FBI Vault, Abner Zwillman, Part 05: microphone memoranda of January 1959 on the 1956 jury

The Vault viewer shows 87 pages; the stored image is page 1, a cover sheet reading “Abner Zwillman (Microfilm), Part 3 of 3, Bufile: 58-4441.” A memorandum dated January 22, 1959 reports that the Newark office had been authorized on September 16, 1958 to install a microphone in the office of the Supreme Beverage Company, Newark, which the memo describes as a hangout for Zwillman and his associates, and that the installation was accomplished on December 18, 1958 (the memo’s OCR is jumbled; these points are read from it as far as it is legible). On January 21, 1959 a conversation between Zwillman and an unidentified man was overheard which, the memo says, discussed how members of the jury panel in the 1956 trial had been approached and indicated that two jurors had been “compromised.” The memo notes that no trial was then in progress and proposes to give the Justice Department the details without disclosing the source.

A Justice Department memorandum of January 26, 1959 says an informant had reported that Zwillman arranged the bribing of two jurors, and the Newark office is told to investigate thoroughly. Page 8 is a partial transcript of the overheard conversation with many unintelligible passages.

These are the FBI’s summaries of an overheard conversation and an informant’s report. They are allegations, not findings, and the pages read do not record a charge. The OCR is poor and the summary above is limited to the legible memo headers and paragraphs; names of other people in the conversation are not repeated. The sequel is in Part 06.