US MILITARY SECRETS STOLEN BY ISRAEL
R. Jeffrey Smith
A Defense Department security official issued a confidential
warning to many military contractors in October that the Israeli government in
October that the Israeli government was "aggressively" trying to
steal US military and intelligence secrets, by trading in part on it's
"storing ethnic ties" to the United States to recruit spies.
The warning, which described Israel as a
"non-traditional adversary" in the world of espionage, was circulated
by the Defense Investigative Service with a memo noting similar intelligence
"threats" from other close US allies. The warning about Israel was
"cancelled" and withdrawn by the Pentagon in December last year after
senior officials decided it's author had improperly singled out Jewish
"ethnicity" as a specific counter-intelligence concern.
The warning nonetheless provoked a vigorous protest on by
the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, a prominent Jewish
organisation, which made the matter public and called on the Pentagon to
conduct an internat investigation. "This is a distressing charge which
impugns American Jews and borders on anti-Semtism," said ADL director
Abraham H. Foxman in a letter to Defence Secretary William J. Perry.
The government memo, and ADL's angry reaction to it,
highlight a particularly delicate issue for the Defence Department. Many
military counter-intelligence officials remain scarred by the 1985 revelation
that Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard stole what the memo refers
to as "vast quantities of classified information" on Israel's behalf
over a 17-month period.
Pollard, who is Jewish, said he was motivated partly by
sympathy for Israel. The Israeli government since then has granted him
citizenship and unsuccessfully appealed to senior US officials for his early
release from a sentence of life in prison. The appeal has been supported by the
some US Jewish groups, although not by B'nai B'rith, which said to found no
evidence of ethnic bias in the US government's handling of the case.
A cover letter to the Defense Investigative Service memo
described it's dissemination as part of a new effort by the Pentagon to alert
military contractors to the dangers of attempted spying by what it refers to as
"military friends" such as France, Italy, Japan, Germany, and
Britain.
"It is obvious that their is far more economic and
industrial espionage than previously suspected," said the memo, which
Pentagon officials said was drafted by an industrial security specialist at the
Defence Investigative Service office in Syracuse, New York, and sent to 250 facilities
military work.
The service is responsible for overseeing securing
programmes at such contractors and conducting background checks on both
civilian and military employees in sensitive posts. The employee sent similar
memos detailing intelligence threats from the other US allies.
The confidential memo on Israel began by noting that the
country, a major recipient of US military and economic aid, "is a
political and military allly." But it continued, "the nature of
espionage relations between the two governments is competitive." It said
Israel "aggressively collects US military and industrial technology,"
including spy satellite date, missile defense information, and data on military
aircraft, tanks, missile boats, and radars.
Drawing on the example of the Pollard case and four other
Israeli espionage operations in the United States, the memo said that the
country's recruitment techniques include "ethnic targeting, financial
aggrandizement, and identification and exploitation of individual frailties"
of US citizens. "Placing Israeli nationals in key industries.... is a
technique utilized with great success," the memo said.
It alleged that Israeli agents stole "proprietary
information" from an Illinois optics firm in 1986 and test equipment for a
radar system in the "mid-1980s." The memo also repeated previously
publicized charges - denied by Israel and never officially proven by US
investigators - that Israel may have provided China with sensitive fighter jet
technology obtained from the United States.
In publicising the memo, which was first obtained by the
Jewish weekly Moment magazine, ADL director Foxman complained not only about
it's reference to Israeli recruitment techniques but also it's harsh tone
regarding an ally that "only five years ago ... refrained from taking
military steps against Iraq despite Scud missile attacks because it's US ally
asked for restraint."
Assistant Secretary of Defence Emmett Paige Jr., who has
responsibility
تعليقات
إرسال تعليق