While millions of Americans have watched his films, such as Pretty Woman and JFK, very few know that Arnon Milchan is a "best friend" of Shimon Peres (born Szymon Perski in Wi?iewo, Poland) the current Israeli president and godfather of Israel's nuclear arsenal.

Shimon Peres is "widely regarded as the architect of Israel's assumed nuclear weapons programme," the BBC reported when he was elected president of Israel in June 2007. Peres was elected to replace the incumbent Israeli president Moshe Katsav who was forced to take a leave of absence after being accused of rape and other sexual offences. (Milchan is also good friends of Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu.)

Milchan's 40-year friendship with Peres, the man who oversaw the construction of Israel's nuclear weapon program is key to understanding Milchan's career as an undercover operative, weapons procurer, and film producer.

The fact that Milchan, the Hollywood producer, has been Israel's "foremost weapons procurer" for decades, brokering deals for "everything from nuclear triggers to rocket fuel to guidance systems," is seldom mentioned in the U.S. news media.

This is probably due to the fact that Milchan is also a "best friend" and business partner of Rupert Murdoch. He is also a close friend and business partner of Levin (Warner Brothers) and Eisner.

"I consider him one of my best friends," Milchan said about Murdoch, "and I think vice versa. We're having a ball. He's a very cool guy."

"Kingpins like Warner Bros.' Gerald Levin and Disney's Michael Eisner are quick to return his calls," the American Jewish journalist Ann Louise Bardach wrote about Milchan in her article "The Last Tycoon" in April 2000.

In 1997, after a six-year relationship with Warner Bros., Milchan became a partner with Murdoch, selling him 20 percent of his film company, New Regency Productions, for $200 million. Murdoch also invested another $30 million in Regency Television. Today, Murdoch's equity partnership with Milchan is close to 50 percent.

"Milchan's deal with Fox also assures him a level of financial security," Bardach wrote. "With Murdoch's $200 million investment and a subsequent $600 million line of credit from a team of banks led by Chase Manhattan, Milchan is well into mogul territory.

"Milchan's tony offices occupy most of Building 12, right next door to the Executive Building on the Fox lot," Bardach wrote. "And it is from this seat of power that Milchan is building an entertainment empire that could one day rival Murdoch's."

THE MILCHAN INFLUENCE

The Israeli influence in films and news media has profoundly affected the quality of news reporting and entertainment. Israeli attitudes and ideas are now disseminated through national media outlets which reach the entire U.S. population on a daily basis. Israeli-made films often reveal hints or clues about actual crimes or criminal plans the Israeli producers are aware of.

One such project, The Lone Gunman, produced by Milchan's "best friend" Rupert Murdoch, had a uncanny resemblance to the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Was this Milchan's influence?

The Milchan-Murdoch partnership in television production may be key to understanding the genesis of the plot of the pilot episode of this short-lived television series. In the first episode a passenger airliner is hijacked by remote control and flown toward the World Trade Center. Disaster is averted at the last minute by over-riding the computer program that has hijacked the plane.

The Lone Gunman, produced by Rupert Murdoch in 2000, revealed an extremely uncanny prescience of 9-11. During the same year it was made, Milchan was producing two television series in collaboration with Fox Television: Roswell, which aired on Warner Brothers network, and Malcolm in the Middle, which aired on Fox. The Lone Gunman pilot episode aired on FOX Television in March 2001.

Given the long, close, and extensive collaboration between Murdoch and Milchan it seems fair to ask: Was Arnon Milchan the original source of the plotline for the Lone Gunman?

Why were the people involved in the production of this episode not investigated in the media? Why did the media ignore its own uncanny prescience, the Lone Gunman episode, which mirrored reality 6 months later?

Was the similarity between the Murdoch-produced show and reality too close for comfort? Was it too uncomfortable to discuss the origin of the idea for the show? Apparently so.

In Milchan's highly-controversial film JFK (1991), directed by Oliver Stone, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is ascribed to conspirators within the U.S. military-industrial complex. Whose idea was this? Why is Arnon Milchan's own criminal connection with Itzhak Rabin, who was in Dallas on the day Kennedy was shot, not an issue here?

In his futuristic film Brazil (1985), directed by Terry Gilliam, terrorist explosions go off randomly in cafes for no apparent reason, very much like the seemingly senseless terrorism that plagues occupied Iraq. Is this Milchan's influence?

"Anyone closely associated with Peres pretty well must be satanic," Barry Chamish, a Canadian-Israeli wrote, "but Milchan produced a film that shows he has insider information. Chamish advises his readers to watch The Devil's Advocate with Al Pacino to "understand the implication."

"Milchan runs his company like a family business. Heading up New Regency Productions for him is his childhood friend David Matalon, whose parents were best friends with Milchan's," Bardach wrote. "Daughter Alexandra [Milchan-Lambert] is vice president of production in Los Angeles."

Matalon has served as president and CEO of New Regency Productions since 1995.

In 1986, Matalon, an Israeli co-founder of Tri-Star pictures, released a film entitled Iron Eagle, in which the aerial combat scenes were filmed entirely with the Israeli Air Force. The plot of this film is about how a few teenagers are able to steal U.S. military aircraft, codes, and information from under the noses of the military brass and run an entire military operation in which they bomb Libya without the knowledge of the military command. This film gives some indication of the kind of projects, and ideas, the Israeli military has collaborated on with their fellow Israelis in Hollywood.

THE SECRETIVE MOGUL

"Averse to publicity and little known outside Hollywood" is how Arnon Milchan's biography begins.

"My idea of a good profile is no profile," Milchan told Bardach. Murdoch, Levin, and Eisner have obviously respected the Israeli's wish, but why would a Hollywood mogul not want to be known to the public?

"Arnon Milchan has kept his secrets to himself," Bardach wrote.

Indeed, very little is known about Milchan, Israel's super weapons agent, except that he spends more time in Tel Aviv and France than he does in his office on the 20th Century Fox lot in Los Angeles, according to Bardach. Now, why would a Hollywood movie producer spend more time in Tel Aviv, where no movies are being made, than in Hollywood?

POLISH ZIONIST ROOTS

Milchan was born on December 6, 1944 on the Zionist settlement of Rehovot, in what was then Palestine, according to Current Biography (2000). Rehovot, one of the earliest Zionist settlements, was founded in 1890 by Polish and Russian Jews, one of whom was Milchan's paternal grandfather. Rehovot has a street and a neighborhood named "Milchen", no doubt in memory of his grandfather.

"My family's been there for 500 years," Milchan told Bardach. "My grandfather was a very close friend of President [Chaim]Weizmann." Oddly, Bardach does not provide the name of his grandfather who was "a very close friend" of Israel's first president. Likewise, she does not give the name of the ancestors Milchan proudly claims have lived in Palestine for 500 years.

"Milchan's father was an enviable success story himself, having laid the sprinklers that irrigated Israel," Bardach wrote. "Later, he would handle some of Israel's lucrative military contracts, according to his son."

Bardach continues:

"However, it was young Milchan who put the company on the map internationally, after his father's sudden death. Following a spot of schooling in London and Geneva, where he excelled in soccer and tennis, Milchan dropped out and returned to Israel. Soon, he struck gold. By marketing a newly discovered nutrient that quadrupled citrus production, he brought his company stratospheric sales throughout the world.

"This is a man who made his fortune by screwing with nature," says screenwriter Shawn Slovo, who began her career as Milchan's secretary in 1977. "He's the Israeli who made the desert bloom. Amazing when you think about it. He could have retired at the age of 22."

Instead, like a kid racing around the Monopoly board, Milchan gobbled up another half dozen businesses--including electronics, chemicals, aerospace and plastics. Still in his early twenties, he met the Shah of Iran and reportedly talked the wily Persian into dozens of contracts, one to build much of Tehran's airport."

When one considers that Arnon Milchan, in his early twenties, was among the founders of Israel's Labor Party in the 1960s with Shimon Peres, Moshe Dayan, and Teddy Kolleck, then one can appreciate that his contracts in Iran and his career in arms dealing and Hollywood have been done with the active collaboration of the Mossad.

"I'M AN AGENT"

Milchan is a "go-between for American weapons manufacturers and the Israeli government, thus playing a major role in the strengthening of the Israeli military," according to Current Biography (2000).

"Throughout the 1970s, '80s and even up until the Gulf War in 1991, Milchan was Israel's foremost weapons procurer, brokering deals for such prized superweapons as the Hawk missile and the famous Scud-foil of the Gulf War, the Patriot," Bardach wrote.

"At different times in his career, his Israeli company, Milchan Brothers, has represented arms manufacturers such as Raytheon, North American Rockwell, Beechcraft, Bell Helicopter and Magnavox. Or, as Milchan downplays it, "there were a bunch of them." Nevertheless, he bristles at being called an arms dealer. "I'm their rep in Israel," he says emphatically. "I get a fee, a commission. I'm not even the buyer. I'm an agent."

"What we do is send my people to the United States," Milchan told Bardach, "so we know what these guys are talking about, and you go back and say to the buyer, 'I think this guy has some interesting stuff. Would you meet with him?' And then you arrange a meeting with the head of the [Israeli] air force and the head of this and the head of that."

In 1992, Milchan was described by the Jerusalem Post as being "among the handful of Hollywood moguls with the muscle and money to single-handedly give the go-ahead for a new movie project. The Mossad is undoubtedly the source of much of Milchan's "muscle and money."

Who pays Milchan's commissions? Whether the commission is paid by the weapon's vendor or by the state of Israel, the money going to Milchan is American money. He is paid either by the company or from the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars provided to Israel for weapons every year. In this way, Milchan, Mossad's man in the middle, has been enriched by U.S. weapons sales to Israel.

"BIG STAR TO RAYTHEON"

In 1975, for example, Milchan reportedly received an improper $300,000 commission paid by a Raytheon subsidiary for the sale of Hawk missiles.

Raytheon makes the Patriot and Hawk missile systems and key components of the Global Hawk. Of particular interest is Raytheon's Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) which allow remote operators to pilot the Global Hawk from "thousands of miles away." This is the kind of technology that is thought to have been used in the terror attacks of 9-11, at the Pentagon in particular.

Terry Gilliam told Bardach that he'll never forget a visit to the Paris Air Show with Milchan during the filming of Baron Munchausen. "It was wonderful to see how the whole arms business worked," Gilliam said. "Arnon was very psyched about the video games. He brought his son with him, who was then a teenager, to play the games, which can replicate the destruction of the planet. He took me to the Raytheon booth, and it was all showmanship. He was obviously a big star to Raytheon."

"Growing up, I would read that he was an arms dealer; he was in the Mossad, and he was a movie producer," his daughter Alexandra told Bardach. She is married to a Scott Lambert, an agent with William Morris in Beverley Hills and graduate of American University in Washington, D.C. (Lambert happens to share the same name of a former Director of Manufacturing Systems at Raytheon.)

MODUS OPERANDI

When one looks at Milchan's career as an Israeli agent who bought media outlets with dirty money one should consider that this may be the modus operandi he has employed to gain influence and outlets in the U.S. media market. Money laundering could explain his ability to make huge deals and control media networks - and his desire for secrecy.

"He's extremely powerful because he brings money to the table," journalist Anita Busch wrote. "He's unique in that way. He's got a credit line that's astronomical, like, you know, almost a billion dollars."

Terry Gilliam, the director of Brazil, wondered where the money came from. "Arnon can be great, but when it comes to money there's something - I don't know - bits just don't seem to connect."

Charles McKeown, a film writer, had a hard time getting paid by the billion dollar Israeli. "You just never know whether he was telling the truth or not," McKeown said. "The kind of deals he was in, the level of finance and the way he operated, seemed to me like a world upside down. I felt we were dealing with a sort of dangerous, shady quality."

MONEY LAUNDERER

In 1975, the Israeli government headed by Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres recruited Milchan to launder money from South Africa. Milchan "has admitted laundering some of the more than $100 million spent by the South Africans during the 1970s in an attempt to improve the white government's image abroad," according to the authors of The Iran-Contra Connection.

Because both Israel and South Africa were ostracized in the 1970s, "The money laundering was part of the two countries' plan to buy newspapers and other media in various parts of the world," his biography reads.

"The Rabin government recruited ... Milchan to launder cash ... to purchase influential publications," Andrew and Leslie Cockburn wrote in their book Dangerous Liaison.

THE MIDDLEMAN

Milchan told Bardach he was asked by "prominent Israelis if 'we can use your companies to make deals to buy newspapers.' I said, 'Sure. It sounds like fun.' Basically, I was used as a middleman."

A citizen of both Israel and Monaco, he is said to control 30 companies in 17 countries, profiting in everything from film production to the weapons trade. But how does one man control 30 companies in 17 countries? Clearly there must be an entire team behind these businesses. Milchan's team could be called Team Mossad.

"I'll say it in my own words," Milchan told Bardach. "I love Israel, and any way I can help Israel, I will. I'll do it again and again. If you say I'm an arms dealer, that's your problem. In Israel, there is practically no business that does not have something to do with defense."

Milchan also funds Christian Zionist movements. Milchan has reportedly contributed significantly to the Christian Coalition, an organization started by the Reverend Pat Robertson, a staunch supporter of Israel.

He also underwrites the Israeli Network which transmits Israeli television programs to the United States and Canada via cable and satellite.

Milchan is also an owner of the Israeli television station known as Channel 10. The other owners are Ronald Lauder, who like Milchan owned about 25 percent, and Josef (Yossi) Maiman, who owns 51 percent and who has been with Channel 10 since it was founded in 2003. Rupert Murdoch bought 9 percent of Channel 10 stock from Milchan and Lauder in 2006.

(Maiman and Lauder are both linked to the Mossad and 9-11. For more on Maiman read "The Great Game: The War For Caspian Oil And Gas." Information about Lauder and 9-11 is in "Mossad - The Israeli Connection To 9-11")

SMUGGLING NUCLEAR TRIGGERS

Milchan should have been busted in 1985 for smuggling trigger devices for nuclear bombs when a business associate, Richard Kelly Smyth, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on charges of smuggling 810 krytrons to Israel. Because krytrons are used in the detonators of nuclear weapons, they are called triggers and their export is tightly regulated.

In 1973, Smyth started a company called Milco International, Inc., financed, according to the Washington Post, by Milchan, hence its name. Up to 80 percent of Milco's business was reportedly with Milchan and Israel.

In 1980, the federal indictment asserted, Smyth and Milco sent 610 krytrons to Israel without the necessary licenses, plus another 200 in 1982.

The 1985 indictment identified the Israeli buyers of the nuclear triggers as Heli Trading Ltd. and Milchan Brothers, two of Milchan's Israel-based companies. Federal authorities told NBC News in 1993 that Milchan also shared in the profits derived from the sales.

Announcement of the indictments came four days after the Israeli Defense Ministry, reacting to news of the grand jury probe, admitted that it had the devices, known as krytrons.

The krytrons were shipped between 1979 and 1983 to an Israeli firm under contract to the government for defense work. The Israeli Ministry of Defense returned only 469 of the krytrons, and Smyth vanished a week before he was to appear for trial.

PROTECTING ISRAEL

Robert C. Bonner, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, refused to comment on questions about whether the Israeli government had been involved in the illegal actions.

State Department spokesman Edward Djerejian said, "I can only note that the indictment does not mention any Israeli citizen."

Djerejian added that the United States "has expressed its serious concern to the Israeli government about this alleged violation of U.S. law" and had been assured that Israel will cooperate with the continuing U.S. investigation "to the full extent permitted under Israeli law."

"Smyth's disappearance, and the unwillingness of Israeli officials to cooperate with U.S. investigators on the case, left federal authorities unable to proceed," Robert Windrem of NBC News reported in July 2001.

Although Milchan is not mentioned in the indictment, a Milco employee, Gretel Siler, who identified herself as corporate treasurer of Milco, told The Washington Post that Milchan had been associated with Milco in various export transactions and had been involved in purchasing the krytrons from the manufacturer, EG&G of Wellesley, Mass.

Milchan denied being involved in the $60,000 krytron deal, but told "60 Minutes" (CBS) that he had allowed the Israeli government to use his companies as conduits for trading with the United States.

"I'm not saying I'm an innocent person - but in this specific case, I knew nothing about it," Milchan told Frank Rose of Premiere magazine. In any case, Milchan was never charged in the case.

Robert Mainhardt, a nuclear scientist and former director of Milco, told "60 Minutes" that he had resigned after Milchan had asked him to obtain advanced nuclear reactor designs and a supply of uranium hexachloride, which is used in the enrichment of bomb-grade uranium.

Mainhardt's fellow directors at Milco, Arthur Biehl and Ivan Getting began to feel uneasy sometime in 1982, the Washington Post reported. The Washington Post did a series of articles about this smuggling. The most important excerpts from the series are the following:

When they joined the board of directors of Milco International in 1980, Biehl and Getting recalled, they thought the company's primary business was developing aerospace software for U.S. military and space programs. They had been recruited by the company's owner, Richard K. Smyth, while serving with him on an influential panel that advises the U.S. Air Force on advanced technologies, work that required them to have top-secret clearances.

But they soon realized that Smyth, a California-based computer expert, spent most of his time trying to buy equipment with military applications, including a uranium byproduct known as "green salt" that can be processed into weapons-grade uranium, for the government of Israel. Often, they said, the sales were made through an Israeli middleman, Arnon Milchan, a flamboyant businessman who sold arms before becoming a producer of such popular movies as the recent Brazil.

"I didn't have any evidence there was anything improper," Biehl said. "I just thought it was a strange way to do business . . . . I wondered why the Israelis were paying fees to {Milco and Milchan} when they could get the same equipment directly" using U.S. foreign aid.

In late 1982, Biehl and Getting resigned from Milco's board of directors, in part because of their misgivings about Smyth's dealings with Milchan and Israel.

Asked why Israel didn't buy the krytrons through its 200-member procurement staff in New York, which buys military equipment with $1.8 billion in annual U.S. aid, Yossi Gal, spokesman with the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. told the Post that Israel occasionally used "independent agents" to make purchases.

Under U.S. laws, Smyth needed a munitions license from the State Department to ship the krytrons overseas. If he had tried to obtain one, according to a knowledgeable State Department source, he would have been turned down because Israel has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Smyth's relations with Israel began in the early 1970s when he was working for North American Rockwell as a chief engineer in its avionics division and traveled to Israel to help set up a subsidiary. There, he met Milchan, who was Rockwell's representative and "point man" with the Israeli government, according to an associate of Smyth from that period.

In January 1973, Smyth founded Milco while still working at Rockwell. His associate recalled Smyth once saying that Milchan provided money to start Milco; this associate said he believes that the name Milco was derived from Milchan.

At the time that Milco was founded, former U.S. intelligence officials said, the Central Intelligence Agency knew that Israel was working to perfect a solid-fuel tactical missile, known as the Jericho, that could carry nuclear warheads. In late 1973, Smyth's associate recalled, he saw Milco order forms for several barrels of a butyl compound used to bind explosive powders into solid rocket fuel. Smyth said he was shipping the butyl to Milchan through another company he owned in Houston, the associate recalled.

Smyth's next known contact with Israel occurred in 1975, about a year after he left Rockwell to run Milco full time. On Oct. 30 of that year, Smyth applied for a munitions license to ship 400 krytrons to Heli Trading Inc., Milchan's company in Israel.

The application, which is filed in court records in Los Angeles, said that the "end user" would be Rehovot Instruments Ltd. and that the krytrons would be used as "remotely located intrusion detectors."

Smyth filed the application after being told by an official from an unnamed U.S. intelligence agency that a license was required, according to court records. Smyth met with the official and told him that "Arnon Milchan {had} requested that a certain number of krytrons be shipped to Israel," according to a letter filed by William Fahey, the prosecutor in the current case.

Internal Milco records, provided by former Smyth associates, show that the company struggled financially from 1975 to 1980. It landed several small contracts for less than $25,000 with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Air Force for studies on computer software for avionics systems in advanced aircraft, the MX missile and a small ship defense missile called the Patriot.

It was also in 1980, the federal indictment alleged, that Milco sent 610 krytrons to Israel in 11 shipments without obtaining the needed licenses. Smyth bought them from EG&G in Salem, Mass., the sole producer of the switches in the United States.

In mid-1981, Smyth listed several contracts with Heli Trading to acquire training simulators for Hawk air defense missiles, a voice scrambler and lasers. He also cited "probable" contracts for a computerized flight control system for Israel's Lavi fighter plane, and thermal batteries and gyroscopes.

James Russell, vice president of Incosym Inc., a maker of gyroscopes in Thousand Oaks, Calif., said he sold Milco several $10,000 gyroscopes in that period. Smyth told him the navigation aids would be used on Israeli navy patrol boats. Milco also won a flight control contract for the Lavi in 1983, according to a listing in Aviation Week magazine.

Smyth's world started to crumble in early 1983 after someone broke into Milco's offices and took several thousand dollars worth of computer and software equipment. Because he was doing some classified U.S. government work and feared some records of it might have been stolen, Smyth wrote a lengthy report about the theft for the Pentagon and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, then-company attorney Brian R. Carter said.

SMYTH DISAPPEARS TO ISRAEL

Milco company records revealed that Milchan's companies had ordered large quantities of missile-related equipment and materials between 1977 and 1982. Among the nuclear items listed were the 810 krytrons, plus neutron generators, high-speed oscilloscopes and high-voltage condensers, according to a 1996 paper on Israel's Nuclear Weapon Capability by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

In August 1985, U.S. Customs subpoenaed the financial records linking Smyth and Milchan. The records were neither turned over nor found. Smyth and his wife disappeared just days before his scheduled trial, which almost certainly would have involved Milchan.

"There were so many...indictments that they probably decided just to get out," Mainhardt, who operates a security business in Dublin, Calif., said. "If I had to make a guess, I'd say they're in Israel."

"Let's assume that there's nothing that Israel and the United States do separately," Milchan told Bardach. "Smyth, a U.S. fugitive for more than a decade, was last seen in Herzliya Pituach, an affluent suburb of Tel Aviv, where Milchan owns a home," Bardach wrote in 2000.

In July 2001, Smyth was arrested in Malaga, Spain.

Smyth pleaded guilty in December to one count of violating the Arms Export Control Act and one count of making a false statement to Customs agents. Proscutors dropped 28 other counts.

On April 29, 2002 Smyth was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison and fined $20,000 for illegally exporting to Israel the devices that are used as triggers for nuclear weapons.

Smyth, 72, was immediately made eligible for parole at his sentencing.

MILCHAN AND PERES

"In Israel, Milchan spends much of his time with best friend Shimon Peres," Bardach wrote.

"Milchan's political connections would prove to be the foundation of his future empire," she wrote. "In addition to agriculture, there would be biotechnology, advertising, aerospace and the biggest jackpot of them all - arms."

In 1953, at age 30, Shimon Peres was appointed by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, to become Director-General of the Ministry of Defense. Within three years, Peres had laid the foundation for Israel's nuclear weapon program, according to the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

Peres started Israel's program to develop nuclear power and nuclear weapons by convincing the French to help Israel build a secret nuclear reactor beginning about 1957. He chose France as the major supplier, arranged the sale of a nuclear reactor, and spent the next decade overseeing the construction of the Dimona nuclear weapon production complex.

Peres is the one who came up with Israel's most often repeated nuclear declaration. At a April 1963 meeting in the White House, Peres responded to President John F. Kennedy's questions about Israel's nuclear program by saying: "Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East." Two years later, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol elevated Peres's words to Israel's official nuclear line.

Read the whole article:
"Arnon Milchan & Israeli Control of the Media"
including source links on
Christopher Bollyn´s website

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