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Jewish World Review August 6, 2008 / 5 Menachem-Av 5768 Government made military engineer's life a living hell because of his faith, Defense Department report documents By David Ashenfelter
Led to scrapping project to improve the armor on Humvees, a decision that proved fatal to American troops who were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan in inadequate fighting vehicles JewishWorldReview.com | (MCT)  ETROIT—
A Detroit-area military engineer accused in 1997 of passing secrets to the Israelis was targeted because of his Orthodox Jewish faith, the Defense Department's Office of Inspector General said in a report. The report said David Tenenbaum, 50, of Southfield, Mich., who was suspected but never formally charged with espionage involving his job at the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) in Warren, was singled out because he is an observant Jew. Tenenbaum's lawyer, Mayer Morganroth of Southfield, said the bogus investigation prompted the Army to scrap Tenenbaum's 1995 project to improve the armor on Humvees, a decision that proved fatal to American troops who were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan in inadequate fighting vehicles. "The discrimination in this case ended up costing American soldiers their lives," Morganroth said. Morganroth's associate, Daniel Harold, said Tenenbaum's persecutors "have blood on their hands." Tenenbaum and his lawyers said the report proves that he was innocent and the victim of anti-Semitism. "You have no idea what it's like to have your loyalty questioned, to be accused of being a traitor," Tenenbaum told the Detroit Free Press last week. He wants an apology from the Army and his accusers punished. The 62-page report, requested by U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was issued three weeks ago with little fanfare. "It was well known that Mr. Tenenbaum was Jewish, lived his religious beliefs and by his actions appeared to have a close affinity for Israel," the report said. "We believe that Mr. Tenenbaum was subjected to unusual and unwelcome scrutiny because of his faith and ethnic background, a practice that would undoubtedly fit a definition of discrimination."
It said TACOM counterintelligence officials had Tenenbaum apply for a higher security clearance as "a ruse" to launch an improper spy investigation. The FBI is the only agency authorized to investigate civilians for espionage. The report said he lost his security clearance but eventually got it back and upgraded, a result that "suggests that Mr. Tenenbaum did not improperly disclose classified material." Morganroth said he wants the Army to compensate his client, who returned to work in 1998 after a 14-month paid leave of absence. Morganroth said Tenenbaum was relegated to lesser duties, shunned by co-workers and stripped of his security clearance. Though his clearance was restored and elevated in 2003 after a four-year legal battle, his federal discrimination lawsuits against the Army failed. TACOM officials wouldn't comment on the report. Neither would John Simonini, a retired lieutenant colonel and TACOM's counterintelligence chief who spearheaded the investigation. The Army and Levin are reviewing the report, staffers said. "We will certainly review the issues raised in the DOD inspector general's review for any procedures and policies that may need to be addressed, or other steps that we should take to address the situation," said Army spokesman Paul Boyce Jr. Tenenbaum, a Detroit-born son of a Holocaust survivor, was hired by TACOM in 1984 after obtaining engineering degrees from Wayne State University and working for a defense contractor in Troy. TACOM hired him to design safer combat vehicles. The report said TACOM hired Tenenbaum because he speaks Hebrew, which officials viewed as an asset in working with Israel on joint projects. Simonini and investigators for the Defense Investigative Service — now the Defense Security Service — and the 902nd Military Intelligence Group began to suspect Tenenbaum of passing secrets after co-workers complained about his behavior. Co-workers said Tenenbaum spent too much time associating with Israeli contacts, made his own travel arrangements for overseas trips and stayed in hotels away from colleagues --- which Simonini and others regarded as telltale signs of spying, the report said. Tenenbaum and his lawyers say some co-workers were jealous because of the assignments he was getting and had hang-ups about his religion. The report said Tenenbaum wore a yarmulke and adhered to strict Jewish dietary rules, prompting him to bring kosher food to work rather than joining co-workers for lunch at restaurants. Colleagues questioned why he was allowed to leave work early on Fridays to prepare for the Jewish Sabbath, the report said. The FBI looked into the complaints but found no evidence of wrongdoing. The report suggested that Simonini and others may have been influenced by a warning from the Defense Investigative Service in 1995 that Israeli intelligence officers were trying to exploit nationalistic feelings in Jewish Americans. The warning came nine years after Navy defense analyst Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison for spying for Israel. U.S. defense officials dismissed the warning in 1996. Unable to persuade the FBI to launch a spy probe, the report said, Simonini and others had Tenenbaum's boss request a top-secret security upgrade for Tenenbaum, which he didn't want because he worked on unclassified projects. The request resulted in a 6 1/2-hour polygraph examination in February 1997 in which Tenenbaum allegedly admitted making inadvertent disclosures of classified information to the Israeli government over a 10-year period. Tenenbaum said the examiner lied. He said the polygraph examination was a horrendous interrogation session conducted by a belligerent examiner who repeatedly accused him of passing secrets and demanded a confession. " 'I've done other Jews before, and I've gotten them to confess, too,' " Tenenbaum said the examiner told him, according to the report. The examiner denied Tenenbaum's charges, the report said, but told colleagues that he believed Tenenbaum had passed secrets to Israel because of his religious beliefs. The report doesn't say whether Tenenbaum passed the exam. He and his lawyers said they weren't given the results but that they're irrelevant given how the exam was conducted. The Office of Inspector General said in the report that it couldn't determine who was telling the truth because the session wasn't tape-recorded and the examiner destroyed his notes. Tenenbaum said the examiner wouldn't let him record the proceeding, the report said. The examiner's report prompted the FBI to launch a criminal investigation, put Tenenbaum and his family under around-the-clock surveillance and search his home on a Saturday - the Jewish Sabbath. Agents carted out 13 boxes of the family's belongings, including children's coloring books. Because an FBI agent neglected to seal the search warrant request, the news media learned that Tenenbaum was under suspicion and swarmed his home. "It was terrifying," Tenenbaum's wife, Madeline, said. "I felt totally violated." In February 1998, one year after the raid, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Leibson in Detroit advised the FBI in Washington that the investigation had failed to turn up any evidence to charge Tenenbaum with espionage. "There is no question that if evidence existed which would prove this case, then these agents would have found it," Leibson wrote to the FBI. The OIG report said the lead FBI agent on the case, James Gugino, testified that he believed Tenenbaum's claim that he had done nothing wrong. "But I also believed that there was an intelligence operation at work here and I think he was an unwitting pawn in a far bigger, very wide ranging intelligence scheme," the report quoted Gugino as saying. The report is a victory for civil rights, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, a Jewish human rights group. He said the Army needs to hold TACOM officials accountable, and he praised Tenenbaum's courage. "There was enormous pressure on him." Cooper said. "A lesser person would have folded. ... He stayed the course, and it's nice to see that, once in a while, the good guy comes out the winner." Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
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© 2008, Detroit Free Press
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You have no idea what it's like to have your loyalty questioned, to be accused of being a traitor.
