Judge William H. Pauley III, a federal government judge from New York who just decided that gathering NSA information was legal “because of 9/11,” in the past let confessed Israeli spy and dual citizen Ben-Ami Kadish go scot-free.
Wikipedia notes:
Ben-Ami Kadish (September 2, 1923 – July 16, 2012) was a former U.S. Army mechanical engineer. He pled guilty in December 2008 to being an “unregistered agent for Israel,” and admitted to disclosing classified U.S. documents to Israel in the 1980s. His unauthorized disclosure of classified U.S. secrets to Israel was concurrent with the espionage activity of Jonathan Pollard…
In December 2008, Kadish pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered agent of Israel, admitting he gave classified documents to Israel in the 1980s. Prosecutors asserted that Kadish had furnished classified American secrets to Yosef Yagur, the same Israeli agent who had received secret documents from Jonathan Pollard. In determining the sentence, Judge William H. Pauley III asserted, “Why it took the government 23 years to charge Mr. Kadish is shrouded in mystery.” Pauley stated that prison would “serve no purpose” for a man of Kadish’s advanced age and infirmity, opting to levy a $50,000 fine against Kadish. The prosecutor stated that the decision to accept the plea agreement was based on Kadish’s cooperation and his willingness to admit wrongdoing. Prior to sentencing, Kadish faced the judge standing with the aid of a cane and stated, “I’m sorry I made a mistake … It was a misjudgment. I thought I was helping the state of Israel without harming the United States.”
A Press Release from the U.S. Attorney Southern District of New York dated May 29, 2009 stated, in part,
FORMER U.S. ARMY ARSENAL EMPLOYEE SENTENCED FOR CONSPIRING TO ACT AS UNREGISTERED AGENT OF ISRAEL
BEN-AMI KADISH was sentenced today to pay a fine of $50,000 in connection with his participation in a conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of the Government of Israel. The sentence was imposed by United States District Judge WILLIAM H. PAULEY III in Manhattan federal court.
KADISH, is a former employee of the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center at the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey. On numerous occasions from about 1980 through 1985, KADISH provided classified documents relating to the U.S. military — including some relating to U.S. missile defense systems — to an agent of the Government of Israel who photographed the documents at KADISH�s residence. On December 30, 2008, KADISH, 85, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Government of Israel.
News reports at the time noted that Kadish, a Connecticut-born U.S. citizen, was facing a maximum of five years in prison and that “The Israeli embassy had no immediate comment.” [Also See: The Israeli Spy Ring.]
Also from Wikipedia:
William H. Pauley III (born 1952) is a United States federal judge. Born in Glen Cove, New York, Pauley received an A.B. from Duke University in 1974 and a J.D. from Duke University School of Law in 1977. He was a law clerk, Office of the Nassau County Attorney, New York from 1977 to 1978. He was a Deputy county attorney of Nassau County Attorney’ Office, New York in 1978. He was in private practice in New York City from 1978 to 1998. He was an Assistant counsel, New York State Assembly Minority Leader, New York from 1984 to 1998. Pauley was nominated by President Bill Clinton on May 21, 1998, to a seat vacated by Peter K. Leisure. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on October 21, 1998, and received his commission on October 22, 1998. Among his notable decisions was that involving Ben-ami Kadish, a U.S. national who pleaded guilty to passing classified information to Israel…
Federal Judge rules NSA data legal because 9/11′
“Just one week after a federal judge ruled against the NSA, another federal judge ruled today in favor of the government and dismissed a case brought by the ACLU against NSA director, James Clapper. Judge William H. Pauley III’s reasoning is juvenile but no less chilling. He writes:
“No doubt, the bulky telephony metadata collection program vacuums up information about virtually every telephone call to, from, or within the United States. (But) As the September 11th attacks demonstrate, the cost of missing such a thread can be horrific. Technology allowed Al Qaeda to operate decentralized and plot international terrorist attacks remotely. The bulky telephone metadata collection program represents the Government’s counter-punch: connecting fragmented and fleeting communications to re-construct and eliminate al-Qaeda’s terror network.”This second (and opposite) ruling increases the likelihood that the challenges will end up before the Supreme Court.
Fun fact: Richard Leon, the D.C. judge who declared the program unconstitutional, was appointed by George W. Bush (and nominated the day before 9/11). William Pauley, the New York judge who upheld the program, was appointed by Clinton.
Judge William Pauley opens his ruling with the mantra of all big police state promoters. “9/11 changes and justifies everything.” [Read the full ruling]
In his 54-page December 27, 2013 ruling, which can be downloaded here, Judge Pauley began “The September 11th terrorist attacks revealed, in the starkest terms, just how dangerous and interconnected the world is. While Americans depended on technology for the conveniences of modernity, al-Qaeda plotted in a seventh-century miliew to use that technology against us. It was a bold jujitsu. And it succeeded because conventional intelligence gathering could not detect diffuse filaments connecting al-Qaeda.”
Pauley then used the case of 9/11 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar to justify the NSA spying program.
Michael German, a senior policy counsel at the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office and a former FBI agent, published an article on October 16, 2013 titled No NSA Poster Child: The Real Story of 9/11 Hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar, which debunked all these arguments.
“[Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Diane] Feinstein’s first claim, based on recent testimony from FBI Director Robert Mueller and the NSA’s director, Gen. Keith Alexander, is that the domestic telephone data collection program would have enabled the intelligence community to prevent the 9/11 attacks by revealing that al-Qaeda operative and future 9/11 hijacker Khalid al Mihdhar was inside the United States… There are a few problems with using Mihdhar as the poster child for new domestic spying programs, however. The intelligence agencies, which normally benefit from being able to keep secret any facts that might undermine their arguments, seem to have forgotten that the 9/11 Commission, the Justice Department Inspector General and the intelligence committees in Congress published in detail what the government knew about Mihdhar before the attacks…..In other words, the problem was not that the government lacked the right tools to do its job (it had ample authority to trace Mihdhar’s calls). The problem was that the government apparently failed to use them. It’s pretty cynical for the intelligence community to use its repeated failures to properly assess information it collected prior to 9/11 as justification for wholesale spying on Americans.”
In his ruling for the government, Pauley continued: “Here, the balance of the equities and the public interest tilt firmly in favor of the government’s position. “Everyone agrees that the government’s interest in combating terrorism is an urgent objective of the highest order.” (pg. 47)
“and courts must pay proper deference to the Executive in assessing the threats that face the nation. Most federal judges do not begin the day with briefings that may describe new and serious threats to our Nation and its people. Any injunction dismantling the section 215 telephony metadata collection program “would cause an increased risk to national security and the safety of the American public.” (pg. 48)
In his Conclusion, Judge Pauley wrote: “The right to be free from searches and seizures is fundamental, but not absolute. As Justice Jackson famously observed: “The bill of Rights is not a suicide-pact.” (pg.51) …Every day, people voluntarily surrender personal and seemingly-private information to trans-national corporations, which exploit that data for profit. Few think twice about it, even though it is far more intrusive than bulk telephony metadata collection. There is no evidence that the Government has used any of the bulk telephony metadata it collected for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks. (pg. 52) Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The success of one helps protect the other. Like the 9/11 Commission observed: The choice between liberty and security is a false one, as nothing is more apt to imperil civil liberties than the success of a terrorist attack on American soil.”
The bug-eyed, psycho looking ghoul is pictured here, in a WSJ profile. Here is William Pauley’s public contact information:
| http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/judge/Pauley
United States District Judge United States Courthouse 500 Pearl St. New York, NY 10007-1312 Courtroom: 20B Chambers Phone: (212) 805-6387 Deputy Phone: (212) 805-6393 INDIVIDUAL PRACTICES OF JUDGE WILLIAM H. PAULEY III
INDIVIDUAL RULES FOR SENTENCING SUBMISSIONS TOJUDGE WILLIAM H. PAULEY III
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RELATED:
- Israel’s ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Card By Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer
- USA TODAY: Spy case poses questions on size of Israeli ring: “The case of an 84-year-old New Jersey man charged with passing secrets to an Israeli agent a quarter-century ago has created speculation that more Americans may have been serving Israeli intelligence than previously thought.”
- US man charged with disclosing nuclear information to Israel:
“…he disclosed secret defense information, including on nuclear weapons and Patriot missiles, to Israel for more than 20 years… Some of the espionage allegedly occurred at the same time that convicted Pentagon spy Jonathan Pollard passed thousands of secret documents to Israel in 1984 and 1985, and the State Department acknowledged Tuesday that the two cases were “in some ways connected.” …One of the documents Kadish provided to CC-1 “contained information concerning nuclear weaponry and was classified as ‘restricted data'” — a specific designation by the US Department of Energy for documents containing atomic-related information — according to the complaint filed in a Manhattan federal court. Other documents passed on by Kadish and classified as “secret” by the Pentagon contained information on a modified version of an F-15 fighter jet as well as the Patriot missile air defense system. The State Department said Washington would express concern to its key Middle East ally over the fresh espionage case. “These kinds of activities, whether they occurred long in the past or present time, are not the kind of actions we would expect from a friend and ally and we would expect that Israel would not be engaged in such activities,” said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.”We will be discussing, if we haven’t already, this issue with the Israelis.”
Source: therebel
The events of 9-11-01 were not and are not justification for anything: not the invasion of Afghanistan, not the 12 year occupation of Afghanistan, not the invasion of Iraq, not the 11 year occupation of Iraq, not the overthrow of the Libyan government, not the hostilities towards Syria and certainly not the acts of war that the US is committing against Iran. We know that 9-11-01 was provoked and could have been more easily prevented than turning into the overwhelming success that it did. Reasonable people will agree that if the US did not constantly provoke our enemies, there would have been far fewer military conflicts around the world. Right this very instant, toxic radiation is and has been seeping uncontrollably and being deliberately discharged into the Pacific Ocean.Deadly radiation is on path to mutate and/or kill all ocean life on its way to the US. Dangerous levels of radiation are already contaminating the nation’s food supply through the natural atmospheric process. Radiation from Fukyshima has the potential to render the entire Northern Hemisphere unimhabitable. So that said, where does it make sense that the top US nuclear priority is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability? It seems to me that it is the responsibility of the US government to protect the American and the nation’s food supply. Americans have infinitely more to fear from Fukushima than Iran.