The Jonathan Pollard affair would never have come about if not for the personal ambition and internecine ego wars between the chiefs of the Israeli espionage system in the 1980s.

It all began with Rafi Eitan, one of Israel’s greatest spies, who was responsible for (among other exploits) the capture of Nazi arch-murderer Adolf Eichmann and for bringing him to Israel to stand trial in 1960. In the beginning of the 1980s, Eitan belonged to the inner circles surrounding Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. His life dream was to be appointed head of the Mossad. He was not granted his wish, but Sharon tried to compensate him by appointing him to head the Bureau of Scientific Relations (Lekem) in 1981. This bureau, associated with the Defense Ministry, was a relatively minor, clandestine Israeli intelligence organization tasked with collecting Western technology to be used by Israeli defense projects. From this position, Eitan wanted to prove his mettle to those who had denied him the Mossad and show them that they’d made a bad mistake. He decided that he would come up with material that they had never seen, even in their wildest dreams. That goal spurred him to employ a spy in the very hub of the US intelligence establishment.

Jonathan Pollard was no run-of-the-mill spy, but a brilliant, ambitious American navy intelligence officer with a photographic memory and great love for the State of Israel. Pollard offered his services to the Israelis, who jumped at the opportunity.

Employing Pollard on US territory was an act of madness. Nevertheless, the quality of the material that Pollard brought in forced Israel’s leaders to receive it, though with trembling hands. “No Israeli leader could have turned his back on such material,” one of the affair’s old-timers told Al-Monitor this week on condition of anonymity. “From our perspective, it was not material that could harm the United States, but it could be of great use to Israel. We viewed ourselves as a faithful American ally and simply ‘helped’ the Americans to help us, without their knowledge. We cut corners,” he admitted. “We simply got carried away; we were dazzled by what we saw.”