Jonathan Pollard Alan Dershowitz Israel Release Disengagement Sharon

Dershowitz: Israel's Sharon, Jews to Blame for Pollard's Continued Imprisonment

Jerusalem-----June 26, 2005.... Alan Dershowitz, renown American attorney and a long-time supporter of justice for Jonathan Pollard, told Israel TV channel 2 recently that Prime Minister Sharon and the Jews are directly to blame for Jonathan Pollard's continued incarceration.

Asked about the Israel ambassador's recent prison visit to Pollard, Dershowitz responded that Pollard was right to be angry about the empty gesture. The attorney blasted Israel Prime Minister Sharon for "sending the wrong people to speak to the wrong people." Dershowitz criticized Sharon for failing to send anyone to speak with the American Jewish Senators to gain their support. He pointed a finger at Senator Joseph Lieberman, who spearheaded the campaign to convince the President to keep Pollard in prison, as a prime example of Sharon's negligence.

Dershowitz stated that he sees no hope of Pollard's release as long as the Jewish Senators are not on board. In another recent interview in Canada last month, Dershowitz called upon the Government of Israel to grant Jonathan Pollard PoZ status. "The courts have been very unfair to him. Israel should declare him to be a Prisoner of Zion," Dershowitz told the [Toronto] Jewish Tribune. Pollard is currently suing in Israel's Supreme Court to compel the government to grant him PoZ status. His petition demonstrates that he meets all of the qualifications under the law for PoZ status and the document also details shocking examples of the cruel and unusual punishment that he has been subjected to in American prisons over the last 2 decades.

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. Furthermore, on May 11, 1998, Israel formally acknowledged Jonathan Pollard had been a bona fide Israel 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.

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.

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 Israel 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.

The Wye Plantation summit is a prime example of U.S. exploitation of Jonathan Pollard. Both before and again during the Wye summit negotiations in the fall of 1998, President Clinton promised to release Jonathan Pollard. Pollard was the deal-maker at Wye which enabled the accords to be completed. At the last minute, with the eyes of the world focused on the Wye Accords signing ceremony which was about to take place in Washington, Clinton reneged on Pollard's release, creating a storm of negative publicity for Israel. How the Wye fiasco came about: In September, 1998, just before the mid-term Congressional elections, President Clinton (who at the time was facing impeachment hearings and in need of a foreign policy PR victory) asked Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to attend a three-way summit with the Palestinians at Wye River, Maryland.

Clinton knew that a successful summit at Wye just before the Congressional elections would be good not only for his image, but would also reap great political benefits for the Democrats in their bid to regain control of Congress. As an inducement to Netanyahu, Clinton promised to release Jonathan Pollard within the context of the summit. Understanding the value of Jonathan Pollard for his own re-election bid, and needing him as a sweetener to sell any kind of "peace" deal to the Israel people, Netanyahu ignored the entreaties of Republican friends like Newt Gingrich and agreed to attend the summit. (Gingrich would later repay Netanyahu by leading the Republican charge of slander and lies against Jonathan Pollard.)

Once the Wye summit was underway, Clinton quickly "forgot" his promise to free Jonathan Pollard and there was little Netanyahu could do. Talks at Wye broke down over the release of Palestinian murderers with Jewish blood on their hands and over Israel's request for the extradition of Ghazi Jabali, the chief of Police in Gaza who was wanted for his role in planning and executing terrorist attacks in Israel. To break the stalemate, the Palestinians suggested Jonathan Pollard as the solution. They proposed that Pollard be sold to Netanyahu once again: the US would give Jonathan to Israel in return for Israel's freeing of hundreds of Palestinian terrorists and immunity for Ghazi Jabali. The US and Israel agreed to the Palestinian plan to swap Pollard for terrorists and murderers. President Clinton personally worked out the details of the deal in a late-night private session with a Palestinian and an Israeli representative. According to the deal, Prime Minister Netanyahu was to receive a side letter from President Clinton the next morning (one of approximately 30 side letters the Americans had promised) guaranteeing Pollard's release for November 11, 1998, one week after the US House elections. The Pollard negotiation was the deal-maker at Wye which allowed the summit to be successfully wrapped up and a signing ceremony to be planned for the next morning in Washington, on Friday October 23, 1998.

Only hours before the signing ceremony, P.M. Netanyahu received all of the American side-letters that had been promised to him, except one - the one guaranteeing the release of Jonathan Pollard. Netanyahu threatened not to attend the signing ceremony unless he got the Pollard side letter. Clinton said, "Trust me." Netanyahu, knowing he was about to be double-crossed by Clinton over Pollard for the second time, refused. Netanyahu demanded that in the absence of a side letter of guarantee, Pollard should be freed into his custody immediately, or no signing ceremony.

Arik Sharon supported Netanyahu and they threatened to leave Wye without signing the accords. In order to take the pressure off of President Clinton, CIA chief George Tenet quickly leaked the news of Pollard's imminent release to the media in a deliberate - and ultimately successful - attempt to torpedo the deal. He sent emissaries to Capitol Hill to hold emergency meetings with leading Senators and Congressmen to enlist their support in publicly denouncing Pollard's release. Many lies were told by the CIA emissaries about Jonathan Pollard to convince the legislators to act swiftly and in unison. Believing the lies, the legislators complied and began an unprecedented series of public actions to prevent the release of Jonathan Pollard.

Meanwhile at Wye, under heavy pressure and still fearful that Netanyahu would not back down, Clinton quickly negotiated a private fall-back position with Netanyahu: Clinton would publicly promise to do a "speedy review"of the Pollard Case and he would use that review to free Pollard a few months later, parallel to the release of the 750 Palestinian terrorists who were part of the price Israel had agreed to pay for Pollard. Under heavy public pressure and betrayed by his own Minister of Defense, Yitzhak Mordecai, who closed ranks with Clinton, Netanyahu folded and accepted this private deal. The signing ceremony was held in Washington as scheduled. (Mordecai himself is now on trial in Israel in 2001 for sexual assault.)

Netanyahu's capitulation at Wye, the public spectacle of his being brought to heel by the Americans, and the lopsided deal he brought home from Wye now that Pollard was no longer perceived to be a part of it, would shortly cost him his premiership. After Wye, the White House falsely accused Netanyahu of having injected Pollard into the Wye summit at the last moment. However, eye witnesses to the Pollard deal at Wye, including the Israeli and the Palestinian who had negotiated the deal with Clinton and the former Israeli Cabinet Secretary, all later contradicted the White House version of events and affirmed that President Clinton had committed himself to the release of Jonathan Pollard as an integral part of the Wye Accords. Note: Prime Minister Netanyahu was the first prime minster of Israel to agree to free Palestinian terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands. That is the price the Americans demanded for Pollard at Wye. To this day, this represents a keen embarrassment for Netanyahu and his party, even more so since he did not receive Pollard but the Palestinian murders were released nonetheless. That is why no official source from the Netanyahu government ever wants to publicly admit to it. They keep the details to a minimum, but all concur that Pollard's freedom was bought and paid for by "concessions"at Wye.

When Netanyahu returned to Israel after Wye, he created a firestorm of publicity by releasing 200 Palestinian common criminals from Israeli prisons. The Palestinians were outraged, and insisted that these common criminals were not the prisoners that they had bargained for at Wye. The Americans angrily protested. Netanyahu reminded the Americans that the Wye Accords do not specify exactly which prisoners Israel must release. Critics wondered if the Prime Minister had lost his mind to antagonize the Americans this way. Only those close to Prime Minister Netanyahu understood that this was Netanyahu's private, pointed reminder to Bill Clinton that if he was thinking of double-crossing him yet a third time over Pollard, he should think again. No Pollard, no release for the Palestinian murderers and terrorists. Unfortunately for Jonathan Pollard, Netanyahu's government fell before he was able to act on this.

In a meeting with Netanyahu right after his electoral defeat in the Spring of 1999, Jonathan Pollard's wife, Esther, received assurances from the former prime minister that the new prime minister, Ehud Barak, had been fully briefed about what had been agreed to at Wye and about the fall-back position; that is to say, Israel had yet to free the 750 terrorists with blood on their hands and was still supposed to receive Pollard home in a "parallel gesture" from President Clinton.

Not long after Barak took office, the 750 Palestinian murderers and terrorists walked out of prison as free men. Jonathan Pollard remained in his American jail cell. In an attempt to justify Clinton's reneging at Wye, a story was leaked to the press that George Tenet, a Clinton appointee, had threatened to resign as head of the CIA if Pollard were released. The story, though not logical, sounded plausible and it became popular to cite the opposition of the American Intelligence community as the reason Clinton did not honor his commitment at Wye to free Pollard. This was soon exposed as the lame excuse it was when Clinton freed a group of unrepentant FALN terrorists in the fall of 1999, in an attempt to improve his wife's popularity with New York State's Hispanic community in her election bid for the Senate. (See Senate Race Page.) To this day, the same lame excuse continues to be used to justify the unjustifiable failure of Clinton to honor his commitment.

In September of 1999, despite strenuous opposition from all of his government advisors and agencies, President Clinton freed 14 unrepentant Puerto Rican terrorists, members of the FALN, charged with bank robbery and various acts of terrorism, including over 130 bombings in the US, and the deaths of American police officers. Clinton ignored a solid wall of opposition from the Justice, Intelligence and Defense departments and Congress, invoked his powers of executive clemency and set the FALN terrorists free. In doing so, he unequivocally put the lie to the notion that any government agency might tie his hands or influence his decision in matters of clemency.

More than two years elapsed after Wye. President Clinton did no review. Jonathan Pollard remained in prison while the US continued to extract Israeli concessions for his release. Those who still believed the myth that it was the American Intelligence Community that was tying the hands of President Clinton, also clung to the belief he would finally honor his many promises to release Jonathan Pollard - including the commitment he had made at Wye - at the end of his term, when he could do so without fear of political reprisal.

Beginning in 1991 Rabbi Mordecai Eliyahu, the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, and Jonathan's rabbi, offered himself to the U.S. Justice Department as Jonathan's guarantor. The offer was ignored. Rabbi Eliyahu repeated the same offer every year after that in private letters to President Clinton. Every offer went unacknowledged until the fall of 2000, when Esther Pollard received a letter from the White House indicating that the President was aware of the former chief Rabbi's offer and that it would be part of the President's consideration in reaching a final decision on her husband's case. President Clinton never kept his promises. When he left office in January 2001, Jonathan Pollard was not included among those that to whom Clinton granted clemency: in spite of his repeated express commitments to Israel to free Pollard in return for numerous heavy concessions in spite of his commitment to free Pollard as an integral part if the Wye Accords in spite of the appeals of the Jewish community, and in spite of the gross injustices of the Pollard case which include: a grossly disproportionate sentence o a broken plea agreement o use of secret evidence o a false charge of treason o ineffective assistance of counsel o ex parte communication between prosecutors and judge o a lack of due process a sentencing procedure infected by false allegations and lies.

On his last day in office, Clinton granted clemency to 140 people. Many who received executive clemency had been convicted of very serious offenses, including murder, robbery and drug dealing. Some of those pardoned had served no prison time at all before being pardoned. Among those pardoned were Clinton's brother, and a former head of the CIA.

In September of 2000, Jonathan Pollard's attorneys, Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, filed a motion in the US District Court of Columbia to vacate his sentence. The motion, supported by documentation, presents a compelling and very disturbing picture of serious government misconduct that went unchecked by Mr. Pollard's then-counsel. As a result of that misconduct, and as a result of his attorney's ineffectiveness Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison on the basis of false allegations, and under circumstances that violated his plea agreement.

Since he was sentenced in 1987, none of Jonathan Pollard's security-cleared attorneys have been able to see the classified portions of the docket in order to challenge them in a court of law or to defend him in a clemency proceeding. In September of 2000, Jonathan Pollard's attorneys filed a separate motion requesting that attorney Eliot Lauer be allowed access to the secret portions of the Pollard court docket.

On January 12, 2001, Chief Judge Norma Holloway Johnson denied the attorneys' request to allow Eliot Lauer access to the complete Pollard docket, upholding the government's claim that Lauer's seeing the secret portion of the record poses a risk to American national security. Both Lauer and Semmelman hold TOP SECRET level security clearances, which they obtained from the Justice Department in order to be eligible to see their client's full record. A motion for reconsideration was filed January 18, 2001.

Amicus briefs supporting Jonathan's new legal cases have been filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as by top American legal authorities. Five Prime Ministers of Israel and three Presidents of Israel have requested Jonathan Pollard's release from the United States. Israel has pledged to be responsible for its agent who has served many years in prison under harsh conditions, and who has fully and repeatedly expressed his remorse. Between close friends and strong allies, that ought to be enough.

Alan Morton Dershowitz (born September 1, 1938) is a Jewish-American political figure and criminal law professor at Harvard Law School, known for his extensive published works, support for Zionism and Israel and work as an attorney in several high-profile law cases. Dershowitz was born in Brooklyn, graduated from Yeshiva University high school and Brooklyn College. At Yale Law School, he was first in his class and editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. After clerking for Chief Judge David Bazelon and Justice Arthur Goldberg, he was appointed to the Harvard Law School faculty at age 25 and became a full professor at age 28, then the youngest in the history of Harvard University (this record has since been surpassed by Noam Elkies).

In 1972, Dershowitz attempted to discredit the chairman of the Israel League for Human Rights, Israel Shahak, who had sharply criticized Israeli treatment towards Palestinians. Shahak was in the process of challenging contested election results for the chairmanship of the Israel League through courts. Dershowitz claimed the judge in the matter, Judge Lovenburg, had ruled that Shahak was properly unseated and challenged anyone to provide evidence to the contrary. In response, Noam Chomsky cited the court documents and claimed the court opined the elections had not been held properly, no conclusions or actions were to be drawn from it, and that Shahak and his colleagues were to continue to function as "those who now direct" the league. The incident created a lasting personal miasma between the intellectuals. Chomsky in recalling the incident in a 1997 book about his life disparaged Dershowitz by calling him a "Stalinist-style thug".

In 1977, Dershowitz handled the appeal of porn star Harry Reems who had been convicted of conspiracy to distribute obscenity, based on his acting in the movie Deep Throat. The conviction was overturned. In 1983 the Jewish advocacy group Anti-Defamation League awarded Dershowitz the William O. Douglas First Amendment Award for his "compassionate eloquent leadership and persistent advocacy in the struggle for civil and human rights." Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, who presented the award, was quoted as saying, "If there had been a few people like Alan Dershowitz during the 1930s and 1940s, the history of European Jewry might have been different."

He successfully defended Claus von Bu"low in 1984 on a charge of attempting to murder his wife with an injection of insulin, a case dramatized in the film Reversal of Fortune (1990) starring Glenn Close, Jeremy Irons, and Ron Silver as Dershowitz. Dershowitz worked on the legal defense team of boxer Mike Tyson, who was convicted of rape in 1992. He was also a member of the legal defense team ("Dream Team") for O.J. Simpson, who was acquitted in 1995 of double homicide despite overwhelming evidence pointing towards guilt. Dershowitz has incited controversy by advocating the issuing of warrants for the torture of suspected terrorists. He has said that in "ticking bomb" cases — situations in which "a captured terrorist who knows of an imminent large-scale threat refuses to disclose it" — the use of torture would be justified in order to save many innocent lives.

Other controversial positions include Dershowitz's comments expressing his disregard for the human rights claims of Palestinian refugees, and Dershowitz's accusations that faculty members at Columbia University encourage terrorism. In the early 2000s Dershowitz was asked to leave The Last Word radio show on Ireland's Today FM when during a live phone in-link he began verbally abusing journalist Robert Fisk and interrupting attempts by Fisk to speak. The presenter of the show, Eamon Dunphy, previously a fan of Dershowitz, pronounced himself "perplexed" by what he said were Dershowitz's attempts to silence someone he disagreed with. Radio listeners, many of them critics of Fisk, rang the show to complain about Dershowitz's behavior, accusing him of "bullying" and "bigotry."

In September 2003, shortly after the publication of Dershowitz's The Case for Israel, Norman Finkelstein accused its author of plagiarism, noting that dozens of quotations in that book resembled, without attribution, passages quoted by Joan Peters in her From Time Immemorial — itself a work that Finkelstein and others had criticized, harshly, for poor scholarship. See Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair for more information.

Today, a powerful grass roots campaign in Israel is taking place with many wearing blue arm bands demanding Pollard's immediate release. Israeli protestors held pictures of Jonathan Pollard during a demonstration demanding his release outside the place where US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon held a meeting in Jerusalem on June 19, 2005. A few believe that this popular campaign was created by Sharon as a distraction tool from the disengagement plan from Gaza in August. Others believe that the US may release Pollard right before the disengagement from Gaza and the West Bank to strengthen Sharon's political hand.

Jonathan Pollard has served over 20 years in a US prison. Pollard has been kept in prison as a political pawn and as a daily reminder, as a scarecrow to Israel not to entertain the idea of implementing espionage activities on US soil. No US agents, who have been found to be spying on Israel defense and military installations and activities have ever been arrested or jailed.

It is a sad fact that Jonathan Pollard was not to blame for his 20 years of suffering, but rather the negligence of the US administration and the Israel government which failed to communicate and share intelligence at the time of Pollard's arrest. And now it just might be a game between Bush and Sharon, with Bush saying: "Arik, I will try to help you before and during the disengagement by releasing Pollard. But you have to get your public asking for it. Let's see some demonstrations. Let's blame Pollard's release on the Israeli people - not us!"

It's well past time for Pollard to come home to Israel, pray at the Western Wall and start a family in a land for which he has sacrificed much.
Israel and the Jewish people owe Pollard a very large debt. And so does Israel's intelligence and defense community which has been silent for much too long.