{"id":205737,"date":"2015-12-03T16:54:31","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T16:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=205737"},"modified":"2015-12-03T16:54:31","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T16:54:31","slug":"jonathan-pollard-affair-unanswered-questions-abound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/jonathan-pollard-affair-unanswered-questions-abound\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jonathan Pollard Affair: Unanswered\u00a0Questions\u00a0Abound"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Jonathan Pollard\u2019s release from federal prison on November 20 has triggered<br \/>\na flood of superficial stories in the establishment media. Few of them address<br \/>\nlingering mysteries or contextualize huge changes in U.S.-Israel relations.<br \/>\nPollard <a href=\"http:\/\/www.israellobby.org\/pollard\/06041986_pollard_indictment.pdf\">was charged with<\/a> (PDF) \u201cGathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign<br \/>\ngovernment\u201d in 1986. The spy used his courier status and security clearances<br \/>\nas a U.S.-Navy intelligence analyst to deliver a huge volume of U.S. intelligence<br \/>\nto Israel from the NSA, CIA and DIA. The Defense Intelligence Agency \u2014 Israel\u2019s<br \/>\nbiggest victim \u2014 even used the Pollard affair as the case study for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=f__MgT9FU-A\">counterintelligence<br \/>\ntraining video<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Yet in court, Pollard expected to be treated with extreme leniency and be merely<br \/>\nslapped on the wrist and deported to Israel. In his own words &#8220;\u2026it was<br \/>\nthe established policy of the Department of Justice not to prosecute US citizens<br \/>\nfor espionage activities on behalf of Israel.&#8221; A huge public relations<br \/>\ncampaign, some spurred on by former AIPAC <i>Near East Report<\/i> editor Wolf<br \/>\nBlitzer, framed the boundaries of acceptable public debate about Pollard while<br \/>\ncalling into question aspects of the criminal investigation.<\/p>\n<p>Pollard was therefore shocked to receive a life sentence in 1987 from Judge<br \/>\nAubrey Robinson. This immediately followed a <a href=\"http:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/weinberger\/2010\/10\/17\/caspar-w-weinberger-jonathan-pollard\/\">classified<br \/>\nmemorandum in aid of sentencing<\/a> from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger<br \/>\nthat had a huge impact on the judicial decision. Yet three decades later, core<br \/>\nquestions about conduct of government with huge relevance to Americans remain<br \/>\nunaddressed:<\/p>\n<p><b>Who was Mr. X or \u201cMEGA\u201d? <\/b>Jonathan Pollard was tasked to obtain secret<br \/>\nfiles by \u201cdate and document control number.\u201d He was shown by his Israeli handlers<br \/>\nUS secrets so highly classified that even he did not have access to them. The<br \/>\nFBI opened an investigation \u201cto determine whether a senior US government official<br \/>\nhas been passing highly sensitive information to the Israeli government\u201d according<br \/>\nto the <i>Washington Post<\/i>. WAPO even speculated that Pollard was burned<br \/>\nto protect an even more valuable agent. Was Mega ever unmasked? Or, as is usually<br \/>\nthe case, was there finally an internal political intervention to close down<br \/>\nthe investigation? When Israel is the subject of investigation, internal and<br \/>\nexternal lobbying for closure usually manages to <a href=\"http:\/\/irmep.org\/adl_espionage.htm\">short-circuit<\/a><br \/>\naccountability.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/smith-grant\/2015\/12\/02\/the-jonathan-pollard-affair-unanswered-questions-abound\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jonathan Pollard\u2019s release from federal prison on November 20 has triggered a flood of superficial stories in the establishment media. Few of them address lingering mysteries or contextualize huge changes in U.S.-Israel relations. Pollard was charged with (PDF) \u201cGathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government\u201d in 1986. The spy used his courier status [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-205737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}