1985 Jonathan Pollard: The Year of the Spy
1985: The year of the spy! Newspaper headlines screamed another “trusted” member of the U.S. intelligence community was exposed as a traitor; the purveyor of information to foreign governments usually for financial gain. The Navy was hit particularly hard when “The Walker Spy Ring” (John Walker, his brother Arthur, son Michael and a former shipmate Jerry Whitworth) were arrested in May and June 1985. Michael Walker is the only member of the ring to be released from Federal Prison, while his father and uncle died in prison and Whitworth is not scheduled to be released until 2048, at the age of 108.
The Walker Spy Ring, like most espionage cases, involved the spy working for a foreign opposing state; the Soviet Union, China, Cuba. However, in 1985 the governments of both the U.S. and Israel were startled to learn a U.S. official was spying for Israel — an ally.
The close relationship between the U.S. and Israel can be traced to the almost immediate recognition of the new state in 1948. As the U.S.’ strongest ally in the region, the U.S. and Israel have shared intelligence even though the relationship has encountered periods of stress. For example, after Israeli gun boats and aircraft attacked the U.S.S. LIBERTY AGTR-5 while operating in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel.
“Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” An infamous quote made by then Secretary of State Henry L. Stimsom when he ordered the shutdown of the State Department’s Black Chamber — the code breaking department — showed American’s sometimes inexperience in the ways of espionage. However, it is naive to believe that friends do not collect intelligence on their allies.
Iranian revolutionaries found U.S. intelligence products showing that the U.S. collected intelligence on Israel in the American Embassy when it was seized in 1979. The trove of documents recovered included CIA’s “Israel Foreign Intelligence and Security Services” which was classified Secret-noforn-nocontract-orcon. The warnings attached to the classification restrict dissemination to U.S. only (noforn), to U.S. government employees (nocontract), and further that the CIA controlled further dissemination (orcon).
More recently, documents disclosed by Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden show that the U.S. has collected intelligence on some its closest allies including many members of the NATO alliance, and continues intelligence cooperation with Israel.
Jonathan Jay Pollard is the most controversial spy arrested in U.S. history. Jonathan Pollard (U.S. Bureau of Prison # 09185–016) was a civilian intelligence analyst working at the Naval Investigative Service’s Anti-terrorism Analysis Center in Suitland, Maryland (September 1979 to November 1985). His sloppy tradecraft exposed his espionage work and he was arrested, along with his wife Anne Henderson Pollard, in November 1985 for providing intelligence documents to the government of Israel’s Scientific Liaison Bureau (LAKAM, dissolved in 1986). After being interrogated by the FBI and Naval Investigative Service (NIS now NCIS), the FBI arrested Pollard as he tried to enter the Israeli Embassy to claim Israeli citizenship. For several years Israel did not acknowledge his role as a spy, he initially contacted an Israeli officer that was not assigned to the U.S. and he delivered the stolen documents to LAKAM and not MOSAD. In 1998, Israel acknowledged Pollard provided U.S. intelligence to Israeli agents and lobbied every U.S. President for his release. In 1996, Israel granted him Israeli citizenship.
Pollard has consistently reasoned that he spied because the U.S. was not providing all the intelligence available on some common threats; the Arab states, the Soviet Union, and Pakistan. However he provided more documents than his Israeli handlers requested. CIA’s Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee report released in 2006 states that Pollard did not provide information on the U.S. to Israel.
In a self-examination submitted to the court prior to his sentencing, Pollard tried to explain he was driven by his ideology and loyalty to Israel. Other reports tell of Pollard’s loyalty to Israel to the point in college he claimed to be already working for Israel’s MOSAD.
“It is my hope that this effort will demonstrate to the court that my ideological convictions, although subsequently corrupted, were genuine and that at no time did I consider undertaking any actions which were directed against the United States Government.”
Pollard’s case was not taken to a trial where the U.S. Attorney provided evidence that a crime was committed and a jury rendered a verdict. The case was settled in a plea bargain, where Pollard admitted his crimes for a negotiated sentence. Pollard agreed to the sentence to secure a lesser sentence for his then wife Anne Henderson Pollard (released in 1989). At the time of sentencing, U.S. Federal Law was different from today. Life in prison provided for parole after serving 30 years of the sentence, which places his parole date as November 21, 2015. He has appealed his sentence claiming it was greater than negotiated.
After sentencing, he claimed his punishment was “political vengeance” even though it mirrored the sentences of several other spies arrested in the 1985, including John Walker (deceased) and NSA spy Ronald W. Pelton, also scheduled for release in 2015. Pelton is already in a federal re-entry program in the Washington, DC area.
Granted, Pollard didn’t provide U.S. information; his actions exposed U.S. assets and methods and there is evidence that Israel provided the intelligence to a third country (South Africa) and was likely used to plan Israel’s attack on a PLO office in Tunisia — another U.S. ally.
Over the years, the government of Israel, Jewish groups both in Israel and the U.S., and certain U.S. officials have lobbied for the early release of Pollard. However, the U.S. has resisted. The closest any president has come to considering his release was during the Wye River Conference during President Bill Clinton’s administration. Director of Central Intelligence Tenet proffered his resignation if Pollard was released.
Would the outcome of the case have been different if Israel had admitted immediately that Pollard was an Israeli spy? It may have, since espionage cases have often been settled with spy trades or other under the table agreements. But never has a citizen that was spying on its home country been traded.
A parole hearing was held in early July 2015 but according to Eliot Lauer, attorney for Pollard, the results have not been released.
UPDATE — The Department of Justice has announced Pollard’s release.
Pollard has done his sentence — a period that he and the U.S. government agreed to in 1986. Even though personally I still hold him in contempt and find his actions as despicable and self-serving, it is time to let him go to live the life of a hero in Israel. He is sixty-one years old, in ill-health and not a threat to the U.S.
In a 60 Minute interview with Mike Wallace, Pollard called officials of Naval Intelligence observing the filming as “rats;” it is time to let the real rat go.
