I think you need to find out how you’ve been tricked into believing a lie ... :-) ...
Better free than a hero
by Jonathan Rosenblum
Jerusalem Post
July 4, 2003
The June issue of Moment Magazine contains an important new article on the Jonathan Pollard case by former Justice Department attorney John Loftus. Loftus explodes the myth that Pollard did incalculable damage to American security interests.
Pollard received the maximum sentence of life imprisonment for spying for Israel, despite a plea bargain agreement under which government prosecutors undertook not to seek the maximum sentence. In short, he traded away his valuable right to a jury trial – a trial the United States government was eager to avoid - and received nothing in return.
Despite the agreement not to seek a life sentence, prosecutors produced at the sentencing hearing a last minute letter and memo from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Weinberger accused Pollard of “treason,” a far more serious crime with which he was never charged, and alleged that even in “the so-called year of the spy” Pollard caused the greatest harm to national security.
Though the Weinberger memo remains classified, the U.S. security establishment has for years hinted to the media and interested public officials that information provided by Pollard to Israel made its way into Soviet hands and played a role in the elimination of more than 40 American agents in Russia.
At the time of Pollard’s sentencing, the American security establishment may well have believed that story. Now, however, it is known that CIA official Aldrich Ames, and FBI agent Robert Hanssen, sold the names of the American agents to the Soviets. Ames, it appears, skillfully deflected suspicion to Pollard for years. (Ames ability to do use Pollard as a red herring has itself been a source of anger against Pollard in certain security circles. Ames was not arrested until 1994 and Hanssen until 2001.)
Loftus’ article contains one bombshell revelation: an internal Navy intelligence review of the Pollard case, conducted after the arrest of Ames and Hanssen found that Pollard lacked the security clearance to obtain access to the names of American agents in the Soviet Union. He could therefore never have provided that information to Israel.
Loftus further downplays the claim advanced by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that U.S. intelligence short-wave radio guides provided Israel by Pollard forced the United States to completely revamp its global communications system at the cost of billions.
Loftus notes that portions of the guide had already been sold to the Soviets by the Walker spy ring, and that the Soviets were so unimpressed that they did not even attempt to attain the rest. He further points out that prosecutor Charles Leeper had originally characterized the damage caused by Pollard as “minimal.”
The Moment article contains one other revelation. Loftus claims to have learned from sources in military intelligence that Pollard transferred to Israel the list of all Saudi and Arab intelligence agents known to America as of 1984. Many of these were on the U.S. payroll. Some of these former Saudi agents are prominent today in Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, a fact highly embarrassing to their former American spymasters.
Seymour Hersh...oh boy.
No. You are buying the Kool Aid of the great patriotic Israeli hero. A hero that exists in the fantasies of a media campaign.
I know exactly what had to be rebuilt due to Pollard...Ames and Hansen’s information was much more military related and covert operations specific. It was also very damaging.
But, Pollard, was more intelligence and electronics specific and much more damaging.