Gadhafi's Jewish New Yorker pen pal was visited by CIA and FBI, said he just collected famous autographs for fun

**Jenna** · 11-02-11, 09:02 PM

While Mr. Schlamowitz has two rambling letters from Colonel Qaddafi’s headquarters and four signed photographs, he also has signed letters or photographs from Hosni Mubarak, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Bashar al-Assad, and Yasir Arafat

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Collecting autographs is Mr. Schlamowitz’s hobby, and he has 6,000 of them. He keeps them in photo albums stuffed into a closet in his apartment in a housing project in Canarsie, the Brooklyn neighborhood where he has lived all his life.

A two-page typed letter, dated 1991 and signed “Revolution leader and Revolution hero,” reads: “America practices terrorism against the Palestinian people through providing Israel with the planes and weapons for attacking the Palestinian camps.” (The writer, it seems, did not realize that Mr. Schlamowitz was Jewish, and an ardent supporter of the state of Israel.) The photographs in Mr. Schlamowitz’s collection bear Colonel Qaddafi’s signature. A Christmas card written around 2000 and signed by the colonel thanked Mr. Schlamowitz for his “friendship through the years.”

As a result of all his communications with the powerful, he has been visited several times by the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who wondered about his connections to the Supreme Court judges and why he was writing to all those leaders. He showed them his closet full of autographs.

“I said I collected them as a hobby, and they were amazed,” he said.

More here: Qaddafi's Canarsie Pen Pal, Louis Schlamowitz - NYTimes.com