Final_Judgment

[280] Final Judgment 341
direction. The evidence for this, as we shall see, is compelling
indeed.
STONE'S LANSKY-ISRAEL CONNECTION
That distribution for Stone's film was handled by Warner Brothers is
somewhat unsettling in light of the conclusions reached in Final
Judgment. In fact, Warner Brothers, a subsidiary of the giant Time-Warner
media empire, evolved from a film production company established by
longtime Meyer Lansky associate, Louis Chesler, a Canadian of somewhat
dubious reputation.
It was in 1956 that Chesler, a Lansky front man, established Seven
Arts Productions in Montreal, Canada. Although ostensibly a film
production company, Seven Arts functioned as a money-laundering facility for
Lansky and others among his associates. 754
By 1955, Seven Arts had gone into partnership with a New York-based
banking consortium and was flush with money within a decade.
In 1967 Seven Arts shook Wall Street and stunned Hollywood when it
gained control of the famous Warner Brothers Studios—in short, a Lansky
take-over. The move was a mystery to many at the time, but little did they
know of the behind-the-scenes Lansky Syndicate dealings which made the
wheeling and dealing possible.
The new operation was dubbed Warner-Seven Arts Studios and, by
1968, was known as Warner Communications. 755 Not surprisingly, it just
so happens, it was Bernie Cornfeld's Investors Overseas Service (JOS)
which "owned major blocks of stock" 756 in Warner-Seven Arts.
Cornfeld of IOS, as we saw in Chapter 15, was a front man for Tibor
Rosenbaum, former Mossad official and the prime mover behind the
Lanksy-linked Permindex operation that was so central to the JFK
assassination conspiracy.
THE 'ISRAELI MAFIA'
In 1981 a major scandal rocked Warner Communications. Several of its
top figures—Solomon Weiss, Stephen Ross and Jay Emmett—were caught
up in tax fraud, bribery, and assorted other racketeering charges brought by
the Justice Department. Warner's links to organized crime were being
investigated. 757
However, what is particularly significant about the case is that much of
the evidence against the aforementioned Weiss, who was senior assistant
treasurer of Warner Communications, emerged from records gleaned from the
files of the United Jewish Appeal and other pro-Israel philanthropies that
were seized by the Justice Department. 758
What's more, the Warner Communications investigation repeatedly
stumbled upon links to the so-called "Israeli mafia,"—the domestic elements
of organized criminal activity operating in Israel.