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Former CIA Chief James Woolsey (above) offers his case for the release of Jonathan Pollard.
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| By Caroline Glick May 2, 2005 |
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James Woolsey, former head of the CIA, said in an interview with Makor Rishon that this is the right time to consider commuting Jonathan Pollard's sentence. We are fighting together on the same front in the war against terror, he said, and this is the time to pay attention to and show consideration for the sensitivities of the citizens of friendly democratic nations.
"Pollard," Woolsey explains, "may not have been a prime candidate for commutation, but 20 years is a very long time. At a certain point, it is time to ask if enough is enough -- and that is in regard to his release, not to diminishing the seriousness of his actions. There is an obligation to have a different approach to spies for friendly countries." Woolsey stresses that his words should not be construed as a recommendation for clemency, and says that when clemency requests are weighed it must be ascertained that deterrence has been achieved.
Woolsey began as CIA Chief in 1993. "I studied the Pollard file closely. My estimation at the time was that Pollard was not even close to being ready to be considered for commutation. At that time he had served a relatively short period of time in prison for a serious espionage case. Since then, he has served another 12 years. He has now been in prison for 20 years."
Claims that the information Pollard gave Israel was leaked to other countries such as China or the Soviet Union, are not true, said Woolsey. He explains that in his view, "the heart of the matter" was the US fear that Israel's own intelligence apparatus would be penetrated by hostile governments and that as a result the materials Pollard transferred, would be picked up.
"As for the quality of the information, in my opinion, at the time (1993) the material was broad-ranging and included information that did not relate solely to Israel's immediate security needs. Part of it, if it had found its way into the hands of a hostile country, would have presented a danger to the US ability to collect intelligence. No intelligence apparatus is immune to penetration, not even Israel's. If there had been some way to assure that only the two top Israeli officials would see the information, probably the US would not have been so concerned. At the time, there was a great deal of espionage activity all over the place. And the heart of the matter was the fear that the material he gave Israel could end up in the hands of a third country. This could have hurt the US ability to gather information."
The Secretary of State during the Pollard case, Caspar Weinberger, was the driving force behind Pollard's life sentence. Pollard signed a plea agreement and cooperated with his interrogators in return for a lighter sentence -- but Weinberger, as it was reported in the media -- claimed in a secret memo to the judge, that Pollard had done great and irreversible damage to the national security of the United States, and even caused the deaths of American agents.
The damage assessment in the Pollard case was carried out by Aldrich Ames, who at the time was a CIA bureau chief. Ames, who himself was exposed in 1994, was a Soviet spy. According to Angelo Codevilla, who at the time was an advisor to the Senate Defense and Intelligence Committee, Ames cast the blame on Pollard for much of the damage Ames himself had done to US national security and to its agents in the Soviet Union.
After the arrest of Ames, Senator Dennis Deconcini, the head of the Defense and Intelligence Committee wrote a letter indicating that was removing his objection to commutation of Jonathan Pollard's sentence. Weinberger himself admitted, in an interview in 2002 on the occasion of the printing of his memoirs, that the Pollard case was a "relatively minor matter" and that "it was made much bigger than its actual importance."
It appears that the disagreement in the United States surrounding Pollard's release revolves around two main arguments. The first argument: given that we now know that any damage caused by Pollard was insignificant, should he be freed in order to correct the injustice, or is it better to retain him as a bargaining chip? As Dennis Ross suggested to President Clinton during the negotiations at the Wye Summit in 1998, Pollard can be used to squeeze additional concessions from Israel for the Palestinians. The second argument: will the release of Pollard signal to the American Jews that is okay to spy for Israel, or has 20 years in prison been enough to achieve the goal of deterrence?
Reprinted with permission of Makor Rishon. Translated to English by Justice4JP.
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