Posted on 11/04/2002 5:23:57 PM PST by JohnathanRGalt
by Jonathan Pollard
The Wall Street Journal - Originally published February 15, 1991
JONATHAN POLLARD: ....the photos that I turned over to the Israelis were of a number of Iraqi chemical weapons manufacturing plants which the government did not want to admit existed. Why? ....What the administration was really concerned about was being placed in a position where it would have to admit that it had tacitly condoned the creation of an Iraqi chemical weapons manufacturing capability.
In 1985, my son, Jonathan Pollard pleaded guilty to providing Israel with information about the military capabilities of Arab states, including Iraq. Today he sits in a basement cell, in isolation 23 hours a day, serving a life sentence.Jonathan was never accused of or indicted for treason, because he did not commit treason. He was indicted on one count of passing information to an ally, Israel. Abdel Kader Helmy, an Egyptian American rocket scientist, participated in a scheme to illegally ship ballistic missile technology to Egypt - technology later used to help increase the range of Iraq's Scud-B missiles. Mr. Helmy got less than a four-year sentence. Jonathan who warned Israel about Iraq's capabilities, got life.
America is now fighting a war with Iraq, while the one person who tried to warn Israel about Iraqi threats sits in jail. In a 1989 letter excerpted below, Jonathan wrote to an American rabbi from his cell that America would have to go to war against Iraq if we failed to prevent the completion of chemical facilities that we knew were under construction. How right he was. - Morris Pollard
Dear Rabbi,
My name is Jonathan Pollard and I am currently serving a life sentence due to my activities on behalf of Israel.
Lest you labor under a false impression, Rabbi, I want to state quite categorically that I do not consider myself to be above the law. I fully appreciate the fact that I must be punished for my activities however justified I may have felt them to be. That being said, I do not believe that the draconian sentence that was meted out to me was in any way commensurate with the crime which I committed. Nowhere in my indictment... was I ever described as a "traitor," which is hardly a surprise given the fact that the operation with which I was associated actually served to strengthen America's long-term security interests in the Middle East.
Notwithstanding [then Defense Secretary Caspar] Weinberger's disingenuous opinion, any objective examination of the record will show that no American agent, facility or program was compromised as a result of my actions - not one. But this salient fact was conveniently overlooked by Mr. Weinberger, who felt that I deserved the death penalty for having had the audacity to make Israel "too strong."
In retrospect, perhaps one of the worst things that the Reagan administration did to Israel during the course of my trial was that it purposely distorted the nature of my activities in such a way as to leave the impression that Israel had somehow become a threat to the national security of this country. So, by intent, the subsequent sentence that I received was an arrow aimed directly at the heart of the US-Israel "special relationship."
The case of Mr. and Mrs. Abdel Kader Helmy appears to be yet another instance where the political aspects of an espionage trial have been of paramount concern to the government. As you'll recall the Helmys are Egyptian-born US citizens who were accused last year of funneling highly sensitive ballistic missile technology to their native land. At the time of his arrest on June 24, 1988, Mr. Helmy was a senior propulsion engineer who held a "secret" level security clearance from the US Department of Defense. According to a 36 page affidavit filed by the Customs Service ... US customs agents searching [Mr.] Helmy's trash found handwritten notes outlining how to work with carbon-carbon fiber material used in rocket nose cones and "stealth" aircraft; instructions on building rocket exhaust nozzles; a description of an extremely sensitive microwave telemetry antenna; and a complete package needed to build or upgrade a tactical missile system.
Although there is no public evidence linking [Mr.] Helmy directly with the Iraqis, intelligence sources have indicated that the Egyptians have used [Mr.] Helmy's expertise to help Baghdad modify its stockpile of Soviet-supplied Scud-B ballistic rockets. His principle responsibility, however was to ensure the success of an Egyptian-Iraqi missile program which had encountered some developmental problems. Code named BADR 2000 by the Egyptians and SAAD-16 by the Iraqis, this Argentine-designed weapon has an estimated range of 500 to 1000 miles, and from what I've been told, figures prominently in Arab strategic planning against Israel.
If one compares the way in which the government responded to my affair with the soft-pedaling of the Helmy case, the existence of a double-standard becomes apparent. Firstly at the insistence of the State and Defense Departments, all espionage-related charges against Mr. and Mrs. Helmy have been quietly dropped.... [T]he administration has done everything it can to reduce the notoriety of the Helmy affair.
The problem ... lay in the fact that many of the photos that I turned over to the Israelis were of a number of Iraqi chemical weapons manufacturing plants which the government did not want to admit existed. Why? Well, if no one knew about these facilities the State and Defense Departments would have been spared the embarrassing task of confronting Iraq over its violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which banned the use of chemical weapons in war. You have to remember... that at the time of my sentencing the massacre of Kurdish civilians in Halabja had not yet occurred, and what little concern was being voiced over Iraq's apparent use of poison gas was largely ignored by the administration which did not want to anger the Arab world by criticizing the use of such barbaric weapons against Iran. The photos I gave Israel, though, if "compromised" would have jeopardized the administration's policy of callous indifference to this issue, in that they constituted hard, irrefutable proof that Iraq was indeed engaged in the production and wide scale use of chemical weapons. What the administration was really concerned about was being placed in a position where it would have to admit that it had tacitly condoned the creation of an Iraqi chemical weapons manufacturing capability.
Once the atrocity of Halabja had occurred though, the White House was placed in a rather awkward position. On the one hand the US Intelligence community did not want to be accused of having failed to keep an eye on Iraq's burgeoning chemical weapons arsenal. Then again, the CIA ... could not very well confirm the existence of the Iraqi poison gas plants without running the risk of compromising the Reagan administration's policy towards these facilities.
After a few days of "soul searching," the State Department finally admitted that the US had intercepted some Iraqi Intelligence communications which indicated that lethal gas had, in fact, been used against unarmed Kurdish civilians. The Iranians had astutely outmaneuvered them, though, and the issue had to be "contained" before it caused a rift in US - Arab relations. Certainly, confirming the undeniable operational employment of chemical munitions by the Iraqis was preferable to describing the exact dimensions of their poison gas plants, which would have raised some uncomfortable questions on Capitol Hill.
Thus in attempt to recapture the moral "high ground," so to speak, from Iran, the White House evidently decided that it would be better for the US to be seen as leading the public denunciation of Iraq rather than the Ayatollah Khomeini. As it was though, the Administration still managed to salvage its standing in the Arab world by preventing Congress from imposing any punitive sanctions against Iraq. In essence, then, what I did by passing satellite photos of the Iraqi poison gas plants to Israel, was to endanger the Reagan Administration's pro-Saudi political agenda, not the intelligence community's "sources and methods."
According to the prosecution, there were two reasons why the government refused to tell Israel about Iraq's poison gas plants: 1) fear of compromising the KH-11 [intelligence] system and 2) concern over Israel's probable reaction once they recognized the threat these facilities posed to their survival.
What the Israelis would actually have considered was a preventative attack on the Iraqi chemical factories before they had become fully operational. Once they had come online, you see, and the Iraqis had been able to disperse their arsenal of chemical munitions, these plants, like the ones in Syria, would only have been attacked either in war time where the idea of a preemptive strike is valid, or in a clandestine sabotage campaign aimed at slowing their production of poisons. This was the same reasoning, by the way, that lay behind the Reagan Administration's desire to bomb the Rabta industrial complex before the Libyans had had the opportunity to complete its construction.
The crisis over the Rabta plant does beg the question, though: If the Reagan administration felt justified in its desire to eliminate what it perceived to be an impending Libyan chemical threat to our national security, why was it so unwilling to grant Israel the same right of preventative self- defense with regard to Iraq's poison gas manufacturing facilities?
So what was I supposed to do? Let Israel fend for herself? If you think that is what I should have done, then how can we condemn all those ... who during the Second World War consciously participated in the abandonment of European Jewry? Seriously, Rabbi, what would be the difference between what they did and a decision on my part to have kept silent about the Iraqi poison gas threat to Israel? I'd rather be rotting in prison than sitting shiva for the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who could have died because of my cowardice. -Jonathan Pollard.
No, it's because he did what was right.If so, can you provide a list of other nations for which it's permissible to ignore security clearance requirements?
One country comes to mind: The U.S.A. The Visa Express appears to have been set up to help Saudi citizens ignore security clearance requirements in obtaining visas. As a result, the head of the State Department's consular service, Mary Ryan, was asked to take an early retirement (at full pension, of course). Perhaps she should be serving life in prison instead of Pollard?Is it because he is an American Jew?
Why is Pollard being singled out for special punishment?If so, are there any other groups that should get special consideration when they break federal law?
Is it because he is an American Jew?
Why has Pollard been given special negative consideration?
Sorry, I've been spending a bit of time trying to check out one of the references you sent:
The Washington Post, June 9,1986: "One senior (Israeli) official, pressed on the question of whether the $300,000 Pollard allegedly was promised over a 10-year period by his Israeli control agents did not suggest something wider than a small 'renegade' spying operation appeared annoyed when he retorted: 'Thirty thousand a year is peanuts. . .' ."
It does not appear to be available in the advanced search of the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/archives/advanced.htm
I tried using many of the words you gave in the 'quote' -- they just don't seem to exist. However, I was able to find these. But they concern fund raising for Pollard after he was caught.
ISRAEL BUILDING POLLARD 'NEST EGG,' BOOK SAYS
Article 5 of 390 foundJoe PichiralloWashington Post Staff Writer
April 6, 1989; Page a18
Section: A SECTION
Word Count: 470The Israeli government is setting aside $5,000 a month to serve as a "little nest egg" for convicted spy Jonathan Jay Pollard should he ever be released from prison and move to Israel, according to a recently published book on the casePollard, a former civilian Navy counterintelligence analyst, pleaded guilty in 1986 to selling more than 1,000 classified U.S. documents to Israel and was sentenced in 1987 to life in prison.The Pollard case was a major embarrassment to Israel, a
Click for complete article
ISRAELI BANK CLEARS FUNDS FOR POLLARD'S LEGAL FEES
Article 194 of 390 foundReuter
April 1, 1987; Page a17
Section: A SECTION
Word Count: 235The Bank of Israel, the country's central bank, has approved the transfer of $150,000 to the father of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, a fundraising committee said today.Yair Racheli, of the "Citizens for Pollard" committee, said the Israeli group had raised $150,000 to help pay for legal fees acquired by Pollard and his wife, Anne.Pollard, a former U.S. Navy Intelligence analyst, is serving a life term in Missouri for passing hundreds of secret U.S. documents to Israel.
Click for complete article
So the real traitor isn't Pollard but the last four administrations?
If you enjoyed that one on Pollard, here's the entire Eric Margolis archive. Strange --
I think one of the reasons Pollard was never released is that he has never come clean on who else in our government was helping him--feeding him the secret ID numbers so he'd know what documents to steal.
I have read that Pollard had accomplices within the U.S. intelligence/defense establishment who fed him the secret ID numbers of the documents he was to steal. Pollard has never revealed who those people were. Unless he does they'll never let him go.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/spies/pollard/5.htm Pollard was quite a well motivated patriot, wasn't he...?
I agree with this source -- finally we have something we can check out. I don't know how well motivated a patriot I'd be on $18K a year. So, we've still got $282,000 which we can't account for.
Caspar Weinburger, in full CYA mode?
| Why? ....What the administration was really concerned about was being placed in a position where it would have to admit that it had tacitly condoned the creation of an Iraqi chemical weapons manufacturing capability. |
You mean the U.S. betrays allies? Surely not! The U.S. government does NO wrong, you fiend! The U.S. never betrays allies, -coff-Kurds-coff-coff-INC...
I'm curious how you know this. Did you hear it from Netanyahu, or from some Clinton mouthpiece trying to bolster the Stainmaker's image?
If "Bibbi" (Is he your friend?) tried, he didn't try very hard. And exactly what would be wrong with his trying anyway? If we had some spy languishing in some foreign prison somewhere, wouldn't you want our President to try to get him released?
ML/NJ
As for the Knesset reaction...in 1986, when the Israeli KGB agent got caught, the Knesset was extremely PO'd. They never stopped supporting Pollard, but they were livid at the Mossad and Shin Bet for letting an embarrassing situation get even worse.
As for blowing smoke and passing gas, I leave that chore to the rabid Pollard fanatics. Espionage, no matter who its being done for, is espionage, and Pollard passed enormous amounts of data to Israel. He did the crime, he can do the time. Technically, he could've gotten the death penalty (some of the material he passed qualified--space and nuclear-warfighting related material).
If that's true, then why did he demand so much money from the Israeli government, no less, in exchange for his traitorous wares?
This slimebag broke his oath to the United States and sold all of us out FOR MONEY. He should be executed.
That so many Jews and Israelis are clamoring for his release is disgusting and shameful. For what he did, they should pray that his name be erased.
Professional Liars Have a Field Day
William Stevenson - The Toronto Sun - December 14, 1991
"... Hersh, the author, and his publishers refused to believe the sources were discredited. One investigator who taped damning interviews to support the case against Hersh was Steven Emerson whom I first knew at U.S. News & World Report. His refusal to gloss over unwelcome facts led him to write books himself, of which the latest, Terrorists, makes plain his knowledge of international conspiracy.
Reporters like Emerson agree Hersh's claim that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir passed the Pollard secrets to Moscow is a figment of the imagination of a former low-level Israeli defense department translator, Ari Ben-Menashe, who portrayed himself as a top intelligence agent....
The Pentagon's Friend
Editorial - The Forward, (NY) January 15, 1999
Much of the debate over the fate of Jonathan Pollard rests on what secrets he did or did not pass along to the Israelis and whether or not they used this information to bargain with the Soviets during the heady years just before the end of the Cold War. Since the records are sealed, we need somebody to break the record open and, if it is possible to do so without damaging national security, tell us in a way that illuminates for the Jewish community and for the rest of the country, the reason that Pollard needs to be kept in prison.
A resolute Israel-basher like Seymour Hersh, writing in the current New Yorker, is not the one to do such a thing. His own biases are well known in the wake of his 1991 book attacking Israel's nuclear capabilities, "The Samson Option." Mr. Hersh is moreover cynical and insulting about Pollard's orthodox religious beliefs and about the sincerity of his supporters in the Jewish community. These days Mr. Hersh is putting forward the idea that Pollard was a cocaine addict and alcoholic, deep in debt and that is why he succumbed to the Israeli offer of money for passing along reams of secret documents about code-breaking and communication intercept procedures....
Public Enemy No. 1
January 21, 1999 - The Jerusalem Post - Uri Dan
The unceasing crusade against granting any kind of clemency to Jonathan Pollard is based on exaggerations - not to mention lies - aimed at painting him as some kind of monster that threatened America's national security.
... Joining the demonization of Pollard this month is the noted American journalist Seymour Hersh, who, in an article that appeared in the New Yorker, accused Pollard of everything he could think of.
He described Pollard as a drug abuser, who betrayed his country because he needed money to support his habit. Hersh also claimed that the US intelligence secrets that he passed on to Israel made their way also to the Soviet Union, during the period that the KGB still ruled Russia and was conducting its own espionage activities throughout the world.
Now, anyone in Israel who is familiar with the Pollard affair knows that no secret or document that he gave to Israel was passed on to the Soviet Union....
... American security officials were in the dark as to how this had occurred, and tried to pin the blame on Pollard. Several years later, they learned the bitter truth: that it was a CIA man, Aldrich Ames, who had sold out his colleagues for money and caused the biggest setback the US intelligence community had ever suffered.
But when these shocking facts were revealed, there was no senior US administration official with the guts to get up and admit that the allegations against Pollard with regard to the events in the Soviet Union in the late Eighties had been proven baseless.
There is the same lack of truth to Hersh's turning of Pollard into a drug addict, with the help of a dubious "witness."
It's no surprise that Seymour Hersh includes half-truths and fairy tales in his sensational stories, particularly since Pollard is linked to Israel, which Hersh had already turned into a nuclear monster in a previous book. In the same fashion, he paints Pollard as a monstrous spy, who severely harmed American national security.
Media Monitor: Seymour Hersh - Unreliable Source
January 22, 1999 - Jason Maoz
One can agree or disagree with the proposition that Jonathan Pollard ought to serve out his life sentence for spying on behalf of Israel, but alarm bells should go off -- on both sides of the argument -- when someone like Seymour Hersh slithers out from under his rock to take up the cudgels for the anti-Pollard position.
In a lengthy article in the Jan. 18 issue of The New Yorker, Hersh recycled several allegations he first aired in his 1991 book The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, the most serious of which is that an unknown quantity of the most highly-classified data stolen by Pollard ended up in Soviet hands.
The Samson Option was widely panned for its unsubstantiated charges and unseemly reliance on questionable sources. Hersh’s prime informant for the book’s most sensational claims was one Arie Ben-Menashe, an individual who has been labeled "a notorious, chronic liar" by The Jerusalem Post and "an abject liar" by the investigative journalist Steven Emerson, and who in fact failed a lie-detector test administered by ABC News.
Another source for The Samson Option, a character named Joe Flynn, admitted that he’d deceived Hersh in exchange for money. According to the Near East Report, "After Flynn was exposed, Hersh said he regretted not checking his facts more carefully....
Seymour Hersh Has Record of False Claims, Bad Journalism
Yated Ne'eman - January 22, 1999 - D.D. Levitin
....
HERSH HAS REPEATEDLY USED UNRELIABLE SOURCES
HERSH HAS COMPARED ISRAEL TO THE NAZIS AND MADE OTHER STATEMENTS SHOWING ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS
HERSH ADMITTED LYING ABOUT ASPECTS OF IRAN-CONTRA
HERSH'S QUESTIONABLE INTERVIEWING TECHNIQUE
Why Do They Hate Pollard So Intensely?
Hershel Shanks, Editor - Moment Magazine April 1999
... "Senior members of the American intelligence community" leak to a Jewish investigative reporter with a distinctly Jewish name horrendous charges about the damage Pollard caused, damage that "could extend up to today." You don't have to be a great investigative reporter to write the anti-Pollard article Seymour Hersh wrote in the New Yorker. All you need to be able to do is transcribe unsubstantiated charges by willing leakers. A good secretary could have done this.
I wonder how Hersh happened to get this story. Did he initiate it, or did someone come to him and say something like: "Psst. Hey, Sy. Want a story? We've got the inside dope. It's yours for nothing. And you'll get another New Yorker byline."
And was that preceded by someone's wondering who to leak it to? Like: "Sy Hersh has a great reputation as an investigative reporter. And besides, he's Jewish. Let's use him."
All of this bespeaks not random opposition but a carefully planned and coordinated high-level effort to make sure Pollard stays in prison.
Why the intensity of it? Why so broadly based? Who is this guy Pollard that he deserves this attention 14 years after his crime, after more than a dozen years in jail?
There's another issue: Dual loyalty. Again, we dare not talk about it But the fact is that the charge is made, and in some quarters it is widespread. Jews are still suspected of dual loyalty. Worse, maybe some are guilty. Doesn't everyone have some hierarchy of moral values?
I have my own secret sources-and I can vouch for their reliability. They tell me that after the Pollard case became known, their security clearances were placed under special review because they were Jews. A number of them hate Pollard as much as anyone else in the intelligence community does. They want him to "rot in jail," as one of them expressed it to me. It is he who raised the ugly head of "dual loyalty."... [Blame-the-victim mentality]. ...
As for the Knesset reaction...in 1986, when the Israeli KGB agent got caught, the Knesset was extremely PO'd. They never stopped supporting Pollard, but they were livid at the Mossad and Shin Bet for letting an embarrassing situation get even worse.
Still no URL on the 'Knesset reaction'. I'll have to assume that it's more smoke and gas unless you can come up with a real source.
Also, I don't know what 'Israeli KGB agent was caught in 1986'. Unless you can come up with a valid source we'll have to assume that's more smoke and gas too. Maybe you were refering to the Russian double agent, Vitali Yurchenko. Poohbah, you seem to be propagating Aldrich Ames lies:
In Washington, anxiety lingers over Aldrich Ames, the director of U.S. counterintelligence revealed as the highest-ranking Russian agent to operate in American intelligence.
Many details are still unknown, but some suspect Ames mounted a conspiracy against Jonathan Pollard to allay Panic in U.S. intelligence circles over the infiltration of a mole and to deflect all suspicion from himself.
It appears Ames spread the word about a Russian mole in Israeli intelligence and claimed Pollard was responsible for the arrest and execution of dozens of agents that Ames himself had exposed.
... CIA Director of Counterintelligence Aldrich Ames was recruited in 1984 by the Russians and handsomely paid. For 10 years Ames supplied staggering amounts of information. The precise extent of the damage he caused may never be known. For the moment, what we do know is that in the early years he gave the Russians a great deal of information about the activities of U.S. intelligence agents in Russia. A good number of them, probably many dozens, were discovered, arrested and killed.
... In July 1986, KGB agent Vitali Yurchenko “defected” to the West. For four months, Yurchenko had numerous conversations with Aldrich Ames’s boss, CIA Director Bill Casey. Yurchenko sold the Americans a large quantity of information that included some truthful data mixed with a generous dose of disinformation. The primary goal was to keep the most highly prized Russian agent - Ames - out of the line of fire.
In post #19 you said: Pollard's material did NOT covr Iraq--it covered the USSR. And a largish amount of the material turned out to be going to the USSR (an Israeli with access to it turned out to be a KGB agent).
Your assertions seem to be fully discredited.
As for blowing smoke and passing gas, I leave that chore to the rabid Pollard fanatics.
The only ones passing gas around here is the anti-Pollard mob. The pro-Pollards are responding with clean, well-reasoned discourse and backing them up with dozens of valid references. The anti-Pollards are responding with angry rants and pointers to disinformation. So far, only one source from the anti-Pollards: http://www.crimelibrary.com/spies/pollard/5.htm, (credit gaijin in post #53) seems to have any valid facts we can check out. Unfortunately, gaijin also gets a demerit for fabricating a lie in post #55 - people making stuff up shouldn't quote the Washington Post because they have an archive where you can go back and check to see if the reference is true.
Espionage, no matter who its being done for, is espionage, and Pollard passed enormous amounts of data to Israel. He did the crime, he can do the time.
He's done far more time than others who have done far worse.
Technically, he could've gotten the death penalty (some of the material he passed qualified -- space and nuclear-warfighting related material).
He passed information that the Russians were sending warfighting material to the Arab states surrounding Israel. The Soviets were arming Hezbullah, Hamas, Islamic Jehad, Egypt, Syria, the Saudis ... and dozens of other unfriendlys. For some strange reason, the U.S. wanted this information kept from Israel (and the American public) -- and that's why Pollard must remain in jail forever.
I'm generally pro-Israel, as my posting history on FR shows. Pollard's just a scumbag, and should be treated as such. And I really hate the "Free Johnny Pollard" freaks, because they make my efforts to support Israel here on FR that much harder.
If Pollard wanted to change US policy, he could have engaged in principled resignation and blown the whistle, instead of espionage.
Here's a hint: don't do the crime if you can't do the time.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.