Intelligence Assessment of Pollard Case

July 10, 1998 - Professor Angelo Codevilla (Boston University)
Former Staff, US SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

(Excerpted from the JERUSALEM POST feature "Jonathan Pollard - 'more alone than ever'") by Steve Rodan

"It is a straightforward political matter," said Angelo Codevilla, international relations professor at Boston University, who served on the staff of the US SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE during the Pollard arrest and conviction.

In briefings to the Senate Committee on Pollard's activities, Codevilla said, US officials never claimed that he gave Israel intelligence methods and sources. Instead, he said, Pollard relayed data, analysis and photographs, the sort of material that Israel was receiving from the US anyway.

Codevilla says Pollard angered his superiors and eventually US government leaders by his efforts to undermine what he regarded as a pro-Iraqi policy by Washington in the 1980's.

"There is no political opposition to Pollard's release that I know of in the US," he said. The only ones whom Pollard's release would anger would be such people as (former Secretary of State George) Shultz and Weinberger.

"They are angry because he committed the worst possible sin in Washington: He was right, before his time. The US policy of aiding Iraq was a disastrous policy. The authors of that policy were Shultz, Weinberger, and Inman."

Codevilla says that the Israeli announcement that Pollard was an authorized agent is only the first step in a complicated process. Now, he says, the Israeli officials must stress to their US counterparts that Pollard's release is a priority.

"The Israeli government has to say it at every step of the way," he said. The message must be: 'You want "this" from us. We want "this" from you.'"