Posted on 05/26/2003 9:17:56 PM PDT by Nachum
As supporters of Jonathan Pollard prepare for a prayer rally on his behalf at the Western Wall on June 4, it appears that one of the most important questions surrounding his case has been answered. Former federal prosecutor John Loftus, in an article in the June issue of Moment Magazine, writes the following:
"There is a good reason why neither Congress nor the American Jewish leadership supports the release of Jonathan Pollard from prison: They all were told a lie - a humongous Washington whopper of a lie. The lie was [that] Pollard had supposedly given Israel a list of every American spy inside the Soviet Union... Soviet agents in Israel, posing as Israeli intelligence agents, passed the information to Moscow, which then wiped out American human assets in the Soviet Union...
"A week after [Pollard was sentenced to life in prison], the Washington Times reported that the United States had identified Shabtai Kalmanovich as the Soviet spy in Israel who supposedly worked for the Mossad but was actually working for the KGB; he had betrayed American secrets to Moscow. Washington insiders winked knowingly at one another: Pollard's contact in Israel had been caught. Just to make sure that Pollard was blamed, U.S. intelligence sources, several months later, leaked word to the press of the Kalmanovich connection...
Citing 'American intelligence sources,' the UPI announced that the 'sensitive intelligence material relayed to Israel by Jonathan Pollard had reached the KGB.'"
Loftus then fires off his bombshell:
"But it was all untrue. Every bit of it. Pollard wasn't the serial killer. The Jew didn't do it. It was one of their own WASPs - Aldrich Ames, a drunken senior CIA official who sold the names of America's agents to the Russians for cash. Pollard was framed for Ames' crime, while Ames kept on drinking and spying for the Soviets for several more years… Ames was arrested in February 1994, and confessed to selling out American agents in the Soviet Union, but not all of them. It was only logical to assume that Pollard had betrayed the rest of them, as one former CIA official admitted shortly after Ames' arrest…
"No one dreamed that yet another high-level Washington insider had sold us out to Soviet intelligence. Years passed, and eventually a Russian defector told the truth. A senior FBI official - Special Agent Robert Hanssen - had betrayed the rest of our agents. Hanssen was arrested in February 2001, and soon confessed in order to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole."
Loftus then writes that a low-level decision was finally made in the Navy's intelligence service to re-examine the Pollard case, and "with sickening chagrin, the Navy discovered that the evidence needed to clear Pollard had been under its nose all along" - namely, that Pollard did not have the special "blue stripe" clearance needed for access to the room in which the list of secret American agents inside Russia was kept. "There is no way on earth," Loftus concludes, "that Jonathan Pollard could have entered the file room, let alone the safe where the list was kept."
Loftus also writes that he then "began to realize that Pollard's tale was only the beginning of a much bigger story about a major America intelligence scandal" - a cover-up of the deep ties between Saudi Arabia and terrorists such as Osama Bin-Laden. "Whenever the FBI or CIA came close to uncovering the Saudi terrorist connection," Loftus writes, "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."
Loftus continues:
"I am not the only one to reach this conclusion. In his autobiography, Oliver North confirmed that every time he wanted to do something about terrorism, [then-Defense Secretary Weinberger, whose secret memo led to Pollard's life sentence] 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. In a bitter irony, the man who could have exposed his bosses' continuous cover-up of the Saudi-Al Qaeda link was himself killed by Al Qaeda on 9/11..." "Pollard never thought he was betraying his country. And he never did, although he clearly violated its laws. He just wanted to help protect Israelis and Americans from terrorists. Now in prison for nearly two decades, Pollard, who is in his late 40s, grows more ill year by year. If, as seems likely, American bureaucrats choose to fight a prolonged delaying action over a new hearing, Pollard will probably die in prison. There are people in power inside the Beltway who have been playing for time. Time for them ran out on 9/11. Sooner or later, they are going to be held accountable. I hope that Pollard lives to see it."
The full text of Pollard's attorneys' largely-laudatory response to Loftus' article is available at "www.jonathanpollard.org/".
Nah, I think it is Texoma. Made a straight beeline to the Toronto nazi/commie scribblers. I may be wrong of course, but I don't think so :).
I love bagels. Is that suppose to be good or bad?
Said sentence was contingent on Pollard engaging in a full and complete damage analysis.
Pollard repeatedly denied checking out documents that he was on record as having checked out from the archives. He refused to acknowledge transmitting any classified material except for some trivial stuff.
No damage analysis, no plea bargain.
Haha, you really are a kook. Watch out, those nazi/commies are gonna sneak up on you!
So far as I know the prosecutors never made that accusation. If true, they should have. The only complaint lodged was that he did an interview with Wolf Blitzer which he cleared with government officials but not Naval Intelligence, which the plea bargain required. Of course they never asked for a life sentence either.
That's the problem with secret evidence. None of us know the facts, none of us know if justice has been done. I think it's interesting that release of the classified information pertaining to the Pollard case, including the Weinberger memo has been called for by both Theodore Olson, his attorney till 2001, who thinks it will lead to his release, and the prosecutor of the case, Joseph deGenova, who thinks it will be damning. Normally I be disposed to believe either one of them. Now I don't know who to believe. :>)
We had one hot war, albeit undeclared completely officially, the Korean War, with the commies of China. Still, in real war, Communist Russia as ever been our ally.
No one disagrees that we were at odds and close to war with the commies in Russia most of their time in ruling --- that the time they were OFFICIALLY our ally was weird, an abberation. Yet they were NEVER officially, fully an enemy. They were a Power we were extremely, justifiably wary of, and against who we mounted many sub-war campaigns, as they did against us.
Yet they were our ALLY, can't be denied. The Rosenbergs spied for an ALLY, that is. That FACT made them clear of that scrub charge of TREASON. Yet we killed them for Treason. If anything the Rosenbergs deserved life, or shorter term.
Pollard, now his case is he spied for an ALLY, a true and ever loyal ally. As nationmal alliances go. The French have been far worse, and even the Canadians.
I can't see anyone calling for some Canadian spy who took stole secrets from the US to be held for life. Think about it.
I agree 100%. But the decision was theirs. The Feds did not want blood. They wanted information. The thought was that with two young boys, the Rosenbergs would confess. The government was in a difficult position because it had information which nailed them cold but could not release it because the Soviets would know we broke their codes. If the Rosenbergs confessed, that information could safely be made public.
Julius, for instance, gave the Soviets a working model of the proximity fuse which was used against American troops in the Korean War.
They died because they supported the Soviet Union until the end. Simple as that. Ethel may have received only a few years had she talked. Can't pin it all on them but they helped tear America apart as liberals and conservatives fought over their guilt or innocence for decades (the Alger Hiss case did the same thing).
Only since the Wall fell, the Venona transcripts declassified and the KGB archives released has the corrosive debate (except among the true, true believers) ended. They were guilty. Alger Hiss was guilty. Ted Hall was guilty.
It was one of the more tragic periods in American history as it divided the country like nothing had since the Civil War. And it all could have been avoided.
Looking back, I wish the government had spilled the Venona secrets in 1952. We would not have had a left wing fifth column in America for the next 45 years had the Feds done that. There would have been no doubt in the minds of Americans that we had been infiltrated and the Soviets did pose a great threat.
Amazing, isn't it? I never thought I'd see the day when there would be people on a conservative forum arguing that a high level convicted spy should be pardoned. It boggles the mind.
And just remember too that if it hadn't been for Pollard, those poor peaceful Iraqi scientists at Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor might never have been killed in that Israeli bombing raid, and Saddam might have had his nuclear arsenal ready for use in the coming 1991 Gulf War. Saddam sure is lucky to have supporters like you guys.
Pollard is certainly a complicated mess, isn't he. Had he broken his oath in a popular cause, like Daniel Ellsburg, he'd be enjoying his retierment.
Only because John Edgar Hoover is no longer alive and the FBI Director.
-archy-/-
Amen. There might not even have been a Clinton presidency.
To my knowledge, three previous cases of high-ranking U.S. government officials caught passing top-secret information to Israel have been similarly hushed up. Two were senior defence department officials under Ronald Reagan, one a top state department official in a previous administration. None was prosecuted.
Too there was the interesting affair of the *Singing Sergeants* of the US Army's Panama-based 570th Military Intelligence Group, who warned Manuel Noriega that one of his office telephone lines was being tapped by US intelligence operatives [the CIA being then headed by George Bush] after which Noriega held his negotiations with US congressmen whose votes on the forthcoming Panama Treaty were for sale on that particular compromised line as his own little joke- a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence among them.
Then there was the little matter of the US congressman who tipped off the North Vietnamese that the US planned a rescue mission to recover the POWS held there, following which the raid on Son Tay prison came back emptyhanded.
So long as those upper level political crooks and creeps continue to get a walk, like Clinton did, so should Pollard. But like Edward Everett Hale's Philip Nolan, he should never be allowed back into the US again.
The Soviet Union is finished, America is stronger than ever. I can't think how releasing what Pollard did over two decades ago poses the slightest security risk at all.
Might embarrass some people but so what.
-archy-/-
Bah!!!!!! Those Israeli's. Turned Pollard over to the FBI and all. Nasty guys. Can't believe em.
The document below was written by a former Pollard attorney, Theodore Olsen, to counter a 1993 NJCRAC position paper on the Pollard case. The document is as relevant today as when it was originally written. Many of the old lies that it deals with are still being circulated today by the same Jewish sources.
That would be the lawyer who became Bush Administration Solicitor General Theodore B. Olsen, whose wife Barbara was killed when American Airlines Flight 77 was crashed into the Pentagon by terrorists on 09/11.
Now that's interesting.
-archy-/-
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