TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/87/87capmil.3

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Spying Between Friends

March 16, 1987

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