Israeli Effort to Link Spy’s Release to Peace Deal Stirs Range of Passions

Eleven years have passed since Jonathan Jay Pollard was sentenced to prison for life, yet the raw sore left by the former Navy intelligence analyst’s spying for Israel caused a last-minute snag Friday in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Disagreement still rages over how much Pollard’s espionage damaged United States security; Caspar W. Weinberger, defense secretary at the time of his arrest, said a greater harm was difficult to imagine. And debate continues on whether Pollard should be released from prison to go to Israel, which granted him citizenship in 1996.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that President Clinton free Pollard, 43, from a prison in Butner, N.C., almost scuttled the nearly complete peace agreement Friday. Netanyahu later relented after Clinton said only that he would review the matter.

Regardless of the outcome, the mere introduction of the Pollard matter into the delicate Middle East peace process elicited strong feelings from many quarters.

An incensed Joseph E. diGenova, who led prosecution efforts against Pollard and the spy’s then-wife, Anne, contended Friday that Pollard’s release would signal to U.S. military and intelligence services that spying for an ally is permissible.

“That’s a dangerous signal at a time when nuclear weapons can be carried around in suitcases,” DiGenova said in an interview. “Who is it OK to spy for? Give me a list.”

What’s more, Pollard still would have value to Israeli intelligence, DiGenova maintained, noting that the former analyst has “a photographic memory.”

But to Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which has asked Clinton to reduce Pollard’s sentence to time served, the arguments for freeing Pollard outweigh any potential risk.

“The man’s been sitting in jail for 13 years,” Cooper said in a telephone interview, “and someone on the shelf for that long is not in a position to impact [intelligence] in any way. You have someone who has paid a serious price. Give him a chance to have the rest of his life to put back together.”

Cooper emphasized that the Wiesenthal Center does not view Pollard as a hero.

Netanyahu’s eleventh-hour plea for Pollard’s freedom was controversial even in Israel.

Amnon Dror headed a now-disbanded Israeli support group for Pollard, the Tel Aviv-based Public Committee for Pollard. Dror said that although he had hoped and worked for Pollard’s release for many years, it was inappropriate to link it with the interim peace accord.

“You can’t put on the same level the negotiations between Arabs and Jews about a conflict that has been going on 50 years and the release of one person,” Dror said.

According to Washington lawyers familiar with Pollard’s case, the American Jewish community is divided on whether clemency should be granted to him and whether Jews should rightly regard him as a hero or martyr.

Leonard Garment, a lawyer active in Jewish causes and a White House attorney under the late President Nixon, said many U.S. Jews are uneasy about supporting Pollard’s case because “they don’t want to be thought of as subterranean citizens of another country.”

Another attorney who has devoted time to the Pollard case during the past 10 years put the Jewish dilemma this way:

“Pollard betrayed his country for Israel, and that’s why he is so beloved by conservative factions there. Intellectually and spiritually, he identified totally with Israel.

“American Jews, however, have been able to balance their allegiance to the United States with their devotion to the Israeli state,” the attorney said. “But Pollard has said you can’t do both if you’re a Jew. This is the last issue most American Jews want to have thrown at them.”

Pollard’s official pleas for clemency have been denied three times--first by President Bush the day before he left office in January 1993, and then by Clinton in March 1994 and July 1996.

Pollard was a civilian intelligence analyst for the Naval Investigative Service when he began spying for Israel in 1984.

Contending that Israel was not receiving the intelligence information that he believed it needed to defend itself, Pollard began supplying the Israeli government with U.S. satellite photographs, information on Arab military systems and other top-secret documents.

Pollard has said he did not initially ask the Israelis for money, but evidence showed that he soon began receiving $1,500 cash a month, as well as jewelry, trips abroad and other gifts. In all, Israel paid him about $50,000.

After he was arrested in November 1985, Pollard agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with U.S. authorities. He identified Israeli Col. Aviem Sella as a key player in the conspiracy. Sella was indicted by a federal grand jury here but has never been brought to this country for trial.

In most cases, defendants who plead guilty and cooperate with the government are given lighter sentences. And Pollard’s prosecutors urged only that he be sentenced to “a substantial period of incarceration.”

But Weinberger submitted to the court a 46-page sealed affidavit documenting the damage caused by Pollard’s espionage, and the defense secretary urged the judge to impose punishment matching Pollard’s “perfidy.”

In the end, Pollard was sentenced to life in prison.

Pollard’s ex-wife, Anne, who served almost four years in prison for being an accessory after the fact to her husband’s espionage, held a news conference Friday in Los Angeles.

“I’m very happy the peace agreement was signed and that my former husband’s release was not linked to this agreement,” she said. “His situation has nothing to do with the peace agreement. I don’t think he’d want his imprisonment to be an impediment to the peace agreement, and neither would I.”

Pollard said it is time for her husband to be released.

“He’s served 13 years,” she said. “That’s enough time. Let him start a new life.”

Ostrow and Jackson reported from Washington, Trounson from Jerusalem. Times staff writer Miles Corwin in Los Angeles contributed to this report.