Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Ben-Ami Kadish, Spy for Israel, Dies at 85

Ben-Ami Kadish, a former civilian employee of the U.S. Army who was arrested at the age of 85 for spying for Israel, has died.

No date of death or cause of death was made public, according to the New Jersey Jewish News, citing a funeral home death notice.

Kadish, a former U.S. Army mechanical engineer, was arrested in December 2008 for passing classified documents between 1980 and 1985 to an Israeli agent, reportedly the same handler as Jonathan Pollard.

He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and was sentenced in mid-2009, at the age of 85, to pay a $50,000 fine.

“I’m sorry I made a mistake,” Kadish said before sentencing. “It was a misjudgment. I thought I was helping the State of Israel without harming the United States.”

Kadish was born in Connecticut and moved to what was then Palestine. He returned to the United States after World War II. He was employed by the army for 27 years after serving in the U.S. Air Force and had security clearance.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.