Ari Ben-Menashe

His parents were Iraqi Jews who settled in Tehran in 1945.

Ari Ben-Menashe (ארי בן מנשה; born 4 December 1951) is an Israeli-Canadian businessman, security consultant, and author.

He served in the Israel Defense Forces in signals intelligence from 1974 to 1977.

He was previously an employee of Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate from 1977 to 1987, and an arms dealer.

He lives in Montreal.

In 1977, Ben-Menashe joined Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate.

He later said, "I happened to be the right guy at the right time. I spoke Persian, Arabic, English. I knew the United States."

In his book Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network Ben-Menashe said that following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, his Iranian background provided useful connections, with some of his school friends playing roles in the new government.

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.

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.

Time was unwilling to publish the allegations, and Ben-Menashe later passed the information to the Lebanese Ash-Shiraa, which published them on 3 November 1986, and soon led to congressional investigations.

Samghabadi later said, "The information he gave me was earthshaking, and it was later corroborated by Congress."

According to Ben-Menashe, the leaking was done on the orders of Likud's Yitzhak Shamir to embarrass his Labour Party rival, Shimon Peres, whose Labour party had criticized Shamir and Likud for secret activities such as arms operation to Iran.

Ben-Menashe served in the Military Intelligence Directorate until 1987, once under Moshe Hebroni, the deputy to the Directorate's Director, General Yehoshua Sagi.

In 1989, Ben-Menashe was charged with attempting to sell three military aircraft to Iran in contravention of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act.

After nearly a year in jail, he was acquitted.

Ari Ben-Menashe was born in Tehran, Iran and immigrated to Israel as a teenager.

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.

Ben-Menashe claimed that the Israeli government offered him a plea bargain.

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.

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.'" The claims were dropped after Ben-Menashe provided Newsweek's Robert Parry with employment references from Israeli intelligence sources.

After almost a year in prison, he was acquitted on 28 November 1990, with a jury accepting that he had acted on behalf of Israel.

During his trial, Ben-Menashe's passport was presented as another piece of evidence that he was more than just a low-level Persian translator for the Israeli Defense Forces.

The passport documented travel all over the world including Peru, Chile, Guatemala, and multiple points in Asia and Europe.

Ben-Menashe's lawyer asked the jury rhetorically, "They need a Persian translator in Chile?"

He then stated, "That doesn't make any sense."

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.

Samghabadi testified that Ben-Menashe had told him about the US and Israeli arms deals, which would become the foundation of the Iran–Contra Affair, several months before the story broke in the Lebanese newspaper Ash-Shiraa, which indicated that he had high-level inside knowledge of Israeli affairs.

Emerson also published his claims in other outlets, and Newsweek (which Parry had left in June 1990) also attacked Ben-Menashe.

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.

He also gave Seymour Hersh information about Israel's nuclear program, which was published in Hersh's book The Samson Option.

Ben-Menashe then fled to Australia and, in his application for refugee status, declared himself a victim of persecution of the Israeli and US governments.

With Ben-Menashe's claims remaining in the public eye, in early 1991 The New Republic's Steven Emerson traveled to Israel and, on his return, described Ben-Menashe as merely a "low-level translator" even though the references described Ben-Menashe as working in "key positions" and handling "complex and sensitive assignments."

Parry later wrote that other documents confirmed Ben-Menashe's travels: "Ben-Menashe's passports and other documents revealed that he had traveled extensively with frequent trips to Latin America, Eastern Europe, the United States and elsewhere, not exactly the record of the stay-at-home, low-level translator that Israel was trying to sell to me and other journalists."

For his return to the US in May 1991 to testify to Congress, the journalist Robert Parry received a tip from an intelligence source that the US was planning to divert Ben-Menashe to Israel, where Ben-Menashe feared that he would be charged for revealing official secrets.

With a delay to Ben-Menashe's flight, congressional investigators were able to extract assurances from the US government.

In December 1991, Ben-Menashe's appeal against a refusal by Australia to grant him refugee status failed.

He left Australia and eventually settled in Canada.

Hebroni told Craig Unger in 1992, "Ben-Menashe served directly under me.... He had access to very, very sensitive material."

In 1992, however, Moshe Hebroni, the deputy director of the Military Intelligence Directorate, told Craig Unger that Ben-Menashe had worked directly with him and had access to sensitive material.