SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- A Navy intelligence employee charged with selling U.S. government secrets is remembered in his hometown as being 'honest in every way.'
Jonathan Pollard, 31, was arrested by FBI agents outside the Israeli embassy in Washington Thursday.
Morris Pollard, his father, is a renowned cancer researcher and director of the University of Notre Dame's Lobund Laboratory.
Pollard and his wife, Ann, are accused of passing highly sensitive, counter-terrorist information to an unnamed foreign government. Sources close to the investigation say the former South Bend resident was working for the Israelis.
'He was an extremely fine student and honest in every way,' Francis McMillan, Pollard's high school English teacher, told the South Bend Tribune Friday.
Pollard graduated from the city's Riley High School in 1972, placing 12th out of a class of approximately 300, said Alma Powell, a school system spokeswoman.
The elder Pollard made a late-night trip to Washington when his daughter-in-law called asking for help Thursday, Mildred Pollard, Jonathan's mother, told the newspaper.
'I am frozen,' she said. 'I think there is something worse than cancer.'
McMillan remembered Jonathan Pollard as a student who opposed the 'ultra-liberal' in class discussions.
'There was never anything radical about him,' she said.
Bernard Wostman, a professor of biological sciences at Notre Dame and a 24-year colleague of Morris Pollard's, called Jonathan, 'a nice guy, an intelligent boy.'
Mrs. Pollard said the family knew little of Jonathan's work as a civilian analyzing data for the Navy, but said it made them uncomfortable.
'We have urged him to get out of it for a long time,' she said.
