U.S. Denies Israeli Spy Sought Data on Iran Arms

Justice Department officials denied Friday a published report that Israel directed its Washington-based spy, Jonathan Jay Pollard, to collect information about Iran’s need for U.S.-manufactured weapons to facilitate the secret Jerusalem-Tehran arms trade.

The Jerusalem Post newspaper, in a dispatch from Washington, said Justice Department documents showed that Pollard’s Israeli contacts told him in 1985 to find out everything he could about arms sales to Iran.

The English-language Israeli newspaper said the documents showed that, at the time of his arrest in November, 1985, Pollard had just completed a report to Yosef Yagur at the Israeli consulate in New York about missile systems “which might be available for sale to Iran.”

When asked about the report, Justice Department spokesman Patrick S. Korten said: “Nothing connected with the Pollard case has anything to do with the sale of U.S. arms to Iran. There is absolutely nothing in that case on those sales, period.”

Other Justice Department officials said that, if the prosecutors working on the Pollard case had obtained such information, it could have tipped them off to the intricate U.S.-Israel-Iran arms-for-hostages deal. There is no indication that the prosecutors knew anything about that transaction until a Beirut magazine broke the story on Nov. 3.

Pollard, a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy, pleaded guilty to espionage charges June 4. He is to be sentenced Jan. 27.

At the time he entered his plea, Pollard said he had supplied Israel with information about weapons systems the United States planned to sell to Israel’s potential Arab adversaries. Nothing was said then about arms sales to Iran.

One U.S. official speculated that Israeli sources might have leaked the story to the Jerusalem Post in an effort to link the Pollard case to U.S.-Israeli cooperation to gain the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon. Such a link might help to reduce Pollard’s ultimate sentence.