Will Gates Be Given the Gate?

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.