Madeleine Albright and Mossad: the Jewess who ‘thought she was a Catholic’

Madeleine Albright – the diplomat who ‘didn’t know she was Jewish

Madeleine Albright – who served as Secretary of State in Bill Clinton’s second administration from 1997 to 2001, has died in Washington aged 84.

Soon after her appointment to the top job in US foreign policy at the start of 1997, Mrs Albright ‘discovered’ that she was racially Jewish, having supposedly been in ignorance of this for her entire life. Her parents had converted to Catholicism during her infancy.

However the Israeli government certainly knew about Albright’s Jewish roots as early as 1994, soon after her appointment as US Ambassador to the United Nations.

Their source was the British publisher George Weidenfeld, who had been a friend of Albright’s father, Czech diplomat Josef Korbel, when Korbel was in a senior role with the Czech government-in-exile in London during the Second World War. (In this capacity Korbel worked with British propaganda and other secret departments.)

Madeleine Albright with Hillary Clinton

H&D can today reveal a few details of Weidenfeld’s career as a Zionist and later Israeli intelligence operative, which make it likely that Mossad was well aware of Albright’s family background for decades – almost certainly as far back as the 1970s, when she worked as congressional liaison for the National Security Council.

Weidenfeld – this close friend of Albright’s father – was closely monitored by Britain’s security service MI5, who knew of his Zionist intelligence work and were concerned that he might be engaged in subversive activities in London on behalf of the nascent Israeli state.

Although his file has not yet been published in British archives and remains entirely secret, we can reveal today that Weidenfeld had a personal file at MI5 numbered PF 604363.

Israeli intelligence operative George Weidenfeld, close friend of Albright’s father

On 27th October 1949 MI5 recorded a conversation via its regular monitoring of a line at the Israeli Legation (later Embassy) in London. Weidenfeld was speaking with Reggie Kidron, a senior diplomat who was responsible for Mossad’s intelligence work in London.

During the conversation Kidron thanked Weidenfeld for certain “contacts”, referring to a recent lunch Weidenfeld had with the senior government minister Herbert Morrison, who was later to succeed Ernest Bevin as British Foreign Secretary.

Whereas Bevin had been staunchly anti-Zionist, Morrison was far more friendly to the new state of Israel. His daughter married the advertising manager of the Jewish Chronicle (London’s main Jewish newspaper) and his grandson Peter Mandelson (now Lord Mandelson) became one of the most influential, pro-Israeli politicians in Britain during the Labour governments of the 1990s and 2000s.

Peter Mandelson (above right) on holiday with Lord Rothschild.

Weidenfeld went on to work for Israel’s first President Chaim Weizmann as “foreign affairs adviser”, before returning to London where his publishing empire served as a convenient means to pass Israeli funds to favoured politicians, in the guise of cash ‘advances’ for books that were never going to generated the sums paid.

Recipients of this largesse included Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his political secretary Marcia Williams.

As we have recently reported on this site, Wilson and Williams had close relationships with several influential Jewish businessmen who were of concern to MI5, either because of their links to Zionist intelligence, or to Soviet bloc intelligence, or their general criminality.

An original page from the ‘lavender list’ on which Marcia Williams (Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s political secretary) listed Weidenfeld among those to be given peerages – note also the name of Joseph Kagan, fraudster and suspected Soviet spy.

Several of these characters received either knighthoods or peerages from Wilson, notably in his final honours list in 1976, known as the “lavender list” because it was drafted on the personal notepaper of Marcia Williams. The Mossad operative George Weidenfeld – having earlier been knighted by Wilson in 1969 – became Lord Weidenfeld on this 1976 list.

Last week H&D‘s Peter Rushton filed a Freedom of Information request for still-secret official files about this honours list, and the cabal of businessmen and suspected spies surrounding Harold Wilson.

Weidenfeld’s Mossad contact Kidron appeared in a ‘Top Secret’ British intelligence document drawn up in December 1949, listing twenty-five individuals who had wartime access to British secrets but who were now known to be serving the Israeli government. Kidron had been Jewish Agency liaison with the South African armed forces during the Second World War, and was feared to have had access to British military secrets, in addition to his dangerous intelligence work among postwar British politicians via Weidenfeld.

Reggie Kidron’s name on a British intelligence list of suspected Jewish spies

Further aspects of our dossier on the fluctuating relationship between British and Zionist intelligence services, during and after the Second World War, will be published soon.

One strange coincidence which might disturb some on the ‘anti-Zionist’ left, is that the sister of this top Mossad officer Reggie Kidron became one of Britain’s leading Trotskyist activists.

This was Chanie Rosenberg, who died last year aged 99. She was married to the leading Trotskyist in Britain – Tony Cliff (born Ygael Gluckstein), founder of what is today the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

Even in old age, Rosenberg was an active militant ‘anti-fascist’, travelling to Burnley in 2002 to oppose British National Party election campaigning.

We wonder whether she ever told her comrades about her close family ties to Mossad?

Chanie Rosenberg – leading British Trotskyist and sister of a top Israeli intelligence officer – with her husband Tony Cliff (born Ygael Gluckstein) and family

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