Jonathan Pollard

Jonathan Jay Pollard (born August 7, 1954) is a former United States Navy intelligence officer who was convicted of spying for Israel and in 1986 received a life sentence with recommendation against parole.

In 1985, Pollard's superiors at the Naval Anti-Terrorist Alert Center in Washington, D.C. grew suspicious of Pollard's behavior on the job. Stacks of classified documents unrelated to his work were repeatedly found in his office. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was soon called in to investigate, and they arrested Pollard in November of 1985. Any hopes of keeping the scandal under wraps were dashed when Pollard attempted to flee arrest by requesting asylum at the Israeli embassy, as originally ordered by his Israeli handlers. The Israeli embassy nevertheless refused to grant Pollard and his wife asylum, and Pollard was subsequently apprehended by the FBI.

Israel paid Pollard tens of thousands of dollars for his spying, but he claims not to have been motivated by money. Exactly what information he gave to Israel has not been officially revealed. Press reports citing a secret 46-page memorandum, provided to the judge by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, describe Pollard's spying as including, among other things, obtaining and copying the latest version of Radio-Signal Notations, a 10-volume manual detailing America's global electronic surveillance network. (Edwin Black, "Why Jonathan Pollard is Still in Prison"; Seymour Hersh, [1] (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/576453/posts)) This memorandum, while leaked to the press, was denied access to Pollard's attorneys. Pollard's attorneys were thus crippled regarding his defense. In a 2002 letter to IMRA, District Court Judge George N. Leighton wrote:

"At the time Mr. Pollard was sentenced in March of 1987, the court placed under seal approximately forty pages of material filed in the court's docket. These included portions of a declaration by then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and portions of pre-sentencing memoranda submitted to the court by the government as well as by the defense. The materials were sealed because the government said they contained classified information, some of which could affect national security if disclosed inappropriately.... Mr. Pollard and his attorney at the time were permitted to read the sealed pages before sentencing. However, despite the provision in the protective order for future access, no attorney representing Mr. Pollard has been permitted to see these pages since 1987. While this denial of access has severely hampered the efforts of Mr. Pollard's new attorneys to secure justice for their client, it has proved convenient for his adversaries. For years, adversaries have exploited the sealed pages to generate political opposition to relief for Mr. Pollard by spreading, in the press, rumors and outright falsehoods. Since the accusations floated in the media are nowhere to be found in the open court file, they would either be substantiated in the sealed pages, or not at all. As no one representing Mr. Pollard has been allowed access to the sealed pages, Mr. Pollard's adversaries have had unbridled license to spread falsehoods with virtually no risk of contradiction." Judge Leighton added: "The government's conduct in this case is highly disturbing."

The U.S. government arranged a plea-bargain with Pollard. The agreement was that Pollard would plead guilty to the one count of passing classified information to an ally without intent to harm the United States. In return, he would receive light sentencing and there would be no trial. Pollard pleaded guilty on the above mentioned indictment on June 4, 1986.

Prior to sentencing, and in violation of the plea agreement, Pollard and his wife Anne gave defiant media interviews in which they defended their spying, and attempted to rally American Jews to their cause. In a 60 Minutes interview, Anne stated, "I feel my husband and I did what we were expected to do, and what our moral obligation was as Jews, what our moral obligation was as human beings, and I have no regrets about that." (Edwin Black, "Why Jonathan Pollard is Still in Prison").

Before sentencing, (the now former) Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger delivered a 46-page classified memorandum to the sentencing judge, the contents of were not shown to Pollard's attorneys. On the day before sentencing, Weinberger delivered a supplemental four-page memorandum to the judge. Pollard and his attorneys were only shown the supplemental memorandum briefly before sentencing. Pollard claims that, in the memorandum, Weinberger accused him of treason and suggested a lifetime prison sentence. Interestingly, treason, by definition, requires espionage for an enemy at a time of war. Pollard was summarily sentenced to life in prison on one count of espionage for an ally (a sentence unprecedented for such an indictment) in violation of his plea-bargain agreement, not having had the benefit of a trial.

Pollard's attorneys failed to file for his appeal within the mandated ten-day period after sentencing. Several years later, with a different attorney, Pollard filed a Habeas Corpus request. The three-judge panel on the appeals court ruled two-to-one to deny Pollard's request. This was primarily due to the faliure of Pollard's attorneys in filing for appeal in a timely manner. The dissenting opinion, Judge Stephen Williams, called the case "a fundamental miscarriage of justice."

In 1987, Pollard began his life sentence, one he is still serving. Pollard's wife, Anne, was sentenced to five years in prison.

He was awarded Israeli citizenship in 1998. As of 2005, he is still in prison, although the Israeli government has repeatedly asked for his release.

In 1998, Israel admitted in a statement from then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Pollard had been an Israeli spy. Israeli sources claimed that President Clinton promised to put Pollard on Netanyahu's plane, possibly to go to an Israeli jail, possibly to go free, but then reneged. Administration spokesmen countered that no such deal had been made.

Controversy over severity of Pollard's sentence

According to Pollard's supporters, his sentence was excessive:

"The median sentence for the offense Pollard committed - one count of passing non-injurious classified information to an ally - is 2 to 4 years."[2] (http://www.jonathanpollard.org/)

Although Pollard pled guilty as part of a plea bargain, he was shown no leniency and given the maximum sentence, comparable to that of Aldrich Ames, the chief of CIA counter intelligence in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, who was indicted for treason, convicted of passing critical defense secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and was found responsible for the deaths of at least 11 U.S. agents.

Pollard maintains that he provided only information which at the time he believed was vital to Israeli security and was being withheld by the Pentagon, in violation of a 1983 Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries regarding sharing of vital security intelligence. According to Pollard, this included data on Soviet arms shipments to Syria, Iraqi and Syrian chemical weapons, the Pakistani atomic bomb project, and Libyan air defense systems ("Territory of Lies", Wolf Blitzer, NY: Harper & Row, 1989, pp. 166-171). Since then, however, he has admitted many times that what he did was unequivocally wrong.

"Unfortunately, I failed to appreciate the fact that such concerns did not justify my indifference to the law." (Pollard's public letter of remorse of June 6, 1991, addressed to his parents but published widely in newspapers)

and

"I realize that no matter what my motives may have been, I did not have the right to violate the law. ... I have also made it very clear that I do not consider myself to be a "hero" and would prefer that people simply see me as someone who made a terrible mistake and who has paid dearly for my mistake. Please accept this as my unconditional statement of heartfelt remorse for my actions." (Pollard's public letter of remorse of May 26, 1996, addressed to President Clinton).

In recent years, many have claimed that Pollard's punishment is too harsh, including Caspar Weinberger, who was a major force behind his original sentencing. Even Jewish and Zionist organizations and individuals are split over the case, with one extreme feeling he received an excessively harsh sentence as a Jew spying for Israel, the other extreme feeling any leniency shown him would reflect badly on the loyalty of American Jews to America, and most inhabiting the middle region. While Eric Margolis (external link below) alleges that Pollard's spying might be linked to the capture and execution of CIA spies in the Eastern Bloc, with Israel having forwarded Pollard's information to the Soviet Union, John Loftus (external link below), however, points out that Pollard did not have clearance to access the list of agents and that Israel and the Soviet Union were adversaries at the time. Loftus believes that the exposure of the CIA agents actually resulted from the ongoing activities of Aldrich Ames, arrested in February 1994, and Special Agent Robert Hanssen, arrested in February 2001, which only came to light long after Pollard's conviction.

External links

fr:Jonathan Pollard he:ג'ונתן פולארד

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