(May 18, 1997)

For more than a decade, the bureau and officials at the Department of Justice have been obsessed with the suspicion that Israeli intelligence is running a mole inside the administration. This conviction originated in November 1986, following the arrest of Jonathan J. Pollard at the gates of the Israeli Embassy. Pollard, a U.S. citizen of Jewish origins, worked as an analyst at the counterterrorism center of U.S. Navy intelligence. He was sentenced to life in prison for spying on behalf of a secret Israeli intelligence unit called Lakam, a Hebrew acronym for Scientific Liaison Bureau.

U.S. prosecutors and investigators believed that Pollard and his Israeli handlers were helped by another American, referred to as Mr. X, who probably was a senior administration official. Mr. X provided the reference numbers that helped Pollard pull out requested files from America’s most-secret intelligence computers. But the investigators could not uncover Mr. X. Now, the FBI is eager to determine whether the old Mr. X of the Pollard affair is Mega.