No Parole Relaxation for Pollard: FRINFORMSUM 6/1/2017
Pollard's Parole Restrictions Will Not be Laxed
Lauren Harper - Unredacted: National Security Archives Blog - June 1, 2017
A federal appeals court rejected Jonathan Pollard's petition to ease his parole requirements and reasserted that it acted within its rights to require Pollard to wear an electronic tracking device. Pollard is a former Navy intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel in 1985 and who was granted parole in November 2015 after serving a 30-year prison sentence. The decision to maintain his current parole requirements was made in part because of former DNI chief James Clapper's assessment that some of the documents stolen by Pollard remained classified.
While Pollard argued before the appeals court that he is not a flight risk, Israel has petitioned successive presidents for Pollard's release (Clinton only dropped the idea after CIA director George Tenet threatened to resign if he did). Immediately prior to his 2015 release, President Obama refused to waive Pollard's parole requirement to stay in the US under supervision for the next five years, despite Pollard's - and his supporters' - wish to see him go to Israel.
In 2012 the National Security Archive won, through a Mandatory Declassification Review request and subsequent appeal to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, the release of a 1987 CIA damage assessment of Pollard's activities. The declassified damage assessment provides new details on what the Israelis asked Pollard to steal. This list largely consisted of secret US documents on Israel's rivals, including Syrian communications, the Egyptian missile program, and Soviet air defenses. At one point, Pollard's handler, Joseph Yagur, told him not to provide "dirt" on senior Israeli officials as these revelations could lead to the operation's end.
2006 CIA release on the left, ISCAP 2012 release on the right:
(click to enlarge)
