Posted on 03/20/2006 7:56:46 AM PST by SmithL
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court refused Monday to give Jonathan Pollard, now serving a life sentence for spying for Israel, access to records that could bolster his case for a presidential clemency.
Pollard's lawyers wanted the justices to reopen his case, so that they could pursue secret documents the government submitted to the judge who sentenced Pollard in 1987.
Pollard sold military secrets to Israel while he worked at the Defense Department's Pentagon headquarters. He was arrested in 1985 and pleaded guilty. The Supreme Court had already refused to let the former Navy intelligence analyst withdraw the guilty plea.
The latest Supreme Court case was not about spying, but about government authority to keep records used in court sealed from the public.
A federal appeals court said last summer that it had no authority to review requests for the documents which Pollard contends will help his bid for presidential clemency.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Further it is common for "false-flag" operations to be used to convince an agent that they are working for one country and are actually working for another.
While I agree with your sentiment here, the problem is that that is not in accordance with our present laws. The laws apparently say that the guy should have been freed by now.
ML/NJ
How could you possibly know that, when the basic issue under consideration in this case before the U.S. Supreme Court was that the U.S. government did not want to publicly to reveal all of the information Pollard provided to Israel?
Well said.
I didn't raise the question: the poster to whom I replied did, when he asserted that "incalculable harm" was done.
When you get a security clearance you swear not to disclose the secured information to unauthorized persons. The Israeli agents he gave the info to were not authorized and he was not in a position to freelance the decision.
Granted. Others have been convicted of passing information to allies before. None of them got life sentences; in fact half of them were sentenced to less than 4 years.
Israel has already made it clear he was working for them.
1. What kind of information did those "others" provide to our allies?
2. Israel is not an "ally" of the United States in any formal (i.e., legal) sense of the word.
You raise a good question: how could you possibly know what Pollard gave Israel?
It is a matter of record, however, that the method of counting "compromised" documents included at least: the entirety of any document of which Pollard got so much as one sentence; the entirety of any document referenced in any way by anything Pollard got. So, for example, a single page might be counted as "compromising" several 500-page volumes. In this way, eleven bundles, each able to fit in a briefcase, were deemed to have "compromised" several moving-vans full of material.
As for the claims that Pollard compromised agents in Russia, the accusation came from none other than Aldritch Ames and Robert Hanssen--who were spying for Russia, and were the ones actually guilty of this crime. Pollard did not have the "blue stripe" clearance necessary to access names of agents.
To give Cap Weinberger his due, it appears that he believed Pollard was responsible for the crimes of Ames and Hanssen, who had not yet been caught.
The laws apparently say that the guy should have been freed by now.
Although he may have believed it at the time, now, after those others were caught, he doesn't consider Pollard all that important.
I don't have to know -- I'm just refuting your point. YOU are the one who thinks Pollard's crimes weren't serious enough to warrant his punishment in the U.S. Federal justice system, and I simply pointed out that you can't possibly know that.
The fact that Israel's extensive lobbtying efforts in the late 1990s couldn't even get a pardon for Pollard from Bill Clinton -- about as cheap a whore and as unprincipled and mentally dysfunctional a politician as anything the U.S. has ever seen -- is a good indication that the damage Pollard did to this country is far more serious than anyone seems to realize.
Pollard felt above the law; now he has to reap the consequences. Since the road to hell is paved with good intentions, his good intentions are not good enough.
Here are some examples:
| Name | Spied for | Served | In |
|---|---|---|---|
| S. Baba | South Africa | 5 months | 1982 |
| S. Scranage | Guyana | 8 months | 1986-87 |
| S. Morrison | Great Britain | 3 months | 1985-86 |
| T. Dole | South Africa | 5 years | 1989-94 |
| A. Helmy | Egypt | 2 years | 1992-94 |
| M. Schwartz | Saudi Arabia | no time; discharged from the Navy without pension |
1996 |
Israel is not an "ally" of the United States in any formal (i.e., legal) sense of the word.
They aren't members of Nato, true. However, they're friendlies. In order to be guilty of the actual crime of "treason", you must be spying for an enemy nation in a time of war. Israel not only isn't an enemy nation, it isn't even a hostile nation.
Straw man. I didn't say he didn't deserve punishment. The question is whether he deserved life in prison.
Good analogy. Like any whore, Clinton would rather be paid and then not "love you long time." He pressured Israel into highly damaging concessions, promising Pollard's release as an inducement--but unfortunately for the Israelis, they gave in without forcing him to perform first.
Clinton is certainly no friend of Israel.
Another reason why it is criminal to steal US intel, no matter the reasons, is that once it's out of US hands, we cannot control who sees it.
Now Pollard whined that he----and his ex-wife Anne who was in on the conspiracy----were altruists, motivated to spy by the purest intentions.
Yet, Pollard pocketed money, and the wife received expensive jewelry, as payments for stealing US intel that was sold to America's enemies.
So much for altruism.
They aren't members of Nato, true. However, they're friendlies. . . . Israel not only isn't an enemy nation, it isn't even a hostile nation.
As far as the U.S. is concerned, Israel has the same legal status as Egypt -- i.e., the U.S. grants them formal recognition as a nation and has agreed to provide direct active military support in very limited circumstances (kudos to anyone who knows exactly what these circumstances are). Neither country is an ally in the formal sense of the word, which means the U.S. has not signed a mutual defense treaty with them in which both countries formally agree to provide military support to the other in the event of aggression by outsiders. The U.S. has signed formal treaties of this sort (NATO, SEATO, etc.) with a number of countries around the world that make these countries allies of ours. No such treaty exists between the U.S. and Israel, so Pollard's supporters have no legal basis for their claim that "spying for an ally" is a less serious offense than spying for anyone else.
In order to be guilty of the actual crime of "treason", you must be spying for an enemy nation in a time of war.
Right. This is why Pollard was never charged with treason.
Burn in hell Pollard. Traitor.
Israeli blood is more precious than American blood to a lot of FReepers as well.
Just think... Klintoon was getting the hard press to commute this POS's sentence... probably would have happened if his lie-brary got more donation coinage.
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