Censored Pollard Letter Revealed : Security: Part of 1987 note to novelist was deleted. Government has cited such letters as a reason to keep convicted spy in prison.

Jonathan J. Pollard, the former U.S. Navy analyst serving a life prison term for spying for Israel, had missiles on his mind when he wrote a letter to novelist Howard Kaplan in Los Angeles six years ago.

But Kaplan, author of “Bullets of Palestine” and two other Middle East spy novels, doesn’t know what Pollard wanted to say. The letter was censored.

After a reference to a type of Soviet weapon and before a sentence about a joint U.S.-Israeli missile project, Navy personnel whited out a block of Pollard’s neat, tight handwriting.

The government made no bones at the time about why it was censoring the 5 1/4-by-3 1/2-inch section: A cover letter from the deputy director of naval intelligence explained that it contained classified national security information.

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Les Aspin cited 14 such jailhouse communications from Pollard in urging President Clinton to deny clemency for the convicted spy, whose cause has been taken up by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and several Jewish groups in this country.

Aspin’s letter to Clinton was confidential, but he reportedly said that the breaches in Pollard’s private correspondence demonstrate he “would continue to present a risk of further damage to the nation” if released and allowed to emigrate to Israel. It is not known which of Pollard’s letters prompted Aspin’s recommendation--or who the recipients were.

Kaplan, a part-time writing instructor at UCLA who lives in Beverlywood, said he has received about 15 letters from Pollard over the years, but only one was censored as far as he knows.

Kaplan said he believes Pollard was caught up in his obsession with international affairs when he veered into a discussion of Soviet and Israeli missiles in that letter, written Aug. 27, 1987.

“I have no indication that it’s anything other than his assessment of what he read in the newspapers,” Kaplan said.

Supporters of Pollard on Wednesday condemned Aspin’s position, saying that Pollard would not have tried to smuggle out secret information in his letters because he knew they were being monitored as part of his plea bargain.

They noted that Pollard had been transferred from a maximum security prison at Marion, Ill., to a more open institution at Butner, N.C., six months ago--well after the alleged release of classified information in his letters.

“It was all known long before,” one East Coast supporter said. “Mr. Pollard has never been warned, reprimanded, disciplined or anything.”

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment, saying: “The only information we’ve got here is that the secretary did write the letter.”

Pollard was convicted in 1987 of passing information to Israel in exchange for payments of close to $50,000 and promises of 10 times that amount for further data about the deployment of military forces in the Middle East.

He contended that he was motivated by a belief that critical information was being unfairly denied to Israel by the United States, its long-time ally.

The censored letter to Kaplan begins with Pollard thanking the novelist for helping him understand the position of Arthur Hertzberg, a prominent historian and rabbi who made remarks that Pollard thought were damaging to his case.

Pollard then wrote about an invitation Hertzberg received to visit the then-Soviet Union--and soon is discussing Soviet criticism of an Israeli weapons project, the Jericho missile.

His letter to Kaplan continues: “I really don’t think we should be all that worried about Soviet threats to provide SS-22/23 missiles to the Syrians in retaliation.”

Then comes the white space. When the letter resumes, Pollard is commenting on an anti-tactical ballistic project: “As a joint U.S.-Israeli ATBM project was recently (illegible word), I’m fairly confident that the Arabs will demand an equivalent capability from the Soviets. It’s all such a bloody waste of money I suppose.”

Kaplan said all the other letters he received from Pollard were handwritten on lined, yellow paper from legal-size pads. This one had been reduced and copied on a duplicating machine.

While Pollard would go on at length about political and military issues, Kaplan said he limited his side of the correspondence to brief updates about his life and copies of articles that he thought might interest the inmate.

Kaplan said he initiated the correspondence.

“I started writing to him very early on, very shortly after he was given what I thought was a very excessive sentence,” Kaplan said. “He’d read my first novel prior to my writing him in prison. I sent him the second and maybe the third one for no reason other than the guy’s got a lot of time on his hands.”

Although Kaplan has drawn on his personal experiences in his books--he once was arrested by the KGB while visiting Ukraine--he said he has no plans to use Pollard’s story in a novel.

“The Pollard story is almost too unbelievable to be fictionalized,” he said.