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Kadish at a Jewish War Veterans event
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| By Israel Insider staff April 22, 2008 |
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US authorities arrested on Tuesday 83-year-old Ben-Ami Kadish, a Jewish-American engineer on suspicion of passing military secrets involving nuclear weapons, fighter jets and air defense systems to Israel during the early 1980s, the Justice Department said.
Kadish is charged with four criminal counts: one of conspiring to disclose documents related to the national defense of the United States to the Government of Israel; one of conspiring to act as an agent of the Government of Israel; one of conspiring to hinder a communication to a law enforcement officer; and one of conspiring to make a materially false statement to a law enforcement officer.
Investigators believe that Kadish took home secret documents, and let the Israeli government worker photograph them. He allegedly returned them to work the following day.
Court documents indicate that Kadish admitted spying during FBI interviews. He reportedly said he was acting out of a belief that he was helping Israel. Kadish was arrested in New Jersey and was scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday afternoon at US District Court in Manhattan, authorities said.
Reportedly born in Connecticut, Ben-Ami grew up in what was then Palestine and fought with the Hagana, the underground military organization that operated in Eretz Yisrael from 1920 to 1948. He also served in both the British and American military during World War II and is an ex-commander of the Jewish War Veterans Post 609 in Monroe, New Jersey.
Kadish was employed during the early 1980s at a US army facility in New Jersey. There he had access to a large volume of sensitive information regarding weapons systems, including F-15 fighter planes sold to a Middle East country other than Israel. The information included information about modifications that had been made to those jets.
Kadish, who had a security clearance, is accused of having taken home 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.
'Don't say anything'
Court papers say Kadish's alleged espionage lasted from around 1979 to 1985
The complaint said Kadish maintained contact with his handler, 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 US 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.
Ynet reported that 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."
"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."
A senior Israeli defense official quoted by ynet said "I find it hard to believe that, after the Pollard affair, we would recruit an American spy."However, the case of Kadish either pre-dates the Pollard affair or coincides with it.
Esther Pollard, Jonathan's wife was angry that the media was making a connection between her husband and Kadish. ""Neither I nor Jonathan know this man," she told Ynet.
Jonathan Pollard is serving a life sentence after being convicted of passing classified information to Israeli agents from his position as an analyst in the US Navy in 1985, slammed the connection made between the two espionage affairs. "Those trying to link them are waging a cheap propaganda campaign to try and postpone my husband's release," she said.
US authorities believe Kadish was handled by the same Israeli who operated Pollard, apparently between the years 1979-1985.
"Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's top priority must be to bring Jonathan home now, not to go off target with other matters," said an agitated sounding Pollard, adding that this is not the first time such allegations have been made.
"Every day is there is a new story about a Chinese spy or a Cuban spy or a spy from the Philippines who passes information regarding the US. Yet I cannot remember anyone ever linking them together. Every case is separate and yet the government and the media are trying to use every excuse possible not to demand his release." |
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