Israeli Spy Chastises Pentagon for anti-Jewish bias

The case of an Army engineer accused over ten years ago of spying for
Israel was the focus of a recent government watchdog group report and
is once again being pressed by the orthodox Jewish organization,
Agudath Israel of America.

The Army engineer, David Tenenbaum, he was given a polygraph test in
1997 during which he says anti-Jewish epithets were shouted at him.
The next day, he says, he found his computer gone and his name erased
from the e-mail system at TACOM (the Tank Automotive and Armaments
Command), the military facility in Warren, Michigan where he worked.

He claims he was urged to confess to the crime of espionage but did
not do so and was not arrested. Two days later, he says, on the Jewish
Sabbath, investigators ransacked his home.

The U.S. Attorney, however, declined to prosecute the case, stating
insufficient evidence to do so.

Mr. Tenenbaum has maintained throughout that he is innocent of the
charge and that he may have been targeted because of his religion.
Indeed, TACOM's director of research expressly stated that the
investigation had been prompted by Mr. Tenenbaum's speaking of Hebrew
and wearing of a yarmulke. He further stated that "none of this would
have happened" had Tenenbaum not been Jewish.

At the beginning of 2000, Agudath Israel raised the issue with then-
CIA Director George Tenet and, later that year, then-U. S. Defense
Secretary William S. Cohen. The national Orthodox Jewish group
expressed concerns about the allegations of anti-Jewish bias in the
Defense Department and pressed for clarification of the government's
position on Jewish employees in general and on the case of Mr.
Tenenbaum specifically.

Last month, an independent watchdog organization, the Project on
Government Oversight, published new government documents relating to
the Pentagon Inspector General's investigation of the handling of the
Tenenbaum case.

On June 27, the Inspector General, General Claude M. Kicklighter,
received a letter from Agudath Israel of America's executive vice
president for government and public affairs, Rabbi David Zwiebel. In
the missive, Rabbi Zwiebel, the Agudath Israel representative who
petitioned Mr. Tenet and Mr. Cohen in 2000, cited the "strong evidence
that Mr. Tenenbaum may have in fact been the victim of religious
discrimination."

He also noted a recent report in The New York Sun about the Project on
Government Oversight's disclosure of the Defense Department's
preliminary finding that "Mr. Tenenbaum experienced religious
discrimination when his Judaism was weighed as a significant factor in
the decision to submit him for an increase in his security clearance."

Rabbi Zwiebel further asserted that "if it is true that Mr. Tenenbaum
was singled out for special scrutiny and adverse action because of his
Orthodox Jewish identity and practice, the message that sends to all
Orthodox Jews in this country is nothing short of devastating.
"It tells us that, despite the fact that we may be model citizens in
every sense of the term, we are somehow considered second-class
Americans, not to be trusted within the Department of Defense."

The Agudath Israel leader implored the Defense Department Inspector
General to recognize the "critical fork in the road" for the
government agency. "Either you can acknowledge that Mr. Tenenbaum was
a victim of? religious bias? and thereby send a powerful message that
this culture of anti-Jewish stereotyping will not be tolerated within
the Department of Defense; or you can circle the wagons, pretend that
such bias does not exist, and tell Mr. Tenenbaum that he was treated
fairly by the Department."

"Much is at stake in this choice," Rabbi Zwiebel wrote in conclusion.
"Respectfully, but urgently, we implore you to seize the opportunity
to do the right thing."

http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/AntiSemi/12954.htm


American Engineer Who Admitted Giving Classified Information to Israel
is Back at Work

By Shawn L. Twing

An American Jewish engineer who admitted giving classified U.S.
technical data “inadvertently” to Israeli officials for 10 years is
back at work at a U.S. Army tank and armor maintenance and research
facility, the Detroit Jewish News reported in its June 5 issue. David
Tenenbaum, a 40-year-old mechanical engineer with the Tank Automotive
Research and Development Engineering Center, a division of the U.S.
Army’s Tank Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) in Warren, MI, no
longer is under investigation for espionage by U.S. authorities, but
the circumstances surrounding his case remain confusing and
suspicious.

Tenenbaum was suspended from TACOM without pay and had his employee
and parking badges confiscated by U.S. authorities in February 1997
after he told Defense Investigative Service and FBI agents that he
divulged “non-releasable classified information to every Israeli
Liaison Officer (ILO) assigned to TACOM over the last 10 years.”

According to a Feb. 14, 1997 affidavit by Federal Bureau of
Investigation special agent Sean Nicol, “Tenenbaum stated that he
inadvertently provided his Israeli contacts, specifically the ILOs and
Dr. Reuven Granot, scientific deputy director, Israeli Ministry of
Defense (MOD), classified information from the three Special Access
Program (SAP) projects to which he had access.

The non-releasable classified information provided to the Israelis by
Tenenbaum includes hydra codes from the Light Armor Systems and
Survivability (LASS) ceramic armor data, Advanced Survivable Test
Battery (ASTB) data, Heavy Survival Test Battery (HSTB) data, and
Patriot missiles countermeasures data. Additionally, Tenenbaum
admitted providing the Israelis with unreleasable classified
information regarding the Bradley tank and HUMV.”

Immediately following the public disclosure of the FBI affidavit,
there was widespread speculation in the American Jewish and Israeli
press that Tenenbaum’s arrest could be the beginning of another
“Pollard Affair,” a reference to convicted spy-for-Israel Jonathan J.
Pollard, a civilian U.S. naval intelligence analyst who was arrested
in 1985 outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC after he was
refused asylum there. [According to a U.S. General Accounting Office
report, Pollard gave his Israeli handlers an estimated 800,000 highly
classified U.S. intelligence documents. He was sentenced in 1986 to
life in prison for his crimes, which severely strained U.S.-Israeli
relations. Initially the Israeli government claimed that Pollard was
part of a “rogue operation.” On the 10th anniversary of his arrest,
however, the Israeli government granted Pollard Israeli citizenship,
and in May, 1998 formally recognized him as an agent of the state of
Israel.]

Very little information about the case was made public by the FBI.

As quickly as the Tenenbaum story appeared last year, however, it then
vanished. Only a handful of articles, most of them in Jewish community
newspapers and the Detroit Free Press, have been published, and very
little information about the case was made public by the FBI. From the
beginning, friends of Tenenbaum and his attorney, Martin Crandall,
insisted that the entire case was a misunderstanding that would be
cleared up quickly. A year-and-a-half later, however, serious
questions remain unanswered, and the few answers available only add to
the confusion.

In the most recent article on the Tenenbaum case, the Detroit Jewish
News reported June 5 that he was cleared of wrongdoing by U.S.
authorities. When asked to confirm the report, FBI special agent Dawn
Moritz told the Washington Report that Tenenbaum had not been cleared
of the charges. “All I can tell you is a two-sentence statement,” she
said. “The case is closed. No criminal charges have been filed.”

The implication of that FBI statement is not clear. If Tenenbaum were
found innocent of the charges, it would be reasonable to assume that
he had been cleared, which is different than simply not having charges
filed. The former implies innocence, but the latter suggests that some
kind of a deal was made or that influence was brought to bear to quash
an indictment.

Exactly what kind of deal, if any, was made is impossible to determine
unless somebody from the FBI, David Tenenbaum, or his attorney start
talking. Given the history of this investigation to date, that is an
unlikely scenario.

Adding to the confusion, TACOM spokesman Eric Emerton told the Detroit
Jewish News that Tenenbaum has returned to work, but he may not return
to his previous job. Emerton declined to say when Tenenbaum returned
to work, but a source close to the investigation confirmed that he
returned to TACOM in early May 1998. This is supported by the TACOM
civilian personnel directory on the Internet, which was last updated
on March 30, 1998, and does not list David Tenenbaum as an employee.

If the FBI investigation found that Tenenbaum is innocent, why isn’t
he back at his previous job? And if this all was a misunderstanding,
why did it take more than a year for that to become clear? Apparently
there is considerably more to this case than is being made public.

Tenenbaum, for his part, has done little or nothing to clear his name.
He repeatedly has refused reporters’ requests for comment. His
attorney is not talking either. Crandall refused to comment about the
case to either the Detroit Jewish News or the Washington Report.

Routine Sharing

Despite all of the evidence pointing to a cover-up, it is possible
that David Tenenbaum “inadvertently” passed classified information to
Israeli officials for 10 years, but did not break U.S. law. Israeli
and American officials routinely share classified intelligence
information, including technical weapons data.

The U.S. government allows Israel to spend $150 million of its annual
$1.8 billion in grant military aid on research and development in the
United States, which places Israeli engineers and defense officials in
close contact with their American counterparts. This could have led to
a blurring of the lines of information that could be shared with
Israel and information that could not. It also is possible that the
FBI and Defense Investigative Service officials were not familiar with
the extent of the U.S.-Israel relationship and inadvertently framed
the question in a routine lie detector test in such a way that
Tenenbaum’s answers sounded more ominous than they really were.

It is equally possible, however, that Tenenbaum violated U.S. law and
passed information illegally to Israeli officials. In a 1996 report by
the U.S. General Accounting Office entitled “Defense Industrial
Security: Weaknesses in U.S. Security Arrangements with Foreign-Owned
Defense Contractors,” the GAO claimed that “Country A [publicly
identified as Israel in the Feb. 22, 1996 Washington Times] conducts
the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of
any U.S. ally.” One common denominator found in almost every example
of Israeli espionage activity cited by the GAO was the illegal theft
of advanced U.S. military technology.

The FBI’s use of the term “non-releasable” also suggests that
Tenenbaum broke the law. Passing classified information to Israeli
officials may be within the legal limits of the U.S.-Israel
intelligence-sharing relationship, but “non-releasable” information is
just that. It is a classification which does not allow for
misinterpretation.

It also doesn’t help Israel or David Tenenbaum that Israeli companies,
particularly Rafael, Israel’s state-owned armaments company, are very
interested in weapons data related to sophisticated armors. Rafael, in
fact, is a world leader in this technology.

In the last year alone, Rafael has won three contracts in the United
States for ceramic armor, all in competition with America’s best firms
in this highly specialized field. (See “U.S. Defense Firm Protests
Marine Corps Contract Awarded to Israel’s Rafael Armaments Company,”
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 1998, p. 48.) If
Israeli engineers had access via David Tenenbaum to U.S. test data, as
the FBI affidavit claims, it certainly could provide Rafael an
advantage in building better, less expensive armor.

Unfortunately, the public may never know exactly what was discovered
during the FBI’s 12-month investigation of David Tenenbaum. If he is
innocent of the charges, hopefully he or his lawyer will say that
publicly. The FBI does make mistakes, which was demonstrated clearly
in the case of David Jewell, the man investigated and eventually
cleared by the Bureau for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing.

If they do not address the issue publicly, however, the available
evidence and numerous unanswered questions will continue to point
decidedly toward Tenenbaum’s guilt and a serious cover-up to hide a
new “Pollard Affair” from the American public.

http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0798/9807046.html
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Yosemite Sam (04.08.2008 13:46)
I'll Always Be Here (04.08.2008 20:57)