1985 - SHARON M. SCRANAGE, operations support assistant for the CIA stationed in Ghana and her Ghanaian boyfriend, MICHAEL SOUSSOUDIS, were charged on 11 July with turning over classified information, including the identities of CIA agents and informants, to Ghanaian intelligence officials. It is reported that a routine polygraph test given to Scranage on her return to the US aroused CIA suspicions.
Following an internal investigation, Scranage agreed to cooperate with the FBI in order to arrest Soussoudis, a business consultant and permanent resident of the United States. According to one report, damaging information on CIA intelligence collection activities is likely to have been passed on by pro-Marxist Kojo Tsikata, head of Ghanaian intelligence, to Cuba, Libya, East Germany and other Soviet Bloc nations.
Indicted on 18 counts of providing classified information to a foreign country, Scranage subsequently pleaded guilty to one count under the espionage code and two counts of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Fifteen remaining charges were dropped. On 26 November Scranage was sentenced to five years in prison. (This was later reduced to two years.) At the same time Soussoudis who had been charged with eight counts of espionage pleaded nolo contendere and was sentenced to 20 years. His sentence was suspended on the condition that he leave the United States within 24 hours.
Washington Post, 12 Jul 1985, "CIA Aide, Ghanaian Face Spy Counts" Washington Post, 14 Jul 1985, "Routine Polygraph Opened Ghanaian Espionage Probe" Washington Post, 20 Jul 1985, "FBI Says Spying Occurred After CIA Order on Ghanaian"
As much as you'd obviously like to pretend it didn't happen, his behavior is a part of the case and the merits thereof, your handwaving notwithstanding. The facts are clear - Jonathan Pollard is in prison because he put himself there.
I have already agreed that he was guilty of espionage and deserved a sentence commensurate with the crime. Your position is that he would have received about 15 years or less under normal sentencing with a plea bargain but that because he showed no remorse and grandstanded he deserves life without parole.
He was actually sentence to prison and did not put himself there. He would leave if a judge ordered his release, like a judge ordered his incarceration.
I don't know what sort of a sentence he would have received, any more than you do. What I do know is that in comparable cases where the defendant behaved similarly, the sentences were similar. Your contention that his sentence is unprecedented is only sustainable so long as you pretend that Pollard's behavior was the same as those other cases. It was not. And yes, he very much put himself there by engaging in behavior that inevitably heightened his risk of greater punishment. Nobody made Jonathan Pollard talk to the Post. Nobody made Jonathan Pollard claim the moral high-ground for his traitorous behavior. Nobody made Jonathan Pollard demonstrate exactly the lack of remorse that has maximized the punishments of countless defendants in countless cases before him. Nobody made Jonathan Pollard choose the same sort of path as the thug gas-station stickup man who decides to impress his friends with how tough he is by flipping off the judge. Nobody made Jonathan Pollard engage in a calculated plan designed to pressure the court system into lightening his sentence, and which ended up backfiring on him.
Nobody made Jonathan Pollard do these things. Jonathan Pollard did all these things on his own. Yes, Jonathan Pollard is very much in prison now because he put himself there. He is merely reaping what he himself has sown, as much as you would like to suggest otherwise.