President Barack Obama: To free Jonathan Pollard immediately

This review is from: Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice (Hardcover)


​
Three decades of US lies about Jonathan Pollard unmasked
After
nearly three decades, in light of the government’s perfidy, the only
conceivable way to provide a belated measure of justice is to end
Pollard’s incarceration immediately.
Jonathan Pollard

Jonathan Pollard. (photo credit:Courtesy)
A recent breakthrough in the case of Jonathan Pollard has shed powerful light on the injustice of his continued incarceration.

Key
portions of a critical classified document, on which the US government
has relied as its justification for keeping Pollard in prison for nearly
30 years, have been declassified.

As a result, longstanding
government assertions that this classified document contains the proof
that Pollard caused unprecedented harm to US national security when he
delivered classified information to Israel have now been exposed as
utter falsehoods.

On November 13, 2014, after years of
litigation, the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel
(ISCAP), granted our appeal on behalf of our pro bono client Jonathan
Pollard, and ordered the declassification of significant portions of a
Declaration that had been submitted to the court in 1987 by
then-secretary of defense Caspar W. Weinberger in connection with
Pollard’s sentencing.

Pollard had imparted classified information
to the State of Israel. He was arrested in 1985. In 1987, Pollard was
sentenced to life in prison, largely on the basis of the Weinberger
Declaration.

Since then, the government has stridently invoked
the Weinberger Declaration as its basis to oppose executive clemency or
parole for Pollard.

The government has asserted that Pollard
should not be released from prison because the Weinberger Declaration
establishes that Pollard caused greater harm to US 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, as no one representing Pollard has been
allowed to see the Weinberger Declaration since the day he was
sentenced.

For all these years, virtually the entire Weinberger
Declaration has been kept under seal by the government under the rubric
of “classified information.” The government has fought fiercely to
prevent the two of us – Pollard’s security-cleared counsel since 2000 –
from seeing any of the classified portion of the Weinberger Declaration,
even under the strictest security conditions.

The recent
disclosures ordered by ISCAP show that the government has been
dishonestly hiding behind the mask of “classified information” to
materially mischaracterize the nature and extent of the harm caused by
Pollard. The newly disclosed material shows that any harm that may have
been caused by Pollard was 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 US national security, and
it was dishonest for the government to pretend that it is.

The
government’s deception had its most blatant and prejudicial impact at
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 Pollard had caused “the greatest
compromise of US security to that date.”

That is an outright
falsehood, and the recent revelations prove it. The newly disclosed
portions reveal the substance of the Weinberger Declaration, which is
devoted to the possible effect of Pollard’s actions on US relations with
Arab countries.

Thus, it is now revealed that 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 to the United States of
Pollard’s conduct is described by Weinberger as “a high probability of
harm to the foreign relations of the US with friendly Arab nations.”

While
the phrase “damage to the national security” is used as a section
heading, what appears below it is, once again, in the nature of
potential impact on foreign relations. For example, Weinberger bemoans
the fact that Pollard provided information that enabled Israel to
conduct a “successful strike on PLO headquarters in Tunisia” while
“avoiding contact with Libyan Air Forces.”

In the same section,
Weinberger decries the fact that Pollard “provided information on Soviet
built air-to-air missile systems and Middle East air orders of battle,”
even while acknowledging that “[s]ince Israel depends for its national
security on control of Middle East air space, much of this information
was considered vital, and, as Col. Sella [of the Israel Air Force]
remarked, was not previously possessed by Israel.”

At Pollard’s
sentencing, the government submitted a Victim Impact Statement, the
instrument designed by law specifically to allow the victim of a crime –
in this case the government itself – to describe to the sentencing
judge the full harm suffered. The VIS says nothing about harm to US
national security.

The VIS focuses on relations with Middle
Eastern countries, and on the lack of a quid pro quo for information the
United States would have preferred to barter with Israel: “Pollard’s
unauthorized disclosures have threatened the US [sic] relations with
numerous Middle East Arab allies, many of whom question the extent to
which Pollard’s disclosures of classified information have skewed the
balance of power in the Middle East. Moreover, because Mr. Pollard
provided the Israelis virtually any classified document requested by Mr.
Pollard’s co-conspirators, the US has been deprived of the quid pro quo
routinely received during authorized and official intelligence
exchanges with Israel, and Israel has received information classified at
a level far in excess of that ever contemplated by the National
Security Council. The obvious result of Mr. Pollard’s largesse is that
US bargaining leverage with the Israeli government in any further
intelligence exchanges has been undermined. In short, Mr. Pollard’s
activities have adversely affected US relations with both its Middle
East Arab allies and the government of Israel.”

The VIS thus
reflects friction between the United States and “Middle East Arab
allies,” and temporary reduction in bargaining leverage by the United
States. It says nothing at all about harm to US national security, and
certainly does not allege, in words or in substance, that this was the
greatest compromise of US national security up to that time.

Those
who have opposed relief for Pollard have asserted that the VIS merely
describes what could be shared with the public, and that grave damage to
US national security is documented in the secret Weinberger
Declaration. This has now been proven false. The Weinberger Declaration
is merely a more detailed version of the VIS.

The revelations
also dovetail closely with the disclosures in another recently
declassified document, a 1987 CIA study of the Pollard case. The CIA
study concludes that Pollard supplied Israel with information regarding
Arab and Pakistani nuclear intelligence, Arab military capability and
weaponry (including biological and chemical weapons), Soviet advisers in
Syria and Soviet training of Syrian personnel, the PLO’s Force 17, and a
radio signal notation manual requested by Israel to help in the
decryption of intercepted communications of Soviet military advisers in
Damascus.

Tellingly, the CIA study specifically states that
Israel never requested information from Pollard concerning “US military
activities, plans, capabilities, or equipment.” Thus, both recently
disclosed government documents, as well as the VIS, point to the same
conclusion: Pollard’s activities may have ruffled feathers in the Middle
East, but there was no material impact on US national security.

The
government’s unconscionable deception has deprived Pollard of his
freedom for too many years. The document brandished by the government to
implement its scheme, hidden from scrutiny until now, has finally been
exposed for what it is: a description of a brief, long-forgotten blip in
foreign relations, not a frightening exposition of unprecedented harm
to US national security.

After nearly three decades, in light of
the government’s perfidy, the only conceivable way to provide a belated
measure of justice is to end Pollard’s incarceration immediately.
President Barack Obama has the solemn duty to uphold the law of the land
by finally putting a stop to this ongoing travesty. There are no more
excuses. The president should exercise his constitutional power and
grant clemency to Jonathan Pollard.

Eliot Lauer and Jacques
Semmelman, litigation partners at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt &
Mosle LLP, have been Jonathan Pollard’s pro bono attorneys since 2000.
Lauer has 41 years of experience as a civil and criminal litigator.
Semmelman has 31 years of experience, and was formerly a federal
prosecutor in New York.​
























See your review on the site