Extent and Value of Cooperation - Legal Text
January 19, 2000
Part Three of a series of selected legal texts excerpted from the Pollard Memoranda in Aid of Sentencing.
Excerpted from: Criminal No. 86-0207 [Redacted]
Jonathan J. Pollard 2nd Memorandum In Aid of Sentencing
Author: Richard Hibey Esq.
Submitted February 27, 1987
Mr. Pollard's Cooperation with the Government and its Value
The court should also weigh heavily the cooperation extended by Mr. Pollard beginning some three months after his arrest and well before a plea agreement was executed. Without promise of any leniency by the United States, except its commitment not to ask for a life sentence or a specific term of years but only for a "substantial" period of incarceration, Mr. Pollard began providing full details of his activities on behalf of the Israelis. The ensuing debriefings consumed several hundred hours, during which Mr. Pollard provided information to his US interrogators on the following subjects:[The US Govt. has redacted this item, blanking out the entire section which details the subject matter on which Jonathan Pollard was fully debriefed. Approximately two and a half full pages are blanked out.]
Mr. Pollard is continuing to assist in the ongoing criminal investigation through interviews and grand jury testimony. For example, he has appeared before the grand jury investigating the role of Avi Sella twice in the last month to detail Sella's direct request and receipt of classified information from him.
Because of Mr. Pollard's candor in describing the extent of information passed to Israel, the United States has been able to gauge more accurately the extent of any damage caused by Mr. Pollard's actions and to take effective countermeasures. In addition, his forthrightness has enabled the United States to confront the Israelis regarding the truth of the statements they submitted to US investigators.
Mr. Pollard's cooperation also has extended beyond identifying the scope of his activities for Israel. A prevalent concern in the US intelligence community was how he could pass documents to the Israelis for 18 months without detection. Mr. Pollard not only supplied details of his ability to circumvent security measures at his workplace and the intelligence libraries, he also provided advice on how best to rectify those holes in the security net. For instance Mr. Pollard explained how modems, which permit communication with a computer by phone, represent a severe security problem since the high speed transmissions could be intercepted by enemy agents acting outside secure facilities, who could quickly access massive amounts of classified information. He also discussed how secretion of a single floppy disc from a secured area could be as damaging as the removal of hundreds of classified documents. in addition, he advised investigators that the State Department and Intelligence and Research Bureau is probably the optimum location for an enemy spy, since analysts at the bureau routinely receive hundreds of intelligence reports weekly as part of their duty of summarizing such reports for reading by the Secretary of State.
Several times during his marathon debriefings officials of various intelligence agencies commented favorably on the ideas put forth by Mr. Pollard. Others assured him that his recommendations had been implemented.
Mr. Pollard's cooperation with investigators also was so impressive and his previous employment evaluation so favorable that his questioners began to take the interrogation beyond the realm of his activities for Israel. For example, after Mr. Pollard's debriefing had terminated, he was brought back from prison to give various intelligence officers a briefing.
The United States concedes that Mr. Pollard was "candid and informative in describing his wrongdoing" and that the investigation of the Israeli involvement in the matter could not have progressed as far as it did without his assistance. The Government's description of Mr. Pollard's cooperation, however, is lame in the extreme. Without benefit of the detail which is supplied above, there is no way the Court could possibly discern the level, depth and value of Mr. Pollard's cooperation. By failing to give Mr. Pollard proper credit for his cooperation, the Government has not honored its part of the plea bargain. Instead, it offers the shrillness of an overstated argument to support its claim for a substantial sentence. This is not fair. If the Government wishes to attack Mr. Pollard's honesty, it is free to do so, but not at the expense of failing to speak as candidly and as openly about his valuable cooperation as it has about his criminal conduct.
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