Thinking About Jonathan Pollard

The third Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, also known by his pen name, the Tzemach Tzedek, sent a letter to one of his emissaries on behalf of another, named Reb Chaim Yehoshua, who was languishing in a Russian jail. Through tireless efforts and at great personal risk, Reb Chaim Yehoshua had managed to rescue hundreds of boys from the fate of being inducted for prolonged service in Czar Nicholas´ army as Cantonists. The Czar´s purpose in recruiting the boys (literally boys) was to force them to accept baptism - by any means. Reb Chaim landed in prison due to the workings of an informant, and he was charged with sedition.

The letter was sent to another Chabad activist named Rabbi Zev Wolf, calling upon him to act on Reb Chaim Yehoshua´s behalf. Reb Chaim was being held in a military prison and faced severe punishment by a military court if convicted of the charges. Just one line from the very short letter contains very potent massages for us all. The Tzemach Tzedek wrote, "Watch over him closely," facing charges in military court, he was in great danger; "With all your heart and soul," Rabbi Zev Wolf usually conducted rescue efforts in a calculating manner with little emotion. In this instance, he was instructed to put emotion into the effort; "And bestow upon him kindness," as Reb Chaim had placed himself at risk and saved so many, there must be reciprocity for his deeds;(*) "Do this for me," As if he would be acting on behalf of the Rebbe - the Tzemach Tzedek - himself. This case was personal. Every case of releasing captives is special, but the case of Reb Chaim Yehoshua was of extra importance.

I personally have acted on behalf of Jonathan Pollard, as have many of us. We have recited prayers, and have written letters, and attended synagogue functions on his behalf. Some of us have also protested at the steps of the Justice Department in Washington D.C., and on the streets of New York and other cities. But we must ask ourselves, as the years pass and Jonathan Pollard remains in jail, “What have we done lately? And have we acted with sufficient fervency and dedication?” Clearly, not enough has been done.

A reminder: We all still owe Jonathan Pollard. He refused to remain silent. And when he discovered the dangers to Israel, he took risks for over a period of four years in order to inform Israel of the emerging threats from Iraq. The consequences he is paying are for actions on our behalf. As Jonathan himself wrote in a letter back in 1987, "I´d rather be rotting in prison then sitting shiva for the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who could have died." We all owe him, big time.

If we do not speak up, who will? Why should a non-Jewish congressman speak up when so many Jewish representatives of heavily Jewish districts are silent? If their constituents were more vocal, they would be as well. Some action on the matter would also no doubt awaken more Knesset members to act. It is time to get moving again, to speak up, to redeem a special captive.

Even during the horrendous and panic ridden days of Nicholas I, efforts to pressure the authorities, succeeded in having Reb Chaim Yehoshua´s case moved from a military to a civilian court, where he received a far lighter sentence. We should be able to accomplish no less for Jonathan Pollard, our brother.

And off the top of your head what was that volume and quality?

Why Pollard Should Never Be Released (The Traitor) :

In fact, it is widely believed that Pollard was not the only one in the American government spying for Israel. During his year and a half of spying, his Israeli handlers requested specific documents, which were identified only by top-secret control numbers. After much internal assessment, the government's intelligence experts concluded that it was "highly unlikely," in the words of a Justice Department official, that any of the other American spies of the era would have had access to the specific control numbers. "There is only one conclusion," the expert told me. The Israelis "got the numbers from somebody else in the U.S. government."
THE men and women of the National Security Agency live in a world of chaotic bleeps, buzzes, and whistles, and talk to each other about frequencies, spectrums, modulation, and bandwidth -- the stuff of Tom Clancy novels. They often deal with signals intelligence, or SIGINT, and their world is kept in order by an in-house manual known as the RASIN an acronym for radio-signal notations. The manual, which is classified "top-secret Umbra," fills ten volumes, is constantly updated, and lists the physical parameters of every known signal. Pollard took it all. "It's the Bible," one former communications-intelligence officer told me. "It tells how we collect signals anywhere in the world." The site, frequency, and significant features of Israeli communications -- those that were known and targeted by the N.S.A. -- were in the RASIN; so were all the known communications links used by the Soviet Union.

Much has been said about Israel being an "ally" of the US. The US and Israel are not "allies" -- we just have some common interests in the area. Israel has it's set of interests, the US has its own, and frequently they overlap. Sometimes they don't, such as (from above article):

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." (boldface mine - Ronin)Casey had then explained that the Israelis had traded the Pollard data for Soviet emigres. "How's that for cheating?" he had asked.

The bottom line is that there will be times when things that Israelis consider vital (like getting Jews permission to emigrate from places like Russia) come into conflict with things that the US considers vital (like the safety and security of US citizens and US intelligence assets)

Israeli make-believe in the U.S. media has always been that spy-for-Israel Jonathan Jay Pollard never really hurt the United States. He only stole U.S. intelligence about the Arabs that Israel needed for its own defense.
Besides, the line continued, Israel was an American ally. As such the United States was actually remiss in not freely providing the intelligence taken by Pollard. Thus, while he may have been technically wrong, it was not really fair to condemn him.
Holding an opposite view was Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense in 1985 and 1986 when Pollard was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. Weinberger said Pollard should be shot. The secretary of defense also wrote a closely held 40-page memorandum to the judge hearing the case against Pollard, detailing just how badly his espionage had hurt the United States.
Measured by volume alone, Pollard’s thefts were unprecedented. The U.S. General Accounting Office, in an article on domestic espionage, concluded that Pollard stole 800,000 pages of intelligence. The Washington Report has concluded, based on figures carried in the newspapers and on conversations with prosecutors familiar with the case, that the volume of highly classified material stolen by Pollard would fill 75 regular-size office file cabinets.
American media make-believers assert that Pollard was promised by the prosecutors that he would not receive a life sentence if he pled guilty. And thus that he was betrayed. But I have been told by prosecutors familiar with the Pollard case, and other cases, that prosecutors may make recommendations to the judge, but he alone decides what a sentence will be.
The Weinberger memorandum is still closely held, but some of its points have “leaked.” None of these put Pollard in a better light.
Some of Pollard’s thefts reached Soviet hands. Several of our intelligence agents (not the CIA case officers who handle the agents) were killed, apparently because the KGB could figure out, based on material stolen by Pollard, who they were. The location of U.S. defense installations and units also reached the U.S.S.R., according to some earlier news items.
How had the contents of documents Pollard stole reached the Soviets? Had he stolen intelligence that they wanted? Was this on orders from his Israeli handlers? The “answer” in the American press, reprinted from the Israeli press, acknowledged, in effect, that American intelligence had reached the Soviet Union from Israeli sources. The “explanation” originating from Israeli government sources was that Israeli intelligence had been penetrated by a Soviet “mole” who stole the documents for Moscow.
The mole story explains “how” American secret documents might have reached Moscow but does not explain what Israel was doing with these documents in the first place. Was the Israeli story that Pollard stole only information about the Arabs false?
Had there been a “Mister X” somewhere inside the U.S. government who told Pollard’s handlers what specific documents he should steal, as many American press accounts have always speculated? If so, his name has not reached the media, but this has not stopped private surmises that “X” might have been a then-high-ranking Pentagon official.
Where make-believe stumbles, British satirist/social critic George Orwell’s “memory hole” takes over. In his book Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell created the memory hole. It represented his fear that a systematic distortion of truth and a continuous rewriting of history, with the planned and systematic destruction down the “memory hole” of truthful and accurate accounts, would end in perpetual dictatorship.
And that seems to be exactly what is being carried out by the make-believers dedicated to always presenting Israel in a favorable light. This is continuing even though now, at Pollard’s insistence, the Israeli government has conceded that the Pollard affair was not a “rogue” operation, but that in fact he was employed by the government of Israel.
A recent long Washington Post article consigns to the memory hole the magnitude of Pollard’s thefts, the possibility that a very high level “Mister X” also working with Israeli intelligence existed inside the U.S., the fact that extremely sensitive U.S. intelligence reached Soviet hands and the likelihood that U.S. agents lost their lives as a result.
Jonathan Jay Pollard, it seems, is actually a nice guy. If you don’t yet believe it, you may need more exposure to what Friends of Israel write in the American media.
[Israeli Make-Believe: Jonathan Jay Pollard Did Not Damage the United States By Andrew I. Killgore, Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs, October/November 1998, page 21].

I wish you fools would just shut yer yaps about Pollard. Coming on the FREE REPUBLIC and defending a villainous traitor to the United States is just outrageous.

Go back to defending every killing of a Palestinian child in Gaza by the IDF. You have more credibility in that department.

As an addendum to my #71, regarding how US and Israeli interests may occasionally diverge, here's an excerpt from 'By Way of Deception' by Victor Ostrovsky Extract re: Israeli Foreknowledge of the Bombing of US Marines In Beirut, 1983 (pp. 322-5)

In the summer of 1983, this same informant told the Mossad about a large Mercedes truck that was being fitted by the Shi'ite Muslims with spaces that could hold bombs. He said it had even larger than usual spaces for this, so that whatever it was destined for was going to be a major target. Now, the Mossad knew that, for size, there were only a few logical targets, one of which must be the U.S. compound. The question then was whether or not to warn the Americans to be on particular alert for a truck matching the description.
The decision was too important to be taken in the Beirut station, so it was passed along to Tel Aviv, where Admony, then head of Mossad, decided they would simply give the Americans the usual general warning, a vague notice that they had reason to believe someone might be planning an operation against them. But this was so general, and so commonplace, it was like sending a weather report; unlikely to raise any particular alarm or prompt increased security precautions. In the six months following receipt of this information, for example, there were more than 100 general warnings of car-bomb attacks. One more would not heighten U.S. concerns or surveillance.
Admony, in refusing to give the Americans specific information on the truck, said, "No, we're not there to protect Americans. They're a big country. Send only the regular information."
At the same time, however, all Israeli installations were given the specific details and warned to watch for a truck matching the description of the Mercedes.
At 6:20 a.m. on October 23, 1983, a large Mercedes truck approached the Beirut airport, passing well within sight of Israeli sentries in their nearby base, going through a Lebanese.army checkpoint, and turning left into the parking lot. A U.S. Marine guard reported with alarm that the truck was gathering speed, but before he could do anything, the truck roared toward the entrance of the four-story reinforced concme Aviation Safety Building, used as headquarters for the Eighth Marine Battalion, crashing through a wrought-iron pate, hitting the sand-bagged guard post, smashing through another barrier, and ramming over a wall of sandbags into the lobby, exploding with such a terrific force that the building was instantly reduced to rubble.
A few minutes later, another truck smashed into the French paratroopers' headquarters at Bir Hason, a seafront residential neighborhood just two miles from the U.S. compound, hitting it with such an impact that it moved the entire building 30 feet and killed 58 soldiers.
The loss of 241 U.S. Marines, most of them still sleeping in their cots at the time of the suicide mission, was the highest single?day death toll for the Americans since 246 died throughout Vietnam at the start of the Tet offensive on January 13,1968.
Within days, the Israelis passed along to the CIA the names of 13 people who they said were connected to the bombing deaths of the U.S. Marines and French paratroopers, a list including Syrian intelligence, Iranians in Damascus, and Shi'ite Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.
At Mossad headquarters, there was a sigh of relief that it wasn't us who got hit. It was seen as a small incident so far as the Mossad was concerned ? that we had stumbled over it and wouldn't tell anybody. The problem was if we had leaked information and it was traced back, our informant would have been killed. The next time, we wouldn't know if we were on the hit list.
The general attitude about the Americans was: "Hey, they wanted to stick their nose into this Lebanon thing, let them pay the price."
For me, it was the first time I had received a major rebuke from my Mossad superior, liaison officer Amy Yaar. I said at the time that the American soldiers killed in Beirut would be on our minds longer than our own casualties because they'd come in with good faith, to help us get out of this mess we'd created. I was told: "Just shut up. You're talking out of your league. We're giving the Americans much more than they're giving us." They always said that, but it's not true. So much of Israeli equipment was American, and the Mossad owed them a lot.
During all this time, several westerners continued to be held captive while others became, fresh hostages of the various factions. One day in late March 1984, CIA station head William Buckley, officially listed as a political officer at the U.S. embassy, left his apartment in West Beirut and was abducted at gunpoint by three Shi'ite soldiers. He was subsequently held for 18 months, tortured extensively and, finally, ritually murdered. He could have been saved.
The Mossad, through its extensive network of informants, had a good idea of where many of the hostages were being held, and by whom. Even if you don't know where, it's always crucial to know by whom, otherwise you might find yourself negotiating with someone who doesn't have any hostages. There's the story of the Lebanese who instructed his aide to find someone to negotiate a hostage with. The aide said, "Which country is your hostage from?" The reply: 'Find me a country and I'll get the hostage."
. Men at Buckley's level are considered of major importance because they have so much knowledge. Forcing information from them can mean a death sentence for many other operatives working around the globe. A group calling itself the Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) claimed responsibility for Buckley's kidnapping. Bill Casey, CIA chief, was so anxious to save Buckley that an expert FBI team specially trained in locating kidnap victims was dispatched to Beirut to find him. But after a month, they'd come up with nothing. Official U.S. policy then prohibited negotiations to ransom hostages, but Casey had authorized considerable sums to pay informants and, if need be, buy Buckley's freedom.
It didn't take the CIA long to turn to the Mossad for help. Shortly after Buckley's kidnapping, the CIA liaison officer in Tel Aviv asked the Mossad for as much information as it could get about Buckley and some of the other hostages.
About 11:30 one morning, an intercom announcement at headquarters asked all personnel to stay off the main floor and the elevator for the next hour because there were guests. Two CIA officials were escorted in and taken to Admony's ninth-floor office. The Mossad head told them he would give them everything the Mossad had, but if they wanted something in particular, they'd have to go through the prime minister, "because he's our boss." In fact, Admony wanted a formal request, so that he could collect on the favor later on, if need be.
In any event, the Americans made a formal request through their ambassador to then prime minister, Shimon Peres. Peres instructed Admony to have the Mossad give the CIA everything it could to help with the U.S. hostage situation. Normally, this sort of request includes limitations such strictures as "We'll give you whatever information we can, as long as it doesn't harm our personnel" - but in this case, there were no limitations, which was a clear indication of how significant both the United States and Peres considered the hostage issue to be.
Politically, these things can be dynamite. The Reagan administration would remember only too well the irreparable political damage and humiliation Jimmy Carter suffered when Americans were held hostage in Iran following the overthrow of the Shah.
Admony assured Peres that he would do everything he could to help the Americans. "I have a good feeling in this regard," he said. "We might have some information that will help them." In truth, he had no intention of helping them.
Two CIA officials were called in to meet with the Saifanim ("goldfish") department, the PLO specialists. The meeting took place at Midrasha, or the Academy. Since Israel considers the PLO its main enemy, the Mossad often calculates that if something can be blamed on the PLO, it has done its job. So they set about attempting to blame the PLO for the kidnappings, even with the knowledge that many of them, including Buckley's, had no PLO connection.
Still, hoping to look as if they were cooperating fully, the Saifanim men plastered maps all over a boardroom wall and offered the Americans a considerable amount of data regarding general locations of hostages; although they were constantly being moved to new locations, the Mossad usually had good general knowledge of where they were. The Mossad left out many of the details they had garnered from their sources, but told the Americans that from the general picture, they could decide if it was worth going further into the specifics. This was all part of an unstated, but very real, system of debt repayment, building Brownie points in return for future favors.
At the end of the meeting, a full report was sent to Admony. For their part, the Americans went back and discussed it with their officials. Two days later, they returned, seeking more specific information on one answer given them in the original briefing. The CIA thought this might prove to be a diamond in the rough, but they wanted to verify the specifics. They asked to speak to the source.
"Forget it," the Mossad man said. "Nobody talks to sources."
"Okay," the CIA man said. "That's fair enough. How about letting us talk to the case officer?"
The Mossad protects katsas' identities vigorously They simply can't risk letting others see them. After all, who knows when they might be recognized as a result? A katsa in Beirut today could end up working anywhere tomorrow, run into the CIA man, and blow an entire operation. Still, there are many ways of arranging interviews where the two sides don't actually meet. Such methods as speaking behind screens and distorting the voice, or wearing a hood, would have served the purpose. But the Mossad had no intention of being that helpful. Despite direct orders from their "boss," Peres, the Saifanim officials said they'd have to check it with the head of the Mossad.
Word went around headquarters that Admony was having a bad day. His mistress, who was the daughter of the head of Tsomet, had a bad day, too. She was having her period - at least, that was the joke. At lunch in the dining room that day, everybody was talking about the hostage thing. By the time it got down to the dining room, the story may have been slightly exaggerated, but Admony is supposed to have said, 'Those fucking Americans. Maybe they want us to get the hostages for -them, too. What are they, crazy?"
In any event, the answer was no. The CIA could not see a katsa. Furthermore, they told the Americans that the information they'd been given was outdated and related to a completely different case, so it had nothing to do with the Buckley case. That wasn't true, but they further embellished their story by asking the Americans to disregard that information in order to save the lives of other hostages. They even promised to double their efforts to help the Americans in return.
Many people in the office said the Mossad were going to regret it someday. But the majority were happy. The attitude was, "Hey, we showed them. We're not going to be kicked around by the Americans. We are the Mossad. We are the best."
It was just this concern over Buckley and the other hostages that prompted Casey to circumvent the congressional arm of the U.S. system and become involved in the plan to supply Iran with embargoed arms in return for the safety of American hostages, culminating in the Iran-Contra scandal. Had the Mossad been more helpful initially, it not only could have saved Buckley and others, it might also have averted this major U.S. political scandal. Peres had clearly seen it as being in Israel's interest to cooperate, but the Mossad - Admony in particular - had other interests and pursued them relentlessly.
The final tragedy of Israel's Mossad-led involvement in Lebanon was that when their station "Submarine" was closed, a lot of agents were left behind, and their entire network collapsed. Many agents were killed. Others were smuggled out successfully.
Israel didn't start the war and they didn't end it. It's like playing blackjack in a casino. You don't start the game, and you don't end it. But you're there. Israel just didn't hit any jackpots...

Extract from 'By Way of Deception', Ostrovsky, Victor and Hoy, Claire, St.Martin's Press, 1990

Here you go, "SJackson," some more "facts" which apparently seem to impress you. Why is it that I suspect MY facts will be dismissed by you far more readily than Dennisw's simple posting of a list of names and numbers?… I wish you fools would just shut yer yaps about Pollard. Coming on the FREE REPUBLIC and defending a villainous traitor to the United States is just outrageous….Go back to defending every killing of a Palestinian child in Gaza by the IDF. You have more credibility in that department.

Howdy, Fool. Good to hear from you.

You don’t deliver the Here you go again a well as RR.

Before spouting off about others being fools, fool, maybe you should read the thread.

I’ll note my posts pertaining to Pollard on this thread below below. Please feel free to read them, though to save you time and eyestrain, I’ll repeat my main points.

*I posted this at the request of one of the local Jihadis who apparently felt he’d used up his Pollard tags this season.

*Life in jail for Pollard works fine for me, as would have been a more severe sentence if imposed at the time.

*His sentence is disproportionate when compared to other similar cases of espionage. There’s no refuting that, but I don’t lose much sleep over it. And if GWB released him, I wouldn’t lose much sleep either.

*The real problem, which of course you nor the Pollard threads ever address, is the lenient sentencing of others convicted of espionage, which continues up to this day.

Feel free to show me why I’d dismiss your cut and paste.

Feel free to show me where I’ve defended Pollard, here or elsewhere.

Feel free to show me where I’ve defended killing children in Gaza or elsewhere.

Till then, outrageous, that applies to the slander you purvey on the thread, fool.

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Posted at the request of Iman RCW2001, who apparently thought a veteran Jew should post this, RCW2001 being a veteran, whatever.

From my perspective, Pollard can rot, I disagree with Theodore Olson on this point, despite the unusual nature of his sentence vs the charge.

The real issue here is the leniant sentences given to others.

1 posted on 12/08/2002 6:27 PM CST by Sjackson

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To: SavePanama

Would not the "Ready, Aim, and Fire" be appropriate?

As long as it's applied equally to Americans who betray their country, yes, it would.

7 posted on 12/08/2002 6:39 PM CST by Sjackson

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To: yonif

I agree with many of these view points. As a sign of good will and friendship between these two great allies, I believe Pollard should be released. He has spent enough time in prison.

I agree, so does Ted Olson.

Of course, if you'd said he should have been shot after his conviction, I might have agreed too.

This is history.

15 posted on 12/08/2002 6:50 PM CST by Sjackson

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To: dennisw

I rarely post to Pollard threads.

I don't either. See comment 1, this was a special call in request on oldies and goodies night from our friend rcw.

You won't learn where the truth lies because thus far the government refuses to release the records, particularly about his plea bargain, to his attorneys. My impression is that most of the info reaching the Soviets came from Ames. One day I hope to see a thread about one of the guys who does the same thing and serves three years, but I'm not holding my breath.

54 posted on 12/08/2002 8:33 PM CST by Sjackson

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