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Time to Release Jonathan Pollard
By Marvin Peyser, Torrington
Last month three consecutive issues of The Voice carried articles from the "get Israel" crowd citing the Jonathan Pollard case, accusing him of traitorous conduct by deliberately spying against us so as to cause harm to the United States. The writers of these articles were motivated to mention Pollard solely by a desire to cast aspersions against Israel. Actually, so much misinformation has circulated about Jonathan Pollard that its time to take a hard look at what actually happened, and why U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Williams called this case a "fundamental miscarriage of justice."
Jonathan Pollard was an ideologue, not a mercenary. In 1983 the United States and Israel entered into a Memorandum of Understanding in which they agreed to share intelligence information vital to each other's security. Pollard, then a civilian analyst in Naval Intelligence, soon discovered that the United States was reneging on the agreement, failing to provide the information it had pledged to deliver. Pollard tried to change American policy by appealing to his superiors, but was sternly rebuffed. Pollard felt that much of the information was vital for Israel's very survival as a nation, and that American failure to comply with their signed agreement would cost many Israeli lives. Accordingly, he decided to furnish this information on his own.
What sort of information did he provide? The details of Iraqi and Syrian chemical and biological capabilities, including poison gas development, details of Soviet arms shipments to Arab nations, Pakistan's efforts to build an atom bomb, Libyan air defenses, the specific locations of the PLO headquarters in Tunis (which enabled Israel to precisely bomb the terror structure without hitting civilian areas), and similar items. The knowledge of Iraqi poison gas production furnished by Pollard was of vital concern to Israel, and even before Iraq used poison gas against its own Kurds, Israelis began building gas-proof sealed rooms in every home. During the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraq fired 43 Scud missiles against Israeli cities, Iraq did not use poison gas. The Israelis had been well prepared for this by Pollard, and it would have availed Saddam Hussein little to do so.
Despite the claims of Voice writers that Pollard spied against the United States, it should be clear that the information given by Pollard was clearly meant to help Israel defend itself against its Arab enemies and was in no way intended to cause harm to America. Why we, the United States, did not willingly provide this information to Israel remains a mystery to this day and has never been explained, bearing in mind that we were legally and morally bound to do so by the 1983 memorandum. Israel lived up to its part, turning over to the U.S. both a Mig-21 and a Mig-23 with all their technology during the height of the Cold War, for example, but we were the ones who did not show good faith.
In 1985 Pollard was discovered and arrested. Both Israel (probably to avoid embarrassment) and the United States (to avoid a lengthy trial with intelligence secrets revealed in open court, and also to avoid embarrassment) prevailed upon Pollard to plead guilty and cooperate with the government by providing details of his operation; he was told that in return he would receive a lighter sentence. Three written agreements were prepared to this effect, and Pollard so pleaded guilty. Then, just prior to sentencing, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger wrote a letter to the sentencing judge claiming that Pollard had caused irreparable harm to the United States. Based on this letter the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment. The Weinberger letter has never been made public, and has not even been shown to Pollard's lawyers, despite the fact that his current lawyers have top-secret clearance.
It is a fundamental precept of American justice that people charged with similar crimes receive similar sentences. This precept has been grossly violated in Pollard's case. Pollard broke American law and punishment is warranted, but his sentence is completely out of line with others convicted of the same offense, and out of line with most of those convicted of much more egregious crimes. Remember that Pollard was never charged with treason, never charged with compromising codes, names of agents, or our war plans, and never charged with harming the United States. He was charged with one count only, of "passing classified information to an ally, without intent to harm the United States." For this he received a far harsher sentence than was meted out to some spies who caused horrific damage to our country.
Two years after Pollard's arrest, an Egyptian-born American named Abdul Khadar Helmy was arrested for spying for Egypt. He gave to Egypt vital information about our stealth aircraft, missiles and rockets. This information was transmitted by Egypt to Iraq, which enabled the Iraqis to extend the range and improve the accuracy of their Scud-B missiles, which were used against us in the Gulf War. For this perfidious act, very damaging to the United States, Helmy was sentenced to four years in jail, and released after only two. Michael Schwartz (not Jewish), then a Lt. Commander in the U.S. Navy, gave American secrets to Saudi Arabia. He was convicted of the same offense as Pollard, passing classified information to an ally, and sentenced to be dishonorably discharged. That was it! No jail time, just discharge from the service. Ensign Steven Baba was sentenced to eight years for giving American code secrets to South Africa; he spent five months in jail and then was released. Peter Lee spied for China and was sentenced to one year in a halfway house (again no jail time).
Jonathan Pollard is the only person in the history of this country to be sentenced to life imprisonment for furnishing information to a country considered an ally, or neutral. The maximum sentence today for this crime is ten years, and the median sentence is two to four years. Only Pollard had the book thrown at him with such vindictiveness. Only in Pollard's case did the Secretary of Defense write to the judge claiming irreparable harm.
Spying for an enemy is an infinitely more serious crime than spying for an ally. CIA agent David Barnett sold the Soviets the names of thirty American agents, and we can only imagine what happened to them. Barnett was given an 18-year sentence, then paroled after serving ten. Clayton Lonetree was a U.S. Marine guard at our Moscow embassy. He sold to Russia the blueprints for the embassy buildings in Moscow and Vienna (thus facilitating wiretaps and electronic eavesdropping) and also the names of U.S. undercover counter-intelligence agents. Lonetree was convicted in 1987, the same year as Jonathan Pollard. He was sentenced to 25 years and was released after nine, half as much as the 18 years Pollard has already served. Apparently a Jew spying not for an enemy but for Israel, one of our closest allies, is considered a far more serious threat than one spying for an enemy.
Albert Sombolay was an American soldier who admitted being devoted to the Arab cause, and who set out to deliberately bring harm to the United States by contacting both the Iraqi and Jordanian embassies during the Gulf War, furnishing both nations classified information, and also providing them with American weapons and other military equipment. He was eventually caught and sentenced to 35 years, which was then reduced to 19. Of the approximately 50 spies convicted of spying for an enemy (mostly Russia and the Warsaw Pact countries), less than a handful received life terms; few of them still remain in jail.
Pollard's initial lawyer was totally incompetent. Among many other things, he never tried to enforce the binding written plea agreements which called specifically for no life sentence, never tried to introduce available evidence showing Caspar Weinberger's charge to be untrue, and incredibly did not even file a one-page Notice of Appeal, thereby preventing a higher court from reviewing the case. When two years ago Pollard's new pro bono lawyers petitioned a higher court for review, it was dismissed 2-1 on the grounds that the proper Notice of Appeal was not filed in the required ten days. This is when Judge Stephen Williams, the lone dissenter, called the case "a fundamental miscarriage of justice." In his long dissent he wrote that it was horrifying that a man should have to spend the rest of his life in prison because the proper legal papers were not filed in a timely matter.
People who have called for Pollard's release come from a diverse spectrum. They include Elie Wiesel, Pat Robertson, Cardinal Law of Boston, Jerome Shestack (president of the American Bar Association), Reverend Benjamin Hooks (director of the NAACP), Mrs. Oscar Schindler, the city councils of most major American cities, many congressmen and senators, and numerous others. President Clinton promised both Yitzhak Rabin and Benjamin Netanyahu to "consider the matter" but reneged, although he did grant clemency to 16 Puerto Rican FALN terrorists with blood on their hands, and others, including the infamous Marc Rich.
When Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy was sentenced to 20 years in prison, it was commuted after four years by President Jimmy Carter, because Liddy had served much more time than the other Watergate participants. The reason given by the White House counsel for the pardon was that "(it) was a clear case of unfair disparity." The same standard of justice should be applied to Jonathan Pollard. He committed a crime, has been punished, and in November of this year will have served 18 years, the first seven of them in solitary confinement. Justice and fairness demand that he should now be released.
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