Posted on 06/25/2003 7:03:19 AM PDT by richardtavor
The treatment of a Jew
Jonathan Pollard about 18 years ago held a sensitive position in the United States intelligence community which gave him access to some classified information.
Being a Jew, besides being a United States citizen, gave him an extra awareness about the dangers his Jewish people in Israel were facing, Israel being at the time classified as a United States friendly nation - certainly not an enemy state. Besides, there was a commitment during those days by the United States that they would pass on the intelligence information that would be vital for Israel's security to know.
Jonathan Pollard being in a position to see some of this intelligence information which was promised to be relayed to Israel - knew also that at the time it was willfully withheld with the knowledge of the then Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger.
It may indeed have been wrong that he, feeling compassion for Israel as a Jew, felt the need to pass on the information he was privy to because of his position to Israel - a nation that is after all a friend and ally to the U.S. - it in no way justifies him being given this excessively long prison sentence for such a minor offence. I would say today as he has sat for this in prison for already 18 years: It is enough. More than enough!
Especially under the relentless pressure of the U.S. intelligence community under the prodding and tutelage of Casper Weinberger, Jonathan Pollard, though he did not spy for an enemy country, was treated in his trial, and every time the possibility of an early parole came up, with the utmost severity. Nearly unbelievably so. The sense is he was framed to have done irreparable damage to the United States of America endangering the lives of American agents deep inside the then Soviet Union. Through the investigations of John Loftus these allegations that were used by some in the C.I.A. to keep him in prison have now been proven to be false.
This is what John Loftus, former prosecutor with the U.S. Justice Department Nazi-hunting unit and co-author of the book The secret war against the Jews - himself being a catholic and not a Jew - writes (p. 402-403): Far from being the superspy that "Cap"Weinberger portrayed him to be, Pollard was a low-level incompetent with an exaggerated opinion of his own worth. CIA officer Ricky Ames may have exaggerated Pollard's leaks in order to conceal his own work for the Russians. As a practical matter, Pollard had little access either to communications intercept of satellite data, let alone secret NASA codes. According to the security officers familiar with the Pollard case, his primary access was to U.S. Navy data banks on ocean shipping. His private focus was on arms shipments to terrorists, which was fairly routine materials. That, say the "old spies", is where the ugly truth lies. To this day, Pollard does not know how sensitive his "routine" shipping surveillance really was. In the spring and summer of 1984, Pollard noticed a pattern of vessels going back and forth from Greece to Yemen, where the PLO had a major base. Pollard passed the tip to the Israelis, who checked it out with their Interpol and West German sources. In the summer of 1984 the Israelis tipped off the Greek authorities to seize an entire shipload of arms destined for the PLO. Neither Pollard nor the government of Israel was aware that they had smashed George Bushs first shipment of arms to Iran. The British secret service had arranged the Greek shipment to ransom American hostages in Lebanon. Pollard never realized that he had busted the most secret White House operation of modern times. The summer 1984 Greek shipment was a dagger over George Bush's head. To this day, Congress believes that the Israelis started the Iranian arms-for-hostage deals in 1985. The problem with that is that Bush's shipment through Greece took place an entire year earlier. The Greek shipment in 1984 exposes the entire White House cover-up. Just recently have the Israelis begun to work out that they were dragged into Iran-Contra as scapegoats for a bungled Bush-British smuggling operation. Our intelligence sources say that none of the parties to the deal - the Americans, the British, or the Israelis - could have had any idea at the time that the hostage deals were destined for unmitigated disaster. There was no great conspiracy, only a series of stupid mistakes. When it came to hostages, everything that could go wrong went wrong, and in the most spectacular way. The only thing that worked halfway well was the cover-up to shift all the blame to Jews. In this chapter we examine the following allegations in detail. · The Israelis encouraged Vice President George Bush to develop an aggressive counterterrorist program. He did so, but with the British as his ally, not the Jews. From 1982 onward, the Office of the Vice President ran a secret counterterrorist center without the knowledge of the CIA or Congress. · From 1984 onward, Vice President Bush's staff worked desperately with the British to ransom Buckley and then brought in the Israelis in 1985 as unwitting "fall guys" for the Iran-Contra debacle. · None of the parties realized at the time that their secret hostage mediator, Monzer Al-Kassar, was really working for the kidnappers, Syrian intelligence and the Soviets. Al-Kassar used his Western intelligence connections to build a drug and arms empire that was untouchable, while he continued his own war against the Jews. There is an old saying that most of the evil in the world is done by good men, with the best of intentions. A case in point is George Bush. In Moment Magazine, June, 2003 (http://www.momentmag.com/features/feat1.html) John Loftus writes the following astounding comments!: No less a figure than Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Leeper had characterized damage caused by the release of the information that Pollard actually gave Israel as "minimal". The reason America suffered so little harm is simple: Pollard was stealing Soviet secrets for Israel, not American secrets for the Soviets. Before the fall of communism, the Soviets were shipping guns to nearly every terrorist group in the Middle East. Pollard knew that U.S. intelligence had been ordered to share this information with Israel -- under an executive order signed by President Reagan -- but had not done so. In fact, as Pollard himself admitted in one of my three prison interviews, many, if not most, of the documents he handed over were cover sheets showing the titles of files that the U.S. was supposed to share with Israel, but were holding back. (The U.S government, according to Israeli intelligence sources, mistakenly counted the cover sheets as if they were full files and came up with the mythical "room full of stolen documents", instead of the small boxfuls or so that Pollard actually passed). In the long run, though, the issue is not how many boxes Pollard passed, but whether anything he gave Israel did harm to America. After 9/11 though, I began to realize that Pollard's tale was only the beginning of a much bigger story about a major America intelligence scandal, which is the subject of a book I am now working on. Although Jonathan Pollard didn't realize it, he had stumbled across the darkest secret in the Reagan administration's closet. It is one of the reasons that I am serving as the intelligence advisor on a trillion-dollar federal lawsuit filed in August 2002 against the Saudis on behalf of the victims of 9/11. Pollard in fact did steal something that the U.S. government never wishes to talk about. Several friends inside military intelligence have told me that Pollard gave the Israelis a roster that listed the identities of all the Saudi and other Arab intelligence agents we knew about as of 1984. (This has been corroborated by Israeli sources, as well). At that time, this list, known in intelligence circles as the "blue book", would have been relatively unimportant to the United States -- but not to Israel. Since 9/11, however, Pollard's "blue book" is of profound interest to everyone, including the U.S. These particular agents are now a major embarrassment to the Saudis and to the handful of American spy chiefs who had employed these Saudi intelligence agents on the sly. Some of the names on this list -- such as Osama Bin Laden -- turned out to be leaders of terrorist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood and what we now call Al Qaeda. In hindsight, we now know that Pollard stole the one book -- that, incidentally, was alluded to in Weinberger's secret memorandum -- that unquestionably proves that the Americans knew as early as 1984 about the connection between the Saudis and terrorist groups. I am not the only one to reach this conclusion. In his autobiography, Oliver North confirmed that every time he wanted to do something about terrorism, Weinberger stopped him because it might upset the Saudis and jeopardize the flow of oil to the U.S. John O'Neill, a former F.B.I. agent and our nation's top Al Qaeda expert, stated in a 2001 book written by Jean Charles Brisard, a noted French intelligence analyst, that everything we wanted to know about terrorism could be found in Saudi Arabia. Congress has been told repeatedly that American intelligence never knew the identities of the Arabs who threw the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Inadvertently, Pollard stole the ultimate smoking gun that shows exactly what the leaders of our intelligence community knew and when they knew it. The "blue book" Pollard stole flatly establishes that all the dots were connected many years before 9/11, and the only thing the intelligence chiefs did competently was cover up the fact that we had long known about the Saudi-terrorist link.
28 years ago my late wife and I were in the heart of the city of Jerusalem in Zion's square - at the office of an eye specialist when a booby-trapped refrigerator exploded on an unsuspecting crowd of Israelis in mid town Jerusalem, killing 12 Israelis and wounding more than 50.
Ahmed Jbarra who perpetrated this heinous crime, was recently released by Israel as a gesture of goodwill by Israel to the PA and newly appointed PM Abu Mazen, also being pressurized to do so by the often immoral and decadent European and Western leaders. This blatant terrorist was immediately appointed by Yasser Arafat as special advisor to the Palestinian Authority. Tom Gross writes: Senior PA officials said the decision to appoint Jbarra to the new post was a "natural" one, taking into consideration his "great contribution to the Palestinian cause." Jbarra, who is a member of Fatah, was also this week appointed a member of its revolutionary council. Jbarra was released by Ariel Sharon as a goodwill gesture on the eve of the Aqaba summit. Both Arafat and Abbas (Abu Mazen) have endorsed Jbarra by giving him a hero's welcome and offering him senior posts in the PA. Last week, Jbarra was present at a press conference organized by Abbas in Ramallah. One truly wonders if the Israelis to please President Bush and the Americans were willing to even go so far as to release a known and dangerous mass killer, is it too much for us Christian Zionists in the light of this very sordid Pollard story to urge the U.S. finally to do some confidence building measures of their own in relation to their loyal ally Israel and immediately release Jonathan Pollard from his prison?
Yesterday I was present at a demonstration for Jonathan Pollard's soon release here in Jerusalem in the vicinity of the beautiful David Citadel Hotel, where American Jewish leaders were assembling together. The organizers of this demonstration felt that the American Jewish leadership had not done enough for his release and in fact somehow betrayed the best interests of this fellow Jew. And maybe this has been sadly true. Just as many among Israel's leadership have somehow betrayed the loyal and faithful - mostly Christian Lebanese in South Lebanon who, after having fought, bled and died with and for Israel, were left with the same feeling of having been betrayed by Israel to the ferocious Hizbollah when Israel abandoned them and their territory. At the demonstration, there were Israelis who asked me "what can the Christian Zionists in the U.S. do? Can't they help us in getting Jonathan Pollard released?"
That's why I am writing this 'cri du coeur', this appeal to you on his behalf.
I think in the light of all this, the best and most effective way to move on a soon release from prison of Jonathan Pollard is to write to any of the present Israeli ministers, to begin with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. To write not to give in to European or American pressure to release more Palestinian prisoners before Jonathan Pollard is released first. After all he has been made an Israeli citizen by Israel's government so he is first and foremost their responsibility. Hoping you will find the time and grace to do so, I am yours for Zion sake.
Following are the names and fax numbers of all Israel's ministers of the present government: Ariel Sharon (Prime minister) 02-5664838 / 6705475 Binyamin Netanyahu (Treasury) 02-5635769 Ehud Olmert (Industry and Trade) 02-6243738 Silvan Shalom (Foreign Ministry) 02-5303506 Tommy Lapid (Justice) 02-6285438 Zevulun Orlev (Labor) 02-5666385 Effie Eitam (Housing) 02-5824111 Benny Elon (Tourism) 02-6514629 Zahi Hanegbi (Internal Security) 02-5308039 Eliezer Zandberg (Science) 02-5811613 Israel Katz (Agriculture) 03-9485835 Tzippy Livni (Alya) 02-5669244 Limor Livnat (Education) 02-5602246 Avigdor Lieberman (Transport) 02-6249134 / 6253884 Uzi Landau 03-6092887 Shaul Mofaz (Defense) 03-6976218 Yehudit Naot (Environment) 02-6535958 Dany Nave (Health) 02-6787662 Gideon Ezra 02-5011520 Avraham Poraz (Interior) 02-5666376 Yossef Paritzky (Infrastructure) 02-5006715 Meir Shitrit 02-5317697 Natan Sharansky 02-6799775
Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director International Christian Zionist Center
Since we apparently don't do that anymore, let him rot in prison till death.
Betrayal with or by a friend is worse than betrayal by an enemy.
That is exactly why we are so angry at France and Germany, they were supposed to be our friends.
So9
There. Much better. I don't give a rat's rotten behind what religion or ethnic background he claims. And I'm tired of morons whining about their religion or ethnic background when they're caught doing something evil.
Mordechai Vanunu is also a Jew and he is also in prison. What is your position on his case?
May have been wrong? Minor offense?
Israel is OK. Traitors are not.
Agreed. My point is that many of his defenders are attempting to distort the situation by labeling this traitor with a lessor crime. His defenders are also attempting to muddle the issue with religion. I don't care if he was giving our state secrets away to Canada for free, he is a traitor and must be punished as such.
I agree with that statement. However, there is a concept known as "Equal Justice Under Law." However foreign the notion may sound, it requires that people who commit more or less equal crimes should be punished more or less equally. Since the US has, over the years, routinely released those who spied for other countries that are/were (mostly) friendly to it (like, for instance, the UK, Germany, France) after relatively short and lenient sentences (i.e. after 3-5 years, with no solitary confinement involved), then this spy for Israel (a mostly friendly nation - and certainly more so than France has been since about 1783) should have been similarly treated. I don't agree with the leniency offered to ANY spies, but if we are to have a tough policy (which we should) then elementary concepts of justice require that the US government not only apply that policy as equally as possible, but that the change in policy be announced before any of the newly harsh penalties are implemented.
Let's look very briefly at the Equal Justice Under Law concept, removing the emotion of a spying case out of it for just a moment. Hypothetically assume Smith and Jones each decide to walk into a different convenience store located in the same city and commit armed robbery at exactly 12 noon on the same day. Neither has a prior record, both get the same amount of money and neither actually shoots or physically harms anyone in the stores that they rob. Both are caught on tape, and neither offers any resistance to police when arrested exactly 24 hours after their respective robberies. Should they each be punished? You betcha! However, should Smith, who happened to rob the store owned by the mayor's brother-in-law, be punished more severely than Jones, who robbed the store owned by Joe Sixpack (who isn't related to anyone in government)? More to the point, should the Mayor's office secretly lean on the judge in Smith's case and specifically request the imposition of the most severe punishment allowed, when such a thing has never been done in any other case? I'd answer "no" to both questions, and I'd hope that all of you would say the same.
No one, repeat NO ONE, has ever argued that Pollard should not have been punished. The ONLY issue is the severity of the punishment - which has to do with what kind of a system of justice we want. There is NO other issue, PERIOD.
Once again, for those of you who missed it: I think that ALL spies should be summarily shot upon conviction, or at least locked up for life waiting to be traded for our captured spies. But since we don't do this with everyone we catch, then the punishment of these people should be as even as possible. THAT is the only question here, NOT whether Pollard should have been punished (which is a given).
Whether there is some kind of cover-up going on here is interesting speculation, but entirely irrelevant.
High-level suspicions about Israeli-Soviet collusion were expressed as early as December, 1985, a month after Pollard's arrest, when William J. Casey, the late C.I.A. director, who was known for his close ties to the Israeli leadership, stunned one of his station chiefs by suddenly complaining about the Israelis breaking the "ground rules." The issue arose when Casey urged increased monitoring of the Israelis during an otherwise routine visit, I was told by the station chief, who is now retired. "He asked if I knew anything about the Pollard case," the station chief recalled, and he said that Casey had added, "For your information, the Israelis used Pollard to obtain our attack plan against the U.S.S.R. all of it. The coordinates, the firing locations, the sequences. And for guess who? The Soviets." (boldface mine - Ronin)Casey had then explained that the Israelis had traded the Pollard data for Soviet emigres. "How's that for cheating?" he had asked.
He was a US citizen when he did this. He should never get out. Not even Clinton had the nerve to pardon him.
-Eric
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