Posted on 11/19/2015 4:50:42 PM PST by Nachum
Is Pollard considered a hero in Israel?
That is close to the mark I think.
Pollard should have been executed thirty years ago.
And yes, I know exactly how much damage that treasonous putrid SOB did to the USA, and am aware of the continuing repercussions that are still reverberating to this day, worldwide.
Both ISIS and Israel will “celebrate” his release.
The former USSR would declare a national holiday, if they still existed.
Despite Pollard’s and Israel’s attempts to prop them up...they (USSR) were still defeated.
Israel never admits that they traded Pollard’s information to the USSR,intentionally, to the detriment of the USA.
But stupid people think they are reliable allies.
The same stupid people think France and Germany were not actively undermining USA sanctions against Iran.
Are we all having fun yet?
“A number of officials strongly suspect that the Israelis repackaged much of Pollard’s material and provided it to the Soviet Union in exchange for continued Soviet permission for Jews to emigrate to Israel. Other officials go further, and say there was reason to believe that secret information was exchanged for Jews working in highly sensitive positions in the Soviet Union.
A significant percentage of Pollard’s documents, including some that described the techniques the American Navy used to track Soviet submarines around the world, was of practical importance only to the Soviet Union. One longtime C.I.A. officer who worked as a station chief in the Middle East said he understood that “certain elements in the Israeli military had used it” — Pollard’s material — “to trade for people they wanted to get out,” including Jewish scientists working in missile technology and on nuclear issues.
Pollard’s spying came at a time when the Israeli government was publicly committed to the free flow of Jewish emigres from the Soviet Union. The officials stressed the fact that they had no hard evidence — no “smoking gun,” in the form of a document from an Israeli or a Soviet archive — to demonstrate the link between Pollard, Israel, and the Soviet Union, but they also said that the documents that Pollard had been directed by his Israeli handlers to betray led them to no other conclusion.
High-level suspicions about Israeli-Soviet collusion were expressed as early as December, 1985, a month after Pollard’s arrest, when William J. Casey, the late C.I.A. director, who was known for his close ties to the Israeli leadership, stunned one of his station chiefs by suddenly complaining about the Israelis breaking the “ground rules.” The issue arose when Casey urged increased monitoring of the Israelis during an otherwise routine visit, I was told by the station chief, who is now retired. “He asked if I knew anything about the Pollard case,” the station chief recalled, and he said that Casey had added, “For your information, the Israelis used Pollard to obtain our attack plan against the U.S.S.R. all of it. The coordinates, the firing locations, the sequences. And for guess who? The Soviets.” Casey had then explained that the Israelis had traded the Pollard data for Soviet emigres. “How’s that for cheating?” he had asked.
In subsequent interviews, former C.I.A. colleagues of Casey’s were unable to advance his categorical assertion significantly. Duane Clarridge, then in charge of clandestine operations in Europe, recalled that the C.I.A. director had told him that the Pollard material “goes beyond just the receipt in Israel of this stuff.” But Casey, who had many close ties to the Israeli intelligence community, hadn’t told Clarridge how he knew what he knew. Robert Gates, who became deputy C.I.A. director in April, 1986, told me that Casey had never indicated to him that he had specific information about the Pollard material arriving in Moscow. “The notion that the Russians may have gotten some of the stuff has always been a viewpoint,” Gates said, but not through the bartering of emigres. “The only view I heard expressed was that it was through intelligence operations” — the K.G.B.
In any event, there was enough evidence, officials told me, to include a statement about the possible flow of intelligence to the Soviet Union in Defense Secretary Weinberger’s top-secret declaration that was presented to the court before Pollard’s sentencing. There was little doubt, I learned from an official who was directly involved, that Soviet intelligence had access to the most secret information in Israel. “The question,” the official said, “was whether we could prove it was Pollard’s material that went over the aqueduct. We couldn’t get there, so we suggested” in the Weinberger affidavit that the possibility existed. Caution was necessary, the official added, for “fear that the other side would say that ‘these people are seeing spies under the bed.’ “
The Justice Department further informed Judge Robinson, in a publicly filed memorandum, that “numerous” analyses of Soviet missile systems had been sold by Pollard to Israel, and that those documents included “information from human sources whose identity could be inferred by a reasonably competent intelligence analyst. Moreover, the identity of the authors of these classified publications” was clearly marked.
A retired Navy admiral who was directly involved in the Pollard investigation told me, “There is no question that the Russians got a lot of the Pollard stuff. The only question is how did it get there?” The admiral, like Robert Gates, had an alternative explanation. He pointed out that Israel would always play a special role in American national security affairs. “We give them truckloads of stuff in the normal course of our official relations,” the admiral said. “And they use it very effectively. They do things worth doing, and they will go places where we will not go, and do what we do not dare to do.”
Nevertheless, he said, it was understood that the Soviet intelligence services had long since penetrated Israel. (One important Soviet spy, Shabtai Kalmanovitch, whose job at one point was to ease the resettlement of Russian emigrants in Israel, was arrested in 1987.) It was reasonably assumed in the aftermath of Pollard, the admiral added, that Soviet spies inside Israel had been used to funnel some of the Pollard material to Moscow.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/576453/posts
He never applied for parole. This is one of the great unexplained mysteries of his case.
“Few people will understand that this is Obama’s passive-aggressive way of screwing Israel.”
For some of us, it was the first thing that popped into our head.
You prefer Iranian jurisprudence or Saudi?
Blame in on Ronald Reagan, he was President when Pollard was sentenced to life with mandatory parole in 30 years, today.
Put pollard UNDER the jail.
No. If the Israeli’s celebrate this I will hold Benjamin Netanyahu responsible.
This could be a tipping point, so he best be cautious.
Pollard should have been hung.
I favor the immemorial custom of law when dealing with traitors, which seems to have been observed by every civilized state throughout history.
I do to. Charge them, convict them. If you don’t pursue charges you don’t get to execute anyone.
Where did I say anything about not charging or convicting? I seem to recall I started off my comment with “...immediately after the guilty verdict was pronounced...”
Blame anyone you want. Reagan was President, but if you don’t want to blame him, you could blame the judge, an LBJ appointee, who sentenced him based on a memo from Casper Weinberger. Who you could blame for not asking for a harsher sentence. You could blame Joe DiGenova, who negotiated a plea deal with a lesser sentence. Can’t blame Ted Olson, his appeals failed. But to blame Netanyahu for a sentence handed down 30 years ago requires reasons unrelated to the American legal system.
He’ll be in Israel next week.
Yeah, this guy did more harm than the Rosenbergs. Listen to Bibi today. It's sickening. Our "ALLY".
I didn’t blame Netanyahu for Pollard’s release. I simply warned him not to celebrate in public.
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