Bush to Free Spy Jonathan Pollard This Week? What the...?

[elehhhhna]

Esther Pollard: Bush is Willing to Free Pollard This Week
Israel National News ^ | April 10th, 2006 | Esther Pollard


Posted on 04/11/2006 1:44:11 PM PDT by shield


Jonathan Pollard's wife Esther said this morning that U.S. President Bush is ready to free the imprisoned Israeli - but that Prime Minister-designate Ehud Olmert has to make the request.


Speaking on Channel Two's Monday morning television talk program, Esther Pollard said, "Someone who is very close to President Bush came to me last night and said that Bush is ready to free Jonathan even in time for the upcoming Passover holiday - as long as Olmert makes an official request."


She said that the source with whom she spoke is "known very well to Mr. Olmert as trustworthy and having close ties with the U.S. President."

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/print.php3?what=news&id=101797

[donco6]

1. I echo your, "What?"

This seems like political suicide to me.

[elehhhhna]

3. oooh I hope so then. Of COURSE He'd pardon TREASON.

[TomInTib]

2. AIPAC has shrubby by the balls.

This is absolutely outrageous!

Pollard is a fucking SPY!

This smells to high heaven and is probably a setup for the Larry Franklin deal.

[Coastie for Truth]

4. This is a planted story

to smear some communities in the US and rouse the rabble. But, I have no doubt this will get play on KGO from 10 PM to 1 AM. Bettacha.

[dogday]

5. Smell that???? Smells like treason to me

This man is a spy who betrayed our country

<snip>

Jonathan Pollard was a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst in the 1980's when he came across information vital to Israel's security that was not being transferred to the Jewish state - contrary to an intelligence-sharing agreement between the U.S. and Israel. He then passed along the information to Israel, ultimately helping Israel to protect itself from Iraqi missiles. He was later caught while trying to find asylum in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Despite a plea bargain agreement, he received a life sentence with no parole for an offense that usually nets 2-4 years. In failing health, Jonathan Pollard is now in his 21st year of that sentence.

</snip>

[NYC]

6. Perhaps this is all the wife's idea.

Just her way of trying to get him released?

[elehhhhna]

7. Probably. Treason Boy WOULD be the one to ask, though.

[NYC]

9. That may be what inspired her.

I don't think he'll do it, but we'll see.

[TexasLawyer]

8. Why Pollard Should Never Be Released (The Traitor)

Maybe it's to piss off Seymour Hersh


Why Pollard Should Never Be Released (The Traitor)
The New Yorker Magazine | :January 18, 1999, pp. 26-33 | SEYMOUR M. HERSH

The Case Against Johnathon Pollard

In the last decade, Jonathan Pollard, the American Navy employee who spied for Israel in the mid-nineteen-eighties and is now serving a life sentence, has become a cause celebre in Israel and among Jewish groups in the United States. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a consortium of fifty-five groups, has publicly called for Pollard's release, arguing, in essence, that his crimes did not amount to high treason against the United States, because Israel was then and remains a close ally. Many of the leading religious organizations have also called for an end to Pollard's imprisonment, among them the Reform Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Orthodox Union.

Pollard himself, now forty-seven, has never denied that he turned over a great deal of classified material to the Israelis, but he maintains that his sole motive was to protect Israeli security. "From the start of this affair, I never intended or agreed to spy against the United States," he told United States District Court Judge Aubrey Robinson,Jr., in a memorandum submitted before his sentencing, in 1986. His goal, he said, was "to provide such information on the Arab powers and the Soviets that would permit the Israelis to avoid a repetition of the Yom Kippur War," in 1973, when an attack by Egypt and Syria took Israel by surprise. "At no time did I ever compromise the names of any U.S. agents operating overseas, nor did I ever reveal any U.S. ciphers, codes, encipherment devices, classified military technology, the disposition and orders of U.S. forces . . . or communications security procedures," Pollard added. "I never thought for a second that Israel's gain would necessarily result in America's loss. How could it?"

Pollard's defenders use the same arguments today. In a recent op-ed article in the Washington Post, the Harvard Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz, who served as Pollard's lawyer in the early nineteen-nineties, and three co-authors called for President Clinton to correct what they depicted as "this longstanding miscarriage of justice" in the Pollard case. There was nothing in Pollard's indictment, they added, to suggest that he had "compromised the nation's intelligence-gathering capabilities" or "betrayed worldwide intelligence data."

<snip>

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/576453/posts

(sorry about the freep cite-- but that's where I found the article. They're not fond of traitors either)

[NYC]

10. Same article: Pollard's monetary gain.

A career American intelligence officer who has been actively involved for years in assessing the damage caused by Pollard told me that Pollard had been desperately broke during this period: "He had credit-card debts, loan debts, debts on rent, furniture, cars." He was also borrowing heavily from his colleagues, in part to forestall possible garnishment of his wages -- an action that could lead to loss of his top-secret clearances. Despite his chronic financial problems, the intelligence officer said, Pollard was constantly spending money on meals in expensive restaurants, on drugs, and on huge bar bills.

In late 1983, shortly after the terrorist bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut, the Navy set up a high-powered Anti-Terrorist Alert Center at Suitland, and in June, 1984, Pollard was assigned to that unit's Threat Analysis Division. He had access there to the most up-to-date intelligence in the American government. By that summer, however, he had been recruited by Israeli intelligence. He was arrested a year and a half later, in November of 1985.

Pollard was paid well by the Israelis: he received a salary that eventually reached twenty-five hundred dollars a month, and tens of thousands of dollars in cash disbursements for hotels, meals, and even jewelry.