According to a recent report by the Jerusalem Post, convicted Israeli secret agent Jonathan Pollard’s life sentence was handed down as a direct result of the Israeli newspaper’s own interview with him.

A newly declassified CIA assessment of the Pollard case indicates that his interview with Wolf Blitzer (then a Jerusalem Post correspondent) prior to sentencing violated the terms of his plea agreement.

Judge Aubrey Robinson gave Pollard a life sentence in March 1987, disregarding a plea agreement stipulating that, in exchange for his cooperation in the investigation against him, Pollard would not receive such a sentence.

The CIA document, published last week by George Washington University’s National Security Archive, indicates that, in addition to the severity of the offense as perceived by the judge at the time [Editor’s note: Numerous experts have come forth over the years, including top-level intelligence officials, and attested that this aspect of the case was greatly exaggerated and, in itself, likely a poor justification for the severity of the sentence], it was Jonathan Pollard’s unauthorized interview that resulted in his life sentence. “Pollard’s willingness to grant an interview to journalist Wolf Blitzer for The Jerusalem Post without obtaining advance approval of the resulting text from the Justice Department violated the terms of his plea bargain,” said the report.

Indeed, at the time, the prosecutor concluded his final argument by saying “[I]n combination with the breadth of this man’s knowledge, the depth of his memory, and the complete lack of honor that he has demonstrated in these proceedings, I suggest to you, your honor, he is a very dangerous man.” Experts have suggested that this “lack of honor” is a reference to the aforementioned interview.

The interview, which took place on November 20, 1986 at Petersberg Federal Penitentiary, contained a general account of Pollard’s illegal activities, including key examples of the intelligence he passed along to Israel, as well as shining light on his motives for doing so. The interview would go on to be reprinted in The Washington Post and The New York Times. Adding insult to injury, Pollard’s then-wife Anne gave an interview with CBS’s news program 60 Minutes in March of 1987, just days prior to the sentencing.

The CIA assessment suggested that the interviews were part of an unsuccessful effort by the Pollards’ to rally support among American Jewry and the Israeli government.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Pollard’s current wife Esther claims that there are no one had prohibited her husband from speaking with the press. All he had to do, she says, was obtain written consent from the Bureau of Prisons, and restrict his comments to the guidelines established for such interviews; guidelines with which Esther maintains they complied fully.

“The government did something highly suspicious by forgetting to send anyone to monitor these interviews,” Esther Pollard said. “Later, at sentencing, the prosecutor successfully inflamed the judge by falsely claiming that not only had the interviews been secretly arranged behind their backs, but that Jonathan had also disclosed highly classified material to Blitzer that compromised the intelligence community’s sources and methods.”

Pollard’s lawyers, Eliot Lauer and Jaques Semmelmen, have also challenged the government’s claim that their client’s interview was unauthorized.

“The government approved Mr. Pollard’s application, and two interviews took place inside the prison with government approval,” said the attorneys. “Under the plea agreement, any interviews had to be approved by the Director of Naval Intelligence. Mr. Pollard had been led to believe that his written requests for authorization had received all necessary approvals within the government.”

“Indeed,” argued Lauer and Semmelman, “it would not have been possible for Mr. Blitzer to enter the prison at all, much less equipped with a tape recorder and camera, without government approval.”

Several years after the interview, according to Mrs. Pollard, Wolf Blitzer said that it seemed to him that the approval for the interview was “part of a calculated scheme” by the prosecutors for the purpose of justifying their violation of the plea bargain. Esther said that government prosecutor Joseph diGenova would later confirm this when he told The Village Voice that he had hoped the interview would be the “rope” with which Pollard would hang himself.

Focusing on the positive, Lawrence Korb, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Pollard affair, claims that the newly-declassified CIA report strengthens the case for Pollard’s release, and urged the Israeli government to press the issue.

“We knew all along that the information that Pollard passed concerned Arab countries, and not the U.S.,” JPost quotes Korb as saying, “but the release of this official document confirming the facts makes it much easier to bring a speedy end to this tragedy.”

“After 28 years it is time for Pollard to be released and to go home now.”

(YWN Staff – YWN World Headquarters – NYC)