Ari Ben-Menashe (Hebrew: ארי בן מנשה; born 4 December 1951)[1] is an Israeli-Canadian businessman, security consultant, and author.
These connections, Ben-Menashe said, led to his playing an intermediary role in the Israeli effort to sell arms to Iran and were close to the Israeli government decision to back the Reagan campaign's "October Surprise" efforts to ensure American hostages held by Iran and its allies were released on a timetable that strengthened Ronald Reagan and not the incumbent US President, Jimmy Carter.
"[8] In September 1986, Ben-Menashe gave information to Time correspondent Raji Samghabadi about the weapons shipments to Iran organised by Richard Secord, Oliver North and Albert Hakim, which later became known as the Iran–Contra affair.
[9] In November 1989, he was arrested in the United States for violating the Arms Export Control Act for trying to sell three Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft to Iran using false end-user certificates.
[14] After realizing that Israel was not going to support him, Ben-Menashe began to give interviews to journalists from prison on matters including his role in the October Surprise and its links with the Iran–Contra affair.
[citation needed] Then, Israel sought to discredit him, with efforts including an "authoritative source" telling The Jerusalem Post (27 March 1990) that "the Defence establishment 'never had any contacts with Ari Ben-Menashe and his activities.
'"[15] The claims were dropped after Ben-Menashe provided Newsweek's Robert Parry with employment references from Israeli intelligence sources.
"[20] Former Time correspondent Raji Samghabadi, to whom Ben-Menashe had given details on the Iran–Contra affair before they became public, proved a key defense witness.
[8][24] In 1990 and 1991, Ben-Menashe said that he had been personally involved in Iran in order to assist the Reagan's presidential campaign with its October surprise of preventing the American hostages from being released before the 1980 election.
Rafi Eitan, Israeli spy and Begin's counter-terrorism advisor, told author Gordon Thomas, who wrote Gideon's Spies, that Eitan had worked with Ben-Menashe on setting up the US–Israeli network for covertly supplying arms to Iran and had collaborated with Ben-Menashe on using Prosecutor's Management Information System (PROMIS) for espionage.
[25] Ben-Menashe claimed that Robert Maxwell, the owner of Mirror Group newspapers in the United Kingdom, was a Mossad agent and that Maxwell had tipped off the Israeli embassy in 1986 about the Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu after Vanunu and a friend approached the Sunday Mirror and The Sunday Times in London with a story about Israel's nuclear capability.
Evans read out a statement from Hersh, who said he had documentation showing meetings between Davies, unnamed Mossad officers, and "Cindy" (Cheryl Bentov), the woman who lured Vanunu to Rome.
Evans and Hersh were later shown to have themselves been the subject of a sting operation by Joe Flynn, Fleet Street's most celebrated con man.
Ben-Menashe testified in 1991 that he had personally witnessed George HW Bush attend a meeting with members of the Iranian government in Paris in October 1980, as part of a covert Republican Party operation to have the 52 U.S hostages held in Iran remain there until President Jimmy Carter, who was negotiating their release, had lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan.
A roll of quarters handy for furtive phone calls, he navigates the back channels that tie the spooks at Langley to their counterparts in Tel Aviv.
"[2] Ben-Menashe again came to the attention of the international media in 2002, when he alleged that Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe's opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, had asked him to help "eliminate" President Robert Mugabe.
[33] Tsvangirai was put on trial for treason before the Harare High Court but was exonerated in October 2004 after the judge accepted he had not used the word "eliminate" to mean that he wanted Mugabe to be assassinated.
"[35] Ben-Menashe was hired by Paul Le Roux, an international drug lord[36] and DEA informant born in the former Rhodesia to lobby the Zimbabwe government to grant leases to Zimbabwean farmlands.
"[40] Ben-Menashe's Montreal based lobbying firm was hired by Sudanese General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo in a $6 million deal.