Israel Might Have Many More Spies Here, Officials Say
By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor
The elderly New Jersey man arrested last week on charges of spying for
Israel years ago was
probably still working for the Jewish state’s espionage service in tandem
with another, as yet
unidentified spy, former American intelligence officials say.
Ben-Ami Kadish, now 84, was employed as a mechanical engineer at a U.S.
Army weapons center in
New Jersey when he allegedly supplied his Israeli handler with classified
military do***ents,
according to charges filed last week.
The handler was named only as “CC-1,” or co-conspirator 1, in the criminal
complaint. But its
description of him as the same man who was handling the notorious Israeli
mole Jonathan Pollard
all but identified him as Yosef Yagur, formerly the consul for scientific
affairs at the
Israeli consulate in New York.
Pollard, who gave Yagur thousands of highly classified do***ents while
working as a navy
intelligence analyst in the 1980s, is in the 21st year of a life sentence
for espionage.
Kadish, who worked at the U.S. Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, N.J.,
from 1963 to 1990,
could also spend the waning years of his life in jail if he is convicted.
A former senior CIA counterintelligence operative believes the case “will
never go to trial,
because of all the ugly stuff that would come out” about Israeli
activities in the United States.
Indeed, Justice Department attorneys have fought to keep “ugly stuff” from
emerging in the
trial of two officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or
AIPAC, charged with
accepting classified do***ents from Pentagon official Larry Franklin.
But the federal judge in the case has indicated he might not go along with
their strategy. Last
month Judge Thomas Ellis III indefinitely postponed the trial of AIPAC
officials Steven Rosen
and Keith Weissman, which was scheduled to open next week.
Neither the United States nor Israel, strategic allies struggling with
Middle East terrorism,
the war in Iraq and the rising threat of Iran, can afford a breech in
relations triggered by
either case.
The Justice Department said Kadish brought home briefcases full of
classified do***ents, which
“CC-1” photographed in his basement. Among the do***ents was “restricted
data” on nuclear
weapons, classified information on a modified F-15 fighter that was sold
to an unnamed foreign
country (most likely Saudi Arabia), and a do***ent relating to the Patriot
anti-missile system,
which the United States deployed to Israel during the first Gulf War in
1990.
Yagur fled New York in 1985 as U.S. counterintelligence agents closed in
on Pollard. He has not
been back since, U.S. officials believe.
They thought that was the end of his espionage operations here.
But Yagur evidently kept in touch with Kadish, exchanging e-mails and
telephone calls with him
long after he returned to Israel. Kadish went to Israel in 2004 and met
with his former spy
master, authorities said.
Israel Might Have Many More Spies Here, Officials Say
Just last month, on March 20, “CC-1” told Kadish to lie to FBI agents who
had questioned him
about the do***ents, according to a wiretap transcript produced by federal
prosecutors.
“Don’t say anything. Let them say whatever they want. You didn’t do
anything,” CC-1 told
Kadish. “What happened 25 years ago? You didn’t remember anything.”
Ron Olive, the navy investigator in charge of the Pollard case, said he
was shocked when he
heard about Kadish’s arrest.
The description of CC-1 as Pollard’s handler meant that “it has to be”
Yagur, he said by
telephone from Arizona, where he was giving a counterintelligence lecture
to federal officials.
“I was like, ‘holy cow, this is unbelievable,’” he said.
Olive said the arrest meant that Kadish was still working for Israeli
intelligence.
“It means Israel still has an agent in place in the U.S. who can ferret
out someone who has
access to information they want,” Olive said.
One role Kadish could play was as a “spotter,” who could size up possible
recruits for Israeli
intelligence, even while living in a retirement community in Monroe
Town****p, N.J., said Olive
and another former federal agent.
“That jumped out at me,” said Harry B. “Skip” Brandon, a former deputy
assistant director of
counterintelligence at the FBI.
“It is very unusual for a former agent handler and his former agent to
remain friends. And it’s
dangerous for both,” he added. Any communication between the two, no
matter how innocent,
raises the risk of detection and exposure.
Other aspects of the case suggest that Jerusalem has at least one, and
maybe several more spies
embedded in U.S. military services or intelligence agencies: As with
Pollard, the Israelis
asked Kadish for specific do***ents, indicating they knew what they were
looking for, supplied
by another spy.
“You know, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit,” said Olive, who in 2006
published a memoir about
the case, “Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies
in American History
Was Brought to Justice”.
Olive said Pollard stole “360 cubic feet” of classified do***ents during
his six years as an
Israeli mole.
Israel Might Have Many More Spies Here, Officials Say
“It was the most devastating spy case I ever saw.”
There have long been rumors of a “Mr. X,” Olive said, “another unknown
government employee who
had access to information that the Israelis could use.”
Israeli intelligence had a spy, code-named MEGA, high up in the Reagan
administration at the
same time Pollard, and now allegedly Kadish, were stealing do***ents,
according to a Wa****ngton
Post story years ago that has never been confirmed.
In fact, according to past and present U.S. counterintelligence officials,
Israeli agents were
so aggressive even after the Pollard case that an FBI counterintelligence
boss in the late
1990s, David Szady, summoned Mossad’s top official for a tongue la****ng.
“Knock it off,” Szady said, according to a reliable source on condition of
anonymity.
Szady has been pilloried in pro-Israel circles for pursuing the AIPAC
case, which many critics
say amounts to trumping up espionage charges against officials who were
merely engaging in the
kind of transaction officials and journalists conduct every day.
But the Israelis here have never stopped practicing the “world’s second
oldest profession,” as
espionage is sometimes dubbed, despite years of rote denials, many
officials say.
“I guarantee you the same thing is happening now,” said Olive, who trains
Department of Energy
security officials on detecting signs of espionage.
One effective espionage tool is forming joint partner****ps with U.S.
companies to supply
software and other technology products to U.S. government agencies,
intelligence officials say.
But Brandon, who retired in the mid-1990s but retains many intelligence
contacts for his global
security consulting business, says the Israelis are interested in
commercial as much as
military secrets. They have a muscular technology sector themselves.
“They are always looking for a leg up,” he said.
Congress is a major target, too, Brandon said.
“God, they would work the Hill, ” he said. “They really worked the Hill.
They were not
necessarily interested in collection [of information] so much as they were
in influence.”
Israel Might Have Many More Spies Here, Officials Say
Influencing Congress is usually the domain of foreign diplomats, he said,
but in Israel’s case
there was “very little distinction between Mossad and the diplomats.”
“They were very sharp,” he added. “Their best and brightest.”
Mossad agents also scout for people to help them in the Jewish-American
community, he said,
based on their religious and political commonality. It’s a vast community
of potential
“spotters,” who can point them to other Jewish Americans in government,
law, finance and
banking who might be susceptible to recruitment, as is the case with
potential Chinese and
Cuban recruits.
Or just useful conversation. Israeli agents, Brandon said, are skilled at
eliciting information
from unwary Jewish Americans in strategically im****tant positions.
“They make you feel good, feel im****tant,” he said. “They don’t even
realize they’re giving up
something” sensitive, or even classified — until it’s too late.
At the same time, U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials have worked hand
in glove on numerous
fronts since 1948, when the Jewish state was founded.
Mossad had access to Russian Jews who supplied the West with Soviet
military, scientific and
technical secrets. American and Israel intelligence have always worked
closely in counterterrorism.
But they don’t tell each other everything, which is why the relation****p
sometimes veers from
friend****p to competition.
“They were never, ever allowed in our facilities,” says a former CIA
officer who was sometimes
assigned a liaison role with Israeli counterterrorism agents.
Likewise, when CIA or other U.S. intelligence operatives visited Israel,
Israeli security
agents would “toss their room,” he said, “just to show who’s in charge.”
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