Pollard 2 – A Brief Comment Richard Sale

By Richard Sale, author of Clinton’s Secret Wars 

I was quite taken aback by the posted comment that “Pollard's defense claims Weinberger made a statement before his death that The Pollard Affair was a relatively minor matter.” 

I talked with Weinberger, who was up at his residence in Maine, over a period of years until just before his death. I won’t quote him, but his reaction to Pollard’s treason was consistently one of implacable outrage.  Let me add that anyone who would believe the declaration of a defense attorney about anything appears to be someone who suffers from the disease of mental gullibility.  If a defense attorney told me the time I would immediately look at my watch. 

Former senior DOD and CIA officials told me that Weinberger gave a secret statement to the court, before Pollard’s sentencing, that detailed the trading of stolen US data to the Soviet Union and the extent of the damage that trading had caused. 

The former senior CIA officials told me of the KGB-Sharon deal that took place on Cyprus in 1981 The KGB and the Israelis held regular meetings there. Weinberger never confirmed this, but we spoke on condition that he would correct what was false or mistaken in my writing. He never corrected this.  It has to be understood that the trading of the Pollard information had a dual purpose. The first was to get more Jews out of the Soviet Union, but the second was to recruit Jews working for the Soviet Union on sensitive missile and/or nuclear issues. 

But what the soviets got in return was severely damaging to US security. The Soviets were ravenous to find out anything about US ballistic missile submarines, to them the most sinister threat, and Pollard gave the Soviets a great deal of data. Soon, like the aftermath of John Walker’s treason, Soviet attack subs began to turn up at critical rendezvous points for US ballistic subs on patrol which then were forced to hastily abort. This clearly impairedUS war fighting capability, at least for a time. (As a point of fact, I was the first US reporter to break this story as well.) 

However, Pollard’s most damaging gift to the Soviets was that of the US. war plan against the Soviet Union. including firing locations, sequences,  and coordinates. 

It should also be remembered that Mossad has no station in Moscow, and that 99.9 percent of its information came from what one Mossad agent called, “positive interrogation” – interviewing Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union and analyzing their information. In addition, there is a super-secret division of Mossad, called Al which n Hebrew means “above” or “on top.”  Al  is so secret that most Mossad employees did not know of its existence, and the few that did had no access to its computerized files. Al operatives use fake U.S. passports and if they are caught in the U.S. they are jailed as spies. They have no diplomatic immunity.

Al operates stations all over the world, but one of Al’s functions was to take data from Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union and repackage it to make it more attractive to the Soviets by inserting things like radar information from the Danes or reports of troop movements in West Germany and other NATO chit chat to provide a fuller, more enticing picture. Al agents most certainly played a part in repackaging the Pollard thefts to make them more attractive to the Russians.  

When the Pollard data began to arrive in the Eastern Bloc, US installations that spy on Israel like the NSA listening post near Harrogate in England or the unmanned listening post on Cyprus could detect an immediate damage to efforts to recruit new agents, a reluctance on the part of prospective U.S. agents to join any outfit so thoroughly penetrated by a foreign power.  One thinks of LeCarre’s tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy and the agonies of double agents when they hear that another has been uncovered. 

Six feet long, six feet wide, and ten feet tall - that is the space the Pollard stolen documents occupies to this day. The story that Pollard stole all this because he was some sort of super Israeli patriot is the rankest horse dung. Weinberger insisted over and over that Pollard had tried to spy for South Africa and that his first love in life was not Israel but money. Weinberger was well aware of Pollard attempting to use the proceeds of his treason to buy expensive jewelry for his wife. He thought Pollard morally disgusting. 

To conclude, when I used the phrase “with grace” in regard to returning Pollard’s body to Israel, I thought I was dripping with almost vulgar irony.

 

 

Comments

[Anna-Marina]

This article from CounterPunch is painful to read, when one skips the story of Rahm and goes directly to a letter by Florida-based Nancy and Mark Gilbert, the Democratic Party and Israel fundraisers. Perhaps we should be thankful to Ambassador Oren for his clarity.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn10012010.html

[J]

Colonel,

I'm frankly stunned that the Europeans weren't outraged at Pollard's espionage and its subsequent damage to their ability to thwart a Soviet/Warsaw Pact nuclear attack.

Dismember Pollard and scatter his parts over the European Continent for every NATO partner that Pollard put at grave risk. That would be considered inhumane wouldn't it. But so was Pollard's espionage -- inhumane to the U.S. and Europe.

Friggin Israeli maggots who are still walking free that were part-n-parcel active players in Pollard's espionage.

[Lewie]

TO: Mr. Richard Sale,
re: Secretary Weinberger interview with journalist Edwin Black.

Sir,

I do hope the following reference material provides clarity with respect to the controversy surrounding my previous post.
[unedited excerpt of Edwin Black's article]

Weinberger memoir omits key involvement
Edwin Black - Special To The Jewish Week (NY) - June 14, 2002
Caspar Weinberger's plain-prose memoir, generally devoid of emotion, recounts his rise to the top of the defense establishment and his controversial tenure there.

What "In the Arena" [Regnery] does not recount is his pivotal involvement with the Jonathan Pollard spy case. Weinberger was called upon by the judge to assess the damage Pollard, a civilian Navy analyst, did to national security.

Asked in an interview why he omitted the incident, Weinberger casually replied, "Because it was, in a sense, a very minor matter but made very important." Asked to elaborate, Weinberger repeated, "As I say, the Pollard matter was comparatively minor. It was made far bigger than its actual importance."

Pressed on why the case was made far bigger than its actual importance, Weinberger answered, "I don't know why — it just was."
[END OF EDWIN BLACK]

[subsequent paragraphs not relevant and were deleted]

Edwin Black from Wikipedia follows:
In the late 1970s he was a founder of the investigative magazine, The Chicago Monthly.[5] He also was a frequent freelance contributor to the four major Chicago newspapers of the day, the Tribune, the Daily News, the Sun-Times, and Chicago Today, as well as such weeklies as Chicago Reader and Chicago Magazine.

[Friendly_Fire]

J, France gave Israel the nukes, Britain the special puppy, Germany have to stay stum, so not surprised, as to what happened behind closed doors etc...

[Patrick Lang]

Lewie

"Pollard’s most damaging gift to the Soviets was that of the US. war plan against the Soviet Union. including firing locations, sequences, and coordinates."

Presumably we are talking about boomers since Pollard would not have had access to the rest of the SIOP.

Does that seem "minor" to you? pl

[Fred]

Anna Marina, from your link:
"... the Obama team’s clever input to re-wording the Gaza blockade language ..." It may have prevented publication in the US media, but it hasn't stop the rest of the planet:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/01/flotilla/index.html

[Fred]

Col.

What is your view on the comments former president Clinton made regarding Russian imigration to Isreal. In addition to a significant change in cultural outlook isn't it also likely that there are a signficant number of Russian agents within the Isreali government and militiary industries?

[Patrick Lang]

Fred

It is likely to be true. pl

[J]

Fred,

Israel has been 'Swiss cheese' when speaking about Russian moles. Which is 'trouble' for U.S.. If you want anything that is U.S. 'classified' protected, you DON'T give it to Israel. If our U.S. government is stupid enough to give the Israelis access to the 'iron dome' tech, they can then kiss it goodbye as it will in short order be 'Moscow bound'. I 'hope' that it is 'U.S. ONLY' access to the iron dome stuff. Course the problem is that if U.S. personnel are allowed local r&r on the Israeli economy, Israeli Military and Civilian Intelligence will have their 'honey traps' and Mata Hari's in place for the unsuspecting U.S. iron dome personnel to garner all the iron dome stuff they can from the unfortunate personnel who have been stuck with the iron dome tasking.

[Jake]

One of these days we will learn our "lessons learned".. The question is WHEN?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hGTcYEKIrWy0bV-jIm7pq9QOea1QD9IJT4Q00?docId=D9IJT4Q00

Banging my head on my desk several times..........

[zhgfnfm]

J, I am afraid your government has given the store already to MOSSAD...when Rahm MOSSAD Emanuel sits on all meetings in the situation room and is your Chief Of Staff to Obama... Since 2000, CIA/MOSSAD have become Siamese Twins....

[Allen Thomson]

There's a fairly recent book on l'affaire Pollard that has substantial portions exerpted at http://tinyurl.com/253pztv

FWIW, it's not really clear to me at what point in his career he would have had need-to-know access to SSBN operational/SIOP information. (Of course, he may have had non-need-to-know access, a thing which I have encountered on distressingly many occasions.)

[walrus]

Lewie, "Edwin Black" is Jewish, and therefore untrustworthy as a reference for this topic.

[J]

zhgfnfm,

Nah, not the 'entire' store, just a 'portion' of it.

Fortunately for U.S. is compartmentalization, which does keep most of the store from being given away to the Israeli dogs.

What is fun, is watching the Israeli dogs gnawing on a bone that has been intentionally placed to see where its marrow winds up.

[Lewie]

Lewie, "Edwin Black" is Jewish, and therefore untrustworthy as a reference for this topic.

Posted by: walrus | 03 October 2010 at 04:00 PM

I respectfully disagree with your position that being Jewish, in itself, is a reliable indicator of a professional journalist's integrity, including when it comes to subject matters related to Israel.
I would hope that you might consider judging Mr. Edwin Black based upon his work.
I have included some information below which I hope you will find interesting. Thanks for replying to my post.
L
Excerpt from Wikipedia biography of Edwin Black
follows:

In 1978 Black interviewed the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented members of the American Nazi Party who, intending provocation, marched through the predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie.[7] In preparing himself for that interview, Black's interest was piqued in the hidden history of relations between the government of Adolf Hitler and German-Jewish Zionists during the first years of the Nazi regime. Five years of research followed, ending in the 1984 publication of his controversial first book, The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine.[8]
Black's books have typically made use of carefully selected networks of volunteer and professional researchers assembled for each project. Three years before completion of his 2001 book, IBM and the Holocaust, Black began to put together what would ultimately become a team more than 100 researchers, translators, and assistants to work on discovery and analysis of primary source documents written in German, French, and Polish.[9] In all, more than 20,000 documents from some 50 different libraries, archives, museums, and other collections were assembled and analyzed in the writing of the book.[10]

Black has written extensively on topics beyond that of 1933-1945 German history, including books on oil dependency, the history of Iraq, and alternative energy. He is presently a contributor to the online magazine, The Cutting Edge News.

Black lives today in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

[edit] Selected literary awards
1985 Carl Sandburg Award of the Friends of the Chicago Public Library for best non-fiction book of 1984 for the book The Transfer Agreement.[12]
2003 General Non-Fiction Book Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) for the book IBM and the Holocaust.[13]
2003 Donald Robinson Award for Investigative Journalism from the ASJA for the article "Final Solutions: How IBM Helped Automate the Nazi Death Machine in Poland," published in The Village Voice.[13]
2005 Best World Affairs Book Award from the Great Lakes chapter of the World Affairs Council for Banking on Baghdad.[14]
2007 Honorable Mention for General Non-Fiction Books from the ASJA for the book Internal Combustion.[15]
[end of Wilipedia excerpt]

[MRW]

A look into Edwin Black's mindset. In an article in the right-wing Israeli setllers' newspaper Arutz Sheva about the Agriprocessors case in Iowa, the tag paragraph states:

Black calls the Rubashkin case a "miscarriage of justice" and compares it to the infamous Jonathan Pollard case in which Pollard was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment for a crime in which similar felons have received 2-4 years. "The issue is not whether Rubashkin is the most angelic or villainous of felons," Black concludes. "The issue is fairness and equality – I'm looking into the law, and that's what my investigation was about."
(IsraelNationalNews.com)
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/137404

Anything Edwin Black has to say on the matter is discredited, IMHO. Considering what Israeli reporters had to say about the flotilla and the killing onboard -- & the lies the IDF made up which Max Blumenthal caught them at and reported -- who could trust them with describing an apple accurately?

[MRW]

Check out the masthead for The Cutting Edge News. That's not an association to crow about.

[confusedponderer]

Lewie,
lest we get sidetracked into matters of irrelevance, the Pollard case was not a miscarriage of justice. So whatever his general qualities as a reporter, or leanings and motives, Black is not objective here. Equivalencing the Pollard case to the Rubashkin case is preposterous.

I like to suggest a better reference point:

Robert Hanssen, the infamous FBI spy was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Like Pollard, he also worked for money, but as an Opus Dei guy, he couldn't credibly claim to have worked in accordance with his faith when supplying the Soviets with all that information.

Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison. A very comparable sentence for a very comparable crime.

[J]

MRW,

Look at 'who' are some of it's article authors -- WINEP for one.

The 'Cutting Edge News' looks like an AIPAC run 'show' full of pro-Israel slant articles. And as far as the slug Rubashkin, he was nothing more than a drug dealer and slave trader masking himself in a Rabbi suit. DOJ/FBI had Rubashkin by his balls. A crook is a crook, no matter what 'religion' they presume

[Abu Sinan]

Looks like the Israelis are still at it:

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

[J]

Abu Sinan,

The Israelis are doing their Intel trolling thing up in Canada as well as near U.S. Government/Military/Intelligence Installations within the U.S..

[J]

The Israeli IDF are such wunnerful luving maggots, they are all over themselves to prevent a bleeding pregnant woman from reaching needed emergency care.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jd6eewcj9E

[J]

Exodus of Jewish Advisors from Obama White House Likely Not an Omen of Good Things to Come

http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/exodus-of-jewish-advisors-from-obama-white-house-likely-not-an-omen-of-good-things-to-come/