Should Jonathan Pollard be pardoned? (treason, deported, terrorism, government)

[GloryB]

The problem in cases like this is that due to classified information, the public only knows the outer fringes of what actually took place and what led up to it. Here is what I found on what looks to be an official website on the issue:

Jonathan Pollard was never indicted for harming the United States.

Jonathan Pollard was never indicted for compromising codes, agents, or war plans.

Jonathan Pollard was never charged with treason. [Legally, treason is a charge that is only applicable when one spies for an enemy state in time of war.]

Jonathan Pollard was indicted on only one charge: one count of passing classified information to an ally, without intent to harm the United States.


The Facts of the Pollard Case

If this is correct, there is all possibility he will be pardoned as a good faith gesture to Israel. He probably should also be deported there to live out the rest of his life.

[Luiso]

Originally Posted by fasterserv

The U.S. government is the best government that Israel can buy and they do it with U.S. dollars.

Mexico might disagree they to are buying "our" politicians in large numbers.

[fasterserv]

What you are saying is, no doubt, true, but Mexico cannot compete with AIPAC. Nearly EVERY politician in Washington, DC is selling out the citizens of the U.S. on a regular basis but they won't say NO to Israel.

Originally Posted by Luiso

Mexico might disagree they to are buying "our" politicians in large numbers.

[sugarmaple]

Israel is no ally. If you research the mossad, they've worked against the USA for over 40 years. Israel may be friendly, but they pursue their own self interests.

I don't know if this statement is really true; I believe Israel is our ally, as is England, France, Italy, to name but a few AND as what was noted in another post on this thread, we all spy on each other, not in the same sense, I believe, as would be spying on Russia (as we did in the past) or Korea, China and even Vietnam....and those countries spy on us.

I have read a great deal about the Mossad and whether or not one agrees with this thinking or philosophy is not an issue I am raising but rather that with the books I have read about the Mossad, they are in fact, a pretty impressive and amazing organization. The first book I read was The Making of a Mossad Officer and if anyone is interested in history and the venue of spying, I recommend it. The Mossad, although now recognized, for a long time was one of those organizations that no-one talked about nor acknowledged ... the Mossad reports to only one person and that is the Prime Minister. Their training is incredible; they are everywhere as, I believe, our agents are as well.

The Mossad is the organization that finall found Eichman and simply whisked him away and brought him to trial at Nuremberg; the Mossad is the one that in practically one fell swoop managed to get a Russian mig...that story in itself is impressive....

I also believe and this topic just might be an interesting thread to start actually....there is a great deal that we are not told, some for our 'protection' and other reasons, I don't know, perhaps the government does not want us to know about some of the mission we undertake...let's not forget our attempt to rescue the highjacked travelers from the plane...the ones that were finally rescued and brought back home I believe the day of or the day after Carter was inagurated (The Delta Force Movie).... then there was our unfortunate unsuccessful attempt in Grenada....so, we too do our share of impressive feats, and we have our share of unsucessful ones too....should the American people be made aware of the spy business we are in; what we do; the clandestine stuff...or are we better off not knowing....

If Pollard is pardoned this time around, and frankly I will be surprised if he is, and is it pardoned or released? is more the question..I would think in part it is because he is ill, wants to go to Israel and there is a little part of me that believes there is more to the story than we have ever been told.

[sugarmaple]

The problem in cases like this is that due to classified information, the public only knows the outer fringes of what actually took place and what led up to it. Here is what I found on what looks to be an official website on the issue:

Jonathan Pollard was never indicted for harming the United States.

Jonathan Pollard was never indicted for compromising codes, agents, or war plans.

Jonathan Pollard was never charged with treason. [Legally, treason is a charge that is only applicable when one spies for an enemy state in time of war.]

Jonathan Pollard was indicted on only one charge: one count of passing classified information to an ally, without intent to harm the United States.

All of this is correct which is one of the reasons I have asked...treason is giving classified information to enemies, not allies, thus I maintain there is a whole lot more that we do not know.....and Israel is not our enemy, but rather our ally.

And, clearly one of the reasons we have, and will continue to have a strong allegiance to Israel and vice versa is because of Israel's strategic place in the Middle East; we are not overly appreciated in the Arab countries; we have our own, shall we call it 'stronghold' - agents right in Israel which clearly help us to know what is going on and what may/may not be planned on the United States....we would certainly be in one heck of a pickle without having our alliance with Israel, that's for sure.

[sugarmaple]

I think you will find this particular site very interesting...includes the history of Pollard, the sentencing...he did enter into a plea agreement and has stuck to it, one of the components of that plea agreement was to help benefit his former wife Ann, who was ill at that time.....

Justice for Jonathan Pollard
I do think some of you may look at this a little differently when you are through reading it.

[sugarmaple]

Jonathan Pollard was a civilian American Naval intelligence analyst. In the mid 1980's (circa 1983-1984), Pollard discovered that information vital to Israel's security was being deliberately withheld by certain elements within the U.S. national security establishment.

Israel was legally entitled to this vital security information according to a 1983 Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries.

The information being withheld from Israel included Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan and Iranian nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare capabilities - being developed for use against Israel. It also included information on ballistic missile development by these countries and information on planned terrorist attacks against Israeli civilian targets.

When Pollard discovered this suppression of information and asked his superiors about it, he was told to "mind his own business", and that "Jews get nervous talking about poison gas; they don't need to know."
He also learned that the objective of cutting off the flow of information to Israel was to severely curtail Israel's ability to act independently in defense of her own interests.


Pollard was painfully aware that Israeli lives were being put in jeopardy as a result of this undeclared intelligence embargo. He did everything he possibly could to stop this covert policy and to have the legal flow of information to Israel restored. When his efforts met no success, he began to give the information to Israel directly.

Jonathan Pollard was an ideologue, not a mercenary. The FBI concluded after nine months of polygraphing that Pollard acted for ideological reasons only, not for profit. This fact was recognized by the sentencing judge who declined to fine Pollard. (See the addendum for further details.)
Furthermore, on May 11, 1998, Israel formally acknowledged Jonathan Pollard had been a bona fide Israeli agent. This fact wiped out any remaining doubt about Jonathan Pollard's motives. Being an official agent is, by definition, the polar opposite of being a mercenary.


In 1985, his actions were discovered by the U.S. government. His instructions from Israel were to seek refuge in the Israeli embassy in Washington. When Pollard and his former wife sought refuge there, they were at first received and then summarily thrown out into the waiting arms of the FBI.

Jonathan Pollard never had a trial. At the request of both the U.S. and Israeli governments, he entered into a plea agreement, which spared both governments a long, difficult, expensive and potentially embarrassing trial.

Jonathan Pollard fulfilled his end of the plea agreement, cooperating fully with the prosecution.

Nevertheless, Pollard received a life sentence and a recommendation that he never be paroled - in complete violation of the plea agreement he had reached with the government.

Jonathan Pollard was never indicted for harming the United States.

Jonathan Pollard was never indicted for compromising codes, agents, or war plans.

Jonathan Pollard was never charged with treason. [Legally, treason is a charge that is only applicable when one spies for an enemy state in time of war.]

Jonathan Pollard was indicted on only one charge: one count of passing classified information to an ally, without intent to harm the United States.

Prior to sentencing, then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger delivered a 46-page classified memorandum to the sentencing judge. Since then, neither Pollard nor any of his cleared attorneys have ever been allowed to access the memorandum to challenge the false charges it contains-a clear violation of Pollard's constitutional rights.

The day before sentencing, Weinberger delivered a four-page supplemental memorandum to the sentencing judge. In it, he falsely accused Pollard of treason. Also in the supplemental memorandum, Weinberger advocated a life sentence in clear violation of Pollard's plea agreement. The implication that follows from Weinberger's false characterization of Pollard's offense as "treason" is that the country Pollard served, Israel, is an enemy state.


Pollard was shown the supplemental Weinberger memorandum only once, just moments before sentencing - hardly adequate time to prepare an appropriate defense to rebut the false accusations in it.

No one else in the history of the United States has ever received a life sentence for passing classified information to an ally - only Jonathan Pollard. The median sentence for this offense is two to four years. Even agents who have committed far more serious offenses on behalf of hostile nations have not received such a harsh sentence.

Pollard's attorney never appealed from the life sentence. The time to file for such an appeal was within ten days of sentencing. Years later, with a different attorney, Pollard filed a habeas corpus challenge to the sentence.
The Court of Appeals, in a two-to-one decision, rejected the challenge, largely on procedural grounds.

The majority placed heavy emphasis on the failure to appeal from the life sentence in a timely manner, and on the resulting far heavier burden faced by Pollard in seeking to challenge the sentence via habeas corpus. [Note: "Habeas corpus" is a procedure by which an incarcerated person may bring a court challenge to the legality of his or her incarceration - often long after the underlying case has been concluded.]

In a dissenting opinion, Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Williams called the case "a fundamental miscarriage of justice," and wrote that he would have ordered that Pollard's sentence be vacated.


In November 1995, Israel granted Jonathan Pollard Israeli citizenship. The official presentation took place in January of 1996. This publicly signaled to the U.S. Israel's willingness to accept full responsibility for Pollard.

U.S. government sources falsely accuse Pollard in the media of passing "rooms full of classified information" and "hundreds of thousands of documents" to Israel. This volume of information is an absurdity! Pollard would have needed to make numerous "drops" using a moving van to have transferred such a large volume of information. In actual fact, Jonathan Pollard made a grand total of eleven "drops" to the Israelis, using only a small briefcase to hold the documents.

The government used an insidious formula to exaggerate the volume of information that Jonathan Pollard passed to Israel. The formula was: if only one page or a single sentence of a document was passed to the Israelis, it was counted as if the whole document had been transmitted. Even referenced documents and sources were counted as having been transmitted in toto. Using this calculation, a single page could be counted as 50 hard-bound 500 page volumes!

There is no Mr. "X".
The CIA claim that another highly-placed spy in the U.S. had to exist in order to give Jonathan Pollard his highly specific tasking orders is a complete fabrication. To understand how Pollard was tasked by Israel to secure specific documents, see: Was there another U.S. spy tasking Pollard? - Mr. ‘X' Exposed.


On May 12, 1998 , in the same statement in which the Government of Israel publicly acknowledged Jonathan Pollard as an Israeli agent, it accepted full responsibility for him, and indicated its commitment to securing his release and repatriation to Israel.

Jonathan Pollard has repeatedly expressed his remorse publicly and in private letters to the President and others. He regrets having broken the law, and is sorry he did not find a legal means to act upon his concerns for Israel. (See Remorse Page.)

Jonathan Pollard has been openly linked to the Middle East Peace Process since 1995.
The Israeli government recognized long ago that Jonathan's sentence was unjust, that the documents he delivered to Israel did not remotely cause the damage that the prosecution claimed but never proved. As a result of this recognition, various Israeli administrations have negotiated, as a matter of basic fairness, to secure Jonathan's release.

Since 1995, within the context of the peace process, the US has repeatedly

[sugarmaple]

One of the reasons Casper Weinberger was given his 'pardon' was because of his handling of the Pollard case....

This too came out....again, I do not believe we do know all of the facts and I do believe, in this case, if we did, I believe he would have been pardoned before but I think, and again it is predominately supposition, that if he were released, he would have things to say that might not be stellar for some of our previous governmental officials.

[sugarmaple]

Just About Everybody Vs. Jonathan J. Pollard
William Northrop and David Kupelian - NEW DIMENSIONS Magazine - August 1992
Convicted of spying for the Israelis, Jonathan Pollard is serving the harshest sentence in U.S. history for his type of offense. Was he truly, as then-Defense Secretary Weinberger claimed, a "traitor?" Or was Pollard singled out for "special treatment" because he embarrassed the U.S. government by giving Israel information about impending threats to its existence -information the U.S. Government was withholding?

Until the Persian Gulf war, convicted spy Jonathan Pollard was widely considered by Americans to be just one more spy nabbed in "the year of the spy," 1985, which also saw the end of the Walker family's 17-year espionage career.

But something astonishing happened in 1991. Saddam Hussein attacked Israel with Scud Missiles, threatening to use his large stockpiles of chemical munitions to destroy the Jewish state. "In the name of Allah," bellowed the Butcher of Baghdad, "we shall cause fire to devour half of Israel." But the Israelis proved to be very well-prepared with an elaborate network of plastic-lined "sealed rooms," specially-designed gas masks and protective "cocoons" for infants, antidote atropine injections, and the requisite distribution system. These preparations, which not only provided Israel with protection against the promised chemical attack, but also allowed her to exercise great restraint and not enter the war, had been the result of five years of painstaking preparation.

Five years - that is, ever since Jonathan Pollard gave the Israelis the U.S. intelligence information regarding Iraq's chemical weapons program - information the U.S. had intentionally withheld from Israel.

Since the Gulf war, many people are having second thoughts about Pollard's actions. Indeed, an ever-growing movement, in both Israel and the U.S. now views Pollard as more of a patriot than a scoundrel, and is actively seeking his release from prison.

[tinman01]

Israel is our ally when it is convenient to them. They are a fickle friend at best.
No he should not be pardoned. He earned his reward and more. What we should have done was penalize Israel for their trespass upon our trust and friendship by cutting aid to 50%.
No traitor no spy should ever receive a pardon.
Someone insinuated he got punished because of his religion. I might remind the readers that Israel receives just about 50% of all foreign aid. Not to mention unlimited support in the UN including the lone super power turning a complete blind eye to Israels misdeeds. They enjoy a duoble standard that we afford no other.