Abraham Feinberg's FBI File

Abraham Feinberg (1908-1998) is best known lobbying for the state of Israel and organizing Harry S Truman's "whistle-stop" fundraising tour that saved his 1948 presidential campaign from certain ruin.  Feinberg's obituary hints at a role trafficking arms to Jewish fighters in Palestine.  As founder of Americans for Haganah and Foundry Associates, Inc., Feinberg was deeply involved in the Haganah arms smuggling network in the United States.  More recently, authors such as Anver Cohen and Michael Karpin document in the book "Israel and the Bomb" and "The Bomb in the Basement" Feinberg's role in undermining US nuclear nonproliferation policy.  On October 31, 1958 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion noted in his diary a conversation "he had with Abraham Feinberg, a wealthy Jewish businessman and major Democratic fund-raiser" to raise funds for Israel's nuclear weapons program among "benedictors" in the United States.  A few years later, President John F. Kennedy fought for biannual international inspections of Dimona and verifiable Israeli assurances that it was not a nuclear weapons production facility.  In 1960 Feinberg funded the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as it mounted US disinformation campaigns about Israel's nuclear weapons program.  JFK's assassination in 1963 marked the gradual end of inspections and the US nonproliferation drive toward Israel.

Covert operative for Israel achieved immunity from criminal prosecution

Nahum Amber Bernstein (1907-1983) AKA Ned Bernay, AKA Meyers, AKA, Corman was a well-connected New York lawyer and founding chairman of the Jerusalem Foundation. After graduating from law school and a stint doing investigations at a law firm, Bernstein went to work as an Office of Strategic Services (predecessor to the CIA) operative training agents for "overseas operations in enemy territory" during WWII.  In 1943 Bernstein listed his qualifications as "police methods including surveillance, cover, wire-tapping, Dictaphone, sound recordings, agent's reports, records, statistics, witness interrogation and personnel."

Bernstein soon began applying his skills in service to Israel from his New York law office (with a branch in Tel Aviv) which was placed in charge of $750,000 in Jewish Agency funding after becoming that organization's attorney.  Bernstein was involved with smuggling front company Foundry Associates, Materials for Palestine and also incorporated Americans for Haganah led by Abraham Feinberg and David Wahl.  He defended the successor publication Israel  Speaks against Justice Department demands that it register as an Israeli foreign agent.

FBI Investigates AIPAC for espionage and theft of government property in 1984

Declassified FBI files reveal a long running espionage and theft of government documents investigation targeting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Israeli embassy in Washington DC during the 1984 US-Israel Free Trade Area negotiations.The FBI uncovered allegations that an agent of the Israeli intelligence services worked undercover as a member of AIPAC's staff. A quarter century after the tainted negotiations led to passage of  US-Israel preferential trade pact, it remains the most unfavorable of all US bilateral trade agreements, producing chronic deficits, lack of US market access to Israel and ongoing theft of US intellectual property. 

New!  The US Trade Representative was ordered by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP) to declassify and release most of the stolen trade document.  Parts of it remain too sensitive to divulge.