FINAL JUDGMENT
The Missing Link in the
JFK Assassination Conspiracy
By MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER
Chapter Five
Genesis:
JFK's Secret War With Israel
The history books have told us of John F. Kennedy's epic
struggles with Fidel Castro and the Soviets in the Bay of Pigs
debacle and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Yet, only in recent years have we begun to learn of
Kennedy's secret war with Israel. Much of the conflict
stemmed from Israel's determination to build a nuclear bomb.
This is a hidden history that helps explain in part the
dynamic forces at work resulting in Kennedy's assassination.
By mid-1963 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion
hated Kennedy with a passion. In fact, he considered JFK a
threat to the very survival of the Jewish State.
One of John F. Kennedy's first presidential appointments was naming
his former campaign aide Myer (Mike) Feldman as his point man for Jewish
and Israeli affairs—an important post, especially considering JFK's tenuous
relationship with Israel and its American lobby.
According to author Seymour Hersh, "The President viewed Feldman,
whose strong support for Israel was widely known, as a necessary evil
whose highly visible White House position was a political debt that had to be
paid." 79
However, the administration was determined to make certain, according
to Hersh, that nobody—Feldman in particular—would be able to circumvent
any administration policy insofar as the Middle East was concerned.
"The President's most senior advisers, most acutely McGeorge Bundy,
the national security adviser, desperately sought to cut Feldman out of the
flow of Middle East paperwork." 80 Hersh quotes another presidential aide as
having said, "It was hard to tell the difference between what Feldman said
and what the Israeli ambassador said." 81
'ZIONISTS IN THE CABINET ROOM'
President Kennedy himself had his own suspicions about Feldman,
according to the president's close friend, Charles Bartlett (to whom Kennedy
in 1960 had previously voiced concerns about Israeli influence as noted in
Chapter 4).
Bartlett recalls a visit with the new President at his home in Hyannis
Port, Massachusetts one Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath). Talk turned to
Feldman's role in the White House bureaucracy. "I imagine Mike's having a
meeting of the Zionists in the cabinet room," the president said, according
to Bartlett. 82
The President's brother, Robert Kennedy, himself said that his brother
admired Feldman's work, but added, "His major interest was Israel rather
than the United States." 83
However, while Myer Feldman was busy promoting Israel's interests at
the White House, the president was sending out a message to the rest of the
foreign policy-making establishment in Washington.
Kennedy was making it clear that he was very much interested in
finding a path to peace in the Middle East and was, in particular, looking for
ways to solve the problem of finding a home for the Palestinian refugees
who had been displaced by Israel in 1948.
Former high-ranking U.S. diplomat Richard H. Curtiss, writing in A Changing Image: American Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute, elaborated on Kennedy's attitude toward the Middle East controversy. In a chapter appropriately titled: "President Kennedy and Good Intentions Deferred Too Long," Curtiss comments:
"It is surprising to realize, with the benefit of hindsight, that from the time Kennedy entered office as the narrowly-elected candidate of a party heavily dependent upon Jewish support, he was planning to take a whole new look at U.S. Mideast policy.
"He obviously could not turn the clock back and undo the work of President Truman, his Democratic predecessor, in making the establishment of Israel possible. Nor, perhaps, would he have wanted to.
"Kennedy was determined, however, to develop good new personal relationships with individual Arab leaders, including those with whom the previous administration's relations had deteriorated.
"As a result, various leaders of newly independent countries were surprised to find their pro forma messages of congratulations upon Kennedy's assumption of office answered with personalized letters from the young American President." 85
According to Kennedy associate, Theodore Sorensen, "Nasser liked Kennedy's Ambassador, John Badeau, and he liked Kennedy's practice of personal correspondence. Kennedy put off, however, an invitation for a Nasser visit until improved relations could enable him to answer the political attacks such a visit would bring from voters more sympathetic to Israel." 86
(Unfortunately, however, as noted by Richard Curtiss, "As with most good intentions deferred, the invitation to Nasser for a personal meeting with Kennedy was never issued." 87)
Thus, it was that upon assuming office, Kennedy made positive attempts to contact Arab heads of state asking how the U.S. could help each country in its individual disputes with Israel.
According to America's most noted longtime Jewish critic of Israel, Dr. Alfred Lilienthal: "While the President, more often through Vice President Lyndon Johnson, gave much lip service to Israeli aspirations, his administration continued to resist pressures, including a round-robin petition signed by 226 Congressmen of both parties (aided by a large New York Times advertisement on May 28, 1962) to initiate direct Arab-Israeli negotiations. Kennedy had decided to shelve his pledge in the Democratic platform to bring Israeli and Arab leaders together around a peace table in order to settle the Palestine question." 89 [To us here in 2016,it should speak volume's of Israeli intentions with regard to the Palestine question.Why you ask? because there is STILL THE SAME QUESTION 54 years later!! DC]
Five years and one day after Kennedy's Senate speech calling for Algerian independence, Algeria became a sovereign state on July 3, 1962. According to former diplomat Richard Curtiss, "Algeria's revolutionary leaders had not forgotten the American senator who had championed their cause and they publicly hailed his election." 90
"Kennedy in turn sent William Porter, the U.S. Foreign Service officer who had explained to him the Algerian cause, as the first U.S. Ambassador to Algeria. Algerian leader Ahmad Ben Bella visited Washington the same year. Afterward, in the words of Ambassador Porter, Ben Bella 'ascribed to Kennedy everything he thought good in the United States.'" 91
Although pro-Israel propagandists and some American conservatives with close ties to the Israeli lobby said that an independent Algeria would be a "communist" outpost in the Middle East, Algerian Premier Ahmed Ben Bella banned the Communist Party of Algeria on November 29, 1962.92 In fact, Algeria was very much an Islamic state and it was precisely this which created so much concern for Israel.
(In subsequent chapters, in greater detail, we shall see further how JFK's CIA enemies were, in fact, collaborating with DeGaulle's enemies in the OAS, and traitors within his regime—along with the Israeli Mossad.)
Twenty years after Algerian independence, the Washington Post commented on the effect that Algerian freedom had upon DeGaulle's Middle East policy and, in turn, upon Israel:
"Diplomatically, France shorn of Algeria, returned under president Charles DeGaulle to its traditional policy of friendship with the Arabs— much to the chagrin of Israel and the 200,000 Algerian Jews who had lived peacefully alongside their Arab neighbors until emigrating to France." 93
Israeli historian Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi notes that "when Algeria, finally independent, joined the United Nations, only Israel voted against its admission." 94 In fact, as we shall see, the Algerian question would ultimately play a part in the events that led to JFK's assassination.
At the same time, JFK was shaping a Middle East policy that put him at loggerheads with Israel. Yet, cognizant of Israel's political influence in the United States, JFK made overtures to Israel and arranged to meet in Palm Beach, in December of 1962, with Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir.
However, the president tempered that pledge with a hope that Israel recognized that America also had interests in the Middle East. According to President Kennedy, referring to U.S.-Israeli relations, "Our relationship is a two-way street." 95
"The United States, the President said, has a special relationship with Israel in the Middle East really comparable only to that which it has with Britain over a wide range of world affairs. But for us to play properly the role we are called upon to play, we cannot afford the luxury of identifying Israel, or Pakistan, or certain other countries, as our exclusive friends." 96
According to Green, the thrust of Kennedy's message to Israel was this: "The best way for the United States to effectively serve Israel's national security interests, Kennedy said, was to maintain and develop America's associations with the other nations of the region. [America's] influence could then be brought to bear as needed in particular disputes to ensure that Israel's essential interests were not compromised." 97
"'If we pulled out of the Arab Middle East and maintained our ties only with Israel this would not be in Israel's interest,' Kennedy said." 98
The President outlined to Mrs. Meir what has come to be called the Kennedy Doctrine. Kennedy told Meir that U.S. interests and Israel's interests were not always the same. The Talbot memorandum described Kennedy's forthright stance:
"We know," [said Kennedy] "that Israel faces enormous security problems, but we do too. We came almost to a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union last spring and again recently in Cuba . . . Because we have taken on wide security responsibilities we always have the potential of becoming involved in a major crisis not of our own making . . .
Thus it was that John F. Kennedy informed Israel, in no uncertain terms, that he intended—first and foremost—to place America's interests—not Israel's interests—at the center of U.S. Middle East policy.
In order to thoroughly examine Kennedy's conflict with Israel over the Zionist State's nuclear intentions, we once again refer to Stephen Green's aforementioned work, Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations With a Militant Israel, a treasure trove of little known information relating to U.S.- Israeli relations from the period of 1948 through 1967. Green writes of JFK's discovery that Israel was engaged in nuclear arms development.
When Kennedy was coming into office in the transition period in December 1960 the Eisenhower administration informed Kennedy of Israel's secret nuclear weapons development at a site in the desert known as Dimona. Israel had advanced several cover stories to explain its activities at Dimona.
Israel's intended entry into the nuclear arena was, as a consequence, a frightening prospect in JFK's mind, particularly in light of ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
From the very beginning of his presidency, John F. Kennedy found himself at severe odds with the government of Israel. It was a conflict that would never really be resolved until the day JFK died in Dallas. It was not an auspicious start for the New Frontier.
In Paris, Charles DeGaulle's reaction mirrored that of Kennedy's. His government had been providing nuclear technology assistance to Israel, but with the assurance from Ben-Gurion that the nuclear development was peaceful in nature.
According to Israeli historians Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman: "There was also pressure from President DeGaulle in Paris. The French attitude toward the Middle East began to change just after he took office in 1958 . . . He suspected that the Dimona reactor was destined for military uses and this greatly annoyed the French president." 104 (DeGaulle's later decision to grant Algerian independence, already described, simply exacerbated his own already growing tensions with Israel.)
In Washington, JFK was determined to settle the matter once and for all. Stephen Green described Kennedy's next step: "In May Kennedy and Ben-Gurion met in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Kennedy had already written to Ben-Gurion expressing his extreme concern about the Dimona project, and suggesting regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In New York, Ben-Gurion agreed to a compromise—(approximately) annual inspections by U.S. scientists at times and on terms to be determined by the Israeli Defense Ministry.
"Later, Myer Feldman, Kennedy's aide for Middle East matters, would reveal that in return for the periodic U.S. inspections, Ben-Gurion had exacted a promise of provision of advanced Hawk ground-to-air missiles.
"There is no reason to doubt Kennedy's seriousness in wanting to track Israeli nuclear research and forestall weapons development, but whether annual inspections under the terms indicated achieved this result [was, as events unfolded] open to question." 105
So it was that John F. Kennedy unintentionally found himself already at loggerheads with Israel behind the scenes.
According to Seymour Hersh: "Israel's bomb, and what to do about it, became a White House fixation, part of the secret presidential agenda that would remain hidden for the next thirty years."106 As Hersh notes, quite profoundly we see in retrospect, this secret war with Israel was never once noted by any of Kennedy's biographers.107 If indeed it had been, as we shall see, the mystery behind the JFK assassination might have been unraveled long, long ago.
In March, 1963, Sherman Kent, the Chairman of the Board of National Estimates at the CIA, wrote an extended memorandum to the CIA's Director on the highly controversial subject entitled "Consequences of Israeli Acquisition of Nuclear Capability."
According to Stephen Green, for the purposes of this internal memorandum, Kent defined "acquisition" by Israel as either (a) a detonation of a nuclear device with or without the possession of actual nuclear weapons, or (b) an announcement by Israel that it possessed nuclear weapons, even without testing. Kent's primary conclusion was that an Israeli bomb would cause 'substantial damage to the U.S. and Western position in the Arab world.' 108
According to Green's accurate assessment, "The memorandum was very strong and decidedly negative in its conclusions" 109 which were as follows:
"Even though Israel already enjoys a clear military superiority over its Arab adversaries, singly or combined, acquisition of a nuclear capability would greatly enhance Israel's sense of security. In this circumstance, some Israelis might be inclined to adopt a moderate and conciliatory posture . . .
"We believe it much more likely, however, that Israel's policy toward its neighbors would become more rather than less tough. [Israel would] seek to exploit the psychological advantages of its nuclear capability to intimidate the Arabs and to prevent them from making trouble on the frontiers." 110
In dealing with the United States, the CIA analyst estimated, a nuclear Israel would "make the most of the almost inevitable Arab tendency to look to the Soviet Bloc for assistance against the added Israel threat, arguing that in terms of both strength and reliability Israel was clearly the only worthwhile friend of the U.S. in the area.
"Israel,” in Kent's analysis, "would use all the means at its command to persuade the U.S. to acquiesce in, and even to support, its possession of nuclear capability."111
In short, Israel would use its immense political power—especially through its lobby in Washington—to force the United States to accede to Israel's nuclear intentions.
However, the CIA did not make known its concerns about Israel's determination to produce a nuclear bomb. According to Green, "It is perhaps significant that the memorandum was not drafted as a formal national intelligence estimate (NIE), which would have involved distribution to several other agencies of the government. No formal NIE was issued by CIA on the Israeli nuclear weapons program until 1968."112
That the CIA—or at the very least, elements within the CIA—would be interested in protecting Israel's interests is no surprise. As we shall see in Chapter 8, the ties between Israel and the CIA were quite intimate—perhaps too intimate in too many, many ways.
In the meantime, President Kennedy was well aware that Israel's nuclear
project at Dimona would enable Israel to produce at least one bomb per
year—and that was enough to start a world war.
Although Israel's nuclear program was ostensibly "peaceful" in nature, the fact is that the project was entirely controlled by Israel's Ministry of Defense. This alone made the project controversial, even in Israel. It was for this reason that it was critical for Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to neutralize JFK's opposition.
There was enough domestic opposition to the program in Israel itself that Kennedy's own steadfast refusal to support Israeli nuclear development could have killed the project altogether.
In the early months of his administration, Kennedy maintained regular contact with Ben-Gurion in an effort to stop the nuclear development. The two leaders had an ongoing private correspondence over the issue.
Ben-Gurion sought to have a private meeting with Kennedy—in the course of an official state visit to Washington—but the president refused to provide a formal invitation.
It was then that, in May 1961, Ben-Gurion pulled his strings at the White House and contrived a meeting with Kennedy through the intervention of New York financier Abe Feinberg.
It was Feinberg, as we have seen in Chapter 4, who had initially smoothed over Kennedy's relations with the American Jewish community during the 1960 presidential campaign and arranged for a massive infusion of Jewish money into JFK's campaign.
(It was this experience, as noted previously, that soured Kennedy's attitude toward Israel and its powerful lobby to a significant extent.)
Feinberg arranged for the American president and the Israeli leader to meet during Ben-Gurion's unofficial visit to the United States where he was scheduled to be honored at a convocation at Brandeis University, a Jewish oriented center of learning near Boston.
Following the affair at Brandeis, Ben-Gurion journeyed to New York City where he met with Kennedy at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. According to Hersh, "The meeting with Kennedy was a major disappointment for the Israeli prime minister, and not only because of the nuclear issue. " 114
"'He looked to me like a twenty-five-year-old boy,' Ben-Gurion later told his biographer. 'I asked myself: 'How can a man so young be elected President?' At first I did not take him seriously.'"115
What's more, the Israeli Prime Minister had an additional reason to be suspicious of the young American's motives. According to Feinberg, "B.G. could be vicious, and he had such a hatred of the old man." 117 The "old man" in this case was the president's father, former Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, long considered not only an "anti-Semite" but a Hitler partisan.
Ben-Gurion's contempt for the younger Kennedy was growing by leaps and bounds—almost pathologically. According to Hersh, "The Israeli prime minister, in subsequent private communications to the White House, began to refer to the President as 'young man.' Kennedy made clear to associates that he found the letters to be offensive."118
Kennedy himself told his close friend, Charles Bartlett, that he was getting fed up with the fact that the Israeli "sons of bitches lie to me constantly about their nuclear capability."119
Obviously, to say the very least, there was no love lost between the two leaders. The U.S.-Israeli relationship was at an ever-growing and disastrous impasse, although virtually nothing was known about this to the American public at the time.
Former Undersecretary of State George Ball notes in his book, The Passionate Attachment, that "In the fall of 1962, Ben-Gurion conveyed his own views in a letter to the Israeli ambassador in Washington, intended to be circulated among Jewish American leaders, in which he stated: 'Israel will regard this plan as a more serious danger to her existence than all the threats of the Arab dictators and Kings, than all the Arab armies, than all of Nasser's missiles and his Soviet MIGs . . . Israel will fight against this implementation down to the last man."120
Clearly, then, by this point, Ben-Gurion perceived the American president's policies to be a very threat to Israel's survival. Ben-Gurion was vowing to fight, as we have seen, "down to the last man."
Kennedy offered to sell Israel Hawk missiles for defensive purposes—as Israel had been demanding—but Kennedy continued to drag his feet on the sale. The president refused to be pushed to the limit by Israel.
Kennedy finally relented and approved the sale, but only after pressure from Israel and its allies in the American Congress. By then, however, it was probably too late. The twig had been bent.
"The legislators reechoed the Ben-Gurion contention that Israel had fallen behind in the arms race. Nasser, they claimed, was ready for a pushbutton war. Israel [was] easy to pinpoint and destroy and [could not] retaliate against four or five Arab states at once."121
By this time—behind the scenes—Kennedy had ordered continuing surveillance of the Israelis and their push for the nuclear bomb. It was a top priority for Kennedy, by all estimations. However, to ensure that Israel's access to intelligence regarding the American spy operation against Israel was limited, the surveillance was being conducted directly out of then-CIA Director John McCone's office. 122
(This, of course, still did not guarantee that Israel's friends in the CIA [whom we will consider in Chapter 8] did not tip off the Israelis to the hostile operations being conducted.)
Kennedy was still willing, however, to attempt to settle the matter and requested that Israel permit American inspectors the opportunity to come to Israel's nuclear operation at Dimona to verify that—as Israel claimed—the program was peaceful in nature. This was the president's last-ditch effort, apparently, to pacify Israel and, at the same time, find out precisely what was going on at Dimona. But Israel would not permit the inspection.
By this time there was a general understanding at the highest ranks of the Kennedy administration that there was a major problem at hand. The president's inner circle had begun to realize that Israel deemed Kennedy's refusal to knuckle under to Israel's demands as a dire threat to Israel's survival.
According to then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, speaking in retrospect, "I can understand why Israel wanted a nuclear bomb. There is a basic problem there. The existence of Israel has been a question mark in history, and that's the essential issue."123
The Israelis—and particularly Ben-Gurion—would no doubt agree. In their view, John F. Kennedy himself was emerging as a threat to Israel's very existence:
JFK would simply not countenance a nuclear Israel and Israel's leaders believed that a nuclear Israel would ensure the continued survival of the Jewish State.
KENNEDY'S GOOD INTENTIONS
According to Hersh, "State Department Arabists were pleasantly
surprised early in 1961 to get word from the White House, according to [one
source], that 'just because 90 percent of the Jewish vote had gone for
Kennedy, it didn't mean he was in their pocket.'"84 Former high-ranking U.S. diplomat Richard H. Curtiss, writing in A Changing Image: American Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute, elaborated on Kennedy's attitude toward the Middle East controversy. In a chapter appropriately titled: "President Kennedy and Good Intentions Deferred Too Long," Curtiss comments:
"It is surprising to realize, with the benefit of hindsight, that from the time Kennedy entered office as the narrowly-elected candidate of a party heavily dependent upon Jewish support, he was planning to take a whole new look at U.S. Mideast policy.
"He obviously could not turn the clock back and undo the work of President Truman, his Democratic predecessor, in making the establishment of Israel possible. Nor, perhaps, would he have wanted to.
"Kennedy was determined, however, to develop good new personal relationships with individual Arab leaders, including those with whom the previous administration's relations had deteriorated.
"As a result, various leaders of newly independent countries were surprised to find their pro forma messages of congratulations upon Kennedy's assumption of office answered with personalized letters from the young American President." 85
OLIVE BRANCH TO NASSER
The key Arab leader at the time was Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, the
voice of Pan-Arabism. Kennedy was especially intrigued with the
possibility of opening up relations with Nasser. According to Kennedy associate, Theodore Sorensen, "Nasser liked Kennedy's Ambassador, John Badeau, and he liked Kennedy's practice of personal correspondence. Kennedy put off, however, an invitation for a Nasser visit until improved relations could enable him to answer the political attacks such a visit would bring from voters more sympathetic to Israel." 86
(Unfortunately, however, as noted by Richard Curtiss, "As with most good intentions deferred, the invitation to Nasser for a personal meeting with Kennedy was never issued." 87)
Thus, it was that upon assuming office, Kennedy made positive attempts to contact Arab heads of state asking how the U.S. could help each country in its individual disputes with Israel.
STANDING BY TRADITION
However, Kennedy wanted one thing in particular understood by all sides
in the conflict: the new U.S. president wanted "to make it crystal clear that the
U.S. meant what it said in the Tripartite Declaration of 1950—that we will
act promptly and decisively against any nation in the Middle East which
attacks its neighbor." 88 This policy was directed not only to the Arabs, but
Israel as well. Kennedy did indeed mean business.
ISRAEL'S LOBBY REACTS
Soon after Kennedy assumed office, Israel and its American lobby began to
understand the import of Kennedy's positioning in regard to the Arab-Israeli
conflict. Israel was not happy—to say the very least—and began putting
heat on the White House through the egis of its supporters in Congress,
many of whom relied upon support from the Israeli lobby for campaign
contributions and political leverage. According to America's most noted longtime Jewish critic of Israel, Dr. Alfred Lilienthal: "While the President, more often through Vice President Lyndon Johnson, gave much lip service to Israeli aspirations, his administration continued to resist pressures, including a round-robin petition signed by 226 Congressmen of both parties (aided by a large New York Times advertisement on May 28, 1962) to initiate direct Arab-Israeli negotiations. Kennedy had decided to shelve his pledge in the Democratic platform to bring Israeli and Arab leaders together around a peace table in order to settle the Palestine question." 89 [To us here in 2016,it should speak volume's of Israeli intentions with regard to the Palestine question.Why you ask? because there is STILL THE SAME QUESTION 54 years later!! DC]
ALGERIA, AGAIN
It was mid-way into Kennedy's presidency that he had the satisfaction of
seeing French President Charles DeGaulle grant independence to Algeria—
something, of course, as we saw in Chapter 4 that was not looked favorably upon
by Israel and its American lobby. Five years and one day after Kennedy's Senate speech calling for Algerian independence, Algeria became a sovereign state on July 3, 1962. According to former diplomat Richard Curtiss, "Algeria's revolutionary leaders had not forgotten the American senator who had championed their cause and they publicly hailed his election." 90
"Kennedy in turn sent William Porter, the U.S. Foreign Service officer who had explained to him the Algerian cause, as the first U.S. Ambassador to Algeria. Algerian leader Ahmad Ben Bella visited Washington the same year. Afterward, in the words of Ambassador Porter, Ben Bella 'ascribed to Kennedy everything he thought good in the United States.'" 91
Although pro-Israel propagandists and some American conservatives with close ties to the Israeli lobby said that an independent Algeria would be a "communist" outpost in the Middle East, Algerian Premier Ahmed Ben Bella banned the Communist Party of Algeria on November 29, 1962.92 In fact, Algeria was very much an Islamic state and it was precisely this which created so much concern for Israel.
DeGAULLE'S MIDDLE EAST
TURN-ABOUT
However, the debate over Algerian independence had sparked a major
crisis within France and the French Secret Army Organization (OAS), which
fought Algerian freedom, considered John F. Kennedy an enemy only second
to Charles DeGaulle. (In subsequent chapters, in greater detail, we shall see further how JFK's CIA enemies were, in fact, collaborating with DeGaulle's enemies in the OAS, and traitors within his regime—along with the Israeli Mossad.)
Twenty years after Algerian independence, the Washington Post commented on the effect that Algerian freedom had upon DeGaulle's Middle East policy and, in turn, upon Israel:
"Diplomatically, France shorn of Algeria, returned under president Charles DeGaulle to its traditional policy of friendship with the Arabs— much to the chagrin of Israel and the 200,000 Algerian Jews who had lived peacefully alongside their Arab neighbors until emigrating to France." 93
Israeli historian Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi notes that "when Algeria, finally independent, joined the United Nations, only Israel voted against its admission." 94 In fact, as we shall see, the Algerian question would ultimately play a part in the events that led to JFK's assassination.
At the same time, JFK was shaping a Middle East policy that put him at loggerheads with Israel. Yet, cognizant of Israel's political influence in the United States, JFK made overtures to Israel and arranged to meet in Palm Beach, in December of 1962, with Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir.
`A TWO-WAY STREET'
It was during that meeting that Kennedy actually went so far as to
emphasize American support for Israel, probably the farthest that any
American president had gone since Israel was first established. However, the president tempered that pledge with a hope that Israel recognized that America also had interests in the Middle East. According to President Kennedy, referring to U.S.-Israeli relations, "Our relationship is a two-way street." 95
NO 'EXCLUSIVE FRIENDS'
Phillips Talbot, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs,
who was present at the Kennedy-Meir conference prepared a memorandum
for the State Department summarizing that meeting. According to the
memorandum, summarized by Stephen Green in his monumental study,
Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations With a Militant Israel: "The United States, the President said, has a special relationship with Israel in the Middle East really comparable only to that which it has with Britain over a wide range of world affairs. But for us to play properly the role we are called upon to play, we cannot afford the luxury of identifying Israel, or Pakistan, or certain other countries, as our exclusive friends." 96
According to Green, the thrust of Kennedy's message to Israel was this: "The best way for the United States to effectively serve Israel's national security interests, Kennedy said, was to maintain and develop America's associations with the other nations of the region. [America's] influence could then be brought to bear as needed in particular disputes to ensure that Israel's essential interests were not compromised." 97
"'If we pulled out of the Arab Middle East and maintained our ties only with Israel this would not be in Israel's interest,' Kennedy said." 98
FOUR PROBLEMS WITH ISRAEL
The American President cited four areas causing a strain in U.S.-Israel
relations: 1) Israel's diversion—from the Arab States—of the Jordan River
waters; 2) Israel's retaliatory raids against Arab forces in border areas; 3)
Israel's pivotal role in the Palestinian refugee problem; and 4) Israel's
insistence that the United States sell advanced Hawk missiles to Israel. 99 The President outlined to Mrs. Meir what has come to be called the Kennedy Doctrine. Kennedy told Meir that U.S. interests and Israel's interests were not always the same. The Talbot memorandum described Kennedy's forthright stance:
"We know," [said Kennedy] "that Israel faces enormous security problems, but we do too. We came almost to a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union last spring and again recently in Cuba . . . Because we have taken on wide security responsibilities we always have the potential of becoming involved in a major crisis not of our own making . . .
AMERICA'S NEEDS IMPORTANT
"Our security problems are, therefore, just as great as Israel's. We have
to concern our self with the whole Middle East. We would like Israeli
recognition that this partnership which we have with it produces strains for
the United States in the Middle East . . . when Israel takes such action as it did last spring [when Israel launched a raid into Syria, resulting in a
condemnation by the UN Security Council]. Whether right or wrong, those
actions involve not just Israel but also the United States." 100
AMERICA—NOT ISRAEL—FIRST
Stephen Green believes that Kennedy's position vis-à-vis Israel was an
important stand: "It was a remarkable exchange, and the last time for many,
many years in which an American president precisely distinguished for the
government of Israel the differences between U.S. and Israeli national
security interests." 101 Thus it was that John F. Kennedy informed Israel, in no uncertain terms, that he intended—first and foremost—to place America's interests—not Israel's interests—at the center of U.S. Middle East policy.
NUCLEAR EXPANSION
This set the groundwork for further tension between the U.S. and Israel
over an even more explosive issue: Israel's determination to build a nuclear
bomb. Israel had been engaged in nuclear development during the past decade
but continued to insist that its nuclear programs were strictly peaceful in
nature. However, the facts prove otherwise. In order to thoroughly examine Kennedy's conflict with Israel over the Zionist State's nuclear intentions, we once again refer to Stephen Green's aforementioned work, Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations With a Militant Israel, a treasure trove of little known information relating to U.S.- Israeli relations from the period of 1948 through 1967. Green writes of JFK's discovery that Israel was engaged in nuclear arms development.
When Kennedy was coming into office in the transition period in December 1960 the Eisenhower administration informed Kennedy of Israel's secret nuclear weapons development at a site in the desert known as Dimona. Israel had advanced several cover stories to explain its activities at Dimona.
A 'HIGHLY DISTRESSING' SITUATION
Israel had kept the nuclear weapons program as secret as possible, but
US intelligence had discovered the project. Kennedy termed the situation
"highly distressing.”102 Kennedy, upon taking office, determined that he
would make efforts to derail Israel's nuclear weapons development. Nuclear
proliferation was to be one of Kennedy's primary concerns. Israel's intended entry into the nuclear arena was, as a consequence, a frightening prospect in JFK's mind, particularly in light of ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
From the very beginning of his presidency, John F. Kennedy found himself at severe odds with the government of Israel. It was a conflict that would never really be resolved until the day JFK died in Dallas. It was not an auspicious start for the New Frontier.
KENNEDY 'NOT AMUSED'
AND DE GAULLE 'ANNOYED'
According to Stephen Green: "The next year-1961—was to be an
important one in the process of the nuclearization of the Middle East. In
January, [Israeli Prime Minister] David Ben-Gurion informed the Israeli
Knesset and the rest of the world that the Dimona reactor was in fact not a
textile plant or a pumping station, but 'a scientific institute for research in
problems of arid zones and desert flora and fauna.' A new American
president, John Kennedy, was not amused." 103 In Paris, Charles DeGaulle's reaction mirrored that of Kennedy's. His government had been providing nuclear technology assistance to Israel, but with the assurance from Ben-Gurion that the nuclear development was peaceful in nature.
According to Israeli historians Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman: "There was also pressure from President DeGaulle in Paris. The French attitude toward the Middle East began to change just after he took office in 1958 . . . He suspected that the Dimona reactor was destined for military uses and this greatly annoyed the French president." 104 (DeGaulle's later decision to grant Algerian independence, already described, simply exacerbated his own already growing tensions with Israel.)
In Washington, JFK was determined to settle the matter once and for all. Stephen Green described Kennedy's next step: "In May Kennedy and Ben-Gurion met in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Kennedy had already written to Ben-Gurion expressing his extreme concern about the Dimona project, and suggesting regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In New York, Ben-Gurion agreed to a compromise—(approximately) annual inspections by U.S. scientists at times and on terms to be determined by the Israeli Defense Ministry.
"Later, Myer Feldman, Kennedy's aide for Middle East matters, would reveal that in return for the periodic U.S. inspections, Ben-Gurion had exacted a promise of provision of advanced Hawk ground-to-air missiles.
"There is no reason to doubt Kennedy's seriousness in wanting to track Israeli nuclear research and forestall weapons development, but whether annual inspections under the terms indicated achieved this result [was, as events unfolded] open to question." 105
So it was that John F. Kennedy unintentionally found himself already at loggerheads with Israel behind the scenes.
THE SECRET WAR
Kennedy's friendly overtures to the Arab states were only a public
aspect of what ultimately developed into an all-out 'secret war' between
Kennedy and Israel.According to Seymour Hersh: "Israel's bomb, and what to do about it, became a White House fixation, part of the secret presidential agenda that would remain hidden for the next thirty years."106 As Hersh notes, quite profoundly we see in retrospect, this secret war with Israel was never once noted by any of Kennedy's biographers.107 If indeed it had been, as we shall see, the mystery behind the JFK assassination might have been unraveled long, long ago.
ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR AGENDA
There was an added wrinkle. Although Israel and the American CIA had
established a longtime close and ongoing working relationship, the CIA was
monitoring Israel's nuclear weapons development. In March, 1963, Sherman Kent, the Chairman of the Board of National Estimates at the CIA, wrote an extended memorandum to the CIA's Director on the highly controversial subject entitled "Consequences of Israeli Acquisition of Nuclear Capability."
According to Stephen Green, for the purposes of this internal memorandum, Kent defined "acquisition" by Israel as either (a) a detonation of a nuclear device with or without the possession of actual nuclear weapons, or (b) an announcement by Israel that it possessed nuclear weapons, even without testing. Kent's primary conclusion was that an Israeli bomb would cause 'substantial damage to the U.S. and Western position in the Arab world.' 108
According to Green's accurate assessment, "The memorandum was very strong and decidedly negative in its conclusions" 109 which were as follows:
"Even though Israel already enjoys a clear military superiority over its Arab adversaries, singly or combined, acquisition of a nuclear capability would greatly enhance Israel's sense of security. In this circumstance, some Israelis might be inclined to adopt a moderate and conciliatory posture . . .
"We believe it much more likely, however, that Israel's policy toward its neighbors would become more rather than less tough. [Israel would] seek to exploit the psychological advantages of its nuclear capability to intimidate the Arabs and to prevent them from making trouble on the frontiers." 110
In dealing with the United States, the CIA analyst estimated, a nuclear Israel would "make the most of the almost inevitable Arab tendency to look to the Soviet Bloc for assistance against the added Israel threat, arguing that in terms of both strength and reliability Israel was clearly the only worthwhile friend of the U.S. in the area.
"Israel,” in Kent's analysis, "would use all the means at its command to persuade the U.S. to acquiesce in, and even to support, its possession of nuclear capability."111
In short, Israel would use its immense political power—especially through its lobby in Washington—to force the United States to accede to Israel's nuclear intentions.
However, the CIA did not make known its concerns about Israel's determination to produce a nuclear bomb. According to Green, "It is perhaps significant that the memorandum was not drafted as a formal national intelligence estimate (NIE), which would have involved distribution to several other agencies of the government. No formal NIE was issued by CIA on the Israeli nuclear weapons program until 1968."112
That the CIA—or at the very least, elements within the CIA—would be interested in protecting Israel's interests is no surprise. As we shall see in Chapter 8, the ties between Israel and the CIA were quite intimate—perhaps too intimate in too many, many ways.
KENNEDY AND BEN-GURION
Although Israel's nuclear program was ostensibly "peaceful" in nature, the fact is that the project was entirely controlled by Israel's Ministry of Defense. This alone made the project controversial, even in Israel. It was for this reason that it was critical for Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to neutralize JFK's opposition.
There was enough domestic opposition to the program in Israel itself that Kennedy's own steadfast refusal to support Israeli nuclear development could have killed the project altogether.
In the early months of his administration, Kennedy maintained regular contact with Ben-Gurion in an effort to stop the nuclear development. The two leaders had an ongoing private correspondence over the issue.
A POISONED RELATIONSHIP
According to Seymour Hersh, "Israel's bomb program, and the
continuing exchange of letters about it, would complicate, and eventually
poison, Kennedy's relationship with David Ben-Gurion." 113 Ben-Gurion sought to have a private meeting with Kennedy—in the course of an official state visit to Washington—but the president refused to provide a formal invitation.
It was then that, in May 1961, Ben-Gurion pulled his strings at the White House and contrived a meeting with Kennedy through the intervention of New York financier Abe Feinberg.
It was Feinberg, as we have seen in Chapter 4, who had initially smoothed over Kennedy's relations with the American Jewish community during the 1960 presidential campaign and arranged for a massive infusion of Jewish money into JFK's campaign.
(It was this experience, as noted previously, that soured Kennedy's attitude toward Israel and its powerful lobby to a significant extent.)
Feinberg arranged for the American president and the Israeli leader to meet during Ben-Gurion's unofficial visit to the United States where he was scheduled to be honored at a convocation at Brandeis University, a Jewish oriented center of learning near Boston.
Following the affair at Brandeis, Ben-Gurion journeyed to New York City where he met with Kennedy at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. According to Hersh, "The meeting with Kennedy was a major disappointment for the Israeli prime minister, and not only because of the nuclear issue. " 114
"'He looked to me like a twenty-five-year-old boy,' Ben-Gurion later told his biographer. 'I asked myself: 'How can a man so young be elected President?' At first I did not take him seriously.'"115
HATRED
Following the meeting, Ben-Gurion complained to Feinberg about his
unhappy first meeting with JFK. It was not an auspicious start, and as we
shall see, it set a trend. According to Feinberg, "There's no way of
describing the relationship between Jack Kennedy and Ben-Gurion because
there's no way B.G. was dealing with JFK as an equal, at least as far as
B.G. was concerned. He had the typical attitude of an old-fashioned Jew
toward the young. He disrespected [Kennedy] as a youth." 116 What's more, the Israeli Prime Minister had an additional reason to be suspicious of the young American's motives. According to Feinberg, "B.G. could be vicious, and he had such a hatred of the old man." 117 The "old man" in this case was the president's father, former Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, long considered not only an "anti-Semite" but a Hitler partisan.
Ben-Gurion's contempt for the younger Kennedy was growing by leaps and bounds—almost pathologically. According to Hersh, "The Israeli prime minister, in subsequent private communications to the White House, began to refer to the President as 'young man.' Kennedy made clear to associates that he found the letters to be offensive."118
Kennedy himself told his close friend, Charles Bartlett, that he was getting fed up with the fact that the Israeli "sons of bitches lie to me constantly about their nuclear capability."119
Obviously, to say the very least, there was no love lost between the two leaders. The U.S.-Israeli relationship was at an ever-growing and disastrous impasse, although virtually nothing was known about this to the American public at the time.
'A MORE SERIOUS DANGER'
President Kennedy's efforts to resolve the problem of the Palestinian
refugees also met with fierce and bitter resistance by Ben-Gurion. The Israeli
leader refused to agree to a Kennedy proposal that the Palestinians either be
permitted to return to their homes in Israel or to be compensated by Israel
and resettled in the Arab countries or elsewhere. Former Undersecretary of State George Ball notes in his book, The Passionate Attachment, that "In the fall of 1962, Ben-Gurion conveyed his own views in a letter to the Israeli ambassador in Washington, intended to be circulated among Jewish American leaders, in which he stated: 'Israel will regard this plan as a more serious danger to her existence than all the threats of the Arab dictators and Kings, than all the Arab armies, than all of Nasser's missiles and his Soviet MIGs . . . Israel will fight against this implementation down to the last man."120
Clearly, then, by this point, Ben-Gurion perceived the American president's policies to be a very threat to Israel's survival. Ben-Gurion was vowing to fight, as we have seen, "down to the last man."
KENNEDY'S GESTURE
Despite all of this, the American president remained determined to find a
solution to the potential crisis presented by Ben-Gurion's obstinacy. Kennedy offered to sell Israel Hawk missiles for defensive purposes—as Israel had been demanding—but Kennedy continued to drag his feet on the sale. The president refused to be pushed to the limit by Israel.
Kennedy finally relented and approved the sale, but only after pressure from Israel and its allies in the American Congress. By then, however, it was probably too late. The twig had been bent.
ISRAEL RELENTLESS
Even the arms sales to Israel did not assuage Israel and its lobby.
According to Alfred Lilienthal: "Congress continued to maintain pressures
on the White House. The "Israel first" bloc in the Senate attacked the
administration for failing to conclude a defense pact to protect Israel and to
call an embargo on all arms shipments to the Middle East. "The legislators reechoed the Ben-Gurion contention that Israel had fallen behind in the arms race. Nasser, they claimed, was ready for a pushbutton war. Israel [was] easy to pinpoint and destroy and [could not] retaliate against four or five Arab states at once."121
By this time—behind the scenes—Kennedy had ordered continuing surveillance of the Israelis and their push for the nuclear bomb. It was a top priority for Kennedy, by all estimations. However, to ensure that Israel's access to intelligence regarding the American spy operation against Israel was limited, the surveillance was being conducted directly out of then-CIA Director John McCone's office. 122
(This, of course, still did not guarantee that Israel's friends in the CIA [whom we will consider in Chapter 8] did not tip off the Israelis to the hostile operations being conducted.)
Kennedy was still willing, however, to attempt to settle the matter and requested that Israel permit American inspectors the opportunity to come to Israel's nuclear operation at Dimona to verify that—as Israel claimed—the program was peaceful in nature. This was the president's last-ditch effort, apparently, to pacify Israel and, at the same time, find out precisely what was going on at Dimona. But Israel would not permit the inspection.
By this time there was a general understanding at the highest ranks of the Kennedy administration that there was a major problem at hand. The president's inner circle had begun to realize that Israel deemed Kennedy's refusal to knuckle under to Israel's demands as a dire threat to Israel's survival.
According to then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, speaking in retrospect, "I can understand why Israel wanted a nuclear bomb. There is a basic problem there. The existence of Israel has been a question mark in history, and that's the essential issue."123
The Israelis—and particularly Ben-Gurion—would no doubt agree. In their view, John F. Kennedy himself was emerging as a threat to Israel's very existence:
JFK would simply not countenance a nuclear Israel and Israel's leaders believed that a nuclear Israel would ensure the continued survival of the Jewish State.
THREATS AGAINST JFK
The American president continued to demand that Israel permit
American inspection of Israel's nuclear development facilities. In response,
Israel called on its American lobby to apply pressure on Kennedy behind the
scenes.
One of those called into action was Abe Feinberg, the New York
businessman who had helped raise critical funds for Kennedy during his
presidential campaign. However, even Feinberg was unsuccessful.124
However, Feinberg did send a message to the president that continued
demands for inspection of the plant might "result in less support [from the
Israeli lobby] in the 1964 presidential campaign."125
According to Hersh, "In the end Feinberg and Ben-Gurion could not
overcome the continued presidential pressure for inspection of Dimona. BenGurion's
categorical public denial of any weapons intent at Dimona had left
the Israeli government few options: refusing access would undercut the
government's credibility and also lend credence to the newly emerging antinuclear
community inside Israel." 126
DESERT DECEPTION
So it was that Ben-Gurion finally agreed to allow American nuclear
experts to come to Dimona. However, Ben-Gurion had a clever trick up his
sleeve. The Israeli Prime Minister hurriedly ordered the construction of what
amounted to a phony nuclear plant—one that didn't give evidence of the
construction of a nuclear bomb. False control rooms were set in place and
dummy operations were displayed.
It was all very carefully orchestrated. Even the Israeli guides who took
the Americans through the facility were accompanied by translators who
gave the Americans fraudulent translations of the remarks made by the
Israeli engineers at the plant.
According to Hersh, "Ben-Gurion took no chances: the American
inspectors—most of them experts in nuclear reprocessing—would be
provided with a Potemkin Village and never know it."127
Ben-Gurion's deception—however successful it may have been—still did
not convince JFK that Israel was indeed fully committed to peaceful nuclear
development. Kennedy, of course, knew better.
A standoff between Kennedy and Israel was already in place and it did not
bode well for the future.
THE 'LAST AMERICAN PRESIDENT'
John Hadden, the former CIA station chief in Tel Aviv at the time
believes that John F. Kennedy was the last American president to have
really tried to stop the advent of the Israeli atomic bomb. "Kennedy really
wanted to stop it," said Hadden, "and he offered them conventional weapons
[for example, the Hawk missiles] as an inducement.
"But the Israelis were way ahead of us. They saw that if we were going
to offer them arms to go easy on the bomb, once they had it, we were going
to send them a lot more, for fear that they would use it."128
`THE TURBULENT YEAR'
By the fateful year of 1963, John F. Kennedy and Israel were decidedly on
two different sides, and not only in the realm of the secret—and critical—
nuclear controversy.
In fact, it went much deeper than that. Overall Kennedy administration
policy toward the Middle East left Israel and its American lobby most
dissatisfied. In his memoirs, I. L. Kenan of the pro-Israel American-Israel
Public Affairs Committee, a registered lobby for Israel, described 1963 as
“the turbulent year" between John F. Kennedy and Israel. In a chapter in
those memoirs, entitled "A Multitude of Promises"—Kennedy presumably
the promiser—Kenan scored Kennedy's Middle East policies:
"Kennedy's neutralist strategy, his hope to please both sides in every
troubled area, plunged him into a multitude of predicaments in the turbulent
year of 1963. His pursuit of former enemies whom he sought to befriend
alarmed our allies, whose fears he constantly sought to ally by strong but
quiet commitments." 129
The "enemies" whom Kenan referred to were those Arab leaders—Nasser
of Egypt most especially—to whom JFK offered peace. Those "allies"—at
least in Kenan's context—really meant just one country—Kenan's foreign
principal, Israel.
Kennedy's "strong but quiet commitments," however, were apparently
not enough as relations between Israel and the Arab states were strained. War
appeared imminent, at least in the eyes of the Israeli leadership.
By the end of April, 1963 Israel's David Ben-Gurion sensed that the
Arabs were going to attack the Jewish State, but John F. Kennedy did not share that pessimistic view. Kennedy still hoped for peace in the region and
he continued his efforts.130
THE ALGERIAN PROBLEM
Although then-Senator John F. Kennedy's 1957 speech calling for
independence for Algeria from France had helped pave the way for that end
result, newly-won Algerian freedom came at great cost. Israel was actively
seeking to undermine the new regime.
On August 14, 1963 the government of Algerian premier Ben Bella
accused Israel of plotting to topple the new Arab regime.
The Algerian
authorities captured 20 Algerians and 10 foreigners who were engaged in a
conspiracy to bring down the government.
"Those foreigners are nearly all Israelite's," declared the Algerian
information minister. "We are led to believe that we are facing a plot with
far-flung ramifications and that behind it is the hand of Israel which is trying
to oppose the march of our revolution.
"Ben Bella has made clear the Algerian position on the enclave of
imperialism called Israel but which is really Palestine. It is not strange that
they are trying to interfere in our internal affairs." 131
Israel and its allies in the French Secret Army Organization
(OAS)—now officially disbanded, but effectively still functioning—were
determined to reverse the course of history.
This, however, is not the last time in these pages that we will find the
fine hand of Israel and the OAS interfering in the life and work of John F.
Kennedy.
THE LAST PRESS CONFERENCE
Kennedy's efforts to conduct a balanced U.S. Middle East policy were
being frustrated at each and every turn. The bitterness was apparent—on
both sides. As a result of Israel's manipulation of Congress, both the House of
Representatives and the Senate voted in late 1963 to cut off aid to Egypt, a
country central to Kennedy's drive for peace.
This, in effect, temporarily—at least—scuttled JFK's peace efforts. His
hand of friendship to the Arab world and its leaders, Nasser of Egypt in
particular, was being cut off—at the shoulder.
Israel's chief (registered) lobbyist in Washington—I. L. Kenan—described
John F. Kennedy's final Washington press conference.
"Kennedy ruefully surveyed the debris of his Nasser policy at a press
conference on November 14, 1963. He was sharply critical. The Senate
amendment required him "to make a finding which is extremely
complicated," and he did not believe that this language would strengthen our
hand or our flexibility in dealing with the UAR.
"[Kennedy] went on: 'In fact, it would have an opposite effect. I think
it's a very dangerous, untidy world, but we're going to have to live with it;
and I think one of the ways to live with it is to permit us to function.'
"If the Administration did not function, the voters would throw it out.
Kennedy asked Congress not to make it impossible to function by means of
`legislative restraints and inadequate appropriations.'
"These words," Kenan notes, "were uttered at his last White House
press conference." 132
On many fronts, indeed, JFK's Middle East policy was angering the
Israelis, including—perhaps especially—JFK's determination to solve the
problem of the Palestinian refugees.
JFK'S 'GOOD FAITH' IN DOUBT
On November 20, 1963, Kennedy's delegation at the United Nations
called for continuing movement toward the implementation of the 1948 UN
resolution which called for the right of displaced Palestinian Arabs to return
to their homes (in Israel) and for those who chose not to return to their
homes to be compensated.
The London Jewish Chronicle reported the reaction of the Israelis:
"Prime Minister Levi Eshkol summoned the U.S. ambassador . . . and told
him that Israel was 'shocked' by the pro-Arab attitude adopted by the U.S.
delegation." Golda Meir, the Chronicle reported, "expressed Israel's
`astonishment and anger' at the attitude of the U.S." 133
For its own part, the Chronicle noted editorially, "Israel, which has
neither been consulted nor informed about the American intention, is not
surprisingly questioning the good faith of the United States." 134
It is not likely that JFK ever got to read the defamatory comments
about his Middle East policy published by the London Jewish Chronicle.
They were printed on November 22, 1963.
So it was that even as John F. Kennedy was preparing to leave
Washington for his final journey as president, he was plagued with the
problem of Israel and its powerful influence in Washington.
As it turned out, it was during Kennedy's trip to Dallas that one last
memorandum was prepared on his behalf relating to the touchy issue of
global nuclear arms development.
Although JFK had forcefully opposed French production of nuclear
weapons—much as he opposed that of Israel—the American president had,
however, begun taking a new look at his stance vis-à-vis the French.
Thus it was that while John F. Kennedy was triumphantly touring
downtown Dallas, there was being prepared a "Top Secret, Eyes Only"
memorandum from JFK's adviser, McGeorge Bundy, outlining the new,
perhaps more lenient, Kennedy policy toward France, which, as we have
seen, had itself played a major role in Israel's nuclear development and,
unwittingly (much to the disgust of French President DeGaulle) in the drive
for atomic weaponry. The memorandum regarding the new policy toward
France was also dated November 22, 1963. 135
By this time, however, John F. Kennedy's fate was sealed. He had
pushed Israel and its leaders to the brink.
BEN-GURION: 'SIGNS OF PARANOIA'
The straw that broke the camel's back, had actually taken place some
six months earlier. By spring of 1963, Kennedy and Ben-Gurion were at
loggerheads, more seriously than ever before. What's more, Ben-Gurion
was suffering a deep personal crisis (part of which, we now see, stemmed
from his unhappy relationship with John F. Kennedy).
According to the Israeli prime minister's biographer, Dan Kurzman:
"Lonely and depressed, Ben-Gurion felt strangely helpless. Leadership of
Israel was slipping from his withered hands . . . Ben-Gurion began to show
signs of paranoia. Enemies were closing in on him from all sides. A mere
declaration by Egypt, Syria and Iraq in April 1963 that they would unite and
demolish the "Zionist threat" threw him into near-panic." 136
SECRET CORRESPONDENCE
'INCREASINGLY SOUR'
All of this, of course, contributed immensely to the problems between
Kennedy and Ben-Gurion. Seymour Hersh writes: "Kennedy's relationship
with Ben-Gurion remained at an impasse over Dimona, and the
correspondence between the two became increasingly sour. None of those
letters has been made public."137
KENNEDY A 'BULLY'
(Like much of the secret government files on the JFK assassination, the
Kennedy exchanges with Ben-Gurion also have not been released—not even to
U.S. government officials with full security clearances who have attempted to
write classified histories of the period.) 138
"It was not a friendly exchange," according to Ben-Gurion's writer,
Yuval Neeman. "Kennedy was writing like a bully. It was brutal."139 BenGurion'
s response was not passive either.
All of this exacerbated tensions—fierce tensions—between the
American President and the Israeli leader. Kennedy's impatience was
building. Relations between the United States and Israel were unlike they
had ever been before. According to Hersh, "The president made sure that the
Israeli prime minister paid for his defiance.” 140 When Ben-Gurion
once again sought the opportunity for a formal, ballyhooed state visit to
Washington, Kennedy rebuffed him.
ISRAEL'S 'EXISTENCE IS IN DANGER'
It was then that Ben-Gurion made his position all too clear. He was
convinced that what he perceived to be Kennedy's intransigence was an all-out
threat to the continued survival of the Jewish State. JFK was perceived as an
enemy of the Jewish people.
In one of his final communications with Kennedy, Ben-Gurion wrote:
"Mr. President, my people have the right to exist . . . and this existence
is in danger." 141 (emphasis added) It was at this time that Ben-Gurion
demanded that Kennedy sign a security treaty with Israel. Kennedy refused.
On June 16, 1963 Ben-Gurion abruptly resigned as prime minister and
defense minister. Thus, the "prophet of fire" ended his fifteen-year career as
grand old man of Israel. At the time, the Israeli press—and indeed the world
press—told the world that Ben-Gurion's sudden resignation was a result of
his dissatisfaction with domestic political scandals and turmoil that were
rocking Israel.142
A BITTER IMPASSE
However, the primary reason behind Ben-Gurion's departure was the
Israeli leader's inability to pressure JFK into accepting Israel's demands.
According to Hersh: "There was no way for the Israeli public . . . to suspect
that there was yet another factor in Ben-Gurion's demise: his increasingly
bitter impasse with Kennedy over a nuclear-armed Israel." 143 Ben-Gurion
had failed. The battle had been lost, but the war between the two men was
still to be won.
A MODERN-DAY HAMAN?
What was on Ben-Gurion's mind as he turned over the reins of
government to his successor? What was David Ben-Gurion's final act as
Prime Minister of the Jewish State? In light of Ben-Gurion's explicit
comment to John F. Kennedy that "my people have the right to exist . .
and this existence is in danger," we can certainly make a good presumption.
In Ben-Gurion's eyes, John F. Kennedy was clearly a modern-day
Haman—an enemy of the Jewish people. In Jewish folklore, Haman was a
descendant of the Amalekites who served as prime minister to King
Ahasueros of Persia. It was Haman who sought to convince the king that
all of the Jews of his empire should be exterminated forever.
However, according to legend, a beautiful Jewish temptress named
Esther used her feminine wiles on Ahasueros and, in the end, it was Haman
who was instead put to death. The important Jewish holiday of Purim
celebrates the deliverance of the Jews from Haman's intended holocaust.
In the Bible—Deut 25:19, I Sam. 15:8—the ancient Hebrews were
urged to "blot out the memory of the Amalekites" from whom Haman
descended.
In Israel—in 1963—David Ben-Gurion certainly looked upon John F.
Kennedy as a modern-day Haman, a son of the Amalekites. As he pondered
the brutal conflict with JFK, Ben-Gurion no doubt remembered the
meditation that is read on Purim:
"A wicked man, an arrogant offshoot of the seed of Amalek, rose up
against us. Insolent in his riches, he digged himself a pit, and his own
greatness laid him a snare. In his mind he thought to entrap, but was himself entrapped; he sought to destroy, but was himself speedily destroyed
. . . he made him a gallows, and was himself hanged thereon."
A FINAL ORDER?
The Israeli leader could not help but ponder further how he might
deliver his people from what he perceived to be certain destruction. BenGurion
had devoted a lifetime creating a Jewish State and guiding it into the
world arena. And, in Ben-Gurion's eyes, John F. Kennedy was an enemy of
the Jewish people and of his beloved state of Israel.
Andrew and Leslie Cockburn have summarized it well: "Ben-Gurion is
the father of Israel. He really steered the state to independence, steered his
people to independence, wrote the Israeli declaration of independence, was
prime minister all the way through, with a brief interval, until 1963. The
Israel you see today is really the creation of David Ben-Gurion."144 We can
thus see why Ben-Gurion was indeed so frustrated by his failure to back
down John F. Kennedy. It was a time of crisis and a time for action.
It is the thesis of this volume that Ben-Gurion, in his final days as
Prime Minister, ordered the Mossad to participate in the JFK assassination
conspiracy. Based upon evidence that we will outline in Final Judgment, we
believe that the Mossad carried out Ben-Gurion's order.
On November 22, 1963, the American president whom Ben-Gurion
considered a threat to Israel's very survival came to an inglorious end in
Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
That Israel and its leaders believed that drastic measures might be needed
to influence the course of history and to ensure the survival of Israel cannot
be doubted.
Isser Harrel, who was head of the Mossad until mid-1963, has been
quoted as saying that "The government of Israel must act to root out the evil
of racism and the monster of anti-Semitism . ." and that if it could not be
done diplomatically, it was to be done in other ways, including, according to
Harel, "the secret services, as was the case in my times." 145 In short, by
means of murder, if necessary.
Former Undersecretary of State George Ball summarizes the impact of
John F. Kennedy's assassination on U.S.-Israeli relations quite succinctly, if
somewhat cryptically: "However Kennedy would have succeeded in his
relations with Israel must remain one of the many intriguing questions for
which his assassination precludes any answer." 146
A MOSSAD HIT SQUAD
We know precisely who would have coordinated Mossad participation in
the assassination on John F. Kennedy, working in concert with Israel's
allies in the CIA and in Organized Crime (about more of which we shall
discuss in these pages.)
Israel's respected Ha'aretz newspaper reported on July 3, 1992 that it
was former Jewish underground terrorist-turned-Mossad operative Yitzhak Shamir (later Israeli Prime Minister) who headed a special Mossad hit squad
during his service in the Mossad.
The Israeli newspaper reported that Shamir headed the assassination unit
from 1955 until 1964—the year after JFK's assassination. "The unit carried
out attacks on perceived enemies and suspected Nazi War criminals,"147
according to an account of the newspaper's report.
"In February 1963 Mr. Shamir dispatched squads on two unsuccessful
attempts to assassinate Hans Kleinwachter, a German scientist suspected of
helping Egypt develop missiles. Another German scientist working for the
Egyptians, Heinz Krug, disappeared mysteriously in September 1962."148
Shamir's operatives were suspected of having been responsible.
According to the Israeli newspaper, Shamir had recruited members for
his Mossad hit squad from former members of the Stern Gang, the
underground terrorist group that Shamir led during Israel's fight for
independence. The Stern Gang was responsible for the murder, in 1944, of
Lord Moyne, Britain's resident Mideast minister, and for the slaying of U.N.
mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948. 149
We have already seen that Kennedy—like Moyne and Bernadotte—was a
"perceived enemy" of Israel and its embittered Prime Minister, David BenGurion.
And now we know of the existence of the Mossad hit squad that
played a major role in the conspiracy that brought about the death of John
F. Kennedy. In Chapter 16 we shall learn precisely how this Mossad orchestrated
conspiracy came about.
THE ENEMIES COME TOGETHER
With Israel's intimate ties to not only the American CIA but also the
Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate—which we will examine in
much further detail—the Israeli prime minister and his Mossad operatives
had in place a network of allies with whom they could easily collaborate in
orchestrating the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Each of these powerful forces had good reason to take drastic action to
put an end to the threat posed by JFK. That they undoubtedly came together
in a joint conspiracy we shall document in this volume.
THE COMING OF THE MESSIAH
With John F. Kennedy lying in a grave in Arlington National
Cemetery, Israel was safe—for the time being at least. The modern-day heir
of Haman's legacy had been destroyed. That Lyndon Johnson—a man with a
steadfast history of loyalty to Israel and its American lobby—was in line to
assume the American presidency was a fact not gone unnoticed. Israel's
messiah had come
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.
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.
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
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 (BCI) in Geneva, Switzerland.
(BCI, 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 protégé (and as his reputed bagman), 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 thenPresident
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 protégé, 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 (AIPAC) sent out to top-ranking figures in AIPAC 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 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.
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.
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 AntiDefamation
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.
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.
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
To be continued...next...
Israel's Godfather:
The Man in the Middle
Meyer Lansky,
the CIA, the FBI & the Israeli Mossad
footnotes
Chapter Five
Genesis
79 Seymour Hersh. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and
American Foreign Policy. (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 98.
80 Ibid., p. 99.
81 Ibid
82 Ibid
83 Ibid p. 100.
84 Ibid., p. 113.
85 Richard Curtiss. A Changing Image (Washington, D.C.: American
Educational Trust, 1986), p. 65.
86 Ibid., p. 67.
87 Ibid.
88 New Outlook Magazine, January, 1964, p. 5.
89 Alfred Lilienthal. The Zionist Connection II. (New Brunswick, New jersey:
North American, 1982), p. 545.
558 Reference Notes [461]
90 Curtiss, p. 66.
91 Ibid., p. 66
92 Washington Post, November 20, 1962.
93 Washington Post, March 20, 1982.
94 Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi. The Israeli Connection—Who Israel Arms and
Why. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), p. 45.
95 Stephen Green. Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations With a Militant
Israel (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1984), p. 182.
96
Ibid., p. 181.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid.
99 Ibid., pp. 181-182.
100 Ibid., p. 182.
101 Ibid., pp. 182-183.
102 Ibid., p. 154.
103 Ibid., p. 159-160.
104 Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman. Every Spy a Prince. (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1990), pp. 71-72.
105 Ibid., pp. 159-160.
106 Hersh, p. 100.
107 Ibid.
108 Green, p. 164.
109 Ibid.
110 Ibid.
111 Ibid., pp. 164-165.
112 Ibid. , p. 164.
113 Hersh, p. 101.
114 Ibid., p. 102.
115 Ibid.
116 Ibid., p. 103.
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid., p. 105.
119 Ibid., p. 118.
120 George Ball and Douglas Ball. The Passionate Attachment. [New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 1992), p. 51.
121 Lilienthal, p. 547.
122 Hersh, p. 107.
123 Ibid., p. 109.
124 Ibid., p. 108.
125 Ibid.
126 Ibid., p. 109.
127 Ibid., p. 111.
128 Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn. Dangerous Liaison: The Inside
Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship. (New York: Harper Collins
Publishers, 1991), p. 91.
[462] Final Judgment 559
129 I. L. Kenan. Israel's Defense Line: Her Friends and Foes in Washington.
(Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1981), p. 166.
130 Ibid., pp. 166-167.
131 Washington Post, August 13, 1963.
132 Ibid., p. 187.
133 London Jewish Chronicle, Nov. 22, 1963.
134 Ibid.
135 Hersh, pp. 125-126.
136Dan Kurzman. Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire. (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1983), pp. 440-441.
137 Hersh, pp. 120-121.
138 Ibid., p. 120.
139 Ibid., p. 121.
140 Ibid.
141
Ibid.
142 Ibid., pp. 121-122.
143 Ibid., p. 124.
144 Interview on C-SPAN's Booknotes, September 1, 1991.
145 Quoted by Yossi Melman in the Los Angeles Times, Nov. 28, 1993.
146 Ball, pp. 51-52.
147 Washington Times, July 4, 1992.
148 Ibid.
149 Ibid.
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.
560 Reference Notes [463]
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.
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