While Epstein and Maxwell certainly associated with the Mossad's network (as well as the CIA, MI6, Soviet intelligence, and the Russian mob, to name a few), anything Ben-Menashe says should be viewed skeptically and needs independent corroboration, given his track record, vested interests, and agendas.
Ben-Menashe was born in Tehran, Iran in 1951, emigrating to Israel as a teenager. . .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 unable to corroborate the allegations, and Ben-Menashe later passed the information to the Lebanese Ash-Shiraa,[9] which published them on 3 November 1986,[10] and soon led to Congressional investigations. Samghabadi later said that "The information he gave me was earthshaking, and it was later corroborated by Congress."[9][11] According to Ben-Menashe, the leaking was done on the orders of Likud's Yitzhak Shamir to embarrass his Labor Party rival Shimon Peres. . .Ben-Menashe first came to public prominence in 1989, when he was arrested in the US on 3 November 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.[4][13][14] According to Ben-Menashe, the Israeli government urged him to plead guilty,[15] with officers of Shin Bet visiting his mother in Tel Aviv telling her that "it would be in my best interests to plead guilty to all charges before the Federal Superior Court [in New York] if I wished to avoid prosecution in Israel."[16] According to British intelligence writer Gordon Thomas, while awaiting trial at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, Ben-Menashe was visited by Israeli government lawyers, who urged him to plead guilty and in exchange offered him a generous financial settlement that would allow him to live comfortably after his release from prison.[17] 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. . .Ben-Menashe claimed that Robert Maxwell, then owner of Mirror Group newspapers in the UK, was a Mossad agent, and that Maxwell had tipped off the Israeli embassy in 1986 about 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.[31] Vanunu was subsequently lured by Mossad from London to Rome, kidnapped, returned to Israel, and sentenced to 18 years in jail. According to Ben-Menashe the Daily Mirror's foreign editor, Nicholas Davies worked for the Mossad and was involved in the Vanunu affair. No British newspaper would publish the Maxwell allegations because of his well-known litigiousness. However, Ben-Menashe was used as a key source by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Seymour Hersh for his book about Israel's nuclear weapons, The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, published in Britain in 1991 by Faber and Faber.[21] Hersh included the allegations about Maxwell and Vanunu in his book. . .On November 12, Matthew Evans, chairman of Faber and Faber, called a press conference in London to say he had evidence that Ben-Menashe was telling the truth about Nick Davies. Evans read out a statement from Seymour Hersh, who said he had documentation showing meetings between Davies, unnamed Mossad officers, and "Cindy" (Cheryl Bentov), the woman who lured Vanunu to Rome. It transpired that Matthew Evans and Seymour Hersh had themselves been the subject of a sting operation by Joe Flynn, Fleet Street's most celebrated con man. Evans had met Flynn in Amsterdam, paying him £1,200 for the forged documents. . .Ben-Menashe testified in 1991 that he had personally witnessed George H. W. Bush attend a meeting with members of the Iranian government in Paris in October 1980, as part of a covert Republican Party operation—the so-called October surprise—to have the 52 U.S hostages then held in Iran remain there until President Jimmy Carter, who was negotiating their release, had lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan. Time called him a "spinner of tangled yarns,"[27] and ABC News claimed he failed a lie-detector test: On a scale of reliability from zero to minus eight, he scored minus eight or minus seven on major questions.[33] In 1992, American journalist Craig Unger of The Village Voice wrote: "Ari has put five or six dozen journalists from all over the world through roughly the same paces. His seduction begins with a display of his mastery of the trade craft of the legendary Israeli intelligence services. 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. His astute analysis and mind-boggling revelations can stir even the most jaded old hand of the Middle East. … Listen to him, trust him, print his story verbatim—then sit round and watch your career go up in flames."[8]. . .Ben-Menashe's American business partner, Alexander Legault, was arrested in October 2008 while being deported back into the United States after a failed refugee claim in Canada. He had been wanted on $10,000,000 bond by the FBI since 1986 on charges of racketeering, conspiracy, organized fraud, mail fraud and unregulated security in Florida and Louisiana.[3] Documents obtained in 2002 by Canadian journalists under Canada's freedom of information legislation show that Ben-Menashe had a relationship with the Canadian government: "over 400 pages showing Ben-Menashe was regularly de-briefed by Canadian intelligence officers, plumbed about what he knew of the inner workings of the governments he was involved with.". . .Ben-Menashe's Montreal based lobbying firm was hired by Sudanese general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo in a $6M deal. The firm, Dickens & Madson Inc, signed a deal offering to seek government recognition, funding and "striving to obtain funding and equipment for the Sudanese military" with General Dagalo.[44] General Dagalo's forces carried out the Khartoum massacre where more than 100 protesters were killed. :
Wow, nice material