The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Obama Administration is preparing to release one of this country’s most notorious spies in an effort to placate Israel in the aftermath of Iranian agreement. Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy, betrayed his country and was arrested as he attempted to flee to the Israeli embassy in 1985. He was not only convicted of espionage but the Justice Department and intelligence agencies have long maintained that he did untold harm to the national security. The question of the release of Pollard has always raised interesting political, social, and legal questions. Thirty years is certainly not an insignificant amount of time and Pollard reportedly has health issues. My greatest concern is one of special treatment, particularly on sentencing policy for other national security cases. (For full disclosure, I have handled and continued to serve as lead counsel in national security cases).
For some the release comes at a time of tension over Israeli spying operations against the United States. Israel has long been accused of being one of the greatest sponsors of espionage against the United States, including recent reports ranking it among the top most active countries targeting the United States. The alleged concession will not sit well with some people who will argue that we should not trade away spies to appease other nations upset with our foreign policy. This would not be a spy swap with Russia but what the Wall Street Journal is suggesting is a concession prize to help political relations both inside and outside the United States. Particularly given the opposition to the Iran deal itself, the release would be viewed by many as too high a price for political relations. After all, the United States still gives Israel billions each year in aid, including massive military support. However, the Administration is framing the issue as a routine release after serving 30 years for the espionage. 
On its face, the Pollard case file contains elements that have always worked against leniency, particularly in the relations with Israel after his arrest. Pollard reportedly stole tens of thousands of documents for Israel and allegedly sought to broker arms deal with the governments of South Africa, Argentina, and Taiwan. He eventually agreed to cooperation in exchange for a deal for his wife and a reduction of charges. In the meantime, Israel insisted that they did not run Pollard as a spy and that he was part of an unauthorized operation — a suggestion that has been widely questioned. However, the case has also been colored by bad blood between Israeli and American intelligence officials over the case. When asked to return the material, U.S. officials accused Israel of giving back a small amount of low classified documents and then abusing a U.S. team sent to retrieve more documents. There were even allegations that Israeli intelligence stole material from the U.S. team sent to Israel. It has also refused to release the name of his handler. This record contributed to a long and fervent opposition by intelligence officials to the release of Pollard. There has been a long effort to release Pollard both by the Israeli government and Jewish organizations in the United States. Many of his advocates have insisted that he gave intelligence to an ally and the harm was not as severe for that reason for the United States. Others have argued that, given his cooperation, 30 years is more than enough time.
The question of his release date raises an interesting question. It is also worth noting that, while Pollard was given a life sentence, in June 1987, the laws in effect at the time of Pollard’s sentencing set parole after 30 years for federal life-sentence inmates. That would put his release date at November 21, 2015. However, he is still subject to the discretion of the Commission and is only subject to release in the absence of significant prison regulation violations or a “reasonable probability” of recidivism.
This is a palpable mistrust of the statement made by the Administration over the discussions with Israel. National Security Council spokesperson Alistair Baskey insisted that Pollard’s prison status “will be determined by the United States Parole Commission according to standard procedures. There is absolutely zero linkage between Mr. Pollard’s status and foreign policy considerations.” Zero linkage? If Pollard is released on the heels of the Iran deal, it would be viewed by many as an amazing coincidence. Moreover, Baskey’s statement raises yet another question of whether the Administration is too cavalier with the truth of statements to the American people. Is the Administration denying that the release has been discussed with Israel? The Administration is clearly gearing up to treat the November date as a release date to suggest that it has done nothing special for Pollard. The Justice Department released a tough sounding statement by spokesman Marc Raimondi statement that, if you read it closely, suggests that it will no longer oppose release: “The Department of Justice has always and continues to maintain that Jonathan Pollard should serve his full sentence for the serious crimes he committed, which in this case is a 30-year sentence as mandated by statute.” The question is whether the Justice Department will take the same position in other cases in national security cases. The Justice Department often challenges such constructive release dates and arguing that changed policies or practices can extend sentences. If there is any discretionary decision, it is notorious for opposing any release in major criminal cases.
It would be nice if we could “like” & comment to someone’s comment on here! To Bam Bam……you’re absolutely, right! To Penelope Dreadful….I agree!
you’ve got a point there, Paul, suffering fools is getting harder and harder in me old age…alright,alright, I’ll calm down 🙂
Johnny, are you another one of Nick’s avatars for speaking on his behalf?
I am gonna assume you can back up your assertions that I do not support Israel’s existence, and that I have been spreading venom.
Unless you can back those up, please ignore me and I will gladly do the same to you.
po, It seems phillyt made it about conservatives and liberals and got it wrong. Nick Spinelli just corrected the stupid troll. You do not support Israel’s existence. That is clear by the venom you spread. I think you are the Patriot troll.
Bruce, are you alright? You make it hard to ignore you thanks to the inanity of your comments!
Nick, making it about liberals and conservatives serves only to dissimulate the issue under layers of silliness.
Who are those liberals you speak of?
One may support Israel, its existence and place in the world while still decrying many of the policies its leaders pursue. A great many people across the spectrum are speaking more and more against such policies despite the Israeli propaganda that makes it the perpetual victim.
There is no conflict around the world that does not involve Israel and the US, and had we gone along with the former and its supporters who wanted to bomb Syria and Iran, you would have much more to worry about right now than whether Pollard is freed or not.
Amazing that we catch an obvious spy and we still give them tons of stuff every year.
Jet; Obummer’s trip to Kenya is costing the tax payers $1,000,000,000 That’s 1 BILLION tax dollars aren’t you glad you voted for such an idiot
One ingredient in the ‘nail Pollard to the cross’ argument is how, at that time, before, and to some degree now, Israel blatantly spied on the US and crossed the US whenever it suited them. Israel has been working the game in both directions or talking out of both sides of its mouth since its inception. Israel represents itself as the victim and then victimizes in return, and not even to their original evil Germany, Russia, and most of Eastern Europe.
Pollard wasn’t the only ‘spy’ keeping Israel up to date on American secrets. Pollard was as much a symbol of how pissed the US was as was the gravity of what he did. If he gets out a few months early, so what. He will have the unique history of having spent almost 30 years in jail. He will have been that pound of flesh.
I am always astonished @ the lack of history knowledge like what PhillyT is exhibiting. And, the history is fairly recent. Back in the 80’s, when Pollard was convicted, liberals were the biggest supporters of Israel. It’s done a 180 in those intervening years.
Hersh piece on Pollard:
http://cryptome.org/jya/traitor.htm
In THE TRAITOR, The case against Jonathan Pollard, Seymore Hersh quotes former DCI William Casey speaking to a station chief:
Yep. Traitorous American Pollard sold our Soviet attack strategy to traitorous “ally” Israel who then sold it to the Soviet Union. With friends like these….
Does America spy on its allies? Who are your allies? Who are your enemas?
We spy on our allies and if they are smart they spy on us. 😉
How did America go from “Common Defence” to guardian of the Middle East, ney, the WORLD?
Talk about “unconstitutional.”
Did the Founders establish a “Christian” Theocracy with a constitutional mandate, an eternal obligation to shepherd the Israelites?
America needs, not only the separation of church and state, which Jefferson stated was “de facto,” but a separation of Christian and Hebrew religious sects.
It is well past time for Israel to assimilate in the Middle East.
Nowhere in the Bible does God assign the task of perpetuation of the Jewish religion or the state of Israel to American taxpayers.
The only people who derive a “benefit” from the existential relationship America has with the state of Israel, are people who “profess” an unfounded, mystical “belief” in Jesus Christ, which equates to less than 14% of the world’s population.
How many trillions of dollars and American lives have been spent on groundless, baseless, irrational hostilities and wars-for-no-reason in the Middle East?
America should leave the Middle East alone Let the Middle East conduct its own affairs.
America should be prepared to defend against all forms military technology.
———–
P.S. FYI – Overpopulation (resource consumption, pollution) and “immigration,” as “human weaponry,” are forms of attack just as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are. Industrial, mass abortion (“Planned Parenthood”) is population control which is a countermeasure.
How many Germans or Japanese so called spys or traitors do we have in prison since WWII? How many Koreans of the same ilk? How about Vietnamese?
What is it about this guy that makes you folks want life in prison for ever for this Israeli spy?
The reason I want to keep him in prison is to make sure he NEVER gets to enjoy the millions of dollars of our tax money he has waiting for him once he gets out. That is NOT a deterent at all. If he wants to pay back all that money, THEN I will be in favor of letting him out.
Tablet
November 16, 2010
By: Gil Troy
Jonathan Pollard, who is now marking his 24th year in prison, has earned the dubious record of serving the longest prison term in American history for spying for an ally. Convicted of espionage in 1987, Pollard was the suburban American Jewish dream turned nightmare: a good, middle-class, high-achieving boy turned traitor. The son of a college professor, smart enough to graduate from Stanford, patriotic enough to be hired to work in naval intelligence, he made a criminal decision to betray his country to help Israel.
And yet new petitions on his behalf have recently begun to circulate, and gain momentum, both in the U.S. Congress and the Israeli Knesset. This is, in large measure, because Pollard’s situation rests on a contradiction: He was guilty of a reprehensible crime, and yet he has been treated abominably. One of the most infamous Jewish criminals in modern times, he is also the victim of the worst act of official American anti-Semitism in our lifetimes. With his round face and shoulder-length hair, Pollard today still looks more like a perpetual grad student than an arch criminal, but he has suffered severely. He has served hard time, mostly in maximum-security prisons, spending years in lockdown 23 hours a day. Websites pleading his case detail his medical ailments, noting that he has “developed diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, pre-glaucoma, and arthritis while in prison.”
From the moment he was sentenced, there were people in the Jewish community—and beyond—who believed Pollard had been unjustly punished and who fought for his release. But they were few and far between, and they often made the wrong case for him. This newest round of argument on Pollard’s behalf is different. For starters, many of his champions have been careful not to lionize him. Rather, they focus on correcting what Judge Stephen Williams, who filed a dissent in one of Pollard’s failed appeals, deemed “a fundamental miscarriage of justice.” Most surprisingly, on September 27, 2010, a former assistant secretary of Defense confirmed many people’s decades-long fears that, at some point, the case had turned personal—and poisonous. Without explaining what prompted him to break his silence, Lawrence Korb, who served in the Pentagon in Reagan’s first term, wrote President Barack Obama: “Based on my first-hand knowledge, I can say with confidence that the severity of Pollard’s sentence is a result of an almost visceral dislike of Israel and the special place it occupies in our foreign policy on the part of my boss at the time, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.”
Decades into this tragic and pathetic tale, American Jewry’s continuing allergy to defending Pollard says more about our communal fears and the price we are willing to pay for social and political acceptance than it does about Pollard and his crimes.
***
On November 21, 1985, FBI agents arrested Pollard, 31 at the time, just outside Israel’s embassy in Washington. Since June 1984, Pollard had been routinely removing sensitive documents from the Naval Intelligence Support Center on Friday afternoons, passing them to his Israeli handlers for Xeroxing, and blithely returning them on Monday mornings. When first interrogated by the FBI, Pollard called his wife. After he worked the word “cactus” into the conversation, their designated SOS code word, Anne Henderson-Pollard scurried about their house—with a neighbor’s help—sanitizing it. The neighbor subsequently gave the FBI a 70-pound suitcase filled with secret documents, reflecting the volume of Pollard’s activities and sloppiness.
Despite transferring thousands of documents to his Israeli handlers, Pollard failed to gain asylum at the embassy on that day in 1985. Backpedaling furiously, Israel first labeled Pollard a rogue agent, as his handlers worked out of a shadowy organization called Lekem, the Defense Ministry’s Bureau for Scientific Relations. The department, headed by the legendary Mossad man Rafi Eitan, was disbanded shortly after Pollard’s arrest. Israel granted Pollard citizenship in 1995—long after such a move could have done him any good. And it wasn’t until 1998 that Israel finally acknowledged what everyone knew: Pollard had been an authorized agent spying for Israel.
An American Jew’s arrest as an Israeli spy was upsetting enough for American Jews. But Pollard’s defense made the affair excruciating. Minimizing the thousands of dollars he earned, the diamond-and-sapphire ring the Israelis gave him, and his efforts to shop American secrets to South Africa and possibly Pakistan, too, Pollard portrayed himself as a Zionist idealist. Anti-Semites bullied him as a child, he recalled. He claimed that the documents he smuggled out, so crucial to Israeli security, should have been shared freely. And, using a most obnoxious and threatening term, he said a “racial obligation” compelled him, as a Jew, to defend the Jewish state.
Suddenly, amid Ronald Reagan’s resurgence of hard-bodied patriotic machismo, in the age of Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo and Clint Eastwood’s tough-guy “make my day” taunt, a balding, mustachioed, jowly-faced American Jewish nerd in glasses was betraying the red, white, and blue for the blue and white. Pollard’s crimes epitomized Zionism-run-amok, with the ideological implications of Jewish tribal solidarity pushed to its extreme.
“I feel my husband and I did what we were expected to do, and what our moral obligation was as Jews, what our moral obligation was as human beings, and I have no regrets about that,” Anne Pollard said defiantly on 60 Minutes shortly before being sentenced, one of many arrogant, self-destructive moves the couple made back then. While stirring up the terrifying “dual loyalty” charge—far more terrifying to Jews than to Irish-Americans and other hyphenated Americans—the Pollards defined every Jew’s ultimate loyalty as being to the Jewish state. Desperately repudiating the charge, the prominent academic Jacob Neusner would declare America to be the true “promised land.”
This American Jewish skittishness regarding Pollard was particularly surprising because by the 1980s American Jews were thriving in America’s suburban meritocracy. Some American Jewish superstars were accented immigrants like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, Elie Wiesel. But most American Jewish success stories were 100 percent American. Speaking unaccented English, they were supposed to be unscarred psychologically, unapologetically American.
***
American Jews had been here before. Three decades before Pollard made headlines, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s arrest, trial, and conviction as Soviet spies for stealing atomic secrets rendered the American Jews’ nightmare scenario in pinkish hues. But in the 1950s, American Jews were greener, more marginal. Julius Rosenberg represented the intellectual, foreign-born, New York Jew as Communist, at a time when Communism was disproportionately popular among Jews.
With the Rosenbergs—as with the Pollards—the rightness of finding them guilty was often confused with the wrongness of their punishment. The zeal with which they were prosecuted, the way Judge Irving Kaufman presided over their trial, and Ethel Rosenberg’s unjust execution along with her husband, all suggested something deeper in both the American Jewish psyche and the larger American political culture. The American legal establishment particularly enjoyed prosecuting these treasonous Jews, while many American Jews leapt to prove their own loyalty—at the Rosenbergs’ expense.
Just as in the Rosenberg case, the judge presiding over Pollard’s sentencing was swayed to render too harsh a punishment—a decision that kicked up new waves of suspicion and anxiety.
In an effort to keep his wife out of prison, Pollard pleaded guilty to one count of espionage. His wife, Anne, then 26, pleaded guilty to the milder charge of illegally possessing classified documents. In return, the prosecutor asked the judge to punish Pollard with a “substantial number of years in prison.” During the sentencing phase, one voice proved damningly influential. In a secret 46-page-pre-sentencing “damage-assessment memorandum” sent to the judge—and an additional four-page memo that was recently declassified—Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger made a fierce argument. “It is difficult … to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant in view of the breadth, the critical importance to the U.S., and the high sensitivity of the information he sold to Israel,” wrote Weinberger, before adding—malevolently and unnecessarily—that Pollard’s “loyalty to Israel transcends his loyalty to the United States.”
Judge Aubrey Robinson Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, sentenced Jonathan Pollard to life in prison and his wife to five years. (After Anne Henderson-Pollard served three-and-a-half years, she was paroled. Jonathan Pollard divorced her so she could rebuild her life without him.) The sentence was surprisingly harsh. By comparison, in 1987 Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, who’d been seduced by a Soviet agent, became the first Marine ever convicted of espionage. His crimes compromised agents and the American embassy in Moscow. Yet a military court—under Weinberger’s direct authority—sentenced Lonetree to 30 years in prison, and he eventually served nine years. Richard Miller, an FBI agent who spied for the Soviets in the 1980s, served 13 years. Spies for other allies, like Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt, and the Philippines, served anywhere from two to four years, with maximum sentences of 10 years. Pollard’s extreme sentence—along with the continuing refusal to free him–has raised questions about official American anti-Semitism and whether Pollard is enduring harsher punishment for the crime of being an American Jew spying for Israel.
Given that neither Weinberger nor Robinson ever explained their actions, the Pollard case remained shrouded in this noxious mystery. Years later, Weinberger would skip over the case in his memoirs and, when asked about the omission, would dismiss the Pollard case as a “very minor matter.” But it’s clear that his accusation that Pollard committed “treason”—and harmed the nation—had a devastating impact.
In his recent letter, Lawrence Korb suggested that Weinberger, his former boss, had exaggerated the damage Pollard caused and that an anti-Semitic bias distorted the case. From the start, some speculated that Weinberger, who had Jewish grandparents but was a devout Episcopalian, sacrificed Pollard to exorcise his own ancestral demons. There was something about this pudgy, sloppy, unapologetic Jewish spy for Israel that repulsed Weinberger. Weinberger was also one of the Reagan Administration’s leading Israel skeptics. Caught in a power struggle with the pro-Israel Secretary of State George Shultz, Weinberger usually viewed the Jewish state as more albatross than asset.
More benign observers guessed that the secrets Pollard spilled did more damage to U.S. interests than Pollard or the Israelis suggested. Perhaps, some argued, Russian spies secured key codes thanks to Israeli-based KGB agents. Others assumed Pollard received instructions from a higher-level mole who remains unexposed. After Aldrich Ames’ arrest for spying in 1994, some speculated that Weinberger and others may have blamed Pollard for the damage Ames had actually caused, including the deaths of as many as 10 CIA assets. The author John Loftus and others theorized that Ames, who was a top CIA counter-intelligence official, probably pinned his own crimes on Pollard. In 1995, Moment magazine editor Hershel Shanks would quote Loftus quoting naval intelligence “sources” who admitted that “90 percent of the things we accused [Pollard] of stealing, he didn’t even have access to.”
***
After Pollard’s sentencing, New York Times columnist William Safire warned that Pollard encouraged “anti-Semites who charge that Jews everywhere are at best afflicted with dual loyalty and at worst are agents of a vast fifth column.” Issuing a personal declaration of independence from Israel, Safire proclaimed: “American supporters of Israel cannot support wrongdoing here or there. In matters of religion and culture, many of those supporters are American Jews, but in matters affecting national interest and ultimate loyalty, the stonewalling leaders of Israel will learn to think of us as Jewish Americans.”
But one keen observer of American Jewry, the political scientist Daniel Elazar, noticed that it was American Jews—and not their non-Jewish neighbors—who were actually raising the dual-loyalty specter, “apparently in the hope of preventing the issue from surfacing by raising the charge in order to deny it. Even more frequently, it was raised by Jews in the media, most of whom were highly assimilated but still apparently needed to demonstrate their ‘bona fides’ as Americans.” Elazar concluded: “The level of American Jewish insecurity is astounding.”
American Jews still viewed themselves and their community as on probation in the United States, with their ultimate acceptance conditional on good behavior. This pathology would be stated clearly, if unconsciously, years later, by one of the highest-ranking Jews in American history, who served his country nobly as director of naval intelligence from 1978 to 1982 and yanked Pollard’s security clearance—temporarily—years before the spying began. Rear Admiral Sumner Shapiro sounded like a scared yid when discussing Pollard. Annoyed at fringe American Jewish groups that defended Pollard, Shapiro told the Washington Post in 1998: “We work so hard to establish ourselves and to get where we are, and to have somebody screw it up … and then to have Jewish organizations line up behind this guy and try to make him out a hero of the Jewish people, it bothers the hell out of me.”
All minorities want to celebrate their tribal successes as reflecting the best of their people without being tarred when one of their own acts poorly. And given the torturous history of anti-Semitism, American Jews feel this intensely. We circulate lists of Jewish Nobel prize winners, delighting in each American Jewish success, using Jewish achievements to validate our rich but complex Jewish baggage. And while we reserve the right to cringe when a Bernard Madoff becomes the modern face of the greedy Jew or a Jonathan Pollard becomes the modern face of the traitorous Jew, we also reserve the right to object when our neighbors make similar leaps from the one bad apple to the whole bunch.
Nearly two years after Pollard’s arrest, with the sentencing returning the case to the headlines, the Israeli academic Shlomo Avineri zeroed in on this American Jewish insecurity—and inconsistency. Writing in the Jerusalem Post, first condemning Pollard as a traitor and his own government as clumsy, Avineri mocked the “nervousness, insecurity, and even cringing” of American Jews. Playing the role of the abrasive Israeli—or biblical prophet—Avineri wrote: “Today, American Jewish leaders by their protestations of over-zealous loyalty to the United States at a moment when no one is really questioning it, are saying that America in the long run is no different from France and Germany. When you have to over-identify, there is no other proof needed that you think that your non-Jewish neighbors are looking askance at your Americanism. You are condemned by your own protestations of loyalty and flag-waving.” At a time when Israel’s actions made it unpopular with many American Jews, Avineri’s aggressively Zionist analysis only exacerbated tensions.
***
The controversy–and speculation–peaked during the Wye River negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in October 1998. Benjamin Netanyahu, in his first round as Israel’s prime minister, lobbied hard for Pollard’s release. President Bill Clinton seemed set to free him as a sweetener to Israel until the CIA director, George Tenet, threatened to resign. Such power politicking against a spy who had been imprisoned for over a decade reinforced both camps’ speculation. Those who fear anti-Semitism say this irrational move reflects a deep aversion in the WASP-iest bastions of the American government. Those who believe Pollard did more damage than we know insist that the usually mild-mannered Tenet had a good reason to be so rigid.
To Israeli settlers, Pollard’s case symbolizes the anti-Semitism of even benign non-Jewish polities such as the United States and the weak-kneed appeasement policies of successive Israeli governments, which have failed to free Pollard. The most popular pro-Pollard bumper sticker in Israel simply appeals for Pollard to come home “haBaytah,” but a few years ago one poster challenged: “BUSH: FREE YOUR CAPTIVE.” This poster not only targeted a good friend of Israel’s, George W. Bush, but it pictured Pollard with the young Israeli Hamas is holding, Gilad Shalit. The implicit comparisons, between the innocent Shalit and the guilty Pollard, as well as between the democratic United States and the terrorist-state Hamas, were offensive. While the right’s support has sustained Pollard emotionally, it may have made his get-out-of-jail card even harder to get. The Israeli right is unpopular with both the American Jewish community and the American political establishment, making Pollard even more unappealing.
***
However unappealing he may be, the time has come to free Jonathan Pollard—not as some sop to Israelis but as a matter of justice. Holding an individual hostage to the vagaries of the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic process is cruel and unusual punishment. The Pollard case has become a question of justice, American-style, unrelated to American-Israeli relations. And justice when applied too zealously becomes unjust. For decades, the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil-rights organizations have taught that we take up certain criminals’ cases not because we like the criminals or excuse their crimes but because, at a certain point, it becomes the right thing to do.
Imagine another case in which an accused man served a disproportionately long sentence after being tried in a court where direct pressure was applied by the secretary of Defense for reasons that may well have been mistaken or personally motivated. If there was another such case, one imagines that it would attract lots of attention from the ACLU and other groups concerned with the civil liberties of Americans. So why are they silent? More to the point, why are we silent?
If the Pollard case represents the worst of American anti-Semitism, then, by historic standards, anti-Semitism American style is mild indeed. Still, that American Jews, despite their long record of defending the underdog, still hestitate to champion Pollard’s release now, suggests that we—like Jonathan Pollard—remain victims of the “astounding” insecurity Elazar witnessed two decades ago.
***
The Hunting Horse: The Truth Behind the Jonathan Pollard Spy Case
Author: Elliott Goldenberg
In 1987, former naval intelligence officer Jonathan Jay Pollard was sentenced to life in prison for passing classified information to the Israelis-the only person ever to be so severely punished for spying on behalf of an American ally. Why was his sentence so harsh? This fascinating, intensively researched book, by investigative journalist Elliot Goldenberg, finally reveals the whole story. After numerous interviews with top intelligence operatives and government insiders, Goldenberg is able to make a strong case that Pollard’s sentence was not due to the severity of the damage he inflicted on the security of the United States, contrary to assertions by the Justice Department and the Pentagon. His greatest crime, Goldenberg insists, was that Pollard inadvertently stumbled upon and threatened to expose secret dealings between President Reagan’s most-trusted advisors and Saddam Hussein. Pollard, realizing how much of a threat this might mean to Israeli security, took it upon himself to pass on vital information regarding these U.S.-Iraqi dealings to Israeli security. Pollard’s information eventually helped Israel target Iraqi military establishments for strikes during the Gulf War.
bam bam – to the best of my knowledge, the Israelis were not involved militarily against Iraq. In fact, after the Iraqis starting hurling SCUDs at the Israelis, we pacified them by giving them missile cover and using 1/3 of our air power to hunt SCUDs.
randyjet
The Rosenbergs treason was light years more serious than Pollards. It was also in the aftermath of a world war and the Soviets were pretty much the enemy and no longer an ally. Several of the accomplices received ten and fifteen year sentences. If you go back a few decades Americans were being executed for crimes of anarchy when today they might, if they are unlucky, get cited and fined for marching without a license.
There is little if anything to compare here. Pollard was a traitor but more a crook who did it for money whereas the Rosenbergs had strong ideological reasons. He traded in secrets in a way that both the US and Israel did and continue to do. The US is allied with the enemies of Israel which makes for a lot of potential intrigue.
Obama had nothing to do with catching, convicting, and sentencing Pollard. If he does allow Pollard early release it would be a stupid move instead of making any degree of any statement. Pollard gets out in November after serving 30 years, his full sentence.
In the US, a country with two choices left or right, it is hard not to bundle up everything one can grab in attacking the ‘other side’. Even if Obama let this sap out of jail a few months early it would not merit a serious criticism. This is an exceptionally lame attempt to find something that sticks-Iran deal, Israel whimpering in the corner, throw them a bone, etc..
Al O’Heem,
Enjoy your posts — not just this thread.
What a conundrum for the far right wingers!
They never wanted Pollard in jail in the first place because he was “only” spying for Israel, our sempiternal ally and key player in the EndTimes drama that will unfold any day now.
On the other hand, now that the Obama administration is considering releasing him after he has served his 30 years, they are forced to oppose this will all possible vehemence because, well, because the Obama administration has proposed it.
I feel your pain, RWNJs.