Michael Collins Piper: Final Judgement

[Michael Hogan]

Piper may well be on the money in regards to LBJ's policy switch on Israel, a move calculated to endear him to the pro-Israel lobby in his own party. A cunning move on LBJ's part, no doubt, but not evidence of Israeli involvement in the assassination.

Instead Piper offers us his hindsight bias along with the old familiar fallacy of POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC.

I wonder whether there is any substantive opposition to Piper's main theses in Final Judgment?

Not yet.

[Peter McGuire]

Does all ‘opposition’ really boil down to name-calling and other efforts to divert attention from the case he makes?

I certainly think so. It is usually an Anti-Semite issue, but it could be nit picking as well. Pipers central thesis; that Israel had a motive , is just that, a theory. There are a thousand theories to this unsolved case. Why shouldn't this one be considered?

Furthermore, Piper finally takes a look at Jack Ruby's long term connections to the Meyer Lansky crime syndicate. Until Final Judgment, very little was written about the real Jack Ruby.

Take a look at what happens when someone writes about the influence of the Israel Lobby:

Everyone should be familiar with the paper written by Harvard and University of Chicago professors Walt and Mearsheimer:

March 31, 2006

The Lobby Strikes Back

Harvard study of Israeli lobby's influence costs the academic dean of the Kennedy School his job

by Justin Raimondo

The reaction to the Harvard University study by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," [.pdf] has been fury by the Lobby and its partisans – and a demotion for Walt, who, it was announced shortly after the paper's release, would be stepping down from his post as [academic] dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. As the New York Sun reports (via the Harvard Crimson):

"Yesterday's issue of The New York Sun reported that an 'observer' familiar with Harvard said that the University had received calls from 'pro-Israel donors' concerned about the KSG paper. One of the calls, the source told The Sun, was from Robert Belfer, a former Enron director who endowed Walt's professorship when he donated $7.5 million to the Kennedy School's Center for Science and International Affairs in 1997. 'Since the furor, Bob Belfer has called expressing his deep concerns and asked that Stephen not use his professorship title in publicity related to the article,' the source told The Sun."

The Kennedy School has removed its logo from the front page of the paper, and made more prominent a boilerplate statement to the effect that the school doesn't necessarily endorse any or all of the views expressed therein.

Now, somebody please tell me that Mearsheimer and Walt have overplayed the power and influence of the Lobby in American political life.

The hate campaign directed at Mearsheimer and Walt underscores and validates the study's contention that all attempts to objectively discuss our Israel-centric foreign policy and the pivotal role played by the Lobby are met with outright intimidation. We have O.J. Simpson defender and pro-Israel fanatic Alan Dershowitz claiming that the scholarly duo filched the majority of their sources from "hate sites" – although how Dershowitz knows this, without having looked directly over their shoulders as they wrote, is very far from clear. But don't worry, he assures us, a "team" of researchers on his staff is looking into the matter. One wonders if this is the same "team" that looked into the evidence and concluded that Simpson was innocent.

Virtually every mention of the study informs us that David Duke is among its most fervent defenders. The Boston Globe and the Washington Post both featured Duke's endorsement in their respective summaries of the controversy, and when the shameless Joe Scarborough of MSNBC had him on, he introduced the notorious racist this way:

"Thank you for being with us tonight, Mr. Duke. You have been attacked as a former Klansman, an anti-Semite, but tonight you're in league with Harvard University. Do you feel vindicated?"

Mearsheimer and Walt are the ones who should feel vindicated, because this sort of cheap demagoguery proves their point about the Lobby's modus operandi. Always they seek to set the terms of the debate in their favor: If you disagree with them and decry their influence, you're a "Nazi." How very convenient.

What would the Lobby do without the former Ku Klux Klan leader, who now inveighs against "ZOG" and the alleged perfidy of the Jews from somewhere in Central Europe? He ought to be getting some kind of stipend from them, in view of the tremendous service he performs: by setting up an avowed neo-Nazi as the chief spokesman for the other side, the Lobby gets to control the discourse.

Naturally, Scarborough would never have invited anyone like, say, Juan Cole on the show to defend the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis. He might have invited any one of a number of people cited in the study's 200-plus footnotes, including Antiwar.com's Ran HaCohen. But that is expecting far too much of the Lobby and its allies: intellectual honesty is not one of their strong points.

The same trope is continued and expanded on with Max Boot's contribution to the debate, in which he conjures the ghost of Richard Hofstadter, departed neocon scholar of "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," which sought, back in the early 1960s, to show that "right-wing agitation" (i.e., mainstream conservatism) was a psychopathology, rather than a bona fide ideology, consisting of little more than paranoid fantasies brought on by acute "status resentment." Hofstadter, in turn, was simply carrying forward and applying the "social science" of Theodore Adorno, the Marxist sociologist who famously diagnosed opposition to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's policies as evidence of an Oedipal "father complex." So far, it's the same old malarkey, minus the footnotes, until, at the end, Boot bares his teeth:

"After finishing their magnum opus, I was left with just one question: Why would the omnipotent Israel lobby (which, they claim, works so successfully 'to stifle criticism of Israel') allow such a scurrilous piece of pseudo-scholarship to be published? Then I noticed that Walt occupies a professorship endowed by Robert and Renee Belfer, Jewish philanthropists who are also supporters of Israel. The only explanation, I surmise, is that Walt must himself be an agent of those crafty Israelites, employed to make the anti-Israel case so unconvincingly that he discredits it. 'The Lobby' works in mysterious ways."

But not too mysterious. As we see, above, Belfer got on the phone to Harvard – and Walt was out of the dean's office in no time. To notice this, however, is "paranoid."

There have been a few substantive commentaries on the Mearsheimer-Walt study, to my knowledge, one by Daniel Drezner, and another by Daniel Levy, a former top adviser to Israel's prime minister, which originally appeared in Ha'aretz. Drezner, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago and a very smart blogger, gives credit to the study for exploring truths that make people feel "very uncomfortable at cocktail parties," and concedes that there is much to be said for the thesis that Israel seems to dominate "some aspects" of U.S. policy-making. However, he nits and picks:

"Shot through these papers are an awful lot of casual assertions that don't hold up to close scrutiny. … The authors assert that, 'If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a nuclear North Korea, it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep up constant pressure on politicians to confront Tehran.' I'm pretty sure that there's more to U.S. opposition to Iran possessing nuclear weapons than the protection of Israel."

It is true there may be other reasons why Washington might not want Iran to go nuclear, but there is no reason to believe that these might prevail over prudence in the absence of the Lobby's decisive influence. Drezner cites the study's contention that the Lobby's mere existence proves an imperfect congruence of Israeli and American interests – otherwise, "one would not need an organized special interest group to bring it about." Drezner finds this "fascinating," he writes, because of

"The implicit assumptions contained within it: i) the only interest group in existence is the Lobby, and; ii) in the absence of the Lobby, a well-defined sense of national interest will always guide American foreign policy. It would be very problematic for good realists like Mearsheimer and Walt to allow for other interest groups – oil companies, for example – to exist. This would allow for a much greater role for domestic politics than realists ever care to admit."

Contra Drezner, Mearsheimer and Walt do not contend that the Lobby is the sole organization of its kind, only that they do a better job than anyone else. Far from denying the influence of domestic politics on foreign policy, the study shows that this sort of influence is decisive, especially in its discussion of the Christian evangelical-neocon convergence on the issue of Israel. Whether this comports with Drezner's understanding of "realism" is, really, irrelevant.

While Drezner does not agree with Mearsheimer and Walt, he is too intellectually honest to go along with the Smear Brigade's calumnies:

"On the one hand, it's a shame that this isn't being debated more widely in the mainstream press. On the other hand, it might be good if the mainstream media didn't cover it, if this New York Sun editorial is any indication:

"'It's going to be illuminating to watch how Harvard handles the controversy over the decision of its John F. Kennedy School of Government to issue a "Faculty Research Working Paper" on "The Israel Lobby" that is co-authored by its academic dean, Stephen Walt. On page one this morning we report that Dean Walt's paper has been met with praise by David Duke, the man the Anti-Defamation League calls "America's best-known racist." The controversy is still young. But it's not too early to suggest that it's going to be hard for Mr. Walt to maintain his credibility as a dean. We don't see it as a matter of academic freedom but simply as a matter of necessary quality control.'

"This is an absurd editorial – just about any argument out there is endorsed by one crackpot or another, so that does not mean the argument itself is automatically invalidated. As for Walt's sympathies towards David Duke, in the very story they cite, Walt is quoted as saying, 'I have always found Mr. Duke's views reprehensible, and I am sorry he sees this article as consistent with his view of the world.'

"I didn't say this explicitly in my last post, but let me do so here: Walt and Mearsheimer should not be criticized as anti-Semites, because that's patently false. They should be criticized for doing piss-poor, monocausal social science."

Bravo – except for the "piss-poor" stuff. Drezner should ask himself, however, why it is that the debate over this study is being engaged in such a vicious manner by opponents of the Harvard study. Doesn't that say something about the role of the Lobby and its methods, as characterized by Mearsheimer and Walt? Drezner believes the authors have failed to demonstrate that Israel is a strategic liability, that "U.S. foreign policy behavior" is determined "almost exclusively by the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'" and that the authors "omit consideration of contradictory policies and countervailing foreign policy lobbies." Fine. All those points are debatable. But they aren't being debated. Instead, the Lobby is busy smearing the authors and getting Walt kicked out of his job as Kennedy School dean.

Daniel Levy, a former adviser in the office of Israel's prime minister, a member of the Israeli negotiating team at the Oslo B and Taba talks, and the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative, has the most thoughtful commentary to date, averring that the Harvard study "should serve as a wake-up call, on both sides of the ocean." He notes that "the tone of the report is harsh," and "jarring," that it "lacks finesse and nuance," but nevertheless,

"Their case is a potent one: that identification of American with Israeli interests can be principally explained via the impact of the Lobby in Washington, and in limiting the parameters of public debate, rather than by virtue of Israel being a vital strategic asset or having a uniquely compelling moral case for support (beyond, as the authors point out, the right to exist, which is anyway not in jeopardy). The study is at its most devastating when it describes how the Lobby 'stifles debate by intimidation' and at its most current when it details how America's interests (and ultimately Israel's, too) are ill-served by following the Lobby's agenda."

Hear! Hear!

Levy goes on to note that the response to the study by the Lobby "has been characterized by a combination of the shrill and the smug. Avoidance of candid discussion might make good sense to the Lobby, but it is unlikely to either advance Israeli interests or the U.S.-Israel relationship." In the course of his argument that the Lobby is just as bad for Israel as it is for America, Levy makes a salient point:

"The Lobby even denies Israel a luxury that so many other countries benefit from: of having the excuse of external encouragement to do things that are domestically tricky but nationally necessary (remember Central Eastern European economic and democratic reform to gain EU entry in contrast with Israel's self-destructive settlement policy for continued U.S. aid)."

The Lobby, by its success at neutralizing any effort to rein in the Israeli leadership's more extreme impulses, undermines the interests of the Jewish state. But the ideologues who make up the Lobby don't care about that: what they really care about is having the power to silence – and punish – their enemies.

The firing of Dean Walt is an outrage, one that should be met with a storm of indignation. That the Amen Corner would even attempt it – let alone go on the record as taking credit for it – is a testament to the Lobby's enduring and unchallenged power. It shows how the Lobby operates, and why they must be stopped before any real debate over the foreign policy of this country can be conducted.

The reasons for this extreme defensiveness on the part of the Lobby are not hard to discern. If they are the prime movers of U.S. foreign policy, then they do indeed have a lot to answer for. As the consequences of the Iraq war roll across our television screens, tracing a path of blood and mindless destruction, we have to wonder: who got us here? We have to question their motivations. And we have to ask: Why?

Who lied us into war? For whose sake did 2,300 American soldiers, and tens of thousands of Iraqis, die? Whose interests were served? The tip of the spear Mearsheimer and Walt have pricked the Lobby with is the contention that they were the decisive influence in pushing us into war with Iraq. And the howls that are coming from right, left, and center are proof enough that they have struck home.

Edited December 17, 2006 by Peter McGuire

[Mark Stapleton]

My apologies for the delay, but back to business:

Chapter 7--"Israel's Godfather"

In this chapter, Piper probes the multitude of links which connect the shadowy figure of Meyer Lansky to many of the main players in the JFK assassination saga.

Briefly, Lansky was born Maier Suchowjansky in Grodno, Russia in 1902 and arrived in the US in 1911. He rose from the immigrant slums of NYC to preeminence in the underworld, along with childhood friends Benjamin Seigel, Charles Lucania and Frank Costello. In Luciano's autobiography, he claims Lansky was his 'consigliere' or chief advisor. Luciano claimed Lansky's nickname was 'the genius'.

Prohibition in the 1920's, being the stupid policy that it was, made them all millionaires before 1930. Being farsighted gangsters, they realised that the survival of their empire depended on adequate protection, so the corruption of the legal and political system in the US basically went right to the top. When the Great Depression ended prohibition, the shrewder gangsters, like Lansky, had purchased significant interests in legal distilleries. Lansky also diversified into casinoes, notably in Cuba, under the patronage of Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista.

Piper claims FDR himself sent Lansky as a personal emissary to Cuba to meet Batista. The purpose was to influence Batista to institute reforms that would quell the growing communist movement in that country. It was during this period (the 1930's) that Lansky began cementing the long and profitable business and personal friendship with Batista and other Cuban leaders which would earn tremendous wealth for all concerned. Piper adds that among those on the recieving end of Lansky's largesse was Carlos Prio Soccaras, who ultimately became a business partner in gun-running activities with Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby.

Luciano's imprisonment in 1936 on prostitution charges created a vacuum in the underworld power structure. Luciano and others, including Lansky biographer Hank Messick (Lansky, Berkeley Medallion Books, 1971), claimed that Lansky became the unofficial treasurer of the underworld, which greatly enhanced his power and influence, but not necessarily his fame. Messick claimed that the media focus has been overwhelmingly directed at the Sicilian wing of the mafia, leaving the Jewish side largely overlooked. He wrote:

The real leaders of crime have remained hidden while the nation's law enforcement have chased minor punks. Naive is he who believes this development is accidental. Research reveals that non-Mafia leaders of crime have been hiding behind the vendetta-ridden society (Italian Mafia) for decades.....attempts to frame me have been made, and I've been smeared as anti-Semitic from coast to coast by gangsters who used religion as a cloak.

Piper adds that the original name for the crime syndicate--'Union Siciliano'--was suggested by Lansky. Luciano confirmed this himself in his autobiographical work, "The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano". Piper adds that, henceforth, this gave the criminal underworld a decidedly Sicilian imagery. Genius has its rewards.

Lansky's role in OSS-Naval Intelligence operations during WW2 as the possible explanation for Lansky's immunity from prosecution from Federal authorities is worth consideration. Piper writes (pp 81-82):

Writing in Secret File, Hank Messick comments: "Was Lansky rewarded? No final answer is possible, but he has been strangely immune to prosecution at the Federal level. Twice the IRS Intelligence Division has recommended prosecution and twice the Justice Department has declined. Lansky remains the only top man in the national crime syndicate to escape untouched. Because of his brains and the troubles of his colleagues, he rules as undisputed chairman of the board.

Lansky himself acknowledged his role in the so called "Operation Underworld". "Sure, I'm the one who put Lucky and Naval Intelligence together", he told his friend, Israeli newsman Uri Dan. Lansky's reasons were interesting: "The reason I co-operated was because of strong personal feelings. I wanted the Nazis beaten. I was a Jew and I felt for those Jews in Europe who were suffering. They were my brothers."

Former Lansky associate (and covert FBI operative) Michael Milan also points to another critical Lansky connection that may have accounted for his immunity from Federal harassment:

"I knew that J Edgar Hoover and Lansky sometimes broke bread together. Mr. L was never rousted, was rarely served with federal subpoenas and was generally left alone to conduct his business..."

It was the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that was largely responsible for the establishment of the J Edgar Hoover Foundation in 1947. (Top Lansky associates have long been generous financial backers of the ADL). The Hoover Foundation's first president was Rabbi Paul Richman, Washington director of the ADL.

Piper adds that Hoover biographer Curt Gentry (J Edgar Hoover: the man and his secrets 1991) noted that the FBI was never strongly concerned with Lansky's activities. According to Gentry "the Dallas and Miami field offices had blind spots....there was a rumour, often heard in the underworld, that Lansky had his own man very high up in the FBI. William Sullivan had his own suspect, someone close to both Hoover and Tolson, who was reputedly living far above his means. Sullivan, of course, died in a strange hunting accident in 1977 just before he was about to appear before the HSCA.

Having established that Lansky had friends in high places, Piper goes on to outline Lansky's support for the Hagannah (Jewish terrorist underground), which included fundraising dinners and benefit nights at such places as Las Vegas's Colonial Inn (the casino which Jack Ruby once owned a shareholding). He also reportedly provided technical assistance to Israeli gun-running operations within the US (which included intercepting a shipment from a Pittsburgh arms dealer destined for Arabs). He also persuaded some of his associates to invest in Israeli bonds. Piper also cites journalist Robert Friedman's book, The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane: From FBI informant to Knesst member (1990) in which the author claims that Lansky was a major contributor to the radical New York born Rabbi, who founded the militant Jewish Defense League.

If Piper is to be believed (and I think his thesis is plausible), Lansky's involvement in Operation Underworld ultimately opened the door for his entry into a global network of international intrigue. His vast financial resources and commitment to the state of Israel were welcomed wholeheartedly. Operation Underworld was headquartered in the Rockerfeller Centre in NYC, with famed British intelligence operative William Stephenson as its head and Louis Bloomfield his top aide. Piper claims that Stephenson worked closely with the ADL and the FBI in co-ordinating anti-Nazi intelligence operations in the US. Piper claims Stephenson was pivotal in the establishment of Mossad (more about this in chapter 15) and he believes there is little doubt that both Stephenson and Bloomfield were in close contact with Lansky and his men.

In 1947 Rudolph Sonneborn established the Sonneborn Institute. It was this institute which provided the Jewish Hagannah, and later the Irgun, with arms and money. The Institute's co-ordinator was Louis Bloomfield. Working with Bloomfield were liquor baron Sam Bronfman, Hank Greenspun and Lansky himself. Piper further claims that Teddy Kollek and James Jesus Angleton also collaborated with Lansky (more on JJA in later chapters).

The establishment of Tibor Rosenbaum's Banque de Credit International (BCI) in Geneva emerged as Lansky's main European money laundering conduit. Rosenbaum, an orthodox Rabbi, had vast connections to the Israeli cause, serving as president of the World Jewish Congress, co-founder of the World Zionist Congress and director of the Jewish Agency in Geneva. It was a money laundering bank, pure and simple.

BCI was to become Lansky's primary money laundering bank--sharing those money laundering services that the bank provided to Mossad. In its heyday, BCI included in its directors two longtime Lansky associates, Ed Levinson and John Pullman.

Levinson was one of the operators of the Fremont Casino in Vegas, a front man for Lansky's close friend Joseph (Doc) Stacher, and a frequent business partner of Bobby Baker (Serve U Corporation). There's a possible LBJ connection here, if I'm not mistaken. Pullman, claims Piper, was Lansky's key international money handler.

Lansky's connection to BCI first became part of the public record in 1970 during the criminal trial of Alvin Malnik, one of Lansky's lieutenants. Piper goes on to outline Lansky's global drug trafficking activities via BCI and the Bank of World Commerce in Nassau, Bahamas. Millions in small bills being transferred from Lanky's casinos, often masked as Israeli bond sales and Jewish philanthropies.

Another financial institution claimed by Piper to be responsible for financial support of the Mossad is American Bank and Trust, a subsidiary of the Swiss-Israel Trade Bank, another Mossad financial operation. Rosenbaum and Shaul Eisenberg were among its directors. The Swiss-Israel Trade Bank assumed management of AB and T on a very memorable day--November 22, 1963. Piper puts this down to coincidence--maybe. One of the newly installed directors was Abe Fienberg, fundraiser for JFK's 1960 campaign and later to become a close confidant of LBJ.

Edited January 23, 2007 by Mark Stapleton

[Mark Stapleton]

Apologies for the confusing appearance of the previous post. Of the eight RED coloured paragraphs, paras 2 and 3 shouldn't have turned out RED. I've attempted to edit without success. Hopefully, readers will get the gist of it. (of course you will, you're smart.)

MS.

[Sid Walker]

Chapter 7--"Israel's Godfather"

Another financial institution claimed by Piper to be responsible for financial support of the Mossad is American Bank and Trust, a subsidiary of the Swiss-Israel Trade Bank, another Mossad financial operation. Rosenbaum and Shaul Eisenberg were among its directors. The Swiss-Israel Trade Bank assumed management of AB and T on a very memorable day--November 22, 1963. Piper puts this down to coincidence--maybe. One of the newly installed directors was Abe Fienberg, fundraiser for JFK's 1960 campaign and later to become a close confidant of LBJ.

Thanks again for another interesting and informative chapter summary, Mark.

I hope you keep going, despite the apparent lack of response from other forum members.

Whereas ad hominem attacks on MC Piper are ten a penny, well-argued, documented attacks on the content of Final Judgment seem to be rare indeed.

I found the comments about Abraham Feinberg towards the end of your summary fascinating.

Here's what anti-Zionist Jewish American Alfred Lilienthal has to say about Feinberg in What Price Israel? 1953 -- 2003 (the particular extract is sourced from HERE)

Let’s take Abraham Feinberg as an example of this highly improper Zionist influence. By his own admission in the Oral History provided by him to the Truman Library archives in 1973, he planned (or rather, shall I say schemed?) his way to the top specifically to be able to influence presidential policy toward his people and the American stance toward the probability of a Jewish state in Palestine. His original goal was to get next to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he devised ways for an introduction.

However, he never got quite that close and had to settle for an acquaintanceship with the then vice president, Harry Truman. Soon Roosevelt died, and Feinberg’s new friend became president. Here we have the beginning of an ugly alliance between fanatical Zionism and the highest office in our land because of the power of Zionist money and the prospect of Jewish votes. Feinberg soon wormed his way into the inner circle of campaign finance advisors to Truman.

Why do I use such provocative words such as schemed, and devised, and plotted, and wormed his way in? Because, they are true to what happened. It is time we called a spade a spade and not allow anyone to be silenced by the false charge of anti-Semitism (or self-hating Jew) for our making verified charges such as these. I do not expect all of my American Jewish or Israeli co-religionists to ever agree with me about the negative essence of Zionism, but it remains the right of many of us of Jewish faith to insist that Judaism is not Zionism, Zionism is not Judaism, and to be anti-Zionist is in no way to be anti-Semitic.

At the same time that I and others in the U.S. State Department were being investigated and forced out of our careers due to vicious lies by anonymous informants, Feinberg was not investigated and purged out of his powerful unofficial capacity in the Truman administration. As a staunch conservative Republican and proven anti-Communist, you would think I would be one of the last persons to be targeted by the FBI at the time. Yet a questionable individual such as Feinberg could be designated as the one person to decide which other Jews had the right to speak with the president. This is acknowledged in the 1967 Oral History at the Truman Library of Matthew Connelly, Truman’s appointment secretary from 1945 to 1953: “After the death of David Niles, I selected Abe Feinberg myself as our point of contact, because we used to get requests from the heads of different Jewish groups and not having knowledge of who was who or what was what or what their angle was, I could call Abe Feinberg and ask him about this individual who was requesting an appointment. He would say, ‘He’s O.K.’ or ‘Don’t bother with him.’” No wonder that my anti-Zionist Jewish colleagues at the American Council for Judaism such as Lessing Rosenwald became far more limited in their contact with Truman!

Money talks, and Feinberg the Money Man was able to greatly influence Truman’s policies toward Israel. Historian David McCullough wrote a passage in his 1992 biography of Truman about Feinberg’s talent for throwing money around, in this case reportedly as bankrolls that fell on the floor as Feinberg was said to have delivered them in an umbrella in attempted exchange for favoritism toward Israel. The statement was a highly inaccurate anecdote similar to one that John F. Kennedy had told to Gore Vidal involving a purported 2 million dollar bribe in cash being brought in a suitcase to Truman aboard his whistle-stop campaign train in 1948. It was a case of a core of truth being turned in the retelling into a bit of clownishness. McCullough did not realize that Feinberg was still alive and soon found himself and his publisher being contacted by Feinberg’s lawyer. The offending passage was removed from the next edition under threat of a libel suit.

McCullough of course should have removed the distorted version of the story. Too bad that he may have been unaware of the real story from several vantage points in the Truman Library archives that are now available on the Internet. It is a far more powerful indictment of Feinberg than the clownish version. Feinberg’s own words from 1973 describe how there were not enough funds through the Democratic finance committee to afford a campaign trip by train throughout the country that Truman wished to be able to make to have a chance to retain the presidency. Truman was falling way behind Dewey in the polls, and he was being deserted literally and financially by many of the usual Democratic Party faithful. Abe Feinberg, whose wealth derived from hosiery manufacture and Ed Kaufmann of Kay Jewelers, provided a quick $100,000 to get the campaign trip started. Feinberg reveals further, “As that train went into towns where there were Jewish communities, I arranged that a Jewish delegation would ask to see the President and be received on the train and that, in as many cases as possible, they would bring him donations above these original commitments.” Feinberg comments about Truman, “He often said, ‘If not for my friend Abe, I couldn’t have made the trip and I wouldn’t have been elected.’”

Isn’t it “just politics” that Truman would naturally turn to anyone who could put up the funds to “save his skin” as the Jewish World Review article characterized the situation? Perhaps, unless the persons or interests the money is coming from are gravely questionable. In the Palestine Post, a Zionist-Jewish publication in the pre-Israel era, there was an announcement on July 4, 1947 of the founding in New York City of Americans for Haganah Incorporated. The President of this new organization—whose mission was to supply funds for unrestricted immigration of Jews to Palestine and to raise money for the Zionist militias to acquire more weaponry to subdue the Arabs who did not wish to be displaced from their own land—was none other than our schemer Abraham Feinberg. At the same time that he was cozying up to Truman, it was public knowledge in the news of the day that he was an ardent Zionist of the most extreme variety.

This was the same month in 1947 in which Truman was writing with clear hostility in his “lost” diary on the 27th: “The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced]P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, or Baptist, he goes haywire.” Why then was Feinberg allowed to get so close to Truman when the American Council for Judaism’s anti-Zionist position of an “unselfish” solution for Palestine was Truman’s original position as well? It is obvious that now as then, we need total campaign finance reform and a halt to pandering for ethnic and religious votes in order to prevent this kind of corruption of our American political decision-making processes.

[William Kelly]

Why can't we get Mark Lane to contribute to this thread?

BK

bkjfk3@yahoo.com

[Sid Walker]

Why can't we get Mark Lane to contribute to this thread?

BK

bkjfk3@yahoo.com

Great idea.

I understand he's currently working with Mohamed Al Fayed on the case of his son'e death (and the death of Lady Di), as reported in this rather derogatory article.

[Mark Stapleton]

Chapter 8.

In this chapter Piper takes a look at the mysterious intelligence identity James Jesus Angleton and explains how he may have been a key 'behind the scenes' player in the JFK assassination saga, especially when it came to the contrived schemes which pointed the blame in the wrong direction.

Born in 1917, the same year as JFK, he was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) while at Yale University and soon became a rising star in the world of clandestine activities. On Angleton's wartime work with Jewish resistance groups, former CIA advisor Wilbur Crane Eveland wrote this:

CIA operations had started before Allen Dulles became director that had long range implications from which the US might find it difficult to disengage. Stemming from his wartime OSS liason with Jewish resistance groups based in London, James Angleton had arranged an operational-intelligence exchange agreemnet with Israel's Mossad, upon which the CIA relied for much of its intelligence about the Arab states.(1)

According to Angleton's biographer Tom Mangold, CIA Director Allen Dulles and his Deputy Richard Helms were Angleton's 'mentors'. However, Helms was Angletons 'chief patron' (2). This friendship, says Mangold, was the most important factor in giving him freedom of movement within the CIA. He was extended such trust by his superiors that there was often a significant failure of executive control over his activities.

Piper bemoans the fact that Mangold's account of Angleton's career devotes insufficient attention to his ties with Israel. However, he quotes Mangold as stating the following: "I would like to place on the record, however, that Angleton's closest professional friends overseas, then and subsequently, came from the Mossad and that he was held in immense esteem by his Israeli colleagues and by the state of Israel, which was to award him profound honors after his death".(3)

Piper further claims that Angleton had close personal ties with Ben-Gurion himself, dealing with the Israeli leader on an intimate basis, although Piper provides no references to support this. I have read in my travels that Angleton stated to a colleague in the late sixties that he had made more than 100 trips to Israel and that he sometimes thought 'it was the only sane country on earth'. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I read this so it should be regarded merely as heresay.

By 1951, Angleton was engaged 'in the underground Jewish network that ran down from Eastern Europe through Italy to the ports where shiploads of immigrants were loaded for Palestine', according to Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, (Dangerous Liason: the inside story of the US-Israeli Covert Relationship, New York, Harper Collins, 1991).

By 1954, Angleton had assumed the position of Chief of CIA counterintelligence. He had become "official CIA liason for all allied foreign intelligence agencies".(4). Piper claims that Angleton engaged in many clandestine activities, all of which were to the benefit of his two obsessions--fanatical anti-Communism and single minded devotion to Israel. These included a joint CIA/Mossad plot to kill Egyptian President Nasser in 1958 (scotched by John Foster Dulles), a plan to overthrow the Syrian Government the same year, his collaboration with organised crime in establishing the ZR/Rifle team in order to kill Castro and close collaboration with Mossad (in particular Mossad chief Isser Harel and Ephraim Evron) in regard to Israel's activities in the nuclear field.

Corroboration of Piper's assertions regarding Israel's nuclear activities comes from an independent source. In the latter years of the Eisenhower Administration, the Israeli Government sought to conceal its efforts to produce a nuclear weapon. It had been working on this project with French assistance since 1956. Avner Cohen's comprehensive study of Israel's nuclear programme, "Israel and the Bomb" points out that US intelligence had become aware--through U-2 aerial reconnaissance flights--in April 1958 that construction of a 'probable' nuclear related site was under way in the Negev desert. However, the US didn't officially make this discovery until it became the front page story in the New York Times on December 19, 1960. (much to the consternation of the intelligence community, the Arab states and the new President-elect, JFK). Cohen cites two reasons for the failure, one analytical and one bureaucratic. Regarding the bureaucratic failure, Cohen wrote:

Important information was available but was not disseminated through the system. Israel may also have had friends in high places in the intelligence and nuclear establishments who might have helped to suppress the early information. Information about Israel was jealously held within the CIA, where James Jesus Angleton was in charge of the Israeli desk. Angleton did not share sensitive information about other agencies, and also withheld much of it from other CIA sections.(5)

Piper also claims that Angleton's wartime links with the Jewish underground in Europe enabled him to maintain close links with the criminal underworld in Italy and France. Piper cites historian Alfred McCoy (a Forum member) and his 1991 work "The Politics of Heroin" in drawing a line through the French Corsican Mafia, the CIA, Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Marseille's heroin shipments and attempts on De Gaulle, with Angleton as the fulcrum for these connections. Frankly, it's a bit beyond the scope of his book and a bit much for me, but its not implausible, imo.

Piper's point about Angleton is well made, imo. He was a great friend of Israel, he ran cover for them and his obsession with communist threats everywhere served Israel well. That's probably why they dedicated a monument to his memory after his death (contained in the photo section). Piper adds that two articles about Angleton's role in the assassination written by Lisa Pease appear in the book "The Assassinations" (LA, Feral House Press, 2003).

Notes.

1. Wilbur Crane Eveland., Ropes of Sand, New York: W W Norton & Co, 1980, p.95.

2. Tom Mangold., Cold Warrior--James Jesus Angleton: The CIA's Master Spy Hunter, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991, p.307.

3. Ibid, p.362.

4. Andrew and Leslie Cockburn., Dangerous Liason: The Inside Story of the US-Israeli Covert Relationship, New York: Harper Collins, 1991, p.42.

5. Avner Cohen., Israel and the Bomb, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998, p.84.

Edited January 26, 2007 by Mark Stapleton

[Mark Stapleton]

Sorry--double trouble.

And the color mucked up again. It doesn't seem to work the way it used to. I'll refrain from using it. Only the first and last paragraphs in RED were meant to appear in RED.

Edited January 26, 2007 by Mark Stapleton

[John Dolva]

Good News

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,199...rss&feed=12

[Mark Stapleton]

Good News

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,199...rss&feed=12

I meant to comment on this before but got distracted with other threads, so...

What the hell is this about?

How is the arrest of a Klansman for a 1964 murder related to Piper's thesis?

I know you do a lot of good work, John, especially in the film/photo area. I wouldn't consider mischievously interrupting or disrupting your threads on issues which you consider important.

It may surprise you but I have spent quite a few hours getting through the Piper summary and intend to finish it in the near future (quite a few more hours work there). Your 'good news' has no bearing or relevance to the subject matter as far as I can see. If it is relevant, please explain how. If not, please do the right thing and delete your post or move it to wherever it is supposed to go. Alternetively, I can complain to the already overworked moderators and we can make a big issue out of this.

If you wish to deliberately cheapen or belittle my efforts to summarise Piper's book, you are free to embark on this mischievous path. The Forum will be your judge. See you next month.

[John Dolva]

Mark, thank you for highlighting this.

One should not forget the type of persons Piper has associated with. I understand another one (David Duke) is preparing a book on how the Jews blew up the World Trade Center.

These people have a certain voice in the talk-cirquit in some militant Islamic groupings. There's always the possibility that their justified righteous indignation at how some parts of the western world treat their people will allow themeselves to be mislead by these provocateurs. As a result many may suffer. So it is relevant and important.

As it's John's topic it's up to him to delete or not delete postings. He won't find me objecting eitherway.

Anyway I'm glad the truth of where these people have come from and how that may color their 'theories' is kept in mind.

[Sid Walker]

Your last two posts in this thread, John, indicate how low some folk will go in their determination to hijack real discussion of Piper's thesis, by diverting the 'debate' - a debate they are actually unwilling to join with rational arguments - into ad hominem slurs and suchlike.

Disappointing, John.

As they say in soccer, "Play the ball, not the man!"

If you can.

[John Dolva]

You want to 'play me', not 'the ball? Ok, Sid.

I posted a two liner on a subject that reminds of Pipers 'heritage'. Mark asked me to please explain. (where have I heard that one before?) I find his old compatriots David "the Jews blew up the trade center" Duke and their talk cirquit within the militant Muslim groupings in asia and the middle east relevant. In return you do what you accuse me of doing. Naturally I'm not interested in Pipers writings (except in a socio-political context). And it is true that that does have a lot to do with where they come from.

Are you sure that you are not doing just a little bit of what you are saying I do re 'slurring'? Why not just have your real discussion instead?

Edited February 16, 2007 by John Dolva

[Sid Walker]

You want to 'play me', not 'the ball? Ok, Sid.

I posted a two liner on a subject that reminds of Pipers 'heritage'. Mark asked me to please explain. (where have I heard that one before?) I find his old compatriots David "the Jews blew up the trade center" Duke and their talk cirquit within the militant Muslim groupings in asia and the middle east relevant. In return you do what you accuse me of doing. Naturally I'm not interested in Pipers writings (except in a socio-political context). And it is true that that does have a lot to do with where they come from.

Are you sure that you are not doing just a little bit of what you are saying I do re 'slurring'? Why not just have your real discussion instead?

Mark Stapleton has put a lot of work into compiling a summary of Final Judgment by Michael Collins Piper. It's a project in progress. I think he's done a fine job so far.

Inter alia, this summary provides Piper's critics wih an opportunity to show where he has things wrong. If Piper's book was as disreputable and unimportant as you suggest, given this is a forum with JFK experts a-plenty, one might have thought that by now Piper's thesis would be in ruins, demolished by numerous sharp criticisms and exposes of Final Judgment's factual errors.

In fact, there has been... almost complete silence.

I should acknowledge the main exception: silly and rather spiteful posts like your recent contributions - posts that have about as much to do with the book Final Judgment as the lyrics of Boris the Spider.

Edited February 16, 2007 by Sid Walker