FBI Retrieved 163 U.S. Papers From Israel, Court Memo Says : Prosecutors Seek a ‘Substantial’ Sentence for Spy

WASHINGTON — FBI agents investigating the espionage of admitted spy Jonathan J. Pollard retrieved 163 classified government documents from Israel, according to court papers filed today.

In a 55-page sentencing memo filed by federal prosecutors in U.S. District Court, the Justice Department said FBI agents found the classified documents during a trip to Israel in December, 1985. The papers were retrieved from the Israeli government, according to the memo.

Pollard, a former Navy counterintelligence analyst, pleaded guilty last June 5 to conspiring to give U.S. military secrets to Israel. In seeking a “substantial sentence” for the crime, prosecutors said he “expressed no remorse” to FBI agents and said “he would do it all again if given the chance,” the memo said.

The crime carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.

The sentencing memo filed by U.S. Atty. Joseph E. diGenova said Pollard and his wife, Anne Henderson-Pollard, who faces sentencing on lesser charges, lived lavishly in the year before their November, 1985, arrests.

‘Extraordinary Expenditures’

Although the Pollards earned between them only $29,000 from their jobs, the couple made “extraordinary cash expenditures,” including “cash payments on their American Express credit card bills of almost $20,000,” the memo said.

The Pollards charged daily lunches, dinners and drinks at Washington restaurants, airline tickets and $2,300 worth of jewelry the couple bought in Israel two years ago, the prosecutor’s memo said.

It said that after the Pollards traveled to Paris in November, 1984, to meet Israeli co-conspirators, they apparently paid cash for hotel and restaurant bills in a number of European resort cities, including Saint-Tropez, Cannes, Nice, and Monte Carlo.

The documents FBI officials retrieved from the Israeli government were photocopies of original publications and messages that Pollard said he gave to his Israeli co-conspirators, the memo said. Pollard told FBI agents that the original materials were returned to him after they had been photocopied, according to the memo.

4 Israelis Cited

Charged as unindicted co-conspirators in the case against Pollard were four Israelis: Rafael Eitan, Israeli air force Col. Aviem Sella, Joseph Yagur, and Irit Erb, a former secretary at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

The indictment charged that Eitan, a former adviser on terrorism to two Israeli prime ministers, directed from Israel Pollard’s collection of Navy intelligence documents. Yagur, Sella and Erb allegedly acted as Pollard’s contacts in the United States.

The Israeli government has insisted that any involvement by Israeli citizens in the spy ring was not authorized by Israeli intelligence officials or by the government. Israel has maintained that Israeli co-conspirators were part of a renegade Israeli operation.

Before his arrest, Pollard deliberately misled federal investigators about his spying activities to protect his Israeli co-conspirators, the memo said.

The Pollards are scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 20 by U.S. District Court Judge Aubrey E. Robinson.