Sheldon Adelson
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Sheldon Adelson was an American casino magnate and major Republican donor. He appears in John Kiriakou's account of the Jonathan Pollard case: when Pollard completed his full thirty-year sentence, Kiriakou says, Adelson sent his private jet to pick him up at prison and fly him to Tel Aviv. On arrival Pollard was met by Benjamin Netanyahu, kissed the ground, and was bestowed with Israeli citizenship.

In a separate discussion of the Pollard case, after a co-guest noted that Adelson had given Donald Trump a hundred million dollars, Kiriakou remarked that "even in death, Adelson is influencing" American politics, through his widow, Miriam Adelson.

Widow, the Sands, and suspected intelligence ties

Discussing Adelson's widow Miriam, who operated the Sands Casino, Kiriakou compares her to the casino's previous owner, the gangster Meyer Lansky, calling her likely "mobbed up" and, like Lansky, "a major Zionist" and "a criminal." He cites court filings showing that when the CIA hired a Spanish surveillance company to spy on Julian Assange during his time in London's Ecuadorian embassy, it was the Sands Casino and its Israeli-led security staff who contracted that firm on the CIA's behalf, and notes that China has banned its officials from staying at Sands casinos in Macau, believing Adelson ran a CIA blackmail operation there.

Kiriakou says Adelson paid, probably illegally, to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and that he gave more than one hundred million dollars to the 2016 Trump campaign, with his widow giving another hundred million in 2024. He believes Adelson likely worked as a middleman feeding information to both Israel and the CIA, giving the Israelis information on the United States and the CIA information on China, motivated not by money, which he had more than enough of, but by power, control, and a misguided patriotism toward Israel.

See also

- Jonathan Pollard
- Benjamin Netanyahu
