I'm rather interested, here. Has it been proved gentlemen Ames and Hanssen did the deed? If so, why is Oollard still in jail? If no, what are you doing accusing them of it without knowledge or cause?
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 ...
And suggesting that people are suggesting something that no one is suggesting is a straw-man argument.
I'm also wondering if you can read.
The law says what the sentence was. The judge legally and properly sentenced Pollard to life in prison. Pollard's waterboys make a big deal out of the plea agreement, but Pollard violated the plea agreement, and -- this is important -- a plea agreement binds the defence and the prosecutor, but it does not and can not bind the judge.
Basically, the Israelis want their spy back, so they can show to potential spies, and maybe current spies whose ardour for treason is flagging, "see, we back a guy up." So they're quite willing to say and do anything to get him out (except, like, return the documents he stole, or cooperate in damage assessment, both of which Israel has flatly refused to do).
It's hard to feel bad about the Israelis being out all their money, and having a no-account agent languishing in jail. They've made the money back by selling excerpts from the information to various US enemies.
Someone asked about why not cut aid to Israel for a year? Simple. Israel couldn't survive, and the only nation in the world that would take the refugees would be us. It would be like getting a million Marielitos, all of whom would complain incessantly about how much better Israel was, burden public services, and vote straight Democratic. But the good news is that there would no longer be a foreign country trying to winkle Jonathan P out of durance vile.
Watch your mouth. He was indicted on exactly one count. I translated that into "only once" without properly accounting for the fact that he made eleven drops to the Israelis.
"one document Pollard is believed to have slipped to the Israelis -- thought to have landed in Soviet hands, albeit unintentionally -- was a huge National Security Agency compendium of frequencies used by foreign military and intelligence services. Gathering this information cost the U.S. billions of dollars, but Pollard rendered it useless."
That's one of Aldritch Ames's crimes, chalked up to Pollard by Time. But of course Time Magazine has never been known to get facts wrong, so that can't be.
From further down in the above-cited Epstein document: "one target of Pollard espionage was the data that the US had obtained about Saddam Hussein's biological warfare capability."
Duh. That was of vital interest to the Israelis, and should have been shared with them.
Via Epstein, the prosecutor, DiGenova, speaks: "It is absolutely indefensible from either a legal or humanitarian standpoint to grant clemency to him".
Straw man. Nobody's talking about clemency here. He already served 20 years. If they sent him home today with a free t-shirt, it could hardly be called "clemency".
This worried the US government even more than the incredible amount of documents involved, approximately 850,O0O pages...
This is BS of the sort that has already been thoroughly debunked. Eleven briefcase loads could hardly amount to more than 1,000 pages--let alone the better part of one million pages. I already identified the bogus means by which that astronomic figure was derived. To suggest that he actually took 850,000 pages of documents is absurd.
Pollard had shopped his access to two other foreign powers that he thought would pay him more, before trying the Israelis.
Proof? (Hint: you're lying.)
That is hardly a strawman argument because the argument cannot be refuted. We HAVE spied in allies in the past.
The fact that Pollard should rot in prison, should not give way to "holier than thou" sentiment swhen it comes to spying on "friends".
A better question is why the other spies you list didn't get life terms. Most on your list are obscure to the point that I couldn't find much information about their cases except at jonathanpollard.org. I did find this information about Marie Scranage where we learn that she cooperated with authorities to arrest another spy, her boyfriend Michael Soussoudis.
Were there any mitigating factors like that for Pollard? Isn't it the case that, rather than cooperating, he tried to flee arrest? What is the comparative damage done by Pollard's spying vs. Scranage and the others?
It's not clear that Pollard did much of any damage. Most of what was attributed to him at the time was actually the work of Aldritch Ames. 90% of what he was accused ot taking, he had no access to. What he did take, generally, were shipping records (which were his department) that appeared to be terrorist arms traffic.
John Loftus claims that this was part of Pollard's undoing: on information from Pollard, the Israelis tipped the Greeks to intercept what they believed to be an arms shipment to the PLO. Loftus claims that this was in fact a shipment of arms to Iran--the first shipment in the "Iran-Contra" affair. This of course suggests a reason that Bush Sr., at least, would want Pollard put away. Ironically, though, if this is true then it's Bush who should have been put away.
By my estimation, either
(1) you don't know the meaning of the term "straw-man argument", or
(2) you lack the ability to rationally apply that term to the posts on this thread, or
(3) you are deliberately obfuscating.
I'd ask you which but that I have no reason to expect a meaningful answer.
When I was in Israel, we often stood for hours outside the base gate because the Israelis had some operation going on they didn't want their American allies to see....LOL! We were considered "spies".
Tell me again about "should have been shared"....you know nothing about which you ramble about...
I'm rather interested, here. Has it been proved gentlemen Ames and Hanssen did the deed? If so, why is Oollard still in jail? If no, what are you doing accusing them of it without knowledge or cause?
Awesome news!!! He should rot in his cell.
Why is it that you and others make such a big deal out of it? Spies against the US deserve every bad thing they get.
Could Israel be lying? I mean, the Israelies do lie, don't they?
You're right--the Israelis had no good reason to know about Iraq's arsenal of chemical or biological weapons. How silly of me. /sarc
I'm afraid you're talking to hear yourself talk. What a moron.
Yes.
If so, why is Oollard still in jail?
You're asking what the motive is for leaving him to rot instead of reversing the error? I'm not the one perpetrating the injustice so one can only speculate as to the motive.
There have been more than one suggestion made. The likeliest appear to be: that releasing Pollard would result in major public discussion of Ames's and Hanssen's espionage, which the intelligence community doesn't want; releasing Pollard would involve admitting a huge mistake, whereas letting him rot wouldn't; and (if true) Pollard's intelligence unwittingly betrayed Iran Contra, stepping on toes very high in the food chain.
You're right. Injustice is, in the great big scheme of things, a big yawner. Eventually the oppressor and oppressed lie down in the dust together, and their power, and their sufferings, are all forgotten. That being the case, who really gives a crap if Pollard rots or not? Even if the real criminals are the ones who withheld vital information from Israel.
Other poster: YOU are the one who thinks Pollard's crimes weren't serious enough to warrant his punishment in the U.S. Federal justice system
You: Straw man. I didn't say he didn't deserve punishment. The question is whether he deserved life in prison.
Eh, "serious enough to warrant his punishment in the U.S. Federal justice system" is the same as "The question is whether he deserved life in prison", isn't it?
Conjectures of that sort are best handled by fitting them into a much larger context. Why would they strain relations with the US in pleading to get a Russian spy released, exactly? By the time you're done fleshing out a bona fide theory, you'll realize that it's collapsing of its own weight.
BTW, you must really think Bush is an idiot: there he goes again, calling Israel an ally and making you sound like a liar.
My friend, you seem to have a chip on your shoulder the size of a Sequoia. The effect of this chip-generating emotion is taking a toll on your reason, I think.
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