TTEscrima

U.S. authorities arrested an American engineer on Tuesday on suspicion of giving secrets on nuclear weapons, fighter jets and air defense missiles to Israel during the 1980s, the Justice Department said.


Ben-Ami Kadish, 84, acknowledged his spying in FBI interviews and said he acted out of a belief that he was helping Israel, court papers said.

He was accused of reporting to an Israeli government handler who also dealt with Jonathan Jay Pollard, an American citizen serving a life term on a 1985 charge of spying for Israel.

Kadish's arrest is a sign the Pollard scandal, which remains an irritant in the close U.S. alliance with Israel, may have spread wider than was previously acknowledged. Kadish was arrested in New Jersey and was scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday afternoon at U.S. District Court in New York City, authorities said.

"We will be informing the Israelis of this action," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. "Twenty-plus years ago during the Pollard case we noted that this was not the kind of behavior we would expect from friends and allies and that would remain the case today."

Kadish's lawyer, Bruce Goldstein, did not immediately return a call for comment.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel, asked about the arrest, said: "We know nothing about it. We heard it from the media."

Pollard pleaded guilty in 1986. Israel granted him citizenship in 1996 and acknowledged in 1998 that the former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst was one of its spies. Israel has unsuccessfully sought Pollard's release.

Kadish is a Connecticut-born U.S. citizen who worked as a mechanical engineer at the U.S. Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center at the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey.

His spying lasted roughly from 1979 to 1985, and his contact with the unnamed Israeli handler continued until March of this year, the federal complaint against him said.

The complaint said Kadish did not appear to receive any money in exchange for his suspected spying, just small gifts and restaurant meals.

Kadish, who had a security clearance, took 50 to 100 classified documents from the arsenal's library, working from a list provided by the handler identified in a federal complaint as "CC-1." The handler would then photograph the documents in Kadish's basement and Kadish would return them to the library, the complaint said.

It said one of the classified documents passed on by Kadish "contained information concerning nuclear weaponry." Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons but has never acknowledged it.

Another document obtained by Kadish related to "a major weapons system ... a modified version of an F-15 fighter jet that the United States had sold to another foreign country," the complaint said. It did not identify the country.

A third document contained information regarding the U.S. Patriot missile air defense system.

The complaint said Kadish maintained contact with CC-1, met him in Israel in 2004, and spoke with him by telephone on March 20 of this year, after his first FBI interview. It said the handler told him to lie to U.S. authorities: "Don't say anything ... What happened 25 years ago? You don't remember anything," the handler was quoted as saying.

The complaint said the handler worked for the Israeli government as consul for science affairs at the Israeli Consulate General in New York, from 1980 to November 1985.

During the late 1970s the handler worked for what was known at the time as Israeli Aircraft Industries, an Israeli government contractor, the complaint said. It said the handler left the United States when Pollard was arrested and has not returned.

The history appears to fit with that of Yosef Yagur, who has been publicly linked to the Pollard case. A woman who identified herself as Yagur's wife, when reached by telephone, said, "We're not speaking to journalists. Goodbye."

American arrested as nuclear spy for Israel - Yahoo! News

Mike Brewer

This is going to be an intensely interesting case to watch. Any luck finding the Israeli news coverage of the same story? I haven't seen any yet, but it's always fun to compare and contrast.

In the wake of Carter's meeting with Hamas (great going, Mr. Peanut - you intergalactic prick!!) and Condi's visit to the Middle East not too long ago, this will have greater repercussions than it might otherwise have had. I'm looking forward to getting some more facts about the case, but you can bet that he wasn't the only one the Israelis are running.

Actually, this is not entirely dissimilar from the way things worked between America and Britain in World War I. All the way up to Pearl Harbor, actually. It took some serious catastrophes for Churchill to decide on pure, transparent openness with us in terms of intelligence. That trust is hard to come by on a national level. It'll be interesting in the extreme to see how much is damaged by a breach of trust between the U.S. and Israel.

Mike Brewer

From Israel's point of view:

U.S. arrests American over suspected nuclear espionage for Israel - Haaretz - Israel News

Mike Brewer

Looks like everybody is functioning on the same threads of information. Nobody's deviating much from the AP reports.


Another Israeli Report:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...534727,00.html

DickHardman

why do the israelis want to spy on us so much??? they have all our stuff already, we give them so much, why do they feel the need to run operations in our country????

Mike Brewer

In all likelihood, they want to spy here because they know that we talk to the Palestinians as well. A lot of the spying we did during the Cold War was against Russia directly, but a lot of it was done by talking to third parties. We got good information on the UsSR through all sorts of third party nations, just because they did business with the Soviets. Austria - and Vienna in particular - was a hotbed for spying because everyone traded currency there and tourism was huge. Anywhere money and tourists frequent is a good place to spy. Believe it or not, one of the best places to go to find information on denied countries like Iran, Syria, and places like that is Spain. Spain maintains diplomatic missions in just about every country with the exception of North Korea (I think), which means nearly everyone has an embassy there chock full of diplomats from countries we want to spy on.

The espionage game is not one played in direct moves. Almost everything is a matter of indirect attack.

DickHardman

sorry i didnt mean to post classified information mike, good thing you deleted it before anyone noticed.

TTEscrima

Sorry, but this is irresistible. That does explain it, without the patriot missile technology they were stealing they'd be defenseless against the Palestinians new stealth rock throwing systems. Imagine the horror of facing a group of people throwing rocks at you if you hadn't stolen nuclear technology from an ally. I know, I know the Palestinians also have suicide bombers and the best defense against them is a Tactical nuke.

Mike Brewer

No, TT, not a problem. You're absolutely right. The missile defense is important to them big time. The reason that's such a rub here is that it's something we've been willing to set up for them for some time, and they are a part of the whole missile defense issue that we've been trying to negotiate for years. Remember that these things were ripped off even prior to the first Gulf war, so to put it into perspective, the plans were stolen even before we saw the Patriot as an anti-missile missile. Originally, the Patriot was seen as a high altitude air defense missile like the Nike it was intended to replace. It wasn't until the late 80's that we really looked at its potential for hitting other missiles.

But you're absolutely right. The depth and breadth of what they want from us and why they spy is far greater than I included in my initial response. I was just trying to be breif and not give Dick any reason to go oof on a UFO tangent.