Jonathan Pollard

Jonathan Jay Pollard (born August 7, 1954 in Galveston, Texas) is a convicted Israeli spy and a former United States Naval civilian intelligence analyst. Pollard waived the right to trial in return for restrictions on sentencing, plead guilty and was convicted on one count of spying for Israel. He received a life sentence in 1986 with a recommendation against parole. He was incarcerated at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois in solitary confinement for seven years, then transferred to Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina. Israel publicly denied that Pollard was an Israeli spy until 1998, when he was granted Israeli citizenship. Israel now actively lobbies for his released.

Early career

Shortly into his career as an intelligence analyst, Pollard had his security clearance reduced by Admiral Sumner Shapiro after presenting a plan to garner intelligence from South Africa. According to the Washington Post, Sumner dismissed Pollard as a "kook." "I wish the hell I'd fired him," Shapiro would later opine. Pollard's clearance was later reinstated.

Espionage

Shortly after Pollard began working at the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NIS) he met Avi Sella, an Israeli spy posing as a graduate student at New York University. Within a few days, Pollard sold classified information to Sella in exchange for a diamond and sapphire ring and $10,000 cash. He also agreed to $1,500 per month for further espionage.

Ron Olive, the agent in charge of counterintelligence for the Naval Investigative Service at the time of Pollard's arrest, published a book about the case in 2006. Olive told the BBC that the incident was "one of the most devastating cases of espionage in US history" during which Pollard stole over "one million classified documents".

The full extent of the information he gave to Israel has still not been officially revealed. According to Pollard, he gave only information regarding Iraq's missile threats to Israel. Press reports cited a secret 46-page memorandum, which Pollard and his attorneys were allowed to view. They were provided to the judge by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who described Pollard's spying as including, among other things, obtaining and copying the latest version of Radio-Signal Notations, a 10-volume manual detailing America's global electronic surveillance network.

With regard to friendly nations spying on each other, Pollard supporters cite the 1983 statement by Senator David Durenberger, former head of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. Durenberger claimed, while speaking to a Jewish group, that the CIA had turned an officer in the Israel Defence Forces, and that he had been an active source during the 1982 Lebanon War. His name was Yosef Amit and he was an intelligence officer for the Israeli Army. According to Israel Shahak, he was secretly sentenced for spying for the US.

One theory of the damage Pollard caused the US holds is that he compromised US worldwide signals intelligence efforts in disastrous fashion by revealing US penetration of cryptographic modules sold around the world for official use.

Trial

Pollard had, in the meantime, begun plea discussions with the Government. He sought to plead guilty both to minimize his chances of receiving a life sentence and to enable Anne Pollard to plead as well, which the Government was otherwise unwilling to let her do. The government, however, was prepared to offer Pollard a plea agreement only after Pollard consented to assist the government in its damage assessment and submitted to polygraph examinations and interviews with FBI agents and Department of Justice attorneys. Accordingly, over a period of several months, Pollard cooperated with the Government's investigation, and in late May 1986, the Government offered him a plea agreement, which he accepted.

By the terms of that agreement, Pollard was bound to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government, which carried a maximum prison term of life, and to cooperate fully with the Government's ongoing investigation. He promised not to disseminate any information concerning his crimes without submitting to pre-clearance by the Director of Naval Intelligence. His agreement further provided that failure by Anne Pollard to adhere to the terms of her agreement entitled the Government to void his agreement, and her agreement contained a mirror-image provision.

In return for Pollard's plea, the Government promised not to charge him with additional crimes, entered into a plea agreement with Anne Pollard, and made several specific representations that are very much at issue in this case. The critical provisions are paragraphs 4(a) and 4(b) of the agreement, in which the Government "agreed as follows":

(a) When [Pollard] appears before the Court for sentencing for the offense to which he has agreed to plead guilty, the Government will bring to the Court's attention the nature, extent and value of his cooperation and testimony. Because of the classified nature of the information Mr. Pollard has provided to the Government, it is understood that particular representations concerning his cooperation may have to be made to the Court in camera. In general, however, the Government has agreed to represent that the information Mr. Pollard has provided is of considerable value to the Government's damage assessment analysis, its investigation of this criminal case, and the enforcement of the espionage laws.

(b) Notwithstanding Mr. Pollard's cooperation, at the time of sentencing the Government will recommend that the Court impose a sentence of a substantial period of incarceration and a monetary fine. The Government retains full right of allocution at all times concerning the facts and circumstances of the offenses committed by Mr. Pollard, and will be free to correct any misstatements of fact at the time of sentencing, including representations of the defendant and his counsel in regard to the nature and extent of Mr. Pollard's cooperation. Moreover, Mr. Pollard understands that, while the Court may take his cooperation into account in determining whether or not to impose a sentence of life imprisonment, this agreement cannot and does not limit the court's discretion to impose the maximum sentence.

On June 4, 1986 Jonathan Pollard pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government. Before sentencing, and in violation of the plea agreement, Pollard and his wife Anne gave defiant media interviews in which they defended their spying, and attempted to rally American Jews to their cause. In a 60 Minutes interview, Anne said, "I feel my husband and I did what we were expected to do, and what our moral obligation was as Jews, what our moral obligation was as human beings, and I have no regrets about that". Three weeks before Pollard's sentencing, Wolf Blitzer, at the time a Jerusalem Post correspondent, conducted a jail-cell interview with Pollard and penned an article which also ran in The Washington Post headlined, "Pollard: Not A Bumbler, but Israel's Master Spy." published on February 15, 1987. Pollard told Blitzer about some of the information he provided the Israelis: reconnaissance satellite photography of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) headquarters in Tunisia, specific capabilities of Libya's air defenses, and "the pick of U.S. intelligence about Arab and Islamic conventional and unconventional military activity, from Morocco to Pakistan and every country in between. This included both 'friendly' and 'unfriendly' Arab countries."

According to an opinion piece by Joseph C. Goulden, the breaking of the plea agreement (in which Pollard swore not to disclose classified material he obtained while working for the Navy and swore not to "provide information for purposes of publication or dissemination," unless it was reviewed by the Director of Naval Intelligence) remains one possible reason for Pollard's remaining in prison despite a change in U.S. parole laws.

Before sentencing, as noted above, Secretary Weinberger delivered a 46-page classified memorandum to the sentencing judge. According to a pro-Pollard ACLU amicus brief, Wolf Blitzer, former U.S. District Court Judge George N. Leighton (see below) and even Pollard's own website the contents of the memo were shown to Pollard's attorneys at the time. On the day before sentencing, Weinberger delivered a supplemental four-page memorandum to the judge. Pollard and his attorneys were shown the supplemental memorandum only briefly before sentencing. Pollard alleges that, in the memorandum, Weinberger accused him of treason and suggested a lifetime prison sentence.

Pollard never faced treason charges and was convicted within the boundaries of the charge he pleaded guilty to, although many speculate that the Weinberger memorandum outlined (and the classified memorandum to the judge detailed) treasonous activities by Pollard, due to the overwhelming assertion by U.S. defense and intelligence officials that Pollard should stay imprisoned for life.

The primary investigator in the Pollard case, Ron Olive, stated in his 2006 book Capturing Jonathan Pollard, that Pollard offered classified material to four other countries besides Israel, including Pakistan. Seven former U.S. secretaries of Defense have written petitions to keep Pollard imprisoned for life, and CIA chief George Tenet threatened to resign when the issue of releasing Pollard was put forward by the Clinton administration.

Sentencing

Pollard was sentenced to life in prison on one count of espionage. Pollard and his supporters protested that this was a sentence unprecedented for espionage committed for an ally and that this was in violation of his plea agreement. However, the prosecutor complied with the plea agreement and asked for "only a substantial number of years in prison"; Judge Aubrey Robinson, Jr. imposed the life sentence after hearing the statements of the Secretary of Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence, and other U.S. government officials (plea agreements are not binding upon judges). Pollard's attorney then failed to file his appeal within the mandated ten-day period after sentencing. In 1987, Pollard began his life sentence, which he is still serving. Pollard's wife, Anne, was sentenced to five years in prison but was released after three and a half years because of health problems.

In United States of America v. Jonathan Jay Pollard 1990 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11844, Pollard's attorney filed a motion to withdraw the plea, among other things. The motion was denied. Several parts of the plea agreement are mentioned in the appeal, United States of America v. Jonathan Jay Pollard 295 U.S. App. D.C. 7; 959 F.2d 1011; 1992 U.S. App. LEXIS 4695. The appeal was also denied. Several years later, with a different attorney, Pollard filed a Habeas Corpus petition. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled two-to-one to deny Pollard's petition, primarily due to the failure of Pollard's original attorneys to file his appeal in a timely manner. The dissenting judge, Judge Stephen Williams, stated that "because the government's breach of the plea agreement was a fundamental miscarriage of justice requiring relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, I dissent."

More information about the sentencing and criticism of it and the judge is featured in Miscarriage of Justice: The Jonathan Pollard Story by Mark Shaw. He points out that the life sentence given Pollard is excessive when compared with any other assessed to a person spying for an ally of the United States. He also questions the validity of the devastating report forwarded to the court by Caspar Weinberger contending that Pollard committed devious acts of espionage far beyond those charged against him.

Israel and Pollard

Israel initially publicly denied that Pollard was an Israeli spy. However, the Israeli government has paid for at least two of Pollard's trial attorneys—Richard A. Hibey and Hamilton Philip Fox III—and has repeatedly asked for his release. Israeli leaders often raise the Pollard case in discussions with U.S. officials, including presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In 1998, Israel admitted in a statement from then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Pollard had been an Israeli spy and granted him Israeli citizenship. "One of the first things we said (at the 1998 Wye River conference)", recalled Netanyahu in an interview, "was that if we signed an agreement with Arafat, I expected a pardon for Pollard". President Clinton declined to release Pollard.

The Israeli request for Pollard's release made in New York on September 14, 2005 was again declined by President Bush. A request on Pollard's behalf that he be designated a Prisoner of Zion was rejected by the High Court of Justice of Israel on January 16, 2006. Another appeal for intervention on Pollard's behalf was rejected by the High Court on June 8, 2006.

On January 10, 2008, the subject of Pollard's pardon was again brought up, this time by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, at President Bush's first visit to Israel as president. This request was turned down by President Bush. The next day, at a dinner attended by several ministers in the Israeli government (in addition to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice), the subject of Pollard's release was again brought up. This time however, Prime Minister Olmert stated that it was not the appropriate occasion to discuss the fate of the convicted Israeli spy. The Jerusalem City Council, in support of Pollard, changed the name of a square near the official prime minister's residence from Paris Square to Freedom for Jonathan Pollard Square.

Israeli Calls for Pollard's release

Pollard's supporters argue that his sentence was excessive: "The median sentence for the offense Pollard committed - one count of passing non-injurious classified information to an ally - is two to four years". Although Pollard pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain, he was shown no leniency and was given the maximum sentence. Pollard was never charged, indicted, or convicted of treason.

Pollard maintains that he provided only information that, at the time, he believed was vital to Israeli security and that was being withheld by the Pentagon, in violation of a 1983 Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries regarding the sharing of vital security intelligence. According to Pollard, this included data on Soviet arms shipments to Syria, Iraqi and Syrian chemical weapons, the Pakistani atomic bomb project, and Libyan air defense systems.

Since then, however, he has publicly expressed remorse for operating outside the law:

"Unfortunately, I failed to appreciate the fact that such concerns did not justify my indifference to the law." (Pollard's public letter of remorse of June 6, 1991, addressed to his parents but published widely in newspapers)

and

"I realize that no matter what my motives may have been, I did not have the right to violate the law. ... I have also made it very clear that I do not consider myself to be a "hero" and would prefer that people simply see me as someone who made a terrible mistake and who has paid dearly for my mistake. Please accept this as my unconditional statement of heartfelt remorse for my actions." (Pollard's public letter of remorse of May 26, 1996, addressed to President Bill Clinton).

In recent years, others have argued that Pollard's punishment is too harsh while some, including Moshe Feiglin have called him a "hero" who "saved the Israelis from American treachery." Caspar Weinberger, who was the driving force behind Pollard's life sentence, has stated that the case was a minor problem made much larger than it really was. In an interview in 2002, Weinberger was asked why he had omitted all mention of Pollard in his memoirs. Weinberger replied, "Because it was, in a sense, a very minor matter but made very important." Asked to elaborate, Weinberger repeated, "As I say, the Pollard matter was comparatively minor. It was made far bigger than its actual importance."

Eric Margolis alleges that Pollard's spying may have led to the capture and execution of CIA spies in the Eastern Bloc after Israel sold or bartered Pollard's information to the Soviet Union. John Loftus argues that Pollard did not have access to agent lists and that Israel would have had no reason to disclose such names to the Soviet Union, even if it had them. Loftus believes that the exposure of the CIA agents actually resulted from the ongoing activities of top CIA official Aldrich Ames, arrested in February 1994, and FBI Special Agent Robert Hanssen, arrested in February 2001. Their activities were exposed only after Pollard's conviction. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was an opponent of the release or sentence commutation of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. In late 1998, in response to media reports that President Clinton was considering issuing a pardon to Pollard, Rumsfeld sent a letter to President Clinton, urging him not to grant clemency. Seven former U.S. Secretaries of Defense, (namely Rumsfeld, Melvin R. Laird, Frank C. Carlucci, Richard B. Cheney, Caspar W. Weinberger, James R. Schlesinger and Elliot L. Richardson) signed the letter urging Clinton not to pardon Pollard or commute his sentence.

Rejected appeal

In July 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected Pollard's latest appeal. Pollard had sought a new trial on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel, and he sought to receive classified documents pertinent to his new lawyers' efforts in preparing a clemency petition. The Court of Appeals rejected both arguments, however, and Pollard remains imprisoned. On February 10, 2006, lawyers for Pollard filed an appeal with the United States Supreme Court to attempt to gain access to the classified documents. The brief was based on the notion that the separation of powers doctrine is a flexible doctrine that does not dictate the complete separation of the three branches of Government from one another. The Court of Appeals violated this principle in asserting sua sponte that the judiciary has no jurisdiction over the classified documents due to the fact that access was for the ultimate purpose of clemency, an executive function. In fact, the President's clemency power would be wholly unaffected by successor counsel's access to the classified documents, and the classified documents were sealed under protective order, a judicial tool. The Supreme Court denied this appeal on March 20, 2006.

The courts have been criticized for denying Pollard's current attorneys' access to the sentencing memorandum. In a 2002 letter to IMRA, former U.S. District Court Judge George N. Leighton wrote:

"At the time Mr. Pollard was sentenced in March of 1987, the court placed under seal approximately forty pages of material filed in the court's docket. These included portions of a declaration by then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and portions of pre-sentencing memoranda submitted to the court by the government as well as by the defense. The materials were sealed because the government said they contained classified information, some of which could affect national security if disclosed inappropriately.... Mr. Pollard and his attorney at the time were permitted to read the sealed pages before sentencing. However, despite the provision in the protective order for future access, no attorney representing Mr. Pollard has been permitted to see these pages since 1987. While this denial of access has severely hampered the efforts of Mr. Pollard's new attorneys to secure justice for their client, it has proved convenient for his adversaries. For years, adversaries have exploited the sealed pages to generate political opposition to relief for Mr. Pollard by spreading, in the press, rumors and outright falsehoods. Since the accusations floated in the media are nowhere to be found in the open court file, they would either be substantiated in the sealed pages, or not at all. As no one representing Mr. Pollard has been allowed access to the sealed pages, Mr. Pollard's adversaries have had unbridled license to spread falsehoods with virtually no risk of contradiction... The government's conduct in this case is highly disturbing."

Ron Olive book

Ron Olive, retired NIS Naval Investigative Service, now Naval Criminal Investigative Service, led the Pollard investigation, and in 2006 published the book Capturing Jonathan Pollard - How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice. In his book, Olive claims that Pollard was not necessarily loyal to Israel and that Pollard confessed to passing secrets to South Africa and to his financial advisers, shopping his access to Pakistan and recruiting others for money.

In an opinion piece by Pollard's wife Esther, Lynching Jonathan Again, she describes Olive's claims as "old lies... repackaged." Likewise, Pollard's pro bono attorneys, Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, in an article published in the Jerusalem Post, assert that Olive's claims and accusations against Pollard are false. The attorneys conclude their case by stating "The book and op-ed piece contain numerous accusations that are nowhere to be found in the public sentencing docket, and that could not be disclosed if they were in the classified sentencing docket. They are therefore in neither place, and cannot be considered even remotely reliable....In sum, while Olive describes his book as a 'true documented story,' it is nothing of the sort. To use Olive's own words, his book is an exercise in 'speculation, rumor, myths and lies.'"

Another issue the book got into was the parole/pardon controversy. Olive claims that Pollard's sentencing did not make him ineligible for parole, and that federal attorneys have visited Pollard recommending him to apply for parole and that his prison record has been good. Olive also claims that if Pollard serves thirty years of his sentence and there are no cases of outlandish behavior; that it is actually mandatory that Pollard be released from prison on parole. Olive claims that Pollard has refused to apply for parole on the basis that upon release from prison Pollard will likely move to Israel, and claim a secret interest bearing bank account in escrow for his espionage services. Olive states the US government could seize that bank account as it is ill gotten profits and demand Tel Aviv extradite him to Washington on the grounds of parole violation. This is the basis, Olive states, that Pollard has been in search of a pardon, as that would ruin any future American action against him for the espionage and he could live out the rest of his life worry-free.

Miscellaneous

Jonathan's first wife Anne was granted her divorce after release from prison. Anne was paroled after serving 40 months of her sentence on account of her good adjustment to prison life and also on account of medical conditions. Anne moved to Israel for a time in the late 1990s and then settled in California, where she then took up employment working in fashion design. Following his divorce, Jonathan fell in love with Elaine "Esther" Zeitz, a Canadian Orthodox Jew who he had met as a teenager and had then been involved in the effort to free him. Jonathan is now married to Esther. Although Anne Pollard, in an interview, says she has not spoken to her ex-husband since the divorce, she has continued her involvement to free him.

His story inspired the movie Les Patriotes (The Patriots) by French director Éric Rochant in which US actor Richard Masur portrayed a character resembling Pollard.

External links

• Jonathan Pollard's Website
• Israel acknowledges spying on US. BBC News, 12 May 1998
• All about Jonathan Pollard
• Why Jonathan Pollard is Still in Prison by Edwin Black, published in The Forward and archived in the Internet Archive. A shorter version of this article was published here in the The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.
• CRS Report for Congress RS20001 Jonathan Pollard: Background and Considerations for Presidential Clemency - Federation of American Scientists