WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: His betrayal is said to have caused one of the worst security disasters in U.S. history. Today, Jonathan J. Pollard is returning to a federal courtroom almost 18 years after he was convicted of spying for Israel to challenge his life sentence.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER (voice-over): Jonathan J. Pollard was arrested by the FBI in November 1985 and charged with selling classified material to Israel. He was an American citizen working for the Navy as a civilian intelligence analyst. He pled guilty and was sentenced to life.

Upon his arrest, Israeli leaders apologized, but tried to deny responsibility, saying his mission had been unauthorized. But in 1998, they admitted that indeed his operation was known at the highest levels of the Israeli government. He's now an Israeli citizen.

For his part, Pollard has denied spying against the United States, saying he was only giving information he believed was vital to Israeli security. The Israelis have never revealed to the U.S. government exactly what it was he gave him, although it is said to include information on Iraqi and Syrian chemical weapons, Soviet arms shipments to Syria, and a Pakistani atomic bomb project.

President Clinton came close to pardoning Jonathan Pollard in the closing days of his administration, but didn't after CIA Director George Tenet said he would resign if Clinton did so.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Pollard has long argued the government agreed it would not seek a life sentence if he cooperated with prosecutors. Now, almost 18 years later, should Jonathan Pollard be given a reduced sentence?

Joining us from Tampa, Florida, the former Justice Department prosecutor, John Loftus. He says Pollard got a raw deal and his sentence should be reduced. And from Toronto, the journalist Eric Margolis. He says Pollard got exactly what he deserved.

Let's start with you, John. Tell us why you think Pollard should get a reduced sentence.

JOHN LOFTUS, FMR. JUSTICE DEPT. PROSECUTOR: Well, originally the suspicion was that Pollard had given away the names of our spies behind the iron curtain in Russia. It turns out now that his accusers, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, were in fact the Russian spies. They were blaming Pollard for their own crimes.

Naval intelligence tells me that Pollard never even had a blue stripe security clearance to get into the file room. He couldn't have betrayed this stuff. Pollard passed all of his polygraphs. He's unquestionably guilty of minor offenses, but he should have been out of jail five years ago.

BLITZER: What about that, Eric?

ERIC MARGOLIS, JOURNALIST: Well, that's not what Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger said at the time. He said that Pollard had committed an unprecedented and grave damage against the national security against the United States, not some minor infractions. And seven former defense secretaries also underlined the point that Pollard should stay in prison and serve out his full term.

LOFTUS: Eric, that's (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

BLITZER: Hold up. One at a time. Go ahead, Eric, finish your thought.

MARGOLIS: But we don't know the full extent of the damage that Pollard caused. The evidence was under security and still fragmentary. But there were American agents in the Middle East; there were allegedly 100 of them who were exposed to American codes, other CIA operations, and there was the accusation that Israel had bartered a lot of the information that Pollard delivered to the Soviet Union for various things it desired.

BLITZER: All right. Let's let John respond. Go ahead, John.

LOFTUS: Eric, all those stories were discredited years ago. Weinberger's deputy, Lawrence Karb (ph), is now one of the leading advocates for the release of Jonathan Pollard. Everything that you just presented to people is a fiction. It did not happen. It's been proved and disproved numerous times.

MARGOLIS: Well, I'm sorry. I don't agree with you.

BLITZER: Well, let me interrupt and ask John this: if that were true, why would -- when President Clinton, then President Clinton ordered a complete review of the Pollard sentence, why would someone like Les Aspen, who was then the defense secretary, someone known as very ardently supportive of Israel, why did he come down almost uniformly with all the other members of the national security and intelligence community with a strong recommendation to President Clinton, don't reduce the sentence?

LOFTUS: Because we didn't have Hanssen in custody them. Until we had both guy -- some people thought, well, Ames may have betrayed some of the names of our spies, but Pollard did the rest. It wasn't until we got both Ames and Hanssen that we realized Pollard didn't do any of this. Moreover, he couldn't have done it because he didn't even have the security clearance to get in the file room. He's completely innocent.

BLITZER: Sorry -- go ahead, Eric.

MARGOLIS: I go back to the question of American agents across the Middle East who were allegedly revealed and then turned by Israeli intelligence services. And there's the other issue, and that is the mysterious Mr. X. Pollard was clearly being directed, according to FBI sources, to go and look for specific information among the tens of thousands of documents he stole.

There may have been a senior administration official who was his accomplice. An investigation was begun. It was stopped. It's never been revealed.

And I think before there's any discussion of pardoning or reducing Mr. Pollard's sentence, that he should, A, be forced to disclose who was his accomplice, if any. And secondly, the Israeli government has refused to return the files or allowed its agents to be debriefed by the FBI. This should be a basic preliminary before any discussion.

BLITZER: All right. What about that, John?

LOFTUS: Well, he's flatly wrong. The Israeli government voluntary returned the files that Pollard talk. And he's also wrong, it wasn't American agents in the Middle East.

Pollard did give the Israelis one top secret code word piece of information. It's called a blue book. It was a roster of all the Arab intelligence agent in the Middle East that the United States government knew about. We should have given it to Israel, but we didn't. We were holding stuff back.

Pollard did pass that. Now it's a very embarrassing document now, because among the names there listed under Saudi Arabia intelligence agents are guys like Osama bin Laden, and that's a very embarrassing issue for the CIA and FBI because agencies have told Congress over the years we didn't know who the Saudis and the Pakistanis were hiring to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.

MARGOLIS: You know that's a red herring, Mr. Loftus. You're trying to portray this man as a crusader against terrorism or another Captain Dreyfuss. And this is not the case.

Why would all these senior American defense and security officials say that enormous damage had been caused? It's not just the American agents in Russia who were betrayed, but it was American interests across the Middle East. NSA codes, NSA targeting, weapons, U.S. war fighting plans in the Middle East and so on. This was major espionage.

BLITZER: On that point, let me just...

(CROSSTALK)

LOFTUS: You know this is frivolous. There were no NSA codes. He's making this up.

BLITZER: John, hold on a second. John, when you point out that so-called blue book of agents that -- Arab agents in the region may have been compromised or were in fact compromised by Jonathan J. Pollard, the suspicion is that he didn't just pass along analysis, but he passed along what they call the sources and methods, how the U.S. government collects intelligence, the so-called crown jewels of the intelligence community, which resulted in an enormous requirement by the U.S. government to change that because of the damage potentially that could be done.

LOFTUS: You know the only thing that Pollard passed over there that was of significance was the blue book. All right? The rest of the stuff was fairly minor. CIA did the damage assessment early on, saying there was really no harm to national security.

The real issue in the Pollard case right at the end was when they began to suspect that he somehow was the source of the leaks for all our spies in Russia. That's been completely disproven. The other stuff is really quite minor.

MARGOLIS: Tens of thousands of documents classified top secret dealing with codes and war fighting plans you call minor? I certainly don't.

LOFTUS: Actually it wasn't. He handed over six small suitcases. What the government did was to count the cover sheets as if they contained the full file. That's where they come up with 10,000 pages. There never were 10,000 pages and there were no -- repeat, no -- codes handed over.

Whoever is saying that is not a member of the intelligence community. He was never charged...

(CROSSTALK)

MARGOLIS: Well, that comes from intelligence sources. And...

LOFTUS: Which agency? Which agency?

MARGOLIS: From my intelligence sources they come, and they were quite well reported at the time, Mr. Loftus. You can't downgrade this and say that his stuff was trivial. It's just not accurate.

LOFTUS: That was an official CIA assessment. I didn't say trivial, but it was minor. And he deserved to go to jail for that, but not for life.

BLITZER: All right. Let's take a caller from New York. Michael, go ahead with your question.

MICHAEL: My belief is that he should stay in jail, if nothing more than to serve as an example to foreign governments who would use people within our country to spy on us, especially countries that receive financial aid from us, such as Israel.

BLITZER: What about that, John?

LOFTUS: Well, under those rules, then all the people that spied in this country for Saudi Arabia should get life sentences. That didn't happen.

There are about a dozen comparable cases where there were in fact documents, information given to our allies. None of them came close to the sentence Pollard received. The only reason he got a lifetime sentence was because Pollard got the sentence that Ames and Hanssen deserved.

They thought he had betrayed our entire spy network in Russia. And he is now completely proven to be innocent of those charges.

BLITZER: All right. You know, on that point, Eric, the fact is that Jonathan J. Pollard never had a trial. He cooperated, he pleaded guilty shortly after he was arrested. He submitted himself to hours and hourts of polygraphs.

He let the U.S. government know exactly what he did. That's how the U.S. government found out, because the Israelis did not cooperate fully to the extent that the U.S. government wanted the Israelis to cooperate. In exchange, he was promised by the U.S. attorney, Joe DiGenova, in this case at that time that he would get a significant sentence, but not the maximum sentence, which was life in prison.

The federal judge, though, when hearing the affidavit that the then secretary of defense, Casper Weinberger, put out overruled that plea agreement and said give him life, which is exactly what he gave him. But the U.S. attorney at that time was ready for a plea agreement which would have given him a significant sentence, 15, 20 years, let's say.

He's now served 18. A lot of people think, you know what, that's enough.

MARGOLIS: Well, I agree that if there's anything questionable about the case, it's the plea bargain agreement. Just as recent cases of national security have been very questionable, too. That certainly ought to be reviewed.

And it should not be sheltered under the cover of national security. Let's re-open that part of the case fair enough.

BLITZER: And the other point, John, that Pollard's new team of lawyers is making is that his old lawyers, Richard Hibey (ph), in particular, who was his first criminal defense attorney, engaged in malpractice, didn't do a good job in protecting his rights, especially seeking an appeal quickly after the Judge Aubrey Robinson (ph) sentenced him to life in prison.

Do you believe, John Loftus, that that argument, which will be made at 2:00 p.m. Eastern in about an hour or so from now in a federal courtroom here in Washington, has merit?

LOFTUS: It has some merit. I think that Richard Hibey (ph) is a good guy, and I think he's helping his former client by keeping quiet and not rebutting these charges. But I think Hibey (ph) and Pollard were both stunned on that day when they saw the Weinberger affidavit. They were just amazed at the level of vituperation.

But It was a clearly a result of the false flag operation, you know the Russian spy thing. But Hibey (ph) was never told about the Russian spy connection. He was trying to defend his client in the dark.

Ironically, Jonathan Pollard says that Wolf Blitzer knows more about these secrets than do his own lawyers. Jonathan told me when I visited him in prison that when you interviewed him, Wolf, that you came in fully briefed. You knew about the blue book and the other code word classified operations, that you had all this. So he wasn't giving information to you; you were giving it to him.

BLITZER: Well, what -- to our viewers who may not be familiar, I did write in the late 1980s a book, "Territory of Lies," on the whole Pollard case, and I interviewed not only Jonathan Pollard at the federal penitentiary in Petersburg, Virginia, but I interviewed all of the key prosecutors, the sources, the U.S. attorneys, people who were prosecuting him, his colleagues in Naval intelligence, as well as Israelis who were running him, Israelis who were working with him very closely at the time.

So I had a source of information that I used in writing this book, which was pretty comprehensive. But on the specific point that John Loftus makes, what Pollard did reveal to me in those interviews that I gave him while he was awaiting sentencing still was pretty shocking stuff to those of our viewers who may have read my book. And John, I know you have.

LOFTUS: Yes. And I think, you know, in defense of you, Wolf, that I've read some interesting things that the U.S. government asked Israel to help them find a way to trick Pollard into breaking his plea agreement. And that's why you were briefed with the code word intelligence before you ever met Pollard.

BLITZER: Well, that's not exactly true. I was not briefed on the code word intelligence. I learned a lot of these things in the course of investigating the information after Pollard was sentenced in the year that I worked on this book. But I didn't know about the code word intelligence in advance of that.

I didn't know about the blue book, I didn't know about a lot of these details. I subsequently learned about a lot of these details. We can go into another conversation on this. It's a fascinating...

LOFTUS: Don't get my wrong, I think it was perfectly appropriate...

MARGOLIS: Wolf, I'd like to add another point. There have been calls that Pollard should be released for humanitarian reasons. And I think if we're considering humanitarian reasons, we should not forget the other important prisoner of conscience in the Middle East, and that is Mordecai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear technician who was sentenced to 18 years solitary confinement, Israel's man in the iron mask, for having revealed some of Israel's nuclear secrets.

Surely, if we ask for humanity towards Pollard, Mr. Vanunu should be remembered.

BLITZER: Well, let me let John Loftus have the last word on that. Do you think the Israelis should release Vanunu?

LOFTUS: Well, there's a big difference in the cases. Vanunu stole Israel's nuclear secrets. Pollard did not steal America's spy lists.

MARGOLIS: Vanunu made a report to the London newspaper. He didn't steal nuclear secrets.

BLITZER: Well, he did steal those documents, and he gave them illegally, sold them to the "London Sunday Times," and that's why he's serving this long sentence in Israel. But that's a whole other case which we might have an opportunity...

MARGOLIS: Why? Mr. Pollard was paid by the Israeli government for stealing American secrets.

BLITZER: He was paid. There's no doubt, John Loftus, that he was paid regular monthly stipends by his Israeli...

MARGOLIS: Cash and jewelry.

LOFTUS: Well, let's get the record straight. Pollard received a total of $35,000 over several years, most of which went to pay for the recruitment of a Saudi subsource, OK? There is no $3 million bank account. There's $5 in the Swiss bank account.

MARGOLIS: What about bank accounts in Israel?

LOFTUS: No, there are none. Zero. I checked them all out.

BLITZER: Unfortunately, guys, we have to leave it right there, because we are all out of time. Obviously, a passionate debate, an important debate, and one that's coming back now 16 years after the last time we saw Jonathan Pollard in a courtroom. Now once again, this afternoon, in about an hour or so, we'll get the latest -- the arguments from his new team of lawyers. The prosecution resisting this effort to try to reduce his sentence.

We'll hear what the federal judge has to say. Our David Ensor, our national security correspondent, is going to be covering this throughout the afternoon.

I want to thank John Loftus for joining us. Eric Margolis joining us as well. We'll continue to assess this situation obviously in the days and weeks to come.

Return to John's Media Appearances Section