Territory of Lies: The Exclusive Story of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the American Who Spied on His Country for Israel and How He Was Betrayed

This book tells the story of Jonathan Pollard, an U.S. Navy Intelligence employee whom in 1985 - 86 spied for Israel. The book takes us through a brief life history of the man, the details on how he started his spying, the actual working of the spying, his capture and trial. The author does a very good job of keeping the reader bouncing between thinking Pollard was a socially challenged day dreamer with illusions of grandeur to an Israeli state hero. We learn of the many times in Pollards life where he presented to high school classmates, college friends and co-workers highly creative tails of himself as a top flight Mossad agent - all of which was a fantasy created within Pollards mind. We are also presented with the case that Pollard was providing to Israel valuable and necessary to their survival secrets that not only helped Israel but also the U.S.The author also does a good job of presenting the case that the running of this spy was not done well at all. The book talks about the many mistakes Israel made on the running of Pollard and the others associated with him, and then details how Israel left Pollard out to twist in the wind. What was also interesting to me were the effects, detailed by the author, of this case of friends spying on each other. The author explains the political fallout from this case and the ways the intelligence community reacted to this "Jewish" spying. Bottom line Pollard was a spy and what he did was illegal. The author is somewhat sympathetic to Pollard but in the end does state that the law was broken. There is a lot of sympathy in the book about the jail time the wife gets, but in my view she knew and facilitated the spying, therefore, she was just as guilty as Pollard and got off easy. Pollard complains about how hard jail is on both he and his wife, but you know what - jail is not meant to be fun, it is punishment. The book is interesting and moves fast - similar to a CNN article. You get all the facts and they are spelled out in an easy to grasp fashion. If you are interested in this case this is a very good overview.

This is an excellent book about a most unusual espionage case. I believe that Wolf Blitzer deserves a great deal of praise both for his writing style and the quality of his research.Bottom Line: Pollard was a venal, mixed up person who cheerfully betrayed his country for money. My impression from reading a recent Seymour Hersh article about Pollard is that the "I did it for Israel" excuse is a convenient afterthought. He should stay in jail...But if it is necessary to release him in order to cajole some future Israeli government into a peace accord with the Palestinians, I could live with that. We should just revoke his citizenship before letting him make "aliyah" (emigration) to Israel. Personally, I'd like to see him sent there via a giant slingshot (like the way Dilbert gets periodically sent to Elbonia).