“Pollard [said] he was opposed to being released in a deal that would also release Barghouti, whom he referred to as "a mass murderer of Jews."
Allegations intended to harm Jonathan Pollard’s chances of freedom surface fairly regularly in some US press, typically as leaks to a select group of trusted pundits. But a recent such slander appeared in an Israeli journal, its source not even a credible news source. One need read no farther than the article’s heading and sub-heading, Jonathan Pollard tried to spy for Australia, “Altruistic motives or dollars and cents?” to appreciate the author’s intent. The originating piece appeared in the conservative “blog,” Newsmax.com, its author with a history of writing opposing Pollard’s release.
Beginning in the late 1980’s faceless “leakers” insisted Pollard had provided US secrets to the Soviets resulting in danger to the United States, and in the arrests and deaths of American operatives behind the Iron Curtain. Those “unnamed sources” later implicated the Israeli government in providing that information to the Soviets. From the start US intelligence and FBI investigators realized that Pollard could not know the type and location of information to supply his handlers. That was where an “Agent X,” a source higher up in the US government, was suggested. As it turned out there were two “Agents X,” but they weren’t tasking Pollard. Both were high level US intelligence bureaucrats who had been on the payroll of the KGB for years.
“Pollard wasn''t the serial killer [of those murdered US spies. It was] Aldrich Ames, (CIA Chief of Counter Intelligence for the Soviet Union-Warsaw Pact)… who sold the names of America''s agents to the Russians for cash. Pollard was framed for Ames''s crime.” Ames admitted to most of the betrayals so Pollard remained the “traitor-of-choice,” responsible for the deaths of America’s agents. “Years passed, and eventually a Russian defector told the truth. A senior FBI official -- Special Agent Robert Hanssen -- had betrayed the rest of those agents.”
A second justification for Pollard’s life sentence was described in a January, 1999 New York Times article, U.S. Now Tells of Much Deeper Damage by Pollard Than Thought: “Among the documents Mr. Pollard handed over to Israel, Mr. Hersh''s article said, was a 10-volume directory of the frequencies and bandwidths of signals intercepted worldwide… [that] would afford a foreign intelligence service deep insights into American techniques for spying on the world.” But according to Angelo Codevilla, Senior Staff Member for the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time of the Pollards arrest, it was not Pollard but “John Walker [who] gave [the Soviets] the capacity to read all of our Navy generated messages, and therefore many of other messages generated by U.S. code machines.”
Surveillance video frame purporting to show Pollard in the act of stealing classified documents (Wikipedia).
And as for that “room full of documents” which Weinberger theatrically portrayed Pollard removing on Friday evenings and returning on Monday mornings for undetected for nearly two years, according to Codevilla, “what he [Pollard] actually gave away was seven briefcases full, neither more nor less. Seven briefcases do not a room fill, except in the imaginations of insincere people.”
Immediately following the “trial” Caspar Weinberger announced to the press: "It is difficult for me, even in the so-called year of the spy, to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant." Espionage on behalf of America’s enemy, Russia, is the sole basis for a charge of treason, for Weinberger’s description of Pollard as a “traitor.” Years later an unrepentant Weinberger who described the Pollard Affair of minor importance, continued to maintain that, “Any traitor who did what he did should be shot.”
According to information from “unattributed government sources” leaked to UPI in December, 1987, "sensitive intelligence material relayed to Israel by Jonathan Pollard had reached the KGB." Now the leakers were not only saying Pollard was a “traitor,” but Israel also was now described as passing on Pollard’s information to America’s Russian enemy!
Following his arrest the real source whispering in the ear of that “unnamed government source” turned out to be none other than the CIA’s own counterintelligence chief and master Russian mole, Aldrich Ames.
These then are the charges that, thanks to Caspar Weinberger’s manipulation of facts and the media, raised Pollard’s activities to that of “treason” and, in the decades since, have served to justify his life sentence. So how does the recent assertion that Pollard first tried to peddle his wares to the Australians fit in?
“Lydia Jechorek, the FBI agent assigned to the Pollard case, told Newsmax on Monday that after his arrest in 1985, Pollard admitted to her that he had attempted to spy for another “friendly country” [Australia] before spying for Israel.” According to the Justice Department point man for the case John L. Martin, “After Australia rejected his overtures, Pollard spied for Israel.” Jechorek concludes that, far from altruistic and idealistic motives, “[he just] wanted to be someone important.”
A mercenary bereft of idealism, hungry to be “someone important.” Even assuming that such descriptions were accurate, something I will soon disprove, how do they add credibility to a sentence of life in prison for a conviction on the single charge of “passing information to an ally”? Perhaps these “new” disclosures, this obvious effort at character assassination are a response to something yet to surface in the press.
Recall those 2009 negotiations between Arafat and Netanyahu hosted by President Clinton at Wye River Reservation. At that time a flurry of “unattributed” anti-Pollard leaks surfaced in the US media. It was later apparent that they were in reaction to Clinton considering Pollard’s release as part of a deal between the Netanyahu and Arafat. Might it be that President Obama is similarly considering releasing Pollard as part of quid pro quo to, for example, restart Palestinian peace talks?
Postscript: The primary intention of this and other such “leaks” by Pollard’s jailers is to discredit his motives as Jew and Zionist in an effort to erode support for his release. In 2007 a US-sponsored swap involving Pollard for the release of Marwan Barghouti was disclosed. Once he learned of it, “Pollard [said] he was opposed to being released in a deal that would also release Barghouti, whom he referred to as "a mass murderer of Jews."
More than 22 years in prison, and still the Zionist placing Israel’s security above his own!
A Rosh HaShana wish to all of my readers, and a remembrance that Jonathan Pollard is not free to share this joyous holiday with us. How many Israelis would not be with us this year had he not made the choice to risk his freedom on their behalf. Let us all hope that before another year has passed that he is freed to return to the land for which he sacrificed so much, and that owes him far more in return!
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