SEEDS OF FIRE ( RE:ISRAELI SPY POLLARD)

(Note - You can hear Gordon Thomas' sensational 12-19-01 interview with Jeff in our program Archives.)

United Press International has alerted the world's media that Seeds of Fire already a runaway Internet bestseller has explosive implications for U.S. relations with Israel. "Seeds of Fire is likely to doom new Israeli efforts to free spy Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. naval intelligence officer serving a life sentence for betraying his country, UPI said Monday, January 28, in a major wire-service story.

Said UPI: "Former (and probably next) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, scheduled to be in Washington this weekend for a Conservative conference, will be lobbying hard for Pollard and wants to take up the matter in person with President Bush.

face="Times New Roman"Seeds of Fire contains the full, untold story of the role played by Pollard in the biggest-ever theft of U.S. defense secrets. (See attached backgrounder.)

UPI states that, as a result of the startling evidence published in Seeds of Fire, it is now "unlikely that Pollard will be freed. It is not only UPI that has recognized the importance of Seeds of Fire.

Hours after it was published, the CIA confirmed that key documents in the book secret briefing papers by the agency on the threat China poses were accurate. The CIA then published the secret documents already revealed in Seeds of Fire. But Seeds of Fire contains many more documents that have yet to be published.

UPI praises Thomas as the author of the acclaimed history of the Mossad Gideon's Spies. Seeds of Fire is also the result of careful research leading to "explosive implications and conclusions.

Seeds of Fire: China and the Story Behind the Attack on America reveals why Pollard was sentenced to die in prison after he had been found guilty of being the greatest traitor in the history of the United States. Seeds of Fire shows how, compared to Pollard, the damage done to U.S. security by others spying against the U.S. pales in significance. Pollard was a civilian senior analyst in the most secret Field Operational Intelligence office in Suitland, Maryland. The post required top security clearance because Pollard had access to highly classified files in the entire U.S. intelligence community.

Seeds of Fire documents how a powerful lobby within the United States has lobbied to have Pollard freed. It names the lobbyists. They are headed by Harvard Law School Professor, Alan M. Dershowitz, once Pollard's attorney.

Seeds of Fire quotes the attorney thus: "There is nothing in Pollard's conviction to suggest that he had compromised the nation's intelligence-gathering capabilities or betrayed worldwide intelligence data. Backed by such powerful sources, Israel has now begun a new campaign to persuade the Bush Administration to set Pollard free.

But CIA Director, George Tenet, as Seeds of Fire reveals, is leading the opposition to such a move. Tenet is not the only one who has joined in the battle over Pollard's future. Four retired U.S. admirals, one who had served as a director of U.S. Naval Intelligence, have circulated a paper within the Washington intelligence community that bluntly states Pollard's release would not only be "irresponsible to the highest degree, but also a victory for the clever public relations campaign waged for the worst traitor this country has had.

So far such trenchant views have remained within the intelligence community, but a number of senior members of the CIA, FBI and other agencies who were involved in assessing the damage Pollard did, have begun to say they will go public on what they know the extent of that damage to be.

Though reluctant to be named "for the moment, one FBI agent told Gordon Thomas: "Pollard stole every worthwhile intelligence secret we had. We are still trying to recover from what he did. We have had to withdraw dozens of agents in place in the former Soviet Union, in the Middle East, South Africa and friendly nations like Britain, France and Germany. The American public just don't know the full extent of what he did.

Ironically, Pollard in his youth had made no secret of his support for Israel. The youngest son of an award-winning microbiologist, his family and friends have described his near obsession with "the power of Mossad. At Stanford University he said he was "waiting for the day when Israel will call upon me. Nobody took him seriously; many thought he was a fantasist. For that reason the CIA rejected his job application, dismissing him as a "blabbermouth.

But the agency also saw that he had an extraordinary gift as an analyst. This talent allowed Naval Intelligence to overlook his other faults. His former chief, David Muller, admitted "despite his stories about his visits to Israel when he claimed to have met with Mossad, he was a genius when it came to breaking down complex data. He was a one-off in every sense of the word. With hindsight we all should have listened to the alarm bells ringing.

Pollard had a drug habit. He had huge debts. He lived well above his salary. In every sense he was a prime target for a foreign intelligence service to recruit.

No other U.S. spy in modern intelligence has generated such controversy as Jonathan Pollard. Now forty-seven years of age and incarcerated in a maximum security jail supposedly for the rest of his life, no one publicly still knows the full extent of the damage he did after he was recruited in November 1984 to spy for Israel.

The man who did the recruiting was Rafi Eitan, Mossad's legendary spymaster who captured Adolf Eichmann. Pollard was to be an even greater triumph for Eitan and Israel. Eitan is one of the few who knows the full extent of the top-secret materials Pollard passed over. But within the Israeli intelligence community it is accepted that Pollard also provided a clear picture of U.S. intelligence gathering methods in the Middle East.

For over eleven months Pollard had raped U.S. intelligence. His trial was told, "Over 360 cubic feet of paper was transmitted to Israel.

Yitzhak Shamir, then Israeli's prime minister, had personally approved the recruiting of Pollard. Pollard was arrested on November 21, 1986, outside the Israeli embassy in Washington. He elected to plea-bargain rather than face a full trial. The U.S. government agreed with alacrity: no state secrets would have to be revealed, especially about the extent of Israeli espionage.

After the plea bargain, the Justice Department supplied the court with a sworn declaration signed by Caspar W. Weinberger, the Secretary of Defence, which detailed by categories some of the intelligence systems that had been compromised.

In prison Pollard divorced his first wife, Anne (who had been sentenced to five years imprisonment for being his accomplice) and converted to Orthodox Judaism. In 1994 he married, in prison, a Toronto schoolteacher named Elaine Zeitz. Esther Pollard, as she was from then on known, became the spearhead of the campaign to have her husband freed. Now she has been enjoined by Benyamin Netanyahu.

"Much of what he knows is still in his head. And some of what he stole is still in use by us, Seeds of Fire reveals. "The reason the key was thrown away to his cell is because until he died he would be useful to Israel. They would just have to show him something and he would know how to extrapolate from it. A man like that doesn't lose his touch because he is locked away.

Yet the lobbyists are now arguing that Pollard has to be seen within the context of the "big picture in the Middle East, says Gordon Thomas.

A former FBI officer who had been involved in tracking Pollard told the author he would have no objection to a deal over Pollard "providing Israel listed everything Pollard had stolen and what they have done with the materials in terms of all their friends in Beijing.

He conceded that such a hope was forlorn. Far more realistic he thought, was that one day soon Jonathan Pollard might yet get to use the Israeli passport that spymaster Rafi Eitan had provided him. Certainly the old spymaster is more than ready to welcome Pollard to Israel. "It would be really nice to see Jonathan again and discuss old times, Eitan has told Gordon Thomas.

The full untold story of Pollard, Eitan and Israel's secret operations in the United States are documented in Seeds of Fire: China and the Story Behind the Attack on America, by Gordon Thomas, ISBN 1893302547, Dandelion Books; Paperback; 524 pages; large number of official documents.

Comparison of Pollard's Sentence With Others

The following tables show how grossly disproportionate the life sentence meted out to Jonathan Pollard is when compared with the sentences given to others who commited similar offences by spying for allied nations.

Pollard's life sentence is also disproportionate even when compared to the sentences of those who committed far more serious offences by spying for enemy nations.

Table I: American Allies

Jonathan Pollard is the only person in the history of the United States to receive a life sentence for spying for an American ally.
On November 21, 2001, Pollard entered the 17th year of his life sentence, with no end in sight.
The maximum sentence today for such an offence is 10 years.
The median sentence for this offence is 2 to 4 years.

Name	Country Spied For	Sentence/Punishment	Time Served Before Release^*
Jonathan Pollard	Israel	Life imprisonment
Michael Schwartz	Saudi Arabia	Discharged from Navy	No time served.
Peter Lee	China	1 year in halfway house	No jail time.
Samuel Morison	Great Britain	2 years	3 months
Phillip Selden	El Salvador	2 years
Steven Baba	South Africa	8 years; reduced to 2 years	5 months
Sharon Scranage	Ghana	5 years; reduced to 2 years	8 months
Jean Baynes	Phillipines	41 months	15 months
Abdul Kader Helmy	Egypt	4 years	2 years
Geneva Jones	Liberia	37 months
Frederick Hamilton	Ecuador	37 months
Joseph Brown	Phillipines	6 years
Michael Allen	Phillipines	8 years
Robert Kim	South Korea	9 years
Thomas Dolce	South Africa	10 years	5.2 years
Steven Lalas	Greece	14 years

* Time served before release is shown where known. Other cases of early release exist.

Table II: American Enemies

Jonathan Pollard spied for an American ally. This chart shows that Pollard's life sentence is far harsher than most of the sentences received by those who spied for enemies, and thereby committed much more serious offences and treason.

Name	Country Spied For	Sentence	Time Served Before Release^*
James Wood	Soviet Union	2 years
Sahag Dedyan	Soviet Union	3 years
Randy Jeffries	Soviet Union	3-9 years
Amarylis Santos	Cuba	3½ years
Joseph Santos	Cuba	4 years
Mariano Faget	Cuba	5 years
Brian Horton	Soviet Union	6 years
Alejandro Alonso	Cuba	7 years
William Bell	Poland	8 years
Alfred Zoho	East Germany	8 years
Nikolay Ogarodnikova	Soviet Union	8 years
Francis X. Pizzo	Soviet Union	10 years
Daniel Richardson	Soviet Union	10 years
Ernst Forbich	East Germany	15 years
William Whalen	Soviet Union	15 years
Edwin Moore	Soviet Union	15 years
Troung Dinh Ung	North Vietnam	15 years
Ronald Humphrey	North Vietnam	15 years
Kurt Alan Stand	East Germany	17½ years
Robert Lipka	Soviet Union	18 years
David Barnett	Soviet Union	18 years
Svetlana Ogarodnikova	Soviet Union	18 years
Albert Sombolay	Iraq & Jordan	19 years
Richard Miller	Soviet Union	20 years	6 years
Theresa Maria Squillacote	East Germany	21.8 years
Sarkis Paskallan	Soviet Union	22 years
Harold Nicholson	Soviet Union	23 years
David Boone	Soviet Union	24 years
Clayton Lonetree	Soviet Union	25 years	9 years
Michael Walker	Soviet Union	25 years	15 years
Bruce Ott	Soviet Union	25 years
Kelly Warren	Hungary & Czechoslovakia	25 years
Earl Pitts	Soviet Union	27 years
H.W. Boachanhaupi	Soviet Union	30 years
Roderick Ramsay	Hungary & Czechoslovakia	36 years
James Hall	Soviet Union & East Germany	40 years
Christopher Boyce	Soviet Union	40 years
William Kampiles	Soviet Union	40 years	19 years
Veldik Enger	Soviet Union	50 years
R.P. Charnyayev	Soviet Union	50 years
Marian Zacharski	Poland	Life	4 years
Aldrich Ames	Soviet Union	Life

* Time served before release is shown where known. Other cases of early release exist.

Aldrich Ames: A Case In Point

Aldrich Ames who spied for an enemy nation (the Soviet Union), committed treason, and was responsible for the deaths of at least 11 American agents, received the same sentence as Jonathan Pollard. Pollard's only indictment was one count of passing classified information to an ally. Pollard spent 7 years in solitary confinement, in the harshest unit of the harshest prison in the Federal system - FCI Marion.

Aldrich Ames' treatment was far more benign, and (except for a relatively short period of time during debriefing) did not include the rigours of long years of solitary; nor was he ever subjected to the harsh conditions of "K" Unit at Marion - even though his offence was far more serious.

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True, however, the ( spying)nation does not continually put pressure for their spy's release,once they are tried and convicted.

No, they have exchanges of spies. Now, unless you naively believe that the US doesn't spy on Israel or that Israelis are so stupid that they've never caught an American spy, something else is going on.

That being said, I have no problem with Pollard staying in jail the rest of his life. My problem is that, unlike other "patriots" in these threads who are so concerned about America, I refuse to dismiss the concerns of my fellow Americans who feel that the Pollard case is unique for a variety of reasons. I feel that these concerns need to be dealt with to preserve the integrity of American Justice. Evidently, the other "patriots" do not have a problem with our system of Justice being questioned. Some even feel that they have the right to question the loyalty of any American who dares impugn that there was anti-Semitism involved in the Pollard case, but it appears to me that these "patriots" lack the simple courage and faith in our justice system to answer the detractors. They simply dismiss them. To me, that's not patriotism. It's cowardice.

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