1.6 KiB
| category | tags | summary | died | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence & Government |
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Convicted British arms dealer acting for the CIA who offered Ari Ben-Menashe $2 million and U.S. citizenship for his silence. | 1992 |
Herbert Alwyn Smith was a convicted British arms dealer. He contacted Ari Ben-Menashe through an informant in early 1991, while Ari Ben-Menashe was in Lexington, Kentucky.1
Herbert Alwyn Smith, acting on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency, offered Ari Ben-Menashe a deal: $2 million and United States citizenship in exchange for his silence and a signed statement that he had no legal claims or allegations against the United States government. Ari Ben-Menashe received a letter of credit for the amount but did not accept the deal.1
Herbert Alwyn Smith visited Ari Ben-Menashe in Australia five times over the next year. He also arranged for Ari Ben-Menashe to meet with Central Intelligence Agency officials in Ireland in August 1991 and with Robert Maxwell in the Soviet Union the same month. The purpose of these meetings was to try to get Ari Ben-Menashe to hand over control of part of the slush fund to the Central Intelligence Agency.1
Herbert Alwyn Smith died in March 1992, purportedly of a heart attack, ten days after leaving Sydney, Australia.1
Footnotes
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Ben-Menashe, Ari. Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network. TrineDay, 1992. ↩︎