JERUSALEM - The case of an 84-year-old New Jersey man charged with passing
secrets to an Israeli agent a quarter-century ago has created speculation
that more Americans may have been serving Israeli intelligence than
previously thought.
Jonathan Pollard, a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy, was
arrested by FBI agents in Wa****ngton D.C. in 1985 and pleaded guilty to
spying charges, receiving a life sentence. Now, retired U.S. military
engineer Ben-ami Kadish faces similar charges.
The link between Pollard and Kadish is a now-defunct Israeli intelligence
agency enigmatically known as the Scientific Relations Office. The office
was run by Rafi Eitan, a former officer of the Mossad spy agency who is
now
an octogenarian Israeli Cabinet minister in charge of pensioners' affairs.
Kadish and Pollard allegedly had the same handler, Yosef Yagur, "an
intelligence agent under diplomatic cover" serving as an attache in
Israel's
New York consulate but covertly attached to Eitan's office, said Israeli
intelligence expert Yossi Melman.
Yagur is now retired and lives in Tel Aviv, Melman said. His telephone
number is unlisted.
"For years, Israel was involved in technological espionage in the U.S.,"
Melman said. "Kadish and Pollard were certainly not the only ones."
The prosecutor who oversaw the Pollard case also said the arrest of
Kadish,
who allegedly operated under identical cir***stances, shows the spy ring
was
larger than anyone knew and that the Israelis lied about it.
"It clearly indicates there were other Americans being asked at other
military installations to do the same things the same way," said Joseph E.
diGenova, a Wa****ngton attorney now in private practice.
After Pollard was caught, Eitan assumed responsibility and resigned. The
Scientific Relations Office was disbanded. Israel promised the U.S. that
it
would no longer conduct any intelligence activity on American soil and
there
is no evidence it has broken that promise.
But if the new charges are true, Israel clearly did not come clean about
its
pre-1985 activities.
According to the charges filed in a New York court Tuesday, for six years
beginning in 1979, Kadish took home do***ents concerning nuclear weapons,
a
modified version of the F-15 fighter jet and the U.S. Patriot missile air
defense system and let an Israeli consular official photograph the
do***ents
in his basement.
On Wednesday, Israel offered its first response to the arrest, a vague
statement that neither confirmed nor denied the charges. Foreign Ministry
spokesman Arye Mekel said Israel would not comment specifically on the
Kadish case.
"To remove any doubt, since 1985 there has been much care taken to observe
the directives of the prime ministers not to engage in any activities of
this type in the U.S.," he said. "Relations between the U.S. and Israel
have
always been based on real friend****p and shared values and interests."
Micha Harish, an Israeli Cabinet minister who headed the committee that
investigated the Pollard affair, told Israel Radio on Wednesday that the
working assumption was that Pollard was the only spy.
Israeli lawmaker Yuval Steinitz, a former head of parliament's
intelligence
subcommittee, said that from the information available it seems the Kadish
case was more akin to industrial espionage than full-fledged spying.
"I don't think there's a big scandal here," he said. "I think this is
about
collecting technological information, which many countries do to each
other,
even friendly ones."
Since the Pollard case, Steinitz said, Israel has halted those activities
in
the U.S. And some Israelis have questioned why a three-decade old case
surfaced now.
Shlomo Slonim, an expert on U.S.-Israel relations at Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, said the do***ents Kadish allegedly supplied were not top
secret
and could be found in a library.
"Apparently somebody is trying to trump up something relatively minor and
make it into a scandal of some sort," he said.
Alon Pinkas, Israel's former New York consul, went further, saying
"anti-Israeli" elements in the CIA and Pentagon might have decided to
release the charges to torpedo any possible release of Pollard.
Israeli leaders regularly press the U.S. to free the jailed spy, but U.S.
intelligence agencies strongly oppose it.
U.S. State Department Spokesman Tom Casey expressed displeasure over the
new
revelations in a briefing to re****ters Wednesday.
"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," Casey said.
Official ties are unlikely to be affected, said David Kimche, president of
the Israel Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior Mossad
official.
"There won't be any dramatic ramifications in the sense that any sort of
actions will be taken against Israel, in my opinion," Kimche said.
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