Pollard - "Common Sense and Impudence" Richard Sale

By Richard Sale, author of Clinton’s Secret Wars                                                      

The recurring pressure from Israel to repatriate convicted spy Jonathan Pollard is clearly an expression of common sense if Israel wants to recruit any other agents in place. The KGB was always conscientious in extracting its snared spies by one means or another. 

If anything smacks of impudence it’s the current Israeli pressure when contrasted with the stormy ocean of pious Israeli government denials when the case first broke. 

My own view is that Pollard should never be released. 

I was the reporter who broke the story of how the Israeli government was selling the pilfered Pollard material to the Eastern Bloc in return for increased emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union. 

I don’t recall the exact date of my story but I believe it was 1987.  My sources were senior U.S. serving counterintelligence (CI3) officials.  According to them, the Israel-Soviet deal on emigration was made on Cyprus in 1981 and was the brilliantly cunning idea of top Israeli defense official Ariel Sharon.  (CI3 officials also told me at that time that Mossad was “full of Soviet moles.”) 

The recruitment of Pollard was not an aberration – he became an operative of Israel as early as 1981 when he was working for the U.S. Navy’s Field Operations Intelligence Office. Israel was targeting certain oil fields in southern Russia and Pollard’s task was to gather information on the targeting. 

In any case, although Sharon appears to be the initial villain, high level Israeli officials including Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Yitzhak Shamir and others knew of Pollard’s existence. Shamir, for example, was very active in peddling the Pollard data to the Soviets. 

At the time of his arrest, the Justice Department alleged that Pollard had provided Israel with 1,800 documents or 100,000 pages. The damage Pollard inflicted on U.S. security was enormous.  Senior DOD officials told me that Pollard stole from the Navy's Sixth Fleet Ocean Surveillance Information Facility

(FOSIF) in Rota, Spain, the daily report, a top-secret document filed every morning at 0800 Zulu time (Greenwich Mean Time) that contained NSA data on events in the Middle East and North Africa during the previous 24 hours. NASA and Navy Intelligence shared the site. 

The U.S. Navy’s obsessive focus was on Soviet ballistic missile submarines cruising the Mediterranean whose weapons were aimed at the United States; ships which had to be quickly destroyed in the event of war. 

Pollard gave the Israelis the Rota reports for a year, also providing them with the  National SIGINT Requirements List, a day-to-day compendium, listed by priority, of NSA collection units around the world that would have included things such as alerts to U.S. bases in a region before an insertion by U.S. Special Forces or a forthcoming bombing mission. 

Pollard also plundered the Defense Intelligence Agency's Community On-Line Intelligence System, which was one of the government's first computerized information-retrieval-network systems, called  DIAL-COINS, that contained all the intelligence reports filed by Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine attaches in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa. 

Pollard also stole a huge 10-volume manual called Radio Signals Notations or RAISIN, lauded as the bible of signals intelligence that lists how the United States collects signals around the world. This outlined the sites, frequencies, and significant features of Israeli communication spied on by the United States including the U-2 “Senior Stretch” flights from Cyprus, the RC-135 electronic warfare flights, the joint CIA/NSA listening post in the U.S. Embassy in Israel, along with all the known communications links used by the Soviet Union. All of these were compromised by Pollard. 

The Pollard thefts had sinister consequences. U.S. agents in the Eastern Bloc or the Soviet Union were rolled up and America’s ability to collect technical intelligence on Soviet designs was shut down or crippled, leaving us blind. 

At the time I broke my stories, I did not know former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, now deceased.  However, friends eventually put us together and I talked with him informally over 30 times about what Sy Hersh, myself and others had written about Pollard.  Weinberger could not calmly discuss Pollard but hardened into furious rage each time. 

Sy Hersh and I became friends over the story. He had a book coming out about Israel and after I talked about the moles in Mossad, he called me at UPI and began by saying, “Thanks for screwing up my book,” chiding me for ruining one of the book’s exclusives.  The book had plenty more of them, and Sy remains for me a gigantic figure in journalism for his integrity and toughness. 

To conclude, Pollard should sit where he is until we can, with grace, send his body to Israel for burial.

----------------------------------

I was on the JCS damage assesment board for this matter.  Richard Sale is altogether correct in his account of how greatly Pollard and the Israelis hurt us.   Ehud Barak was Director of General Staff intelligence during the Pollard operation.  While Pollard stabbed the United States in the back, Barak was smiling and smiling in his best "hale fellow well met" manner in dealing with DIA.  pl

Comments

[Graecastle]

as for what i will say, he should be hung until 10 seconds pre-dead on the white house rose garden lawn before the usual cast of sycophants. then, revived; feted with a double ham omelete, friexenet brunch. then, jit (just in time) he should be drawn, quartered and then fedexed to tel aviva in half a dozen "overnights".

all captured, of course, on multiple cam-phones (for the blogosphere) and stationary satellites (for distribution to interested parties at a USonly-convenient time)...

lest we not forget his masters, apologists, associates, colleagues and copycats, maybe we have a party and "invite" them all.

there'd be a whole lot less cars on the streets at rush hour...

and this is just what i'm prepared to commit to print.

[Russ Wagenfeld]

Hi Pat,
After reading this post I looked up drawn and quartered on Google. One hit said the following:
The statutory punishment for treason in England from 1283 to 1867, D&Q was a multimedia form of execution. First the prisoner was drawn to the place of execution on a hurdle, a type of sledge. (Originally he was merely dragged behind a horse.) Then he was hanged. Cut down while still alive, he was disembowelled and his entrails burned before his eyes. Finally the condemned was beheaded and his body cut into quarters, one arm or leg to a quarter. How exactly the quartering was to be accomplished wasn't always specified, but on at least some occasions horses were hitched to each of the victim's limbs and spurred in four directions. An assistant with a sword or cleaver was sometimes assigned to make a starter cut and ease the strain on the animals. The remains were often put on display as a warning to others.
Then the parts could be shipped to Israel.
This would work for me. Shooting is too good for him.
Russ

[robt willmann]

Here is a story from an ABC television affiliate (Channel 4) in Salt Lake City, Utah, saying that "sales" people in northern Utah County have been going door to door in neighborhoods and at times identifying themselves as Israeli art students and showing Israeli passports and asking about the new National Security Agency data center being built at Camp Williams.

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc/story/Door-to-door-spies-in-Utah-County/sjOWsjk_zEqf6QeAfk4ZJw.cspx

On the web page is a video of the TV news story, called "Door to door spies in Utah County?" It seems to have aired September 29 or 30, 2010.

The local police officer interviewed in the story says that he told one of the "art students" that if he was an artist to draw him something, and gave the person a piece of paper and his pen and the suspect produced a picture that "would have been on a par with what my kindergartner could have done!"

The written story said that the FBI had "no comment".

[Fred]

At least we'll get Rahm Emanuel out of the White House. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/30/emanuel-seen-quitting-friday-for-own-race/

[wisedup]

the Israeli art students are chaff. Designed to distract attention from and thus protect the Pollards still in place.

[Margaret Steinfels]

Here's a string of stories--off the immediate subject--but pretty appalling about our current relationship with Israel. Dennis Ross, a favorite here, I know, seems in the middle of it. He's either telling his friend David Makovsky the truth, or his ideas were rejected by the administration and he's getting even, or he's floating them on behalf of Israel and looking to see what will stick,
Or... I'm sure you all can conjecture other possibilities.

The original news story: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/obama-in-personal-appeal-to-netanyahu-extend-settlement-freeze-for-two-months-1.316450

The news story denying the story: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/white-house-obama-did-not-send-letter-to-netanyahu-1.316491

Makovsky's story, which refers to the letter as a “draft” letter: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3256

The NYTimes version: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/world/middleeast/01mideast.html?_r=1&hp

[Roy G]

If anybody should be freed, it's Mordechai Vanunu.

[mars]

Actually if memory serves me correctly Pollard was being run by Bureau of Scientific Liason ("La'ka'm") in the IDF Defense Ministry, same organization that thefted Mirage III jet plans from France following DeGaulle's arms boycott after 1967 Six-Day war.

While no doubt it would have been better for all, not to mention more just, if Pollard, had been sent to 'disappear' in a pre-Guantanamo Guantanamo, or have met an untimely accident in prison, that doesn't excuse posting some of the comments from the conspiracy branch of your audience, for proping up the old hoary myth of American Jews being unloyal, the supposeded Mossad 'art students.

[Jackie]

Roy G: Good idea, but Israel has to free Vanunu. I'm sure that is on a much different scale for them than Pollard. MV talked about their nuclear weapons.

Russ: D&Q sounds disgusting, but it works for me in this case.

[J]

Rahm probably placed Mossad bugs all over the place on his way out of the White House, oops I forgot, he wouldn't need to do that, Mossad has Amdocs, and other 'contractors' who are bugging every phone in America on Israel's behalf.

[Norman Rogers]

"At the time I broke my stories, I did not know former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, now deceased. However, friends eventually put us together and I talked with him informally over 30 times about what Sy Hersh, myself and others had written about Pollard. Weinberger could not calmly discuss Pollard but hardened into furious rage each time. "

That is an excellent little piece of history. My estimation of Mr. Weinberger has just gone up a great deal. Thank you for sharing that.

[WILL]

Braveheart introduced us to the being "hung, drawn, & quartered." Guy Fawkes, leader of the Gunpowder Plot, famously escaped the second two parts by leaping off the gallows & breaking his neck. I understand they still celebrate Guy Fawkes Night w/ bonfires in Albion.

[BillWade]

"While no doubt it would have been better for all, not to mention more just, if Pollard, had been sent to 'disappear' in a pre-Guantanamo Guantanamo, or have met an untimely accident in prison"

Mars, I say that "the conspiracy branch of your audience" might find your suggestion above to be vile and 100% un-American.

[J]

Phil, Colonel,

Let's 'sift' through 'whom' of those individuals that were whoring in the White House at that time that could have been 'directing traffic' with regards to Israel's and Pollards theft of 'specific' documents.

[SAC Brat]

I'd rather see Pollard be forced to tape a series of public service television and movie commercials on the theme of "Just Say No To Treason". Oh yeah, and mention in every state of the union speech that he is still locked up, a la the old Saturday Night Live news gag about the status of Francisco Franco.

I can dream, can't I?

[Patrick Lang]

J

I think OSD is a more likely place to look. pl

[Anna-Marina]

“Doesn't American political and military leadership have any pride anymore?”
This is a truly rhetorical question. The US political leadership is bought and is blackmailed by AIPAC. The US military leadership is more interested in their carriers (hefty salaries) than in the well-being of the American people. Pride means courage. There are very few courageous people in a position of power in the US. They have been carefully weeded out by the oligarchy. Rot.

[Medicine Man]

Only my opinion but I think Pollard is better off alive and in prison. He serves a useful purpose this way; as a human reminder of past treachery.

[Anna-Marina]

Medicine Man
"Pollard is better off alive and in prison. He serves a useful purpose this way; as a human reminder of past treachery."
And of present (ongoing) treachery as well