In 1999, Pollard could draw comfort from the tireless way powerful Jewish groups lobbied for his release. The Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations, a consortium of over fifty groups, had launched a sustained campaign to have him set free on the grounds that he had not committed high treason against the United States “because Israel was then and remains today a close ally.” Equally influential Jewish religious groups such as the Reform Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Orthodox Union, lent support. The Harvard Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz, who had been Pollard’s attorney, said there was nothing to show the spy had actually compromised “the nation’s intelligence-gathering capabilities or betrayed worldwide intelligence data.”
Alarmed at what they realized was a skilled public relations campaign orchestrated from Israel, the U.S. intelligence community took an unusual step. They moved out of the shadows into the public domain, setting out the facts of Pollard’s treachery. It was both a bold and dangerous decision. It would not only cast a light on sensitive material but also mobilize the evermore powerful Jewish lobby to attack them. They had seen what it had done to others in the frenetic atmosphere of Washington. A reputation could be discreetly tarnished over a late drink at an embassy between acts at the Kennedy Center or over a quiet Georgetown dinner.
Those intelligence men feared that Clinton—“in one of his quixotic moments,” a senior CIA officer told me—would free Pollard before he left office if that would ensure Israel entered into a peace settlement and give Clinton a last foreign policy success. The CIA’s director at the time of writing, George Tenet, had warned the president “that Pollard’s release will demoralize the intelligence community,” Clinton was reported to have merely said: “We’ll see, we’ll see.”
In Tel Aviv, Rafi Eitan has closely followed every move, telling friends that “should the day come when Jonathan makes it to Israel, I’d be happy to have a cup of coffee with him.”
Meantime Eitan continued to rejoice at the success of another operation he had also mounted against the United States. It led to Israel’s becoming the first nuclear power in the Middle East.
In the darkness of a Tel Aviv cinema in 1945, Rafi Eitan had watched the birth of the nuclear age over Hiroshima. While all around him young soldiers whistled and cheered at the newsreel footage of the devastated Japanese city, he had only two thoughts. Would Israel ever possess such a weapon? Suppose her Arab neighbors obtained one first?
From time to time down the years the questions had surfaced in his mind. If Egypt had had a nuclear bomb, it would have won the Suez War and there would have been no Six Day War or Yom Kippur War. Israel would have been a nuclear desert. With a nuclear weapon, Israel would be invincible.
In those days, for an operative whose work was primarily concerned with killing terrorists, such strategic questions were only of academic interest and answering them was the province of others. However, when he took command of LAKAM, he began to seriously consider the matter. He now only had one question: Could he help to provide Israel with a nuclear shield?
Reading long into the night, fueled by the forty vitamin capsules he swallowed each day, he discovered how Israel’s politicians and scientists had initially been divided over “going nuclear.” In the files were details of angry exchanges within cabinet meetings, the bitter monologues of scientists, and always the overpowering voice of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion cutting through the anguish, protests, and long-winded arguments.
Trouble had begun in 1956, when France had sent a twenty-four-megawatt reactor to Israel. Ben-Gurion announced its purpose was to provide a “pumping station” to turn the desert into an “agricultural paradise by desalinating a billion cubic gallons of seawater annually.” The claim promptly led to the resignation of six of the seven members of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, protesting the reactor was actually intended to be the precursor of “political adventurism which will unite the world against us.” Israel’s leading military strategists supported them. Yigal Allon, a hero of the War of Independence, roundly condemned the “nuclear option”; Yitzhak Rabin, who would soon become the IDF chief of staff, was equally vocal in his protest. Even Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s leading hawk, vehemently opposed a nuclear arsenal. “We have the best conventional forces in the region.”
