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The Shadow Dossier — The Analyst Who Spied for an Ally · The Shadow Dossier

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  the shadow dossier act i a friend with a grievance
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  jonathan pollard worked as a civilian intelligence
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  analyst for the u .s navy with access to some
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  of the country's most sensitive signals and satellite
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  intelligence he was not recruited by hostile
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  power in 1984 he approached israeli intelligence
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  directly Motivated, he later said, by a belief
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  that the United States was withholding intelligence
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  from Israel that could protect Israeli lives,
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  particularly warnings related to Arab states'
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  military capabilities. Israel's Bureau of Scientific
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  Relations, a small intelligence unit separate
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  from the Mossad, agreed to run him as a source.
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  For roughly 18 months, Pollard removed classified
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  documents from his workplace, sometimes suitcases
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  full of them, and photocopied them for his handlers,
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  who paid him for his trouble and for the volume
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  of what he provided. What made Pollard's case
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  extraordinary, even among Cold War espionage
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  cases, was sheer scale. He is believed to have
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  passed many thousands of classified documents,
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  an amount later officials described as filling
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  a room, covering satellite photography, signals
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  intelligence, and assessments of Soviet, Arab,
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  and other nations' military capabilities far
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  beyond what any reasonable ally -to -ally information
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  -sharing arrangement would have covered. Suspicion
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  caught up with him in November 1985. FBI surveillance
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  closed in and Pollard and his wife attempted
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  to seek refuge inside the Israeli embassy in
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  Washington. Israeli security guards, understanding
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  instructions not to grant asylum inside the embassy
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  in this exact scenario, turned them away at the
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  gate. FBI agents arrested them outside on the
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  street. Act 3, a sentence out of proportion.
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  Pollard pleaded guilty to a single count of passing
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  classified information to an allied foreign government,
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  a charge that historically carried lighter sentences
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  than espionage for a hostile power. Prosecutors,
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  however, submitted a classified damage assessment
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  describing the material as gravely harmful to
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  national security. And in 1987, Pollard was sentenced
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  to life in prison, a sentence far harsher than
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  any comparable case before or after. Israel initially
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  distanced itself from the operation, describing
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  it as unauthorized, before eventually acknowledging
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  Pollard as an Israeli agent and granting him
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  citizenship. Over the following decades, Pollard's
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  case became a genuine irritant in U .S.-Israeli
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  relations, with Israeli governments repeatedly
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  requesting clemency and American officials repeatedly
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  refusing. Pollard was paroled in November 2015.
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  after serving 30 years, still under parole restrictions
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  that limited his travel and required him to remain
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  in the United States. Those restrictions were
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  lifted in 2020, and Pollard and his wife relocated
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  to Israel, where he was welcomed publicly by
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  the Israeli government. The case still divides
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  opinion. To American intelligence officials,
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  Pollard remains one of the most damaging leakers
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  in the country's history, someone who betrayed
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  access entrusted to him regardless of the recipient.
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  To supporters, his sentence was a miscarriage
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  of proportion, punishing him far beyond what
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  the letter of his plea agreement implied. Both
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  things in the record turn out to be true at once.
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  This concludes declassified file number 067 of
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  the shadow dossier. the analyst who spied for
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  an ally. What dangerous secrets await in our
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  next file? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
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  RSS .com, and YouTube so you never miss an official
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  declassification. This is the Shadow Dossier.
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  Thank you for listening.