In a November 1985, a short, bespectacled Navy civilian researcher, with a history of erratic behavior and drug use, was stopped by FBI agents on his way home from work. Allowed to call his wife, he uttered the word “cactus.” After the call, his wife removed a suitcase from their apartment and called some Israeli acquaintances.Pollard
The researcher was Jonathan Pollard. The Israelis were his handlers. The suitcase was filled with intelligence materials, which Pollard had surreptitiously removed from his office. The materials represented a small portion of the paper pile Pollard had stolen and provided to the Israelis over the previous 18 months. In total, the purloined documents could fill a space 10 feet by 6 feet by 6 feet – almost as large as the prison cell Pollard was destined to occupy for the next 28 years.
Pollard entered into a plea bargain with the federal prosecutors. In return for pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government — a charge carrying the maximum penalty of life in prison – and for cooperating fully with the government’s investigation, the prosecutors agreed to inform the sentencing judge of the “nature, extent and value” of his cooperation and testimony. They also agreed to limit their allocution (i.e., sentencing argument) to the “facts and circumstances” of the case. Finally, the government, in return for Pollard’s cooperation, agreed to seek only “a sentence of a substantial period of incarceration.”
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