10-11-2008, 06:04 PM
Magda Hassan Wrote:Tell me more Mark. What was the fish that JFK rejected?
I did notice that is was during LBJ's time that the US started big $ funding of Israel.
In Piper's Final Judgement, (pp35/36 in the 2005 edition), the author cites Hersh's The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, 1991. The story goes that in 1960 Abe Feinberg, President of the Israel Bond Organisation and acting on behalf of the Israel Lobby, offered to 'pay the bills' in exchange for JFK handing over ME foreign policy to them.
Apparently Kennedy was outraged and expressed his dismay the next day to a close friend, newspaper columnist Charles Bartlett. "They wanted control", he told Bartlett.
According to Hersh, after JFK became President he criticised the current method of campaign financing as "highly undesirable" as it made candidates "dependant on large financial contributions of those with special interests".
In 1962, Kennedy introduced five bills to reform campaign financing to Congress and a further two in 1963. None survived.