Jonathan Pollard

Jonathan Jay Pollard (Hebrew: יונתן פולארד, romanized: Yonatan Polard, born August 7, 1954) is an American-born Israeli spy and former American intelligence analyst who was jailed for spying for Israel. In 1984, Pollard sold numerous state secrets, including the National Security Agency's ten-volume manual on how the US gathers its signal intelligence and disclosed the names of thousands of people who had cooperated with US intelligence agencies. He was apprehended in 1985 and in subsequent proceedings agreed to a plea deal, pleaded guilty to spying for and providing top-secret classified information to Israel. Pollard admitted shopping his services—successfully, in some cases—to other countries. In 1987, he was sentenced to life in prison for violations of the Espionage Act. The Israeli government acknowledged part of its role in Pollard's espionage in 1987 and issued a formal apology to the US, but did not admit to paying him until 1998. Over the course of his imprisonment, Israeli officials, US-Israeli activist groups and some American politicians continually lobbied for a reduction or commutation of his sentence. In defense of his actions, Pollard said the American intelligence establishment collectively endangered Israel's security by withholding crucial information. Opposing any form of clemency for Pollard were many active and retired US officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, former CIA director George Tenet; several former US secretaries of defense; a bi-partisan group of US congressional leaders; and members of the US Intelligence Community. They maintained that the damage to US national security due to Pollard's espionage was much more severe, wide-ranging, and enduring than acknowledged publicly. Although Pollard argued that he only supplied Israel with information critical to its security, opponents stated that he had no way of knowing what the Israelis had received through legitimate exchanges and that much of the data he compromised had nothing...