U.S. arrests American over nuclear espionage for Israel

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

Ben-Ami Kadish, an 84-year-old Connecticut-born U.S. citizen who worked at an Army engineering center in New Jersey, was suspected of reporting to the same Israeli government handler who dealt with Jonathan Jay Pollard, currently serving a life term on a charge of spying for Israel.

Kadish faces four counts of conspiracy, including allegations that he conspired to disclose U.S. national defense documents to Israel and that he acted as an agent of the Israeli government, U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia and FBI officials said.

Kadish worked as a mechanical engineer at the U.S. Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center in Dover, New Jersey.

The complaint says Kadish took home classified documents several times between 1979 and 1985, and the Israeli government worker photographed them in Kadish's basement. Contact between the two continued until March of this year, according to the court papers.

The documents included information about nuclear weapons, a modified version of an F-15 fighter jet and the U.S. Patriot missile air defense system.

Kadish was arrested in New Jersey and was scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday afternoon at U.S. District Court in Manhattan, authorities said.

The Prime Minister's Office said it was unaware of the affair and was looking into the details.

Immediately after the affair broke, a senior defense official said "I find it hard to believe that, after the Pollard affair, we would recruit an American spy."

A U.S. Justice Department official said Kadish did not appear to receive any money in exchange for his suspected spying.

According to the complaint, the Israeli government worker provided Kadish on numerous occasions with lists of U.S. national defense classified documents for Kadish to obtain.

Prosecutors also allege Kadish conspired to hinder a communication with a law enforcement officer and make a materially false statement to a law enforcement officer.

Those charges stem from a March 20 conversation in which Kadish was told by the Israeli contact to lie to U.S. law enforcement agents, the complaint said.

A day later, Kadish lied to FBI agents about his communications with the
Israeli worker, the complaint said.

Kadish was described in the complaint as a Connecticut-born man employed from October 1963 to January 1990 as a mechanical engineer at the Army's Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, where the research center is based.

The complaint said the Israeli worker, who was not identified in court papers, was born in Israel and is an Israeli citizen.

It said that in the late 1970s, the Israeli worker was employed at the Israel Aircraft Industries in Israel, which since at least the late 1970s has been a defense manufacturing contractor for the Israeli government.

From July 1980 through November 1985, he worked for the government of Israel as the consul for science affairs at the Israeli Consulate General in Manhattan, the complaint said.

The complaint noted that Pollard was charged in November 1985 with
espionage-related offense after he provided classified information to the same Israeli worker, among other people.

The Israeli worker left the United States in November 1985 and has not
returned, the complaint said.

Pollard, a former civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy, plead guilty in 1986 to transferring military secrets to Israel while working at the Pentagon. He is serving a life sentence in a U.S. federal prison.

Kadish's arrest indicates that spying revealed by the Pollard case, still an irritant in the close U.S. alliance with Israel, may have spread wider than previously acknowledged. "It was bigger than we thought, and they hid it well," said former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova, who prosecuted the Pollard case.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said, "We will be informing the Israelis of this action ... 20-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."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/977076.html

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