The statements were in an affidavit for a search warrant filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit. The FBI was granted permission to search the Southfield home of David Tenenbaum, 39, a mechanical engineer in the combat vehicle research center at the Army's Tank Automotive and Armaments Command in Warren.
The agency is investigating statements made by Tenenbaum after a lie detector test given as part of a security clearance upgrade.
Tenenbaum said he had inadvertently given classified information to every Israeli liaison officer assigned to the tank command over the past 10 years and to a scientific deputy director for the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
The information included test data for light-armor systems and countermeasures for Patriot missiles, used by the United States in the Persian Gulf War. It also included classified information about the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the Humvee.
Tenenbaum said he had taken home documents that read "For Official Use Only," and cover sheets marked "SECRET." He told the agents that he had one of the center's computers in his home.
The FBI wanted to search for telephone bills, financial statements, address books, computer files and any classified material.
Tenenbaum has not been arrested or charged.
Tenenbaum did not return a phone message left yesterday at his home. A woman who answered the phone at Tenenbaum's home Tuesday said she didn't know about the search warrant or the investigation, the Detroit News said.
The Tank Automotive and Armaments Command coordinates procurement, storage and maintenance for tanks and other military vehicles. Eric Emerton, Warren Tank Command spokesman, referred all questions to an FBI spokeswoman. The agency would only say an investigation was ongoing.
Eric Rubin, a National Security Council spokesperson in the White House, said his agency would have no comment on the report of Tenenbaum's activity because it is part of a criminal investigation.
"I gather that the Pentagon is also aware of this, but will not be commenting," Rubin told the Detroit Free Press. The FBI, he said, would provide the only "official response from the U.S. government" at this time.
An Israeli defense ministry spokesperson in Jerusalem said yesterday the agency had not received any request connected with Tenenbaum.
"On this occasion the (ministry of defense) wishes to emphasize that all MOD and IDF officials in the USA are under the most explicit and categorical instructions to decline any and all offers of classified U.S. information, other than that which is transmitted to them in an orderly fashion through the authorized official channels that exist between the two countries."
In the affidavit, the FBI said Tenenbaum may have violated federal laws against gathering or transmitting defense information or delivering that information to a foreign government. Each charge would carry a 10-year maximum prison term.
Analysts said it was hard to gauge how damaging the leaks might be. Natalie Goldring, deputy director of the British-American Security Information Council, a nonprofit research group in Washington D.C., said the leaks were probably more important politically than militarily, since Israel is a strong ally of the United States.
But Ms. Goldring said Israel could use the information to build systems that would compete with American products, or sell such products to countries the United States would not.
"Israel hasn't always shown the discipline in weapon sales that the U.S. would like," she said. "We have continuing conflicts over unauthorized transitions of technology."
She said Tenenbaum's explanation that the data were given inadvertently for 10 years was puzzling.
"You can do some inadvertently once, maybe twice," Ms. Goldring said. "Classified documents are quite clearly labeled, and it's the responsibility of people who hold those clearances to know if the people they're sharing with were cleared."
The Israelis would be interested in Patriot missile technology because the United States has sold the missiles to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, said Paul Beaver, group spokesman for Jane's Information Group, publisher of books on airplanes and ships.
Giving military information to the Israelis is not unprecedented. Former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard received a life sentence in 1986 for passing government secrets to Israel.
Christopher Simpson, an associate professor at American University who studies how government documents are kept secret, said while some of the information was sensitive, Tenenbaum might have thought it was not significant.
"The U.S. Government routinely overclassifies information to such a degree that this person could feel, perhaps with some merit, that 'This should be declassified, and if I share it with my friend it won't damage national security,"' Simpson said. "What we're creating is a situation where overclassification undermines the ability to protect truly sensitive information."