Jonathan Pollard ?

[JI7]

i know Pollard is accused of being a spy. i admit i don't know much about it, but seeing on tv, especially early morning exchange with wolf blitzer on the case was kind of confusing. seems some people are saying he wasn't a spy but did somethings he shouldn't have ? and some are saying he is guilty and did horrible things. i guess everyone agrees he did "wrong" but disagree on how "bad" that "wrong" was. there is also the thing with israel and how he has become an israeli hero. and some saying because of that he should go free. what is all of your opinions on this ? should he be released ? is he being treated unfairly ? is there pro israel or anti israel bias involved ? if there is another thread on this subject on du, please post the link.

[mmm]

1. bullet thru the head

fuck that asshole

[Must_B_Free]

2. At least his polls are honest now

or appear not to be freeped anymore

[Rick Myers]

3. Wolf wrote a book about the case

My personal opinion is... Life in prison.

He was a spy...

Religion is irrelevant! Nationality is irrelevant!

He is NOT a hero. Read the facts of his case. Many innocent people DIED due to his duplicity. US security was compromised.

END PROGRAM

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

4. he's a spy, he belongs in prison for the rest of his life

Any other country would do the same to a CIA agent that spied on them, hopefully we are civilized enough not to kill him. Clinton refused to pardon him. That's how this game is played, and Pollard certainly knew the rules.

[caledesi]

5. Agree. Life in prison.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=105661

[Julien Sorel]

9. Clionton was actually about to pardon him,

when a reporter, I think it was Hersh, leaked the info and killed the deal. Clinton really did pander to Israel to an outrageous degree.

Blitzer wrote a book about Pollard that, if memory serves, was generally sypathetic to him, and at the same time, tried to play down the damage his spying did to U.S. interests. Blitzer got his start in journalism writing press releases for AIPAC, put in some time as the Washington correspondent for the JPost, and while he was doing that, moonlighted doing some kind of pro-Israeli propaganda, iirc, so I'm always a little suspicious about him whenever the topic of Israel comes up.

[Lexingtonian]

6. yeah, throw away the key

Pollard got caught around the time of the 1990/91 Gulf War when he was working in satellite/signals intelligence. It's not really clear from the newspaper accounts what and how much he passed on, but it seems to have been a lot of satellite imagery, probably a lot of the downlink data encryption, and analyses. Probably mostly of Middle Eastern 'surveillance sites', i.e. Iraq and Egypt/Israel/Syria.

He passed it all on to Mossad, it seems, but a good amount of it was then revealed to be known to Russian military intelligence a few years later. (It seems Mossad did some selling and buying with what goods they had.)

There is an outfit and a kind of network of Pollard supporters run out of Toronto that includes his wife. They ran a very active and public effort for a time to get the U.S. to release Pollard. It's not too clear how this network is connected to the Likud and their neocon supporters in the U.S., but when he was PM Binyamin Netanyahu really did what he could to get Bill Clinton to pardon Pollard.

The argument of the Pollard supporters is that it wasn't really espionage because it was being done for Israel- which is a 'friend' and an 'ally' in their reasoning, and thus not culpable. In their view the people who want Pollard locked up for what he did are 'anti-Semitic' and such.

The context is this problem of 'dual loyalty', iow traitorousness, that anti-Semites have alleged of Jews ever since nation states became meaningful entities. Pollard, to his misfortune, fulfills all of the criteria of the charge pretty exactly. A second context is that most of the spies that gave the secrets of the atomic bomb to the Russians in 1945 were also Jews who were part of the naive and ethically challenged Communist underground of the time- Julius and Ethel Rosenbaum, Harry Gold, David Greenglass.

Supposedly the key people in the CIA and FBI thought it all through for a long time and then went to Bush Sr and to Clinton and told them that they couldn't exercise leniency in the matter. They'd have a revolt of the agencies on their hands if they allowed a double standard and probably a lot more people committing this sort of espionage.

The basic attitude of the Free Jonathan Pollard movement is the politically naive and morally unprincipled idea that it's OK for people who are a certain kind of friends to violate you, that it's an obligation to forgive them. It's the logic of an abusive family as the norm being taken into the political arena, a defining deviancy down.

[IndianaGreen]

7. He is a traitor, and he tried to sell secrets to Pakistan and Russia

for money, of course.

Pollard is now portraying himself as some sort of Zionist martyr, which he never was.

Having said all of that about Pollard, I am troubled by the fact that there was a plea agreement that was reached between the Government and Pollard's attorneys. Then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger wrote a long letter to the trial judge, most of which remains classified to this very day, which prompts the judge to disregard the plea agreement and impose a life sentence on Pollard. This is an extremely harsh sentence for a spy for a friendly country.

The Pollard story is further complicated by internal Israeli politics. Apparently, Israeli politicians did not want to acknowledge that Pollard was their spy, a key requirement for treating Pollard differently than say, an spy for the Russians. Treachery and betrayal by all manner of interested parties, in and out of Israel, have clouded the issue.

If the Government had a plea agreement with Pollard, and the judge ignored the deal, I think Pollard should have his life sentence commuted.

I also want the Government to make public Weinberger's letter.

[JI7]

14. i would like to see it released also

i just think with so many insisting he was treated unfairly, or did his time, maybe he may really have released a far more harsh punishment than deserved. releasing the letter and maybe other things may help to clear things up.

[Booberdawg]

8. The fact that he is an Israeli hero

does not speak FOR his release. The Saudi's who flew planes into the World Trade Center are hero's to some Saudi's. So what?

He jeopardized national security for OUR country, doesn't matter that Israel is considered a friend. People died because of his actions. He deserves life in prison and should never be pardoned. Never.

[JI7]

10. robert hansen and the other spy

one point that the guy who is calling for his release made was that the guilty was really robert hansen and that other guy , i think his name was ames. that much of what pollard was blamed for was their doing. don't you think he should be released if this is true ?

[JHB]

11. That's a big IF...

...and just because his supporters are saying it doesn't make it true.

However, they can't dispute the central point, which is he DID reveal secrets to foreign agents for his own purposes.

He can skip off to Israel when Hell has a hockey team.

[JI7]

15. is there a chance this may not be true ?

could there be some possibility that this may not be entirely true ? i mean, what if hansen and ames IS responsible. weren't they captured AFTER pollard ? this would mean pollard would have got the blame for their doing. but with their capture, it may prove pollard really was not responsible. i just find it interesting because so many insist he sh ould be let out. i don't think they would do that if they felt he really was guilty.

[Walt Starr]

12. He should never see the light of day again

He's a spy and a traitor. He should rot forever in prison or be put to death. No parole, no chance of ever getting out.

[StandWatie]

13. Seymour Hersh did the best work on the subject..

I can't find a link to it but he is not being treated unfairly at all, there are certain groups that want to prove he is Dreyfus to validate their own persecution fantasies but that's all it is.

The peace was called "The Case Against Jonathan Pollard" and it ran in the New Yorker.

[Tinoire]

16. There's a copy of that article here (FR)

The Case Against Johnathon Pollard

In the last decade, Jonathan Pollard, the American Navy employee who spied for Israel in the mid-nineteen-eighties and is now serving a life sentence, has become a cause celebre in Israel and among Jewish groups in the United States. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a consortium of fifty-five groups, has publicly called for Pollard's release, arguing, in essence, that his crimes did not amount to high treason against the United States, because Israel was then and remains a close ally. Many of the leading religious organizations have also called for an end to Pollard's imprisonment, among them the Reform Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Orthodox Union.

<snip / this entire article is a must read... unsnippable>

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/576453/posts

[IndianaGreen]

17. Tsk, tsk, tsk... Did you really had to quote Free Republic?

Tsk, tsk, tsk... Did you really had to quote Free Republic? Or did you notice? }(

I know, I do the same thing when I Google!

I disagree with those that say that Pollard should be released because of Israel's relationship with the US, or that minimize the severity of Pollard's crimes.

I do think, however, that if there was a plea agreement between the Government and Pollard, that we should have been bound by it. If the trial judge, as it is being alleged, ditched the plea agreement based on a still-classified letter from Caspar Weinberger, then the American people (as well as Pollard's attorneys) are entitled to read this letter.

I am coming around to the view that the treachery of Mr. Pollard was more than matched by the treachery of high ranking government officials in the US and in Israel.

Pollard should have his sentence reviewed!