Pollard was a spendthrift and crippled by debt: he was always in need of money and the money he received from Lekem was relatively good. With one month's salary he bought a ring for his fiancee followed by a honeymoon in Europe where they stayed in the very best hotels. He even opened a Swiss bank account and in total earned tens of thousands of dollars. Pollard clearly was not just acting out of sympathy for Israel. However, it was not all bad for Lekem: it is far easier to keep a spy on side who is being paid. Pollard received more and more money, thus reinforcing the idea that he was providing a considerable service to Israel, which psychologically was very important and meant that he worked even harder.
From now on, Pollard worked on demand. At the beginning of his collaboration with Lekem it was he who had taken the initiative to find documents that might be relevant to Israel. Yet he was now being told where to look and as he was being forced to take more and more risks, he was given an Israeli passport (under a different name, of course), in order to keep him quiet. This meant that if things did go wrong then he would be able to settle in Israel, or at least, that is clearly what they wanted him to believe.
Pollard handed over thousands and thousands of pages of documents including information on the US Navy' communication systems, Soviet military equipment in the Middle East, arms sales to Arab countries and a number of satellite photos. If the Israeli
Air Force was able to bomb Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Tunis in October 1985, then it was no doubt down to the aerial photographs provided by Pollard.
This incident certainly gave various specialists in Washington something to think about. The bombing surprised them as they knew very well that the Israelis could not have had the aerial photographs to carry out such an operation. Only the US had access to such things. As a result, the idea that there might be a mole in their midst began to take form.
At the same time, Pollard was increasingly coming under the suspicions of his superiors in the US Navy, not least because of his lifestyle: Pollard and his wife appeared to be positively rolling in money. This recklessness was no doubt due to a lack of professionalism from Lekem, and their Mossad rivals would certainly not have allowed one of their agents to visit the best tailors or dine in the most expensive restaurants. They would also show a similar amateurism when their spy was finally unmasked.
On several occasions Pollard was caught telling lies, inventing false pretences to view highly confidential archives, or lying about how he spent his time. More worryingly, a colleague saw him leave work with a large amount of documents, which turned out to be secret ones, and which should never have left the building where Pollard worked.
The spy was thus under increasingly worrying suspicion, yet it was the illegal installation of a camera in his office that would bring the truth to light. The navy's counterintelligence unit discovered that Pollard was consulting documents that had nothing to do with his work on terrorism. Yet when asked politely, Pollard had an answer for everything: if he was consulting documents that had no relevance to his work, it was because he had discovered a major case of espionage.
His defence was clever but he was to make a vital mistake. Allowed to call his wife, he told her, using a coded message, that she should quickly destroy some documents that were stored at their home. His wife panicked and could do no better than to cram the papers into a suitcase and entrust it to their neighbours, who in turn were so wary and suspicious of what was going on, that they alerted the authorities.
However, Pollard had not yet been arrested and was allowed to return home that same evening. He must have known that his time was up and so called his case officer, Yagour, demanding to be evacuated as soon as possible. Unfortunately, he soon discovered that contrary to what he had been told, there was no escape plan or anything for that matter that would help him.
Believing that he had been let go, Pollard made one last desperate attempt and drove with his wife to the Israeli Embassy in Washington. As the gates were opening for another car, he forced his way in, but was outflanked by the FBI, who had already laid siege to the Embassy. Inside, the security services knew what had to be done and to avoid an incident with the FBI, they sent him away, despite the fact that he had an Israeli passport.
All the Lekem agents who had dealt with Pollard suddenly rushed to leave the US. As for the abandoned spy, he was arrested and immediately confessed to what he had done. The result was predictable: the United States were furious with Israel, while Jerusalem, after initially denying it, soon apologised and blamed Eitan and his subordinates. Finally, each side tried their best to minimalise the significance of the whole affair.
Yet Pollard's betrayal, despite its extreme seriousness, did not fundamentally harm the relationship between the two countries: the US and Israel are also linked by other important interests. However, it is true that the affair definitely cast a temporary frost between the two. It should also be emphasised that in spite of the continued urgings of the Israeli authorities, which have been repeated several times over the years, including in recent election campaigns in Israel, Washington has never agreed to pardon Pollard, who was sentenced to a lifetime in prison.
During the Wye Plantation negotiations between Israel and Palestine, Prime Minister Netanyahu threatened that he would not sign it unless
