Posted on 10/20/2002 12:38:09 PM PDT by RCW2001
And your evidence for that is?
Pollard was set up and took the rap for Aldrich Ames's betrayal.
Pollard had no access to info regarding "agents". He was an electronic intel analyst.
And the evidence for that claim is what?
... Pollard was set up and took the rap for Aldrich Ames's betrayal ..Um, sure, this was the verdict the jury returned: we find the defendant--or, rather, we find that the defendant needs to be found guilty in lieu of someone else.
I'll repeat what *I* said. Pollard served more time than anyone else in comprarble situation.
And I'll add to it: There are too many -- not all, but too many grudge bearers and jew haters running up to bash Pollard. Anyone on this thread who has bashed and jumped on him had better be looking closely at their motives for doing so. I notice some gave reasons, most just spewed out pile-on me-too vileness, which many on FR are ever wont to do, yet these days seem higher in percentage.
.......................................
Pollard Has Been Punished Enough
March 8, 1994 - Theodore Olson, Esq. - The Wall St. Journal
It is plain than columnist Al Hunt and the anti-Pollard faction within the Clinton administration for whom he is giving voice do not like Jonathan Pollard (“President Clinton, Don’t Free the Traitor Pollard, February 24). But his rationale for opposing clemency is mostly misinformation and ignorance, and his conclusion implicitly concedes the shallowness of his convictions.
As Mr. Pollard’s attorney, I offer these counterbalancing facts:
First, the matter of motives and money. Mr. Hunt’s carefully chosen litany of phrases such as “big bucks,” “well-paid” and “well-heeled” produces a profoundly false impression. As Mr. Hunt knows, Mr. Pollard sought out the Israelis and volunteered to give, not sell, information to Israel about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons under construction by Iraq and others for use against Israel. Six months down the line, Pollard was persuaded to accept paltry sums - pocket change compared with what Washington journalists routinely receive for weekend television appearances. Intelligence services know that it is impossible to control idealists - and it is standard procedure to corrupt them with money. Mr. Pollard was wrong to acquiesce, but everyone who has studied the record objectively knows that he acted as he did because he could not stand the implications of silence in the face of another Holocaust, not for money.
Second, Mr. Hunt repeatedly uses the term “traitor.” That word describes one who commits treason, the only crime considered so egregious that is mentioned in our Constitution. It is defined by law as committing war against the U.S. or aiding its enemies. It is punishable by death. Mr. Pollard did not commit, nor was he charged with, treason. Even the government has admitted that is use of the word “treason” and “traitor” to describe Mr. Pollard was wrong and “regrettable.” The court that reviewed Mr. Pollard’s case, whose opinion Mr. Hunt quotes, said that the “traitor” could justifiably be called “rank hyperbole.”
Third, Mr. Hunt’s comparison of Mr. Pollard to the Aldrich Ames case is appalling. Mr. Ames allegedly aided the Soviet Union when they were implacable enemies of the U.S.: Mr. Pollard helped one of our closest allies. Mr. Ames is said to have betrayed American agents: Mr. Pollard told Israel about instruments of mass destruction against Jews. Mr. Ames purportedly took millions of dollars and was motivated by greed: Mr. Pollard gave defensive information to save a people that had been nearly exterminated 50 years ago. What can Mr. Hunt be thinking?
Fourth, Mr. Hunt has mischaracterized the court decision regarding the government’s violation of the Pollard plea bargain. Mr. Pollard’s appeal was rejected as untimely, not because it was lacking in merit. All three judges who considered the appeal expressed considerable skepticism concerning the government’s conduct. One of the three went so far as to call Mr. Pollard’s treatment “a fundamental miscarriage of justice.”
The fact is that the government blatantly betrayed Mr. Pollard and its written contract with him. It made three promises, and broke them all. It agreed to represent to the sentencing judge that Mr. Pollard’s cooperation had been of “considerable value” to “enforcement of the espionage laws,” but did precisely the opposite, denigrating the value and motivation for that compensation - listing it among factors “compelling a substantial sentence.” It promised to limit its sentencing argumentation to the “facts and circumstances” of Mr. Pollard’s offense, but instead heaped savage vituperation on his motives on his motives, character and “arrogance.” Finally, it agreed not to seek a sentence of life in prison, but obtained exactly such a sentence by, among other things, demanding a sentence commensurate with the crime of treason.
Fifth, Mr. Hunt rejects as “bogus and irrelevant” the assertion that Mr. Pollard’s sentence was excessive. He could not be more wrong. Mr. Pollard has served more than eight years, mostly in solitary confinement in the nation’s harshest prison. No one who gave defense information to an ally has ever been punished so severely. The government did not even charge him with harming or having reason to know that his actions would harm the U.S. Once again, Mr. Hunt has outpaces Mr. Pollard’s prosecutors by pressing to maintain a level of punishment that the prosecutors promised not to seek.
Sixth, it is curious that Mr. Hunt thinks that the information Mr. Pollard gave away “was so sensitive that officials still insist they can’t provide specifics.” What officials? The Office of Naval Intelligence has said that much of Mr. Pollard’s information “was declassified during the Gulf War.” Mr. Pollard’s chief prosecutor has urged publicly that it all be declassified.
Finally, after all of Mr. Hunt’s rhetoric, his main grievance seems to be that Israel has failed to “come clean and acknowledge what a despicable act Pollard performed.” If it did so, he concludes, then “clemency [would] be in order.” This is an amazing conclusion because Mr. Pollard himself has admitted that what he did was wrong and has expressed great remorse for his actions. And two successive Israeli prime ministers have put in writing formal requests for mercy - not forgiveness - for the Pollard affair. The significance of these extraordinary official requests cannot have been lost on President Clinton - who, incidentally, may not be anxious to acknowledge publicly that the U.S. has spied on Israel. What more does Mr. Hunt want? Some sort of Chinese Communist public act of self-abasement?
There is more, but too little space to say it all. Defense Secretary-nominee Bobby Inman has publicly admitted that he cut off Israel from promised defensive information as retaliation for Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactors. (Maybe Mr. Hunt can tell us how many America soldiers would have died in the Persian Gulf had Israel not taken that action.) Mr. Pollard stepped into the breach and opened the spigot that Mr. Inman had closed. He had no right to do so, but voices as diverse as Cardinal Law, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, Benjamin Hooks, Father Drinan, Sen. Carol Mosely-Braun, Pat Robertson, dozens of Members of Congress, the city councils of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and two Israeli prime ministers have pleaded for an end to his punishment. Apparently many officials at State, Justice and the White House now agree.
The fundamental issue is when we can stop punishing a man who broke the law to expose a massive, malignant and malicious arms buildup so that a beleaguered people could defend themselves from weapons of terror and mass destruction. It might take some courage from President Clinton to do the right thing, but Mr. Pollard has been punished enough.
Theodore B. Olson is the former lead attorney for Jonathan Pollard.
……………………………………………….
Pollard Legal Appeal - Abbreviated Version
by Theodore Olson, Esq.
INTRODUCTION
In a very real sense, Jonathan J. Pollard is the test by which this Government's adherence to principle will be measured. He may have committed a serious crime, but that does not excuse the excesses that have pervaded his prosecution. Whatever his culpability, he was constitutionally entitled to the presumption of innocence and a public trial. It was beyond the Government's power to take these rights from him through duress or empty promises. Yet the Government conditioned its conduct toward his seriously ill wife on Mr. Pollard's agreement to plead guilty, reneged on each important promise it exchanged for his guilty plea, and denied his lawyers access to important evidence. This case is exceedingly important because requiring fair play by the Government even in the case of the most unsympathetic defendant is the assurance that all citizens will receive the same protection.
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
This case calls into question the conduct of the Government, not the defendant. It requires the Court to consider the limits on Government when its competitive zeal and retributive anger have been aroused by an unpopular defendant.
The Government decided to avoid what would surely have been an awkward, potentially embarrassing and inconvenient trial and to secure Mr. Pollard's cooperation in the investigation and evaluation of his activities. These were undoubtedly important objectives. To achieve them, the Government purchased Mr. Pollard's plea Of guilty in exchange for the prospect of more lenient treatment of Mrs. Pollard together with three explicit promises calculated to maximize his chances for a sentence less than life in prison. But the Government did not keep its part of the bargain because it could not restrain its desire to ensure that Mr. Pollard would never again 'see the light of day." J.A. 411.
Even if, standing alone, the Government may induce the relinquishment of constitutional rights by threats and promises involving a desperate and dependent loved one, that kind of distasteful tactic certainly requires an exacting review of the prosecutor's overall conduct toward the accused. Here, that conduct cannot withstand close scrutiny.
In blatant disregard of its agreement to limit its allocution to the "facts and circumstances of the offenses committed," the Government threw everything in its arsenal at Mr. Pollard during the sentencing process, including the prosecutor's opinions of Mr. Pollard's character, motivations and personality. If agreeing to restrict its allocution meant anything to the Government when it put that promise in writing, it meant nothing when it came time to perform.
The prosecution also agreed to represent that Mr. Pollard's cooperation had been of "considerable value" to its investigation and to the enforcement of the espionage laws. Instead, it ridiculed the value of his cooperation and heaped abuse on his motives for offering it.
Finally, the Government agreed not to seek a life sentence for Jonathan Pollard. But its vituperative allocution and its disparagement of the value of Mr. Pollard's cooperation were intended to have precisely the opposite effect. The coup de grace was delivered by two stinging denunciations of Jonathan Pollard by the nation's highest-ranking national security official, who demanded a sentence commensurate with the "magnitude of the treason committed." Treason, of course, is punishable by death, 18 U.S.C. S 2381, and is not an offense that Mr. Pollard committed. But the District Court got the message and imposed the most stringent sentence that Mr. Pollard's plea allowed.
The Government has impaired this challenge to its conduct with yet another assault on Mr. Pollard's rights. It denied his new lawyers access to the Government's classified sentencing submissions for the plainly unsustainable reason that the prosecutor did not think that new counsel had a "need" to see that vital evidence. See J.A. 505.
There is no doubt that the Government decided that Mr. Pollard was an offensive and thoroughly unpleasant individual who deserved the nastiest kind of punishment. In fact it had every right to seek such punishment -- up to the point when it bargained away that right for something that it needed from Mr. Pollard. But the Government cannot have it both ways.
In the end, this is a simple case because no crime is serious enough to countenance Governmental overreaching. The Government must never be allowed to induce the surrender of constitutional rights with promises that it cannot or does not intend to keep.
CONCLUSION
Whether or not the Government's actions toward Jonathan Pollard would have been tolerable as isolated incidents, the totality of its conduct describes a level of broken commitments and improper actions that is not acceptable. The Government wanted Mr. Pollard's cooperation and to avoid a public trial that may have had uncontrollable repercussions. At the same time, his prosecutors and his former employers wanted desperately to strike out at Mr. Pollard and send a clear message to others. But the Government could not achieve its conflicting objectives without breaking its word to Mr. Pollard. He is therefore entitled to withdraw his plea or receive a new sentencing.
The government agreed to a plea bargain which the judge ignored because the CIA via Capar Weinberger gave the judge a brief falsely claiming that Pollard had done irreparable damage.
To this day the CIA has refused to give this brief to Pollard's attorneys. Making it public would expose the coverup that someone in the CIA (Ames and his controller?) used to deflect suspicion against themselves. Even when Ames was found to be the one who betrayed the US agents you and your ilk continue to blame Pollard and thru him Israel for giving the info to the Soviets.
Now the CIA is covering up the coverup to avoid even more egg on its face hence Tenent's opposition to Pollards clemency.
You could start by reading post #28 in this thread to gain just a little insight into the facts.
Even when Ames was found to be the one who betrayed the US agents you and your ilk continue to blame Pollard and thru him Israel for giving the info to the Soviets.I and my ilk would be interested to see Pollard's legal representation prove all this in an appeals court. Paranoid conspiracy theories are sometimes true, but not as often as the paranoiacs would have us believe.
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.