US authorities have arrested an American engineer on suspicion of giving secrets on nuclear weapons, fighter jets and air defence missiles to Israel during the 1980s, the Justice Department said.
Ben-Ami Kadish, 84, a US citizen who worked at an army engineering centre in New Jersey, was suspected of reporting to the same Israeli government handler as Jonathan Jay Pollard, who is serving a life term on a charge of spying for Israel.
Court papers say Kadish acknowledged his spying in FBI interviews and said he acted out of a belief that he was helping Israel. The papers claim the spying lasted roughly from 1979 to 1985, and his contact with the unidentified Israeli handler continued until March of this year.
Kadish was arrested in New Jersey and was scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon at US District Court in Manhattan, authorities said.
"We will be informing the Israelis of this action," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. "Twenty-plus years ago during the Pollard case we noted that this was not the kind of behavior we would expect from friends and allies and that would remain the case today."
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel, asked about the arrest, said: "We know nothing about it. We heard it from the media."
Kadish worked as a mechanical engineer at the U.S. Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Centre at the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey.
A Justice Department official said Kadish did not appear to receive any money in exchange for his suspected spying, just small gifts and restaurant meals.
Kadish, who had a security clearance, is said to have taken 50 to 100 classified documents from the arsenal's library, working from a list provided by the handler identified in a federal complaint as "CC-1." The handler would then photograph the documents in Kadish's basement and Kadish would return them to the library, the complaint said.
It said one of the classified documents passed on by Kadish "contained information concerning nuclear weaponry."