Prosecutors: Convicted Spy Pollard's Information Still Top Secret
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Federal prosecutors said Monday that most of the information convicted spy Jonathan Pollard had and passed along to Israel 30 years ago remains top secret and could gravely harm national security.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Tinio spoke in Manhattan U.S. District Court Monday after Judge Katherine Forrest asked if he still possesses top-secret information.
Forrest is considering Pollard's lawyers' request to relax parole conditions after his release from prison last month. They said what he knows is no longer valuable.
Parole conditions include monitoring of his computer and his whereabouts, along with a curfew.
Forrest said a one-page explanation from the U.S. Parole Commission supporting the conditions is insufficient. She said she will await a better explanation before deciding whether they are appropriate.
Pollard had been granted parole this summer from a life sentence imposed in 1987. His lawyers have said that they have secured a job and housing for him in the New York area. According to court papers, he will be working at a financial firm in the city.
His release last month from a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina came nearly 30 years to the day after his arrest for providing large amounts of classified U.S. government information to Israel.
The saga involving Pollard for years divided public opinion in the United States and became both an irritant and a periodic bargaining chip between the United States and Israel.
"The people of Israel welcome the release of Jonathan Pollard,'' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement last month. "As someone who raised Jonathan's case for years with successive American presidents, I had long hoped this day would come.''
Supporters have long maintained that he was punished excessively for actions taken on behalf of an American ally while critics, including government officials, derided him as a traitor who sold out his country.
Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst, was arrested on Nov. 21, 1985, after trying unsuccessfully to gain asylum at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He had earlier drawn the suspicion of a supervisor for handling large amounts of classified materials unrelated to his official duties.
U.S. officials have said Pollard, over a series of months and for a salary, provided intelligence summaries and huge quantities of classified documents on the capabilities and programs of Israel's enemies. He pleaded guilty in 1986 to conspiracy to commit espionage and was given a life sentence a year later.
Though he has said his guilty plea was coerced, he has also expressed regret, telling The Associated Press in a 1998 interview that he did not consider himself a hero.
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