January 8-9, 2013 -- SPECIAL REPORT. Pollard damage report reveals nuclear bombshell
Israeli and American Jews often brush aside the damage that convicted Naval Intelligence spy Jonathan Pollard did to U.S. national security. However, the recent disclosure of formerly redacted pages in the Pollard Damage Assessment prepared by the Director of Central Intelligence's Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee and issued on October 30, 1987 has revealed that Pollard began working as a U.S. naval intelligence watch officer the same month that Israel and South Africa, possibly with the financial support of Taiwan, detonated a nuclear device in the South Atlantic near Prince Edward Islands. The unredacted damage assessment report also provides details of Pollard's espionage work for South Africa before or at the same time he was spying for Israel.
Pollard's joint espionage for Israel and South Africa point to him likely playing a role on providing faulty intelligence to upper intelligence echelons concerning the nuclear test.
The report describes Pollard's work in September 1979 in the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office (NFOIO). The report states: "He began work as an Intelligence Research Specialist assigned to the Naval Ocean Surveillance Information Center (NOSIC} of the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office in September 1979." The report also states that during the same month of the South African-Israeli nuclear test Pollard "admitted that he
had attended a clandestine meeting with the South African Defense Attache."
The report's description of Pollard's early association with South Africa at the same time Israel and the apartheid regime were cooperating on nuclear weapons development is as follows:
"The following factors that have come to light about his employment with the Navy indicate that Pollard was unsuited for access to sensitive. national security information:
-- False claims concerning professional qualifications. Pollard falsely stated on his naval employment application that he had a 'provisional' M.A. degree from the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy. Moreover, in February 1980 during an interview with Task Force 168, the intelligence element charged with HUMINT collection, Pollard falsely
claimed to have an M.A. degree, to be proficient in Afrikaans, and to have applied for a commission in the naval reserve. Pollard made another, more farfetched statement to
his immediate supervisor in NOSIC: he said he had key South African contacts who could provide him with valuable information, and that he had known South African citizens
for many years because his father bad been the CIA Station Chief in South Africa."
The report also states: "Pollard claimed in a post-arrest debriefing that he had come
very close to volunteering to commit espionage while holding a conversation in Hebrew with the Israeli Naval Attache during a U.S.-Israeli intelligence exchange in 1983. Although it is not clear exactly when Pollard first began to consider espionage, we believe it was at least as early as 1980-81."
In July 1980, after the successful nuclear test the previous year and after Pollard and, presumably other Israeli moles, tainted U.S. intelligence into believing that the "flash" spotted on September 22, 1979 by orbiting U.S. VELA satellites was nothing more than a meteor entering the atmosphere, Pollard admitted he lied earlier about his contacts in South African intelligence.
The damage report's Executive Summary is surprisingly soft on Israel's use of Pollard as a spy. The summary states that Pollard's "short but intensive espionage career on behalf of Israel lasted from June 1984 until his arrest on 21 November 1985." However, other sections of the report state that Pollard considered spying for Israel at least as early as 1980-81. Other parts of the report indicate that Pollard's espionage for both Israel and South Africa began much earlier and that even as a teen Pollard was a committed Zionist who placed loyalty to Israel above the United States, a lesson learned that was later ignored when the U.S. government security apparatus appointed card-carrying Zionists to top jobs in the Defense Department, Justice Department, and CIA.
Since his sentencing to life imprisonment on March 4, 1987, Pollard has seen one after another Israeli leader -- Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, and Binyamin Netanyahu -- pressure the White House for a pardon and safe passage for Pollard to Israel. Netanyahu has even visited Pollard in the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina, nicknamed "B'nai Butner" because it has its own kosher kitchen. In fact, Pollard has become a folk hero to many Israelis, an action that shows the true nature of Israel and its people as documented enemies of the United States and the American people.
Pollard was viewed as a security risk early on in his career but his protectors in the Naval Intelligence chain-of-command laughed off Pollard's sure signs of betrayal as due to "eccentricity." In 1983 and 1984, this editor was assigned computer security responsibilities for the Naval Telecommunication Command and Pollard's Special Security Officer (SSO) at the Naval Intelligence and Security Command in Suitland, Maryland personally told me about the trouble he was having in trying to convince his superiors that Pollard was a bona fide security risk. When I asked the SSO about details, he claimed that Pollard was always crying discrimination because he was Jewish. In fact, the Damage Report refers to Pollard's use of the anti-Semite canard to remain in his position and with his access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) left intact. The report states; "[Pollard] claimed he
developed a strong perception of anti-Israeli attitudes among his colleagues and of inadequate US intelligence support for Israel." The report fails to mention what many in the CIA and U.S. intelligence knew in the aftermath of the 1983 terrorist bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, that Israel knew about the attack in advance and failed to warn U.S. commanders beforehand. In retrospect, Pollard was merely using his Jewishness to cover for his espionage for Israel.
The report also states that Pollard argued with his superiors over priorities. As a Naval Intelligence analyst Pollard Pollard wanted to concentrate on research related to the Middle East to the exclusion of littoral Africa.
The damage report cites Pollard's personal and employment history as "replete with incidents of irresponsible behavior that point to significant emotional instability." Yet, he continued to have his security access reinstated after repeated suspensions. U.S. intelligence sources have told WMR that Pollard had a protector high up in the Reagan administration, someone the Mossad code-named "Mega." There has been an ongoing debate on the identity of Mega for the past thirty years.
But only a high-level sponsor in the administration would have enabled Pollard to continue to have access to the most sensitive U.S. intelligence information, especially when considering that the damage report later concluded: "Despite his emotional and behavioral difficulties, Pollard managed to gain the respect of most of his superiors, as evidenced by his achievement of promotions from GS-07 to GS-12 over a six-year period."
The report also states that while a student at Stanford University, Pollard bragged about being a Mossad agent: "former student acquaintances told investigators that he bragged about his role as a Mossad agent and, on one occasion, waved a pistol in the air and screamed that everyone was out to get him." Thus began Pollard's modus operandi: because he appeared crazy, there was no way Pollard could be a Mossad agent. Surely, the Mossad screened its agents and would drum out anyone with psychological problems. If anyone believed that, they fell right into the trap Mossad had cleverly laid.
Consider for a moment the following bizarre behavior exhibited by Pollard while he was with Navy intelligence: "After Pollard' a arrest, I [REDACTED] observed that Pollard's sometimes strange behavior -- including, inter alia, the telling of bizarre stories about his
adventures as a CIA agent in Syria and being captured and tortured by Syrian authorities -- had taken on new importance after his discovery and arrest, but noted further that the most important thing known about Pollard before his arrest was that he was an intelligent, energetic, and often productive analyst whose faults could be overlooked in light of his obvious value to the components to which he was assigned."
Pollard apparently did not fool the CIA. The report states: "Pollard in 1978 had been rejected for a CIA Graduate Fellowship." The reason given was Pollard's admission that he used marijuana, along with another reason that the report continues to withhold from disclosure.
The Damage Report states; "Pollard's success rested upon an academic background that included graduate study at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, upon his considerable skills as an analyst, and upon deficiencies in administrative procedures and record-keeping -- since rectified --that allowed Pollard to change jobs without adverse aspects of his past performance coming to the attention of his new supervisors."
The report points to factors that any legitimate background investigation would have discovered about Pollard and which should have resulted in a veto of his security clearance. The report states; "Pollard claimed that he had begun dreaming about
future emigration to Israel at age 12 when that country won a dramatic victory in the six-day war of June 1967." The report adds, "another influence was his attendance in the summer of 1971 at a three-month science camp in Israel, which featured strong
encouragement to emigrate."
The Damage Report appears to have had competing sets of authors -- one group trying to emphasize the aggressive nature of Israeli intelligence targeting of the United States and the other trying to slough off Pollard's treason as relatively insignificant. On one hand, the report claims that Pollard began spying for Israel in 1984 but on the other it states that one of the Pollard family's old friends and "pro-Israeli activist" was closely linked to a top Israeli intelligence operative: "He [Pollard] eagerly seized an opportunity to volunteer his services to Israeli intelligence in late June 1984. At that time, Pollard met his initial Israeli handler, Col. Aviem Sella -- a noted fighter pilot on study leave in the United States --through a pro-Israeli activist, who was an old friend of the Pollard family."
Sella became Pollard's principal point of contact: "Pollard passed classified material to Sella concerning military developments in several Arab countries during at least three meetings, June-August 1984 . . . Pollard received initial, formal instruction from the Israelis during three days of operational planning and tasking 1984 sessions in Paris in November 1984. Here, Pollard met Rafael Eitan, advisor on counterterrorism to Prime Minister Shamir and the
senior Israeli in charge of the case, as well as Joseph Yagur, Counselor for Scientific Affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York, who immediately replaced Sella as Pollard's direct handler. Pollard's initial monthly salary of $1,500 was agreed upon in [REDACTED].
The Israelis were clearly concerned that Pollard would soon be tripped up on a polygraph and urged him to resign before one could be administered. The report states that Pollard's primary task was "to provide Israel with the best available U.S. intelligence on Israel's Arab adversaries and the military support they receive from the Soviet Union. Eitan emphasized that Pollard should resign from naval intelligence rather than undergo a polygraph examination; we assume that Pollard at some point told the Israelis that his application for a graduate fellowship had been rejected by CIA."
The report contains several lengthy and unredacted descriptions of Pollard's espionage for the Jewish state and the timing of the most recent CIA declassification and disclosure, December 16, 2012, may have been agreed upon to point out Israel's duplicity with regard to the United States a few weeks prior to the political firestorm from mainly Jewish neo-conservatives upset about the nomination of former Republican senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska as the next Secretary of Defense. The neo-con meme is that Hagel is anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.
The report states: "After returning from Paris, Pollard shifted his espionage into high gear. Beginning in/late January 1995, he made large biweekly deliveries of classified material, on every other Friday, to the apartment of Irit Erb, a secretary at the Israeli Embassy in
Washington. Pollard recalled that his first and possibly largest delivery occurred on 23 January and consisted of five suitcases full of classified material, and that he maintained the biweekly schedule -- interrupted only by a second operational trip abroad -- until his arrest in November 1995. Pollard also met Yagur at Erb's apartment on the last Saturday of each month to discuss additional taskings and the value of the intelligence he delivered. Pollard recalled that Yagur on at least two occasions indicated that selected items of his intelligence were known and appreciated by 'the highest levels of the Israeli Government.' Pollard's monthly salary was raised to $2,500 in February 1995 in appreciation for his productivity; and he made a second operational trip to meet his Israeli handlers in Tel Aviv in July-August 1995.
By the fall of 1985, Pollard's Navy supervisor had become suspicious of his activities because Pollard seemed to be handling large amounts of classified material concerning the Middle East and unrelated to Pollard's legitimate duties, which concerned North America and the Eastern Caribbean. An investigation ensued that led to Pollard being questioned by FBI and NIS officials beginning on 18 November and arrested on 21 November after an unsuccessful effort to gain asylum at the Israeli Embassy.
During post-arrest debriefings, Pollard said that if his espionage had remained undetected, he would have been inclined to seek a job with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research because he would not have been required to undergo a polygraph and major intelligence products were readily available there. He also indicated he could have assumed a less risky role as an agent of influence at State."
It was this information that led some law enforcement investigators to believe that "Mega" held a high-level post in the State Department.
According to Pollard, Israel's laundry list for intelligence was extensive:
"According to Pollard, the Israelis submitted the following collection requirements, in descending order of priority, to Pollard:
-- Arab (and Pakistani) nuclear intelligence;
-- Arab exotic weaponry, including chemical and
weapons;
-- Soviet aircraft;
-- Soviet air defenses;
-- Soviet air-to-air missiles and air-to-surface missiles;
and
-- Arab order-of-battle, deployments, readiness, [REDACTED}
Eitan provided additional tasking for [REDACTED] material reporting "dirt" on Israeli political figures, any information that would identify Israeli officials who were providing information to the United States [REDACTED]."
Eitan's request for "dirt" on Israeli officials was likely that collected by the CIA's agents in Israel, particularly inside the Israeli government. It was well-known by the CIA at the time that Netanyahu, as an example, was a fairly open homosexual from the time that he spent in Philadelphia, especially as a member of the Rittenhouse Square gay scene, to his start in Israeli politics. Later, U.S. government surveillance of Netanyahu placed him on numerous occasions at sado-masochistic gay theaters in Greenwich Village in New York. In addition, the CIA amassed a great deal of "dirt" on the questionable financial activities of Sharon and his sons.
Continuing, the report states:
"We believe that Pollard responded effectively to the general Israeli taskings, but that he himself exerted the strongest influence on what was compromised by virtue of his own access, interests, and collection initiatives. U.S. investigators, with Pollard's assistance, identified the following categories and approximate numbers of compromised published documents, plus an estimated 1,500 current intelligence summary messages:
Special compartmented information (SCI)
Top Secret, non-codeword
Secret, non-codeword
Confidential
Unclassified and unknown classification
The Jewish media, upon the most recent disclosures in the Damage report, described Pollard as only providing information on the Soviet union and the Arab states, not on the United States. However, what the Jewish press conveniently ignores is that what Pollard provided to Israel was based on sensitive U.S. sources and methods, many inside Arab and eastern European governments. When the identities of these sources were determined by Pollard's disclosures, the Mossad approached them to accept one of two offers: either work for Mossad or their espionage for the United States would be conveyed to their own security services, with dire, if not fatal, consequences resulting. In any event, these U.S. intelligence sources were compromised and, therefore, "burned."
The paragraphs on Israel's intelligence gains from the Pollard disclosures are totally redacted but likely contain the aforementioned information gathered from U.S. intelligence sources at the time of Pollard's arrest.
The report does state: "The unauthorized disclosure to the Israelis of such a large and varied body of classified material poses risks of several kinds to US intelligence sources and methods, analytical capabilities and intelligence exchanges, and foreign-policy interests, including the possibility of extended compromise of some of Pollard's material to third countries."
The reference to "third countries" is particularly noteworthy. It is known that Israel traded some of the classified information provided to Pollard to the Soviet Union. In return, the Soviets agreed to increase the number of exit visas for Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel. Some of these Jews only used Israel as a transit country because many eventually ended up in the United States.
Other excerpts of the report of interest include:
"Pollard's role in providing Israel with intelligence that assisted its planning for the 1985 raid on PLO headquarters near Tunis."
"Pollard's espionage has put at risk important U.S. intelligence and foreiqn-policy interests."
"Pollard granted a detailed, on-the-record interview to journalist Wolf Blitzer."
"Pollard showed additional evidence of emotional instability and ah obsession with helping Israel."
The following statement appears to have come right from the editorial offices of the Anti-Defamation League and bears no relation to other sections of the report about Pollard's failed loyalties to the United States:
"Jonathan Jay Pollard's childhood and adolescence were marked by material sufficiency, strong intellectual stimulation within a closely knit family, and some bruising experiences as a member of the Jewish-American minority growing up in Middle America. Born as the youngest of three children to Morris and Mildred Klein Pollard on 7 August 1954, Jonathan
Pollard spent his early childhood in Galveston, Texas, and his adolescence in South Bend, Indiana, where his father is a prominent virologist at the University of Notre Dame. The family has been strongly pro-American and also active in support of the State of Israel. Jonathan Pollard indicated that he felt ethnically isolated in South Bend and was uncomfortable in an environment he perceived to be strongly anti-Semitic."
There are disturbing sections that call into question the loyalties of Pollard's family:
"In a Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing, Pollard wrote that 'the first flag I could recognize in my early youth was that of Israel and for years our family took quiet pride in my late uncle's decision to provide the fledgling Israeli Army in 1948 with military boots and medical supplies 'liberated' from the American Hospital in Paris, which he commanded at the time." Pollard also states in the memorandum, 'my parents never ceased in their
efforts to portray this land [USA] ... as a Godsend for Jews . . . '"
Pollard also related that "the first indication I had that life would be an agonizing struggle between competing values rather than one of coherent academic absolutes occurred when my family moved to Indiana, where I suddenly found myself confronting a community in which racism and bigotry were acceptable social practices. I was never able to establish friendships in my neighborhoods and was compelled to spend most of my time around the city's Hebrew Day School, where I felt at least physically safe and emotionally protected."
By Pollard's own admission, his dubious loyalties to the United States at an early stage should have barred his access to classified material:
"Pollard indicated that he already had begun fantasizing about future emigration to Israel when that state won a dramatic victory in the six-day war of June 1967. This event evidently made a lasting impression upon him; from then on he increasingly considered emigration to or other means to assist Israel. Another influence was Pollard's attendance in the summer of 1971 at a three-month science camp in Israel, sponsored by the Weizman Institute, which featured patriotic field trips and strong encouragement for young Jewish-Americans to emigrate to Israel."
Other red flags appeared in Pollard's background, any one of which was grounds to deny him a security clearance"
"Pollard's attendance at Stanford University from 1972-76 was marked both by significant academic achievement and signs of emotional instability. On the one hand, he graduated with a B.A. in political science, emphasizing national-security studies, with a grade point average of 3.5. On the other hand, after Pollard's arrest, former Stanford acquaintances alleged that he was involved in several bizarre incidents. They, for example, claim that he told them he worked for the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, and was being groomed to work for it within the United States Government. On another occasion, Pollard waved a pistol in the air and screamed that everyone was out to get him."
Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu is among the many religious and political leaders of Israel who have called for Pollard's release. Eliyahu gave the eulogy at the funeral of Jewish Defense League terrorist group founder Meir Kahane. Eliyahu also called the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami "God's punishment" for Asian nations like India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia that refused to support Israel. He also said the life of one Israeli yeshiva student is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs. U.S. political leaders refuse to condemn the vile hatred and racism that emanate from the mouths of Israel's top rabbis.
The report continues:
"Throughout his time at Stanford, Pollard apparently retained a fixation on emigrating to Israel or providing other direct assistance to Tel Aviv. He claims to have volunteered to work on a kibbutz during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 as part of a program to permit Israeli men to be transferred from the kibbutzim to the war fronts . . . his [Pollard's] volunteer group spent five frustrating days waiting for an El Al flight in Los Angeles before being told the need for had passed with Sharon's crossing of the Suez Canal."
Pollard's work history is provided in the report:
Pollard's Assignments and Security-Clearance Actions
With Naval Intelligence, 1979-85
September 1979 Research analyst, Naval Ocean Surveillance
Information Center, Suitland, Maryland (merchant shipping analyst and watch
officer).
November 1979
Interim Top Secret clearance granted.
February 1980 Volunteer to Task Force 168 (TF-168), the
naval intelligence .element responsible for HUMINT collection; Pollard was assigned to
collect information from a South African defense attache.
April 1980 Pollard temporarily reassigned to position in
Naval Intelligence Support Center (NISC)-34 that did not require access to SCI material, owing to reservations concerning his emotional stability.
May 1980 Assigned as Middle Eastern warship analyst, Free World Branch, NISC-33; SCI access
reinstated.
August 1980 Association with TF-168 terminated owing to evidence of gross unreliability and recommendation by clinical psychologist that Pollard be assigned to non-sensitive duties. Top Secret clearance and SCI access suspended; Pollard reassigned as research ship analyst, NISC-34, pending fitness for duty evaluation by one of four cleared psychiatrists identified to Pollard by Commanding Officer, NISC.
April 1981 Psychiatrist diagnosed Pollard as having a [REDACTED] but also
deemed him "thoroughly capable of handling the duties of his job and not a security
risk." The psychiatrist recommended further treatment, but Pollard did not seek or
receive any.
January 1982 Reinstatement of Pollard's Top Secret clearance and SCI access ordered by Commander, Naval Intelligence Command (NIC).
February 1982. Pollard returned from NISC-34 to assignment as Middle East warship analyst in NISC-33.
June 1984 Began temporary duty with Anti-Terrorist
Alert Center (ATAC), Naval Investigative Service (NIS); worked rotating shift as
watchstander.
October 1984 Permanently assigned to ATAC, NIS, as analyst responsible for assessing terrorist activities, narcotics traffic, and instability in North America and Eastern
Caribbean. Remained in this assignment until arrest.
Task Force 168 worked closely with the Defense Intelligence Agency on overt human intelligence collection operations. It was closed down in October 1991. Before he was arrested, Pollard tried to reapply for a position with TF-168. The report states: "Pollard, surprisingly, once again sought to be assigned or detailed to TF-168 despite his
previous problems with that component. He arrived late and disheveled for an applicant interview and offered a preposterous explanation, to the effect that the Irish Republican Army had kidnapped his wife and he had spent the weekend getting her released."
Pollard's time with TF 168 was rife with signs that he was a hostile intelligence agent. The report states:
"-- Adverse record with Task Force-168. Pollard repeatedly violated his instructions -- for example, by attending meetings against orders and disclosing classified information without authorization -- during his assignment to collect intelligence on Soviet naval activities in the South Atlantic from a South African defense attache. Pollard's superiors quickly developed misgivings concerning his erratic behavior and then learned he had lied about his qualifications and disclosed classified information to the South African attache without authorization.* As a result of his unacceptable behavior, Pollard was examined by a clinical psychologist, who described Pollard as grandiose and manipulative. The psychologist felt that the risk of unintentional compromise of information, but not espionage, by Pollard was high. He recommended therapy and assignment to nonsensitive duties.
* The TF-168 collection operation was converted to counterintelligence case "Operation swan Song," under the auspices of NIS, in July 1980, for the purpose of clarifying Pollard's activities. Operation Swan Song was terminated in early August following Pollard's admissions, noted above, and a determination that further investigation would be unproductive.
-- Lifestyle Problems. Pollard experienced intermittent financial difficulties and behavioral problems, and the post-arrest investigation turned up allegations of drug abuse. Pollard's rent check was returned owing to insufficient funds in March 1983, and he was late paying
rent due in December 1993, and March and April 1984. In May 1984, he borrowed money from a co-worker and over the next few months bounced several checks attempting to repay it. In July 1984, a letter of indebtedness from the Navy Federal Credit Union reported that Pollard was delinquent in repaying a $4,175.00 loan. Meanwhile, Pollard and his fiancee Anne Henderson allegedly used marijuana and cocaine occasionally at parties in the Washington area from 1982-84. In late 1983, an anonymous telephone caller informed a NISC official that Pollard had been observed in an altercation in a bar in Georgetown and had identified himself as an intelligence analyst during the incident.
In post-arrest debriefings, Pollard claimed that what he perceived to be anti-Israeli attitudes among his colleagues in naval intelligence contributed to his decision to commit espionage for Israel. For example, Pollard claimed that the U.S. delegation to a US-Israeli scientific and technological intelligence-exchange conference, which he attended in 1982, failed to follow established disclosure guidance by withholding information releasable to Israel. Pollard also claimed he overheard comments from U.S delegates that he viewed as either anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic.
Pollard claimed that another key contributing factor was his concern and frustration over the inadequate U.S. reaction following the bombing of the U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut in October 1983. Pollard rationalized that if the U.S. Government were unwilling to take effective countermeasures to protect its own interests in Lebanon, then it might be unwilling or unable to provide Israel with adequate assistance in the event of critical need. Pollard stated he 'walked out of the memorial service [for the Marines] committed to doing something that would guarantee Israel's security even though it might involve a degree
of potential risk and personal sacrifice.'
Pollard stated that in the fall of 1983 he made a final decision to assist Israel through espionage, and he soon sought means to initiate the activity. He thought initially that he would need an associate to act as an intermediary with the Israelis. Accordingly, Pollard -- accompanied by Anne Henderson -- in the spring of 1984 approached [REDACTED] a friend who worked [REDACTED] with a proposal for an ill-defined effort to aid Israel.
Pollard's access to classified information and, according to Pollard, would have known intuitively that Pollard would welcome an opportunity to provide classified material to the Israeli Government. In late June 19841 shortly after Pollard was detailed to the Naval Investigative Service's newly-created Anti-Terrorist Alert Center (ATAC), Pollard received a phone call from [REDACTED] who wanted Pollard to meet a high-ranking Israeli Air Force officer. [REDACTED] stated this officer had been involved in the 'raid on the reactor,' which Pollard understood to be the October 1981 Israeli air raid on the Osirak nuclear facility in Iraq. Pollard claims he immediately viewed this proposal as an opportunity for him to volunteer his services to Israel. A few days later, Pollard was telephoned at his residence by "Avi," who introduced himself as a friend of [REDACTED] and arranged to meet with Pollard in Washington.
Pollard said his initial meeting with Col. Aviem Sella* occurred a week to 10 days after Sella's initial phone call. They met at a bar in the Washington Hilton Hotel [REDACTED]
---
*Sella is not an intelligence careerist but a highly successful fighter pilot who was being groomed for senior rank with the expectation that he eventually might become Chief of staff of the Israeli Air Force. Sella's official reason for residency in the United States in 1984 was his pursuit of a doctorate in computer sciences at New York University while on study leave from the Israeli Air Force.
intelligence information to Israel. Speaking in Hebrew, Pollard described his job at the ATAC and his extensive access to classified material both in the center and elsewhere in the US
Intelligence Community. While Sella seemed skeptical that security could be as lax as Pollard described, he identified the general targets of his collection efforts -- the Soviet Union and Arab States. Sella emphasized that Israel would not request information on US military capabilities, then told Pollard that he wanted to see an example of the material he could provide. Sella suggested that Pollard obtain classified documents on Saudi Arabia and Soviet air-defense systems, as well as photographs of the bomb-damaged Iraqi nuclear facility.
Sella established a secure procedure for setting up future clandestine meetings. He directed that Pollard obtain a listing of several pay telephones within a few blocks of his
residence, also located near the Hilton Hotel. Once this was accomplished, Sella assigned a Hebrew letter to each number and explained that he would call Pollard at his residence, mention a Hebrew letter, and thereby direct Pollard to a particular pay telephone to await an operational telephone call.
Using this procedure, Sella contacted Pollard within a few days to arrange a second meeting for the purpose of viewing and evaluating the information requested at the first.
After again making contact at the Hilton, Sella drove Pollard to a secluded outdoor location near Dumbarton Oaks. Pollard had brought a briefcase full of classified documents for Sella's review, including a three-volume study of Saudi Arabian military forces, a [REDACTED] study of Saudi ground forces' logistics, and [REDACTED] satellite imagery of the bomb-damaged Iraqi nuclear facility. Sella commented that the material was much better than what was currently available in Israel and would be of great assistance to his country.
A third meeting with Sella was scheduled for the purpose of copying all material collected to date. In the week or so between the second and third meetings, Pollard assembled
information from the National Security Agency, including daily Middle East and North African Summaries and a study on Egyptian air defenses. He also screened and obtained numerous us·defense attache reports from embassies in various Arab countries.
The meeting began at a Holiday Inn in Bethesda, Maryland, and proceeded by car via a circuitous route to a residence on Deborah Street in Potomac, Maryland. Subsequent investigation identified the Deborah Street residence as the house of Ilan Ravid, Attache for Scientific Affairs of the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Pollard saw a man in the house whom he identified during subsequent investigation as similar in appearance to Ravid.
During the third meeting, Sella informed Pollard that he would have to travel to Europe -- Paris was agreed upon -- to meet the Israeli intelligence official in charge of the
operation. Pollard was told to make his own travel arrangements and charge the expense to a credit card, as he would be reimbursed after arriving in Paris. Anne Henderson, to whom Pollard had become engaged in July 1994, was to accompany Pollard, but the Israelis did not want her to know the true purpose of the trip. To assist Pollard in explaining how he could afford such a 'vacation,' Pollard and Sella created a fictitious 'Uncle Joe Fisher' who was paying for the trip as an engagement present. Sella also told Pollard to arrange for him to meet Henderson socially so that she could see a familiar face in Paris; Pollard, Henderson, Sella, and his wife met subsequently for dinner at the Four Ways Restaurant in
Washington, D.C. Finally, Sella told Pollard to bring his latest Navy leave-and-earnings statement to Paris for examination by Israeli Intelligence officers, so that they might use it as a basis for establishing payment for his espionage.
Meetings between Pollard and his Israeli handlers on 8, 9, and 10 November in Paris essentially completed Pollard's assessment and recruitment and prepared him to undertake the most productive period of his espionage career. Several important developments occurred during the meetings:
-- Pollard met Rafael (Rafi) Eitan, a senior career official in Israeli intelligence, former adviser on counterterrorism to the Israeli Prime Minister, and the person in charge of the operation.
-- Direct handling of Pollard in the United States was transferred from Sella to Joseph (Yossi) Yagur, Counselor for Scientific Affairs, Israeli Consulate New York; Eitan and Yaqur warned Pollard against further operational contact with Sella.
-- Yaqur and Eitan provided initial, detailed taskings on the intelligence Pollard was to obtain. Yagur emphasized that Pollard should seek military and scientific intelligence on Arab States, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union in its role as military patron of the Arabs. Eitan requested the only specific document mentioned at the Paris meetings, the 'RASIN Manual,' which he could only describe as a document concerning signals intelligence. Eitan also requested information on PLO Force 17, material reporting 'dirt' on Israeli political figures, any information that would identify Israeli officials who were providing information to the United States, and any information on U.S. intelligence operations targeted against Israel.
In addition to conveying operational instructions and taskings, Eitan used the Paris meetings to test and strengthen Pollard's motivation. Eitan presented a formal, highly alarmist briefing to Pollard on the Middle East situation, which described how Israel could be quickly overrun by a Syrian attack. He emphasized that Israel faced a 'technological Pearl Harbor' [where did that phrase appear again? Of course, it was the 'electronic Pearl Harbor" used by the neo-cons to help set the stage for the 9/11 attacks] and badly needed access to the material Pollard could provide. In his debriefings, Pollard commented that the presentation was calculated to strengthen his commitment to the espionage operation, and it was accompanied by a 'ceremony' wherein he was 'sworn in' as an Israeli citizen.
During the post-arrest interviews, Pollard recalled an additional meeting at the Deborah Street residence in Potomac sometime between his return to the United States and the January 1985 meeting -- probably in December 1984. Pollard recalled that the purpose of that meeting was to pick up the ring for Henderson and the 'Uncle Joe Fisher' letter. Yagur also told Pollard that this meeting and all future meetings would be in an apartment on
Van Ness Street, N.W. in Washington, D. C. Pollard received a key to the apartment at that time.
The biweekly drop schedule and monthly face-to-face meetings with Yagur at Erb's apartment continued up to the time of Pollard's initial questioning by NIS and FBI personnel in November 1985. He made his last drop on Friday, 15 November. The only interruption in the routine occurred during Pollard's second and last operational trip overseas in July and August 1985. During this trip, Pollard met with Eitan and Yagur in Tel Aviv and married Anne Henderson in Venice, Italy.
The Israelis warmly praised Pollard's productivity during his first operational meeting in Tel Aviv. Pollard and Yagur met with Eitan in a secure area of the Beilinson Hospital in Tel Aviv, where Eitan was recuperating from eye surgery. Eitan reviewed a computerized listing that Pollard believed contained all the material provided to date. Eitan complimented him on the material, stating that it had been crucial to the security of Israel and had far exceeded
expectations.
Pollard claimed to investigators that he again expressed concern about what would happen to his wife and himself if his espionage was detected. Eitan again assured him that no
drastic action would be taken by the United States. He also repeated his pledge that Israel would take care of Pollard; and informed Pollard that in addition to his salary, Israel was
setting up a Swiss bank account for him, into which Israel would deposit $30,000 per year. Pollard was to continue his espionage for Israel for 10 years, after which Pollard and his
immediate family would emigrate to Israel. He could then use the projected $300,000 to establish himself in his new homeland. The Swiss account would be in the name of 'Danny Cohen,' which would be Pollard's Israeli identity. Eitan commented further that Israeli passports would be prepared for the Pollards.
By the fall of 1985, the ATAC officer-in-charge (OIC) had become auspicious of Pollard's activities because he seemed to be handling large amounts of classified material concerning the Middle East that was unrelated to his legitimate area of concern, North America and the Caribbean. The ore began to monitor more closely Pollard's activities. on 25 October 1985, one of Pollard's co-workers notified the ore that he had seen Pollard apparently removing classified material from the center without authorization. The ore verified that Pollard had removed the material and informed the Counterintelligence Directorate of the Naval Investigative Service. N!S opened an investigation of Pollard and notified the FBI. Pollard was observed removing additional classified material during the
NIS/FBI investigation.
On 18 November 1985, FBI and NIS agents confronted and questioned Pollard for the first time as he left the ATAC building in Suitland, Maryland. They found classified material in Pollard's possession for which he had no authorization to remove from the building. Pollard at first claimed to be delivering the material to another U.S. intelligence organization. Once this story broke down, he alleged that the information was destined for a journalist contact, Kurt Lohbeck, who was interested in helping the Afghan Mujahidin. ([Lohbeck died in 2010. His obituary in the Albuquerque Journal stated that Lohbeck was "a radio and television announcer and news director, a congressional consultant to the U.S. House Interior Committee, an aide for then New Mexico Congressman Manuel Lujan, a NM legislator, a CBS war correspondent covering Afghanistan for ten years during the Soviet invasion, an author (Holy War, Unholy Victory), an expert witness regarding Afghan refugees seeking political asylum, a founder and member of the board of a local bank, founder and president of the regional chapter of the Society of American Magicians (S.A.M.), and a member of LA's Magic Castle and London's Magic Circle.'] Lohbeck was also a cog in the support network for the Afghan mujaheddin that was featured in the book and movie "Charlie Wilson's War.")
The report provides additional information on Lohbeck and Pollard: "Pollard and Lohbeck had met on a number of occasions to discuss Middle Eastern, Soviet-Afghan, and arms-transfer issues. Lohbeck was a pro-Mujahidin lobbyist, who maintained contacts with Afghan guerrilla leaders as well as US and Pakistani government officials."
The Jewish media concluded Pollard did not jeopardize U.S. national security by spying for Israel. Tell that to crews who flew on the RC-135 (above), the Air Force planes that flew ferret SIGINT and ELINT missions along the Soviet and Chinese coasts. Pollard sold the Israelis the store on RC-135 operations and Israel passed some of the intelligence on to the Soviets in return for more Soviet Jews emigrating to Israel.
In what could be the most damning part of the report, the FBI gave Israel enough time to exfiltrate Pollard's handlers from the United States. The report states: "[During] the three-day period of questioning by NIS and FBI investigators, Pollard alerted Yagur by telephone and volunteered false information to investigators thereby giving Yagur, Erh,. and Sella time to flee the country. Pollard was placed under 24-hour FBI/NIS surveillance on 19 November with the two-fold objectives of identifying his real contacts and preventing his escape from the United States. Pollard and his wife were arrested by the FBI on the morning of 21 November after a security officer at the Israeli Embassy refused to allow them entry into the building. Probably, Yagur, Sella, and Erb already had left the United States."
Wolf Blitzer played an unusual role in the Pollard case. The report states: "While his cooperation in debriefings was most helpful to government investigators, Pollard's willingness to grant an interview to journalist Wolf Blitzer for The Jerusalem Post without obtaining advance approval of the resulting text from the Justice Department violated the terms of his plea bargain. In the Blitzer interview, which was held on 20 November 1986 at Petersburg Federal Penitentiary, Pollard provided extensive information on his motives and objectives in conducting espionage for Israel. He also provided Blitzer a general account, with some important examples,* of intelligence he passed to the Israelis and emphasized that the Israeli Government must have been aware of and have approved of his activities. The interview, first published in excerpted segments in The Jerusalem Postover several months, was replayed in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Anne Henderson-Pollard followed up with her own commentary on the case in an unauthorized interview on '60 Minutes' on 1 March 1987, just three days before the Pollards were sentenced.
* Pollard told Blitzer he gave the Israelis "intelligence on PLO headquarters in Tunis, Iraqi and Syrian chemical warfare production facilities, Soviet arms shipments to Syria and other Arab states, Pakistan's nuclear program, and the US Intelligence Community's assessment of a new Soviet fighter."
The U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv (above) bristles with intercept antennas on its roof. The Israelis wanted Pollard to pass on intelligence on what kind of "dirt" the U.S. had on Israeli political leaders and the identities of Israeli informants for U.S. intelligence, called "rats" by the Israelis.
This publicity, which the Pollards apparently hoped would mobilize sympathy and support from the Israeli Government as well as from within the American Jewish community, backfired on both them and on the Israelis.
Israeli discomfiture had been heightened by the U.S. indictment in February 1987 of Pollard-recruiter Col. Aviem Sella and then by the sharp US reaction to Sella's appointment as Commander of Israel's Tel Nof airbase. Although the official Israeli Government investigation announced on 11 March and completed in late May was legally toothless and did not yield findings of complicity on the part of Israeli cabinet officials in the affair, adverse publicity and political pressure forced Sella's resignation from the Tel No£ post.
Nonetheless, Israeli media commentaries and public opinion polls also suggest that many Israeli citizens regard Pollard as an Israeli patriot and believe that their government should have assisted him once he was caught. Moreover, Sella retains his status as an Israeli national hero and his colonelcy in the Israeli Air Force.
In addition to running operations against the Arabs, the Israeli services have high interest in collecting political, economic, and scientific intelligence about the Soviet bloc, the
United States, and the United Nations, whose policy decisions could have repercussions on Israel. Tel Aviv's program for accelerating its technological, scientific, and military development has included attempts to penetrate classified defense [REDACTED but likely refers to U.S. defense contractors. A number of NSA and National Reconnaissance Office programs were compromised in the 1980s by Israeli contractors who received classified information from Jewish American defense contractor engineers and scientists. A particularly damaging compromise occurred in RCA in New Jersey in 1985, the same year Pollard was arrested. Jewish RCA engineers turned over classified information to Israeli engineers working on a firewalled signals intelligence program code named DINDI. The entire program was shut down as a result of the compromise but FBI agents in New Jersey were instructed not to pursue criminal investigations of Jewish American engineers. Another sensitive NSA program, code-named PIEREX, was also compromised to Israeli engineer spies].
Two of Pollard's three handlers, Col. Aviem Sella and Joseph Yagur, emphasized that Pollard should obtain military and technical intelligence on the Soviet Union, Arab states, and Pakistan. The Israelis wanted to be informed of technological advances in Arab military inventories; for example, they wanted Pollard to provide them with information on Soviet reactive-armor technology and on advanced Soviet SAM systems so they could prepare for their appearance in Arab inventories.
Yagur. expressed .interest in intelligence regarding all Middle Eastern countries, which he defined as ranging from Morocco to Pakistan and from Lebanon to the Yemens [REDACTED and REDACTED], Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, and Pakistan. Pollard also was to
provide indications-and-warning support for the Israelis by contacting them via an emergency telephone number and using a code word, later designated as '20 percent,' if he learned that war in the Middle East was imminent.
[Eitan] asked for information on the PLO's Force 17, CIA psychological studies or other
intelligence containing 'dirt' on senior Israeli officials; information identifying the 'rats' in Israel, by which Eitan apparently meant Israelis who provided information to the United
States.
As the espionage operation accelerated following the Paris meeting, Yaqur extended and refined the Israeli requirements at meetings held monthly with Pollard. During a discussion which accompanied Pollard's first large delivery of classified material on 23 January 1985, Yagur repeated a request that Eitan had made in Paris for the 'RASIN' (Radio Siqnal
Notation) manual. Yagur showed Pollard the first chapter of the manual, which identified it as an NSA document. Yagur told Pollard that Israel had gained access to the communications of the Soviet military assistance group in Damascus and needed the RASIN manual to determine if it were technically feasible to decrypt the signals.
Examples included requests for information on 'CERES,' which Yagur thought was a Syrian research and development facility; data on Syrian remotely piloted vehicles; information on the Ramona ELINT system in Syria, the numbers and locations of all Soviet advisors in Syria; information on the national-level command, control, and communications center in Damascus; the identities of Syrian units with attached Soviet advisors; and all training programs for Syrian personnel in the USSR. Yagur also requested medical intelligence on the health of Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad.
Pollard also received specific requests for intelligence on Egypt and on the Egyptian connection with an Argentinian missile program. Yagur asked for a specific, Egyptian study on the Israeli Air Force and a Westinghouse Corporation study on Egyptian air defenses, neither of which Pollard was able to obtain. Yagur also made a high-priority request for information on the Argentine-Egyptian Condor missile program. DIA documents on the Condor, which Pollard obtained and provided, filled an important gap in Israeli strategic intelligence, according to Yagur. Pollard claimed he later saw an Israeli intelligence report based on his information.
In June or July 1995; Yaqur asked Pollard for all available information on PLO headquarters outside Tunis and on Libyan and Tunisian air defenses. Following the Israeli air attack on the headquarters on 1 October 1985 -- according to Pollard--Yaqur said a contingency plan had been developed and executed based upon Pollard's information. Pollard claimed that Yaqur passed thanks from 'the highest levels of the Israeli Government' for his intelligence support for the raid.
In the absence of an Israeli request, Pollard initiated the delivery of three daily intelligence summaries, prepared by the National Security Agency and by Naval Intelligence and issued by the originators in message format, which the Israelis found useful and asked to receive routinely. These were the Middle East and North Africa Summary (MENAS), the Mediterranean Littoral Intelligence Summary (MELOS); and the Indian Ocean Littoral Intelligence Summary (I.O. Littoral Intsum.) Pollard claims to have provided copies of each
summary from mid-July 1994 until a few days before his arrest on 21 November 1985, which would yield a total of roughly 1,500 messages. As an example of their importance to the Israelis, Pollard recalled that Yagur once chided him for missing one day out of a month's collection of MELOS messages. Pollard claims the Israelis used the MENAS to identify new units in Arab orders-of-battle.
Pollard recalled that on two occasions--dates not remembered -- he delivered information on an emergency basis, for warning purposes. In one instance he alerted Yagur that the Soviet T-72M main battle tank had entered the Syrian inventory. On the other occasion he provided information on an impending terrorist truck bombing attack. According to Pollard, the CIA had warned Israel of an impending attack that would occur during the coming week, but had offered no supporting details. Pollard said he found information explaining that the terrorists had planned to use a truck with stolen French diplomatic plates. As a result of his information, Pollard said, the Israelis were able to foil the attack."
Pollard also gave Israel intelligence on:
"-- The State Department's position on Taba, a small disputed area on the Egyptian-Israeli border
-- 'Granite' and 'Have' programs, which involve U.S. exploitation of foreign materiel."
[Note: Granite was a U.S. Army Foreign Science and Technology Center foreign material exploitation program. It ended in 1992. Have was a series of Air Force compartmented intelligence programs that extended beyond exploitation of foreign material to SIGINT and other areas (Have Union RC-135 SIGINT missions, Have Void bunker buster project, Have Glib exploitation of foreign ordnance, Have Crow tactical electronics warfare system, Have Cook Air Force HUMINT collection on C3 systems, Have Flex airborne lasers, Have Quick frequency hopping and anti-jamming communications, and Have Blue stealth fighter development]. The Jewish media reports that Pollard did not provide intelligence on U.S. weapons systems is patently false. Stealth technology and bunker busters were highly-classified programs at the time of Pollard's espionage.]
"Pollard said he provided at his own initiative a DIA study that concluded Syria had a less-than-even chance of retakinq the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in a surprise attack.
Yagur questioned Pollard about the Middle East Arms Transfer (MEAT) Working Group, a State Department-chaired interagency committee that coordinates military-hardware sales to that region, and asked if Pollard could join it.
Pollard's deliveries concerning PLO headquarters near Tunis, Tunisian and Libyan air defenses, and Pakistan's plutonium reprocessing facility near Islamabad.
Pollard told investigators that Joseph Yagur informed him that the RASIN manual permitted Israel to begin the process of attempting to monitor a communications link between the Soviet General Staff in Moscow and the Soviet military assistance group in Damascus, Syria.
Apart from supporting Israeli actions or positions that could harm US relations with friendly Arab states, Pollard's activities have caused some Arab countries to raise unwelcome questions or make critical observations about U.S. evenhandedness
in its Mideast policies.
The Damage report provides a chronology of Pollard's life:
Jonathan Jay Pollard: A Chronology o£ Events
7 August 1954 Born in Galveston, Texas.
1961 Family moved to South Bend, Indiana; father employed asvirologist at Notre Dame University. Pollard complained in pre-sentencing affidavit that the community generally was unfriendly to Jews.June 1967 Pollard indicated in pre-sentencing affidavit that Israel's dramatic victory in the six-day war made a profound and lasting impression upon him.
Summer 1971 Pollard attended Weizman Institute Science Camp in Israel, which extolled Zionism and encouraged emigration to Israel.
1972-1976 Attended Stanford University; graduated with BA in Political Science. GPA 3.5. Displayed first known signs of emotional instability.
The report states that Pollard should have been identified as a security risk at a very early stage: "Pollard's adverse performance record with TF-168 and other manifestations of irresponsibility during his employment with naval intelligence should have been highlighted in his personnel file and been readily available to naval intelligence components (as well as any other intelligence agencies) considering him for reassignment or interagency transfer. Pollard's frequent removal of large numbers of documents from his workspace should have aroused the suspicion of his supervisor and colleagues much sooner despite complicating factors such as flextime (permission for employees to work odd hours) and Pollard's possession of a 'courier card' that afforded him unrestricted permission to transport classified material among DoD facilities. A related factor was that most of the documents Pollard stole were unrelated to his job as a terrorism analyst for North America and the Caribbean. Pollard's acquisition of such documents therefore, constituted a gross violation of the need-to-know principle."
The report's most important recommendation was for the Attorney General to stop treating Israel as a non-hostile ally. The report states: "Israel's absence from the Attorney General's list of 'criteria countries' -- meaning that the U.S. Counterintelligence posture against Israel is not especially high -- points to a need for remedial action. Israel's special relationship with the United States appears to preclude that coutnry's placement on the 'criteria country' list."
The Jewish media called the release of the Pollard Damage Report a vindication for Israel because Pollard didn't hand over classified information on U.S. military or intelligence capabilities. The Jewish media's contention is a not-too-clever lie. By exposing America's sensitive intelligence sources and methods, such as the ability of an NSA outstation on Masirah island off of Oman (above), to gather electronic intelligence from surrounding nations, Pollard placed it and countless other intelligence-gathering operations in extreme jeopardy.
Had the United States adopted a strong counterintelligence stance against Israel in 1987, it is doubtful that Israel would have been able to carry out its various terrorist missions in the United States -- from the Oklahoma City federal building bombing to the 9/11 attacks. Thousands of American would be alive today if the FBI and Justice Department had decided to declare persona non grata a few Israeli spies and deny a few card-carrying Zionists security clearances and sensitive positions in the U.S. government.
There is an interesting side story to the pollard treason and it is germane as the Senate argues over Hagel's nomination to be Defense Secretary. In 1975, a Republican conservative congressman from Virginia, Robert Daniel, Jr., a former CIA employee, asked the CIA to provide him with information on Mossad, as well as three other intelligence services, those of France, West Germany, and China -- seen as threats to U.S. national security.
After Daniel's request, his political career began to sink like the Titanic. Ironically, Daniel's banker father, Robert Daniel, Sr., was returning from a trip to Europe in 1912. The elder Daniel survived his voyage on the ill-fated RMS Titanic and went on to be elected to the Virginia Senate. As far as Daniel, Jr., the whispering campaign began that he was asking too many questions about Mossad's activities in the United States. Daniel was actually trying to defend the policy of keeping the U.S. intelligence budget classified in an era when the intelligence community had come under incessant attack for its abuses of power at home and abroad. A Confidential CIA Office of Legislative Counsel memo dated October 1, 1975, states that Daniel wanted the information on Mossad to argue against an amendment by Rep. Robert Giaimo (D-CT) to make the intelligence budget public. Daniel believed that such information in the hands of Mossad, the West German BND, the Chinese Kung An Po, and the French SDECE would pose a national security threat to the United States.
But for the Jewish Lobby, and we will call it that because its interests extend far beyond the borders of Israel, Daniel had to go. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) began grooming a Jewish Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Norm Sisisky, to challenge Daniel, a member of an old Virginia plantation family. In 1982, Sisisky defeated Daniel 54 to 46 percent and, as a freshman, was appointed to serve on four major Armed Services Committee subcommittees, including Military Nuclear Systems and Strategic and Critical Materials. Sisisky also was named to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. An ardent Zionist who represented a 40 percent African American district, Sisisky once missed an important civil rights bill vote because it thought it more important to attend his grandson's bar mitzvah at Jerusalem's Western Wall. Sisisky was the president of his Petersburg conservative synagogue and the Virginia United Jewish Appeal, which provided financial aid to Israel. Sisisky, a leader of the Blue Dog Democrats, was one of Israel's strongest supporters in Congress.
In 1993, Defense Secretary Les Aspin informed President Bill Clinton that Pollard attempted to pass classified information to Israel in 14 letters he wrote from prison. Aspin strongly argued against presidential clemency. Aspin lasted only eleven months as Defense Secretary and he died from a sudden stroke in 1995 at the age of 56. Later, in 1998, CIA director George Tenet threatened to resign if Clinton decided to include Pollard's release as part of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians.
If it is "anti-Semitic" to place the interests of the United States ahead of those of Israel, so be it. Those who are challenging Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel because he values America's interests over those of Israel should have their own loyalty to America questioned. And if that includes opening up criminal investigations of a few sitting senators and representatives, along with a few Israeli-owned journalists and lobbyists, so be it also.
Israeli and American Jews often brush aside the damage that convicted Naval Intelligence spy Jonathan Pollard did to U.S. national security. However, the recent disclosure of formerly redacted pages in the Pollard Damage Assessment prepared by the Director of Central Intelligence's Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee and issued on October 30, 1987 has revealed that Pollard began working as a U.S. naval intelligence watch officer the same month that Israel and South Africa, possibly with the financial support of Taiwan, detonated a nuclear device in the South Atlantic near Prince Edward Islands. The unredacted damage assessment report also provides details of Pollard's espionage work for South Africa before or at the same time he was spying for Israel.
Pollard's joint espionage for Israel and South Africa point to him likely playing a role on providing faulty intelligence to upper intelligence echelons concerning the nuclear test.
The report describes Pollard's work in September 1979 in the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office (NFOIO). The report states: "He began work as an Intelligence Research Specialist assigned to the Naval Ocean Surveillance Information Center (NOSIC} of the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office in September 1979." The report also states that during the same month of the South African-Israeli nuclear test Pollard "admitted that he
had attended a clandestine meeting with the South African Defense Attache."
The report's description of Pollard's early association with South Africa at the same time Israel and the apartheid regime were cooperating on nuclear weapons development is as follows:
"The following factors that have come to light about his employment with the Navy indicate that Pollard was unsuited for access to sensitive. national security information:
-- False claims concerning professional qualifications. Pollard falsely stated on his naval employment application that he had a 'provisional' M.A. degree from the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy. Moreover, in February 1980 during an interview with Task Force 168, the intelligence element charged with HUMINT collection, Pollard falsely
claimed to have an M.A. degree, to be proficient in Afrikaans, and to have applied for a commission in the naval reserve. Pollard made another, more farfetched statement to
his immediate supervisor in NOSIC: he said he had key South African contacts who could provide him with valuable information, and that he had known South African citizens
for many years because his father bad been the CIA Station Chief in South Africa."
The report also states: "Pollard claimed in a post-arrest debriefing that he had come
very close to volunteering to commit espionage while holding a conversation in Hebrew with the Israeli Naval Attache during a U.S.-Israeli intelligence exchange in 1983. Although it is not clear exactly when Pollard first began to consider espionage, we believe it was at least as early as 1980-81."
In July 1980, after the successful nuclear test the previous year and after Pollard and, presumably other Israeli moles, tainted U.S. intelligence into believing that the "flash" spotted on September 22, 1979 by orbiting U.S. VELA satellites was nothing more than a meteor entering the atmosphere, Pollard admitted he lied earlier about his contacts in South African intelligence.
The damage report's Executive Summary is surprisingly soft on Israel's use of Pollard as a spy. The summary states that Pollard's "short but intensive espionage career on behalf of Israel lasted from June 1984 until his arrest on 21 November 1985." However, other sections of the report state that Pollard considered spying for Israel at least as early as 1980-81. Other parts of the report indicate that Pollard's espionage for both Israel and South Africa began much earlier and that even as a teen Pollard was a committed Zionist who placed loyalty to Israel above the United States, a lesson learned that was later ignored when the U.S. government security apparatus appointed card-carrying Zionists to top jobs in the Defense Department, Justice Department, and CIA.
Since his sentencing to life imprisonment on March 4, 1987, Pollard has seen one after another Israeli leader -- Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, and Binyamin Netanyahu -- pressure the White House for a pardon and safe passage for Pollard to Israel. Netanyahu has even visited Pollard in the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina, nicknamed "B'nai Butner" because it has its own kosher kitchen. In fact, Pollard has become a folk hero to many Israelis, an action that shows the true nature of Israel and its people as documented enemies of the United States and the American people.
Pollard was viewed as a security risk early on in his career but his protectors in the Naval Intelligence chain-of-command laughed off Pollard's sure signs of betrayal as due to "eccentricity." In 1983 and 1984, this editor was assigned computer security responsibilities for the Naval Telecommunication Command and Pollard's Special Security Officer (SSO) at the Naval Intelligence and Security Command in Suitland, Maryland personally told me about the trouble he was having in trying to convince his superiors that Pollard was a bona fide security risk. When I asked the SSO about details, he claimed that Pollard was always crying discrimination because he was Jewish. In fact, the Damage Report refers to Pollard's use of the anti-Semite canard to remain in his position and with his access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) left intact. The report states; "[Pollard] claimed he
developed a strong perception of anti-Israeli attitudes among his colleagues and of inadequate US intelligence support for Israel." The report fails to mention what many in the CIA and U.S. intelligence knew in the aftermath of the 1983 terrorist bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, that Israel knew about the attack in advance and failed to warn U.S. commanders beforehand. In retrospect, Pollard was merely using his Jewishness to cover for his espionage for Israel.
The report also states that Pollard argued with his superiors over priorities. As a Naval Intelligence analyst Pollard Pollard wanted to concentrate on research related to the Middle East to the exclusion of littoral Africa.
The damage report cites Pollard's personal and employment history as "replete with incidents of irresponsible behavior that point to significant emotional instability." Yet, he continued to have his security access reinstated after repeated suspensions. U.S. intelligence sources have told WMR that Pollard had a protector high up in the Reagan administration, someone the Mossad code-named "Mega." There has been an ongoing debate on the identity of Mega for the past thirty years.
But only a high-level sponsor in the administration would have enabled Pollard to continue to have access to the most sensitive U.S. intelligence information, especially when considering that the damage report later concluded: "Despite his emotional and behavioral difficulties, Pollard managed to gain the respect of most of his superiors, as evidenced by his achievement of promotions from GS-07 to GS-12 over a six-year period."
The report also states that while a student at Stanford University, Pollard bragged about being a Mossad agent: "former student acquaintances told investigators that he bragged about his role as a Mossad agent and, on one occasion, waved a pistol in the air and screamed that everyone was out to get him." Thus began Pollard's modus operandi: because he appeared crazy, there was no way Pollard could be a Mossad agent. Surely, the Mossad screened its agents and would drum out anyone with psychological problems. If anyone believed that, they fell right into the trap Mossad had cleverly laid.
Consider for a moment the following bizarre behavior exhibited by Pollard while he was with Navy intelligence: "After Pollard' a arrest, I [REDACTED] observed that Pollard's sometimes strange behavior -- including, inter alia, the telling of bizarre stories about his
adventures as a CIA agent in Syria and being captured and tortured by Syrian authorities -- had taken on new importance after his discovery and arrest, but noted further that the most important thing known about Pollard before his arrest was that he was an intelligent, energetic, and often productive analyst whose faults could be overlooked in light of his obvious value to the components to which he was assigned."
Pollard apparently did not fool the CIA. The report states: "Pollard in 1978 had been rejected for a CIA Graduate Fellowship." The reason given was Pollard's admission that he used marijuana, along with another reason that the report continues to withhold from disclosure.
The Damage Report states; "Pollard's success rested upon an academic background that included graduate study at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, upon his considerable skills as an analyst, and upon deficiencies in administrative procedures and record-keeping -- since rectified --that allowed Pollard to change jobs without adverse aspects of his past performance coming to the attention of his new supervisors."
The report points to factors that any legitimate background investigation would have discovered about Pollard and which should have resulted in a veto of his security clearance. The report states; "Pollard claimed that he had begun dreaming about
future emigration to Israel at age 12 when that country won a dramatic victory in the six-day war of June 1967." The report adds, "another influence was his attendance in the summer of 1971 at a three-month science camp in Israel, which featured strong
encouragement to emigrate."
The Damage Report appears to have had competing sets of authors -- one group trying to emphasize the aggressive nature of Israeli intelligence targeting of the United States and the other trying to slough off Pollard's treason as relatively insignificant. On one hand, the report claims that Pollard began spying for Israel in 1984 but on the other it states that one of the Pollard family's old friends and "pro-Israeli activist" was closely linked to a top Israeli intelligence operative: "He [Pollard] eagerly seized an opportunity to volunteer his services to Israeli intelligence in late June 1984. At that time, Pollard met his initial Israeli handler, Col. Aviem Sella -- a noted fighter pilot on study leave in the United States --through a pro-Israeli activist, who was an old friend of the Pollard family."
Sella became Pollard's principal point of contact: "Pollard passed classified material to Sella concerning military developments in several Arab countries during at least three meetings, June-August 1984 . . . Pollard received initial, formal instruction from the Israelis during three days of operational planning and tasking 1984 sessions in Paris in November 1984. Here, Pollard met Rafael Eitan, advisor on counterterrorism to Prime Minister Shamir and the
senior Israeli in charge of the case, as well as Joseph Yagur, Counselor for Scientific Affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York, who immediately replaced Sella as Pollard's direct handler. Pollard's initial monthly salary of $1,500 was agreed upon in [REDACTED].
The Israelis were clearly concerned that Pollard would soon be tripped up on a polygraph and urged him to resign before one could be administered. The report states that Pollard's primary task was "to provide Israel with the best available U.S. intelligence on Israel's Arab adversaries and the military support they receive from the Soviet Union. Eitan emphasized that Pollard should resign from naval intelligence rather than undergo a polygraph examination; we assume that Pollard at some point told the Israelis that his application for a graduate fellowship had been rejected by CIA."
The report contains several lengthy and unredacted descriptions of Pollard's espionage for the Jewish state and the timing of the most recent CIA declassification and disclosure, December 16, 2012, may have been agreed upon to point out Israel's duplicity with regard to the United States a few weeks prior to the political firestorm from mainly Jewish neo-conservatives upset about the nomination of former Republican senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska as the next Secretary of Defense. The neo-con meme is that Hagel is anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.
The report states: "After returning from Paris, Pollard shifted his espionage into high gear. Beginning in/late January 1995, he made large biweekly deliveries of classified material, on every other Friday, to the apartment of Irit Erb, a secretary at the Israeli Embassy in
Washington. Pollard recalled that his first and possibly largest delivery occurred on 23 January and consisted of five suitcases full of classified material, and that he maintained the biweekly schedule -- interrupted only by a second operational trip abroad -- until his arrest in November 1995. Pollard also met Yagur at Erb's apartment on the last Saturday of each month to discuss additional taskings and the value of the intelligence he delivered. Pollard recalled that Yagur on at least two occasions indicated that selected items of his intelligence were known and appreciated by 'the highest levels of the Israeli Government.' Pollard's monthly salary was raised to $2,500 in February 1995 in appreciation for his productivity; and he made a second operational trip to meet his Israeli handlers in Tel Aviv in July-August 1995.
By the fall of 1985, Pollard's Navy supervisor had become suspicious of his activities because Pollard seemed to be handling large amounts of classified material concerning the Middle East and unrelated to Pollard's legitimate duties, which concerned North America and the Eastern Caribbean. An investigation ensued that led to Pollard being questioned by FBI and NIS officials beginning on 18 November and arrested on 21 November after an unsuccessful effort to gain asylum at the Israeli Embassy.
During post-arrest debriefings, Pollard said that if his espionage had remained undetected, he would have been inclined to seek a job with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research because he would not have been required to undergo a polygraph and major intelligence products were readily available there. He also indicated he could have assumed a less risky role as an agent of influence at State."
It was this information that led some law enforcement investigators to believe that "Mega" held a high-level post in the State Department.
According to Pollard, Israel's laundry list for intelligence was extensive:
"According to Pollard, the Israelis submitted the following collection requirements, in descending order of priority, to Pollard:
-- Arab (and Pakistani) nuclear intelligence;
-- Arab exotic weaponry, including chemical and
weapons;
-- Soviet aircraft;
-- Soviet air defenses;
-- Soviet air-to-air missiles and air-to-surface missiles;
and
-- Arab order-of-battle, deployments, readiness, [REDACTED}
Eitan provided additional tasking for [REDACTED] material reporting "dirt" on Israeli political figures, any information that would identify Israeli officials who were providing information to the United States [REDACTED]."
Eitan's request for "dirt" on Israeli officials was likely that collected by the CIA's agents in Israel, particularly inside the Israeli government. It was well-known by the CIA at the time that Netanyahu, as an example, was a fairly open homosexual from the time that he spent in Philadelphia, especially as a member of the Rittenhouse Square gay scene, to his start in Israeli politics. Later, U.S. government surveillance of Netanyahu placed him on numerous occasions at sado-masochistic gay theaters in Greenwich Village in New York. In addition, the CIA amassed a great deal of "dirt" on the questionable financial activities of Sharon and his sons.
Continuing, the report states:
"We believe that Pollard responded effectively to the general Israeli taskings, but that he himself exerted the strongest influence on what was compromised by virtue of his own access, interests, and collection initiatives. U.S. investigators, with Pollard's assistance, identified the following categories and approximate numbers of compromised published documents, plus an estimated 1,500 current intelligence summary messages:
Special compartmented information (SCI)
Top Secret, non-codeword
Secret, non-codeword
Confidential
Unclassified and unknown classification
The Jewish media, upon the most recent disclosures in the Damage report, described Pollard as only providing information on the Soviet union and the Arab states, not on the United States. However, what the Jewish press conveniently ignores is that what Pollard provided to Israel was based on sensitive U.S. sources and methods, many inside Arab and eastern European governments. When the identities of these sources were determined by Pollard's disclosures, the Mossad approached them to accept one of two offers: either work for Mossad or their espionage for the United States would be conveyed to their own security services, with dire, if not fatal, consequences resulting. In any event, these U.S. intelligence sources were compromised and, therefore, "burned."
The paragraphs on Israel's intelligence gains from the Pollard disclosures are totally redacted but likely contain the aforementioned information gathered from U.S. intelligence sources at the time of Pollard's arrest.
The report does state: "The unauthorized disclosure to the Israelis of such a large and varied body of classified material poses risks of several kinds to US intelligence sources and methods, analytical capabilities and intelligence exchanges, and foreign-policy interests, including the possibility of extended compromise of some of Pollard's material to third countries."
The reference to "third countries" is particularly noteworthy. It is known that Israel traded some of the classified information provided to Pollard to the Soviet Union. In return, the Soviets agreed to increase the number of exit visas for Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel. Some of these Jews only used Israel as a transit country because many eventually ended up in the United States.
Other excerpts of the report of interest include:
"Pollard's role in providing Israel with intelligence that assisted its planning for the 1985 raid on PLO headquarters near Tunis."
"Pollard's espionage has put at risk important U.S. intelligence and foreiqn-policy interests."
"Pollard granted a detailed, on-the-record interview to journalist Wolf Blitzer."
"Pollard showed additional evidence of emotional instability and ah obsession with helping Israel."
The following statement appears to have come right from the editorial offices of the Anti-Defamation League and bears no relation to other sections of the report about Pollard's failed loyalties to the United States:
"Jonathan Jay Pollard's childhood and adolescence were marked by material sufficiency, strong intellectual stimulation within a closely knit family, and some bruising experiences as a member of the Jewish-American minority growing up in Middle America. Born as the youngest of three children to Morris and Mildred Klein Pollard on 7 August 1954, Jonathan
Pollard spent his early childhood in Galveston, Texas, and his adolescence in South Bend, Indiana, where his father is a prominent virologist at the University of Notre Dame. The family has been strongly pro-American and also active in support of the State of Israel. Jonathan Pollard indicated that he felt ethnically isolated in South Bend and was uncomfortable in an environment he perceived to be strongly anti-Semitic."
There are disturbing sections that call into question the loyalties of Pollard's family:
"In a Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing, Pollard wrote that 'the first flag I could recognize in my early youth was that of Israel and for years our family took quiet pride in my late uncle's decision to provide the fledgling Israeli Army in 1948 with military boots and medical supplies 'liberated' from the American Hospital in Paris, which he commanded at the time." Pollard also states in the memorandum, 'my parents never ceased in their
efforts to portray this land [USA] ... as a Godsend for Jews . . . '"
Pollard also related that "the first indication I had that life would be an agonizing struggle between competing values rather than one of coherent academic absolutes occurred when my family moved to Indiana, where I suddenly found myself confronting a community in which racism and bigotry were acceptable social practices. I was never able to establish friendships in my neighborhoods and was compelled to spend most of my time around the city's Hebrew Day School, where I felt at least physically safe and emotionally protected."
By Pollard's own admission, his dubious loyalties to the United States at an early stage should have barred his access to classified material:
"Pollard indicated that he already had begun fantasizing about future emigration to Israel when that state won a dramatic victory in the six-day war of June 1967. This event evidently made a lasting impression upon him; from then on he increasingly considered emigration to or other means to assist Israel. Another influence was Pollard's attendance in the summer of 1971 at a three-month science camp in Israel, sponsored by the Weizman Institute, which featured patriotic field trips and strong encouragement for young Jewish-Americans to emigrate to Israel."
Other red flags appeared in Pollard's background, any one of which was grounds to deny him a security clearance"
"Pollard's attendance at Stanford University from 1972-76 was marked both by significant academic achievement and signs of emotional instability. On the one hand, he graduated with a B.A. in political science, emphasizing national-security studies, with a grade point average of 3.5. On the other hand, after Pollard's arrest, former Stanford acquaintances alleged that he was involved in several bizarre incidents. They, for example, claim that he told them he worked for the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, and was being groomed to work for it within the United States Government. On another occasion, Pollard waved a pistol in the air and screamed that everyone was out to get him."
Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu is among the many religious and political leaders of Israel who have called for Pollard's release. Eliyahu gave the eulogy at the funeral of Jewish Defense League terrorist group founder Meir Kahane. Eliyahu also called the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami "God's punishment" for Asian nations like India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia that refused to support Israel. He also said the life of one Israeli yeshiva student is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs. U.S. political leaders refuse to condemn the vile hatred and racism that emanate from the mouths of Israel's top rabbis.
The report continues:
"Throughout his time at Stanford, Pollard apparently retained a fixation on emigrating to Israel or providing other direct assistance to Tel Aviv. He claims to have volunteered to work on a kibbutz during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 as part of a program to permit Israeli men to be transferred from the kibbutzim to the war fronts . . . his [Pollard's] volunteer group spent five frustrating days waiting for an El Al flight in Los Angeles before being told the need for had passed with Sharon's crossing of the Suez Canal."
Pollard's work history is provided in the report:
Pollard's Assignments and Security-Clearance Actions
With Naval Intelligence, 1979-85
September 1979 Research analyst, Naval Ocean Surveillance
Information Center, Suitland, Maryland (merchant shipping analyst and watch
officer).
November 1979
Interim Top Secret clearance granted.
February 1980 Volunteer to Task Force 168 (TF-168), the
naval intelligence .element responsible for HUMINT collection; Pollard was assigned to
collect information from a South African defense attache.
April 1980 Pollard temporarily reassigned to position in
Naval Intelligence Support Center (NISC)-34 that did not require access to SCI material, owing to reservations concerning his emotional stability.
May 1980 Assigned as Middle Eastern warship analyst, Free World Branch, NISC-33; SCI access
reinstated.
August 1980 Association with TF-168 terminated owing to evidence of gross unreliability and recommendation by clinical psychologist that Pollard be assigned to non-sensitive duties. Top Secret clearance and SCI access suspended; Pollard reassigned as research ship analyst, NISC-34, pending fitness for duty evaluation by one of four cleared psychiatrists identified to Pollard by Commanding Officer, NISC.
April 1981 Psychiatrist diagnosed Pollard as having a [REDACTED] but also
deemed him "thoroughly capable of handling the duties of his job and not a security
risk." The psychiatrist recommended further treatment, but Pollard did not seek or
receive any.
January 1982 Reinstatement of Pollard's Top Secret clearance and SCI access ordered by Commander, Naval Intelligence Command (NIC).
February 1982. Pollard returned from NISC-34 to assignment as Middle East warship analyst in NISC-33.
June 1984 Began temporary duty with Anti-Terrorist
Alert Center (ATAC), Naval Investigative Service (NIS); worked rotating shift as
watchstander.
October 1984 Permanently assigned to ATAC, NIS, as analyst responsible for assessing terrorist activities, narcotics traffic, and instability in North America and Eastern
Caribbean. Remained in this assignment until arrest.
Task Force 168 worked closely with the Defense Intelligence Agency on overt human intelligence collection operations. It was closed down in October 1991. Before he was arrested, Pollard tried to reapply for a position with TF-168. The report states: "Pollard, surprisingly, once again sought to be assigned or detailed to TF-168 despite his
previous problems with that component. He arrived late and disheveled for an applicant interview and offered a preposterous explanation, to the effect that the Irish Republican Army had kidnapped his wife and he had spent the weekend getting her released."
Pollard's time with TF 168 was rife with signs that he was a hostile intelligence agent. The report states:
"-- Adverse record with Task Force-168. Pollard repeatedly violated his instructions -- for example, by attending meetings against orders and disclosing classified information without authorization -- during his assignment to collect intelligence on Soviet naval activities in the South Atlantic from a South African defense attache. Pollard's superiors quickly developed misgivings concerning his erratic behavior and then learned he had lied about his qualifications and disclosed classified information to the South African attache without authorization.* As a result of his unacceptable behavior, Pollard was examined by a clinical psychologist, who described Pollard as grandiose and manipulative. The psychologist felt that the risk of unintentional compromise of information, but not espionage, by Pollard was high. He recommended therapy and assignment to nonsensitive duties.
* The TF-168 collection operation was converted to counterintelligence case "Operation swan Song," under the auspices of NIS, in July 1980, for the purpose of clarifying Pollard's activities. Operation Swan Song was terminated in early August following Pollard's admissions, noted above, and a determination that further investigation would be unproductive.
-- Lifestyle Problems. Pollard experienced intermittent financial difficulties and behavioral problems, and the post-arrest investigation turned up allegations of drug abuse. Pollard's rent check was returned owing to insufficient funds in March 1983, and he was late paying
rent due in December 1993, and March and April 1984. In May 1984, he borrowed money from a co-worker and over the next few months bounced several checks attempting to repay it. In July 1984, a letter of indebtedness from the Navy Federal Credit Union reported that Pollard was delinquent in repaying a $4,175.00 loan. Meanwhile, Pollard and his fiancee Anne Henderson allegedly used marijuana and cocaine occasionally at parties in the Washington area from 1982-84. In late 1983, an anonymous telephone caller informed a NISC official that Pollard had been observed in an altercation in a bar in Georgetown and had identified himself as an intelligence analyst during the incident.
In post-arrest debriefings, Pollard claimed that what he perceived to be anti-Israeli attitudes among his colleagues in naval intelligence contributed to his decision to commit espionage for Israel. For example, Pollard claimed that the U.S. delegation to a US-Israeli scientific and technological intelligence-exchange conference, which he attended in 1982, failed to follow established disclosure guidance by withholding information releasable to Israel. Pollard also claimed he overheard comments from U.S delegates that he viewed as either anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic.
Pollard claimed that another key contributing factor was his concern and frustration over the inadequate U.S. reaction following the bombing of the U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut in October 1983. Pollard rationalized that if the U.S. Government were unwilling to take effective countermeasures to protect its own interests in Lebanon, then it might be unwilling or unable to provide Israel with adequate assistance in the event of critical need. Pollard stated he 'walked out of the memorial service [for the Marines] committed to doing something that would guarantee Israel's security even though it might involve a degree
of potential risk and personal sacrifice.'
Pollard stated that in the fall of 1983 he made a final decision to assist Israel through espionage, and he soon sought means to initiate the activity. He thought initially that he would need an associate to act as an intermediary with the Israelis. Accordingly, Pollard -- accompanied by Anne Henderson -- in the spring of 1984 approached [REDACTED] a friend who worked [REDACTED] with a proposal for an ill-defined effort to aid Israel.
Pollard's access to classified information and, according to Pollard, would have known intuitively that Pollard would welcome an opportunity to provide classified material to the Israeli Government. In late June 19841 shortly after Pollard was detailed to the Naval Investigative Service's newly-created Anti-Terrorist Alert Center (ATAC), Pollard received a phone call from [REDACTED] who wanted Pollard to meet a high-ranking Israeli Air Force officer. [REDACTED] stated this officer had been involved in the 'raid on the reactor,' which Pollard understood to be the October 1981 Israeli air raid on the Osirak nuclear facility in Iraq. Pollard claims he immediately viewed this proposal as an opportunity for him to volunteer his services to Israel. A few days later, Pollard was telephoned at his residence by "Avi," who introduced himself as a friend of [REDACTED] and arranged to meet with Pollard in Washington.
Pollard said his initial meeting with Col. Aviem Sella* occurred a week to 10 days after Sella's initial phone call. They met at a bar in the Washington Hilton Hotel [REDACTED]
---
*Sella is not an intelligence careerist but a highly successful fighter pilot who was being groomed for senior rank with the expectation that he eventually might become Chief of staff of the Israeli Air Force. Sella's official reason for residency in the United States in 1984 was his pursuit of a doctorate in computer sciences at New York University while on study leave from the Israeli Air Force.
intelligence information to Israel. Speaking in Hebrew, Pollard described his job at the ATAC and his extensive access to classified material both in the center and elsewhere in the US
Intelligence Community. While Sella seemed skeptical that security could be as lax as Pollard described, he identified the general targets of his collection efforts -- the Soviet Union and Arab States. Sella emphasized that Israel would not request information on US military capabilities, then told Pollard that he wanted to see an example of the material he could provide. Sella suggested that Pollard obtain classified documents on Saudi Arabia and Soviet air-defense systems, as well as photographs of the bomb-damaged Iraqi nuclear facility.
Sella established a secure procedure for setting up future clandestine meetings. He directed that Pollard obtain a listing of several pay telephones within a few blocks of his
residence, also located near the Hilton Hotel. Once this was accomplished, Sella assigned a Hebrew letter to each number and explained that he would call Pollard at his residence, mention a Hebrew letter, and thereby direct Pollard to a particular pay telephone to await an operational telephone call.
Using this procedure, Sella contacted Pollard within a few days to arrange a second meeting for the purpose of viewing and evaluating the information requested at the first.
After again making contact at the Hilton, Sella drove Pollard to a secluded outdoor location near Dumbarton Oaks. Pollard had brought a briefcase full of classified documents for Sella's review, including a three-volume study of Saudi Arabian military forces, a [REDACTED] study of Saudi ground forces' logistics, and [REDACTED] satellite imagery of the bomb-damaged Iraqi nuclear facility. Sella commented that the material was much better than what was currently available in Israel and would be of great assistance to his country.
A third meeting with Sella was scheduled for the purpose of copying all material collected to date. In the week or so between the second and third meetings, Pollard assembled
information from the National Security Agency, including daily Middle East and North African Summaries and a study on Egyptian air defenses. He also screened and obtained numerous us·defense attache reports from embassies in various Arab countries.
The meeting began at a Holiday Inn in Bethesda, Maryland, and proceeded by car via a circuitous route to a residence on Deborah Street in Potomac, Maryland. Subsequent investigation identified the Deborah Street residence as the house of Ilan Ravid, Attache for Scientific Affairs of the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Pollard saw a man in the house whom he identified during subsequent investigation as similar in appearance to Ravid.
During the third meeting, Sella informed Pollard that he would have to travel to Europe -- Paris was agreed upon -- to meet the Israeli intelligence official in charge of the
operation. Pollard was told to make his own travel arrangements and charge the expense to a credit card, as he would be reimbursed after arriving in Paris. Anne Henderson, to whom Pollard had become engaged in July 1994, was to accompany Pollard, but the Israelis did not want her to know the true purpose of the trip. To assist Pollard in explaining how he could afford such a 'vacation,' Pollard and Sella created a fictitious 'Uncle Joe Fisher' who was paying for the trip as an engagement present. Sella also told Pollard to arrange for him to meet Henderson socially so that she could see a familiar face in Paris; Pollard, Henderson, Sella, and his wife met subsequently for dinner at the Four Ways Restaurant in
Washington, D.C. Finally, Sella told Pollard to bring his latest Navy leave-and-earnings statement to Paris for examination by Israeli Intelligence officers, so that they might use it as a basis for establishing payment for his espionage.
Meetings between Pollard and his Israeli handlers on 8, 9, and 10 November in Paris essentially completed Pollard's assessment and recruitment and prepared him to undertake the most productive period of his espionage career. Several important developments occurred during the meetings:
-- Pollard met Rafael (Rafi) Eitan, a senior career official in Israeli intelligence, former adviser on counterterrorism to the Israeli Prime Minister, and the person in charge of the operation.
-- Direct handling of Pollard in the United States was transferred from Sella to Joseph (Yossi) Yagur, Counselor for Scientific Affairs, Israeli Consulate New York; Eitan and Yaqur warned Pollard against further operational contact with Sella.
-- Yaqur and Eitan provided initial, detailed taskings on the intelligence Pollard was to obtain. Yagur emphasized that Pollard should seek military and scientific intelligence on Arab States, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union in its role as military patron of the Arabs. Eitan requested the only specific document mentioned at the Paris meetings, the 'RASIN Manual,' which he could only describe as a document concerning signals intelligence. Eitan also requested information on PLO Force 17, material reporting 'dirt' on Israeli political figures, any information that would identify Israeli officials who were providing information to the United States, and any information on U.S. intelligence operations targeted against Israel.
In addition to conveying operational instructions and taskings, Eitan used the Paris meetings to test and strengthen Pollard's motivation. Eitan presented a formal, highly alarmist briefing to Pollard on the Middle East situation, which described how Israel could be quickly overrun by a Syrian attack. He emphasized that Israel faced a 'technological Pearl Harbor' [where did that phrase appear again? Of course, it was the 'electronic Pearl Harbor" used by the neo-cons to help set the stage for the 9/11 attacks] and badly needed access to the material Pollard could provide. In his debriefings, Pollard commented that the presentation was calculated to strengthen his commitment to the espionage operation, and it was accompanied by a 'ceremony' wherein he was 'sworn in' as an Israeli citizen.
During the post-arrest interviews, Pollard recalled an additional meeting at the Deborah Street residence in Potomac sometime between his return to the United States and the January 1985 meeting -- probably in December 1984. Pollard recalled that the purpose of that meeting was to pick up the ring for Henderson and the 'Uncle Joe Fisher' letter. Yagur also told Pollard that this meeting and all future meetings would be in an apartment on
Van Ness Street, N.W. in Washington, D. C. Pollard received a key to the apartment at that time.
The biweekly drop schedule and monthly face-to-face meetings with Yagur at Erb's apartment continued up to the time of Pollard's initial questioning by NIS and FBI personnel in November 1985. He made his last drop on Friday, 15 November. The only interruption in the routine occurred during Pollard's second and last operational trip overseas in July and August 1985. During this trip, Pollard met with Eitan and Yagur in Tel Aviv and married Anne Henderson in Venice, Italy.
The Israelis warmly praised Pollard's productivity during his first operational meeting in Tel Aviv. Pollard and Yagur met with Eitan in a secure area of the Beilinson Hospital in Tel Aviv, where Eitan was recuperating from eye surgery. Eitan reviewed a computerized listing that Pollard believed contained all the material provided to date. Eitan complimented him on the material, stating that it had been crucial to the security of Israel and had far exceeded
expectations.
Pollard claimed to investigators that he again expressed concern about what would happen to his wife and himself if his espionage was detected. Eitan again assured him that no
drastic action would be taken by the United States. He also repeated his pledge that Israel would take care of Pollard; and informed Pollard that in addition to his salary, Israel was
setting up a Swiss bank account for him, into which Israel would deposit $30,000 per year. Pollard was to continue his espionage for Israel for 10 years, after which Pollard and his
immediate family would emigrate to Israel. He could then use the projected $300,000 to establish himself in his new homeland. The Swiss account would be in the name of 'Danny Cohen,' which would be Pollard's Israeli identity. Eitan commented further that Israeli passports would be prepared for the Pollards.
By the fall of 1985, the ATAC officer-in-charge (OIC) had become auspicious of Pollard's activities because he seemed to be handling large amounts of classified material concerning the Middle East that was unrelated to his legitimate area of concern, North America and the Caribbean. The ore began to monitor more closely Pollard's activities. on 25 October 1985, one of Pollard's co-workers notified the ore that he had seen Pollard apparently removing classified material from the center without authorization. The ore verified that Pollard had removed the material and informed the Counterintelligence Directorate of the Naval Investigative Service. N!S opened an investigation of Pollard and notified the FBI. Pollard was observed removing additional classified material during the
NIS/FBI investigation.
On 18 November 1985, FBI and NIS agents confronted and questioned Pollard for the first time as he left the ATAC building in Suitland, Maryland. They found classified material in Pollard's possession for which he had no authorization to remove from the building. Pollard at first claimed to be delivering the material to another U.S. intelligence organization. Once this story broke down, he alleged that the information was destined for a journalist contact, Kurt Lohbeck, who was interested in helping the Afghan Mujahidin. ([Lohbeck died in 2010. His obituary in the Albuquerque Journal stated that Lohbeck was "a radio and television announcer and news director, a congressional consultant to the U.S. House Interior Committee, an aide for then New Mexico Congressman Manuel Lujan, a NM legislator, a CBS war correspondent covering Afghanistan for ten years during the Soviet invasion, an author (Holy War, Unholy Victory), an expert witness regarding Afghan refugees seeking political asylum, a founder and member of the board of a local bank, founder and president of the regional chapter of the Society of American Magicians (S.A.M.), and a member of LA's Magic Castle and London's Magic Circle.'] Lohbeck was also a cog in the support network for the Afghan mujaheddin that was featured in the book and movie "Charlie Wilson's War.")
The report provides additional information on Lohbeck and Pollard: "Pollard and Lohbeck had met on a number of occasions to discuss Middle Eastern, Soviet-Afghan, and arms-transfer issues. Lohbeck was a pro-Mujahidin lobbyist, who maintained contacts with Afghan guerrilla leaders as well as US and Pakistani government officials."
The Jewish media concluded Pollard did not jeopardize U.S. national security by spying for Israel. Tell that to crews who flew on the RC-135 (above), the Air Force planes that flew ferret SIGINT and ELINT missions along the Soviet and Chinese coasts. Pollard sold the Israelis the store on RC-135 operations and Israel passed some of the intelligence on to the Soviets in return for more Soviet Jews emigrating to Israel.
In what could be the most damning part of the report, the FBI gave Israel enough time to exfiltrate Pollard's handlers from the United States. The report states: "[During] the three-day period of questioning by NIS and FBI investigators, Pollard alerted Yagur by telephone and volunteered false information to investigators thereby giving Yagur, Erh,. and Sella time to flee the country. Pollard was placed under 24-hour FBI/NIS surveillance on 19 November with the two-fold objectives of identifying his real contacts and preventing his escape from the United States. Pollard and his wife were arrested by the FBI on the morning of 21 November after a security officer at the Israeli Embassy refused to allow them entry into the building. Probably, Yagur, Sella, and Erb already had left the United States."
Wolf Blitzer played an unusual role in the Pollard case. The report states: "While his cooperation in debriefings was most helpful to government investigators, Pollard's willingness to grant an interview to journalist Wolf Blitzer for The Jerusalem Post without obtaining advance approval of the resulting text from the Justice Department violated the terms of his plea bargain. In the Blitzer interview, which was held on 20 November 1986 at Petersburg Federal Penitentiary, Pollard provided extensive information on his motives and objectives in conducting espionage for Israel. He also provided Blitzer a general account, with some important examples,* of intelligence he passed to the Israelis and emphasized that the Israeli Government must have been aware of and have approved of his activities. The interview, first published in excerpted segments in The Jerusalem Postover several months, was replayed in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Anne Henderson-Pollard followed up with her own commentary on the case in an unauthorized interview on '60 Minutes' on 1 March 1987, just three days before the Pollards were sentenced.
* Pollard told Blitzer he gave the Israelis "intelligence on PLO headquarters in Tunis, Iraqi and Syrian chemical warfare production facilities, Soviet arms shipments to Syria and other Arab states, Pakistan's nuclear program, and the US Intelligence Community's assessment of a new Soviet fighter."
The U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv (above) bristles with intercept antennas on its roof. The Israelis wanted Pollard to pass on intelligence on what kind of "dirt" the U.S. had on Israeli political leaders and the identities of Israeli informants for U.S. intelligence, called "rats" by the Israelis.
This publicity, which the Pollards apparently hoped would mobilize sympathy and support from the Israeli Government as well as from within the American Jewish community, backfired on both them and on the Israelis.
Israeli discomfiture had been heightened by the U.S. indictment in February 1987 of Pollard-recruiter Col. Aviem Sella and then by the sharp US reaction to Sella's appointment as Commander of Israel's Tel Nof airbase. Although the official Israeli Government investigation announced on 11 March and completed in late May was legally toothless and did not yield findings of complicity on the part of Israeli cabinet officials in the affair, adverse publicity and political pressure forced Sella's resignation from the Tel No£ post.
Nonetheless, Israeli media commentaries and public opinion polls also suggest that many Israeli citizens regard Pollard as an Israeli patriot and believe that their government should have assisted him once he was caught. Moreover, Sella retains his status as an Israeli national hero and his colonelcy in the Israeli Air Force.
In addition to running operations against the Arabs, the Israeli services have high interest in collecting political, economic, and scientific intelligence about the Soviet bloc, the
United States, and the United Nations, whose policy decisions could have repercussions on Israel. Tel Aviv's program for accelerating its technological, scientific, and military development has included attempts to penetrate classified defense [REDACTED but likely refers to U.S. defense contractors. A number of NSA and National Reconnaissance Office programs were compromised in the 1980s by Israeli contractors who received classified information from Jewish American defense contractor engineers and scientists. A particularly damaging compromise occurred in RCA in New Jersey in 1985, the same year Pollard was arrested. Jewish RCA engineers turned over classified information to Israeli engineers working on a firewalled signals intelligence program code named DINDI. The entire program was shut down as a result of the compromise but FBI agents in New Jersey were instructed not to pursue criminal investigations of Jewish American engineers. Another sensitive NSA program, code-named PIEREX, was also compromised to Israeli engineer spies].
Two of Pollard's three handlers, Col. Aviem Sella and Joseph Yagur, emphasized that Pollard should obtain military and technical intelligence on the Soviet Union, Arab states, and Pakistan. The Israelis wanted to be informed of technological advances in Arab military inventories; for example, they wanted Pollard to provide them with information on Soviet reactive-armor technology and on advanced Soviet SAM systems so they could prepare for their appearance in Arab inventories.
Yagur. expressed .interest in intelligence regarding all Middle Eastern countries, which he defined as ranging from Morocco to Pakistan and from Lebanon to the Yemens [REDACTED and REDACTED], Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, and Pakistan. Pollard also was to
provide indications-and-warning support for the Israelis by contacting them via an emergency telephone number and using a code word, later designated as '20 percent,' if he learned that war in the Middle East was imminent.
[Eitan] asked for information on the PLO's Force 17, CIA psychological studies or other
intelligence containing 'dirt' on senior Israeli officials; information identifying the 'rats' in Israel, by which Eitan apparently meant Israelis who provided information to the United
States.
As the espionage operation accelerated following the Paris meeting, Yaqur extended and refined the Israeli requirements at meetings held monthly with Pollard. During a discussion which accompanied Pollard's first large delivery of classified material on 23 January 1985, Yagur repeated a request that Eitan had made in Paris for the 'RASIN' (Radio Siqnal
Notation) manual. Yagur showed Pollard the first chapter of the manual, which identified it as an NSA document. Yagur told Pollard that Israel had gained access to the communications of the Soviet military assistance group in Damascus and needed the RASIN manual to determine if it were technically feasible to decrypt the signals.
Examples included requests for information on 'CERES,' which Yagur thought was a Syrian research and development facility; data on Syrian remotely piloted vehicles; information on the Ramona ELINT system in Syria, the numbers and locations of all Soviet advisors in Syria; information on the national-level command, control, and communications center in Damascus; the identities of Syrian units with attached Soviet advisors; and all training programs for Syrian personnel in the USSR. Yagur also requested medical intelligence on the health of Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad.
Pollard also received specific requests for intelligence on Egypt and on the Egyptian connection with an Argentinian missile program. Yagur asked for a specific, Egyptian study on the Israeli Air Force and a Westinghouse Corporation study on Egyptian air defenses, neither of which Pollard was able to obtain. Yagur also made a high-priority request for information on the Argentine-Egyptian Condor missile program. DIA documents on the Condor, which Pollard obtained and provided, filled an important gap in Israeli strategic intelligence, according to Yagur. Pollard claimed he later saw an Israeli intelligence report based on his information.
In June or July 1995; Yaqur asked Pollard for all available information on PLO headquarters outside Tunis and on Libyan and Tunisian air defenses. Following the Israeli air attack on the headquarters on 1 October 1985 -- according to Pollard--Yaqur said a contingency plan had been developed and executed based upon Pollard's information. Pollard claimed that Yaqur passed thanks from 'the highest levels of the Israeli Government' for his intelligence support for the raid.
In the absence of an Israeli request, Pollard initiated the delivery of three daily intelligence summaries, prepared by the National Security Agency and by Naval Intelligence and issued by the originators in message format, which the Israelis found useful and asked to receive routinely. These were the Middle East and North Africa Summary (MENAS), the Mediterranean Littoral Intelligence Summary (MELOS); and the Indian Ocean Littoral Intelligence Summary (I.O. Littoral Intsum.) Pollard claims to have provided copies of each
summary from mid-July 1994 until a few days before his arrest on 21 November 1985, which would yield a total of roughly 1,500 messages. As an example of their importance to the Israelis, Pollard recalled that Yagur once chided him for missing one day out of a month's collection of MELOS messages. Pollard claims the Israelis used the MENAS to identify new units in Arab orders-of-battle.
Pollard recalled that on two occasions--dates not remembered -- he delivered information on an emergency basis, for warning purposes. In one instance he alerted Yagur that the Soviet T-72M main battle tank had entered the Syrian inventory. On the other occasion he provided information on an impending terrorist truck bombing attack. According to Pollard, the CIA had warned Israel of an impending attack that would occur during the coming week, but had offered no supporting details. Pollard said he found information explaining that the terrorists had planned to use a truck with stolen French diplomatic plates. As a result of his information, Pollard said, the Israelis were able to foil the attack."
Pollard also gave Israel intelligence on:
"-- The State Department's position on Taba, a small disputed area on the Egyptian-Israeli border
-- 'Granite' and 'Have' programs, which involve U.S. exploitation of foreign materiel."
[Note: Granite was a U.S. Army Foreign Science and Technology Center foreign material exploitation program. It ended in 1992. Have was a series of Air Force compartmented intelligence programs that extended beyond exploitation of foreign material to SIGINT and other areas (Have Union RC-135 SIGINT missions, Have Void bunker buster project, Have Glib exploitation of foreign ordnance, Have Crow tactical electronics warfare system, Have Cook Air Force HUMINT collection on C3 systems, Have Flex airborne lasers, Have Quick frequency hopping and anti-jamming communications, and Have Blue stealth fighter development]. The Jewish media reports that Pollard did not provide intelligence on U.S. weapons systems is patently false. Stealth technology and bunker busters were highly-classified programs at the time of Pollard's espionage.]
"Pollard said he provided at his own initiative a DIA study that concluded Syria had a less-than-even chance of retakinq the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in a surprise attack.
Yagur questioned Pollard about the Middle East Arms Transfer (MEAT) Working Group, a State Department-chaired interagency committee that coordinates military-hardware sales to that region, and asked if Pollard could join it.
Pollard's deliveries concerning PLO headquarters near Tunis, Tunisian and Libyan air defenses, and Pakistan's plutonium reprocessing facility near Islamabad.
Pollard told investigators that Joseph Yagur informed him that the RASIN manual permitted Israel to begin the process of attempting to monitor a communications link between the Soviet General Staff in Moscow and the Soviet military assistance group in Damascus, Syria.
Apart from supporting Israeli actions or positions that could harm US relations with friendly Arab states, Pollard's activities have caused some Arab countries to raise unwelcome questions or make critical observations about U.S. evenhandedness
in its Mideast policies.
The Damage report provides a chronology of Pollard's life:
Jonathan Jay Pollard: A Chronology o£ Events
7 August 1954 Born in Galveston, Texas.
1961 Family moved to South Bend, Indiana; father employed asvirologist at Notre Dame University. Pollard complained in pre-sentencing affidavit that the community generally was unfriendly to Jews.June 1967 Pollard indicated in pre-sentencing affidavit that Israel's dramatic victory in the six-day war made a profound and lasting impression upon him.
Summer 1971 Pollard attended Weizman Institute Science Camp in Israel, which extolled Zionism and encouraged emigration to Israel.
1972-1976 Attended Stanford University; graduated with BA in Political Science. GPA 3.5. Displayed first known signs of emotional instability.
The report states that Pollard should have been identified as a security risk at a very early stage: "Pollard's adverse performance record with TF-168 and other manifestations of irresponsibility during his employment with naval intelligence should have been highlighted in his personnel file and been readily available to naval intelligence components (as well as any other intelligence agencies) considering him for reassignment or interagency transfer. Pollard's frequent removal of large numbers of documents from his workspace should have aroused the suspicion of his supervisor and colleagues much sooner despite complicating factors such as flextime (permission for employees to work odd hours) and Pollard's possession of a 'courier card' that afforded him unrestricted permission to transport classified material among DoD facilities. A related factor was that most of the documents Pollard stole were unrelated to his job as a terrorism analyst for North America and the Caribbean. Pollard's acquisition of such documents therefore, constituted a gross violation of the need-to-know principle."
The report's most important recommendation was for the Attorney General to stop treating Israel as a non-hostile ally. The report states: "Israel's absence from the Attorney General's list of 'criteria countries' -- meaning that the U.S. Counterintelligence posture against Israel is not especially high -- points to a need for remedial action. Israel's special relationship with the United States appears to preclude that coutnry's placement on the 'criteria country' list."
The Jewish media called the release of the Pollard Damage Report a vindication for Israel because Pollard didn't hand over classified information on U.S. military or intelligence capabilities. The Jewish media's contention is a not-too-clever lie. By exposing America's sensitive intelligence sources and methods, such as the ability of an NSA outstation on Masirah island off of Oman (above), to gather electronic intelligence from surrounding nations, Pollard placed it and countless other intelligence-gathering operations in extreme jeopardy.
Had the United States adopted a strong counterintelligence stance against Israel in 1987, it is doubtful that Israel would have been able to carry out its various terrorist missions in the United States -- from the Oklahoma City federal building bombing to the 9/11 attacks. Thousands of American would be alive today if the FBI and Justice Department had decided to declare persona non grata a few Israeli spies and deny a few card-carrying Zionists security clearances and sensitive positions in the U.S. government.
There is an interesting side story to the pollard treason and it is germane as the Senate argues over Hagel's nomination to be Defense Secretary. In 1975, a Republican conservative congressman from Virginia, Robert Daniel, Jr., a former CIA employee, asked the CIA to provide him with information on Mossad, as well as three other intelligence services, those of France, West Germany, and China -- seen as threats to U.S. national security.
After Daniel's request, his political career began to sink like the Titanic. Ironically, Daniel's banker father, Robert Daniel, Sr., was returning from a trip to Europe in 1912. The elder Daniel survived his voyage on the ill-fated RMS Titanic and went on to be elected to the Virginia Senate. As far as Daniel, Jr., the whispering campaign began that he was asking too many questions about Mossad's activities in the United States. Daniel was actually trying to defend the policy of keeping the U.S. intelligence budget classified in an era when the intelligence community had come under incessant attack for its abuses of power at home and abroad. A Confidential CIA Office of Legislative Counsel memo dated October 1, 1975, states that Daniel wanted the information on Mossad to argue against an amendment by Rep. Robert Giaimo (D-CT) to make the intelligence budget public. Daniel believed that such information in the hands of Mossad, the West German BND, the Chinese Kung An Po, and the French SDECE would pose a national security threat to the United States.
But for the Jewish Lobby, and we will call it that because its interests extend far beyond the borders of Israel, Daniel had to go. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) began grooming a Jewish Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Norm Sisisky, to challenge Daniel, a member of an old Virginia plantation family. In 1982, Sisisky defeated Daniel 54 to 46 percent and, as a freshman, was appointed to serve on four major Armed Services Committee subcommittees, including Military Nuclear Systems and Strategic and Critical Materials. Sisisky also was named to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. An ardent Zionist who represented a 40 percent African American district, Sisisky once missed an important civil rights bill vote because it thought it more important to attend his grandson's bar mitzvah at Jerusalem's Western Wall. Sisisky was the president of his Petersburg conservative synagogue and the Virginia United Jewish Appeal, which provided financial aid to Israel. Sisisky, a leader of the Blue Dog Democrats, was one of Israel's strongest supporters in Congress.
In 1993, Defense Secretary Les Aspin informed President Bill Clinton that Pollard attempted to pass classified information to Israel in 14 letters he wrote from prison. Aspin strongly argued against presidential clemency. Aspin lasted only eleven months as Defense Secretary and he died from a sudden stroke in 1995 at the age of 56. Later, in 1998, CIA director George Tenet threatened to resign if Clinton decided to include Pollard's release as part of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians.
If it is "anti-Semitic" to place the interests of the United States ahead of those of Israel, so be it. Those who are challenging Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel because he values America's interests over those of Israel should have their own loyalty to America questioned. And if that includes opening up criminal investigations of a few sitting senators and representatives, along with a few Israeli-owned journalists and lobbyists, so be it also.
