Israel is setting aside $5,000 a month for Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who spied for Israel, a new book alleges.
In addition, high-level U.S. and Israeli officials continue to talk about sending Pollard to Israel in an international spy swap, writes Wolf Blitzer in his new book “Territory of Lies” (Harper and Row, New York, 336 pages).
Israel has declined to comment on Blitzer’s report. Pollard has called an excerpt from the book a “fiction,” according to Bernard Henderson, Pollard’s father-in-law and leader of an organization that advocates his release.
The book again thrusts into the headlines a case that became a major embarrassment for Israel and at one point posed a threat to U.S. Israel relations.
Pollard pleaded guilty in 1986 to passing hundreds of classified U.S. intelligence documents to Israeli agents. He is serving a life sentence at a maximum-security federal prison in Marion, III.
Pollard’s wife, Anne, pleaded guilty to lesser charges and is serving a five-year term at a federal prison hospital in Rochester, Minn.
Among the documents Pollard gave to the Israelis, according to Blitzer, were detailed aerial photographs of Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunis, later used by Israel for the October 1985 bombing raid on the home of PLO chief Yasir Arafat; information on Soviet weapons shipments to Arab countries; and information about the chemical warfare capabilities of Syria, Iraq and Libya.
The U.S. government indicted former Israeli air force Col. Aviem Sella as a conspirator in the case and named three others as unindicted coconspirators. All remain in Israel.
FAMILY NOT INFORMED
The Israeli government said the operation was the work of “rogue” agents, operating with no political authority. While Blitzer uncovered no evidence of involvement at the highest level of the Israeli government, he writes that Israeli investigators believe some Cabinet ministers “probably suspected.”
Blitzer, who is Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, said the $5,000 being set aside for Pollard is double the amount Pollard was receiving from his Israeli handlers during the year he spied for Israel.
“This is standard operating procedure in most intelligence agencies, to keep paying captured agents. In Israel, the tradition is the salary is doubled,” Blitzer said in a telephone interview Thursday.
Pollard’s father, Dr. Morris Pollard of South Bend, Ind., said Wednesday that “we knew nothing about” the payments and did not hear about them during a visit to Israel last week.
“I don’t know what to say about it,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s certainly generous of them to do it. He’s been abused very severely.”
But Bernard Henderson issued a statement denying the report outright. “The truth is the Pollards lack even a few dollars necessary to buy supplies from their prison commissaries,” he said.
Blitzer writes that U.S. and Israeli officials have been discussing a number of scenarios that would send the Pollards to Israel. Israel may be asked to relax its reluctance to extradite American criminals living in Israel or to make a swap for Soviet spies in its own prisons.
However, there is considerable opposition within the U.S. Justice Department, which would prefer that Pollard stay behind bars at least until he is eligible for parole in 1997, said Blitzer.
The Justice Department has no comment on the book, according to a spokesman.
‘PERSONAL AXES TO GRIND’
In his initial reaction to the book, based on a excerpt in the April issue of Washingtonian magazine, Jonathan Pollard said Blitzer’s account of his arrest by U.S. officials and “abandonment” by his Israeli handlers was based on interviews with individuals “with personal axes to grind.”
“One of my greatest concerns in the fallout to my wife and family that the article’s blackening of my character may lead to,” he said in a statement released by Henderson.
By contrast, Morris Pollard said he was expecting a “sympathetic treatment” in Blitzer’s book, which he had not yet read.
He labeled the Washingtonian excerpt “frivolous” and “sensationalized,” but said he had called Blitzer Wednesday morning and told him he “came off very well” on ABC’s Nightline treatment of the case Tuesday night.
“The book is a complete account. For the first time it tells all sides of what happened,” said Blitzer. He said he based his book on interviews with all sides, including two interviews with Pollard in prison, and thousands of documents.
“There are things that will make the Israelis happy, other things the U.S. will not be happy with,” he said. “But my job was not to make people happy, but to tell the truth of what happened.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
