Jonathan Pollard
Jonathan Jay Pollard (born August 7, 1954) is an American former intelligence analyst who was jailed for spying for Israel.
Jonathan Pollard
United States (1954–present)
Israel (1995–present)
Former intelligence analyst and spy for Israel
Released
Anne Henderson Pollard (divorced)
Elaine Zeitz (aka Esther Pollard) (deceased)
Morris Pollard (father)
Molly Pollard (mother)
Life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 30 years
In 1984, Pollard sold numerous closely guarded state secrets, including the National Security Agency's ten-volume manual on how the U.S. gathers its signal intelligence, and disclosed the names of thousands of people who had cooperated with U.S. intelligence agencies.[1] He was apprehended in 1985, and in subsequent proceedings agreed to a plea deal, pleaded guilty to spying for and providing top-secret classified information to Israel. Pollard admitted shopping his services—successfully, in some cases—to other countries.[2] In 1987, he was sentenced to life in prison for violations of the Espionage Act.
The Israeli government acknowledged a portion of its role in Pollard's espionage in 1987, and issued a formal apology to the U.S.,[3] but did not admit to paying him until 1998.[4] Over the course of his imprisonment, Israeli officials, US-Israeli activist groups and some US politicians continually lobbied for a reduction or commutation of his sentence.[5] In defense of his actions, Pollard said the American intelligence establishment collectively endangered Israel's security by withholding crucial information. Opposing any form of clemency were many active and retired U.S. officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, former CIA director George Tenet; several former U.S. Secretaries of Defense; a bi-partisan group of U.S. congressional leaders; and members of the U.S. intelligence community.[6][4][1][7] They maintained that the damage to U.S. national security due to Pollard's espionage was far more severe, wide-ranging, and enduring than publicly acknowledged. Though Pollard argued that he only supplied Israel with information critical to its security, opponents stated that he had no way of knowing what the Israelis had received through legitimate exchanges, and that much of the data he compromised had nothing to do with Israeli security. Pollard revealed aspects of the U.S. intelligence gathering process, its "sources and methods".[4] In 1995, while imprisoned, he was granted Israeli citizenship.[8]
Pollard was released on November 20, 2015, in accordance with federal guidelines in place at the time of his sentencing.[9] On November 20, 2020, his parole expired and all restrictions were removed.[10] On December 30, 2020, Pollard and his second wife moved to Israel and settled in Jerusalem.[11][12]
Since moving to Israel, Pollard has endorsed Itamar Ben-Gvir and voiced support for a population transfer to move Gaza's Arabs to Ireland.[13]
Early life[edit]
Jonathan Jay Pollard was born in Galveston, Texas, in 1954, to a Jewish family, the youngest of three siblings born to Morris and Mildred "Molly" Klein (Kahn) Pollard. In 1961, his family moved to South Bend, Indiana, where his father Morris, an award-winning microbiologist, taught at the University of Notre Dame.[1][14][15]
At an early age, Pollard became aware of the horrific toll the Holocaust had taken on his immediate family, on his mother's side of the family,[16] the Kleins (Kahns) from Vilna in Lithuania,[17] and shortly before his bar mitzvah, he asked his parents to visit the Nazi death camps.[18] Pollard's family made a special effort to instill a sense of Jewish identity in their children, which included devotion to the cause of Israel.[19]
Pollard grew up with what he called a "racial obligation" to Israel,[20] and made his first trip to Israel in 1970, as part of a science program visiting the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. While there, he was hospitalized after a fight with another student. One Weizmann scientist remembered Pollard as leaving behind "a reputation of being a troublemaker".[21]
After completing high school, Pollard attended Stanford University, where he completed a degree in political science in 1976.[1] While there, he is remembered by several of his acquaintances as having boasted that he was a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, claiming to have worked for Mossad, to have attained the rank of colonel in the Israel Defense Forces (even sending himself a telegram addressed to "Colonel Pollard"), and to have killed an Arab while on guard duty at a kibbutz. He also claimed that his father, Morris Pollard[22] was a CIA operative, and to have fled Czechoslovakia as a child during the Prague Spring in 1968 when his father's CIA role there was discovered. None of these claims were true.[23][24][25][26] Later, Pollard enrolled in several graduate schools, but never completed a post-graduate degree.[1]
Pollard's future wife, Anne Henderson (born 1960), moved to Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1978 to live with her (recently divorced) father, Bernard Henderson. In the summer of 1981, she moved into a house on Capitol Hill with two other women and, through a friend of one of her roommates, she first met Pollard. He later said he had fallen in love during their first meeting—they were "an inseparable couple" by November 1981, and in June 1982, when her Capitol Hill lease expired, she moved into Pollard's apartment in Arlington, Virginia.[27] In December 1982, the couple moved into downtown Washington, D.C., to a two-bedroom apartment at 1733 20th Street NW, near Dupont Circle. They married on August 9, 1985, more than a year after Pollard began spying for Israel, in a civil ceremony in Venice, Italy.[28] At the time of their arrest, in November 1985, they were paying US$750 (equivalent to $2,125 in 2023) per month in rent.[29]
Early career[edit]
Pollard began applying for intelligence service jobs in 1979 after leaving graduate school, first at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and then at the U.S. Navy. Pollard was turned down for the CIA job after taking a polygraph test in which he admitted to prolific illegal drug usage between 1974 and 1978.[30]
He fared better with the Navy, and on September 19, 1979, he was hired by the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office (NFOIO), an office of the Naval Intelligence Command (NIC). As an intelligence specialist, he was to work on Soviet issues at the Navy Ocean Surveillance Information Center (NOSIC), a department of NFOIO. A background check was required to receive the necessary security clearances, but no polygraph test. In addition to a Top Secret clearance, a more stringent 'Sensitive Compartmented Information' (SCI) clearance was required. The Navy asked for but was denied information from the CIA regarding Pollard, including the results of their pre-employment polygraph test revealing Pollard's excessive drug use.[30]
Pollard was given temporary non-SCI security clearances pending completion of his background check, which was normal for new hires at the time. He was assigned to temporary duty at another NIC Department, the Naval Intelligence Support Center (NISC) Surface Ships Division, where he could work on tasks that did not require SCI clearance. NOSIC's current operations center and the NISC were co-located in Suitland, Maryland.
Two months after Pollard was hired, he approached the technical director of NOSIC, Richard Haver, and offered to start a back-channel operation with the South African intelligence service. He also lied about his father being involved with CIA operations in South Africa. Haver became wary of Pollard and requested that he be terminated. However, Haver's boss believed that Pollard's supposed connection with South African intelligence could be useful, and he reassigned him to a Navy human intelligence (HUMINT) operation, Task Force 168 (TF-168).[30] This office was within Naval Intelligence Command (NIC), the headquarters for Navy intelligence operations (located in a separate building, but still within the Suitland Federal Center complex.) It was later discovered that Pollard had lied repeatedly during the vetting process for this position: he denied illegal drug use, claimed his father had been a CIA operative, misrepresented his language abilities and his educational achievements, and claimed to have applied for a commission as officer in the Naval Reserve.[30] A month later Pollard received his SCI clearances and was transferred from NISC to TF-168.
While transferring to his new job at TF-168, Pollard again initiated a meeting with someone far up the chain of command, this time with Admiral Sumner Shapiro, Commander, Naval Intelligence Command (CNIC), about an idea he had for TF-168 and South Africa. (The TF-168 group had passed on his ideas.) After the meeting, Shapiro immediately ordered that Pollard's security clearances be revoked and that he be reassigned to a non-sensitive position. According to The Washington Post, Shapiro dismissed Pollard as a "kook", saying later, "I wish the hell I'd fired him."[31]
Because of the job transfer, Shapiro's order to remove Pollard's security clearances slipped through the cracks. However, Shapiro's office followed up with a request to TF-168 that Pollard be investigated by the CIA. The CIA found Pollard to be a risk and recommended that he not be used in any intelligence collection operation. A subsequent polygraph test was inconclusive, although it did prompt Pollard to admit to making false statements to his superiors, prior drug use, and having unauthorized contacts with representatives of foreign governments.[32] The special agent administering the test felt that Pollard, who at times "began shouting and shaking and making gagging sounds as if he were going to vomit", was feigning illness to invalidate the test. He recommended against Pollard's being granted access to highly classified information.[32] Pollard was also required to be evaluated by a psychiatrist.[32]
Pollard's clearance was reduced to Secret.[32] He subsequently filed a grievance and threatened lawsuits to recover his SCI clearance. While awaiting his grievance to be addressed, he worked on less sensitive material and began receiving excellent performance reviews.[33] In 1982, after the psychiatrist concluded Pollard had no mental illness, Pollard's clearance was upgraded to SCI. In October 1984, after some re-organization of the Navy's intelligence departments, Pollard applied for and was accepted into a position as an analyst for the Naval Intelligence Command.
Parole[edit]
Laws in effect at the time of Pollard's sentencing mandated that federal inmates serving life sentences be paroled after 30 years of incarceration if no significant prison regulations had been violated, and if there was a "reasonable probability" that the inmate would not re-offend.[182][183] On July 28, 2015, the United States Parole Commission announced that Pollard would be released on November 20, 2015.[184] The U.S. Justice Department informed Pollard's legal team that it would not contest the Parole Commission's unanimous July 7 decision.[9]
The terms of release set by the Parole Commission stipulated that Pollard must remain on parole for a minimum of five years. The US government could have legally extended his period of parole until 2030.[185] His parole restrictions required him to remain in New York City unless granted special permission to travel outside. His parole officer was also authorized to impose a curfew and set exclusion zones within the city. He was ordered to wear electronic monitoring devices to track his movements. In addition, press interviews and Internet access without prior permission were prohibited. Pollard's attorneys appealed the conditions to the Parole Commission's appeals board, which removed only one restriction, that of requiring prior permission to use the Internet. However, it was ruled that his Internet use would be subjected to monitoring.[186][187] Pollard's attorneys and Ayelet Shaked, Israel's Justice Minister, urged President Obama to exercise his powers of clemency to waive Pollard's parole requirements and allow him to move to Israel immediately; but a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council announced that the president would not intervene.[188][189]
After his release on November 20, as scheduled, Pollard relocated to an apartment secured for him by his attorneys in New York City.[190] A 7:00 pm to 7:00 am curfew was imposed on him. A job offer, as a research analyst at a Manhattan investment firm, was retracted due to the inspections to which his employer's computers would be subjected.[191] His attorneys immediately filed a motion challenging the terms of his parole, arguing that the Internet restrictions rendered him unemployable as an analyst, and the GPS-equipped ankle bracelet was unnecessary, as he was not a flight risk.[187] The filing included affidavits from McFarlane and former Senate Intelligence Committee member Dennis DeConcini declaring that any secrets learned by Pollard thirty years ago were no longer secret, and had no value today.[192] On August 12, 2016, a federal judge denied the motion on the basis of a statement from James Clapper, the director of U.S. National Intelligence, asserting that contrary to the MacFarlane and DeConcini affidavits, much of the information stolen by Pollard in the 1980s remained secret. The judge also cited Pollard's Israeli citizenship, obtained during his incarceration, as evidence that he was indeed a flight risk.[193]
A bill introduced in the Knesset in November 2015 would, if passed, authorize the Israeli government to fund Pollard's housing and medical expenses, and pay him a monthly stipend, for the remainder of his life. Reports that the Israelis had already been paying Pollard and his ex-wife during his incarceration were denied.[194] After numerous delays, the bill was withdrawn from consideration in March 2016 at the request of Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli security officials, citing "diplomatic and security reasons".[195]
In March 2017, Pollard's attorneys petitioned the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to reverse the August 2016 lower-court decision denying his request for more lenient parole restrictions. They argued that the prohibition against leaving his residence between 7 pm and 7 am forced him to violate Shabbat and Jewish holidays, and that surveillance of his computers prevented him from working at a job consistent with his education and intelligence. They further asserted that Pollard could not possibly remember information he saw before his arrest, and in any case, the parole conditions arbitrarily limited his computer usage, but not his ability to transfer information by other means. Netanyahu also reportedly renewed his request for a parole waiver during a meeting with Vice President Mike Pence.[196] In May 2017, the court rejected the appeal, ruling that the parole conditions minimized the risk of harm he continued to pose to U.S. intelligence.[197]
On November 20, 2020, Pollard's parole restriction expired. The US Justice Department declined to extend the restrictions.[198]
Emigration to Israel[edit]
Although Pollard expressed a desire to move to Israel, he did not immediately do so after his parole expired due to his wife's health issues, and remained in the US for over a month while she underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer. Pollard and his wife, Esther, finally arrived in Israel on December 30, 2020, on a private jet owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson. They were greeted on arrival by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who handed Pollard his Israeli documentation.[11][12] Israeli Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen said that Pollard would be granted a government stipend equivalent to the pensions granted to former Mossad and Shin Bet agents.[199] In accordance with COVID-19 restrictions, they went into quarantine for two weeks following their arrival. Pollard and his wife settled in Jerusalem.[200][12] Esther Pollard died on January 31, 2022. She had been hospitalized for two weeks after contracting COVID-19.[201][202]
Pollard was honored by Mayor of Jerusalem Moshe Lion at a Jerusalem Day gala in 2021. Pollard gave the keynote address to the gala, in which he accused the U.S. government of anti-Semitism, called the U.S State Department and the United Nations enemies of Israel, and referred to the Biden administration as "Amalek."[203][204] In Jewish tradition, the 613 commandments mandates that Amalekites must be killed.[205]
Pollard turned down an offer to stand for the Knesset on the Otzma Yehudit party's electoral slate in the 2022 Israeli legislative election, saying that he had "suffered enough".[206]
In mid-September 2022, Pollard announced his engagement to Rivka Abrahams-Donin, a widowed mother of seven children.[207][208] They married on October 20.[209]
On November 23, 2023, Pollard posted on X (formerly Twitter) that Israel should have arrested the families of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas during the Israel–Hamas war to prevent them from interfering in Israel's war plans.[210] In February 2024, he advocated moving the entire Arab population out of Gaza, preferably to Ireland.[211]