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It requires a Presidential pardon to release Jonathan Pollard to his new home nation of Israel. Why was Netanyahu smiling recently after meeting Secretary Kerry? Jerusalem Post published an article with a new plea for Pollard’s release with arguments made by Angelo Codeville. Codeville is not an unknown person in this case and has made a similar plea 14 years ago …
Netanyahu and Unkept Promises – A Request for Release of Spy Pollard
The Pollard case hit the public forum again in October 1998, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked President Clinton to release Pollard as part of the Wye River Agreement. According to New York Post correspondent Uri Dan, three days before the conclusion of the talks Clinton gave Netanyahu a commitment to do so. This reportedly angered CIA director George Tenet, who threatened to resign if Clinton carried through on the promise. In an attempt to save face the President sent letters to all senior administration officials, asking for information and advice on the matter. This, in turn, upset officials at the Justice Department, who felt they should have the lead role in a clemency review in a major espionage case.
There the matter stood, with apparent unanimity of all “informed” national security and legal experts, until January 2,1999. On that date the Washington Post published an article by four university professors arguing that the President should indeed extend clemency to Pollard. The article provoked an immediate, negative response, including a rebuttal letter to the Post from Vincent Cannistrano, former head of intelligence programs at the National Security council and a Washington Times article by Representative Porter Goss, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Among the authors of the Washington Post article was Alan Dershowitz, a predictable Clintonista, but also Angelo Codevilla, a conservative Republican. Why would a conservative Republican and noted expert on national security argue for clemency for Pollard? We called Codevilla to find out:
An Interview with Angelo Codevilla – Special Feature
Originally published in The Washington Weekly - January 11, 1999Clark comment: I cannot help but wonder what sort of mental gymnastics brought the archconservative Codevilla (for example, see his critique of “the CIA’s American Liberal culture” in Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century (1992) to the defense of a man who sold the secrets of the country to which he morally and legally owed his allegiance to another country. As the Cheshire cat said….
The Spy Who’s Locked Into the Cold
When this article was first published, Jonathan Pollard’s lawyers were involved in a final legal initiative that they hoped would lead to his release. That battle was lost last week when the U.S. Supreme Court refused, without comment, to hear Pollard’s request to see the classified documents — including the memo written by ex-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger — that led to his life sentence.
Without a Presidential pardon, Jonathan Pollard will likely die in prison. This is a crushing defeat not only for Jonathan, but for the whole Jewish People.
(Politico) – Reader’s comment: By far the most egregious damage done by Pollard was to steal classified documents relating to the US Nuclear Deterrent relative to the USSR and send them to Israel. According to sources in the US State Department, Israel then turned around and traded those stolen nuclear secrets to the USSR in exchange for increased emigration quotas from the USSR to Israel. Other information that found its way from the US to Israel to the USSR resulted in the loss of American agents operating inside the USSR. Casper Weinberger, in his affidavit opposing a reduced sentence for Pollard, described the damage done to the United States thus, “[It is] difficult to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by… Pollard’s treasonous behavior.”
This should end the suggestion that Israel’s spies are harmless. They are not. The United States’ nuclear deterrent cost an estimated five trillion taxpayer dollars during the 50s and 60s to build and maintain, and less than $100,000 for Pollard to undermine. Israel waited 13 years to admit Pollard had been spying for them, and now lobbies for his release, having granted him Israeli citizenship.
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Secretary of Defense Casper W. Weinberger submitted a secret 46-page damage assessment of Pollard's espionage which remains classified.USA v Jonathan J. Pollard: Sentencing Declarations, Filings, Clemency Drive
Mossad handler Rafi Eitan … don’t believe a word this man utters!
Antisemitism in American politics: the Pollard Show Trial
(JPost) – Driving from Mitzpe Ramon to Tel Aviv Rafi Eitan, head of the intelligence unit (Lakam) that that ran the operation, described Jonathan’s espionage as even more important than that of Eli Cohen, the legendary spy hanged in Damascus.
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Justice Department lead prosecutor Joseph diGenova approached Jonathan with an agreement by which he would waive his rights to a jury trial, and public exposure of intelligence methods and agents overseas, in exchange for a guarantee of “leniency in sentencing.” The “trial” took place in the judge’s chambers and was swift according to plan… except in the matter of the sentence: life in prison without parole.In his September, 1999 interview in Middle East Quarterly Casper Weinberger, Reagan’s defense secretary was asked, “You have been quoted saying that Jonathan Pollard ‘should have been shot.’ Is this accurate?”
Weinberger: “Any traitor who did what he did should be shot.”
By legal definition “treason is the betrayal of one’s own country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposely acting to aid its enemies.”
Jonathan Pollard not bearing grudge against former PM Shimon Peres