SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) – Jonathan Pollard, the Jewish American jailed for spying for Israel, first offered classified information to Australia, according to a report.
Lydia Jechorek, an FBI agent assigned to the Pollard case after his arrest in 1985, told Newsmax, a conservative American news organization, that Pollard had attempted to spy for another “friendly country” before spying for Israel. Jechorek said that he had admitted this to her after his arrest.
While she declined to name the country, Monday’s Newsmax report quoted John L. Martin, who was chief of the Justice Department’s counterespionage section, as saying: “After Australia rejected his overtures, Pollard spied for Israel.”
In the 2006 book “Capturing Jonathan Pollard,” Ronald Olive, the Naval Investigative Service agent in charge of Pollard’s case, mentioned the Australian spying effort briefly, but it was not widely picked up by the media, the Newsmax article said.
Pollard has renounced his U.S. citizenship and is now an Israeli citizen.
