Jonathan Pollard hasn’t stolen secret information since the Cold War. But he’s still a risk to national security, U.S. intelligence agencies insist.
Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. intelligence analyst turned spy for Israel, wants the American government to ease up on the conditions of his parole. In legal briefs, he has argued that Washington should stop monitoring his personal computer and online activities and not force him to wear a personal GPS device that tracks Pollard’s movements in New York, where he has been living since his release from federal prison last year.
To which the U.S. intelligence community has essentially replied, “Oh, hell no.”
In a series of declarations filed late Friday with the U.S. Parole Commission, senior U.S. intelligence officials forcefully argued that Pollard still poses a risk to national security because if left unchecked, he could divulge U.S. secrets—and even old ones could do harm.
“Some of the sources and methods used to develop some of the intelligence exposed by Mr. Pollard not only remain classified but are still in use by the Intelligence Community today,” Jennifer L. Hudson, a senior official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in a written statement (PDF).
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had previously said that some of the information Pollard is believed to have exposed is still classified at the secret and top secret level (PDF). But Hudson’s declaration adds a new dimension as to why the intelligence community thinks Pollard, who is now 61, is still a dangerous man.
Pollard was sentenced arrested in 1985 while working as a civilian intelligence analyst for the Navy, before the dawn of the internet and when the intelligence community’s main enemy was the Soviet Union. Could the information he leaked really be so revealing more than 30 years later?
“I would have no doubt, given the volume of the material,” one former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with Pollard’s case told The Daily Beast. In particular, Pollard may have known which up-and-coming leaders the U.S. was trying to recruit as future spies in the 1980s, and if they’re in positions of influence today in Israel or other Middle Eastern countries, they could still be providing useful intelligence, the former official noted. “The last thing you want is him talking about what’s in his head.”
Of course, there’s another motivation for the intelligence community to try to keep restrictions on Pollard’s parole: “They want to fuck with him,” the former official said.
U.S. spies don’t easily forgive, and they don’t forget.
Current and former intelligence officials hold Pollard in especially strong contempt to this day, both for the scale of his treachery and the acute risk it posed to U.S. interests at the time.
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