Pollard: Anti-Israel elements in US administration leaked my Huckabee meeting to get him fired

Former Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard on Thursday accused anti-Israel and isolationist elements within the US government of leaking to The New York Times that he met off-the-books with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, in a bid to discredit and oust the pro-Israel envoy.

“The New York Times story was part, or is part, of an effort to discredit the ambassador and have him removed, and I think the people behind this are anti-Israel elements within the Trump administration, the neo-isolationists… and others, perhaps pro-Saudi, pro-Qatari elements within the administration that would like to see a person like Ambassador Huckabee sent home,” Pollard said in an interview with i24.

Pollard said he asked to meet Huckabee in order to thank the ambassador for his efforts to secure his 2015 parole and for his kindness to his late wife Esther while in a US prison.

Pollard, who was imprisoned in the US for three decades for spying for Israel, also accused US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and White House adviser Jared Kushner of representing Saudi and Qatari rather than US interests in brokering the Gaza ceasefire, and said he despises them for daring to “carry on with terrorists.”

The 20-point ceasefire plan, which suggests the possibility of Palestinian statehood, threatens Israel’s security and “undermines our independence,” and the October 9 truce-hostage deal that is based on that plan would have been worthwhile only had Israel “unleashed… hell on Hamas” following the October 13 release of the last 20 living hostages from Gaza, Pollard said.

The Israeli news network spoke with Pollard following the Times’ Thursday report about his meeting with Huckabee, which was said to have alarmed the CIA station chief in Israel, and which the White House said it was unaware of.

“The White House was not aware of that meeting, but the president stands by Ambassador Huckabee and all that he’s doing for the United States and Israel,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said when asked about the Times report at a press briefing on Thursday.

Q: Ambassador Huckabee had a meeting with Jonathan Pollard, a former US citizen who was convicted and spent 3 decades in jail for selling state secrets to Israel. Did the WH know that meeting was happening?

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LEAVITT: The WH was not aware of that meeting but the president stands… pic.twitter.com/mro1PNn224

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 20, 2025

During the i24 interview, which aired in English with Hebrew subtitles on the outlet’s Hebrew-language news channel, Pollard suggested that the CIA station chief in question was the one who leaked the story of his meeting with Huckabee to the Times.

Pollard described the meeting with the ambassador as “personal” and “friendly” and said it was his first time being hosted by a US government official since his release.

“A lot of people seem to think that I harbor an anger toward the United States, which I don’t,” said Pollard, 70, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for sending secrets to Israel while serving as a US Navy analyst.

“There were specific people that lied about me, that lied about Israel, that tried to use me as a weapon to undermine the US-Israel special relationship, and those are the people I have problems with,” said Pollard. “But certainly people like Ambassador Huckabee, and others, I have absolutely no problem talking to.”

“I honestly never thought for a moment that this kind of meeting that I had would be used by elements within… the US embassy and within the Trump administration as a weapon to have the ambassador embarrassed and subsequently removed,” said Pollard.

“I’ve been punished. Thirty years is a long time,” said Pollard of his incarceration. “The fact that I didn’t really cooperate with the authorities at the time, who wanted to use me as a weapon against Israel, I think, is still a problem for certain elements within the American intelligence community.”

Referring to the leak to the Times, Pollard continued: “If I could guess, I would say it’s that community, particularly the CIA station in the embassy, that probably was the one that initiated this whole effort to discredit the ambassador.”

Huckabee is among the Israeli government’s most vociferous advocates in the administration of US President Donald Trump, whose MAGA voter base includes a large contingent that is leery of Israel’s influence on US politics.

A Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, Huckabee has defended the government’s continued settlement construction in the West Bank as a response to recognition of Palestinian statehood by several Western nations over the summer.

‘I despise them’

Asked if the meeting could cause problems for Huckabee in the Trump administration, Pollard did not address the question directly, and instead launched a tirade against Witkoff and Kushner for meeting with Hamas representatives even after the group’s brutal attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.

“American representatives — of the Trump administration in particular — people like Jared Kushner, people like Steve Witkoff… I despise them,” said Pollard. “For people like that to carry on with terrorists who have murdered our people, who have organized efforts to discredit Israel, I find abhorrent. But that isn’t a problem for certain people.”

Kushner, who is Trump’s son-in-law, and Witkoff met with senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya and other top Hamas members at least once, to hammer out the October 9 ceasefire deal.

“Steve Witkoff can meet with the people who ordered our people to be butchered on October 7, and nobody seems to think that’s a problem because, ‘Well, he’s working on peace,'” said Pollard.

“No, he’s working on his bank account,” he continued, apparently alluding to the Witkoff family firm’s reported solicitation of investments from Hamas-backer Qatar.

In brokering the Gaza ceasefire, Witkoff and Kushner “did everything in their power to prevent us from winning in Gaza,” said Pollard.

‘They are representatives — not of the United States, but of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and secondarily, Turkey,” said the former Israeli spy, ironically accusing other US officials of having ultimate loyalty to a different country.

“I don’t consider what they did for our hostages to be an act of altruism in any way, shape or form. People have to understand that just because somebody appears to be a friend of ours doesn’t make him so.”

Pollard said his comments did not engender a lack of gratitude toward Witkoff and Kushner, since no gratitude was due.

“If immediately after the living hostages were released, we unleashed… hell on Hamas and finished them off, I would have said that everything that had led up to that point in terms of negotiating and discussions to secure the release of the hostages would have been worthwhile,” said Pollard. “But right now, the 20-point peace plan that the president has imposed on us undermines our independence and threatens the security of our country.”

Pollard was arrested in 1985, convicted of espionage and sentenced to life two years later after pleading guilty in a deal that his attorneys expected would lead to a more lenient sentence.

Israel long lobbied for Pollard’s release. When he was granted parole in 2015, he was forbidden from traveling abroad, subjected to a curfew, required to wear a wrist monitor and prohibited from working for any company that lacked US government monitoring software on its computer systems.

Pollard arrived in Israel in 2020 with his wife, Esther, who passed away in 2022. He had long expressed a desire to move to Israel, which granted him citizenship in 1995 while he was still in prison.