Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan J. Pollard downplayed the controversy around his private meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, telling NBC News the visit was “personal” and “wasn’t done surreptitiously.”
The “main point” of the meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in July, Pollard said, was to “thank” the ambassador for “his efforts on my behalf during my incarceration.”
Pollard, a former American intelligence analyst, spent 30 years in prison on espionage charges after being found to have passed critical security documents to Israeli intelligence in the 1980s. Israel made Pollard a citizen during his lengthy prison term, and he moved there in 2020, five years after his release on probation.
During Pollard’s detention, Huckabee was among several pro-Israeli politicians who advocated for his release, arguing that the sentence was too severe for someone who had been spying for an ally.
Pollard described his meeting as more of a social call and insisted the two didn’t discuss politics or Gaza. But the meeting comes amid a growing list of episodes in which the ambassador, a fierce champion of Israel, has appeared to deviate from official White House policy as the Trump administration deepens its involvement in Middle East diplomacy and peacekeeping.




Women carry children as Israeli forces forcibly displace them from Nur Shams refugee camp in the northern West Bank, with Israeli soldiers looking on, one with his weapon raised, on February 10, 2025. © 2025 Wahaj Bani Moufleh.
You suspected that Maga had not conquered the Washington national cathedral when Bill Kristol was spotted at a men’s urinal conversing with Chris Wallace. You knew it for sure when James Carville, Anthony Fauci and Rachel Maddow were seen sitting close to one another in the nave.
The Trump administration on Thursday announced new oil and gas drilling off California’s and Florida’s coasts, setting the stage for a political showdown – including with Sunshine state Republicans who have largely opposed petroleum development in the Gulf of Mexico.
A federal judge on Thursday halted for now Donald Trump’s deployment of national guard troops to Washington DC, dealing the president a temporary legal setback to his efforts to send the military to US cities over the objections of local leaders.
Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist who participated in protests at Columbia University and was detained by Ice earlier this year, has filed a lawsuit demanding the Trump administration release its communications with anti-Palestinian groups he says contributed to his March arrest and efforts to detain him.





























