Posted on 06/18/2011 10:29:06 PM PDT by Eleutheria5
Morris Pollard, the father of Jonathan Pollard, has died at age 95. HIs family has sent an urgent plea to President Obama, asking him to show mercy and allow Jonathan Pollard compassionate leave to attend his father's funeral. Jonathan Pollard was convicted for passing classified information to a foreign country and has been incarcerated for 26 years Pollard's father had been hospitalized for the last several months. During this period, activists on Pollard's behalf and various well-known Israelis, attempted to no avail to obtain permission for Jonathan to visit his father on a 24 hour leave.
The refusal prompted MK Aryeh Eldad to send a message of condolence to Jonathan, saying: "The people of Israel will not forget President Obama's cruelty in ignoring all the requests to free you. A president who lacks the basic human feeling that would allow a son's visit to his dying father should not wonder that the Jewish people will make every effort to prevent his re-election."
A petition signed by a 75 israeli MK's, asking Obama to allow Pollard to visit his dying father was to have been handed to Vice President Joe Biden shortly. It came too late.
MK Nachman Shai (Kadima), initiator of the petition, said that its signers represented a broad spectrum of parties and opinions, who united for this humanitarian purpose. "I hope that we will succeed in opening President Obama's heart," he had said.
Recent efforts on the part of various persons to convince President Shimon Peres, considered by Deptury Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon the natural choice to turn to Obama on this issue, had been unsuccessful.
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
There are a RANGE of penalties provided for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. Pollard basically got the maximum, but he KNEW that it was a possibility when he CHOSE to do it and before he got caught ...
Tell him to write out a "TS" Slip and take it to the Chaplain ...
You’re continuing to argue exactly that. You’re accusing the US of being the villains, and the convicted traitor of being a hero, trying to save the world from the evil Americans in league with the Arabs. You continue to make excuses for him selling military secrets to foreign powers, as you paint the US as villains to justify his treason. And what were you trying to hint at regarding the Rosenbergs, as if it wasn’t extremely obvious?
“Thats what Cap Weinberger wrote to the judge ... “
No, that’s not what your Wikipedia source from Edwin Black via The Forward says...
Not that you even read the source... which was a 3rd hand anecdotal account from an unnamed source in the court room.
Here’s what Weinberger’s assistant says: “Free Pollard”.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/28/opinion/la-oe-korb-pollard-20101028
“trying to save the world from the evil Americans in league with the Arabs. “
How can you deny the US partnered with Saddam and provided chemicals?
How can you justify treason against the United States by painting us as the villain?
So why do Israeli spies like Pollard get punished absolutely disproportionally when compared to others, even those who’ve done lots and lots of harm?
Nobody is saying to let him off for the crime, but he wasn’t an enemy agent. He didn’t kill any US agents (like some famous spies that got far lesser punishment than Pollard.)
No, that’s not what your Wikipedia source from Edwin Black via The Forward says...
Not that you even read the source... which was a 3rd hand anecdotal account from an unnamed source in the court room.
Knew I would trip you up - from Washington Post 12/8/2010 [NOTE what the judge said]:
Now another key official at the time of Pollard’s arrest, former FBI and Navy lawyer M.E. “Spike” Bowman, is weighing in -- against his release -- in a forthcoming article.
“Since I was the only person who actually touched all aspects of the case I thought it was incumbent on me to lay out the facts,” Bowman, the top legal adviser to Navy intelligence at the time, and who later worked as senior counsel at the FBI and as deputy director of the National Counterintelligence Executive, told SpyTalk.
In a piece written for a forthcoming journal of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, founded years ago to support the CIA, Bowman notes that there have been “few rebuttals of this escalation of calls for Pollard’s release…mainly because so few were cognizant of the scope of Pollard’s disclosures, or the misuses of those disclosures, and the damage they did to our own operations and sources."
The true extent of the spy’s damage remains locked in government vaults, Bowman writes, “because when a plea agreement was reached, it was no longer necessary to litigate issues that could have exposed the scope of Pollard’s treachery -- and the exposure of classified systems.”
But the retired Navy captain singles out three of Pollard’s leaks, the first being “the daily report from the Navy’s Sixth Fleet Ocean Surveillance Information Facility (FOSIF) in Rota, Spain, a top-secret document filed every morning reporting all that had occurred in the Middle East during the previous twenty-four hours, as recorded by the NSA’s most sophisticated monitoring devices.”
“Probably the most serious disclosure (of those of which we are aware) was the TOP SECRET NSA RAISIN manual, which lists the physical parameters of every known signal [or electronic communication], notes how we collect signals around the world, and lists all the known communications links then used by the Soviet Union,” Bowman writes.
“It is certainly the thing that stood out in the mind of the sentencing judge; particularly when Pollard alleged at sentencing that there really was no harm done. The judge interrupted and brought him up short, pointing specifically to disclosure of the RAISIN manual.”
Bowman also writes that “Pollard disclosed information to the Israelis that could prevent the U.S. from monitoring Israeli activities in the Middle East -- clearly a foreign policy nightmare.”
“How can you justify treason against the United States by painting us as the villain?”
I’m sorry if the facts are inconvenient for you.
Pollard HAS done 26+ years of time.
It’s really hard for a patriotic American to look back at mistakes the US made, and depict the revelation of Iraq’s nuclear plans, and operative relations with Osama Bin Laden as deserving of a death sentence.
The only reason you keep playing in absolutes and denying such inconvenient facts speaks to some other deep hatred of some sort or other.
He wasn’t an Israeli. He was an American, albeit a traitorous one. The fact that Israel was among the recipients of our secrets does not exonerate him or mitigate the damage he inflicted.
“Knew I would trip you up - from Washington Post 12/8/2010 [NOTE what the judge said]:”
Link? Earlier you said the source was Weinberg, now you’re claiming you tripped me up and the source was the Judge?
...and the foreign policy nightmare cited by the judge is that Pollard provided info that “could” prevent the US from spying on Israel. Well, that explains your hypocrisy and blood thirst. Oh, no it doesn’t.
Again, from the Washington Post:
Hard copies of the documents Pollard stole in 18 months could “fill a room that is six feet by six feet by ten,” Ronald Olive, the top Navy investigator in the Pollard case, told SpyTalk.
"No other spy in the history of the United States stole so many secrets, so highly classified, in such a short period of time," he maintains.
Bowman also takes aim at Korb’s contention that Pollard has been unduly punished, arguing in his open letter to Obama that "the average sentence for Pollard's offence” -- stealing secrets for “friendly” countries -- “is two to four years, and under current guidelines the maximum sentence is 10 years.”
But Bowman, as well as a counterintelligence officer involved in Pollard’s case who insisted on anonymity, says Korb’s math is skewed.
“The supporters who claim that the sentence of Pollard was disproportionate to the crime cite three to four cases where Americans sold or gave documents to non-adversary countries like Saudi Arabia, Ecuador and El Salvador,” the CIA officer said. “These were a handful of secrets, and those who committed the crime were sentenced proportionately. What Pollard's crew has done is to take these handfuls of cases and then extrapolated the sentences saying that Pollard has served far longer than the ‘average’ spy who spied for 'friendly services.' "
In fact, the average sentence for those caught spying for the Russians, not counting the 365-year term given to Jerry A. Whitworth, part of the infamous John Walker family spy ring, was over 36 years. Three spies other than Pollard, including Russian mole Aldrich Ames, were given life sentences.
Of course, Pollard didn’t just spy for Israel, although that was far and away his main benefactor.
“Intelligence officials have unofficially detailed instances of additional disclosures to other nations,” Bowman writes. “These officials said that Pollard had given classified documents to Pakistan, South Africa and two other countries they declined to identify.”
Some the documents Pollard gave Israel ended up in Moscow, according to various reports, but as one investigator in the case told SpyTalk, “there are only two countries that know the facts …Russia and Israel. Which leads me to believe we will never know the truth.”
“The fact that Israel was among the recipients of our secrets does not exonerate him or mitigate the damage he inflicted.”
Who said it exonerates him?
It DOES mitigate the damage.
Unless you view Israel as a danger like Cuba, USSR, China, etc. Do you?
No - it WAS NOT a third-hand comment, like you said. It was a statement from the trial judge [who interrupted Pollard’s “I didn’t really harm anything” rationalization] who cited Weinberger’s memorandum.
The statement from the judge is part of the sentencing record ...
Okay, let me teach you what a link to your source should look like.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/12/former_top_intelligence_offici.html
There.
See how helpful that is?
Actually, it’s not helpful because the source behind ALL the accusations you keep repeating is Ron Olive, who headed up the team that made the file on Pollard. Meanwhile the main evidence against Pollard was his own confession. That’s it.
Excuse me? It wasn’t enough for you to paint the US as the villain, now you have to come right out and say that’s a fact? And we deserved the treason committed by Pollard because we gave Iraq nuclear weapons, and we allied ourselves with Osama bin Laden?
And you need to quit accusing FReepers of being Jew haters. You are the only one here who gives a crap about the fact that some of Pollard’s treason for hire benefited Israel.
“The statement from the judge is part of the sentencing record ...”
You mean like this one from the dissenting judge, Judge Stephen F. Williams, who stated that “because the government’s breach of the plea agreement was a fundamental miscarriage of justice requiring relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, I dissent.” ????? Like that?
No, it does not mitigate the damage. There is no justification for treason. Whatever your pet cause is, treason is still deserving of the death penalty. Your hero got off easy, so quit whining about him not getting extra privileges.
“And we deserved the treason committed by Pollard because we gave Iraq nuclear weapons, and we allied ourselves with Osama bin Laden?”
See, it’s an inconvenient FACT.
It doesn’t justify Pollard.
I continue to point out he served 26 years for a crime he confessed to. It does however give context, that debunks your attempts to demonize him with such curious blood thirst.
I wish he had acted as a whistleblower instead, because yes, these are dark episodes in our nations history. Spying exists. The US engages in intelligence gathering every day. We have satellites pointed at Israel for that very purpose right now. If you persist on framing this as an evil versus good discussion (that’s you doing that), then I suggest you figure out who made the right choice. Gaining the intelligence and bombing Osiraq was the right thing to do.
“Whatever your pet cause is, treason is still deserving of the death penalty. “
Name the other spies you want the death penalty for.
See. You’re focused on this particular one for a reason. It’s creepy.
Also creepy...your moral equivalency to equate Pollard with Spies of enemy states whose actions resulted in deaths.
Listen troll, the United States does not deserve your brand of justice. You are promoting treason in the wrong place. That crap is welcome at a number of anti-American sites, but not here.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.