An Israel Espionage Drama, Sans Israel
www.forward.com/articles/117301/
By J.J. Goldberg - The Forward [NY] - October 21 , 2009

J4JP Prefacing Comments:

"High-ranking sources say that it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff who urged
the judge, through then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, to ignore the
plea agreement and throw the book at Pollard. . They wanted to send a
message. ... Pollard is still in jail, these sources say, not because his
crime merits his lengthy sentence - it doesn't - but because too many
American Jews still haven't gotten the message."

So, writes JJ Goldberg in an article which appeared in the "LA Jewish
Journal" more than a decade ago. ("Crime and Punishment," LA JJ - 04/03/98).

Nevertheless, Goldberg does not let this previous burst of truthfulness get
in the way of his distorted perception of the Pollard case in the essay
below.

For that "sub-group" of Jewry who feel compelled to keep proving their
American patriotism, "An Israel Espionage Drama, Sans Israel" will be
reassuring. Its basic premise is, of course, utterly false, blaming Jonathan
Pollard for the endemic and unrelenting anti-Semitism in the American
intelligence community that Pollard himself was a victim of.

That notwithstanding, the essay does come to the conclusion that "after 20
years of trying and mostly failing to find more Israeli spies, the [FBI]
decided to manufacture one." Could it be more obvious?

The median sentence for spying for an ally is 2 to 4 years. On November 21,
2009, Jonathan Pollard will enter his 25th year of a life sentence.
---------

Fans of Israeli espionage melodrama are having a hard time digesting the
latest episode, the October 19 arrest of scientist Stewart David Nozette on
charges of trying to spy for Israel. From what's known so far, the case
seems to defy traditional understandings of Israel as either victim or
menace.

For that sub-group of Israel-boosters whose frame of reference is Jonathan
Pollard, serving life in prison for giving American secrets to Israel,
Nozette makes an
awkward martyr. He offers no overt Jewish identity markers to rally around,
no visible passion for Israel, indeed no evidence of having actually helped
Israel in this affair. As the FBI admits, the whole gambit was the bureau's
idea, not his.

Nor does the case help critics who view Israel as a threat to American
security. His arrest, a sting operation with no links to Israel, appears
anomalous. Israel is a bystander this time, a plot device in someone else's
play.

In reality, this is a psychodrama about America's counterintelligence
services and their bottomless fear of Israeli spies. The fear dates back to
the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard, the civilian Naval Intelligence analyst
caught passing classified information to Israel. Pollard traumatized the
intelligence community, insiders say. Ever since, the feds have been haunted
by fears that Pollard was only a cog in a larger but impenetrable Israeli
spy machine.

But the trauma is deeper than that. Pollard left the intelligence community
spooked, so to speak, by fears that Jewish religious devotion to Israel
could create confused loyalties or worse. Few believe more than a tiny
fraction of American Jews are confused. Still, if 3,000 American Jews
currently work in sensitive defense jobs, a conservative estimate, then
one-half of a percent could mean a dozen at-risk employees. The number
sounds small, but in counterintelligence terms it's terrifying.

Since Pollard, traumatized feds have groped for a way to detect moles
without the appearance of a witch-hunt. Over time several individuals have
come under suspicion and several lives have been ruined, but nothing was
ever proved. CIA analyst Adam Ciralsky was grilled in 1997 about family
links to the United Jewish Appeal. Tank engineer David Tenenbaum was
suspended that year and his home ransacked, apparently because of his
yarmulke. Two staffers at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and a
Pentagon analyst were caught up in 2004 in a sensational investigation that
ended in a guilty plea for the analyst and a five-year legal ordeal for the
other two. Charges were dismissed.

The closest the feds have come to catching an actual spook was the arrest
last year of an octogenarian retired Army engineer, Ben-Ami Kadish, for
spying linked to Pollard's handlers in the 1980s.

Now comes Nozette, perhaps the unlikeliest suspect of all. Nothing about him
suggests pro-Israel zealotry. His passions are all about space science.

Nozette was raised in Chicago's heavily Jewish West Rogers Park section. His
parents, Morris and Helen Nozette, were involved in the local Reform temple,
according to their Chicago Tribune obituaries, but apparently had no major
involvement with Israel. Son Stewart showed little interest in Jewish
matters as an adult, various sources say. Negotiating with the undercover
FBI agent supposedly recruiting him to Israeli intelligence, he tried to
finagle an Israeli passport by describing his parents - not himself - as
Jewish.

What he did absorb at home was a zeal for entrepreneurial science. His
father, an engineer, had worked on the Manhattan Project developing the
nuclear bomb.
After the war he took his skills and launched a successful plastics firm.

Stewart Nozette followed his father, pursuing science, weaponry and
commercialization of research. He's best known for his leadership in the
search for water on
the moon. Days before his arrest he was to address an advanced geophysics
seminar at Mississippi State University. His topic was his latest project, a
complex ballet of multiple spacecraft with the twin goals of mapping the
moon's surface and searching for ice underneath.

Dual use, finding multiple applications for discoveries, is a recurring
theme in Nozette's career. A scientist on the Reagan-era Strategic Defense
Initiative, he later led a Pentagon program to repurpose a missile-detecting
SDI satellite as a lunar explorer. His best known publication is a 1987
book, "Commercializing SDI Technologies." For decades he's shuttled between
government and the private sector, developing technologies for one and
applying them to the other, often through his own nonprofit, the Alliance
for Competitive Technology.

His alleged espionage venture looks like more dual-use and
commercialization, but carried a step too far - trying to sell U.S.
government secrets to a foreign country. According to the criminal complaint
filed by the FBI in federal court October 16, Nozette was contacted by phone
this past September by an undercover FBI operative posing as an agent of
Israel's Mossad intelligence service. Nozette agreed to supply classified
satellite and nuclear information on request, for a fee. Six weeks and two
secret envelope drops later, he was arrested.

Why was Nozette picked for the sting? A government source told The
Washington Post that suspicions arose during a 2006 investigation of his
firm's billing practices. Feds noticed he had been consulting for a decade
for an Israeli government-owned aerospace firm (identified in the Israeli
press as Israel Aircraft Industries). In 2007 his home was raided. He told
an associate that if he were arrested, he would flee to Israel or another
country and "tell them everything" - hinting, the Post said, that his
Israeli contract included spying.

But the FBI complaint says the flee-to-Israel remark was "based on an
unrelated criminal offense," meaning the bureau saw no link between his firm's
Israel Aircraft contract and the current espionage charges. The complaint
also quotes Nozette telling his "recruiter" in September: "I thought I was
working for you already. I mean that's what I always thought, [the foreign
company] was just a front." If the Israelis were using him as a spy, he wasn't
told.
Possibly the FBI knows much more about Nozette's Israel Aircraft consulting
than it's saying. More likely, after 20 years of trying and mostly failing
to find more Israeli spies, the bureau decided to manufacture one.
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SEE ALSO:

Terror in the US and the Jonathan Pollard Case
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2001/092601.htm

Comparative Sentencing Charts
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/sentences.htm

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JUSTICE FOR JONATHAN POLLARD
Website: http://www.JonathanPollard.org
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