Documents

Adolph "Al" Schwimmer was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1917.  He worked as a TWA flight engineer before being approached by the untouchable Jewish Agency paymaster Nahum "Ned" Bernstein to acquire aircraft for the fledgling state of Israel.  The WWII veteran established front companies to acquire war surplus aircraft and military engines and smuggle them to Palestine.  Schwimmer was convicted of violating the U.S. Neutrality Act but received no prison time because the judge believed other, much higher smuggling network figures who had not been indicted, were more to blame.

In 1951 at the invitation of David Ben-Gurion, Schwimmer returned to Israel to establish the state-owned military industrial corporation Israel Aircraft Industries. He led the company for 25 years.  In the 1980s Schwimmer joined the Reagan administration's covert Iran-Contra operation as a middle man selling U.S. military equipment to Iran in order to finance the Nicaraguan contras.  In 2001 President Bill Clinton pardoned Schwimmer after intense lobbying by the son of another convicted smuggler for Israel, Hank Greenspun. Schwimmer died on June 10, 2011.*

Schwimmer's partial FBI file required multiple appeals and more than three years to release.  It reveals the FBI's dawning understanding about how Israeli use of Americans as both front-organization operatives and to provide cover from the top echelons of America's public and private sector would make effective counter-intelligence almost impossible.   "...The Israelis may use fictitious business fronts in carrying out their intelligence and related operations...When such firms are discovered, every effort should be made to determine whether they are legitimate business establishments or fronts for covert Israeli operations, " stated one 1951 report.  The report was made as the incredible breadth of the Jewish Agency's smuggling network became evident. Paying off witnesses and greasing politicians became part and parcel of "quashing" investigations into Israeli espionage in America.

The FBI file reveals missed counter-intelligence opportunities.  Although an American AIA employee, threatened with death for insufficient loyalty to Israel, tipped off the FBI that another American—Ehud Kadish—was involved in Israeli missile development, not until 2008 would the FBI collar "America's second Jonathan Pollard"—brother Ben-Ami Kadish—for missile espionage against America.

Release notes:  On 11/30/2011 the FBI acknowledged receipt of IRmep's FOIA request for Schwimmer's FBI file but claimed a month later it could not locate the material. On March 1, 2012 the Justice Department Office of Information Policy ordered the FBI to conduct another search.  By August the FBI indicated it had located 554 pages of material.  Although most of the following files reveal the FBI declassification was finalized in 2013, the actual release (FOIA release letter) did not occur until 1/28/2015 after additional requests for the material.  Some "Other Government Agency" pages are still missing.