Israel's Botched Hit: Flash of Truth Amid
Lies
By Robert Parry
The Consortium News, 1997
On Sept. 25, a two-man Israeli hit team was on the prowl in Amman,
Jordan, looking for Hamas leader Khaled Meshal. Obeying secret orders
to avenge suicide bombings in Israel, the assassins drove a
non-descript drab-green Hyundai to Meshal's house and followed him on
his route to work.
When Meshal climbed out of his car, the assassins jumped out, too.
According to witnesses, one assassin had a gray device strapped to
his arm and approached Meshal from behind. The assassin lifted his
arm in the direction of Meshal's left ear. The device emitted a
popping sound -- and forced a lethal toxin into Meshal's skin.
The assassins fled. Meshal collapsed and was rushed to a hospital.
There, doctors puzzled over the curious malady that soon left Meshal
clinging to life on a respirator.
But this dramatic incident did not end as a medical mystery. Instead,
it touched off an international furor. Enraged by an assassination
attempt in his own capital, Jordan's King Hussein blamed Israel and
demanded that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu deliver the antidote
to save Meshal's life. If Netanyahu refused, King Hussein warned of
reprisals, including the possible severing of relations with
Israel.
Under normal circumstances, Netanyahu might have weathered this
diplomatic storm behind a protective barrier of intelligence
"deniability." He might have rejected allegations of Israeli
complicity and pretended not to know what had caused Meshal's
illness.
Meshal might have died an unexplained death and the truth would have
disappeared into a haze of historical suspicions. There even might
have been some mocking stories in The New Republic or other
staunchly pro-Israeli publications commenting on the cultural
proclivity of Arabs to believe in baseless "conspiracy theories."
Israeli assassins with a mysterious toxin? The Israelis, of all
people, using poison gas?
But the Meshal affair was one of those rare moments when truth was
plucked from the thicket of intelligence deceptions. This happened --
as it does occasionally -- because of the capture of clear physical
evidence that could not be cleverly spun by propagandists. Netanyahu
could not dismiss King Hussein's allegations because Meshal's
bodyguards chased the assassins -- first on foot, then by car and
then on foot again.
One bodyguard, trained in martial arts, subdued one of the assassins
by force and the other surrendered. Their false identities as
Canadian tourists quickly collapsed and the two were identified as
agents of Israel's foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.
Netanyahu had no choice but to admit Israeli complicity. His
fall-back was to justify the attack as appropriate retaliation for
the suicide bombings. [For details on the Meshal case, see Barton
Gellman's account in The Washington Post, Oct. 6,
1997]
But the Meshal case carries another lesson: investigators should not
reject too quickly other stories of controversial Israeli
intelligence operations. Since World War II, Israeli operatives have
engaged in many daring exploits, first to found the Jewish state and
since then to defend its fragile security. One storied Israeli
intelligence operation kidnapped Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in
Argentina in 1960 and brought him to Israel for execution.
The legacy of the Holocaust and the hostility of many Arab neighbors
have pushed Israelis into this harsh pragmatism where the ends can be
made to justify the means, where rough justice exacts an eye for an
eye, even when revenge is inflicted on a group, not the guilty
individual. When international controversy does flare, Israel can
rely on sympathizers in Western countries to protect its P.R.
flanks.
Out in the Cold
That was the case, too, in the early 1990s when Israel faced a
potential P.R. disaster with the defection of possibly the most
knowledgeable intelligence agent ever: Ari Ben-Menashe. A 10-year
veteran of an Israeli military intelligence office called the
External Relations Department, Ben-Menashe was arrested in the United
States in late 1989 on charges of trying to sell C-130 cargo planes
to Iran.
After the arrest, the Israeli government informed federal prosecutors
and U.S. journalists that Ben-Menashe had never worked for Israeli
intelligence. Left out in the cold, Ben-Menashe began divulging some
of Israel's most closely held secrets. Over time, those secrets
included:
--Details about Israel's nuclear program and collaboration with
South Africa's white-supremacist government in developing and
testing nuclear weapons.
--Allegations that the government of Menachem Begin cooperated
with the Reagan-Bush campaign and with conservative European
intelligence services to ship arms to Iran in 1980, thus
undermining President Carter's efforts to free 52 American
hostages.
--Accounts of secret Israeli diplomacy to disrupt a CIA-sanctioned
operation to funnel military hardware to Saddam Hussein's Iraq
during the 1980s.
--Israeli use of British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell as an
intelligence operative who disseminated propaganda and arranged
clandestine weapons shipments through the Eastern Bloc.
I was one of the first reporters to interview Ben-Menashe, in New
York City's federal prison in February 1990 when I was still a
correspondent for Newsweek. He was a difficult interview,
brash and arrogant, talking down to me as though I were someone who
couldn't be expected to grasp the more complicated picture. He
outlined an intelligence world -- almost an alternative history --
that existed beneath the surface of events that common citizens would
know.
When I informed Ben-Menashe that Israel was denying any connection to
him, he arranged with his mother to send me a package of his personal
documents. They included letters of reference establishing that he
indeed had worked for ERD, an arm of the Aman or military
intelligence.
Confronted with the documents, Israeli officials grudgingly admitted
Ben-Menashe's employment in the intelligence community. But they then
retreated to a new cover story: that Ben-Menashe was a "low-level
translator" who never traveled on government business.
Key Friends
This cover story was equally implausible and, off-the-record,
Israeli officials admitted to me and other skeptical journalists that
it wasn't true. The officials acknowledged that the Iranian-born
Ben-Menashe had undertaken sensitive missions for Israel, in part
because of his proficiency in speaking Farsi and Arabic. One senior
military intelligence officer confirmed to me that Ben-Menashe also
had operated in then-communist Poland for the Israeli government.
Israel, however, relied on some of its closest allies in the U.S.
news media to promote the "low-level translator" story. Steven
Emerson, a writer for The New Republic and The Wall
Street Journal's editorial page, cited the line repeatedly,
adding that his Israeli contacts had shared with him their other
claim, that Ben-Menashe was "delusional."
(Emerson's journalistic career suffered a string of embarrassing
setbacks in the mid-1990s. After the Oklahoma City bombing on April
19, 1995, he rushed onto TV news shows and pointed the finger of
guilt at Islamic radicals. A subsequent article by investigative
reporter Robert I. Friedman disclosed how Emerson had closely
coordinated his anti-Arab journalism with hard-line Israeli
officials. Likud party leaders even stayed at Emerson's apartment
during their frequent trips to Washington. [For details, see
The Nation, May 15, 1995])
But in 1991, Emerson and other Ben-Menashe debunkers were riding
high. They savaged any American investigator who tried to examine his
allegations carefully. In this strategy, Israel was aided by the fact
that Ben-Menashe's charges were extremely dangerous as well to
then-President George Bush and senior CIA officials, including Robert
Gates, who was Bush's choice to become CIA director.
In effect, Ben-Menashe depicted an intelligence coup in 1980, with
the CIA conspiring behind President Carter's back to put Ronald
Reagan and George Bush, a former CIA director, into power.
Ben-Menashe alleged that Bush and Gates played direct roles in the
operation, allegations that they vigorously denied. However, at the
center of the controversy, known popularly as the "October Surprise"
case, was the late William J. Casey, Ronald Reagan's campaign chief
in 1980 and then his first CIA director.
Press Attacks
In 1991, these suspicions about Bush's hand in a 1980 intelligence
coup were rising as a potentially devastating threat to Bush's
re-election which was then considered a very strong bet. Quickly,
Bush's many friends at conservative and mainstream publications
joined with Israel's influential press allies to put the story
down.
In a string of press attacks, Ben-Menashe was inundated with
character assassination. The New Republic and my former
employers at Newsweek led the way, claiming to have
disproved the October Surprise story by establishing alibis for
Casey's whereabouts on key days when he was alleged to be meeting
with Iranians in Europe. Those alibis would later be disproved,
although no official corrections would ever be run. [For details,
see my books, Trick or Treason and The October Surprise
X-Files.]
Amid the growing controversies around his allegations, Ben-Menashe
won acquittal of the criminal charges against him. A jury in New York
apparently accepted his legitimacy as an Israeli intelligence officer
on a secret mission. Eventually dozens of government officials, other
witnesses and documents corroborated additional aspects of
Ben-Menashe's allegations.
But Ben-Menashe often undercut his own credibility by over-promising
what he could deliver in terms of documents or contacts with
high-level officials in the Middle East. Still, his biggest problem
appeared to be that he challenged too many powerful interests at
once. The acceptance of the October Surprise allegations alone would
have destroyed the legitimacy of 12 years of Republican rule, forced
investigations into illegal CIA political operations and damaged
Israel's image.
Also infuriating the Israelis was Ben-Menashe's account of the highly
sensitive Israeli nuclear weapons program. In fall 1986, a former
employee at Israel's Dimona nuclear facility, Mordecai Vanunu,
divulged secrets of that program to the Sunday Times of
London. Israel went to the extraordinary lengths to capture Vanunu in
Europe and spirit him back to Israel for imprisonment.
Ben-Menashe touched that same raw nerve when he gave more nuclear
details to investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh. Hersh checked and
cross-checked Ben-Menashe's story about the Israeli arsenal and
Maxwell's espionage role. Initially a strong skeptic about
Ben-Menashe, Hersh grew convinced that Ben-Menashe was "golden" -- in
Hersh's word -- and included Ben-Menashe's corroborated accounts in
The Samson Option, Hersh's 1991 book about Israel's nuclear
weapons stockpile.
For doing so, Hersh came under heavy attack from pro-Israeli
journalists in the United States and in Great Britain, especially
those connected to Maxwell's empire. Despite the furor, Ben-Menashe's
accounts published in The Samson Option largely prevailed.
After Maxwell's mysterious death at sea off the Canary Islands on
Nov. 5, 1991, Maxwell received the rare honor of a burial in
Jerusalem's historic Mount of Olives and Hersh won two libel cases
brought by Maxwell associates.
Weak Democrats
Still, the smear campaigns against Ben-Menashe took their toll.
Weak Democratic leaders -- particularly Sen. David Boren of Oklahoma
and Lee Hamilton of Indiana -- caved under Republican pressure. Boren
brushed aside Ben-Menashe's testimony and cleared the way for Gates
to be confirmed as CIA director. In 1992-93, Hamilton oversaw an
October Surprise investigation, which defended Republican innocence
by concealing testimony and documentary evidence which pointed toward
Reagan-Bush guilt. [See The October Surprise
X-Files.]
Meanwhile, Hersh and others who had drawn accurate information from
Ben-Menashe retreated under fire. Hersh began calling Ben-Menashe "a
liar," presumably because Ben-Menashe had failed to fulfill a promise
that he could get a visa for Hersh to travel to Iran. When I've
talked with Hersh over the years since then, he has not offered a
single example of a substantive factual claim by Ben-Menashe that
proved to be false. But like others, Hersh recognized the danger to
his career and resented Ben-Menashe's bravado.
On many occasions, I shared Hersh's frustration with Ben-Menashe's
behavior. The ex-Israeli agent sometimes dangled promises of more
documents and then failed to deliver. But I was unable to disprove
conclusively any of his substantive allegations, even when they first
sounded highly implausible to me.
But the calumny heaped upon those who fairly examined these questions
was so extraordinary that nearly everyone backed off or suffered
great harm. Gary Sick, a serious scholar of U.S.-Iran relations who
would have been in line for a senior State Department job under
President Clinton, was turned into a political pariah for his
conclusion that the October Surprise allegations were true. [See
Gary Sick's book, October Surprise.]
PBS Frontline, which recruited me to report two
documentaries on the issue, became a whipping boy for conservatives
who cited those programs as a justification for slashing the PBS
budget.
As individuals scrambled to salvage their careers and reputations,
the integrity of the historical record crumbled. Ironically, the
Democrats most responsible for the collapse -- Hamilton and Boren --
earned kudos for their "bipartisanship" and "conscience."
Another Chance
But there was still a chance for the truth to emerge in the early
years of the Clinton administration. Along two separate tracks,
Iranian government emissaries sought out contacts with the Clinton
newcomers. Primarily, these emissaries wanted to test out the
possibility of improved U.S.-Iranian relations and possibly gain
release of Iranian assets frozen since 1979.
As part of those overtures, the Iranian emissaries informed the White
House that the long-denied stories about a Republican-Iranian deal in
1980 were true. Sources close to the White House told me that this
information was delivered directly to President Clinton. But Clinton
turned his back on the overtures because hard documentary evidence
was lacking and because of continued concerns about the Iranian
government's support for international terrorism.
(One Clinton source identified Kamal Kharrazi as part of this Iranian
initiative. Kharrazi then was Iranian representative to the United
Nations, but he is now foreign minister under Iran's new, more
moderate government.)
Though official Washington seems to have little interest in fixing
old political and journalistic errors, some early history books of
the era accept the October Surprise story as fact. Peter Bourne's
Jimmy Carter biography, published this year, describes the Republican
sabotage almost matter-of-factly.
Bourne recounts an interview with Bassam Abu Sharif, a top aide to
Yasir Arafat, describing a request from "a senior Reagan advisor" who
flew to Lebanon in July 1980 seeking Arafat's "influence in Tehran to
delay the [hostage] release until after the election."
(In 1996, Arafat confirmed this account in a private meeting with
Carter, according to the scholarly journal, Diplomatic
History, Fall 1996. Later, the ex-president confirmed to me that
Arafat had supplied the information about the Republican
operation.)
On another front, Bourne adds that Casey "had established his own
channels to Tehran through relationships in the French intelligence
community." Those contacts permitted Casey to open up direct
negotiations with Iranians in Europe.
These European intelligence figures "were professional operatives who
not only had the necessary international contacts and were
coldbloodedly involved in breaking of governments through clandestine
deals and furtive manipulation, they were also people who could keep
secrets even if it meant perjuring themselves."
Bourne also cites an obvious motive for CIA officers to help in the
plot. "Carter was widely disliked [by them] while Casey and
Reagan's vice presidential nominee, George Bush, were considered
members of the club," Bourne notes.
In Israel, Bourne writes, Prime Minister Menachem Begin had concluded
that Carter would lose and began "to cover Israel's bets
surreptitiously with the Republicans." Explaining why the 1992-93
congressional inquiry rejected the October Surprise allegations,
Bournes adds that the members of Congress lacked "definitive
evidence" and may have feared that a full investigation would "reveal
far greater involvement of Israel than had already come to
light."
Brzezinski's View
In an interview, Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski told me that the Carter White House was well aware that
the Begin government had "an obvious preference for a Reagan
victory." That animosity could be traced back to Carter's opposition
to Jewish settlements on the West Bank.
David Kimche, a senior Begin aide and former Mossad official, has
corroborated Brzezinski's point. "Begin was being set up for
diplomatic slaughter by the master butchers in Washington," Kimche
wrote about Israeli concerns for a second Carter term, when the
president would be freed from the electoral pressures of the American
Jewish community. [See Kimche's book, The Last
Option.]
Despite the shifting assessments of historians, Ben-Menashe remained
the odd man out. Angry about his disclosures, Israel subjected him to
years of harassment. As he shuttled from country to country, he
always feared sudden deportation to Israel -- the Vanunu option -- or
worse. He finally settled in Montreal, married a Canadian woman and
obtained Canadian citizenship. Now in his late 40s, he works for an
international commodities broker and tries to put the controversies
of the 1980s behind him.
But the attempted murder of Khaled Meshal offers a reminder of how
far Israel is prepared to go when its security interests are
threatened -- and how hard it is to know the history even when it
happens right before our eyes. ~
Copyright (c) 1997
