TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/070191/0701102.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9.4 KB | 194 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 24

ESPIONAGE

Con Man or Key to a Mystery?


Ari Ben-Menashe adds fuel to the allegations that William Casey
crafted a deal in 1980 to delay the release of the American
hostages held by Tehran

By NANCY GIBBS -- Reported by Ron Ben-Yishai/Tel Aviv, Dan
Goodgame and Bruce van Voorst/Washington


    It is especially hard to solve a mystery if all the
people who actually know the truth are either accomplished
liars, adamantly mute, or already dead. Such a conundrum is
facing investigators who are still trying to unravel the
Iran-contra scandal and other baroque plots that American
officials may have hatched in the Middle East over the past
decade. Last week, as yet more charges came to light, there was
no shortage of fingerprints, plot twists or stool pigeons. But
there was a desperate shortage of certainty, perhaps because
when truth is stranger than fiction, the two are harder to
separate.

    There are a handful of people who could plausibly answer
the frightening questions that date back to 1980. Did Reagan
campaign officials conspire with Iran to delay the release of
the hostages until after the election? For how long did U.S.
officials secretly help supply weapons to Iran? Were they also
helping the Iraqis to illegally acquire missile parts and
chemical weapons? If they were willing, Ronald Reagan, George
Bush and Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani could probably
answer; if they were still alive, former CIA Director William
Casey, Israeli counterterrorism expert Amiram Nir and Ayatullah
Ruhollah Khomeini could.

    And so can I, claims Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli
intelligence officer who clings like kudzu to every new
conspiracy theory that sprouts in the thicket of conflicting
tales. Since the others aren't talking, even his wild charges
get a wide audience. He was among the first to leak the details
of secret U.S. arms sales to Iran back in 1986. He is one of the
sources behind the stories about a purported "October surprise"
hostage deal in the 1980 campaign. And now he has told Senate
investigators that between 1986 and 1988 the Reagan
Administration was secretly supporting shipments of arms --
including chemical weapons -- to Iraq, despite pleas and
complaints from Israel about the dangers that Baghdad posed to
its neighbors.

    As charges mount that the Reagan Administration
consistently violated both the law and its own stated policies,
the Senate Intelligence Committee seems compelled to at least
hear out even the most outlandish tales that come its way. The
lawmakers must decide whether to recommend confirmation of White
House deputy for national security affairs Robert Gates as the
new CIA director. Ben-Menashe's claims have provided another
wrinkle, since he charges that Gates, while serving on Jimmy
Carter's NSC staff and then as Casey's deputy at the CIA,
participated in illegal operations.

    Over Memorial Day weekend, Ben-Menashe arrived in
Washington bearing allegations about Gates that went far beyond
his handling of the Iran-contra scandal. Ben-Menashe charges
that Gates was present at three 1980 meetings between William
Casey, then manager of Reagan's election campaign, and Iranian
officials in Madrid, at which they allegedly discussed delaying
the release of the 52 American hostages in Iran in return for
shipments of arms through Israel. Ben-Menashe also claims that
Gates attended a final meeting in October in Paris, which
included not only Casey but the vice-presidential candidate and
former CIA chief, George Bush. President Bush has repeatedly
denied being present at that meeting, calling the charges
"bald-faced lies."

    Ben-Menashe did not stop there. He told Senate
investigators that during the Iran-Iraq war, the CIA secretly
helped ship weapons to Iraq, including missile parts and
chemical arms. At the time, the U.S. was officially embargoing
arms sales to Iraq, but privately tilted toward Baghdad out of
fear that an Iranian victory could spread Islamic fundamentalism
throughout the region. Ben-Menashe now belatedly portrays Gates
as a central figure in the secret arms sales and describes
meetings in Tel Aviv, Santiago and Kansas City at which the
transfers were discussed.

    In response to the charges, Gates sent over to the
Intelligence Committee a foot-high stack of travel documents and
work logs covering the period of August 1980 to the present,
which White House officials say prove beyond question that he
could not have been at the secret meetings that Ben-Menashe says
he attended. Committee investigators went over to the White
House to check secondary and tertiary records. They showed that
on many of the dates, Gates was attending government meetings
or had other ironclad alibis.

    As for the claim that Bush and Gates were in on the
October 1980 meetings in Paris, other sources dispute the
charge. Last week ABC's Nightline and the Financial Times of
London, acting as an unofficial grand jury, sorted through the
evidence about the Madrid and Paris meet ings. They found hotel
records indicating that Iranian arms dealers Jamshid and Cyrus
Hashemi, the alleged go-betweens for Casey and Tehran, were in
Madrid when the meetings supposedly occurred. They also reported
that neither Casey's family nor Republican campaign officials
could document his whereabouts on the dates in question. But
Jamshid Hashemi denied that Bush was involved in the Paris
session.

    Chameleons are doomed to have credibility problems, and
Ben-Menashe is no exception. He is an Iranian-born Jew of Iraqi
parentage who attended an American school outside Tel Aviv. He
smokes Marlboros, listens to Mozart and speaks Farsi, Hebrew,
Arabic and English. He went to work for Israeli intelligence in
1974, where his language skills helped him crack the codes of
intercepted Arabic and Iranian communications. After Iraq
invaded Iran in 1980, he says he became part of an Israeli team
to supply Iran with military equipment. By his breathtaking, and
implausible, account, $82 billion worth of arms were shipped
over the next few years.

    In 1989 he was arrested in California on charges of
attempting to smuggle C-130 transport planes to Iran. In his
defense he declared that he had acted on behalf of Israeli
intelligence -- but Israeli officials at first denied even
knowing him, and later dismissed him as a lowly translator.
Ben-Menashe sat in jail without bond for 11 months before he was
acquitted in a jury trial.

    Israeli officials continue to insist that he was never
more than a desk jockey and that all his accounts of being a
major player in global intelligence are bogus. "All the work he
did for us was done in his room while sitting at his word
processor," says a colonel in Israeli military intelligence who
was Ben-Menashe's last boss.

    In August 1983 his boss wanted to send Ben-Menashe to the
Israeli military attache's office in Washington to work as a
translator. He then appeared before a committee for a routine
job-qualification examination. The committee's report was blunt:
"It was found that he has serious personality disorders."

    Even so, some knowledgeable -- and skeptical -- experts do
not dismiss Ben-Menashe as a gifted con man. His information,
with its richness of detail and its grains of truth, was enough
to win the attention of some journalists and investigators who
are trying to piece together the truth behind the conspiracy
theories. Gary Sick, the former Carter White House official
whose lengthy investigations refocused attention on the
"October surprise" story in April, admits that he was deeply
suspicious of Ben-Menashe's tales at first. But one by one, at
least some of Ben-Menashe's stories have turned out to be
plausible. Among them: that Casey and the Iranians had met in
March or April, as ABC News suggested. Previous accounts had the
meetings taking place months later.

    Likewise, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who is
writing a book about Israel's nuclear program, has found some
of Ben-Menashe's testimony credible. Ben-Menashe claims to have
operated at one time out of Ayacucho, Peru, where he says his
job was to protect supplies of minerals essential to Israel's
nuclear program. At one point, Hersh devised his own test of the
agent's veracity. He handed Ben-Menashe a list of 10 minerals,
asking him to pinpoint the critical ones for nuclear-weapons
production. Ben-Menashe checked three, and they were the right
ones.

    It might be easier to judge Ben-Menashe's credibility if
anyone could pinpoint his motives. He portrays himself as a
patriot who was angered at Gates for helping Israel's enemies.
"I didn't do anything for myself,'' he told TIME. "I did it for
Israel." He is also in the process of writing his memoirs, so
he may be looking for some limelight. He says he is frightened
and bitter at the Israelis for abandoning him.

    Ben-Menashe, on balance, appears to be a practiced poseur.
But his charges will continue to attract attention as long as
questions linger about the Reagan Administration's bizarre
dealings with Iran and Iraq. If Casey in fact cut a deal with
Iran to delay the release of the hostages, the act would verge
on treason. If no such bargain was ever struck, the reputations
of innocent men have been smeared. Either way, it is long past
time to get to the bottom of the mystery.