Report: Pollard Hoped To Spy for Australia
Jonathan Pollard, the Jewish American jailed for spying for Israel, reportedly first offered classified information to Australia.
Newsmax, the conservative American news organization, reported Monday that Pollard told Lydia Jechorek, an FBI agent assigned to the Pollard case after his arrest in 1985, that he had attempted to spy for another “friendly country” before spying for Israel.
The report quoted John L. Martin, who was chief of the Justice Department’s counterespionage section, as saying, “After Australia rejected his overtures, Pollard spied for Israel.”
In the 2006 book “Capturing Jonathan Pollard,” Ronald Olive, the Naval Investigative Service agent in charge of Pollard’s case, mentioned the Australian spying effort briefly, but it was not widely picked up by the media, the Newsmax article pointed out.
Pollard has renounced his U.S. citizenship and is now an Israeli citizen. He is expected to be deported there when his prison sentence ends in 2015.
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