An FBI agent claimed yesterday that the Jewish Defense League planned in 1971 to use a “drone airplane” filled with explosives to attack the Soviet United Nations Mission. The agent, John M. Dogget, made the charge while testifying at a federal court hearing on a motion to dismiss the case of one of three JDL members, Sheldon Seigel, accused of fire-bombing impressario Sol Hurok’s office Jan. 26, 1972, in which one person died and eight people were injured.
Explaining why the government put a wire tap on Seigel’s telephone without a court order, Dogget claimed that in Nov. 1971, the then U.S. Ambassador to the UN, George Bush, called a meeting of federal and local law enforcement officials to discuss ways to ward off attacks on Soviet premises and personnel allegedly threatened by the JDL.
At that meeting Bush informed the participants of the JDL’s plans to aim an explosive-laden drone plane at the roof of the Russian Mission in mid-Manhattan, Dogget said. He also stated that Bush told them that the JDL planned sniper attacks on Russian diplomats in Washington.
Last Friday, federal prosecutor Henry Putzel, told the court that Seigel, 25, was a government informer against the other two defendants but had decided at the last minute not to testify. At the government’s request, he is being tried separately from the other JDL suspects, Stuart Cohen, 19, and Sheldon Davis, 19.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
