Jonathan Pollard, who spied for Israel, gets hero’s welcome from Netanyahu
Jonathan J. Pollard, the American who served 30 years in prison for spying for Israel in a Cold War-era espionage case that had been a thorn in relations between the two allies, arrived in Israel early Wednesday to a carefully staged, if relatively subdued, hero’s welcome from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The predawn scene unfolded with a camera rolling, as Netanyahu, who has just begun what will be a bitterly contested campaign leading to elections in March, met Pollard, who completed his parole last month, and his wife, Esther, at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv.
The couple descended from a private jet, kissed the tarmac and recited a Jewish prayer of thanks reserved for new experiences. Netanyahu added one of his own, praising God for “releasing the bound” — though the prayer is ordinarily said upon waking to refer to freeing the worshipper from the bonds of sleep.
The prime minister then handed Pollard, who was granted Israeli citizenship in 1995 while in prison, an Israeli identification card.
“You’re home,” Netanyahu said.
A U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, Pollard gave a range of classified documents to Israel starting in 1984. His disclosures exposed the abilities of the American spy agencies, potentially damaged intelligence collection efforts and risked exposing secrets, CIA and Defense
Department officials said in classified documents prepared after his arrest.
“We are ecstatic to be home at last after 35 years,” Pollard, 66, said. “And we thank the people and the prime minister of Israel for bringing us home. No one could be prouder of his country or of this leader than we are. And we hope to become productive citizens as soon and as quickly as possible and to get on with our lives here.”
The spectacle was most likely the final chapter in a long and painful saga that has irritated the IsraeliAmerican relationship.
The jet that delivered the Pollards belonged to a casino owned by Sheldon Adelson, the Republican billionaire who is a longtime benefactor of Netanyahu’s, the Israeli news media reported. Adelson, one of the world’s richest men and a key supporter of President Donald
Trump’s, had long lobbied for Pollard’s release.
After his arrest in 1985, Pollard pleaded guilty in a deal with prosecutors who agreed to seek a yearslong sentence. But the judge, relying on a once-classified damage assessment written by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, sentenced him to life in prison. Pollard ultimately served three decades behind bars, the longest stretch in prison for an American who illegally gave material to an allied government.
In October 1987, the CIA, with Pollard’s cooperation, began working on a damage assessment. Though a redacted version of the document has been made public, much remains classified. The report found that while the Israelis did not request information on American military plans or some of the most delicate topics, the “sheer quantity” of disclosures posed a risk to intelligence sources and collection methods. “Pollard’s operation has few parallels among known U.S. espionage cases,” the CIA report said.
Pollard was released from prison in November 2015, leaving a federal penitentiary in North Carolina to live in New York. The conditions of his parole, unsuccessfully contested by his lawyer and the Israeli government, did not allow him to travel outside the United States for five years without permission.
American national security officials had long objected to any easing of Pollard’s punishment, highlighting the damage he caused to American intelligence collection. But objections from intelligence officers largely became muted over time, with some acknowledging that Pollard had paid his debt.
In Israel, Pollard’s case became a cause célèbre of some on the right wing.
But others saw him with more jaundiced eyes, noting that he had sold American secrets for large sums of money. And others faulted him for having created enormous problems for Jews in the U.S. government who felt that their loyalties had been suddenly called into question.