Long before Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998 at Chaghai, the Pakistani nukes’ lab was one of the targets of an Israeli espionage effort that led to the arrest and conviction of Jonathan Pollard.
Pollard, Israel’s mole in the US Navy’s Anti-Terrorist Alert between 1984 and 1985, passed thousands of documents to his handlers and provided information about Pakistan’s plutonium reprocessing facility near Islamabad. The details are carried in The Jonathan Jay Pollard Espionage Case: A Damage Assessment, October 30, 1987 prepared by the CIA, and declassified for the second time on December 13.
A heavily redacted version of the report was first declassified in 2006.
The latest version gives more insight and was released as a result of appeals by the National Security Archive, a non-profit organisation working to reduce secrecy in US government.
Then defence secretary Caspar Weinberger said Pollard delivered to the Israelis documents that could fill a 6’x6’x10’ space. He was detected and arrested in the US in 1985, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The assessment report contains a confession by Pollard and reveals new details on the subjects on which he was asked by his Israeli handlers to provide intelligence, “in descending order of priority”:
“Arab (and Pakistani) nuclear intelligence; Arab exotic weaponry, including chemical and weapons; Soviet aircraft; Soviet air defences; Soviet air-to-air missiles and air-to-surface missiles; and Arab order-of-battle, deployments, readiness.”
In the 17 months that Pollard worked for Israel, he was initially paid $1,500 a month, the amount was later increased to $2,500.
In a still heavily toned down section titled “Implications of Compromises —What Israel Gained from Pollard’s Espionage”, the document reveals on Page 58 that “Pollard’s stolen material, from the Israeli perspective, provided significant benefits [redacted] …. Page 59, [redacted] Pollard’s deliveries concerning PLO headquarters near Tunis, Tunisian and Libyan air defenses, and Pakistan’s plutonium reprocessing facility near Islamabad.”
The reference to Pakistan is most likely about the Pakistan Institute of Science & Technology’s New Labs near Rawalpindi, where there has been a plutonium reprocessing facility since the 1980s. In 2009, New Labs was in the news again when a US think tank, using satellite imagery, said it had added another plutonium separation plant at the same site.