Arms and the Man,Hollywood style

Arnon Milchan has been known for three decades as a movie producer. Now two authors talk about his other identity as an Israeli intelligence agent and arms trader

Never,never tell jokes about a man with easy access to weapons of mass destruction, Peter Chernin,a former News Corporation official,once light-heartedly warned of Arnon Milchan,who has long tantalised Hollywood with his dual identity as a producer of popular movies and a businessman tied to the arms industry.

Chernin may have been even more right than he knew. Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan,by Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman holds that Milchanwhose credits include Love and Other Drugs and Knight and Dayat least through the mid-1980s was a full-fledged operative for Israels top-secret intelligence agency,Lakam. In that capacity,according to the book,Milchan supervised government-backed accounts and front companies that financed the special needs of the entirety of Israels intelligence operations outside the country. The special needs serviced by Milchan,66,included buying components to build and maintain Israels nuclear arsenal. But with the indictment in 1985 of Richard Kelly Smyth,who had made illegal shipments of nuclear triggers through Milchan companies,Milchan found his arms-dealing in the news even as he was wrangling with Universal Pictures over the near collapse of a movie,Brazil,directed by Terry Gilliam.

He was not accused of wrongdoing,but the case drew scrutiny to his activities in the arms business. In the glow of friendships with the likes of Brad Pitt and Robert De Niro,speculation about his intrigues seemed to fadeuntil a pair of unlikely biographers decided to figure out why Israel had been filtering a large part of its military budget through Hollywood hands. Gelman explains how the twowho are brothers-in-lawconceived of writing about Milchan. Never having written together,they began culling public records and published accounts and cobbled together a draft of their book before approaching Milchan. Should I be concerned? Milchan asked during a first conversation in 2009,Gelman said. I did it for my country,the money did not go to me, Gelman recalled Milchan explaining.

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The book was not authorised by Milchan. The account was based partly on interviews with the likes of Shimon Peres,the Israeli president who,according to the book,acknowledged having recruited Milchan as a clandestine operative. After the 1973 Yom Kippur war,Milchan began acquiring both big-ticket conventional weapons and krytrons,devices that can trigger nuclear bombs. Then,he was introduced to the film business by Elliott Kastner,an American producer with whom he collaborated on a 1977 picture,The Stick-Up. By the early 1980s,Milchan was a force in Hollywood,with films like The King of Comedy and Once Upon a Time in America,both with De Niroand the movies became not just convenient cover,but a full-blown second career.

In the late 1990s,the News Corporation paid $200 million for a 20 per cent stake in Milchans Regency Enterprises. A News Corporation spokeswoman,Teri Everett,had no response to a query about the companys reason for backing Milchan,and about any reaction by its chief executive,Rupert Murdoch,to revelations in the new book. Asked whether Milchan would discuss the book,his executive assistant,Jane Bulmer,said he was travelling and out of reach. But Bulmer said he had told her he hasnt read the book and does not plan on commenting on any unauthorised books that have been written about him.MICHAEL CIEPLY