Convicted spy seeks reduced sentence
By Wolf Blitzer
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Jonathan Pollard was back in a federal court Tuesday trying to get his life sentence reduced. He's already been in prison for more than 16 years, having pled guilty to spying for Israel. He was a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy in 1984 and 1985 when he started passing thousands of classified documents to his Israeli handlers.
After he was caught, the Israeli government initially denied any responsibility, insisting the Israeli officials who ran him were "unauthorized" to do so. They apologized to the U.S. government, and promised it would never happen again.
Abandoned by the Israeli government, Pollard entered into a plea agreement. He admitted his crime and promised to cooperate with U.S. investigators involved in a damage assessment operation. He spent hours detailing his espionage. It was largely his information that allowed the U.S. government to learn the full extent of what he had done. He named the Israeli officials involved in the espionage.
In exchange for that cooperation, the then-U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Joe diGenova, agreed not to seek a life sentence -- only a "substantial" sentence, which was left undefined.
But the federal judge, Aubrey Robinson, effectively rejected the plea agreement after receiving a last-minute and highly-classified damage assessment from then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger alleging enormous damage to U.S. national security.
"It is difficult for me to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant in view of the breadth, the critical importance to the United States, and the high sensitivity of information he sold to Israel," Weinberger said.
If true, Pollard supporters ask, why would diGenova agree to a plea agreement that would result in a less-than-life sentence?
I interviewed Pollard twice in 1986 at the federal penitentiary in Petersburg, Virginia while he was awaiting sentencing. I later wrote a book on the case, "Territory of Lies," published by Harper and Row in 1989.
All these years later, the case has now once again come before a federal judge.
The Israelis no longer deny responsibility. They say they would like to see Pollard freed, and allowed to settle in Israel -- where many see him as a hero.
Former President Bill Clinton considered pardoning Pollard after repeated requests by Israeli leaders, including former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But in the end, he rejected the request after top U.S. national security officials, including CIA Director George Tenet, strongly opposed it. Tenet threatened to resign.
Now, the case has come back.
