Suddenly I found myself driving back to work, wondering where the few hours of sleep had gone. Tuesday, 19 November—it was going to be a bad day. I could feel it. Agent Redman was already in the office when I arrived, along with a cluster of agents who had been on Defense Minister Rabin’s detail.
I went to the safe and retrieved the documents we had seized the night before. Lanny McCullah would be calling, and I wanted to confirm my earlier count of how many TS/SCI and secret-coded documents we had unearthed at the suspect’s apartment. As predicted, McCullah called me from headquarters and wanted to know “what the hell” was going on. My account only stoked his fire. “How many agents do you have on this?” he demanded. “What’s your next move? Where is Pollard now? Where are the documents?”
I informed him that the Rabin detail had ended, that now that I had my agents back, everyone was going to be working this case. We knew what needed to be done, and I was on top of it. I didn’t feel on top of it, but that wasn’t something I needed to tell Wyatt Earp.
Had the FBI stayed in the game I would have had to follow their lead, but they hadn’t, and now the onus was on me. Only eight o’clock and already I was tense. “I’m going to put together a surveillance and investigative plan,” I assured McCullah, sounding more confident than I felt. “But I’ll need some time.”
It bothered me that McCullah was taking his frustration out on me, but I understood how he felt. The Pollard matter was proving to be one giant mess. I would have been a lot more upset had I known the reason McCullah hadn’t been at NIS headquarters when we brought Pollard in for the interview. Lance Arnold told me several months later that the assistant director had had tickets to the Redskins football game! Nothing was going to interfere with Monday night football live.
When he found out Pollard was coming in later to take a polygraph, McCullah calmed down. I told him I had to go, not to worry, we would keep him informed.
“Make sure you do,” he said before releasing me. “I want to be updated on everything!”
With all the other pressure on me, I didn’t need headquarters breathing down my neck, but I had no choice in the matter. Before hunkering down with the surveillance plan, I went into Gerry Nance’s office to vent. He was still the acting special agent in charge.
“Gerry,” I announced in a calm voice, “I have to ask you for a big favor. I want you to call headquarters.” I paused, then yelled, “And tell them to quit calling me, to let me do my job, and to stay off my ass while I sort this out!” Of course, I didn’t expect Nance to make the call, but I sure felt better letting off steam. It wasn’t until years later that Nance told me he did in fact pass the message on to McCullah. I laughed. Maybe that’s why no one called me from headquarters for the rest of that day.
Around ten thirty that morning, Redman came into my office to tell me there was a problem with Pollard. I sighed. “What’s wrong with him now?”
“I’ve got him on hold. He says he isn’t feeling well and doesn’t want to come in for the polygraph.”
“I can’t believe it!” I said, hitting the desk with the palm of my hand. “Transfer the call to my office, will you?”
How was I going to handle the analyst this time? It was absolutely critical that Pollard not worm his way out of the polygraph. I had no idea he had already taken two such tests, one with the CIA and one with the NIS. Nor did I know of the hatred he harbored for the NIS as a result.
Pollard came on the line and I said hello and asked him what was going on. He answered that he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before and his stomach was upset. He didn’t think he could make it in for the polygraph.
Still trying to make light of the investigation without being threatening, I informed him that none of us had slept well the night before either. “It’s in your best interest to take this stupid polygraph test, Jay. Let’s get this over with once and for all,” I said, adding that once he had passed the test he could go back to work with a clean slate. That was a white lie. On account of the documents we’d found in his residence, he would never go back to work in the ATAC—or anywhere else in the government. For all intents and purposes, his work as an analyst was over.
Then Pollard made a comment that set off alarm bells in my head. “Ron, I don’t mind taking a polygraph if they only ask me about the Soviet Union or the Soviet bloc countries.”
If they only ask him about the Soviet Union or the Soviet bloc countries? For the first time I had a gut feeling that something was wrong—very wrong. My mind spun. Why would he make such a statement to me on the phone? What did it signify?
Up to this point, no one was close to believing Pollard was an outright spy, not Agent Redman, not myself, and certainly not the FBI. Commander Agee and Assistant Director McCullah suspected him, though of what they couldn’t be sure. It was imperative that we look at the case with open minds. Yes, Pollard could be fired for having classified documents in his possession, but making a criminal case out of it would take hard evidence, not subjective reasoning or panic-based conclusions.
What if this really was a worst-case scenario? We couldn’t let Pollard off the hook. This might be our last chance to get him on the box. If we couldn’t convince him to come in and take the test and he was spying for another country, he would flee the United States. There was almost nothing we could do to prevent it.
Gathering my thoughts, I said in a lighthearted voice, “Jay, you’re absolutely right. There’s no way you can’t pass this polygraph when they ask you about the Soviets and the bloc countries.” I was shooting from the hip again. What the analyst didn’t realize—or what he’d forgotten—was that the counterintelligence polygraph didn’t ask about specific countries, it was very general. The question was, Have you ever committed espionage or sabotage against the United States? “Yeah, you’ll pass it,” I went on. “I know that and you know that. That’s why you need to come in here and get this thing over with.” I reiterated that it wouldn’t take long and then he could move on with his life.
“I’m really too tired to drive in,” Pollard said, digging in his heels.
It was time to get firm with him or lose him forever. “Look, Jay, if you’re so tired, I don’t want you driving down here anyway. Stay right where you are. I’ll have agents from the office pick you up and drive you back home.” Then I raised my voice. “This mess can’t be put off any longer. We both have better things to do. So just wait there for my agents and don’t leave.”
At last, he agreed to come in and take the polygraph.
After hanging up the phone, I raced back to the office area where my agents were waiting. “Get to Pollard’s apartment right now, with a red light and siren if you have to, and bring him over here for a polygraph test.” They catapulted out of their seats and took off without further explanation. I wish I could remember their names today, but things were happening way too fast.
Thus we passed the second major hurdle with Pollard. Only later would I find out that he was stalling for time because his handler had instructed him to do so. Yagur’s order had clouded his judgment. If Pollard wanted to save his skin, he should have fled the country for Israel the night before, after we’d left his apartment. The analyst was an exceptionally bright man, but it was none too wise to call me late in the morning and say he was too tired to take a polygraph. By now he could have been driving up the East Coast for a flight out of New York, or making his way to Canada. It was foolish, also, to believe that Sella or Yagur would bail him out—but then, just about every action Pollard had taken during his career as a spy had been foolish.
Possessed of a king-size ego and lacking all common sense, much less knowledge of the workings of foreign counterintelligence, he was his own worst enemy. The Israelis hadn’t given him any security training. He’d been handing thousands of classified documents over to them every month, and they had done nothing to bring him under control. He had no escape plan. After all this neglect did he really believe, having gotten an order from his handler to stall for seventy-two hours, that someone from Israel would swoop down out of the sky and save him?
Gerry Nance came in shortly after my phone call with Pollard and, seeing how tense I was, asked if I wanted to join him for a quick bite at the officers club, within walking distance of our building. It would take the polygraph operators three or more hours to complete Pollard’s initial test, so I had the time. About forty-five minutes later Nance and I took the elevator down and were on our way out when my two agents came through the door with Pollard.
The analyst stopped in his tracks. “Ron,” he said in an urgent voice, “I need to talk to you before I take this polygraph.”
“Sure, Jay,” I said, taken aback. I looked at Nance and told him to go ahead without me, thanked the agents for picking up Pollard, then escorted him into the office spaces at the far end of the hallway that had been set aside for polygraph testing. I had no clue what the wayward analyst wanted to talk to me about. What I was about to find out would wake up the FBI and put everyone at NIS headquarters into a tailspin.