U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee secretly hosted convicted spy Jonathan Pollard at the American embassy in July, a meeting kept off the ambassador’s official schedule and withheld from both the White House and the State Department. The undisclosed encounter, revealed on Thursday, has unsettled members of the U.S. intelligence community who learned of it only after the fact.
Pollard confirmed the meeting to the New York Times, describing the conversation as “friendly” and “personal.” According to Pollard, he requested the meeting himself to thank Huckabee for publicly advocating for his release more than a decade ago.
Pollard, a former Naval Intelligence analyst, was arrested in 1985 after passing more than 800 classified documents and roughly 1,500 intelligence summaries to Israeli handlers. The stolen materials included sensitive assessments of Arab states, Pakistan, the Soviet Union, nuclear programs, and global military capabilities. His espionage is still widely regarded as the most damaging spying case in modern U.S. history.
Though sentenced to life in prison, Pollard was eligible for parole under pre-1987 sentencing rules and was released in 2015. The Justice Department ultimately declined to renew his parole restrictions in November 2020, allowing him to leave the United States. The following month, he flew to Israel on a private jet owned by the late Israel lobby donor Sheldon Adelson, where he was welcomed as a national hero and personally greeted by then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Since Pollard’s release, U.S. policy within the State Department and intelligence agencies has explicitly barred all official contact with him due to the scale of his espionage. Huckabee’s decision to meet with him—while hiding the meeting from senior U.S. officials—marked the first breach of that decade-long protocol.
Despite the uproar, the White House has publicly defended the ambassador. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that “the president stands by our ambassador, Mike Huckabee, and all that he is doing for the United States and Israel.” There is no indication that Huckabee will face disciplinary action.
The revelation has fueled growing criticism from segments of the American right, where skepticism of Israel has intensified over the past two years. Huckabee, a staunch supporter of Israel who once claimed Palestinians “did not exist,” remains one of the most influential voices shaping President Trump’s Israel policy during both of his terms.