By Eric Margolis
The
Toronto Sun, Jan. 14, 1999
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The case of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan
Jay Pollard has again reared its ugly head. American Jewish groups,
Hollywood celebrities and Israel have renewed pressure on the besieged
Clinton administration to free the man they call "the Jewish
Dreyfus." Pollard has served 13 years of a life sentence.
President Bill Clinton is loath to
antagonize America's politically powerful Jewish community, which
strongly supports the Democratic party. But the president is also under
intense pressure from the national security community not to free the
Israeli spy. CIA director George Tenent has threatened to resign if
Pollard is pardoned. Seven former U.S. secretaries of defence, some of
whom are Jewish, also demanded Pollard remain in prison for life.
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Convicted Israeli spy Pollard
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After years of denials, Israel finally
admitted Pollard, a U.S. Navy civilian analyst, was not a "rogue
agent," as it originally claimed, but a spy for Israeli intelligence.
Pollard caused enormous damage to U.S.
national security. He gave Israel top-secret U.S. military intelligence and
diplomatic codes; names of nearly 100 U.S. agents in the Mideast, who were
then "turned" by Israel; NSA code-breaking techniques and
targets; intercepts of foreign communications; and U.S. war-fighting plans
for the Mideast.
According to CIA sources, Pollard provided
Israeli intelligence with names of important American agents inside the
former Soviet Union and Russia who had supplied information on East Bloc
weapons and war plans. How the agents' names were linked to the secrets
they supplied - a major breach of basic intelligence security - remains a
mystery.
Some of the enormously sensitive secrets
stolen by Pollard may have been either sold, or bartered, by Israel to the
Soviet Union.
A number of key CIA agents in the East Bloc
were allegedly executed as a result of Pollard's spying. The KGB likely
gained access to top-secret U.S. codes - either directly from Israel, or
through spies in Israel's government. In short, Pollard's treachery caused
one of the worst security disasters in modern U.S. history.
FBI investigators discovered Pollard was
being directed to steal specific secret data by a senior administration
official, known as "Mr. X." But the White House, unwilling to
stir up a domestic political storm, quashed the investigation.
To my knowledge, three previous cases of
high-ranking U.S. government officials caught passing top-secret
information to Israel have been similarly hushed up. Two were senior
defence department officials under Ronald Reagan, one a top state
department official in a previous administration. None was prosecuted.
Pollard's defenders claim he, like French
Capt. Alfred Dreyfus in 1894, is a victim of anti-Semitism in the military.
They maintain Pollard was "only" spying for a friendly country,
motivated solely by concern for Israel's security. These assertions are
patently false. Pollard was suspected for some time of spying.
Investigation was held off precisely because of fears of raising cries of
anti-Semitism. Pollard took large sums of money and jewelry from Israeli
agents in payment for spying.
With remarkable chutzpah, Israel, which
receives up to $5 billion in U.S. aid annually, refuses to return documents
stolen by Pollard, or allow U.S. intelligence to debrief Mossad agents who
ran Pollard in order to learn the full extent of the disaster. While
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu kept calling for Pollard's release on
"humanitarian" grounds, he refused to free prisoner of conscience
Mordechai Vanunu, now serving 18 years in solitary confinement in Israel
for telling a British newspaper about Israel's nuclear arsenal.
Pollard is no Jewish patriot. He is a traitor
who sold out his country, and fellow intelligence officers, for money, then
claimed he was being persecuted by anti-Semitics.
Victim he is not. To the contrary, Pollard is
a poster boy for anti-Semitism. His treason unfairly exposes all American
Jews to hate, and accusations of doubtful loyalty.
Jonathan Pollard is a traitor of the worst
kind - not a second Dreyfus - and should stay in prison.
See also news
reports1. More news reports2.
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