Pentagon Warned of Israel Using ‘Ethnic Ties’ to Get Spies

WASHINGTON —  A Defense Department security office issued a confidential warning to many military contractors in October that the Israeli government was “aggressively” trying to steal U.S. military and intelligence secrets, by trading in part on its “strong ethnic ties” to the United States to recruit spies.

The warning was circulated by the Defense Investigative Service with a memo noting similar intelligence “threats” from other close U.S. allies. The Pentagon withdrew the warning about Israel in December after senior officials decided its author had improperly singled out Jewish ethnicity as a counterintelligence concern.

The warning nonetheless provoked a vigorous protest Monday by the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish organization, which called on the Pentagon to conduct an investigation.

“This is a distressing charge which impugns American Jews and borders on anti-Semitism,” ADL director Abraham H. Foxman stated in a letter to Defense Secretary William J. Perry.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Emmett Paige Jr. replied in a letter Monday that the document was written by a low-level official and does not reflect the department’s views.

The government memo highlights a particularly delicate issue for the Defense Department. Many military counterintelligence officials remain scarred by the 1985 revelation that Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard spied for Israel.