Situated  

Anti-Israeli archive sniffers have uncovered a cryptic reference to Owen Lattimore in the FBI files of Abraham Feinberg, Zionist activist and Democratic party fundraiser.

Feinberg was a connected guy, accompanying Israel’s first president to a Harry Truman meeting, and supposedly financing Truman’s whistle-stop train tour in the come from behind 1948 re-election fight.

During the late 40s the Bureau was monitoring both Feinberg and Lattimore, producing summaries of Feinberg’s phone conversations with some direct quotes.  In January 1949 Feinberg was frantically calling the Israeli embassy, speaking with Israeli Ambassador Eliahu  Epstein and a deputy. Feinberg urgently needed a name to forward to the White House, someone to chair an export commission of interest to Israel, and sought to clear it with the Embassy.

The apparent favorite for some time had been Bartley Crum, a New York lawyer and non-Jew who dabbled in Middle East causes.   Epstein felt Crum’s personal troubles would make him a poor choice [Crum was a renowned drinker and pill popper who latter committed suicide].

Other names floated about, but Feinberg’s bottom line was “It’s gotta be a goy.”

Lattimore, he assured Epstein, was “reliable.”

It would appear so, judging from Lattimore’s 1949 Situation In Asia, where bracing contact with those whip-smart Israeli’s was prophesied to provoke unrest against their rulers amongst the teeming Arab masses:

Israel exemplifies the best culture of 

Europe at a very high level of evolution,

 but it is not revolutionary. Israel's 

presence in Asia, however, is revolutionary.

 Nowhere else in Asia is the scientifically

skilled and culturally mature European in direct

 contact with the ragged, depressed, and 

oppressed peoples of the East as a farmer and 

artisan, a worker with his hands. The nearest 

equivalent is where Russians and Asians meet; 

but the average attainments of the Russian in 

Asia are not as high as those of the average

Israeli. And nowhere, outside of Russia, is 

it possible for working Europeans to ask Asian 

workers to join their labor unions with equal 

rights, as has happened in Haifa, where the 

Israelis have extended their labor rights to Arabs.

Later in ’49 and in 1950 the Bureau knew from mail cover that Feinberg had written Lattimore at his home, contents unclear.

Not clear who got the commission job.