N.J. man accused of spying for Israel

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N.J. man accused of spying for Israel

Postby hava1 » Tue Apr 22, 2008 3:51 pm

http://www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/04 ... adish.html

N.J. man accused of spying for Israel
Undated photo of Ben Ami Kadish. Photo courtesy NJJN.
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by Ron Kampeas
JTA
April 22, 2008

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The arrest this week of a retired a New Jersey man on charges of transmitting classified information to Israel two decades ago shows how the Jonathan Pollard spy case continues to haunt the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Ben-Ami Kadish, a former U.S. Army engineer, had a court appearance in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday, facing four charges of conspiracy to share classified information with Israel.

From 1979 to 1985, Kadish, who now lives in a retirement community in Monroe, N.J., allegedly "borrowed" documents from the library of the Dover, N.J., U.S. Army facility where he was employed and shared them with the science affairs consul at the Israeli consulate in New York.

The documents included information on nuclear weaponry and plans for upgrading the F-15 combat aircraft. Kadish allegedly told FBI agents that he shared the documents to help Israel; he was not paid by Israel for his services.

The science affairs consul is not named in the Justice Department’s complaint sheet, but an archival search reveals him to be Yosef Yagur. The complaint sheet notes that "co-conspirator-1" -- Yagur, who is not charged -- also received information from Pollard.

Israel recalled Yagur and his Washington counterpart, Ilan Ravid, in November of 1985 in order to avoid their getting caught up in the Pollard investigation.

The Pollard case for a short time devastated U.S.-Israel relations. In its aftermath, Israel swore never to run a spy again, and Americans broadened their information sharing with Israel in order to keep the Israelis from temptation.

This week’s arrest of Kadish begs the question of why U.S. federal authorities are still pursuing Pollard-related leads more than 20 years after the fact. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after pleading guilty to the spy charges.

This Tuesday, Yagur refused to answer reporters’ questions and Israeli officials said they knew nothing of the case. Officials at Israel's consulate in New York declined to comment.

It is not clear from the complaint sheet filed Monday that Kadish was the original target of this investigation. It notes that a grand jury subpoena was issued on March 21, 2008, a day after Kadish’s first interview with agents, but does not say whether the subpoena sought his testimony as a witness or as a target. In any case, detectives did not immediately serve the subpoena.

Instead, the complaint sheet says that at the March 20 interview federal agents presented Kadish with evidence that he shared between 30 and 100 documents with Yagur between 1979 and 1985. Kadish allegedly first met Yagur in the 1970s, when Yagur was employed by Israel Aircraft Industries; they were introduced by Kadish's brother, also employed by IAI, the complaint sheet says.

At that March 20 meeting, Kadish acknowledged sharing some of the documents with Yagur, the complaint sheet says, and acknowledged that he did not have the authority to share such documents.

That evening, Yagur allegedly phoned Kadish and implored him not to cooperate. The complaint sheet says that, in a conversation in Hebrew, Yagur said, "Don't say anything. Let them say whatever they want," and, "What happened 25 years ago? You didn't remember anything."

The next day, March 21, Kadish allegedly downplayed his ties to Yagur in a second interview with FBI agents. He said that over the years the two had maintained nothing more than a social relationship, with phone calls, emails and occasional visits; Kadish and Yagur had met in Israel in 2004. More crucially, Kadish allegedly denied having been in touch with Yagur the previous evening.

That alleged lie could prove critical to Kadish's prosecution: It allows prosecutors to expand the conspiracy from 1985 to March 20 of this year, when Yagur allegedly urged Kadish to lie. There is a 10-year statute of limitations on the crimes outlined in the complaint sheet; without the alleged lie, the government's case would be flimsy.

Kadish, who was born in Connecticut and grew up in pre-state Palestine, served in the Haganah, Israel's pre-state defense force and the precursor to the IDF. According to the New Jersey Jewish News, he has remained active in the Jewish community since his retirement, particularly at the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County.

Gerrie Bamira, the executive director of the federation, told JTA, “Ben-Ami Kadish, his wife and neighbors have in recent years been supportive of the Jewish federation of greater Middlesex County and our work in the community.”

“We maintain our belief that individuals are innocent until proven guilty,” Bamira added.

Kadish is also an ex-commander of the Jewish War Veterans Post 609 in Monroe. Moe Eillish, the quartermaster of that post, said of Kadish, “He was a good man."

Kadish and his wife, Doris, raise money for charitable causes through annual gatherings in their sukkah, according to a 2006 story in the N.J. Jewish News.

JTA correspondent Ben Harris contributed to this report from New York.
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Postby American Dream » Tue Apr 22, 2008 4:21 pm

Extracted from:
Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy, By Way of Deception, St Martin's Press, New York 1990.

{Ostrovsky's Foreword}

{p. vii} REVEALING THE FACTS as I know them from my vantage point of four years spent inside the Mossad was by no means an easy task.

Coming from an ardent Zionist background, I had been taught that the state of Israel was incapable of misconduct. That we were the David in the unending struggle against the ever-growing Goliath. That there was no one out there to protect us but ourselves - a feeling reinforced by the Holocaust survivors who lived among us.

We, the new generation of Israelites, the resurrected nation on its own land after more than two thousand years of exile, were entrusted with the fate of the nation as a whole.

The commanders of our army were called champions, not generals. Our leaders were captains at the helm of a great ship. I was elated when I was chosen and granted the privilege to join what I considered to be the elite team of the Mossad.

But it was the twisted ideals and self-centered pragmatism that I encountered inside the Mossad, coupled with this so-called team's greed, lust, and total lack of respect for human life, that motivated me to tell this story.

It is out of love for Israel as a free and just country that I am laying my life on the line by so doing, facing up to those who took it upon themselves to turn the Zionist dream into the present-day nightmare.

{p. viii} The Mossad, being the intelligence body entrusted with the responsibility of plotting the course for the leaders at the helm of the nation, has betrayed that trust. Plotting on its own behalf, and for petty, self-serving reasons, it has set the nation on a collision course with all-out war.

{Claire Hoy's Foreword}

{p. ix} One of the main themes of this book is Victor's belief that Mossad is out of control, that even the prime minister, although ostensibly in charge, has no real authority over its actions ...

{p. xi} The Mossad - believe it or not - has just 30 to 35 case officers, or katsas, operating in the world at any one time. The main reason for this extraordinary low total, as you will read in this book, is that unlike other countries, Israel can tap the significant and loyal cadre of the worldwide Jewish community outside Israel. This is done through a unique system of sayanim, volunteer Jewish helpers.

{Jointly written text - remainder of book}

{p. 52} My first six weeks were uneventful. I worked at the downtown office, essentially as a gofer and filing clerk. But one chilly day in February 1984, I found myself joining 14 others on a small bus. ... This course was to be known as Cadet 16, as it was the sixteenth course of Mossad cadets.

{p. 53} He walked briskly to the head of the table while the other two sat at the back of the room. "My name is Aharon Sherf," he said. "I am the head of the Academy. Welcome to the Mossad. Its full name is Ha Mossad, le Modiyn ve le Tafkidim Mayuhadim [the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations]. Our motto is: 'By way of deception, thou shalt do war.'

{p. 86} The next day Ran S. delivered a lecture on the sayanim, a unique and important part of the Mossad's operation. Sayanim - assistants - must be 100 percent Jewish. They live abroad, and though they are not Israeli citizens, many are reached through their relatives in Israel. An Israeli with a relative in England, for example, might be asked to write a letter saying the person bearing the letter represents an organization whose main goal is to help save Jewish people in the diaspora. Could the British relative help in any way?

There are thousands of sayanim around the world. In London alone, there are about 2,000 who are active, and another 5,000 on the list. They fulfill many different roles. A car sayan, for example, running a rental agency, could help the Mossad rent a car without having to complete the usual doc-

{p. 87} umentation. An apartment sayan would find accommodation without raising suspicions, a bank sayan could get you money if you needed it in the middle of the night, a doctor sayan would treat a bullet wound without reporting it to the police, and so on. The idea is to have a pool of people available when needed who can provide services but will keep quiet about them out of loyalty to the cause. They are paid only costs. Often the loyalty of sayanim is abused by katsas who take advantage of the available help for their own personal use. There is no way for the sayan to check this.

One thing you know for sure is that even if a Jewish person knows it is the Mossad, he might not agree to work with you - but he won't turn you in. You have at your disposal a nonrisk recruitment system that actually gives you a pool of millions of Jewish people to tap from outside your own borders. It's much easier to operate with what is available on the spot, and sayanim offer incredible practical support everywhere. But they are never put at risk - nor are they privy to classified information.

Suppose during an operation a katsa suddenly had to come up with an electronics store as a cover. A call to a sayan in that business could bring 50 television sets, 200 VCRs - whatever was needed - from his warehouse to your building, and in next to no time, you'd have a store with $3 or $4 million worth of stock in it.

Since most Mossad activity is in Europe, it may be preferable to have a business address in North America. So, there are address sayanim and telephone sayanim. If a katsa has to give out an address or a phone number, he can use the sayan's. And if the sayan gets a letter or a phone call, he will know immediately how to proceed. Some business sayanim have a bank of 20 operators answering phones, typing letters, faxing messages, all a front for the Mossad. The joke is that 60 percent of the business of those telephone answering companies in Europe comes from the Mossad. They'd fold otherwise.

The one problem with the system is that the Mossad does not seem to care how devastating it could be to the status of the Jewish people in the diaspora if it was known. The an-

{p. 88} swer you get if you ask is: "So what's the worst that could happen to those Jews? They'd all come to Israel? Great."

Katsas in the stations are in charge of the sayanim, and most active sayanim will be visited by a katsa once every three months or so, which for the katsa usually means between two and four face-to-face meetings a day with sayanim, along with numerous telephone conversations. The system allows the Mossad to work with a skeleton staff. That's why, for example, a KGB station would employ about 100 people, while a comparable Mossad station would need only six or seven.

{p. 269} Pollard was not Mossad, but many others actively spying, recruiting, organizing, and carrying out covert activities - mainly in New York and Washington, which they refer to as their "playground" - do belong to a special, super-secret division of the Mossad called simply Al, Hebrew for "above" or "on top."

The unit is so secretive, and so separate from the main o ganization, that the majority of Mossad employees don't even know what it does and do not have access to its files on the computer.

But it exists, and employs between 24 and 27 veteran field personnel, three as active katsas. Most, though not all, of their activity is within U.S. borders. Their primary task is to gather information on the Arab world and the PLO, as opposed to gathering intelligence about U.S. activities. But as we shall see, the dividing line is often blurred, and when in doubt, Al doesn't hesitate to cross over it.

To say it doesn't gather information on the Americans is like saying mustard is not the main course, but you do like a little on your hotdog. Say, for example, there's a senator on the arms committee who interests Mossad. Al rarely uses sayanim, but that senator's paperwork, anything happening in his office, would be important information, so an aide would become a target. If an aide was Jewish, he or she would be approached as a sayan. Otherwise, the person would be recruited as an agent, or even just as a friend, with whom to mingle and listen.

The Washington cocktail circuit is very important for that. Certain attaches keep track of it. There is no problem adding someone to that circuit and giving it a legitimate ring.

Suppose, for instance, McDonnell Douglas wants to sell U.S.-made airplanes to Saudi Arabia. Is that a U.S. issue or an Israeli issue? Well, as far as the Institute is concerned, it's Israel's business. When you have something like that in place, it's very difficult not to use it. So they do.

{p. 270} One of the more famous of Al's activities involved the theft of research material from some major U.S. aircraft-manufacturing firms to help Israel secure a five-year, $25.8 million contract in January 1986 to supply the U.S. navy (shipboard) and marine corps with 21 16-foot-long drones, or unmanned Mazlat Pioneer 1 aircraft, plus the accompanying ground control, launch, and recovery equipment. The drones, which have a television monitor mounted underneath, are used in military reconnaissance work. Mazlat, a subsidiary of the state-run Israeli Aeronautical Industries and Tadiran, "won" the contract after outbidding U.S. firms in a 1985 tender.

In reality, Al stole the research. Israel had been working on a drone, but was not nearly far enough advanced to enter this competition. When you don't have to include research recovery costs in your bid, it makes a substantial difference.

After winning the contract, Mazlat went into partnership with AAI Corp. of Baltimore, Maryland, to complete it.

Al is similar to Tsomet, but it does not come under the jurisdiction of the head of Tsomet. Rather, it reports directly to the head of Mossad. Unlike normal Mossad stations, it does not operate inside the Israeli embassy. Its stations are located in safe houses or apartments.

The three Al teams are set up as a station, or unit. Let's say that for some reason relations between Israel and Great Britain collapsed tomorrow and the Mossad had to leave the United Kingdom. They could dispatch an Al team to London and have a complete clandestine setup the next day. The Al katsas are among the most experienced in the Institute.

The United States is one place where the consequences for messing up are immense. But not working through the embassy creates difficulties, especially with communications. If Al people are caught in the United States, they're jailed as spies. They have no diplomatic immunity. The worst that can happen to a katsa in a normal station, because he has diplomatic immunity, is deportation. Officially, the Mossad has a liaison station in Washington, but nothing else.
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Postby AlicetheKurious » Tue Apr 22, 2008 5:46 pm

The Pollard case for a short time devastated U.S.-Israel relations. In its aftermath, Israel swore never to run a spy again, and Americans broadened their information sharing with Israel in order to keep the Israelis from temptation.


Brilliant.
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Postby Searcher08 » Tue Apr 22, 2008 7:31 pm

AlicetheKurious wrote:
The Pollard case for a short time devastated U.S.-Israel relations. In its aftermath, Israel swore never to run a spy again, and Americans broadened their information sharing with Israel in order to keep the Israelis from temptation.


Brilliant.


Pollard apparently sold a trojan horse version of Promis to Mossad, who made hundreds of millions from selling it via people like Robert Maxwell and Earl Brian.
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