Lydia Jechorek, the FBI agent who led the investigation into Jonathan Pollard, told an Israeli news outlet that Pollard was not discriminated against out of anti-Semitism.
"Throughout the years, because of the severe sentence Pollard received and the refusal of the US authorities to grant him an early release, a theory was developed that Pollard was discriminated against out of anti-Semitism," Jechorek told Yediot Aharonot. "And that's really not true. It's important for us to show that we treated this story exactly as we would have treated any other espionage saga. We just did our job."
In an interview ahead of the "Pollard" series on Kan 11, the agents who captured Pollard broke their years-long silence, and spoke about his capture and interrogation.
According to them, at first they did not suspect that there was any connection to Israel, and instead believed there was a connection to Russia or China.
"At first, obviously, we did not know that Pollard was spying for Israel," Jechorek recalled. "We only knew that he was taking confidential documents without permission from the office. That's why this case reached me."
"The investigators and agents were not even aware, according to them, that Pollard was a Jew. We had no idea. At this stage, because everything happens so quickly, we have no time to examine Pollard's personal file. In addition, he never said at his workplace that he was a Jew, and we did not have that information."
Lisa Redman, who was a senior agent at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) in Washington, said: "Only later, during the interrogation, would Pollard claim that some of the reasons he was spying for Israel was that people in the office had made anti-Semitic remarks, something which made him very angry. We, in any case, did not find any testimony that there had been such remarks."
Jechorek told Yediot Aharonot that the whole Israeli connection seemed disconnected from the reality they were dealing with during those days, and recalled what happened in the interrogation room several minutes after his arrest.
"I sat there with Pollard, and then there was a knock at the door and one of my bosses came into the room. He asked me, 'Who did Pollard give the documents to?' and I told him, 'Apparently to the Israelis.' His response was, 'Oh my G-d, it's a shame he wasn't spying for the Russians.'"
Barry Colvert, who at the time was the FBI's chief polygraph examiner, told of his meeting with Pollard in the interrogation room: "Pollard is perhaps the smartest spy I have ever interrogated. Not only did he have a photographic memory, he was able to look at a document and analyze it in depth, and thereby attain information and understand its greater significance. That was the beauty of Jonathan Pollard, that was his great value. He was one of the greatest assets."
Colvert said that in the interrogation room, Pollard received the impression that he had been abandoned by Israel after he heard that the documents he stole were returned to Washington.
"At that point Pollard understood that he had essentially been used," he said.
Jechorek said that the staff was very surprised by the severity of the sentence, but said that it could be that his wife's interview with the media, in which she said live that she was proud of what she did, influenced the ruling.
"It's again the same brazenness, of Pollard and Anne, which got them into trouble," Jechorek said.