Espionage Spying Between Friends

By William E. Smith

No one in Israel was mincing words. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin called it a "real disaster, a real wound in Israeli-U.S. relations." Foreign Minister Shimon Peres admitted that Israel had made a "regretful mistake." Declared former Foreign Minister Abba Eban: "This is the most difficult moment in the history of Israel's international relations, especially because the wrongdoing was done here."

The disaster, the wound, the mistake, the wrongdoing turned on the case of Jonathan Jay Pollard, 32, an American naval intelligence analyst, who was given a sentence of life imprisonment last week for spying in Israel's behalf against the U.S. Pollard's wife Anne, 26, was condemned to prison for five years. In Israel this final denouement of the Pollard affair precipitated a painful self-examination of intelligence operations as well as worries about the future of the special relationship between Israel and the U.S.

% The saga of Jonathan Pollard the spy began in the spring of 1984, when he first met Colonel Aviam Sella, one of Israel's best-known younger military officers, through a mutual acquaintance. The Israeli colonel at the time was taking a course in computer engineering at New York University. Pollard offered to spy for the Israelis and soon began to steal documents from the Naval Investigative Service in Suitland, Md., where he worked. On a trip to Paris that fall, he met Yosef Yagur, scientific attache at the Israeli consulate in New York City, and Rafi Eitan, the former deputy head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. Eitan was running the small, little-known intelligence unit to which Pollard was passing information. Month after month, Pollard delivered highly classified documents to the apartment of Irit Erb, a secretary at the Israeli embassy in Washington, where the material was photocopied.

In November 1985, co-workers finally noted that Pollard was taking classified papers home with him and informed the FBI. During the ensuing interrogation, Pollard phoned his wife and alerted her to what was happening by using the code word "cactus." Anne Henderson-Pollard then warned the Israelis of the impending danger and tried unsuccessfully to dispose of a suitcase full of classified documents. A few days later the Pollards drove to the Israeli-embassy compound, where they apparently hoped to gain refuge and perhaps political asylum. But the Israelis, realizing the Pollards were being followed by the FBI, turned them away, and the pair were soon arrested. Sella, Yagur and Erb quietly slipped out of the country.

In a world in which spying between friendly nations is not uncommon, what was unusual about the Pollard case? For one thing, the sheer volume of the intelligence material Pollard stole and turned over to Israel. According to the Government, if all these documents were stacked in one place, the resulting mountain of paper would be 6 ft. wide, 6 ft. deep and 10 ft. high. Furthermore, the material stolen covered a wide range of highly sensitive subjects, from nuclear facilities in Iraq and Pakistan to Soviet surface-to- air-missile capabilities to the antiaircraft defenses around the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunis. Israel later staged an air attack on the P.L.O. buildings, killing at least 60 Tunisians and Palestinians. Declared Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger: "It is difficult for me to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant in view of the breadth, the critical importance to the U.S. and the high sensitivity of the information he sold to Israel."

Throughout the case, Pollard's attorneys attempted to portray their client as an idealistic Zionist whose actions were based on his concern for Israel's security and survival. The prosecution, however, pointed out that Pollard had received some $50,000 for his espionage and, had he remained in the service of the Israelis for an additional nine years, would have wound up with at least $500,000.

The defense also based its case on the contention that spying for Israel, a close U.S. ally, was fundamentally different from spying for, say, the Soviet Union and that nobody could prove Pollard's actions had actually harmed his country. The prosecution took a dim view of that argument. Explains John Martin, the Justice Department's chief of internal security: "God forbid that the day should come when we would have the burden of showing that not only did a spy give up information on nuclear weapons but that those weapons were used under hostile conditions."

Outside the courtroom, Pollard and his wife were making statements that were as legally compromising as anything in their testimony. In a letter published in the Jerusalem Post, Pollard wrote of his "absolute obligation" to spy for Israel and alluded to circumstances in which a person might be forced to use "situational ethics" as a guide to his conduct. His wife, interviewed on CBS's 60 Minutes, spoke of the responsibility of American Jews to aid Israel. Said she: "I feel my husband and I did what we were expected to do, what our moral obligation was as Jews ((and)) as human beings, and I have no regrets about that."

In an unusually emotional courtroom finale, the Pollards pleaded desperately for clemency. But despite the fact that Pollard entered a guilty plea last summer and since then had been cooperating to some degree with the Government in fingering the Israeli officials with whom he had worked, U.S. District Court Judge Aubrey Robinson Jr. concluded that Pollard's crime merited the harshest punishment the court could impose.

When the case first broke in late 1985, the U.S. was not yet aware of the seriousness of the espionage, and accepted Israeli promises of assistance in settling the affair. The Justice Department wanted to proceed with the trial of Pollard and the indictment of his Israeli contacts, but the State Department argued that American relations with Israel should receive primary consideration. Secretary of State George Shultz spoke of Israeli "cooperation" on the case, and State Department Legal Adviser Abraham Sofaer headed a delegation that was sent to Israel to collect the documents Pollard had stolen. According to court records, Sofaer returned with a mere 163 documents out of the thousands that had been taken.

Gradually the Administration's anger increased as it realized the gravity of the security breach and the difficulty of ascertaining exactly what had happened. Moreover, though Jerusalem still insisted that Pollard had been part of a "rogue" spy team, Washington began to suspect that those who had worked with him were actually being rewarded. Eitan, who had headed the Pollard operation, was appointed board chairman of Israel Chemicals, a large government-owned company. Two weeks ago Colonel Sella was named commander of one of Israel's most important air bases, Tel Nof.

After learning of Sella's promotion, the Administration canceled a joint American-Israeli air-force training course and put Tel Nof off limits to U.S. officers and other officials. In addition, the Administration threatened to suspend its policy of military cooperation with the Israeli air force unless Sella's appointment was rescinded. Last week a federal grand jury in Washington issued an indictment against Sella.

Israel's Foreign Minister Peres is undoubtedly right in his judgment that the "body of relations" between the U.S. and Israel is strong and can withstand the shock of the Pollard affair. But the case raises troubling questions about the proprieties of espionage between allies. Says the Justice Department's Martin: "Even as friendly as you are, there are times when national interests are different. It is up to policymakers to decide who gets what. We can't have individuals secretly providing information to any friend or foe."

With reporting by Ron Ben-Yishai/Jerusalem and Anne Constable/Washington