David nen Baum speaks

at a ZOA event at the
Holocaust Memorial Center.

Wrongly accused of spying for Israel,
David Tenenbaum's fight for justice continues.

David Sachs I Senior Copy Editor

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Tenenbaum was hired in 1984 to work
at the U.S. Army's Tank-Automotive and
Armaments Command facility in Warren,
known as TACOM. An Orthodox Jew, he
was hired as a liaison to work on joint
projects with the Israeli military because
he had previously traveled to Israel and
was fluent in Hebrew.
Ironically, Tenenbaum said, the only
reasons he was accused of spying for Israel
were because "I spoke Hebrew and had
been to Israel — the same reasons why I
was hired.
"In my case, this witch-hunt or `Jew-
hunt' did not just hurt me and my family,
it caused death to our soldiers in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It's the story of how system-
atic hate had severe repercussions to the
soldiers who are fighting on our behalf:'
In 1995, Tenenbaum had begun working
on a joint project with the U.S., Israeli and
German armies to add armor to poorly
protected Humvees, the larger replace-
ment of the conventional jeep. Tenenbaum
began the project as he recognized a need
to add protection to the vehicles because
they proved vulnerable to rocket-propelled
grenade attacks during urban warfare in
Somalia earlier that decade.
When the Army targeted Tenenbaum
for investigation — or "inquisition" as he
calls it — it also discontinued his pro-
gram to armor the Humvees. Some seven
years later, when the U.S. went to war in
Afghanistan and Iraq, these unarmored
vehicles proved very vulnerable to ter-
rorists' improvised explosive devices or
"IEDs" hidden along roadways — killing
and maiming scores of American soldiers.
"Decisions to end my program were
made by those who had a significant bias
against Jews, and that had catastrophic

16

October 11 • 2012

consequences to our U.S. soldiers,"
Tenenbaum said.
"What does the government say to the
parents, the children, the wives or hus-
bands of the soldiers that died in the IED
incidents when they knew that they could
have stopped it?"
Tenenbaum said some soldiers in the
war zone tried lining their vehicles with
scrap metal or even old clothing in hopes
of protecting themselves. "It didn't do any
good — I guarantee you."

False Accusations

Tenenbaum told his story last month
before a capacity crowd of more than
300 people at a lecture sponsored by the
Zionist Organization of America-Michigan
Region, held at the Holocaust Memorial
Center in Farmington Hills.
Although he had spoken publicly in Los
Angeles on behalf of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center and other venues in New York and
Israel, this was the first time he appeared
in his hometown Detroit area.
In his talk, which outlined his more
than 14-year fight for justice, Tenenbaum
outlined the anti-Semitic attitudes of some
of his co-workers, while admitting he
didn't exactly fit in with his colleagues.
"I didn't go to restaurants with them
because I only ate kosher food, and I
wouldn't work on Shabbos," he said. "I
found out later my colleagues used to call
me the 'little Jewish spy."'
After he was exonerated, a sympathetic
FBI agent told Tenenbaum that he was tar-
geted, "because you worked," Tenenbaum
said. "That caused a lot of issues. People
were playing fantasy football and doing
their taxes. And because I'm Jewish."
In order to protect against espionage,
Army employees are required to immedi-
ately report any suspicions of spying. In

Tenenbaum and attorney Daniel Harold

1996, on the same day when Tenenbaum
was nominated for an engineer exchange
program with Israel, a coworker brought
up suspicions he supposedly had of
Tenenbaum nine years earlier but never
reported. (When quizzed later about this
delay, the accuser claimed he held back
for nine years because he didn't want to
appear anti-Semitic.)
It had been some 10 years since
Jonathan Pollard pleaded guilty of pro-
viding U.S. military secrets to Israel.
Tenenbaum's attorney, Daniel Harold
of Morganroth & Morganroth in
Birmingham, said, "Our suspicions are
that because of the Pollard incident, peo-
ple targeted David because he was Jewish."
In order to launch an espionage investi-
gation against Tenenbaum with absolutely
no evidence against him to justify a search
warrant or lie-detector test, his enemies
in the Army concocted a scheme where
they claimed a need to bolster his security
clearance, requiring a routine lie-detector
test.
The polygraph examiner, however,
refused to let the session be tape-recorded,

against the common practice, Tenenbaum
said. "Throughout the examination, he
was belligerent.
"He said, 'I can tell you're lying by the
look in your eyes. I've done other Jews
before, and have gotten them to confess —
and I'll get you to confess, too'
"Little did I know that when I finally left
after seven hours, he told the FBI that I
confessed to giving classified information
to every Israeli I ever worked with, that
I ever knew over 10 years, on every pro-
gram I ever worked on — inadvertently.
"A lot of mistakes to make in one shot:'
Tenenbaum laughed ironically. "I don't
make these things up!"
Tenenbaum said after the lie-detector
test, the polygraph examiner destroyed
his notes and issued a false claim that
Tenenbaum confessed. This led the FBI
to open up a criminal investigation of
him and his family. A traumatic raid of
his home on Shabbos afternoon, Feb. 14,
1997, resulted in the confiscation of a large
amount of his and his family's belongings.
A leaked item to the Detroit News claimed
that Tenenbaum had indeed spied. Soon,
TV news crews were camped outside his
house.
"The FBI started following me and my
family 24 hours a day for six months:'
Tenenbaum said. "It's nerve-wracking hav-
ing five or six cars around you when you're
going places.
"The FBI tries to isolate you from
your neighbors, but they didn't count
on one thing: Jews stay together:' said
Tenenbaum. "Not one neighbor thought I
did anything wrong.
"When the investigation against me was
completed and dropped in July 1998, the
U.S. attorney's office sent my attorney a
letter saying if any evidence existed, the
agents would have found it. I was probably
one of the most investigated people in the
U.S. — I estimate millions and millions of
dollars were spent on my case for about a
year and a half."

Seeking Redress

Today, Tenenbaum continues to work at
TACOM, although he says he does not
have any major projects, and his cowork-
ers keep their distance from him.
Many of his former accusers still work
at TACOM, a situation that is extremely
uncomfortable for Tenenbaum.
"Right now, I can't get a job anywhere
else," he said. "I've tried. I can't leave; I
can't get promoted. I'm stuck. Contractors
outside of TACOM don't want to work with
me either."
Tenenbaum, through his attorneys
Mayer Morgenroth and Daniel Harold,
filed suit against the Army seeking com-
pensation for all the trauma he was put
through because of discrimination. The
case was dismissed in September 2002
because the Army claimed that in order to