Edgar Bronfman

Not only did Dallas have an immensely powerful Jewish community, but, more importantly, the city (and Texas) had been a major center of fundraising and arms smuggling on behalf of the Zionist cause, going back to the 1940s. Even Jonathan Pollard, the American spy for Israel, said he was inspired to pro-Israel activism by stories he heard (while living in Texas) of gunrunning for the Israeli underground by Jews in Texas. In fact, the official published history of a major Zionist arms smuggling operation, the Sonneborn Institute, reports its agents smuggled aircraft parts out of Texas to Israel. This was happening when a then recently discharged Army Air Corps aircraft mechanic, Jack Ruby, was re-settling in Dallas in 1947, the year prior to Israel's birth, when Sonneborn's activities were at a zenith. Ruby bragged of having run arms to Israel and, in 1963, is now known to have part of an arms smuggling operation overseen by an Israeli intelligence officer. So the Israeli connection to Texas was a lot more intimate than many today ever realized.

In 1963, JFK's primary interest in Dallas was raising money from the Dallas elite, and that meant the wealthy pro-Israel Jewish Democrats who were major financial angels for the ruling Democratic Party there. And since JFK was, at that time, at loggerheads with Israel over its nuclear arms program, it is critical to recognize how JFK was lured to Dallas and who was in charge of the arrangements that actually facilitated his assassination. And while it is well known that the Dallas leg of JFK's Texas trip was sponsored by the Citizens Council (CC), the elite business group that ruled Dallas, the little-noticed evidence shows that two of the three key figures who dominated the CC were Jewish—not "WASPs," as the legend of Dallas would have it. These were the folks who really ran Dallas, not the conservatives affiliated with the John Birch Society, as the old myth suggests. In 1963, one of those Jewish power brokers was an outspokenly pro-Israel liquor wholesaler, Julius Schepps, who held the distribution rights in Dallas for the Bronfman family's Seagram's products. And as we shall see, there is evidence that Jack Ruby was on the payroll of the Bronfman family, whose fingerprints are to be found all over the JFK assassination conspiracy.

THE ADL AND ORGANIZED CRIME

The liquor industry, largely controlled by Jewish families such as the Bronfman family, and others, have been major contributors to the ADL, financing a large portion of its budget over the years. 219 These same liquor interests—obviously, as we have seen—had longtime contacts with Lansky from his earliest years in the bootlegging and rum-running rackets.

The origins of Hoover's sponsor—the ADL—is quite interesting. The organization's initial impetus came not so much out of a desire to defend members of the Jewish faith, but, more so, in particular, Jewish mobsters.

In the early part of this century New York City Police Commissioner Thomas Bingham had begun a dedicated investigation of organized crime in his city. By 1908 Bingham was under fire and being accused of being "anti- Semitic" for pointing out the role of certain Jewish gangsters in organized crime.

Ultimately, Bingham was forced out of office and organized crime took hold in New York City. One of the immediate beneficiaries of Bingham's departure was mobster Arnold Rothstein, Lansky's mentor and the undisputed Jewish underworld leader prior to the younger Lansky's rise to power.

The source of the attacks on Bingham was a public relations committee formed by a corporate attorney by the name of Sigmund Livingston. By 1913 Livingston's committee had formally incorporated as the Anti- Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. 220

So it was that "crime buster" J. Edgar Hoover was himself a beneficiary of ADL largesse (a large portion of which, as we have seen, came from the coffers of Lansky and his criminal syndicate.) 

 

OPERATION UNDERWORLD

It was Lansky's connection with the OSS-Naval Intelligence enterprise known as "Operation Underworld" that brought him into a strange global network that ultimately paved the way for the establishment of the state of Israel. Operation Underworld was stationed at Rockefeller Center in New York and supervised by a British intelligence operative named William Stephenson (who was said to be Ian Fleming's inspiration for the fictional character, James Bond.) It was Stephenson who worked closely with the Anti- Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith as well as the FBI in coordinating anti-Nazi intelligence operations in the United States.235

(In later years, following the establishment of Israel, the Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate-financed ADL emerged as an unregistered foreign agent for Israel, handling intelligence and propaganda operations for the Jewish State, in collaboration with the FBI and the CIA. In Chapter 17 we will examine the ADL's role more fully, particularly in regard to its manipulation of the media. )

In any case, as we shall see in Chapter 15, it was Operation Underworld's William Stephenson who became a critical player in the establishment of Israel's Mossad. Stephenson's top aide was Louis Bloomfield, later an attorney for the Lansky-linked Bronfman bootlegging family and himself a key player in the conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy. (We shall examine Bloomfield in detail in Chapter 15.)

There is little question but that Stephenson and Bloomfield were in close contact with Lansky and his henchmen during this period. Lansky himself, as we have seen, acknowledged his own role in Operation Underworld.236 Following World War II, the activities of Operation Underworld and many of the key players shifted to a new front: the establishment of Israel. 

Both Stephenson and Bloomfield were integral to gunrunning operations on behalf of the Jewish terrorist underground that later emerged as the government of the new Jewish State in 1948.

It was in 1947 that Rudolph Sonneborn (husband of New York publisher Dorothy Schiff) set up an entity known as the Sonneborn Institute. It was this institute that provided the Jewish Haganah, and later the Irgun, in Palestine with arms and money. The Institute's coordinator for arms smuggling to the Jewish underground was Louis Bloomfield. Working with Bloomfield were liquor baron Samuel Bronfman, one Hank Greenspun (about whom we shall see much more later in Chapter 17) and Lansky himself. 237

It was during the 1947-1948 period that Teddy Kollek, later mayor of Jerusalem, was in charge of the Haganah station in Lansky's then-base of operations, New York City. He was said to be the formal liaison with American organized crime. 238 Kollek worked with the Lansky Syndicate and ultimately had contact with yet another key player in our story, one James Jesus Angleton—a controversial figure indeed. 239

It was Angleton, an OSS man, who later became a top-ranking figure in the American CIA and Israel's chief contact—some would say co-opted agent and loyalist—within CIA ranks. Angleton worked closely with Jewish underground activities both in London and in Italy and was instrumental in orchestrating U.S. intelligence collaboration with the Corsican Mafia and the Sicilian Mafia in intelligence operations during these same years and thereafter.

(In Chapter 8 and Chapter 16 we shall examine Angleton's CIA activities, working closely with Israel and of his pivotal role in the JFK assassination and cover-up conspiracy in detail.)

Clearly, during the period of the establishment of Israel, Meyer Lansky was directly and intimately involved with all of the major players. Many of these same people would later be involved with Lansky in what some call "the crime of the century." The Russian-born Jewish immigrant had come a long way from the slums of Brooklyn to a singular and pre-eminent role in global power politics. Indeed, Lansky was emerging as the "godfather" of a newly born nation: Israel.

ISRAEL: A BASE OF OPERATIONS

The real key to the Lansky connection with Israel is money. The newly-established State of Israel not only needed money to exist, but the organization of a new government was an ideal opportunity for Lansky and his confederates to establish their own worldwide financial—and criminal— network. In its early years Israel was "untouchable." The emotional memories of the experiences of the Jewish people during World War II— indeed throughout history—were the foundations upon which Israel had been established. Criticism of Israel was verboten. The new Jewish 

State was an ideal cover under which Lansky and his criminal syndicate

could operate unfettered.

MONEY LAUNDERING

Lansky's status as organized crime's chief financier and grand wizard of money laundering put Lansky in a particularly central position. Organized crime writer Ed Reid's description of Lansky pinpoints Lansky's role precisely: "With his brother Jake, [Lansky] rules the gambling roost of the crime syndicate and may be the direct link between unknown moneyed nabobs who stash away mob dollars in foreign banks and the cash vaults of the U.S. criminal cartel." 240

It was Lansky's foreign banking connection that draws him into the web of Israel's international intrigue to the utmost.

RABBI TIBOR ROSENBAUM

Lansky's primary link with Israeli intelligence and financial operations came through the entity of the Banque de Credit International in Geneva Switzerland. This bank emerged as Lansky's primary European money- laundering operation.241 This bank was the brainchild of one Tibor Rosenbaum.

An Orthodox rabbi, Rosenbaum served for a period as international vice president of the World Jewish Congress (of which Lansky-connected Bronfman family member Edgar Bronfman has served as president). Rosenbaum also was a co-founder of the World Zionist Congress and a director of the Jewish Agency in Geneva, Switzerland. 242

However, and most importantly, Rosenbaum had served as Director General for Finance and Supply for Israel's secret intelligence agency, the Mossad. Rosenbaum was, very clearly, a key figure in Israel's international intrigue and a critical player in the world of organized crime syndicate boss Meyer Lansky.

Rosenbaum, among other things, also served on the board of the Swiss- Israel Trade Bank, established by Pinchas Sapir, Israel's Finance Minister and a Mossad officer. 243 It was during the time he served on the Swiss- Israel Trade Bank that Rosenbaum created the Banque de Credit International (BCI).

RUBY AND THE BRONFMAN FAMILY

Jack Ruby's covert activities were clearly well-established. But independent researcher Brian Downing Quig came up with a Ruby connection that had never before been revealed. Exploring the corrupt world of Arizona mob bagman and political boss Kemper Marley, linked to the infamous 1976 murder of investigative reporter Don Bolles, Quig learned from Marley's longtime publicist Al Lizanetz that not only had the Lansky- linked Bronfman bootlegging family been Marley's sponsors, but also that Jack Ruby himself was also on the Bronfman family's payroll. 470

So when we consider the Bronfman family's intimate ties to the Permindex entity (that, as we shall see in Chapter 15, clearly played a central role in the JFK conspiracy) the Ruby connection to the Bronfman family is interesting indeed and does point further to an Israeli connection. 

LOUIS BLOOMFIELD—THE BRONFMAN CONNECTION

Above all, the Permindex connection to Israel and its global intelligence network is best personified by the individual who served as chairman of the board of Permindex: Major Louis M. Bloomfield of Montreal, Canada, a devoted and influential supporter of the Israeli cause. It was Bloomfield who held half the shares of Permindex and its parent company "for party or parties unknown."519 In fact, Permindex had its headquarters in Bloomfield's base of operations in Montreal until 1961 at which time it was relocated to Rome. 520

Beyond question, Bloomfield, as we shall see, was a major player in Israel's international network. Our first introduction to Bloomfield was in Chapter 7. There we learned how Bloomfield played a critical role in helping establish the state of Israel and its Mossad.

In the years that followed, Bloomfield rose high in the ranks of the Canadian business world, reputed to control Le Credit Suisse [bank] of Canada, Heineken's Breweries, Canscot Realty, the Grimaldi Siosa [shipping] Lines, Ltd—and, interestingly enough—the Israel Continental Company.521 But the real key to understanding Bloomfield is his role as a founding partner in the Phillips, Vineberg, Bloomfield and Goodman firm which represents the Canadian-based Bronfman family interests.522 This rather intriguing detail suggests that Bloomfield's wide-ranging financial interests were, in fact, those of the Bronfman family. Thus Bloomfield was essentially, a front man for the Bronfman empire.

The Bronfman family, which built its fortune working with the Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate in the illegal liquor trade, have been key backers of Israel and leaders in the Zionist cause. Edgar Bronfman most recently served as president of the World Jewish Congress.

But there is yet another intriguing Bronfman family link to the JFK assassination conspiracy. When a Russian translator was needed for Lee Harvey Oswald's Russian wife, Marina, it was Texas oilman Jack Crichton, a former military intelligence officer who made the arrangements. According to JFK assassination researcher Peter Dale Scott, Crichton, until 1962, "was also a Vice-President of the Empire Trust Company, a firm whose leading shareholders, the inter-related families of Loeb, Lehman and Bronfman, are said by Stephen Birmingham to have maintained 'something like a private CIA ... around the world' to protect their other investments such as in Cuba, in Guatemala, and in General Dynamics."523

So another Bronfman family intimate was in a key position in the days following the JFK assassination. And in Appendix Four we'll see the Bronfman-Empire Trust connection arise again, this time in relation to a key figure on the Warren Commission "investigating" the JFK assassination. The Bronfman fingerprints around the JFK assassination are everywhere.

Bloomfield also maintained close links with Israel in his own Canadian business and social affairs. The director of the Israeli-Canadian Maritime League, Bloomfield also served as Chairman of the Histadrut Campaign in Canada. 524 The Histadrut, Israel's national labor federation, at one point owned over one-third of the gross national product of Israel and controlled the second largest bank in Israel, the Bank Hapoalim. This bank, as we shall see, was implicated in Permindex intrigue in Europe that comes full circle back to New Orleans and the Clay Shaw connection.

In addition, it turns out, in the critical year of 1963, Bloomfield actually transferred $7.5 million into BCI's coffers. According to April 9, 1975 report in the New York Times, Bloomfield arranged for the deposit into BCI from a charitable foundation that Bloomfield had set up on behalf of a client. This was ostensibly for the purpose of rescuing the Mossad- controlled bank after the government of Liberia defaulted on a substantial loan from BCI, supposedly putting the bank in peril.525 So the Permindex chief and Rabbi Rosenbaum's BCI had a serious relationship indeed— whatever the actual purpose of the $7.5 million deposit in the BCI account.

In light of the critical role that the Permindex chief played in the affairs of BCI, it is worth noting that the same New York Times article explained precisely how critical BCI was to the interests of Israel. According to the Times: "[BCI] did a lot of business with Israel. It helped channel money from rich investors around the world into Israel and performed any number of services for the country. Once when Defense Minister Shimon Peres, when director general in the defense ministry, called Rosenbaum and told him that Israel needed $7 million within 24 hours for her national security, Rosenbaum found the money overnight. He did not ask for, but received, a commission of $500,000 for his services . . .

"The defense ministry maintained an account at the bank to buy arms in western Europe. Other accounts were held by the Histadrut, the Israeli labor federation, by Solel Bonhen (the Histadrut-owned supply and construction company), the Zim Navigation Co. and Israel Corporation, an investment company."526 What is particularly interesting is that the Times also added: "But [BCI] was not an Israeli bank. It was a Jewish bank, showing healthy balance sheet assets . . . ."527 Clearly, Permindex and BCI were part and parcel of the same interests—particularly in 1963.

BLOOMFIELD AND U.S. INTELLIGENCE

And, as we have already seen, the intelligence connections of Permindex chief Bloomfield were impeccable. Although a Canadian by birth, Bloomfield was hired by J. Edgar Hoover to serve as a recruiting agent for the FBI's counterespionage division, Division Five. Through this position Bloomfield became a working partner of Division Five chief William Sullivan, a close friend of James J. Angleton, the Mossad's CIA ally. Sullivan was Angleton's "man inside" the FBI.

Bloomfield was also given an officer's rank in the U.S. Army during World War II and assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—just as had been the American who ultimately became his fellow Permindex director, Clay Shaw.

(A witness uncovered by Jim Garrison claimed to have seen a meeting in Winnipeg airport between Clay Shaw and CIA contract agent David Ferrie with another individual who may have been Bloomfield. 528 It is known that Shaw and Ferrie journeyed in a plane flown by Ferrie to Bloomfield's home base in Montreal at some time in 1961 or 1962.) 529

Obviously, Louis Bloomfield was a key figure in the Permindex network—a vital link between Clay Shaw's operation in New Orleans and other forces operating through Permindex, most especially Israel.

SHAW AND ANGLETON

It is conceivable that not only did Bloomfield first come across Shaw during his service with the OSS during this same period, but also even another OSS man, James Jesus Angleton, who later went on to become Israel's ally in the CIA. Angleton himself may have had contact with Shaw at that time, although there is no firm evidence to prove it. However, there is one intriguing item which points to a possible connection between Shaw and Angelton during that period.

When Jim Garrison first began investigating Clay Shaw, he only knew Shaw under the alias "Clay Bertrand." We can suggest one possible inspiration for Shaw's pseudonym. While serving with U.S. intelligence during World War II, Shaw was stationed for a time in France where he certainly had contact with the French intelligence.

At that time, one of the highest-ranking French intelligence officers was one Gustave Bertrand who was, in fact, a close friend (and role model) for another OSS officer, James J. Angleton. In later years Angleton "singled out [Bertrand] as one of the people he learned the most from in a substantive way”530 and who "remained Angleton's friend until death" 531 and who was Angleton's "great Buddha head." 532

When Shaw later adopted his alias of "Bertrand" it is entirely conceivable that he was using this name as a salute to a senior intelligence operative with whom he first made contact in Europe and with whom he probably maintained contact in the years that followed.

This is speculation, of course, but there is no question, as the evidence now shows, that Angleton and Shaw were certainly moving in the same circles during World War II—and much later. And as we shall see in this chapter and in Chapter 16, the French intelligence connections to Permindex and to the JFK assassination conspiracy are very strong indeed.

And inasmuch as Shaw later served, without question, as a valued international contact for the CIA, reporting back to the agency on his foreign ventures, it is certain that Shaw's reports would have ultimately  ended upon on the desk of James J. Angleton. Shaw, in effect, was functioning (at least indirectly) as one of Angleton's operatives.

However, it is likely their initial relationship was forged during their joint service with the OSS during World War II.

Yet, there is one definitive Angleton-Shaw connection that has been documented and it is interesting indeed. When Shaw was later arrested by Jim Garrison, it was discovered his address book contained the private telephone number of the Principessa Marcelle Borghese. 533 The principessa was a relative of Prince Valerio Borghese who was rescued during World War II by Angleton whose exploits with the OSS in Italy as its station chief in Rome won him a decoration from the Vatican. 534

It will be recalled, of course, that one facet of the OSS-orchestrated campaign against the Nazis and the Italian fascists was known as Operation Underworld. As we saw in Chapter 7, it was Meyer Lansky who was the middle man between the OSS and organized crime, helping arrange for Sicilian Mafia support for the invading Allied troops in Italy. Angleton, of course, was point man in Europe for the project.

(That Permindex was based in Rome, may thus be no coincidence, considering Angleton's long-standing connections with the city, where even his father held the National Cash Register franchise for Italy.) 535

In any event there is no question whatsoever that Clay Shaw and James Angleton—along with Major Bloomfield of Permindex—had long moved in the same closely related circles on a wide variety of fronts.

MORE STRANGE CONNECTIONS

That Clay Shaw's contacts in the Mossad-linked Permindex entity had a wide-ranging array of international interests in the world of intrigue is further evidenced by some of the other personalities involved. Among those who were either investors in Permindex or who shared seats on the board of Permindex were several interesting characters with equally interesting connections. Among them were:

 Ferenc Nagy. The former premier of Hungary was a fierce anti- communist who maintained close connections not only to Israel's allies in the America CIA, but also to the anti-Castro Cuban colony in Miami, itself practically a joint operating subsidiary of both the CIA and the Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate. (Nagy himself later settled in Dallas, Texas and was residing there at the time of the Kennedy assassination.)536

 Hans Seligman. A member of the family which controlled the Seligman Bank of Basel and whose extended family were, in America, part of the famous "Our Crowd" (German Jewish elite) in New York City during the latter period of the 19th century. Seligman was intimately involved with the Israel-oriented Zionist agency known as the Jewish Colonization Association.537

 Morris Dalitz. The former Cleveland bootlegger-turned-Las Vegas casino gambling czar. Dalitz was a longtime Lansky intimate who was Benjamin Siegel's successor as Lansky's point man in Las Vegas. 538

As we saw in Chapter 10, Dalitz later employed "racket buster" G. Robert Blakey as a consultant/character witness in a libel action in which Dalitz was contesting charges that his La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad, California was linked to organized crime. It was shortly thereafter that Blakey was placed in charge of the House Assassinations Committee investigation of the JFK murder.

Dalitz himself, as noted in Chapter 10, was also a longtime fund-raiser for the Israeli lobby in the United States and honored by the aforementioned Anti-Defamation League (ADL ) for his services.

 Carlos Prio Socarras. The President of Cuba from 1948-1952, Prio Socarras had been a front-man for Meyer Lansky's partner-in-crime, Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista. In fact, it was Lansky who persuaded Batista with a hefty bribe to "step down" in favor of Prio Socarras. 539 And as we saw in Chapter 14 Prio was engaged in gun-running with a business partner whose name is now more than a footnote in history: Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby.

No wonder then, that the Italian journal, Paesa Sera, would be moved to comment: "It is a fact that the CMC is nevertheless the point of contact for a number of persons who, in certain respects, have somewhat equivocal ties whose common denominator is an anti-communism so strong that it would swallow up all those in the world who have fought for decent relations between East and West, including Kennedy." 540

CMC/Permindex—it might also be added even more particularly—is nevertheless the point of contact for a number of persons who, in certain respects, have somewhat equivocal ties whose common denominator is a devotion to the cause of Israel. 

 

THE BRONFMANS, AGAIN

Interestingly enough, in early 1993 the Lansky syndicate-linked Bronfman family, through their Seagram Company, purchased a substantial controlling interest in Time Warner, further cementing the media giant into the tightly-knit circles of the CIA-Lansky Syndicate-Israeli Mossad connection that have swirled around the company since its inception.

It was, as we saw in Chapter 15, Major Louis M. Bloomfield, chief executive operative of the Permindex entity, who had been longtime personal attorney for the Bronfman interests and a major figure in the Israeli lobby in Canada.

That a company which has been intimately tied from its earliest years not only with the inner circles of Meyer Lansky and his international crime syndicate, but also with Israel and its Mossad, should be the sponsor of Oliver Stone's grand conspiracy theory is enough to make one wonder, to say the least. But there's more.

It is somewhat interesting to note that when Stone hired on a public relations agency to handle the publicity and controversy which emerged when the film was released, it was the powerful Washington, D.C. firm of Hill & Knowlton. After all, it was Hill & Knowlton that orchestrated major propaganda in favor of American involvement in the Persian Gulf War against Iraq—and in favor of Israel.

STONE'S ADL CONNECTION

What's more, the Hill & Knowlton executive who handled his firm's efforts on behalf of Stone, Frank Mankiewicz, got his start in the public relations business working on behalf of the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith in Los Angeles. (In Chapter 18, we shall see, Mankiewicz himself had a curious role in the circumstances surrounding yet another Kennedy assassination.) 

• Edgar Bronfman
  [1.11/D][Irving wrote about an appeal letter by Edgar Bronfman the President of the World Jewish Congress - in Irving's words 'president of the World ("What? Us - an international conspiracy?") Jewish Congress' - to combat the spread of Holocaust denial] '...isn't there something obscene about the spectacle of billionaire Bronfman pleading ("Your money is tax deductable to the full extent of the law") for funds? Like his bootlegger father, Bronfman makes his millions from distilling alcohol - a poisonous drug which accounts for the one hundred thousand needless deaths each year in the United States alone. Now isn't that a true Holocaust?
  It's a wonder incidentally that Brofman hasn't gone into the lucrative abortion business yet. As of January 1995 one of the biggest abortion businesses, Planned Parenthood Inc., was said by the Miami Herald to be grossing $500 million annually in the United States."[ 'Opinion', Action Report, number 9, May 1995, p. 2; K4, Tab. 10, p. 46 (at 2)]
  [1.11/E]'I was allowed free speech [in Canada], until I injured one of the most cherished shibboleths of its traditional enemy, the history of the Holocaust: the last ten years have seen a new and uglier breed of Untouchables created, ironically by Edgar Bronfman Jr., whose father made his billions as a bootlegger - the criminal enemies of the first "untouchables" in the FBI.' ['A Radical's Diary',Action Report, number 12, 15 August 1997 [on title page, on pages 'July 1997'], p. 21; K4, Tab. 10, p. 59]