Goal of Freeing Spy Gains Support : Espionage: Five years and a war have passed since Jonathan Pollard began a life sentence for selling U.S. secrets to Israel. His defenders seek a new trial, a reduced sentence, or clemency.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — In Morris Pollard’s eyes there are no lost causes--not the cancer and exotic diseases he has fought as a scientist, and certainly not the personal crusade that consumes him: freedom for his son, a spy.

Jonathan Jay Pollard sold top-secret U.S. documents to Israel. That, his father says, was a terrible blunder, the fruit of a misguided scheme and a crime that should be punished--but not by life imprisonment.

The Pollards have been spreading that word for four years. Since the Persian Gulf War their message has been gaining new support.

The campaign to free the man who passed on classified data about Iraq and other Arab states has gained momentum, stirred debate and raised emotional questions with Americans and Israelis.

A major Jewish organization recently called for Pollard’s release from federal prison. A group of rabbis is lending legal support. One Israeli leader has publicly vowed that Pollard won’t be forgotten. And Pollard’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, is lobbying Jewish groups to rally around his client.

“In the early days of this case, most Jews didn’t want to talk to us about this,” said the elder Pollard, a cancer researcher and professor emeritus at Notre Dame University. “Now, we’re honored. Suddenly, there’s a turnaround and they’re all jumping on the bandwagon, saying, ‘Well, we were always in favor of you, but we really didn’t know what to do.’ ”

“People are not asking his motivation anymore. They’re saying ‘What can I do?’ ” said Carol Pollard, who quit her hospital administrator’s job in Connecticut to work for her brother’s cause.

Pollard has been behind bars 5 1/2 years. Meanwhile, the embarrassment and international tension created by his case have faded. The war, while not exonerating him, made him appear less mercenary because he warned the Jewish state about the menace of Iraqi chemical warfare.

“What the war did is to make people understand his motives. If they do not agree with him, people perhaps understand what motivated him to do what he did,” said Jacob Davidson, a board member of the World Jewish Congress, whose American branch--representing 38 U.S. groups--has called for commutation of Pollard’s sentence.

That April resolution, which calls Pollard’s sentence excessive, “was a very important and a watershed statement,” said Elan Steinberg, the group’s executive director. “It’s the first time mainstream Jewish organized life has asked for commutation.”

Pollard, 36, a former Navy civilian intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty to espionage in 1987. He sold Israel hundreds of secrets, including information about Iraq’s biological and chemical capabilities.

Also, he allegedly supplied details about Soviet weapons shipments to Arab states, spy satellite photos, military documents about Iran, Syria and Libya, and information about suspicions of Palestine Liberation Organization plots.

Israel, in calling for Pollard to be pardoned, maintained that he had been recruited by renegade intelligence agents.

Pollard, meanwhile, has argued that his actions, while mistaken, were guided by fears that the United States was denying Israel information critical to its defense.

Pollard’s former wife, Anne Henderson Pollard, was released from prison last year. Pollard, who declined to be interviewed, is in the federal penitentiary in Marion, Ill. His neighbor there is another spy, John Walker.

Advocates argue that Pollard, unlike Walker and others who sold secrets to the Soviets, gave information to an ally--and that in such cases, and in spying involving neutral nations, prison terms have ranged from two to four years.

“This sentence is both unjust in terms of Pollard and a slap in the face to Israel,” Dershowitz said.

“When you consider this against other espionage sentences . . . we smell a whiff of not only anti-Israel behavior, but maybe a little anti-Semitism as well,” said Rabbi Joseph Glaser of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which will join a legal brief on Pollard’s behalf.

Former U.S. Atty. Joseph diGenova scoffed at Glaser’s charge and said: “(Pollard) wants to be treated differently because he spied for an ally. The law doesn’t provide for that kind of special treatment.”

“The guy plead guilty,” DiGenova added. “It’s easy to forget that.”

The plea also is a subject of dispute. Pollard’s attorneys, in a long-shot move, will ask an appeals court this fall to allow him to withdraw that plea and stand trial.

Attorney Hamilton Fox III says the government sandbagged Pollard. That is, it got him to plead guilty by promising not to seek a life sentence, but then “without ever uttering the words, it conveyed that message to the judge in every possible way.”

“He cooperated thoroughly, and then the government used the information to condemn him,” Pollard’s father says. “They had him dig a hole and then they buried him in it.”

“What is happening to Jonathan,” he said, “is a form of cancer, as far as the legal system is concerned.”

Fox also is seeking access to former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger’s classified assessment of the damage to U.S. security caused by Pollard’s spying. Weinberger’s opinion was believed to have influenced the sentencing. The attorney says he suspects that Weinberger painted “a much bleaker picture than reality.”

DiGenova says the government lived up to its promise to seek a substantial sentence, and that Pollard knew the judge wasn’t bound by that recommendation.

As for exaggerated claims about national security, he notes that Israel was sold “360 cubic feet” of documents.

“You think you give away that much stuff and there’s no damage?” he asked. “Tremendous damage was done.”

A Defense Department analysis called Pollard’s actions “one of the worst compromises in U.S. espionage history,” DiGenova said. “It was staggering in its breadth and its dimension. That’s the reason for the life sentence. Many of us who saw the information thought it was devastating.”

DiGenova said he doesn’t expect to see Pollard get a trial, any change in his sentence or--a third option--executive clemency.

Pollard’s defenders remain hopeful. Dershowitz, who plans to meet this month with the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith, said he already sees a more positive reception when he speaks with Jewish groups, even though many have not yet come aboard.

A lobbying campaign also remains alive in Israel, where 70 members of the Knesset, some of whom have written or talked with Pollard, have sent a petition to President Bush urging him to grant clemency.

And in March, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said: “We have not forgotten Jonathan Pollard. We haven’t, and we won’t.”