Herb Keinon: Is the US Justice Department out to get Israeli spies?
The surprise arrest in the US this week of 84-year-old Ben-Ami Kadish for allegedly spying for Israel a generation ago highlights a fascinating little point: One never hears about the US spying on Israel.
Why not? Is Washington not interested in inside info on what Israel is up to?
Is the CIA, with agents spanning the globe, not keen on securing pre-knowledge of Israel's technological advances in defense and security fields?
Unlikely.
Rather, the more probable reason is because when US spies are uncovered here, as they surely have been over the years, it never hits the news.
Yossi Alpher, a former senior Mossad officer, cited former US officials as saying that the CIA spies on Israel, just as it spies everywhere else. "But when someone is caught here, he receives a wrap on the knuckles, and is declared persona non grata," Alpher said. "The fact that you never hear that someone was tried and put in jail for spying for the US reflects a different approach on Israel's part. It is not that we are not worried about sensitive information falling into other hands, it's just that when those hands happen to be friendly ones, we deal with it differently - unlike the US Justice Department."
Alpher, who now co-edits the Israeli-Palestinian on-line dialogue magazine bitterlemons.org - and is most definitely not a conspiracy theorist seeing an anti-Semite lurking under every US government desk - said he can't escape the conclusion that the US Justice Department is looking for Israel.
"When you take this case, together with the refusal to release [Jonathan] Pollard, even when spies working for the Soviet Union and China who caused death to other agents have been released, when you take into account the AIPAC case [the 2005 arrest of two senior AIPAC staffers on espionage charges], and attempts to recruit Israelis [to spy here for the US], it seems the Justice Department is targeting Israel. I don't know why, but we are being treated pretty roughly."
Alpher said it is not unheard of in the annals of espionage, both here and abroad, that when someone old and frail is caught having spied may years ago, the charges are just dropped.
But not this time.
"The Justice Department is targeting Israel," he said. "They have been looking for additional Americans spying for Israel for a long, long time."
Indeed, one senior government official said Kadish's arrest may finally shed some light on why the US has been so adamant for so long in holding Pollard, even though other spies who have spied for hostile countries - not friendly ones - have been treated more leniently.
Most Israelis, the official said, have thought the Pollard case was over and done with. Most thought that his long-term incarceration, the closure of the intelligence organization, known as the Bureau of Scientific Relations, that "ran" him, the Israeli promise never to spy on the US again, and the intervening two decades had put an end to the affair as an American-Israeli issue.
But they were wrong.
"The Pollard case is not over," he said. "The US did not release him because they were convinced, and are still convinced, that there were other fish involved, much bigger than Pollard - including one very senior official. And they want him. Since Israel has never admitted this, the US is keeping Pollard as a bargaining chip, and not willing to part with him."
In light of the Kadish arrest, Pollard's chances of being released have diminished even further, he said, because it shows there were indeed other Israeli agents operating in the US at the same time, using similar methods, and being operated by the same handler - a man identified in the press as Yossi Yagur....
Read entire article at Jerusalem Post
Why not? Is Washington not interested in inside info on what Israel is up to?
Is the CIA, with agents spanning the globe, not keen on securing pre-knowledge of Israel's technological advances in defense and security fields?
Unlikely.
Rather, the more probable reason is because when US spies are uncovered here, as they surely have been over the years, it never hits the news.
Yossi Alpher, a former senior Mossad officer, cited former US officials as saying that the CIA spies on Israel, just as it spies everywhere else. "But when someone is caught here, he receives a wrap on the knuckles, and is declared persona non grata," Alpher said. "The fact that you never hear that someone was tried and put in jail for spying for the US reflects a different approach on Israel's part. It is not that we are not worried about sensitive information falling into other hands, it's just that when those hands happen to be friendly ones, we deal with it differently - unlike the US Justice Department."
Alpher, who now co-edits the Israeli-Palestinian on-line dialogue magazine bitterlemons.org - and is most definitely not a conspiracy theorist seeing an anti-Semite lurking under every US government desk - said he can't escape the conclusion that the US Justice Department is looking for Israel.
"When you take this case, together with the refusal to release [Jonathan] Pollard, even when spies working for the Soviet Union and China who caused death to other agents have been released, when you take into account the AIPAC case [the 2005 arrest of two senior AIPAC staffers on espionage charges], and attempts to recruit Israelis [to spy here for the US], it seems the Justice Department is targeting Israel. I don't know why, but we are being treated pretty roughly."
Alpher said it is not unheard of in the annals of espionage, both here and abroad, that when someone old and frail is caught having spied may years ago, the charges are just dropped.
But not this time.
"The Justice Department is targeting Israel," he said. "They have been looking for additional Americans spying for Israel for a long, long time."
Indeed, one senior government official said Kadish's arrest may finally shed some light on why the US has been so adamant for so long in holding Pollard, even though other spies who have spied for hostile countries - not friendly ones - have been treated more leniently.
Most Israelis, the official said, have thought the Pollard case was over and done with. Most thought that his long-term incarceration, the closure of the intelligence organization, known as the Bureau of Scientific Relations, that "ran" him, the Israeli promise never to spy on the US again, and the intervening two decades had put an end to the affair as an American-Israeli issue.
But they were wrong.
"The Pollard case is not over," he said. "The US did not release him because they were convinced, and are still convinced, that there were other fish involved, much bigger than Pollard - including one very senior official. And they want him. Since Israel has never admitted this, the US is keeping Pollard as a bargaining chip, and not willing to part with him."
In light of the Kadish arrest, Pollard's chances of being released have diminished even further, he said, because it shows there were indeed other Israeli agents operating in the US at the same time, using similar methods, and being operated by the same handler - a man identified in the press as Yossi Yagur....