17 Corporate Crime Reporter 28(3), July 14, 2003

VON RAAB ACCUSED OF HARASSING ISRAELIS. CASES DROPPED

As Commissioner of Customs under President Reagan and President Bush, a major responsibility of William Von Raab was to enforce the laws against smuggling of critical technology out of the country.

The government program to stop the outflow of this technology was called "Operation Exodus." Most of the technology was headed toward the eastern bloc.

But some was headed to Israel.

In the current issue of American Conservative magazine, Von Raab says that the arrests of a handful of Israeli citizens in California "who had been caught red-handed with the complete ingredients for cluster bombs" led to accusations by Secretary of State George Schultz that Von Raab was "harassing Israelis." ("Nothing to Declare: One Nation is More Favored Than Others," By William Von Raab, American Conservative, July 14, 2003)

Schultz and others within the administration "packaged these arrests with a series of other Israeli arrests for similar actions to show, not a pattern of criminal activity by foreign agents, but harassment by U.S. Customs agents against nice guys," Von Raab writes.

To prove that he wasn't harassing Israeli citizens, a meeting was set up between Von Raab and Morris Abram, the then chairman of the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, "the most important member of the Jewish community that I could reach," Von Raab writes. Von Raab flew to New York and was accompanied to the meeting with Abrams by the man in charge of all Customs agents, assistant Commissioner Bill Rosenblatt.

"In the taxi from the airport to Manhattan, I asked Rosenblatt what the plan was," Von Raab writes. "He pulled out a loose-leaf binder marked Top Secret. All the pages inside were also marked Top Secret. �What the hell are you doing?' I cried. �Don't worry,' he said. �This is just a bunch of routine reports that I stamped Top Secret. There is nothing even confidential here. I know these fellows. He will like this, feel he is being brought in on the real information, and send us on our merry way.'"

Von Raab says that the meeting with Abram went very well, "he liked the Top Secret binder -- Rosenblatt was right."

"Abram was deeply pleased that he was being given a look inside our Operation Exodus," Von Raab writes. "He further seemed to catch on quickly that I was not running anti-Israeli hit teams."

"We returned to Washington," Von Raab concludes. "James Baker was pleased. George Schultz was appeased. The Israeli agents were never prosecuted -- the cases against them vanished like water into sand."

Von Raab did not return calls seeking comment for this article.