Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan

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Overview

Arnon Milchan, a unique and exciting individual, has worked his way up from a small town in Israel to become a world-renowned figure both in the extravagant Hollywood scene – and in the dangerous and covert world of the Mossad.
Milchan worked for Israel as a weapons procurer and in the acquisition of sensitive technologies for Israel's nuclear program. He was heavily involved in business activities in pre-revolution Iran, and with the South African government in the 1970s, both in weapons procurement and in efforts to influence international-media attitudes toward the apartheid regime.
Milchan's Hollywood career began in the late 1970s, and he rapidly built up a multi-billion dollar business. He partnered with Rupert Murdoch at 20th Century Fox and produced many films including "The War of the Roses" and "Under Siege."

Confidential: Life of Secret Agent

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780615433813
Publisher: Gefen Publishing House
Publication date: 8/1/2011
Pages: 288
Sales rank: 424,291
Product dimensions: 7.00 (w) x 9.50 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Meir Doron was born and raised in the town of Rehovot, the hometown of Arnon Milchan, and grew up with the extended Milchan family. He is an award-winning screenwriter (winner of the Prix Italy, 1986, for his film Bread), and has worked over the past three decades as a journalist and editor, specializing in security and political affairs. He currently lives in Los Angeles, CA

Joseph Gelman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and moved to Israel in 1976, where he volunteered for over three years of service in a paratroop reconnaissance unit. He has worked as a private consultant on campaign management and speechwriting for candidates such as Bruce Herschensohn for US Senate, Richard Riordan for Mayor of Los Angeles, and California Proposition 209. He currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Acknowledgments vii

Prologue ix

1 Man on Fire 15

2 The New Age 19

3 The Mirror Has Two Faces 27

4 Six Degrees of Separation 35

5 Don't Say a Word 41

6 Dangerous Beauty 55

7 The Client 67

5 The Man Who Knew Too Little 82

9 Under Siege 96

10 The Devil's Advocate 107

11 Mud 119

12 Guilty by Suspicion 130

13 Once upon a Time in America 147

14 Falling Down 163

15 Fight Club 174

16 Mr. and Mrs. Smith 190

17 Pretty Woman 200

18 Entrapment 209

19 The Negotiator 223

20 City of Angels 242

21 Jumper 253

Epilogue 259

Appendix A The Smoking Gun 265

Appendix B Novels of "Jon Schiller" 268

Appendix C Filmography Arnon Milchan 271

Index 276

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Silencedogoodspeaks

Posted July 29, 2011

Featured in the New York Times and hundreds of major media outlets worldwide:

Michael Cieply, LOS ANGELES - "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 tantalized Hollywood with his dual identity as a producer of popular movies and a businessman tied to the arms industry.

Mr. Chernin may have been even more right than he knew.

"Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan," written by Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman, and set for publication on July 30 by Gefen Books, now holds that Mr. Milchan - whose credits include "Love and Other Drugs" and "Knight and Day" - at least through the mid-1980s was a full-fledged operative for Israel's top-secret intelligence agency, Lakam. (The acronym is from the Hebrew for the blandly named Science Liaison Bureau.)

In that capacity, according to the book, Mr. Milchan supervised government-backed accounts and front companies that financed "the special needs of the entirety of Israel's intelligence operations outside the country."

The "special needs" serviced by Mr. Milchan, who is now 66 years old, included buying components to build and maintain Israel's nuclear arsenal. But with the indictment in 1985 of Richard Kelly Smyth, an aerospace executive who had made illegal shipments of nuclear triggers through Milchan companies, Mr. Milchan unexpectedly 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.

Mr. Smyth became a fugitive. He was finally arrested in 2001, convicted and imprisoned. He was released on probation in 2005.

Mr. Milchan was not accused of wrongdoing, but the case drew scrutiny to his activities in the arms business even as he stepped up his film career under deals first at Warner Brothers, then at 20th Century Fox, whose parent company bought a stake in his Regency Enterprises. In the glow of friendships with the likes of Brad Pitt and Robert De Niro, speculation about his intrigues seemed to fade - until a pair of unlikely biographers decided to figure out why Israel had been filtering a large part of its military budget through Hollywood hands.

Mr. Doron spoke recently over coffee at a patio cafe here, expressing puzzlement at Israel's reliance on a middleman to broker deals that seemingly could have been made without the services of his Milchan Brothers umbrella company and affiliates.

He was flanked by Mr. Gelman, who sipped watermelon juice, and joined in explaining how the two - who are brothers-in-law - conceived of writing about Mr. Milchan, who had been vaguely identified in Israel's press as the "Chuck Norris of the Lakam." Mr. Gelman, who was born in the United States, had lived in Israel and served as a paratrooper during the 1982 war in Lebanon. Mr. Doron had been a writer and editor specializing in Israeli military issues.

Never having written together, they began culling public records and published accounts. Eventually, they met Mr. Smyth, who was by then living in Lompoc, Calif., and, with his story in hand, cobbled together a draft of their book before approaching Mr. Milchan.

"Should I be concerned?" Mr. Milchan asked during a first conversation by phone in 2009, Mr. Gelman said. A major worry, Mr. Gelman told him, was the impression that...

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Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan

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