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Episode 88: Israel (Part 3)

  • Matt Crumpton
  • 4 hours ago
  • 16 min read

In the last episode we examined James Angleton’s ties to Israel. To say that Israel had an ally in James Angleton would be a massive understatement. For those who believe Israel is behind the JFK Assassination, the close relationship with Angleton establishes an Israeli connection to actions that only someone inside the CIA, like Angleton, could take.

 

Other than Angleton, what other players are on the board in the Israel did it theory? Today, we’ll look at two of them: Meyer Lansky and Permindex. Did Meyer Lansky have involvement in the JFK Assassination through Israel? And was Permindex a permanent industrial exhibition, or was it really an entity that raised funds for assassinations? 


Lansky Revisited

 

We previously talked about Meyer Lansky in Episode 81 when we covered the mafia. Although Lanksy was Jewish, he was welcomed in to the Italian mob because of his relationship with Lucky Luciano and his know-how when it came to off-shore banking. In that same episode we covered how Lansky sought refuge in Israel from a US tax evasion charge in 1970, but was denied by Golda Meir, even though he had previously given money to Meir for Israel.[1]

 

For many people who think that Israel was involved in the JFK Assassination, Meyer Lansky looms large. So, let’s take another look at Lanksy, this time in the context of his ties to Israel. According to Lansky’s biographer, he first met Israeli agents in the summer of 1948 when his Colonial Inn gambling house hosted a fundraiser for the Haganah. Lansky gave a donation himself and reportedly told the Israeli agents, QUOTE “I’m at your service.”[2] -

 

Shortly after that, according to Michael Collins Piper, who I should note is alleged to be an Holocaust denier by the Anti Defamation League,[3] Lanksy also found out about an arms shipment leaving the New York docks to go to Arabs who were fighting against Jews in Palestine. To help the Zionists, Lansky got the dock workers to toss the Arab-bound weapons into the water. On other occasions, arms that were intended for the Arabs were hijacked by Lansky and shipped to the Haganah instead.[4]  

 

Other Lansky Ties

 

Ok, so Meyer Lanksy cares about the Zionist cause, especially on the heels of World War II. But, aside from that, there are a few other points about Lansky that are potentially notable when it comes to whether he had involvement in the JFK Assassination.

 

Through Lansky’s heroin smuggling operations, he traveled through France and met high-ranking leaders in the Corsican mafia. And it turns out that the CIA also had ties with the Corsicans. The Agency supplied weapons and money to Corsican gangs to assault Communist picket lines and harass important union officials.[5] Partially as a result of being in business with Lansky and the CIA, the French Connection heroin network thrived. Many JFK assassination researchers suspect that the Corsican mafia may have been involved in procuring an assassin in Dallas. If so, Lansky would have a direct link to the Corsicans – and so would the CIA.  

 

We also can’t forget that Meyer Lansky’s courier, Jim Braden, was arrested in the Dal-Tex Building across the street from the Schoolbook Depository immediately after the assassination. Braden, who legally changed his name from Eugene Brading two months before the assassination, told police that he was in town on business and was just looking for a phone in the Dal-Tex building.[6] What makes Braden’s presence in the Dal-Tex building even more suspicious is that he had visited HL Hunt the day before the assassination - the same day that Jack Ruby also visited Hunt’s office.[7]  And, according to Bernard Fensterwald, Jack Ruby visited the Cabana Motel, where Braden was staying around midnight the night before the assassination.

 

Additionally, in the weeks before the assassination, Braden worked out of an office suite in Room 1701 of the Marquette Building in New Orleans. During the same time, David Ferrie, who worked with Cuban Exiles, Carlos Marcello and Guy Banister, was working in the same building as Braden on the same floor, in Room 1707.[8] All of the things that are suspicious about Braden being in Dealey Plaza, are vicariously tied back to Meyer Lansky, the man Braden was working for as a courier.

 

Further, Meyer Lansky’s close associate and Las Vegas casino operator, Morris Dalitz, hired Robert Blakey, a former justice department prosecutor, to be one of his lawyers when he was a plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit in 1976.[9] The next year, Blakey oversaw the investigation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations as chief counsel.[10] And, remember, Meyer Lansky’s name is not mentioned by the HSCA’s organized crime report. I don’t know what to make of this fact, and Piper didn’t have a footnote for it. But, I file it under the category of notable, if true.

 

BCI

 

We’ll come back to Lansky’s alleged role in a bit. But, first, let’s turn our attention to the bank where Lansky laundered most of his cash on behalf of American organized crime: the Banque de Credit International (or BCI), based in Geneva, Switzerland.[11]

 

The bank was founded in 1959 by Tibor Rosenbaum,[12] who had previously served as Director of Logistics and Supply for the Mossad.[13] BCI’s board members included two very close associates of Meyer Lansky: John Pullman, Lansky’s international finance man, and Ed Levinson, the mafioso who helped finance Bobby Baker’s Carousel Motel in Ocean City, Maryland.[14]

 

The fact that two guys with an organized crime background and questionable board credentials were appointed to the BCI board speaks volumes about Lansky’s influence and, about BCI’s willingness to do business with a known criminal. Another significant depositor of the bank was the state of Israel. Ernest Japhet, who was president of the largest bank in Israel, Bank Leumi, was also on the board of BCI. [15] At one point as much as ninety percent of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s external budget flowed through BCI.[16]

 

So, BCI bank was extremely close to Israel and its leadership. But, perhaps most importantly, BCI was, according to Michael Collins Piper, one of the primary shareholders of Permindex,[17] a company that also did its banking with BCI.[18]

 

Permindex Begins

 

So, what exactly was Permindex? Ostensibly, it was an organization with the goal of fostering international trade by creating a new world trade center.[19] The name Permindex was an acronym for “Permanent Industrial Exposition.” Depending on who you ask, Permindex was either a poorly thought out international trade venture or a front company for covert operations, including assassinations.

 

The company was formed as Centro Mondiale Commerciale in Basel, Switzerland by George Mantello. Mantello was a textile manufacturer in Romania. He escaped to Switzerland in the lead up to World War II where he went to work for the Consulate of El Salvador in Geneva. While working at the Salvadorian consulate, he issued thousands of travel documents to Jewish refugees – a courageous and laudable act that undoubtedly saved lives.[20]

 

A CIA memo about Mantello from 1959 says that two well-placed sources said that he QUOTE “was closely connected with the Israeli Intelligence Services.” But, because Mantello helped many Jewish refugees escape, it is not necessarily nefarious that he would have connections with the Israeli Intelligence Service.[21]

 

Eventually, the objective of creating a world trade center in Basel, Switzerland was changed to creating one in Rome. The reason for that move is a little cloudy. The official account is that Mantello and his backers were simply not successful in raising the money in Switzerland and then decided to move the project to Rome.[22]

 

Was Permindex kicked out of Switzerland?

 

The unofficial account comes from what New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison told Playboy Magazine’s editors off the record in 1967. He said QUOTE “Permindex was dissolved by the Swiss government in 1961 on the grounds that it was a conduit for funds to the OAS, the neo fascist secret army then struggling to keep Algeria French and overthrow DeGaulle. At the height of the OAS’s activities, French government officials such as Andre Malraux, charged the group was secretly supported by the CIA, which wished to see DeGaulle deposed.”[23] In support of Garrison’s claim, a February 1, 1957 State Department Dispatch from the American Consulate in Basel said that Permindex’s director, George Mantello was QUOTE “expelled from Switzerland by the Swiss Authorities.”[24]

 

On the other hand, a later State Department Dispatch from Basel on April 9, 1958 mentioned the same allegations against Mantello and said QUOTE “As far as the consulate is concerned, none of these charges have been proved.” But, there was a follow up dispatch on May 21st that said Mantello QUOTE “was once threatened with expulsion from Switzerland for illegal dealings in gold.”[25]

 

The next week the State Department in Basel, who was apparently very interested in Permindex, reflected on the failure of Permindex, which was never able to get off the ground in Switzerland, saying QUOTE “Permindex collapsed principally for one reason: it had no real money to start with and all efforts to raise some failed. Early in the game, backers of the scheme let word be spread that there was substantial American capital in the venture, but they politely declined to disclose names or the amount of holdings. The consulate was assured reliably that there was never American money worth mentioning in the scheme.”[26]  

 

So, was Permindex kicked out of Switzerland? The answer is no, if you are looking strictly at primary documents. The answer is yes, if you take Jim Garrison’s word for it. My question, for which I couldn’t find a great answer, is ‘why did George Mantello want to start Permindex in the first place?’ It’s not like he had a background in international trade. Why would a bona fide World War II hero like Mantello care so much about an international trade exhibit? In particular, why would Mantello continue to care about it’s success in Rome after the project never got of the ground in Basel?

 

Permindex and Bloomfield

 

As we discussed in Episode 81, Meyer Lanksy helped fight the Germans in World War II by working with the Office of Naval Intelligence to watch out for Nazi infiltrators at loading docs, which Lansky controlled.[27] This plan to secure the Eastern seaboard against Nazi sabotage with mafia help, which became known as Operation Underworld, was led by British Col. William Stephenson.[28]

 

Stephenson’s top aide for Operation Underworld was Canadian Louis Bloomfield, who also served as the attorney for the Canadian bootlegging Bronfman family who were associated with mob activities during the Prohibition era.[29] Perhaps more importantly, Bloomfield also worked for the Sonneborn Institute, an entity that provided weapons and money to the Haganah. At Sonneborn Institute, Bloomfield coordinated the smuggling of guns, bombs, and ammo to the Haganah.[30] Bloomfield was also the director of the Israeli-Canadian Maritime League and chair of the Histadrut Campaign in Canada.[31] Bloomfield  also regularly did legal work for Permindex and its shareholders.

 

Zooming out, [32]  the big picture here is that Lansky put his deposits in the bank at BCI and had influence over BCI through his two directors: Pullman and Levinson. And BCI, according to Michael Collins Piper, was one of the largest shareholders of Permindex. You may be asking yourself – who cares? Why does this matter? Well, where it gets really interesting is when we look at the list of the board members of Permindex, we find the name of Clay Shaw. 

 

Clay Shaw and Paesa Sera

 

On March 1, 1967, New Orleans District attorney Jim Garrison arrested and charged businessman and CIA asset, Clay Shaw, with conspiring to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Three days later Italian newspaper Paesa Sera published a story alleging that Clay Shaw was linked to the CIA through his involvement as a board member of Centro Mondiale Commerciale (or CMC), the company that owned Permindex.[33] We learned in Episode 52 that Clay Shaw was an asset of the CIA who was regularly in touch with the Agency.[34] The declassified documents that we are aware of about Shaw’s relationship with the CIA show that he was focused on gathering intelligence about what he saw during his international travels. Shaw provided information to the CIA on 33 different occasions.[35]

 

So, what exactly did the Paesa Sera newspaper say? For starters, it said that CMC, was QUOTE “a creature of the CIA, set up as a cover for the transfer to Italy of CIA-FBI funds for illegal political-espionage activities.”[36] When the CIA became aware of these claims after they were published in Pravda, the Soviet state paper, an internal memo was drafted which said QUOTE “It appears that all of the Pravda charges are untrue, except that there was a CIA relationship” with Shaw.[37]

 

Critics of Paesa Sera have noted that it was a left-wing Italian paper that had reported disinformation about the United States in the past, and that it the same story was echoed by Soviet outlets, like Pravda, a communist paper.[38] The argument that, “if they’re communists then everything negative that they say about the US must be a lie” is not typically one that would convince me. Enemies can tell the truth about each other. Sometimes, enemies are the only ones who do tell the truth. More important than the political leanings of Peasa Sera, is the sourcing of the claims in the article. My biggest concern is that I don’t know where the newspaper got its information from. And, some of the information in the paper was provably wrong. For example, Louis Bloomfield was the attorney for Permindex who had no ownership of it – not a banker who owned 50% of the company – as Paesa Sera reported.[39]

 

Files on Permindex

 

So, what documentary evidence exists to help our understanding of Clay Shaw and Permindex? We have a copy of the letter from the CMC board of directors to Shaw from July 26, 1958 notifying him that he had unanimously been elected to the board.[40] A few months earlier, George Mantello and his son Enrico had met with Shaw in New Orleans to see the International Trade Mart in person.[41]

 

The president of Permindex was Ferenc Nagy, who had been the president of Hungary and moved to the US in 1947 when Soviet backed communists held his son hostage and forced him to resign.[42] In 1959, after Shaw was already on the CMC Board, Nagy contacted the CIA to let them know that he would be willing to place an American businessman on the board of Permindex, or to place a CIA agent on the staff of Permindex. He also invited the CIA to buy equity in the company (which is another way of saying he was asking the CIA for money). The November 1959 internal CIA memo discussing Nagy’s offers noted that the exhibit halls of Permindex had just opened in Rome and were expected to be in full operation by the Spring of 1960. The memo came from Cord Meyer, who was then the chief of the CIA’s International Organizations Division (also known as IOD). Notably, Meyer described Farenc Nagy as a QUOTE “covert associate of IOD”.[43]  

 

The Commercial Staff of the CIA passed on the Permindex opportunity, primarily because the trade center in Rome had no planned relationships with Soviet Bloc countries, which made putting a CIA official on the staff much less helpful to the Agency.[44] A later 1967 CIA memo which analyzes the earlier back and forth about Nagy and Permindex injects some uncertainty into the issue, saying QUOTE “The documents did not indicate whether or not CIA decided to use Permindex.”[45]

 

In April of 1959, Clay Shaw’s friend, New York Times reporter, Ann Carnahan, wrote him to ask for details about Permindex because she had been approached by Permindex to do some public relations work. Shaw responded QUOTE “Although I am a member of the board of directors … I am afraid I don’t know too much about them.” He did not answer Carnahan’s questions in his letter. Instead, he noted that he would be in New York to visit her soon and could answer more questions then, in person.[46]

 

In an October 1960 letter responding to someone who offered to help to recruit tenants for the World Trade Center, Shaw said QUOTE “As for Permindex, my relation with them is a rather specialized one. They are anxious for the International Trade Mart here and the trade center in Rome to work together, and to that end, invited me to join their board of directors, which I have done. However, I am not too familiar with their day to day operations.”[47]

 

In 1962, the Permindex World Trade Center in Rome was forced to close because it couldn’t secure enough tenants.[48]

 

Permindex and OAS

 

Michael Collins Piper and other authors allege that when Permindex wasn’t failing at operating a trade center, it was involved in numerous assassination attempts against French President, Charles De Gaulle. Several articles mention a report from the French Intelligence service, SDECE which says that Permindex laundered money into the OAS accounts to help finance the assassination attempts on De Gaulle.[49] Many authors also claim that Guy Banister’s office in New Orleans served as the American headquarters for French OAS mercenaries,[50] which would not be a huge surprise given that all of the munitions from the Schlumberger raid were stored at Guy Banister’s office, as further discussed in Episode 47.

 

The problem with this OAS claim is that no one has ever been able to find the underlying SDECE reports or any proof that they existed.[51] This doesn’t mean that it is categorically untrue that Permindex had any involvement with OAS. There’s just not much documentary evidence to support it.

 

However, Permindex president, Ferenc Nagy, was a friend of Jacques Soustelle, who had been the Governor of Algeria under Charles De Gaulle. Soustelle split with De Gaulle over Algerian independence and became a backer of the OAS. In the early 1960s, Soustelle traveled to Washington to meet with CIA officers. According to Andrew Tully in his book CIA: The Inside Story, Soustelle was successful in obtaining assistance from the CIA to attempt assassinate Charles De Gaulle – Kennedy’s ally. This was reinforced by findings of the Church Committee.[52]

 

On top of the alleged Permindex ties to French OAS, the company also had at least one connection to Propaganda Due, the Italian right-wing, anti-communist criminal organization and secret society that exerted significant influence on Italian public life, and had ties to the American CIA.[53] According to Italian author, Michele Metta, Permindex met in the same office building as Propaganda Due’s leadership – the office of Roberto Ascarelli.[54]

 

PERMINDEX CONCLUSION

 

So, what are we to make of Permindex? Was it a failed business venture that happened to have some CIA affiliated jet-setters involved, or was it a sinister money laundering scheme for covert operations?

 

Putting all of this together, the theory advanced by Michael Collins Piper is one based largely on associations and implications. It goes like this: Meyer Lansky was aligned with Israel on its geopolitical policies. He put most of his money in the BCI bank, where he had two board members and which was also used by Israel and was started by Tibor Rosenbaum, who had been a Mossad officer. Two CIA assets, Clay Shaw and Ferenc Nagy were on the board of Permindex, which used the BCI bank, and BCI, according to Piper, had an ownership interest in Permindex. The lawyer for Permindex, Louis Bloomfield, was also very involved in causes related to the State of Israel. When we throw the Paese Sera story on top of those connections, the implication is that Permindex may have been used as a vehicle to kill President Kennedy, just like it was allegedly used to try to kill Charles De Gaulle.

 

The challenge is that many of the worst allegations against CMC/Permindex do not seem to have any documentary support. Yes, we have the Paese Sera newspaper, but they don’t disclose their sources, and they are from a communist leaning paper in the context of the cold war, which further complicates matters.

 

I don’t believe that the CMC/Permindex allegations have been debunked. But they are certainly not proven by any means. With something like the assassination of a president through an international cut-out we wouldn’t expect to find a smoking gun document anyway. So, the lack of documentary evidence does not mean that the thing didn’t happen. It just means it is much harder to prove it, if it did.

 

NEXT TIME ON SOLVING JFK: We wrap up our study of Israel’s alleged involvement in the JFK Assassination by looking at the Mossad, Mickey Cohen, and one of the men behind the financing of Oliver Stone’s JFK: Arnon Milchan.

 


[1] Solving JFK Episode 81

[2] Robert Lacey, Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life, at 232.

[4] Piper at 86.

[5] Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, at 60-61.

[8] Bernard Fensterwald and the Committee To Investigate Assassinations, Coincidence or Conspiracy?, at 288.

[9] Piper at 127.

[11] Hank Messick, Secret File, at 248-249.

[12] Piper at 150.

[14] Solving JFK Episode 72

[16] Jim Hougan, Spooks: The Haunting of America – The Private Use of Secret Agents, at 172; see also The New York Times, April 9, 1975. (The New York Times, in describing BCI, reported that QUOTE “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 Perez …. called Rosenbaum and told him that Israel needed 7 million [dollars] within 24 hours for her national security, Rosenbaum found the money overnight. He did not ask for it but received a commission of $500,000 for his Services.)

[17] Piper at 197.

[18] Piper at 187.

[31] Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, at 792.

[32] https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/clay-shaw-in-italy-part-2 (We mentioned briefly in episode 52 that Jules Kimble said he once took a plane trip with Clay Shaw that David Ferrie piloted from New Orleans to Montreal, Canada, sometime in late 1961 or early 1962. Ferrie, Clay Shaw, and Kimble stayed overnight in Montreal. Shaw was gone all night and rejoined them the next day. As we’ll soon see, Clay Shaw has at least one link to Louis Bloomfield, through their mutual involvement with Permindex. We don’t know if the Montreal trip brought to light by Kimble was to see Louis Bloomfield, given that the trip itself is highly disputed, and does not have a ton of support aside from Kimble’s story.)

[34] Solving JFK Podcast, Episode 52

[37] Memo for Chief, CI/R&A, “Trace Results on Persons Connected with Centro Mondiale Commerciale,” 24 March 1967; and “Subject: Clay L. Shaw,” Enclosure 21; both in Microfilm Box 23, HSCA/CIA Collection, JFK NARA.

[50] See, e.g., Piper at 201.

 

 

Lansky Controlled Marcello?

 

Despite the sources that we covered during the series on the Mafia stating that Carlos Marcello was the most respected boss within La Cosa Nostra, including FBI agent Patrick Collins, who investigated Marcello, authors like Michael Collins Piper refer to Marcello as QUOTE “Meyer Lansky’s Louisiana henchman”.[54]

 

In support of that idea, Piper first quotes Lansky’s former partner, Lucky Luciano, who said QUOTE “Meyer Lanksy, my old partner, and a Jew, would wind up the real boss of bosses of all the Italians and the Jews and without a single fuckin vote on the council.” But Luciano was close to Lanksy so he may just be hyping him up and he’s making that statement in 1961 when he had been living in Italy since 1947.[54] So, Luciano’s point about Lanksy’s status in La Cosa Nostra, was not the most up to date information.  Piper further points out that, according to organized crime reporter, Hank Messick, Lansky gave Marcello a franchise for the Algiers section of town where he could keep two thirds of the slot machine profits himself. By 1940, Marcello had 250 slot machines there. Lansky also was the real boss of the Beverly Club, which was known as Carlos Marcello’s personal fiefdom.[54]

 

The reality of the relationship between Lansky and Marcello is probably somewhere in between what Piper argues and what Marcello biographers have laid out. Lansky was a little older than Marcello and was more powerful than him in the 1940s, without a doubt. But, that basic assessment ignores the reality of the power dynamics as we get closer to 1963 when Marcello had grown much more powerful. Did he owe Lanksy favors? Sure. Was he working for Lansky as Piper says? I have not sees evidence to support that idea. 

 

 
 
 

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