Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
April 23, 2008
Pg. B1
By Andy Newman
An 84-year-old former Army engineer in New Jersey was charged on Tuesday with leaking dozens of secret documents about nuclear arms, missiles and fighter jets to the Israeli government during the early 1980s, federal prosecutors said.
The engineer, Ben-Ami Kadish of Monroe Township, could face life in prison or possibly the death penalty if convicted on the most serious charge, prosecutors said.
His case is linked to that of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the naval analyst serving a life sentence for leaking documents to Israel around the same time. An Israeli official who came to Mr. Kadish’s house to photograph documents also received information from Mr. Pollard, prosecutors said.
Federal officials said authorities became aware of what they called Mr. Kadish’s spying activities only in recent months but would not say how they learned of his efforts more than 20 years later.
Mr. Kadish admitted to an F.B.I. agent last month that he had shown 50 to 100 classified documents to the Israeli official, according to prosecutors’ court filings on Tuesday.
Mr. Kadish, a balding, gray-haired man wearing a hearing aid, shuffled into a federal courtroom in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, where he was released on $300,000 bail after a brief appearance before Magistrate Judge Douglas F. Eaton. He did not have to enter a plea because he had not been indicted.
Neither Mr. Kadish nor his lawyers spoke to the reporters who swarmed around them outside the courthouse afterward.
Prosecutors declined to provide details on what was in the documents and would not say what harm, if any, had come to American interests as a result. According to court papers, Mr. Kadish’s crimes occurred between 1979 and 1985, when he worked as a mechanical engineer at Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County, N.J., an Army research and development center. He would sign secret documents out of the library and take them to his home in New Jersey — prosecutors would not say in which town — where the Israeli official, a science adviser at the Israeli consulate in New York, would photograph them in the basement, according to court papers.
The complaint specifically mentions three documents that Mr. Kadish is accused of leaking — one “concerning nuclear weaponry” containing “atomic-related information”; one regarding a modified version of an F-15 fighter jet that the United States sold to another country; and one containing information about the Patriot missile system.
Mr. Kadish told the F.B.I. agent that he had not received money from the Israeli official, only small gifts and the occasional dinner, the complaint said.
Mr. Kadish is also charged with lying to the F.B.I. about having spoken to the Israeli official last month. On March 20, after giving a statement to the F.B.I., Mr. Kadish received a phone call from the Israeli official instructing him to lie to the authorities, and the next day, he denied having spoken to the official, the complaint says.
The court papers do not name the Israeli official who photographed the documents, and he is not charged. But they describe him as the consul for science affairs at the consulate in the early 1980s and state that Mr. Pollard provided classified information to him, too.
Joseph E. diGenova, the federal prosecutor who supervised the Pollard case, said that the official was almost certainly Yosef Yagur, who was a science attaché at the Israeli consulate in New York in the mid-1980s. Mr. diGenova said Mr. Yagur was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Pollard case who fled to Israel after Mr. Pollard’s arrest and has never returned to the United States.
A woman who identified herself as Mr. Yagur’s wife said the family had no comment on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
The Pollard case has long been a contentious issue between the United States and Israel, whose leaders have argued for his release — a proposal that has been repeatedly rebuffed by American officials.
Mr. diGenova said the Pollard and Kadish cases were strikingly similar.
“They are carbon copies of each other,” he said. “They were the same kind of people, involved the same techniques of taking material from a library and copying it, and they took place at almost exactly the same time.”
A 1999 article in The New Yorker said Mr. Pollard gave Israel a directory of the frequencies of signals intercepted worldwide by the National Security Agency and access to intelligence reports filed by American spies in the Middle East.
Like Mr. Pollard, Mr. Kadish is charged with conspiring to deliver documents related to national defense to a foreign government, with the intent that they be used to harm the United States. It is the most serious charge that Mr. Kadish faces.
After the exposure of the Pollard affair, Israel promised the United States that it would not operate agents on its soil again. Though Mr. Kadish is suspected of having operated at the same time as Mr. Pollard, and not afterward, another conviction would be embarrassing for Israel because its officials were supposed to have disclosed to the United States all relevant information about Israeli intelligence gathering at the time of Mr. Pollard’s arrest.
A State Department spokesman, Tom H. Casey, declined to speculate on the diplomatic fallout from Mr. Kadish’s arrest. “I would simply say, just as a general matter,” he said, “that 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.”
Yuval Steinitz, a member of the Israeli parliament with an extensive intelligence background, said that Israel stopped gathering intelligence in the United States after the Pollard case and added, “This is an old story. I don’t assume that this will have any negative impact on the relations” between the two countries.
Mr. Kadish, who prosecutors say was born in Connecticut, now lives in a retirement community in Monroe Township, an hour southwest of New York City.
Friends said they were shocked by the allegations against him.
“I don’t understand it,” said George Applebaum, a former commander of the Jewish War Veterans post there, where he was preceded as commander by Mr. Kadish. “All I hear about Ben and his wife, Doris, are just laudatory things.”
Mr. Applebaum said that while Mr. Kadish was a Zionist and a supporter of Israel, he did not seem particularly fervent.
“He wasn’t wild-eyed and long-haired like some people are when they promote a cause,” Mr. Applebaum said. “He supported causes, but in fact I felt sometimes he should have led more.”
A 2006 profile of the Kadishes in The New Jersey Jewish News describes their good works: raising money for the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, organizing canned good drives for kosher food pantries and inviting scores of people to their home to celebrate the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.
“Our door is always open,” Mr. Kadish told the newspaper.
According to the article, Mr. Kadish grew up in Palestine, fought for the creation of Israel and served in both the British and American military during World War II.
Mr. Kadish, who was ordered on Tuesday to surrender his passport and not travel beyond New Jersey and New York, is due back in court on May 22.
David Johnston, Isabel Kershner and Anthony Ramirez contributed reporting.
April 23, 2008
Pg. B1
By Andy Newman
An 84-year-old former Army engineer in New Jersey was charged on Tuesday with leaking dozens of secret documents about nuclear arms, missiles and fighter jets to the Israeli government during the early 1980s, federal prosecutors said.
The engineer, Ben-Ami Kadish of Monroe Township, could face life in prison or possibly the death penalty if convicted on the most serious charge, prosecutors said.
His case is linked to that of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the naval analyst serving a life sentence for leaking documents to Israel around the same time. An Israeli official who came to Mr. Kadish’s house to photograph documents also received information from Mr. Pollard, prosecutors said.
Federal officials said authorities became aware of what they called Mr. Kadish’s spying activities only in recent months but would not say how they learned of his efforts more than 20 years later.
Mr. Kadish admitted to an F.B.I. agent last month that he had shown 50 to 100 classified documents to the Israeli official, according to prosecutors’ court filings on Tuesday.
Mr. Kadish, a balding, gray-haired man wearing a hearing aid, shuffled into a federal courtroom in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, where he was released on $300,000 bail after a brief appearance before Magistrate Judge Douglas F. Eaton. He did not have to enter a plea because he had not been indicted.
Neither Mr. Kadish nor his lawyers spoke to the reporters who swarmed around them outside the courthouse afterward.
Prosecutors declined to provide details on what was in the documents and would not say what harm, if any, had come to American interests as a result. According to court papers, Mr. Kadish’s crimes occurred between 1979 and 1985, when he worked as a mechanical engineer at Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County, N.J., an Army research and development center. He would sign secret documents out of the library and take them to his home in New Jersey — prosecutors would not say in which town — where the Israeli official, a science adviser at the Israeli consulate in New York, would photograph them in the basement, according to court papers.
The complaint specifically mentions three documents that Mr. Kadish is accused of leaking — one “concerning nuclear weaponry” containing “atomic-related information”; one regarding a modified version of an F-15 fighter jet that the United States sold to another country; and one containing information about the Patriot missile system.
Mr. Kadish told the F.B.I. agent that he had not received money from the Israeli official, only small gifts and the occasional dinner, the complaint said.
Mr. Kadish is also charged with lying to the F.B.I. about having spoken to the Israeli official last month. On March 20, after giving a statement to the F.B.I., Mr. Kadish received a phone call from the Israeli official instructing him to lie to the authorities, and the next day, he denied having spoken to the official, the complaint says.
The court papers do not name the Israeli official who photographed the documents, and he is not charged. But they describe him as the consul for science affairs at the consulate in the early 1980s and state that Mr. Pollard provided classified information to him, too.
Joseph E. diGenova, the federal prosecutor who supervised the Pollard case, said that the official was almost certainly Yosef Yagur, who was a science attaché at the Israeli consulate in New York in the mid-1980s. Mr. diGenova said Mr. Yagur was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Pollard case who fled to Israel after Mr. Pollard’s arrest and has never returned to the United States.
A woman who identified herself as Mr. Yagur’s wife said the family had no comment on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
The Pollard case has long been a contentious issue between the United States and Israel, whose leaders have argued for his release — a proposal that has been repeatedly rebuffed by American officials.
Mr. diGenova said the Pollard and Kadish cases were strikingly similar.
“They are carbon copies of each other,” he said. “They were the same kind of people, involved the same techniques of taking material from a library and copying it, and they took place at almost exactly the same time.”
A 1999 article in The New Yorker said Mr. Pollard gave Israel a directory of the frequencies of signals intercepted worldwide by the National Security Agency and access to intelligence reports filed by American spies in the Middle East.
Like Mr. Pollard, Mr. Kadish is charged with conspiring to deliver documents related to national defense to a foreign government, with the intent that they be used to harm the United States. It is the most serious charge that Mr. Kadish faces.
After the exposure of the Pollard affair, Israel promised the United States that it would not operate agents on its soil again. Though Mr. Kadish is suspected of having operated at the same time as Mr. Pollard, and not afterward, another conviction would be embarrassing for Israel because its officials were supposed to have disclosed to the United States all relevant information about Israeli intelligence gathering at the time of Mr. Pollard’s arrest.
A State Department spokesman, Tom H. Casey, declined to speculate on the diplomatic fallout from Mr. Kadish’s arrest. “I would simply say, just as a general matter,” he said, “that 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.”
Yuval Steinitz, a member of the Israeli parliament with an extensive intelligence background, said that Israel stopped gathering intelligence in the United States after the Pollard case and added, “This is an old story. I don’t assume that this will have any negative impact on the relations” between the two countries.
Mr. Kadish, who prosecutors say was born in Connecticut, now lives in a retirement community in Monroe Township, an hour southwest of New York City.
Friends said they were shocked by the allegations against him.
“I don’t understand it,” said George Applebaum, a former commander of the Jewish War Veterans post there, where he was preceded as commander by Mr. Kadish. “All I hear about Ben and his wife, Doris, are just laudatory things.”
Mr. Applebaum said that while Mr. Kadish was a Zionist and a supporter of Israel, he did not seem particularly fervent.
“He wasn’t wild-eyed and long-haired like some people are when they promote a cause,” Mr. Applebaum said. “He supported causes, but in fact I felt sometimes he should have led more.”
A 2006 profile of the Kadishes in The New Jersey Jewish News describes their good works: raising money for the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, organizing canned good drives for kosher food pantries and inviting scores of people to their home to celebrate the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.
“Our door is always open,” Mr. Kadish told the newspaper.
According to the article, Mr. Kadish grew up in Palestine, fought for the creation of Israel and served in both the British and American military during World War II.
Mr. Kadish, who was ordered on Tuesday to surrender his passport and not travel beyond New Jersey and New York, is due back in court on May 22.
David Johnston, Isabel Kershner and Anthony Ramirez contributed reporting.