Hundreds of pages released this week by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee contain protocols of closed committee hearings from the seminal year of 1967, including one in which former Senator William J. Fulbright is quoted as saying, "The trouble is they [the Israel lobby] think they have control of the Senate and they can do as they please."

During the hearing in question - in June 1967 - the senators of the prestigious committee grilled then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk over the meaning of the looming crisis days before the Six-Day War, and the meaning of Israel's remarkable victory during the war.

Former Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa suggested revoking tax deductible contributions of the United Jewish Appeal as an effort to put pressure on Israel, to which Fulbright responded, "The trouble is they think they have control of the Senate and they can do as they please."

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When asked by former Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri to clarify his statement, Fulbright said, "I said they know they have control of the Senate politically, and therefore whatever the Secretary tells them, they can laugh at him. They say, 'Yes, but you don't control the Senate.'"

To read an excerpt from the dialogue, click here.

This coming weekend, Haaretz will publish more anecdotes from the hearings in a longer feature.