Israel Might Have Many More Spies Here, Officials Say

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 documents, 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
documents 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 documents 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 documents, which "CC-1" photographed in his
basement. Among the documents 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 document 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 documents,
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 Township, 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 documents, 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
documents 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 documents,
according to a Washington 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
lashing.

"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 partnerships 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 important positions.

"They make you feel good, feel important," 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
relationship sometimes veers from friendship 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."

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.

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