Jonathan Pollard

Jonathan Pollard (born August 7, 1954, Galveston, Texas, U.S.) is an American civilian defense analyst who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 for having sold classified information to Israel; he was paroled in 2015. His arrest caused acute embarrassment to Israel, whose officials were caught spying on a key ally. Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres apologized for Pollard’s activities and dissolved the scientific intelligence agency that had worked with him.

While Pollard was young, his family moved to South Bend, Indiana, where his father was a professor of microbiology at the University of Notre Dame. He graduated from Stanford University in 1976 with a degree in international relations. In 1977 he was rejected for a job with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after an investigation uncovered his use of drugs and his penchant for telling stories (some of which gave the impression that he was an agent of Israeli intelligence), and he began graduate studies in law and diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. In 1979, when he got a job at the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office in Maryland, the CIA did not make its damaging report available to those investigating his fitness. After he was caught lying on the job in 1981, his security clearance was reduced, and he was told to seek psychiatric help, but his clearance was restored after he filed a grievance.

In 1984 he was assigned to the U.S. Navy’s Anti-Terrorist Alert Center. With access to all government documents that could help with his job, he contacted officials at the Israeli embassy who were connected to that country’s Bureau of Scientific Relations and began to supply them with boxes and suitcases full of information from the Departments of State, Defense, and Justice, the CIA, and the National Security Agency. On October 25, 1985, he was seen carrying a large bundle from his office to his wife’s car and was placed under surveillance. On November 21 he was arrested outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, where he and his wife had gone in hope of asylum; his wife was arrested the next day.

Pollard pleaded guilty to having conveyed classified information to a foreign state and cooperated with investigators. Nevertheless, in March 1987 he was given the maximum sentence of life in prison. His wife was sentenced to five years. At sentencing, Pollard claimed to have been motivated by “sectarianism,” though Israeli agents had agreed to pay him $30,000 each year for a period of 10 years and had already paid him more than $45,000. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger wrote to the judge that Pollard had seriously compromised national security.

Pollard entered the federal prison system in Marion, Illinois, and then was transferred to Butler, North Carolina. His wife was released from a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1989. In 1990 the couple divorced; Pollard remarried while in prison, and his first wife eventually moved to Israel. In 1996 the State of Israel granted Pollard citizenship. Numerous pro-Israel groups continued to call for Pollard’s release from prison, as did Israeli officials and government leaders. In 2015 he was granted parole, and on November 20 he was let out of prison. As part of the conditions for his release, Pollard was barred from leaving the United States for five years. After completing his parole, he moved to Israel in December 2020.