180. Have the US and Israel Always Spied on Each Other? (Ep 2)

How did Israel’s spy in America Jonathan Pollard wind up getting caught? And what does the sordid episode tell us about the nature of the spy relationship between America and Israel? David and Gordon explore how an US-Israeli spy stole hundreds of classified documents in the 1980s, and what this story tells us about the contemporary espionage relationships between the US and Israel. ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026 at The Rest Is Fest: Buy your tickets ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 4 September: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/the-rest-is-classified-live/⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign⁠-up⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restisclassified Upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app! It’s risk free with NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee 🌍 ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Joe Pettit Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03David McCloskey?

  For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com.

• 0:25Gordon Corera?

  How did Israel spy in America, Jonathan Pollard, wind up getting caught? And what does this pretty sordid episode tell us about the nature of the spy relationship between America and Israel? Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm Gordon Corera.

• 0:39David McCloskey?

  And I'm David McClosky.

• 0:40Gordon Corera?

  And we're looking at the US-Israel relationship, a special relationship of sorts, one in which they cooperate very closely, but also shock horror spy on each other. And we looked a bit at the modern context for some of that spying, as well as how their relationship developed last time. And then we started with this fascinating story of Jonathan Pollard, a Navy analyst who'd volunteered his services to Israel to pass on secrets. So David, last time, we talked a bit about Pollard, slightly eccentric, fabulous character that he was.

• 1:15David McCloskey?

  Slightly eccentric. Yes, yes.

• 1:18Gordon Corera?

  Not a member of the reality-based community, but who managed to get a security clearance in the US, interestingly enough. And we talked a bit about his initial meeting with an Israeli, but it's really interesting, isn't it, who he is going to be run by when it comes to Israel? Because it isn't actually the intelligence services we've all heard of, the Mossad, it's someone else.

• 1:46Gordon Corera?

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• 1:49David McCloskey?

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• 2:37David McCloskey?

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• 2:55Gordon Corera?

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• 3:38Gordon Corera?

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• 3:50Speaker 02

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• 4:21David McCloskey?

  Remember in the past episode that science counselor, there's a science counselor at the Israeli consulate in New York, who, the guy who had reached out, Avi Em Sela, this Colonel, this Air Force Colonel, who's studying at the US. When he gets contacted by Pollard for a meeting, he goes to the consulate of New York, to the science counselor and says, can I, should I have the meeting? And that meeting gets cleared, Sela has the discussion and Pollard volunteers. The science counselor is Amanda Yosef-Yagor, and he is going to become Pollard's day-to-day handler. He's not a Mossad officer. He works for an organization inside the Israeli Ministry of Defense that is focused on gathering

• 5:06David McCloskey?

  scientific and technical intelligence. It's called the Bureau of Scientific Relations, and the Hebrew acronym is LAKAM, L A K A M. And LAKAM, it's a really interesting unit. It's run by a guy named Raphael Rafi Eitan, who is a longtime intelligence officer who had actually been instrumental in capturing the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann off of the streets of Buenos Aires. And you, you've met Rafi, isn't that right, Gordon?

• 5:40Gordon Corera?

  I did. I met him before he died. So it's really interesting. I went to make a Radio 4 BBC documentary, maybe about 15 years ago, about the Mossad and its history. And so I went to, to interview Rafi about actually the Eichmann operation. And he described to me planning and being involved in this very famous operation to kidnap effectively the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. I did not ask him, though, I'm ashamed to say, about Jonathan Pollard, because, because we weren't dealing with that. But the main thing I remember about Rafi at that point, when I went to see him, he was quite an elderly chap at that point, quite portly, quite a kind of playful sense of humor. I went to see him in his office, I think, in Israel. He was then head of what was described as the Pensioners Political Party.

• 6:25Gordon Corera?

  So he'd created a political party or a kind of movement to represent the interests of pensioners and the elderly in Israel. And that was his new job. So this kind of master spy who'd kind of helped capture Eichmann and run, or at least overseen the Pollard operation, was then fighting for pensioners, which was, you know, happened to all of us one day. But yeah, he was, he was, he was, you got the sense then, he was a bit of a maverick, I think, and a bit of a character.

• 6:49David McCloskey?

  Yes. And I mean, Eitan is one of those guys who seems to have made a host of enemies across the Israeli national security and intelligence bureaucracy, because he has apparently earned the nickname The Stinker, which I think is, which is a phenomenal, a phenomenal nickname. But you're right, he's, he's very much a maverick and he's keen to see what Pollard can produce. And again, I think, you know, it's a very fascinating question, which maybe we'll come to it yet, which is how much did Mossad and other elements of the Israeli government really know about the Pollard case? But it's not Mossad. It is this, is this very aggressive, you know, scientific and sort of

• 7:32David McCloskey?

  tech-focused unit that Rafi Eitan is running, that is going to end up getting the Pollard intelligence. Now, here's how the, the actual mechanics of the espionage worked. Three times a week, Pollard will use a courier card that actually it's almost impossible to imagine this today, that lets him walk out of his office without being searched with a bunch of documents. He'll then stash them in a suitcase that he keeps in his car, exactly for that purpose. And then he will deliver them to a secretary. It's a woman who works at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He'll take the documents to her apartment. And once a month, he'll visit or sort of rotate,

• 8:17David McCloskey?

  because there's another apartment the Israelis have procured in the same building in Northwest Washington. And this second unit has photocopying and photography equipment. So the Israelis can make copies very quickly of the documents and return the originals to Pollard. And it's in this second apartment with all of the photocopying equipment that Pollard and Yosef Yagor, his handler, will review the materials. Pollard will probably explain what he's provided. Pollard is paid and then he's tasked for the next round. What are the different, you know, what do the Israelis want, want more of?

• 8:56Gordon Corera?

  And it's a lot of stuff. I mean, it's not insignificant, the amount he's providing, is it?

• 9:00David McCloskey?

  It's a lot of stuff. And I think this also is, provides a bit of a hint as to how, how many other entities inside the Israeli state were probably receiving some of this information, because the tasking, I mean, Pollard himself described the tasking as very organized. And he said, you know, the type of guidance I received suggested a highly coordinated effort between the Navy, the Army and the Air Force. He was getting these prioritized lists, which had been agreed upon by the different services. And then he provides that information to the Israelis.

• 9:36Gordon Corera?

  Which, you know, if he's getting tasking, which says, you know, we want this, this and this and this. I mean, that suggests that the Israeli state knows, knows about this and is quite organized in thinking, well, we've got a guy inside the US, you know, Navy intelligence world. What, what do we want from him? You know, this isn't just a kind of rogue, as it were, Rafi Eitan stinker operation. It's, it's something a bit more organized than that, isn't it?

• 10:02David McCloskey?

  Right. And, and the later... You know, I think the Israelis, when this breaks, as we'll see, try to claim that it's a rogue operation. It's totally unauthorized. And I think the, I think the mechanics of how it's run.

• 10:16Gordon Corera?

  Suggest perhaps otherwise, yeah.

• 10:17David McCloskey?

  Right. It's just, it suggests that it's a much more kind of structural effort. Now, it's very possible that, you know, Mossad or the various, you know, other, uh, you know, branches of the Israeli military didn't know that it was Pollard himself and would have actually had, had his identity, but, but had to have been aware, given the nature of the product, that a, there was a human penetration in Washington that Mossad was running. The material, I think, is fascinating to look at because he's handled, Pollard will end up being handled over a 17-month period. He delivers more than 800 highly classified documents.

• 10:58David McCloskey?

  And again, it, you know, he, he had estimated that they would fill a space 10 feet by six feet by six feet. So it's a big, a big container of material. And some of it is really damaging. Pollard gives up what's known as the radio signal notations manual, which is this 10-volume product that's constantly being updated, that lists the physical parameters of signals that are being used to intercept communications. So at one sigenter said, it's the Bible. It tells how we collect signals anywhere in the world. So it's, it's a hugely damaging thing because that can help the Israelis to evade those signals. The Israelis had this particular interest in reports that were being generated by what's called

• 11:40David McCloskey?

  the Sixth Fleet Ocean Surveillance Information Facility. So it's a report that's filed every morning about activity in the Mediterranean and the Middle East over the prior 24 hours. And it's built from very advanced means of intercepting Soviet military communications, including tracking Soviet subs in the Mediterranean. Pollard hands over more than a year's worth of these reports during the time the Israelis handle him. And when he missed a few meetings because he was sick, his handlers nagged him to produce the backlog. That's how important they were. He hands over the National Sigint Requirements List, which basically tells NSA Collection units worldwide who to target and in what priority.

• 12:25David McCloskey?

  The Israelis, of course, could use that to learn to hide what they don't want the Americans to see. Pollard also betrayed what was then an exotic satellite capability called taking off-axis photographs, which is essentially shooting targets, which if you just look at the orbit of the satellite, would have seemed to be out of range. And so that gives the Israelis a sense of what the US might be able to photograph, for example, inside Israel, that the Israelis may not have, may not have believed we're capable of. And Pollard takes so much stuff that he becomes one of the heaviest users of a classified Pentagon library during 1984 and 1985.

• 13:05David McCloskey?

  On one occasion, he collected, took out so much material that he needed a handcart to take it out to his car.

• 13:13Gordon Corera?

  You would think the librarians are like, oh, Mr. Pollard again.

• 13:16David McCloskey?

  Mr. Pollard.

• 13:16Gordon Corera?

  More, more top secret documents.

• 13:19David McCloskey?

  Librarians love being helpful though, Gordon. You know, the librarians are probably, they're probably tickled this guy's using all this stuff.

• 13:25Gordon Corera?

  Someone cares, you know, someone's coming to the library.

• 13:27David McCloskey?

  Someone's coming to the library. Now, all that in isolation, I mean, I guess it sounds damaging enough, but the Israelis piece that, you know, all of that information together. What this means is that when the Israelis in October of 1985, go and bomb the Palestine Liberation Organization's headquarters in Tunis, in Tunisia, the Israelis have this combined Sigint Requirements List with all of the monitoring that the US is doing at the Mediterranean, and they can outwit American collectors. And, and we talked in the first episode about the Israelis attempting to, to maybe mask their intention, their specific intentions vis a vis a strike on Iran.

• 14:10David McCloskey?

  This is a, this is an analog from the eighties where the Israelis might not want us to know in advance that they're going to bomb PLO headquarters in Tunis. Now, with the stuff that Pollard has provided, they can actually work out how to evade our collection and early warning systems, so it's a surprise.

• 14:27Gordon Corera?

  I mean, it's a really interesting practical example, isn't it, of that? Because it could be that if the US intelligence community picks up signals or, you know, information that Israel's planning to do that and to bomb the PLO, it will then put pressure on them to stop. So the, there's a strong interest in the Israelis in being able to do it without being spotted by the US. And Pollard has given them the ability to do that, to evade US intelligence collections. You can, you can really see there that the value of what he is doing. What's he getting in return? I mean, is it, you know, ideology, we talked about his sympathy for Israel. So that is clearly one part of it, but he's also getting money as well.

• 15:06David McCloskey?

  He is, he is. And, you know, we've talked about this in other, uh, human espionage cases where, you know, I'm thinking of the Tokhachev case, right, in Russia, where, you know, he's this, he's this extremely valuable engineer working on advanced aircraft and avionics systems. He's deeply ideologically motivated. At the same time, he wants money to show, for the US to, to show the value, you know, of the product that he's providing. And frankly, the service that's handling somebody wants to pay them so that they have a means, even if it's loose, of, of control and influence.

• 15:47David McCloskey?

  And I think that's exactly what's going on here with Pollard because his salary, he is paid, his salary ends up reaching 2,500 bucks per month, which is the equivalent of about 7,700 today, right? So maybe not life-changing, but for someone who's in serious financial trouble, you know, pretty important. He's also given tens of thousands of dollars in cash to compensate him for hotels, meals and jewelry. By the time he's caught, Pollard has been paid about 50,000 in cash. And this is interesting, and I think this shows some of the long-term plans that both sides had for this partnership because he had been promised an additional $30,000 per year,

• 16:32David McCloskey?

  which would be deposited into a foreign bank account, which was open for Pollard under an alias that he would use when he eventually became a citizen of Israel. And the Israelis had made a 10-year commitment to him that meant he would receive an additional $540,000 over the life of this, you know, planned conspiracy, which is about just shy of $2 million in today's money.

• 17:00Gordon Corera?

  Pretty significant.

• 17:01David McCloskey?

  It's, and I think this, you know, it's interesting because a lot of the, a lot of the, the sums that we talk about when people spy can sound pretty small, you know? But in this case, I think what the plan was, is basically he was providing the Israelis exceptionally valuable information in exchange for a new life. And that meant the money and that meant Israeli citizenship. Now, it doesn't last. The good times, the good times can't roll on forever. And by the fall of 1985, Pollard has fallen under suspicion. But it's not because some brilliant George Smiley-esque character working inside naval intelligence in Sutland, Maryland has figured out what Pollard is up to.

• 17:45David McCloskey?

  It's, it's that he's taking so many documents that are so outside the scope of his day-to-day work that his boss is like, what's going on?

• 17:57Gordon Corera?

  It's such a shame it's not the librarian who notices because I think that would be, that would be the best. Yeah, that would be, if it was a novel, if it was a novel, you'd have, you'd have that kind of clever, quiet librarian going, hmm, I wonder if something's up. But it's actually his boss who goes, hang on a sec, you know? Why are you asking for so many things over so many different areas? I mean, which again is slightly amateur hour, but that's often the way, isn't it?

• 18:22David McCloskey?

  It is. We, we know, we should say, we know a lot of detail about this case because of the, the legal proceedings of the indictment. Um, and, and the indictment itself says that Pollard had been assigned to intelligence research duties relating to the Caribbean and the continental United States. So when he's pulling the Sigint Requirements List.

• 18:43Gordon Corera?

  For the Middle East.

• 18:44David McCloskey?

  A bunch of like situation reports about what's going on in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. At some point, somebody was like, wait a minute, why does he want all of this? And he's taking this out in hand carts and the librarians are waving them off with sort of teary eyes about his use of the library. So at some point, you know, someone says, we gotta look at this guy. And I think it's great because there's a CIA damage assessment done on Pollard. And it says simply, at this point, an investigation ensued, which, which is very ominous. So the FBI gets involved.

• 19:16Gordon Corera?

  The Thebes are in.

• 19:17David McCloskey?

  The Thebes, the Thebes. Got, I mean, this story's got everything, doesn't it? It's got the DIA, it's got Thebes.

• 19:23Gordon Corera?

  It's got the Navy.

• 19:24David McCloskey?

  It's got the Navy.

• 19:25Gordon Corera?

  It's got the IRA.

• 19:26David McCloskey?

  And it's got the, it's got the IRA and, and Mossad. So I mean, we're just, you know, we're all over the place. We're ticking all the boxes. So the FBI gets involved on the 15th of November, 1985, begins conducting interviews. And, uh, the appeals court will later recount that there were FBI agents and also naval investigators who stopped Pollard as he's leaving work and questioned him about the unauthorized removal of classified information.

• 19:53Gordon Corera?

  I like the idea that it's as he's pushing a handcart of classified material. Mr. Pollard, what's in that large handcart you're pushing towards your car?

• 20:05David McCloskey?

  Yes, your, your duties, is it all Caribbean intelligence reports? Oh, wait a minute, the intercept capabilities in the Mediterranean. So Pollard is understandably alarmed by this, by this questioning. And that day, he makes two calls home to Anne. And he, he uses the code word cactus in, in these phone calls, which is the signal that he is in trouble. And I should say, I can't imagine a less natural word to use if you're standing in the parking lot of a naval facility in Sutland, Maryland. And you're calling your, your, your wife and you're using the word cactus.

• 20:50David McCloskey?

  I mean, how would you, if, if you were doing that, Gordon, how would you use the word cactus to signal that you were in trouble?

• 20:56Gordon Corera?

  Cause it's not like you're in Texas. It's not like, you know, there's, I don't know. Do you have any cacti, cactus near you?

• 21:03David McCloskey?

  We do have cactus, but why would I be talking about them over the phone?

• 21:06Gordon Corera?

  I, I, I think you, you could be like, oh, I pricked my finger on the cactus that is kept in the bathroom of the library of the US Naval Institute, but that's not exactly the kind of thing you'd tell your wife. I must call you immediately, my darling, to tell you that I, I touched a cactus.

• 21:25David McCloskey?

  I felt, I touched a cactus. I fell in a cactus. I don't know. He somehow, so he somehow uses the word cactus to, to signal that there, there are problems. And then Anne phones Colonel Sella, who is not handling him, but is still, you know, sort of involved in the case and is a friend, uh, to say that we've, we've got, we've got trouble. Now Pollard himself will call his handler, Yosef Yagor, on the 19th of November and, and explain how alarmed he is. And Yagor says, chill out and just, just stall for time. And then something very, I think this is quite poor form here, Gordon. The, the Israelis that are involved in the case begin to leave the country.

• 22:08David McCloskey?

  So the embassy, the embassy secretary who had helped with the photocopying leaves the country on the 20th of November. Yosef Yagor, the handler is going to leave on the 22nd of November.

• 22:22Gordon Corera?

  That's never good.

• 22:23David McCloskey?

  It's not a good sign. And, but, but on the 21st, this is, this is before the handler leaves, Pollard sits down for another FBI interview about the removal of classified documents. And after that, he basically, he and Anne get in the car and they drive straight to the Israeli embassy in Washington. They go inside, they stay for about 20 minutes and they request political asylum in Israel. And this is the crazy thing, but they are unsuccessful, Gordon, in an attempt to get asylum. Pollard apparently panics and he actually drives into the, he goes into the basement of the embassy in an attempt to seek refuge, but they're turned out.

• 23:03David McCloskey?

  And as he leaves the building, Pollard is arrested by the FBI and Anne is arrested the next day.

• 23:10Gordon Corera?

  So maybe there with, with Pollard having failed to get any political asylum and having been turfed out the embassy as his handlers make a run for it, basically to get out the country. Let's take a break and we'll see what happens to Pollard afterwards.

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• 26:09Gordon Corera?

  So welcome back. Jonathan Pollard has, has tried and failed to start an escape plan involving going to the Israeli embassy. I mean, David, what, what's happened there? I mean, do you think that, do you think he was supposed to do that to pitch up at the embassy and?

• 26:24David McCloskey?

  No.

• 26:24Gordon Corera?

  And be somehow smuggled out? It all sounds pretty desperate, doesn't it?

• 26:28David McCloskey?

  It's interesting because Rafi Eitan, who's the head of the com, this, this unit that's running Pollard, has basically said, and I, maybe, I don't know, you should have brought this up when you were meeting him about his pensioner's party, Gordon. But Rafi Eitan says this was not the plan and the operation was undone by an unspecified mistake on the part of one of the Israelis involved. Pretty murky, like Rafi Eitan hasn't, hasn't clearly said, you know, the way it was supposed to go down. Now, I mean, as I, as I dug into this, I thought, you know, it's, you kind of assume, especially if you're an aficionado of spy fiction and, and television shows and movies, you kind of assume, oh, doesn't everybody, oh, every service has some kind of sexy exfil

• 27:12David McCloskey?

  plan for its, for its agents. And I think the answer is oftentimes no. I mean, obviously it depends on the agent, but in a case where you're potentially having to get someone out of a friendly country like the US, get, maybe you don't actually have a plan. Now, whatever plan, if they did have one, and they might have, I can't imagine a world where the plan is to go and hole up in the Israeli embassy, because then you're talking about, you're talking about a potential political issue between the two countries.

• 27:47Gordon Corera?

  Yes, it becomes very public. Yeah, that is not a clandestine way of getting someone out of the country. I mean, you, you, yeah. It, it, so I agree. It doesn't sound like, it sounds like desperation from Pollard, just pitching up at the embassy as he knows he's under pressure and just thinking, I've got to do something. And the Israelis by this point are like, I think they've realized, haven't they? The fact that they're leaving the country, they realize this is going to be an absolute disaster. You know, this is, this has the, the Americans have found out about it. This is going to go south and this is going to cause a lot of, lots of problems. At that point, the last thing you want is the guy in the embassy. So you can see why they, they've turfed him out. And it means Pollard is going to be arrested. I mean, he's got, he's got no way out, has he?

• 28:29David McCloskey?

  But this gets at the fascinating, I guess maybe theme in the series of what do you, if you're the US government, what do you do? Cause he's, he's been arrested, but you don't really want a trial that's going to put Israeli espionage in the US front and center in, in newspapers and you're going to have to comment on it. And it is, you don't want that. So what happens is Pollard is offered a plea bargain in which he'll plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit espionage, waive his right to a jury trial. And then in exchange, the prosecution says, look, we're, we will seek a substantial prison term, but not life.

• 29:12David McCloskey?

  And we'll give Anne, your accomplice and wife, a lesser term because she's not the primary agent in this relationship. The deal is only offered after Pollard, Pollard will submit to polygraphs and interviews and critically agree to help the damage assessment. Cause that is a big, that is a big question that investigators have is what did you actually compromise so we can go and fix it and plug the leak if you did?

• 29:41Gordon Corera?

  I mean, it's very similar to, you know, when you have some of the Cambridge spies, like you think of Anthony Blunt, you know, who's confronted and the Brits realize he's bad. And they think, we don't want a trial for publicity, but you know, the deal is you tell us everything, everything you did so we can know what happened and what the damage was and what the kind of, you know, what the techniques and tactics of the other side were, and then we'll keep quiet. And it sounds like, I mean, it's not quite quick keeping quiet, but you can see that there's a deal there to be done, but it's, it's not going to quite go to plan, is it?

• 30:10David McCloskey?

  Two major things happened that.

• 30:14David McCloskey?

  We'll sink this deal. The first one, which I think his legal team probably advised him against or discouraged.

• 30:21Gordon Corera?

  Should have done.

• 30:22David McCloskey?

  But he's, you know, he's a, he's a fabulous and is emotionally unstable, as we've said. Pollard goes to the press, go to the press. So between the plea and the, in the sentencing, which is looming, Pollard gives two exclusive interviews to Wolf Blitzer, who is then the Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post.

• 30:43Gordon Corera?

  I had no idea that that was his previous job before CNN. Interesting. Okay.

• 30:46David McCloskey?

  Wolf, Wolf Blitzer has, has written extensively about Pollard because he, he met him and interviewed him after he was caught. And in these interviews, Pollard presents himself as a, as a Jewish hero and Israeli hero, a kind of master spy. Pollard compares himself to a downed Israeli pilot who's been captured behind enemy lines. And Pollard writes a public letter, which is printed in the Jerusalem Post, in which he calls his plea bargain a judicial crucifixion, insists his actions.

• 31:22Gordon Corera?

  Which is an interesting choice of words.

• 31:24David McCloskey?

  Which is an, which is an inflammatory choice of words.

• 31:27Gordon Corera?

  Suggests perhaps not the right choice of words.

• 31:29David McCloskey?

  And he argues that the Jewish community should put a stop to the ordeal that he is experiencing. To add more fuel to the fire, days before the sentencing, his wife Anne goes on 60 Minutes, says the couple has no regrets because their actions were the result of their moral obligation as Jews. Now, you could imagine that the prosecution, which has said, look, you're, we're going to make this quiet. You're going to tell us exactly what you, what you gave them. And in exchange for your cooperation, you're not going to get life, you're going to get whatever, 10 years. And then it's done, it's quiet, it's done, it's over. And you get to have a life beyond this. You could imagine why the prosecution or how the prosecution would, would be somewhat frustrated

• 32:12David McCloskey?

  by, by your wife going on 60 Minutes and you having all these conversations with Wolf Blitzer. And what they end up doing, what they will end up doing is asking the court to give him a life sentence. Now, the second thing that Pollard does, which is a no-no, is that he lies to the FBI. So on, on the 15th of February in 1987, Wolf Blitzer publishes a piece in the Washington Post, which runs with the headline, Pollard, Not a Bumbler, But Israel's Master Spy. And in it, Blitzer describes six categories of classified information that Pollard provided to Israel.

• 32:52David McCloskey?

  Now, the prosecutors, who were, again, still trying to get a handle on the damage assessment, they confront Pollard with this and say, did you tell, did you actually give this stuff to the Israelis? And why in the world are you talking about this with Wolf Blitzer? Pollard denies it, says Wolf Blitzer is lying. And the prosecutors say, well, we're going to put you on the polygraph and get to the bottom of it. Pollard continues to say, you know, it's, it's, it's false. Wolf Blitzer is making it up. So he had a very, you know, he's kind of slandering Wolf Blitzer in a way.

• 33:21Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, bad thing.

• 33:22David McCloskey?

  Then, on the polygraph, Pollard says, okay, I am now ready to, at last, to tell the truth. And he says, he says, because I imagine him actually just hooked up. He's got the, you know, sort of thing around his vest for the breathing. And he's got the things on his fingers for the sweat. And he's got the heartbeat monitor, you know, all this stuff, right? And he says, okay, I'm going to come clean now. He says, yes, I did walk Wolf Blitzer through each of those six categories of information that I provided to the Israelis. And yes, it included satellite photos of chemical warfare facilities, US assessments on the Palestine Liberation Organization, Soviet arms shipments to Syria, lots more. And, and Pollard, so he, so he lied to investigators about what he told Wolf Blitzer.

• 34:07David McCloskey?

  He's also caught in a tangle of smaller lies. He told, Pollard told at least three contradictory versions of a story about, about offering to repay the Israeli money that he had been, that he had been provided. He, Pollard said he was going to endow a mysterious intelligence chair somewhere with the money that the Israelis had provided him, but he had repaid none of it. So, and then, this is, and this is the kicker, Gordon. Pollard also apparently told the FBI that he would commit espionage for Israel again, if given the chance.

• 34:40Gordon Corera?

  I mean, this guy is about as dumb as you get in terms of like, you know, you're lying to the FBI, changing your story, talking to the journalists, then going, going and saying, yeah, do it all again. I mean.

• 34:55David McCloskey?

  You turn me, you turn me loose, I'm going to do it again. It's not a good look. Now, into this mess, the Secretary of Defense at the time, Casper Weinberger, his staff writes up a memo, which is in part to correct what the Department of Defense saw as the sentencing judge's erroneous assumption that Pollard's espionage for an ally had not done any harm to the US. And it's, it's, it's very interesting because I actually don't think, there's certainly other Israeli espionage cases where there's been a desire on the part of all parties to keep things quiet, right? And to just kind of minimize the, minimize the public affair and be done with it.

• 35:37David McCloskey?

  Because it's kind of an embarrassing aspect of this otherwise friendly relationship. But it's, it's so fascinating in this case that I think because Pollard had taken so much stuff, because Pollard had gone to the press and made this a massive political issue, and because he had lied to investigators over and over again. So the US is struggling to get a handle on the damage assessment. Casper Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense, basically says, look, I'm worried that you, the judge, are going to go too easy on Pollard because he was spying for Israel. And Weinberger makes clear in a number of memos that it is difficult for me, even in the so-called year of the spy,

• 36:20David McCloskey?

  to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant, referring to Pollard.

• 36:27Gordon Corera?

  I mean, it's so interesting, isn't it? Because Pollard will get life in prison. And you do feel like, I mean, he brought it upon himself because he could have got a much easier deal if he had not played the games that he plays of lying and going to the press. He almost invites this. I mean, the US government did not want this to be a big deal. And, you know, there were lots of other cases, as you mentioned, you know, last time, in which people are, you know, discovered maybe passing things to the Israelis, in which it's played very quietly. But Pollard is the one who they really go for and go for life. But it is partly due to the damage and it's partly due to the way he plays it. And I mean, I guess he got life and, you know, that sounds like what they wanted and what he deserved for frankly stupidity as well as espionage.

• 37:11David McCloskey?

  Yeah, there, there was a very interesting, I think it was a New York Times piece that came out around the time of, of the Pollard trial. And there was an FBI official quoted in there saying, yeah, you know, we've, we've looked at about a dozen Israeli espionage cases over the past few years. This is, you know, it's talking about the mid 80s. And this is the only one where this has happened. Usually, you know, the charges are dropped or in a worst case, someone gets a few years in prison after submitting a plea deal to cooperate. But, but Pollard, I think because of the circus around this and, and because of the damage he did,

• 37:54David McCloskey?

  he becomes this very awkward and tangled link in the US-Israel relationship from that point forward.

• 38:00Gordon Corera?

  The legacy of this case is going to stretch on for decades right through to today, isn't it? Because you get, of course, the initial fallout because it's so public. And, you know, US officials are obviously going to talk about, you know, how angry they are, which is.

• 38:13David McCloskey?

  We're shocked, we're shocked.

• 38:17Gordon Corera?

  There's gambling in this casino, there's spying amongst spies. I mean, you're right. So there's, there's the performative bit, which is, you know, which we often see actually when spies get caught, where politicians have to go up, you know, this is terrible, I'm outraged. And, you know, things basically keep going as they were. But actually, the Pollard case is going to be different, isn't it? Because of the legacy.

• 38:37David McCloskey?

  Yeah, it is, it is interesting. I mean, for example, to compare it to a Russian espionage case, where, you know, when, when Pollard is, is caught, there's no, there's no expulsion of Israeli diplomats, there's no sanctions, there's no cuts to economic or military aid. You know, if you read the accounts from the time, it does seem like there was obviously frustration inside the US intelligence community with the Israelis. But it doesn't seem to have led to any rollback.

• 39:09Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, it doesn't change the relationship.

• 39:11David McCloskey?

  There's no reports on this, but I could definitely see, look, if the, if the US is sharing. A number of human intelligence streams with the Israelis, maybe for six months, all of a sudden they'll stop getting shared to register that you're frustrated, but there's no structural tap that gets turned off. There's no attempt to really punish the Israelis for what they've done. Now, Washington does demand an apology. I also found this interesting that they, there's a demand that the Israelis return the documents that they stole. They hand back some, but not all of them. And the Israelis characterize the operation as this kind of rogue.

• 39:50Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, of course they do.

• 39:51David McCloskey?

  LaCam is this rogue outfit run by Rafi Atan.

• 39:54Gordon Corera?

  I can't believe that Rafi Atan, what was he doing?

• 39:57David McCloskey?

  Right.

• 39:58Gordon Corera?

  I can't believe he did that. The whole of the Israeli intelligence community having been probably in on it. I mean, but that's what you do. That's the game, isn't it? You get caught and you say, that guy.

• 40:07David McCloskey?

  That guy, that guy's up to, it's a bad guy. He's up to no good. The stinker. So they, they do shut down LaCam in 1986 in the aftermath of this. The Colonel Sella, who had been the initial contact for Pollard, he's indicted in the US. Israel does not produce him. He's actually promoted to the command of an airbase. Rafi Atan goes on to run the pensioners' party in Israel.

• 40:30Gordon Corera?

  Correct.

• 40:30David McCloskey?

  And the intel relationship, you know, it just, it, as you said, it, it, it motors on and, and deepens significantly in the 1990s and the early 2000s, particularly when we're talking about signals intelligence. But through all of this, Pollard is this constant kind of pebble in the shoe of the relationship because he's, he's just languishing in a US prison. He's got that life sentence. But in 1995, he's granted Israeli citizenship. The several Israeli prime ministers in the 1990s, including Rabin and Netanyahu, press

• 41:10David McCloskey?

  President Clinton for clemency for Pollard. At, at the 1998 Y River talks, then Prime Minister Netanyahu basically insists that Pollard's release, and this is crazy, be part of the price for concessions to the Palestinians, which, which allegedly led CIA Director George Tenet to tell Clinton that he would resign if Pollard were freed.

• 41:39Gordon Corera?

  I mean, it's so interesting firstly, that the Israelis want him out so much that they are going to tie it to the big negotiations at a presidential, prime ministerial level. That's how, how significant they see it, which I think is, you know, it's interesting, you know, what it tells you about kind of Israel and maybe the way they see him as an agent, you know, and there is that thing, you want to get your agents out and, you know, it's good for business if you're an intelligence agency. Again, suggests perhaps it wasn't a rogue operation.

• 42:08David McCloskey?

  Well, in 98, Netanyahu comes out and admits for the first time that Pollard actually was an agent. So I think the rogue, the idea that it was this rogue outfit by the, the late 90s, the Israelis have dropped that entirely and they just, they're trying to negotiate to get him out.

• 42:23Gordon Corera?

  But it's also interesting, isn't it? That, you know, CIA Director Tenet says, you know, he's going to resign if Pollard is freed. And I think it's because you could see that psychologically within the US intelligence community, if the idea is you can betray a ton of secrets and then get away with it, it's not a great look, is it? So it, it doesn't happen.

• 42:41David McCloskey?

  So what happened to Pollard? Well, he divorces Anne after her release. She did five years and then was, was divorced by Pollard. He marries a Canadian school teacher in prison, who, who winds up waging a very tireless campaign for his release. A square in Jerusalem is named in his honor. And over time, it, it never becomes, I think, a major political issue in Israel, but a majority of the members of the Knesset in Israel eventually start to back calls for clemency for Pollard. Now, his sentence had a mandatory parole clause

• 43:23David McCloskey?

  after 30 years. And so he is released in November of 2015. I actually found this shocking that he stays in the US for five years after his release, but then he, he moves to Israel in 2020, where he is greeted on the tarmac upon arrival by Benjamin Netanyahu. And what else, Gordon? I feel like this is absolutely where the story was always going to end. Jonathan Pollard has become a far-right commentator and a potential far-right member of the Knesset because just this year in May, Pollard announced that he is entering politics. He is, I think,

• 44:04David McCloskey?

  to the right of Netanyahu. He's been critical of Netanyahu for being too soft.

• 44:09Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, I mean, there is space there.

• 44:11David McCloskey?

  There's, there, there is, it's wild.

• 44:13Gordon Corera?

  There is, there is. Believe it or not, there is space to the right of Netanyahu and he's there. I mean, that's, it's wild, isn't it?

• 44:20David McCloskey?

  But lest, lest any listeners think that Pollard has a strong chance of actually being elected. I did, I did kind of go down the rabbit hole on this, Gordon. I found a, an Israeli political commentator who said that Pollard had about the same odds of joining the Knesset as he would if he were running to be the Pope. So, so he may, he may continue to be no more than sort of a political talking head in Israel until the end of his days.

• 44:49Gordon Corera?

  What a fascinating story. And it is interesting on a human level, but I, I, I mean, in terms of what it all means, I think, I think what it tells you is, I, I find it interesting that the Israelis did it and the consequences and the costs were quite high. But, you know, intelligence and running agents is a kind of cost benefit decision, isn't it? And, and you're constantly thinking, well, what are the, what are the benefits I get for running this agent? And what are the costs if he gets caught, you know, and it gets discovered? And the Israelis clearly felt at this time that it was worth the cost or the risk of getting caught because what he was providing them was so good.

• 45:32David McCloskey?

  And he, and he volunteered.

• 45:34Gordon Corera?

  And he volunteered. You're right. If you translate it to other countries as well, and you think, let's say you're the UK where we don't spy on the US. Of course we don't.

• 45:41David McCloskey?

  Obviously.

• 45:42Gordon Corera?

  Obviously. But there are things that, you know, you could imagine a bit like Israel and US where we'd love to know, like, what is, you know, Donald Trump going to do in terms of tariffs or what's, you know, what's the real plans for Iran or what's likely to happen here or there. But if you were to speak hypothetically, as I may not have done to British intelligence officials about such a possibility, I think hypothetically, they would suggest that the risks of getting caught and the fallout of doing something like that would be so great and so damaging that why would you do it? You know, yeah, there's a benefit in terms of knowing maybe this or that, but the, but the costs in terms of breaking the trust of a relationship would be damaging, but it's maybe a different calculation if you're the Israelis.

• 46:25David McCloskey?

  Because the Israelis sit outside the, the structure of the Five Eyes, I think there is a, there's a sense that even though the relationship is exceptionally close from an intelligence and security standpoint, it's not as close as the relationship between Washington and London or Washington and Canberra. So there's a, there's a, a segment of information that the Israelis are not receiving. And, and a desire, I think, to, to fill those gaps that they occasionally meet with, with espionage. I think it matters that he volunteered because it's almost like you could, if you're Rafi Atan, or you're

• 47:09David McCloskey?

  Colonel Sella, or you're Yosef Yagor, or any of the people involved in the case, if you have someone show up on your doorstep and say, I am totally ideologically motivated. I love Israel. I want to work for Israel. And you have to pay me a little bit because I got money problems, but I'm your man and I want to do this. I want to work for you as a penetration inside Navy Intelligence and here's all the stuff I can give you. In some ways, it's like, it's like malpractice, if you're an intelligence officer, to turn that person away.

• 47:43David McCloskey?

  I mean, Atan actually said this, you know, he's like, it was so good that I couldn't say no. It, there was just, the information was too good. And there's, there's something to that. If someone shows up on your doorstep, you might say, look, we'll deal with the politics come what may. This stuff is so useful to us. We're gonna, we're gonna take, take the risk. I also, you know, I also think, and as we talked about in the first episode.

• 48:11David McCloskey?

  The Israelis are continuing to spy on us.

• 48:13Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 48:14David McCloskey?

  We spy on them. But you know, I think it's become like so much of the spy world, probably a little bit less human. And there's much more spying that's happening at the world of signals, intelligence and digital collection and sort of technical stuff, right? That's happening more.

• 48:32Gordon Corera?

  Which is less emotional, isn't it? It's it's less emotional if you get caught, less personal. It's less about one person betraying their country and their secrets to another. It's a kind of, it's different, isn't it? It's not going to excite the passions in the same way as as something like a Pollard case.

• 48:48David McCloskey?

  We mentioned the, in the first episode, the incident where, I think it was in 2019, when the Israelis got caught putting signals intelligence collectors, they're these kind of, they're called stingrays. They basically spoof a cellphone tower and allow you to, you know, there are ways you could use those to collect phone, a huge amount of phone numbers, but also data off of some of the phones in some cases. The Israelis were putting those in Washington. They got caught doing it. And it's an incident that most people, even who are following this closely, would know about because, to your point, you know, if you're the FBI, well, you just, you confiscate the equipment and you've, you sort of work backward to maybe what's been compromised.

• 49:29David McCloskey?

  But there isn't a human at the center of it that makes it this embarrassing affair that has political consequences. You can just kind of sweep it under the rug and and move on. You know, I also think the other angle here is that as cover has become harder, you know, that this world of ubiquitous technical surveillance we've talked about makes it harder to to have a credible cover inside an embassy or a consulate. The Israelis are probably using, you know, nonofficial cover, commercial covered officers all over the US to go after sensitive, you know, whether it's tech stuff out in Silicon Valley, whether it's financial stuff in New York, whether it's politics in DC.

• 50:12David McCloskey?

  I mean, you have a host of, you know, sort of exotically covered intelligence officers you can use to collect sensitive information or even secrets in ways where the people providing it don't even think they're they're committing espionage. And so I'm sure that that is happening at a, at a massive scale, but it's just not something that we, we see and it's not something that bubbles up to the surface because they don't get caught.

• 50:37Gordon Corera?

  No, that's right. And you don't have that embarrassing problem that they had in this case where they suddenly have to clear people out of the embassy, you know, who've been running Pollard.

• 50:45David McCloskey?

  Nobody's driving into the basement of the Israeli embassy and and asking for asylum.

• 50:50Gordon Corera?

  It does make you kind of realize, I think, you know, to that, to that point, that, that running agents like that is, is very risky. But, you know, technical collection is just less emotional. And and so there are kind of almost unwritten rules about what's acceptable and what's not. And I guess Pollard crossed the line, you know, and it happened, as you said, almost by accident because he was a volunteer, but it did cross the line and the consequences were serious.

• 51:14David McCloskey?

  And I think a lot of what we might think of as kind of spying or something that's at least adjacent to it, you know, with with allies, it, I think that the mechanism for dealing with it is oftentimes basically accusing someone in the States of not having registered as a foreign agent, right? Whether that's for, you know, Qatar, the UAE, South Korea, there's a bunch of recent cases where American officials or former officials have been caught doing something that is quite close to espionage, but isn't quite and ends up being prosecuted under the

• 51:54David McCloskey?

  far less kind of stringent rules of the, I think it's the Foreign Agents Registration Act, right? As opposed to the Espionage Act, which is what Pollard was prosecuted under.

• 52:04Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, it's the difference between kind of influence and interference and espionage. So you get people who are trying to influence politics and and interfere sometimes even or push political debate, but it's not quite the same as the handcart of files coming.

• 52:18David McCloskey?

  The handcart, the handcart of files is, that's, you get, you get the book thrown at you for that.

• 52:23Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, well, I mean, I guess as we am, we should say that it is very fortunate that the US and UK will never have this problem and that we don't spy on each other because of course we are entirely aligned as allies, never having any issues between us. And we are part of the Five Eyes and we are going to be looking, I think, coming up at at the Five Eyes and at the the roots of the US UK relationship, Bletchley Park and how how it all began. So it's a chance to maybe raise that question about, you know, how does that really work? And do friends really never spy on friends? And and how does, how do those relationships and how does the trust work deep in that really special relationship? So those episodes, I think, are coming up.

• 53:04Gordon Corera?

  So do join the Declassified Club if you want to get early access to those and to everything else we've got coming up in the next few months. Got a lot of interesting stuff in the pipeline, so do join at the rest is classified.com. But otherwise, we'll see you next time.

• 53:21David McCloskey?

  We'll see you next time.

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