US Army Defends Conduct in Tenenbaum Case
By RICHARD LARDNER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – The Army’s top lawyer is disputing a critical government report that concluded faith instead of facts drove the investigation of a civilian employee wrongly suspected of spying for Israel.
The report by the Pentagon inspector general found the employee, David Tenenbaum, an Orthodox Jew, was targeted by counterintelligence agents because of his religion. The conclusion vindicated Tenenbaum, who was never charged with a crime and has spent a decade trying to clear his name.
The case demonstrates how difficult it can be to reconcile suspicion and reality within the murky counterespionage world.
Indeed, the Army still maintains it was right to go after Tenenbaum. In a 23-page response to the inspector general’s findings, Army General Counsel Benedict Cohen says that report is filled with errors. It was Tenenbaum’s suspicious behavior and, later, his “deceptive responses” during a lie detector test “that led the Army to conclude he may have been passing classified information to Israel,” according to the response, obtained by The Associated Press.
The investigation of Tenenbaum played out during the mid-1990s, when the shock of major spy scandals was still being felt. In 1985 – dubbed the “Year of the Spy” – more than half a dozen agents were arrested. Among them was Jonathan Pollard, a civilian intelligence analyst for the Navy who was sentenced to life in prison for selling secrets to Israel, a U.S. ally.
By 1995, the Defense Investigative Service, now the Defense Security Service, was warning that Israeli intelligence officers were trying to exploit the “strong ethnic ties to Israel present in the United States.” In that environment, Tenenbaum, who regularly wore a yarmulke and would eat only in kosher restaurants, became a bull’s eye.