Makor Rishon Expose: Who's Afraid of Pollard?
By Pazeet Ravina - Makor Rishon - April 4, 2008

Translated to English by J4JP and released April 8, 2008

In a front page headline this week in huge letters, as if a new world war
had been declared, Yediot Achronot declared: "THE STATE COMPTROLLER WILL
TORPEDO POLLARD'S RELEASE". Anyone who bothered to read the body of the
text, and not just the blaring headline, cannot avoid the impression that
behind the headline "The Comptroller will Torpedo" lurks someone who is
attempting to torpedo the Comptroller. Who is so afraid of the Comptroller's
investigation of the Pollard issue?

"I only wish that I might be proven wrong, but it appears that there is
someone whose hat* is burning upon his head."

This is how the State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss responded to the
bizarre headline in Yediot last week which declared in a huge letters, the
sensational news: "The State Comptroller Will Torpedo Pollard's Release."
After the blaring headline, the news item pales in comparison and doesn't
provide a single new fact, except for expressing the opinion of one source,
without a name, hiding behind the euphemism, "high level sources in the
defense establishment."

The actual investigation by the Comptroller, it should be noted, is not
exactly news. It has been on-going for the last 3 months. Nevertheless,
Yediot chose to allot the first 3 pages of the paper (including the front
page) to this "news" item, thus creating the impression that there is
indeed someone whose hat* is very much burning upon his head. Anyone who
bothered to read the body of the text, and not just the blaring headline,
cannot avoid the impression that behind the headline "The Comptroller will
Torpedo" lurks someone who is attempting to torpedo the Comptroller. Who is
so afraid of the Comptroller's investigation of the Pollard issue?

The State Comptroller's investigation is being carried out at the
instruction of the Knesset. After 23 years of Pollard languishing in prison,
the Knesset State Control Committee gave the order to investigate whether,
in fact, everything has been done which needed to be done to secure Pollard's
release. The State Comptroller is not supposed to look only at the current
government's handling of the case, but at the handling of all previous
governments, throughout these long years.

Pollard joined American Naval Intelligence in 1979. Within a few years, in
the course of his service as an analyst in the anti-terror unit, Jonathan
Pollard was enlisted by LAKAM, the Scientific Liason Bureau in the Ministry
of Defense, and began to transfer classified American documents to Israel.
Rafi Eitan was the head of LAKAM at the time. Today he is the head of the
Pensioners' Party and a minister in the government of Ehud Olmert. At the
time of the operation, Shimon Peres was Prime Minister. Over the course of a
year and a half, the information Pollard passed information to Israel was of
enormous intelligence value.

In 1985 Pollard was exposed. He and Ann, his former wife, attempted to seek
asylum at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, but were refused. Then-Prime
Minister Peres agreed to the Americans' request, and Israel returned the
purloined documents with Pollard's fingerprints on them. The documents were
used as evidence against Pollard and it is believed that without them, he
would never have been indicted. Ever since, Pollard has been languishing in
an American prison. In 1998, after 13 years of turning its back, Israel
officially recognized Pollard as an agent who worked on its behalf. But to
this day, after 23 years in prison, Israel has not succeeded in securing his
release.

A SHARP LETTER FROM POLLARD
The head of the Knesset State Control Committee, Zevulun Orlev, who
initiated the investigation of the Pollard issue, hopes that this time
answers will be forthcoming to weighty questions: Did the former and the
present Prime Ministers really do everything they ought to have done? Did
they seek and request Pollard's release? Did the State ask for a pardon for
him? Did they at least request to have Pollard recognized as a Prisoner of
Zion to ease his prison conditions?

Orlev stresses that prior to implementing the investigation by the State
Comptroller, extensive negotiations were held with the Government and the
coalition so as to obviate any opposition. "I invested hundreds of hours of
work, to ensure a consentual process," he said this week.

Indeed, until this week, the investigation of the State Comptroller was
smooth sailing. An array of Government and security officials, under the
supervision of Amir Kain, Chief of Security for the Defense Ministry,
provided opinions and documents to the State Comptroller.

The headlines in Yediot took Orlev by surprise. However, the head of the
Knesset State Control Committee believes that, as opposed to what was
claimed in the newspaper, the source is the Prime Minister's office, and not
the Ministry of Defense.

"I recognize the Prime Minister's fingerprints," said Orlev, "and I can
appreciate that from the time that people began handing over documents and
giving testimony to the State Comptroller, the Prime Minister's office
realized that they were not in a good position. The route they chose, and
not for the first time either, was to try to undermine the credibility of
the State Comptroller. This was an attempt to scare the Comptroller off.
This was spin by the Prime Minister to save his own neck at Pollard's
expense."

Be that as it may, what was it that occurred particularly last week, which
caused such a panic in Prime Minister's office or amongst the nameless
security officials in the Ministry of Defense? The response to this issue
needs to be divided into two parts.

The first part is about the extensive, intense correspondence that has been
going on for months now, between the Prime Minister's office and Pollard's
attorney, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, about money. Two days before the
headlines in Yediot, the Prime Minister's office received a particularly
sharp letter which Jonathan Pollard sent from his prison cell to PM Ehud
Olmert. In his letter, Pollard takes strong exception to fallacious
statements written by the Prime Minster's Public Relations Representative
and by the Prime Minister's Legal Counsel which claim that, "The State of
Israel is supporting and assisting Jonathan Pollard and his associates in
every possible way."

In his letter, Pollard writes that contrary to the claims of the PM's Legal
Counsel, neither he nor his wife, Esther, has ever received a single cent
from the Government of Israel. "Therefore," writes Pollard to Olmert, "I
instructed my attorney to request a detailed accounting from your office,
including signed receipts, regarding financial support for me and for my
wife."

"If, as you insist, your Government is allocating resources for me and my
wife," Pollard continues, "but we are not receiving them, then who is
getting the money? Are the funds being misappropriated by your office and
used illegally elsewhere? While we do not know for certain what kind of
corruption is going on, we do know that something smells very bad."

BARNEA IS ALSO ENLISTED
It is no minor matter to receive a letter like this from a man who has been
sitting in prison for more than 23 years. Taking care of the Pollard issue,
responsibility for every aspect of the case, resides with the Prime Minister's
Office. The last thing the Prime Minister needs is a gut-wrenching letter
from Pollard in prison, accusing him of abandonment and financial
malfeasance. Somehow or other, two days after the letter was faxed to the PM's
office, the headlines appeared in Yediot Achronot.

Was Pollard's letter the trigger that caused the leak in Yediot? It is not
improbable. The letter raises a critical issue: financial malfeasance.
Unlike the government's claims about the efforts (or the lack of efforts)
for his release - which can be dismissed relatively easily by citing matters
of national interest and security - claims of financial malfeasance are far
more difficult to deal with by means of a smokescreen. This is an issue that
the State Comptroller can really sink his teeth into.

If one looks at the broader picture, this was also the week in which Noam
Shalit - the agonized father of Gilad Shalit - pointed an accusing finger
at the Prime Minister's office, saying that Olmert had achieved zero results
in the efforts to free his son. At the same time, Micki Goldwasser, the
mother of MIA Ehud Goldwasser, accused Olmert of creating three more 'Ron
Arad cases' by the way he is handling the issue of Israel's captives and MIA's.

Orlev's hunch that the headlines in Yediot were initiated by the Prime
Minister's office were confirmed two days later by Nachum Barnea, in his
feature-length column in the weekend edition of the paper. What really
angered Pollard, as he pointed out in his letter to Olmert, was the
statement of the PM's Legal Counsel to Pollard's lawyer: "I do not see any
place for providing the information which you requested, out of fear that
this will damage Mr. Pollard's welfare and the efforts of the State of
Israel to assist him." Pollard's attorney was also astonished by their
response, "According to the law, the Prime Minister's office is obliged to
provide me and my client with the financial data. I never imagined that they
would behave this way."

Perversely, while the Prime Minister's office refuses to provide any
information to Pollard and his attorney about the government's support for
him, they provided figures to Yediot Achronot. In his column, Nachum Barnea,
winner of the Israel Prize for Journalism, writes, "According to Government
sources, Ann Pollard (his former wife) received, up until the year 2004,
sums which add up to 2 million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars".
The same officials, according to Barnea, "refuse to pinpoint the amount
given to Jonathan Pollard and his wife Esther, but stress that the sums are
high beyond measure." He even adds, "The former Cabinet Secretary, Israel
Maimon, showed the accounting books to Orlev," and "the amounts were most
impressive."

When I checked this week with Orlev and with the former Cabinet Secretary
Israel Maimon, they both said the same thing: not the slightest truth to
what Barnea wrote. "I never showed Zevulun Orlev any accounting books,"
attorney Israel Maimon told Makor Rishon. Orlev confirms: "It is not my job
to oversee Barnea or the media, but Maimon is 100% correct." Someone, one
of those "high ranking government sources" must be sweating an awful lot.

POLLARD AS A PAWN IN A GAME
Orlev says that in his estimation, the investigation by the State
Comptroller won't continue much longer, "a few weeks at most." "The entire
report will not be public," he adds. It will be relayed to a subcommittee of
the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for study."

It is to be hoped that the report will be completed before the visit of
President Bush next month for the 60th anniversary celebration of the State
of Israel. Officials who work closely on the Pollard issue believe that,
"This is the penultimate moment, the perfect time to request Pollard's
release as an American gesture to the State of Israel."

In this context, there are quite a few things which the State Comptroller
can check out. For example, on the eve of Bush's previous visit to Israel
(in January of this year), did the Prime Minister's office which is
responsible for the Pollard issue, hold discussions on the possibility of
requesting Pollard's release, or at least of beginning a process to request
a pardon for him? What comes to mind with regard to the visit, is a letter
by HaRav Ovadia Yosef to Bush requesting Pollard's release, which Olmert
tried to prevent Minister Eli Yishai from delivering to the American
President. The Prime Minister's office refuses to say whether for Bush's
upcoming visit they intend to raise the issue.

This is where the second part of the puzzle comes into the picture. If
indeed Olmert's office is hiding behind the same "high ranking sources in
the Defense Ministry" which leaked the story and engaged Yediot in the
matter; if Olmert and his people have any intention of demanding the release
of Pollard, clearly, the window of opportunity extends from between the
President's upcoming visit to Israel, to the end of his term in office this
year.

Is Pollard's release, in this instance, intended to be an integral part of
the signing of an overall agreement between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority? If so, Olmert will not be the one who invented the wheel. Before
him, there was Binyamin Netanyahu who demanded Pollard's release and got a
commitment from then-President Clinton to release Pollard as part of the Wye
Accords. As will be remembered, Clinton did not keep his word, and after
signing the Wye Accords, he used the excuse that the head of the CIA was
very opposed and would resign if Pollard were freed.

In his book, "The Missing Peace" Dennis Ross, President Clinton's Special
Envoy to the Middle East, writes that in 1998, in the course of the Wye
Summit, President Clinton asked him if Pollard's release were an important
issue for Israel. Ross responded (p.438), "Yes, because he is considered a
soldier for Israel and there is an ethos in Israel that you never leave a
soldier behind in the field." It is not certain that in Israel in the year
2008, this same value of not leaving a solder in the field still holds. In
any event, Ross recounts how he advised the President not to free Pollard
because of his value as a political bargaining chip, even though he felt
that Pollard deserved to be free because he had been punished more severely
than others who had committed similar offenses in the US. "It would be a
huge payoff for Bibi; you don't have many like this in your pocket. I would
save it for permanent status. You will need it later, don't use it now,"
Ross writes.

This is essentially the condensed version of the tragedy of Jonathan
Pollard, who has been transformed over the years, from being a prisoner to
being a strategic possession.

SHARON ALSO TRIED**
Pollard's name also came up at the conclusion of Ariel Sharon's time in
office. At the time, the Prime Minster felt, or so it would seem, that it
would be easier for him to sell the Disengagement plan to the Israeli
public, if as part of the plan, the release of Jonathan Pollard would be
part of an overall agreement.

We learned this when former Ambassador to the US, Danny Ayalon, decided to
reveal the story about a year ago, in attempt to revive a deal to free
Marwan Barghouti in return for the release of Pollard.

Ayalon revealed that on the eve of the Disengagement, Sharon secretly
offered a similar deal to the American administration in which Israel would
free Marwan Barghouti and the US would free Jonathan Pollard. Ayalon
broached the subject at a private meeting that he had with the American
Secretary of State. However Condoleezza Rice rejected the idea out of hand.
Sharon was not pleased. He needed something to encourage public compliance,
and the return of Pollard would have given him the support he required.
However the Americans were not interested.

In the end, during Sharon's visit to Bush's ranch, an agreement was reached
between Sharon and Rice to permit Ayalon to visit Pollard in prison. Until
then, Pollard had only been receiving visits at the consular level.

Last summer, Ayalon felt that the Americans, who were then interested in
strengthening Abu Mazen by releasing Marwan Barghouti, might be willing to
consider the deal again. But it did not happen. [See: Background: PM Ariel
Sharon tried to release Barghouti, not Pollard www.jonathanpollard.org].

At this time, a similar situation exists. The Wye Accords occurred towards
the conclusion of Clinton's term in office, about a year prior to the end.
Bush's schedule is similar. The Bush administration has already announced
that by the end of 2008, an agreement will be signed between Israel and the
Palestinians. Is there also a deal being cooked up this time to include
Pollard's release in the Annapolis Accords, in order to lend legitimacy to
the deal for the Israeli public? Is such a deal being sandwiched into a mega
deal in which, in order to appease the Palestinians, Marwan Barghouti will
be released? Is someone afraid that the State Comptroller is going to
discover that Pollard is being used as a pawn in a game?

Zevulun Orlev says that the attempt to exploit Pollard as a strategic
bargaining chip is a terrible thing. "The fear that this is the case has
occurred to me," he says, "but I prefer not to rely on rumor." The
Government is supposed to be held to account on this issue is by the Foreign
Affairs and Defense Committee. However MK Steinitz, a member of the Foreign
Affairs and Defense Committee, says that he has no recollection of any
discussion whatsoever regarding Pollard, in the last two years.

In response to our question this week, if in light of President Bush's
upcoming visit to Israel next month, there has been any discussion in the
Prime Minister's office of the possibility of requesting a pardon for
Pollard from the American administration, the PM's office responded, "We are
not in the habit of talking about the issue."

They can get away with a response like this when talking to Makor Rishon,
but not with the State Comptroller. One thing is certain though, the Bush
Administration is investing its full weight into assuring that a deal based
on Annapolis will be signed by the end of the year. This is the only way for
Bush and Rice to ensure that there will be something more to their legacy
than America's failure in Iraq. Another thing that is certain, for the State
Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss, there won't be a dull moment between now
and Independence Day.
_____________________________

* "Upon the head of the thief, the hat burns" is a Hebrew aphorism which
succinctly expresses the notion that a guilty party is no nervous about his
guilt that he cannot remain calm (A guilty mind betrays itself).

SEE ALSO:
**Background: PM Ariel Sharon tried to release Barghouti, not Pollard -
J4JPnews Release www.jonathanpollard.org

Text: Jonathan Pollard's letter to PM Olmert [March 24,2008]
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2008/032508.htm

Text: Jonathan Pollard's letter to State Comptroller Lindenstrauss [March
27, 2008] http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2008/032708.htm

YNET: Pollard urges State Comptroller: Follow the money
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2008/032708a.htm

Excerpts from "The Missing Peace" by Dennis Ross
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2005/022005.htm)

The Wye Double-Cross Page http://www.jonathanpollard.org/wye.htm

Terror in the US and the Jonathan Pollard Case by Larry Dub Esq
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2001/092601.htm