Robert Kennedy Tried to Make the American Zionist Council's AIPAC Register as a Foreign Agent

Sen. Fulbright "uncovered a massive network of financial 'conduits' moving funds directed by the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem to lobby startup groups across the United States."

AIPAC has spent more than $100 million on the 2024 campaigns. The White House recently condemned Rep. Cori Bush for attacking AIPAC after the pro-Israel group spent $9 million to unseat her. In 2022, The American Prospect reported: “AIPAC Has Taken Over the Democratic Primary Process”

CNN now blares: “Biden administration announces major actions to tackle Russian efforts to influence 2024 election.” Reuters proclaims: “Russia, China, Iran trying to influence US election, intelligence official says.” See my past piece “"Russiagate’ Was Israelgate”.

Grant Smith is author of How Israel Made AIPAC: The Most Harmful Foreign Influence Operation in America and other related books. He was interviewed earlier this year about “Why AIPAC is still Israel’s foreign agent.”

In 2009, he wrote the piece “The Kennedys vs Israel’s Lobby” published by Pulse. The piece as a standalone only seems to only be available via WayBackMachine now, so I have republished it below. He summarizes the issue in this video from a few years ago:

In his talk, he highlights his tweet to one of RFK’s pro-Israel children: “Your father's Justice Department told @AIPAC to register as an Israeli foreign agent under FARA on 11/21/1962. That was when AIPAC operated as the lobbying division of the American Zionist Council. RFK tried to engage, AIPAC didn't comply & U.S. suffers.”

Grant’s piece from 2009:

Details of the JFK-RFK duo’s effort to register the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) parent organization, the American Zionist Council (AZC) as an Israeli foreign agent were shrouded in mystery until declassified in mid-2008.

Between 1962 and 1963 Senator J.W. Fulbright uncovered a massive network of financial “conduits” moving funds directed by the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem to [Israeli] lobby startup groups across the United States.  Even as JFK attempted to place Israel’s Dimona nuclear weapons program under US inspection, RFK ordered the AZC to openly register and disclose all of its foreign funded lobbying activity in the United States.

The DOJ and AZC fought their secret battle as Fulbright’s hearings disclosed the immense proportions of the Israel lobby effort.  Nathan B. Lenvin, a DOJ attorney who had been after AIPAC’s founder Isaiah Kenen since 1951 to continue registering as a foreign agent after he left the employ of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs took copious notes of the many meetings, AZC’s offers of limited registration and the DOJ’s counter offers.

But the law enforcement effort ended in tragedy.  JFK’s assassination … in Dallas meant RFK’s political cover for the prosecution was gone and his days at the DOJ were numbered.  He left to run for a New York senate seat.  In 1965 the DOJ allowed the AZC to file a highly redacted and non-standardized FARA declaration in secret.  The AZC then shut down and transferred lobbying activity to AIPAC, which refused to register.

The anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism wrote to RFK about their fight against the American Zionist Council:

I had excerpted this article by Smith in a longer piece on the Kennedys, but thought it important to highlight this in a separate posting.