Jonathan Pollard

Jonathan Pollard was a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst from 1983-84. He was convicted of spying for Israel and is currently serving a life sentence. In November 1995, Israel granted him Israeli citizenship. On May 11, 1998, Israel formally acknowledged Jonathan Pollard had been a bona fide Israeli agent. Pollard's secret information heist is reckoned to be the single most damaging case of espionage conducted against the United States. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer/analyst, writes:

Pollard did more damage to the United States than any spy in history. And it was genuine damage, not just a mass of documents that had been routinely classified. Pollard’s Israeli handler, aided by someone in the White House who has up until now evaded arrest, was able to ask for specific classified documents by name and number. The Soviets obtained US war plans, passed to them by the Israelis in exchange for money and free emigration of Russian Jews without any regard for the damage it was doing to the United States. The KGB was able to use the mass of information to reconstruct US intelligence operations directed against it and a number of Americans and US agents paid with their lives. Pollard also revealed to the Israelis and Soviets the technical and human source capabilities that US intelligence did and did not have, which is the most critical information of all as it underlies all information collection efforts. Compounding the problem, the United States has never actually been able to accurately ascertain all of the damage done by Pollard because the Israeli government has refused to cooperate in the investigation and has not returned the documents that were stolen.

On 18 November 2010, Rep. Barney Frank wrote a letter to president Obama seeking a pardon for Pollard. A total of 39 Congressmen co-signed the letter; more than half of them were members of the Congressional Black Caucus.