Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1998, Pages 46, 97

Special Report

American Engineer Who Admitted Giving Classified Information to Israel is Back at Work

By Shawn L. Twing

An American Jewish engineer who admitted giving classified U.S. technical data “inadvertently” to Israeli officials for 10 years is back at work at a U.S. Army tank and armor maintenance and research facility, the Detroit Jewish News reported in its June 5 issue. David Tenenbaum, a 40-year-old mechanical engineer with the Tank Automotive Research and Development Engineering Center, a division of the U.S. Army’s Tank Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) in Warren, MI, no longer is under investigation for espionage by U.S. authorities, but the circumstances surrounding his case remain confusing and suspicious.

Tenenbaum was suspended from TACOM without pay and had his employee and parking badges confiscated by U.S. authorities in February 1997 after he told Defense Investigative Service and FBI agents that he divulged “non-releasable classified information to every Israeli Liaison Officer (ILO) assigned to TACOM over the last 10 years.”

According to a Feb. 14, 1997 affidavit by Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent Sean Nicol, “Tenenbaum stated that he inadvertently provided his Israeli contacts, specifically the ILOs and Dr. Reuven Granot, scientific deputy director, Israeli Ministry of Defense (MOD), classified information from the three Special Access Program (SAP) projects to which he had access.

The non-releasable classified information provided to the Israelis by Tenenbaum includes hydra codes from the Light Armor Systems and Survivability (LASS) ceramic armor data, Advanced Survivable Test Battery (ASTB) data, Heavy Survival Test Battery (HSTB) data, and Patriot missiles countermeasures data. Additionally, Tenenbaum admitted providing the Israelis with unreleasable classified information regarding the Bradley tank and HUMV.”

Immediately following the public disclosure of the FBI affidavit, there was widespread speculation in the American Jewish and Israeli press that Tenenbaum’s arrest could be the beginning of another “Pollard Affair,” a reference to convicted spy-for-Israel Jonathan J. Pollard, a civilian U.S. naval intelligence analyst who was arrested in 1985 outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC after he was refused asylum there. [According to a U.S. General Accounting Office report, Pollard gave his Israeli handlers an estimated 800,000 highly classified U.S. intelligence documents. He was sentenced in 1986 to life in prison for his crimes, which severely strained U.S.-Israeli relations. Initially the Israeli government claimed that Pollard was part of a “rogue operation.” On the 10th anniversary of his arrest, however, the Israeli government granted Pollard Israeli citizenship, and in May, 1998 formally recognized him as an agent of the state of Israel.]

Very little information about the case was made public by the FBI.

As quickly as the Tenenbaum story appeared last year, however, it then vanished. Only a handful of articles, most of them in Jewish community newspapers and the Detroit Free Press, have been published, and very little information about the case was made public by the FBI. From the beginning, friends of Tenenbaum and his attorney, Martin Crandall, insisted that the entire case was a misunderstanding that would be cleared up quickly. A year-and-a-half later, however, serious questions remain unanswered, and the few answers available only add to the confusion.

In the most recent article on the Tenenbaum case, the Detroit Jewish News reported June 5 that he was cleared of wrongdoing by U.S. authorities. When asked to confirm the report, FBI special agent Dawn Moritz told the Washington Report that Tenenbaum had not been cleared of the charges. “All I can tell you is a two-sentence statement,” she said. “The case is closed. No criminal charges have been filed.”

The implication of that FBI statement is not clear. If Tenenbaum were found innocent of the charges, it would be reasonable to assume that he had been cleared, which is different than simply not having charges filed. The former implies innocence, but the latter suggests that some kind of a deal was made or that influence was brought to bear to quash an indictment.

Exactly what kind of deal, if any, was made is impossible to determine unless somebody from the FBI, David Tenenbaum, or his attorney start talking. Given the history of this investigation to date, that is an unlikely scenario.

Adding to the confusion, TACOM spokesman Eric Emerton told the Detroit Jewish News that Tenenbaum has returned to work, but he may not return to his previous job. Emerton declined to say when Tenenbaum returned to work, but a source close to the investigation confirmed that he returned to TACOM in early May 1998. This is supported by the TACOM civilian personnel directory on the Internet, which was last updated on March 30, 1998, and does not list David Tenenbaum as an employee.

If the FBI investigation found that Tenenbaum is innocent, why isn’t he back at his previous job? And if this all was a misunderstanding, why did it take more than a year for that to become clear? Apparently there is considerably more to this case than is being made public.

Tenenbaum, for his part, has done little or nothing to clear his name. He repeatedly has refused reporters’ requests for comment. His attorney is not talking either. Crandall refused to comment about the case to either the Detroit Jewish News or the Washington Report.

Routine Sharing

Despite all of the evidence pointing to a cover-up, it is possible that David Tenenbaum “inadvertently” passed classified information to Israeli officials for 10 years, but did not break U.S. law. Israeli and American officials routinely share classified intelligence information, including technical weapons data.

The U.S. government allows Israel to spend $150 million of its annual $1.8 billion in grant military aid on research and development in the United States, which places Israeli engineers and defense officials in close contact with their American counterparts. This could have led to a blurring of the lines of information that could be shared with Israel and information that could not. It also is possible that the FBI and Defense Investigative Service officials were not familiar with the extent of the U.S.-Israel relationship and inadvertently framed the question in a routine lie detector test in such a way that Tenenbaum’s answers sounded more ominous than they really were.

It is equally possible, however, that Tenenbaum violated U.S. law and passed information illegally to Israeli officials. In a 1996 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office entitled “Defense Industrial Security: Weaknesses in U.S. Security Arrangements with Foreign-Owned Defense Contractors,” the GAO claimed that “Country A [publicly identified as Israel in the Feb. 22, 1996 Washington Times] conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any U.S. ally.” One common denominator found in almost every example of Israeli espionage activity cited by the GAO was the illegal theft of advanced U.S. military technology.

The FBI’s use of the term “non-releasable” also suggests that Tenenbaum broke the law. Passing classified information to Israeli officials may be within the legal limits of the U.S.-Israel intelligence-sharing relationship, but “non-releasable” information is just that. It is a classification which does not allow for misinterpretation.

It also doesn’t help Israel or David Tenenbaum that Israeli companies, particularly Rafael, Israel’s state-owned armaments company, are very interested in weapons data related to sophisticated armors. Rafael, in fact, is a world leader in this technology.

In the last year alone, Rafael has won three contracts in the United States for ceramic armor, all in competition with America’s best firms in this highly specialized field. (See “U.S. Defense Firm Protests Marine Corps Contract Awarded to Israel’s Rafael Armaments Company,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 1998, p. 48.) If Israeli engineers had access via David Tenenbaum to U.S. test data, as the FBI affidavit claims, it certainly could provide Rafael an advantage in building better, less expensive armor.

Unfortunately, the public may never know exactly what was discovered during the FBI’s 12-month investigation of David Tenenbaum. If he is innocent of the charges, hopefully he or his lawyer will say that publicly. The FBI does make mistakes, which was demonstrated clearly in the case of David Jewell, the man investigated and eventually cleared by the Bureau for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing.

If they do not address the issue publicly, however, the available evidence and numerous unanswered questions will continue to point decidedly toward Tenenbaum’s guilt and a serious cover-up to hide a new “Pollard Affair” from the American public.