Will Gates Be Given the Gate?

By Janice Castro

Questions about ROBERT GATES resurfaced on the eve of the Senate vote this week on his confirmation as head of the CIA. At issue: former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe's claim that Gates planned illegal arms shipments to Iraq with him in the mid-1980s. Gates convincingly disputed the charges during the Senate hearings. The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded after lengthy investigation that no "credible evidence" supported the allegations. But Ben-Menashe's credibility gauge took a jump when investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in his new book, The Samson Option, named Ben-Menashe as a source for his charge that Nicholas Davies, foreign editor of London's Daily Mirror, was an Israeli agent. Davies denied a meeting described by Ben-Menashe, but was fired last week after the Israeli produced a witness and a photo. U.S. investigators are now re-examining Ben-Menashe's assertions regarding Gates.

With reporting by Sidney Urquhart