29-05-09 Former soldier fined for spying,avoids jail

A judge spared an 85-year-old former U.S. Army engineer any prison time for passing secret documents to the Israelis in the 1980s but said it remains a mystery why such a grave assault on national security took 23 years to prosecute.U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III on Friday scolded Ben-ami Kadish for letting the Israelis steal classified documents between 1979 and 1985 from the Armament Research,Development and Engineering Center at the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, N.J.,where he worked.“What you did was a very grave offense,” the judge told Kadish,who hobbled to a lectern with a metal cane to deliver a short statement before he was fined $50,000 but was given no prison time and no probation.Kadish,who seemed to fall asleep while his lawyer argued for leniency,apologized.“It was a mistake.It was a misjudgment,” he said.“I thought I was helping the state of Israel without harming the United States.” The judge told him that it was difficult to dismiss his conduct as a simple error in judgment but that it would serve no purpose to send him to prison since he was so old and in poor health and because the government had drastically reduced the seriousness of the charges, which initially could have been punishable by death.“This was not one mistake,” the judge said. “This was over many years.”At the start of the sentencing hearing,the judge demanded that the government tell him why it took until 2008 to prosecute Kadish.“Why it took the government 23 years to charge Mr. Kadish is shrouded in mystery,” he said.Assistant U.S. Attorney Iris Lan said the government waited because the FBI wasn’t able to assemble enough evidence until then.Later,though,the judge praised the government for bringing the case at all.“When someone jeopardizes national security,they should understand that no matter how long it takes — even 23 years — the government is going to seek them out and bring them to the bar of justice,” he said.In December,Kadish,of Monroe Township,N.J.,admitted passing the documents to the Israelis by letting Yossi Yagur,an Israeli government agent who had requested them,photograph them in the basement of his home.He pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy