Former Army Employee Pleads Guilty to Acting as Israeli Agent

MANHATTAN — Lev L. Dassin, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Ben-Ami Kadish pleaded guilty earlier today to a one-count information charging him with participating in a conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of the Government of Israel.

In summary, according to statements at Kadish’s guilty plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge Theodore H. Katz, the Information and other documents filed Manhattan federal court:

Kadish is a former employee of the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center at the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey ("the Arsenal"). On numerous occasions from about 1980 through 1985, Kadish provided classified documents relating to the U.S. military – including some relating to U.S. missile defense systems – to an agent of the Government of Israel, Yossi Yagur, who photographed the documents at Kadish’s residence.

Kadish, 85, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.

Kadish is scheduled to be sentenced in Manhattan federal court by U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley on February 13, 2009.

Mr. Dassin praised the investigative work of the New York and Newark Field Divisions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and thanked the U.S. Army for their support in this case.

This prosecution is being handled by Assistant United States Attorney Iris Lan from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and Trial Attorney Kathleen Kedian from the Counterespionage Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

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