Feds lied for 30 years about Jonathan Pollard
OpEd on Weinberger Memo Declassifications by Pollard Attorneys

By Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman - Worldnetdaily – February 22, 2015
[May be reprinted]
http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/feds-lied-for-30-years-about-jonathan-pollard/

A recent breakthrough in the case of Jonathan Pollard has shed powerful new
light on the injustice of his continued incarceration. Key portions of a
critical classified document, on which the government has relied as its
justification for keeping Mr. Pollard in prison for nearly 30 years, have
now been declassified.

As a result, longstanding government assertions that this specific
classified document contains the proof that Mr. Pollard caused unprecedented
harm to U.S. national security when he delivered classified information to
Israel, have now been exposed as utter falsehoods.

On Nov. 13, 2014, after years of litigation, the Interagency Security
Classification Appeals Panel, or ISCAP, granted our appeal on behalf of our
pro bono client, Jonathan Pollard, and ordered the declassification of
significant portions of a declaration that had been submitted to the court
in 1987 by then-Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger in connection with
Mr. Pollard’s sentencing.

Mr. Pollard had imparted classified information to the state of Israel. He
was arrested in 1985. In 1987, Mr. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison,
largely on the basis of the Weinberger declaration.

Since then, the government has stridently invoked the Weinberger declaration
as its basis to oppose executive clemency or parole for Mr. Pollard. The
government has asserted that Mr. Pollard should not be released from prison
because the Weinberger declaration establishes that Mr. Pollard caused
greater harm to U.S. national security than had ever occurred previously.
The government has been able to present this harsh characterization of the
Weinberger declaration without fear of contradiction, as no one representing
Mr. Pollard has been allowed to see the Weinberger declaration since the day
Mr. Pollard was sentenced.

For all these years, virtually the entire Weinberger declaration has been
kept under seal by the government under the rubric “classified information.”
The government has fought fiercely to prevent the two of us – Mr. Pollard’s
security-cleared counsel since 2000 – from seeing any of the classified
portion of the Weinberger declaration, even under the strictest security
conditions.

The recent disclosures ordered by ISCAP show that the government has been
dishonestly hiding behind the mask of “classified information” to materially
mischaracterize the nature and extent of the harm caused by Mr. Pollard. The
newly disclosed material shows that any harm that may have been caused by
Mr. Pollard was in the form of short-term disruption in foreign relations
between the United States and certain Arab countries. That is not at all the
same thing as harm to U.S. national security. And it was dishonest for the
government to pretend that it is.

The government’s deception had its most blatant and prejudicial impact at
Mr. Pollard’s parole hearing held in July 2014, during which the government
invoked the Weinberger declaration and – without showing it to the parole
commission – urged the commission to accept its representation that the
document substantiated more harm to the national security of the United
States than had ever occurred previously. In its decision denying parole,
the commission took the government at its word and essentially parroted the
government’s characterization of the Weinberger declaration when it wrote
that Mr. Pollard had caused “the greatest compromise of U.S. security to
that date.”

That is an outright falsehood, and the recent revelations prove it.

The newly disclosed portions reveal the substance of the Weinberger
declaration, which is devoted to the possible effect of Mr. Pollard’s
actions on U.S. relations with Arab countries.

Thus, it is now revealed that Mr. Pollard provided Israel with information
concerning the “political-economic affairs of Middle Eastern nations,”
various “Middle Eastern orders of battle,” and the “technology of Soviet
weapons and radar systems” used by various Arab governments. The potential
consequence to the United States of Mr. Pollard’s conduct is described by
Mr. Weinberger as “a high probability of harm to the foreign relations of
the U.S. with friendly Arab nations.”

While the phrase “damage to the national security” is used as a section
heading, what appears below it is, once again, in the nature of potential
impact on foreign relations. For example, Mr. Weinberger bemoans the fact
that Mr. Pollard provided information that enabled Israel to conduct a
“successful strike on PLO headquarters in Tunisia” while “avoiding contact
with Libyan Air Forces.” In the same section, Mr. Weinberger decries the
fact that Mr. Pollard “provided information on Soviet built air-to-air
missile systems and Middle East air orders of battle,” even while
acknowledging that “[s]ince Israel depends for its national security on
control of Middle East air space, much of this information was considered
vital, and, as Col. Sella [of the Israeli Air Force] remarked, was not
previously possessed by Israel.”

At Mr. Pollard’s sentencing, the government submitted a Victim Impact
Statement, or VIS, the instrument designed by law specifically to allow the
victim of a crime – in this case the government itself – to describe to the
sentencing judge the full harm suffered.

The VIS says nothing about harm to U.S. national security. The VIS focuses
on relations with Middle Eastern countries, and on the lack of a quid pro
quo for information the United States would have preferred to barter with
Israel:

“Mr. Pollard’s unauthorized disclosures HAVE THREATENED THE U.S. [SIC]
RELATIONS WITH NUMEROUS MIDDLE EAST ARAB ALLIES, many of whom question the
extent to which Mr. Pollard’s disclosures of classified information have
skewed the balance of power in the Middle East. Moreover, because Mr.
Pollard provided the Israelis virtually any classified document requested by
Mr. Pollard’s coconspirators, THE U.S. HAS BEEN DEPRIVED OF THE QUID PRO QUO
ROUTINELY RECEIVED DURING AUTHORIZED AND OFFICIAL INTELLIGENCE EXCHANGES
WITH ISRAEL, and Israel has received information classified at a level far
in excess of that ever contemplated by the National Security Council. The
obvious result of Mr. Pollard’s largesse is that U.S. BARGAINING LEVERAGE
WITH THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT IN ANY FURTHER INTELLIGENCE EXCHANGES HAS BEEN
UNDERMINED. IN SHORT, MR. POLLARD’S ACTIVITIES HAVE ADVERSELY AFFECTED U.S.
RELATIONS with both its Middle East Arab allies and the government of
Israel.” (Emphasis in caps added.)

The VIS thus reflects friction between the United States and “Middle East
Arab allies,” and temporary reduction in bargaining leverage by the United
States. It says nothing at all about harm to U.S. national security, and
certainly does not allege, in words or in substance, that this was the
greatest compromise of U.S. national security up to that time.

Those who have opposed relief for Mr. Pollard have asserted that the VIS
merely describes what could be shared with the public, and that grave damage
to U.S. national security is documented in the secret Weinberger
declaration. This has now been proven false. The Weinberger declaration is
merely a more detailed version of the VIS.

The new revelations also dovetail closely with the disclosures in another
recently declassified document, a 1987 CIA study of the Pollard case. The
CIA study concludes that Mr. Pollard supplied Israel with information
regarding Arab and Pakistani nuclear intelligence, Arab military capability
and weaponry (including biological and chemical weapons), Soviet advisers in
Syria and Soviet training of Syrian personnel, the PLO’s Force 17, and a
radio signal notation manual requested by Israel to help in the decryption
of intercepted communications of Soviet military advisers in Damascus.

Tellingly, the CIA study specifically states that Israel never requested
information from Mr. Pollard concerning “U.S. military activities, plans,
capabilities, or equipment.” Thus, both recently disclosed government
documents, as well as the VIS, point to the same conclusion: Mr. Pollard’s
activities may have ruffled some feathers in the Middle East, but there was
no material impact on U.S. national security.

The government’s unconscionable deception has deprived Mr. Pollard of his
freedom for too many years. The document brandished by the government to
implement its scheme, hidden from scrutiny until now, has finally been
exposed for what it is: a description of a brief, long-forgotten blip in
foreign relations, not a frightening exposition of unprecedented harm to
U.S. national security.

After nearly three decades, in light of the government’s perfidy, the only
conceivable way to provide a belated measure of justice is to end Mr.
Pollard’s incarceration immediately. President Obama has the solemn duty to
uphold the law of the land by finally putting a stop to this ongoing
travesty. There are no more excuses. The president should exercise his
constitutional power and grant clemency to Jonathan Pollard.
= =
Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, litigation partners at Curtis,
Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP, have been Jonathan Pollard’s pro bono
attorneys since 2000. Lauer has 41 years of experience as a civil and
criminal litigator. Semmelman has 31 years of experience, and was formerly a
federal prosecutor in New York.

See Also:

Exposed: Secret Memo reveals Pollard sentence a sham – by Aaron Klein –
Worldnetdaily Exclusive on Weinberger Memo Declassification
http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/exposed-secret-memo-reveals-pollard-sentence-a-sham

Haaretz: Senior US Officials: Charge used to keep Pollard in prison patently
false http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2014/112014c.htm

Doc: Letter by 8 Senior US Officials Slamming Unjust Denial of Parole to
Pollard http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2014/111414.pdf

Doc: Clemency Letter to President Obama by Pollard Attorneys Re: unjust,
flawed parole process) www.JonathanPollard.org

JPost Editorial: Prisoner of Zion in the US
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Prisoner-of-Zion-in-the-US-383577

JUSTICE FOR JONATHAN POLLARD
Website: http://www.JonathanPollard.org
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