Free Pollard - A Cause for American Jews?
BLITZER, WOLF
Free Pollard— A Cause for American i Jews? WOLF BLITZER Should American Jews support a movement to free Jonathan Pollard? There is no question that he is guilty of espionage. Yet, considering all...
...She had served nearly three years of her five-year sentence...
...But they recognize that this is a long shot...
...No one has ever advised us of such compensation...
...Navy's relationship with Israel reached an all-time high—one of the great ironies of the Pollard affair...
...They suspect that their client will be freed only as part of a bilateral U.S.-Israeli political deal involving a whole host of other issues...
...U.S...
...Yet there is no doubt Weinberger wanted Pollard punished severely...
...Both cooperated with authorities as part of their plea-bargain agreement...
...Under U.S...
...Pollard called it "a real disappointment," adding that it was "stocked with so many factual errors and pieces of disinformation that it should be classified fiction...
...Lehman, it must be recalled, was one of the best friends Israel ever had at the Pentagon...
...Israeli leaders remain deeply committed to Pollard, but they can't publicly acknowledge this...
...Herbert Moscovitz discovered that Anne Pollard was suffering from a rare stomach disorder, biliary dyskinesia, and could not digest food properly...
...X continues even today, although very few officials are hopeful of any success...
...But by all accounts, there has been no serious movement...
...Indeed, before Weinberger signed off on the memo, Navy Secretary John Lehman did as well...
...Everything in the car, except for the cat, was confiscated...
...In the meantime, Jonathan Jay Pollard serves his life sentence in the federal prison in Marion...
...From Israel's viewpoint, he was a loyal agent...
...She allegedly had helped Pollard try to recruit a friend as a possible courier in the summer of 1984...
...control, there's no knowing where it might wind up...
...I now believe, however, the government used me— to get a sdff sentence for Pollard...
...It may take a while, but I'm confident that some equitable resolution of this affair will finally occur...
...In 1984, Dr...
...But that will require a decision in Jerusalem at the highest level to intervene on Pollard's behalf with the highest officials of the U.S...
...However, these five persons did not determine Pollard's sentence...
...law, Sella remains a fugitive...
...Pollard, by his own admission to the FBI, illegally provided Israel with more than 800 classified publications and more than 1,000 messages and cables—some classified Sensitive Compartmented Information, even more vital than Top Secret...
...Prime Minister Shimon Peres and his national unity government were clearly concerned about the ramifications the scandal might have on U.S.-Israeli relations...
...On the other hand, Pollard and his wife Anne were deeply offended by the book...
...The Israeli government doesn't need any pressure from the American Jewish community to help Pollard...
...If these factors count for anything, he should not have received a life sentence...
...I don't believe that any money has been set aside...
...If the American Jewish community has not rallied behind Pollard, the Israeli government, too, has been ambivalent...
...Vogel had previously arranged some East-West prisoner exchanges, one resulting in the release of Soviet Jewish activist Natan Sharansky...
...U.S...
...In 1985 she took a freelance position with the public relations firm CommCore, which was seeking a media training contract with the Chinese embassy...
...On the other hand, much of the worst-case damage has been contained because of Pollard's cooperation during hundreds of hours of FBI-polygraphed interrogation...
...Life for me continues in much the same way it has for the past four years," Pollard writes from prison...
...He tried his darnedest to give Israel only information which he believed was necessary for Israel's survival and would not jeopardize the interests of the United States...
...Israelis have also been quiedy responsible for helping raise a significant sum of money to pay for some of the Pollards' enormous legal fees...
...Both Jonathan Pollard and his wife Anne had testified before that grand jury...
...He made that clear in the memo as well as in private conversations...
...Pollard's Unnecessary Ordeal," on September 1, 1989 had played an important role in finally convincing prison authorities to release her...
...I think the four factors I mentioned convinced him to ignore the government's sentencing agreement and to give Pollard no credit for pleading guilty and cooperating...
...They later came to Washington to lobby congressmen and senators on his behalf...
...Before the interviews, there was very litde—if any— sympathy for Pollard...
...Anne Pollard was charged with conspiracy to receive embezzled government property and as an accessory after the fact for possession of national defense documents...
...The original draft of the memo had been prepared by a high-level interagency team of U.S...
...There is no doubt that these officials were motivated by a very deep anger toward Pollard...
...On the other hand, it is also true that under his watch at the Pentagon, the overall U.S.Israeli military relationship reached new heights...
...The FBI arrested her there...
...Eventually she found her passport and used it to gain admission to the prison...
...Indeed, both the United States and Israel have an important interest in removing this irritant to their relationship—and the sooner the better...
...It was an unprecedented act in the history of international espionage—one government assisting the other in prosecuting its own agent...
...Weinberger was, by no means, Israel's best friend in the Reagan administration...
...Whatever is done, Jewish leaders must be very careful to deal only with the facts—and not with wild speculation involving anti-Semitic plots and anti-Israeli conspiracy theories, as suggested by Pollard's family and some of his more ardent supporters...
...The U.S...
...continued from page 41 mass protests, fundraising and other public activity on his behalf probably will not hurt, but it won't help all that much either...
...He pleaded guilty...
...Two well-known spies, Shabtai Kalmanovich and Marcus Klingberg, are currently serving long prison sentences in Israel...
...What incentive, for example, do other suspected spies now have to plead guilty and cooperate when they see what happened to Pollard...
...Those are not defenses, but those certainly argue against the maximum possible punishment, which is what he got...
...In contrast, Pollard said of himself: "With my eyes shut and not fully aware of the consequences, I entered the territory of lies without a passport for return...
...Still, I'm alive and kicking and have absolutely no intention of throwing in the towel...
...Constitution—and the government would have had a very hard time convicting him...
...My commitment to Israel is based on purely ideological grounds and cannot be measured in monetary terms...
...As far as we're concerned, this is an outright fabrication...
...At her sentencing on March 4,1987 Anne Pollard said, "I love Jay very, very much and when he called [on] me in his eleventh hour, I responded because I felt that was what a wife should do...
...Pollard had invited me into the prison...
...In that book, Greene, whom Pollard deeply admires, wrote of a fictional spy: 'With his eyes open, knowing the consequences, he entered the territory of lies without a passport for return...
...Both Pollards pleaded guilty...
...The second reason involved me...
...John Walker, who spied for the Soviets, and Edwin Wilson, the renegade CIA operative who sold arms to Libya, are in separate cells in that same section...
...officials suspected that the Israelis also were attempting to conceal the identity of another alleged American agent—the so-called Mr...
...Pollard's own lawyers are still considering a strategy to have his guilty plea withdrawn...
...Many readers of my book on the Pollard case, Territory of Lies (Harper & Row, 1989), have accused me of being overly sympathetic to the Pollards...
...They were also affected by the other highly publicized—and em-bar rassing—espionage cases of 1985—dubbed "the year of the spy...
...In short, quiet U.S.Israeli diplomacy will be more effective than public protests by American Jews...
...Perhaps someday Judge Robinson, in his memoirs, will explain his thinking...
...He had been deeply angered by Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982...
...In the end, in my opinion, only the Israeli government can save Pollard...
...Israeli officials have privately conceded that they panicked when Pollard was arrested outside the embassy...
...her first two appeals had been denied...
...Originally, it had apologized for the "rogue, unauthorized" operation...
...government...
...I felt that I was, while assisting my husband, not causing any harm to the United States at all...
...In my opinion, four elements lie behind Judge Robinson's rejection of the government's sentencing recommendation and his decision to give Pollard life...
...The Jewish community's ability to affect the situation is clearly limited...
...She often did not receive proper medication and was unable to eat jail food...
...law enforcement officials, was outraged by this Israeli behavior...
...Bureau of Prisons' officials told author Wolf Blitzer that an article he wrote for the op-ed page of The New York Times, entitled "Mrs...
...Yet it is also true that after getting his side of the story out for the first time, public opinion in Israel and in the American Jewish community began to change...
...What if some of those documents wound up in the hands of Soviet spies in Israel...
...law enforcement authorities had been badly burned that year...
...The Knesset members clearly feel guilty that their government not only abandoned Pollard by kicking him out of the embassy in Washington when he sought political asylum but also betrayed him by allowing a team of United States investigators and prosecutors to come to Israel shortly after his arrest in order to take testimony from the Israeli officials involved...
...The only "bank account" I wish to enjoy is the knowledge that through my efforts both Israeli and American lives might be saved...
...officials, including the prosecutors...
...The Knesset members praised Pollard as an intelligent and warm Jew who loves Israel and still wants to live there...
...After nearly 100 days in jail, she was released on bail...
...And at that time, there was no hard evidence that he gave the documents to anyone...
...The handful of documents discovered in his apartment when he was first picked up for questioning on November 18, 1985 was not enough to merit a lengthy prison sentence...
...After an extensive investigation, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith found no evidence of anti-Semitism in connection with the case...
...prosecution in exchange for their testimony against Pollard, was only recendy forced into retirement from Israel Chemicals because of his opposition to government efforts to privatize the firm...
...For one thing, the East German lawyer, Wolfgang Vogel, who had been involved in trying to work out a deal, has been accused of corruption by the new leadership in East Berlin...
...Justice Department has continued to threaten to revoke their immunity because they allegedly did not testify fully and honesdy...
...The Israelis were pleas-andy surprised by what they felt was a genuine willingness on the part of some U.S...
...Pollard will technically become eligible for parole in six years (after serving a total of ten years), but there is no guarantee he will get it even then...
...Pollard brought her five classified documents...
...She already had been eligible for parole for more than a year...
...E.B.W...
...Anne Poilard asked her husband to bring home articles with background information on China...
...Within the highest echelons of the Reagan administration, Weinberger was usually the most critical of Israel and the most supportive of Saudi Arabia...
...The Israelis still find some need to hide behind the screen of a "rogue" operation...
...District Court Judge Aubrey Robinson III should have accepted the government's recommendation that Pollard receive a "substantial" sentence, but not a life sentence...
...But by then, he had himself been indicted by a U.S...
...The Americans were outraged when they discovered that Israel had tried to cover up aspects of the case, returning, for example, only a small fraction of the documents provided by Pollard...
...They would like to have a trial...
...He remains isolated in a special subterranean section...
...Turned away by embassy guards, Jonathan Pollard was arrested...
...and Assistant U.S...
...Pollard's lawyers are hoping that political pressure from Capitol Hill will encourage the Bureau of Prisons to ease up on Pollard, and, as an initial step, allow him to be moved from the maximum-security compound to a less restrictive prison environment...
...Can the American Jewish community hasten the process...
...From time to time, Israeli Cabinet Secretary Elyakim Rubinstein has returned to Washington to meet with Justice Department officials in an attempt to resolve the case...
...Sella was named commander of the Tel Nof air base near Tel Aviv, traditionally the stepping stone to becoming commander of the Air Force, and Eitan was named chairman of Israel Chemicals, the largest government-owned company in the country...
...Judge Robinson, for his part, has an excellent reputation and is widely regarded in Washington legal circles as a fair person...
...Attorney Charles Leeper contended that Anne Pollard should not be released on bail because the documents she had in her purse at the time of Pollard's arrest indicated she planned to leave the country with him...
...officials, who have pointed to the fact that five key players on the government's team involved in the case—Mark Richard, Deputy Assistant Attorney General...
...Pollard, of course, had worked for the Navy...
...Pollard may not have shown much remorse, but he did cooperate with the investigation and he did plead guilty...
...An astute reader, however, pointed out to me that Pollard had adapted the quote from Graham Greene's novel, The Heart of the Matter...
...At a preliminary hearing Assistant U.S...
...I did not disclose anything to any foreign national...
...I have never committed espionage in my life, nor would I ever...
...They were furious at Pollard and wanted to send a clear message to all government employees—don't spy for enemies or for friends...
...He fully cooperated...
...They apologized to the United States and cooperated—but not completely...
...When she tried to visit her husband in jail the next day, she could not get in because her identification papers had been siezed...
...Seymour Reich, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and president of B'nai B'rith International, has publicly raised questions about the severity of Pollard's sentence...
...Eitan, who together with two other Israeli officials involved in the affair had received immunity from U.S...
...However, Pollard never blacked out any of the documents...
...They At the time, I»had no idea what the government's motivation was in giving me access to Pollard in prison...
...grand jury on three counts of espionage...
...That's what he deserved...
...The sentencing judge, like U.S...
...I do believe the severity of Weinberger's memo was at least in part the result of his feelings about Israel...
...Based on these documents, she briefed her associates but failed to win the contract When Pollard was first questioned by the FBI, Anne Pollard gathered up what she thought were all the classified documents—a stack 15- to 18-inches high—in their apartment, put them into a suitcase and, with the help of unwitting neighbors—the suitcase was too heavy for her—attempted to hide them from the authorities...
...he received authorization from Washington...
...But Pollard is not receiving any of that money in Marion...
...One reason stemmed from Pollard's expressed lack'of remorse, which clearly outraged the judge...
...Were these government officials who set me up motivated by anti-Israel or anti-Semitic sentiments...
...X. The hunt for Mr...
...The Weinberger memo also raised the possibility that Israel may have provided some of Pollard's information to other third parties—for whatever reason...
...I would never do anything to damage this country...
...Many of those pages certainly could (and probably should) have been released to Israel, but with certain sections censored in order to protect the sources and methods used to collect that intelligence...
...government to choose between divulging highly classified information or dropping the prosecution— as in the Iran-Contra cases...
...I was naturally pleased to receive his first interviews...
...lawmakers to take another look at the Pollard case, especially the severe sentence and the harsh conditions of his incarceration...
...He was especially angry over my disclosure that the Israeli government was quiedy setting aside $5,000 a month for him so that he would have a nice nest egg upon his arrival in Israel...
...Moreover, he provided the secret material not to an enemy but to a friendly ally...
...I did not compromise information...
...but if this is the case, Anne and I insist that it be given to the holiest Jews, specifically to the rehabilitation of Israeli soldiers wounded in action...
...Some believe this sentence was the result of subsurface anti-Semitism—I am not among them...
...There was no trial...
...But for the most part Jewish organizations have remained silent...
...Anne Pollard was sent home...
...Espionage is very difficult to prove in court...
...Yet he joined Weinberger in endorsing the memo...
...It is underscored by the extraordinary support openly expressed for the Pollards by a cross section of the Knesset...
...Letter writing to newspapers or to the government, continued on page 55 Free Pollard...
...Clearly impressed by what they had heard from Pollard, they vowed to do whatever they could to help him and his wife...
...Let me turn to a personal aspect of the case...
...He spied for a country which was an ally of the United States...
...On this point, I, of course, have felt uncomfortable, although I believe that I behaved as any professional journalist would in these circumstances...
...national security interests...
...As of this writing, however, a warrant has been issued for Vogel's arrest...
...Anne Pollard after her release from prison...
...Through one of his lawyers, in fact, Pollard issued the following statement: We are distressed by allegations in Wolf Blitzer's book that the Israeli government is setting aside $5,000 per month as compensation for me...
...The quote at the beginning of my book—the source of the tide, Territory of Lies—came from Pollard...
...He helped the government in its damage assessment...
...The pro-Pollard movement in Israel is gaining impressive momentum...
...It was during his tenure that the U.S...
...As I made clear in the book, I never thought that Pollard had been motivated by greed...
...Paradoxically, the prospect of a multination spy swap involving Pollard has apparently been reduced with the political upheaval in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union...
...lawmakers to urge that Pollard receive an immediate pardon enabling him to setde in Israel...
...In October 1989, two Knesset members, Geula Cohen of the far right Techiya party and Edna Solodar of the left-of-center Labor party, flew to the maximum security prison in Marion, Illinois and met with Pollard for an emotional 90 minutes...
...There is no question that Pollard did indeed damage U.S...
...U.S...
...It is unlikely, however, that overt anti-Semitism was involved...
...Prosecutors also accused her of attempting to use Pollard's intelligence-gathering to further her career...
...Without the leads and evidence provided by Israel, Pollard could have remained silent—his right under the U.S...
...Robinson has refused to explain his thinking, which I believe was flawed even for tactical reasons...
...After the sentencing, Sella's promotion was withdrawn under sharp pressure from the U.S...
...I could easily have been denied permission, but the government knew that any interview Pollard granted—without the written authorization of Naval Intelligence—would violate his plea-bargain agreement...
...I concluded that he was indeed an ideological zealot who would have spied for Israel even if no money had been involved in the operation...
...he often clashed with his Israeli counterparts, especially Ariel Sharon...
...Was this overly harsh sentence the result of anti-Semitism...
...government and the American Jewish community...
...Certainly Felix Bloch, the State Department diplomat suspected of, but never charged with, spying for the Soviet Union, learned that lesson...
...If both Pollard and the Israeli government had made a decision to stonewall, the enormous scope of Pollard's espionage activities over an 18-month period would almost assuredly never have been uncovered...
...authorities were shocked when Sella and Rafi Eitan, the head of the LAKAM scientific-intelligence gathering unit in the Defense Ministry that ran Pollard, were promoted on the eve of Pollard's sentencing...
...Besides, she had her passport with her when she was arrested, additional evidence that she intended to flee...
...But Pollard may yet return...
...They leaked that information to me in order to assure a concerned and confused Israeli public that the government had not in fact abandoned Pollard...
...The warden at Petersburg, Virginia, where Pollard was being held, did not allow me to enter the prison on his own...
...Her condition worsened in prison...
...Pollard violated this agreement by giving me two lengthy pre-sentencing interviews...
...Should they...
...investigation, but also to punish those officials involved...
...Yet, considering all the circumstances, his sentence to life imprisonment was excessive...
...But the idea that he should be treated as if he were a spy who has sold nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union—what did he do...
...The fourth and most important factor that led Judge Robinson to impose such a harsh sentence on Pollard was a classified 46-page sentencing memorandum that then Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger gave to the judge, which oudined the worst possible damage to the United States...
...In this case, it might well have been impossible if both Pollard and the Israelis had remained silent...
...Recently, there has been a modest shift in the mainstream American Jewish leadership...
...law enforcement authorities acknowledge that this initial Israeli cooperation, even if incomplete and misleading, was instrumental in convincing Pollard to confess and plead guilty...
...officials, while still furious over the entire affair, tend to agree that Pollard will one day be allowed to settle in Israel as part of a high-level U.S.-Israeli political deal...
...When and how remains a question...
...Anne Pollard: The "Unnecessary Ordeal" Is Over Anne Pollard, her health precarious, was released to a halfway house in New York in November 1989...
...The Israelis also tried to conceal Israeli Air Force Colonel Aviem Sella's role in establishing the initial contact with Pollard...
...Once the information is out of U.S...
...It already is under severe pressure from the Israeli public at large...
...In the end, they got the worst of both worlds: massive criticism in America and their own man jailed for life...
...They thought they were embarking on a damage control operation...
...Could there be others who have not been arrested...
...But for political reasons, the Israelis continue to feel they must stick by their original story that he was part of a rogue intelligence-gathering operation...
...stopped on the way for Anne to receive medical treatment at Washington Hospital Center to relieve her stomach pain, aggravated by stress...
...I agree with Pollard's current lawyer, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, who said on "60 Minutes" that Pollard was 'jusdy convicted and jusdy sentenced to a term of imprisonment...
...U.S...
...What I wrote in the book—and what has again been confirmed to me by very high-ranking Israeli officials—is that the "tradition in the Israeli intelligence community has always been that captured agents serving in prison continue to receive their salary, only doubled...
...Instead, the Israelis are holding it for him...
...Its report has not been made available to the public...
...U.S...
...prosecutors and other law enforcement officials were more than happy to let Pollard dig his own grave...
...For the time being, though, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin and other senior officials remain too embarrassed to raise the Pollard case with President Bush or his most senior aides...
...She suffered debilitating pain and lost about 80 pounds...
...Three days later, the Pollards packed their personal bags, took their wedding album, birth certificates, marriage license, cat and the cafs vaccination papers and drove toward the refuge they hoped to find at the Israeli embassy...
...Moreover, I deeply resent the fact that Wolf Blitzer and others are attempting to use this story to paint me as a mercenary, which I'm not...
...She required continuous use of drugs to stimulate her stomach to empty and frequent hospital outpatient treatments to control the disorder...
...No one can accuse Lehman of being anti-Israel or anti-Semitic...
...He was the one who wanted to explain his side of the story...
...Attorneys Stephen R. Spivack, David Geneson and Charles Roistacher— are Jewish...
...Although the physical surroundings at Marion are better than I had expected, there's nothing good that I can say about solitary confinement...
...Pollard acknowledges that at the time of his arrest, he was receiving $2,500 a month from his Israeli handlers...
...As part of Pollard's plea-bargain agreement, he signed a document pledging not to give media interviews without the written authority of the director of Naval Intelligence...
...They appealed to U.S...
...The third reason for Pollard's maximum sentence involved the strange behavior of the Israeli government...
...The suggestion has outraged U.S...
...it pledged not only to cooperate fully with the U.S...
...A trial would have required the U.S...
...I do not believe he was motivated by anti-Semitism...
...Judge Abraham Sofaer, the State Department's Legal Adviser...
Vol. 15 • April 1990 • No. 2
