Convicted of espionage in 1986, Pollard did such damage to U.S. national security that top intelligence officials threatened to resign if Bill Clinton acceded to Israeli demands to pardon him. He is serving a life sentence for stealing secrets deemed so valuable that the Soviet Union reportedly agreed to trade them for the release of tens of thousands of Russian Jews for resettlement in Israel.

Pollard had top-secret clearance and was able to procure a long list of documents for his Israeli handlers, but what baffled – and alarmed – top intelligence officials was that he had known the titles and in some cases the serial numbers of specific documents. These could only have been provided by someone in a much higher pay grade – a top official privy to ultra-sensitive, need-to-know secrets. Continued