[With J4P preface]Allegations of Israeli Spying Usually Disappear --
Eventually
by Alex Safian - www.Camera.org - September 5, 2004

Justice4JP PREFACE:

Why is the Pollard case always dredged up and paraded in the media every
time the US accuses Israel of spying in the US? Why is this not done to any
other country or any other ethnic individual when a new spy case breaks?

The answer is simple. The case of Jonathan Pollard continues to be used to
threaten the Jews. The false accusations against Pollard and the unjust
sentence he is serving - which neither Israel nor the American Jewish
leadership has protested for nearly 2 decades - make Pollard's plight a
convenient weapon to use against the Jews.

After nearly 2 decades in prison, Jonathan continues to pay the price for
the refusal of Israel and the American Jewish leaders to stand up for equal
justice for one of their own. As long as they turn their backs on Jonathan,
he will be continued to be used to call into question Israel's reliability
as an ally, and the trustworthiness of the American Jewish community.

The truth that both Israel and American Jews continue to avoid is glaringly
obvious: Jonathan did not cause the anti-Jewish sentiment in the
Intelligence community; he was one of its victims.

But avoiding the truth, does not mean that the Jews can avoid its
consequences. As long as the Pollard case continues to fester, the same
anti-Semitic elements that came after Jonathan with a vengeance out of all
proportion to the offense he committed, will continue to come after Jews and
Jewish organizations.

While it is too soon to draw any conclusions about the latest US accusations
of espionage against AIPAC and Lawrence A. Franklin, the following article
by Alex Safian responds to the storm of media coverage surrounding the
story. It does two things well: firstly, it draws the connection between the
most recent US accusation of espionage against Israel with other such
accusations in the recent past. All of these accusations received a great
deal of press and then faded out, with no arrests made and no charges filed.
Secondly, the article unflinchingly confronts the fact that it is not just
Israel which spies on the US, but that the US has repeatedly spied on
Israel.

A critical issue which is relevant but not mentioned in this article is the
timing of US accusations.
A look at the timing and background of these episodes reveals that US has
always trumpeted its allegations of espionage against Israel at very
specific moments in time in order to serve other political goals or agendas.
More often than not these allegations are timed to create pressure to force
Israel to follow some US directive or policy which Israel might otherwise
resist.

The Safian article follows:
===
Allegations of Israeli Spying Usually Disappear -- Eventually

by Alex Safian, CAMERA Associate Director - www CAMERA.org - [Originally
published August 29, 2004]

Reports that the FBI suspects a mid-level Pentagon employee
specializing in Iranian affairs of conveying classified documents to the
pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, and further that two of the lobby's employees may
have passed those documents to Israel, have led to a predictable storm of
press coverage, much of it overheated. CBS, for example, led its Nightly
News on Friday with its "scoop," and ABC's Nightline replaced its scheduled
program with coverage of the spy story. For some unexplained reason the
Nightline program included a segment on the USS Liberty incident and an
interview with discredited Israel-basher and conspiracy theorist James
Bamford.

Israeli officials and AIPAC have strongly denied any involvement in
spying on America, and it is far too early to say whether anyone will be
arrested or convicted of anything in this case, or whether any sensitive
information was compromised. But there is no doubt that in its coverage of
the affair the media has forgotten two fundamental facts:

- There have been entirely similar charges in the past of alleged spying for
Israel which ended up being dropped for lack of evidence or merit.

- Countries don't just spy on their enemies, they also spy on their friends.
It is well known, for example, that Israel has spied on America at least
once in the past, in the Jonathan Pollard affair, which Israel apologized
for. Less well known, however, is the fact that the United States has also
spied on Israel, even recruiting Israeli military officers and politicians.

Israel's Alleged Spies

Supposed spies for Israel have included David Tenenbaum, an Orthodox
Jew and engineer who worked at the U.S. Army Tank Automotive and Armaments
Command in Warren Michigan. Tenenbaum was charged with passing sensitive
information on the Patriot missile and advanced armor to Israel. (Detroit
Free Press, Feb. 20, 1997) More than a year later the case was quietly
dropped, with the FBI stating only that "The case is closed. No criminal
charges have been filed."

After the case was dropped, Tenenbaum got his job back, but he has
filed a lawsuit against the government claiming that he was singled out for
scrutiny and prosecution solely for his religious beliefs. (Detroit Free
Press, Oct. 13, 2000)

Also suspected of spying for Israel was CIA employee Adam Ciralsky.
According to an internal CIA memo, Ciralsky was guilty of "deliberately
compromising U.S. government classified information to an Israeli national,
accepting compensation from an Israeli national in exchange for U.S.
government classified information, and deliberately concealing from the U.S.
government a relationship with an Israeli national." (Associated Press, Feb.
7, 2000)

Despite the seemingly serious charges against Ciralsky, he has to this
date not been charged with any wrongdoing, and he has filed his own lawsuit
against the U.S. government, charging that he was:

"unjustly singled out for investigation and subsequently
interrogated, harassed, surveilled and terminated from employment with the
CIA solely because he is a Jew and he practices the Jewish religion.
Moreover, this ultra vires and constitutionally repugnant conduct was
knowingly undertaken by defendants in conformance with a custom, policy and
practice of both the CIA and FBI. Here, Mr. Ciralsky seeks damages to
compensate for him for his injuries, and injunctive relief to prevent
further harm to himself and other Jewish-Americans who work or seek to work
in the federal government in so-called intelligence agencies. Indeed,
damages and injunctive and other equitable relief are being sought pursuant
to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ..."

In addition, because of the anti-Semitic language used in many of the
CIA's memos on Ciralsky (references to his "rich Jewish friends" and
"wealthy daddy") , the agency arranged to have the ADL provide sensitivity
training to its internal investigators. (U.S. Newswire, Apr. 14, 1999,
letter from CIA Director George Tenet to the ADL)

Perhaps the most serious instance of supposed spying by Israel against
the United States involved a person code-named "Mega," who may well not have
existed. As reported by the Washington Post on May 7, 1997:

"The FBI has opened an investigation to determine whether a senior
U.S. government official has been passing highly sensitive information to
the Israeli government, according to sources with direct knowledge of the
inquiry.

"The investigation was launched in January after the National
Security Agency intercepted a secure communication between a senior Israeli
intelligence officer in Washington and a superior in Tel Aviv that referred
to someone code-named 'Mega,' and an attempt to obtain a sensitive American
document, U.S. government officials said."

Israeli officials strongly denied that they were spying against the
United States, and also denied that they were familiar with anyone
code-named "Mega." As the officials explained, however, the Hebrew term for
the CIA sounded something like "Mega," perhaps explaining the confusion. In
any event, no one was ever charged with being "Mega," and it seems the
investigation was, again, quietly dropped. Though, of course, not before
Israel's reputation was again dragged through the mud.

Despite the nonexistence of "Mega," the Post story certainly did
reveal spying - on Israel by the United States. For as the report indicated,
the NSA monitored a secure communication between Israeli intelligence
officials. Just monitoring the conversation, whether it was secure or not,
is spying. But a secure communication would be encrypted, and because Israel
is one of the world's leaders in the science of cryptography, there is no
chance that even the NSA's supercomputers could have cracked the Israeli
code. The only other possibility is a U.S. mole within Israeli intelligence
who passed on to the U.S. the key to the Israeli code.

In other words, the "Mega" case proved beyond any doubt that the
United States was spying on Israel. Nor was it an isolated incident - there
have been previous cases of such spying by the U.S.

America's Spies in Israel

Yosef Amit was an intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces,
responsible for running agents in Arab countries, who eventually rose to
command an intelligence base on the border with Lebanon. While there, Major
Amit ran into difficulties with the law in 1978, and was discharged from the
IDF. Eventually going to work as a private investigator, he was recruited
into the CIA by Tom Waltz, a Jewish CIA officer based at the American
embassy in Tel-Aviv.

The Americans were supposedly especially interested in information on
Israeli troop movements and plans in Lebanon and the territories, which Amit
provided. He also apparently passed to the Americans secret documents from
Israel's internal security service, the Shin Bet, which he got from a friend
who worked there.

The Shin Bet eventually caught up with Amit in 1986, when he was
secretly arrested for espionage. The trial was also secret, though it is
known that Amit received a long prison sentence. (Ha'aretz, Dec. 12, 1997)
[J4JP Note: Amit was arrested 4 months after Jonathan Pollard. He was
released from prison in 1993. Jonathan Pollard continues to languish in
prison. He will shortly complete his 19th year in an American prison with no
end in sight.]

Another U.S. spy was the Israeli politician Andrzej Kielczynski, a
friend of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and also a member of the
Likud Central Committee. Kielczynski was recruited into the CIA in 1985 by
the same Mr. Waltz who recruited Yosef Amit, and he allegedly turned over to
the Americans information on where Israel based nuclear weapons, and also
helped to uncover Jonathan Pollard's spying against America. (Ha'aretz, May
18, 2001) [J4JP Note: Jonathan Pollard was never charged with spying against
the US, only with spying on behalf of Israel. There is a significant
distinction!]

Kielczynski later sued the CIA, claiming breach of contract - supposed
promises of money and American citizenship having not been forthcoming. In
contesting the suit, the CIA did not deny that Kielczynski was a CIA asset.
Instead, it won the case by citing a 125-year-old precedent (Totten v.
United States, 92 U.S. 105 [1875]) to the effect that "secret information
agreements to which a United States government agency is a party cannot be
enforced in the courts ... because its litigation could jeopardize
confidential information." ( New York Law Journal, Feb. 27, 2001)

In other words, the CIA's own legal defense confirmed that it had
recruited Kielczynski as a spy against Israel.

Conclusion

Spy stories and allegations always garner banner headlines and
television "exclusives" if Israel is involved, but the reality is that most
such cases fade away for lack of any credible evidence. Many seem to be the
result of overzealous investigators, some of whom may harbor unfriendly
attitudes towards Jews or Israel (witness, for example, the anti-Semitic
language in the Ciralsky memos).

The media, and the public, should remember this when new spy
allegations crop up. The media should also remember that spying is a two way
street -- and while Israel has spied on America in the past, so has America
spied on Israel.

SEE ALSO:
Israelis Who Spied for the US Page www.jonathanpollard.org/israelispies.htm
The Cirasky and Tanenbaum Page www.jonathanpollard.org/ciralsky.htm
The Mega Spy Scandal www.jonathanpollard.org/megaspy.htm
US Memo on Israel Cited Its Spy Aims www.jonathanpollard.org/1996/020396.htm
Defense Memo Warned of Israeli Spying
www.jonathanpollard.org/1996/013096.htm