Jerusalem, Thursday, January 10, 2001 [Pictures
added by this
website]Editorial Pardon
Pollard, Mr. President AS
he spends his last days in office working
to secure some semblance of a productive
dialogue between Israel and the
Palestinians, US President Bill
Clinton should pause and remember
Jonathan Pollard. Pardoning the
convicted Israeli spy would not garner the
same glory as international peacemaking,
to be sure, nor could it win the outgoing
president any political gain. It would be
little more than a pure humanitarian act
-- and what more could there
be? There is no question that Pollard's
crime of passing classified information to
Israel while working as a US Navy analyst
was serious -- it was. Nor is it in
question that he deserved to be punished
-- he has been. Indeed, he himself
expressed "deep remorse" in a letter to
Clinton last month. The issue is: After 15
years in maximum security prisons,
including seven in solitary confinement,
further incarceration of Pollard would be
a miscarriage of justice. Alan Dershowitz, Irwin Cotler,
Kenneth Lasson (all law professors),
and Angelo Codevilla (professor and
former Senate Intelligence Committee
staffer) pointed out in a Washington Post
op-ed last year that Pollard was neither
charged nor convicted of the crime of
treason. "Nor was there anything in his
indictment to suggest that he intended to
harm America -- or that he compromised the
nation's intelligence-gathering
capabilities or caused injury to any of
its agents," the op-ed continued. As unseemly as it may be, allies spy on
each other all the time. When they are
caught, the rules of the game dictate that
the matter be settled quietly, usually by
expulsion. In no case has the punishment
for spying for an ally carried anywhere
near as harsh a sentence as the one
Pollard is serving. Pollard
was charged with one count of passing
classified information to an ally, and
sentenced to life in prison without
parole. The current maximum sentence for
this offense is 10 years, and the median
sentence is about three years. Pollard, by
contrast, is being treated more harshly
than Aldridge Ames, who was held
responsible for the deaths of 10 American
agents, convicted of treason -- and
sentenced to life in prison. Ames did not
serve for years in solitary confinement,
nor was he confined in as harsh a prison
environment as Pollard's. Pollard's life sentence, besides being
considerably disproportionate to other
sentences for similar crimes, was in gross
violation of his plea agreement with the
government. Under that agreement,
according to which Pollard pled guilty and
cooperated with the prosecution, the
government pledged not to call for a life
sentence. Though two judges on a
three-judge panel upheld Pollard's
sentence by ruling against his appeal on
technical grounds, the third judge found
that the government's breach of its plea
agreement was "a complete and gross
miscarriage of justice." It is clear that Pollard violated his
oaths to secrecy and unjustifiably took
the law into his own hands. However, he
did so not to harm the United States, but
to provide Israel with intelligence that
he believed the US should have been
sharing with its close ally. In doing so,
Pollard harmed that alliance, as did those
Israelis who acted recklessly in
cooperating with him. In Israel, Pollard's fate is a matter
of national concern. He is not lionized
for his crime, but he is embraced as a
patriot across the political spectrum, as
a rare joint letter signed by Binyamin
Netanyahu and Ehud Barak last
year illustrates. The letter stated:
"Concerning Mr. Pollard, the people of
Israel and virtually all its political
parties stand as one." That
is why Pollard has
featured
prominently in almost every
US-brokered peace summit, with his pardon
mooted by the Israelis as part of a
comprehensive accord, but rejected by the
Americans. In these situations, Clinton
was swayed by the US intelligence
community, with its unrelenting antipathy
toward Pollard. Indeed, he is understood
to have declined Netanyahu's appeal during
the 1999 Wye River talks after CIA chief
George Tenet threatened to quit if
Pollard was released. There is no more such pressure. On
January 20 [2001] the US
administration will change, and with it
the entire upper echelon. Those working to
free Pollard will have to
renew and redouble
their efforts, facing a White House
likely less sympathetic to the cause than
Clinton's. The outgoing president, who has
professed and proven his affection for
Israel, now has a chance to demonstrate
this by giving an American native and
Israeli national his liberty. This simple
act would redress a grave injustice, and
serve as a valedictory gesture that would
be long remembered. says:
Never
Forget. Never Forget what Jonathan Pollard
Did. He Betrayed his Country. One of them,
anyway.
Related
items on this website: - Jewish
Pressure on Clinton to Release Traitor
Pollard
-
What
about the plight of Mordechai
Vanunu?
-
The
New Yorker, Jan 18, 1999: "The Traitor:
The case against Jonathan
Pollard"
-
Jonathan
Pollard "lucky to have escaped death
penalty"
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