My old classmate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Jay Pollard, is still well and truly locked up for espionage.

Mention his name at Fletcher and everyone looks away, nervously. What, was he here? Surely not. He never graduated? So how can he have been here?

Yet there he was, large as life every day in the canteen in 1977-78 when I was there:

Pollard was very much part of a hard-line ‘bombs and missiles’ group of US students who would argue over lunch that the USA should have used tactical nukes to win the Vietnam war. 

One of this group’s favourite pieces of kit was a circular slide-rule needed by would-be Bombers and Missilers to measure the devastation likely to be caused by nuclear and other massive explosions according to such factors as (a) size of explosion, (b) density of buildings and (c) local population.

At a student fancy dress party one of them came dressed in a costume made up as one of these slide-rules. Cool, huh?

Here is a hard-nosed review of what he did:

… the indisputable facts are extraordinary enough on their own terms. They speak volumes about the devastatingly poor judgment exercised by both the spy and his Israeli handlers

…the most far-reaching of Pollard’s haul was the 10-volume Radio and Signal Intelligence Manual (RAISIN), which detailed the American global electronic signal network. That theft alone reportedly cost the United States billions of dollars, since the compromise of these secrets required the complete restructuring of the country’s capabilities.

What a happy couple Pollard and his wife were, to be sure:

In the course of pilfering thousands of documents for the Israelis, Pollard also stole five classified documents that gave background information about Chinese diplomats and intelligence activities in the United States. He gave these documents to his wife, who used them as background material for a pitch to win a public-relations contract from the Chinese Embassy in Washington

Time to let him out? Is handing over Top Secret material to allies worse than handing it over to enemies?

Read the whole thing. Very interesting on many philosophical and policy levels.

Update  a reader sends in something gleaned from a former senior CIA person:

… the real reason is that the Israelis double-crossed US again by swapping some of the Pollard loot to the Soviets as part  of the Soviet Jews migration program.  That’s why the US can’t forgive Pollard.

That story runs around and is mentioned in the article linked above. Yet by now it would have been officially/unofficially confirmed, I’d have thought. And even if it’s true, it’s a reason to dump on Israel, not the lugubriously stupid Pollard?