Israel Matzav

What a shock: Pollard imprisonment based on lies

I really feel like slamming some of the chickens**t American Jews who regularly comment - both on this blog and on Twitter and Facebook - that Jonathan Pollard should rot in jail because what he did was so terrible they're afraid of being accused of having 'dual loyalties' if they actually question Pollard's life sentence. Much of the infamous Cap Weinberger memo (that Pollard's lawyers were never allowed to see) has been declassified, and it shows that much of the US government argument for keeping Pollard imprisoned is based on lies and mischaracterizes what Weinberger (an anti-Semite in his own right) wrote (Hat Tip: NY Nana).

Key portions of a critical classified document on which the US government has cited as justification for keeping Jonathan Pollard in jail have been declassified – and his lawyers say the government has been "dishonest" in "hiding behind the mask of 'classified information' to materially mischaracterize the nature and extent of the harm caused by Mr. Pollard."

Lawyers Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, who have represented Pollard for 15 years pro-bono, say the newly disclosed material shows that any harm possibly caused by Pollard was only "in the form of short-term disruption in foreign relations between the United States and certain Arab countries."

"That is not at all the same thing as harm to U.S. national security," they write in a World Net Daily op-ed, "and it was dishonest for the government to pretend that it is."

The government position for 30 years has been that Pollard must remain in prison because a secret note from then-Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger stated that Pollard caused greater harm to U.S. national security than had ever occurred previously.

"The government has been able to present this harsh characterization of the Weinberger declaration without fear of contradiction," Semmelman and Lauer write, because "no one representing Mr. Pollard [was ever] allowed to see the Weinberger declaration since the day Mr. Pollard was sentenced" – until now.

...

The lawyers state that the U.S. government's "deception had its most blatant and prejudicial impact at Mr. Pollard's parole hearing held in July 2014, during which the government invoked the Weinberger declaration and - without showing it to the parole commission - urged the commission to accept its representation that the document substantiated more harm to the national security of the United States than had ever occurred previously."

"In its decision denying parole, the commission took the government at its word and essentially parroted the government's characterization of the Weinberger declaration when it wrote that Mr. Pollard had caused 'the greatest compromise of U.S. security to that date,'" noted the lawyers.

"That is an outright falsehood," the lawyers write, "and the recent revelations prove it... [It] is now revealed that Mr. Pollard provided Israel with information concerning the 'political-economic affairs of Middle Eastern nations,' various 'Middle Eastern orders of battle,' and the 'technology of Soviet weapons and radar systems' used by various Arab governments."

"The potential consequence [thereof] is described by Mr. Weinberger as 'a high probability of harm to the foreign relations of the U.S. with friendly Arab nations'" – and nothing more than that.

The op-ed details the type of information Pollard gave Israel, and the modest and temporary damage it caused to U.S. relations with some countries – but not to U.S. security.

Hang your heads in shame chickens**t American Jews. Maybe you should worry more about why your government has been holding an American Jew imprisoned for 30 years for a crime that normally carries a 2-4-year sentence than you worry about accusations that you hold dual loyalties (as if any of you holds any loyalty to the Jewish state).

So why did then-CIA director George Tenet threaten to resign if Bill Clinton released Pollard (as he promised to do) in exchange for Israel signing the Why Why Wye agreement? Probably because Tenet knew that if what was really in the Weinberger document was made public (and there would have been no more reason to keep it classified 17 years ago had Pollard been released), he and other government officials who had lied about its contents would have found their butts in a sling. Now, they're all dead or retired.

Read the whole thing.

It's long past time to release Jonathan Pollard NOW.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Binyamin Netanyahu, Caspar Weinberger, Central Intelligence Agency, Jonathan Pollard, spying

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:13 PM