Chapter 18

Pollard: the Spy amongst friends

In 2001, an extensive Israeli intelligence network was dismantled in the United States. It comprised of more than 100 alleged fine-arts students, who were, in fact, agents with links to advanced technology companies. The fake students were quietly arrested by the FBI and the majority were subsequently expelled, with only a dozen or so remaining imprisoned in the United states.

The FBI neither confirmed nor denied the information when it was revealed by an investigator for the American Fox News channel. Naturally, the Israeli authorities vehemently denied it. However, Fox News is generally considered to be very close to the conservative Right and therefore on the side of President Bush. It may therefore be that Washington approved or even encouraged what was an embarrassing revelation for Israel. What is even more interesting is that the arrests of the Israeli agents took place during the Summer of 2001, just before the events of 11 September. Some of the agents in the Israeli network had visited the places where the suspected Al-Qaida members responsible for diverting the planes had lived. Was this just a coincidence? If not, what were the Israeli spies doing? Were they watching future terrorists? If so, did they have information about the planned attacks? Again, if this is true then why did not Israel, which is often jokingly referred to as the 51st state of the United States, warn its best friend?

There are many troubling questions that boost what is a very thorny and sensitive issue regarding Israeli spying in America. This is because there were precedents that had already caused a stir. The Pollard Affair, for example, which was revealed in 1985 by the US Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, is considered one of the most serious spy stories in US history!

If the issue of Israeli spying activity in the US is so sensitive, it is because the two countries had very close ties, not to mention the fact that there was a community of 6 million Jewish people living in North America. Israeli intelligence was often tempted to recruit from the Jewish diaspora, leading to the issue of dual loyalty: loyalty to one’s country and the desire to help the Jewish state. This was a very serious question as this helped feed the suspicions of an entire community and the spread of anti-Semitism.

At least officially, the Israeli services tried to avoid appealing to American Jews for espionage matters. In reality, however, it was quite the contrary. American Jews often held prominent places in administrations, businesses and the media, not to mention the intelligence services. It was therefore tempting to offer them to put aside the American citizenship and remind them that their first priority should be to the help Israel. Of course, this was significant for those willing to betray their true country, but the Israelis had a very strong argument to convince them: they told them that the Americans were keeping secrets from them, especially information essential for the security of Israel. It was therefore the duty of future agents to collect this information, without feeling that they were betraying anyone.

There were many examples of this. In 1960 it was discovered that the owner of a uranium treatment plant was providing information to the Israeli consulate. In 1977, the deputy director of the US Air Force was dismissed: he had been sending classified information to Israel. In the 1980s a CIA advisor was dismissed for the same reasons and a manufacturer, who was also a NATO advisor, was accused of illegally exporting atomic bomb detonators to Israel. There are at least another forty similar cases of the same.

Such acts of disloyalty were therefore not as rare as one might have originally imagined. Morality does not exist in the world of intelligence. What is more, Israel was able to make serious breaches to its alliance with the US when its own interests commanded it. In 1967, during the Six Day War, Israeli forces did not hesitate to attack a US navy ship that was sailing too close to its shores: more than thirty sailors on board perished. However, most of these cases were classified and have not been pursued further. Besides, it was important to look after the Israeli ally who was much needed in the Middle East. This why the Pollard Affair was the most spectacular, mainly because it was made public.

There was definitely an American desire behind this disclosure of information. Having said that, the case was so big that it could not be kept quiet or hidden away like so many others. It is likely that in making the affair public, the Americans wanted to send some kind of warning to the Israelis. Furthermore, even within the government, not all minsters were on the same wavelength. If President Reagan was decidedly pro-Israel (it was under his presidency that several agreements promoting military cooperation were signed, with $3.5 billion donated to Israel every year), the same cannot be said for other members of the White House administration. For example, the Secretary of State for Defense, Caspar Weinberger, was certainly not pro-Israel. He was to play a big role in this case and one might even suggest that he was not a complete stranger to the revelations made in the press.

Jonathan Pollard was an employee of the US Naval Intelligence Service and thus under the command of Weinberger. Coming from a Jewish family that had settled in Indiana, the relative affluence of his family had allowed him to study at a good university. Yet he was a very strange character and had trouble separating truth from fiction. He was an inveterate liar and a fantasist, he even told his friends at Stamford University that he had links with Mossad or that he was the son of a former CIA agent.

The young man was obviously already obsessed with the secret services. More worryingly, he also had a serious drug addiction, with those who knew him well even arguing that it was cocaine. This meant he was someone who was not only not very unbalanced mentally, but also led a lot of people to be suspicious of him.

After university, Pollard tried to join the CIA but was rejected: his lie detector test was disastrous and he had clearly underestimated his drug problem. So Pollard turned to the navy, which also had an intelligence unit. Any investigation into his personal life had to be brief, if not botched, as his application was accepted. After all, maybe the recruiting officers felt that the subordinate analyst position he was offered would not give him access to any secret data.

Yet Pollard proved to be a very good analyst. After the terrible attack on the US Marine’s building in Beirut, he was promoted and transferred to a new organisation that acted as a terrorism warning centre, close to Washington, which was answerable to the US Navy.

In 1984 he was promoted again and now looked at ‘threat analysis’. This meant that he had access to terrorism information deemed ‘classified’ or ‘top secret’, which came from all branches of the US intelligence network. It also allowed him to see the top secret databases of these organisations. Information that would go far beyond the strict framework of terrorism...

Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman⁹⁹

How Pollard’s American employers could ignore his strange behaviour and his boasts and his lies as a student remains a mystery. Pollard had unsuccessfully requested to join the CIA in 1977, two years before he joined the Navy. The DIS, the investigative department of the Ministry of Defence, made its routine background checks before enlisting him in the navy intelligence: they questioned his father as well as some former classmates from Fletcher High School. But the CIA did not provide the file that they had on Pollard, which concluded by saying that he was ‘an inveterate liar, a show off, a zealous Zionist and a drug addict’. In 1981, the Navy restricted his access to secret documents due to his psychiatric problems as evidenced by his bizarre behaviour. Pollard even claimed to have a friend in South African intelligence, but his bosses soon discovered this was a lie when the man in question came on an official visit to the US. They invited Pollard to see a psychiatrist, but he spent six months battling the administration and finally had the decision annulled on the grounds that they had no concrete evidence against him.

In 1984, during a party at the home of a Jewish businessman from New York, Pollard met a colonel in the Israeli Air Force, Aviem Sella. The meeting was certainly not a coincidence. Sella was a brilliant pilot who had come to the US to study computer science. Pollard was very impressed with him, a man who had had countless military exploits in Israel. There was now a real-life hero in front of him! Yet the hero was to make him a spy: Sella, the brilliant Israeli officer, was also occasionally linked to his country’s secret services. The Israelis had been keeping an eye on Pollard for many years, and now believed the time was right to recruit him.

The service behind this endeavour was at that time relatively unknown: the Lekem was a secret Israeli intelligence organisation that mainly dealt with gathering scientific information. It had been created on the initiative of Shimon Peres while he had been Defence Minister, and played a key role in the development of Israel’s nuclear programme. In 1984 the Lekem was led by the legendary Rafi Eitan, or ‘Dirty Rafi’ as he was familiarly known. This nickname came from when he fled through the sewers after an attack against British forces, in the war that preceded the creation of Israel. Eitan, who was also a protégé of Ariel Sharon, is perhaps best-known for leading the commando group that kidnapped Eichmann.

So why was it Lekem who had to recruit Pollard? This was a secret organisation that was primarily interested in scientific research. There are two reasons: firstly, Eitan never refused the opportunity to trump another Israeli intelligence agency. Secondly, Pollard was of great interest to them: the intelligence services of the US Navy were in possession of countless bits of technological information, such as codes, procedures, trade secrets etc., as well as other valuable data.

The privileged relationship that the US shared with Israel should have piqued his conscience, but ‘Dirty Rafi’ had no such qualms. For him, only the outcome mattered and he was convinced that despite the agreements reached between the two countries, they [the Americans] were continuing to hold back vital information. Eitan played on the fact that Lekem did not officially exist: only the highest Israeli authorities knew of its operations.

At the time, it was a government of national unity at the controls. Shamir was the Foreign Secretary, Rabin for defence, and Shimon Peres, who was responsible for the creation of Lekem, was Prime Minister. It is therefore likely that the Prime Minister covered up the operation and afterwards informed the other two. Of course, the Israeli government would later deny knowing anything about the whole affair. But that is the rule: whenever something goes wrong, always blame it on the lower ranks.

There is further evidence of the Israeli government’s duplicity in this case: the nature of the information provided by Pollard could leave no doubt of its American origin. Yet valuable information such as this had to be communicated to the authorities, on the condition that they would then exploit it to good effect. Therefore, Peres and the others could not ignore the fact that Eitan had a source in the US...

After this first contact with Sella, Pollard was put to the test and asked to prove how effective he could be and the initial information he sent to Lekem was dazzling: Pollard had gathered information on the military programmes of Israel’s neighbouring Arab countries - information that the Israelis were unaware of. The most important thing the documents told them was that their suspicions had been right: the Americans were not telling them everything they knew.

Despite their links with Israel, the United States also had close relationships with a number of so-called ‘moderate’ Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, but also with Egypt and Jordan. They sold them weapons, which they clearly had no intention of informing their Israeli ally about and in a way this justified Israel’s decision to spy on them. Aware of the rich harvest of information Pollard could provide, the authorities in Jerusalem authorised Lekem to continue using him, fully aware of the political risk the operation posed.

Initially, Colonel Sella continued as Pollard’s case officer and the two men became friends. However, this could not have lasted as the Israeli pilot was not an expert in the world of espionage. His role was taken over by a professional intelligence officer called Yagour, who was officially a scientific attaché at Israeli Consulate in New York. This also meant that he benefitted from diplomatic immunity, which Sella did not.

From now on contact with Pollard became much stricter. Aware of the rather disturbing psychological profile of their agent, the Israelis made sure that he was buttered up the right way. What a pathological liar like Pollard needed above all was recognition and so his employers never failed to let him know that he was doing them a great service. This was, of course, the absolute truth: the documents that Pollard had provided them with were genuinely of the upmost importance. He was collecting information from the databases of the US departments to which he had access, or from the secret archives that he was allowed to view and then printing them. When it came to original documents, such as satellite photos, he borrowed them long enough to show them to his case officer. This was a risky procedure as leaving the office with top secret documents meant that he was at the mercy of having to undergo an unexpected search. It was a game he would eventually lose.

Jacques Derogy and Hesi Carmel¹⁰⁰

[In this extract the two journalists describe the meeting between Pollard and Colonel Sella at the home of Steven Stern, a rich Jewish man from New York.]

Sella sought the agreement of his boss, General Amos Lapidot, who encouraged him to submit a report to Rafi Eitan. Eitan was the head of Lekem, the obscure scientific bureau with links to the Ministry of Defence and which wasn’t even on the CIA’s radar of Israeli intelligence, and he gave Sella the green light to proceed. Pollard brought with him a file of top-quality information. Eitan was excited and believed the chance had come for him to outdo his Mossad rivals, but his subordinates at Lekem were not pleased: firstly, the service had no mandate to spy on Americans and secondly, Pollard’s handwriting left little to be desired. Consequently, they asked for a document from their leader showing that they had warned him of using such a dangerous character and that Colonel Sella should not act as his case officer. Determined to have his own way, Eitan flew to the US to convince Sella to keep manipulating his course, assuring him that he had been authorised to do so by the authorities.

After having received the documents, the Israelis followed the following procedure: every fortnight, Pollard would visit a house bought by Lekem near Washington, where he could make use of an ultra-modern photocopier. Once the documents had been duplicated, he could then return to his office and put the various bits of paper and photographs back where he had found them.

Pollard was a spendthrift and crippled by debt: he was always in need of money and the money he received from Lekem was relatively good. With one month’s salary he bought a ring for his fiancée followed by a honeymoon in Europe where they stayed in the very best hotels. He even opened a Swiss bank account and in total earned tens of thousands of dollars. Pollard clearly was not just acting out of sympathy for Israel. However, it was not all bad for Lekem: it is far easier to keep a spy on side who is being paid. Pollard received more and more money, thus reinforcing the idea that he was providing a considerable service to Israel, which psychologically was very important and meant that he worked even harder.

From now on, Pollard worked on demand. At the beginning of his collaboration with Lekem it was he who had taken the initiative to find documents that might be relevant to Israel. Yet he was now being told where to look and as he was being forced to take more and more risks, he was given an Israeli passport (under a different name, of course), in order to keep him quiet. This meant that if things did go wrong then he would be able to settle in Israel, or at least, that is clearly what they wanted him to believe.

Pollard handed over thousands and thousands of pages of documents including information on the US Navy’ communication systems, Soviet military equipment in the Middle East, arms sales to Arab countries and a number of satellite photos. If the Israeli Air Force was able to bomb Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in Tunis in October 1985, then it was no doubt down to the aerial photographs provided by Pollard.

This incident certainly gave various specialists in Washington something to think about. The bombing surprised them as they knew very well that the Israelis could not have had the aerial photographs to carry out such an operation. Only the US had access to such things. As a result, the idea that there might be a mole in their midst began to take form.

At the same time, Pollard was increasingly coming under the suspicions of his superiors in the US Navy, not least because of his lifestyle: Pollard and his wife appeared to be positively rolling in money. This recklessness was no doubt due to a lack of professionalism from Lekem, and their Mossad rivals would certainly not have allowed one of their agents to visit the best tailors or dine in the most expensive restaurants. They would also show a similar amateurism when their spy was finally unmasked.

On several occasions Pollard was caught telling lies, inventing false pretences to view highly confidential archives, or lying about how he spent his time. More worryingly, a colleague saw him leave work with a large amount of documents, which turned out to be secret ones, and which should never have left the building where Pollard worked.

The spy was thus under increasingly worrying suspicion, yet it was the illegal installation of a camera in his office that would bring the truth to light. The navy’s counterintelligence unit discovered that Pollard was consulting documents that had nothing to do with his work on terrorism. Yet when asked politely, Pollard had an answer for everything: if he was consulting documents that had no relevance to his work, it was because he had discovered a major case of espionage.

His defence was clever but he was to make a vital mistake. Allowed to call his wife, he told her, using a coded message, that she should quickly destroy some documents that were stored at their home. His wife panicked and could do no better than to cram the papers into a suitcase and entrust it to their neighbours, who in turn were so wary and suspicious of what was going on, that they alerted the authorities.

However, Pollard had not yet been arrested and was allowed to return home that same evening. He must have known that his time was up and so called his case officer, Yagour, demanding to be evacuated as soon as possible. Unfortunately, he soon discovered that contrary to what he had been told, there was no escape plan or anything for that matter that would help him.

Believing that he had been let go, Pollard made one last desperate attempt and drove with his wife to the Israeli Embassy in Washington. As the gates were opening for another car, he forced his way in, but was outflanked by the FBI, who had already laid siege to the Embassy. Inside, the security services knew what had to be done and to avoid an incident with the FBI, they sent him away, despite the fact that he had an Israeli passport.

All the Lekem agents who had dealt with Pollard suddenly rushed to leave the US. As for the abandoned spy, he was arrested and immediately confessed to what he had done. The result was predictable: the United States were furious with Israel, while Jerusalem, after initially denying it, soon apologised and blamed Eitan and his subordinates. Finally, each side tried their best to minimalise the significance of the whole affair.

Yet Pollard’s betrayal, despite its extreme seriousness, did not fundamentally harm the relationship between the two countries: the US and Israel are also linked by other important interests. However, it is true that the affair definitely cast a temporary frost between the two. It should also be emphasised that in spite of the continued urgings of the Israeli authorities, which have been repeated several times over the years, including in recent election campaigns in Israel, Washington has never agreed to pardon Pollard, who was sentenced to a lifetime in prison.

During the Wye Plantation negotiations between Israel and Palestine, Prime Minister Netanyahu threatened that he would not sign it unless Pollard was released. But Clinton did not give in to such blackmail. So why such obstinacy from the Americans? After all, Pollard had spent almost twenty-five years in prison and was a citizen of one of the United State’s closest allies in the Middle East. What is more, in Israel Pollard had become somewhat of a national hero in the same vein as Eli Cohen.¹⁰¹

In order to understand why the Americans insisted on keeping him in prison, it is important to bear in mind the vehemence with which Caspar Weinberger described the case, even going so far as to say that Pollard should be shot. Indeed, the Pollard Affair went beyond that of simple spying between the two countries, as such cases of espionage had already been revealed before. Instead, it must be seen in the context of the time: in the 1980s, the Israelis were doing everything they could to ensure that Soviet Jews were allowed to emigrate to Israel. Among these Jews were highly skilled people, such as senior scientists, and others who were of great interest to the Israelis. But Moscow was not interested, and so the idea of a trade formed, whereby Israel could use the information provided by Pollard, which included military information that might in turn have been of interest to the Soviets, such as the range of techniques used by the US Navy to detect and track Soviet submarines. Information such as this could prove vital in case of any conflict. The Israelis presumably communicated this information with Moscow and in return, many Soviet Jews were suddenly given permission to go to Israel. However, one way or another the US intelligence agencies had got to the bottom of the case and Jonathan Pollard had to pay the ultimate price.

The famous American journalist, Seymour Hersch,¹⁰² claims to have been told by certain CIA officials, furious at the idea that the White House might one day bow to Israeli pressure and pardon Pollard, that they planned to block any such pardon by revealing that he had, in fact, caused serious harm to the USA. This damage was far worse than might previously have been imagined, as some of his information had actually ended up in the hands of the Soviets.