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PROFITS OF WAR -- INSIDE THE SECRET U.S.-ISRAELI ARMS NETWORK |
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Afterword A LOT HAS HAPPENED since I was acquitted. A number of journalists have investigated some of the events I've described, and at least part of the story is now emerging. PBS's Frontline, in two first-rate documentaries produced by Robert Parry, delved into various aspects of the arms-for- hostages deal. Gary Sick, a former Carter administration adviser on Iran, published his important book October Surprise, which systematically sifts through the evidence that convinced him the Reagan camp and Khomeini did actually make a secret deal. Seymour Hersh's excellent book The Samson Option, caused an enormous stir with its revelations about Israel's nuclear program and about Robert Maxwell. British journalist Patrick Seale's recent book, Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire, speculates about the Palestinian terrorist's ties to the Israelis. And a few enterprising newspaper and magazine reporters are now exploring Carlos Cardoen's American-backed sales of chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein during the I980s. The exposes in the media have had some impact. Both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have begun looking into the October Surprise. The full Senate voted down a formal investigation, but the Senate Foreign Relations Committee decided to hold limited hearings on the arms-for-hostages deal, within its regular budget. The House, however, funded a fullscale October Surprise Task Force, whose chief counsel is former federal prosecutor E. Lawrence Barcella, Jr., to investigate Sick's and my allegations, among others. In June 1992 I was interviewed at length by the Task Force staff. Unbeknownst to me, however, a deal had apparently been struck between the Democratic and Republican leaderships before the Task Force was authorized. The Task Force was required to issue an interim report prior to July 1, 1992, and the deal evidently required that President Bush be completely, and quickly, exonerated. So, the interim report, issued by its chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, on June 30, while explaining that the Task Force had only begun its investigations, drew one, and only one, conclusion: "that Mr. Bush was in the United States continuously during the October 18-22 time period, and that he therefore did not travel to Paris, France, to participate in the alleged secret meeting." This conclusion was drawn despite the interim report's assertions that it had interviewed only about 50 out of some 150 potential witnesses, and had obtained only a small fraction of the documents it was seeking. At his July 1 press conference, Hamilton stated that "all credible evidence" led to the conclusion that George Bush was not in Paris. In June I also testified under oath, in closed session, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I stated unequivocally that I had, indeed, seen Bush in Paris, but 1 am not sanguine that the Senate Committee's report will be any more forthcoming than the House Task Force's interim report. A lot of other heads may roll, but President Bush is apparently going to keep his, whether or not he is reelected. Several official inquiries are also currently underway in Great Britain, focusing on the activities of Robert Maxwell and Nicholas Davies. And in Australia, a Western Australia Royal Commission has launched a probe that touches on some of my allegations. It is still too early to know whether these investigations will lead to further action. A lot has happened to the main characters in my story. George Bush is still president of the United States, but his approval rating has plummeted, as the U.S. economy continues to falter and every day brings new revelations of his administration's dealings with Iraq. His reelection bid seems to be in serious trouble. Robert Gates was nominated for a second time to be CIA director. When I and others testified in late spring 1991 before closed sessions of the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees and the Senate Intelligence Committee, his confirmation hearings were postponed until October of that year. But then, in the shadow of Clarence Thomas's dramatic Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Gates was quietly confirmed as CIA director. He remains in that position today. Former Sen. John Tower wrote a book about the Iran-contra affair, which said nothing new and was not widely read. He was killed in a plane crash in Georgia in early 1991. Robert McFarlane, now a private citizen, came under FBI counterintelligence investigation in early 1991 regarding his relationship with Rafi Eitan and Israeli intelligence and his involvement in the Pollard case. The results of that investigation have never been made public. But in October 1991, an article by Craig Unger in Esquire magazine repeated my allegations that McFarlane had been recruited by Rafi Eitan and named him as Mr. X in the Pollard case. McFarlane sued the magazine. That litigation is still pending. As for the Israelis, in early 1992, Shimon Peres was ousted as leader of the Labor Party by his longtime rival Yitzhak Rabin. On June 23, Labor won the national elections by a wide margin, and Rabin replaced the 76-year-old Yitzhak Shamir as prime minister. The repudiation of Shamir increased American hopes for a Bush-sponsored settlement in the Middle East, but as of August, no solution was in sight. Rafi Eitan retired from intelligence work, and gave away all the money he got from the slush fund. According to the Israeli press, he is now, ironically, working for an international oil trader who is instrumental in selling Iraqi oil, in violation of the United Nations embargo. Moshe Hebroni now works for the Jewish Agency, Yehoshua Sagi became a member of the Knesset. Avi Pazner, Shamir's spokesperson, was hounded by the press about the Israeli government's lies about me, among other things. He was appointed ambassador to Italy in 1991. Nachum Admoni was removed as director of Mossad in 1989, but was still advising Shamir on intelligence. He is the chair of a public utility in Israel. My Iranian friend Sayeed Mehdi Kashani is now an adviser to Iranian President Rafsanjani. Col. Mohammed Jalali is now retired, living in Iran, with a second home in London. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein went from darling of the Americans to George Bush's satanic madman virtually overnight in August 1990. In January and February 1991, his country was devastated by the heaviest aerial bombing since World War II. More than 100,000 Iraqis were reported dead in the aftermath of the Gulf War. But Saddam Hussein survived and remains in power. The turbulent Soviet Union has, meanwhile, undergone dizzying changes. In the summer of 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev survived a coup attempt but then was forced to resign. The union dissolved into separate states, and the KGB was stripped of its powers. One of its former heads, Viktor Chebrikov, who had helped us move slush fund moneys to East Bloc banks, is out of a job. He is living quietly in Russia as a private citizen. In Peru, Abimael Guzman died of cancer in 1990, but the Shining Path, the revolutionary movement he founded, lives on with my friend Roberto leading it. Largely to combat the Shining Path, President Alberto Fujimori suspended the Peruvian constitution in early 1992 -- an action that brought condemnation from around the world. Carlos Cardoen still heads Cardoen Industries in Chile. After the appearance of a number of newspaper stories describing his involvement with Iraq, the U.S. Customs Service began an investigation, and in April 1992, charges against him were filed in Miami. His plant in Paraguay was not closed down in 1989, thanks to President Andres Rodriguez, who continues to rule the country with the blessing of the U.S. government. Several Australians involved in the activities I've described have run into problems. Prime Minister Bob Hawke was defeated in a special vote in the Labor Party caucus in December 1991. Forced to resign, he was replaced by Paul Keating, who had for several years been considered Hawke's natural successor until they fell out over the timing of Hawke's departure. Brian Burke, the premier of Western Australia in whose jurisdiction we were allowed to park our aircraft, was forced to resign and has been subjected to prolonged questioning in a Royal Commission. And Alan Bond, the wealthy Australian businessman who had been entangled with Carlos Cardoen in Chile and Iraq, was convicted in May 1992 of bank fraud. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, which he is currently serving, although an appeal is pending. Revelations in the British press ruined both of the men I worked with most closely in London. Media mogul Robert Maxwell, of course, received more attention than anyone. The publication in October 1991 of Seymour Hersh's book, naming him as a collaborator with Israeli intelligence, was the beginning of the end. Maxwell and the Mirror Newspaper Group sued Hersh and his publishers, and the Daily Mirror published lengthy articles denouncing the allegations against Maxwell and Nicholas Davies. (Davies also filed a suit, but allowed it to lapse.) Almost immediately, however, some of the critical denials in the Mirror articles were shown to be false, and Hersh and his publishers filed a countersuit against Maxwell, Davies, and the Mirror Group. But, just as the claims and counterclaims were reaching fever pitch, on November 5, 1991, Maxwell's body was found floating off the Canary Islands near his yacht, causing an international uproar. A Spanish autopsy concluded the death was an accident. An Israeli autopsy called it a murder. Under British law, Maxwell's libel suit ended with his death; and in July the court threw out the Mirror Group's claim, an action it has appealed. The counterclaims are still quite alive. After Maxwell's burial on Israel's Mount of Olives, his empire crumbled. The British press exposed him for what he was -- a fraud and a crook, who stole the pension funds of his own employees to the tune of about a billion dollars. A number of stories alluded to his ties with both Israeli and Soviet intelligence. His business dealings are currently under investigation by intelligence agencies and parliamentary committees in Israel, Bulgaria, Russia, and Great Britain. In the U.S., congressional investigators are also looking into his activities. Maxwell's two sons, Kevin and Ian, who inherited the tattered remains of his empire, were arrested for fraud in London in June 1992. Nick Davies, the Daily Mirror foreign editor, was accused by Seymour Hersh and several British publications of being an Israeli agent and arms dealer. Davies flatly denied the accusations, but after he was caught in some flagrant lies, he was fired from the Mirror in early November. In June 1992 he published a book about Princess Diana, but it was overshadowed by Andrew Morton's book on the same subject published around the same time. He is said to be currently working on a book about "the real" Robert Maxwell. Scotland Yard, MI-5, the Serious Fraud Squad, and Inland Revenue are all investigating Davies. *** As for me, immediately after my acquittal in November 1990, I rented an apartment in Lexington, Kentucky. I feared for my life, and I had close friends in high office there who offered me protection. (Years earlier they had worked with the Israelis on arms deals.) I stayed in Lexington until mid-April 1991. Then, traveling on an Israeli passport that is valid until 1994, I went to Sydney, Australia. I had a number of friends there from my arms-dealing days, among them former high government officials. They had promised that I would receive political asylum in Australia and that I would be allowed to live there, eventually receiving citizenship. However, in the next few months I got a lot of attention in the press, I testified before congressional committees, and Seymour Hersh's book was published. Suddenly, on December 28, 1991, three days before George Bush's visit to Australia, upon my arrival from a trip to Europe and the United States, my visa was revoked at Sydney airport. The authorities allowed me into the country for only one month. This caused a furor in the Australian press, and there were accusations that the government had yielded to American pressure, since my presence in Sydney was deemed an embarrassment to the visiting president. I took the Australian minister of immigration to court. Federal Justice Graham Hill ordered the government to identify the person responsible for canceling my visa and to provide all documents used in making that decision. Rather than do that, the Australian government reinstated my visa and agreed to pay my court costs. In the meantime, in early 1991 the CIA had contacted me through an informant, Herbert Alwyn Smith, a convicted British arms dealer whom I'd known in prison. Smith, on behalf of the CIA, offered me a deal. I would get $2 million and U.S. citizenship in exchange for my silence and my signature on a piece of paper stating that I had no legal claims or allegations against the U.S. government. I even received a letter of credit in the amount of $2 million from them, but I did not cash it or accept the deal. Smith visited me in Australia five times over the next year, and I continued to talk to him. Through Smith as messenger, it was arranged for me to meet with two CIA officials in Ireland in August 1991 and with Robert Maxwell in the Soviet Union the same month. The purpose of both meetings was to try to get me to hand over control of part of the slush fund to the CIA. Unable to deliver a successful deal, and perhaps having learned too much, Smith died, purportedly of a heart attack, in March 1992, ten days after he left Sydney. One thing I've learned since my acquittal in New York is the power of the printed word and how much those who seek to conceal the truth fear it. So, in June 1991, I contracted with Allen & Unwin, the Australian publishers, to write this book. The Israeli government evidently got wind of it, and shortly thereafter I had a distinguished visitor. Ehud Ulmart, then Israel's minister of health and a close crony of Shamir's, offered to see that I got Australian citizenship (just how, I never knew), and to guarantee that the Israelis would "leave me alone," if I agreed to stop writing the book. I refused. But that was just the beginning. After Gary Sick's and Seymour Hersh's books came out in the fall of 1991, both quoting me as a prominent source, an intense, prolonged barrage of media assaults seeking to discredit me started up in earnest. Time magazine was first, on October 28, calling me a "veteran spinner of stunning-if-true-but yarns," and a "fabricator." Newsweek chimed in on November 4, 1991, with a two-and-a-half-page story that described me as a "shadowy, Israeli exile," "a former translator for the Israeli government." Grudgingly conceding that I was "difficult to ignore," the article nonetheless concluded that much of what I said "does not seem to check out." The article took great pains to suggest that my involvement in the leaking of the Iran-contra story "makes no sense," but of course they never mentioned the testimony of Raji Samghabadi at my trial. The next week, November 11, Newsweek was at it again, with a seven-page piece on the October Surprise, calling it "a conspiracy theory run wild." Steve Emerson then viciously attacked me in both the New Republic and the Wall Street Journal. In the former, on November 18, he called me a "low-level translator" and described the ERD as "one of the most insignificant" branches of Israeli intelligence. In the latter, on November 27, he described me as an "abject liar." Just for good measure, he asked Hersh to apologize to the Maxwell family for printing my insulting allegations against the publishing baron. At the time, Maxwell seemed perfectly capable of taking care of himself. His newspapers in London, New York, and Tel Aviv, to no one's surprise, all took their turns slamming me. Amidst all these smears on my credibility, there were also articles supporting my claims. Most important was a two-part piece, entitled "Who Are You, Ari Ben-Menashe?", by Pazit Ravina in the Israeli daily Davar, in January and February 1992. She said, "In talks with people who worked with Ben-Menashe, the claim that he had access to highly sensitive intelligence information was confirmed again and again." And, just as this book was about to go to press, on July 7, 1992, the Village Voice printed a long article by Craig Unger. He quoted my former colleague, Moshe Hebroni: "Ben-Menashe served directly under me. He worked for the Foreign Flow desk in External Relations. He had access to very, very sensitive material." Aside from the media attacks, there were more subtle approaches. An old friend of mine from Mossad just happened to "bump into me" at my London hotel in December 1991 and said how nice it was to see me again after all these years. Although I made no mention of this book to him, he called a couple of days later to ask how it was going. "Don't forget your country in all this, Ari," he said. "Whatever you did, whatever sacrifices had to be made, it was all in the cause of Israel." "Are you saying I was sacrificed?" I asked. "Just remember us," he replied. "That's all we ask. There are matters which should not be talked about ... " Other attempts to sabotage this book were less gentle. The writers who worked with me in Australia received a number of death threats. One American publisher with whom I thought I had a deal to publish the book in the U.S. was apparently intimidated and backed out. A British publisher with whom I did have a deal, refused, at the last minute, to publish the book. Fortunately, Sheridan Square Press in New York and Allen & Unwin in Sydney remained impervious to intimidation. *** And what became of all that slush-fund money? There was approximately $780 million (including interest) in the Israeli slush fund, and another $780 million (including interest) in the American CIA slush fund. To a clever politician or a secret intelligence service, this would be a formidable sum, especially because it is not on any budget line and can be used without accountability. In 1991, about $80 million of the Israeli slush fund that had been on deposit in Australian banks was transferred out of Australia to the former East Bloc. Another $100 million was taken from accounts in Eastern Europe and given to a political party in Israel (neither Labor nor Likud) that favors peace with the Palestinians. The remainder of the Israeli money -- approximately $600 million -- is distributed in various countries around the world, with no final resolution. As for the American CIA money, in August 1991, we cut a deal handing control of it to Robert Maxwell, who in turn was supposed to disburse it to the Americans. But Maxwell reneged on the deal. *** Today, I am a man alone. After my trial I sought a divorce from my wife Ora in the Dominican Republic, only to find out, months later, that she had already divorced me in Israel. I have not seen my daughter Shira since October 1989. I have no country. I am a citizen of the world -- or a citizen of nowhere. Looking back, I can say that the 1980s were a mean decade, perverted in their lack of humanity. It would be too easy to say simply that I regret my role -- though I am deeply sorry for the human suffering of the Iranians and Iraqis. I also regret that Israel continued to develop its capacity for nuclear destruction and that we were unable to bring about peace with the Palestinians. But I do not regret that my experience allowed me to see firsthand how secret intelligence agencies increasingly dominate the foreign policy of nations like the United States and Israel. Whereas once intelligence was supposed to inform leaders and guide them in making policy decisions, today covert intelligence operations and foreign policy are too often inseparable, one and the same. The tools of secret slush fund money, covert operations, and disinformation have been used on such a grand scale that they have changed the nature of the entire political process. A handful of people never elected by anyone are now able to manipulate politics. And my former colleagues, the international arms merchants, with whom I had so many dealings, are not out of business, not by a long shot. If there isn't a big war going on at any given time, there are always a number of small wars. The events in Eastern Europe, in Yugoslavia and in the former Soviet republics continue to generate profits for them. As I sit here I imagine them around their tables, waiting for the next big one, just like Iran and Iraq. Perhaps India and Pakistan. Plenty of cannon fodder to be equipped, a balanced enough conflict to last a long time, no one in the West to care who gets killed -- a real goldmine. I am a humbler man today than I was in the 1970s when I joined Israeli intelligence. I've learned the hard way that everyone makes mistakes, some of them so big that they are irrevocable. I've also changed my view of Israel and the Jewish people. When I was young, I shared with many Israelis a deep nationalistic feeling -- the self-righteous and arrogant belief that we were right and everyone else was wrong, that it was more important for Jews and Israel to survive than others, that we were -- as the Bible says -- the chosen people. I still believe that Jews are chosen. But no longer can I accept the premise on which the Iranian arms deals were based: "Better that their boys die than ours." People are people. We are all chosen.
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