Jonathan Pollard
(1954 - )
In November 1985, the FBI arrested Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, on charges of selling classified material to Israel. Pollard was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. His wife, Anne, got five years in jail for assisting her husband.
Immediately upon Pollard's arrest, Israel apologized and explained that the operation was unauthorized. "It is Israel's policy to refrain from any intelligence activity related to the United States," an official government statement declared, "in view of the close and special relationship of friendship" between two countries. Prime Minister Shimon Peres stated: "Spying on the United States stands in total contradiction to our policy."
The United States and Israel worked together to investigate the Pollard affair. The Israeli inquiry revealed that Pollard was not working for Israeli military intelligence or the Mossad. He was directed by a small, independent scientific intelligence unit. Pollard initiated the contact with the Israelis.
A subcommittee of the Knesset's Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee on Intelligence and Security Services concluded: "Beyond all doubt...the operational echelons (namely: the Scientific Liaison Unit headed by Rafael Eitan) decided to recruit and handle Pollard without any check or consultation with the political echelon or receiving its direct or indirect approval." The Knesset committee took the government to task for not properly supervising the scientific unit.
As promised to the U.S. government, the spy unit that directed Pollard was disbanded, his handlers punished and the stolen documents returned. The last point was crucial to the U.S. Department of Justice's case against Pollard.
Pollard denied spying "against" the United States. He said he provided only information he believed was vital to Israeli security and was being withheld by the Pentagon. This included data on Soviet arms shipments to Syria, Iraqi and Syrian chemical weapons, the Pakistani atomic bomb project and Libyan air defense systems.
Pollard was convicted of espionage. His life sentence was the most severe prison term ever given for spying for an ally. It also was far greater than the average term imposed for spying for the Soviet Union and other enemies of the United States.
Though initially shunned by Israel, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Pollard had worked for Israeli intelligence and granted him citizenship. Netanyahu requested clemency for Pollard during Middle East peace talks at the Wye Plantation in Maryland in 1998.
Pollard's supporters in the United States also routinely request that he be pardoned. President Clinton reportedly considered a pardon, but defense and intelligence agency officials have vigorously opposed the idea. At the end of Clinton's term, the issue was again raised and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), chairman of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, along with a majority of senators argued against a pardon. "Mr. Pollard is a convicted spy who put our national security at risk and endangered the lives of our intelligence officers," Shelby said. “There not terms strong enough to express my belief that Mr. Pollard should serve every minute of his sentence....”
James Woolsey, former head of the CIA, has confirmed this was “a serious espionage case,” but said it was not true that the information given to Pollard was leaked to other countries. He said the main issue was the U.S. fear that Israel's intelligence services might be penetrated by enemies who then could access the material Pollard passed on. Woolsey also contradicted claims that Pollard only passed information that was relevant to Israel's security. “As for the quality of the information, in my opinion, at the time [1993] the material was broad-ranging and included information that did not relate solely to Israel's immediate security needs. Part of it, if it had found its way into the hands of a hostile country, would have presented a danger to the U.S. ability to collect intelligence.”
In July 2005, a U.S. federal appeals court rejected Pollard’s claim that he had inadequate counsel in his original trial and denied his request to downgrade his life sentence.
The three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit also denied Pollard’s attorneys access to classified information they hoped would help in their attempt to win presidential clemency for their client. Pollard’s attorneys want to see 40 pages of a declaration written in 1987 by the then-Secretary of State Casper Weinberger, which outlines his assessment of Pollard’s damage to U.S. interests. That declaration is believed to be key to Pollard’s long sentence, but the court ruled that federal courts lack jurisdiction to review claims for access to documents for clemency purposes.
The rulings, which affirm decisions by a U.S. District Court in 2003, leave Pollard with little recourse but the Supreme Court to change his fate.
Pollard, who is being held at Butner Prison in North Carolina, is eligible for parole, but his attorneys said he has not sought a parole hearing because it would be hard to argue for parole without the classified information.
Courtesy of:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/pollard.html