US to raise fresh espionage case with Israel
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States will express concern to key ally Israel over a fresh espionage case involving an American accused of passing secret nuclear weapons information to the Jewish state, the State Department said Tuesday.
US authorities arrested the former military officer on charges that he disclosed classified US defense information, including on nuclear weapons, to Israel, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Ben-Ami Kadish, who once worked as a mechanical engineer at a US Army weapons center in New Jersey, was charged with conspiring to disclose documents related to the national defense of the United States to the Israeli government and conspiring to act as an agent for the Jewish state.
He was accused of illegally acting as an agent for Israel from 1979 to 2008 without notifying the US Attorney General's office.
"These kinds of activities whether they occurred long in the past or present time are not the kind of actions we would expect from a friend and ally and we would expect that Israel would not be engaged in such activities," said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.
"We will be discussing, if we haven't already, this issue with the Israelis," he said.
Washington would relay its concerns through the Israeli embassy in Washington, said a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Casey said Kadish's case was "in some ways connected" to that of Pentagon spy Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life term after being convicted on a charge of spying for Israel in the mid 1980s.
Pollard had allegedly passed thousands of documents to Israeli agents whilst working as a US naval officer.
The Israeli government publicly admitted in 1998 that Pollard had been their agent and awarded him Israeli citizenship, reports have said.
