Large congressional junkets to Israel have become such fixtures in Washington, DC, that few Americans now question their curious origins.
These periodic pilgrimages were once contentious and of such dubious legality for AIPAC’s founder he had to tread a cautious line between Congress, the Executive, the State Department, and US Department of Justice Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) enforcement section.
FARA was passed in 1938 to protect Americans from undue influence over Congress by foreign lobbies. It netted up assorted Communists with Soviet connections and Nazis corresponding with the Reich in the 1940s. They were prosecuted not for their activities, but rather their failure to properly notify Americans of their true foreign government sponsors, and required disclosures at a public FARA office visited often by reporters. More