FWIW, here's the "Pollard authorized version". Not exactly the one I had, but not exactly what you claim he admits to either.
He also learned that the objective of cutting off the flow of information to Israel was to severely curtail Israel's ability to act independently in defense of her own interests.
Furthermore, on May 12, 1998, Israel formally acknowledged Jonathan Pollard had been a bona fide Israeli agent. This fact wiped out any remaining doubt about Jonathan Pollard's motives. Being an official agent is, by definition, the polar opposite of being a mercenary.
Prior to sentencing, then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger delivered a 46-page classified memorandum to the sentencing judge. Since then, neither Pollard nor any of his cleared attorneys have ever been allowed to access the memorandum to challenge the false charges it contains-a clear violation of Pollard's constitutional rights.
The day before sentencing, Weinberger delivered a four-page supplemental memorandum to the sentencing judge. In it, he falsely accused Pollard of treason. Also in the supplemental memorandum, Weinberger advocated a life sentence in clear violation of Pollard's plea agreement. The implication that follows from Weinberger's false characterization of Pollard's offense as "treason" is that the country Pollard served, Israel, is an enemy state.
The Court of Appeals, in a two-to-one decision, rejected the challenge, largely on procedural grounds.
The majority placed heavy emphasis on the failure to appeal from the life sentence in a timely manner, and on the resulting far heavier burden faced by Pollard in seeking to challenge the sentence via habeas corpus. [Note: "Habeas corpus" is a procedure by which an incarcerated person may bring a court challenge to the legality of his or her incarceration - often long after the underlying case has been concluded.]
In a dissenting opinion, Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Williams called the case "a fundamental miscarriage of justice," and wrote that he would have ordered that Pollard's sentence be vacated.
The CIA claim that another highly-placed spy in the U.S. had to exist in order to give Jonathan Pollard his highly specific tasking orders is a complete fabrication. To understand how Pollard was tasked by Israel to secure specific documents, see: Was there another U.S. spy tasking Pollard? - Mr. X Exposed.
The Israeli government recognized long ago that Jonathan's sentence was unjust, that the documents he delivered to Israel did not remotely cause the damage that the prosecution claimed but never proved. As a result of this recognition, various Israeli administrations have negotiated, as a matter of basic fairness, to secure Jonathan's release.
Since 1995, within the context of the peace process, the US has repeatedly exploited the plight of Jonathan Pollard to extract heavy concessions from Israel.
However despite express promises made by the United States to Israel, Jonathan Pollard remains in jail.
Although President Clinton promised Prime Minister Rabin that he would release Jonathan as part of a Middle East peace settlement, the President refused to honor his promise after Rabin was assassinated.
Both before and again during the Wye summit negotiations in the fall of 1998, President Clinton promised to release Jonathan Pollard. Pollard was the deal-maker at Wye which enabled the accords to be completed.
In September, 1998, just before the mid-term Congressional elections, President Clinton (who at the time was facing impeachment hearings and in need of a foreign policy PR victory) asked Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to attend a three-way summit with the Palestinians at Wye River, Maryland.
Clinton knew that a successful summit at Wye just before the Congressional elections would be good not only for his image, but would also reap great political benefits for the Democrats in their bid to regain control of Congress. As an inducement to Netanyahu, Clinton promised to release Jonathan Pollard within the context of the summit.
Understanding the value of Jonathan Pollard for his own re-election bid, and needing him as a sweetener to sell any kind of "peace" deal to the Israeli people, Netanyahu ignored the entreaties of Republican friends like Newt Gingrich and agreed to attend the summit. (Gingrich would later repay Netanyahu by leading the Republican charge of slander and lies against Jonathan Pollard.)
President Clinton personally worked out the details of the deal in a late-night private session with a Palestinian and an Israeli representative.
The Pollard negotiation was the deal-maker at Wye which allowed the summit to be successfully wrapped up and a signing ceremony to be planned for the next morning in Washington, on Friday October 23, 1998.
Netanyahu threatened not to attend the signing ceremony unless he got the Pollard side letter. Clinton said, "Trust me." Netanyahu, knowing he was about to be double-crossed by Clinton over Pollard for the second time, refused.
Netanyahu demanded that in the absence of a side letter of guarantee, Pollard should be freed into his custody immediately, or no signing ceremony. Arik Sharon supported Netanyahu and they threatened to leave Wye without signing the accords.
He sent emissaries to Capitol Hill to hold emergency meetings with leading Senators and Congressmen to enlist their support in publicly denouncing Pollard's release. Many lies were told by the CIA emissaries about Jonathan Pollard to convince the legislators to act swiftly and in unison. Believing the lies, the legislators complied and began an unprecedented series of public actions to prevent the release of Jonathan Pollard.
Under heavy public pressure and betrayed by his own Minister of Defense, Yitzhak Mordecai*, who closed ranks with Clinton, Netanyahu folded and accepted this private deal. The signing ceremony was held in Washington as scheduled. *(Mordecai himself is now on trial in Israel in 2001 for sexual assault.)
However, eye witnesses to the Pollard deal at Wye, including the Israeli and the Palestinian who had negotiated the deal with Clinton and the former Israeli Cabinet Secretary, all later contradicted the White House version of events and affirmed that President Clinton had committed himself to the release of Jonathan Pollard as an integral part of the Wye Accords.
Note: Prime Minister Netanyahu was the first prime minster of Israel to agree to free Palestinian terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands. That is the price the Americans demanded for Pollard at Wye. To this day, this represents a keen embarrassment for Netanyahu and his party, even more so since he did not receive Pollard but the Palestinian murders were released nonetheless. That is why no official source from the Netanyahu government ever wants to publicly admit to it. They keep the details to a minimum, but all concur that Pollard's freedom was bought and paid for by "concessions"at Wye.
The Palestinians were outraged, and insisted that these common criminals were not the prisoners that they had bargained for at Wye. The Americans angrily protested. Netanyahu reminded the Americans that the Wye Accords do not specify exactly which prisoners Israel must release. Critics wondered if the Prime Minister had lost his mind to antagonize the Americans this way.
Only those close to Prime Minister Netanyahu understood that this was Netanyahu's private, pointed reminder to Bill Clinton that if he was thinking of double-crossing him yet a third time over Pollard, he should think again. No Pollard, no release for the Palestinian murderers and terrorists.
Unfortunately for Jonathan Pollard, Netanyahu's government fell before he was able to act on this.
The story, though not logical, sounded plausible and it became popular to cite the opposition of the American Intelligence community as the reason Clinton did not honor his commitment at Wye to free Pollard.
This was soon exposed as the lame excuse it was when Clinton freed a group of unrepentant FALN terrorists in the fall of 1999, in an attempt to improve his wife's popularity with New York State's Hispanic community in her election bid for the Senate. (See Senate Race Page.)
To this day, the same lame excuse continues to be used to justify the unjustifiable failure of Clinton to honor his commitment.
Clinton ignored a solid wall of opposition from the Justice, Intelligence and Defense departments and Congress, invoked his powers of executive clemency and set the FALN terrorists free. In doing so, he unequivocally put the lie to the notion that any government agency might tie his hands or influence his decision in matters of clemency. (See FALN Page and Clemency Page.)
Rabbi Eliyahu repeated the same offer every year after that in private letters to President Clinton.
Every offer went unacknowledged until the fall of 2000, when Esther Pollard received a letter from the White House indicating that the President was aware of the former chief Rabbi's offer and that it would be part of the President's consideration in reaching a final decision on her husband's case.
When he left office in January 2001, Jonathan Pollard was not included among those that to whom Clinton granted clemency:
On his last day in office, Clinton granted clemency to 140 people. Many who received executive clemency had been convicted of very serious offenses, including murder, robbery and drug dealing. Some of those pardoned had served no prison time at all before being pardoned. Among those pardoned were Clinton's brother, and a former head of the CIA. (See Clemency Page.)
The motion, supported by documentation, presents a compelling and very disturbing picture of serious government misconduct that went unchecked by Mr. Pollard's then-counsel. As a result of that misconduct, and as a result of his attorney's ineffectiveness Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison on the basis of false allegations, and under circumstances that violated his plea agreement. (See Legal Doc: Declaration of Jonathan Jay Pollard In Support of Motion for Resentencing. See also Legal Doc: Memorandum of Law in Support of Jonathan Jay Pollard's § 2255 Motion for Resentencing.)
In September of 2000, Jonathan Pollard's attorneys filed a separate motion requesting that attorney Eliot Lauer be allowed access to the secret portions of the Pollard court docket. (See Legal Doc: Motion to Unseal the Pollard Record.)
Both Lauer and Semmelman hold TOP SECRET level security clearances, which they obtained from the Justice Department in order to be eligible to see their client's full record.
A motion for reconsideration was filed January 18, 2001. (See Legal Doc: Motion for Reconsideration of Court Order.)
Between close friends and strong allies, that ought to be enough.
For what it's worth, indeed. It's worth crap. It's like reading O.J. Simpson's version of "Who Killed Nicole Simpson"?
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.
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.
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 | |
Ana Belen Montes | Cuba | 25 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 | |
Robert Hanssen | Soviet Union | Life |
* Time served before release is shown where known. Other cases of early release exist.
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.
That was in the indictment? Can you show that to us? That sounds rather pre-judgemental, doesn't it? Isn't the United States Government the judge of what might be harmful to her interests? Perhaps Pollard didn't think he was harming the US, but managed to anyway because he failed to understand US priorities and objectives, since he was an agent of a foreign power? Perhaps that is why he is in the clink?