"The US security establishment is like an elephant; it never forgets, never forgives," a veteran Washington lobbyist expert in Israel-US ties told me. "The establishment underwent a trauma in 1985 when the Jewish spy (Jonathan Pollard - R.D.) stabbed it in the back and then twisted the knife in the wound. You (Israelis) continue to pay the price to this day, and you will probably pay tomorrow and the next day as well. The hugs of every serving president, whoever it is, shouldn't mislead you."
Thus the lobbyist responded to the assessment, reported here for the first time, that the US refusal of entry visas to certain current and former Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) senior managers is retribution for the company's relationship with an American scientist who was convicted of attempted espionage in 2011, more than three years after he had stopped working at IAI. In a plea bargain, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
The indictment filed against the scientist did not claim that the government of Israel, IAI, or anyone on their behalf, had broken US law. In fact, the indictment makes it clear that it was a case of an FBI sting operation. The FBI used Israel as bait, but Israel actually had no part in the affair.
IAI's involvement with the scientist, Stewart David Nozette, has cost it dearly. From interviews by "Globes" with sources in the US and Israel, it emerges that the employment of the scientist as a "technical consultant" for a little over nine years, between November 1998 and January 2008, is the reason that not only current IAI CEO Joseph Weiss is refused a visa, but also caused several former senior managers at the company, among them the previous CEO, Itzhak Nissan, to be barred from entering the US. (Barbara Opall-Rome, Israel bureau chief for "Defense News", in an investigative report to be published shortly, reveals that two or three IAI employees are targets of the US administration's visa sanctions.)
Weiss and Nissan are believed to have been targeted because of their links with IAI's space and missiles activity. The information that Nozette gave the company was mainly to do with satellites and other space matters (although it concerned early warning systems as well), and it was naturally channeled to the relevant division at IAI, the Systems Missiles and Space Group. Weiss headed the Group from April 2006 to July 2012, when he was appointed CEO (he previously headed the MBT Space Division). Nissan was general manager of the Systems Missiles and Space Group between 2002 and 2006. During that entire period, Nozette's material flowed to this Group, which perhaps set a red light flashing for the Americans.
In retrospect, two former IAI senior managers, who knew the scientist, say that they always had the impression that Nozette was a little crazy, and that he was "bad news from day one."
Former IAI senior managers say that the fact that the CEO cannot travel to one of IAI's main target markets damages business there. Weiss told "Globes" this week that IAI's annual sales in the US average $800 million to $900 million. In the middle of the previous decade, the figure was $1.1 billion.
Nevertheless, Weiss says that the visa problem does not affect IAI's performance in the US. "These days, you don’t have to be physically present," he said. "The technology enables you to function from Lod as well."
However, all former senior IAI managers with whom I spoke were unanimous that the absence of the CEO from the US market weighs on the company. One of them described as a white elephant IAI's subsidiary Stark Aerospace in Columbus, Mississippi, the baby of past chairman Yair Shamir, which was supposed to be a large profit source as a site for producing sub-systems with US companies. "The heart aches to see such a shiny, sophisticated facility under-utilized," one of the sources said.
Another said that the blame did not attach to Weiss but to those who appointed him CEO when they knew, or ought to have known, that he had problems travelling to the US. At any rate, the Weiss era is due to end next year when he reaches age 67 and retires. IAI's US activity will assume supreme importance when the practice of converting a quarter of US military aid to Israel to shekels ceases, under the agreement regulating aid for the ten years to 2028. Collaborations with US companies will become critical for defense companies in Israel.
"Globes" has learned that the Israeli embassy in Washington started to try to help Weiss several years ago when it became clear that the gates of the US were shut before him. The problem was raised informally with several legislators or their aides, but so far nothing has come of these efforts. Separately, law firms were hired in Washington to try to remove the decree, but nothing has changed.
A spokesperson for the Israel embassy in Washington, Itai Bar-Dov, told "Globes", "We don't comment to the press on our connections or contacts with the US authorities."
A US State Department spokesperson, Noel Clay, said in response to a question from "Globes" about the possible connection between the refusal of a visa to Weiss and others and the Nozette affair, "Records relating to visas are privileged under US law, and so we cannot give you the information you requested."
Weiss himself told "Globes", "I won't say that it isn't annoying, but it's only an anecdote. As far as I'm concerned, as long as our business with US companies is successful and beneficial to both countries, as long as IAI's activity in the US is perceived as good for Israel and America, that's enough." He said he hardly remembered Nozette and did not believe that there could be a connection between the scientist's conviction and the visa refusal. "No-one has ever talked to us about this," he says.
So from interviews with sources in Washington and in Israel a near consensus emerges: Weiss, Nissan, and probably one or two more, are paying the price of Nozette having been employed by IAI. But the word "near" must be stressed. Two IAI senior managers, one current and one former, claim that the Nozette affair may not necessarily be behind the visa refusals. They claim that IAI and its managers may have fallen victim to a campaign by US defense companies that did not view favorably IAI's activity in certain fields, such as aircraft conversions, and sought to make it difficult for the company to operate in the US by banishing its CEO from one of its main markets.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 26, 2017
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