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PROFITS OF WAR -- INSIDE THE SECRET U.S.-ISRAELI ARMS NETWORK |
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Inside Cover: This is the book the Israelis tried to stop, written by the man they said didn't exist -- the book that the CIA tried to sabotage. Ari Ben-Menashe worked for more than a dozen years in the inner circles of Israel's clandestine services. He was privy to the negotiations between the Republicans and the Iranians to hold the American hostages until after the 1980 election -- the "October Surprise" -- and he was there when Bush met a high Iranian official in Paris in October 1980. He also worked directly with Robert Gates -- now the director of the CIA -- to arrange the transfer of $52 million in cash to Iran in early 1981. Ben-Menashe was one of the six members of Israel's top-secret Joint Committee on Israel-Iran Relations, responsible for the transfer of billions of dollars of arms to Iran during the 1980s. He traveled the world, buying and selling arms, setting up the front companies and conduits necessary for this massive trade, virtually all of it with the connivance of the CIA. In 1986, in Israel, he briefed George Bush. Ben-Menashe also was involved in Israel's attempt to halt the U.S.'s arming of Iraq. He and his colleagues tried everything to prevent arms dealers -- including Margaret Thatcher's son Mark -- from supplying Saddam Hussein with unconventional weapons. Ben-Menashe played a role in the growth of the Israel nuclear arsenal, arranging for the acquisition of strategic materials through bizarre and incredibly difficult channels. He saw Israel's links to South Africa flourish; he watched super-secret Israeli committees calmly review their lists of which enemies of Israel would live and which would be assassinated; he saw his masters sponsor monstrous terrorist acts, all for reasons of state. In the course of his operations, he worked intimately with a network of agents and collaborators that encompassed some of the most famous and powerful men in the world, including British publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, and high U.S. government officials such as Senator John Tower and National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane. This his former allies cut him off and set him up. He spent nearly a year in a U.S. jail on trumped-up charges while the Israeli government denied it had ever heard of him. But in October 1990, he was acquitted -- because he proved that both Israel and the United States had, indeed, authorized the decade-long secret sale of arms to Iran. This book, which reads like a gripping spy novel, is the inside story of the man who was a key source for Gary Sick's October Surprise and for Seymour Hersh's The Samson Option. It dissects the international arms trade as it tells of the accumulation of fortune in CIA and Israeli Intelligence bank accounts, whose ownership is still publicly disavowed by all concerned. Pieces of this puzzle were tantalizingly revealed during the Iran-contra investigations; now the full picture emerges with breathtaking clarity. Ari Ben-Menashe was born December 4, 1951, in Tehran, Iran, to an Iraqi-Jewish family. In 1966 he emigrated to Israel. From 1974 to 1977 he served in the Israel Defense Forces, in signals intelligence. In the years 1977 to 1987 he was a civilian employee of the External Relations Department of IDF Military Intelligence. From 1987 to 1989, he was a special intelligence adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. He speaks Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, English, French, and Spanish. Since 1990, he has been a man without a country, dividing his time among England, the United States, and Australia. He cannot, for obvious reasons, return to Israel. *** Back Cover: "The man who knew too much, the spy who came in from the cold, the man without a country -- Ari Ben-Menashe has earned every cliche the literature of espionage has to offer. "The most closely guarded secrets in the world have passed before his eyes. Ignore him and you'll miss out on the great secrets of the Reagan-Bush era. A dozen or more highly placed intelligence sources have been able to corroborate key stories that were never meant to see the light of day ... adventures and allegations so stunning, so monumental that they go to the heart of whether or not this country is still a constitutional democracy. "Ari Ben-Menashe is one of the most dangerous renegade agents ever to defect from Israeli intelligence. It is hard to think of anyone who has told us more about the secrets of the intelligence world than he. His charges have been corroborated." -- Craig Unger, in the Village Voice "The controus of the Israeli intelligence effort can be discerned through the activities of one man, Ari Ben-Menashe." -- Gary Sick, in October Surprise "Ben-Menashe's deeds deal with the most sensitive issues of Israeli existence: nuclear secrets of the State of Israel and an international arms network involving Israel's relationship with the only power left in the world today, the United States. "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." -- Pazit Ravina, reporter for Davar "I knew him for more than ten years. I often called upon him to take part in discussions with the head of the intelligence office. Ari Ben-Menashe had access to very, very sensitive material." -- Moshe Hebroni, former chief of staff, office of the director of Israeli Military Intelligence "Shamir, Ben-Menashe said, decided 'without any hesitation to open the Soviet Bloc to Israel. He authorized the exchange of intelligence with the Soviets. Suddenly, we're exchanging information.' "Ben-Menashe's account might seem almost too startling to be believed, had it not been subsequently amplified by a second Israeli, who cannot be named." -- Seymour Hersh, in The Samson Option "Ben-Menashe had access not just to the greatest secrets of Israeli intelligence, but also of the countries with whom Israel exchanged intelligence." -- An Anonymous Former Colleague
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