Please note two important things:
1) This is not about wanting "special treatment" for Pollard because he is Jewish or spied for Israel. Pollard has already been singled out for "special treatment" by those who imprisoned him. What we would like to know is why Pollard was treated differently from other spies who spied for friendly countries, and
2) the well-known line that Pollard spied only for money (which contradicts the claim by many of the same people that he was motivated by his e-vil Jewish ideology) breaks down when one considers that he did not want to accept any money but did so because he was pressured by his Israeli handlers.
I hope some, if not all, FReepers will read this and consider.
John Loftus is incorrect. So was Moynihan but in a different way. Truman did know about Venona. Moyihan's statement is understandable as the common assumption has been Truman did not know. Pat attributed the secrecy to the Army's desire to not let the Soviets know we broke their codes. Considering that Truman kept his knowledge of Venona secret and did little about the infiltration (he told the press Hiss was not a Soviet agent when he knew Hiss was ), Moyihan acted in good faith saying what he said. He was one of the last decent Democrats.
Loftus is another matter. Do a google search on his name. He is a liberal activist. Notice how he claims the "evil" intelligence community was loath to admit it had been compromised. That is just plan silly as anyone who knows the story of James Jesus Angleton is aware. What Loftus does not want to admit is it was not so much the intelligence agencies which were compromised but his beloved Democratic party, the State Department (a hive of liberals), the FDR and the Truman administration. The New Deal coalition swarmed with traitors.
Far as Pollard is concerned...I have no idea what the proper course of action is. Somebody had it in for him. I do not believe that was without good reason. But he has served a long sentence. On the other hand, releasing someone because a foreign government lobbys strongly for it is extremly bad policy and a precedent which should never be set. Bush is good at these types of problems. Perhaps he should pardon Pollard. Be best if a Republican did it. To grant a pardon, Bush would have to lay out very clearly the following: Pollard cooperated fully. He has been punished enough. Lobbying for his release had nothing to do with the decision to grant a pardon. If Bush grants a pardon without doing all that, it will appear to be another Marc Rich case and the base of the GOP, the military and the intelligence community will be furious.
Reason and Justice both say Pollard should be freed and deported, or retried in fair public trial. Yet both of those base attributes of men's pysche are absent in this modern Dreyfuss case.
...These particular agents are now a major embarrassment to the Saudis and to the handful of American spy chiefs who had employed these Saudi intelligence agents on the sly. Some of the names on this list—such as Osama Bin Laden—turned out to be leaders of terrorist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood and what we now call Al Qaeda. ...
...During the Reagan-Bush administrations, the National Security Council wanted to throw the Soviets out of Afghanistan using Arab soldiers instead of American. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but no one thought about the long-term consequences. In imitation of the Soviet strategy of hiring terrorists, we asked the Saudis to recruit a proxy army of Islamic terrorists whom we would supply with guns and pay indirectly, according to intelligence sources. By having the Saudis hire the "freedom fighters," we could avoid embarrassing questions in Congress about giving the taxpayers money to known Arab terrorists. ...
... The Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989. The naive Americans walked away from the Frankenstein monster they had created, but the cynical Saudis kept the terrorists on the payroll. From the Saudi perspective, it was safer to keep paying the terrorists groups to attack Israel, Bosnia or Chechnya rather than letting them all back into Saudi Arabia. ...
... In this "Keystone Cops" affair, one wing of U.S. intelligence was hunting terrorists while another winked at the Saudis’ recruitment of them. I have spoken to numerous FBI and CIA counter-terrorist agents, all of whom tell a similar story. Whenever the FBI or CIA came close to uncovering the Saudi terrorist connection, their investigations were mysteriously terminated. In hindsight, I can only conclude that some of our own Washington bureaucrats have been protecting the Al Qaeda leadership and their oil-rich Saudi backers from investigation for more than a decade. ...
... In his autobiography, Oliver North confirmed that every time he wanted to do something about terrorism, Weinberger stopped him because it might upset the Saudis and jeopardize the flow of oil to the U.S. John O’Neill, a former FBI agent and our nation’s top Al Qaeda expert, stated in a 2001 book written by Jean Charles Brisard, a noted French intelligence analyst, that everything we wanted to know about terrorism could be found in Saudi Arabia. ...
... O’Neill warned the Beltway bosses repeatedly that if the Saudis were to continue funding Al Qaeda, it would end up costing American lives, according to several intelligence sources. As long as the oil kept flowing, they just shrugged. Outraged by the Saudi cover-up, O’Neill quit the FBI and became the new chief of security at the World Trade Center. ...
... The "blue book" Pollard stole flatly establishes that all the dots were connected many years before 9/11, and the only thing the intelligence chiefs did competently was cover up the fact that we had long known about the Saudi-terrorist link. ...
I don't know how reliable the author is (Loftus), but this portion of the article certainly fits with my perception of the situation, that Bin Ladin was a Saudi agent, that his efforts to foment Wahab insurgencies from the Balkans to the Philippines were in service to Saudi policy, as were his efforts to seize control of Central Asia (if you're going to dream, dream big). That the US was complicit, helping where we could, and turning a blind eye where we couldn't, that Saudi control of US foreign policy was strong under previous administrations (Reagan, Bush Sr,) but reached its height under Clinton. That GW began to back away from them with his embrace of Putin (and his coincident backing away from the Chechens). And that while Bin Ladin's attacks on the US were probably not intended by the Saudi Government, that they were the logical outcome of Saudi and Wahab ideology if not policy.
I believe that this is the reason that Clinton did not arrest Bin Ladin when he had the chance, that Bin Ladin and his camps were Saudi operations, and by extension tolerated by those members of our government who are, or were, Saudi agents.
I can't help but wonder if Bin Ladin was free-lancing for Saddam when he hit us, or if he was just starting to believe his own sermons. In any case, our half-hearted slaps at him during the Clinton years were intended not to destroy him, but to re-direct him away from attacking us.
Tell me I'm crazy...