IT'S TIME TO CONSIDER INFAMY HALL OF FAME TO INCLUDE JONATHAN POLLARD

Each major sport -- baseball, football, basketball, and hockey -- has a Hall of Fame. It's time that we consider creating an Infamy Hall of Shame. The Pollard case and its last-minute injection into the bargaining process at the Wye River peace talks brings infamy front and center.

The first inductees to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936 were Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner.

In the American Infamy Hall of Shame, the first inductees would be Benedict Arnold, Aldrich Ames, Edward Lee Howard, William Kampiles, Julius Rosenberg, John Walker, Jerry Whitworth -- and Jonathan Pollard.

Every schoolchild learns about Benedict Arnold, who was one of George Washington's trusted generals. After Arnold's treason against the new American nation was discovered, he fled to the British and went into exile in London in 1781.

Numerous books have been written about the perfidy of CIA analyst Aldrich Ames. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Edward Lee Howard, a former CIA case officer, gave the Soviet KGB detailed information on CIA sources and activities in Moscow. Several of our operatives were executed. Howard defected to the Soviet Union in 1985 and is still at large.

William Kampiles sold the specifications of our overhead satellite system for cold cash and earned a 40-year sentence.

Julius Rosenberg gave the secrets of the atom bomb to our wartime ally, the Soviet Union. He was executed eight years later in 1953. The now public Soviet archives confirm that Rosenberg was a spy. So too for Alger Hiss.

John Walker stole secret Defense Department documents and cryptographic keys and sold them to Moscow for cash. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Jerry Whitworth, Walker's co-conspirator, got a sentence of 365 years in the pen.

Jonathan Pollard is the final spy to be inducted into the Infamy Hall of Shame.

I was a member of the U.S. Senate's Intelligence Committee when Pollard was apprehended. I have followed the case ever since, including during the more than five years I have served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board since 1993.

Pollard transferred mountains of top-secret material to Israel in the 1980s. He pleaded guilty of a conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government and was sentenced to life in prison. Three years later Pollard sought to reopen his case, claiming the government had coerced his plea and had breached a plea bargain. District of Columbia Court of Appeals Judge Ruth Baker Ginsburg (now on the Supreme Court) and Judge Leon Silberman affirmed the conviction. While not disputing Pollard's guilt, Judge Stephen Williams dissented, agreeing with Pollard that he should be sentenced to a lesser term by a different judge.

At the outset, Pollard did it out of conscience. As he got deeper into it, like most of the other members of the Infamy Hall of Shame, he decided to earn some money for his strenuous spy work. Moreover, Pollard actually continued to send top-secret information to Israel while serving life in the penitentiary.

For years after his arrest and incarceration, the Israeli government hung Pollard out to dry, claiming he was part of an "unauthorized rogue operation." Israel proclaimed that it would never spy on its trusted friend, the United States. In more recent times, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to his credit, has 'fessed up. Pollard was in fact a spy controlled by the highest echelons of Israeli intelligence. His Israeli handlers passed Pollard's secret data on to civilian Israeli authorities. Later on, Israel supplied some of the secret information to another nation.

William Safire of the New York Times, perhaps the most ardent journalistic supporter of Israel, puts it this way: "Pollard betrayed his country at the behest of foolhardy spooks in Israel who were unconcerned about poisoning Israeli-American relations and besmirching all Jewish Americans with charges of `dual loyalty.' The reckless Israelis ignoring the risk were more culpable than the traitor in Washington, but were never properly punished by Israel."

Supporters of Pollard make the bogus argument that Israel is entitled, as a matter of right, to all aspects of America's Mideast intelligence and that Israel gives us everything they have in return. False. The United States does not share all of its intelligence data (or all of any category of intelligence data) with any nation. The same is true for Israel.

As the peace talks in Maryland were concluding and as the documents were being prepared for signing, Netanyahu demanded that Pollard be turned over to Israel. He and President Clinton boxed around on the issue for some hours. Finally, it was agreed that Clinton would review the matter, which Clinton has done twice before. Could Netanyahu truly believe that relocating Israel's discredited spy was more important than the agreement he had just entered into with the Palestinians?

Netanyahu's 11th-hour demand was a political ploy, a sop he wanted to throw to the Israeli hardliners who want no territorial concessions to the Palestinians. Netanyahu faces tremendous opposition from his own right wing, especially the Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Signing the agreement with Arafat -- with Clinton as the guarantor -- required personal and political courage on Netanyahu's part. For this act he might qualify as something of a contemporary profile in courage, although the Pollard request cheapened an otherwise noble moment.

The return of Jonathan Pollard to Israel will not change a single vote in the Knesset. It will not change the mind of a single Jewish settler in the West Bank. Transferring Pollard to Israel will not buy off the zealots. They are dug in, and the Pollard gambit will not expiate Netanyahu's supposed sin of surrender against God's will and history, as claimed by the hardliners.

As for Clinton, he will create gargantuan morale problems in both the FBI and the CIA if he reverts to his let's-make-everyone-happy mode and grants Netanyahu's demand to release Pollard after only 13 years in prison. The Pollard case is deemed a success story for the CIA and the FBI. If Clinton decides that 13 years is a sufficient sentence for selling out your country, there will be trouble in both agencies.

Both FBI director Louis Freeh or CIA director George Tenet would be held in contempt by their colleagues if they approve the release.

If Freeh were to advise against clemency and be overruled by Clinton, the FBI director would resign. Having already been rebuffed by Attorney General Janet Reno on the appointment of an independent counsel on the 1996 campaign fund-raising orgy, Freeh could not accept yet another slap in the face from the Clinton administration. If his advice on major law enforcement matters is no longer heeded by the Clinton administration, Freeh will leave.

CIA director Tenet is, if anything, in an even worse fix than Freeh. Under the Wye River accord, the CIA has become the on-the-ground peace enforcer in Palestinian territory. It appears that Tenet volunteered for this assignment. If Tenet had not accepted this innovative CIA role, Netanyahu would not have signed the agreement. If Tenet agrees to free Pollard, he loses the measure of respect he has justifiably gained from the people who work under him at the CIA.

If Tenet does disagree with Clinton's let's-be-nice copout -- as he must -- he has to make it clear that the choice the president is about to make is between freeing Pollard and losing Tenet as director of the CIA. Faced with this stark choice, Clinton cannot and must not send the traitor Pollard to refuge in the nation that instigated and benefited from the conspiracy.

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator.