Adolph "Al" Schwimmer
(Dates Unknown)
All but unnoticed in the Clinton pardon scandals, a presidential clemency has been granted to a near-mythic figure from Israel's past, opening a window on a shadowy world of spy operations and arms deals stretching from Israel's War of Independence to the Iran-contra scandal of the 1980s.
Among the January 20 clemency actions by the former president was an order to restore the civil rights of an American citizen convicted decades ago of smuggling arms to the newborn Jewish state, 83-year-old Adolph W. Schwimmer of Tel Aviv.
Not a household name even in his adopted Israel, Connecticut native "Al" Schwimmer is a figure of legend in Zionist circles for having run a secret and illegal American-based arms network that helped secure Israel's independence in 1948. Under his direction the network bought, borrowed and stole dozens of fighter aircraft, recruited scores of battle-trained American pilots and mechanics and shipped tons of ammunition that proved critical to the war effort. With the help of a young Defense Ministry official and close friend named Shimon Peres, Mr. Schwimmer went on to found an aviation firm that would become Israel's largest company, Israel Aircraft Industries.
Mr. Schwimmer is also a mythic figure in the intelligence community and among world arms merchants for his linchpin role in the Iran-contra affair of the mid-1980s and in fostering countless clandestine Arab-Israeli contacts over the decades.
He also introduced and worked closely with Israeli arms dealer-turned-media magnate Yaacov Nimrodi and Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, who promoted a secret Saudi Arabian proposal in the early 1980s to offer Saudi recognition of the Jewish state in exchange for guardianship rights over the Temple Mount. Also on their agenda was a grand scheme, supported by then-defense minister Ariel Sharon, to foster a coup to overthrow the regime of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.
A U.S. Army Air Corps flight engineer in World War II, Mr. Schwimmer came under FBI scrutiny in the late 1940s, when he was using a small airfield outside Prague, under the cover of a fictitious Panamanian company he had created, to ferry fighters, bombers and other war materiel to the precursor of Israel's vaunted air force.
Now-declassified FBI documents indicate that Mr. Schwimmer was suspected not only of illegally transporting weapons, some of which were allegedly stolen from U.S. Navy ordnance dumps, but of having supplied the Czech Army with a U.S. early-approach portable radar device and a trainer aircraft in return for use of their heavily guarded airfield.
Staying one jump ahead of federal investigators and export authorities, Mr. Schwimmer left his American operations for Tel Aviv in the shadow of an indictment filed against him for arms smuggling. In February 1950, the Federal District Court in Los Angeles convicted Adolph William Schwimmer of conspiracy to violate the U.S. Neutrality Act and export control laws.
Also convicted was Mr. Schwimmer's protégé in gun-running for the pre-state Haganah underground, Brooklyn-born Hank Greenspun, a decorated World War II veteran and onetime publicist for mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel's Flamingo casino. Greenspun was later to become the crusading publisher of the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, taking on the likes of redbaiting Senator Joseph McCarthy. He died in 1989. Greenspun's son Brian, a former classmate of President Clinton's at Georgetown University and now the Las Vegas Sun's president and editor, sought the pardon. Mr. Schwimmer had adamantly refused to do so for more than half a century, maintaining that an apology on his part was out of the question, as he was guilty of no wrongdoing.
It was the senior Greenspun who introduced Mr. Schwimmer to Saudi arms mogul Adnan Khashoggi. "Khashoggi was a great gambler, and he spent a lot of time in Nevada," Mr. Schwimmer told the Forward this week. "Hank thought it would be a good idea if somehow we got him introduced to Israel."
Mr. Schwimmer then arranged for the Saudi tycoon to meet Mr. Nimrodi, a former Israeli military attaché to Tehran and fellow arms dealer, as well as a host of other prominent and powerful Israelis.
Although nearly the entire Arab world was at the time formally at war with Israel, the Schwimmer-Nimrodi partnership yielded the Jewish state contacts in a range of Middle East states, with Saudi Arabia as an early focus.
"Menachem Begin was the prime minister at the time, at Camp David negotiating the treaty with Egypt along with [then-cabinet ministers] Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizman," Mr. Schwimmer recalled.
"On their way back from Washington, they were in New York, and we hoped to arrange a meeting with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who was at the time being treated in Cleveland for a heart problem. The meeting didn't work out, but Begin did send word to the crown prince through us and Khashoggi that he, like any Arab, was welcome to come pray at Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, as long as he came in peace."
Journalist Yossi Melman, an authority on Israeli intelligence, said that Mr. Nimrodi, then Mr. Schwimmer's business partner, later used the Saudi contacts to obtain a secret political document drawn up by Crown Prince Fahd. The document, known as the Fahd Plan, spoke of Saudi recognition of the Jewish state in exchange for the right to fly the Saudi flag over Al-Aqsa and other shrines on Jerusalem's Temple Mount.
But in the face of the elation and anticipation with which Mr. Nimrodi brought the plan to Mr. Begin for review, the hard-line prime minister registered only fury. Mr. Nimrodi "presented this as an enormous achievement, and Begin threw them out. Begin was angry, asking him how he could bring a plan that whittled away at Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem," Mr. Melman said.
In May 1982, a clandestine gathering brought Mr. Schwimmer, Mr. Nimrodi, Foreign Ministry Director-General David Kimche (late of the Mossad), Mr. Sharon (who had replaced Mr. Weizman as defense minister) and his wife Lily, together with Sudanese President Gaafar Numeiri at a Kenyan safari resort owned by Mr. Khashoggi.
Mr. Schwimmer said the Israelis won Numeiri's agreement to allow Ethiopian Jews safe passage through Sudan on their way to the Jewish state. In return, he said, Israel would later spirit Numeiri out of the country when his regime was toppled. "Otherwise his opponents would have killed him."
Mr. Melman said that for Mr. Khashoggi, and for Mr. Sharon and Mr. Kimche as well, much more was at stake. "They proposed to Numeiri that the Sudan become a gigantic arms cache for weapons either produced or captured by Israel. Saudi Arabia was to finance the project, aimed largely at selling weapons to exiled Iranian generals for a major coup attempt.
In the end, the Mossad foiled the plan, going behind Mr. Sharon's back to persuade the late shah's son, then in Morocco, to veto it.
Three years later, Mr. Schwimmer, now an adviser to then-Prime Minister Peres, became a principal player in the Iran-contra affair, an undercover operation disclosed in 1986, in which money from covert U.S. arms sales to Iran was to be used to finance anti-communist guerrillas in Nicaragua. Subsequent joint House-Senate hearings focused for a time on the role of Mr. Schwimmer.
In a 1987 hearing, ex-U.S. Air Force Gen. Richard Secord, one of many Iran-contra go-betweens, testified that Mr. Schwimmer paid $1 million in November 1995 to finance shipment of five loads of HAWK anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. Gen. Secord said that only one shipment was made, at a cost of about $200,000, and that Mr. Schwimmer never asked for the balance to be refunded.
Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a former National Security Council aide, then decided to spend the money to aid the financially-strapped contras, Gen. Secord continued, quipping, to the panel's surprise, "So Mr. Schwimmer made a 'Contra-bution.'"
The Iran-contra affair has left a number of mysteries unsolved to this day, among them a plane crash that took the life of Peres adviser and Irangate principal Amiram Nir in Mexico in 1988, the unexplained disappearance of $2 million from the arms sales proceeds and a 1991 break-in at the home of Nir's widow, Judy Nir-Mozes, heiress to the Yedioth Aharonot newspaper fortune. Secret documents and tapes related to the affair were stolen in the break-in.
Media reports at the time briefly hinted about a possible link to Mr. Nimrodi or Mr. Schwimmer, but investigations showed no incriminating evidence, a police spokes- woman said.
Mr. Schwimmer, for his part, took the investigations in stride, as he did the appearance of his name on the list of the January 20 pardons.
The basis of most pardon requests, Mr. Schwimmer said, "is to fill out all sorts of papers asking for forgiveness, telling the Justice Department you're sorry, you did wrong, and you regret it, and you won't do it again. I didn't feel that way, and I still don't. I didn't feel I had done anything wrong, so I never applied."
Brian Greenspun, noting that President Kennedy had pardoned his father Hank 40 years ago, said, "Al and my dad got into this thing together, and it seemed wrong that at this point in his life, his country had not recognized that what he did was right."
Shortly before his death, Hank Greenspun told his son to look after Al Schwimmer, Mr. Greenspun said. "I just saw an opportunity here."
By BRADLEY BURSTON, FORWARD CORRESPONDENT
Courtesy of: