Final_Judgment

438 Agents of Influence [341]
Although JFK assassination researchers have exercised themselves
relentlessly over the fact that Warren Commission member (and later U.S.
President) Gerald Ford, then a Republican congressman from Michigan, was
J. Edgar Hoover's eager and willing informant, supplying confidential
commission findings to the FBI throughout the commission's tenure, an
equally strong argument can be made that Ford was also at least a potential
conduit for both the Lansky syndicate and the Mossad.
This startling allegation, on its face, might appear a bit extraordinary to
some, but let's look at the facts. At the time that Ford was appointed to the
commission, one of his closest political allies and major financial backers
was a Detroit-based figure named Max Fisher. Just after Ford assumed the
presidency in 1974—in the wake of the Watergate scandal—Fisher was
described as one of "the mystery men behind Gerald Ford" who would "tell
the president what to do and when to do it." 862 And in light of his status in
Ford's rising political fortunes, we do know that in 1963—when Ford was
appointed to the Warren Commission, Fisher likewise was then in a
position to tell Ford "what to do and when to do it."
So who is Max Fisher? Here's how Gerald Ford described Fisher in his
own memoirs. Fisher, he said, was "a prominent Detroit businessman who
was chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Max was a lifelong
Republican and a close friend. He had served as an unofficial ambassador
between the United states and Israel for years, and his contacts at the highest
levels of both governments had often helped us bridge over
misunderstandings.” 863
Edward Tivnan's portrayal of Fisher in The Lobby: Jewish Political
Power and American Foreign Policy is even more detailed and points toward
Fisher's high-level role in the Jewish lobby in America. Tivnan describes
Fisher as, among other things: "a former head of the Council of Jewish
Federations and Welfare Funds, chairman of the United Jewish Appeal,
member of the Executive Committee of the American Jewish Committee, a
major donor to the Republican Party." 864
In regard to Fisher's status both here in the United States and in Israel,
Jean Baer writes admiringly in her book, The Self Chosen, that Fisher "has
served as an unofficial financial advisor to the Israeli government and has
been called 'probably the most prominent Republican in the country.'" 865
Although there are many GOP socialites who would dispute Baer's
fawning (and somewhat inaccurate) suggestion that Fisher was "the most
prominent Republican in the country," Israeli correspondent Wolf Blitzer
was probably more in perspective when he declared in 1985 that Fisher had
"long been the most influential Jew in the Republican Party " 866 —certainly a
unique status, by anyone's judgment—and among those who, according to
Blitzer, "sensitized the Republican national leadership to the concerns of the
American Jewish community." 867
J. J. Goldberg, writing in Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish
Establishment, describes Ford's chief financial angel as one of "the two
most senior leaders of the organized Jewish community . . . [and] one of the