Jefferson Morley: The CIA AND ZIONISM

[Leslie Sharp]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

To get back to Jeff's article, its pretty good I think as far as showing how dedicated Angleton was as a backer of Israel and how he helped them get the bomb.

But I am going to write a reply or rejoinder or whatever including the newest version of Angleton's testimony as secured by Aaron Good, plus how this policy clashed with Kennedy's policy.

 

I would ask why Otto Skorzeny's disputed history with Mossad, as controversial as it might be, isn't relevant to Jeff's article that includes a photo of the CI Chief and Meir Amit of Mossad who at one time solicited the help of the SS Commando . . . assuming the underlying purpose of this forum is to consider and debate facts related to the Kennedy assassination.

I would also note that Angleton's associations from the early 1950s, including those he enjoyed during his involvement in MKULTRA (highlighted by Jeff), contribute to further understanding of the complex character that was JJA – who appears in the records of Pierre Lafitte.

Edited May 4 by Leslie Sharp

[Evan Marshall]

I knew Charley Askins rather well and disliked him and that isn't Charley!

[Leslie Sharp]

3 minutes ago, Evan Marshall said:

I knew Charley Askins rather well and disliked him and that isn't Charley!

. . . as I have noted previously on this forum, numerous times.

Did you know Askins while he worked at SwRi in San Antonio?

Did you encounter Harlon B. Carter over the years?

[Chuck Schwartz]

Evan, did Askins ever talk to you about the JFKA? If so, what did he say? How did you come to know Askins?

[Evan Marshall]

As I said before I never met Harlan Carter. Charley and I were both writers for a number of gun magazines. I never discussed JFK because Charly was an egomaniac and a murder! I was a Detroit copper whose assignment included SWAT and Homicide. I knew Charly when he was in southwest Asia and later. He was a most disagreeable person

 

 

Edited May 8 by Evan Marshall

[Chuck Schwartz]

Evan, OK.

[David McLean]

Having - finally, belatedly - read Jeff Morley’s CIA and Zionism, it seems clear that US foreign policy is and has been since JFK  hostage to whoever is on power in Israel. Even NATO’s nuclear capability is under firm US control. Not so, apparently, with Israel’s nuclear arms, as Netanyahu seemed to signal in his latest Halocaust address.

And as the world is discovering to its horror, the claims of Zionism seem to have grown beyond comprehension, unconditional surrender of any and all defenders of Palestinian rights, dignity, and very existence. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Paul Brancato]

3 hours ago, David McLean said:

Having - finally, belatedly - read Jeff Morley’s CIA and Zionism, it seems clear that US foreign policy is and has been since JFK  hostage to whoever is on power in Israel. Even NATO’s nuclear capability is under firm US control. Not so, apparently, with Israel’s nuclear arms, as Netanyahu seemed to signal in his latest Halocaust address.

And as the world is discovering to its horror, the claims of Zionism seem to have grown beyond comprehension, unconditional surrender of any and all defenders of Palestinian rights, dignity, and very existence. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This may be because of secrets held by Israel regarding Angleton’s. According to a friend who is working through the latest unredacted files concerning Angleton’s closed door Senate testimony, Angleton was closely tied with Saudi Arabia, and generally with British interests which were largely pro Arab because of Oil. His close connections with Israeli Intelligence seems to be in the service of Anti-Soviet operations, and Nazi functionaries were Angleton’s go to interrogators. If both Mossad and CIA used an agent such as Otto Skorzeny, which appears true, then they had mutual checks on each other, since neither would want that kind of relationship public. 
In regards to the 1967 war and ensuing takeover of the West Bank and Golan Heights, you never hear Zionist supporters in the US mention this, and if they do of course they frame it as a necessary preemptive attack on Egypt and Syria. 

[Leslie Sharp]

18 hours ago, Evan Marshall said:

As I said before I never met Harlan Carter. Charley and I were both writers for a number of gun magazines. I never discussed JFK because Charly was an egomaniac and a murder! I was a Detroit copper whose assignment included SWAT and Homicide. I knew Charly when he was in southwest Asia and later. He was a most disagreeable person

 

 

Was he active military in Southwest Asia when you knew him? 

[James DiEugenio]

15 hours ago, David McLean said:

Having - finally, belatedly - read Jeff Morley’s CIA and Zionism, it seems clear that US foreign policy is and has been since JFK  hostage to whoever is on power in Israel. Even NATO’s nuclear capability is under firm US control. Not so, apparently, with Israel’s nuclear arms, as Netanyahu seemed to signal in his latest Halocaust address.

And as the world is discovering to its horror, the claims of Zionism seem to have grown beyond comprehension, unconditional surrender of any and all defenders of Palestinian rights, dignity, and very existence. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting comments  Dave.

Its revealing to compare the reaction of LBJ and Nixon to the Israelis having the bomb, and JFK's.

When Helms told Johnson about proof they had the bomb, Johnson shrugged and told him to limit the knowledge, as he did not want Ramsey Clark to know.  Nixon let Israel then expand their arsenal without explanation, or inclusion in any non proliferation treaty.

Kennedy was really upset when he found out the Israelis were lying to him about DImona.  He sent Ben Gurion a threatening letter about cutting off aid.  When Ben Gurion replied with horror stories about what Nasser would do to Israel resembling what Hitler did, Kennedy did not bat an eyelash. He reissued the same threat. 

Ben Gurion resigned the next day. Whether that was cause and effect, no one knows.  But it sure is worth pondering.

And BTW, Kennedy took all these horror stories about Nasser in stride.  Because the whole time he is making these demands on Israel, he is carrying on a really fascinating conversation with Nasser.  Who he saw as the best hope for modernizing and westernizing the Middle East.  The problem with that was that Saudi Arabia and England knew this, and so they were determined to break that bond by keeping Nasser bogged down in that war over succession in Yemen.

But once Kennedy was dead, all the work he did to build trust and friendship with Nasser was down the drain.  I am convinced the 1967 war would not have happened if JFK had lived.  That is how much Nasser admired Kennedy.  And this is why the JFK case is relevant to what is happening there and no one wants to admit that.

Edited May 9 by James DiEugenio

[Kevin Balch]

19 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Interesting comments  Dave.

Its revealing to compare the reaction of LBJ and Nixon to the Israelis having the bomb, and JFK's.

When Helms told Johnson about proof they had the bomb, Johnson shrugged and told him to limit the knowledge, as he did not want Ramsey Clark to know.  Nixon let Israel then expand their arsenal without explanation, or inclusion in any non proliferation treaty.

Kennedy was really upset when he found out the Israelis were lying to him about DImona.  He sent Ben Gurion a threatening letter about cutting off aid.  When Ben Gurion replied with horror stories about what Nasser would do to Israel resembling what Hitler did, Kennedy did not bat an eyelash. He reissued the same threat. 

Ben Gurion resigned the next day. Whether that was cause and effect, no one knows.  But it sure is worth pondering.

And BTW, Kennedy took all these horror stories about Nasser in stride.  Because the whole time he is making these demands on Israel, he is carrying on a really fascinating conversation with Nasser.  Who he saw as the best hope for modernizing and westernizing the Middle East.  The problem with that was that Saudi Arabia and England knew this, and so they were determined to break that bond by keeping Nasser bogged down in that war over succession in Yemen.

But once Kennedy was dead, all the work he did to build trust and friendship with Nasser was down the drain.  I am convinced the 1967 war would not have happened if JFK had lived.  That is how much Nasser admired Kennedy.  And this is why the JFK case is relevant to what is happening there and no one wants to admit that.

The Israeli nuclear weapons program was planned to use the plutonium route. This avoids the need for a large, impossible to conceal and high electricity consumption uranium enrichment facility. The French had supplied the necessary processing equipment along with a heavy water reactor which does not need enriched uranium. Ben Gurion’s plan for obtaining nuclear weapons was not universally supported as it would be expensive and Israel was a poor country. I think their program was delayed with technical and political problems. Hence the need for smuggling very highly enriched uranium from the NUMEC plant in Apollo, PA in 1964-65. This could be fabricated into a simple, Hiroshima type bomb that would not need to be tested and it would have been ready in time for the 1967 war.

At the time of the uranium theft, the NUMEC plant had more unaccounted uranium from “processing losses” by far than any other nuclear fuel facility. The Atomic Energy Commission suspected but could not prove that the uranium had been diverted. Environmental samples collected near the Dimona site in 1968 bore the unique isotopic signature of the uranium being processed at the NUMEC plant.

It’s very possible that one of the USS Liberty’s intelligence collection goals was to obtain evidence of Israeli nuclear weapons.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/world/middleeast/1967-arab-israeli-war-nuclear-warning.html

JFK blundered by providing the Hawk missiles to Israel. Mike Feldman justified it as an alternative to giving Israel a US security guarantee. Yet today we supply weapons and give Israel a de facto security guarantee.

[Leslie Sharp]

On 5/8/2024 at 11:48 AM, Paul Brancato said:

This may be because of secrets held by Israel regarding Angleton’s. According to a friend who is working through the latest unredacted files concerning Angleton’s closed door Senate testimony, Angleton was closely tied with Saudi Arabia, and generally with British interests which were largely pro Arab because of Oil. His close connections with Israeli Intelligence seems to be in the service of Anti-Soviet operations, and Nazi functionaries were Angleton’s go to interrogators. If both Mossad and CIA used an agent such as Otto Skorzeny, which appears true, then they had mutual checks on each other, since neither would want that kind of relationship public. 
In regards to the 1967 war and ensuing takeover of the West Bank and Golan Heights, you never hear Zionist supporters in the US mention this, and if they do of course they frame it as a necessary preemptive attack on Egypt and Syria. 

There seems to be a degree of controversy over when exactly Skorzeny agreed to cooperate with Mossad. Bergman insists it was not until July 1964 when Otto met with an Israeli conduit in Dublin.  Other versions suggest he was recruited as early as summer of 1963; still others argue an even earlier association.  I think there's little doubt that his concerns related to the possibility of his own extradition for war crimes were legitimate since Eichman's abduction, trial and execution. Suggesting he aligned philosophically with Jewish interests in the region is more than a stretch. 

I'm wondering why the Argentinian shipments of yellowcake to Israel in 1963 hasn't captured more interest than it has since the document drop in 2018.  Argentina had its own political upheaval from the Navy revolt September 1962 - April 1963; Peron was still in exile in Madrid socializing with both Otto and Ilse. What might either have known about that yellowcake?

Edited May 9 by Leslie Sharp

[Paul Brancato]

58 minutes ago, Leslie Sharp said:

There seems to be a degree of controversy over when exactly Skorzeny agreed to cooperate with Mossad. Bergman insists it was not until July 1964 when Otto met with an Israeli conduit in Dublin.  Other versions suggest he was recruited as early as summer of 1963; still others argue an even earlier association.  I think there's little doubt that his concerns related to the possibility of his own extradition for war crimes were legitimate since Eichman's abduction, trial and execution. Suggesting he aligned philosophically with Jewish interests in the region is more than a stretch. 

I'm wondering why the Argentinian shipments of yellowcake to Israel in 1963 hasn't captured more interest than it has since the document drop in 2018.  Argentina had its own political upheaval from the Navy revolt September 1962 - April 1963; Peron was still in exile in Madrid socializing with both Otto and Ilse. What might either have known about that yellowcake?

Leslie - who is Bergman? Also I did not know about Argentine shipments to Israel.

[James DiEugenio]

Kevin:

The Hawks did not go to Israel until Johnson was president.

IMO, with Dimona as it was, Kennedy would not have shipped them.

[Leslie Sharp]

55 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Leslie - who is Bergman? Also I did not know about Argentine shipments to Israel.

The Secret History of Israel's War Against Hitler's Scientists

BY RONEN BERGMAN ON 04/12/18 AT 11:21 AM EDT

(excerpt)

 

. . . On March 25, 1963, Ben-Gurion summoned [Mossad chief Isser] Harel to his office; the Mossad chief had carried out some of his media operations without the prime minister's approval and now his boss was upset. The prime minister reminded Harel that he was supposed to implement government policy, not set it. Offended by the rebuke, Harel offered his resignation, confident the Old Man, as Ben-Gurion was known, couldn't manage without him and would beg him to stay.

Ben-Gurion thought otherwise. He accepted the resignation on the spot. Harel's once brilliant career ended in a failed bluff and utter defeat. He was immediately replaced by Amit, the chief of AMAN.

But it was too late for Ben-Gurion, too. Harel's campaign had played into the hands of Begin, among others. Less than two months after replacing Harel, Ben-Gurion resigned, convinced he'd lost the support of his own party. He was replaced by Levi Eshkol.

56 Burglaries and 30,000 Documents

Amit, one of the IDF's brilliant young commanders, took over a Mossad in disarray. The agency was deeply demoralized. In the nine months since Egypt had announced its four missile tests, the Israelis had learned little about the program, and everything the Mossad and AMAN had tried had failed to even slow the project, let alone dismantle it. Pressuring Germany had made no difference.

Amit set about rebuilding the organization, reinforcing it with the best personnel he knew from AMAN. As soon as he took over, he ordered a halt to any matters that he considered extraneous, and a drastic reduction of the resources being devoted to the hunt for Nazi criminals, explaining, "We have to produce information about the enemies of the state of Israel nowadays." Amit knew that he needed a tactical reset, and that the Mossad had to rethink its approach to the problem of Egyptian missiles.

His first order, then, was for a shift away from targeted killing operations and for the vast majority of his resources to be focused instead on trying to understand what was going on inside the missile project. Secretly, however, with most of the top officials of the organization out of the loop, he prepared a targeted killing project of his own against the scientists. Operations personnel were trying to find ways to send parcel bombs from inside Egypt, significantly shortening the time between the sending and opening of the package. They tried out the method on a relatively easy target, the physician Eisele. On September 25, 1963, there was a blast in the post office in the upscale Cairo neighborhood of Maadi: A letter bomb that had been addressed to Dr. Carl Debouche, the false name Eisele was using, exploded and blinded a postal worker.

The failure of this operation convinced Amit that targeted killings should be used only sparingly. Nevertheless, he ordered the Mossad to prepare plans to shoot, blow up or poison the scientists in case nonviolent means proved ineffective.

Amit ordered the Mossad to step up break-ins at all the offices connected to the missile project in West Germany and Switzerland. These operations were enormously complex. The sites were well guarded—both by Egyptian intelligence and by the men under Vallentin, the German project's security chief—in the hearts of crowded European cities, in countries where the law was strictly enforced.

Mossad operatives burglarized the Egyptian embassies, the Egyptian purchasing mission in Cologne and the Intra office in Munich. They broke into the EgyptAir office in Frankfurt no fewer than 56 times between August 1964 and December 1966. The information they obtained (operatives photographed some 30,000 documents up to the end of 1964 alone) was important, but far from sufficient. The Mossad had to recruit someone on the inside of the missile project. This critical task was assigned to a division called Junction, which was responsible for bringing in the bulk of the organization's human intelligence.

Unlike in Hollywood movies, most of this information is not collected directly by Mossad employees darting about in the shadows. Rather, it is gleaned from foreign nationals in their home countries. The Mossad case officers responsible for recruiting and operating these sources are called "collection officers," and they are expert psychologists. They know how to persuade a person to betray everything and everyone he believes in: his friends and family, his organization, his nation.

But none had been able to work on anyone close to the Egyptian program. Recruiting agents in Arab countries became a long-term priority, but in the short run, Junction would have to look elsewhere.

'A Favorite of the Führer'

In April 1964, Amit sent Eitan to Paris, which served as the nerve center of Israeli intelligence, to run Junction's operations in Europe. Vallentin was becoming more of a problem, and Junction needed to take care of him.

Avraham Ahituv, Junction's coordinator in Bonn, had an idea, and he presented it to Eitan in Paris in May 1964. He'd identified a dubious character who'd sold arms and intelligence to the Nasser regime and also was close to the German scientists. "There is just one small problem," Ahituv said. "The man's name is Otto Skorzeny, and he was a high-ranking Wehrmacht officer, Hitler's special operations commander, and a favorite of the Führer."

"And you want to recruit this Otto?" Eitan asked sarcastically. "Wonderful."

In 1960, Ahituv told Eitan, Harel had ordered Amal, the unit that handled the hunt for Nazi war criminals, to gather as much information as possible about Skorzeny, with the goal of bringing him to justice or killing him. His file said he was an enthusiastic member of the Austrian Nazi Party, had enlisted in 1935 in a secret SS unit in Austria and had taken part in Kristallnacht. He rose rapidly in rank in the Waffen-SS, becoming head of its special operations units.

Skorzeny parachuted into Iran and trained local tribes to blow up oil pipelines serving the Allied armies, and he plotted to murder the Big Three—Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt. He also had a plan for abducting and killing U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower. Skorzeny was even personally selected by Hitler to lead the Gran Sasso raid, which successfully extricated Benito Mussolini, the Führer's friend and ally, from the Alpine villa where he was being held prisoner by the Italian government.

Allied intelligence called Skorzeny "the most dangerous man in Europe." He was not, however, convicted of war crimes. He was acquitted by one tribunal, and after he was re-arrested on other charges, he escaped with the help of his SS friends. He took refuge in Francisco Franco's Spain, where he established profitable commercial relations with fascist regimes from around the world.

Skorzeny's acquaintance with the scientists in Egypt, and the fact that he'd been a superior officer to Vallentin during the war, was enough, in Eitan's view, to justify trying to recruit him, despite his Nazi past. Eitan felt that if it helped Israel, it was worth it.

Through a number of intermediaries, the Mossad established contact with Countess Ilse von Finckenstein—Skorzeny's wife. She would serve as the Mossad's entrée. The agency's file on the countess says that she was "a member of the aristocracy. She is a cousin of the German [prewar] Finance Minister Hjalmar Schacht.… She is 45, a fairly attractive woman, brimming over with energy."

"She was involved in everything," said Raphael "Raphi" Medan, the German-born Mossad operative who was assigned to the mission. "She sold titles of nobility, had ties with Vatican intelligence and sold arms as well." She and her husband also had liberal ideas about their relationship. "They didn't have children," Medan said, "and they maintained an open marriage. Ilse always looked stunning. Every two years she underwent hormonal treatment in Switzerland in order to preserve her youth."

Medan "had had a reputation, because of his European good looks, for being able to influence women," according to the Mossad report on the affair. They set a meeting for late July 1964 in Dublin. Medan introduced himself as an Israeli Defense Ministry employee on leave, looking for an opening in international tourism. He might be interested in taking part in a Bahamas development project that the countess was involved in, he said. The countess liked Medan, and when their business talk was over, she invited him to a party at her farm. This was the start of a series of meetings, including some wild partying in Europe.

According to a Mossad rumor that circulated for many years and was gently hinted at in the reports but not explicitly stated, Medan "sacrificed" himself for his country—and took advantage of the German couple's open marriage—by wooing the countess and eventually taking her to bed. Medan, however, simply said, "There are things that gentlemen do not speak about," and described their encounter, with a smile, as "good and even gratifying."

Yellowcake:
 

The story of the Argentine yellowcake sale to Israel has remained largely unknown in part because Israel has gone to great lengths to keep tight secrecy to this day about how and where it acquired raw materials for its nuclear program.

 

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/israels-quest-for-yellowcake-the-secret-argentina-israel-connection-1963-1966
 

 

Edited May 10 by Leslie Sharp