy—got word from home that there were "orders" that he not participate in any such venture. It was then that Luciano saw the whole picture—the whole truth about what "the Mafia" had really become.
'THE BOSS OF EVERYTHING'
"When I realized that Meyer Lansky was right in the middle of this, that's
when I knew he had us all by a string. Why should Lansky, being a Jew, give a shit whether or not some fucking movie had a bunch of Italian
names in it? Because he was pulling the wires and everybody was dancing to
his tune on the other end, like a bunch of puppets. "Lansky held the purse strings, too; he was the treasurer and he was really trying to be the boss of everything. He was so hungry for power behind the scenes he'd kiss anybody's ass and do anything he had to do so that in the end, he—Meyer Lansky, my old partner and a Jew—would wind up the real boss of bosses of all the Italians and the Jews—and without a single fucking vote on the organized crime syndicate council.
"I never really knew what it meant when we was kids and I used to call him the Genius. But at the age of sixty-four, I finally got wise." 203
THE GUIDING HAND
So it was that Meyer Lansky—though not an Italian—did, indeed, become,
as he was to be called, "the chairman of the board" of the organized crime
syndicate, even more powerful than the "Mafia" itself. If, as some claim, "The Mafia Killed JFK," it couldn't have been done without the foreknowledge—and guiding hand—of Meyer Lansky.
And as we shall see in this chapter—and further throughout the pages of this work—Lansky's connections with Israel and its Mossad (as well as Israel's allies in the CIA), demonstrates that Israeli loyalist Meyer Lansky is an integral player who bound together the diverse elements which came together in the JFK assassination conspiracy.
HIDING BEHIND 'THE MAFIA'
In Little Man, his recent friendly biography of Meyer Lansky, Robert
Lacey dismissed rumors of Lansky's role in the JFK assassination when he
wrote that: "Meyer was mentioned most frequently of all in that happiest of
hunting grounds for conspiracy theorists, the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy.” 204 This is the only reference in Lacey's book to even the most tenuous link between Lansky and the JFK murder. However, as we shall see, the connections are very deep indeed. Yet, contrary to what Lacey contends, Lansky's name seldom appears in any significant fashion in most standard accounts which contend that organized crime played a role in the assassination.
The fact is that Lansky's name has been continuously and conveniently buried behind a host of Italian Organized Crime ("Mafia") figures. In Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 we review, extensively, Lansky's connections with the more famous—perhaps infamous—Italian-surnamed underworld figures linked to the Kennedy assassination.
As we shall see, in fact, those individuals in question were, practically to a man, Lansky's underlings. However, Lansky's name is hardly mentioned at all in standard accounts which suggest that organized crime— particularly "the Mafia"—played a part in the president's murder.
`THE REAL LEADERS OF CRIME'
Lansky's most authoritative biographer, organized crime writer Hank
Messick pinpoints the tendency of the media—and the law enforcement
community—to overlook the broad and penetrating reach of the Meyer
Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate, focusing instead on the media's hype of
"the Mafia"—the Italian wing of the criminal underworld. Says Messick: "The real leaders of crime have remained hidden while the nation's law enforcement agencies have chased minor punks. And naive is he who believes this development is accidental. Research reveals that non Mafia leaders of crime have been hiding behind the vendetta-ridden society the Italian Mafia for decades. . . Attempts to frame me have been made, and I've been smeared as anti-Semitic from coast to coast by gangsters who used religion as a cloak." 205
In his own memoirs, Lansky's crony, Charles "Lucky" Luciano revealed one rather interesting fact. According to Luciano, it was Lansky himself who suggested that the newly-assembled national crime syndicate dub itself "the Union Siciliano"—a sobriquet which gave the criminal underworld a decidedly "Sicilian" imagery. 206
`KOSHER NOSTRA'
According to veteran JFK assassination researcher Peter Dale Scott, "It is
relevant that then-Senate rackets committee counsel Robert F. Kennedy did
not use the word 'Mafia' when presenting, in his 1960 book The Enemy
Within, his model of organized crime as an endemic, multi-ethnic, partially
institutionalized syndicate."207 According to Scott: "What Robert Kennedy had meant by the `syndicate' was very different from what Mafia experts meant by the term La Cosa Nostra." 208 According to Scott, "anyone speaking about organized crime . . . does so under conditions of great political restraint." 209
To put it bluntly: the term "Mafia" does not account for the substantial— and indeed predominant—role of Meyer Lansky and his Jewish associates in the national crime syndicate.
Because of political constraints and fear of being accused of "antisemitism," many have been afraid to point out the important role of Jewish criminals in the world of crime.
One Jewish gangster, Lansky's West Coast henchman, Mickey Cohen, discussed the Italian-Jewish conflict in organized crime in his memoirs. He said, frankly: "See, I don't want to pull any wool over anybody's eyes because I'm writing a true autobiography, right? And I certainly don't want to mince any words, but I really don't consider the Mafia or anything of that type the only strength in organized crime.” 210
Cohen differentiated between the Italian elements in organized crime, popularly known as "the Mafia" and "La Cosa Nostra" and the Jewish forces sometimes satirically called, "the Kosher Nostra."
"It's an organization. It's more what I would refer to as a syndicate.. . So it was an organization, but it wasn't the Mafia. Being Jews, Benny and me and even Meyer couldn't be a real part and parcel of that [the Mafia]."211
The "Benny" to whom Cohen referred was the aforementioned Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the lifelong friend and crime partner of Lansky's. It was Lansky who ultimately ordered Siegel's assassination.
(We will learn much more about the Lansky-Siegel-Cohen connection in Chapter 13 where we uncover Cohen's own pivotal role in the JFK assassination conspiracy.)
It was not, in fact, until the infamous Mafia conclave at Appalachian, New York, in 1957 when the media began hyping "the Mafia" as a major force in organized crime.
Americans had long been aware of legendary mobsters such as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, but general awareness that a national crime syndicate did indeed exist was not commonplace.
Following a police raid of the Appalachian conference,attended exclusively by top Italian-surnamed Mafia figures from around the country public attention began focusing on "the Mafia",thanks to the media.
MAFIA IN TURMOIL/LANSKY ON TOP
The official story has always been that a local policeman just happened
to stumble upon the Mafia conclave at the home of Mafia figure Joseph
Barbara. He called in reinforcements and a major "bust" took place.
However, according to Hank Messick, the police had been tipped off by a
Lansky associate that the meeting was about to take place. Messick
described the consequences of the Appalachian raid : "The delegates were scattered before any alliance could be reached. And the publicity caused the greatest heat since the 1930's. It focused not only on the men who attended the session but on the entire Mafia. What's more, it continued for well over a year as state and federal officials tried to find some charge to stick against the delegates they had captured or identified.
"Not only were Mafia leaders immobilized by the continuing publicity, but also they were demoralized. Almost instinctively they rallied to Lansky and other non-Mafia syndicate leaders for advice and assistance." 212
Perhaps not coincidentally, one of the young attorneys who played a key role in the Appalachian raid was one Justin Finger. It was Finger who later went on to become chief of the "civil rights division" of the Anti Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the primary intelligence and propaganda arm of Israel's Mossad in the United States. 213 In subsequent chapters, Chapter 17 in particular, we will examine the role of the A.D.L in the JFK assassination cover-up in more explicit detail.
Obviously, the Appalachian raid was a critical event in Lansky's continuing rise to power. It solidified Lansky's hold over the crime syndicate.
Michael Milan, a low-level Jewish organized crime figure who grew up in Lansky's sphere of influence claims to have, in fact, been ritually inducted into the Mafia—by Lansky himself. It was to Lansky that Milan swore his allegiance. Writing in his memoirs, Milan remembers the event fondly: “`Omerta' whispered Meyer Lansky, only half believing in the ritual itself, but not wanting to show the slightest sign of disrespect to . . . Mafia traditions." 214
In any case, as we have seen, Meyer Lansky's predominant role in the criminal underworld was already well in place.
THE HOOVER-LANSKY CONNECTION
Lansky's role in the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S)-Naval
Intelligence operations during World War II and his work on behalf of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt in handling Batista may account for the fact that
Lansky seldom faced harassment from the federal authorities. Writing in Secret File, Hank Messick comments: "Was Lansky rewarded? No final answer is possible, but he has been strangely immune to prosecution on the Federal level. Twice the IRS Intelligence Division has recommended prosecution, and twice the Justice Department has declined. Lansky remains the only top man in the national crime syndicate to escape untouched. Because of his brains and the troubles of his colleagues, he rules as undisputed chairman of the board."215
Lansky himself acknowledged his role in the so-called "Operation Underworld." "Sure, I'm the one who put Lucky and Naval Intelligence together," he told his Israeli friend, Israeli newsman Uri Dan. Lansky's reasons were interesting: "The reason I cooperated was because of strong personal feelings. I wanted the Nazis beaten. I was a Jew and I felt for those Jews in Europe who were suffering. They were my brothers."216
Former Lansky associate (and covert FBI operative) Michael Milan also points toward another critical Lansky connection that may have accounted for his immunity from federal harassment.
"I also knew that J. Edgar Hoover and Meyer Lansky sometimes broke bread together. Mr. L. was never rousted, was rarely served with federal subpoenas, and was generally left alone to conduct his business. Mr. L., on the other hand, didn't go around shooting anybody like people in some of the other Mafia Families, and making life embarrassing for the cops and the feds.
"So in this way everybody got along. Mr. H. could worry about his fifth column,the communists. Mr. Costello could worry about keeping peace among the different Families and looking forward to retirement, and Mr. L. could worry about the cash flow in his Las Vegas casinos. “ 217
J. Edgar Hoover's own connections to the Lansky Crime Syndicate and to the pro-Israel lobby have been the subject of rumors and controversy for many years.
It was the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (A.D.L) of B'nai B'rith that was largely responsible for the establishment of the J. Edgar Hoover Foundation in 1947. (Top Lansky associates have long been generous financial backers of the A.D.L.) The Hoover Foundation's first president was Rabbi Paul Richman, Washington director of the A.D.L.
THE A.D.L AND ORGANIZED CRIME
The liquor industry, largely controlled by Jewish families such as the
Bronfman family, and others, have been major contributors to the A.D.L,
financing a large portion of its budget over the years. 219 These same liquor
interests—obviously, as we have seen—had longtime contacts with Lansky
from his earliest years in the bootlegging and rum-running rackets. The origins of Hoover's sponsor—the A.D.L—is quite interesting. The organization's initial impetus came not so much out of a desire to defend members of the Jewish faith, but, more so, in particular, Jewish mobsters.
So it was that "crime buster" J. Edgar Hoover was himself a beneficiary of A.D.L largesse (a large portion of which, as we have seen, came from the coffers of Lansky and his criminal syndicate.)
LOOKING THE OTHER WAY
Critical J. Edgar Hoover biographer Curt Gentry notes that Hoover's
FBI was never strongly concerned with Lansky's activities. According to
Gentry, "The Dallas and Miami field offices of the FBI had blind spots. As
a result, there were no taps or bugs on Lansky's protege, New Orleans
Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, Lansky's Tampa Mafia underling Santo Trafficante, and, except for a brief period, Meyer Lansky."221
(In Chapter 10, Chapter 11, and Chapter 12 we will explore Lansky's
relationships with Marcello, Trafficante and other "Mafia" figures further.) Gentry adds: "There was a rumor, often heard in the underworld, that Meyer Lansky had his own man very high up in the FBI. William Sullivan had his own suspect, someone close to both the director and Hoover's close friend and second in command, Clyde Tolson, who was reputedly living far above his means. This was one case the FBI never solved." 222
This same Sullivan happened to be the number three man at the FBI behind Hoover and Tolson. As head of the Bureau's highly secretive Division Five, Sullivan was in charge of domestic counterintelligence. Also in charge of the FBI's participation in the Warren Commission investigation, Sullivan was not only a close friend of James Angleton, head of the Mossad desk at the CIA, but also—incredibly enough—a CIA conduit within the FBI itself.223 (We will examine Angleton's role in the JFK assassination in much further detail in Chapter 8 and in Chapter 16).
As head of the FBI's Domestic Intelligence, Sullivan was in charge of the infamous COINTELPRO operations against, among others, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a bevy of left-wing (and right-wing) political groups.224 COINTELPRO relied heavily on the Israeli lobby's Anti Defamation League for continuing and ongoing intelligence reports as it had since at least before World War II.
A DEAD WITNESS
Clearly a man with much inside knowledge, Sullivan was shot to death
in a strange hunting accident on November 9, 1977 just prior to the time
that he was to be called to testify before the House Select Committee on
Assassinations. Sullivan, who had resigned from the FBI, having broken with Hoover, had told investigators that he had become disenchanted when Hoover told him personally, "I am most concerned about having something issued so we can convince the public that Lee Harvey Oswald is the real assassin." 225
Whatever Sullivan did know about Hoover—and perhaps Hoover's relationship with Meyer Lansky will never be known.
HOOVER'S DEAL
According to Sam and Chuck Giancana, in their biography of Chicago
Mafia boss, Sam Giancana, "Hoover himself had been on the [organized
crime] pad for years." 226 That Hoover was well versed in Lansky's criminal activities there is no question. His intelligence sources were legendary.
WHAT HOOVER KNEW
Gentry sums it up well, noting that Hoover, although an inveterate
gambler, knew all about what was happening in Lansky's Las Vegas
casinos even though he, Hoover, avoided Las Vegas like the plague: "Hoover knew who was skimming from the casino profits—and how much they were taking in. He knew where the money went and how it made its way to the top bosses.
"He also knew that some people, well connected with this place, were very unhappy with the Kennedy's, John and Robert, unhappy to the point they were talking about killing them."
"Eventually the FBI discovered that most of the `skim’ loot went to Meyer Lansky in Miami. In a typical month in 1963, the skim from one casino amounted to $123,500, of which Lansky kept $71,000, then transmitted the rest to the New Jersey mobster Gerald Catena. Catena distributed in the north and Lansky in Florida. Each recipient would have a small percentage of his share deducted for casino employees who kept mum about the operation. There were also couriers, $300,000 to a Swiss bank, $100,000 to the Bahamas."228 (Later in this chapter and in Chapter 11, Chapter 12 and Chapter 15 we shall discuss Lansky's Swiss bank connections. They are central to the joint Lansky-CIA-Israeli Mossad operation that resulted in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.)
Even in the late 1960's, according to Gentry , "Hoover still had a blind spot so far as [Lansky] was concerned."229
THE ANGLETON CONNECTION
However, in 1993 author Anthony Summers provided what may be a
critical missing piece of the puzzle. Summers created a media sensation
when he alleged in his new biography of Hoover, Official and Confidential,
and on the PBS series "Frontline," that Lansky blackmailed Hoover with supposed photos of Hoover engaged in homosexual activity. Although such
rumors about Hoover had been commonplace for years, no well-known
author had affixed his own name to the charge. Citing numerous sources—some suspect and virtually all of them unsavory—Summers claimed that not only Lansky, but also several others had access to similar photos (which Summers is apparently unable to produce). Summers reports that former O.S.S man and later longtime CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton also had control of the Hoover photos, as did former O.S.S chief William Donovan.
The question, though, is whether Angleton, Donovan and company gave the photos to Lansky—or vice-versa--either option being possible in light of Lansky's own longtime association with American intelligence. 230
That both Lansky and Angleton were in possession of such evidence is quite interesting in light of their joint interest in the welfare of the state of Israel, a subject we will be examining shortly. Angleton, as we shall see in Chapter 8 and Chapter 12, had been directly involved with the Lansky crime syndicate through the CIA's dealings with Lansky's drug-smuggling allies in the Corsican and Sicilian Mafias. He was also Israel's chief CIA patron.
THE GODFATHER
Clearly, Meyer Lansky was very much a "godfather" in organized crime,
far more influential than even the most powerful Mafia boss in any city in
America. All of this, then, accounts for Lansky's preeminent role in the
underworld. It is for this reason, then, that when we refer to the "Meyer
Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate" we are referring to not only the "Mafia"
but also to the powerful Jewish interests that are inter-connected here. It was
the Lansky Syndicate that played a pivotal role in the establishment of
Israel. Lansky, you see, was Israel's modern-day "Godfather." Lansky was
with Israel from the beginning.
GUN-RUNNING FOR ISRAEL
According to Hank Messick, "Certainly Jewish gangsters have long and
openly supported Jewish causes and the State of Israel. On the night
Lansky's ex-partner, Bugsy Siegel, was executed, the Flamingo was taken
over by Moe Sedway [a Lansky henchman]. When asked how he so
conveniently happened to be in Las Vegas, [Sedway] explained that he was
there to arrange a United Jewish Appeal fund drive." 231 Robert Lacey points out in his biography of Lansky that Israeli agents were introduced to Lansky in the summer of 1948, the year that Israel became a state. Lansky permitted the Haganah (Jewish terrorist underground) fund-raiser, Joseph Baum, to hold a $10,000 benefit at (Lansky's gambling house), the Colonial Inn. He gave a donation himself. Lansky told them: "I'm at your service."232 (As we noted in Chapter 4, one of the smaller shareholders in the Colonial Inn—at least at one point—was a Dallas nightclub keeper named Jack Ruby.)
Lansky also provided other "technical assistance" to the Israeli gunrunning operations in the United States. In one instance, a Pittsburgh arms dealer's shipment of weapons to the Arabs who were fighting the Jews in Palestine was tossed overboard after Lansky talked to his friends at the New York docks. On other occasions, arms intended for the Arabs were, instead, hijacked by Lansky's henchman and shipped to Israel.
Lansky also wasn't above putting the squeeze on rackets buddies—Jewish and non-Jewish alike—to buy Israel bonds. "Hey, these are a great investment," he would say.233 In fact, according to journalist Robert Friedman, Lansky was later a major contributor to radical New York-born Rabbi Meir Kahane who founded the militant Jewish Defense League. Kahane, who was ultimately assassinated, actually served, at one point, in the Israeli parliament. 234 And, as we shall see in Chapter 8, Kahane himself had unusual connections to American intelligence that bring his Lansky connection full circle.
OPERATION UNDERWORLD
It was Lansky's connection with the O.S.S-Naval Intelligence enterprise
known as "Operation Underworld" that brought him into a strange global
network that ultimately paved the way for the establishment of the state of
Israel. Operation Underworld was stationed at Rockefeller Center in New York
and supervised by a British intelligence operative named William Stephenson
(who was said to be Ian Fleming's inspiration for the fictional character,
James Bond.) It was Stephenson who worked closely with the Anti Defamation
League (A.D.L) of B'nai B'rith as well as the FBI in coordinating
anti-Nazi intelligence operations in the United States.235 (In later years, following the establishment of Israel, the Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate-financed A.D.L emerged as an unregistered foreign agent for Israel, handling intelligence and propaganda operations for the Jewish State, in collaboration with the FBI and the CIA. In Chapter 17 we will examine the A.D.L's role more fully, particularly in regard to its manipulation of the media. )
In any case, as we shall see in Chapter 15, it was Operation Underworld's William Stephenson who became a critical player in the establishment of Israel's Mossad. Stephenson's top aide was Louis Bloomfield, later an attorney for the Lansky-linked Bronfman bootlegging family and himself a key player in the conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy. (We shall examine Bloomfield in detail in Chapter 15.)
There is little question but that Stephenson and Bloomfield were in close contact with Lansky and his henchmen during this period. Lansky himself, as we have seen, acknowledged his own role in Operation Underworld.236 Following World War II, the activities of Operation Underworld and many of the key players shifted to a new front: the establishment of Israel.
Both Stephenson and Bloomfield were integral to gunrunning operations on behalf of the Jewish terrorist underground that later emerged as the government of the new Jewish State in 1948.
It was during the 1947-1948 period that Teddy Kollek, later mayor of Jerusalem, was in charge of the Haganah station in Lansky's then-base of operations, New York City. He was said to be the formal liaison with American organized crime. 238 Kollek worked with the Lansky Syndicate and ultimately had contact with yet another key player in our story, one James Jesus Angleton—a controversial figure indeed. 239
It was Angleton, an O.S.S man, who later became a top-ranking figure in the American CIA and Israel's chief contact—some would say co-opted agent and loyalist—within CIA ranks. Angleton worked closely with Jewish underground activities both in London and in Italy and was instrumental in orchestrating U.S. intelligence collaboration with the Corsican Mafia and the Sicilian Mafia in intelligence operations during these same years and thereafter. (In Chapter 8 and Chapter 16 we shall examine Angleton's CIA activities, working closely with Israel and of his pivotal role in the JFK assassination and cover-up conspiracy in detail.)
Clearly, during the period of the establishment of Israel, Meyer Lansky was directly and intimately involved with all of the major players. Many of these same people would later be involved with Lansky in what some call "the crime of the century." The Russian-born Jewish immigrant had come a long way from the slums of Brooklyn to a singular and pre-eminent role in global power politics. Indeed, Lansky was emerging as the "godfather" of a newly born nation: Israel.
ISRAEL: A BASE OF OPERATIONS
The real key to the Lansky connection with Israel is money. The
newly-established State of Israel not only needed money to exist, but the
organization of a new government was an ideal opportunity for Lansky and
his confederates to establish their own worldwide financial—and criminal—
network. In its early years Israel was "untouchable." The emotional
memories of the experiences of the Jewish people during World War II—
indeed throughout history—were the foundations upon which Israel had been
established. Criticism of Israel was verboten. The new Jewish State was an ideal cover under which Lansky and his criminal syndicate
could operate unfettered.
MONEY LAUNDERING
Lansky's status as organized crime's chief financier and grand wizard of
money laundering put Lansky in a particularly central position. Organized
crime writer Ed Reid's description of Lansky pinpoints Lansky's role
precisely: "With his brother Jake, Lansky rules the gambling roost of the
crime syndicate and may be the direct link between unknown moneyed
nabobs who stash away mob dollars in foreign banks and the cash vaults of
the U.S. criminal cartel." 240 It was Lansky's foreign banking connection that draws him into the web of Israel's international intrigue to the utmost.
RABBI TIBOR ROSENBAUM
An Orthodox rabbi, Rosenbaum served for a period as international vice president of the World Jewish Congress (of which Lansky-connected Bronfman family member Edgar Bronfman has served as president). Rosenbaum also was a co-founder of the World Zionist Congress and a director of the Jewish Agency in Geneva, Switzerland. 242
However, and most importantly, Rosenbaum had served as Director General for Finance and Supply for Israel's secret intelligence agency, the Mossad. Rosenbaum was, very clearly, a key figure in Israel's international intrigue and a critical player in the world of organized crime syndicate boss Meyer Lansky.
Rosenbaum, among other things, also served on the board of the Swiss-Israel Trade Bank, established by Pinchas Sapir, Israel's Finance Minister and a Mossad officer. 243 It was during the time he served on the Swiss Israel Trade Bank that Rosenbaum created the Banque de Credit International (B.C.I).
THE BANQUE DE
CREDIT INTERNATIONAL
B.C.I—Meyer Lansky's European money laundering bank—was very
much an Israeli government/Mossad operation, critical to the survival of
the Jewish State. Indeed, one of the board members of B.C.I was Zwi Recheter, director of the Bank Hapoalim, one of Israel's largest banks and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Israel's Histadrut, the national labor confederation. 244 What's more, B.C.I held the bulk of funds for the World Jewish Congress and the Jewish Agency, no minor deposits by any means.
B.C.I was to become Meyer Lansky's primary overseas money laundering bank—sharing those money laundering services that the bank provided to Israel's Mossad. In fact, during its heyday, B.C.I included among its board of directors two longtime Lansky associates, Edward Levinson and John Pullman. 245
Testimony in the trial revealed that one of the main money laundering channels for the illegal proceeds of the Lansky Crime Syndicate's narcotics, vice and gambling rackets in the United States was Tibor Rosenbaum's B.C.I. Rosenbaum's bank received its Lansky Crime Syndicate cash flow mainly through the Lansky-dominated Bank of World Commerce in Nassau, Bahamas.
Cornfeld, in fact, was sponsored by Rosenbaum, and had emerged as a major money launderer for Lansky's global drug trafficking. Millions in small bills were transferred from Lansky's casinos, often masked as Israeli Bond sales and contributions to Jewish philanthropies.246 This, of course, an outrageous betrayal of honest supporters of the Zionist cause. (In Chapter 12 we shall examine in detail how as a result of active U.S. involvement in the region, the Lansky Syndicate used the cover of CIA covert activities in Southeast Asia to carry out multi-billion dollar drug smuggling operations.)
Investigative reporter Jim Hougan focused on the Lansky-Rosenbaum connection and its central link to Israel's international operations—particularly those of the Mossad:
"During the Second World War Rosenbaum had become a hero of the resistance through his underground activities on behalf of the Jews.
"After the war he became a delegate to the World Zionist Congress in Basel, where plans were made for the creation of Israel, and worked in various European capitals for the Palestine Liberation office (forerunner of the Jewish Agency). This was at the height of Zionist terrorist attacks in Palestine. A superb clandestine operator, Rosenbaum is said to have been instrumental in providing weapons to the Haganah and Stern Gang. That would tend to explain why the International Credit Bank [i.e. Banque de Credit International or B.C.I], `Rosenbaum's Baby," became gambling czar Meyer Lansky's Number One conduit abroad.
"Rosenbaum was more than a friend to the Jews, however. When his bank was rocked with scandal after the collapse of [Bernard Cornfeld's] I.O.S, the newspaper Ha'aretz solemnly declared, 'Tibor Rosenbaum is Israel.' And the paper wasn't far from wrong. While Rosenbaum's bank facilitated the flight-capital schemes worked by I.O.S, it also served as a source of secret funds for the Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, and as one of the country's primary weapons brokers. At one point 'as much as ninety percent of the Israeli Defense Ministry's external budget flowed . . . through Rosenbaum's bank on the Rue de Conseil General.'
"In economic matters he was equally important, founding the Israel Corporation with the help of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a French aristocrat committed to the Zionist cause. The raison d'etre of the Israel Corporation was to raise money among the world's Jews, money to be invested in a variety of public and semi-public Israeli enterprises.
By finding money abroad to fund development projects in "the homeland," Rosenbaum and Rothschild freed Israeli tax monies to be spent on the country's critical military needs. Accordingly, [Rosenbaum] became the "Mr. Fixit" of Israeli finance, cementing friendships with the country's most important military and political leaders.
"The mix of Mob, Mossad, IOS, and Rothschild monies was an intoxicating one in which the common denominator appears to have been a love of Israel. Certainly Rosenbaum and Cornfeld shared that affection with Lansky and the French baron."247
THE ISRAEL CORPORATION
There is yet another interesting Lansky-BCI-Israel link in the
aforementioned Israel Corporation. It was Rosenbaum's B.C.I that held the
bulk of funds for the Israel Corporation, a $200 million investment trust.
The founders of the Israel Corporation included a host of longtime figures
who moved in Lansky's sphere of influence. Others included two interesting figures in particular:
Shaul Eisenberg, Israel's wealthiest industrialist and longtime Mossad operative—a key figure in Israel's nuclear bomb project; and
Philip M. Klutznick, a top-ranking figure in the Anti-Defamation League (A.D.L) of B’nai B’rith. 248
The A.D.L connection here is interesting in that it further backtracks to Lansky's BCI-Rosenbaum linkage. Klutznick, who had been associated with the Lansky-linked Sonneborn Institute gunrunning operations coordinated by Louis M. Bloomfield (mentioned earlier), had become chairman of the board of the American Bank and Trust Company.
American Bank and Trust was a subsidiary of the Swiss-Israel Trade Bank, a Mossad financial operation of which Rosenbaum and his long-time associate, Shaul Eisenberg, had been directors. By coincidence—maybe not—Swiss-Israel Trade Bank assumed management of American Bank and Trust on a very memorable day: November 22, 1963.249
Installed as one of the new directors of the company was New York businessman Abe Feinberg. It was Feinberg, whom we first met in Chapter 4, who was instrumental in arranging highly critical American Jewish financial support for the 1960 presidential campaign of then-Senator John F. Kennedy.
American Bank and Trust had an unhappy ending. The company was looted in 1975-76 by financier David Gravier who subsequently was supposed to have died in an airplane crash in Mexico. Tibor Rosenbaum's B.C.I also, incidentally, had a similarly unhappy ending. The bank collapsed in 1974 resulting in a scandal that shook Israel to its core. In his book, Jews and Money: The Myths and the Reality, author Gerald Krefetz details the collapse of the Lansky-Mossad banking operation.
THE A.D.L BANKS
The Bank of Miami Beach and the City National Bank of Miami were
Lansky's chief money laundering banks in the United States and both
included several Lansky associates, most notably one Max Orovitz, as
directors. In 1963, in fact Lansky began planning the installation of his
gambling casinos in the Bahamas in Orovitz' office. Finally, when Lansky
himself ultimately settled in Israel, he initially took up residence in the Dan
Hotel in Tel Aviv, owned by Lansky's Miami banker friend, Orovitz. Lansky's Miami banks were central to Lansky's gambling operations in the Caribbean. According to former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow, the Bank of Miami Beach "was originally set up to service Cuban casinos operated by organized crime and continued to perform laundering services through the 1960's—and was still considered mob-connected. It was considered a sister bank of the Miami National Bank in the 1960's, sharing many of the same directors and performing many of the same services." 250
https://theundergroundmovement.org/tag/city-national-bank/
City National's chairman, beginning in 1982, was Donald Beazley, who was a former director of the mysterious Australian Nugan Hand Bank.252 The Nugan Hand Bank, the subject of an interesting study by Jonathan Kwitny entitled The Crimes of Patriots, has been repeatedly linked to international drug money trafficking out of Southeast Asia conducted through the conduit of CIA operations in the region. (And as we shall see in Chapter 12, Lansky utilized the CIA's activities in Southeast Asia as a cover for his drug-running operations which were, in fact, carried out hand-in-hand with the CIA. In Chapter 15, however, we shall see the Lansky-Rosenbaum connection once again, and in further detail. Their linkage is critical to recognizing the important role that Israel played in the JFK assassination conspiracy.)
THE GODFATHER GOES HOME
It was in 1970, finally, that Meyer Lansky pulled up stakes and settled
in Israel. Under Israel's unique "Law of Return" any Jew from anywhere in the
world could claim Israeli citizenship. That is what Lansky did. At home in the United States, Lansky was under criminal investigation. Exile in Israel seemed a likely way of escaping the trouble. Israel was an ideal location for Lansky to relocate his operations and he set about plans for setting up the Jewish State as the new, formal headquarters for his global crime syndicate. As Hank Messick put it: "As chairman of the board of the Syndicate International, Lansky could operate just as easily—perhaps more easily—from Tel Aviv as Miami Beach." 253 Lansky's longtime associate Joseph (Doc) Stacher had already gone to Israel to live. So had a wide-ranging assortment of other American Jewish mobsters, including Lansky's good friend Phil "The Stick" Kovolick.
The Mossad-dominated government of Israel seemed to welcome these criminals as new countryman. Israel, according to Newsweek, "appeared to be motivated by self-interest. Each year, Lansky and his underworld associates pour vast sums into Israeli bonds and Israeli philanthropies.
MOB MONEY IN ISRAEL
"As the daily Ha'aretz saw it, the government seemed afraid of losing the
millions of dollars in illicit money first 'laundered' in mob-controlled
institutions and then funneled into Israeli business and industry."254 Lansky's initial entree to Israel was quietly orchestrated. Word leaked out that a wealthy "Miami philanthropist” had taken up residence in the Jewish State. However, circumstances beyond Lansky's control made matters difficult for the grand wizard of the underworld.
During his stay in Israel, two American grand juries (in March of 1971 and in June of 1972) handed down indictments against Lansky and several of his associates. The first indictment charged—correctly, of course—that Lansky had been skimming millions from the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The second indictment charged Lansky with income tax evasion.
There were more than a few honest, law-abiding Israelis who objected to the "chairman of the board" staking his future in Israel, and the political pressure was such that there was widespread clamor for his deportation. It didn't help matters that fearless crime reporter Hank Messick's biography of Lansky appeared during that same period and portions of it appeared in the Israeli press. Lansky himself made his own loyalties clear, however. In a friendly series of interviews with Ma'ariv, an Israeli daily, Lansky said, "I don't care what they wrote and write about me in America. I care what they think of me in Israel."255
Between the public outcry in Israel and pressure from American authorities, the Israel government buckled and agreed to expel Lansky. However, the "boss of all bosses" appealed his expulsion all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court. The emotional issue of a Jew who had made "aliyah" and settled in Israel under the Law of Return—and who was then being expelled to face possible punishment in a criminal court in another country—played heavily in Lansky's favor. However, despite Lansky's best efforts—including an offer of $10,000,000 if he was permitted to remain—he was forced to return to the United States.
LANSKY IN DECLINE
By this time, Lansky was in ill health and even underwent open-heart
surgery. However, as the Wall Street Journal noted: "Whenever the heat was on—an investigation made public, a grand jury inquiry, a new task
force of federal crime fighters on his trail—stories suddenly abound that
Meyer Lansky is dying of cancer or some other terminal illness. In the files
of the New York State Police, there exists a report made out in the 1920's
that says Meyer Lansky is a bad guy, all right, but there's no need to worry
because he's a sickly man who won't live out the year."256 But Lansky's traditional magical powers over the American criminal justice system were still with him. First of all, a jury in his home base of Miami acquitted him on the income tax evasion charges. Then, in mob controlled Nevada, the criminal charges against Lansky were thrown out of court on the basis that Lansky was in ill health. And in Washington, U.S. Solicitor General Robert Bork decided that going after Lansky—the ruling boss of international organized crime—was not in the nation's best interests. Bork decided that the Justice Department just didn't have a case against Lansky. The case was dropped.257 Lansky had once again prevailed—to nobody's surprise. (Bork later suffered an ignominious rejection by the Senate when nominated for the Supreme Court. However, it was not Bork's pandering to Lansky that weighed against him—although it probably should have.)
Lansky's remaining years were quiet ones spent with his wife and dog and an assortment of other aging racketeers. He still maintained some oversight over his business operations but increasing health problems continued to plague him. The mastermind behind the global crime syndicate finally died on January 15, 1983.
In his final years—and posthumously—Lansky (with the willing help of Hollywood and the rest of the media) became a folk hero of sorts. Gangsterism was being made fashionable—even as the glory days of John F. Kennedy and Camelot were being trashed by that same media. Lansky's days with Benjamin Siegel were glamorized in films such as The Gangster Chronicles, The Neon Empire, and in Mobsters, where a host of teen idols played Lansky, Siegel, Costello and Luciano in their early years.
Author Robert Lacey—who had previously written a glowing profile of the British royal family—turned his attention to the royal family of the international crime syndicate and produced—with the help of the Lansky family—a Lansky biography, Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life. Lacey's epic tells much—but ignores a lot. He would have us believe that Lansky was, more than anything, a devoted family man, and not the ruthless thug that he truly was. Even as Lacey's Lansky biography was hitting the bookstores, yet another Hollywood production brought Lansky to the screen. This film, Bugsy, starring heart-throb Warren Beatty as Benjamin Siegel, cast the highly-regarded actor Ben Kingsley (who had even played Mahatma Gandhi) as a wise and all-knowing Meyer Lansky.
However, the Hollywood versions of the life and times of Meyer Lansky were far from the truth, no matter how colorful a story they told about the evil genius they portrayed.
Thus, even in death, Meyer Lansky prevailed. Lansky's central role As a virtual middleman between the high-level forces that conspired in the assassination of John F. Kennedy has been cleverly buried by a willing media. "Israel's Godfather" was lionized almost as a misunderstood statesman. Meyer Lansky, however, was not that.
Instead, Lansky was a cynical, cold-blooded killer who had ordered the death of his closest friend—Benjamin Siegel—and who certainly had no qualms about helping orchestrate the murder of an American president who threatened not only his own survival, but that of his beloved State of Israel.
next
Thick as Thieves: A Dangerous Liaison—
James Jesus Angleton and the Unholy
Alliance Between Israel, the CIA and
the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate
footnotes
Chapter Six The Coming of the Messiah
150 John Davis. Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. (New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1989), p. 159.
151 Robert Lacey. Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life. (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1991), pp. 332-333.
152 Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris. The Green Felt Jungle. (New York: Pocket Books edition, 1964), pp. 217-219.
153 Ibid.
154 Robert Morrow. The Senator Must Die (Santa Monica, California: Roundtable Publishing, Inc., 1988), p. 126.
155 Robert N. Winter-Berger. The Washington Pay-Off (New York: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1972), pp. 65-66.
156 Ibid., p. 66.
157 Stephen Green. Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations With a Militant Israel. (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1984), p. 186.
158 Ibid.
159 I. L. Kenan. Israel's Defense Line: Her Friends and Foes in Washington. (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1981), p. 173.
160 Seymour Hersh. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 127.
161 Ibid., p. 128. 162 Green, p. 185. 163 Ibid., p. 186. 164 Richard Curtiss. A Changing Image (Washington, D.C.: American Educational Trust, 1986), p. 68.
165 Ibid.
166 Jean Lacouture. DeGaulle: The Ruler. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993), p. 446.
167 Ibid.
168 Ibid, p. 378.
169 Ibid.
170 Curtiss, Ibid.
171 Ibid.
172 Ibid.
173 Ibid.
174 Alfred Lilienthal. The Zionist Connection II. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: North American, 1982), p. 549.
175 Kenan, p. 173.
176 Curtiss, p. 75.
177 Green, p. 246.
178 Ibid.
179 Curtiss, p. 75.
180 Green, p. 186.
181 Richard Deacon. The Israeli Secret Service. (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., Inc., 1978), p. 179.
182 Ibid.
183 Green, pp. 165-166.
184 Washington Observer, September 15, 1968.
185 Alan H. Ryskind. Hubert. (New York: Arlington House, 1968), pp. 79-84.
186 Ball, p. 52.
187 Green, pp. 186-187.
188 Ibid.
189 Ibid., p. 251.
190 Ibid., pp. 243-244.
191 Ibid., p. 249.
192 Ibid., p. 180.
193 Washington Star, June 4, 1967.
194 Ball, pp. 65-66.
195 Green, p. 250.
Chapter Seven Israel's Godfather
196 Marvin Miller. The Breaking of a President: The Nixon Connection. (Covina, California: Classic Publications, 1975), p. 336.
197 The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 1969, p. 1.
198 Miller, p. 327.
199 Martin Gosch & Richard Hammer. The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano. (Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1974), p. 229.
200 Robert D. Morrow. The Senator Must Die: The Murder of Robert F. Kennedy. (Santa Monica, California: Roundtable Publishing, Inc., 1988), p. 238.
201 The Spotlight, September 25, 1978.
202 Gosch & Hammer, p. 381.
203 Ibid., p. 431.
204 Robert Lacey. Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life. (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1991), p. 386.
205 Hank Messick. Lansky. (New York: Berkley Medallion Books, 1971), pp. 8-10.
206 Gosch & Hammer, p. 146.
207 Peter Dale Scott. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993), p. 192.
208 Peter Dale Scott. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993), p. 187.
209 Ibid.
210 Mickey Cohen with John Peer Nugent. Mickey Cohen: In My Own Words. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975), p. 35.
211 Ibid.
212 Messick, p. 215.
213 Executive Intelligence Review. Dope, Inc. (New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1986), p. 587.
214 Michael Milan. The Squad: The U.S. Government's Secret Alliance With Organized Crime. (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1989), p. 194.
215 Hank Messick. Secret File. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1969), p. 185.
216 Interview with Ma'ariv, July 5, 1971.
217 Milan, p. 206.
218 Washington Observer, May 15, 1969.
219 Twin Circle , September 29, 1968.
220 Executive Intelligence Review. (Dope, Inc.), pp. 578-579.
221 Curt Gentry. J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), p. 530.
222 Ibid., p. 531.
223 Tom Mangold. Cold Warrior. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 235.
224 Peter Dale Scott. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993), p. 64. 562 Reference Notes [465]
225 Morrow, p. 98.
226 Sam Giancana and Chuck Giancana. Double Cross: The Explosive Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America. (New York: Warner Books, 1992), p. 255.
227 Ibid., p. 256.
228 Gentry, p. 495.
229 Ibid., p. 628.
230 Antony Summers. Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1993), pp. 244-245.
231 Messick, p. 276.
232 Lacey, p. 163.
233 Ibid., p. 164.
234 Robert I. Friedman. The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane: From FBI Informant to Knesset Member. (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1990), p. 144.
235 Intelligence Review. Moscow's Secret Weapon: Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Mafia. (Washington, D.C.: Executive Intelligence Review, March 1, 1986), p. 14.
236 Ibid
237 Ibid., pp. 14-15.
238 Ibid
239 Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn. Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991), pp. 41-42.
240 Ed Reid. The Grim Reapers: The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America, City by City. (New York: Pocket Books edition, 1964), p. 293.
241 Messick, pp. 248-249.
242 Executive Intelligence Review (Moscow), p. 17
243 Ibid, p. 16.
244 Ibid., p. 18.
245 Life, September 16, 1967.
246 Messick, Ibid.
247 Jim Hougan. Spooks: The Haunting of America—The Private Use of Secret Agents. (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1985), p. 172.
248 Executive Intelligence Review (Moscow,), p. 13.
249 Ibid., p. 16.
250 Morrow, p . 1 5 2 .
251 Executive Intelligence Review. Project Democracy: The 'Parallel Government' Behind the Iran-Contra Affair. (Washington, D.C.: Executive Intelligence Review, April 1987), pp. 271-272.
252 Ibid., p. 272. 253Hank Messick and Burt Goldblatt. The Mobs and the Mafia. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972), p. 204.
254 Newsweek, November 29, 1971.
255 Lacey, p. 333. [466] Final Judgment 563
256 Wall Street Journal, Ibid.
257 Lacey, pp. 383-384.
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