The White House on Thursday said it was unaware of a private meeting earlier this year between Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, and convicted Israeli-American spy Jonathan Pollard at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
The meeting reportedly took U.S. officials by surprise because it broke with what some current and former officials described as a long-standing precedent for American diplomatic protocol.
Pollard, 71, confirmed the meeting to reporters, according to i24News, and described it as cordial.
He said it was the first time a U.S. official had hosted him at an American government office since his parole in 2015 after serving nearly 30 years in prison. Pollard pleaded guilty in 1986 to a single count of conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government.
"The White House was not aware of that meeting, but the president stands by our ambassador, Mike Huckabee, and all that he's doing for the United States and Israel," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday in a briefing that aired live on Newsmax and the Newsmax2 free online streaming platform.
Huckabee told Axios on Thursday that nothing was requested or granted in the meeting, which took place in July. He said many people request meetings, and he tries to accommodate them.
The meeting, however, was described within the U.S. security apparatus as an unprecedented, unsanctioned outreach to a convicted American spy whose case many officials still view as one of the most damaging in modern U.S. intelligence history.
"Why would the American representative in the state of Israel want to meet with Jonathan Pollard?" Daniel Kurtzer, the U.S. ambassador to Israel from 2001-2005 under George W. Bush, told The New York Times. "It just defies any kind of logic."
Kurtzer acknowledged Pollard paid a heavy price but said there was "no reason to rehabilitate him."
Pollard told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that the meeting was a "personal" conversation meant to thank Huckabee for his support and kindness to his late wife, Esther — who died in 2022 — and not a political exchange.
"The reason I wanted to meet him was to express my deep and sincere appreciation for everything he had done to help me when I was in prison," he said.
Pollard, who emigrated to Israel in 2020 after his parole restrictions expired, said the meeting was "misinterpreted" and used by certain figures within the U.S. Embassy and the Trump administration to try to discredit Huckabee.
"These people are not friends of Israel, and frankly, I wouldn't even consider them friends of the Trump administration either," he said, adding that President Donald Trump should "clean out" the CIA.
"The entire CIA station at the U.S. Embassy should be sent home, and a smaller, more professional team should be brought in. A depoliticized team should be brought in to represent the agency," Pollard said.
He also criticized Kurtzer and suggested someone at the U.S. Embassy alerted White House officials about the meeting.
"Dan Kurtzer is someone I characterize as an enemy of the State of Israel," Pollard told the Post.
"He has made some very intemperate remarks concerning me that I find, frankly, kind of shocking. I understood, the minute I read the [Times] article, where this was coming from."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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