ISRAEL ,THE UNITED STATES AND THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY ALL BETRAYED JONATHAN POLLARD

Previously, I sent you "Pollard Defenders Vindicated--After 25 years, the CIA has declassified documents that show Jonathan Pollard never spied on the U.S. for Israel" by Lee Smith December 20, 2012 

     *Judge Aubrey Eugene Robinson Jr.  illegally conducted back channel communications with the prosecution who inflamed Judge Robinson by telling him (falsely) that Pollard had provided security information to South Africa. 

     *  Judge Robinson sentenced Jonathan Pollard to life in prison in 1987, claiming that information provided by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger showed that Pollard's spying on behalf of Israel had caused significant damage to American security interests.

 

     *Pollard's Defense (regardless of the level of their security clearances ) were never given access to these charges nor afforded an opportunity to rebut them. As individual accusations leaked out they have been all successfully rebutted. 

     *Now,  After 25 years, the CIA has declassified documents that show Jonathan Pollard never spied on the U.S. for Israel. the CIA report reveals that Pollard did not procure secrets about the United States—nor did Israel ask him to. The intelligence he provided his Israeli handlers consisted of the information that the United States had acquired concerning Arab and other Middle Eastern states.

The  multitude of  public leak and sentensing memo accusations against Pollard have proved to be false. He did not compromise agents. He did not compromise means and sources .  He did not compromise any information relating to US  forces.  All the information he transmitted related to Arab equipment, capabilities, etc. In other words, very simply, he compromised “Defense information” but did not spy against the United States.

     *What adds to this outrage is that the Obama administration knows full well the facts and has elected explicitly to continue Jonathan Pollard's imprisonment in order to keep him as Dennis Ross described as a “bargaining chip”.

I have had no connection ever with Jonathan Pollard or with his prosecution. As a matter of fact, I was not a close follower of the case in the media. My original reaction was “he is a traitor, lock him up and throw away the key.” Also, I was extremely  upset at Israeli for utilizing a Jewish agent which gives the anti-Semites and state, CIA, etc. (who are plentiful) to voice the mantra of “dual loyalty”.

{Zionist Spies Against America - Rense    Ukrainian Revisionism - Jewish spies against America: a long tradition Jewish spies against America: a long tradition.
Pentagon: We thought engineer was Israeli spy because he's a Jew ... 

Israeli Spying: The Mother of all Scandals }

I was involved in the Kadish case  for the DOD and DOJ. They assumed that every document he ever read was compromised. Thus I reviewed the 200+ documents that he had requisitioned. Nearly all were at the official use level. All dealt with logistical support details. None were sensitive. The only documents on "nuclear materials” dealt with the mating of the physical missiles with the aircraft systems (which wire was attached to which wire and which hose was attached to which hose.) Any connection to Pollard was far-fetched. Kadish pled guilty in a deal that permitted him to keep all his retirement and benefits and involved no jail time or other civil penalties. At that time I wrote an article which was published on this case

THIS SENSATIONAL (NOT CORRECT) ARTICLE WAS TYPICAL: Ex-U.S. Army engineer Kadish pleads guilty to spying for Israel Kadish charged with slipping classified documents about nuclear weapons to Israeli Consulate employee in 1980s. By The Associated Press | Dec. 30, 2008 

I am also familiar with the AIPAC/Larry Franklin case. Franklin (not Jewish) was accused of providing “top  secret policy materials” to AIPAC (and presumably to Israel). As there was no US policy at that time---we were all circulating drafts attempting to influence US policy--nothing was classified. In fact, I received drafts containing much more “defense materials” from Robert Gates and from Zbigniew  Brzezinski .

 The judge eventually dismissed all charges against Stephen Rosen  and Keith  Weissman.  The judge lashed into the persecution for their underhanded and unethical behavior.  

 Legal experts said the government was wrong in the first place for trying to criminalize the kind of information horse-trading that long has occurred in Washington. 

THE BASIC QUESTIONS RELATING TO THE POLLARD CASE ARE:

 WHAT WAS  HE ACTUALLY INDICTED FOR? WHAT WAS HE ACTUALLY GUILTY OF?

In a recent article appearing on-line Prof. Angelo Codevilla, a staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time Jonathan Pollard was arrested is quoted:“Having been intimately acquainted with the materials that Pollard passed and with the sources and methods by which they were gathered, I would be willing to give expert testimony that Pollard is guilty of neither more nor less than what the indictment alleges.”

The  multitude of  public leak and sentensing memo accusations against Pollard have proved to be false. He did not compromise agents. He did not compromise means and sources .  He did not compromise any information relating to US  forces.  All the information he transmitted related to Arab equipment, capabilities, etc. In other words, very simply, he compromised “Defense information” but did not spy against the United States. 

 U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (long regarded by Israel as antagonistic toward the Jewish state),intimidated to the court that Pollard gave information to the Soviets.  The assumption was  that "means and sources "information was being transmitted to the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union fell we found out that our assumptions that the Soviet Union had penetrated Israeli intelligence and that US intelligence going to Israel was in fact ending up in the Soviet Union WERE FALSE.(Later, we came to learn that this was the doing of Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames.)

WHAT IS THE APPROPRIATE AND COMPARABLE PUNISHMENT FOR HIS ACTUAL TRANSGRESSIONS?During the same time period  a spy caught working for Saudi Arabia (a Navy officer named Schwarz-not Jewish- where the intelligence did in fact go to an enemy power-and was very harmful to US military interests) received a dishonorable discharge and nothing further as punishment 

THE BOTTOM LINE IS: DO YOU FEEL THAT POLLARD  SHOULD BE RELEASED?

 ALSO, DO YOU FEEL THAT IT IS DESPICABLE THAT A PROMINENT JEWISH MEMBER OF THE OBAMA TEAM HAS PUBLICLY ADVOCATED THAT POLLARD  NOT BE RELEASED BUT RATHER THAT HE STILL  BE HELD AS A “BARGAINING CHIP”.One of the major reasons for incarcerating Pollard-and thus holding him as hostage-was the widespread belief (spread by Aldrich Ames to cover his own tracks) that there was a 2nd Israeli mole inside the CIA. U.S. officials  repeatedly, publicly claimed that Pollard was not working alone when he spied for Israel and  the United States therefore  should make Pollard's release conditional on Israel acknowledging this"BASELESS." claim. 

Now follows the 2 articles I mentioned.

 1.     Israel Betrayed Pollard, Too

Sidney Zion - NY Daily News -June 22, 2000

A sensational revelation about the Jonathan Pollard case surfaced this week. When the Israeli government agreed to return the purloined papers obtained through its American spy, the United States government agreed that it would not use the stuff to convict Pollard.

But as soon as the documents got to Washington, the FBI slammed them in Pollard's face, forcing a guilty plea that resulted in a life sentence .

Until the other day, Pollard didn't know about the deal brokered by then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Secretary of State George Shultz in 1985, right after Pollard's arrest. But now, a 1987 report by a Knesset committee chaired by Abba Eban has finally seen the light of day. And it shows a dark picture of denial and deceit — a virtual triple-cross — that has doomed Pollard for 15 years, with no end in sight.

Without the documents, our government had no real case against Pollard. When he was caught trying to get into the Israeli Embassy in Washington, he had only those few papers he could hold. The U.S. interest was to retrieve the mass of documents that had been passed, and Israel was more than willing to give them back. Shultz wanted to keep this terribly embarrassing situation between allies as limited as possible.

But Israel needed certain conditions: Pollard's handlers must be granted immunity from prosecution in America, and Pollard would not be convicted based on the purloined papers. Immunity was granted to the three Israeli agents who had brought Pollard, a Navy intelligence officer, into the deal. There would not be immunity for Pollard, but the documents returned to America would not be used against him.

When the FBI, against this agreement, hit Pollard with the papers, which had his fingerprints all over them, he felt he had no choice but to plead guilty.

The Justice Department offered him a "substantial sentence," which was understood to be no more than 10 years in prison. No other spy for an allied government had received more than four years.

But an hour before sentencing, then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger delivered a memo to the trial judge proclaiming Pollard "the worst spy in American history." He accused him of treason, a charge never made by the prosecution because it couldn't be made, since Israel is an ally of America.

Thus, Pollard became the first defendant in history to receive the maximum after pleading guilty. And on a secret affidavit the public has not yet seen. And against an American guarantee that what he stole would not be used against him. If this be due process. ...

Where were the Israelis while this was going on? They never advised Pollard that America had agreed to keep the documents out of the case. He pleaded guilty without knowing this, and when his appeal came up, he still didn't know.

Indeed, until two years ago, the Israeli government refused to confirm that he was their agent. They protected his handlers but left him out in the cold.

And all the while, until this day, the CIA has been spreading stories that make him a danger to America — without a scintilla of evidence to support it. "If you only knew what we know" — that's the mantra.

Well, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) finally got access to these files. "I saw nothing new," Schumer said. "They ought to let him go."

What's new is that they knew it all the time, America and Israel.

2.     The Truth About the Pollard Affair – The Eban Report

By Dr. Aaron Lerner – The Jerusalem Post – June 20, 2000

I would like to share some shocking information that recently came to my attention regarding the Pollard Affair. This new information not only makes the already-powerful arguments for Pollard’s immediate release just that much stronger. It also raises serious questions about US-Israel relations and provides further evidence of Israel’s own role in undermining Pollard’s position.

I recently obtained a copy of the May 26, 1987 Eban Commission Report on the Pollard Affair that was prepared by a subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset.

I was astounded to find the following passage under the heading “The Decision to Cooperate with the US.”

1. Israel agreed to return the American documents it obtained through Pollard, but “conditioned the cooperation on the granting of immunity to the three persons involved in the affair and on the consent of the Americans to the fact that the documents returned would not be used to convict Pollard… ” That’s right. The United States agreed NOT to use the documents in the case against Pollard.

How important were those documents to the case?

Let’s look at what Assistant U.S. Attorney John R. Fisher wrote on page 10 in the June 17, 1987 “Government’s Opposition to Motion to Reduce Sentence”: “Cooperation was not forthcoming in this case until several months after defendant’s arrest. Indeed, defendant agreed to enter a guilty plea and cooperate only after government attorneys and investigators returned from Israel with additional evidence of defendant’s guilt.”

Not only did the Americans break their agreement with Israel and use the documents to prosecute Pollard, the government’s own lawyer states for the record that Pollard pleaded guilty thanks to those documents.

America broke its word and Pollard went to prison.

And what about Israel? In the same section of the Eban Report, which was written just after Pollard was sentenced, three members of the Eban Commission condemned Israel’s return of the documents and concluded,

” …These documents constituted the basis for the conviction and life sentence that Pollard received, in spite of… an American commitment not to use the documents against Pollard.”

When Israel handed over the documents to the US in 1985, it did not advise Jonathan Pollard of the American agreement not to use the documents against him. So he had no way to keep them out of court.

In the summer of 1991, four years after the Eban Report was issued, as Jonathan Pollard prepared to appeal his case, he still did not know that that evidence had no place in the courtroom.

Not only did Israel provide America the gun to shoot Pollard, their silence denied Pollard the opportunity to defend himself against it.

Israel did not stop there.

When Jonathan Pollard signed the plea agreement, he was explicitly defined in the plea agreement as an official agent of the Israeli Government, a status that makes clear Israel’s obligations to him.

After Pollard signed the plea agreement, that passage was crossed out with two different colors of ink by two different representatives – an American and an Israeli.

So, rather than stand by their agent when the US violated an agreement not to use the documents Israel had returned to America, and press for the deal to be honored ex post facto, Israel opted to turn its back on Pollard.

The severity of Jonathan Pollard’s sentence bears no relationship to either the terms of the plea bargain or the crimes he was prosecuted for.

From day one, proponents of the sentence have defended their position by claiming that the damage assessment in Pollard’s classified file is so shocking that it justifies the sentence.

For years this “if you only knew what we know” argument has provided refuge for people who, for whatever reason, did not want to help put an end to this grossly disproportionate punishment.

But now we do know.

New York Senator Charles Schumer did not rely on what others claimed was in the classified Pollard file. He saw it himself. And after reviewing the “if you only knew what we know” file, he revealed the shocking truth – There was nothing to know! That’s right. Schumer, after seeing the file itself, states that there is nothing in it to justify the harsh and unprecedented sentence that Jonathan Pollard is serving.

This revelation raises several questions:

One: Why did the US intelligence community misrepresent the damage caused by the Pollard affair?

Two: What does this tell us about the nature of US – Israel intelligence (and other) relations?

Three: What does this tell us about the senior actors – such as US President Bill Clinton – who most certainly must have been aware that the “if you only knew what we know” line was just that – a line.

Hillary Clinton says that she is “open to learning more (about the Pollard case) and thinking harder about what I think is the right thing to do.” Well the right thing to do today, with the “if you only knew what we know” line excuse demolished, is to set Pollard free. And that’s today – not tomorrow.

Dr. Aaron Lerner is a commentator and Middle East news analyst. He is CEO of IMRA, an independent news service based in Israel.

Pollard hopes to see Ariel Sharon one more time – Gil Hoffman – The Jerusalem Post

1. The associate said Pollard’s interest in Sharon was connected to the 1987 Eban Commission Report, which was the Knesset’s official investigation of the Pollard Case. The report revealed Sharon’s role right after Pollard’s arrest.
   “Sharon was the only one who fought tooth and nail with then-prime minister Shimon Peres and the rest of the cabinet, arguing with them not to return the US documents that Pollard had provided to Israel,” the associate said. “Sharon warned that doing so would endanger the agent’s life.”
   According to the Eban Report, Sharon argued that Israel must first rescue Pollard and then do whatever else was deemed necessary.
   He was adamant that Israel do nothing until the safe return of its agent was first assured.
   The Eban Report indicated that two other ministers supported Sharon’s position, but he was out-voted and Peres’s promise to then-US secretary of state George Schultz to return the documents was ratified. The report also confirmed that the documents were the only evidence the US had on Pollard.
   Without them, they would not have had enough of a case against him.
   When the cabinet voted to return the documents, the report said Sharon declared: “You have just killed the agent!”