Israel Spy Case Figure Released From Prison to Halfway House

NEW YORK —  Anne Henderson-Pollard, imprisoned for helping her husband spy on the U.S. government for Israel, was released from federal prison to a Manhattan halfway house, officials said Friday.

Henderson-Pollard had served two years and eight months of her five-year sentence when she was released from the federal prison at Danbury, Conn., according to Steve Finger, acting executive assistant at the prison.

She was placed in the custody of the Women’s Prison Assn. and Hopper House, which maintains a halfway house on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

She was released on Nov. 20. Her father, Bernard R. Henderson of Secaucus, N.J., said little was made of the change because his daughter--who suffers from bilary dyskinesia, a rare gastro-intestinal disorder--”needed a little time just to stand up. Every day she does a little better.”

Henderson-Pollard must stay at the halfway house from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., according to Richard Luna, a probation official. But she will soon be eligible for weekend furloughs.

She works at her father’s public relations company in Manhattan, and must inform the halfway house of her whereabouts at all times.

Henderson-Pollard is scheduled to be released on probation on March 30. She has applied for “curfew parole,” a form of house arrest, and could be granted that status as early as the end of next month. She also has applied for early release.

She was sentenced in March, 1987, after pleading guilty to conspiracy to receive embezzled government property and being an accessory after the fact to possession of state secrets.

Her husband, Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst, was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to selling secrets to Israel.