TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/87/87capmil.3

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                                                                                March 16, 1987

NATION

Spying Between Friends


The Pollard verdict causes a wave of unease in Israel


No one in Israel was mincing words. Defense Minister Yitzhak
Rabin called it a "real disaster, a real wound in Israeli-U.S.
relations." Foreign Minister Shimon Peres admitted that Israel
had made a "regretful mistake."  Declared former Foreign
Minister Abba Eban: "This is the most difficult moment in the
history of Israel's international relations, especially because
the wrongdoing was done here."

The disaster, the wound, the mistake, the wrongdoing turned on
the case of Jonathan Jay Pollard, 32, an American naval
intelligence analyst, who was given a sentence of life
imprisonment last week for spying in Israel's behalf against the
U.S. Pollard's wife Anne, 26, was condemned to prison for five
years. In Israel this final denouement of the Pollard affair
precipitated a painful self- examination of intelligence
operations as well as worried about the future of the special
relationship between Israel and the U.S.

The saga of Jonathan Pollard the spy began in the spring of
1984, when he first met Colonel Aviam Sella, one of Israel's
best-known younger military officers, through a mutual
acquaintance. The Israeli colonel at the time was taking a
course in computer engineering at New York University. Pollard
offered to spy for the Israelis and soon began to steal
documents from the Naval Investigative Service in Suitland, Md.,
where he worked. On a trip to Paris that fall, he met Yosef
Yagur, scientific attache at the Israeli consulate in New York
City, and Rafi Eitan, the former deputy head of Mossad, the
Israeli intelligence agency. Eitan was running the small,
little-known intelligence unit to which Pollard was passing
information. Month after month, Pollard delivered highly
classified documents to the apartment of Irit Erb, a secretary
at the Israeli embassy in Washington, where the material was
photocopied.

In November 1985, co-workers finally noted that Pollard was
taking classified papers home with him and informed the FBI.
During the ensuing interrogation, Pollard phoned his wife and
alerted her to what was happening by using the code word
"cactus."  Anne Henderson- Pollard then warned the Israelis of
the impending danger and tried unsuccessfully to dispose of a
suitcase full of classified documents. A few days later the
Pollards drove to the Israel-embassy compound, where they
apparently hoped to gain refuge and perhaps political asylum.
But the Israelis, realizing the Pollards were being followed by
the FBI, turned them away, and the pair were soon arrested.
Sella, Yagur and Erb quietly slipped out of the country.

In a world in which spying between friendly nations is not
uncommon, what was unusual about the Pollard case?  For one
thing, the sheer volume of the intelligence material Pollard
stole and turned over to Israel. According tot he Government,
if all these documents were stacked in one place, the resulting
mountain of papers would be 6 ft. wide, 6 ft. deep and 10 ft.
high. Furthermore, the material stolen covered a wide range of
highly sensitive subjects, from nuclear facilities in Iraq and
Pakistan to Soviet surface-to-air-missile capabilities to the
antiaircraft defense around the Palestine Liberation
Organization headquarters in Tunis. Israel later staged an air
attack on the P.L.O. buildings, killing at least 60 Tunisians
and Palestinians. Declared Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger:
"It is difficult for me to conceive of a greater harm to
national security than that caused by the defendant in view of
the breadth, the critical importance of the U.S. and the high
sensitivity of the information he sold to Israel."

Throughout the case, Pollard's attorneys attempted to portray
their client as an idealistic Zionist whose actions were based
on his concern for Israel's security and survival. The
prosecution, however, pointed out that Pollard had received some
$50,000 for his espionage and, had he remained in the service
of the Israelis for an additional nine years, would have wound
up with at least $500,000.

The defense also based its case on the contention that spying
for Israel, a close U.S. ally, was fundamentally different from
spying for, say, the Soviet Union and that nobody could prove
Pollard's actions had actually harmed his country. The
prosecution took a dim view of that argument. Explains John
Martin, the Justice Department's chief of internal security:
"God forbid that the day should come when we would have the
burden of showing that not only did a spy give up information
on nuclear weapons but that those weapons were used under
hostile conditions."

Outside the courtroom, Pollard and his wife were making
statements that were as legally compromising as anything in
their testimony. In a letter published in the Jerusalem Post,
Pollard wrote of his "absolute obligation" to spy for Israel and
alluded to circumstances in which a person might be forced to
use "situational ethics" as a guide to his conduct. His wife,
interviewed on CBS's 60 Minutes, spoke of the responsibility of
American Jews to aid Israel. Said she:  "I feel my husband and
i did what we were expected to do, what our moral obligation was
as Jews [and] as human beings, and I have no regrets about
that."

In an unusually emotional courtroom finale, the Pollards
pleaded desperately for clemency. But despite the fact that
Pollard entered a guilty plea last summer and since then had
been cooperating to some degree with the Government in fingering
the Israel officials with whom he had worked, U.S. District
Court Judge Aubrey Robinson Jr. concluded that Pollard's crime
merited the harshest punishment the court could impose.

When the case first broke in late 1985, the U.S. was not yet
aware of the seriousness of the espionage, and accepted Israeli
promises of assistance in settling the affair. The Justice
Department wanted to proceed with the trial of Pollard and the
indictment of his Israeli contact, but the State Department
argued that American relations with Israel should receive
primary consideration. Secretary of State George Shultz spoke
of Israeli "cooperation" on the case, and State Department Legal
Adviser Abraham Sofaer headed a delegation that was sent to
Israel to collect the documents Pollard had stolen. According
to court records, Sofaer returned with a mere 163 documents out
of the thousands that had been taken.

Gradually the Administration's anger increased as it realized
the gravity of the security breach and the difficulty of
ascertaining exactly what had happened. Moreover, though
Jerusalem still insisted that Pollard had been part of a "rogue"
spy team, Washington began to suspect that those who had worked
with him were actually being rewarded. Eitan, who had headed
the Pollard operation, was appointed board chairman of Israel
Chemicals, a large government-owned company. Two weeks ago
Colonel Sella was named commander of one of Israel's most
important air bases, Tel Nof.

After learning of Sella's promotion, the Administration canceled
a joint American-Israeli air-force training course and put Tel
Nof off limits to U.S. officers and other officials. In
addition, the Administration threatened to suspend its policy
of military cooperation with the Israeli air force unless
Sella's appointment was rescinded. Last week a federal grand
jury in Washington issued an indictment against Sella.

Israel's Foreign Minister Peres is undoubtedly right in his
judgment that the "body of relations" between the U.S. and
Israel is strong and can withstand the shock of the Pollard
affair. But the case raises troubling questions about the
proprieties of espionage between allies. Says the Justice
Department's Martin:  "Even as friendly as you are, there are
times when national interests are different. It is up to
policymakers to decide who gets what. We can't have individuals
secretly providing information to any friend or foe."

--By William E. Smith.  Reported by Ron Ben-Yishai/Jerusalem
and Anne Constable/Washington